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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 52 46 51
Rank change year-on-year -6 +5 -10
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,468 1,564 2,102
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 4.49% 4.11% 4.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.97% 4.80% 4.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 993 1,045 1,500
10th Percentile £313 £350 £363
25th Percentile £400 £413 £427
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -6.33%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £638
90th Percentile £695 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 18 68
10th Percentile £30.06 £40.88 £45.88
25th Percentile £47.19 £43.75 £51.25
Median hourly rate £56.25 £57.50 £73.75
Median % change year-on-year -2.17% -22.03% +22.92%
75th Percentile £67.00 £71.88 £90.00
90th Percentile £70.45 £85.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £57.50 £68.63
% change year-on-year - -16.21% +14.38%

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 29,563 32,568 44,587
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.50% 85.63% 89.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,358 20,001 30,324
10th Percentile £300 £310 £313
25th Percentile £403 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,791 1,464 1,557
10th Percentile £14.23 £14.84 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.00 £18.75
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% +1.18% +46.55%
75th Percentile £44.35 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £66.50 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £43.00 £40.59
% change year-on-year -47.37% +5.94% +75.90%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Test Automation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Test Automation 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 16 September 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 16 September 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 16 September 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 -7 1,217 £500 -2.44% 769
UK excluding London +9 700 £475 -5.00% 652
London -11 581 £500 -4.76% 248
Work from Home +2 499 £475 -5.00% 412
North of England -4 218 £460 -5.88% 176
South East -6 141 £500 -2.44% 181
Midlands +37 122 £463 +2.44% 105
Yorkshire 0 106 £501 +5.37% 63
Scotland +8 99 £500 +4.17% 39
North West 0 97 £424 -16.55% 93
West Midlands +25 78 £519 -7.82% 56
South West +22 68 £500 -9.09% 79
East Midlands +25 44 £350 -8.20% 46
East of England +23 35 £343 -8.67% 48
Wales -1 18 £375 -28.57% 24
North East +2 17 £445 +4.71% 22
Northern Ireland 0 6 £115 - 10

Test Automation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 68 (4.63%) Confluence
2 20 (1.36%) SAS
3 19 (1.29%) Apache Spark
4 18 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
5 16 (1.09%) Apache
6 8 (0.54%) SharePoint
7 6 (0.41%) CICS
7 6 (0.41%) CMS
8 5 (0.34%) Anypoint
8 5 (0.34%) JBoss
8 5 (0.34%) WordPress
9 4 (0.27%) Drupal
9 4 (0.27%) Oracle Application Server
9 4 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.20%) IIS
10 3 (0.20%) nginx
10 3 (0.20%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.20%) WebSphere
11 2 (0.14%) Camunda
11 2 (0.14%) Mule
Applications
1 21 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.48%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.27%) Simulink
5 4 (0.27%) Windchill
6 3 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.14%) Trello
8 1 (0.068%) CATIA
8 1 (0.068%) MadCap Flare
8 1 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 10 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (0.48%) Aladdin
3 4 (0.27%) SAP PLM
3 4 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
5 2 (0.14%) Eagle PACE
5 2 (0.14%) Markit EDM
5 2 (0.14%) Maximo
5 2 (0.14%) NEC Housing
5 2 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
5 2 (0.14%) SAP CRM
5 2 (0.14%) Temenos T24
6 1 (0.068%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.068%) Magento
6 1 (0.068%) MoSes
6 1 (0.068%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.068%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.068%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.068%) Shopify
6 1 (0.068%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 382 (26.02%) Azure
2 371 (25.27%) AWS
3 169 (11.51%) Azure DevOps
4 157 (10.69%) GitHub
5 99 (6.74%) GCP
6 94 (6.40%) Serverless
7 89 (6.06%) GitHub Actions
8 53 (3.61%) AWS Lambda
9 42 (2.86%) Amazon S3
10 36 (2.45%) AWS CloudFormation
10 36 (2.45%) SaaS
11 31 (2.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 31 (2.11%) Power Platform
12 24 (1.63%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 22 (1.50%) Amazon SQS
13 22 (1.50%) Snowflake
14 21 (1.43%) Amazon EC2
14 21 (1.43%) Amazon ECS
14 21 (1.43%) Azure AKS
14 21 (1.43%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 42 (2.86%) HTTP
2 37 (2.52%) Firewall
3 18 (1.23%) HTTPS
3 18 (1.23%) SSL
4 17 (1.16%) Wireshark
5 11 (0.75%) Network Security
5 11 (0.75%) TCP/IP
6 10 (0.68%) Multicast
6 10 (0.68%) VPN
7 9 (0.61%) Ethernet
8 7 (0.48%) DNS
9 6 (0.41%) SD-WAN
10 5 (0.34%) VLAN
10 5 (0.34%) WAN
11 4 (0.27%) BGP
11 4 (0.27%) Bluetooth
11 4 (0.27%) Internet
11 4 (0.27%) LAN
11 4 (0.27%) MPLS
11 4 (0.27%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 92 (6.27%) PostgreSQL
2 91 (6.20%) NoSQL
3 88 (5.99%) MongoDB
4 78 (5.31%) SQL Server
5 62 (4.22%) Relational Database
6 34 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
7 23 (1.57%) Amazon RDS
8 21 (1.43%) DynamoDB
9 19 (1.29%) Big Data
10 18 (1.23%) Data Lake
11 16 (1.09%) MySQL
11 16 (1.09%) Pentaho
12 14 (0.95%) DB2
12 14 (0.95%) Power BI
13 13 (0.89%) Oracle Database
14 12 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
15 10 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
15 10 (0.68%) GIS
15 10 (0.68%) Hadoop
15 10 (0.68%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 288 (19.62%) JIRA
2 264 (17.98%) Selenium
3 252 (17.17%) Jenkins
4 248 (16.89%) Git
5 146 (9.95%) GitLab
6 140 (9.54%) Cucumber
7 109 (7.43%) Cypress.io
8 104 (7.08%) Postman
9 83 (5.65%) JUnit
10 77 (5.25%) REST Assured
11 54 (3.68%) JMeter
12 49 (3.34%) Bitbucket
13 48 (3.27%) Maven
14 46 (3.13%) SonarQube
15 34 (2.32%) Appium
16 32 (2.18%) SpecFlow
17 29 (1.98%) Mockito
17 29 (1.98%) WebDriver
18 27 (1.84%) SoapUI
19 26 (1.77%) IntelliJ
General
1 432 (29.43%) Social Skills
2 285 (19.41%) Finance
3 200 (13.62%) Analytical Skills
4 141 (9.60%) Public Sector
5 133 (9.06%) Banking
6 39 (2.66%) Front Office
7 34 (2.32%) Manufacturing
8 32 (2.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 27 (1.84%) Telecoms
10 24 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
11 23 (1.57%) Investment Banking
12 22 (1.50%) Retail
13 19 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
14 18 (1.23%) Electronics
14 18 (1.23%) Law
14 18 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
15 17 (1.16%) Marketing
16 13 (0.89%) Financial Institution
17 11 (0.75%) Aerospace
17 11 (0.75%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 327 (22.28%) Developer
2 186 (12.67%) Senior
3 181 (12.33%) Tester
4 126 (8.58%) Test Engineer
5 108 (7.36%) Analyst
6 102 (6.95%) Lead
7 100 (6.81%) Automation Tester
8 96 (6.54%) Java Developer
9 85 (5.79%) Test Analyst
10 77 (5.25%) Software Engineer
11 66 (4.50%) QA Engineer
12 55 (3.75%) DevOps Engineer
13 53 (3.61%) Test Manager
14 43 (2.93%) Test Automation Engineer
15 42 (2.86%) Senior Developer
16 41 (2.79%) Architect
17 39 (2.66%) Automation Engineer
17 39 (2.66%) Test Leader
18 36 (2.45%) Data Engineer
18 36 (2.45%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 169 (11.51%) REST
2 119 (8.11%) React
3 115 (7.83%) Playwright
4 104 (7.08%) .NET
5 102 (6.95%) RESTful
6 93 (6.34%) Kafka
7 90 (6.13%) HTML
8 88 (5.99%) CSS
9 81 (5.52%) Node.js
10 73 (4.97%) SOAP
10 73 (4.97%) Spring
11 71 (4.84%) Spring Boot
12 69 (4.70%) JSON
13 66 (4.50%) XML
14 51 (3.47%) AngularJS
15 42 (2.86%) Jest
15 42 (2.86%) Web Services
16 34 (2.32%) Gherkin
16 34 (2.32%) pytest
17 33 (2.25%) jQuery
Miscellaneous
1 92 (6.27%) Product Ownership
2 81 (5.52%) Cloud Native
3 54 (3.68%) Mobile App
4 31 (2.11%) Self-Motivation
5 30 (2.04%) Data Protection Act
6 29 (1.98%) Distributed Systems
7 28 (1.91%) Security Posture
8 26 (1.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 26 (1.77%) Virtual Team
9 25 (1.70%) Legacy Systems
9 25 (1.70%) Public Cloud
10 24 (1.63%) Greenfield Project
11 21 (1.43%) Management Information System
12 19 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
12 19 (1.29%) Onboarding
13 16 (1.09%) Algorithms
13 16 (1.09%) Data Structures
14 15 (1.02%) Fixed Income
15 14 (0.95%) PKI
16 13 (0.89%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 142 (9.67%) Linux
2 86 (5.86%) Windows
3 55 (3.75%) Android
4 52 (3.54%) Unix
5 36 (2.45%) Apple iOS
6 16 (1.09%) Mac OS X
6 16 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (0.89%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.54%) CentOS
9 4 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.20%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.068%) FreeRTOS
11 1 (0.068%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.068%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.068%) Solaris
11 1 (0.068%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.068%) VMS
11 1 (0.068%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.068%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 714 (48.64%) Agile
2 671 (45.71%) CI/CD
3 558 (38.01%) DevOps
4 329 (22.41%) Problem-Solving
5 225 (15.33%) Microservices
6 204 (13.90%) TDD
7 202 (13.76%) Test Strategy
8 201 (13.69%) Scrum
9 176 (11.99%) Software Engineering
10 168 (11.44%) Test Scripting
11 164 (11.17%) Continuous Improvement
12 163 (11.10%) Containerisation
13 162 (11.04%) SDLC
14 157 (10.69%) Infrastructure as Code
14 157 (10.69%) Software Testing
15 140 (9.54%) Validation
16 139 (9.47%) BDD
17 121 (8.24%) Mentoring
18 119 (8.11%) Continuous Integration
19 116 (7.90%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 392 (26.70%) Java
2 354 (24.11%) Python
3 256 (17.44%) SQL
4 206 (14.03%) JavaScript
5 178 (12.13%) C#
6 126 (8.58%) TypeScript
7 76 (5.18%) Bash
8 50 (3.41%) PowerShell
9 38 (2.59%) Go
10 33 (2.25%) C++
11 27 (1.84%) Kotlin
12 16 (1.09%) Shell Script
13 14 (0.95%) Scala
14 12 (0.82%) PHP
14 12 (0.82%) Swift
15 11 (0.75%) Bicep
16 9 (0.61%) C
16 9 (0.61%) Perl
16 9 (0.61%) PL/SQL
16 9 (0.61%) VB
Qualifications
1 288 (19.62%) Security Cleared
2 215 (14.65%) SC Cleared
3 93 (6.34%) Degree
4 56 (3.81%) ISTQB
5 53 (3.61%) DV Cleared
6 44 (3.00%) Computer Science Degree
7 35 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
8 28 (1.91%) AWS Certification
9 16 (1.09%) Master's Degree
10 15 (1.02%) CISSP
11 11 (0.75%) Azure Certification
11 11 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.75%) ISEB
11 11 (0.75%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 9 (0.61%) CISA
12 9 (0.61%) CISM
13 6 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 6 (0.41%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
13 6 (0.41%) OSCP
14 5 (0.34%) GPEN
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 324 (22.07%) QA
2 103 (7.02%) Accessibility
3 56 (3.81%) Data Quality
4 30 (2.04%) WCAG
5 24 (1.63%) GDPR
6 20 (1.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 17 (1.16%) SEPA
8 14 (0.95%) NIST
9 11 (0.75%) PCI DSS
10 9 (0.61%) NCSC
10 9 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 8 (0.54%) NIST 800
11 8 (0.54%) PSD2
12 7 (0.48%) Software Quality Assurance
13 6 (0.41%) COBIT
13 6 (0.41%) SLA
14 5 (0.34%) ISO 20022
14 5 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 5 (0.34%) ITGC
15 4 (0.27%) SOC 2
System Software
1 217 (14.78%) Docker
2 22 (1.50%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.54%) Firmware
3 8 (0.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.34%) zsh
5 4 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.20%) QEMU
6 3 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.068%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.068%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.068%) VirtualBox
8 1 (0.068%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 219 (14.92%) Kubernetes
2 158 (10.76%) Terraform
3 110 (7.49%) Ansible
4 44 (3.00%) Grafana
5 23 (1.57%) Prometheus
6 19 (1.29%) HP ALM
7 13 (0.89%) Podman
8 12 (0.82%) Argo
9 10 (0.68%) CSIRT
9 10 (0.68%) Docker Swarm
10 8 (0.54%) NetBackup
11 7 (0.48%) Kibana
12 6 (0.41%) Nessus
12 6 (0.41%) Nmap
12 6 (0.41%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.41%) RSA Archer
13 5 (0.34%) HP Quality Center
13 5 (0.34%) Puppet
13 5 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
14 4 (0.27%) WMI
Vendors
1 142 (9.67%) Microsoft
2 117 (7.97%) Oracle
3 54 (3.68%) Salesforce
4 53 (3.61%) ServiceNow
5 46 (3.13%) SAP
6 45 (3.07%) Splunk
7 36 (2.45%) Databricks
7 36 (2.45%) Google
8 21 (1.43%) HP
9 18 (1.23%) Talend
10 17 (1.16%) F5
10 17 (1.16%) UiPath
11 16 (1.09%) Cisco
11 16 (1.09%) Denodo
11 16 (1.09%) VMware
12 14 (0.95%) IBM
13 13 (0.89%) Atlassian
14 12 (0.82%) MuleSoft
15 11 (0.75%) Blue Prism
15 11 (0.75%) Dynatrace