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 15 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 48 45
Rank change year-on-year +6 -3 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,613 1,539 1,588
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.73% 4.63% 4.22%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.57% 5.12% 4.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,699 1,062 1,071
10th Percentile £324 £320 £338
25th Percentile £405 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £669 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £488 £494
% change year-on-year -7.69% -1.32% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 113 34 15
10th Percentile £40.00 £36.75 £41.75
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.63 £45.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £52.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% -8.70% -23.33%
75th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £77.50 £72.60 £80.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.50 £60.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +15.83% +4.35% -22.03%

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 46,870 30,047 32,387
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.76% 90.49% 86.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,156 18,700 19,515
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,444 1,888 1,247
10th Percentile £13.53 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.94 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -10.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £42.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.18 £65.25 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £40.33
% change year-on-year +68.43% -44.79% -8.14%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 +9 2,197 £475 -5.00% 538
UK excluding London 0 1,284 £450 -7.69% 422
London +7 988 £500 -2.44% 180
Work from Home +3 710 £475 -3.40% 303
North of England -3 451 £455 -4.16% 120
Midlands +14 281 £450 -5.26% 60
West Midlands +21 262 £450 -13.88% 40
South East -6 247 £449 -5.53% 86
Yorkshire -4 191 £475 -7.32% 31
North West -12 165 £492 +16.59% 72
South West -7 111 £450 -17.43% 80
Scotland -7 110 £470 -6.00% 22
North East +1 100 £425 -11.69% 17
East of England +9 95 £367 -17.30% 49
Wales -6 24 £413 -13.16% 7
East Midlands -33 19 £418 +19.29% 20
Northern Ireland +1 7 £513 +345.65% 3
Channel Islands - 1 £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
1 198 (7.58%) Confluence
2 58 (2.22%) Apache Airflow
3 50 (1.91%) SharePoint
4 46 (1.76%) Apache Spark
5 38 (1.45%) Apache
6 37 (1.42%) SAS
7 17 (0.65%) CMS
8 14 (0.54%) Camunda
8 14 (0.54%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.27%) Jupyter
9 7 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
9 7 (0.27%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.23%) nginx
11 5 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.15%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.15%) ColdFusion
12 4 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
12 4 (0.15%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.11%) Kentico
14 2 (0.077%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 25 (0.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.27%) Chatbot
5 6 (0.23%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
7 3 (0.11%) Mingle
7 3 (0.11%) Trello
8 2 (0.077%) Gliffy
9 1 (0.038%) Simulink
9 1 (0.038%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 31 (1.19%) Dynamics CRM
1 31 (1.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.42%) Payment Gateway
3 10 (0.38%) Aladdin
3 10 (0.38%) SAP MDG
4 7 (0.27%) FLEXCUBE
4 7 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
4 7 (0.27%) SAP GRC
5 6 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
5 6 (0.23%) SAP ERP
6 4 (0.15%) Temenos T24
7 3 (0.11%) Finacle
8 2 (0.077%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.077%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.077%) SAP HR
8 2 (0.077%) SAP Payroll
8 2 (0.077%) SimCorp Dimension
8 2 (0.077%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 1 (0.038%) SAP MM
9 1 (0.038%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 818 (31.31%) AWS
2 796 (30.46%) Azure
3 487 (18.64%) GitHub
4 375 (14.35%) Azure DevOps
5 287 (10.98%) GitHub Actions
6 214 (8.19%) GCP
7 186 (7.12%) Serverless
8 135 (5.17%) AWS Lambda
9 126 (4.82%) Power Platform
10 110 (4.21%) Amazon S3
11 95 (3.64%) GitHub Copilot
12 89 (3.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 82 (3.14%) OpenShift
14 77 (2.95%) Amazon EKS
15 76 (2.91%) AWS CloudFormation
16 68 (2.60%) Amazon ECS
17 61 (2.33%) Snowflake
18 58 (2.22%) dbt
19 56 (2.14%) Dynamics 365
20 55 (2.10%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 36 (1.38%) DNS
2 30 (1.15%) Firewall
2 30 (1.15%) TCP/IP
3 29 (1.11%) HTTP
4 27 (1.03%) Broadband
5 26 (1.00%) 4G
5 26 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
6 23 (0.88%) 5G
7 21 (0.80%) Network Security
8 18 (0.69%) BGP
9 17 (0.65%) WAN
10 14 (0.54%) 2G
10 14 (0.54%) 3G
10 14 (0.54%) Diameter Protocol
10 14 (0.54%) IPv4
10 14 (0.54%) IPv6
10 14 (0.54%) SIGTRAN
10 14 (0.54%) SS7
11 13 (0.50%) DHCP
11 13 (0.50%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 166 (6.35%) PostgreSQL
2 126 (4.82%) Relational Database
3 124 (4.75%) MongoDB
4 119 (4.55%) Data Warehouse
5 111 (4.25%) SQL Server
6 100 (3.83%) NoSQL
7 86 (3.29%) Power BI
8 57 (2.18%) Metadata
9 44 (1.68%) Data Lake
9 44 (1.68%) MySQL
10 42 (1.61%) DynamoDB
11 34 (1.30%) Oracle Database
11 34 (1.30%) Pentaho
11 34 (1.30%) Redis
12 32 (1.22%) Amazon Redshift
12 32 (1.22%) Oracle Reports
13 31 (1.19%) Amazon Athena
14 30 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
14 30 (1.15%) Big Data
15 28 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 622 (23.80%) Git
2 423 (16.19%) Jenkins
3 414 (15.84%) JIRA
4 362 (13.85%) GitLab
5 328 (12.55%) Selenium
6 198 (7.58%) Cucumber
7 175 (6.70%) Postman
8 173 (6.62%) JUnit
9 137 (5.24%) Cypress.io
10 118 (4.52%) REST Assured
11 107 (4.09%) JMeter
12 92 (3.52%) SonarQube
13 77 (2.95%) Gatling
14 74 (2.83%) Maven
15 69 (2.64%) Mockito
16 68 (2.60%) Gradle
17 62 (2.37%) Zephyr
18 50 (1.91%) WebDriver
19 45 (1.72%) Bitbucket
20 34 (1.30%) TestNG
General
1 743 (28.43%) Social Skills
2 504 (19.29%) Finance
3 376 (14.39%) Analytical Skills
4 354 (13.55%) Public Sector
5 263 (10.07%) Banking
6 81 (3.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 64 (2.45%) Telecoms
8 44 (1.68%) Investment Banking
9 41 (1.57%) Front Office
10 38 (1.45%) Military
10 38 (1.45%) Retail
11 34 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 29 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
13 22 (0.84%) Financial Institution
13 22 (0.84%) Manufacturing
13 22 (0.84%) Marketing
14 21 (0.80%) Law
15 20 (0.77%) Aerospace
16 18 (0.69%) Back Office
17 15 (0.57%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 601 (23.00%) Developer
2 439 (16.80%) Senior
3 275 (10.52%) Lead
4 249 (9.53%) Test Engineer
5 192 (7.35%) Java Developer
6 190 (7.27%) Tester
7 160 (6.12%) Data Engineer
8 132 (5.05%) Senior Developer
9 130 (4.98%) Software Engineer
10 127 (4.86%) Analyst
11 122 (4.67%) Architect
12 109 (4.17%) DevOps Engineer
12 109 (4.17%) QA Engineer
13 102 (3.90%) Test Automation Engineer
14 88 (3.37%) Automation Tester
15 87 (3.33%) Test Analyst
16 84 (3.21%) Full-Stack Developer
17 83 (3.18%) Automation Engineer
18 81 (3.10%) Test Leader
19 78 (2.99%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 480 (18.37%) REST
2 378 (14.47%) Terraform
3 320 (12.25%) Playwright
4 294 (11.25%) RESTful
5 280 (10.72%) Spring
6 274 (10.49%) Kafka
7 245 (9.38%) React
8 239 (9.15%) Spring Boot
9 195 (7.46%) .NET
10 155 (5.93%) HTML
11 151 (5.78%) Node.js
12 128 (4.90%) CSS
13 116 (4.44%) OAuth
14 115 (4.40%) AngularJS
15 97 (3.71%) JSON
16 78 (2.99%) Middleware
17 73 (2.79%) OAuth2
18 69 (2.64%) XML
19 68 (2.60%) OpenID
19 68 (2.60%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 408 (15.61%) Cloud Native
2 235 (8.99%) Product Ownership
3 201 (7.69%) Distributed Systems
4 126 (4.82%) Enterprise Software
5 90 (3.44%) Onboarding
6 83 (3.18%) AI Agents
7 68 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
8 64 (2.45%) Mobile App
9 58 (2.22%) Data Protection Act
9 58 (2.22%) Self-Motivation
10 39 (1.49%) Data Structures
11 37 (1.42%) Security Posture
12 35 (1.34%) Private Cloud
13 30 (1.15%) Virtual Team
14 29 (1.11%) Management Information System
15 28 (1.07%) Data Centre
16 25 (0.96%) Distributed Architecture
17 24 (0.92%) Legacy Applications
17 24 (0.92%) Life Science
18 21 (0.80%) Embedded Systems
Operating Systems
1 185 (7.08%) Linux
2 113 (4.32%) Windows
3 91 (3.48%) Unix
4 57 (2.18%) Apple iOS
5 50 (1.91%) Android
6 31 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (0.96%) Windows Server
8 10 (0.38%) VMS
9 9 (0.34%) macOS
10 7 (0.27%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.23%) AIX
11 6 (0.23%) Ubuntu
11 6 (0.23%) zOS
12 5 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 5 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
13 4 (0.15%) Solaris
14 3 (0.11%) CentOS
15 2 (0.077%) Embedded Linux
15 2 (0.077%) Windows Server 2008
15 2 (0.077%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,656 (63.38%) CI/CD
2 1,268 (48.53%) Agile
3 981 (37.54%) DevOps
4 538 (20.59%) Microservices
5 525 (20.09%) Continuous Improvement
6 509 (19.48%) Software Engineering
7 503 (19.25%) Problem-Solving
8 464 (17.76%) Validation
9 455 (17.41%) Infrastructure as Code
10 450 (17.22%) AI
11 441 (16.88%) Scrum
12 394 (15.08%) Containerisation
13 375 (14.35%) Test Strategy
14 359 (13.74%) Observability
15 344 (13.16%) TDD
16 337 (12.90%) Stakeholder Management
17 321 (12.28%) SDLC
17 321 (12.28%) Software Testing
18 276 (10.56%) Deployment Automation
19 272 (10.41%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 750 (28.70%) Python
2 738 (28.24%) Java
3 675 (25.83%) SQL
4 407 (15.58%) JavaScript
5 316 (12.09%) TypeScript
6 231 (8.84%) C#
7 107 (4.09%) PowerShell
8 95 (3.64%) Bash
9 63 (2.41%) Bicep
10 57 (2.18%) Kotlin
11 47 (1.80%) C++
11 47 (1.80%) Go
12 45 (1.72%) Scala
13 36 (1.38%) Shell Script
14 31 (1.19%) PL/SQL
15 29 (1.11%) Perl
16 22 (0.84%) Swift
17 21 (0.80%) Apex Code
18 19 (0.73%) Ruby
19 18 (0.69%) C
Qualifications
1 820 (31.38%) Security Cleared
2 693 (26.52%) SC Cleared
3 155 (5.93%) BPSS Clearance
4 148 (5.66%) Degree
5 120 (4.59%) ISTQB
6 97 (3.71%) DV Cleared
7 85 (3.25%) Computer Science Degree
8 52 (1.99%) AWS Certification
9 44 (1.68%) Azure Certification
10 37 (1.42%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.61%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 16 (0.61%) ISEB
12 15 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 14 (0.54%) CISSP
13 14 (0.54%) Master's Degree
14 12 (0.46%) Cisco Certification
14 12 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
15 10 (0.38%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 8 (0.31%) SAFe Agilist
17 6 (0.23%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 687 (26.29%) QA
2 248 (9.49%) Accessibility
3 185 (7.08%) Data Quality
4 104 (3.98%) WCAG
5 48 (1.84%) GDPR
6 24 (0.92%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 16 (0.61%) NIST
9 14 (0.54%) GRC
9 14 (0.54%) SLA
10 12 (0.46%) NCSC
11 9 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
12 8 (0.31%) HL7
13 7 (0.27%) SEPA
13 7 (0.27%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.23%) PCI DSS
15 5 (0.19%) Software Quality Assurance
16 4 (0.15%) FATCA
16 4 (0.15%) HIPAA
16 4 (0.15%) MiFID
System Software
1 535 (20.47%) Docker
2 47 (1.80%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (1.53%) Active Directory
4 20 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.46%) Firmware
5 12 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.27%) Hyper-V
6 7 (0.27%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.077%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.038%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.038%) KVM
9 1 (0.038%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.038%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 533 (20.40%) Kubernetes
2 152 (5.82%) Ansible
3 132 (5.05%) Grafana
4 89 (3.41%) Prometheus
5 38 (1.45%) Argo
6 27 (1.03%) Puppet
7 26 (1.00%) Kibana
7 26 (1.00%) Progress Chef
8 13 (0.50%) Control-M
8 13 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 12 (0.46%) HP ALM
10 9 (0.34%) Microsoft Intune
11 8 (0.31%) SCCM
12 7 (0.27%) HP Fortify
12 7 (0.27%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.23%) Istio
13 6 (0.23%) Packer
14 5 (0.19%) Podman
14 5 (0.19%) WMI
15 4 (0.15%) Dell DRAC
Vendors
1 260 (9.95%) Microsoft
2 202 (7.73%) Oracle
3 112 (4.29%) Databricks
4 95 (3.64%) Google
5 69 (2.64%) IBM
6 68 (2.60%) Salesforce
7 62 (2.37%) SAP
8 60 (2.30%) ServiceNow
9 58 (2.22%) VMware
10 55 (2.10%) Red Hat
11 54 (2.07%) Splunk
12 53 (2.03%) Informatica
13 51 (1.95%) Talend
14 46 (1.76%) Dynatrace
15 36 (1.38%) Cisco
15 36 (1.38%) Denodo
15 36 (1.38%) MuleSoft
16 34 (1.30%) UiPath
17 31 (1.19%) Foundry
18 30 (1.15%) OpenAI