Test Automation Contract Job Trends

Automated Testing
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Test Automation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 21 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 44 47 53
Rank change year-on-year +3 +6 -13
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,723 1,520 1,843
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.80% 4.17% 3.98%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.36% 4.82% 4.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,193 1,013 1,333
10th Percentile £325 £325 £363
25th Percentile £404 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -7.08%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £630
90th Percentile £688 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £495 £500
% change year-on-year +1.01% -1.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 8 60
10th Percentile £34.55 £40.88 £34.98
25th Percentile £45.94 £42.19 £47.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £47.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.84% -36.67% +25.00%
75th Percentile £67.00 £63.75 £90.00
90th Percentile £69.40 £70.88 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £50.00 £72.50
% change year-on-year +30.00% -31.03% +20.83%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Test Automation falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 32,161 31,515 40,985
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.65% 86.38% 88.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,137 18,969 27,555
10th Percentile £300 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,122 1,120 1,583
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.20 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.23 £18.98
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.90
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -20.27% +25.43%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.48 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £33.00 £44.25
% change year-on-year -31.42% -25.42% +42.74%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Test Automation relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Test Automation job vacancy trend in the UK

Test Automation
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Test Automation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation over the 6 months to 21 November 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Test Automation.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Automation over the 6 months to 21 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Test Automation within the UK over the 6 months to 21 November 2025. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -2 1,471 £500 - 1,133
UK excluding London +5 825 £500 +1.01% 747
London -9 690 £513 -2.38% 544
Work from Home +7 545 £500 - 616
North of England -4 276 £488 +8.33% 157
Midlands +19 159 £500 +6.38% 72
South East -16 156 £492 -4.00% 246
Yorkshire -9 130 £518 +8.95% 38
West Midlands +19 126 £515 +2.24% 42
North West -4 105 £400 -11.11% 97
South West +18 88 £525 -4.55% 112
Scotland +1 74 £500 +11.11% 54
East of England +11 53 £475 +18.75% 67
North East +14 43 £494 +18.26% 22
East Midlands +3 33 £360 -10.00% 30
Wales +8 31 £495 -5.26% 29
Northern Ireland +1 11 £295 -43.13% 20

Test Automation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 87 (5.05%) Confluence
2 53 (3.08%) SAS
3 26 (1.51%) Apache Spark
4 22 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
5 19 (1.10%) Apache
6 14 (0.81%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.52%) CMS
8 8 (0.46%) Oracle Application Server
9 5 (0.29%) Anypoint
9 5 (0.29%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.23%) JBoss
10 4 (0.23%) nginx
10 4 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 4 (0.23%) WordPress
11 3 (0.17%) CICS
11 3 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.17%) WebLogic
12 2 (0.12%) IIS
12 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 24 (1.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.70%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.41%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.23%) Simulink
5 4 (0.23%) Windchill
6 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.12%) Trello
7 1 (0.058%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 15 (0.87%) Aladdin
2 14 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.23%) Maximo
3 4 (0.23%) SAP HR
3 4 (0.23%) SAP PLM
4 3 (0.17%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.12%) Eagle PACE
5 2 (0.12%) Markit EDM
5 2 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.12%) SAP BRIM
5 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.12%) Shopify
6 1 (0.058%) Algo Collateral
6 1 (0.058%) CODA-Financials
6 1 (0.058%) MoSes
6 1 (0.058%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.058%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.058%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.058%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 483 (28.03%) Azure
2 432 (25.07%) AWS
3 246 (14.28%) GitHub
4 209 (12.13%) Azure DevOps
5 158 (9.17%) GCP
6 130 (7.54%) Serverless
7 126 (7.31%) GitHub Actions
8 65 (3.77%) AWS Lambda
9 56 (3.25%) Power Platform
10 54 (3.13%) OpenShift
11 51 (2.96%) Amazon S3
12 48 (2.79%) AWS CloudFormation
13 41 (2.38%) Azure AKS
14 37 (2.15%) Snowflake
15 36 (2.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 36 (2.09%) SaaS
16 31 (1.80%) Amazon ECS
16 31 (1.80%) Amazon EKS
17 27 (1.57%) Entra ID
18 24 (1.39%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 43 (2.50%) Firewall
2 35 (2.03%) HTTP
3 32 (1.86%) Wireshark
4 27 (1.57%) HTTPS
5 22 (1.28%) SSL
6 17 (0.99%) TCP/IP
6 17 (0.99%) VPN
7 16 (0.93%) Network Security
8 13 (0.75%) DNS
8 13 (0.75%) Multicast
8 13 (0.75%) SD-WAN
9 11 (0.64%) Ethernet
10 10 (0.58%) WAN
11 7 (0.41%) AMQP
12 6 (0.35%) Bluetooth
12 6 (0.35%) FTP
12 6 (0.35%) Internet
13 5 (0.29%) Broadband
13 5 (0.29%) MPLS
13 5 (0.29%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (6.62%) PostgreSQL
2 94 (5.46%) NoSQL
3 89 (5.17%) MongoDB
4 72 (4.18%) Relational Database
5 68 (3.95%) SQL Server
6 44 (2.55%) Data Warehouse
7 28 (1.63%) Amazon RDS
7 28 (1.63%) Pentaho
8 27 (1.57%) Power BI
9 25 (1.45%) BigQuery
9 25 (1.45%) DynamoDB
10 23 (1.33%) Oracle Database
11 21 (1.22%) Data Lake
12 20 (1.16%) Big Data
13 17 (0.99%) Apache Cassandra
13 17 (0.99%) MySQL
14 15 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
14 15 (0.87%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 14 (0.81%) RDBMS
16 13 (0.75%) Redis
Development Applications
1 317 (18.40%) Git
2 309 (17.93%) JIRA
3 300 (17.41%) Jenkins
4 273 (15.84%) Selenium
5 215 (12.48%) GitLab
6 153 (8.88%) Cucumber
7 126 (7.31%) Postman
8 114 (6.62%) Cypress.io
9 101 (5.86%) JUnit
10 71 (4.12%) JMeter
11 68 (3.95%) REST Assured
12 58 (3.37%) Bitbucket
13 47 (2.73%) SonarQube
14 40 (2.32%) Maven
15 36 (2.09%) SpecFlow
16 34 (1.97%) Mockito
17 31 (1.80%) Gatling
18 29 (1.68%) Sonatype Nexus
19 26 (1.51%) Appium
19 26 (1.51%) Zephyr
General
1 487 (28.26%) Social Skills
2 295 (17.12%) Finance
3 205 (11.90%) Public Sector
4 194 (11.26%) Analytical Skills
5 131 (7.60%) Banking
6 36 (2.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 35 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
8 29 (1.68%) Telecoms
9 25 (1.45%) Investment Banking
10 24 (1.39%) Front Office
11 22 (1.28%) Manufacturing
12 21 (1.22%) Pharmaceutical
13 19 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
14 18 (1.04%) Financial Institution
15 17 (0.99%) Marketing
15 17 (0.99%) Retail
16 16 (0.93%) Electronics
17 12 (0.70%) Legal
17 12 (0.70%) Military
17 12 (0.70%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 391 (22.69%) Developer
2 263 (15.26%) Senior
3 208 (12.07%) Tester
4 150 (8.71%) Test Engineer
5 149 (8.65%) Lead
6 115 (6.67%) Java Developer
7 113 (6.56%) Automation Tester
8 86 (4.99%) Analyst
9 81 (4.70%) Software Engineer
10 70 (4.06%) Data Engineer
11 68 (3.95%) DevOps Engineer
12 65 (3.77%) Test Analyst
13 63 (3.66%) QA Engineer
14 61 (3.54%) Senior Developer
15 59 (3.42%) Test Automation Engineer
16 55 (3.19%) Automation Engineer
17 51 (2.96%) Test Leader
17 51 (2.96%) Test Manager
18 39 (2.26%) Consultant
18 39 (2.26%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 215 (12.48%) REST
2 154 (8.94%) Playwright
3 151 (8.76%) React
4 131 (7.60%) .NET
5 127 (7.37%) RESTful
6 115 (6.67%) Spring
7 113 (6.56%) Kafka
8 109 (6.33%) Node.js
9 107 (6.21%) Spring Boot
10 84 (4.88%) JSON
11 79 (4.59%) SOAP
12 78 (4.53%) XML
13 75 (4.35%) CSS
14 74 (4.29%) HTML
15 68 (3.95%) AngularJS
16 61 (3.54%) pytest
17 51 (2.96%) Jest
17 51 (2.96%) Web Services
18 42 (2.44%) JMS
19 39 (2.26%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 148 (8.59%) Cloud Native
2 112 (6.50%) Product Ownership
3 52 (3.02%) Mobile App
4 44 (2.55%) Security Posture
5 37 (2.15%) Distributed Systems
6 35 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
7 33 (1.92%) Algorithms
7 33 (1.92%) Public Cloud
8 30 (1.74%) Self-Motivation
9 29 (1.68%) Virtual Team
10 28 (1.63%) Onboarding
11 26 (1.51%) Enterprise Software
11 26 (1.51%) Legacy Systems
12 20 (1.16%) Data Structures
13 19 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 19 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
13 19 (1.10%) Management Information System
14 16 (0.93%) Genomics
15 15 (0.87%) Life Science
16 14 (0.81%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 179 (10.39%) Linux
2 88 (5.11%) Windows
3 59 (3.42%) Unix
4 53 (3.08%) Android
5 41 (2.38%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.16%) Mac OS X
7 18 (1.04%) Windows Server
8 17 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 10 (0.58%) CentOS
9 10 (0.58%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.17%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.17%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
12 2 (0.12%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.058%) Solaris
13 1 (0.058%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.058%) VMS
13 1 (0.058%) Windows Embedded Compact
13 1 (0.058%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 850 (49.33%) CI/CD
2 845 (49.04%) Agile
3 666 (38.65%) DevOps
4 420 (24.38%) Problem-Solving
5 273 (15.84%) Microservices
6 261 (15.15%) Scrum
7 250 (14.51%) Test Strategy
8 244 (14.16%) Containerisation
9 238 (13.81%) Continuous Improvement
10 222 (12.88%) TDD
11 214 (12.42%) Infrastructure as Code
12 211 (12.25%) Software Engineering
13 203 (11.78%) Test Scripting
14 191 (11.09%) SDLC
15 183 (10.62%) Software Testing
16 166 (9.63%) BDD
17 164 (9.52%) AI
18 161 (9.34%) Validation
19 152 (8.82%) Analytics
20 142 (8.24%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 496 (28.79%) Python
2 415 (24.09%) Java
3 315 (18.28%) SQL
4 239 (13.87%) JavaScript
5 194 (11.26%) TypeScript
6 182 (10.56%) C#
7 101 (5.86%) Bash
8 70 (4.06%) PowerShell
9 42 (2.44%) C++
10 39 (2.26%) Go
11 24 (1.39%) Kotlin
12 22 (1.28%) Bicep
13 15 (0.87%) Scala
13 15 (0.87%) Shell Script
14 14 (0.81%) Ruby
14 14 (0.81%) Swift
15 13 (0.75%) PHP
15 13 (0.75%) PL/SQL
16 12 (0.70%) Perl
17 11 (0.64%) C
Qualifications
1 404 (23.45%) Security Cleared
2 317 (18.40%) SC Cleared
3 109 (6.33%) Degree
4 70 (4.06%) ISTQB
5 56 (3.25%) Computer Science Degree
6 50 (2.90%) DV Cleared
7 48 (2.79%) BPSS Clearance
8 28 (1.63%) AWS Certification
9 25 (1.45%) Master's Degree
10 24 (1.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 20 (1.16%) CISSP
12 18 (1.04%) OSCP
13 16 (0.93%) Azure Certification
14 14 (0.81%) Cisco Certification
14 14 (0.81%) CISM
14 14 (0.81%) ISEB
14 14 (0.81%) MCP
15 13 (0.75%) CEH
15 13 (0.75%) GPEN
16 12 (0.70%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 386 (22.40%) QA
2 131 (7.60%) Accessibility
3 79 (4.59%) Data Quality
4 42 (2.44%) NIST
5 39 (2.26%) GDPR
6 36 (2.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 34 (1.97%) WCAG
8 19 (1.10%) PCI DSS
9 18 (1.04%) EU AI Act
9 18 (1.04%) NCSC
10 16 (0.93%) NIST 800
11 15 (0.87%) SEPA
12 13 (0.75%) PSD2
13 8 (0.46%) COBIT
13 8 (0.46%) ISO 20022
13 8 (0.46%) SLA
14 7 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 7 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 7 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.41%) SOC 2
System Software
1 348 (20.20%) Docker
2 31 (1.80%) Active Directory
3 9 (0.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.46%) Firmware
5 5 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.29%) zsh
6 4 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (0.17%) QEMU
7 3 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.12%) Embedded Firmware
8 2 (0.12%) vSphere
9 1 (0.058%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 316 (18.34%) Kubernetes
2 216 (12.54%) Terraform
3 136 (7.89%) Ansible
4 79 (4.59%) Grafana
5 47 (2.73%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.04%) HP ALM
7 17 (0.99%) Argo
8 16 (0.93%) CSIRT
8 16 (0.93%) Nmap
9 15 (0.87%) Progress Chef
10 13 (0.75%) NetBackup
11 10 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
12 9 (0.52%) Puppet
13 7 (0.41%) Kibana
13 7 (0.41%) Nessus
14 6 (0.35%) Podman
15 5 (0.29%) HP Quality Center
15 5 (0.29%) RSA Archer
16 4 (0.23%) SCCM
16 4 (0.23%) WMI
Vendors
1 182 (10.56%) Microsoft
2 152 (8.82%) Oracle
3 65 (3.77%) SAP
3 65 (3.77%) ServiceNow
4 64 (3.71%) Salesforce
5 63 (3.66%) Splunk
6 54 (3.13%) Databricks
6 54 (3.13%) Google
7 30 (1.74%) Talend
8 28 (1.63%) Denodo
8 28 (1.63%) VMware
9 24 (1.39%) Cisco
10 22 (1.28%) F5
10 22 (1.28%) webMethods
11 21 (1.22%) IBM
12 19 (1.10%) HP
12 19 (1.10%) Red Hat
12 19 (1.10%) UiPath
13 18 (1.04%) Atlassian
14 17 (0.99%) Dynatrace