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 18 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 48 54
Rank change year-on-year +2 +6 -4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,139 1,331 1,565
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.24% 4.47% 3.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.00% 4.91% 4.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,385 936 1,027
10th Percentile £338 £323 £363
25th Percentile £403 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £495 £513
Median % change year-on-year -4.04% -3.41% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £725 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £468 £501
% change year-on-year -1.60% -6.69% -3.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 26 54
10th Percentile £36.19 £37.92 £50.38
25th Percentile £59.63 £44.95 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.57% -8.70% -14.66%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.50 £72.34
90th Percentile £74.40 £77.35 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +28.57% -8.70% -10.68%

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 42,754 27,087 37,306
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.83% 91.00% 85.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,630 17,192 23,755
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.46% -3.79% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,570 1,249 2,608
10th Percentile £14.80 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.02 £17.87 £16.02
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +67.72% -29.51% +6.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.32 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +17.29%

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 18 June 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 18 June 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 18 June 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 +5 1,828 £475 -3.26% 650
UK excluding London 0 1,053 £460 -1.60% 522
London +2 834 £500 -0.50% 245
Work from Home 0 609 £475 - 309
North of England +11 367 £458 +1.67% 129
Midlands +12 228 £450 +5.88% 59
West Midlands +35 209 £450 -10.00% 33
South East -29 192 £481 -3.75% 148
North West +6 149 £475 +12.16% 67
Yorkshire -4 147 £500 +2.56% 37
South West +18 105 £450 -5.26% 54
East of England +19 84 £495 +7.90% 63
North East +4 79 £425 +6.25% 26
Scotland -29 56 £440 -8.33% 26
Wales -2 32 £475 +16.92% 8
Northern Ireland +20 21 £475 +16.28% 49
East Midlands -43 19 £418 +54.63% 26
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
1 185 (8.65%) Confluence
2 48 (2.24%) SAS
3 45 (2.10%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (2.10%) Apache Spark
4 18 (0.84%) Apache
5 14 (0.65%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.56%) CMS
7 9 (0.42%) Appian
8 8 (0.37%) Camunda
8 8 (0.37%) nginx
8 8 (0.37%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.28%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.19%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.19%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.14%) Kentico
11 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.094%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.094%) Mendix
12 2 (0.094%) Mule
Applications
1 31 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
4 10 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.14%) Simulink
7 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.047%) Mingle
7 1 (0.047%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.84%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 11 (0.51%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.37%) Findur
7 6 (0.28%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.28%) Shopify
8 5 (0.23%) BambooHR
8 5 (0.23%) Loan IQ
8 5 (0.23%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.19%) Infor CloudSuite
9 4 (0.19%) Infor LN
9 4 (0.19%) Infor M3
10 3 (0.14%) Distributed Ledger
10 3 (0.14%) Maximo
10 3 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
10 3 (0.14%) Workday HCM
11 2 (0.094%) iTrent
11 2 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 619 (28.94%) Azure
2 607 (28.38%) AWS
3 355 (16.60%) GitHub
4 279 (13.04%) Azure DevOps
5 216 (10.10%) GitHub Actions
6 158 (7.39%) GCP
7 151 (7.06%) Serverless
8 101 (4.72%) AWS Lambda
9 93 (4.35%) Amazon S3
10 92 (4.30%) Power Platform
11 67 (3.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 63 (2.95%) OpenShift
13 58 (2.71%) Amazon ECS
14 49 (2.29%) Amazon EC2
15 46 (2.15%) AWS CloudFormation
16 45 (2.10%) Azure Data Factory
17 42 (1.96%) dbt
18 40 (1.87%) Amazon EKS
18 40 (1.87%) Snowflake
19 30 (1.40%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.17%) HTTP
2 21 (0.98%) Firewall
3 16 (0.75%) SAN
4 12 (0.56%) Network Security
5 11 (0.51%) WAN
6 10 (0.47%) VPN
7 9 (0.42%) MPLS
7 9 (0.42%) TCP/IP
8 7 (0.33%) BGP
8 7 (0.33%) Wireshark
9 6 (0.28%) Ethernet
9 6 (0.28%) LAN
9 6 (0.28%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.28%) VLAN
9 6 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
10 5 (0.23%) 5G
10 5 (0.23%) Multicast
11 4 (0.19%) 4G
11 4 (0.19%) Ethernet VPN
11 4 (0.19%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 116 (5.42%) PostgreSQL
2 107 (5.00%) MongoDB
3 99 (4.63%) Data Warehouse
4 91 (4.25%) NoSQL
5 75 (3.51%) Relational Database
5 75 (3.51%) SQL Server
6 68 (3.18%) Power BI
7 46 (2.15%) DynamoDB
8 41 (1.92%) Metadata
9 37 (1.73%) Oracle Reports
10 36 (1.68%) Big Data
10 36 (1.68%) Pentaho
11 33 (1.54%) Amazon Athena
12 28 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
12 28 (1.31%) Amazon Redshift
13 27 (1.26%) MySQL
14 26 (1.22%) Data Lake
14 26 (1.22%) Redis
15 23 (1.08%) BigQuery
16 22 (1.03%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 411 (19.21%) JIRA
2 388 (18.14%) Git
3 347 (16.22%) Jenkins
4 312 (14.59%) GitLab
5 278 (13.00%) Selenium
6 171 (7.99%) Postman
7 153 (7.15%) Cucumber
8 115 (5.38%) REST Assured
9 107 (5.00%) JUnit
10 105 (4.91%) JMeter
11 104 (4.86%) Cypress.io
12 62 (2.90%) WebDriver
13 59 (2.76%) Zephyr
14 57 (2.66%) SonarQube
15 47 (2.20%) Gatling
16 45 (2.10%) Gradle
17 38 (1.78%) Mockito
18 36 (1.68%) Bitbucket
19 34 (1.59%) Maven
20 31 (1.45%) SpecFlow
General
1 570 (26.65%) Social Skills
2 374 (17.48%) Finance
3 303 (14.17%) Public Sector
4 262 (12.25%) Analytical Skills
5 178 (8.32%) Banking
6 52 (2.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 44 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
8 38 (1.78%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.64%) Front Office
10 27 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
11 26 (1.22%) Military
11 26 (1.22%) Telecoms
12 21 (0.98%) Financial Institution
13 19 (0.89%) Retail
14 17 (0.79%) Aerospace
14 17 (0.79%) Legal
14 17 (0.79%) Manufacturing
14 17 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
15 14 (0.65%) Marketing
16 13 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 433 (20.24%) Developer
2 340 (15.90%) Senior
3 233 (10.89%) Test Engineer
4 229 (10.71%) Lead
4 229 (10.71%) Tester
5 140 (6.55%) Data Engineer
6 131 (6.12%) Java Developer
7 112 (5.24%) Analyst
8 107 (5.00%) Software Engineer
9 102 (4.77%) DevOps Engineer
10 98 (4.58%) Architect
11 94 (4.39%) Test Automation Engineer
12 92 (4.30%) Automation Tester
13 84 (3.93%) Test Leader
14 83 (3.88%) Senior Developer
15 80 (3.74%) QA Engineer
16 69 (3.23%) Test Analyst
17 61 (2.85%) Full-Stack Developer
18 58 (2.71%) Automation Engineer
19 57 (2.66%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 255 (11.92%) REST
2 250 (11.69%) Playwright
3 198 (9.26%) React
4 166 (7.76%) RESTful
5 160 (7.48%) Spring
6 148 (6.92%) Kafka
7 131 (6.12%) Spring Boot
8 127 (5.94%) .NET
9 113 (5.28%) Node.js
10 89 (4.16%) AngularJS
11 72 (3.37%) HTML
12 63 (2.95%) CSS
12 63 (2.95%) pytest
13 62 (2.90%) OAuth
14 50 (2.34%) Jest
15 46 (2.15%) Swagger
16 43 (2.01%) Gherkin
16 43 (2.01%) JSON
17 41 (1.92%) OAuth2
18 38 (1.78%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 251 (11.73%) Cloud Native
2 161 (7.53%) Product Ownership
3 125 (5.84%) Distributed Systems
4 61 (2.85%) Enterprise Software
4 61 (2.85%) Legacy Systems
5 56 (2.62%) Data Protection Act
6 44 (2.06%) Mobile App
7 43 (2.01%) Self-Motivation
8 42 (1.96%) Virtual Team
9 41 (1.92%) Onboarding
10 33 (1.54%) Distributed Architecture
11 27 (1.26%) NHS
12 24 (1.12%) Management Information System
13 23 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
14 22 (1.03%) Algorithms
14 22 (1.03%) Data Centre
14 22 (1.03%) Security Posture
15 21 (0.98%) Embedded Systems
16 20 (0.94%) AI Agents
17 19 (0.89%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 127 (5.94%) Linux
2 83 (3.88%) Windows
3 61 (2.85%) Unix
4 43 (2.01%) Android
5 41 (1.92%) Apple iOS
6 22 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 20 (0.94%) Windows Server
8 12 (0.56%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.47%) Solaris
10 9 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 8 (0.37%) Windows Server 2008
12 7 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.19%) Embedded Linux
15 3 (0.14%) AIX
16 2 (0.094%) CentOS
16 2 (0.094%) Kali Linux
16 2 (0.094%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,173 (54.84%) CI/CD
2 997 (46.61%) Agile
3 765 (35.76%) DevOps
4 383 (17.91%) Problem-Solving
5 348 (16.27%) Microservices
6 342 (15.99%) Continuous Improvement
7 322 (15.05%) Test Strategy
8 320 (14.96%) Scrum
9 312 (14.59%) Validation
10 301 (14.07%) Infrastructure as Code
10 301 (14.07%) Software Engineering
11 266 (12.44%) Containerisation
12 263 (12.30%) Observability
13 248 (11.59%) AI
14 238 (11.13%) TDD
15 212 (9.91%) End-to-End Testing
16 211 (9.86%) ETL
17 210 (9.82%) User Acceptance Testing
18 202 (9.44%) API Testing
19 198 (9.26%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 551 (25.76%) Python
2 532 (24.87%) Java
3 490 (22.91%) SQL
4 285 (13.32%) JavaScript
5 243 (11.36%) TypeScript
6 202 (9.44%) C#
7 75 (3.51%) PowerShell
8 73 (3.41%) Bash
9 52 (2.43%) C++
10 48 (2.24%) Kotlin
11 38 (1.78%) PL/SQL
12 36 (1.68%) Scala
13 34 (1.59%) Apex Code
14 31 (1.45%) Bicep
14 31 (1.45%) C
14 31 (1.45%) Go
15 22 (1.03%) Swift
16 20 (0.94%) Ruby
17 17 (0.79%) Groovy
18 14 (0.65%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 680 (31.79%) Security Cleared
2 558 (26.09%) SC Cleared
3 102 (4.77%) ISTQB
4 96 (4.49%) BPSS Clearance
5 87 (4.07%) Degree
6 75 (3.51%) DV Cleared
7 42 (1.96%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (1.17%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 19 (0.89%) AWS Certification
10 17 (0.79%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 16 (0.75%) Master's Degree
12 14 (0.65%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 13 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
14 11 (0.51%) CCNP
14 11 (0.51%) SAFe Agilist
15 9 (0.42%) Azure Certification
15 9 (0.42%) DBS Check
16 7 (0.33%) CISSP
17 5 (0.23%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 5 (0.23%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 464 (21.69%) QA
2 166 (7.76%) Accessibility
3 146 (6.83%) Data Quality
4 71 (3.32%) WCAG
5 35 (1.64%) GDPR
6 15 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.70%) SLA
7 13 (0.61%) ISO 20022
7 13 (0.61%) NCSC
8 10 (0.47%) Def Stans
8 10 (0.47%) NIST
9 7 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 6 (0.28%) PCI DSS
11 5 (0.23%) FATCA
12 4 (0.19%) HL7
12 4 (0.19%) MiFID
12 4 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 4 (0.19%) SEPA
12 4 (0.19%) Software Quality Assurance
13 3 (0.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 360 (16.83%) Docker
2 30 (1.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (0.89%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.65%) Firmware
5 12 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 4 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.094%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.094%) SRDF
10 1 (0.047%) Squid
10 1 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.047%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 362 (16.92%) Kubernetes
2 265 (12.39%) Terraform
3 105 (4.91%) Grafana
4 101 (4.72%) Ansible
5 94 (4.39%) Prometheus
6 36 (1.68%) Argo
7 19 (0.89%) HP ALM
8 14 (0.65%) Puppet
9 13 (0.61%) Kibana
10 11 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.47%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.47%) HP Quality Center
12 8 (0.37%) Kustomize
12 8 (0.37%) NetBackup
13 7 (0.33%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 7 (0.33%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 6 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.23%) Istio
15 5 (0.23%) Progress Chef
16 4 (0.19%) Rancher
Vendors
1 181 (8.46%) Microsoft
2 172 (8.04%) Oracle
3 97 (4.53%) Salesforce
4 68 (3.18%) Databricks
5 65 (3.04%) Talend
6 62 (2.90%) Google
7 59 (2.76%) Red Hat
7 59 (2.76%) ServiceNow
8 56 (2.62%) Splunk
9 46 (2.15%) Denodo
10 35 (1.64%) SAP
11 34 (1.59%) VMware
12 33 (1.54%) IBM
12 33 (1.54%) Informatica
13 30 (1.40%) UiPath
14 29 (1.36%) Dynatrace
15 22 (1.03%) Cisco
15 22 (1.03%) HP
15 22 (1.03%) MuleSoft
16 16 (0.75%) Blue Prism