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 15 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 48 49
Rank change year-on-year +3 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,273 1,451 1,603
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.32% 4.47% 3.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.08% 4.95% 4.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,470 1,011 1,052
10th Percentile £325 £313 £363
25th Percentile £403 £393 £424
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £485 £514
Median % change year-on-year -2.06% -5.60% -2.14%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £611
90th Percentile £663 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £463 £504
% change year-on-year -2.70% -8.19% -0.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 30 48
10th Percentile £36.19 £34.53 £49.40
25th Percentile £60.17 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -9.09% -20.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £71.87
90th Percentile £74.40 £75.25 £79.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +35.00% -9.09% -13.30%

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 44,765 29,340 36,482
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.08% 90.42% 85.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,853 18,476 23,295
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £418 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £624 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,647 1,521 2,449
10th Percentile £14.94 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.61 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -4.70%
75th Percentile £68.50 £52.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.70 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.25 £24.64 £38.12
% change year-on-year +83.64% -35.36% -0.99%

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 15 July 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 15 July 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 15 July 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 +4 1,923 £475 -2.31% 1,017
UK excluding London +3 1,124 £450 -2.70% 996
London +6 874 £500 - 285
Work from Home -3 649 £475 +4.40% 849
North of England +19 386 £458 +2.35% 215
Midlands +11 246 £450 +8.11% 121
West Midlands +26 229 £450 -6.83% 55
South East -33 196 £459 -8.20% 250
North West -1 155 £478 +19.50% 103
Yorkshire +8 153 £484 -3.20% 82
South West +10 116 £450 +2.86% 106
North East +9 88 £425 +6.25% 31
East of England +19 86 £450 -1.91% 118
Scotland -25 70 £440 -10.93% 90
Wales -1 35 £475 +15.15% 56
Northern Ireland +22 22 £475 +16.28% 58
East Midlands -39 17 £425 +40.26% 66
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
1 197 (8.67%) Confluence
2 51 (2.24%) Apache Spark
3 47 (2.07%) SAS
4 46 (2.02%) Apache Airflow
5 23 (1.01%) Apache
6 17 (0.75%) SharePoint
7 13 (0.57%) CMS
8 10 (0.44%) nginx
8 10 (0.44%) Tomcat
8 10 (0.44%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.26%) Camunda
10 5 (0.22%) Appian
11 4 (0.18%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.18%) Jupyter
11 4 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.13%) Kentico
13 2 (0.088%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.088%) Mendix
13 2 (0.088%) Microsoft Exchange
13 2 (0.088%) Mule
Applications
1 30 (1.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (0.35%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.18%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.18%) Simulink
5 4 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.044%) Mingle
6 1 (0.044%) SOLIDWORKS
6 1 (0.044%) Trello
Business Applications
1 24 (1.06%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.75%) Aladdin
2 17 (0.75%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
3 12 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.35%) Findur
5 6 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
5 6 (0.26%) SAP ERP
5 6 (0.26%) SAP MDG
5 6 (0.26%) Shopify
6 5 (0.22%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.22%) Loan IQ
7 4 (0.18%) Infor CloudSuite
7 4 (0.18%) Infor LN
7 4 (0.18%) Infor M3
8 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.13%) Maximo
9 2 (0.088%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.088%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.088%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 672 (29.56%) Azure
2 665 (29.26%) AWS
3 399 (17.55%) GitHub
4 303 (13.33%) Azure DevOps
5 238 (10.47%) GitHub Actions
6 167 (7.35%) GCP
7 159 (7.00%) Serverless
8 108 (4.75%) AWS Lambda
9 100 (4.40%) Power Platform
10 99 (4.36%) Amazon S3
11 67 (2.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 64 (2.82%) OpenShift
13 60 (2.64%) Amazon ECS
14 55 (2.42%) AWS CloudFormation
15 53 (2.33%) Amazon EC2
16 47 (2.07%) dbt
17 44 (1.94%) Amazon EKS
18 42 (1.85%) Azure Data Factory
18 42 (1.85%) Snowflake
19 38 (1.67%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.10%) HTTP
2 19 (0.84%) Firewall
3 16 (0.70%) SAN
4 11 (0.48%) Network Security
4 11 (0.48%) WAN
5 10 (0.44%) 5G
6 9 (0.40%) 4G
6 9 (0.40%) MPLS
7 8 (0.35%) 2G
7 8 (0.35%) 3G
7 8 (0.35%) Diameter Protocol
7 8 (0.35%) SIGTRAN
7 8 (0.35%) SS7
7 8 (0.35%) VPN
8 7 (0.31%) BGP
9 6 (0.26%) Ethernet
9 6 (0.26%) LAN
9 6 (0.26%) TCP/IP
9 6 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
9 6 (0.26%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 119 (5.24%) PostgreSQL
2 116 (5.10%) MongoDB
3 110 (4.84%) Data Warehouse
4 94 (4.14%) NoSQL
5 84 (3.70%) SQL Server
6 78 (3.43%) Power BI
6 78 (3.43%) Relational Database
7 46 (2.02%) DynamoDB
7 46 (2.02%) Metadata
8 40 (1.76%) Big Data
9 39 (1.72%) Oracle Reports
10 35 (1.54%) Pentaho
11 33 (1.45%) Amazon Athena
12 31 (1.36%) Amazon RDS
13 30 (1.32%) MySQL
14 26 (1.14%) Amazon Redshift
14 26 (1.14%) Data Lake
14 26 (1.14%) Redis
15 24 (1.06%) Elasticsearch
16 22 (0.97%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 429 (18.87%) JIRA
2 421 (18.52%) Git
3 366 (16.10%) Jenkins
4 307 (13.51%) GitLab
5 295 (12.98%) Selenium
6 173 (7.61%) Postman
7 155 (6.82%) Cucumber
8 122 (5.37%) REST Assured
9 118 (5.19%) JUnit
10 115 (5.06%) Cypress.io
11 101 (4.44%) JMeter
12 66 (2.90%) WebDriver
13 65 (2.86%) Zephyr
14 55 (2.42%) SonarQube
15 52 (2.29%) Gatling
16 49 (2.16%) Gradle
17 42 (1.85%) Mockito
18 39 (1.72%) Bitbucket
19 38 (1.67%) Maven
20 37 (1.63%) SpecFlow
General
1 597 (26.26%) Social Skills
2 408 (17.95%) Finance
3 307 (13.51%) Public Sector
4 287 (12.63%) Analytical Skills
5 188 (8.27%) Banking
6 60 (2.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 45 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
8 38 (1.67%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.54%) Front Office
10 30 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
10 30 (1.32%) Telecoms
11 27 (1.19%) Military
12 24 (1.06%) Financial Institution
12 24 (1.06%) Retail
13 20 (0.88%) Aerospace
14 18 (0.79%) Manufacturing
15 17 (0.75%) Legal
15 17 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
16 16 (0.70%) Back Office
17 14 (0.62%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 469 (20.63%) Developer
2 363 (15.97%) Senior
3 246 (10.82%) Lead
4 236 (10.38%) Test Engineer
5 233 (10.25%) Tester
6 154 (6.78%) Data Engineer
6 154 (6.78%) Java Developer
7 120 (5.28%) Analyst
8 113 (4.97%) Software Engineer
9 110 (4.84%) DevOps Engineer
10 104 (4.58%) Architect
11 103 (4.53%) Test Automation Engineer
12 97 (4.27%) Senior Developer
13 91 (4.00%) QA Engineer
13 91 (4.00%) Test Leader
14 90 (3.96%) Automation Tester
15 76 (3.34%) Test Analyst
16 67 (2.95%) Full-Stack Developer
17 60 (2.64%) Automation Engineer
18 59 (2.60%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 281 (12.36%) REST
2 273 (12.01%) Playwright
3 207 (9.11%) React
4 186 (8.18%) Spring
5 184 (8.10%) RESTful
6 160 (7.04%) Kafka
7 152 (6.69%) .NET
8 151 (6.64%) Spring Boot
9 120 (5.28%) Node.js
10 93 (4.09%) AngularJS
11 86 (3.78%) HTML
12 76 (3.34%) CSS
13 63 (2.77%) OAuth
14 59 (2.60%) pytest
15 53 (2.33%) Jest
16 52 (2.29%) Swagger
17 49 (2.16%) JSON
18 47 (2.07%) Gherkin
19 42 (1.85%) HTML5
19 42 (1.85%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 302 (13.29%) Cloud Native
2 164 (7.22%) Product Ownership
3 135 (5.94%) Distributed Systems
4 78 (3.43%) Enterprise Software
5 63 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
6 55 (2.42%) Onboarding
7 53 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
8 48 (2.11%) Self-Motivation
9 46 (2.02%) Mobile App
10 45 (1.98%) Virtual Team
11 32 (1.41%) Distributed Architecture
12 29 (1.28%) AI Agents
12 29 (1.28%) Security Posture
13 27 (1.19%) Embedded Systems
14 26 (1.14%) Management Information System
14 26 (1.14%) NHS
15 21 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
16 20 (0.88%) Algorithms
16 20 (0.88%) Data Centre
16 20 (0.88%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 135 (5.94%) Linux
2 78 (3.43%) Windows
3 70 (3.08%) Unix
4 43 (1.89%) Android
5 41 (1.80%) Apple iOS
6 25 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 18 (0.79%) Windows Server
8 14 (0.62%) Mac OS X
9 11 (0.48%) Solaris
10 10 (0.44%) Mac OS
11 8 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
12 7 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
13 6 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.18%) Ubuntu
15 3 (0.13%) AIX
16 2 (0.088%) CentOS
17 1 (0.044%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,305 (57.41%) CI/CD
2 1,054 (46.37%) Agile
3 838 (36.87%) DevOps
4 413 (18.17%) Problem-Solving
5 394 (17.33%) Microservices
6 380 (16.72%) Continuous Improvement
7 357 (15.71%) Scrum
8 345 (15.18%) Test Strategy
9 341 (15.00%) Validation
10 340 (14.96%) Software Engineering
11 335 (14.74%) Infrastructure as Code
12 296 (13.02%) Containerisation
13 287 (12.63%) TDD
14 285 (12.54%) AI
15 278 (12.23%) Observability
16 234 (10.29%) End-to-End Testing
17 228 (10.03%) ETL
18 222 (9.77%) Data Pipeline
19 221 (9.72%) Software Testing
20 220 (9.68%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 587 (25.82%) Python
2 576 (25.34%) Java
3 521 (22.92%) SQL
4 300 (13.20%) JavaScript
5 254 (11.17%) TypeScript
6 207 (9.11%) C#
7 82 (3.61%) Bash
8 77 (3.39%) PowerShell
9 53 (2.33%) C++
10 51 (2.24%) Kotlin
11 38 (1.67%) PL/SQL
12 37 (1.63%) Bicep
13 34 (1.50%) Apex Code
13 34 (1.50%) C
14 33 (1.45%) Scala
15 32 (1.41%) Go
16 23 (1.01%) Ruby
16 23 (1.01%) Swift
17 19 (0.84%) Shell Script
18 16 (0.70%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 710 (31.24%) Security Cleared
2 593 (26.09%) SC Cleared
3 109 (4.80%) BPSS Clearance
4 108 (4.75%) Degree
5 102 (4.49%) ISTQB
6 74 (3.26%) DV Cleared
7 54 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
8 27 (1.19%) AWS Certification
8 27 (1.19%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 17 (0.75%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 17 (0.75%) Azure Certification
10 15 (0.66%) Master's Degree
11 12 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
12 11 (0.48%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.48%) SAFe Agilist
13 10 (0.44%) CCNP
14 9 (0.40%) CISSP
14 9 (0.40%) DBS Check
15 7 (0.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 526 (23.14%) QA
2 186 (8.18%) Accessibility
3 159 (7.00%) Data Quality
4 80 (3.52%) WCAG
5 41 (1.80%) GDPR
6 15 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 14 (0.62%) NCSC
8 12 (0.53%) SLA
9 11 (0.48%) ISO 20022
10 10 (0.44%) Def Stans
11 9 (0.40%) NIST
12 7 (0.31%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 6 (0.26%) PCI DSS
14 5 (0.22%) FATCA
14 5 (0.22%) GRC
14 5 (0.22%) SEPA
14 5 (0.22%) Software Quality Assurance
15 4 (0.18%) HL7
15 4 (0.18%) MiFID
16 3 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 405 (17.82%) Docker
2 31 (1.36%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (0.79%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.62%) Firmware
5 13 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.088%) SRDF
11 1 (0.044%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.044%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 405 (17.82%) Kubernetes
2 291 (12.80%) Terraform
3 118 (5.19%) Ansible
4 117 (5.15%) Grafana
5 96 (4.22%) Prometheus
6 37 (1.63%) Argo
7 23 (1.01%) HP ALM
8 16 (0.70%) Puppet
9 13 (0.57%) Kibana
10 12 (0.53%) HP Quality Center
11 11 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
12 10 (0.44%) Dell DRAC
13 8 (0.35%) Kustomize
13 8 (0.35%) NetBackup
13 8 (0.35%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.26%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.22%) Forefront Identity Manager
15 5 (0.22%) Istio
15 5 (0.22%) NetIQ Identity Manager
16 4 (0.18%) Packer
Vendors
1 203 (8.93%) Microsoft
2 182 (8.01%) Oracle
3 105 (4.62%) Salesforce
4 74 (3.26%) Databricks
5 65 (2.86%) Talend
6 64 (2.82%) Google
7 60 (2.64%) Splunk
8 59 (2.60%) Red Hat
9 49 (2.16%) ServiceNow
10 44 (1.94%) Denodo
11 39 (1.72%) IBM
12 38 (1.67%) Informatica
13 37 (1.63%) SAP
14 34 (1.50%) VMware
15 30 (1.32%) UiPath
16 29 (1.28%) Dynatrace
17 26 (1.14%) HP
17 26 (1.14%) MuleSoft
18 21 (0.92%) Cisco
19 14 (0.62%) Fortinet