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

6 months to
28 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 45 55
Rank change year-on-year -3 +10 -11
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,981 1,328 1,552
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.46% 4.57% 3.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.20% 5.05% 4.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,327 915 1,046
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 £625 £638
90th Percentile £675 £725 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £496
% change year-on-year -0.42% -3.88% -5.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 9 59
10th Percentile £33.54 £41.66 £37.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.50 £56.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.42% -5.42% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.50 £78.13
90th Percentile - £75.84 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £56.75 £61.25
% change year-on-year +18.94% -7.35% +2.08%

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 38,117 26,296 38,255
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.75% 90.49% 86.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,146 17,083 24,839
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 £738 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.51% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,236 956 2,346
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.12 £12.84
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.47 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% - -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.94 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.35 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.25 £31.64 £31.80
% change year-on-year -1.23% -0.50% -11.67%

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 28 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 28 March 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 28 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 -1 1,697 £487 -2.55% 674
UK excluding London +4 915 £475 -0.42% 573
London +2 832 £500 - 183
Work from Home -5 578 £475 -5.00% 333
North of England +5 337 £481 +7.49% 162
Midlands +9 192 £475 +0.32% 83
South East -25 177 £500 -9.09% 145
West Midlands +14 163 £480 -3.52% 57
North West +7 151 £450 - 82
Yorkshire -7 142 £500 +5.26% 41
South West -2 79 £488 -7.14% 72
East of England +1 61 £570 +16.33% 65
North East +10 47 £425 +8.97% 39
Scotland -17 41 £425 -5.56% 30
Wales -1 34 £509 +27.25% 27
East Midlands -24 29 £400 +8.55% 26
Northern Ireland +14 21 £475 -3.01% 7
Channel Islands - 1 - - 1

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
1 138 (6.97%) Confluence
2 64 (3.23%) SAS
3 32 (1.62%) Apache Spark
4 20 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.66%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.56%) Apache
7 8 (0.40%) Appian
8 7 (0.35%) nginx
8 7 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.30%) Tomcat
10 5 (0.25%) Camunda
10 5 (0.25%) CMS
11 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.15%) Anypoint
13 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
13 2 (0.10%) Mendix
13 2 (0.10%) Oracle Application Server
13 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
13 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.61%) MS Visio
4 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.15%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.15%) Simulink
7 1 (0.050%) Mingle
7 1 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.11%) Aladdin
2 9 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
3 8 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
4 6 (0.30%) Findur
4 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
5 5 (0.25%) Maximo
5 5 (0.25%) Shopify
5 5 (0.25%) Workday HCM
6 4 (0.20%) SAP HR
7 3 (0.15%) BambooHR
7 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.15%) Infor CloudSuite
7 3 (0.15%) Infor LN
7 3 (0.15%) Infor M3
7 3 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
7 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
8 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
8 2 (0.10%) iTrent
8 2 (0.10%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 582 (29.38%) Azure
2 508 (25.64%) AWS
3 356 (17.97%) GitHub
4 271 (13.68%) Azure DevOps
5 193 (9.74%) GitHub Actions
6 182 (9.19%) GCP
7 140 (7.07%) Serverless
8 79 (3.99%) OpenShift
9 78 (3.94%) Power Platform
10 74 (3.74%) AWS Lambda
11 69 (3.48%) Amazon S3
12 51 (2.57%) AWS CloudFormation
13 48 (2.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 44 (2.22%) Azure AKS
15 40 (2.02%) Snowflake
16 39 (1.97%) Amazon ECS
17 35 (1.77%) SaaS
18 34 (1.72%) Azure Data Factory
19 33 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
20 32 (1.62%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.36%) Firewall
2 26 (1.31%) HTTP
3 17 (0.86%) TCP/IP
3 17 (0.86%) VPN
4 14 (0.71%) SSL
5 13 (0.66%) Network Security
5 13 (0.66%) SD-WAN
5 13 (0.66%) WAN
6 12 (0.61%) Wireshark
7 10 (0.50%) DNS
7 10 (0.50%) FTP
8 9 (0.45%) Ethernet
8 9 (0.45%) HTTPS
8 9 (0.45%) SAN
9 8 (0.40%) MPLS
9 8 (0.40%) Multicast
10 7 (0.35%) 5G
11 5 (0.25%) AMQP
11 5 (0.25%) Cisco IPT
11 5 (0.25%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (5.55%) PostgreSQL
2 88 (4.44%) NoSQL
3 80 (4.04%) SQL Server
4 77 (3.89%) MongoDB
5 63 (3.18%) Relational Database
6 50 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
7 45 (2.27%) Power BI
8 41 (2.07%) DynamoDB
9 32 (1.62%) MySQL
9 32 (1.62%) Pentaho
10 30 (1.51%) BigQuery
11 25 (1.26%) Oracle Database
12 23 (1.16%) Metadata
12 23 (1.16%) Tableau
13 22 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
13 22 (1.11%) Redis
14 19 (0.96%) Amazon Athena
14 19 (0.96%) Big Data
15 17 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
16 16 (0.81%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 379 (19.13%) Git
1 379 (19.13%) JIRA
2 364 (18.37%) Jenkins
3 291 (14.69%) Selenium
4 288 (14.54%) GitLab
5 168 (8.48%) Cucumber
6 159 (8.03%) Postman
7 117 (5.91%) JUnit
8 108 (5.45%) Cypress.io
9 105 (5.30%) JMeter
10 98 (4.95%) REST Assured
11 53 (2.68%) WebDriver
12 46 (2.32%) SonarQube
13 42 (2.12%) SpecFlow
14 39 (1.97%) Zephyr
15 38 (1.92%) Gatling
16 34 (1.72%) Maven
16 34 (1.72%) TestRail
17 33 (1.67%) Bitbucket
17 33 (1.67%) Mockito
General
1 523 (26.40%) Social Skills
2 332 (16.76%) Finance
3 291 (14.69%) Public Sector
4 206 (10.40%) Analytical Skills
5 157 (7.93%) Banking
6 36 (1.82%) Documentation Skills
7 32 (1.62%) Investment Banking
8 30 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 28 (1.41%) Front Office
10 24 (1.21%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
12 19 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
13 18 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
14 17 (0.86%) Aerospace
14 17 (0.86%) Legal
14 17 (0.86%) Military
14 17 (0.86%) Pharmaceutical
15 14 (0.71%) Financial Institution
16 11 (0.56%) Publishing
17 10 (0.50%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 420 (21.20%) Developer
2 331 (16.71%) Senior
3 221 (11.16%) Test Engineer
4 220 (11.11%) Tester
5 213 (10.75%) Lead
6 118 (5.96%) Automation Tester
7 102 (5.15%) Java Developer
8 100 (5.05%) Analyst
9 97 (4.90%) Data Engineer
10 95 (4.80%) Test Automation Engineer
11 85 (4.29%) Software Engineer
11 85 (4.29%) Test Leader
12 82 (4.14%) QA Engineer
13 80 (4.04%) DevOps Engineer
14 77 (3.89%) Senior Developer
15 72 (3.63%) Architect
16 65 (3.28%) Test Analyst
17 62 (3.13%) Test Manager
18 59 (2.98%) Automation Engineer
19 52 (2.62%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 258 (13.02%) REST
2 239 (12.06%) Playwright
3 169 (8.53%) React
4 162 (8.18%) RESTful
5 149 (7.52%) Node.js
5 149 (7.52%) Spring
6 142 (7.17%) .NET
7 132 (6.66%) Kafka
8 119 (6.01%) Spring Boot
9 90 (4.54%) pytest
10 83 (4.19%) AngularJS
11 67 (3.38%) HTML
12 62 (3.13%) OAuth
13 58 (2.93%) Jest
14 55 (2.78%) CSS
15 51 (2.57%) Web Services
16 46 (2.32%) JSON
17 43 (2.17%) GraphQL
18 41 (2.07%) OpenID
19 40 (2.02%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 207 (10.45%) Cloud Native
2 143 (7.22%) Product Ownership
3 98 (4.95%) Distributed Systems
4 49 (2.47%) Mobile App
5 47 (2.37%) Data Protection Act
5 47 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
6 42 (2.12%) Algorithms
7 38 (1.92%) Onboarding
8 36 (1.82%) Virtual Team
9 31 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
9 31 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
10 29 (1.46%) NHS
11 27 (1.36%) Security Posture
12 23 (1.16%) Data Structures
12 23 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
13 22 (1.11%) Equities
14 21 (1.06%) Management Information System
15 20 (1.01%) Distributed Architecture
16 19 (0.96%) Data Centre
16 19 (0.96%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 141 (7.12%) Linux
2 89 (4.49%) Windows
3 49 (2.47%) Android
4 39 (1.97%) Apple iOS
5 35 (1.77%) Unix
6 22 (1.11%) Windows Server
7 18 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (0.56%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.40%) Kali Linux
11 7 (0.35%) Solaris
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2008
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.20%) CentOS
14 3 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
15 2 (0.10%) Windows 10
16 1 (0.050%) FreeRTOS
16 1 (0.050%) Robot Operating System
16 1 (0.050%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,050 (53.00%) CI/CD
2 935 (47.20%) Agile
3 745 (37.61%) DevOps
4 440 (22.21%) Problem-Solving
5 323 (16.30%) Continuous Improvement
6 309 (15.60%) Test Strategy
7 303 (15.30%) Microservices
8 283 (14.29%) Scrum
9 278 (14.03%) Containerisation
10 257 (12.97%) Validation
11 251 (12.67%) Infrastructure as Code
12 237 (11.96%) Software Engineering
13 235 (11.86%) AI
14 223 (11.26%) Analytics
15 221 (11.16%) Test Scripting
16 217 (10.95%) Observability
17 216 (10.90%) TDD
18 206 (10.40%) Regression Testing
19 205 (10.35%) SDLC
20 197 (9.94%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 607 (30.64%) Python
2 476 (24.03%) Java
3 410 (20.70%) SQL
4 294 (14.84%) JavaScript
5 274 (13.83%) TypeScript
6 211 (10.65%) C#
7 82 (4.14%) PowerShell
8 80 (4.04%) Bash
9 51 (2.57%) C++
10 31 (1.56%) C
10 31 (1.56%) Kotlin
11 29 (1.46%) Go
11 29 (1.46%) Ruby
12 27 (1.36%) PL/SQL
13 26 (1.31%) Bicep
14 25 (1.26%) Apex Code
15 24 (1.21%) Scala
16 18 (0.91%) Swift
17 17 (0.86%) Groovy
18 15 (0.76%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 585 (29.53%) Security Cleared
2 453 (22.87%) SC Cleared
3 102 (5.15%) Degree
4 97 (4.90%) ISTQB
5 79 (3.99%) BPSS Clearance
6 59 (2.98%) DV Cleared
7 57 (2.88%) Computer Science Degree
8 37 (1.87%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 23 (1.16%) Master's Degree
10 14 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
11 13 (0.66%) AWS Certification
11 13 (0.66%) Azure Certification
12 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
12 11 (0.56%) OSCP
13 10 (0.50%) CISSP
13 10 (0.50%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 9 (0.45%) CCNP
14 9 (0.45%) CEH
14 9 (0.45%) ISEB
15 8 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 446 (22.51%) QA
2 148 (7.47%) Accessibility
3 111 (5.60%) Data Quality
4 55 (2.78%) WCAG
5 40 (2.02%) GDPR
6 29 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 22 (1.11%) NIST
8 16 (0.81%) NCSC
8 16 (0.81%) SLA
9 14 (0.71%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 11 (0.56%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
11 10 (0.50%) EU AI Act
11 10 (0.50%) ISO 20022
11 10 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.40%) PSD2
13 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
13 6 (0.30%) SEPA
13 6 (0.30%) SOC 2
14 5 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 391 (19.74%) Docker
2 30 (1.51%) Active Directory
3 12 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (0.56%) Firmware
5 9 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 5 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 4 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.10%) SRDF
11 1 (0.050%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.050%) HDFS
11 1 (0.050%) KVM
11 1 (0.050%) Squid
11 1 (0.050%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.050%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 373 (18.83%) Kubernetes
2 228 (11.51%) Terraform
3 116 (5.86%) Grafana
4 100 (5.05%) Ansible
5 89 (4.49%) Prometheus
6 29 (1.46%) Argo
7 24 (1.21%) HP ALM
8 22 (1.11%) Puppet
9 16 (0.81%) Progress Chef
10 15 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
11 13 (0.66%) NetBackup
12 11 (0.56%) Nmap
13 10 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
14 9 (0.45%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 9 (0.45%) NetIQ Identity Manager
15 7 (0.35%) Kibana
15 7 (0.35%) Podman
16 6 (0.30%) Rancher
17 5 (0.25%) Dell DRAC
17 5 (0.25%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 170 (8.58%) Microsoft
2 156 (7.87%) Oracle
3 73 (3.69%) Databricks
3 73 (3.69%) Salesforce
4 65 (3.28%) Google
5 61 (3.08%) ServiceNow
6 60 (3.03%) Splunk
7 50 (2.52%) Red Hat
7 50 (2.52%) SAP
8 37 (1.87%) Talend
9 28 (1.41%) Denodo
9 28 (1.41%) VMware
10 27 (1.36%) HP
11 26 (1.31%) IBM
12 23 (1.16%) Cisco
13 21 (1.06%) Dynatrace
14 16 (0.81%) MuleSoft
14 16 (0.81%) Workday
15 15 (0.76%) UiPath
16 14 (0.71%) OpenAI