Test Automation Contracts

Automated Testing
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Test Automation skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Test Automation over the 6 months leading up to 3 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 48 52 51
Rank change year-on-year +4 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,398 1,594 2,363
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 4.46% 3.67% 4.23%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.92% 4.30% 4.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 979 1,050 1,685
10th Percentile £313 £363 £375
25th Percentile £400 £425 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £513 £545
Median % change year-on-year -6.34% -5.96% -0.91%
75th Percentile £588 £615 £650
90th Percentile £706 £723 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £501 £512
% change year-on-year -7.19% -2.15% +2.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 51 58
10th Percentile £40.26 £50.00 £46.75
25th Percentile £44.95 £52.50 £51.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £57.50 £65.75
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% -12.55% +14.67%
75th Percentile £66.50 £71.88 £89.38
90th Percentile £77.22 £85.00 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year -4.35% -8.00% +15.21%

All Process and 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 28,438 37,047 49,962
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.78% 85.22% 89.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,912 23,635 34,414
10th Percentile £300 £300 £325
25th Percentile £405 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% +1.38%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,399 2,530 1,711
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.75 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.44 £16.06 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.93% +4.17% +38.46%
75th Percentile £53.75 £61.30 £64.81
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.66 £38.12 £35.00
% change year-on-year -35.31% +8.91% +64.71%

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 3 July 2025.

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 3 July 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 17 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 3 July 2025. 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 1,152 £475 -9.52% 4,562
UK excluding London +11 627 £465 -7.19% 2,842
London -5 590 £500 -4.76% 2,097
Work from Home -3 486 £465 -9.05% 2,117
South East +13 184 £500 -9.09% 745
North of England -5 155 £449 -10.30% 695
Midlands +56 97 £416 +4.06% 345
Scotland +9 91 £488 +2.63% 248
North West +2 80 £422 -17.25% 409
Yorkshire -3 60 £488 +0.15% 230
South West +20 53 £450 -17.05% 352
West Midlands +37 50 £492 +15.65% 206
East Midlands +27 47 £275 -29.49% 137
East of England +23 29 £468 -5.56% 319
Wales +3 20 £395 -22.62% 92
North East +4 16 £400 -5.88% 58
Northern Ireland -7 2 £409 - 74

Test Automation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

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

Application Platforms
1 65 (4.65%) Confluence
2 17 (1.22%) Apache Spark
3 14 (1.00%) Apache
4 11 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (0.57%) SharePoint
6 6 (0.43%) Anypoint
6 6 (0.43%) CICS
6 6 (0.43%) CMS
7 5 (0.36%) WordPress
8 4 (0.29%) Drupal
9 3 (0.21%) JBoss
9 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.21%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.14%) GeoServer
10 2 (0.14%) IIS
10 2 (0.14%) Mule
10 2 (0.14%) nginx
10 2 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.14%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.14%) WebSphere
Applications
1 21 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.36%) Chatbot
3 4 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.29%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.14%) Trello
5 1 (0.072%) CATIA
5 1 (0.072%) MadCap Flare
5 1 (0.072%) Simulink
5 1 (0.072%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.072%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 11 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (0.50%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.36%) Aladdin
4 4 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
4 4 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
5 3 (0.21%) Infor CloudSuite
5 3 (0.21%) Shopify
6 2 (0.14%) Finacle
6 2 (0.14%) Maximo
6 2 (0.14%) NEC Housing
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
6 2 (0.14%) SAP CRM
6 2 (0.14%) SAP Hybris
6 2 (0.14%) SAP SCM
6 2 (0.14%) SimCorp Dimension
6 2 (0.14%) Temenos T24
7 1 (0.072%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.072%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.072%) SAP MM
7 1 (0.072%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 360 (25.75%) AWS
2 355 (25.39%) Azure
3 169 (12.09%) Azure DevOps
4 127 (9.08%) GitHub
5 107 (7.65%) GCP
6 87 (6.22%) Serverless
7 65 (4.65%) GitHub Actions
8 52 (3.72%) AWS Lambda
9 50 (3.58%) SaaS
10 48 (3.43%) AWS CloudFormation
11 35 (2.50%) Amazon S3
12 33 (2.36%) Power Platform
13 30 (2.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 26 (1.86%) Amazon SQS
15 23 (1.65%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 22 (1.57%) PaaS
17 20 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
17 20 (1.43%) IaaS
18 19 (1.36%) Azure AKS
18 19 (1.36%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 44 (3.15%) HTTP
2 40 (2.86%) Firewall
3 28 (2.00%) DNS
4 20 (1.43%) TCP/IP
5 19 (1.36%) HTTPS
6 18 (1.29%) BGP
6 18 (1.29%) OSPF
7 16 (1.14%) DHCP
8 8 (0.57%) Network Security
8 8 (0.57%) SSL
9 7 (0.50%) Wireless
10 5 (0.36%) Multicast
10 5 (0.36%) SNMP
10 5 (0.36%) SSH
11 4 (0.29%) Bluetooth
11 4 (0.29%) LAN
11 4 (0.29%) SMTP
12 3 (0.21%) FTP
12 3 (0.21%) VPN
12 3 (0.21%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 84 (6.01%) SQL Server
2 78 (5.58%) NoSQL
3 67 (4.79%) PostgreSQL
4 53 (3.79%) MongoDB
5 48 (3.43%) Relational Database
6 31 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
7 21 (1.50%) DynamoDB
8 18 (1.29%) DB2
8 18 (1.29%) MySQL
9 16 (1.14%) Data Lake
9 16 (1.14%) Power BI
10 14 (1.00%) Elasticsearch
10 14 (1.00%) Hadoop
11 13 (0.93%) Big Data
11 13 (0.93%) Oracle Database
12 12 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
13 8 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
13 8 (0.57%) Delta Lake
14 7 (0.50%) Amazon Aurora
14 7 (0.50%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 253 (18.10%) Selenium
2 236 (16.88%) JIRA
3 233 (16.67%) Jenkins
4 213 (15.24%) Git
5 121 (8.66%) Cucumber
5 121 (8.66%) GitLab
6 111 (7.94%) Postman
7 109 (7.80%) Cypress.io
8 82 (5.87%) REST Assured
9 80 (5.72%) JUnit
10 63 (4.51%) JMeter
11 46 (3.29%) Maven
12 43 (3.08%) SonarQube
13 41 (2.93%) Bitbucket
14 33 (2.36%) SpecFlow
15 31 (2.22%) SoapUI
16 30 (2.15%) Appium
17 29 (2.07%) IntelliJ
18 24 (1.72%) WebDriver
19 21 (1.50%) TestNG
General
1 409 (29.26%) Social Skills
2 291 (20.82%) Finance
3 210 (15.02%) Analytical Skills
4 147 (10.52%) Banking
5 142 (10.16%) Public Sector
6 49 (3.51%) Front Office
7 45 (3.22%) Manufacturing
8 43 (3.08%) Telecoms
9 36 (2.58%) Electronics
10 34 (2.43%) Marketing
11 28 (2.00%) Investment Banking
12 22 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 22 (1.57%) Retail
13 21 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (1.22%) Documentation Skills
14 17 (1.22%) Law
15 16 (1.14%) Financial Institution
16 11 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
17 10 (0.72%) Billing
17 10 (0.72%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 297 (21.24%) Developer
2 170 (12.16%) Senior
3 165 (11.80%) Tester
4 128 (9.16%) Analyst
5 124 (8.87%) Test Engineer
6 110 (7.87%) Lead
7 95 (6.80%) Test Analyst
8 91 (6.51%) Architect
9 85 (6.08%) Software Engineer
10 83 (5.94%) Automation Tester
11 68 (4.86%) QA Engineer
12 61 (4.36%) Test Manager
13 58 (4.15%) DevOps Engineer
14 57 (4.08%) Java Developer
15 42 (3.00%) Test Automation Engineer
16 39 (2.79%) Senior Developer
17 38 (2.72%) Test Leader
18 37 (2.65%) Automation Engineer
19 36 (2.58%) Full-Stack Developer
20 34 (2.43%) QA Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 142 (10.16%) REST
2 123 (8.80%) .NET
3 100 (7.15%) RESTful
4 97 (6.94%) Playwright
5 95 (6.80%) React
6 88 (6.29%) HTML
7 87 (6.22%) CSS
8 79 (5.65%) Node.js
9 77 (5.51%) Kafka
10 55 (3.93%) Spring
11 54 (3.86%) JSON
12 53 (3.79%) Spring Boot
13 52 (3.72%) XML
14 47 (3.36%) Web Services
15 44 (3.15%) Jest
15 44 (3.15%) SOAP
16 39 (2.79%) pytest
17 36 (2.58%) AngularJS
18 30 (2.15%) Gherkin
19 29 (2.07%) AWS CDK
Miscellaneous
1 81 (5.79%) Product Ownership
2 65 (4.65%) Cloud Native
3 44 (3.15%) Mobile App
4 29 (2.07%) Self-Motivation
5 28 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
5 28 (2.00%) Public Cloud
6 26 (1.86%) Data Structures
6 26 (1.86%) Onboarding
7 25 (1.79%) Algorithms
7 25 (1.79%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 24 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
8 24 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
9 23 (1.65%) Virtual Team
10 22 (1.57%) Greenfield Project
10 22 (1.57%) Management Information System
11 21 (1.50%) Fixed Income
12 17 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
12 17 (1.22%) Equities
13 14 (1.00%) PKI
14 13 (0.93%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 117 (8.37%) Linux
2 100 (7.15%) Windows
3 49 (3.51%) Android
4 34 (2.43%) Apple iOS
5 28 (2.00%) Unix
6 18 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (0.50%) Windows Server
8 5 (0.36%) CentOS
9 4 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.21%) Embedded Linux
10 3 (0.21%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.14%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.14%) Windows 7
11 2 (0.14%) zOS
12 1 (0.072%) FreeRTOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 654 (46.78%) Agile
2 573 (40.99%) CI/CD
3 465 (33.26%) DevOps
4 315 (22.53%) Problem-Solving
5 193 (13.81%) Software Engineering
6 190 (13.59%) Test Strategy
7 188 (13.45%) Microservices
8 180 (12.88%) TDD
9 175 (12.52%) Scrum
10 170 (12.16%) Software Testing
11 165 (11.80%) Test Scripting
12 151 (10.80%) Continuous Integration
13 143 (10.23%) Infrastructure as Code
14 142 (10.16%) Containerisation
15 140 (10.01%) User Acceptance Testing
16 125 (8.94%) Validation
17 124 (8.87%) API Testing
18 123 (8.80%) SDLC
19 122 (8.73%) Mentoring
19 122 (8.73%) Performance Testing
Programming Languages
1 395 (28.25%) Java
2 355 (25.39%) Python
3 239 (17.10%) SQL
4 234 (16.74%) JavaScript
5 184 (13.16%) C#
6 132 (9.44%) TypeScript
7 74 (5.29%) PowerShell
8 56 (4.01%) Bash
9 35 (2.50%) Go
10 30 (2.15%) C++
11 25 (1.79%) Bicep
12 23 (1.65%) Kotlin
13 20 (1.43%) Scala
14 19 (1.36%) Ruby
15 17 (1.22%) Shell Script
16 14 (1.00%) PHP
16 14 (1.00%) VB
17 13 (0.93%) Swift
18 11 (0.79%) Objective-C
19 9 (0.64%) C
Qualifications
1 268 (19.17%) Security Cleared
2 188 (13.45%) SC Cleared
3 123 (8.80%) Degree
4 76 (5.44%) DV Cleared
5 56 (4.01%) ISTQB
6 55 (3.93%) Computer Science Degree
7 22 (1.57%) BPSS Clearance
8 19 (1.36%) Azure Certification
9 14 (1.00%) AWS Certification
9 14 (1.00%) Master's Degree
10 13 (0.93%) ISEB
10 13 (0.93%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 11 (0.79%) CISSP
12 8 (0.57%) CISA
13 7 (0.50%) Cisco Certification
13 7 (0.50%) CISM
14 6 (0.43%) CCNP
14 6 (0.43%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
15 5 (0.36%) CCNA
15 5 (0.36%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 326 (23.32%) QA
2 80 (5.72%) Accessibility
3 25 (1.79%) Data Quality
4 17 (1.22%) WCAG
5 15 (1.07%) GDPR
6 13 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 13 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 13 (0.93%) SEPA
7 10 (0.72%) Software Quality Assurance
8 8 (0.57%) NIST
9 6 (0.43%) COBIT
9 6 (0.43%) NIST 800
9 6 (0.43%) SLA
10 5 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
10 5 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 5 (0.36%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.29%) HIPAA
12 3 (0.21%) ITGC
12 3 (0.21%) SOC 2
13 2 (0.14%) GRC
System Software
1 167 (11.95%) Docker
2 38 (2.72%) Active Directory
3 6 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (0.43%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.29%) Firmware
4 4 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.14%) FreeRADIUS
5 2 (0.14%) iptables
5 2 (0.14%) zsh
6 1 (0.072%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.072%) Time Sharing Option
6 1 (0.072%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
6 1 (0.072%) VirtualBox
6 1 (0.072%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.072%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 193 (13.81%) Kubernetes
2 147 (10.52%) Terraform
3 102 (7.30%) Ansible
4 36 (2.58%) Grafana
5 21 (1.50%) HP ALM
6 17 (1.22%) Puppet
7 14 (1.00%) Prometheus
8 12 (0.86%) Podman
9 11 (0.79%) Progress Chef
10 10 (0.72%) Argo
10 10 (0.72%) Docker Swarm
11 7 (0.50%) WMI
12 6 (0.43%) RSA Archer
13 5 (0.36%) HP Quality Center
14 4 (0.29%) CloudHub
14 4 (0.29%) Kibana
14 4 (0.29%) Proxmox
15 3 (0.21%) Kustomize
15 3 (0.21%) Packer
15 3 (0.21%) vRealize
Vendors
1 126 (9.01%) Microsoft
2 96 (6.87%) Oracle
3 66 (4.72%) SAP
4 47 (3.36%) Google
5 42 (3.00%) Salesforce
6 40 (2.86%) ServiceNow
7 32 (2.29%) Splunk
8 29 (2.07%) Cisco
8 29 (2.07%) Databricks
9 25 (1.79%) HP
10 21 (1.50%) Fortinet
11 20 (1.43%) CheckPoint
12 17 (1.22%) Palo Alto
13 14 (1.00%) UiPath
14 13 (0.93%) IBM
14 13 (0.93%) MuleSoft
15 12 (0.86%) VMware
16 10 (0.72%) Citrix
17 9 (0.64%) ION Trading
17 9 (0.64%) Sybase