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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 48 51
Rank change year-on-year +2 +3 -1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,134 1,327 1,555
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.24% 4.47% 3.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.00% 4.91% 4.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,388 937 1,020
10th Percentile £337 £320 £363
25th Percentile £403 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £493 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.65% -3.80% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £725 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £464 £501
% change year-on-year -0.81% -7.44% -3.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 26 54
10th Percentile £36.19 £37.92 £50.38
25th Percentile £59.63 £44.95 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.57% -8.70% -12.88%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.50 £72.34
90th Percentile £74.40 £77.35 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +28.57% -8.70% -9.36%

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 42,679 27,009 37,072
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.81% 91.00% 85.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,607 17,137 23,609
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 2,567 1,242 2,598
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.87 £16.03
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.27 £37.34
Median % change year-on-year +67.37% -29.66% +6.69%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +76.94% -34.02% +17.29%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 +3 1,822 £475 -3.06% 1,156
UK excluding London +1 1,052 £460 -0.81% 1,191
London +5 830 £500 -1.48% 255
Work from Home 0 609 £475 - 1,002
North of England +12 366 £455 +1.79% 249
Midlands +10 228 £450 +7.46% 135
West Midlands +31 209 £450 -10.00% 68
South East -27 192 £481 -3.75% 301
North West +3 149 £475 +15.29% 117
Yorkshire +3 146 £500 +5.26% 82
South West +15 105 £450 -5.26% 106
East of England +18 84 £495 +10.00% 162
North East +5 79 £425 +6.25% 51
Scotland -29 56 £440 -9.04% 127
Wales 0 32 £475 +16.92% 60
Northern Ireland +22 21 £475 +16.28% 71
East Midlands -41 19 £418 +54.63% 67
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
1 184 (8.62%) Confluence
2 48 (2.25%) SAS
3 45 (2.11%) Apache Spark
4 44 (2.06%) Apache Airflow
5 18 (0.84%) Apache
6 14 (0.66%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.56%) CMS
8 9 (0.42%) Appian
9 8 (0.37%) Camunda
9 8 (0.37%) nginx
9 8 (0.37%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.19%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.19%) Jupyter
12 3 (0.14%) Kentico
12 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.094%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.094%) Mendix
13 2 (0.094%) Mule
Applications
1 31 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
4 10 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.14%) Simulink
7 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.047%) Mingle
7 1 (0.047%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.84%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 10 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.37%) Findur
7 6 (0.28%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.28%) Shopify
8 5 (0.23%) BambooHR
8 5 (0.23%) Loan IQ
8 5 (0.23%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.19%) Infor CloudSuite
9 4 (0.19%) Infor LN
9 4 (0.19%) Infor M3
10 3 (0.14%) Distributed Ledger
10 3 (0.14%) Maximo
10 3 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
10 3 (0.14%) Workday HCM
11 2 (0.094%) iTrent
11 2 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 618 (28.96%) Azure
2 611 (28.63%) AWS
3 357 (16.73%) GitHub
4 280 (13.12%) Azure DevOps
5 216 (10.12%) GitHub Actions
6 158 (7.40%) GCP
7 152 (7.12%) Serverless
8 102 (4.78%) AWS Lambda
9 93 (4.36%) Amazon S3
9 93 (4.36%) Power Platform
10 68 (3.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 63 (2.95%) OpenShift
12 59 (2.76%) Amazon ECS
13 49 (2.30%) Amazon EC2
14 45 (2.11%) AWS CloudFormation
14 45 (2.11%) Azure Data Factory
15 41 (1.92%) Amazon EKS
16 40 (1.87%) dbt
16 40 (1.87%) Snowflake
17 30 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.17%) HTTP
2 21 (0.98%) Firewall
3 16 (0.75%) SAN
4 12 (0.56%) Network Security
5 11 (0.52%) WAN
6 10 (0.47%) VPN
7 9 (0.42%) MPLS
7 9 (0.42%) TCP/IP
8 7 (0.33%) BGP
8 7 (0.33%) Wireshark
9 6 (0.28%) Ethernet
9 6 (0.28%) LAN
9 6 (0.28%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.28%) VLAN
9 6 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
10 5 (0.23%) 5G
10 5 (0.23%) Multicast
11 4 (0.19%) Ethernet VPN
11 4 (0.19%) NAS
11 4 (0.19%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (5.53%) PostgreSQL
2 108 (5.06%) MongoDB
3 98 (4.59%) Data Warehouse
4 93 (4.36%) NoSQL
5 78 (3.66%) SQL Server
6 73 (3.42%) Relational Database
7 68 (3.19%) Power BI
8 47 (2.20%) DynamoDB
9 41 (1.92%) Metadata
10 37 (1.73%) Oracle Reports
11 36 (1.69%) Big Data
11 36 (1.69%) Pentaho
12 34 (1.59%) Amazon Athena
13 28 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
13 28 (1.31%) Amazon Redshift
13 28 (1.31%) MySQL
14 26 (1.22%) Data Lake
14 26 (1.22%) Redis
15 23 (1.08%) Tableau
16 22 (1.03%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 410 (19.21%) JIRA
2 387 (18.13%) Git
3 349 (16.35%) Jenkins
4 313 (14.67%) GitLab
5 278 (13.03%) Selenium
6 171 (8.01%) Postman
7 152 (7.12%) Cucumber
8 116 (5.44%) REST Assured
9 107 (5.01%) JUnit
10 105 (4.92%) JMeter
11 104 (4.87%) Cypress.io
12 63 (2.95%) WebDriver
13 59 (2.76%) Zephyr
14 57 (2.67%) SonarQube
15 48 (2.25%) Gatling
16 45 (2.11%) Gradle
17 38 (1.78%) Mockito
18 35 (1.64%) Bitbucket
19 33 (1.55%) Maven
20 31 (1.45%) SpecFlow
General
1 568 (26.62%) Social Skills
2 370 (17.34%) Finance
3 304 (14.25%) Public Sector
4 262 (12.28%) Analytical Skills
5 175 (8.20%) Banking
6 52 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 45 (2.11%) Documentation Skills
8 38 (1.78%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.64%) Front Office
10 27 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
11 26 (1.22%) Telecoms
12 23 (1.08%) Military
13 21 (0.98%) Financial Institution
14 19 (0.89%) Retail
15 17 (0.80%) Aerospace
15 17 (0.80%) Legal
15 17 (0.80%) Manufacturing
15 17 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
16 14 (0.66%) Marketing
17 13 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 432 (20.24%) Developer
2 338 (15.84%) Senior
3 236 (11.06%) Test Engineer
4 228 (10.68%) Lead
5 227 (10.64%) Tester
6 140 (6.56%) Data Engineer
7 130 (6.09%) Java Developer
8 112 (5.25%) Analyst
9 107 (5.01%) Software Engineer
10 101 (4.73%) DevOps Engineer
11 97 (4.55%) Architect
12 94 (4.40%) Test Automation Engineer
13 91 (4.26%) Automation Tester
14 83 (3.89%) Test Leader
15 82 (3.84%) Senior Developer
16 80 (3.75%) QA Engineer
17 69 (3.23%) Test Analyst
18 58 (2.72%) Automation Engineer
19 57 (2.67%) Full-Stack Developer
19 57 (2.67%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 252 (11.81%) REST
2 250 (11.72%) Playwright
3 195 (9.14%) React
4 165 (7.73%) RESTful
5 159 (7.45%) Spring
6 150 (7.03%) Kafka
7 131 (6.14%) Spring Boot
8 129 (6.04%) .NET
9 116 (5.44%) Node.js
10 86 (4.03%) AngularJS
11 72 (3.37%) HTML
12 63 (2.95%) CSS
12 63 (2.95%) pytest
13 60 (2.81%) OAuth
14 51 (2.39%) Jest
15 47 (2.20%) Swagger
16 43 (2.01%) Gherkin
16 43 (2.01%) JSON
17 39 (1.83%) OAuth2
18 38 (1.78%) Quarkus
Miscellaneous
1 249 (11.67%) Cloud Native
2 160 (7.50%) Product Ownership
3 124 (5.81%) Distributed Systems
4 60 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
5 58 (2.72%) Enterprise Software
6 56 (2.62%) Data Protection Act
7 46 (2.16%) Mobile App
8 43 (2.01%) Self-Motivation
9 42 (1.97%) Virtual Team
10 41 (1.92%) Onboarding
11 33 (1.55%) Distributed Architecture
12 28 (1.31%) NHS
13 24 (1.12%) Management Information System
14 23 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
15 22 (1.03%) Algorithms
15 22 (1.03%) Data Centre
15 22 (1.03%) Security Posture
16 21 (0.98%) Embedded Systems
17 20 (0.94%) AI Agents
18 19 (0.89%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 127 (5.95%) Linux
2 82 (3.84%) Windows
3 60 (2.81%) Unix
4 44 (2.06%) Android
5 41 (1.92%) Apple iOS
6 21 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 20 (0.94%) Windows Server
8 12 (0.56%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.47%) Solaris
10 9 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 8 (0.37%) 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 (0.094%) CentOS
16 2 (0.094%) Kali Linux
16 2 (0.094%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,171 (54.87%) CI/CD
2 997 (46.72%) Agile
3 761 (35.66%) DevOps
4 384 (17.99%) Problem-Solving
5 348 (16.31%) Microservices
6 345 (16.17%) Continuous Improvement
7 322 (15.09%) Scrum
8 321 (15.04%) Test Strategy
9 312 (14.62%) Validation
10 300 (14.06%) Software Engineering
11 298 (13.96%) Infrastructure as Code
12 266 (12.46%) Containerisation
13 265 (12.42%) Observability
14 248 (11.62%) AI
15 240 (11.25%) TDD
16 212 (9.93%) End-to-End Testing
17 211 (9.89%) ETL
18 209 (9.79%) User Acceptance Testing
19 203 (9.51%) API Testing
20 201 (9.42%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 552 (25.87%) Python
2 531 (24.88%) Java
3 490 (22.96%) SQL
4 283 (13.26%) JavaScript
5 245 (11.48%) TypeScript
6 202 (9.47%) C#
7 75 (3.51%) PowerShell
8 73 (3.42%) Bash
9 52 (2.44%) C++
10 48 (2.25%) Kotlin
11 39 (1.83%) PL/SQL
12 36 (1.69%) Scala
13 33 (1.55%) Apex Code
14 31 (1.45%) C
14 31 (1.45%) Go
15 30 (1.41%) Bicep
16 22 (1.03%) Swift
17 20 (0.94%) Ruby
18 17 (0.80%) Groovy
19 14 (0.66%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 678 (31.77%) Security Cleared
2 556 (26.05%) SC Cleared
3 102 (4.78%) ISTQB
4 97 (4.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 87 (4.08%) Degree
6 75 (3.51%) DV Cleared
7 42 (1.97%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (1.17%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 19 (0.89%) AWS Certification
10 17 (0.80%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 16 (0.75%) Master's Degree
12 14 (0.66%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 13 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
14 11 (0.52%) CCNP
14 11 (0.52%) SAFe Agilist
15 9 (0.42%) Azure Certification
15 9 (0.42%) DBS Check
16 7 (0.33%) CISSP
17 5 (0.23%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 5 (0.23%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 463 (21.70%) QA
2 169 (7.92%) Accessibility
3 145 (6.79%) Data Quality
4 74 (3.47%) WCAG
5 36 (1.69%) GDPR
6 15 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.70%) SLA
7 13 (0.61%) ISO 20022
7 13 (0.61%) 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
11 5 (0.23%) FATCA
12 4 (0.19%) HL7
12 4 (0.19%) MiFID
12 4 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 4 (0.19%) SEPA
12 4 (0.19%) Software Quality Assurance
13 3 (0.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 363 (17.01%) Docker
2 30 (1.41%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (0.89%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.66%) Firmware
5 12 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 4 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.094%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.094%) SRDF
10 1 (0.047%) Squid
10 1 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.047%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 363 (17.01%) Kubernetes
2 263 (12.32%) Terraform
3 106 (4.97%) Grafana
4 102 (4.78%) Ansible
5 95 (4.45%) Prometheus
6 37 (1.73%) Argo
7 19 (0.89%) HP ALM
8 14 (0.66%) Puppet
9 13 (0.61%) Kibana
10 11 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.47%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.47%) HP Quality Center
12 8 (0.37%) Kustomize
12 8 (0.37%) NetBackup
13 7 (0.33%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 7 (0.33%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 6 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.23%) Istio
15 5 (0.23%) Progress Chef
16 4 (0.19%) Rancher
Vendors
1 178 (8.34%) Microsoft
2 174 (8.15%) Oracle
3 96 (4.50%) Salesforce
4 68 (3.19%) Databricks
5 65 (3.05%) Talend
6 62 (2.91%) Google
7 59 (2.76%) Red Hat
8 56 (2.62%) ServiceNow
8 56 (2.62%) Splunk
9 46 (2.16%) Denodo
10 34 (1.59%) SAP
10 34 (1.59%) VMware
11 33 (1.55%) IBM
11 33 (1.55%) Informatica
12 30 (1.41%) UiPath
13 29 (1.36%) Dynatrace
14 22 (1.03%) Cisco
14 22 (1.03%) HP
14 22 (1.03%) MuleSoft
15 16 (0.75%) Blue Prism