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

6 months to
26 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 2,464 1,532 1,580
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.49% 4.63% 4.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.32% 5.12% 4.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,590 1,048 1,066
10th Percentile £322 £313 £350
25th Percentile £405 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £665 £688 £694
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 101 38 18
10th Percentile £40.00 £30.06 £40.88
25th Percentile £55.00 £45.31 £43.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -4.35% -23.33%
75th Percentile £74.00 £66.50 £73.84
90th Percentile £77.50 £69.40 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.22 £56.25 £57.50
% change year-on-year +21.27% -2.17% -18.58%

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 46,293 29,942 32,892
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.37% 90.52% 85.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,017 18,609 19,950
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,198 1,849 1,396
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.32 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.23 £17.33 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £66.00 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.22
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.78% -47.67% +1.18%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 2,065 £475 -5.00% 3,122
UK excluding London -2 1,193 £450 -5.26% 1,974
London +5 938 £500 -1.72% 1,446
Work from Home -1 657 £480 +1.05% 1,340
North of England +1 410 £450 -5.26% 493
Midlands +14 264 £450 -2.70% 222
West Midlands +26 249 £454 -12.47% 151
South East -21 222 £448 -5.79% 435
Yorkshire -6 175 £460 -8.00% 153
North West -14 142 £492 +15.82% 265
South West -6 111 £463 -14.15% 290
North East +2 100 £425 -10.53% 75
Scotland -19 98 £475 -5.00% 223
East of England +8 92 £375 +17.19% 201
Wales -4 26 £425 +3.03% 44
East Midlands -45 15 £418 +15.97% 70
Northern Ireland 0 8 £513 +68.86% 79
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 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
1 189 (7.67%) Confluence
2 65 (2.64%) Apache Airflow
3 46 (1.87%) Apache Spark
3 46 (1.87%) SharePoint
4 38 (1.54%) SAS
5 32 (1.30%) Apache
6 17 (0.69%) CMS
7 14 (0.57%) Camunda
8 12 (0.49%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.28%) Jupyter
9 7 (0.28%) nginx
9 7 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.24%) Tomcat
11 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.16%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.16%) ColdFusion
12 4 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 3 (0.12%) Kentico
Applications
1 23 (0.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.73%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.28%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.16%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 2 (0.081%) Mingle
7 2 (0.081%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.041%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.041%) Simulink
8 1 (0.041%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 30 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 28 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.41%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.41%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.28%) SAP GRC
6 6 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.24%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.16%) FLEXCUBE
7 4 (0.16%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.12%) Finacle
9 2 (0.081%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.081%) Distributed Ledger
9 2 (0.081%) Findur
9 2 (0.081%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.081%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.081%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.081%) Shopify
9 2 (0.081%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 780 (31.66%) AWS
2 739 (29.99%) Azure
3 441 (17.90%) GitHub
4 343 (13.92%) Azure DevOps
5 258 (10.47%) GitHub Actions
6 187 (7.59%) GCP
7 176 (7.14%) Serverless
8 132 (5.36%) AWS Lambda
9 115 (4.67%) Power Platform
10 103 (4.18%) Amazon S3
11 86 (3.49%) GitHub Copilot
12 85 (3.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 76 (3.08%) OpenShift
14 69 (2.80%) Amazon EKS
14 69 (2.80%) AWS CloudFormation
15 67 (2.72%) Amazon ECS
16 60 (2.44%) dbt
17 59 (2.39%) Snowflake
18 53 (2.15%) Anthropic Claude
19 47 (1.91%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.06%) HTTP
2 25 (1.01%) 4G
2 25 (1.01%) DNS
2 25 (1.01%) Firewall
3 22 (0.89%) 5G
3 22 (0.89%) Wi-Fi
4 21 (0.85%) TCP/IP
5 19 (0.77%) Broadband
6 16 (0.65%) Network Security
7 15 (0.61%) 2G
7 15 (0.61%) 3G
7 15 (0.61%) Diameter Protocol
7 15 (0.61%) SIGTRAN
7 15 (0.61%) SS7
8 14 (0.57%) WAN
9 13 (0.53%) BGP
9 13 (0.53%) LAN
10 12 (0.49%) Ethernet VPN
10 12 (0.49%) VXLAN
11 11 (0.45%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 149 (6.05%) PostgreSQL
2 130 (5.28%) MongoDB
3 125 (5.07%) Data Warehouse
4 114 (4.63%) Relational Database
5 106 (4.30%) NoSQL
6 100 (4.06%) SQL Server
7 84 (3.41%) Power BI
8 55 (2.23%) Metadata
9 43 (1.75%) DynamoDB
10 41 (1.66%) Data Lake
11 39 (1.58%) Oracle Reports
12 37 (1.50%) MySQL
13 34 (1.38%) Pentaho
14 33 (1.34%) Big Data
14 33 (1.34%) Redis
15 32 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
16 31 (1.26%) Amazon Athena
17 28 (1.14%) Oracle Database
18 27 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
18 27 (1.10%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 566 (22.97%) Git
2 403 (16.36%) Jenkins
3 398 (16.15%) JIRA
4 347 (14.08%) GitLab
5 313 (12.70%) Selenium
6 169 (6.86%) Cucumber
6 169 (6.86%) Postman
7 149 (6.05%) JUnit
8 126 (5.11%) Cypress.io
9 111 (4.50%) REST Assured
10 99 (4.02%) JMeter
11 85 (3.45%) SonarQube
12 72 (2.92%) Gatling
13 69 (2.80%) Maven
14 65 (2.64%) Zephyr
15 61 (2.48%) Mockito
16 60 (2.44%) Gradle
17 52 (2.11%) WebDriver
18 38 (1.54%) Bitbucket
19 30 (1.22%) SpecFlow
General
1 676 (27.44%) Social Skills
2 459 (18.63%) Finance
3 349 (14.16%) Public Sector
4 342 (13.88%) Analytical Skills
5 229 (9.29%) Banking
6 79 (3.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 59 (2.39%) Telecoms
8 40 (1.62%) Front Office
9 36 (1.46%) Investment Banking
10 34 (1.38%) Retail
11 33 (1.34%) Military
12 32 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
13 31 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
14 23 (0.93%) Financial Institution
15 20 (0.81%) Law
15 20 (0.81%) Manufacturing
16 18 (0.73%) Marketing
17 17 (0.69%) Aerospace
18 14 (0.57%) Automotive
18 14 (0.57%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 557 (22.61%) Developer
2 410 (16.64%) Senior
3 251 (10.19%) Lead
4 233 (9.46%) Test Engineer
5 197 (8.00%) Tester
6 177 (7.18%) Java Developer
7 159 (6.45%) Data Engineer
8 124 (5.03%) Software Engineer
9 122 (4.95%) Analyst
10 121 (4.91%) Senior Developer
11 115 (4.67%) DevOps Engineer
12 110 (4.46%) Architect
13 103 (4.18%) Test Automation Engineer
14 99 (4.02%) QA Engineer
15 87 (3.53%) Automation Tester
16 80 (3.25%) Test Analyst
17 78 (3.17%) Full-Stack Developer
18 75 (3.04%) Test Leader
19 74 (3.00%) Automation Engineer
19 74 (3.00%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 425 (17.25%) REST
2 367 (14.89%) Terraform
3 295 (11.97%) Playwright
4 257 (10.43%) RESTful
5 255 (10.35%) Kafka
6 252 (10.23%) Spring
7 227 (9.21%) React
8 216 (8.77%) Spring Boot
9 183 (7.43%) .NET
10 149 (6.05%) HTML
11 139 (5.64%) Node.js
12 128 (5.19%) CSS
13 99 (4.02%) AngularJS
13 99 (4.02%) OAuth
14 86 (3.49%) JSON
15 74 (3.00%) Middleware
16 68 (2.76%) pytest
17 64 (2.60%) OAuth2
18 62 (2.52%) Swagger
18 62 (2.52%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 395 (16.03%) Cloud Native
2 210 (8.52%) Product Ownership
3 178 (7.22%) Distributed Systems
4 102 (4.14%) Enterprise Software
5 84 (3.41%) Onboarding
6 67 (2.72%) AI Agents
7 63 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
8 53 (2.15%) Data Protection Act
8 53 (2.15%) Self-Motivation
9 50 (2.03%) Mobile App
10 35 (1.42%) Virtual Team
11 31 (1.26%) Data Structures
12 30 (1.22%) Security Posture
13 27 (1.10%) Management Information System
13 27 (1.10%) Private Cloud
14 25 (1.01%) Data Centre
14 25 (1.01%) Legacy Applications
15 22 (0.89%) Life Science
16 21 (0.85%) Embedded Systems
17 19 (0.77%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 177 (7.18%) Linux
2 107 (4.34%) Windows
3 101 (4.10%) Unix
4 46 (1.87%) Apple iOS
5 42 (1.70%) Android
6 31 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (1.01%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.32%) VMS
9 6 (0.24%) Mac OS X
9 6 (0.24%) Solaris
10 5 (0.20%) AIX
10 5 (0.20%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.20%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.16%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.16%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.16%) zOS
12 3 (0.12%) CentOS
12 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,522 (61.77%) CI/CD
2 1,188 (48.21%) Agile
3 916 (37.18%) DevOps
4 492 (19.97%) Microservices
5 482 (19.56%) Continuous Improvement
6 476 (19.32%) Problem-Solving
7 458 (18.59%) Software Engineering
8 443 (17.98%) Infrastructure as Code
9 420 (17.05%) Scrum
10 418 (16.96%) Validation
11 415 (16.84%) AI
12 365 (14.81%) Containerisation
12 365 (14.81%) Test Strategy
13 333 (13.51%) Observability
14 319 (12.95%) TDD
15 295 (11.97%) SDLC
16 294 (11.93%) Stakeholder Management
17 293 (11.89%) Software Testing
18 262 (10.63%) End-to-End Testing
19 246 (9.98%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 691 (28.04%) Python
2 688 (27.92%) Java
3 615 (24.96%) SQL
4 378 (15.34%) JavaScript
5 281 (11.40%) TypeScript
6 210 (8.52%) C#
7 100 (4.06%) PowerShell
8 90 (3.65%) Bash
9 53 (2.15%) Bicep
10 47 (1.91%) Kotlin
10 47 (1.91%) Scala
11 45 (1.83%) C++
12 42 (1.70%) Go
13 33 (1.34%) PL/SQL
13 33 (1.34%) Shell Script
14 27 (1.10%) Perl
15 23 (0.93%) Apex Code
16 21 (0.85%) C
17 17 (0.69%) Ruby
18 16 (0.65%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 780 (31.66%) Security Cleared
2 661 (26.83%) SC Cleared
3 140 (5.68%) BPSS Clearance
4 136 (5.52%) Degree
5 104 (4.22%) ISTQB
6 93 (3.77%) DV Cleared
7 81 (3.29%) Computer Science Degree
8 45 (1.83%) AWS Certification
9 35 (1.42%) Azure Certification
10 27 (1.10%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.65%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 15 (0.61%) Master's Degree
13 14 (0.57%) CISSP
13 14 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 13 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
14 13 (0.53%) ISEB
15 12 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.37%) DBS Check
17 8 (0.32%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 8 (0.32%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 642 (26.06%) QA
2 223 (9.05%) Accessibility
3 177 (7.18%) Data Quality
4 98 (3.98%) WCAG
5 44 (1.79%) GDPR
6 24 (0.97%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.61%) GRC
8 15 (0.61%) NIST
9 14 (0.57%) SLA
10 12 (0.49%) NCSC
11 8 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.24%) SEPA
12 6 (0.24%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.20%) FATCA
13 5 (0.20%) HL7
14 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
14 4 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 509 (20.66%) Docker
2 43 (1.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 36 (1.46%) Active Directory
4 20 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.45%) Firmware
7 8 (0.32%) VMware NSX
8 6 (0.24%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
10 2 (0.081%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.041%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.041%) KVM
11 1 (0.041%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.041%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 494 (20.05%) Kubernetes
2 140 (5.68%) Ansible
3 132 (5.36%) Grafana
4 88 (3.57%) Prometheus
5 35 (1.42%) Argo
6 29 (1.18%) Kibana
7 24 (0.97%) Progress Chef
8 23 (0.93%) Puppet
9 15 (0.61%) HP ALM
10 14 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 13 (0.53%) Control-M
12 8 (0.32%) Microsoft Intune
13 7 (0.28%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.24%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.24%) Istio
14 6 (0.24%) SCCM
15 5 (0.20%) Dell DRAC
15 5 (0.20%) Packer
15 5 (0.20%) WMI
16 4 (0.16%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 237 (9.62%) Microsoft
2 197 (8.00%) Oracle
3 98 (3.98%) Databricks
4 81 (3.29%) Google
5 74 (3.00%) Salesforce
6 71 (2.88%) IBM
7 66 (2.68%) ServiceNow
8 60 (2.44%) Splunk
9 59 (2.39%) SAP
10 58 (2.35%) Talend
11 55 (2.23%) Red Hat
12 52 (2.11%) VMware
13 46 (1.87%) Denodo
14 43 (1.75%) Dynatrace
14 43 (1.75%) Informatica
15 35 (1.42%) Cisco
16 34 (1.38%) MuleSoft
17 31 (1.26%) UiPath
18 24 (0.97%) OpenAI
19 22 (0.89%) Foundry