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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 55
Rank change year-on-year -1 +8 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,981 1,323 1,516
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.15% 4.55% 3.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.92% 5.00% 4.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,302 920 991
10th Percentile £331 £325 £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 £614 £625
90th Percentile £663 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.26% -5.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 22 53
10th Percentile £36.79 £35.58 £51.50
25th Percentile £56.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £66.75 £52.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.14% -16.00% -11.35%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £77.50
90th Percentile - £75.45 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -12.00% -9.09%

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 40,228 26,443 36,791
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.35% 90.98% 86.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,265 17,000 23,677
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,380 1,081 2,436
10th Percentile £14.89 £14.42 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.38 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.83% -21.23% +0.29%
75th Percentile £67.31 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £26.50 £38.00
% change year-on-year +69.81% -30.26% +8.57%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 -2 1,693 £475 -5.00% 605
UK excluding London -7 924 £469 -1.26% 475
London -1 821 £492 -1.60% 217
Work from Home -2 576 £470 -4.96% 292
North of England +8 338 £464 +3.06% 124
Midlands +7 195 £450 -1.10% 61
West Midlands +22 170 £463 -7.73% 39
South East -42 163 £505 +0.80% 127
North West +12 150 £465 +4.08% 61
Yorkshire -4 141 £483 -3.50% 28
South West +12 95 £469 -8.54% 67
East of England +9 63 £522 +9.95% 53
North East +6 53 £425 +7.59% 35
Scotland -29 43 £440 -2.22% 27
Wales +3 33 £475 +18.75% 16
East Midlands -36 25 £400 +13.15% 22
Northern Ireland +15 18 £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
1 162 (8.18%) Confluence
2 43 (2.17%) SAS
3 41 (2.07%) Apache Spark
4 33 (1.67%) Apache Airflow
5 15 (0.76%) Apache
6 11 (0.56%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.40%) Appian
8 7 (0.35%) nginx
8 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.30%) Camunda
10 5 (0.25%) CMS
11 4 (0.20%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.10%) Mendix
14 1 (0.050%) Ethereum
14 1 (0.050%) OpenStack
14 1 (0.050%) Solana
Applications
1 27 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.61%) MS Visio
4 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.15%) Simulink
7 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.050%) Mingle
8 1 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (1.01%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 9 (0.45%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.35%) Findur
6 7 (0.35%) Shopify
7 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
8 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
8 5 (0.25%) Maximo
8 5 (0.25%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.25%) SAP MDG
9 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
9 3 (0.15%) Infor CloudSuite
9 3 (0.15%) Infor LN
9 3 (0.15%) Infor M3
9 3 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
9 3 (0.15%) Workday HCM
10 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
10 2 (0.10%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 564 (28.47%) Azure
2 543 (27.41%) AWS
3 344 (17.36%) GitHub
4 256 (12.92%) Azure DevOps
5 198 (9.99%) GitHub Actions
6 145 (7.32%) GCP
7 129 (6.51%) Serverless
8 82 (4.14%) Amazon S3
8 82 (4.14%) AWS Lambda
9 74 (3.74%) Power Platform
10 56 (2.83%) OpenShift
11 55 (2.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 55 (2.78%) Amazon ECS
12 52 (2.62%) AWS CloudFormation
13 44 (2.22%) Amazon EKS
14 39 (1.97%) Snowflake
15 38 (1.92%) Amazon EC2
16 36 (1.82%) Azure Data Factory
17 34 (1.72%) Azure AKS
18 28 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.21%) HTTP
2 20 (1.01%) Firewall
3 14 (0.71%) SAN
4 12 (0.61%) TCP/IP
5 11 (0.56%) FTP
5 11 (0.56%) SSL
6 10 (0.50%) VPN
7 9 (0.45%) Ethernet
8 8 (0.40%) WAN
8 8 (0.40%) Wireshark
9 7 (0.35%) MPLS
9 7 (0.35%) Network Security
9 7 (0.35%) SD-WAN
10 6 (0.30%) VLAN
10 6 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
11 5 (0.25%) 5G
11 5 (0.25%) Multicast
12 4 (0.20%) Modbus
12 4 (0.20%) NAS
12 4 (0.20%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (5.60%) PostgreSQL
2 100 (5.05%) MongoDB
3 98 (4.95%) NoSQL
4 89 (4.49%) SQL Server
5 73 (3.69%) Data Warehouse
6 71 (3.58%) Relational Database
7 53 (2.68%) Power BI
8 42 (2.12%) DynamoDB
9 36 (1.82%) Metadata
9 36 (1.82%) Pentaho
10 34 (1.72%) MySQL
11 33 (1.67%) Big Data
12 26 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
12 26 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
13 25 (1.26%) Redis
13 25 (1.26%) Tableau
14 22 (1.11%) Amazon Aurora
14 22 (1.11%) BigQuery
15 21 (1.06%) Data Lake
16 20 (1.01%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 396 (19.99%) JIRA
2 366 (18.48%) Git
3 333 (16.81%) Jenkins
4 280 (14.13%) GitLab
5 271 (13.68%) Selenium
6 168 (8.48%) Postman
7 150 (7.57%) Cucumber
8 102 (5.15%) JUnit
9 96 (4.85%) REST Assured
10 95 (4.80%) Cypress.io
11 93 (4.69%) JMeter
12 57 (2.88%) WebDriver
13 49 (2.47%) SonarQube
14 48 (2.42%) Zephyr
15 37 (1.87%) Gatling
16 35 (1.77%) Mockito
17 33 (1.67%) Gradle
18 32 (1.62%) Bitbucket
19 31 (1.56%) SpecFlow
20 30 (1.51%) Maven
General
1 513 (25.90%) Social Skills
2 337 (17.01%) Finance
3 282 (14.24%) Public Sector
4 234 (11.81%) Analytical Skills
5 164 (8.28%) Banking
6 40 (2.02%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.87%) Investment Banking
8 34 (1.72%) Front Office
8 34 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 25 (1.26%) Telecoms
10 21 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
11 19 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
12 18 (0.91%) Legal
13 17 (0.86%) Military
13 17 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.81%) Aerospace
15 15 (0.76%) Retail
16 13 (0.66%) Financial Institution
17 12 (0.61%) Back Office
17 12 (0.61%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 416 (21.00%) Developer
2 310 (15.65%) Senior
3 224 (11.31%) Test Engineer
4 210 (10.60%) Tester
5 197 (9.94%) Lead
6 117 (5.91%) Data Engineer
7 114 (5.75%) Java Developer
8 110 (5.55%) Analyst
9 104 (5.25%) Test Automation Engineer
10 99 (5.00%) Automation Tester
11 94 (4.75%) Software Engineer
12 84 (4.24%) Architect
13 82 (4.14%) QA Engineer
14 81 (4.09%) DevOps Engineer
15 79 (3.99%) Senior Developer
16 78 (3.94%) Test Leader
17 68 (3.43%) Test Analyst
18 64 (3.23%) Full-Stack Developer
19 58 (2.93%) Test Manager
20 52 (2.62%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 252 (12.72%) Playwright
2 239 (12.06%) REST
3 181 (9.14%) React
4 158 (7.98%) RESTful
5 149 (7.52%) Spring
6 143 (7.22%) Kafka
7 139 (7.02%) .NET
8 129 (6.51%) Node.js
9 125 (6.31%) Spring Boot
10 82 (4.14%) AngularJS
11 75 (3.79%) HTML
12 66 (3.33%) pytest
13 60 (3.03%) CSS
13 60 (3.03%) OAuth
14 53 (2.68%) Jest
15 43 (2.17%) OpenID
15 43 (2.17%) Swagger
16 42 (2.12%) JSON
17 41 (2.07%) Gherkin
18 39 (1.97%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 215 (10.85%) Cloud Native
2 154 (7.77%) Product Ownership
3 103 (5.20%) Distributed Systems
4 51 (2.57%) Data Protection Act
5 48 (2.42%) Mobile App
6 46 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
7 39 (1.97%) Virtual Team
8 36 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
9 35 (1.77%) Self-Motivation
10 34 (1.72%) Onboarding
11 30 (1.51%) NHS
12 26 (1.31%) Algorithms
13 24 (1.21%) Management Information System
14 23 (1.16%) Data Centre
15 21 (1.06%) Derivative
15 21 (1.06%) Distributed Architecture
16 20 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
17 19 (0.96%) Fixed Income
18 17 (0.86%) Data Structures
18 17 (0.86%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 126 (6.36%) Linux
2 79 (3.99%) Windows
3 49 (2.47%) Unix
4 43 (2.17%) Android
5 37 (1.87%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.06%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.66%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.40%) Solaris
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.15%) AIX
14 3 (0.15%) CentOS
15 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.050%) FreeRTOS
16 1 (0.050%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,076 (54.32%) CI/CD
2 917 (46.29%) Agile
3 708 (35.74%) DevOps
4 393 (19.84%) Problem-Solving
5 321 (16.20%) Continuous Improvement
6 317 (16.00%) Microservices
7 293 (14.79%) Scrum
8 290 (14.64%) Test Strategy
9 264 (13.33%) Infrastructure as Code
10 261 (13.18%) Validation
11 260 (13.12%) Containerisation
12 247 (12.47%) Software Engineering
13 238 (12.01%) Observability
14 223 (11.26%) TDD
15 214 (10.80%) AI
16 202 (10.20%) Test Scripting
17 195 (9.84%) Regression Testing
18 194 (9.79%) User Acceptance Testing
19 190 (9.59%) ETL
20 189 (9.54%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 518 (26.15%) Python
2 497 (25.09%) Java
3 438 (22.11%) SQL
4 282 (14.24%) JavaScript
5 257 (12.97%) TypeScript
6 198 (9.99%) C#
7 72 (3.63%) PowerShell
8 68 (3.43%) Bash
9 53 (2.68%) C++
10 41 (2.07%) Kotlin
11 35 (1.77%) PL/SQL
12 33 (1.67%) C
13 32 (1.62%) Scala
14 30 (1.51%) Apex Code
15 28 (1.41%) Ruby
16 25 (1.26%) Bicep
17 24 (1.21%) Go
18 17 (0.86%) Swift
19 14 (0.71%) Groovy
19 14 (0.71%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 618 (31.20%) Security Cleared
2 487 (24.58%) SC Cleared
3 90 (4.54%) ISTQB
4 87 (4.39%) Degree
5 79 (3.99%) BPSS Clearance
6 69 (3.48%) DV Cleared
7 47 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (1.26%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 15 (0.76%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.56%) SAFe Agilist
12 10 (0.50%) CCNP
12 10 (0.50%) DBS Check
12 10 (0.50%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 9 (0.45%) AWS Certification
13 9 (0.45%) Azure Certification
14 8 (0.40%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 8 (0.40%) CISSP
15 7 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
16 5 (0.25%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 431 (21.76%) QA
2 151 (7.62%) Accessibility
3 119 (6.01%) Data Quality
4 66 (3.33%) WCAG
5 34 (1.72%) GDPR
6 15 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 14 (0.71%) ISO 20022
7 14 (0.71%) SLA
8 11 (0.56%) NCSC
9 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
10 8 (0.40%) NIST
11 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 7 (0.35%) SEPA
12 6 (0.30%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.30%) PSD2
12 6 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 5 (0.25%) FATCA
14 4 (0.20%) HL7
14 4 (0.20%) MiFID
14 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 352 (17.77%) Docker
2 22 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (1.06%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.66%) Firmware
5 11 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
9 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.10%) SRDF
12 1 (0.050%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.050%) HDFS
12 1 (0.050%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.050%) KVM
12 1 (0.050%) Squid
12 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 336 (16.96%) Kubernetes
2 231 (11.66%) Terraform
3 113 (5.70%) Grafana
4 92 (4.64%) Prometheus
5 83 (4.19%) Ansible
6 28 (1.41%) Argo
7 22 (1.11%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.86%) Puppet
9 14 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.66%) Kibana
11 10 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 8 (0.40%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.40%) NetBackup
13 7 (0.35%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.25%) Rancher
16 4 (0.20%) Nmap
16 4 (0.20%) Podman
Vendors
1 166 (8.38%) Oracle
2 162 (8.18%) Microsoft
3 81 (4.09%) Salesforce
4 67 (3.38%) Databricks
5 62 (3.13%) ServiceNow
6 61 (3.08%) Splunk
7 56 (2.83%) Talend
8 54 (2.73%) Google
9 49 (2.47%) Red Hat
10 37 (1.87%) Denodo
10 37 (1.87%) SAP
11 29 (1.46%) VMware
12 27 (1.36%) IBM
13 25 (1.26%) HP
14 21 (1.06%) Cisco
14 21 (1.06%) Dynatrace
15 20 (1.01%) Informatica
15 20 (1.01%) MuleSoft
16 19 (0.96%) UiPath
17 16 (0.81%) Blue Prism