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 23 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 50 50
Rank change year-on-year +4 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,263 1,443 1,594
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.29% 4.42% 3.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.05% 4.89% 4.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,467 1,003 1,049
10th Percentile £325 £313 £363
25th Percentile £402 £385 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £522
Median % change year-on-year - -9.00% -0.57%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £613
90th Percentile £663 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £463 £510
% change year-on-year -1.62% -9.31% +2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 31 39
10th Percentile £38.08 £35.00 £46.50
25th Percentile £60.25 £44.51 £51.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -9.09% -21.29%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.76 £71.87
90th Percentile £74.70 £75.00 £75.10
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +35.00% -9.09% -14.56%

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 44,826 29,510 35,120
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.34% 85.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,774 18,532 22,551
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £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 2,642 1,578 2,152
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £13.25
25th Percentile £20.01 £17.46 £17.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £39.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -36.33% -7.06%
75th Percentile £68.55 £50.94 £62.76
90th Percentile £83.00 £69.13 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.34 £40.00
% change year-on-year +84.88% -39.15% -1.45%

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 23 July 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 23 July 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 23 July 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 1,911 £475 - 748
UK excluding London +7 1,121 £455 -1.62% 541
London +4 866 £500 - 312
Work from Home -1 633 £475 +3.94% 307
North of England +15 390 £465 +3.73% 138
Midlands +8 247 £447 +8.69% 64
West Midlands +28 229 £450 -2.70% 37
South East -33 198 £459 -8.20% 157
North West -1 153 £488 +18.33% 79
Yorkshire +5 152 £500 +5.26% 42
South West +6 113 £463 +7.25% 90
North East +12 95 £425 +6.25% 20
East of England +14 81 £450 - 58
Scotland -13 74 £440 -10.34% 31
Wales -5 35 £475 +13.43% 9
Northern Ireland +24 20 £475 +16.28% 13
East Midlands -41 18 £425 +30.37% 27
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
1 202 (8.93%) Confluence
2 52 (2.30%) Apache Spark
3 46 (2.03%) Apache Airflow
3 46 (2.03%) SAS
4 25 (1.10%) SharePoint
5 24 (1.06%) Apache
6 14 (0.62%) CMS
7 13 (0.57%) WebLogic
8 8 (0.35%) nginx
8 8 (0.35%) Tomcat
9 5 (0.22%) Camunda
9 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.18%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.18%) Appian
10 4 (0.18%) Jupyter
10 4 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.13%) Kentico
12 2 (0.088%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.088%) Mendix
12 2 (0.088%) Mule
Applications
1 22 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
4 9 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.35%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.18%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.18%) Simulink
6 4 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.088%) Trello
8 1 (0.044%) Mingle
8 1 (0.044%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 25 (1.10%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.75%) Aladdin
2 17 (0.75%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.57%) Oracle EBS
4 12 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.35%) Findur
6 6 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.27%) SAP ERP
6 6 (0.27%) SAP MDG
6 6 (0.27%) Shopify
7 5 (0.22%) BambooHR
8 4 (0.18%) Infor CloudSuite
8 4 (0.18%) Infor LN
8 4 (0.18%) Infor M3
9 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
9 3 (0.13%) Loan IQ
10 2 (0.088%) Advent Geneva
10 2 (0.088%) Oracle EBS R12
10 2 (0.088%) SAP GRC
10 2 (0.088%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 676 (29.87%) Azure
2 666 (29.43%) AWS
3 410 (18.12%) GitHub
4 308 (13.61%) Azure DevOps
5 250 (11.05%) GitHub Actions
6 168 (7.42%) GCP
7 158 (6.98%) Serverless
8 110 (4.86%) AWS Lambda
9 98 (4.33%) Amazon S3
10 97 (4.29%) Power Platform
11 68 (3.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 66 (2.92%) OpenShift
13 65 (2.87%) Amazon ECS
14 58 (2.56%) AWS CloudFormation
15 52 (2.30%) Amazon EC2
16 49 (2.17%) Amazon EKS
17 48 (2.12%) dbt
17 48 (2.12%) GitHub Copilot
18 44 (1.94%) Snowflake
19 42 (1.86%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.02%) Firewall
1 23 (1.02%) HTTP
2 17 (0.75%) Network Security
3 16 (0.71%) SAN
4 12 (0.53%) 2G
4 12 (0.53%) 3G
4 12 (0.53%) 4G
4 12 (0.53%) 5G
4 12 (0.53%) Diameter Protocol
4 12 (0.53%) SIGTRAN
4 12 (0.53%) SS7
4 12 (0.53%) WAN
5 10 (0.44%) TCP/IP
6 9 (0.40%) LAN
6 9 (0.40%) VPN
7 8 (0.35%) BGP
7 8 (0.35%) DNS
7 8 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
8 7 (0.31%) MPLS
8 7 (0.31%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (5.61%) PostgreSQL
2 124 (5.48%) MongoDB
3 115 (5.08%) Data Warehouse
4 106 (4.68%) NoSQL
5 88 (3.89%) SQL Server
6 82 (3.62%) Relational Database
7 75 (3.31%) Power BI
8 49 (2.17%) DynamoDB
9 44 (1.94%) Metadata
10 41 (1.81%) Oracle Reports
11 39 (1.72%) Big Data
12 36 (1.59%) MySQL
13 34 (1.50%) Pentaho
14 32 (1.41%) Amazon Athena
15 30 (1.33%) Amazon RDS
16 26 (1.15%) Amazon Redshift
16 26 (1.15%) Data Lake
16 26 (1.15%) Redis
17 22 (0.97%) Elasticsearch
17 22 (0.97%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 431 (19.05%) JIRA
2 428 (18.91%) Git
3 366 (16.17%) Jenkins
4 298 (13.17%) GitLab
5 288 (12.73%) Selenium
6 166 (7.34%) Postman
7 152 (6.72%) Cucumber
8 117 (5.17%) REST Assured
9 116 (5.13%) Cypress.io
9 116 (5.13%) JUnit
10 101 (4.46%) JMeter
11 71 (3.14%) Zephyr
12 63 (2.78%) WebDriver
13 59 (2.61%) SonarQube
14 53 (2.34%) Gatling
15 49 (2.17%) Gradle
16 44 (1.94%) Mockito
17 43 (1.90%) Maven
18 42 (1.86%) Bitbucket
19 36 (1.59%) SpecFlow
General
1 597 (26.38%) Social Skills
2 412 (18.21%) Finance
3 310 (13.70%) Public Sector
4 281 (12.42%) Analytical Skills
5 190 (8.40%) Banking
6 60 (2.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 42 (1.86%) Documentation Skills
8 37 (1.63%) Front Office
9 35 (1.55%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.55%) Telecoms
10 32 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
11 28 (1.24%) Military
11 28 (1.24%) Retail
12 23 (1.02%) Financial Institution
13 19 (0.84%) Aerospace
14 18 (0.80%) Manufacturing
15 16 (0.71%) Back Office
15 16 (0.71%) Legal
16 15 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
17 13 (0.57%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 485 (21.43%) Developer
2 372 (16.44%) Senior
3 245 (10.83%) Lead
4 224 (9.90%) Test Engineer
4 224 (9.90%) Tester
5 161 (7.11%) Java Developer
6 153 (6.76%) Data Engineer
7 123 (5.44%) Analyst
8 117 (5.17%) Software Engineer
9 111 (4.90%) DevOps Engineer
10 105 (4.64%) Senior Developer
11 104 (4.60%) Architect
12 99 (4.37%) Test Automation Engineer
13 91 (4.02%) Automation Tester
14 90 (3.98%) QA Engineer
14 90 (3.98%) Test Leader
15 84 (3.71%) Test Analyst
16 72 (3.18%) Full-Stack Developer
17 59 (2.61%) Automation Engineer
18 56 (2.47%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 303 (13.39%) REST
2 268 (11.84%) Playwright
3 205 (9.06%) React
4 198 (8.75%) RESTful
5 190 (8.40%) Spring
6 173 (7.64%) Kafka
7 160 (7.07%) .NET
8 157 (6.94%) Spring Boot
9 119 (5.26%) Node.js
10 91 (4.02%) AngularJS
11 90 (3.98%) HTML
12 83 (3.67%) CSS
13 67 (2.96%) OAuth
14 57 (2.52%) pytest
15 56 (2.47%) JSON
16 54 (2.39%) Jest
17 49 (2.17%) HTML5
18 48 (2.12%) Swagger
19 47 (2.08%) Gherkin
20 46 (2.03%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 311 (13.74%) Cloud Native
2 165 (7.29%) Product Ownership
3 147 (6.50%) Distributed Systems
4 81 (3.58%) Enterprise Software
5 62 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
6 55 (2.43%) Data Protection Act
7 54 (2.39%) Onboarding
8 51 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
9 41 (1.81%) Mobile App
10 36 (1.59%) Virtual Team
11 34 (1.50%) AI Agents
12 31 (1.37%) Distributed Architecture
13 27 (1.19%) Embedded Systems
13 27 (1.19%) Security Posture
14 26 (1.15%) NHS
15 24 (1.06%) Management Information System
16 21 (0.93%) Algorithms
16 21 (0.93%) Fixed Income
17 20 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
18 19 (0.84%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 137 (6.05%) Linux
2 82 (3.62%) Windows
3 77 (3.40%) Unix
4 42 (1.86%) Android
5 41 (1.81%) Apple iOS
6 23 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 20 (0.88%) Windows Server
8 14 (0.62%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 9 (0.40%) Solaris
11 6 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
11 6 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
12 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.18%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.13%) AIX
15 2 (0.088%) CentOS
16 1 (0.044%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,317 (58.20%) CI/CD
2 1,069 (47.24%) Agile
3 838 (37.03%) DevOps
4 415 (18.34%) Microservices
5 411 (18.16%) Problem-Solving
6 397 (17.54%) Continuous Improvement
7 369 (16.31%) Scrum
8 349 (15.42%) Software Engineering
9 344 (15.20%) Infrastructure as Code
10 340 (15.02%) Test Strategy
11 339 (14.98%) Validation
12 299 (13.21%) Containerisation
13 298 (13.17%) TDD
14 296 (13.08%) AI
15 290 (12.81%) Observability
16 231 (10.21%) ETL
17 230 (10.16%) End-to-End Testing
18 227 (10.03%) SDLC
19 222 (9.81%) Data Pipeline
20 213 (9.41%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 577 (25.50%) Java
2 576 (25.45%) Python
3 526 (23.24%) SQL
4 287 (12.68%) JavaScript
5 244 (10.78%) TypeScript
6 207 (9.15%) C#
7 84 (3.71%) Bash
8 81 (3.58%) PowerShell
9 53 (2.34%) Kotlin
10 49 (2.17%) C++
11 43 (1.90%) Bicep
12 35 (1.55%) PL/SQL
13 32 (1.41%) Go
14 30 (1.33%) Apex Code
14 30 (1.33%) Scala
15 29 (1.28%) C
16 23 (1.02%) Ruby
16 23 (1.02%) Shell Script
17 22 (0.97%) Swift
18 16 (0.71%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 709 (31.33%) Security Cleared
2 599 (26.47%) SC Cleared
3 110 (4.86%) Degree
4 108 (4.77%) BPSS Clearance
5 101 (4.46%) ISTQB
6 70 (3.09%) DV Cleared
7 54 (2.39%) Computer Science Degree
8 28 (1.24%) AWS Certification
8 28 (1.24%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 22 (0.97%) Azure Certification
10 17 (0.75%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 13 (0.57%) Cisco Certification
11 13 (0.57%) Master's Degree
12 11 (0.49%) CCNP
12 11 (0.49%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.49%) SAFe Agilist
13 9 (0.40%) CISSP
13 9 (0.40%) DBS Check
14 8 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
15 7 (0.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 537 (23.73%) QA
2 186 (8.22%) Accessibility
3 156 (6.89%) Data Quality
4 82 (3.62%) WCAG
5 42 (1.86%) GDPR
6 16 (0.71%) SLA
7 14 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 14 (0.62%) NCSC
8 10 (0.44%) NIST
9 9 (0.40%) ISO 20022
10 7 (0.31%) GRC
10 7 (0.31%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 7 (0.31%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.27%) Def Stans
12 5 (0.22%) FATCA
12 5 (0.22%) Software Quality Assurance
13 4 (0.18%) MiFID
14 3 (0.13%) EU AI Act
14 3 (0.13%) HL7
14 3 (0.13%) SEPA
System Software
1 412 (18.21%) Docker
2 31 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
3 25 (1.10%) Active Directory
4 15 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.53%) Firmware
6 6 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
7 5 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.088%) SRDF
10 2 (0.088%) VMware NSX
11 1 (0.044%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 413 (18.25%) Kubernetes
2 302 (13.35%) Terraform
3 120 (5.30%) Grafana
4 118 (5.21%) Ansible
5 101 (4.46%) Prometheus
6 39 (1.72%) Argo
7 22 (0.97%) HP ALM
8 18 (0.80%) Puppet
9 14 (0.62%) Kibana
10 11 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.44%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.44%) Progress Chef
12 8 (0.35%) NetBackup
13 7 (0.31%) HP Quality Center
13 7 (0.31%) Kustomize
14 5 (0.22%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 5 (0.22%) Istio
14 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
14 5 (0.22%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 5 (0.22%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 207 (9.15%) Microsoft
2 189 (8.35%) Oracle
3 97 (4.29%) Salesforce
4 77 (3.40%) Databricks
5 65 (2.87%) Google
6 64 (2.83%) Talend
7 60 (2.65%) Red Hat
8 59 (2.61%) Splunk
9 49 (2.17%) ServiceNow
10 43 (1.90%) IBM
11 42 (1.86%) Denodo
12 40 (1.77%) SAP
13 38 (1.68%) Informatica
14 36 (1.59%) VMware
15 31 (1.37%) Dynatrace
16 29 (1.28%) UiPath
17 28 (1.24%) HP
18 27 (1.19%) MuleSoft
19 25 (1.10%) Cisco
20 14 (0.62%) Fortinet