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 31 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 50 43
Rank change year-on-year +4 -7 +9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,326 1,502 1,596
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.33% 4.56% 4.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.12% 5.04% 4.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,493 1,039 1,064
10th Percentile £325 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year -4.40% -0.10% -4.67%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £669 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £458 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -3.53% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 37 22
10th Percentile £39.18 £25.57 £42.50
25th Percentile £59.81 £45.00 £50.31
Median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% - -21.29%
75th Percentile - £65.00 £69.84
90th Percentile £75.00 £71.10 £83.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.00 £55.00 £56.25
% change year-on-year +25.45% -2.22% -13.04%

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 45,455 29,807 32,988
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.58% 90.45% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,783 18,569 20,737
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,905 1,767 1,609
10th Percentile £14.10 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.75 £17.30 £18.89
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +3.56%
75th Percentile £67.84 £47.31 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.56 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +92.49% -47.37% +14.67%

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 31 August 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 31 August 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 31 August 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 1,969 £475 -5.00% 1,377
UK excluding London -6 1,124 £458 -3.53% 871
London +6 908 £500 - 688
Work from Home -6 633 £488 +2.63% 584
North of England +4 400 £463 +0.54% 202
Midlands +8 240 £450 -2.44% 100
West Midlands +26 225 £450 -12.62% 64
South East -23 218 £459 -8.20% 212
Yorkshire -11 158 £473 -5.59% 52
North West -11 146 £492 +16.17% 111
South West -3 114 £475 -2.56% 170
North East +13 103 £450 +1.12% 40
East of England +19 78 £450 +10.77% 84
Scotland -30 75 £470 -6.00% 82
Wales -6 29 £500 +25.00% 18
East Midlands -39 15 £418 +19.29% 35
Northern Ireland +9 11 £488 +323.91% 19
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

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
1 186 (8.00%) Confluence
2 52 (2.24%) Apache Airflow
3 44 (1.89%) SharePoint
4 42 (1.81%) Apache Spark
5 39 (1.68%) SAS
6 23 (0.99%) Apache
7 14 (0.60%) CMS
8 12 (0.52%) WebLogic
9 11 (0.47%) Camunda
10 6 (0.26%) nginx
10 6 (0.26%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.26%) Tomcat
11 5 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
12 4 (0.17%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.17%) ColdFusion
12 4 (0.17%) Jupyter
12 4 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 3 (0.13%) Kentico
14 2 (0.086%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 24 (1.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.69%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.26%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.17%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.17%) Simulink
6 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.13%) Trello
7 2 (0.086%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.043%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 28 (1.20%) Dynamics CRM
2 24 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.60%) Aladdin
4 13 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.34%) Findur
7 7 (0.30%) SAP GRC
8 6 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
8 6 (0.26%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.26%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.21%) BambooHR
10 4 (0.17%) Shopify
11 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
11 3 (0.13%) FLEXCUBE
12 2 (0.086%) Advent Geneva
12 2 (0.086%) Finacle
12 2 (0.086%) Infor CloudSuite
12 2 (0.086%) Infor LN
12 2 (0.086%) Infor M3
12 2 (0.086%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 705 (30.31%) AWS
2 700 (30.09%) Azure
3 423 (18.19%) GitHub
4 329 (14.14%) Azure DevOps
5 256 (11.01%) GitHub Actions
6 174 (7.48%) Serverless
7 168 (7.22%) GCP
8 127 (5.46%) AWS Lambda
9 110 (4.73%) Power Platform
10 96 (4.13%) Amazon S3
11 80 (3.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 74 (3.18%) OpenShift
13 69 (2.97%) Amazon ECS
14 68 (2.92%) GitHub Copilot
15 63 (2.71%) AWS CloudFormation
16 62 (2.67%) Amazon EKS
17 60 (2.58%) dbt
18 58 (2.49%) Snowflake
19 50 (2.15%) Amazon EC2
20 46 (1.98%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.12%) HTTP
2 23 (0.99%) Firewall
3 20 (0.86%) DNS
4 19 (0.82%) 4G
5 18 (0.77%) 5G
6 16 (0.69%) 2G
6 16 (0.69%) 3G
6 16 (0.69%) Diameter Protocol
6 16 (0.69%) Network Security
6 16 (0.69%) SIGTRAN
6 16 (0.69%) SS7
6 16 (0.69%) TCP/IP
7 15 (0.64%) WAN
8 13 (0.56%) LAN
8 13 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
9 11 (0.47%) SAN
10 10 (0.43%) BGP
11 9 (0.39%) DHCP
12 8 (0.34%) Ethernet VPN
12 8 (0.34%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 134 (5.76%) PostgreSQL
2 125 (5.37%) Data Warehouse
3 122 (5.25%) MongoDB
4 108 (4.64%) NoSQL
5 98 (4.21%) SQL Server
6 93 (4.00%) Relational Database
7 85 (3.65%) Power BI
8 48 (2.06%) Metadata
9 47 (2.02%) DynamoDB
10 39 (1.68%) Oracle Reports
11 35 (1.50%) Amazon Athena
11 35 (1.50%) MySQL
12 33 (1.42%) Amazon Redshift
12 33 (1.42%) Big Data
12 33 (1.42%) Data Lake
12 33 (1.42%) Pentaho
13 30 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
14 29 (1.25%) Redis
15 28 (1.20%) Elasticsearch
16 25 (1.07%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 474 (20.38%) Git
2 391 (16.81%) JIRA
3 374 (16.08%) Jenkins
4 317 (13.63%) GitLab
5 299 (12.85%) Selenium
6 166 (7.14%) Postman
7 144 (6.19%) Cucumber
8 125 (5.37%) Cypress.io
9 121 (5.20%) JUnit
10 104 (4.47%) REST Assured
11 100 (4.30%) JMeter
12 76 (3.27%) SonarQube
13 66 (2.84%) Zephyr
14 59 (2.54%) Gatling
15 58 (2.49%) Gradle
16 54 (2.32%) WebDriver
17 53 (2.28%) Maven
18 45 (1.93%) Mockito
19 42 (1.81%) Bitbucket
20 27 (1.16%) Appium
General
1 641 (27.56%) Social Skills
2 431 (18.53%) Finance
3 337 (14.49%) Public Sector
4 317 (13.63%) Analytical Skills
5 206 (8.86%) Banking
6 74 (3.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 45 (1.93%) Telecoms
8 44 (1.89%) Documentation Skills
9 39 (1.68%) Front Office
10 35 (1.50%) Investment Banking
11 33 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
12 32 (1.38%) Retail
13 27 (1.16%) Military
14 24 (1.03%) Financial Institution
15 19 (0.82%) Back Office
15 19 (0.82%) Law
16 18 (0.77%) Aerospace
17 17 (0.73%) Marketing
18 16 (0.69%) Legal
19 15 (0.64%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 517 (22.23%) Developer
2 386 (16.60%) Senior
3 236 (10.15%) Lead
4 222 (9.54%) Test Engineer
5 201 (8.64%) Tester
6 165 (7.09%) Java Developer
7 138 (5.93%) Data Engineer
8 126 (5.42%) Software Engineer
9 124 (5.33%) Analyst
10 123 (5.29%) DevOps Engineer
11 111 (4.77%) Senior Developer
12 104 (4.47%) Test Automation Engineer
13 97 (4.17%) Architect
14 96 (4.13%) QA Engineer
15 88 (3.78%) Automation Tester
16 83 (3.57%) Test Analyst
16 83 (3.57%) Test Leader
17 76 (3.27%) Full-Stack Developer
18 68 (2.92%) Automation Engineer
19 67 (2.88%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 367 (15.78%) REST
2 336 (14.45%) Terraform
3 273 (11.74%) Playwright
4 223 (9.59%) RESTful
5 219 (9.42%) Kafka
6 216 (9.29%) Spring
7 212 (9.11%) React
8 185 (7.95%) Spring Boot
9 165 (7.09%) .NET
10 130 (5.59%) HTML
11 124 (5.33%) Node.js
12 111 (4.77%) CSS
13 99 (4.26%) AngularJS
14 76 (3.27%) OAuth
15 71 (3.05%) JSON
16 63 (2.71%) pytest
17 59 (2.54%) Middleware
18 58 (2.49%) XML
19 55 (2.36%) Jest
19 55 (2.36%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 343 (14.75%) Cloud Native
2 189 (8.13%) Product Ownership
3 160 (6.88%) Distributed Systems
4 96 (4.13%) Enterprise Software
5 65 (2.79%) Onboarding
6 57 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
7 54 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
8 48 (2.06%) AI Agents
8 48 (2.06%) Mobile App
8 48 (2.06%) Self-Motivation
9 37 (1.59%) Virtual Team
10 25 (1.07%) Embedded Systems
11 23 (0.99%) Security Posture
12 22 (0.95%) Data Centre
13 21 (0.90%) Data Structures
13 21 (0.90%) Management Information System
13 21 (0.90%) NHS
14 20 (0.86%) Distributed Architecture
15 19 (0.82%) Life Science
16 18 (0.77%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 165 (7.09%) Linux
2 99 (4.26%) Unix
3 94 (4.04%) Windows
4 41 (1.76%) Apple iOS
5 39 (1.68%) Android
6 29 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 23 (0.99%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.30%) Solaris
9 6 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
10 5 (0.21%) Mac OS X
10 5 (0.21%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.21%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.17%) AIX
11 4 (0.17%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.17%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.17%) VMS
11 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.086%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,370 (58.90%) CI/CD
2 1,087 (46.73%) Agile
3 876 (37.66%) DevOps
4 440 (18.92%) Microservices
5 438 (18.83%) Problem-Solving
6 425 (18.27%) Continuous Improvement
7 410 (17.63%) Software Engineering
8 395 (16.98%) Infrastructure as Code
9 378 (16.25%) Scrum
10 370 (15.91%) Validation
11 352 (15.13%) Test Strategy
12 343 (14.75%) AI
13 319 (13.71%) Containerisation
14 297 (12.77%) Observability
15 296 (12.73%) TDD
16 267 (11.48%) SDLC
17 254 (10.92%) Software Testing
18 242 (10.40%) End-to-End Testing
19 241 (10.36%) Stakeholder Management
20 216 (9.29%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 635 (27.30%) Python
2 628 (27.00%) Java
3 575 (24.72%) SQL
4 339 (14.57%) JavaScript
5 247 (10.62%) TypeScript
6 199 (8.56%) C#
7 111 (4.77%) PowerShell
8 91 (3.91%) Bash
9 54 (2.32%) Bicep
10 50 (2.15%) C++
11 49 (2.11%) Kotlin
12 34 (1.46%) PL/SQL
13 32 (1.38%) C
14 31 (1.33%) Scala
15 28 (1.20%) Go
15 28 (1.20%) Shell Script
16 27 (1.16%) Apex Code
17 24 (1.03%) Ruby
18 17 (0.73%) Groovy
18 17 (0.73%) Perl
Qualifications
1 760 (32.67%) Security Cleared
2 644 (27.69%) SC Cleared
3 125 (5.37%) Degree
4 115 (4.94%) BPSS Clearance
5 106 (4.56%) ISTQB
6 75 (3.22%) DV Cleared
7 70 (3.01%) Computer Science Degree
8 38 (1.63%) AWS Certification
9 30 (1.29%) Azure Certification
9 30 (1.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 19 (0.82%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 13 (0.56%) ISEB
11 13 (0.56%) Master's Degree
12 12 (0.52%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 11 (0.47%) SAFe Agilist
14 10 (0.43%) Cisco Certification
14 10 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
15 9 (0.39%) CISSP
16 8 (0.34%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 8 (0.34%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 594 (25.54%) QA
2 194 (8.34%) Accessibility
3 165 (7.09%) Data Quality
4 89 (3.83%) WCAG
5 43 (1.85%) GDPR
6 20 (0.86%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 14 (0.60%) NCSC
8 14 (0.60%) SLA
9 13 (0.56%) GRC
10 11 (0.47%) NIST
11 7 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 6 (0.26%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.21%) Def Stans
13 5 (0.21%) FATCA
13 5 (0.21%) HL7
14 4 (0.17%) MiFID
14 4 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 456 (19.60%) Docker
2 35 (1.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 32 (1.38%) Active Directory
4 17 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (0.56%) Firmware
6 7 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
7 5 (0.21%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.21%) VMware NSX
8 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.043%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.043%) KVM
9 1 (0.043%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.043%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 445 (19.13%) Kubernetes
2 126 (5.42%) Ansible
3 118 (5.07%) Grafana
4 87 (3.74%) Prometheus
5 41 (1.76%) Argo
6 23 (0.99%) Puppet
7 22 (0.95%) Progress Chef
8 15 (0.64%) HP ALM
8 15 (0.64%) Kibana
9 11 (0.47%) Control-M
10 10 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (0.34%) Dell DRAC
12 7 (0.30%) Istio
12 7 (0.30%) Kustomize
12 7 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
13 6 (0.26%) Packer
13 6 (0.26%) SCCM
14 5 (0.21%) HP Fortify
14 5 (0.21%) WMI
15 4 (0.17%) NetIQ Identity Manager
Vendors
1 222 (9.54%) Microsoft
2 195 (8.38%) Oracle
3 86 (3.70%) Databricks
3 86 (3.70%) Salesforce
4 67 (2.88%) Google
5 64 (2.75%) Red Hat
6 60 (2.58%) Talend
7 58 (2.49%) IBM
8 54 (2.32%) ServiceNow
9 52 (2.24%) SAP
9 52 (2.24%) Splunk
10 43 (1.85%) Denodo
10 43 (1.85%) Informatica
11 42 (1.81%) VMware
12 38 (1.63%) Dynatrace
13 31 (1.33%) Cisco
14 30 (1.29%) MuleSoft
15 27 (1.16%) UiPath
16 20 (0.86%) HP
17 17 (0.73%) OpenAI