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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 49 51
Rank change year-on-year +3 +2 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,252 1,480 1,543
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.23% 4.50% 3.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.99% 4.98% 4.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,448 1,029 1,038
10th Percentile £325 £313 £360
25th Percentile £405 £386 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £488 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -4.88% -2.38%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £612
90th Percentile £663 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £463 £509
% change year-on-year -0.76% -9.05% +1.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 32 28
10th Percentile £38.90 £35.58 £46.00
25th Percentile £60.17 £44.51 £51.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -13.04% -12.55%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.50 £72.03
90th Percentile £74.00 £74.35 £79.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +28.57% -8.70% -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 45,167 29,748 33,534
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.91% 90.41% 85.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,886 18,653 21,488
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
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 2,759 1,659 1,873
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.47 £17.30 £18.14
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.90% -4.71%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.05 £40.94
% change year-on-year +90.72% -43.70% +3.38%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 +3 1,923 £475 -3.06% 1,296
UK excluding London +1 1,134 £459 -0.76% 800
London +3 857 £500 -1.96% 645
Work from Home -7 616 £475 +2.26% 598
North of England +13 384 £465 +3.33% 188
Midlands +9 268 £450 +9.76% 108
West Midlands +32 250 £450 -10.00% 65
South East -34 211 £459 -8.20% 200
Yorkshire -2 155 £496 +4.47% 58
North West -6 140 £490 +16.11% 104
South West +1 110 £469 +17.19% 119
North East +14 97 £425 +6.25% 26
East of England +19 80 £463 +2.78% 67
Scotland -29 69 £440 -12.00% 56
Wales -3 32 £475 +16.92% 20
Northern Ireland +21 18 £488 +19.34% 58
East Midlands -36 18 £425 +25.00% 43
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
1 197 (8.75%) Confluence
2 52 (2.31%) SAS
3 50 (2.22%) Apache Airflow
4 49 (2.18%) Apache Spark
5 27 (1.20%) SharePoint
6 24 (1.07%) Apache
7 14 (0.62%) CMS
8 13 (0.58%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.31%) nginx
9 7 (0.31%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
11 5 (0.22%) Camunda
12 4 (0.18%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.18%) Jupyter
12 4 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
13 3 (0.13%) Kentico
13 3 (0.13%) OpenStack
14 2 (0.089%) Appian
14 2 (0.089%) Mendix
14 2 (0.089%) Mule
Applications
1 20 (0.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.31%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.22%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.18%) Simulink
7 3 (0.13%) Trello
8 2 (0.089%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.044%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 27 (1.20%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.80%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.71%) Aladdin
4 12 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.36%) Findur
7 6 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.27%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.27%) SAP MDG
7 6 (0.27%) Shopify
8 5 (0.22%) BambooHR
9 4 (0.18%) Infor CloudSuite
9 4 (0.18%) Infor LN
9 4 (0.18%) Infor M3
10 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
11 2 (0.089%) Advent Geneva
11 2 (0.089%) Loan IQ
11 2 (0.089%) Oracle ERP
11 2 (0.089%) SAP GRC
12 1 (0.044%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 676 (30.02%) Azure
2 673 (29.88%) AWS
3 410 (18.21%) GitHub
4 309 (13.72%) Azure DevOps
5 248 (11.01%) GitHub Actions
6 166 (7.37%) Serverless
7 163 (7.24%) GCP
8 114 (5.06%) AWS Lambda
9 99 (4.40%) Amazon S3
9 99 (4.40%) Power Platform
10 73 (3.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 69 (3.06%) Amazon ECS
12 65 (2.89%) OpenShift
13 60 (2.66%) AWS CloudFormation
14 56 (2.49%) GitHub Copilot
15 55 (2.44%) Amazon EKS
16 54 (2.40%) dbt
17 53 (2.35%) Amazon EC2
18 48 (2.13%) Snowflake
19 41 (1.82%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 22 (0.98%) Firewall
1 22 (0.98%) HTTP
2 18 (0.80%) Network Security
3 15 (0.67%) 4G
3 15 (0.67%) 5G
4 13 (0.58%) 2G
4 13 (0.58%) 3G
4 13 (0.58%) Diameter Protocol
4 13 (0.58%) SAN
4 13 (0.58%) SIGTRAN
4 13 (0.58%) SS7
4 13 (0.58%) WAN
5 11 (0.49%) TCP/IP
6 10 (0.44%) DNS
6 10 (0.44%) LAN
7 8 (0.36%) Wi-Fi
8 7 (0.31%) BGP
9 6 (0.27%) Broadband
9 6 (0.27%) HTTPS
9 6 (0.27%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (5.99%) PostgreSQL
2 125 (5.55%) Data Warehouse
3 122 (5.42%) MongoDB
4 107 (4.75%) NoSQL
5 88 (3.91%) SQL Server
6 79 (3.51%) Power BI
7 78 (3.46%) Relational Database
8 50 (2.22%) DynamoDB
9 47 (2.09%) Metadata
10 42 (1.87%) Oracle Reports
10 42 (1.87%) Pentaho
11 35 (1.55%) MySQL
12 34 (1.51%) Big Data
13 33 (1.47%) Amazon Athena
13 33 (1.47%) Data Lake
14 28 (1.24%) Redis
15 27 (1.20%) Amazon RDS
15 27 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
16 23 (1.02%) Elasticsearch
17 20 (0.89%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 447 (19.85%) Git
2 425 (18.87%) JIRA
3 371 (16.47%) Jenkins
4 300 (13.32%) GitLab
5 281 (12.48%) Selenium
6 158 (7.02%) Postman
7 151 (6.71%) Cucumber
8 121 (5.37%) JUnit
9 113 (5.02%) Cypress.io
10 105 (4.66%) REST Assured
11 96 (4.26%) JMeter
12 70 (3.11%) Zephyr
13 64 (2.84%) SonarQube
14 62 (2.75%) WebDriver
15 53 (2.35%) Gatling
16 49 (2.18%) Gradle
17 45 (2.00%) Mockito
18 44 (1.95%) Maven
19 43 (1.91%) Bitbucket
20 33 (1.47%) SpecFlow
General
1 595 (26.42%) Social Skills
2 406 (18.03%) Finance
3 322 (14.30%) Public Sector
4 286 (12.70%) Analytical Skills
5 181 (8.04%) Banking
6 65 (2.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 40 (1.78%) Documentation Skills
8 37 (1.64%) Influencing Skills
8 37 (1.64%) Telecoms
9 34 (1.51%) Front Office
9 34 (1.51%) Investment Banking
10 32 (1.42%) Retail
11 27 (1.20%) Military
12 24 (1.07%) Financial Institution
13 19 (0.84%) Aerospace
14 16 (0.71%) Back Office
15 15 (0.67%) Manufacturing
15 15 (0.67%) Organisational Skills
16 14 (0.62%) Legal
16 14 (0.62%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 482 (21.40%) Developer
2 375 (16.65%) Senior
3 243 (10.79%) Lead
4 221 (9.81%) Test Engineer
5 211 (9.37%) Tester
6 162 (7.19%) Java Developer
7 157 (6.97%) Data Engineer
8 118 (5.24%) Analyst
8 118 (5.24%) Software Engineer
9 110 (4.88%) DevOps Engineer
10 109 (4.84%) Senior Developer
11 104 (4.62%) Architect
12 101 (4.48%) Test Automation Engineer
13 90 (4.00%) QA Engineer
14 87 (3.86%) Automation Tester
15 84 (3.73%) Test Leader
16 79 (3.51%) Test Analyst
17 73 (3.24%) Full-Stack Developer
18 60 (2.66%) Automation Engineer
18 60 (2.66%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 320 (14.21%) REST
2 272 (12.08%) Playwright
3 201 (8.93%) RESTful
4 199 (8.84%) React
5 189 (8.39%) Spring
6 180 (7.99%) Kafka
7 157 (6.97%) .NET
8 152 (6.75%) Spring Boot
9 126 (5.60%) Node.js
10 95 (4.22%) AngularJS
11 93 (4.13%) HTML
12 87 (3.86%) CSS
13 72 (3.20%) OAuth
14 60 (2.66%) JSON
15 56 (2.49%) Jest
16 54 (2.40%) pytest
17 51 (2.26%) Gherkin
17 51 (2.26%) OAuth2
18 50 (2.22%) HTML5
19 47 (2.09%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 329 (14.61%) Cloud Native
2 164 (7.28%) Product Ownership
3 155 (6.88%) Distributed Systems
4 82 (3.64%) Enterprise Software
5 60 (2.66%) Legacy Systems
6 57 (2.53%) Data Protection Act
6 57 (2.53%) Onboarding
7 51 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
8 41 (1.82%) Mobile App
9 37 (1.64%) Virtual Team
10 35 (1.55%) AI Agents
11 31 (1.38%) Distributed Architecture
12 27 (1.20%) Embedded Systems
12 27 (1.20%) NHS
13 26 (1.15%) Security Posture
14 23 (1.02%) Management Information System
15 19 (0.84%) Data Centre
15 19 (0.84%) Derivative
15 19 (0.84%) Fixed Income
16 18 (0.80%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 146 (6.48%) Linux
2 86 (3.82%) Windows
3 82 (3.64%) Unix
4 42 (1.87%) Apple iOS
5 41 (1.82%) Android
6 27 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 20 (0.89%) Windows Server
8 13 (0.58%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.36%) Solaris
11 6 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
12 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
13 4 (0.18%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 3 (0.13%) AIX
14 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
15 2 (0.089%) CentOS
16 1 (0.044%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,325 (58.84%) CI/CD
2 1,068 (47.42%) Agile
3 859 (38.14%) DevOps
4 427 (18.96%) Microservices
5 418 (18.56%) Problem-Solving
6 414 (18.38%) Continuous Improvement
7 371 (16.47%) Scrum
8 363 (16.12%) Infrastructure as Code
9 361 (16.03%) Software Engineering
10 334 (14.83%) Validation
11 333 (14.79%) Test Strategy
12 310 (13.77%) AI
12 310 (13.77%) TDD
13 307 (13.63%) Containerisation
14 293 (13.01%) Observability
15 242 (10.75%) SDLC
16 237 (10.52%) ETL
17 234 (10.39%) Data Pipeline
18 228 (10.12%) Software Testing
19 225 (9.99%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 576 (25.58%) Java
2 571 (25.36%) Python
3 526 (23.36%) SQL
4 288 (12.79%) JavaScript
5 238 (10.57%) TypeScript
6 206 (9.15%) C#
7 85 (3.77%) PowerShell
8 82 (3.64%) Bash
9 55 (2.44%) Kotlin
10 50 (2.22%) C++
11 49 (2.18%) Bicep
12 34 (1.51%) PL/SQL
13 31 (1.38%) C
14 30 (1.33%) Scala
15 28 (1.24%) Apex Code
16 27 (1.20%) Go
17 24 (1.07%) Shell Script
18 23 (1.02%) Ruby
19 22 (0.98%) Swift
20 17 (0.75%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 717 (31.84%) Security Cleared
2 606 (26.91%) SC Cleared
3 104 (4.62%) Degree
4 103 (4.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 99 (4.40%) ISTQB
6 68 (3.02%) DV Cleared
7 54 (2.40%) Computer Science Degree
8 33 (1.47%) AWS Certification
9 28 (1.24%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 22 (0.98%) Azure Certification
11 17 (0.75%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 12 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
13 11 (0.49%) CISSP
13 11 (0.49%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 11 (0.49%) SAFe Agilist
14 10 (0.44%) Master's Degree
14 10 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
15 9 (0.40%) CCNP
15 9 (0.40%) DBS Check
16 8 (0.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 553 (24.56%) QA
2 185 (8.21%) Accessibility
3 164 (7.28%) Data Quality
4 85 (3.77%) WCAG
5 42 (1.87%) GDPR
6 15 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.67%) NCSC
6 15 (0.67%) SLA
7 10 (0.44%) ISO 20022
7 10 (0.44%) NIST
8 7 (0.31%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 7 (0.31%) PCI DSS
9 6 (0.27%) GRC
9 6 (0.27%) Software Quality Assurance
10 5 (0.22%) Def Stans
10 5 (0.22%) FATCA
11 4 (0.18%) MiFID
12 3 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.13%) EU AI Act
12 3 (0.13%) HL7
System Software
1 430 (19.09%) Docker
2 31 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 27 (1.20%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (0.58%) Firmware
6 5 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.089%) SRDF
9 2 (0.089%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.044%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 429 (19.05%) Kubernetes
2 313 (13.90%) Terraform
3 117 (5.20%) Ansible
4 115 (5.11%) Grafana
5 94 (4.17%) Prometheus
6 42 (1.87%) Argo
7 23 (1.02%) Puppet
8 18 (0.80%) HP ALM
9 16 (0.71%) Progress Chef
10 12 (0.53%) Kibana
11 11 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
12 10 (0.44%) Dell DRAC
13 7 (0.31%) Kustomize
13 7 (0.31%) NetBackup
14 6 (0.27%) Istio
14 6 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
15 5 (0.22%) Forefront Identity Manager
15 5 (0.22%) NetIQ Identity Manager
16 4 (0.18%) HP Quality Center
16 4 (0.18%) Packer
Vendors
1 209 (9.28%) Microsoft
2 189 (8.39%) Oracle
3 93 (4.13%) Salesforce
4 79 (3.51%) Databricks
5 68 (3.02%) Talend
6 64 (2.84%) Red Hat
7 62 (2.75%) Google
8 56 (2.49%) Splunk
9 52 (2.31%) ServiceNow
10 49 (2.18%) Denodo
11 42 (1.87%) IBM
12 41 (1.82%) Informatica
13 40 (1.78%) SAP
14 38 (1.69%) VMware
15 33 (1.47%) Dynatrace
16 28 (1.24%) MuleSoft
17 27 (1.20%) UiPath
18 25 (1.11%) HP
19 24 (1.07%) Cisco
20 13 (0.58%) Fortinet