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 11 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 49 52
Rank change year-on-year +3 +3 -3
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,114 1,320 1,545
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.24% 4.49% 3.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.00% 4.94% 4.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,363 934 1,018
10th Percentile £350 £319 £363
25th Percentile £402 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £494 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -3.71% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £658 £725 £723
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £463 £501
% change year-on-year - -7.68% -3.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 25 52
10th Percentile £36.19 £37.34 £51.25
25th Percentile £59.13 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% -8.33% -10.95%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £74.40 £77.38 £89.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +22.73% -8.33% -5.42%

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 42,291 26,731 37,187
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.76% 91.01% 85.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,385 16,984 23,772
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £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 2,541 1,182 2,587
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.28 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.14% -25.26% +1.39%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £61.16
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +8.91%

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 11 June 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 11 June 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 11 June 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 1,807 £475 -3.06% 586
UK excluding London +4 1,036 £463 - 461
London +1 832 £500 -1.48% 192
Work from Home -4 599 £475 - 306
North of England +8 366 £463 +3.47% 123
Midlands +7 223 £450 +9.09% 67
West Midlands +32 201 £459 -4.97% 44
South East -31 189 £475 -5.00% 126
Yorkshire +1 155 £500 +5.26% 31
North West +2 148 £475 +12.16% 68
South West +26 103 £463 -2.63% 51
East of England +20 82 £495 +7.90% 67
North East +3 71 £425 +6.25% 25
Scotland -32 52 £440 -9.65% 22
Wales +1 32 £475 +18.75% 10
East Midlands -45 22 £409 +48.64% 23
Northern Ireland +23 21 £475 +16.28% 9
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
1 175 (8.28%) Confluence
2 48 (2.27%) SAS
3 44 (2.08%) Apache Spark
4 43 (2.03%) Apache Airflow
5 17 (0.80%) Apache
6 13 (0.61%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.57%) CMS
8 9 (0.43%) Appian
9 8 (0.38%) Camunda
9 8 (0.38%) nginx
9 8 (0.38%) Tomcat
10 5 (0.24%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.19%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.14%) Jupyter
12 3 (0.14%) Kentico
12 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.095%) Mendix
13 2 (0.095%) Mule
Applications
1 29 (1.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
4 10 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.14%) Simulink
7 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.047%) Mingle
7 1 (0.047%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 18 (0.85%) Aladdin
1 18 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
2 12 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
3 9 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
3 9 (0.43%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.38%) Findur
5 6 (0.28%) SAP ERP
5 6 (0.28%) Shopify
6 5 (0.24%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.24%) Loan IQ
6 5 (0.24%) SAP MDG
7 4 (0.19%) Infor CloudSuite
7 4 (0.19%) Infor LN
7 4 (0.19%) Infor M3
8 3 (0.14%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.14%) Maximo
8 3 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.14%) Workday HCM
9 2 (0.095%) iTrent
9 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 611 (28.90%) Azure
2 608 (28.76%) AWS
3 356 (16.84%) GitHub
4 276 (13.06%) Azure DevOps
5 210 (9.93%) GitHub Actions
6 166 (7.85%) GCP
7 145 (6.86%) Serverless
8 97 (4.59%) AWS Lambda
9 89 (4.21%) Power Platform
10 88 (4.16%) Amazon S3
11 61 (2.89%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 59 (2.79%) OpenShift
13 58 (2.74%) Amazon ECS
14 46 (2.18%) AWS CloudFormation
15 44 (2.08%) Azure Data Factory
16 42 (1.99%) Amazon EC2
17 41 (1.94%) Amazon EKS
18 39 (1.84%) Snowflake
19 34 (1.61%) dbt
20 29 (1.37%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.14%) HTTP
2 22 (1.04%) Firewall
3 16 (0.76%) SAN
4 11 (0.52%) Network Security
5 10 (0.47%) TCP/IP
5 10 (0.47%) VPN
6 9 (0.43%) MPLS
6 9 (0.43%) WAN
7 7 (0.33%) Wireshark
8 6 (0.28%) BGP
8 6 (0.28%) Ethernet
8 6 (0.28%) SSL
8 6 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (0.24%) 5G
9 5 (0.24%) Multicast
9 5 (0.24%) VLAN
10 4 (0.19%) 4G
10 4 (0.19%) NAS
10 4 (0.19%) Reverse Proxy
10 4 (0.19%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 119 (5.63%) PostgreSQL
2 106 (5.01%) MongoDB
3 92 (4.35%) Data Warehouse
3 92 (4.35%) NoSQL
4 87 (4.12%) SQL Server
5 69 (3.26%) Relational Database
6 65 (3.07%) Power BI
7 48 (2.27%) DynamoDB
8 41 (1.94%) Metadata
9 37 (1.75%) Oracle Reports
10 36 (1.70%) Big Data
11 35 (1.66%) Pentaho
12 31 (1.47%) MySQL
13 28 (1.32%) Amazon Athena
13 28 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
14 26 (1.23%) Data Lake
15 25 (1.18%) Redis
15 25 (1.18%) Tableau
16 23 (1.09%) BigQuery
17 22 (1.04%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 409 (19.35%) JIRA
2 374 (17.69%) Git
3 350 (16.56%) Jenkins
4 303 (14.33%) GitLab
5 286 (13.53%) Selenium
6 174 (8.23%) Postman
7 153 (7.24%) Cucumber
8 123 (5.82%) REST Assured
9 103 (4.87%) JUnit
10 102 (4.82%) JMeter
11 100 (4.73%) Cypress.io
12 64 (3.03%) WebDriver
13 59 (2.79%) Zephyr
14 53 (2.51%) SonarQube
15 47 (2.22%) Gatling
16 41 (1.94%) Gradle
17 36 (1.70%) Mockito
18 33 (1.56%) Bitbucket
19 31 (1.47%) Maven
19 31 (1.47%) SpecFlow
General
1 562 (26.58%) Social Skills
2 358 (16.93%) Finance
3 292 (13.81%) Public Sector
4 256 (12.11%) Analytical Skills
5 172 (8.14%) Banking
6 48 (2.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 44 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
8 39 (1.84%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.66%) Front Office
10 27 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
11 24 (1.14%) Telecoms
12 22 (1.04%) Military
13 18 (0.85%) Aerospace
13 18 (0.85%) Legal
14 17 (0.80%) Financial Institution
14 17 (0.80%) Manufacturing
14 17 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
14 17 (0.80%) Retail
15 14 (0.66%) Marketing
15 14 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 423 (20.01%) Developer
2 326 (15.42%) Senior
3 240 (11.35%) Test Engineer
4 233 (11.02%) Lead
5 223 (10.55%) Tester
6 128 (6.05%) Data Engineer
7 121 (5.72%) Java Developer
8 112 (5.30%) Analyst
9 104 (4.92%) Software Engineer
10 102 (4.82%) Test Automation Engineer
11 97 (4.59%) Architect
12 94 (4.45%) DevOps Engineer
13 90 (4.26%) Automation Tester
14 87 (4.12%) Test Leader
15 85 (4.02%) QA Engineer
16 80 (3.78%) Senior Developer
17 68 (3.22%) Test Analyst
18 60 (2.84%) Full-Stack Developer
18 60 (2.84%) Test Manager
19 56 (2.65%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (11.83%) Playwright
2 249 (11.78%) REST
3 189 (8.94%) React
4 162 (7.66%) RESTful
5 151 (7.14%) Spring
6 146 (6.91%) Kafka
7 140 (6.62%) .NET
8 126 (5.96%) Spring Boot
9 117 (5.53%) Node.js
10 83 (3.93%) AngularJS
11 74 (3.50%) HTML
12 67 (3.17%) pytest
13 62 (2.93%) CSS
14 58 (2.74%) OAuth
15 49 (2.32%) Jest
16 47 (2.22%) Swagger
17 44 (2.08%) OpenID
18 42 (1.99%) JSON
19 41 (1.94%) Gherkin
20 39 (1.84%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 242 (11.45%) Cloud Native
2 158 (7.47%) Product Ownership
3 118 (5.58%) Distributed Systems
4 58 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
5 55 (2.60%) Data Protection Act
6 53 (2.51%) Enterprise Software
7 46 (2.18%) Mobile App
8 42 (1.99%) Self-Motivation
9 40 (1.89%) Virtual Team
10 36 (1.70%) Onboarding
11 33 (1.56%) Distributed Architecture
12 31 (1.47%) NHS
13 24 (1.14%) Algorithms
14 23 (1.09%) Management Information System
15 22 (1.04%) Data Centre
15 22 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
16 20 (0.95%) Embedded Systems
16 20 (0.95%) Fixed Income
16 20 (0.95%) Security Posture
17 19 (0.90%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 130 (6.15%) Linux
2 82 (3.88%) Windows
3 60 (2.84%) Unix
4 45 (2.13%) Android
5 40 (1.89%) Apple iOS
6 21 (0.99%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.57%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.47%) Solaris
10 9 (0.43%) Mac OS
11 8 (0.38%) Windows Server 2008
12 7 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.19%) Embedded Linux
15 3 (0.14%) AIX
16 2 (0.095%) CentOS
16 2 (0.095%) Kali Linux
17 1 (0.047%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,152 (54.49%) CI/CD
2 975 (46.12%) Agile
3 745 (35.24%) DevOps
4 381 (18.02%) Problem-Solving
5 343 (16.23%) Microservices
6 336 (15.89%) Continuous Improvement
7 324 (15.33%) Test Strategy
8 319 (15.09%) Scrum
9 303 (14.33%) Validation
10 288 (13.62%) Software Engineering
11 284 (13.43%) Infrastructure as Code
12 260 (12.30%) Containerisation
13 259 (12.25%) Observability
14 246 (11.64%) TDD
15 240 (11.35%) AI
16 217 (10.26%) ETL
17 208 (9.84%) API Testing
17 208 (9.84%) End-to-End Testing
17 208 (9.84%) User Acceptance Testing
18 203 (9.60%) Test Scripting
Programming Languages
1 545 (25.78%) Python
2 534 (25.26%) Java
3 488 (23.08%) SQL
4 284 (13.43%) JavaScript
5 242 (11.45%) TypeScript
6 204 (9.65%) C#
7 75 (3.55%) PowerShell
8 71 (3.36%) Bash
9 54 (2.55%) C++
10 48 (2.27%) Kotlin
11 39 (1.84%) PL/SQL
12 36 (1.70%) Scala
13 31 (1.47%) C
14 29 (1.37%) Go
15 28 (1.32%) Apex Code
15 28 (1.32%) Bicep
16 21 (0.99%) Swift
17 20 (0.95%) Ruby
18 17 (0.80%) Groovy
19 14 (0.66%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 660 (31.22%) Security Cleared
2 538 (25.45%) SC Cleared
3 101 (4.78%) ISTQB
4 99 (4.68%) BPSS Clearance
5 85 (4.02%) Degree
6 75 (3.55%) DV Cleared
7 42 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
8 24 (1.14%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 15 (0.71%) AWS Certification
9 15 (0.71%) Master's Degree
10 14 (0.66%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 13 (0.61%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 13 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
12 11 (0.52%) CCNP
12 11 (0.52%) SAFe Agilist
13 9 (0.43%) Azure Certification
13 9 (0.43%) DBS Check
14 8 (0.38%) CISSP
15 5 (0.24%) CCIE
15 5 (0.24%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 460 (21.76%) QA
2 159 (7.52%) Accessibility
3 136 (6.43%) Data Quality
4 68 (3.22%) WCAG
5 35 (1.66%) GDPR
6 15 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.71%) SLA
7 12 (0.57%) ISO 20022
7 12 (0.57%) NCSC
8 10 (0.47%) Def Stans
8 10 (0.47%) NIST
9 7 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 6 (0.28%) PCI DSS
10 6 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 5 (0.24%) FATCA
11 5 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
12 4 (0.19%) HL7
12 4 (0.19%) SEPA
13 3 (0.14%) HIPAA
13 3 (0.14%) MiFID
System Software
1 357 (16.89%) Docker
2 30 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (0.99%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.66%) Firmware
5 13 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.33%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
9 4 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.095%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.095%) SRDF
11 1 (0.047%) KVM
11 1 (0.047%) Squid
11 1 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.047%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 352 (16.65%) Kubernetes
2 252 (11.92%) Terraform
3 106 (5.01%) Grafana
4 99 (4.68%) Ansible
5 93 (4.40%) Prometheus
6 34 (1.61%) Argo
7 19 (0.90%) HP ALM
8 14 (0.66%) Puppet
9 13 (0.61%) Kibana
10 12 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.47%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.47%) HP Quality Center
12 8 (0.38%) Kustomize
12 8 (0.38%) NetBackup
13 7 (0.33%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 7 (0.33%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 6 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.24%) Progress Chef
16 4 (0.19%) Istio
16 4 (0.19%) Rancher
Vendors
1 174 (8.23%) Microsoft
1 174 (8.23%) Oracle
2 90 (4.26%) Salesforce
3 68 (3.22%) Databricks
4 64 (3.03%) ServiceNow
4 64 (3.03%) Talend
5 61 (2.89%) Google
6 57 (2.70%) Red Hat
7 56 (2.65%) Splunk
8 46 (2.18%) Denodo
9 35 (1.66%) SAP
9 35 (1.66%) VMware
10 33 (1.56%) IBM
11 28 (1.32%) UiPath
12 27 (1.28%) Dynatrace
13 26 (1.23%) Informatica
14 22 (1.04%) HP
15 21 (0.99%) Cisco
16 20 (0.95%) MuleSoft
17 16 (0.76%) Blue Prism