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 4 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 49 47
Rank change year-on-year +6 -2 +5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,487 1,562 1,581
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.55% 4.71% 4.16%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.39% 5.20% 4.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,601 1,073 1,066
10th Percentile £325 £313 £350
25th Percentile £405 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -5.66%
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 106 36 17
10th Percentile £40.00 £37.92 £42.00
25th Percentile £56.25 £45.94 £47.50
Median hourly rate £70.00 £56.25 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +24.44% -2.17% -23.33%
75th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 £74.50
90th Percentile £77.75 £71.00 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.25 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +20.43% - -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 46,144 30,062 32,646
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.46% 90.58% 85.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,776 18,666 19,743
10th Percentile £325 £300 £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 £634 £625 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,300 1,877 1,341
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.33 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.12 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.62 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.57% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £65.06 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £65.18 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.77% -48.10% +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 4 October 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 4 October 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 4 October 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 +5 2,089 £475 -5.00% 3,903
UK excluding London -1 1,210 £450 -5.26% 2,719
London +5 944 £500 -1.96% 1,665
Work from Home +1 667 £485 +0.73% 2,068
North of England -4 423 £453 -4.63% 625
Midlands +17 266 £450 -2.70% 333
West Midlands +20 251 £450 -13.21% 199
South East -10 225 £450 -5.26% 564
Yorkshire -6 175 £463 -7.50% 204
North West -9 154 £492 +23.06% 319
South West -4 113 £456 -16.28% 383
North East +5 101 £425 -11.69% 103
Scotland -13 101 £475 -5.00% 376
East of England +17 94 £371 -7.25% 301
Wales -8 24 £425 +3.03% 89
East Midlands -40 15 £418 +17.61% 134
Northern Ireland +2 7 £513 +345.65% 73
Channel Islands - 1 £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
1 195 (7.84%) Confluence
2 65 (2.61%) Apache Airflow
3 50 (2.01%) Apache Spark
4 46 (1.85%) SharePoint
5 37 (1.49%) Apache
6 31 (1.25%) SAS
7 17 (0.68%) CMS
8 13 (0.52%) Camunda
9 12 (0.48%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.28%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
12 5 (0.20%) nginx
12 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.16%) Anypoint
13 4 (0.16%) ColdFusion
13 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 4 (0.16%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.12%) Kentico
15 2 (0.080%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 21 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.28%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.16%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.12%) Mingle
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 2 (0.080%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.040%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.040%) Simulink
8 1 (0.040%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 31 (1.25%) Dynamics CRM
2 29 (1.17%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.48%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.40%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.28%) SAP GRC
6 6 (0.24%) FLEXCUBE
6 6 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.24%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.16%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.12%) Finacle
9 2 (0.080%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.080%) Findur
9 2 (0.080%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.080%) SAP FI
9 2 (0.080%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.080%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.080%) Shopify
10 1 (0.040%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 784 (31.52%) AWS
2 750 (30.16%) Azure
3 445 (17.89%) GitHub
4 349 (14.03%) Azure DevOps
5 262 (10.53%) GitHub Actions
6 194 (7.80%) GCP
7 183 (7.36%) Serverless
8 137 (5.51%) AWS Lambda
9 120 (4.83%) Power Platform
10 113 (4.54%) Amazon S3
11 88 (3.54%) GitHub Copilot
12 87 (3.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 79 (3.18%) OpenShift
14 75 (3.02%) Amazon EKS
15 72 (2.90%) Amazon ECS
16 71 (2.85%) AWS CloudFormation
17 61 (2.45%) Snowflake
18 59 (2.37%) dbt
19 53 (2.13%) Anthropic Claude
20 52 (2.09%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 29 (1.17%) DNS
2 27 (1.09%) Firewall
3 25 (1.01%) HTTP
4 24 (0.97%) 4G
5 23 (0.92%) TCP/IP
6 22 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
7 21 (0.84%) 5G
8 20 (0.80%) Broadband
8 20 (0.80%) Network Security
9 15 (0.60%) WAN
10 14 (0.56%) 2G
10 14 (0.56%) 3G
10 14 (0.56%) BGP
10 14 (0.56%) Diameter Protocol
10 14 (0.56%) SIGTRAN
10 14 (0.56%) SS7
11 13 (0.52%) LAN
12 12 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
12 12 (0.48%) VXLAN
13 11 (0.44%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 154 (6.19%) PostgreSQL
2 126 (5.07%) Data Warehouse
2 126 (5.07%) MongoDB
3 115 (4.62%) Relational Database
4 104 (4.18%) NoSQL
5 100 (4.02%) SQL Server
6 88 (3.54%) Power BI
7 58 (2.33%) Metadata
8 43 (1.73%) Data Lake
9 41 (1.65%) DynamoDB
10 39 (1.57%) MySQL
11 37 (1.49%) Oracle Reports
12 36 (1.45%) Big Data
13 34 (1.37%) Pentaho
14 33 (1.33%) Amazon Redshift
15 32 (1.29%) Amazon Athena
15 32 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
15 32 (1.29%) Redis
16 29 (1.17%) Oracle Database
17 26 (1.05%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 570 (22.92%) Git
2 410 (16.49%) Jenkins
3 400 (16.08%) JIRA
4 350 (14.07%) GitLab
5 315 (12.67%) Selenium
6 181 (7.28%) Cucumber
7 171 (6.88%) Postman
8 154 (6.19%) JUnit
9 124 (4.99%) Cypress.io
10 113 (4.54%) REST Assured
11 101 (4.06%) JMeter
12 87 (3.50%) SonarQube
13 72 (2.90%) Gatling
14 67 (2.69%) Maven
15 66 (2.65%) Zephyr
16 60 (2.41%) Mockito
17 57 (2.29%) Gradle
18 50 (2.01%) WebDriver
19 40 (1.61%) Bitbucket
20 32 (1.29%) TestNG
General
1 691 (27.78%) Social Skills
2 466 (18.74%) Finance
3 357 (14.35%) Analytical Skills
4 345 (13.87%) Public Sector
5 237 (9.53%) Banking
6 79 (3.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 60 (2.41%) Telecoms
8 39 (1.57%) Investment Banking
9 38 (1.53%) Front Office
10 34 (1.37%) Military
10 34 (1.37%) Retail
11 32 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
12 30 (1.21%) Documentation Skills
13 22 (0.88%) Financial Institution
14 21 (0.84%) Law
15 20 (0.80%) Manufacturing
15 20 (0.80%) Marketing
16 18 (0.72%) Aerospace
17 17 (0.68%) Back Office
18 14 (0.56%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 568 (22.84%) Developer
2 413 (16.61%) Senior
3 255 (10.25%) Lead
4 241 (9.69%) Test Engineer
5 188 (7.56%) Tester
6 179 (7.20%) Java Developer
7 165 (6.63%) Data Engineer
8 126 (5.07%) Software Engineer
9 117 (4.70%) Analyst
10 116 (4.66%) Architect
10 116 (4.66%) Senior Developer
11 110 (4.42%) DevOps Engineer
12 104 (4.18%) QA Engineer
13 101 (4.06%) Test Automation Engineer
14 86 (3.46%) Automation Tester
15 81 (3.26%) Full-Stack Developer
16 78 (3.14%) Test Analyst
17 77 (3.10%) Test Leader
18 75 (3.02%) Automation Engineer
19 71 (2.85%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 434 (17.45%) REST
2 372 (14.96%) Terraform
3 289 (11.62%) Playwright
4 265 (10.66%) RESTful
5 259 (10.41%) Kafka
6 253 (10.17%) Spring
7 226 (9.09%) React
8 214 (8.60%) Spring Boot
9 179 (7.20%) .NET
10 155 (6.23%) HTML
11 138 (5.55%) Node.js
12 130 (5.23%) CSS
13 104 (4.18%) AngularJS
14 103 (4.14%) OAuth
15 88 (3.54%) JSON
16 75 (3.02%) Middleware
17 65 (2.61%) pytest
18 64 (2.57%) OAuth2
18 64 (2.57%) XML
19 61 (2.45%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 393 (15.80%) Cloud Native
2 217 (8.73%) Product Ownership
3 183 (7.36%) Distributed Systems
4 105 (4.22%) Enterprise Software
5 87 (3.50%) Onboarding
6 75 (3.02%) AI Agents
7 62 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
8 55 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
9 53 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
9 53 (2.13%) Mobile App
10 35 (1.41%) Security Posture
11 34 (1.37%) Data Structures
12 31 (1.25%) Virtual Team
13 30 (1.21%) Private Cloud
14 27 (1.09%) Management Information System
15 25 (1.01%) Data Centre
16 24 (0.97%) Life Science
17 23 (0.92%) Legacy Applications
18 20 (0.80%) Embedded Systems
19 19 (0.76%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 178 (7.16%) Linux
2 110 (4.42%) Windows
3 96 (3.86%) Unix
4 50 (2.01%) Apple iOS
5 46 (1.85%) Android
6 32 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (1.01%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.32%) VMS
9 7 (0.28%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.24%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.20%) AIX
11 5 (0.20%) Windows 7
11 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.16%) Mac OS X
12 4 (0.16%) Solaris
12 4 (0.16%) zOS
13 3 (0.12%) CentOS
13 3 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.12%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.080%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,542 (62.00%) CI/CD
2 1,203 (48.37%) Agile
3 925 (37.19%) DevOps
4 498 (20.02%) Microservices
5 483 (19.42%) Continuous Improvement
5 483 (19.42%) Problem-Solving
6 469 (18.86%) Software Engineering
7 448 (18.01%) Infrastructure as Code
8 430 (17.29%) AI
9 427 (17.17%) Scrum
10 423 (17.01%) Validation
11 367 (14.76%) Containerisation
12 360 (14.48%) Test Strategy
13 328 (13.19%) Observability
14 327 (13.15%) TDD
15 304 (12.22%) Software Testing
16 300 (12.06%) Stakeholder Management
17 296 (11.90%) SDLC
18 264 (10.62%) End-to-End Testing
19 249 (10.01%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 706 (28.39%) Python
2 700 (28.15%) Java
3 640 (25.73%) SQL
4 388 (15.60%) JavaScript
5 286 (11.50%) TypeScript
6 210 (8.44%) C#
7 103 (4.14%) PowerShell
8 94 (3.78%) Bash
9 56 (2.25%) Bicep
10 51 (2.05%) Kotlin
11 49 (1.97%) Scala
12 46 (1.85%) C++
13 42 (1.69%) Go
14 33 (1.33%) Shell Script
15 31 (1.25%) PL/SQL
16 29 (1.17%) Perl
17 21 (0.84%) Apex Code
18 19 (0.76%) C
19 17 (0.68%) Ruby
19 17 (0.68%) Swift
Qualifications
1 789 (31.72%) Security Cleared
2 664 (26.70%) SC Cleared
3 149 (5.99%) BPSS Clearance
4 138 (5.55%) Degree
5 100 (4.02%) ISTQB
6 93 (3.74%) DV Cleared
7 79 (3.18%) Computer Science Degree
8 48 (1.93%) AWS Certification
9 37 (1.49%) Azure Certification
10 26 (1.05%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.64%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 15 (0.60%) Master's Degree
13 14 (0.56%) CISSP
13 14 (0.56%) ISEB
13 14 (0.56%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 12 (0.48%) Cisco Certification
14 12 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
15 9 (0.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 9 (0.36%) DBS Check
16 8 (0.32%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 644 (25.89%) QA
2 236 (9.49%) Accessibility
3 176 (7.08%) Data Quality
4 102 (4.10%) WCAG
5 44 (1.77%) GDPR
6 24 (0.97%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 16 (0.64%) NIST
9 15 (0.60%) GRC
10 14 (0.56%) SLA
11 12 (0.48%) NCSC
12 8 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
13 7 (0.28%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.24%) HL7
14 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
14 6 (0.24%) SEPA
14 6 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
15 5 (0.20%) FATCA
16 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
16 4 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 507 (20.39%) Docker
2 41 (1.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (1.61%) Active Directory
4 20 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.44%) Firmware
6 10 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.28%) VMware NSX
8 6 (0.24%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
9 2 (0.080%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.040%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.040%) KVM
10 1 (0.040%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.040%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 499 (20.06%) Kubernetes
2 146 (5.87%) Ansible
3 137 (5.51%) Grafana
4 91 (3.66%) Prometheus
5 36 (1.45%) Argo
6 33 (1.33%) Kibana
7 26 (1.05%) Puppet
8 25 (1.01%) Progress Chef
9 14 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.52%) Control-M
10 13 (0.52%) HP ALM
11 9 (0.36%) Microsoft Intune
12 8 (0.32%) SCCM
13 7 (0.28%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.24%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.24%) Istio
15 5 (0.20%) Dell DRAC
15 5 (0.20%) Packer
15 5 (0.20%) WMI
16 4 (0.16%) Rancher
Vendors
1 242 (9.73%) Microsoft
2 193 (7.76%) Oracle
3 102 (4.10%) Databricks
4 84 (3.38%) Google
5 68 (2.73%) IBM
5 68 (2.73%) Salesforce
6 66 (2.65%) ServiceNow
7 59 (2.37%) SAP
8 57 (2.29%) Splunk
8 57 (2.29%) Talend
9 52 (2.09%) Red Hat
9 52 (2.09%) VMware
10 50 (2.01%) Informatica
11 42 (1.69%) Dynatrace
12 39 (1.57%) Denodo
13 34 (1.37%) MuleSoft
14 33 (1.33%) Cisco
15 32 (1.29%) UiPath
16 26 (1.05%) OpenAI
17 23 (0.92%) Foundry