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 29 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 46 56
Rank change year-on-year -2 +10 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,978 1,320 1,480
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.20% 4.52% 3.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.97% 4.98% 3.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,308 910 963
10th Percentile £330 £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 £622 £630
90th Percentile £672 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.32% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 17 56
10th Percentile £35.88 £33.10 £49.00
25th Percentile £57.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £66.00 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.00% -8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £78.75
90th Percentile - £71.30 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -12.00% +6.38%

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 39,818 26,498 37,391
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.58% 90.82% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,090 17,105 24,099
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +0.52% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,400 1,069 2,428
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.82 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.66 £29.07 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.87% -16.94% -6.17%
75th Percentile £65.88 £62.24 £59.44
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.25 £28.00 £36.02
% change year-on-year +50.89% -22.27% +0.06%

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 29 April 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 29 April 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 29 April 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 1,684 £475 -5.00% 533
UK excluding London 0 908 £469 -1.32% 459
London -3 827 £500 -0.50% 152
Work from Home -3 570 £469 -6.20% 244
North of England +11 336 £469 +3.70% 125
Midlands +3 181 £449 -3.03% 67
South East -37 170 £500 -2.44% 119
West Midlands +18 155 £463 -7.73% 45
North West +17 148 £456 +1.39% 57
Yorkshire -12 141 £500 - 30
South West +7 89 £475 -5.94% 57
East of England -1 56 £538 +9.69% 57
North East +9 52 £425 +8.97% 38
Scotland -22 48 £433 -1.70% 27
Wales -3 29 £475 +20.25% 11
East Midlands -39 26 £400 -9.86% 22
Northern Ireland +20 19 £475 +16.28% 10
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
1 144 (7.28%) Confluence
2 43 (2.17%) SAS
3 41 (2.07%) Apache Spark
4 31 (1.57%) Apache Airflow
5 12 (0.61%) Apache
5 12 (0.61%) SharePoint
6 8 (0.40%) Appian
7 7 (0.35%) nginx
7 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.30%) Camunda
9 5 (0.25%) Anypoint
9 5 (0.25%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.20%) CMS
11 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.10%) Mendix
12 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
13 1 (0.051%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.051%) Solana
Applications
1 26 (1.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (0.56%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.15%) Simulink
6 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.051%) Mingle
7 1 (0.051%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (1.01%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.35%) Findur
4 7 (0.35%) Shopify
5 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
6 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.25%) Maximo
7 4 (0.20%) Workday HCM
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%) SAP BRIM
8 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
9 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.10%) iTrent
9 2 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
10 1 (0.051%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 569 (28.77%) Azure
2 537 (27.15%) AWS
3 342 (17.29%) GitHub
4 260 (13.14%) Azure DevOps
5 194 (9.81%) GitHub Actions
6 153 (7.74%) GCP
7 137 (6.93%) Serverless
8 87 (4.40%) AWS Lambda
9 82 (4.15%) Amazon S3
10 68 (3.44%) Power Platform
11 61 (3.08%) OpenShift
12 59 (2.98%) AWS CloudFormation
13 57 (2.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 55 (2.78%) Amazon ECS
15 39 (1.97%) Azure AKS
16 38 (1.92%) Amazon EKS
16 38 (1.92%) Snowflake
17 34 (1.72%) Azure Data Factory
18 33 (1.67%) Amazon EC2
19 30 (1.52%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.31%) HTTP
2 24 (1.21%) Firewall
3 14 (0.71%) SAN
4 13 (0.66%) VPN
5 12 (0.61%) FTP
5 12 (0.61%) TCP/IP
6 11 (0.56%) SSL
7 9 (0.46%) Ethernet
7 9 (0.46%) MPLS
7 9 (0.46%) Network Security
7 9 (0.46%) WAN
8 8 (0.40%) SD-WAN
8 8 (0.40%) Wireshark
9 6 (0.30%) 5G
9 6 (0.30%) DNS
9 6 (0.30%) Multicast
10 5 (0.25%) AMQP
10 5 (0.25%) Cisco IPT
10 5 (0.25%) HTTPS
10 5 (0.25%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (5.61%) PostgreSQL
2 99 (5.01%) NoSQL
3 97 (4.90%) MongoDB
4 88 (4.45%) SQL Server
5 70 (3.54%) Relational Database
6 69 (3.49%) Data Warehouse
7 48 (2.43%) Power BI
8 46 (2.33%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.77%) MySQL
10 34 (1.72%) Metadata
10 34 (1.72%) Pentaho
11 31 (1.57%) Big Data
12 26 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
12 26 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
12 26 (1.31%) Tableau
13 25 (1.26%) Redis
14 24 (1.21%) BigQuery
15 23 (1.16%) Amazon Athena
15 23 (1.16%) Amazon Aurora
16 20 (1.01%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 383 (19.36%) JIRA
2 367 (18.55%) Git
3 319 (16.13%) Jenkins
4 277 (14.00%) Selenium
5 267 (13.50%) GitLab
6 159 (8.04%) Postman
7 153 (7.74%) Cucumber
8 100 (5.06%) Cypress.io
9 98 (4.95%) JUnit
10 90 (4.55%) JMeter
11 88 (4.45%) REST Assured
12 60 (3.03%) WebDriver
13 49 (2.48%) SonarQube
14 48 (2.43%) Zephyr
15 34 (1.72%) Gradle
15 34 (1.72%) Maven
15 34 (1.72%) Mockito
16 33 (1.67%) Gatling
16 33 (1.67%) SpecFlow
17 32 (1.62%) Bitbucket
General
1 516 (26.09%) Social Skills
2 346 (17.49%) Finance
3 295 (14.91%) Public Sector
4 221 (11.17%) Analytical Skills
5 161 (8.14%) Banking
6 42 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.87%) Investment Banking
8 34 (1.72%) Front Office
9 33 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 29 (1.47%) Telecoms
11 23 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
12 22 (1.11%) Legal
13 21 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (0.86%) Aerospace
14 17 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
15 16 (0.81%) Military
16 14 (0.71%) Financial Institution
17 13 (0.66%) Back Office
17 13 (0.66%) Publishing
18 11 (0.56%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 427 (21.59%) Developer
2 305 (15.42%) Senior
3 217 (10.97%) Test Engineer
4 209 (10.57%) Tester
5 207 (10.47%) Lead
6 113 (5.71%) Data Engineer
6 113 (5.71%) Java Developer
7 102 (5.16%) Test Automation Engineer
8 101 (5.11%) Automation Tester
9 100 (5.06%) Analyst
10 84 (4.25%) Test Leader
11 83 (4.20%) DevOps Engineer
11 83 (4.20%) QA Engineer
12 82 (4.15%) Architect
12 82 (4.15%) Software Engineer
13 76 (3.84%) Senior Developer
14 66 (3.34%) Test Analyst
14 66 (3.34%) Test Manager
15 62 (3.13%) Full-Stack Developer
16 53 (2.68%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 240 (12.13%) Playwright
2 229 (11.58%) REST
3 179 (9.05%) React
4 152 (7.68%) RESTful
5 146 (7.38%) Node.js
6 145 (7.33%) Spring
7 134 (6.77%) .NET
8 132 (6.67%) Kafka
9 120 (6.07%) Spring Boot
10 85 (4.30%) AngularJS
11 75 (3.79%) HTML
12 69 (3.49%) pytest
13 61 (3.08%) OAuth
14 59 (2.98%) CSS
14 59 (2.98%) Jest
15 43 (2.17%) Gherkin
16 42 (2.12%) JSON
16 42 (2.12%) OpenID
17 39 (1.97%) GraphQL
18 36 (1.82%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 213 (10.77%) Cloud Native
2 154 (7.79%) Product Ownership
3 99 (5.01%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (2.43%) Mobile App
5 47 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
6 46 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
7 38 (1.92%) Onboarding
8 34 (1.72%) Virtual Team
9 33 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
10 32 (1.62%) NHS
11 28 (1.42%) Algorithms
11 28 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
12 26 (1.31%) Security Posture
13 24 (1.21%) Data Centre
14 23 (1.16%) Management Information System
15 21 (1.06%) Derivative
16 20 (1.01%) Distributed Architecture
17 19 (0.96%) Data Structures
17 19 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
18 18 (0.91%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 132 (6.67%) Linux
2 82 (4.15%) Windows
3 46 (2.33%) Android
4 42 (2.12%) Unix
5 37 (1.87%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.01%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.66%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.51%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.40%) Solaris
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.20%) CentOS
13 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.15%) AIX
15 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
16 1 (0.051%) VMS
16 1 (0.051%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,052 (53.19%) CI/CD
2 911 (46.06%) Agile
3 709 (35.84%) DevOps
4 396 (20.02%) Problem-Solving
5 321 (16.23%) Continuous Improvement
6 308 (15.57%) Microservices
7 286 (14.46%) Test Strategy
8 284 (14.36%) Scrum
9 273 (13.80%) Infrastructure as Code
10 261 (13.20%) Containerisation
10 261 (13.20%) Validation
11 232 (11.73%) Software Engineering
12 225 (11.38%) Observability
13 224 (11.32%) AI
14 220 (11.12%) TDD
15 202 (10.21%) Test Scripting
16 201 (10.16%) Regression Testing
17 198 (10.01%) Analytics
18 197 (9.96%) SDLC
18 197 (9.96%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 542 (27.40%) Python
2 493 (24.92%) Java
3 424 (21.44%) SQL
4 290 (14.66%) JavaScript
5 270 (13.65%) TypeScript
6 201 (10.16%) C#
7 72 (3.64%) PowerShell
8 66 (3.34%) Bash
9 52 (2.63%) C++
10 35 (1.77%) Kotlin
11 33 (1.67%) C
12 31 (1.57%) Scala
13 28 (1.42%) Bicep
13 28 (1.42%) Ruby
14 27 (1.37%) PL/SQL
15 26 (1.31%) Apex Code
16 21 (1.06%) Go
17 15 (0.76%) Swift
18 14 (0.71%) Groovy
19 13 (0.66%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 606 (30.64%) Security Cleared
2 480 (24.27%) SC Cleared
3 90 (4.55%) ISTQB
4 88 (4.45%) Degree
5 79 (3.99%) BPSS Clearance
6 60 (3.03%) DV Cleared
7 50 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
8 24 (1.21%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 16 (0.81%) Master's Degree
10 14 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
11 13 (0.66%) Azure Certification
12 12 (0.61%) AWS Certification
13 10 (0.51%) CCNP
14 9 (0.46%) DBS Check
14 9 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
15 8 (0.40%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 7 (0.35%) CISSP
16 7 (0.35%) SAFe Agilist
17 6 (0.30%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
17 6 (0.30%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 445 (22.50%) QA
2 143 (7.23%) Accessibility
3 116 (5.86%) Data Quality
4 63 (3.19%) WCAG
5 43 (2.17%) GDPR
6 19 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 15 (0.76%) SLA
8 14 (0.71%) ISO 20022
9 13 (0.66%) NCSC
10 10 (0.51%) Def Stans
10 10 (0.51%) PCI DSS
11 9 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.40%) NIST
13 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 7 (0.35%) PSD2
13 7 (0.35%) SEPA
14 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
15 5 (0.25%) FATCA
15 5 (0.25%) PERC
16 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 356 (18.00%) Docker
2 25 (1.26%) Active Directory
3 15 (0.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.71%) Firmware
5 9 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
6 8 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
9 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.10%) SRDF
12 1 (0.051%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.051%) HDFS
12 1 (0.051%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.051%) KVM
12 1 (0.051%) Squid
12 1 (0.051%) Time Sharing Option
12 1 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.051%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 345 (17.44%) Kubernetes
2 245 (12.39%) Terraform
3 112 (5.66%) Grafana
4 84 (4.25%) Prometheus
5 78 (3.94%) Ansible
6 29 (1.47%) Argo
7 24 (1.21%) HP ALM
8 18 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.86%) Puppet
10 14 (0.71%) Kibana
11 10 (0.51%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.51%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.51%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 9 (0.46%) Progress Chef
13 8 (0.40%) Dell DRAC
13 8 (0.40%) NetBackup
14 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.25%) Nmap
15 5 (0.25%) Rancher
16 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 169 (8.54%) Microsoft
2 163 (8.24%) Oracle
3 78 (3.94%) Salesforce
4 69 (3.49%) Databricks
5 66 (3.34%) ServiceNow
6 58 (2.93%) Google
6 58 (2.93%) Splunk
7 49 (2.48%) Red Hat
8 46 (2.33%) Talend
9 41 (2.07%) SAP
10 30 (1.52%) Denodo
10 30 (1.52%) IBM
11 27 (1.37%) HP
12 24 (1.21%) VMware
13 21 (1.06%) Cisco
14 20 (1.01%) Dynatrace
15 19 (0.96%) UiPath
16 18 (0.91%) Informatica
17 16 (0.81%) Blue Prism
17 16 (0.81%) MuleSoft