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 1 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 47 55
Rank change year-on-year 0 +8 -10
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,977 1,320 1,548
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.42% 4.55% 3.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.17% 5.02% 4.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,328 911 1,038
10th Percentile £330 £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 £475 £498
% change year-on-year - -4.52% -5.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 9 58
10th Percentile £33.54 £41.66 £37.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.50 £56.75 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.42% -1.30% -8.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.50 £76.25
90th Percentile - £75.84 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £56.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +18.94% -5.42% -4.00%

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 38,255 26,278 38,264
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.62% 90.49% 86.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,265 17,064 24,859
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 £636 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,246 966 2,352
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.00 £12.84
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.26 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £32.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.94% -1.54% -11.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.72 £70.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.07 £31.50 £31.65
% change year-on-year +8.14% -0.47% -12.69%

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 1 April 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 1 April 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 1 April 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 1,688 £481 -3.75% 674
UK excluding London +3 913 £475 - 573
London -1 825 £500 - 183
Work from Home -5 575 £475 -5.00% 333
North of England +6 338 £475 +5.56% 162
Midlands +9 193 £474 - 83
South East -23 178 £500 -7.41% 145
West Midlands +15 165 £477 -4.22% 57
North West +8 148 £456 +1.39% 82
Yorkshire -8 146 £500 +5.26% 41
South West -3 78 £475 -9.52% 72
East of England 0 56 £620 +26.53% 65
North East +7 47 £425 +8.97% 39
Scotland -14 40 £415 -7.83% 30
Wales +1 35 £505 +26.13% 27
East Midlands -24 28 £400 +8.55% 26
Northern Ireland +16 20 £475 -3.01% 7
Channel Islands - 2 - - 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
1 137 (6.93%) Confluence
2 67 (3.39%) SAS
3 31 (1.57%) Apache Spark
4 20 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
5 14 (0.71%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.56%) Apache
7 8 (0.40%) Appian
7 8 (0.40%) nginx
8 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
8 7 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.30%) Camunda
10 5 (0.25%) CMS
11 3 (0.15%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
12 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.10%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.10%) Oracle Application Server
12 2 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 29 (1.47%) 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 (0.051%) Mingle
7 1 (0.051%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.11%) Aladdin
2 9 (0.46%) 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%) iTrent
8 2 (0.10%) NetSuite
8 2 (0.10%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 574 (29.03%) Azure
2 508 (25.70%) AWS
3 353 (17.86%) GitHub
4 273 (13.81%) Azure DevOps
5 191 (9.66%) GitHub Actions
6 178 (9.00%) GCP
7 135 (6.83%) Serverless
8 81 (4.10%) OpenShift
9 79 (4.00%) Power Platform
10 74 (3.74%) AWS Lambda
11 69 (3.49%) Amazon S3
12 50 (2.53%) AWS CloudFormation
13 49 (2.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 41 (2.07%) Azure AKS
14 41 (2.07%) Snowflake
15 39 (1.97%) Amazon ECS
16 35 (1.77%) SaaS
17 34 (1.72%) Azure Data Factory
18 33 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
19 32 (1.62%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.37%) Firewall
1 27 (1.37%) HTTP
2 17 (0.86%) TCP/IP
2 17 (0.86%) VPN
3 14 (0.71%) SSL
4 13 (0.66%) Network Security
4 13 (0.66%) SD-WAN
4 13 (0.66%) WAN
5 11 (0.56%) Wireshark
6 10 (0.51%) DNS
6 10 (0.51%) FTP
6 10 (0.51%) SAN
7 9 (0.46%) Ethernet
7 9 (0.46%) HTTPS
8 8 (0.40%) MPLS
8 8 (0.40%) Multicast
9 7 (0.35%) 5G
10 5 (0.25%) AMQP
10 5 (0.25%) Cisco IPT
10 5 (0.25%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (5.46%) PostgreSQL
2 85 (4.30%) NoSQL
3 81 (4.10%) SQL Server
4 77 (3.89%) MongoDB
5 62 (3.14%) Relational Database
6 50 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
7 45 (2.28%) Power BI
8 41 (2.07%) DynamoDB
9 33 (1.67%) Pentaho
10 32 (1.62%) MySQL
11 30 (1.52%) BigQuery
12 25 (1.26%) Metadata
12 25 (1.26%) Oracle Database
13 23 (1.16%) Tableau
14 22 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
14 22 (1.11%) Redis
15 19 (0.96%) Amazon Athena
16 18 (0.91%) Big Data
17 17 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
18 16 (0.81%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 381 (19.27%) Git
2 379 (19.17%) JIRA
3 358 (18.11%) Jenkins
4 294 (14.87%) Selenium
5 284 (14.37%) GitLab
6 168 (8.50%) Cucumber
7 161 (8.14%) Postman
8 116 (5.87%) JUnit
9 107 (5.41%) Cypress.io
10 104 (5.26%) JMeter
11 99 (5.01%) REST Assured
12 54 (2.73%) WebDriver
13 45 (2.28%) SonarQube
14 41 (2.07%) SpecFlow
15 40 (2.02%) Zephyr
16 36 (1.82%) Gatling
17 34 (1.72%) TestRail
18 33 (1.67%) Maven
19 32 (1.62%) Mockito
20 31 (1.57%) Bitbucket
General
1 519 (26.25%) Social Skills
2 326 (16.49%) Finance
3 291 (14.72%) Public Sector
4 205 (10.37%) Analytical Skills
5 157 (7.94%) Banking
6 37 (1.87%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (1.67%) Investment Banking
8 30 (1.52%) Front Office
9 27 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
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%) Pharmaceutical
15 16 (0.81%) Military
16 14 (0.71%) Financial Institution
17 11 (0.56%) Publishing
18 10 (0.51%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 412 (20.84%) Developer
2 321 (16.24%) Senior
3 224 (11.33%) Tester
4 222 (11.23%) Test Engineer
5 212 (10.72%) Lead
6 118 (5.97%) Automation Tester
7 102 (5.16%) Analyst
8 99 (5.01%) Java Developer
9 96 (4.86%) Data Engineer
9 96 (4.86%) Test Automation Engineer
10 85 (4.30%) Software Engineer
10 85 (4.30%) Test Leader
11 82 (4.15%) QA Engineer
12 80 (4.05%) DevOps Engineer
13 73 (3.69%) Senior Developer
14 71 (3.59%) Architect
15 66 (3.34%) Test Analyst
16 61 (3.09%) Automation Engineer
16 61 (3.09%) Test Manager
17 52 (2.63%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 258 (13.05%) REST
2 240 (12.14%) Playwright
3 171 (8.65%) React
4 156 (7.89%) RESTful
5 150 (7.59%) Node.js
6 145 (7.33%) Spring
7 139 (7.03%) .NET
8 127 (6.42%) Kafka
9 115 (5.82%) Spring Boot
10 95 (4.81%) pytest
11 82 (4.15%) AngularJS
12 65 (3.29%) HTML
13 61 (3.09%) OAuth
14 59 (2.98%) Jest
15 53 (2.68%) CSS
16 51 (2.58%) Web Services
17 48 (2.43%) JSON
18 43 (2.18%) GraphQL
19 40 (2.02%) Gherkin
19 40 (2.02%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 206 (10.42%) Cloud Native
2 144 (7.28%) Product Ownership
3 96 (4.86%) Distributed Systems
4 49 (2.48%) Mobile App
5 46 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
6 42 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
7 38 (1.92%) Algorithms
8 37 (1.87%) Onboarding
8 37 (1.87%) Virtual Team
9 33 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
10 31 (1.57%) Self-Motivation
11 30 (1.52%) NHS
12 27 (1.37%) Security Posture
13 22 (1.11%) Data Structures
13 22 (1.11%) Management Information System
14 21 (1.06%) Equities
14 21 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
15 20 (1.01%) Derivative
16 19 (0.96%) Data Centre
16 19 (0.96%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 137 (6.93%) Linux
2 89 (4.50%) Windows
3 48 (2.43%) 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 (0.46%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.40%) Solaris
11 7 (0.35%) Kali Linux
11 7 (0.35%) 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 1 (0.051%) FreeRTOS
15 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
15 1 (0.051%) Windows 10
15 1 (0.051%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,048 (53.01%) CI/CD
2 933 (47.19%) Agile
3 745 (37.68%) DevOps
4 434 (21.95%) Problem-Solving
5 324 (16.39%) Continuous Improvement
6 309 (15.63%) Test Strategy
7 296 (14.97%) Microservices
8 284 (14.37%) Scrum
9 276 (13.96%) Containerisation
10 262 (13.25%) Validation
11 255 (12.90%) Infrastructure as Code
12 234 (11.84%) AI
13 226 (11.43%) Software Engineering
14 224 (11.33%) Analytics
14 224 (11.33%) Test Scripting
15 218 (11.03%) Observability
16 212 (10.72%) TDD
17 206 (10.42%) Regression Testing
17 206 (10.42%) SDLC
18 199 (10.07%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 604 (30.55%) Python
2 475 (24.03%) Java
3 415 (20.99%) SQL
4 290 (14.67%) JavaScript
5 272 (13.76%) TypeScript
6 209 (10.57%) C#
7 82 (4.15%) PowerShell
8 77 (3.89%) Bash
9 49 (2.48%) C++
10 30 (1.52%) C
10 30 (1.52%) Kotlin
11 29 (1.47%) Ruby
12 28 (1.42%) PL/SQL
13 26 (1.32%) Apex Code
13 26 (1.32%) Bicep
13 26 (1.32%) Go
14 23 (1.16%) Scala
15 18 (0.91%) Swift
16 16 (0.81%) Groovy
17 15 (0.76%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 596 (30.15%) Security Cleared
2 464 (23.47%) SC Cleared
3 101 (5.11%) Degree
4 98 (4.96%) ISTQB
5 79 (4.00%) BPSS Clearance
6 62 (3.14%) DV Cleared
7 56 (2.83%) 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
13 10 (0.51%) CISSP
13 10 (0.51%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 10 (0.51%) OSCP
14 9 (0.46%) CCNP
14 9 (0.46%) ISEB
15 8 (0.40%) CEH
15 8 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 442 (22.36%) QA
2 145 (7.33%) Accessibility
3 114 (5.77%) Data Quality
4 55 (2.78%) WCAG
5 40 (2.02%) GDPR
6 29 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 17 (0.86%) NIST
8 16 (0.81%) SLA
9 15 (0.76%) NCSC
10 14 (0.71%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 11 (0.56%) PCI DSS
12 10 (0.51%) Def Stans
12 10 (0.51%) ISO 20022
13 9 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 8 (0.40%) PSD2
15 6 (0.30%) EU AI Act
15 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
15 6 (0.30%) SEPA
15 6 (0.30%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 394 (19.93%) Docker
2 29 (1.47%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (0.56%) Firmware
5 10 (0.51%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
8 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
9 4 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
10 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.10%) SRDF
12 1 (0.051%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.051%) HDFS
12 1 (0.051%) KVM
12 1 (0.051%) Squid
12 1 (0.051%) Time Sharing Option
12 1 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.051%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 369 (18.66%) Kubernetes
2 235 (11.89%) Terraform
3 113 (5.72%) Grafana
4 95 (4.81%) Ansible
5 86 (4.35%) Prometheus
6 29 (1.47%) Argo
7 25 (1.26%) HP ALM
8 21 (1.06%) Puppet
9 15 (0.76%) Progress Chef
9 15 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.66%) NetBackup
11 10 (0.51%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.51%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.51%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 10 (0.51%) Nmap
12 7 (0.35%) Podman
13 6 (0.30%) Kibana
13 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
13 6 (0.30%) Rancher
14 5 (0.25%) Dell DRAC
Vendors
1 170 (8.60%) Microsoft
2 158 (7.99%) Oracle
3 75 (3.79%) Salesforce
4 72 (3.64%) Databricks
5 65 (3.29%) Google
6 61 (3.09%) ServiceNow
7 59 (2.98%) Splunk
8 52 (2.63%) Red Hat
8 52 (2.63%) SAP
9 38 (1.92%) Talend
10 30 (1.52%) IBM
11 29 (1.47%) Denodo
11 29 (1.47%) VMware
12 28 (1.42%) HP
13 23 (1.16%) Cisco
14 20 (1.01%) Dynatrace
15 16 (0.81%) MuleSoft
15 16 (0.81%) Workday
16 15 (0.76%) UiPath
17 14 (0.71%) OpenAI