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 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 47 47 53
Rank change year-on-year 0 +6 -13
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,714 1,533 1,821
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.76% 4.21% 3.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.33% 4.83% 4.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,182 1,020 1,319
10th Percentile £325 £325 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.98%
75th Percentile £584 £600 £630
90th Percentile £688 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £495 £500
% change year-on-year +1.01% -1.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 8 56
10th Percentile £37.01 £40.88 £34.88
25th Percentile £46.25 £42.19 £47.10
Median hourly rate £65.00 £47.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.84% -36.67% +25.00%
75th Percentile £67.00 £63.75 £90.00
90th Percentile £68.60 £70.88 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £50.00 £75.00
% change year-on-year +30.00% -33.33% +25.00%

All Process and 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 32,184 31,740 40,662
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.29% 87.07% 88.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,215 19,128 27,258
10th Percentile £300 £310 £310
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £744 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,084 1,140 1,567
10th Percentile £14.56 £15.22 £14.32
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.24 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.04 £43.84
Median % change year-on-year -23.87% -24.65% +25.26%
75th Percentile £45.53 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.85 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -29.69% -26.97% +39.06%

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025.

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 29 November 2025. 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 -2 1,467 £500 - 503
UK excluding London 0 818 £500 +1.01% 461
London -2 690 £500 -4.76% 186
Work from Home +8 546 £500 - 244
North of England +1 280 £488 +8.33% 62
Midlands +18 159 £500 +2.15% 49
South East -18 154 £492 -1.60% 207
Yorkshire -4 129 £519 +14.64% 16
West Midlands +19 125 £515 -6.36% 31
North West -6 111 £402 -10.61% 34
South West +16 86 £537 -2.36% 68
Scotland +2 70 £500 +11.11% 27
East of England +7 51 £450 +12.50% 49
North East +16 42 £500 +19.76% 12
East Midlands +5 34 £360 -20.88% 17
Wales +7 30 £495 -5.26% 12
Northern Ireland +5 11 £295 -43.13% 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 90 (5.25%) Confluence
2 53 (3.09%) SAS
3 29 (1.69%) Apache Spark
4 21 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
5 18 (1.05%) Apache
6 13 (0.76%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.47%) CMS
7 8 (0.47%) Oracle Application Server
8 5 (0.29%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.23%) Anypoint
9 4 (0.23%) JBoss
9 4 (0.23%) nginx
9 4 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
9 4 (0.23%) WordPress
10 3 (0.18%) CICS
10 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.12%) IIS
11 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 21 (1.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.70%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.41%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.23%) Simulink
5 4 (0.23%) Windchill
6 3 (0.18%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.12%) Trello
8 1 (0.058%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 18 (1.05%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.23%) SAP HR
3 4 (0.23%) SAP PLM
4 3 (0.18%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.12%) Eagle PACE
5 2 (0.12%) Markit EDM
5 2 (0.12%) Maximo
5 2 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.12%) SAP BRIM
5 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.12%) Shopify
6 1 (0.058%) CODA-Financials
6 1 (0.058%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.058%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.058%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.058%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.058%) PORTIA
6 1 (0.058%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 476 (27.77%) Azure
2 429 (25.03%) AWS
3 254 (14.82%) GitHub
4 209 (12.19%) Azure DevOps
5 154 (8.98%) GCP
6 131 (7.64%) GitHub Actions
7 129 (7.53%) Serverless
8 63 (3.68%) AWS Lambda
9 54 (3.15%) Power Platform
10 52 (3.03%) Amazon S3
10 52 (3.03%) OpenShift
11 47 (2.74%) AWS CloudFormation
12 43 (2.51%) Azure AKS
13 39 (2.28%) Snowflake
14 38 (2.22%) SaaS
15 35 (2.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 35 (2.04%) Amazon EKS
16 30 (1.75%) Amazon ECS
17 28 (1.63%) Entra ID
18 26 (1.52%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 42 (2.45%) Firewall
2 35 (2.04%) HTTP
3 34 (1.98%) Wireshark
4 27 (1.58%) HTTPS
5 22 (1.28%) SSL
6 17 (0.99%) TCP/IP
6 17 (0.99%) VPN
7 16 (0.93%) Network Security
8 15 (0.88%) SD-WAN
9 13 (0.76%) DNS
10 12 (0.70%) Ethernet
10 12 (0.70%) Multicast
11 11 (0.64%) WAN
12 8 (0.47%) FTP
13 7 (0.41%) AMQP
14 6 (0.35%) Bluetooth
14 6 (0.35%) Internet
15 5 (0.29%) Broadband
15 5 (0.29%) MPLS
15 5 (0.29%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (6.48%) PostgreSQL
2 98 (5.72%) NoSQL
3 88 (5.13%) MongoDB
4 74 (4.32%) Relational Database
5 64 (3.73%) SQL Server
6 45 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
7 28 (1.63%) Pentaho
8 27 (1.58%) Power BI
9 26 (1.52%) Amazon RDS
9 26 (1.52%) BigQuery
10 25 (1.46%) DynamoDB
11 21 (1.23%) Big Data
11 21 (1.23%) Data Lake
11 21 (1.23%) Oracle Database
12 18 (1.05%) MySQL
13 17 (0.99%) Apache Cassandra
14 15 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
14 15 (0.88%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 14 (0.82%) RDBMS
15 14 (0.82%) Redis
Development Applications
1 318 (18.55%) Git
2 310 (18.09%) JIRA
3 301 (17.56%) Jenkins
4 269 (15.69%) Selenium
5 223 (13.01%) GitLab
6 149 (8.69%) Cucumber
7 123 (7.18%) Postman
8 112 (6.53%) Cypress.io
9 98 (5.72%) JUnit
10 75 (4.38%) JMeter
11 65 (3.79%) REST Assured
12 58 (3.38%) Bitbucket
13 43 (2.51%) SonarQube
14 38 (2.22%) SpecFlow
15 37 (2.16%) Maven
16 34 (1.98%) Mockito
17 32 (1.87%) Gatling
18 26 (1.52%) Sonatype Nexus
19 25 (1.46%) Appium
19 25 (1.46%) WebDriver
General
1 483 (28.18%) Social Skills
2 290 (16.92%) Finance
3 211 (12.31%) Public Sector
4 186 (10.85%) Analytical Skills
5 124 (7.23%) Banking
6 34 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 32 (1.87%) Telecoms
8 31 (1.81%) Documentation Skills
9 23 (1.34%) Front Office
10 22 (1.28%) Investment Banking
10 22 (1.28%) Manufacturing
10 22 (1.28%) Pharmaceutical
11 20 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
12 17 (0.99%) Financial Institution
13 16 (0.93%) Electronics
13 16 (0.93%) Marketing
14 14 (0.82%) Retail
15 13 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
16 12 (0.70%) Legal
16 12 (0.70%) Military
Job Titles
1 386 (22.52%) Developer
2 266 (15.52%) Senior
3 207 (12.08%) Tester
4 158 (9.22%) Test Engineer
5 149 (8.69%) Lead
6 122 (7.12%) Java Developer
7 116 (6.77%) Automation Tester
8 82 (4.78%) Analyst
9 78 (4.55%) Software Engineer
10 72 (4.20%) Data Engineer
11 65 (3.79%) DevOps Engineer
11 65 (3.79%) QA Engineer
12 63 (3.68%) Test Analyst
12 63 (3.68%) Test Automation Engineer
13 61 (3.56%) Senior Developer
14 53 (3.09%) Automation Engineer
15 52 (3.03%) Test Manager
16 51 (2.98%) Test Leader
17 40 (2.33%) Full-Stack Developer
18 37 (2.16%) Senior Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 215 (12.54%) REST
2 159 (9.28%) Playwright
3 149 (8.69%) React
4 132 (7.70%) RESTful
5 126 (7.35%) .NET
6 122 (7.12%) Spring
7 119 (6.94%) Kafka
8 116 (6.77%) Node.js
9 115 (6.71%) Spring Boot
10 80 (4.67%) JSON
11 76 (4.43%) HTML
12 75 (4.38%) CSS
12 75 (4.38%) SOAP
13 74 (4.32%) XML
14 69 (4.03%) AngularJS
15 65 (3.79%) pytest
16 50 (2.92%) Jest
17 46 (2.68%) Web Services
18 44 (2.57%) JMS
19 38 (2.22%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 157 (9.16%) Cloud Native
2 113 (6.59%) Product Ownership
3 53 (3.09%) Mobile App
4 45 (2.63%) Distributed Systems
4 45 (2.63%) Security Posture
5 34 (1.98%) Data Protection Act
6 31 (1.81%) Public Cloud
7 30 (1.75%) Algorithms
7 30 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
8 29 (1.69%) Onboarding
8 29 (1.69%) Virtual Team
9 25 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
9 25 (1.46%) Legacy Systems
10 19 (1.11%) Data Structures
10 19 (1.11%) Management Information System
11 17 (0.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 17 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
12 16 (0.93%) Genomics
13 15 (0.88%) Life Science
14 14 (0.82%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 175 (10.21%) Linux
2 86 (5.02%) Windows
3 58 (3.38%) Unix
4 50 (2.92%) Android
5 39 (2.28%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.17%) Mac OS X
7 18 (1.05%) Windows Server
8 15 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 10 (0.58%) Kali Linux
10 9 (0.53%) CentOS
11 3 (0.18%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.18%) Windows 10
11 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
12 2 (0.12%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.058%) Solaris
13 1 (0.058%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.058%) VMS
13 1 (0.058%) Windows Embedded Compact
13 1 (0.058%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 851 (49.65%) CI/CD
2 849 (49.53%) Agile
3 658 (38.39%) DevOps
4 429 (25.03%) Problem-Solving
5 277 (16.16%) Microservices
6 261 (15.23%) Scrum
7 253 (14.76%) Containerisation
8 250 (14.59%) Test Strategy
9 242 (14.12%) Continuous Improvement
10 227 (13.24%) TDD
11 211 (12.31%) Software Engineering
12 209 (12.19%) Infrastructure as Code
13 208 (12.14%) Test Scripting
14 187 (10.91%) SDLC
15 176 (10.27%) Software Testing
16 167 (9.74%) AI
17 166 (9.68%) BDD
18 164 (9.57%) Validation
19 155 (9.04%) Analytics
20 147 (8.58%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 494 (28.82%) Python
2 409 (23.86%) Java
3 314 (18.32%) SQL
4 237 (13.83%) JavaScript
5 197 (11.49%) TypeScript
6 181 (10.56%) C#
7 102 (5.95%) Bash
8 72 (4.20%) PowerShell
9 41 (2.39%) C++
10 39 (2.28%) Go
11 24 (1.40%) Kotlin
12 23 (1.34%) Bicep
13 16 (0.93%) PL/SQL
14 15 (0.88%) Scala
15 14 (0.82%) Ruby
15 14 (0.82%) Shell Script
16 13 (0.76%) Swift
17 12 (0.70%) Perl
17 12 (0.70%) PHP
18 11 (0.64%) C
Qualifications
1 414 (24.15%) Security Cleared
2 321 (18.73%) SC Cleared
3 112 (6.53%) Degree
4 68 (3.97%) ISTQB
5 58 (3.38%) Computer Science Degree
6 49 (2.86%) DV Cleared
7 47 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
8 27 (1.58%) AWS Certification
9 25 (1.46%) Master's Degree
10 22 (1.28%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 20 (1.17%) CISSP
12 18 (1.05%) OSCP
13 15 (0.88%) Azure Certification
14 14 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
14 14 (0.82%) CISM
14 14 (0.82%) MCP
15 13 (0.76%) CEH
15 13 (0.76%) GPEN
15 13 (0.76%) ISEB
16 12 (0.70%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (22.23%) QA
2 133 (7.76%) Accessibility
3 77 (4.49%) Data Quality
4 42 (2.45%) NIST
5 38 (2.22%) GDPR
6 36 (2.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 35 (2.04%) WCAG
8 19 (1.11%) NCSC
8 19 (1.11%) PCI DSS
9 18 (1.05%) EU AI Act
10 16 (0.93%) NIST 800
11 14 (0.82%) PSD2
12 12 (0.70%) SEPA
13 9 (0.53%) ISO 20022
14 8 (0.47%) COBIT
14 8 (0.47%) SLA
15 7 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 7 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 7 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 7 (0.41%) SOC 2
System Software
1 358 (20.89%) Docker
2 31 (1.81%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.47%) Firmware
3 8 (0.47%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
5 4 (0.23%) zsh
6 3 (0.18%) QEMU
6 3 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.12%) Embedded Firmware
7 2 (0.12%) vSphere
8 1 (0.058%) HDFS
8 1 (0.058%) ISA Server
8 1 (0.058%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 321 (18.73%) Kubernetes
2 216 (12.60%) Terraform
3 135 (7.88%) Ansible
4 80 (4.67%) Grafana
5 48 (2.80%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.05%) HP ALM
7 16 (0.93%) CSIRT
7 16 (0.93%) Nmap
7 16 (0.93%) Progress Chef
8 15 (0.88%) Argo
9 13 (0.76%) NetBackup
10 12 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.58%) Puppet
12 7 (0.41%) Kibana
12 7 (0.41%) Nessus
13 6 (0.35%) Podman
14 5 (0.29%) RSA Archer
15 4 (0.23%) Rancher
15 4 (0.23%) SCCM
15 4 (0.23%) vRealize
Vendors
1 176 (10.27%) Microsoft
2 155 (9.04%) Oracle
3 65 (3.79%) SAP
3 65 (3.79%) ServiceNow
3 65 (3.79%) Splunk
4 59 (3.44%) Salesforce
5 58 (3.38%) Databricks
6 53 (3.09%) Google
7 30 (1.75%) Talend
8 28 (1.63%) Denodo
8 28 (1.63%) VMware
9 24 (1.40%) Cisco
10 22 (1.28%) F5
10 22 (1.28%) webMethods
11 21 (1.23%) IBM
12 19 (1.11%) Atlassian
12 19 (1.11%) HP
12 19 (1.11%) Red Hat
13 17 (0.99%) Dynatrace
14 15 (0.88%) Workday