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 27 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 50 44
Rank change year-on-year +6 -6 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,452 1,530 1,586
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.49% 4.63% 4.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.32% 5.11% 4.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,583 1,046 1,075
10th Percentile £323 £313 £350
25th Percentile £405 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £665 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 99 38 17
10th Percentile £39.45 £30.06 £42.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £45.31 £47.50
Median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -4.35% -23.33%
75th Percentile £74.50 £66.50 £74.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £69.40 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £56.25 £57.50
% change year-on-year +20.00% -2.17% -22.03%

All Process & 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 46,089 29,922 32,856
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.33% 90.54% 85.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,886 18,587 19,900
10th Percentile £325 £295 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,201 1,858 1,386
10th Percentile £13.70 £14.29 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.23 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +57.06% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £65.88 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.78% -47.67% +1.18%

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 27 September 2026.

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 27 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 18 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 27 September 2026. 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 +4 2,054 £475 -5.00% 2,755
UK excluding London -3 1,185 £450 -5.26% 1,748
London +6 934 £500 - 1,225
Work from Home -2 651 £479 +0.84% 1,187
North of England 0 409 £450 -5.26% 448
Midlands +17 263 £450 -2.70% 205
West Midlands +26 248 £450 -13.18% 140
South East -18 217 £448 -5.79% 361
Yorkshire -6 175 £460 -8.00% 138
North West -15 142 £492 +15.82% 242
South West -6 111 £463 -14.35% 254
North East +4 99 £425 -10.53% 68
Scotland -18 98 £475 -5.00% 202
East of England +18 92 £375 +17.19% 173
Wales -6 26 £425 +3.03% 42
East Midlands -43 15 £418 +15.97% 64
Northern Ireland +3 8 £513 +345.65% 77
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 2

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
1 189 (7.71%) Confluence
2 65 (2.65%) Apache Airflow
3 46 (1.88%) Apache Spark
3 46 (1.88%) SharePoint
4 37 (1.51%) SAS
5 32 (1.31%) Apache
6 17 (0.69%) CMS
7 14 (0.57%) Camunda
8 12 (0.49%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.29%) Jupyter
9 7 (0.29%) nginx
9 7 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.24%) Tomcat
11 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.16%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.16%) ColdFusion
12 4 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 3 (0.12%) Kentico
Applications
1 22 (0.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.73%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.29%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.16%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 2 (0.082%) Mingle
7 2 (0.082%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.041%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.041%) Simulink
8 1 (0.041%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 30 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 28 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.41%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.41%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.29%) SAP GRC
6 6 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.24%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.16%) FLEXCUBE
7 4 (0.16%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.12%) Finacle
9 2 (0.082%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.082%) Findur
9 2 (0.082%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.082%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.082%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.082%) Shopify
9 2 (0.082%) Workday HCM
10 1 (0.041%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 780 (31.81%) AWS
2 736 (30.02%) Azure
3 440 (17.94%) GitHub
4 341 (13.91%) Azure DevOps
5 257 (10.48%) GitHub Actions
6 187 (7.63%) GCP
7 176 (7.18%) Serverless
8 132 (5.38%) AWS Lambda
9 115 (4.69%) Power Platform
10 103 (4.20%) Amazon S3
11 86 (3.51%) GitHub Copilot
12 85 (3.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 74 (3.02%) OpenShift
14 69 (2.81%) Amazon EKS
14 69 (2.81%) AWS CloudFormation
15 67 (2.73%) Amazon ECS
16 60 (2.45%) dbt
17 59 (2.41%) Snowflake
18 53 (2.16%) Anthropic Claude
19 47 (1.92%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.06%) HTTP
2 25 (1.02%) DNS
2 25 (1.02%) Firewall
3 24 (0.98%) 4G
4 22 (0.90%) Wi-Fi
5 21 (0.86%) 5G
5 21 (0.86%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.77%) Broadband
7 16 (0.65%) Network Security
8 14 (0.57%) 2G
8 14 (0.57%) 3G
8 14 (0.57%) Diameter Protocol
8 14 (0.57%) SIGTRAN
8 14 (0.57%) SS7
8 14 (0.57%) WAN
9 13 (0.53%) BGP
9 13 (0.53%) LAN
10 12 (0.49%) Ethernet VPN
10 12 (0.49%) VXLAN
11 11 (0.45%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 149 (6.08%) PostgreSQL
2 129 (5.26%) MongoDB
3 125 (5.10%) Data Warehouse
4 112 (4.57%) Relational Database
5 105 (4.28%) NoSQL
6 99 (4.04%) SQL Server
7 84 (3.43%) Power BI
8 55 (2.24%) Metadata
9 43 (1.75%) DynamoDB
10 41 (1.67%) Data Lake
11 39 (1.59%) Oracle Reports
12 37 (1.51%) MySQL
13 33 (1.35%) Big Data
13 33 (1.35%) Pentaho
14 32 (1.31%) Amazon Redshift
14 32 (1.31%) Redis
15 31 (1.26%) Amazon Athena
16 28 (1.14%) Oracle Database
17 27 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
17 27 (1.10%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 564 (23.00%) Git
2 401 (16.35%) Jenkins
3 396 (16.15%) JIRA
4 347 (14.15%) GitLab
5 312 (12.72%) Selenium
6 169 (6.89%) Cucumber
6 169 (6.89%) Postman
7 149 (6.08%) JUnit
8 126 (5.14%) Cypress.io
9 111 (4.53%) REST Assured
10 99 (4.04%) JMeter
11 83 (3.38%) SonarQube
12 72 (2.94%) Gatling
13 69 (2.81%) Maven
14 65 (2.65%) Zephyr
15 61 (2.49%) Mockito
16 60 (2.45%) Gradle
17 51 (2.08%) WebDriver
18 37 (1.51%) Bitbucket
19 30 (1.22%) TestNG
General
1 675 (27.53%) Social Skills
2 456 (18.60%) Finance
3 349 (14.23%) Public Sector
4 342 (13.95%) Analytical Skills
5 229 (9.34%) Banking
6 79 (3.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 58 (2.37%) Telecoms
8 40 (1.63%) Front Office
9 36 (1.47%) Investment Banking
10 34 (1.39%) Retail
11 33 (1.35%) Military
12 32 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
13 31 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
14 23 (0.94%) Financial Institution
15 20 (0.82%) Law
15 20 (0.82%) Manufacturing
16 18 (0.73%) Marketing
17 17 (0.69%) Aerospace
18 14 (0.57%) Automotive
18 14 (0.57%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 554 (22.59%) Developer
2 409 (16.68%) Senior
3 250 (10.20%) Lead
4 232 (9.46%) Test Engineer
5 197 (8.03%) Tester
6 174 (7.10%) Java Developer
7 158 (6.44%) Data Engineer
8 122 (4.98%) Software Engineer
9 121 (4.93%) Analyst
9 121 (4.93%) Senior Developer
10 114 (4.65%) DevOps Engineer
11 110 (4.49%) Architect
12 102 (4.16%) Test Automation Engineer
13 99 (4.04%) QA Engineer
14 87 (3.55%) Automation Tester
15 80 (3.26%) Test Analyst
16 78 (3.18%) Full-Stack Developer
17 74 (3.02%) Automation Engineer
17 74 (3.02%) Test Leader
17 74 (3.02%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 422 (17.21%) REST
2 366 (14.93%) Terraform
3 295 (12.03%) Playwright
4 256 (10.44%) RESTful
5 255 (10.40%) Kafka
6 248 (10.11%) Spring
7 226 (9.22%) React
8 212 (8.65%) Spring Boot
9 182 (7.42%) .NET
10 149 (6.08%) HTML
11 137 (5.59%) Node.js
12 128 (5.22%) CSS
13 99 (4.04%) OAuth
14 96 (3.92%) AngularJS
15 86 (3.51%) JSON
16 74 (3.02%) Middleware
17 68 (2.77%) pytest
18 64 (2.61%) OAuth2
19 62 (2.53%) Swagger
19 62 (2.53%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 394 (16.07%) Cloud Native
2 210 (8.56%) Product Ownership
3 178 (7.26%) Distributed Systems
4 102 (4.16%) Enterprise Software
5 82 (3.34%) Onboarding
6 67 (2.73%) AI Agents
7 63 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
8 52 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
8 52 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
9 50 (2.04%) Mobile App
10 34 (1.39%) Virtual Team
11 31 (1.26%) Data Structures
12 30 (1.22%) Security Posture
13 27 (1.10%) Management Information System
13 27 (1.10%) Private Cloud
14 25 (1.02%) Data Centre
14 25 (1.02%) Legacy Applications
15 22 (0.90%) Life Science
16 21 (0.86%) Embedded Systems
17 19 (0.77%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 177 (7.22%) Linux
2 107 (4.36%) Windows
3 100 (4.08%) Unix
4 46 (1.88%) Apple iOS
5 42 (1.71%) Android
6 31 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (1.02%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.33%) VMS
9 6 (0.24%) Mac OS X
9 6 (0.24%) Solaris
10 5 (0.20%) AIX
10 5 (0.20%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.20%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.16%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.16%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.16%) zOS
12 3 (0.12%) CentOS
12 3 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,518 (61.91%) CI/CD
2 1,184 (48.29%) Agile
3 912 (37.19%) DevOps
4 489 (19.94%) Microservices
5 481 (19.62%) Continuous Improvement
6 474 (19.33%) Problem-Solving
7 454 (18.52%) Software Engineering
8 442 (18.03%) Infrastructure as Code
9 417 (17.01%) Scrum
10 416 (16.97%) Validation
11 415 (16.92%) AI
12 364 (14.85%) Test Strategy
13 363 (14.80%) Containerisation
14 329 (13.42%) Observability
15 319 (13.01%) TDD
16 293 (11.95%) Software Testing
16 293 (11.95%) Stakeholder Management
17 292 (11.91%) SDLC
18 261 (10.64%) End-to-End Testing
19 246 (10.03%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 689 (28.10%) Python
2 681 (27.77%) Java
3 612 (24.96%) SQL
4 377 (15.38%) JavaScript
5 280 (11.42%) TypeScript
6 208 (8.48%) C#
7 100 (4.08%) PowerShell
8 90 (3.67%) Bash
9 53 (2.16%) Bicep
10 47 (1.92%) Kotlin
10 47 (1.92%) Scala
11 45 (1.84%) C++
12 42 (1.71%) Go
13 33 (1.35%) PL/SQL
13 33 (1.35%) Shell Script
14 27 (1.10%) Perl
15 23 (0.94%) Apex Code
16 21 (0.86%) C
17 17 (0.69%) Ruby
18 16 (0.65%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 779 (31.77%) Security Cleared
2 661 (26.96%) SC Cleared
3 139 (5.67%) BPSS Clearance
4 136 (5.55%) Degree
5 104 (4.24%) ISTQB
6 93 (3.79%) DV Cleared
7 81 (3.30%) Computer Science Degree
8 45 (1.84%) AWS Certification
9 35 (1.43%) Azure Certification
10 27 (1.10%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.65%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 15 (0.61%) Master's Degree
13 14 (0.57%) CISSP
13 14 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 13 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
14 13 (0.53%) ISEB
15 12 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.37%) DBS Check
17 8 (0.33%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 8 (0.33%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 640 (26.10%) QA
2 223 (9.09%) Accessibility
3 176 (7.18%) Data Quality
4 98 (4.00%) WCAG
5 44 (1.79%) GDPR
6 24 (0.98%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.61%) GRC
8 15 (0.61%) NIST
9 14 (0.57%) SLA
10 12 (0.49%) NCSC
11 8 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.24%) SEPA
12 6 (0.24%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.20%) FATCA
13 5 (0.20%) HL7
14 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
14 4 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 508 (20.72%) Docker
2 43 (1.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 36 (1.47%) Active Directory
4 20 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.45%) Firmware
7 8 (0.33%) VMware NSX
8 6 (0.24%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
10 2 (0.082%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.041%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.041%) KVM
11 1 (0.041%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.041%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 488 (19.90%) Kubernetes
2 140 (5.71%) Ansible
3 132 (5.38%) Grafana
4 88 (3.59%) Prometheus
5 33 (1.35%) Argo
6 29 (1.18%) Kibana
7 24 (0.98%) Progress Chef
8 23 (0.94%) Puppet
9 15 (0.61%) HP ALM
10 14 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 13 (0.53%) Control-M
12 8 (0.33%) Microsoft Intune
13 7 (0.29%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.24%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.24%) Istio
14 6 (0.24%) SCCM
15 5 (0.20%) Dell DRAC
15 5 (0.20%) Packer
15 5 (0.20%) WMI
16 4 (0.16%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 237 (9.67%) Microsoft
2 194 (7.91%) Oracle
3 97 (3.96%) Databricks
4 81 (3.30%) Google
5 74 (3.02%) Salesforce
6 71 (2.90%) IBM
7 66 (2.69%) ServiceNow
8 59 (2.41%) SAP
8 59 (2.41%) Splunk
9 57 (2.32%) Talend
10 53 (2.16%) Red Hat
11 52 (2.12%) VMware
12 45 (1.84%) Denodo
13 43 (1.75%) Informatica
14 42 (1.71%) Dynatrace
15 35 (1.43%) Cisco
16 34 (1.39%) MuleSoft
17 31 (1.26%) UiPath
18 24 (0.98%) OpenAI
19 22 (0.90%) Foundry