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

6 months to
5 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 46 56
Rank change year-on-year -2 +10 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,988 1,332 1,514
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.18% 4.55% 3.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.95% 5.00% 4.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,315 917 992
10th Percentile £331 £328 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -7.27%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £625
90th Percentile £663 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.05% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 18 56
10th Percentile £36.32 £33.58 £50.63
25th Percentile £54.55 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £52.50 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year +23.81% -14.29% -6.84%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.07 £78.75
90th Percentile - £70.60 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -12.00% -

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 40,158 26,632 37,270
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.47% 90.92% 86.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,255 17,168 24,015
10th Percentile £320 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +1.46% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,399 1,080 2,442
10th Percentile £14.95 £14.63 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.94 £29.00 £35.83
Median % change year-on-year +44.62% -19.06% -0.47%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.69 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.88 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.57 £37.50
% change year-on-year +59.59% -26.48% +7.14%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 1,692 £475 -5.00% 651
UK excluding London -4 917 £470 -1.05% 520
London +1 825 £500 -2.68% 214
Work from Home -2 575 £475 -5.00% 303
North of England +12 334 £469 +4.11% 156
Midlands +2 186 £450 -2.70% 73
South East -39 171 £509 -0.68% 122
West Midlands +18 161 £463 -6.57% 50
North West +14 146 £463 +2.78% 71
Yorkshire -3 142 £493 +3.68% 36
South West +5 92 £475 -5.00% 64
East of England -5 58 £522 +6.58% 65
North East +7 51 £419 +6.01% 49
Scotland -29 49 £425 -5.03% 31
Wales -2 29 £475 +18.75% 16
East Midlands -36 25 £400 -9.86% 23
Northern Ireland +15 18 £475 +16.28% 5
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
1 152 (7.65%) Confluence
2 43 (2.16%) SAS
3 42 (2.11%) Apache Spark
4 32 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
5 14 (0.70%) Apache
6 13 (0.65%) 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%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.20%) CMS
11 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.10%) Mendix
13 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
14 1 (0.050%) CICS
14 1 (0.050%) OpenStack
Applications
1 25 (1.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.60%) MS Visio
4 11 (0.55%) 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 19 (0.96%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
3 8 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.35%) Findur
4 7 (0.35%) Shopify
5 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
6 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.25%) Maximo
7 4 (0.20%) SAP MDG
8 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.15%) Infor CloudSuite
8 3 (0.15%) Infor LN
8 3 (0.15%) Infor M3
8 3 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
8 3 (0.15%) SAP ERP
8 3 (0.15%) Workday HCM
9 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 574 (28.87%) Azure
2 546 (27.46%) AWS
3 343 (17.25%) GitHub
4 263 (13.23%) Azure DevOps
5 197 (9.91%) GitHub Actions
6 150 (7.55%) GCP
7 139 (6.99%) Serverless
8 89 (4.48%) AWS Lambda
9 84 (4.23%) Amazon S3
10 70 (3.52%) Power Platform
11 60 (3.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 60 (3.02%) OpenShift
12 59 (2.97%) AWS CloudFormation
13 56 (2.82%) Amazon ECS
14 40 (2.01%) Amazon EKS
15 39 (1.96%) Azure AKS
15 39 (1.96%) Snowflake
16 36 (1.81%) Amazon EC2
17 34 (1.71%) Azure Data Factory
18 30 (1.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.31%) HTTP
2 21 (1.06%) Firewall
3 14 (0.70%) SAN
4 12 (0.60%) TCP/IP
5 11 (0.55%) FTP
5 11 (0.55%) SSL
5 11 (0.55%) VPN
6 9 (0.45%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.40%) WAN
7 8 (0.40%) Wireshark
8 7 (0.35%) MPLS
8 7 (0.35%) Network Security
8 7 (0.35%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.30%) 5G
9 6 (0.30%) Multicast
9 6 (0.30%) VLAN
10 5 (0.25%) AMQP
10 5 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
11 4 (0.20%) Modbus
11 4 (0.20%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (5.63%) PostgreSQL
2 101 (5.08%) NoSQL
3 97 (4.88%) MongoDB
4 90 (4.53%) SQL Server
5 71 (3.57%) Relational Database
6 70 (3.52%) Data Warehouse
7 51 (2.57%) Power BI
8 48 (2.41%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.76%) Metadata
9 35 (1.76%) MySQL
10 34 (1.71%) Pentaho
11 33 (1.66%) Big Data
12 26 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
13 25 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
13 25 (1.26%) Redis
13 25 (1.26%) Tableau
14 24 (1.21%) Amazon Athena
14 24 (1.21%) BigQuery
15 23 (1.16%) Amazon Aurora
16 21 (1.06%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 392 (19.72%) JIRA
2 374 (18.81%) Git
3 324 (16.30%) Jenkins
4 275 (13.83%) GitLab
5 274 (13.78%) Selenium
6 162 (8.15%) Postman
7 150 (7.55%) Cucumber
8 103 (5.18%) JUnit
9 99 (4.98%) Cypress.io
10 92 (4.63%) JMeter
11 88 (4.43%) REST Assured
12 60 (3.02%) WebDriver
13 49 (2.46%) SonarQube
14 47 (2.36%) Zephyr
15 35 (1.76%) Gatling
15 35 (1.76%) Gradle
15 35 (1.76%) Mockito
16 34 (1.71%) Maven
17 32 (1.61%) SpecFlow
18 29 (1.46%) Bitbucket
General
1 517 (26.01%) Social Skills
2 345 (17.35%) Finance
3 292 (14.69%) Public Sector
4 228 (11.47%) Analytical Skills
5 164 (8.25%) Banking
6 41 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (1.81%) Investment Banking
8 34 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 33 (1.66%) Front Office
10 27 (1.36%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
12 19 (0.96%) Legal
13 17 (0.86%) Aerospace
13 17 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.80%) Military
15 13 (0.65%) Financial Institution
15 13 (0.65%) Retail
16 12 (0.60%) Back Office
16 12 (0.60%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 427 (21.48%) Developer
2 306 (15.39%) Senior
3 213 (10.71%) Test Engineer
4 212 (10.66%) Tester
5 206 (10.36%) Lead
6 114 (5.73%) Data Engineer
7 113 (5.68%) Java Developer
8 107 (5.38%) Analyst
9 101 (5.08%) Automation Tester
10 100 (5.03%) Test Automation Engineer
11 87 (4.38%) Architect
12 85 (4.28%) QA Engineer
13 84 (4.23%) Software Engineer
13 84 (4.23%) Test Leader
14 80 (4.02%) DevOps Engineer
15 78 (3.92%) Senior Developer
16 68 (3.42%) Test Analyst
17 65 (3.27%) Test Manager
18 64 (3.22%) Full-Stack Developer
19 53 (2.67%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 241 (12.12%) Playwright
2 236 (11.87%) REST
3 175 (8.80%) React
4 155 (7.80%) RESTful
5 150 (7.55%) Spring
6 140 (7.04%) Node.js
7 137 (6.89%) .NET
8 134 (6.74%) Kafka
9 124 (6.24%) Spring Boot
10 86 (4.33%) AngularJS
11 76 (3.82%) HTML
12 68 (3.42%) pytest
13 64 (3.22%) OAuth
14 61 (3.07%) CSS
15 55 (2.77%) Jest
16 47 (2.36%) JSON
17 45 (2.26%) Gherkin
18 42 (2.11%) OpenID
19 39 (1.96%) Swagger
20 38 (1.91%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 216 (10.87%) Cloud Native
2 151 (7.60%) Product Ownership
3 101 (5.08%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (2.41%) Data Protection Act
4 48 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
5 47 (2.36%) Mobile App
6 38 (1.91%) Onboarding
7 36 (1.81%) Virtual Team
8 31 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
8 31 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
9 30 (1.51%) NHS
10 27 (1.36%) Algorithms
11 25 (1.26%) Data Centre
12 24 (1.21%) Management Information System
13 21 (1.06%) Distributed Architecture
14 20 (1.01%) Derivative
14 20 (1.01%) Security Posture
15 19 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
16 18 (0.91%) Data Structures
17 17 (0.86%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 127 (6.39%) Linux
2 82 (4.12%) Windows
3 44 (2.21%) Android
4 43 (2.16%) Unix
5 36 (1.81%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.06%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.65%) Mac OS X
9 11 (0.55%) 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%) CentOS
13 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.15%) AIX
15 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.050%) FreeRTOS
16 1 (0.050%) Robot Operating System
16 1 (0.050%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,066 (53.62%) CI/CD
2 919 (46.23%) Agile
3 719 (36.17%) DevOps
4 397 (19.97%) Problem-Solving
5 320 (16.10%) Continuous Improvement
6 317 (15.95%) Microservices
7 290 (14.59%) Scrum
8 286 (14.39%) Test Strategy
9 269 (13.53%) Infrastructure as Code
10 265 (13.33%) Validation
11 263 (13.23%) Containerisation
12 240 (12.07%) Software Engineering
13 227 (11.42%) Observability
14 220 (11.07%) AI
15 213 (10.71%) TDD
16 202 (10.16%) Regression Testing
16 202 (10.16%) Test Scripting
17 198 (9.96%) SDLC
18 197 (9.91%) Analytics
19 196 (9.86%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 541 (27.21%) Python
2 497 (25.00%) Java
3 434 (21.83%) SQL
4 289 (14.54%) JavaScript
5 267 (13.43%) TypeScript
6 202 (10.16%) C#
7 73 (3.67%) PowerShell
8 68 (3.42%) Bash
9 52 (2.62%) C++
10 36 (1.81%) Kotlin
11 33 (1.66%) C
12 32 (1.61%) Scala
13 31 (1.56%) PL/SQL
14 28 (1.41%) Ruby
15 26 (1.31%) Apex Code
15 26 (1.31%) Bicep
16 23 (1.16%) Go
17 15 (0.75%) Swift
18 14 (0.70%) Groovy
19 13 (0.65%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 613 (30.84%) Security Cleared
2 484 (24.35%) SC Cleared
3 87 (4.38%) ISTQB
4 86 (4.33%) Degree
5 79 (3.97%) BPSS Clearance
6 66 (3.32%) DV Cleared
7 49 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
8 21 (1.06%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 16 (0.80%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.60%) Azure Certification
10 12 (0.60%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.55%) AWS Certification
12 10 (0.50%) CCNP
12 10 (0.50%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 9 (0.45%) DBS Check
13 9 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.40%) SAFe Agilist
15 6 (0.30%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 6 (0.30%) CISSP
15 6 (0.30%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 449 (22.59%) QA
2 144 (7.24%) Accessibility
3 118 (5.94%) Data Quality
4 61 (3.07%) WCAG
5 39 (1.96%) GDPR
6 18 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 14 (0.70%) ISO 20022
8 13 (0.65%) SLA
9 11 (0.55%) NCSC
10 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
11 9 (0.45%) PCI DSS
12 8 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 7 (0.35%) NIST
13 7 (0.35%) SEPA
14 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
14 6 (0.30%) PSD2
15 5 (0.25%) FATCA
16 4 (0.20%) HL7
16 4 (0.20%) MiFID
System Software
1 357 (17.96%) Docker
2 23 (1.16%) Active Directory
3 19 (0.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.70%) Firmware
5 11 (0.55%) 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%) Time Sharing Option
12 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 344 (17.30%) Kubernetes
2 242 (12.17%) Terraform
3 109 (5.48%) Grafana
4 84 (4.23%) Prometheus
5 80 (4.02%) Ansible
6 29 (1.46%) Argo
7 22 (1.11%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.86%) Puppet
9 15 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (0.70%) 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
12 8 (0.40%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
14 5 (0.25%) Nmap
14 5 (0.25%) Rancher
15 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 167 (8.40%) Microsoft
2 164 (8.25%) Oracle
3 81 (4.07%) Salesforce
4 68 (3.42%) ServiceNow
5 66 (3.32%) Databricks
6 57 (2.87%) Splunk
7 56 (2.82%) Google
8 49 (2.46%) Red Hat
8 49 (2.46%) Talend
9 44 (2.21%) SAP
10 33 (1.66%) Denodo
11 30 (1.51%) IBM
12 27 (1.36%) VMware
13 25 (1.26%) HP
14 22 (1.11%) Cisco
15 20 (1.01%) Dynatrace
15 20 (1.01%) MuleSoft
16 18 (0.91%) Informatica
16 18 (0.91%) UiPath
17 16 (0.80%) Blue Prism