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 10 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 45 54
Rank change year-on-year -3 +9 -8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,995 1,347 1,498
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.35% 4.61% 3.40%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.10% 5.09% 3.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,334 922 997
10th Percentile £331 £326 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £619 £638
90th Percentile £676 £738 £720
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 12 55
10th Percentile £34.57 £31.68 £37.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.88 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.33% +1.59% -12.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.51 £75.00
90th Percentile - £74.80 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.88 £57.50
% change year-on-year +20.81% -2.83% -8.00%

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 39,137 26,475 37,986
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.32% 90.62% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,793 17,183 24,611
10th Percentile £315 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.05% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,316 1,000 2,387
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.81
25th Percentile £19.34 £19.25 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.71 £31.04 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +18.27% -6.12% -8.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.28 £70.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.71 £29.23 £33.07
% change year-on-year +25.59% -11.60% -7.64%

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 10 April 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 10 April 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 10 April 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 -2 1,701 £481 -3.80% 674
UK excluding London +3 915 £475 -1.04% 573
London -2 833 £500 - 183
Work from Home -4 576 £475 -5.00% 333
North of England +9 327 £475 +5.56% 162
Midlands +8 190 £469 -2.20% 83
South East -31 178 £500 -2.72% 145
West Midlands +7 162 £475 -6.81% 57
North West +21 144 £465 +3.33% 82
Yorkshire -9 137 £500 +5.26% 41
South West -2 87 £475 -9.52% 72
East of England -1 60 £608 +23.98% 65
North East +8 51 £425 +8.97% 39
Scotland -18 39 £415 -7.83% 30
Wales -1 36 £509 +27.25% 27
East Midlands -27 28 £400 -0.93% 26
Northern Ireland +16 20 £475 +16.28% 7
Channel Islands - 2 - - 1

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
1 131 (6.57%) Confluence
2 69 (3.46%) SAS
3 28 (1.40%) Apache Spark
4 22 (1.10%) Apache Airflow
5 15 (0.75%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.55%) Apache
7 8 (0.40%) Appian
8 7 (0.35%) nginx
8 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
8 7 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.30%) Camunda
9 6 (0.30%) CMS
10 3 (0.15%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.10%) Mendix
11 2 (0.10%) Oracle Application Server
11 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 13 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
4 12 (0.60%) MS Visio
5 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.15%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.15%) Simulink
8 1 (0.050%) Mingle
8 1 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.10%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.35%) Findur
5 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
5 6 (0.30%) Shopify
6 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.25%) Maximo
7 4 (0.20%) Workday HCM
8 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.15%) Infor CloudSuite
8 3 (0.15%) Infor LN
8 3 (0.15%) Infor M3
8 3 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
8 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
9 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.10%) iTrent
9 2 (0.10%) NetSuite
9 2 (0.10%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 579 (29.02%) Azure
2 515 (25.81%) AWS
3 349 (17.49%) GitHub
4 272 (13.63%) Azure DevOps
5 195 (9.77%) GitHub Actions
6 161 (8.07%) GCP
7 131 (6.57%) Serverless
8 80 (4.01%) OpenShift
9 76 (3.81%) Power Platform
10 72 (3.61%) AWS Lambda
11 68 (3.41%) Amazon S3
12 51 (2.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 50 (2.51%) AWS CloudFormation
14 43 (2.16%) Snowflake
15 40 (2.01%) Azure AKS
16 39 (1.95%) Amazon ECS
17 35 (1.75%) Azure Data Factory
18 34 (1.70%) Dynamics 365
19 33 (1.65%) Amazon EKS
20 32 (1.60%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.35%) HTTP
2 23 (1.15%) Firewall
3 13 (0.65%) SSL
3 13 (0.65%) TCP/IP
4 12 (0.60%) FTP
4 12 (0.60%) Network Security
4 12 (0.60%) VPN
5 11 (0.55%) SAN
6 9 (0.45%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.40%) MPLS
7 8 (0.40%) SD-WAN
7 8 (0.40%) WAN
7 8 (0.40%) Wireshark
8 7 (0.35%) 5G
8 7 (0.35%) DNS
8 7 (0.35%) HTTPS
8 7 (0.35%) Multicast
9 5 (0.25%) AMQP
9 5 (0.25%) Cisco IPT
9 5 (0.25%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 105 (5.26%) PostgreSQL
2 89 (4.46%) NoSQL
3 82 (4.11%) SQL Server
4 79 (3.96%) MongoDB
5 63 (3.16%) Relational Database
6 56 (2.81%) Data Warehouse
7 43 (2.16%) Power BI
8 42 (2.11%) DynamoDB
9 34 (1.70%) Pentaho
10 33 (1.65%) MySQL
11 30 (1.50%) BigQuery
12 27 (1.35%) Metadata
13 25 (1.25%) Redis
13 25 (1.25%) Tableau
14 23 (1.15%) Oracle Database
15 22 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
16 19 (0.95%) Amazon Athena
16 19 (0.95%) Big Data
16 19 (0.95%) Oracle Reports
17 17 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 390 (19.55%) Git
2 386 (19.35%) JIRA
3 343 (17.19%) Jenkins
4 301 (15.09%) Selenium
5 275 (13.78%) GitLab
6 163 (8.17%) Postman
7 157 (7.87%) Cucumber
8 117 (5.86%) JUnit
9 102 (5.11%) JMeter
10 101 (5.06%) Cypress.io
11 100 (5.01%) REST Assured
12 55 (2.76%) WebDriver
13 44 (2.21%) SonarQube
13 44 (2.21%) Zephyr
14 38 (1.90%) SpecFlow
15 35 (1.75%) Maven
16 34 (1.70%) Gatling
16 34 (1.70%) Mockito
16 34 (1.70%) TestRail
17 32 (1.60%) Gradle
General
1 518 (25.96%) Social Skills
2 334 (16.74%) Finance
3 298 (14.94%) Public Sector
4 201 (10.08%) Analytical Skills
5 152 (7.62%) Banking
6 37 (1.85%) Documentation Skills
7 31 (1.55%) Front Office
7 31 (1.55%) Investment Banking
8 27 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 26 (1.30%) Telecoms
10 21 (1.05%) Legal
11 20 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
12 18 (0.90%) Aerospace
12 18 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
13 17 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
14 15 (0.75%) Military
15 13 (0.65%) Financial Institution
15 13 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
16 11 (0.55%) Electronics
16 11 (0.55%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 427 (21.40%) Developer
2 320 (16.04%) Senior
3 221 (11.08%) Tester
4 213 (10.68%) Test Engineer
5 212 (10.63%) Lead
6 113 (5.66%) Automation Tester
7 107 (5.36%) Java Developer
8 105 (5.26%) Analyst
9 99 (4.96%) Data Engineer
10 94 (4.71%) Test Automation Engineer
11 84 (4.21%) QA Engineer
12 82 (4.11%) Test Leader
13 81 (4.06%) DevOps Engineer
14 79 (3.96%) Software Engineer
15 76 (3.81%) Architect
16 75 (3.76%) Senior Developer
17 68 (3.41%) Test Analyst
18 61 (3.06%) Test Manager
19 58 (2.91%) Full-Stack Developer
20 57 (2.86%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 254 (12.73%) REST
2 234 (11.73%) Playwright
3 176 (8.82%) React
4 152 (7.62%) RESTful
5 151 (7.57%) Node.js
6 147 (7.37%) Spring
7 139 (6.97%) .NET
8 129 (6.47%) Kafka
9 117 (5.86%) Spring Boot
10 91 (4.56%) pytest
11 84 (4.21%) AngularJS
12 64 (3.21%) HTML
13 59 (2.96%) Jest
13 59 (2.96%) OAuth
14 52 (2.61%) CSS
15 50 (2.51%) Web Services
16 46 (2.31%) JSON
17 42 (2.11%) GraphQL
18 40 (2.01%) Gherkin
18 40 (2.01%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 211 (10.58%) Cloud Native
2 141 (7.07%) Product Ownership
3 91 (4.56%) Distributed Systems
4 52 (2.61%) Mobile App
5 46 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
6 43 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
7 38 (1.90%) Onboarding
8 37 (1.85%) Virtual Team
9 35 (1.75%) Algorithms
9 35 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
10 32 (1.60%) Self-Motivation
11 31 (1.55%) NHS
12 29 (1.45%) Security Posture
13 23 (1.15%) Management Information System
14 22 (1.10%) Data Structures
15 21 (1.05%) Data Centre
16 20 (1.00%) Equities
17 19 (0.95%) Distributed Architecture
17 19 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
18 18 (0.90%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 133 (6.67%) Linux
2 92 (4.61%) Windows
3 51 (2.56%) Android
4 43 (2.16%) Apple iOS
5 38 (1.90%) Unix
6 22 (1.10%) Windows Server
7 20 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.65%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.40%) Solaris
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.20%) CentOS
13 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
13 4 (0.20%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.050%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.050%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.050%) VMS
14 1 (0.050%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,062 (53.23%) CI/CD
2 935 (46.87%) Agile
3 734 (36.79%) DevOps
4 430 (21.55%) Problem-Solving
5 328 (16.44%) Continuous Improvement
6 308 (15.44%) Test Strategy
7 299 (14.99%) Microservices
8 289 (14.49%) Scrum
9 271 (13.58%) Containerisation
10 270 (13.53%) Validation
11 260 (13.03%) Infrastructure as Code
12 235 (11.78%) AI
13 231 (11.58%) Analytics
14 226 (11.33%) Observability
15 222 (11.13%) TDD
16 221 (11.08%) Software Engineering
16 221 (11.08%) Test Scripting
17 213 (10.68%) Regression Testing
18 205 (10.28%) SDLC
19 194 (9.72%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 583 (29.22%) Python
2 477 (23.91%) Java
3 426 (21.35%) SQL
4 288 (14.44%) JavaScript
5 267 (13.38%) TypeScript
6 210 (10.53%) C#
7 81 (4.06%) PowerShell
8 75 (3.76%) Bash
9 50 (2.51%) C++
10 33 (1.65%) C
11 32 (1.60%) Kotlin
12 30 (1.50%) Ruby
13 28 (1.40%) PL/SQL
14 27 (1.35%) Apex Code
14 27 (1.35%) Bicep
15 23 (1.15%) Scala
16 21 (1.05%) Go
17 19 (0.95%) Swift
18 15 (0.75%) Groovy
19 13 (0.65%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 613 (30.73%) Security Cleared
2 482 (24.16%) SC Cleared
3 100 (5.01%) ISTQB
4 96 (4.81%) Degree
5 80 (4.01%) BPSS Clearance
6 62 (3.11%) DV Cleared
7 53 (2.66%) Computer Science Degree
8 37 (1.85%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 19 (0.95%) Master's Degree
10 15 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
11 13 (0.65%) AWS Certification
11 13 (0.65%) Azure Certification
12 10 (0.50%) CISSP
12 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
13 9 (0.45%) CCNP
13 9 (0.45%) ISEB
13 9 (0.45%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 8 (0.40%) DBS Check
14 8 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
15 7 (0.35%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 445 (22.31%) QA
2 140 (7.02%) Accessibility
3 118 (5.91%) Data Quality
4 59 (2.96%) WCAG
5 45 (2.26%) GDPR
6 29 (1.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.80%) NIST
7 16 (0.80%) SLA
8 14 (0.70%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 14 (0.70%) NCSC
9 12 (0.60%) ISO 20022
10 11 (0.55%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
12 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.40%) PSD2
14 7 (0.35%) SEPA
15 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
15 6 (0.30%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.25%) EU AI Act
16 5 (0.25%) PERC
System Software
1 385 (19.30%) Docker
2 29 (1.45%) Active Directory
3 14 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (0.60%) Firmware
5 10 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
7 6 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.10%) SRDF
11 1 (0.050%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.050%) HDFS
11 1 (0.050%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.050%) KVM
11 1 (0.050%) Squid
11 1 (0.050%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 363 (18.20%) Kubernetes
2 233 (11.68%) Terraform
3 102 (5.11%) Grafana
4 80 (4.01%) Prometheus
5 78 (3.91%) Ansible
6 29 (1.45%) Argo
7 25 (1.25%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.85%) Puppet
8 17 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
9 14 (0.70%) Progress Chef
10 10 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
10 10 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
10 10 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 9 (0.45%) NetBackup
12 7 (0.35%) Kibana
12 7 (0.35%) Nmap
13 6 (0.30%) Dell DRAC
13 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
13 6 (0.30%) Podman
13 6 (0.30%) Rancher
Vendors
1 175 (8.77%) Microsoft
2 165 (8.27%) Oracle
3 79 (3.96%) Salesforce
4 74 (3.71%) Databricks
5 67 (3.36%) ServiceNow
6 60 (3.01%) Google
7 51 (2.56%) Splunk
8 48 (2.41%) Red Hat
8 48 (2.41%) SAP
9 42 (2.11%) Talend
10 35 (1.75%) Denodo
11 30 (1.50%) VMware
12 29 (1.45%) IBM
13 28 (1.40%) HP
14 20 (1.00%) Cisco
14 20 (1.00%) Dynatrace
15 16 (0.80%) Workday
16 15 (0.75%) Blue Prism
16 15 (0.75%) MuleSoft
16 15 (0.75%) OpenAI