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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 49 46
Rank change year-on-year +5 -3 +5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,459 1,531 1,558
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.48% 4.64% 4.09%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.31% 5.13% 4.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,579 1,047 1,050
10th Percentile £322 £313 £349
25th Percentile £405 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -0.05% -4.71%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £666 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 114 39 18
10th Percentile £40.00 £31.71 £40.88
25th Percentile £56.25 £45.63 £43.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -4.35% -23.33%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £73.84
90th Percentile £77.50 £69.80 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.61 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +19.32% - -18.58%

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 46,342 29,835 32,681
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.41% 90.50% 85.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,074 18,533 19,873
10th Percentile £325 £300 £309
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 £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,192 1,836 1,405
10th Percentile £13.74 £14.31 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.32 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.25% -48.10% +1.18%

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 24 September 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 24 September 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 24 September 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 2,064 £475 -5.00% 3,073
UK excluding London -4 1,199 £450 -5.26% 1,908
London +7 933 £500 - 1,473
Work from Home -4 663 £480 +1.05% 1,264
North of England -1 416 £450 -5.26% 458
Midlands +11 263 £450 -2.70% 216
West Midlands +23 248 £458 -11.76% 149
South East -11 227 £448 -8.21% 428
Yorkshire -5 175 £460 -8.00% 139
North West -19 139 £492 +16.17% 250
South West -4 112 £463 -14.35% 277
North East +2 109 £425 -10.53% 69
Scotland -18 97 £475 -5.00% 242
East of England +13 93 £375 +17.19% 188
Wales -4 26 £475 +15.15% 47
East Midlands -47 15 £418 +15.97% 66
Northern Ireland +4 7 £513 +345.65% 63
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 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
1 190 (7.73%) Confluence
2 66 (2.68%) Apache Airflow
3 46 (1.87%) SharePoint
4 45 (1.83%) Apache Spark
5 39 (1.59%) SAS
6 32 (1.30%) Apache
7 17 (0.69%) CMS
8 14 (0.57%) Camunda
9 12 (0.49%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.28%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.28%) nginx
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
11 6 (0.24%) Tomcat
12 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.16%) Anypoint
13 4 (0.16%) ColdFusion
13 4 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
14 3 (0.12%) Kentico
Applications
1 23 (0.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.73%) 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%) Trello
7 2 (0.081%) Mingle
7 2 (0.081%) Simulink
7 2 (0.081%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.041%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.041%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 30 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 28 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.41%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.41%) SAP MDG
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%) FLEXCUBE
7 4 (0.16%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.12%) Finacle
9 2 (0.081%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.081%) Distributed Ledger
9 2 (0.081%) Findur
9 2 (0.081%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.081%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.081%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.081%) Shopify
10 1 (0.041%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 777 (31.60%) AWS
2 735 (29.89%) Azure
3 431 (17.53%) GitHub
4 337 (13.70%) Azure DevOps
5 255 (10.37%) GitHub Actions
6 188 (7.65%) GCP
7 174 (7.08%) Serverless
8 130 (5.29%) AWS Lambda
9 115 (4.68%) Power Platform
10 101 (4.11%) Amazon S3
11 85 (3.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 82 (3.33%) GitHub Copilot
12 82 (3.33%) OpenShift
13 71 (2.89%) AWS CloudFormation
14 68 (2.77%) Amazon EKS
15 67 (2.72%) Amazon ECS
16 62 (2.52%) dbt
17 60 (2.44%) Snowflake
18 50 (2.03%) Anthropic Claude
19 47 (1.91%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.06%) HTTP
2 25 (1.02%) DNS
2 25 (1.02%) Firewall
3 24 (0.98%) 4G
4 23 (0.94%) 5G
5 20 (0.81%) TCP/IP
5 20 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
6 17 (0.69%) Broadband
7 16 (0.65%) Network Security
8 15 (0.61%) 2G
8 15 (0.61%) 3G
8 15 (0.61%) Diameter Protocol
8 15 (0.61%) SIGTRAN
8 15 (0.61%) SS7
9 14 (0.57%) WAN
10 13 (0.53%) BGP
10 13 (0.53%) LAN
11 12 (0.49%) Ethernet VPN
11 12 (0.49%) VXLAN
12 11 (0.45%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 150 (6.10%) PostgreSQL
2 130 (5.29%) MongoDB
3 125 (5.08%) Data Warehouse
4 114 (4.64%) Relational Database
5 107 (4.35%) NoSQL
6 98 (3.99%) SQL Server
7 84 (3.42%) Power BI
8 52 (2.11%) Metadata
9 42 (1.71%) DynamoDB
10 40 (1.63%) Data Lake
11 39 (1.59%) Oracle Reports
12 37 (1.50%) MySQL
13 34 (1.38%) Big Data
13 34 (1.38%) Pentaho
14 33 (1.34%) Redis
15 31 (1.26%) Amazon Redshift
16 30 (1.22%) Amazon Athena
17 28 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
17 28 (1.14%) Oracle Database
18 27 (1.10%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 556 (22.61%) Git
2 402 (16.35%) Jenkins
3 399 (16.23%) JIRA
4 342 (13.91%) GitLab
5 314 (12.77%) Selenium
6 175 (7.12%) Postman
7 167 (6.79%) Cucumber
8 148 (6.02%) JUnit
9 124 (5.04%) Cypress.io
10 108 (4.39%) REST Assured
11 98 (3.99%) JMeter
12 92 (3.74%) SonarQube
13 72 (2.93%) Gatling
14 68 (2.77%) Maven
15 65 (2.64%) Zephyr
16 60 (2.44%) Mockito
17 59 (2.40%) Gradle
18 52 (2.11%) WebDriver
19 38 (1.55%) Bitbucket
20 30 (1.22%) TestNG
General
1 676 (27.49%) Social Skills
2 453 (18.42%) Finance
3 343 (13.95%) Public Sector
4 337 (13.70%) Analytical Skills
5 227 (9.23%) Banking
6 79 (3.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 58 (2.36%) Telecoms
8 41 (1.67%) Front Office
9 36 (1.46%) Investment Banking
10 34 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
11 33 (1.34%) Retail
12 32 (1.30%) Military
13 31 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
14 23 (0.94%) Financial Institution
15 21 (0.85%) Law
16 20 (0.81%) Manufacturing
17 19 (0.77%) Aerospace
17 19 (0.77%) Marketing
18 14 (0.57%) Automotive
19 13 (0.53%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 561 (22.81%) Developer
2 407 (16.55%) Senior
3 247 (10.04%) Lead
4 238 (9.68%) Test Engineer
5 197 (8.01%) Tester
6 182 (7.40%) Java Developer
7 154 (6.26%) Data Engineer
8 123 (5.00%) Software Engineer
9 122 (4.96%) Analyst
10 120 (4.88%) Senior Developer
11 118 (4.80%) DevOps Engineer
12 110 (4.47%) Architect
13 103 (4.19%) Test Automation Engineer
14 98 (3.99%) QA Engineer
15 86 (3.50%) Automation Tester
16 80 (3.25%) Test Analyst
17 79 (3.21%) Full-Stack Developer
18 75 (3.05%) Test Leader
19 74 (3.01%) Automation Engineer
19 74 (3.01%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 428 (17.41%) REST
2 363 (14.76%) Terraform
3 293 (11.92%) Playwright
4 258 (10.49%) RESTful
5 253 (10.29%) Kafka
6 250 (10.17%) Spring
7 226 (9.19%) React
8 214 (8.70%) Spring Boot
9 180 (7.32%) .NET
10 148 (6.02%) HTML
11 140 (5.69%) Node.js
12 127 (5.16%) CSS
13 105 (4.27%) AngularJS
14 98 (3.99%) OAuth
15 84 (3.42%) JSON
16 72 (2.93%) Middleware
17 68 (2.77%) pytest
18 64 (2.60%) OAuth2
19 62 (2.52%) SOAP
20 61 (2.48%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 388 (15.78%) Cloud Native
2 212 (8.62%) Product Ownership
3 178 (7.24%) Distributed Systems
4 101 (4.11%) Enterprise Software
5 80 (3.25%) Onboarding
6 66 (2.68%) AI Agents
7 61 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
8 58 (2.36%) Self-Motivation
9 55 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
10 47 (1.91%) Mobile App
11 36 (1.46%) Virtual Team
12 30 (1.22%) Security Posture
13 29 (1.18%) Data Structures
14 27 (1.10%) Management Information System
14 27 (1.10%) Private Cloud
15 26 (1.06%) Data Centre
16 25 (1.02%) Legacy Applications
17 22 (0.89%) Life Science
18 21 (0.85%) Embedded Systems
19 19 (0.77%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 178 (7.24%) Linux
2 105 (4.27%) Windows
3 101 (4.11%) Unix
4 44 (1.79%) Apple iOS
5 42 (1.71%) Android
6 30 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (1.02%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.28%) VMS
9 6 (0.24%) Mac OS X
9 6 (0.24%) Solaris
10 5 (0.20%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.20%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.16%) AIX
11 4 (0.16%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.16%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,510 (61.41%) CI/CD
2 1,194 (48.56%) Agile
3 907 (36.88%) DevOps
4 488 (19.85%) Microservices
5 477 (19.40%) Continuous Improvement
6 474 (19.28%) Problem-Solving
7 458 (18.63%) Software Engineering
8 439 (17.85%) Infrastructure as Code
9 424 (17.24%) Scrum
10 414 (16.84%) Validation
11 406 (16.51%) AI
12 367 (14.92%) Containerisation
13 365 (14.84%) Test Strategy
14 326 (13.26%) Observability
15 319 (12.97%) TDD
16 300 (12.20%) SDLC
17 296 (12.04%) Software Testing
18 287 (11.67%) Stakeholder Management
19 259 (10.53%) End-to-End Testing
20 245 (9.96%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 691 (28.10%) Java
2 688 (27.98%) Python
3 612 (24.89%) SQL
4 376 (15.29%) JavaScript
5 279 (11.35%) TypeScript
6 209 (8.50%) C#
7 99 (4.03%) PowerShell
8 90 (3.66%) Bash
9 51 (2.07%) Bicep
10 47 (1.91%) Scala
11 46 (1.87%) C++
11 46 (1.87%) Kotlin
12 42 (1.71%) Go
13 33 (1.34%) PL/SQL
13 33 (1.34%) Shell Script
14 26 (1.06%) Perl
15 25 (1.02%) Apex Code
16 22 (0.89%) C
17 18 (0.73%) Ruby
18 16 (0.65%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 791 (32.17%) Security Cleared
2 671 (27.29%) SC Cleared
3 138 (5.61%) Degree
4 136 (5.53%) BPSS Clearance
5 104 (4.23%) ISTQB
6 92 (3.74%) DV Cleared
7 79 (3.21%) Computer Science Degree
8 44 (1.79%) AWS Certification
9 35 (1.42%) Azure Certification
10 27 (1.10%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.65%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 14 (0.57%) CISSP
12 14 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 14 (0.57%) Master's Degree
13 13 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
14 12 (0.49%) ISEB
14 12 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
15 9 (0.37%) DBS Check
16 8 (0.33%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 8 (0.33%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 640 (26.03%) QA
2 221 (8.99%) Accessibility
3 172 (6.99%) Data Quality
4 99 (4.03%) WCAG
5 43 (1.75%) GDPR
6 24 (0.98%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.61%) GRC
8 15 (0.61%) NIST
9 13 (0.53%) SLA
10 12 (0.49%) NCSC
11 8 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.24%) SEPA
12 6 (0.24%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.20%) FATCA
13 5 (0.20%) HL7
14 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
14 4 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 509 (20.70%) Docker
2 43 (1.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 36 (1.46%) Active Directory
4 20 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (0.53%) Firmware
6 12 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
7 8 (0.33%) VMware NSX
8 6 (0.24%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
10 2 (0.081%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.041%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.041%) KVM
11 1 (0.041%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.041%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 498 (20.25%) Kubernetes
2 140 (5.69%) Ansible
3 133 (5.41%) Grafana
4 90 (3.66%) Prometheus
5 41 (1.67%) Argo
6 29 (1.18%) Kibana
7 24 (0.98%) Progress Chef
8 23 (0.94%) Puppet
9 15 (0.61%) HP ALM
10 14 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 13 (0.53%) Control-M
12 8 (0.33%) Microsoft Intune
13 7 (0.28%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.24%) Dell DRAC
14 6 (0.24%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.24%) Istio
14 6 (0.24%) SCCM
15 5 (0.20%) Packer
15 5 (0.20%) WMI
16 4 (0.16%) Rancher
Vendors
1 234 (9.52%) Microsoft
2 198 (8.05%) Oracle
3 96 (3.90%) Databricks
4 79 (3.21%) Google
5 78 (3.17%) Salesforce
6 69 (2.81%) IBM
7 67 (2.72%) ServiceNow
8 59 (2.40%) Red Hat
8 59 (2.40%) Splunk
8 59 (2.40%) Talend
9 56 (2.28%) SAP
10 52 (2.11%) VMware
11 46 (1.87%) Denodo
12 44 (1.79%) Informatica
13 43 (1.75%) Dynatrace
14 35 (1.42%) Cisco
15 34 (1.38%) MuleSoft
16 31 (1.26%) UiPath
17 23 (0.94%) OpenAI
18 22 (0.89%) Foundry