Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 13 April 2021

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Test Automation skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Test Automation over the 6 months to 13 April 2021 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Automated Testing
UK
6 months to
13 Apr 2021		 Same period 2020 Same period 2019
Rank 40 34 31
Rank change year-on-year -6 -3 +5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,687 3,245 6,144
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 5.12% 5.42% 6.37%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.90% 6.36% 7.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,886 2,249 4,153
10th Percentile £329 £325 £319
25th Percentile £400 £400 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
75th Percentile £575 £575 £550
90th Percentile £638 £650 £603
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £438
% change year-on-year +2.86% - +6.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 42 50
10th Percentile £26.15 £21.25 £14.78
25th Percentile £35.75 £30.00 £28.06
Median hourly rate £41.00 £40.75 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.61% -4.12% -1.16%
75th Percentile £55.00 £49.75 £46.88
90th Percentile £63.00 £64.98 £47.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.00 £33.00 £44.25
% change year-on-year +24.24% -25.42% +2.91%

Test Automation is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK
Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 45,542 51,061 84,412
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.77% 85.25% 87.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 31,188 33,980 56,992
10th Percentile £305 £281 £300
25th Percentile £400 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.05% - +5.56%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £669 £651 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £433 £445 £430
% change year-on-year -2.81% +3.49% +2.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,432 1,619 1,986
10th Percentile £12.25 £12.30 £11.62
25th Percentile £15.96 £15.75 £14.50
Median hourly rate £26.25 £21.50 £22.70
Median % change year-on-year +22.07% -5.29% +8.10%
75th Percentile £47.15 £45.88 £43.75
90th Percentile £58.75 £55.00 £50.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £20.03 £22.40
% change year-on-year +14.86% -10.60% +12.00%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Test Automation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Test Automation.

Daily rate trend for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation over the 6 months to 13 April 2021.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Test Automation.

Hourly rate trend for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Automation over the 6 months to 13 April 2021.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 18 Contract 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 13 April 2021. 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
Job
Vacancies
England -8 2,061 £475 - 831
London -4 1,189 £508 -3.33% 318
UK excluding London 0 967 £450 +2.86% 595
Work from Home +6 838 £475 -5.00% 161
North of England +12 239 £439 +5.09% 162
South East -11 223 £450 -0.58% 136
Scotland 0 177 £425 +6.25% 62
South West -5 136 £475 +5.56% 67
Yorkshire +12 112 £450 +5.88% 67
Midlands -15 106 £383 -9.88% 86
North West +11 95 £425 +6.25% 69
West Midlands -17 73 £382 -15.11% 59
East of England -20 54 £425 -4.49% 59
North East +1 32 £450 +5.88% 26
Wales +6 30 £425 +6.25% 14
East Midlands -8 24 £388 -6.06% 26
Northern Ireland +3 3 - - 10
Channel Islands +5 1 - -

For the 6 months to 13 April 2021, IT contractor jobs citing Test Automation also mentioned the following skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads with a requirement for Test Automation.

1 1,461 (54.37%) Agile Software Development
2 934 (34.76%) Java
3 841 (31.30%) DevOps
4 665 (24.75%) Azure
5 637 (23.71%) Python
6 599 (22.29%) TDD
7 596 (22.18%) JavaScript
8 565 (21.03%) Jenkins
9 547 (20.36%) SQL
10 533 (19.84%) Selenium
11 530 (19.72%) Finance
12 510 (18.98%) Scrum
13 500 (18.61%) Git (software)
14 498 (18.53%) BDD
15 493 (18.35%) Continuous Integration
16 477 (17.75%) AWS
17 473 (17.60%) JIRA
18 454 (16.90%) QA
19 434 (16.15%) Microservices
20 408 (15.18%) Docker
21 399 (14.85%) C#
22 369 (13.73%) Software Engineering
23 365 (13.58%) Linux
24 359 (13.36%) Cucumber
25 338 (12.58%) Kubernetes
26 322 (11.98%) Security Cleared
27 313 (11.65%) .NET
28 308 (11.46%) Node.js
29 295 (10.98%) Problem-Solving
30 291 (10.83%) Software Testing

Test Automation
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same job type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 217 (8.08%) Confluence
2 77 (2.87%) Apache
3 65 (2.42%) Apache Spark
4 59 (2.20%) Elasticsearch
5 27 (1.00%) SharePoint
6 26 (0.97%) CMS
7 25 (0.93%) Mule
8 22 (0.82%) WebLogic
9 21 (0.78%) WebSphere
10 16 (0.60%) Tomcat
11 15 (0.56%) Anypoint
12 14 (0.52%) JBoss
12 14 (0.52%) Red Hat Fuse
13 11 (0.41%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 11 (0.41%) Cloud Foundry
13 11 (0.41%) Mule ESB
14 10 (0.37%) IBM Domino
14 10 (0.37%) Oracle Coherence
15 9 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
15 9 (0.33%) MQSeries
Applications
1 31 (1.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.37%) MS Visio
3 9 (0.33%) Chatbot
4 8 (0.30%) Microsoft Office
5 6 (0.22%) Figma
6 5 (0.19%) Microsoft Project
7 4 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 3 (0.11%) Sketch
9 1 (0.037%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.037%) InVision
9 1 (0.037%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.037%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 14 (0.52%) SAP FI-CA
1 14 (0.52%) SAP PSCD
2 11 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
3 9 (0.33%) Magento
4 7 (0.26%) SunGard Martini
5 6 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
5 6 (0.22%) SAP HCM
6 4 (0.15%) Salesforce.com CRM
6 4 (0.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 3 (0.11%) Oracle Cash Management
7 3 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
7 3 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
7 3 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
7 3 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
7 3 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
8 2 (0.074%) BASE24
8 2 (0.074%) Loan IQ
8 2 (0.074%) Oracle Applications
8 2 (0.074%) SAP MDM
8 2 (0.074%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 665 (24.75%) Azure
2 477 (17.75%) AWS
3 261 (9.71%) GitHub
4 190 (7.07%) Serverless
5 115 (4.28%) AWS Lambda
6 112 (4.17%) PaaS
7 94 (3.50%) GCP
8 75 (2.79%) SaaS
9 69 (2.57%) Azure Functions
10 64 (2.38%) Power Platform
11 55 (2.05%) IaaS
12 52 (1.94%) Slack
13 51 (1.90%) Amazon S3
14 45 (1.67%) OpenShift
15 41 (1.53%) Logic Apps
16 39 (1.45%) AWS CloudFormation
17 32 (1.19%) Azure Data Factory
18 29 (1.08%) Amazon EC2
19 27 (1.00%) PowerApps
20 24 (0.89%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 74 (2.75%) HTTP
2 31 (1.15%) TCP/IP
3 27 (1.00%) SSL
4 26 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
5 24 (0.89%) Firewall
5 24 (0.89%) Internet
6 21 (0.78%) DNS
6 21 (0.78%) Kerberos
7 19 (0.71%) Wireless
8 18 (0.67%) IPv6
9 14 (0.52%) HTTPS
10 13 (0.48%) ATM
10 13 (0.48%) DHCP
11 12 (0.45%) IPv4
11 12 (0.45%) Multicast
11 12 (0.45%) Network Security
11 12 (0.45%) Wireshark
12 10 (0.37%) DECT
12 10 (0.37%) PPP
12 10 (0.37%) UPnP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 188 (7.00%) SQL Server
2 149 (5.55%) NoSQL
3 125 (4.65%) Relational Database
4 118 (4.39%) PostgreSQL
5 108 (4.02%) Big Data
5 108 (4.02%) MongoDB
6 75 (2.79%) MySQL
7 68 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
8 62 (2.31%) Oracle Database
9 57 (2.12%) Azure SQL Database
9 57 (2.12%) Hadoop
10 39 (1.45%) Amazon DynamoDB
11 38 (1.41%) Power BI
12 37 (1.38%) Data Lake
13 35 (1.30%) RDBMS
14 33 (1.23%) Apache Hive
15 32 (1.19%) Tableau
16 29 (1.08%) OLTP
17 26 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
18 24 (0.89%) Cosmos DB
Development Applications
1 565 (21.03%) Jenkins
2 533 (19.84%) Selenium
3 500 (18.61%) Git (software)
4 473 (17.60%) JIRA
5 359 (13.36%) Cucumber
6 171 (6.36%) Postman
7 155 (5.77%) Maven
8 147 (5.47%) GitLab
9 128 (4.76%) JMeter
10 115 (4.28%) SoapUI
11 114 (4.24%) JUnit
12 101 (3.76%) Cypress.io
13 97 (3.61%) SpecFlow
14 95 (3.54%) WebDriver
15 80 (2.98%) REST Assured
15 80 (2.98%) Sonatype Nexus
16 78 (2.90%) Subversion
17 71 (2.64%) Bitbucket
18 58 (2.16%) Visual Studio Team System
19 55 (2.05%) TeamCity
General
1 530 (19.72%) Finance
2 268 (9.97%) Banking
3 236 (8.78%) Public Sector
4 72 (2.68%) Front Office
5 68 (2.53%) Marketing
5 68 (2.53%) Telecoms
6 67 (2.49%) Investment Banking
7 42 (1.56%) Retail Banking
8 38 (1.41%) Retail
9 28 (1.04%) Back Office
10 26 (0.97%) Manufacturing
11 24 (0.89%) Electronics
12 21 (0.78%) Automotive
12 21 (0.78%) Publishing
13 18 (0.67%) Games
14 17 (0.63%) Financial Institution
14 17 (0.63%) Law
14 17 (0.63%) Legal
15 10 (0.37%) Advertising
16 6 (0.22%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 911 (33.90%) Developer
2 350 (13.03%) Tester
3 228 (8.49%) Test Engineer
4 217 (8.08%) Automation Tester
5 208 (7.74%) Java Developer
6 189 (7.03%) DevOps Engineer
7 171 (6.36%) Analyst
8 153 (5.69%) Senior Developer
9 137 (5.10%) Test Automation Engineer
10 121 (4.50%) Test Analyst
11 119 (4.43%) Architect
12 95 (3.54%) Software Engineer
13 93 (3.46%) Full Stack Developer
14 92 (3.42%) Azure Engineer
15 85 (3.16%) QA Engineer
16 81 (3.01%) Python Developer
17 79 (2.94%) React Developer
18 78 (2.90%) .NET Developer
19 74 (2.75%) Front End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
20 72 (2.68%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 313 (11.65%) .NET
2 308 (11.46%) Node.js
3 283 (10.53%) REST
4 276 (10.27%) React
5 242 (9.01%) RESTful
6 226 (8.41%) HTML
7 223 (8.30%) Spring
8 215 (8.00%) CSS
9 181 (6.74%) Web Services
10 173 (6.44%) JSON
11 162 (6.03%) AngularJS
12 155 (5.77%) XML
13 152 (5.66%) Spring Boot
14 132 (4.91%) Kafka
15 114 (4.24%) SOAP
16 111 (4.13%) Redux
17 107 (3.98%) HTML5
18 106 (3.94%) Gherkin
19 93 (3.46%) GraphQL
20 72 (2.68%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 195 (7.26%) User Experience
2 184 (6.85%) Analytical Skills
3 139 (5.17%) Mobile App
4 103 (3.83%) Greenfield Project
5 86 (3.20%) Self-Motivation
6 61 (2.27%) Virtual Team
7 59 (2.20%) Cloud Native
8 51 (1.90%) Fixed Income
9 47 (1.75%) Public Cloud
10 46 (1.71%) Algorithms
11 41 (1.53%) Data Structures
12 40 (1.49%) Equities
12 40 (1.49%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 35 (1.30%) Enterprise Software
14 33 (1.23%) Derivative
15 31 (1.15%) Management Information System
16 28 (1.04%) N-Tier
17 27 (1.00%) Linux Command Line
18 24 (0.89%) Embedded Systems
19 23 (0.86%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 365 (13.58%) Linux
2 171 (6.36%) Windows
3 164 (6.10%) Unix
4 113 (4.21%) Apple iOS
5 109 (4.06%) Android
6 50 (1.86%) Mac OS X
7 42 (1.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 19 (0.71%) Ubuntu
9 17 (0.63%) Windows Server
10 15 (0.56%) OpenWrt
10 15 (0.56%) Windows 10
11 12 (0.45%) CentOS
12 6 (0.22%) Mac OS
13 5 (0.19%) Debian
14 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
15 2 (0.074%) Solaris
15 2 (0.074%) Tizen
15 2 (0.074%) VMS
15 2 (0.074%) webOS
16 1 (0.037%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,461 (54.37%) Agile Software Development
2 841 (31.30%) DevOps
3 599 (22.29%) TDD
4 510 (18.98%) Scrum
5 498 (18.53%) BDD
6 493 (18.35%) Continuous Integration
7 434 (16.15%) Microservices
8 369 (13.73%) Software Engineering
9 295 (10.98%) Problem-Solving
10 291 (10.83%) Software Testing
11 270 (10.05%) SDLC
12 218 (8.11%) Continuous Delivery
13 210 (7.82%) Test Strategy
14 209 (7.78%) Deployment Automation
15 204 (7.59%) Kanban
16 186 (6.92%) Open Source
17 180 (6.70%) Infrastructure as Code
18 178 (6.62%) Test Scripting
19 159 (5.92%) Functional Testing
20 154 (5.73%) Continuous Deployment
Programming Languages
1 934 (34.76%) Java
2 637 (23.71%) Python
3 596 (22.18%) JavaScript
4 547 (20.36%) SQL
5 399 (14.85%) C#
6 160 (5.95%) TypeScript
7 157 (5.84%) PowerShell
8 136 (5.06%) Ruby
9 130 (4.84%) Java 8
10 123 (4.58%) Bash Shell
11 122 (4.54%) Scala
12 110 (4.09%) Shell Script
13 91 (3.39%) Kotlin
14 89 (3.31%) C++
15 74 (2.75%) Go
16 70 (2.61%) C
17 58 (2.16%) ES6
18 52 (1.94%) PL/SQL
19 44 (1.64%) Apple Swift
20 40 (1.49%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 322 (11.98%) Security Cleared
2 249 (9.27%) SC Cleared
3 128 (4.76%) Degree
4 106 (3.94%) ISTQB
5 70 (2.61%) ISEB
6 56 (2.08%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 53 (1.97%) DV Cleared
8 35 (1.30%) BPSS Clearance
9 33 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
10 11 (0.41%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 9 (0.33%) PhD
12 8 (0.30%) Master's Degree
13 7 (0.26%) ISEB Practitioner
14 6 (0.22%) AWS Certification
14 6 (0.22%) Microsoft Certification
15 5 (0.19%) CHECK Team Leader
15 5 (0.19%) CREST Certified
15 5 (0.19%) Numerate Degree
16 4 (0.15%) Cisco Certification
16 4 (0.15%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 454 (16.90%) QA
2 20 (0.74%) NIST
2 20 (0.74%) WCAG
3 13 (0.48%) Data Quality
4 12 (0.45%) GDPR
5 10 (0.37%) Disclosure Scotland
5 10 (0.37%) JTAG
6 9 (0.33%) PCI DSS
6 9 (0.33%) SLA
7 8 (0.30%) ISO 9000
8 5 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 12207
8 5 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 4 (0.15%) HL7
9 4 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 17025
9 4 (0.15%) MiFID
10 3 (0.11%) NCSC
11 2 (0.074%) Cyber Essentials
11 2 (0.074%) Dodd-Frank
11 2 (0.074%) GRC
11 2 (0.074%) IFRS
System Software
1 408 (15.18%) Docker
2 49 (1.82%) Active Directory
3 29 (1.08%) HDFS
4 15 (0.56%) Hyper-V
5 14 (0.52%) VMware Infrastructure
6 11 (0.41%) GridGain
6 11 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
7 8 (0.30%) Firmware
8 7 (0.26%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 7 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
9 5 (0.19%) Oracle Clusterware
10 4 (0.15%) vSphere
11 2 (0.074%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 2 (0.074%) Apache Flume
11 2 (0.074%) KVM
11 2 (0.074%) NFS
11 2 (0.074%) vCloud
11 2 (0.074%) VMware NSX
12 1 (0.037%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.037%) Xen
Systems Management
1 338 (12.58%) Kubernetes
2 218 (8.11%) Terraform
3 190 (7.07%) Ansible
4 65 (2.42%) Opscode Chef
5 63 (2.34%) Puppet
6 56 (2.08%) Grafana
7 44 (1.64%) Kibana
8 24 (0.89%) Prometheus
9 22 (0.82%) HP ALM
10 20 (0.74%) HP Quality Center
11 18 (0.67%) Oozie
12 14 (0.52%) logstash
13 12 (0.45%) Consul
13 12 (0.45%) Rancher
14 11 (0.41%) Hadoop YARN
15 10 (0.37%) Packer
16 9 (0.33%) Istio
16 9 (0.33%) Salt
17 8 (0.30%) CloudHub
17 8 (0.30%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 214 (7.96%) Oracle
2 192 (7.15%) Microsoft
3 82 (3.05%) SAP
4 66 (2.46%) Google
5 50 (1.86%) MuleSoft
6 41 (1.53%) Splunk
7 40 (1.49%) Databricks
8 33 (1.23%) HP
9 32 (1.19%) Atlassian
10 29 (1.08%) AppDynamics
10 29 (1.08%) IBM
11 28 (1.04%) Salesforce.com
12 26 (0.97%) Red Hat
13 22 (0.82%) Apple
13 22 (0.82%) VMware
14 18 (0.67%) Cloudera
15 16 (0.60%) Adobe
16 15 (0.56%) ServiceNow
17 14 (0.52%) Pega
17 14 (0.52%) Xamarin
965 Test Automation job vacancies Nationwide