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

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 49 47
Rank change year-on-year +3 -2 +4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,312 1,500 1,567
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.30% 4.59% 4.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.08% 5.07% 4.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,484 1,037 1,044
10th Percentile £325 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £500 £502
Median % change year-on-year -4.40% -0.30% -4.48%
75th Percentile £575 £585 £600
90th Percentile £665 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -3.37% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 35 22
10th Percentile £38.90 £32.15 £42.50
25th Percentile £59.63 £45.63 £50.31
Median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% - -20.00%
75th Percentile - £66.00 £69.84
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.40 £83.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.00 £55.00 £56.25
% change year-on-year +25.45% -2.22% -12.62%

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 45,469 29,582 33,102
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.59% 90.43% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,813 18,412 20,921
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
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 2,891 1,754 1,674
10th Percentile £14.10 £14.20 £13.86
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.30 £18.13
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -37.90% -4.71%
75th Percentile £67.89 £47.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.92 £42.50
% change year-on-year +91.80% -46.07% +6.25%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -1 1,954 £476 -4.90% 2,156
UK excluding London -9 1,117 £459 -3.37% 1,304
London +4 901 £500 - 1,164
Work from Home -7 631 £486 +2.26% 924
North of England +3 401 £463 +0.54% 282
Midlands +7 237 £450 -2.44% 136
West Midlands +20 222 £450 -12.62% 82
South East -26 214 £459 -8.20% 291
Yorkshire -15 157 £470 -6.00% 69
North West -8 148 £492 +15.76% 161
South West +9 114 £475 -2.56% 225
North East +13 103 £450 +2.86% 53
East of England +17 77 £450 +10.77% 139
Scotland -24 75 £470 -6.00% 164
Wales -9 29 £500 +25.00% 32
East Midlands -43 15 £418 +19.29% 54
Northern Ireland +10 11 £488 +323.91% 53
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

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 (8.00%) Confluence
2 52 (2.25%) Apache Airflow
3 44 (1.90%) SharePoint
4 42 (1.82%) Apache Spark
5 39 (1.69%) SAS
6 23 (0.99%) Apache
7 14 (0.61%) CMS
8 12 (0.52%) WebLogic
9 11 (0.48%) Camunda
10 6 (0.26%) nginx
10 6 (0.26%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.26%) Tomcat
11 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
12 4 (0.17%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.17%) ColdFusion
12 4 (0.17%) Jupyter
12 4 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 3 (0.13%) Kentico
14 2 (0.087%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 25 (1.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.69%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.26%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.22%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.17%) Simulink
7 3 (0.13%) Trello
8 2 (0.087%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.043%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 27 (1.17%) Dynamics CRM
2 23 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.61%) Aladdin
4 13 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
5 10 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.35%) Findur
7 6 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.26%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.26%) SAP GRC
7 6 (0.26%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.22%) BambooHR
9 4 (0.17%) Shopify
10 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
10 3 (0.13%) FLEXCUBE
11 2 (0.087%) Finacle
11 2 (0.087%) Infor CloudSuite
11 2 (0.087%) Infor LN
11 2 (0.087%) Infor M3
11 2 (0.087%) Oracle ERP
11 2 (0.087%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 703 (30.41%) AWS
2 697 (30.15%) Azure
3 423 (18.30%) GitHub
4 330 (14.27%) Azure DevOps
5 254 (10.99%) GitHub Actions
6 174 (7.53%) Serverless
7 166 (7.18%) GCP
8 127 (5.49%) AWS Lambda
9 109 (4.71%) Power Platform
10 96 (4.15%) Amazon S3
11 79 (3.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 74 (3.20%) OpenShift
13 69 (2.98%) Amazon ECS
14 68 (2.94%) GitHub Copilot
15 63 (2.72%) AWS CloudFormation
16 62 (2.68%) Amazon EKS
17 60 (2.60%) dbt
18 58 (2.51%) Snowflake
19 49 (2.12%) Amazon EC2
20 46 (1.99%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.12%) HTTP
2 24 (1.04%) Firewall
3 19 (0.82%) DNS
4 18 (0.78%) 4G
4 18 (0.78%) 5G
5 16 (0.69%) Network Security
6 15 (0.65%) 2G
6 15 (0.65%) 3G
6 15 (0.65%) Diameter Protocol
6 15 (0.65%) SIGTRAN
6 15 (0.65%) SS7
6 15 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 15 (0.65%) WAN
7 13 (0.56%) LAN
8 12 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
9 11 (0.48%) SAN
10 10 (0.43%) BGP
11 8 (0.35%) DHCP
11 8 (0.35%) Ethernet VPN
11 8 (0.35%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (5.84%) PostgreSQL
2 123 (5.32%) Data Warehouse
3 122 (5.28%) MongoDB
4 109 (4.71%) NoSQL
5 100 (4.33%) SQL Server
6 89 (3.85%) Relational Database
7 85 (3.68%) Power BI
8 49 (2.12%) Metadata
9 48 (2.08%) DynamoDB
10 37 (1.60%) Oracle Reports
11 35 (1.51%) Amazon Athena
11 35 (1.51%) MySQL
12 33 (1.43%) Amazon Redshift
12 33 (1.43%) Big Data
12 33 (1.43%) Data Lake
13 32 (1.38%) Pentaho
14 30 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
15 29 (1.25%) Redis
16 28 (1.21%) Elasticsearch
17 24 (1.04%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 472 (20.42%) Git
2 391 (16.91%) JIRA
3 373 (16.13%) Jenkins
4 316 (13.67%) GitLab
5 293 (12.67%) Selenium
6 161 (6.96%) Postman
7 145 (6.27%) Cucumber
8 124 (5.36%) Cypress.io
9 121 (5.23%) JUnit
10 104 (4.50%) REST Assured
11 97 (4.20%) JMeter
12 76 (3.29%) SonarQube
13 65 (2.81%) Zephyr
14 59 (2.55%) Gatling
15 58 (2.51%) Gradle
16 54 (2.34%) WebDriver
17 53 (2.29%) Maven
18 45 (1.95%) Mockito
19 42 (1.82%) Bitbucket
20 27 (1.17%) Appium
General
1 642 (27.77%) Social Skills
2 427 (18.47%) Finance
3 337 (14.58%) Public Sector
4 315 (13.62%) Analytical Skills
5 200 (8.65%) Banking
6 74 (3.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 44 (1.90%) Documentation Skills
7 44 (1.90%) Telecoms
8 39 (1.69%) Front Office
9 35 (1.51%) Investment Banking
10 34 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
11 32 (1.38%) Retail
12 27 (1.17%) Military
13 24 (1.04%) Financial Institution
14 19 (0.82%) Back Office
15 18 (0.78%) Aerospace
15 18 (0.78%) Law
16 17 (0.74%) Marketing
17 16 (0.69%) Legal
18 15 (0.65%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 516 (22.32%) Developer
2 385 (16.65%) Senior
3 235 (10.16%) Lead
4 222 (9.60%) Test Engineer
5 199 (8.61%) Tester
6 165 (7.14%) Java Developer
7 138 (5.97%) Data Engineer
8 124 (5.36%) DevOps Engineer
9 123 (5.32%) Software Engineer
10 122 (5.28%) Analyst
11 111 (4.80%) Senior Developer
12 103 (4.46%) Test Automation Engineer
13 99 (4.28%) Architect
14 96 (4.15%) QA Engineer
15 87 (3.76%) Automation Tester
16 83 (3.59%) Test Leader
17 80 (3.46%) Test Analyst
18 76 (3.29%) Full-Stack Developer
19 67 (2.90%) Java Engineer
20 66 (2.85%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 367 (15.87%) REST
2 335 (14.49%) Terraform
3 271 (11.72%) Playwright
4 222 (9.60%) RESTful
5 217 (9.39%) Kafka
6 216 (9.34%) Spring
7 213 (9.21%) React
8 185 (8.00%) Spring Boot
9 166 (7.18%) .NET
10 129 (5.58%) HTML
11 124 (5.36%) Node.js
12 110 (4.76%) CSS
13 99 (4.28%) AngularJS
14 77 (3.33%) OAuth
15 71 (3.07%) JSON
16 62 (2.68%) pytest
17 58 (2.51%) XML
18 57 (2.47%) Middleware
19 56 (2.42%) OAuth2
20 54 (2.34%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 343 (14.84%) Cloud Native
2 188 (8.13%) Product Ownership
3 161 (6.96%) Distributed Systems
4 94 (4.07%) Enterprise Software
5 65 (2.81%) Onboarding
6 58 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
7 54 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
8 49 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
9 48 (2.08%) Mobile App
10 46 (1.99%) AI Agents
11 37 (1.60%) Virtual Team
12 25 (1.08%) Embedded Systems
13 23 (0.99%) Management Information System
13 23 (0.99%) NHS
13 23 (0.99%) Security Posture
14 22 (0.95%) Data Centre
15 21 (0.91%) Data Structures
16 20 (0.87%) Distributed Architecture
17 19 (0.82%) Life Science
18 18 (0.78%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 164 (7.09%) Linux
2 99 (4.28%) Unix
3 94 (4.07%) Windows
4 41 (1.77%) Apple iOS
5 39 (1.69%) Android
6 29 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 22 (0.95%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.30%) Solaris
9 6 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
10 5 (0.22%) Mac OS X
10 5 (0.22%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.22%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.17%) AIX
11 4 (0.17%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.17%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.17%) VMS
11 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.087%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,365 (59.04%) CI/CD
2 1,077 (46.58%) Agile
3 877 (37.93%) DevOps
4 439 (18.99%) Microservices
5 437 (18.90%) Problem-Solving
6 430 (18.60%) Continuous Improvement
7 407 (17.60%) Software Engineering
8 390 (16.87%) Infrastructure as Code
9 375 (16.22%) Scrum
10 365 (15.79%) Validation
11 349 (15.10%) Test Strategy
12 341 (14.75%) AI
13 316 (13.67%) Containerisation
14 295 (12.76%) TDD
15 294 (12.72%) Observability
16 260 (11.25%) SDLC
17 251 (10.86%) Software Testing
18 239 (10.34%) End-to-End Testing
18 239 (10.34%) Stakeholder Management
19 215 (9.30%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 627 (27.12%) Java
2 626 (27.08%) Python
3 572 (24.74%) SQL
4 335 (14.49%) JavaScript
5 246 (10.64%) TypeScript
6 199 (8.61%) C#
7 112 (4.84%) PowerShell
8 92 (3.98%) Bash
9 55 (2.38%) Bicep
10 50 (2.16%) C++
11 49 (2.12%) Kotlin
12 34 (1.47%) PL/SQL
13 32 (1.38%) C
14 31 (1.34%) Scala
15 28 (1.21%) Go
16 27 (1.17%) Apex Code
16 27 (1.17%) Shell Script
17 25 (1.08%) Ruby
18 17 (0.74%) Groovy
18 17 (0.74%) Swift
Qualifications
1 749 (32.40%) Security Cleared
2 637 (27.55%) SC Cleared
3 126 (5.45%) Degree
4 114 (4.93%) BPSS Clearance
5 107 (4.63%) ISTQB
6 71 (3.07%) DV Cleared
7 70 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
8 36 (1.56%) AWS Certification
9 31 (1.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 29 (1.25%) Azure Certification
11 19 (0.82%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 13 (0.56%) ISEB
12 13 (0.56%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.52%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 11 (0.48%) Cisco Certification
14 11 (0.48%) SAFe Agilist
15 9 (0.39%) CISSP
15 9 (0.39%) Microsoft Certification
16 8 (0.35%) DBS Check
17 7 (0.30%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 587 (25.39%) QA
2 194 (8.39%) Accessibility
3 167 (7.22%) Data Quality
4 89 (3.85%) WCAG
5 42 (1.82%) GDPR
6 20 (0.87%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 14 (0.61%) NCSC
8 14 (0.61%) SLA
9 12 (0.52%) GRC
10 11 (0.48%) NIST
11 7 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 6 (0.26%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.22%) Def Stans
13 5 (0.22%) FATCA
13 5 (0.22%) HL7
14 4 (0.17%) MiFID
14 4 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 454 (19.64%) Docker
2 35 (1.51%) VMware Infrastructure
3 31 (1.34%) Active Directory
4 18 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (0.56%) Firmware
6 7 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
7 5 (0.22%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.22%) VMware NSX
8 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.043%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.043%) KVM
9 1 (0.043%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.043%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 443 (19.16%) Kubernetes
2 127 (5.49%) Ansible
3 118 (5.10%) Grafana
4 88 (3.81%) Prometheus
5 42 (1.82%) Argo
6 23 (0.99%) Puppet
7 22 (0.95%) Progress Chef
8 16 (0.69%) HP ALM
9 15 (0.65%) Kibana
10 11 (0.48%) Control-M
11 10 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.35%) Dell DRAC
13 7 (0.30%) Istio
13 7 (0.30%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
14 6 (0.26%) Packer
14 6 (0.26%) SCCM
15 5 (0.22%) HP Fortify
15 5 (0.22%) WMI
16 4 (0.17%) Forefront Identity Manager
Vendors
1 223 (9.65%) Microsoft
2 194 (8.39%) Oracle
3 87 (3.76%) Databricks
4 86 (3.72%) Salesforce
5 65 (2.81%) Google
6 64 (2.77%) Red Hat
7 57 (2.47%) IBM
7 57 (2.47%) Talend
8 54 (2.34%) ServiceNow
9 53 (2.29%) Splunk
10 51 (2.21%) SAP
11 43 (1.86%) Denodo
12 42 (1.82%) Informatica
12 42 (1.82%) VMware
13 37 (1.60%) Dynatrace
14 31 (1.34%) Cisco
15 30 (1.30%) MuleSoft
16 27 (1.17%) UiPath
17 21 (0.91%) HP
18 17 (0.74%) OpenAI