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 24 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 46 52
Rank change year-on-year -1 +6 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,935 1,351 1,566
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.42% 4.64% 3.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.14% 5.12% 4.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,305 937 1,056
10th Percentile £331 £330 £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 £638 £638
90th Percentile £675 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £484
% change year-on-year -0.47% -1.39% -7.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 7 60
10th Percentile £26.53 £38.81 £44.25
25th Percentile £51.88 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -7.35% +2.08%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.01 £81.56
90th Percentile - £76.18 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +4.17%

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 37,633 26,370 38,295
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.88% 90.52% 86.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,862 17,096 24,871
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.28% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,214 936 2,338
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.20 £12.85
25th Percentile £18.50 £20.75 £16.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.47%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.50 £57.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.35 £71.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.61 £31.76 £31.25
% change year-on-year -6.77% +1.63% -13.19%

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 24 March 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 24 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 17 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 24 March 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 1,658 £488 -2.50% 671
UK excluding London -3 883 £475 -0.47% 569
London -1 824 £500 -0.50% 181
Work from Home -6 557 £475 -5.00% 321
North of England +2 319 £487 +9.44% 162
Midlands +14 190 £474 -0.73% 78
South East -29 167 £500 -13.04% 152
West Midlands +15 161 £478 -3.87% 51
North West +9 149 £463 +2.78% 84
Yorkshire -16 136 £509 +7.11% 42
South West -6 80 £500 -4.76% 73
East of England +1 57 £585 +22.19% 65
Scotland -20 40 £425 -5.56% 28
North East 0 37 £425 +11.67% 36
Wales +2 32 £509 +27.25% 24
East Midlands -23 29 £400 +8.11% 27
Northern Ireland +15 22 £475 -2.56% 6

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
1 135 (6.98%) Confluence
2 59 (3.05%) SAS
3 33 (1.71%) Apache Spark
4 18 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.67%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.57%) Apache
7 8 (0.41%) Appian
8 6 (0.31%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.31%) nginx
8 6 (0.31%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.26%) CMS
9 5 (0.26%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.21%) Camunda
10 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.21%) Oracle Application Server
11 3 (0.16%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.10%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 27 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.62%) MS Visio
4 11 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.16%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.10%) Simulink
8 1 (0.052%) Mingle
8 1 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 24 (1.24%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
3 6 (0.31%) Findur
3 6 (0.31%) Loan IQ
4 5 (0.26%) Maximo
4 5 (0.26%) Shopify
4 5 (0.26%) Workday HCM
5 4 (0.21%) SAP HR
6 3 (0.16%) BambooHR
6 3 (0.16%) Infor CloudSuite
6 3 (0.16%) Infor LN
6 3 (0.16%) Infor M3
6 3 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
6 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
7 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
7 2 (0.10%) iTrent
7 2 (0.10%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.10%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 570 (29.46%) Azure
2 503 (25.99%) AWS
3 350 (18.09%) GitHub
4 267 (13.80%) Azure DevOps
5 192 (9.92%) GitHub Actions
6 181 (9.35%) GCP
7 139 (7.18%) Serverless
8 80 (4.13%) Power Platform
9 72 (3.72%) AWS Lambda
10 70 (3.62%) Amazon S3
10 70 (3.62%) OpenShift
11 50 (2.58%) AWS CloudFormation
12 47 (2.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 43 (2.22%) Snowflake
14 42 (2.17%) Azure AKS
15 40 (2.07%) Amazon ECS
16 35 (1.81%) SaaS
17 34 (1.76%) Amazon EKS
17 34 (1.76%) Azure Data Factory
17 34 (1.76%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.40%) Firewall
2 24 (1.24%) HTTP
3 17 (0.88%) TCP/IP
3 17 (0.88%) VPN
4 14 (0.72%) SSL
5 13 (0.67%) Network Security
5 13 (0.67%) SD-WAN
5 13 (0.67%) WAN
5 13 (0.67%) Wireshark
6 10 (0.52%) DNS
6 10 (0.52%) FTP
6 10 (0.52%) HTTPS
7 8 (0.41%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.41%) MPLS
7 8 (0.41%) Multicast
7 8 (0.41%) SAN
8 5 (0.26%) AMQP
8 5 (0.26%) Cisco IPT
8 5 (0.26%) VLAN
9 4 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (5.79%) PostgreSQL
2 89 (4.60%) NoSQL
3 76 (3.93%) SQL Server
4 75 (3.88%) MongoDB
5 60 (3.10%) Relational Database
6 53 (2.74%) Data Warehouse
7 47 (2.43%) Power BI
8 39 (2.02%) DynamoDB
9 31 (1.60%) MySQL
10 30 (1.55%) BigQuery
11 29 (1.50%) Pentaho
12 25 (1.29%) Oracle Database
13 23 (1.19%) Tableau
14 22 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
15 21 (1.09%) Redis
16 20 (1.03%) Metadata
17 19 (0.98%) Amazon Athena
17 19 (0.98%) Big Data
18 18 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
18 18 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 368 (19.02%) JIRA
2 366 (18.91%) Git
3 356 (18.40%) Jenkins
4 286 (14.78%) Selenium
5 284 (14.68%) GitLab
6 170 (8.79%) Cucumber
7 153 (7.91%) Postman
8 115 (5.94%) JUnit
9 108 (5.58%) Cypress.io
10 104 (5.37%) JMeter
11 98 (5.06%) REST Assured
12 52 (2.69%) WebDriver
13 41 (2.12%) SpecFlow
14 38 (1.96%) Zephyr
15 37 (1.91%) Gatling
16 35 (1.81%) SonarQube
16 35 (1.81%) TestRail
17 34 (1.76%) Maven
18 32 (1.65%) Bitbucket
18 32 (1.65%) Mockito
General
1 519 (26.82%) Social Skills
2 330 (17.05%) Finance
3 284 (14.68%) Public Sector
4 207 (10.70%) Analytical Skills
5 154 (7.96%) Banking
6 35 (1.81%) Documentation Skills
7 32 (1.65%) Investment Banking
8 29 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 28 (1.45%) Front Office
10 22 (1.14%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
12 19 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
13 17 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
13 17 (0.88%) Military
13 17 (0.88%) Pharmaceutical
14 16 (0.83%) Legal
15 15 (0.78%) Aerospace
16 14 (0.72%) Financial Institution
17 10 (0.52%) Electronics
18 9 (0.47%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 408 (21.09%) Developer
2 324 (16.74%) Senior
3 221 (11.42%) Tester
4 214 (11.06%) Lead
5 212 (10.96%) Test Engineer
6 117 (6.05%) Automation Tester
7 97 (5.01%) Analyst
7 97 (5.01%) Java Developer
8 96 (4.96%) Data Engineer
9 92 (4.75%) Test Automation Engineer
10 84 (4.34%) Test Leader
11 82 (4.24%) QA Engineer
12 80 (4.13%) Software Engineer
13 75 (3.88%) Senior Developer
14 74 (3.82%) DevOps Engineer
15 70 (3.62%) Architect
16 65 (3.36%) Test Manager
17 63 (3.26%) Test Analyst
18 59 (3.05%) Automation Engineer
19 49 (2.53%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 247 (12.76%) REST
2 235 (12.14%) Playwright
3 166 (8.58%) React
4 151 (7.80%) RESTful
5 147 (7.60%) Node.js
6 145 (7.49%) Spring
7 139 (7.18%) .NET
8 129 (6.67%) Kafka
9 116 (5.99%) Spring Boot
10 88 (4.55%) pytest
11 72 (3.72%) AngularJS
12 64 (3.31%) HTML
13 62 (3.20%) OAuth
14 56 (2.89%) Jest
15 53 (2.74%) CSS
16 52 (2.69%) Web Services
17 45 (2.33%) JSON
18 42 (2.17%) GraphQL
19 41 (2.12%) OpenID
20 40 (2.07%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 203 (10.49%) Cloud Native
2 137 (7.08%) Product Ownership
3 96 (4.96%) Distributed Systems
4 49 (2.53%) Mobile App
5 47 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
6 44 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
7 42 (2.17%) Algorithms
8 36 (1.86%) Onboarding
9 33 (1.71%) Virtual Team
10 30 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
11 26 (1.34%) NHS
11 26 (1.34%) Security Posture
11 26 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
12 24 (1.24%) Equities
13 23 (1.19%) Data Structures
13 23 (1.19%) Greenfield Project
14 21 (1.09%) Derivative
14 21 (1.09%) Management Information System
15 20 (1.03%) Distributed Architecture
15 20 (1.03%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 135 (6.98%) Linux
2 87 (4.50%) Windows
3 46 (2.38%) Android
4 39 (2.02%) Apple iOS
5 33 (1.71%) Unix
6 21 (1.09%) Windows Server
7 17 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (0.57%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.47%) Kali Linux
10 8 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.31%) Solaris
12 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
12 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.21%) CentOS
14 3 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
15 2 (0.10%) Windows 10
16 1 (0.052%) FreeRTOS
16 1 (0.052%) Robot Operating System
16 1 (0.052%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,027 (53.07%) CI/CD
2 907 (46.87%) Agile
3 731 (37.78%) DevOps
4 434 (22.43%) Problem-Solving
5 315 (16.28%) Continuous Improvement
6 305 (15.76%) Test Strategy
7 294 (15.19%) Microservices
8 269 (13.90%) Containerisation
8 269 (13.90%) Scrum
9 251 (12.97%) Validation
10 243 (12.56%) Infrastructure as Code
11 234 (12.09%) AI
12 223 (11.52%) Software Engineering
13 219 (11.32%) Test Scripting
14 218 (11.27%) Analytics
15 215 (11.11%) Observability
16 213 (11.01%) TDD
17 207 (10.70%) Regression Testing
18 194 (10.03%) SDLC
19 191 (9.87%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 602 (31.11%) Python
2 463 (23.93%) Java
3 409 (21.14%) SQL
4 291 (15.04%) JavaScript
5 270 (13.95%) TypeScript
6 206 (10.65%) C#
7 83 (4.29%) PowerShell
8 80 (4.13%) Bash
9 50 (2.58%) C++
10 31 (1.60%) Kotlin
11 30 (1.55%) C
12 29 (1.50%) Go
13 27 (1.40%) Ruby
14 26 (1.34%) Bicep
14 26 (1.34%) PL/SQL
15 24 (1.24%) Scala
16 22 (1.14%) Apex Code
17 18 (0.93%) Swift
18 17 (0.88%) Groovy
19 15 (0.78%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 558 (28.84%) Security Cleared
2 428 (22.12%) SC Cleared
3 99 (5.12%) Degree
4 95 (4.91%) ISTQB
5 77 (3.98%) BPSS Clearance
6 58 (3.00%) Computer Science Degree
7 57 (2.95%) DV Cleared
8 35 (1.81%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 24 (1.24%) Master's Degree
10 14 (0.72%) AWS Certification
10 14 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
11 13 (0.67%) Azure Certification
12 12 (0.62%) OSCP
13 11 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
14 10 (0.52%) CEH
14 10 (0.52%) CISSP
14 10 (0.52%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 9 (0.47%) CCNP
15 9 (0.47%) ISEB
16 8 (0.41%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 441 (22.79%) QA
2 147 (7.60%) Accessibility
3 110 (5.68%) Data Quality
4 52 (2.69%) WCAG
5 40 (2.07%) GDPR
6 29 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 23 (1.19%) NIST
8 16 (0.83%) NCSC
8 16 (0.83%) SLA
9 14 (0.72%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 11 (0.57%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.52%) Def Stans
11 10 (0.52%) EU AI Act
11 10 (0.52%) ISO 20022
11 10 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.41%) PSD2
13 6 (0.31%) HIPAA
13 6 (0.31%) SEPA
13 6 (0.31%) SOC 2
14 5 (0.26%) MiFID
System Software
1 380 (19.64%) Docker
2 30 (1.55%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.57%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.41%) Firmware
4 8 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
5 7 (0.36%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 5 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.16%) ISA Server
9 2 (0.10%) SRDF
10 1 (0.052%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.052%) HDFS
10 1 (0.052%) KVM
10 1 (0.052%) Squid
10 1 (0.052%) Time Sharing Option
10 1 (0.052%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.052%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 356 (18.40%) Kubernetes
2 222 (11.47%) Terraform
3 115 (5.94%) Grafana
4 100 (5.17%) Ansible
5 87 (4.50%) Prometheus
6 25 (1.29%) HP ALM
7 22 (1.14%) Puppet
8 21 (1.09%) Argo
9 16 (0.83%) Progress Chef
10 15 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
11 13 (0.67%) NetBackup
12 12 (0.62%) Nmap
13 10 (0.52%) HP Quality Center
14 9 (0.47%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 9 (0.47%) NetIQ Identity Manager
15 7 (0.36%) Kibana
15 7 (0.36%) Podman
16 6 (0.31%) Rancher
17 4 (0.21%) Dell DRAC
17 4 (0.21%) Istio
Vendors
1 170 (8.79%) Microsoft
2 147 (7.60%) Oracle
3 75 (3.88%) Databricks
4 68 (3.51%) Salesforce
5 65 (3.36%) Google
6 59 (3.05%) ServiceNow
6 59 (3.05%) Splunk
7 51 (2.64%) SAP
8 43 (2.22%) Red Hat
9 33 (1.71%) Talend
10 28 (1.45%) HP
11 27 (1.40%) VMware
12 26 (1.34%) IBM
13 25 (1.29%) Denodo
14 23 (1.19%) Cisco
15 20 (1.03%) Dynatrace
16 16 (0.83%) MuleSoft
16 16 (0.83%) Workday
17 15 (0.78%) UiPath
18 14 (0.72%) OpenAI