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 20 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 47 56
Rank change year-on-year 0 +9 -8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,981 1,323 1,506
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.11% 4.54% 3.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.88% 4.98% 4.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,297 924 990
10th Percentile £335 £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 £605 £625
90th Percentile £663 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.42% -5.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 22 53
10th Percentile £36.10 £35.58 £51.50
25th Percentile £56.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £66.75 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.14% -12.50% -13.51%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £74.50
90th Percentile £74.00 £75.45 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -12.00% -4.58%

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 40,582 26,548 36,652
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.29% 91.02% 86.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,477 17,040 23,631
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.88% -2.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.21% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,387 1,106 2,443
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.35 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.17 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +50.90% -21.86% +0.13%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.70 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +78.93% -32.93% +7.14%

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 20 May 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 20 May 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 20 May 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 1,691 £475 -5.00% 687
UK excluding London -2 937 £468 -1.42% 551
London 0 804 £500 -1.96% 247
Work from Home -3 568 £475 -3.65% 349
North of England +9 346 £463 +3.47% 137
Midlands +7 192 £450 +4.35% 62
West Midlands +30 168 £461 -5.78% 47
South East -45 167 £500 -0.10% 156
North West +9 151 £466 +3.90% 79
Yorkshire -4 148 £487 +2.53% 28
South West +8 98 £469 -8.54% 71
East of England +13 67 £507 +6.74% 74
North East +5 54 £425 +8.97% 30
Scotland -37 43 £440 -4.35% 24
Wales +1 30 £475 +16.92% 21
East Midlands -41 24 £400 +45.45% 15
Northern Ireland +14 18 £475 +16.28% 15
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
1 159 (8.03%) Confluence
2 40 (2.02%) Apache Spark
2 40 (2.02%) SAS
3 33 (1.67%) Apache Airflow
4 14 (0.71%) Apache
5 11 (0.56%) SharePoint
6 8 (0.40%) Appian
7 7 (0.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 7 (0.35%) nginx
7 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.30%) Camunda
9 5 (0.25%) CMS
10 4 (0.20%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.10%) Mendix
13 1 (0.050%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.050%) OpenStack
13 1 (0.050%) Solana
Applications
1 27 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.15%) Simulink
7 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.050%) Mingle
8 1 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (1.01%) Aladdin
2 13 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 9 (0.45%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.40%) Findur
5 8 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
6 6 (0.30%) Shopify
7 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.25%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.25%) SAP MDG
8 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.15%) Infor CloudSuite
8 3 (0.15%) Infor LN
8 3 (0.15%) Infor M3
8 3 (0.15%) Maximo
8 3 (0.15%) Workday HCM
9 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.10%) iTrent
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 565 (28.52%) Azure
2 546 (27.56%) AWS
3 346 (17.47%) GitHub
4 258 (13.02%) Azure DevOps
5 198 (9.99%) GitHub Actions
6 148 (7.47%) GCP
7 131 (6.61%) Serverless
8 81 (4.09%) Amazon S3
8 81 (4.09%) AWS Lambda
9 75 (3.79%) Power Platform
10 55 (2.78%) OpenShift
11 53 (2.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 52 (2.62%) Amazon ECS
13 48 (2.42%) AWS CloudFormation
14 42 (2.12%) Amazon EKS
15 37 (1.87%) Amazon EC2
15 37 (1.87%) Azure Data Factory
15 37 (1.87%) Snowflake
16 30 (1.51%) Azure AKS
17 29 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.21%) HTTP
2 22 (1.11%) Firewall
3 15 (0.76%) SAN
4 12 (0.61%) TCP/IP
5 11 (0.56%) Network Security
5 11 (0.56%) SSL
5 11 (0.56%) VPN
6 9 (0.45%) WAN
6 9 (0.45%) Wireshark
7 8 (0.40%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.40%) FTP
7 8 (0.40%) MPLS
8 7 (0.35%) SD-WAN
8 7 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
9 6 (0.30%) VLAN
10 5 (0.25%) 5G
10 5 (0.25%) Multicast
11 4 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
11 4 (0.20%) NAS
11 4 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 109 (5.50%) PostgreSQL
2 104 (5.25%) MongoDB
3 99 (5.00%) NoSQL
4 88 (4.44%) SQL Server
5 72 (3.63%) Data Warehouse
6 71 (3.58%) Relational Database
7 53 (2.68%) Power BI
8 43 (2.17%) DynamoDB
9 36 (1.82%) Metadata
10 33 (1.67%) MySQL
10 33 (1.67%) Pentaho
11 32 (1.62%) Big Data
12 26 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
13 25 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
13 25 (1.26%) Tableau
14 24 (1.21%) Redis
15 22 (1.11%) Data Lake
16 21 (1.06%) Amazon Aurora
16 21 (1.06%) BigQuery
17 20 (1.01%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 385 (19.43%) JIRA
2 354 (17.87%) Git
3 335 (16.91%) Jenkins
4 278 (14.03%) Selenium
5 276 (13.93%) GitLab
6 164 (8.28%) Postman
7 144 (7.27%) Cucumber
8 103 (5.20%) REST Assured
9 102 (5.15%) JUnit
10 99 (5.00%) Cypress.io
11 97 (4.90%) JMeter
12 57 (2.88%) WebDriver
13 48 (2.42%) SonarQube
13 48 (2.42%) Zephyr
14 40 (2.02%) Gatling
15 35 (1.77%) Gradle
16 34 (1.72%) Mockito
17 32 (1.62%) SpecFlow
18 30 (1.51%) Bitbucket
18 30 (1.51%) Maven
General
1 517 (26.10%) Social Skills
2 333 (16.81%) Finance
3 280 (14.13%) Public Sector
4 237 (11.96%) Analytical Skills
5 164 (8.28%) Banking
6 43 (2.17%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (1.82%) Investment Banking
8 35 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 34 (1.72%) Front Office
10 25 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
10 25 (1.26%) Telecoms
11 18 (0.91%) Legal
11 18 (0.91%) Military
11 18 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
12 17 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
13 16 (0.81%) Aerospace
14 15 (0.76%) Retail
15 13 (0.66%) Back Office
15 13 (0.66%) Financial Institution
15 13 (0.66%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 409 (20.65%) Developer
2 311 (15.70%) Senior
3 228 (11.51%) Test Engineer
4 207 (10.45%) Tester
5 204 (10.30%) Lead
6 112 (5.65%) Data Engineer
7 110 (5.55%) Analyst
7 110 (5.55%) Java Developer
8 101 (5.10%) Test Automation Engineer
9 97 (4.90%) Automation Tester
10 96 (4.85%) Software Engineer
11 88 (4.44%) DevOps Engineer
12 85 (4.29%) Architect
13 81 (4.09%) QA Engineer
14 80 (4.04%) Test Leader
15 78 (3.94%) Senior Developer
16 67 (3.38%) Test Analyst
17 64 (3.23%) Full-Stack Developer
18 58 (2.93%) Test Manager
19 53 (2.68%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (12.57%) Playwright
2 236 (11.91%) REST
3 181 (9.14%) React
4 157 (7.93%) RESTful
5 143 (7.22%) Spring
6 142 (7.17%) Kafka
7 141 (7.12%) .NET
8 125 (6.31%) Node.js
9 120 (6.06%) Spring Boot
10 78 (3.94%) AngularJS
11 75 (3.79%) HTML
12 66 (3.33%) pytest
13 61 (3.08%) OAuth
14 59 (2.98%) CSS
15 52 (2.62%) Jest
16 45 (2.27%) Swagger
17 44 (2.22%) OpenID
18 42 (2.12%) Gherkin
18 42 (2.12%) JSON
19 40 (2.02%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 219 (11.06%) Cloud Native
2 152 (7.67%) Product Ownership
3 102 (5.15%) Distributed Systems
4 49 (2.47%) Data Protection Act
5 48 (2.42%) Mobile App
6 47 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
7 40 (2.02%) Self-Motivation
8 39 (1.97%) Virtual Team
9 38 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
10 35 (1.77%) Onboarding
11 29 (1.46%) NHS
12 25 (1.26%) Algorithms
13 24 (1.21%) Management Information System
14 23 (1.16%) Data Centre
15 21 (1.06%) Derivative
15 21 (1.06%) Distributed Architecture
16 20 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
17 18 (0.91%) Fixed Income
18 17 (0.86%) Embedded Systems
18 17 (0.86%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 125 (6.31%) Linux
2 77 (3.89%) Windows
3 49 (2.47%) Unix
4 42 (2.12%) Android
5 37 (1.87%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.06%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.61%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.40%) Solaris
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.15%) AIX
14 3 (0.15%) CentOS
15 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.050%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,073 (54.16%) CI/CD
2 911 (45.99%) Agile
3 716 (36.14%) DevOps
4 384 (19.38%) Problem-Solving
5 326 (16.46%) Continuous Improvement
6 319 (16.10%) Microservices
7 295 (14.89%) Test Strategy
8 288 (14.54%) Scrum
9 266 (13.43%) Validation
10 260 (13.12%) Infrastructure as Code
11 254 (12.82%) Containerisation
12 251 (12.67%) Software Engineering
13 246 (12.42%) Observability
14 227 (11.46%) TDD
15 212 (10.70%) AI
16 200 (10.10%) Test Scripting
17 194 (9.79%) Software Testing
17 194 (9.79%) User Acceptance Testing
18 192 (9.69%) API Testing
19 191 (9.64%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 514 (25.95%) Python
2 492 (24.84%) Java
3 437 (22.06%) SQL
4 283 (14.29%) JavaScript
5 246 (12.42%) TypeScript
6 202 (10.20%) C#
7 74 (3.74%) PowerShell
8 68 (3.43%) Bash
9 51 (2.57%) C++
10 43 (2.17%) Kotlin
11 35 (1.77%) PL/SQL
12 32 (1.62%) C
12 32 (1.62%) Scala
13 31 (1.56%) Apex Code
14 26 (1.31%) Bicep
15 23 (1.16%) Go
16 21 (1.06%) Ruby
17 19 (0.96%) Swift
18 14 (0.71%) Shell Script
19 13 (0.66%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 614 (30.99%) Security Cleared
2 486 (24.53%) SC Cleared
3 91 (4.59%) ISTQB
4 87 (4.39%) Degree
5 81 (4.09%) BPSS Clearance
6 69 (3.48%) DV Cleared
7 42 (2.12%) Computer Science Degree
8 26 (1.31%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 13 (0.66%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.56%) CCNP
12 10 (0.50%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 10 (0.50%) SAFe Agilist
13 9 (0.45%) AWS Certification
13 9 (0.45%) DBS Check
14 8 (0.40%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 8 (0.40%) Azure Certification
15 7 (0.35%) CISSP
16 6 (0.30%) Microsoft Certification
17 5 (0.25%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 424 (21.40%) QA
2 154 (7.77%) Accessibility
3 115 (5.81%) Data Quality
4 68 (3.43%) WCAG
5 34 (1.72%) GDPR
6 14 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 14 (0.71%) SLA
7 12 (0.61%) ISO 20022
8 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
9 9 (0.45%) NCSC
10 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 7 (0.35%) NIST
11 6 (0.30%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.25%) FATCA
12 5 (0.25%) SEPA
13 4 (0.20%) HL7
13 4 (0.20%) MiFID
13 4 (0.20%) PSD2
13 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 346 (17.47%) Docker
2 24 (1.21%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (1.01%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.66%) Firmware
5 11 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
9 4 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.10%) Hyper-V
11 2 (0.10%) SRDF
12 1 (0.050%) HDFS
12 1 (0.050%) KVM
12 1 (0.050%) Squid
12 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 332 (16.76%) Kubernetes
2 228 (11.51%) Terraform
3 114 (5.75%) Grafana
4 94 (4.75%) Prometheus
5 87 (4.39%) Ansible
6 28 (1.41%) Argo
7 21 (1.06%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.86%) Puppet
9 14 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.66%) Kibana
11 10 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 9 (0.45%) Dell DRAC
13 8 (0.40%) NetBackup
14 7 (0.35%) Kustomize
14 7 (0.35%) Progress Chef
15 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
16 4 (0.20%) Nmap
16 4 (0.20%) Podman
Vendors
1 158 (7.98%) Microsoft
1 158 (7.98%) Oracle
2 84 (4.24%) Salesforce
3 65 (3.28%) Databricks
4 62 (3.13%) Splunk
5 61 (3.08%) ServiceNow
6 54 (2.73%) Google
7 53 (2.68%) Talend
8 49 (2.47%) Red Hat
9 34 (1.72%) Denodo
9 34 (1.72%) SAP
10 31 (1.56%) VMware
11 25 (1.26%) IBM
12 24 (1.21%) HP
13 22 (1.11%) Cisco
14 21 (1.06%) Dynatrace
15 20 (1.01%) Informatica
15 20 (1.01%) MuleSoft
15 20 (1.01%) UiPath
16 16 (0.81%) Blue Prism