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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 46 45
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,534 1,568 1,579
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.65% 4.74% 4.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.49% 5.24% 4.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,637 1,079 1,066
10th Percentile £325 £313 £338
25th Percentile £406 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £600
90th Percentile £670 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £496
% change year-on-year -5.26% -4.23% -0.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 36 17
10th Percentile £40.00 £37.92 £42.00
25th Percentile £56.25 £45.94 £47.50
Median hourly rate £70.00 £56.25 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +24.44% -2.17% -23.33%
75th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 £74.50
90th Percentile £77.80 £71.00 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.50 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +20.87% - -23.33%

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 46,126 29,916 32,545
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.50% 85.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,740 18,573 19,640
10th Percentile £325 £295 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,322 1,863 1,307
10th Percentile £13.63 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.63% -7.56%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.21 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.95 £65.23 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.32 £42.50
% change year-on-year +68.05% -47.49% -

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 8 October 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 8 October 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 8 October 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 +6 2,129 £475 -5.00% 3,023
UK excluding London -1 1,230 £450 -5.26% 1,790
London +5 966 £500 -2.44% 1,463
Work from Home 0 687 £486 -0.05% 1,245
North of England -3 434 £453 -4.63% 426
Midlands +10 268 £450 -2.70% 206
West Midlands +22 253 £450 -13.88% 142
South East -11 229 £450 -5.26% 394
Yorkshire -7 182 £463 -9.76% 134
North West -12 157 £492 +23.06% 217
South West -10 113 £463 -15.91% 210
Scotland -7 105 £475 -5.00% 264
North East +2 102 £425 -11.69% 75
East of England +3 92 £367 -9.66% 194
Wales -2 24 £419 +1.52% 37
East Midlands -42 15 £418 +19.29% 64
Northern Ireland +7 7 £513 +345.65% 69
Channel Islands - 1 £450 -

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
1 195 (7.70%) Confluence
2 66 (2.60%) Apache Airflow
3 52 (2.05%) Apache Spark
4 47 (1.85%) SharePoint
5 38 (1.50%) Apache
6 30 (1.18%) SAS
7 18 (0.71%) CMS
8 14 (0.55%) Camunda
9 12 (0.47%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.28%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.24%) nginx
12 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.16%) Anypoint
13 4 (0.16%) ColdFusion
13 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 4 (0.16%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.12%) Kentico
15 2 (0.079%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 21 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.28%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.16%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.12%) Mingle
6 3 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 1 (0.039%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.039%) Simulink
7 1 (0.039%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 31 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 29 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.39%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.39%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.28%) FLEXCUBE
5 7 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.28%) SAP GRC
6 6 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.24%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.16%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.12%) Finacle
9 2 (0.079%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.079%) SAP FI
9 2 (0.079%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.079%) SAP Payroll
10 1 (0.039%) Findur
10 1 (0.039%) SAP MM
10 1 (0.039%) SAP PP
10 1 (0.039%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 808 (31.89%) AWS
2 772 (30.47%) Azure
3 459 (18.11%) GitHub
4 357 (14.09%) Azure DevOps
5 274 (10.81%) GitHub Actions
6 204 (8.05%) GCP
7 184 (7.26%) Serverless
8 138 (5.45%) AWS Lambda
9 123 (4.85%) Power Platform
10 115 (4.54%) Amazon S3
11 88 (3.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 86 (3.39%) GitHub Copilot
13 80 (3.16%) OpenShift
14 77 (3.04%) Amazon EKS
15 75 (2.96%) AWS CloudFormation
16 74 (2.92%) Amazon ECS
17 61 (2.41%) Snowflake
18 60 (2.37%) dbt
19 53 (2.09%) Amazon EC2
20 52 (2.05%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 29 (1.14%) DNS
2 27 (1.07%) Firewall
3 26 (1.03%) HTTP
4 25 (0.99%) 4G
4 25 (0.99%) TCP/IP
5 24 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
6 23 (0.91%) Broadband
7 22 (0.87%) 5G
8 20 (0.79%) Network Security
9 15 (0.59%) WAN
10 14 (0.55%) 2G
10 14 (0.55%) 3G
10 14 (0.55%) BGP
10 14 (0.55%) Diameter Protocol
10 14 (0.55%) SIGTRAN
10 14 (0.55%) SS7
11 13 (0.51%) LAN
12 12 (0.47%) Ethernet VPN
12 12 (0.47%) IPv4
12 12 (0.47%) IPv6
Database & Business Intelligence
1 162 (6.39%) PostgreSQL
2 128 (5.05%) MongoDB
3 125 (4.93%) Data Warehouse
4 122 (4.81%) Relational Database
5 107 (4.22%) NoSQL
5 107 (4.22%) SQL Server
6 89 (3.51%) Power BI
7 63 (2.49%) Metadata
8 45 (1.78%) Data Lake
9 42 (1.66%) MySQL
10 41 (1.62%) DynamoDB
11 37 (1.46%) Oracle Reports
12 36 (1.42%) Big Data
12 36 (1.42%) Pentaho
13 35 (1.38%) Redis
14 33 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
14 33 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
15 32 (1.26%) Amazon Athena
16 31 (1.22%) Oracle Database
17 26 (1.03%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 590 (23.28%) Git
2 422 (16.65%) Jenkins
3 402 (15.86%) JIRA
4 355 (14.01%) GitLab
5 320 (12.63%) Selenium
6 186 (7.34%) Cucumber
7 174 (6.87%) Postman
8 158 (6.24%) JUnit
9 128 (5.05%) Cypress.io
10 114 (4.50%) REST Assured
11 105 (4.14%) JMeter
12 88 (3.47%) SonarQube
13 73 (2.88%) Gatling
14 69 (2.72%) Maven
15 68 (2.68%) Zephyr
16 63 (2.49%) Mockito
17 58 (2.29%) Gradle
18 50 (1.97%) WebDriver
19 40 (1.58%) Bitbucket
20 33 (1.30%) TestNG
General
1 708 (27.94%) Social Skills
2 478 (18.86%) Finance
3 362 (14.29%) Analytical Skills
4 352 (13.89%) Public Sector
5 240 (9.47%) Banking
6 81 (3.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 62 (2.45%) Telecoms
8 43 (1.70%) Investment Banking
9 42 (1.66%) Front Office
10 38 (1.50%) Military
11 35 (1.38%) Retail
12 34 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
13 29 (1.14%) Documentation Skills
14 22 (0.87%) Financial Institution
15 21 (0.83%) Law
15 21 (0.83%) Marketing
16 19 (0.75%) Manufacturing
17 18 (0.71%) Aerospace
17 18 (0.71%) Back Office
18 16 (0.63%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 584 (23.05%) Developer
2 427 (16.85%) Senior
3 266 (10.50%) Lead
4 247 (9.75%) Test Engineer
5 187 (7.38%) Tester
6 185 (7.30%) Java Developer
7 170 (6.71%) Data Engineer
8 129 (5.09%) Software Engineer
9 121 (4.78%) Senior Developer
10 118 (4.66%) Analyst
10 118 (4.66%) Architect
11 111 (4.38%) DevOps Engineer
12 105 (4.14%) QA Engineer
13 103 (4.06%) Test Automation Engineer
14 86 (3.39%) Automation Tester
14 86 (3.39%) Full-Stack Developer
15 80 (3.16%) Test Leader
16 79 (3.12%) Test Analyst
17 76 (3.00%) Automation Engineer
18 74 (2.92%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 453 (17.88%) REST
2 380 (15.00%) Terraform
3 303 (11.96%) Playwright
4 277 (10.93%) RESTful
5 268 (10.58%) Kafka
6 262 (10.34%) Spring
7 236 (9.31%) React
8 223 (8.80%) Spring Boot
9 181 (7.14%) .NET
10 160 (6.31%) HTML
11 147 (5.80%) Node.js
12 134 (5.29%) CSS
13 114 (4.50%) AngularJS
14 108 (4.26%) OAuth
15 87 (3.43%) JSON
16 77 (3.04%) Middleware
17 68 (2.68%) OAuth2
18 66 (2.60%) pytest
19 65 (2.57%) XML
20 63 (2.49%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 402 (15.86%) Cloud Native
2 225 (8.88%) Product Ownership
3 188 (7.42%) Distributed Systems
4 113 (4.46%) Enterprise Software
5 87 (3.43%) Onboarding
6 77 (3.04%) AI Agents
7 62 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
8 56 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
8 56 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
9 52 (2.05%) Mobile App
10 38 (1.50%) Data Structures
11 35 (1.38%) Security Posture
12 32 (1.26%) Private Cloud
13 29 (1.14%) Management Information System
13 29 (1.14%) Virtual Team
14 25 (0.99%) Data Centre
15 24 (0.95%) Legacy Applications
15 24 (0.95%) Life Science
16 21 (0.83%) Distributed Architecture
17 20 (0.79%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 182 (7.18%) Linux
2 109 (4.30%) Windows
3 98 (3.87%) Unix
4 48 (1.89%) Apple iOS
5 44 (1.74%) Android
6 30 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (0.99%) Windows Server
8 9 (0.36%) VMS
9 7 (0.28%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.24%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.20%) AIX
11 5 (0.20%) Mac OS X
11 5 (0.20%) Windows 7
11 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
11 5 (0.20%) zOS
12 4 (0.16%) Solaris
13 3 (0.12%) CentOS
13 3 (0.12%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.079%) Embedded Linux
14 2 (0.079%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,585 (62.55%) CI/CD
2 1,234 (48.70%) Agile
3 944 (37.25%) DevOps
4 517 (20.40%) Microservices
5 502 (19.81%) Continuous Improvement
6 494 (19.49%) Problem-Solving
7 486 (19.18%) Software Engineering
8 452 (17.84%) Infrastructure as Code
9 435 (17.17%) AI
10 430 (16.97%) Scrum
11 428 (16.89%) Validation
12 380 (15.00%) Containerisation
13 365 (14.40%) Test Strategy
14 334 (13.18%) Observability
15 331 (13.06%) TDD
16 311 (12.27%) Stakeholder Management
17 308 (12.15%) Software Testing
18 306 (12.08%) SDLC
19 268 (10.58%) End-to-End Testing
20 260 (10.26%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 721 (28.45%) Python
2 717 (28.30%) Java
3 653 (25.77%) SQL
4 398 (15.71%) JavaScript
5 303 (11.96%) TypeScript
6 214 (8.45%) C#
7 104 (4.10%) PowerShell
8 94 (3.71%) Bash
9 57 (2.25%) Bicep
10 50 (1.97%) Kotlin
11 49 (1.93%) Scala
12 46 (1.82%) C++
13 44 (1.74%) Go
14 33 (1.30%) Shell Script
15 31 (1.22%) PL/SQL
16 30 (1.18%) Perl
17 22 (0.87%) Apex Code
18 18 (0.71%) C
18 18 (0.71%) Ruby
19 17 (0.67%) Swift
Qualifications
1 803 (31.69%) Security Cleared
2 678 (26.76%) SC Cleared
3 154 (6.08%) BPSS Clearance
4 141 (5.56%) Degree
5 102 (4.03%) ISTQB
6 95 (3.75%) DV Cleared
7 79 (3.12%) Computer Science Degree
8 50 (1.97%) AWS Certification
9 39 (1.54%) Azure Certification
10 27 (1.07%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.63%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 14 (0.55%) CISSP
12 14 (0.55%) ISEB
12 14 (0.55%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 14 (0.55%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.47%) Cisco Certification
13 12 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
14 10 (0.39%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 8 (0.32%) DBS Check
15 8 (0.32%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 661 (26.09%) QA
2 241 (9.51%) Accessibility
3 183 (7.22%) Data Quality
4 101 (3.99%) WCAG
5 41 (1.62%) GDPR
6 25 (0.99%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 16 (0.63%) NIST
9 15 (0.59%) GRC
10 14 (0.55%) SLA
11 12 (0.47%) NCSC
12 8 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
13 7 (0.28%) HL7
13 7 (0.28%) SEPA
13 7 (0.28%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
15 5 (0.20%) FATCA
15 5 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
16 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
16 4 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 523 (20.64%) Docker
2 46 (1.82%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (1.58%) Active Directory
4 19 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.43%) Firmware
5 11 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.28%) Hyper-V
6 7 (0.28%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.079%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.039%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.039%) KVM
9 1 (0.039%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.039%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 516 (20.36%) Kubernetes
2 149 (5.88%) Ansible
3 139 (5.49%) Grafana
4 91 (3.59%) Prometheus
5 36 (1.42%) Argo
6 33 (1.30%) Kibana
7 27 (1.07%) Puppet
8 26 (1.03%) Progress Chef
9 13 (0.51%) Control-M
10 12 (0.47%) HP ALM
10 12 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.36%) Microsoft Intune
12 8 (0.32%) SCCM
13 7 (0.28%) HP Fortify
13 7 (0.28%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.24%) Istio
15 5 (0.20%) Packer
15 5 (0.20%) WMI
16 4 (0.16%) HP Quality Center
16 4 (0.16%) Rancher
Vendors
1 248 (9.79%) Microsoft
2 198 (7.81%) Oracle
3 107 (4.22%) Databricks
4 90 (3.55%) Google
5 69 (2.72%) IBM
5 69 (2.72%) Salesforce
6 65 (2.57%) ServiceNow
7 59 (2.33%) SAP
8 58 (2.29%) Talend
9 57 (2.25%) Splunk
9 57 (2.25%) VMware
10 53 (2.09%) Informatica
11 52 (2.05%) Red Hat
12 45 (1.78%) Dynatrace
13 38 (1.50%) Denodo
14 37 (1.46%) MuleSoft
15 33 (1.30%) Cisco
16 32 (1.26%) UiPath
17 27 (1.07%) OpenAI
18 26 (1.03%) Foundry