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 15 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 45 45 52
Rank change year-on-year 0 +7 -12
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,707 1,502 1,874
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.81% 4.10% 4.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.35% 4.76% 4.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,182 1,009 1,352
10th Percentile £325 £325 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -7.08%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £688 £690 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £494 £495
% change year-on-year +0.20% -0.20% -5.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 9 62
10th Percentile £34.55 £41.00 £35.25
25th Percentile £45.94 £42.50 £47.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £50.00 £70.50
Median % change year-on-year +30.00% -29.08% +17.50%
75th Percentile £67.00 £63.75 £90.00
90th Percentile £69.40 £68.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £53.75 £65.50
% change year-on-year +20.93% -17.94% +9.17%

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 31,921 31,585 41,489
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.90% 86.22% 88.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,990 19,012 27,981
10th Percentile £295 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,098 1,120 1,596
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.10 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.12 £18.95
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.42
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -19.38% +24.04%
75th Percentile £44.07 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £73.58 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £33.27 £43.54
% change year-on-year -31.98% -23.59% +47.59%

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 15 November 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 15 November 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 15 November 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 -1 1,457 £500 -0.99% 1,030
UK excluding London +5 833 £495 +0.20% 668
London -8 668 £513 -2.38% 493
Work from Home +6 546 £500 - 571
North of England -3 279 £488 +8.33% 159
South East -6 159 £475 -7.32% 195
Midlands +23 158 £492 +5.29% 64
Yorkshire -7 132 £513 +7.89% 42
West Midlands +19 121 £515 +3.00% 41
North West -6 106 £400 -11.11% 95
South West +19 87 £523 -5.00% 95
Scotland +9 79 £500 +11.11% 56
East of England +7 56 £456 +14.06% 61
North East +15 43 £488 +14.71% 22
East Midlands +9 37 £360 -10.00% 23
Wales +6 26 £485 -7.62% 27
Northern Ireland +5 11 £295 -43.13% 19

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 84 (4.92%) Confluence
2 50 (2.93%) SAS
3 26 (1.52%) Apache Spark
4 22 (1.29%) Apache Airflow
5 18 (1.05%) Apache
6 14 (0.82%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.47%) CMS
7 8 (0.47%) Oracle Application Server
8 6 (0.35%) Anypoint
9 5 (0.29%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.23%) JBoss
10 4 (0.23%) nginx
10 4 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 4 (0.23%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.23%) WordPress
11 3 (0.18%) CICS
11 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
12 2 (0.12%) IIS
12 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 26 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.70%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.35%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.23%) Simulink
5 4 (0.23%) Windchill
6 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.12%) Trello
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 14 (0.82%) Aladdin
1 14 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.23%) SAP HR
2 4 (0.23%) SAP PLM
3 3 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.18%) Workday HCM
4 2 (0.12%) Eagle PACE
4 2 (0.12%) Markit EDM
4 2 (0.12%) Maximo
4 2 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.12%) Oracle Financials
4 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
5 1 (0.059%) Algo Collateral
5 1 (0.059%) CODA-Financials
5 1 (0.059%) MoSes
5 1 (0.059%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.059%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.059%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.059%) SAP Payroll
5 1 (0.059%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 479 (28.06%) Azure
2 426 (24.96%) AWS
3 235 (13.77%) GitHub
4 210 (12.30%) Azure DevOps
5 158 (9.26%) GCP
6 124 (7.26%) Serverless
7 118 (6.91%) GitHub Actions
8 60 (3.51%) AWS Lambda
9 56 (3.28%) Power Platform
10 53 (3.10%) OpenShift
11 50 (2.93%) Amazon S3
12 44 (2.58%) AWS CloudFormation
13 37 (2.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 36 (2.11%) Azure AKS
14 36 (2.11%) SaaS
15 35 (2.05%) Snowflake
16 27 (1.58%) Amazon ECS
16 27 (1.58%) Amazon EKS
16 27 (1.58%) Entra ID
17 25 (1.46%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 46 (2.69%) Firewall
2 35 (2.05%) HTTP
3 31 (1.82%) Wireshark
4 27 (1.58%) HTTPS
5 23 (1.35%) SSL
6 17 (1.00%) VPN
7 16 (0.94%) Network Security
7 16 (0.94%) TCP/IP
8 13 (0.76%) Multicast
9 12 (0.70%) DNS
9 12 (0.70%) SD-WAN
10 11 (0.64%) WAN
11 9 (0.53%) Ethernet
12 6 (0.35%) AMQP
12 6 (0.35%) Bluetooth
12 6 (0.35%) Internet
13 5 (0.29%) 5G
13 5 (0.29%) Cisco IPT
13 5 (0.29%) MPLS
13 5 (0.29%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (6.68%) PostgreSQL
2 96 (5.62%) NoSQL
3 89 (5.21%) MongoDB
4 69 (4.04%) Relational Database
5 67 (3.93%) SQL Server
6 43 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
7 27 (1.58%) Amazon RDS
7 27 (1.58%) Power BI
8 25 (1.46%) DynamoDB
8 25 (1.46%) Pentaho
9 24 (1.41%) BigQuery
10 23 (1.35%) Oracle Database
11 22 (1.29%) Data Lake
12 20 (1.17%) Big Data
13 17 (1.00%) Apache Cassandra
13 17 (1.00%) MySQL
14 15 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
14 15 (0.88%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 14 (0.82%) RDBMS
16 13 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 306 (17.93%) Git
2 301 (17.63%) Jenkins
3 293 (17.16%) JIRA
4 282 (16.52%) Selenium
5 213 (12.48%) GitLab
6 151 (8.85%) Cucumber
7 126 (7.38%) Postman
8 118 (6.91%) Cypress.io
9 103 (6.03%) JUnit
10 75 (4.39%) JMeter
11 73 (4.28%) REST Assured
12 57 (3.34%) Bitbucket
13 48 (2.81%) SonarQube
14 44 (2.58%) Maven
15 35 (2.05%) SpecFlow
16 33 (1.93%) Mockito
17 32 (1.87%) Gatling
18 31 (1.82%) Sonatype Nexus
19 26 (1.52%) Appium
19 26 (1.52%) TestRail
General
1 486 (28.47%) Social Skills
2 296 (17.34%) Finance
3 198 (11.60%) Public Sector
4 197 (11.54%) Analytical Skills
5 135 (7.91%) Banking
6 34 (1.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 33 (1.93%) Documentation Skills
8 27 (1.58%) Telecoms
9 26 (1.52%) Investment Banking
10 24 (1.41%) Front Office
10 24 (1.41%) Manufacturing
11 21 (1.23%) Pharmaceutical
12 20 (1.17%) Financial Institution
13 18 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
13 18 (1.05%) Retail
14 17 (1.00%) Electronics
15 16 (0.94%) Marketing
16 14 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
17 12 (0.70%) Legal
17 12 (0.70%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 377 (22.09%) Developer
2 260 (15.23%) Senior
3 212 (12.42%) Tester
4 149 (8.73%) Lead
5 143 (8.38%) Test Engineer
6 119 (6.97%) Automation Tester
7 108 (6.33%) Java Developer
8 87 (5.10%) Analyst
9 80 (4.69%) Software Engineer
10 70 (4.10%) DevOps Engineer
11 66 (3.87%) Test Analyst
12 64 (3.75%) Data Engineer
13 59 (3.46%) QA Engineer
14 57 (3.34%) Senior Developer
15 56 (3.28%) Test Manager
16 55 (3.22%) Automation Engineer
17 54 (3.16%) Test Automation Engineer
18 50 (2.93%) Test Leader
19 40 (2.34%) Senior Tester
20 39 (2.28%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 207 (12.13%) REST
2 148 (8.67%) Playwright
3 147 (8.61%) React
4 130 (7.62%) .NET
5 127 (7.44%) RESTful
6 105 (6.15%) Kafka
6 105 (6.15%) Node.js
6 105 (6.15%) Spring
7 98 (5.74%) Spring Boot
8 86 (5.04%) JSON
9 79 (4.63%) SOAP
9 79 (4.63%) XML
10 76 (4.45%) HTML
11 73 (4.28%) CSS
12 62 (3.63%) AngularJS
13 58 (3.40%) pytest
14 52 (3.05%) Web Services
15 49 (2.87%) Jest
16 41 (2.40%) Gherkin
17 37 (2.17%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 143 (8.38%) Cloud Native
2 106 (6.21%) Product Ownership
3 50 (2.93%) Mobile App
4 43 (2.52%) Security Posture
5 36 (2.11%) Distributed Systems
6 35 (2.05%) Public Cloud
7 34 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
8 33 (1.93%) Algorithms
9 30 (1.76%) Self-Motivation
9 30 (1.76%) Virtual Team
10 28 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
10 28 (1.64%) Onboarding
11 25 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
12 19 (1.11%) Data Structures
12 19 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 19 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
12 19 (1.11%) Management Information System
13 16 (0.94%) Genomics
14 15 (0.88%) Life Science
15 14 (0.82%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 180 (10.54%) Linux
2 85 (4.98%) Windows
3 59 (3.46%) Unix
4 53 (3.10%) Android
5 41 (2.40%) Apple iOS
6 19 (1.11%) Mac OS X
7 18 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 16 (0.94%) Windows Server
9 10 (0.59%) CentOS
9 10 (0.59%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.18%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.18%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.12%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.059%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.059%) Solaris
13 1 (0.059%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.059%) VMS
13 1 (0.059%) Windows Embedded Compact
13 1 (0.059%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 834 (48.86%) CI/CD
2 830 (48.62%) Agile
3 656 (38.43%) DevOps
4 411 (24.08%) Problem-Solving
5 262 (15.35%) Microservices
6 246 (14.41%) Test Strategy
7 245 (14.35%) Scrum
8 233 (13.65%) Containerisation
9 232 (13.59%) Continuous Improvement
10 220 (12.89%) TDD
11 205 (12.01%) Software Engineering
12 203 (11.89%) Test Scripting
13 202 (11.83%) Infrastructure as Code
14 183 (10.72%) Software Testing
15 181 (10.60%) SDLC
16 165 (9.67%) BDD
17 161 (9.43%) Validation
18 155 (9.08%) AI
19 143 (8.38%) Analytics
19 143 (8.38%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 482 (28.24%) Python
2 410 (24.02%) Java
3 309 (18.10%) SQL
4 241 (14.12%) JavaScript
5 183 (10.72%) C#
6 182 (10.66%) TypeScript
7 100 (5.86%) Bash
8 72 (4.22%) PowerShell
9 39 (2.28%) C++
9 39 (2.28%) Go
10 23 (1.35%) Kotlin
11 21 (1.23%) Bicep
12 15 (0.88%) Scala
12 15 (0.88%) Shell Script
13 14 (0.82%) Swift
14 13 (0.76%) PHP
14 13 (0.76%) PL/SQL
15 12 (0.70%) Perl
16 10 (0.59%) C
16 10 (0.59%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 394 (23.08%) Security Cleared
2 311 (18.22%) SC Cleared
3 106 (6.21%) Degree
4 72 (4.22%) ISTQB
5 51 (2.99%) Computer Science Degree
6 48 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
6 48 (2.81%) DV Cleared
7 28 (1.64%) AWS Certification
8 25 (1.46%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 23 (1.35%) Master's Degree
10 19 (1.11%) CISSP
11 17 (1.00%) OSCP
12 16 (0.94%) Azure Certification
13 14 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
13 14 (0.82%) CISM
13 14 (0.82%) MCP
14 13 (0.76%) CEH
14 13 (0.76%) GPEN
14 13 (0.76%) ISEB
15 12 (0.70%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 368 (21.56%) QA
2 131 (7.67%) Accessibility
3 72 (4.22%) Data Quality
4 41 (2.40%) NIST
5 38 (2.23%) GDPR
6 37 (2.17%) WCAG
7 35 (2.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 18 (1.05%) EU AI Act
8 18 (1.05%) PCI DSS
9 17 (1.00%) SEPA
10 16 (0.94%) NCSC
10 16 (0.94%) NIST 800
11 11 (0.64%) PSD2
12 8 (0.47%) COBIT
12 8 (0.47%) SLA
13 7 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 7 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 7 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.41%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.35%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 333 (19.51%) Docker
2 30 (1.76%) Active Directory
3 9 (0.53%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (0.41%) Firmware
5 5 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.29%) zsh
6 3 (0.18%) QEMU
6 3 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
6 3 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.12%) vSphere
8 1 (0.059%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.059%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 303 (17.75%) Kubernetes
2 207 (12.13%) Terraform
3 137 (8.03%) Ansible
4 75 (4.39%) Grafana
5 44 (2.58%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.05%) Argo
6 18 (1.05%) HP ALM
7 16 (0.94%) CSIRT
7 16 (0.94%) Nmap
8 15 (0.88%) Progress Chef
9 13 (0.76%) NetBackup
10 10 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.53%) Puppet
12 7 (0.41%) Kibana
12 7 (0.41%) Nessus
13 6 (0.35%) Podman
14 5 (0.29%) HP Quality Center
14 5 (0.29%) RSA Archer
15 4 (0.23%) CloudHub
15 4 (0.23%) vRealize
Vendors
1 176 (10.31%) Microsoft
2 146 (8.55%) Oracle
3 66 (3.87%) Salesforce
4 64 (3.75%) ServiceNow
5 63 (3.69%) SAP
6 61 (3.57%) Splunk
7 53 (3.10%) Google
8 50 (2.93%) Databricks
9 27 (1.58%) Talend
9 27 (1.58%) VMware
10 25 (1.46%) Denodo
11 24 (1.41%) Cisco
12 22 (1.29%) F5
12 22 (1.29%) webMethods
13 19 (1.11%) HP
13 19 (1.11%) IBM
13 19 (1.11%) Red Hat
13 19 (1.11%) UiPath
14 17 (1.00%) Atlassian
15 15 (0.88%) Workday