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 1 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 49 45
Rank change year-on-year +5 -4 +5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,331 1,492 1,596
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.34% 4.56% 4.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.14% 5.04% 4.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,495 1,030 1,064
10th Percentile £326 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -0.10% -4.67%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £667 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £458 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -3.68% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 37 22
10th Percentile £39.73 £25.57 £42.50
25th Percentile £60.08 £45.00 £50.31
Median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% - -21.29%
75th Percentile - £65.00 £69.84
90th Percentile £75.00 £71.10 £83.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.61 £55.00 £56.25
% change year-on-year +24.74% -2.22% -13.04%

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 45,369 29,617 32,996
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.56% 90.44% 85.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,730 18,446 20,728
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 2,902 1,758 1,607
10th Percentile £14.10 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.78 £17.30 £18.82
Median hourly rate £41.09 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.39% -40.82% +2.41%
75th Percentile £67.88 £47.09 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.56 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +92.49% -47.37% +14.67%

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 1 September 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 1 September 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 1 September 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 +3 1,971 £475 -5.00% 2,228
UK excluding London -6 1,126 £458 -3.68% 1,381
London +8 909 £500 - 1,204
Work from Home -3 631 £488 +2.63% 997
North of England +3 397 £463 +0.60% 286
Midlands +9 244 £450 -2.44% 139
West Midlands +21 229 £450 -12.62% 85
South East -23 218 £455 -9.10% 291
Yorkshire -9 156 £475 -5.00% 67
North West -14 145 £492 +16.17% 164
South West +1 114 £475 -2.56% 234
North East +9 103 £450 +1.12% 56
East of England +15 78 £450 +17.65% 144
Scotland -31 76 £470 -6.00% 193
Wales -6 29 £500 +25.00% 29
East Midlands -40 15 £418 +19.29% 54
Northern Ireland +10 11 £488 +323.91% 81
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
1 187 (8.02%) Confluence
2 53 (2.27%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (1.93%) SharePoint
4 41 (1.76%) Apache Spark
5 38 (1.63%) SAS
6 24 (1.03%) Apache
7 14 (0.60%) CMS
8 12 (0.51%) WebLogic
9 11 (0.47%) Camunda
10 6 (0.26%) nginx
10 6 (0.26%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.26%) Tomcat
11 5 (0.21%) 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 (0.086%) Mule
Applications
1 24 (1.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.69%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.26%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.17%) Simulink
6 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.13%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.13%) Trello
7 2 (0.086%) Mingle
7 2 (0.086%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 28 (1.20%) Dynamics CRM
2 24 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.60%) Aladdin
4 13 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.34%) Findur
7 7 (0.30%) SAP GRC
8 6 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
8 6 (0.26%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.26%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.21%) BambooHR
10 4 (0.17%) Shopify
11 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
11 3 (0.13%) FLEXCUBE
12 2 (0.086%) Finacle
12 2 (0.086%) Infor CloudSuite
12 2 (0.086%) Infor LN
12 2 (0.086%) Infor M3
12 2 (0.086%) Oracle ERP
12 2 (0.086%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 713 (30.59%) AWS
2 700 (30.03%) Azure
3 422 (18.10%) GitHub
4 330 (14.16%) Azure DevOps
5 253 (10.85%) GitHub Actions
6 176 (7.55%) Serverless
7 168 (7.21%) GCP
8 130 (5.58%) AWS Lambda
9 108 (4.63%) Power Platform
10 100 (4.29%) Amazon S3
11 80 (3.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 73 (3.13%) OpenShift
13 70 (3.00%) Amazon ECS
14 68 (2.92%) GitHub Copilot
15 64 (2.75%) AWS CloudFormation
16 63 (2.70%) Amazon EKS
17 61 (2.62%) dbt
18 60 (2.57%) Snowflake
19 50 (2.15%) Amazon EC2
20 45 (1.93%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.12%) HTTP
2 23 (0.99%) Firewall
3 20 (0.86%) DNS
4 19 (0.82%) 4G
5 18 (0.77%) 5G
6 16 (0.69%) 2G
6 16 (0.69%) 3G
6 16 (0.69%) Diameter Protocol
6 16 (0.69%) Network Security
6 16 (0.69%) SIGTRAN
6 16 (0.69%) SS7
6 16 (0.69%) TCP/IP
7 15 (0.64%) WAN
8 13 (0.56%) LAN
8 13 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
9 10 (0.43%) BGP
9 10 (0.43%) SAN
10 9 (0.39%) DHCP
11 8 (0.34%) Ethernet VPN
11 8 (0.34%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (5.79%) PostgreSQL
2 126 (5.41%) Data Warehouse
3 120 (5.15%) MongoDB
4 107 (4.59%) NoSQL
5 95 (4.08%) Relational Database
6 94 (4.03%) SQL Server
7 84 (3.60%) Power BI
8 49 (2.10%) Metadata
9 48 (2.06%) DynamoDB
10 39 (1.67%) Oracle Reports
11 37 (1.59%) MySQL
12 35 (1.50%) Amazon Athena
13 33 (1.42%) Amazon Redshift
13 33 (1.42%) Big Data
13 33 (1.42%) Data Lake
14 32 (1.37%) Pentaho
15 30 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
16 29 (1.24%) Redis
17 28 (1.20%) Elasticsearch
18 25 (1.07%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 478 (20.51%) Git
2 392 (16.82%) JIRA
3 375 (16.09%) Jenkins
4 315 (13.51%) GitLab
5 300 (12.87%) Selenium
6 168 (7.21%) Postman
7 146 (6.26%) Cucumber
8 127 (5.45%) Cypress.io
9 122 (5.23%) JUnit
10 104 (4.46%) REST Assured
11 102 (4.38%) JMeter
12 78 (3.35%) SonarQube
13 66 (2.83%) Zephyr
14 60 (2.57%) Gatling
15 58 (2.49%) Gradle
16 55 (2.36%) Maven
17 54 (2.32%) WebDriver
18 46 (1.97%) Mockito
19 42 (1.80%) Bitbucket
20 27 (1.16%) SpecFlow
General
1 644 (27.63%) Social Skills
2 431 (18.49%) Finance
3 334 (14.33%) Public Sector
4 318 (13.64%) Analytical Skills
5 207 (8.88%) Banking
6 73 (3.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 45 (1.93%) Telecoms
8 42 (1.80%) Documentation Skills
9 39 (1.67%) Front Office
10 35 (1.50%) Investment Banking
11 33 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
12 32 (1.37%) Retail
13 27 (1.16%) Military
14 24 (1.03%) Financial Institution
15 20 (0.86%) Law
16 19 (0.82%) Back Office
17 18 (0.77%) Aerospace
18 17 (0.73%) Marketing
19 16 (0.69%) Legal
20 15 (0.64%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 520 (22.31%) Developer
2 392 (16.82%) Senior
3 236 (10.12%) Lead
4 228 (9.78%) Test Engineer
5 200 (8.58%) Tester
6 166 (7.12%) Java Developer
7 139 (5.96%) Data Engineer
8 127 (5.45%) Software Engineer
9 123 (5.28%) Analyst
10 122 (5.23%) DevOps Engineer
11 112 (4.80%) Senior Developer
12 105 (4.50%) Test Automation Engineer
13 97 (4.16%) Architect
13 97 (4.16%) QA Engineer
14 87 (3.73%) Automation Tester
15 83 (3.56%) Test Leader
16 82 (3.52%) Test Analyst
17 76 (3.26%) Full-Stack Developer
18 68 (2.92%) Automation Engineer
19 67 (2.87%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 372 (15.96%) REST
2 335 (14.37%) Terraform
3 280 (12.01%) Playwright
4 226 (9.70%) RESTful
5 222 (9.52%) Kafka
6 218 (9.35%) Spring
7 216 (9.27%) React
8 186 (7.98%) Spring Boot
9 163 (6.99%) .NET
10 132 (5.66%) HTML
11 126 (5.41%) Node.js
12 114 (4.89%) CSS
13 100 (4.29%) AngularJS
14 81 (3.47%) OAuth
15 71 (3.05%) JSON
16 63 (2.70%) pytest
17 60 (2.57%) OAuth2
18 59 (2.53%) Middleware
19 58 (2.49%) XML
20 55 (2.36%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 346 (14.84%) Cloud Native
2 190 (8.15%) Product Ownership
3 163 (6.99%) Distributed Systems
4 96 (4.12%) Enterprise Software
5 67 (2.87%) Onboarding
6 57 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
7 54 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
8 49 (2.10%) AI Agents
9 47 (2.02%) Mobile App
9 47 (2.02%) Self-Motivation
10 36 (1.54%) Virtual Team
11 25 (1.07%) Embedded Systems
12 23 (0.99%) Security Posture
13 22 (0.94%) Management Information System
14 21 (0.90%) Data Centre
14 21 (0.90%) Data Structures
14 21 (0.90%) NHS
15 20 (0.86%) Distributed Architecture
15 20 (0.86%) Life Science
16 18 (0.77%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 162 (6.95%) Linux
2 98 (4.20%) Unix
3 90 (3.86%) Windows
4 40 (1.72%) Apple iOS
5 38 (1.63%) Android
6 28 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 21 (0.90%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.30%) Solaris
9 6 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
10 5 (0.21%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.21%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.17%) AIX
11 4 (0.17%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.17%) Mac OS X
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 (0.086%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,378 (59.12%) CI/CD
2 1,090 (46.76%) Agile
3 871 (37.37%) DevOps
4 442 (18.96%) Microservices
5 437 (18.75%) Problem-Solving
6 431 (18.49%) Continuous Improvement
7 415 (17.80%) Software Engineering
8 395 (16.95%) Infrastructure as Code
9 381 (16.34%) Scrum
10 374 (16.04%) Validation
11 353 (15.14%) Test Strategy
12 346 (14.84%) AI
13 322 (13.81%) Containerisation
14 301 (12.91%) Observability
15 297 (12.74%) TDD
16 271 (11.63%) SDLC
17 258 (11.07%) Software Testing
18 246 (10.55%) End-to-End Testing
19 244 (10.47%) Stakeholder Management
20 220 (9.44%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 636 (27.28%) Python
2 630 (27.03%) Java
3 574 (24.62%) SQL
4 344 (14.76%) JavaScript
5 251 (10.77%) TypeScript
6 197 (8.45%) C#
7 106 (4.55%) PowerShell
8 89 (3.82%) Bash
9 53 (2.27%) Bicep
10 50 (2.15%) C++
11 49 (2.10%) Kotlin
12 34 (1.46%) PL/SQL
13 31 (1.33%) C
13 31 (1.33%) Scala
14 28 (1.20%) Go
14 28 (1.20%) Shell Script
15 27 (1.16%) Apex Code
16 24 (1.03%) Ruby
17 19 (0.82%) Perl
18 17 (0.73%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 758 (32.52%) Security Cleared
2 645 (27.67%) SC Cleared
3 125 (5.36%) Degree
4 117 (5.02%) BPSS Clearance
5 106 (4.55%) ISTQB
6 75 (3.22%) DV Cleared
7 71 (3.05%) Computer Science Degree
8 38 (1.63%) AWS Certification
9 30 (1.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 29 (1.24%) Azure Certification
11 19 (0.82%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 13 (0.56%) ISEB
12 13 (0.56%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.51%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 11 (0.47%) SAFe Agilist
15 10 (0.43%) Cisco Certification
15 10 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.39%) CISSP
17 8 (0.34%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 8 (0.34%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 594 (25.48%) QA
2 197 (8.45%) Accessibility
3 165 (7.08%) Data Quality
4 92 (3.95%) WCAG
5 43 (1.84%) GDPR
6 20 (0.86%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 14 (0.60%) NCSC
8 14 (0.60%) SLA
9 13 (0.56%) GRC
10 11 (0.47%) 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 (0.21%) Def Stans
13 5 (0.21%) FATCA
13 5 (0.21%) HL7
14 4 (0.17%) MiFID
14 4 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 455 (19.52%) Docker
2 34 (1.46%) VMware Infrastructure
3 31 (1.33%) Active Directory
4 17 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.51%) Firmware
6 7 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
7 5 (0.21%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.21%) 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
1 446 (19.13%) Kubernetes
2 124 (5.32%) Ansible
3 119 (5.11%) Grafana
4 88 (3.78%) Prometheus
5 41 (1.76%) Argo
6 23 (0.99%) Puppet
7 22 (0.94%) Progress Chef
8 15 (0.64%) HP ALM
8 15 (0.64%) Kibana
9 11 (0.47%) Control-M
10 10 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.30%) Dell DRAC
11 7 (0.30%) Istio
11 7 (0.30%) Kustomize
11 7 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
12 6 (0.26%) Packer
12 6 (0.26%) SCCM
13 5 (0.21%) HP Fortify
13 5 (0.21%) WMI
14 4 (0.17%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 219 (9.40%) Microsoft
2 196 (8.41%) Oracle
3 86 (3.69%) Databricks
3 86 (3.69%) Salesforce
4 68 (2.92%) Google
5 63 (2.70%) Red Hat
6 59 (2.53%) Talend
7 58 (2.49%) IBM
8 54 (2.32%) ServiceNow
9 52 (2.23%) SAP
9 52 (2.23%) Splunk
10 43 (1.84%) Informatica
11 42 (1.80%) Denodo
12 41 (1.76%) VMware
13 38 (1.63%) Dynatrace
14 31 (1.33%) Cisco
15 30 (1.29%) MuleSoft
16 27 (1.16%) UiPath
17 20 (0.86%) HP
18 17 (0.73%) OpenAI