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 9 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 45 52
Rank change year-on-year -2 +7 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,902 1,359 1,589
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.50% 4.57% 3.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.23% 5.06% 4.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,298 941 1,084
10th Percentile £331 £325 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £625
90th Percentile £675 £738 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +1.05% -3.06% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 7 65
10th Percentile £33.90 £38.81 £46.20
25th Percentile £50.94 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +4.17%
75th Percentile £69.06 £76.35 £82.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £81.31 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £64.00
% change year-on-year +14.54% -11.33% +9.40%

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 36,399 26,862 38,734
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.19% 90.27% 86.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,113 17,118 25,178
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £612 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £491 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -1.80% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,154 913 2,346
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.52 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £29.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -10.77% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.52 £57.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £76.25 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £31.76 £31.50
% change year-on-year -18.86% +0.83% -10.00%

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 9 March 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 9 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 17 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 9 March 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 -2 1,632 £488 -2.50% 871
UK excluding London +1 873 £480 +1.05% 813
London 0 795 £500 -4.76% 238
Work from Home -2 549 £475 -5.00% 565
North of England +3 316 £488 +9.55% 176
Midlands +4 189 £477 +3.03% 99
South East -23 165 £500 -9.09% 233
West Midlands +9 156 £486 +0.54% 59
North West +10 138 £450 +0.56% 87
Yorkshire -7 134 £500 +5.26% 56
South West -4 82 £515 -1.90% 108
East of England -4 58 £570 +21.93% 100
North East +11 48 £488 +28.09% 33
Scotland -17 40 £440 -2.22% 71
East Midlands -23 33 £400 +7.38% 40
Wales +1 30 £485 +14.12% 34
Northern Ireland +13 20 £475 -2.56% 8

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
1 130 (6.83%) Confluence
2 63 (3.31%) SAS
3 34 (1.79%) Apache Spark
4 17 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.68%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.58%) Apache
7 8 (0.42%) Appian
8 6 (0.32%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.32%) nginx
8 6 (0.32%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.26%) CMS
9 5 (0.26%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.21%) Camunda
10 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.21%) Oracle Application Server
11 3 (0.16%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.16%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.11%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.11%) Mendix
12 2 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.63%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.63%) MS Visio
4 11 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.16%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.053%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.16%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.32%) Loan IQ
4 5 (0.26%) Maximo
4 5 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
4 5 (0.26%) Workday HCM
5 4 (0.21%) SAP HR
5 4 (0.21%) Shopify
6 3 (0.16%) BambooHR
6 3 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
6 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
7 2 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
7 2 (0.11%) Infor CloudSuite
7 2 (0.11%) Infor LN
7 2 (0.11%) Infor M3
7 2 (0.11%) iTrent
7 2 (0.11%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (0.11%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.11%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 555 (29.18%) Azure
2 485 (25.50%) AWS
3 332 (17.46%) GitHub
4 244 (12.83%) Azure DevOps
5 192 (10.09%) GCP
6 181 (9.52%) GitHub Actions
7 131 (6.89%) Serverless
8 83 (4.36%) Power Platform
9 74 (3.89%) OpenShift
10 61 (3.21%) AWS Lambda
11 60 (3.15%) Amazon S3
12 48 (2.52%) Azure AKS
13 45 (2.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 45 (2.37%) AWS CloudFormation
14 43 (2.26%) Snowflake
15 35 (1.84%) Azure Data Factory
16 34 (1.79%) Amazon EKS
16 34 (1.79%) Dynamics 365
17 33 (1.74%) SaaS
18 32 (1.68%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.74%) Firewall
2 26 (1.37%) HTTP
3 20 (1.05%) Wireshark
4 19 (1.00%) TCP/IP
5 18 (0.95%) VPN
6 17 (0.89%) SSL
7 13 (0.68%) HTTPS
7 13 (0.68%) SD-WAN
8 12 (0.63%) Network Security
8 12 (0.63%) WAN
9 11 (0.58%) DNS
10 10 (0.53%) FTP
11 9 (0.47%) Ethernet
12 8 (0.42%) MPLS
12 8 (0.42%) SAN
13 7 (0.37%) AMQP
13 7 (0.37%) Multicast
14 6 (0.32%) VLAN
15 5 (0.26%) Cisco IPT
16 4 (0.21%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 113 (5.94%) PostgreSQL
2 90 (4.73%) NoSQL
3 77 (4.05%) MongoDB
4 76 (4.00%) SQL Server
5 61 (3.21%) Relational Database
6 53 (2.79%) Data Warehouse
7 49 (2.58%) Power BI
8 34 (1.79%) Pentaho
9 31 (1.63%) BigQuery
10 30 (1.58%) DynamoDB
11 27 (1.42%) MySQL
11 27 (1.42%) Oracle Database
12 23 (1.21%) Tableau
13 20 (1.05%) Big Data
14 19 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
15 18 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
15 18 (0.95%) Oracle Reports
15 18 (0.95%) Redis
16 17 (0.89%) Data Lake
16 17 (0.89%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 365 (19.19%) JIRA
2 362 (19.03%) Git
3 353 (18.56%) Jenkins
4 290 (15.25%) GitLab
5 284 (14.93%) Selenium
6 174 (9.15%) Cucumber
7 165 (8.68%) Postman
8 113 (5.94%) Cypress.io
9 110 (5.78%) JUnit
10 101 (5.31%) JMeter
10 101 (5.31%) REST Assured
11 46 (2.42%) WebDriver
12 42 (2.21%) SpecFlow
13 39 (2.05%) Gatling
14 38 (2.00%) SonarQube
14 38 (2.00%) Zephyr
15 36 (1.89%) Maven
16 32 (1.68%) Gradle
16 32 (1.68%) TestRail
17 31 (1.63%) Mockito
General
1 496 (26.08%) Social Skills
2 305 (16.04%) Finance
3 270 (14.20%) Public Sector
4 200 (10.52%) Analytical Skills
5 146 (7.68%) Banking
6 31 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
7 28 (1.47%) Investment Banking
8 26 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 23 (1.21%) Front Office
10 22 (1.16%) Pharmaceutical
11 21 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
12 20 (1.05%) Telecoms
13 16 (0.84%) Influencing Skills
13 16 (0.84%) Military
13 16 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
14 14 (0.74%) Aerospace
14 14 (0.74%) Legal
15 13 (0.68%) Financial Institution
16 10 (0.53%) Electronics
17 9 (0.47%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 396 (20.82%) Developer
2 313 (16.46%) Senior
3 222 (11.67%) Tester
4 220 (11.57%) Lead
5 212 (11.15%) Test Engineer
6 115 (6.05%) Automation Tester
7 99 (5.21%) Data Engineer
8 98 (5.15%) Java Developer
9 89 (4.68%) Analyst
10 86 (4.52%) Test Automation Engineer
11 81 (4.26%) Software Engineer
12 79 (4.15%) Test Leader
13 73 (3.84%) QA Engineer
14 71 (3.73%) DevOps Engineer
15 69 (3.63%) Senior Developer
16 65 (3.42%) Test Manager
17 63 (3.31%) Architect
18 57 (3.00%) Test Analyst
19 52 (2.73%) Automation Engineer
20 48 (2.52%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 242 (12.72%) REST
2 238 (12.51%) Playwright
3 168 (8.83%) React
4 152 (7.99%) RESTful
5 149 (7.83%) .NET
6 148 (7.78%) Node.js
7 142 (7.47%) Spring
8 126 (6.62%) Kafka
9 117 (6.15%) Spring Boot
10 90 (4.73%) pytest
11 67 (3.52%) HTML
12 64 (3.36%) AngularJS
13 57 (3.00%) CSS
13 57 (3.00%) OAuth
14 56 (2.94%) Jest
15 51 (2.68%) Web Services
16 49 (2.58%) JSON
17 44 (2.31%) GraphQL
18 40 (2.10%) OpenID
19 38 (2.00%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 212 (11.15%) Cloud Native
2 125 (6.57%) Product Ownership
3 77 (4.05%) Distributed Systems
4 46 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
4 46 (2.42%) Mobile App
5 42 (2.21%) Algorithms
5 42 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
6 36 (1.89%) Security Posture
7 34 (1.79%) Onboarding
8 30 (1.58%) Virtual Team
9 26 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
10 25 (1.31%) Data Structures
10 25 (1.31%) NHS
10 25 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
11 22 (1.16%) Equities
12 21 (1.10%) Data Centre
12 21 (1.10%) Management Information System
13 20 (1.05%) Derivative
13 20 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
13 20 (1.05%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 150 (7.89%) Linux
2 90 (4.73%) Windows
3 44 (2.31%) Android
4 41 (2.16%) Unix
5 39 (2.05%) Apple iOS
6 23 (1.21%) Windows Server
7 16 (0.84%) Mac OS X
8 15 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 11 (0.58%) Kali Linux
10 9 (0.47%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.32%) CentOS
12 5 (0.26%) Solaris
12 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
12 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.053%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.053%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.053%) Windows Embedded Compact
14 1 (0.053%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,017 (53.47%) CI/CD
2 910 (47.84%) Agile
3 717 (37.70%) DevOps
4 450 (23.66%) Problem-Solving
5 313 (16.46%) Continuous Improvement
6 303 (15.93%) Test Strategy
7 297 (15.62%) Microservices
8 278 (14.62%) Containerisation
9 269 (14.14%) Scrum
10 243 (12.78%) AI
11 240 (12.62%) Validation
12 238 (12.51%) Infrastructure as Code
13 229 (12.04%) Test Scripting
14 221 (11.62%) Software Engineering
15 215 (11.30%) Analytics
16 213 (11.20%) TDD
17 201 (10.57%) Observability
18 190 (9.99%) API Testing
18 190 (9.99%) Software Testing
19 187 (9.83%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 593 (31.18%) Python
2 456 (23.97%) Java
3 392 (20.61%) SQL
4 290 (15.25%) JavaScript
5 274 (14.41%) TypeScript
6 187 (9.83%) C#
7 82 (4.31%) Bash
8 78 (4.10%) PowerShell
9 47 (2.47%) C++
10 34 (1.79%) Go
11 28 (1.47%) PL/SQL
12 25 (1.31%) Bicep
12 25 (1.31%) C
13 24 (1.26%) Kotlin
14 22 (1.16%) Ruby
14 22 (1.16%) Scala
15 19 (1.00%) Apex Code
16 16 (0.84%) Swift
17 15 (0.79%) Shell Script
18 13 (0.68%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 546 (28.71%) Security Cleared
2 423 (22.24%) SC Cleared
3 108 (5.68%) Degree
4 89 (4.68%) ISTQB
5 71 (3.73%) BPSS Clearance
6 60 (3.15%) Computer Science Degree
7 59 (3.10%) DV Cleared
8 32 (1.68%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 27 (1.42%) Master's Degree
10 17 (0.89%) OSCP
11 15 (0.79%) Azure Certification
12 14 (0.74%) AWS Certification
12 14 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
13 13 (0.68%) CISSP
13 13 (0.68%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 13 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
13 13 (0.68%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 12 (0.63%) CEH
14 12 (0.63%) GPEN
15 11 (0.58%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 425 (22.34%) QA
2 149 (7.83%) Accessibility
3 109 (5.73%) Data Quality
4 47 (2.47%) WCAG
5 38 (2.00%) GDPR
6 35 (1.84%) NIST
7 22 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 18 (0.95%) EU AI Act
9 17 (0.89%) NCSC
10 15 (0.79%) SLA
11 11 (0.58%) ISO 20022
12 10 (0.53%) PCI DSS
13 9 (0.47%) NIST 800
13 9 (0.47%) PSD2
14 8 (0.42%) Def Stans
14 8 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 7 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 7 (0.37%) SEPA
16 6 (0.32%) HIPAA
16 6 (0.32%) SOC 2
System Software
1 404 (21.24%) Docker
2 33 (1.74%) Active Directory
3 10 (0.53%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
5 8 (0.42%) Firmware
6 7 (0.37%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 5 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
9 3 (0.16%) ISA Server
9 3 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.11%) SRDF
11 1 (0.053%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.053%) HDFS
11 1 (0.053%) KVM
11 1 (0.053%) QEMU
11 1 (0.053%) Squid
11 1 (0.053%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.053%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.053%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 374 (19.66%) Kubernetes
2 221 (11.62%) Terraform
3 109 (5.73%) Ansible
3 109 (5.73%) Grafana
4 78 (4.10%) Prometheus
5 24 (1.26%) HP ALM
6 20 (1.05%) Puppet
7 19 (1.00%) Argo
8 17 (0.89%) Progress Chef
9 15 (0.79%) Nmap
9 15 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.63%) NetBackup
11 10 (0.53%) HP Quality Center
12 7 (0.37%) Forefront Identity Manager
12 7 (0.37%) Kibana
12 7 (0.37%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 7 (0.37%) Podman
13 6 (0.32%) CSIRT
14 5 (0.26%) Nessus
15 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 172 (9.04%) Microsoft
2 155 (8.15%) Oracle
3 75 (3.94%) Databricks
4 66 (3.47%) Google
4 66 (3.47%) ServiceNow
5 64 (3.36%) Splunk
6 60 (3.15%) Salesforce
7 47 (2.47%) SAP
8 38 (2.00%) Talend
9 35 (1.84%) Red Hat
10 30 (1.58%) Denodo
11 29 (1.52%) VMware
12 26 (1.37%) HP
13 24 (1.26%) IBM
14 23 (1.21%) Cisco
15 19 (1.00%) Workday
16 16 (0.84%) Atlassian
17 15 (0.79%) Dynatrace
17 15 (0.79%) MuleSoft
17 15 (0.79%) OpenAI