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 3 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 55
Rank change year-on-year -1 +8 -8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,986 1,333 1,514
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.19% 4.55% 3.49%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.96% 5.01% 4.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,311 918 989
10th Percentile £330 £329 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -7.27%
75th Percentile £575 £624 £625
90th Percentile £668 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.17% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 18 57
10th Percentile £36.32 £33.58 £49.20
25th Percentile £54.55 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.81% -12.50% -6.80%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.07 £77.50
90th Percentile - £70.60 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -12.00% -

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 40,071 26,623 37,492
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.55% 90.89% 86.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,236 17,168 24,151
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +1.40% -3.85% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,397 1,072 2,456
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.67 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -18.31% -1.39%
75th Percentile £66.00 £60.84 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.31 £27.64 £37.18
% change year-on-year +56.68% -25.66% +6.23%

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 3 May 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 3 May 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 3 May 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 1,693 £475 -5.00% 615
UK excluding London -2 914 £469 -1.17% 505
London 0 829 £500 -2.44% 187
Work from Home -2 574 £475 -5.00% 296
North of England +12 333 £469 +4.28% 146
Midlands +1 184 £449 -3.03% 77
South East -41 171 £500 -2.44% 119
West Midlands +16 158 £463 -6.57% 53
North West +13 146 £464 +3.06% 67
Yorkshire -7 141 £490 +3.11% 40
South West +9 92 £475 -5.00% 62
East of England +2 58 £522 +6.58% 64
North East +7 51 £419 +6.01% 39
Scotland -27 49 £425 -5.03% 31
Wales 0 29 £475 +18.75% 15
East Midlands -35 26 £400 -9.86% 24
Northern Ireland +18 18 £475 +16.28% 5
Channel Islands - 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
1 148 (7.45%) Confluence
2 43 (2.17%) Apache Spark
2 43 (2.17%) SAS
3 32 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
4 14 (0.70%) Apache
5 12 (0.60%) SharePoint
6 8 (0.40%) Appian
7 7 (0.35%) nginx
7 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.30%) Camunda
9 5 (0.25%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.20%) CMS
10 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.10%) Mendix
12 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
13 1 (0.050%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.050%) Ethereum
Applications
1 25 (1.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (0.55%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.15%) Simulink
6 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.050%) Mingle
7 1 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 19 (0.96%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.35%) Findur
4 7 (0.35%) Shopify
5 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
5 6 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
6 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.25%) Maximo
7 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.15%) Infor CloudSuite
7 3 (0.15%) Infor LN
7 3 (0.15%) Infor M3
7 3 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
7 3 (0.15%) SAP ERP
7 3 (0.15%) Workday HCM
8 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
8 2 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
8 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
8 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 571 (28.75%) Azure
2 541 (27.24%) AWS
3 342 (17.22%) GitHub
4 263 (13.24%) Azure DevOps
5 194 (9.77%) GitHub Actions
6 151 (7.60%) GCP
7 137 (6.90%) Serverless
8 87 (4.38%) AWS Lambda
9 84 (4.23%) Amazon S3
10 69 (3.47%) Power Platform
11 61 (3.07%) OpenShift
12 60 (3.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 59 (2.97%) AWS CloudFormation
14 56 (2.82%) Amazon ECS
15 39 (1.96%) Amazon EKS
15 39 (1.96%) Azure AKS
15 39 (1.96%) Snowflake
16 35 (1.76%) Amazon EC2
16 35 (1.76%) Azure Data Factory
17 30 (1.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.31%) HTTP
2 23 (1.16%) Firewall
3 14 (0.70%) SAN
4 12 (0.60%) TCP/IP
4 12 (0.60%) VPN
5 11 (0.55%) FTP
5 11 (0.55%) SSL
6 9 (0.45%) Ethernet
6 9 (0.45%) WAN
7 8 (0.40%) MPLS
7 8 (0.40%) SD-WAN
7 8 (0.40%) Wireshark
8 7 (0.35%) Network Security
9 6 (0.30%) 5G
9 6 (0.30%) DNS
9 6 (0.30%) Multicast
9 6 (0.30%) VLAN
10 5 (0.25%) Cisco IPT
10 5 (0.25%) HTTPS
10 5 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (5.59%) PostgreSQL
2 101 (5.09%) NoSQL
3 96 (4.83%) MongoDB
4 88 (4.43%) SQL Server
5 70 (3.52%) Relational Database
6 69 (3.47%) Data Warehouse
7 51 (2.57%) Power BI
8 47 (2.37%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.76%) Metadata
9 35 (1.76%) MySQL
10 34 (1.71%) Pentaho
11 32 (1.61%) Big Data
12 26 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
13 25 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
13 25 (1.26%) BigQuery
13 25 (1.26%) Redis
13 25 (1.26%) Tableau
14 24 (1.21%) Amazon Athena
15 23 (1.16%) Amazon Aurora
16 21 (1.06%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 386 (19.44%) JIRA
2 373 (18.78%) Git
3 324 (16.31%) Jenkins
4 274 (13.80%) Selenium
5 271 (13.65%) GitLab
6 162 (8.16%) Postman
7 151 (7.60%) Cucumber
8 101 (5.09%) JUnit
9 99 (4.98%) Cypress.io
10 92 (4.63%) JMeter
11 87 (4.38%) REST Assured
12 60 (3.02%) WebDriver
13 49 (2.47%) SonarQube
14 47 (2.37%) Zephyr
15 35 (1.76%) Gradle
16 34 (1.71%) Gatling
16 34 (1.71%) Maven
16 34 (1.71%) Mockito
17 32 (1.61%) SpecFlow
18 31 (1.56%) Bitbucket
General
1 516 (25.98%) Social Skills
2 344 (17.32%) Finance
3 290 (14.60%) Public Sector
4 225 (11.33%) Analytical Skills
5 164 (8.26%) Banking
6 41 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.86%) Investment Banking
8 34 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 33 (1.66%) Front Office
10 28 (1.41%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.11%) Legal
11 22 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
12 17 (0.86%) Aerospace
12 17 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
13 16 (0.81%) Military
14 13 (0.65%) Back Office
14 13 (0.65%) Financial Institution
14 13 (0.65%) Retail
15 12 (0.60%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 430 (21.65%) Developer
2 308 (15.51%) Senior
3 213 (10.73%) Test Engineer
4 212 (10.67%) Tester
5 204 (10.27%) Lead
6 115 (5.79%) Data Engineer
7 114 (5.74%) Java Developer
8 106 (5.34%) Analyst
9 102 (5.14%) Automation Tester
10 101 (5.09%) Test Automation Engineer
11 84 (4.23%) QA Engineer
12 83 (4.18%) Software Engineer
13 82 (4.13%) Architect
13 82 (4.13%) Test Leader
14 79 (3.98%) DevOps Engineer
15 78 (3.93%) Senior Developer
16 67 (3.37%) Test Analyst
17 65 (3.27%) Full-Stack Developer
17 65 (3.27%) Test Manager
18 53 (2.67%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 241 (12.13%) Playwright
2 234 (11.78%) REST
3 174 (8.76%) React
4 154 (7.75%) RESTful
5 149 (7.50%) Spring
6 141 (7.10%) Node.js
7 136 (6.85%) .NET
8 134 (6.75%) Kafka
9 123 (6.19%) Spring Boot
10 86 (4.33%) AngularJS
11 75 (3.78%) HTML
12 69 (3.47%) pytest
13 63 (3.17%) OAuth
14 59 (2.97%) CSS
15 55 (2.77%) Jest
16 45 (2.27%) JSON
17 44 (2.22%) Gherkin
18 42 (2.11%) OpenID
19 39 (1.96%) GraphQL
20 38 (1.91%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 218 (10.98%) Cloud Native
2 154 (7.75%) Product Ownership
3 101 (5.09%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (2.42%) Data Protection Act
4 48 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
5 47 (2.37%) Mobile App
6 37 (1.86%) Onboarding
7 36 (1.81%) Virtual Team
8 31 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
9 30 (1.51%) NHS
9 30 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
10 28 (1.41%) Algorithms
11 25 (1.26%) Data Centre
12 24 (1.21%) Management Information System
13 22 (1.11%) Security Posture
14 21 (1.06%) Distributed Architecture
15 20 (1.01%) Derivative
16 19 (0.96%) Data Structures
16 19 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
17 17 (0.86%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 130 (6.55%) Linux
2 82 (4.13%) Windows
3 44 (2.22%) Android
4 41 (2.06%) Unix
5 36 (1.81%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.06%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.65%) Mac OS X
9 11 (0.55%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.40%) Solaris
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.20%) CentOS
13 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.15%) AIX
15 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.050%) FreeRTOS
16 1 (0.050%) Robot Operating System
16 1 (0.050%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,063 (53.52%) CI/CD
2 914 (46.02%) Agile
3 720 (36.25%) DevOps
4 399 (20.09%) Problem-Solving
5 322 (16.21%) Continuous Improvement
6 316 (15.91%) Microservices
7 291 (14.65%) Scrum
8 285 (14.35%) Test Strategy
9 271 (13.65%) Infrastructure as Code
10 264 (13.29%) Containerisation
11 263 (13.24%) Validation
12 236 (11.88%) Software Engineering
13 229 (11.53%) Observability
14 221 (11.13%) AI
15 212 (10.67%) TDD
16 204 (10.27%) Test Scripting
17 200 (10.07%) Regression Testing
18 199 (10.02%) Analytics
19 195 (9.82%) SDLC
19 195 (9.82%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 544 (27.39%) Python
2 498 (25.08%) Java
3 432 (21.75%) SQL
4 287 (14.45%) JavaScript
5 267 (13.44%) TypeScript
6 201 (10.12%) C#
7 73 (3.68%) PowerShell
8 68 (3.42%) Bash
9 53 (2.67%) C++
10 36 (1.81%) Kotlin
11 33 (1.66%) C
12 32 (1.61%) Scala
13 28 (1.41%) PL/SQL
14 27 (1.36%) Bicep
14 27 (1.36%) Ruby
15 26 (1.31%) Apex Code
16 23 (1.16%) Go
17 15 (0.76%) Swift
18 14 (0.70%) Groovy
18 14 (0.70%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 609 (30.66%) Security Cleared
2 481 (24.22%) SC Cleared
3 88 (4.43%) Degree
4 87 (4.38%) ISTQB
5 78 (3.93%) BPSS Clearance
6 65 (3.27%) DV Cleared
7 50 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
8 22 (1.11%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 16 (0.81%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.60%) Azure Certification
10 12 (0.60%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.55%) AWS Certification
12 10 (0.50%) CCNP
13 9 (0.45%) DBS Check
13 9 (0.45%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 9 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.40%) SAFe Agilist
15 6 (0.30%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 6 (0.30%) CISSP
15 6 (0.30%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 449 (22.61%) QA
2 141 (7.10%) Accessibility
3 118 (5.94%) Data Quality
4 60 (3.02%) WCAG
5 42 (2.11%) GDPR
6 18 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 14 (0.70%) ISO 20022
7 14 (0.70%) SLA
8 13 (0.65%) NCSC
9 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
10 9 (0.45%) PCI DSS
11 8 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 7 (0.35%) NIST
12 7 (0.35%) SEPA
13 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
13 6 (0.30%) PSD2
14 5 (0.25%) FATCA
14 5 (0.25%) PERC
15 4 (0.20%) PMO
System Software
1 359 (18.08%) Docker
2 23 (1.16%) Active Directory
3 18 (0.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.70%) Firmware
5 10 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
9 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.10%) SRDF
12 1 (0.050%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.050%) HDFS
12 1 (0.050%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.050%) KVM
12 1 (0.050%) Squid
12 1 (0.050%) Time Sharing Option
12 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 346 (17.42%) Kubernetes
2 243 (12.24%) Terraform
3 109 (5.49%) Grafana
4 84 (4.23%) Prometheus
5 81 (4.08%) Ansible
6 29 (1.46%) Argo
7 22 (1.11%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.86%) Puppet
9 15 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (0.70%) Kibana
11 10 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 9 (0.45%) Progress Chef
13 8 (0.40%) Dell DRAC
13 8 (0.40%) NetBackup
14 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.25%) Nmap
15 5 (0.25%) Rancher
16 4 (0.20%) Podman
Vendors
1 168 (8.46%) Microsoft
2 161 (8.11%) Oracle
3 80 (4.03%) Salesforce
4 67 (3.37%) Databricks
5 66 (3.32%) ServiceNow
6 57 (2.87%) Google
7 56 (2.82%) Splunk
8 49 (2.47%) Red Hat
9 46 (2.32%) Talend
10 43 (2.17%) SAP
11 31 (1.56%) IBM
12 30 (1.51%) Denodo
13 27 (1.36%) VMware
14 25 (1.26%) HP
15 22 (1.11%) Cisco
16 20 (1.01%) Dynatrace
17 19 (0.96%) UiPath
18 18 (0.91%) Informatica
18 18 (0.91%) MuleSoft
19 16 (0.81%) Blue Prism