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

6 months to
18 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 44 47 53
Rank change year-on-year +3 +6 -13
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,705 1,487 1,874
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.82% 4.12% 4.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.37% 4.78% 4.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,179 990 1,353
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% -6.91%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £688 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £495 £495
% change year-on-year +1.11% -0.10% -5.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 8 62
10th Percentile £34.55 £40.88 £35.25
25th Percentile £45.94 £42.19 £48.44
Median hourly rate £65.00 £47.50 £73.75
Median % change year-on-year +36.84% -35.59% +22.92%
75th Percentile £67.00 £63.75 £90.00
90th Percentile £69.40 £70.88 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £50.00 £68.50
% change year-on-year +30.00% -27.01% +14.17%

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 31,777 31,113 41,385
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.78% 86.30% 88.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,898 18,698 27,863
10th Percentile £300 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,100 1,096 1,595
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.10 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.12 £19.03
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -20.45% +25.71%
75th Percentile £44.77 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £33.93 £44.50
% change year-on-year -33.30% -23.75% +53.45%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -1 1,455 £500 -0.99% 1,093
UK excluding London +6 826 £500 +1.11% 689
London -3 674 £513 -2.38% 539
Work from Home +8 543 £500 - 584
North of England -7 277 £488 +8.33% 160
Midlands +16 157 £495 +5.88% 66
South East -9 156 £492 -4.00% 206
Yorkshire -9 129 £514 +8.16% 42
West Midlands +14 122 £515 +3.00% 45
North West -6 107 £400 -11.11% 95
South West +20 88 £523 -5.00% 97
Scotland +8 76 £500 +11.11% 58
East of England +8 55 £413 +3.13% 61
North East +17 43 £494 +16.18% 23
East Midlands +2 35 £360 -10.00% 21
Wales +8 29 £495 -5.26% 31
Northern Ireland -1 11 £295 -43.13% 19

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 85 (4.99%) Confluence
2 51 (2.99%) SAS
3 26 (1.52%) Apache Spark
4 22 (1.29%) Apache Airflow
5 19 (1.11%) Apache
6 14 (0.82%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.47%) CMS
7 8 (0.47%) Oracle Application Server
8 5 (0.29%) Anypoint
8 5 (0.29%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.23%) JBoss
9 4 (0.23%) nginx
9 4 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
9 4 (0.23%) WebLogic
9 4 (0.23%) WordPress
10 3 (0.18%) CICS
10 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 26 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.70%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.41%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.23%) Simulink
5 4 (0.23%) Windchill
6 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.12%) Trello
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 15 (0.88%) Aladdin
2 14 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.23%) SAP HR
3 4 (0.23%) SAP PLM
4 3 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
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%) Oracle Financials
5 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.12%) Shopify
6 1 (0.059%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.059%) CODA-Financials
6 1 (0.059%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.059%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.059%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 478 (28.04%) Azure
2 425 (24.93%) AWS
3 244 (14.31%) GitHub
4 210 (12.32%) Azure DevOps
5 157 (9.21%) GCP
6 127 (7.45%) Serverless
7 123 (7.21%) GitHub Actions
8 62 (3.64%) AWS Lambda
9 56 (3.28%) Power Platform
10 54 (3.17%) OpenShift
11 50 (2.93%) Amazon S3
12 46 (2.70%) AWS CloudFormation
13 37 (2.17%) Azure AKS
13 37 (2.17%) Snowflake
14 36 (2.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 36 (2.11%) SaaS
15 29 (1.70%) Amazon ECS
15 29 (1.70%) Amazon EKS
16 27 (1.58%) Entra ID
17 25 (1.47%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 43 (2.52%) Firewall
2 35 (2.05%) HTTP
3 31 (1.82%) Wireshark
4 27 (1.58%) HTTPS
5 23 (1.35%) SSL
6 17 (1.00%) VPN
7 16 (0.94%) Network Security
7 16 (0.94%) TCP/IP
8 13 (0.76%) Multicast
9 12 (0.70%) DNS
9 12 (0.70%) SD-WAN
10 10 (0.59%) WAN
11 9 (0.53%) Ethernet
12 6 (0.35%) AMQP
12 6 (0.35%) Bluetooth
12 6 (0.35%) Internet
13 5 (0.29%) 5G
13 5 (0.29%) Broadband
13 5 (0.29%) MPLS
13 5 (0.29%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (6.74%) PostgreSQL
2 96 (5.63%) NoSQL
3 89 (5.22%) MongoDB
4 71 (4.16%) Relational Database
5 66 (3.87%) SQL Server
6 43 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
7 27 (1.58%) Amazon RDS
7 27 (1.58%) Power BI
8 26 (1.52%) Pentaho
9 25 (1.47%) DynamoDB
10 24 (1.41%) BigQuery
11 23 (1.35%) Oracle Database
12 21 (1.23%) Data Lake
13 20 (1.17%) Big Data
14 19 (1.11%) MySQL
15 17 (1.00%) Apache Cassandra
16 15 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
16 15 (0.88%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 14 (0.82%) RDBMS
18 13 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 311 (18.24%) Git
2 298 (17.48%) Jenkins
3 295 (17.30%) JIRA
4 274 (16.07%) Selenium
5 214 (12.55%) GitLab
6 151 (8.86%) Cucumber
7 127 (7.45%) Postman
8 116 (6.80%) Cypress.io
9 101 (5.92%) JUnit
10 73 (4.28%) JMeter
11 69 (4.05%) REST Assured
12 57 (3.34%) Bitbucket
13 49 (2.87%) SonarQube
14 41 (2.40%) Maven
15 36 (2.11%) SpecFlow
16 33 (1.94%) Mockito
17 32 (1.88%) Gatling
18 31 (1.82%) Sonatype Nexus
19 27 (1.58%) Appium
20 26 (1.52%) WebDriver
General
1 480 (28.15%) Social Skills
2 295 (17.30%) Finance
3 199 (11.67%) Public Sector
4 194 (11.38%) Analytical Skills
5 133 (7.80%) Banking
6 35 (2.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 33 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
8 28 (1.64%) Telecoms
9 27 (1.58%) Investment Banking
10 24 (1.41%) Front Office
10 24 (1.41%) Manufacturing
11 21 (1.23%) Pharmaceutical
12 20 (1.17%) Financial Institution
13 19 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
14 18 (1.06%) Retail
15 17 (1.00%) Electronics
16 16 (0.94%) Marketing
17 14 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
18 12 (0.70%) Retail Banking
19 11 (0.65%) Military
Job Titles
1 379 (22.23%) Developer
2 255 (14.96%) Senior
3 209 (12.26%) Tester
4 148 (8.68%) Lead
5 145 (8.50%) Test Engineer
6 116 (6.80%) Automation Tester
7 110 (6.45%) Java Developer
8 86 (5.04%) Analyst
9 80 (4.69%) Software Engineer
10 67 (3.93%) DevOps Engineer
11 66 (3.87%) Data Engineer
12 65 (3.81%) Test Analyst
13 60 (3.52%) QA Engineer
13 60 (3.52%) Test Automation Engineer
14 57 (3.34%) Senior Developer
15 55 (3.23%) Automation Engineer
15 55 (3.23%) Test Manager
16 50 (2.93%) Test Leader
17 39 (2.29%) Full-Stack Developer
18 38 (2.23%) Senior Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 209 (12.26%) REST
2 152 (8.91%) Playwright
3 149 (8.74%) React
4 130 (7.62%) .NET
4 130 (7.62%) RESTful
5 109 (6.39%) Spring
6 108 (6.33%) Node.js
7 107 (6.28%) Kafka
8 101 (5.92%) Spring Boot
9 85 (4.99%) JSON
10 79 (4.63%) XML
11 78 (4.57%) SOAP
12 74 (4.34%) CSS
12 74 (4.34%) HTML
13 63 (3.70%) AngularJS
14 59 (3.46%) pytest
15 51 (2.99%) Web Services
16 50 (2.93%) Jest
17 40 (2.35%) Gherkin
18 37 (2.17%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 144 (8.45%) Cloud Native
2 112 (6.57%) Product Ownership
3 52 (3.05%) Mobile App
4 44 (2.58%) Security Posture
5 37 (2.17%) Distributed Systems
6 35 (2.05%) Data Protection Act
7 33 (1.94%) Algorithms
7 33 (1.94%) Public Cloud
8 29 (1.70%) Self-Motivation
8 29 (1.70%) Virtual Team
9 28 (1.64%) Onboarding
10 27 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
11 25 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
12 19 (1.11%) Data Structures
12 19 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 19 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
12 19 (1.11%) Management Information System
13 16 (0.94%) Genomics
14 15 (0.88%) Life Science
15 14 (0.82%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 179 (10.50%) Linux
2 84 (4.93%) Windows
3 59 (3.46%) Unix
4 54 (3.17%) Android
5 42 (2.46%) Apple iOS
6 19 (1.11%) Mac OS X
7 17 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 16 (0.94%) Windows Server
9 10 (0.59%) CentOS
9 10 (0.59%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.18%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.18%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.12%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.059%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.059%) Solaris
13 1 (0.059%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.059%) VMS
13 1 (0.059%) Windows Embedded Compact
13 1 (0.059%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 838 (49.15%) CI/CD
2 829 (48.62%) Agile
3 658 (38.59%) DevOps
4 413 (24.22%) Problem-Solving
5 266 (15.60%) Microservices
6 250 (14.66%) Scrum
7 249 (14.60%) Test Strategy
8 237 (13.90%) Containerisation
9 231 (13.55%) Continuous Improvement
10 219 (12.84%) TDD
11 207 (12.14%) Software Engineering
12 206 (12.08%) Infrastructure as Code
13 201 (11.79%) Test Scripting
14 186 (10.91%) SDLC
15 183 (10.73%) Software Testing
16 164 (9.62%) BDD
17 162 (9.50%) Validation
18 161 (9.44%) AI
19 146 (8.56%) Analytics
20 141 (8.27%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 487 (28.56%) Python
2 406 (23.81%) Java
3 310 (18.18%) SQL
4 241 (14.13%) JavaScript
5 187 (10.97%) TypeScript
6 183 (10.73%) C#
7 100 (5.87%) Bash
8 71 (4.16%) PowerShell
9 40 (2.35%) C++
10 39 (2.29%) Go
11 23 (1.35%) Kotlin
12 21 (1.23%) Bicep
13 15 (0.88%) Scala
13 15 (0.88%) Shell Script
14 14 (0.82%) Swift
15 13 (0.76%) PHP
15 13 (0.76%) PL/SQL
16 12 (0.70%) Perl
16 12 (0.70%) Ruby
17 10 (0.59%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 394 (23.11%) Security Cleared
2 310 (18.18%) SC Cleared
3 110 (6.45%) Degree
4 71 (4.16%) ISTQB
5 55 (3.23%) Computer Science Degree
6 49 (2.87%) DV Cleared
7 48 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
8 27 (1.58%) AWS Certification
9 25 (1.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 25 (1.47%) Master's Degree
10 20 (1.17%) CISSP
11 18 (1.06%) OSCP
12 15 (0.88%) Azure Certification
13 14 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
13 14 (0.82%) CISM
13 14 (0.82%) MCP
14 13 (0.76%) CEH
14 13 (0.76%) GPEN
14 13 (0.76%) ISEB
15 12 (0.70%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 375 (21.99%) QA
2 128 (7.51%) Accessibility
3 74 (4.34%) Data Quality
4 42 (2.46%) NIST
5 39 (2.29%) GDPR
6 36 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 34 (1.99%) WCAG
8 19 (1.11%) PCI DSS
9 18 (1.06%) EU AI Act
9 18 (1.06%) NCSC
10 16 (0.94%) NIST 800
11 15 (0.88%) SEPA
12 11 (0.65%) PSD2
13 8 (0.47%) COBIT
13 8 (0.47%) SLA
14 7 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 7 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 7 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.41%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.35%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 337 (19.77%) Docker
2 29 (1.70%) Active Directory
3 9 (0.53%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (0.41%) Firmware
5 5 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.29%) zsh
6 3 (0.18%) QEMU
6 3 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
6 3 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.12%) vSphere
8 1 (0.059%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.059%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 307 (18.01%) Kubernetes
2 208 (12.20%) Terraform
3 136 (7.98%) Ansible
4 74 (4.34%) Grafana
5 44 (2.58%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.06%) HP ALM
7 17 (1.00%) Argo
8 16 (0.94%) CSIRT
8 16 (0.94%) Nmap
9 15 (0.88%) Progress Chef
10 13 (0.76%) NetBackup
11 10 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
12 9 (0.53%) Puppet
13 7 (0.41%) Kibana
13 7 (0.41%) Nessus
14 6 (0.35%) Podman
15 5 (0.29%) HP Quality Center
15 5 (0.29%) RSA Archer
16 4 (0.23%) vRealize
16 4 (0.23%) WMI
Vendors
1 179 (10.50%) Microsoft
2 147 (8.62%) Oracle
3 64 (3.75%) Salesforce
3 64 (3.75%) ServiceNow
4 63 (3.70%) SAP
5 62 (3.64%) Splunk
6 53 (3.11%) Google
7 52 (3.05%) Databricks
8 28 (1.64%) Talend
9 27 (1.58%) VMware
10 26 (1.52%) Denodo
11 23 (1.35%) Cisco
12 22 (1.29%) F5
12 22 (1.29%) webMethods
13 19 (1.11%) HP
13 19 (1.11%) IBM
13 19 (1.11%) Red Hat
13 19 (1.11%) UiPath
14 17 (1.00%) Atlassian
15 16 (0.94%) Dynatrace