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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 55
Rank change year-on-year -1 +8 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,992 1,320 1,505
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.13% 4.54% 3.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.90% 4.98% 4.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,302 922 990
10th Percentile £332 £325 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -7.27%
75th Percentile £575 £603 £625
90th Percentile £663 £725 £721
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.26% -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 40,694 26,498 36,630
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.34% 91.04% 86.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,533 17,004 23,615
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -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 2,389 1,106 2,441
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.35 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.79% -23.29% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.50 £59.98 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -33.82% +8.57%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -1 1,702 £475 -5.00% 666
UK excluding London -7 942 £469 -1.26% 536
London +3 810 £500 -0.50% 248
Work from Home -4 573 £475 -3.46% 369
North of England +10 347 £464 +3.75% 133
Midlands +6 194 £450 +4.35% 56
South East -36 171 £505 +0.80% 147
West Midlands +24 170 £463 -5.42% 43
North West +10 152 £467 +4.01% 76
Yorkshire -5 148 £487 +2.53% 26
South West +14 98 £469 -10.71% 68
East of England +15 66 £522 +10.82% 68
North East +7 55 £425 +7.59% 31
Scotland -34 42 £440 -3.30% 31
Wales +2 30 £475 +16.92% 20
East Midlands -37 24 £400 +45.45% 13
Northern Ireland +16 19 £475 +16.28% 24
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 (7.98%) Confluence
2 40 (2.01%) Apache Spark
2 40 (2.01%) SAS
3 33 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
4 14 (0.70%) Apache
5 11 (0.55%) 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
8 6 (0.30%) CMS
9 4 (0.20%) Anypoint
9 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
10 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.10%) Mendix
12 1 (0.050%) Ethereum
12 1 (0.050%) Jupyter
12 1 (0.050%) Solana
Applications
1 27 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (0.55%) 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 (1.00%) Aladdin
2 14 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.55%) 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
1 566 (28.41%) Azure
2 547 (27.46%) AWS
3 348 (17.47%) GitHub
4 260 (13.05%) Azure DevOps
5 199 (9.99%) GitHub Actions
6 148 (7.43%) GCP
7 131 (6.58%) Serverless
8 81 (4.07%) Amazon S3
8 81 (4.07%) AWS Lambda
9 76 (3.82%) Power Platform
10 55 (2.76%) OpenShift
11 53 (2.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 52 (2.61%) Amazon ECS
13 48 (2.41%) AWS CloudFormation
14 42 (2.11%) Amazon EKS
15 37 (1.86%) Amazon EC2
15 37 (1.86%) Azure Data Factory
15 37 (1.86%) Snowflake
16 30 (1.51%) Azure AKS
17 29 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.20%) HTTP
2 22 (1.10%) Firewall
3 15 (0.75%) SAN
4 11 (0.55%) Network Security
4 11 (0.55%) SSL
4 11 (0.55%) TCP/IP
4 11 (0.55%) VPN
5 9 (0.45%) WAN
6 8 (0.40%) MPLS
6 8 (0.40%) Wireshark
7 7 (0.35%) Ethernet
7 7 (0.35%) FTP
7 7 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (0.30%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.30%) VLAN
9 5 (0.25%) 5G
9 5 (0.25%) Multicast
10 4 (0.20%) BGP
10 4 (0.20%) NAS
10 4 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 109 (5.47%) PostgreSQL
2 104 (5.22%) MongoDB
3 100 (5.02%) NoSQL
4 87 (4.37%) SQL Server
5 72 (3.61%) Data Warehouse
6 71 (3.56%) Relational Database
7 54 (2.71%) Power BI
8 43 (2.16%) DynamoDB
9 38 (1.91%) Metadata
10 33 (1.66%) MySQL
10 33 (1.66%) Pentaho
11 32 (1.61%) Big Data
12 26 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
13 25 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
13 25 (1.26%) Tableau
14 24 (1.20%) Redis
15 22 (1.10%) Data Lake
16 21 (1.05%) Amazon Aurora
16 21 (1.05%) BigQuery
17 20 (1.00%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 385 (19.33%) JIRA
2 354 (17.77%) Git
3 336 (16.87%) Jenkins
4 281 (14.11%) Selenium
5 275 (13.81%) GitLab
6 164 (8.23%) Postman
7 143 (7.18%) Cucumber
8 106 (5.32%) REST Assured
9 101 (5.07%) JUnit
10 99 (4.97%) Cypress.io
11 98 (4.92%) JMeter
12 57 (2.86%) WebDriver
13 48 (2.41%) SonarQube
13 48 (2.41%) Zephyr
14 39 (1.96%) Gatling
15 35 (1.76%) Gradle
16 34 (1.71%) Mockito
17 33 (1.66%) SpecFlow
18 30 (1.51%) Bitbucket
18 30 (1.51%) Maven
General
1 520 (26.10%) Social Skills
2 336 (16.87%) Finance
3 281 (14.11%) Public Sector
4 237 (11.90%) Analytical Skills
5 166 (8.33%) Banking
6 43 (2.16%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (1.81%) Investment Banking
8 35 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 34 (1.71%) Front Office
10 25 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
11 24 (1.20%) Telecoms
12 18 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
13 17 (0.85%) Legal
13 17 (0.85%) Military
13 17 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.80%) Aerospace
14 16 (0.80%) Retail
15 13 (0.65%) Back Office
15 13 (0.65%) Financial Institution
15 13 (0.65%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 408 (20.48%) Developer
2 309 (15.51%) Senior
3 225 (11.30%) Test Engineer
4 208 (10.44%) Lead
4 208 (10.44%) Tester
5 111 (5.57%) Analyst
5 111 (5.57%) Data Engineer
6 109 (5.47%) Java Developer
7 101 (5.07%) Test Automation Engineer
8 98 (4.92%) Automation Tester
9 96 (4.82%) Software Engineer
10 90 (4.52%) Architect
11 89 (4.47%) DevOps Engineer
12 82 (4.12%) Test Leader
13 81 (4.07%) QA Engineer
14 78 (3.92%) Senior Developer
15 68 (3.41%) Test Analyst
16 64 (3.21%) Full-Stack Developer
17 60 (3.01%) Test Manager
18 54 (2.71%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (12.55%) Playwright
2 236 (11.85%) REST
3 180 (9.04%) React
4 157 (7.88%) RESTful
5 144 (7.23%) Kafka
6 143 (7.18%) Spring
7 140 (7.03%) .NET
8 124 (6.22%) Node.js
9 120 (6.02%) Spring Boot
10 77 (3.87%) AngularJS
11 75 (3.77%) HTML
12 66 (3.31%) pytest
13 61 (3.06%) OAuth
14 59 (2.96%) CSS
15 52 (2.61%) Jest
16 45 (2.26%) Swagger
17 44 (2.21%) OpenID
18 43 (2.16%) Gherkin
19 42 (2.11%) JSON
20 40 (2.01%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 220 (11.04%) Cloud Native
2 153 (7.68%) Product Ownership
3 105 (5.27%) Distributed Systems
4 52 (2.61%) Data Protection Act
5 48 (2.41%) Mobile App
6 47 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
7 39 (1.96%) Self-Motivation
7 39 (1.96%) Virtual Team
8 38 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
9 36 (1.81%) Onboarding
10 29 (1.46%) NHS
11 25 (1.26%) Algorithms
12 24 (1.20%) Management Information System
13 23 (1.15%) Data Centre
13 23 (1.15%) Distributed Architecture
14 21 (1.05%) Derivative
15 20 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
16 18 (0.90%) Fixed Income
17 17 (0.85%) Embedded Systems
17 17 (0.85%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 125 (6.28%) Linux
2 77 (3.87%) Windows
3 49 (2.46%) Unix
4 43 (2.16%) Android
5 37 (1.86%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.05%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.60%) 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 1,076 (54.02%) CI/CD
2 913 (45.83%) Agile
3 722 (36.24%) DevOps
4 384 (19.28%) Problem-Solving
5 330 (16.57%) Continuous Improvement
6 322 (16.16%) Microservices
7 301 (15.11%) Test Strategy
8 285 (14.31%) Scrum
9 267 (13.40%) Validation
10 260 (13.05%) Infrastructure as Code
11 255 (12.80%) Software Engineering
12 254 (12.75%) Containerisation
13 246 (12.35%) Observability
14 226 (11.35%) TDD
15 213 (10.69%) AI
16 200 (10.04%) Test Scripting
17 197 (9.89%) User Acceptance Testing
18 194 (9.74%) Regression Testing
19 192 (9.64%) API Testing
19 192 (9.64%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 518 (26.00%) Python
2 497 (24.95%) Java
3 438 (21.99%) SQL
4 283 (14.21%) JavaScript
5 246 (12.35%) TypeScript
6 203 (10.19%) C#
7 75 (3.77%) PowerShell
8 68 (3.41%) Bash
9 51 (2.56%) C++
10 44 (2.21%) Kotlin
11 35 (1.76%) PL/SQL
12 32 (1.61%) C
12 32 (1.61%) Scala
13 31 (1.56%) Apex Code
14 26 (1.31%) Bicep
15 24 (1.20%) Go
16 21 (1.05%) Ruby
17 19 (0.95%) Swift
18 14 (0.70%) Shell Script
19 13 (0.65%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 618 (31.02%) Security Cleared
2 488 (24.50%) SC Cleared
3 91 (4.57%) ISTQB
4 87 (4.37%) Degree
5 82 (4.12%) BPSS Clearance
6 70 (3.51%) DV Cleared
7 42 (2.11%) Computer Science Degree
8 26 (1.31%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 13 (0.65%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.60%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.55%) 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 (21.29%) QA
2 154 (7.73%) Accessibility
3 114 (5.72%) Data Quality
4 68 (3.41%) WCAG
5 34 (1.71%) GDPR
6 15 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 14 (0.70%) SLA
8 12 (0.60%) ISO 20022
9 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
10 9 (0.45%) NCSC
11 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 7 (0.35%) NIST
12 6 (0.30%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 5 (0.25%) FATCA
13 5 (0.25%) SEPA
14 4 (0.20%) HL7
14 4 (0.20%) MiFID
14 4 (0.20%) PSD2
14 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 347 (17.42%) Docker
2 25 (1.26%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (1.00%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.65%) Firmware
5 11 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.40%) 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
1 333 (16.72%) Kubernetes
2 229 (11.50%) Terraform
3 111 (5.57%) Grafana
4 92 (4.62%) Prometheus
5 89 (4.47%) Ansible
6 28 (1.41%) Argo
7 21 (1.05%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.85%) Puppet
9 14 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.65%) 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%) Rancher
Vendors
1 160 (8.03%) Oracle
2 158 (7.93%) Microsoft
3 84 (4.22%) Salesforce
4 64 (3.21%) Databricks
5 61 (3.06%) ServiceNow
5 61 (3.06%) Splunk
6 53 (2.66%) Google
6 53 (2.66%) Talend
7 49 (2.46%) Red Hat
8 34 (1.71%) Denodo
8 34 (1.71%) SAP
9 31 (1.56%) VMware
10 27 (1.36%) IBM
11 24 (1.20%) HP
12 21 (1.05%) Cisco
12 21 (1.05%) Dynatrace
12 21 (1.05%) UiPath
13 20 (1.00%) Informatica
13 20 (1.00%) MuleSoft
14 16 (0.80%) Blue Prism