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

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 48 46
Rank change year-on-year +6 -2 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,503 1,554 1,585
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.56% 4.69% 4.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.40% 5.18% 4.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,612 1,068 1,072
10th Percentile £325 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -5.66%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £669 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 36 17
10th Percentile £40.00 £37.92 £42.00
25th Percentile £55.63 £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 £77.70 £71.00 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.00 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +20.00% - -22.03%

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 46,356 30,019 32,670
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.50% 90.58% 85.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,940 18,640 19,751
10th Percentile £325 £300 £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 £632 £625 £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 3,287 1,869 1,348
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.32 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.17 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.72 £25.15 £42.27
Median % change year-on-year +53.96% -40.49% -0.55%
75th Percentile £65.60 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.02 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.86% -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 3 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 3 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 3 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 2,102 £475 -5.00% 3,383
UK excluding London -2 1,217 £450 -5.26% 2,722
London +8 950 £500 - 1,392
Work from Home 0 668 £483 +0.52% 2,038
North of England 0 427 £453 -4.63% 573
Midlands +12 267 £450 -2.70% 296
West Midlands +25 252 £450 -13.34% 188
South East -13 225 £450 -5.26% 501
Yorkshire -5 177 £469 -6.25% 183
North West -14 155 £492 +23.06% 297
South West -9 113 £469 -13.99% 340
North East +5 102 £425 -11.69% 98
Scotland -13 101 £475 -5.00% 491
East of England +15 96 £375 -6.25% 237
Wales -7 24 £425 +3.03% 140
East Midlands -48 15 £418 +15.97% 108
Northern Ireland +2 7 £513 +345.65% 170
Channel Islands - 1 £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
1 195 (7.79%) Confluence
2 65 (2.60%) Apache Airflow
3 50 (2.00%) Apache Spark
4 46 (1.84%) SharePoint
5 37 (1.48%) Apache
6 31 (1.24%) SAS
7 17 (0.68%) CMS
8 13 (0.52%) Camunda
9 12 (0.48%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.28%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
12 5 (0.20%) 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 (0.080%) Mule
Applications
1 21 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.72%) 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%) Trello
7 2 (0.080%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.040%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.040%) Simulink
8 1 (0.040%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 31 (1.24%) Dynamics CRM
2 29 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.40%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.28%) SAP GRC
6 6 (0.24%) FLEXCUBE
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 (0.080%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.080%) Findur
9 2 (0.080%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.080%) SAP FI
9 2 (0.080%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.080%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.080%) Shopify
10 1 (0.040%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 788 (31.48%) AWS
2 757 (30.24%) Azure
3 448 (17.90%) GitHub
4 351 (14.02%) Azure DevOps
5 263 (10.51%) GitHub Actions
6 195 (7.79%) GCP
7 184 (7.35%) Serverless
8 137 (5.47%) AWS Lambda
9 120 (4.79%) Power Platform
10 113 (4.51%) Amazon S3
11 90 (3.60%) GitHub Copilot
12 88 (3.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 79 (3.16%) OpenShift
14 75 (3.00%) Amazon EKS
15 72 (2.88%) Amazon ECS
16 71 (2.84%) AWS CloudFormation
17 61 (2.44%) Snowflake
18 60 (2.40%) dbt
19 54 (2.16%) Anthropic Claude
20 52 (2.08%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.12%) DNS
2 26 (1.04%) Firewall
3 25 (1.00%) HTTP
4 24 (0.96%) 4G
5 23 (0.92%) TCP/IP
6 22 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
7 21 (0.84%) 5G
8 20 (0.80%) Broadband
9 19 (0.76%) Network Security
10 15 (0.60%) WAN
11 14 (0.56%) 2G
11 14 (0.56%) 3G
11 14 (0.56%) BGP
11 14 (0.56%) Diameter Protocol
11 14 (0.56%) SIGTRAN
11 14 (0.56%) SS7
12 13 (0.52%) LAN
13 12 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
13 12 (0.48%) VXLAN
14 11 (0.44%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 155 (6.19%) PostgreSQL
2 129 (5.15%) MongoDB
3 126 (5.03%) Data Warehouse
4 115 (4.59%) Relational Database
5 105 (4.19%) NoSQL
6 100 (4.00%) SQL Server
7 88 (3.52%) Power BI
8 58 (2.32%) Metadata
9 43 (1.72%) Data Lake
10 42 (1.68%) DynamoDB
11 39 (1.56%) MySQL
12 37 (1.48%) Oracle Reports
13 36 (1.44%) Big Data
14 34 (1.36%) Pentaho
15 33 (1.32%) Amazon Redshift
16 32 (1.28%) Amazon Athena
16 32 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
16 32 (1.28%) Redis
17 29 (1.16%) Oracle Database
18 26 (1.04%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 572 (22.85%) Git
2 411 (16.42%) Jenkins
3 400 (15.98%) JIRA
4 351 (14.02%) GitLab
5 318 (12.70%) Selenium
6 183 (7.31%) Cucumber
7 173 (6.91%) Postman
8 155 (6.19%) JUnit
9 125 (4.99%) Cypress.io
10 115 (4.59%) REST Assured
11 102 (4.08%) JMeter
12 87 (3.48%) SonarQube
13 73 (2.92%) Gatling
14 69 (2.76%) Maven
15 66 (2.64%) Zephyr
16 62 (2.48%) Mockito
17 59 (2.36%) Gradle
18 50 (2.00%) WebDriver
19 40 (1.60%) Bitbucket
20 33 (1.32%) TestNG
General
1 694 (27.73%) Social Skills
2 469 (18.74%) Finance
3 357 (14.26%) Analytical Skills
4 349 (13.94%) Public Sector
5 237 (9.47%) Banking
6 79 (3.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 60 (2.40%) Telecoms
8 40 (1.60%) Front Office
9 39 (1.56%) Investment Banking
10 35 (1.40%) Military
11 34 (1.36%) Retail
12 32 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
13 29 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
14 24 (0.96%) Financial Institution
15 21 (0.84%) Law
16 20 (0.80%) Manufacturing
16 20 (0.80%) Marketing
17 19 (0.76%) Aerospace
18 17 (0.68%) Back Office
19 14 (0.56%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 574 (22.93%) Developer
2 419 (16.74%) Senior
3 257 (10.27%) Lead
4 245 (9.79%) Test Engineer
5 190 (7.59%) Tester
6 182 (7.27%) Java Developer
7 165 (6.59%) Data Engineer
8 126 (5.03%) Software Engineer
9 120 (4.79%) Analyst
9 120 (4.79%) Senior Developer
10 116 (4.63%) Architect
11 110 (4.39%) DevOps Engineer
12 103 (4.12%) QA Engineer
12 103 (4.12%) Test Automation Engineer
13 87 (3.48%) Automation Tester
14 83 (3.32%) Full-Stack Developer
15 79 (3.16%) Test Analyst
16 77 (3.08%) Test Leader
17 74 (2.96%) Automation Engineer
18 71 (2.84%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 437 (17.46%) REST
2 371 (14.82%) Terraform
3 294 (11.75%) Playwright
4 266 (10.63%) RESTful
5 263 (10.51%) Kafka
6 254 (10.15%) Spring
7 228 (9.11%) React
8 215 (8.59%) Spring Boot
9 180 (7.19%) .NET
10 155 (6.19%) HTML
11 140 (5.59%) Node.js
12 130 (5.19%) CSS
13 104 (4.16%) AngularJS
14 103 (4.12%) OAuth
15 88 (3.52%) JSON
16 75 (3.00%) Middleware
17 65 (2.60%) pytest
18 64 (2.56%) OAuth2
18 64 (2.56%) XML
19 61 (2.44%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 397 (15.86%) Cloud Native
2 218 (8.71%) Product Ownership
3 184 (7.35%) Distributed Systems
4 105 (4.19%) Enterprise Software
5 88 (3.52%) Onboarding
6 75 (3.00%) AI Agents
7 62 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
8 55 (2.20%) Mobile App
8 55 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
9 53 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
10 36 (1.44%) Security Posture
11 34 (1.36%) Data Structures
12 31 (1.24%) Virtual Team
13 30 (1.20%) Private Cloud
14 27 (1.08%) Management Information System
15 25 (1.00%) Data Centre
16 24 (0.96%) Life Science
17 23 (0.92%) Legacy Applications
18 20 (0.80%) Embedded Systems
18 20 (0.80%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 181 (7.23%) Linux
2 111 (4.43%) Windows
3 99 (3.96%) Unix
4 52 (2.08%) Apple iOS
5 47 (1.88%) Android
6 32 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (1.00%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.32%) VMS
9 7 (0.28%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.24%) Mac OS X
10 6 (0.24%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.20%) AIX
11 5 (0.20%) Windows 7
11 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.16%) Solaris
12 4 (0.16%) zOS
13 3 (0.12%) CentOS
13 3 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.12%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.080%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,550 (61.93%) CI/CD
2 1,210 (48.34%) Agile
3 929 (37.12%) DevOps
4 502 (20.06%) Microservices
5 485 (19.38%) Continuous Improvement
5 485 (19.38%) Problem-Solving
6 470 (18.78%) Software Engineering
7 448 (17.90%) Infrastructure as Code
8 430 (17.18%) AI
9 428 (17.10%) Scrum
10 425 (16.98%) Validation
11 368 (14.70%) Containerisation
12 362 (14.46%) Test Strategy
13 330 (13.18%) Observability
14 329 (13.14%) TDD
15 305 (12.19%) Software Testing
16 300 (11.99%) Stakeholder Management
17 297 (11.87%) SDLC
18 264 (10.55%) End-to-End Testing
19 251 (10.03%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 706 (28.21%) Java
1 706 (28.21%) Python
2 642 (25.65%) SQL
3 389 (15.54%) JavaScript
4 288 (11.51%) TypeScript
5 211 (8.43%) C#
6 102 (4.08%) PowerShell
7 94 (3.76%) Bash
8 56 (2.24%) Bicep
9 51 (2.04%) Kotlin
10 49 (1.96%) Scala
11 46 (1.84%) C++
12 42 (1.68%) Go
13 33 (1.32%) Shell Script
14 31 (1.24%) PL/SQL
15 29 (1.16%) Perl
16 21 (0.84%) Apex Code
17 20 (0.80%) C
18 18 (0.72%) Swift
19 17 (0.68%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 793 (31.68%) Security Cleared
2 668 (26.69%) SC Cleared
3 149 (5.95%) BPSS Clearance
4 138 (5.51%) Degree
5 101 (4.04%) ISTQB
6 93 (3.72%) DV Cleared
7 79 (3.16%) Computer Science Degree
8 48 (1.92%) AWS Certification
9 37 (1.48%) Azure Certification
10 26 (1.04%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.64%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 15 (0.60%) Master's Degree
13 14 (0.56%) CISSP
13 14 (0.56%) ISEB
13 14 (0.56%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 12 (0.48%) Cisco Certification
14 12 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
15 9 (0.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 9 (0.36%) DBS Check
16 8 (0.32%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 647 (25.85%) QA
2 237 (9.47%) Accessibility
3 176 (7.03%) Data Quality
4 103 (4.12%) WCAG
5 45 (1.80%) GDPR
6 25 (1.00%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 16 (0.64%) NIST
9 15 (0.60%) GRC
10 14 (0.56%) SLA
11 12 (0.48%) NCSC
12 8 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
13 7 (0.28%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.24%) HL7
14 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
14 6 (0.24%) SEPA
14 6 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
15 5 (0.20%) FATCA
16 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
16 4 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 508 (20.30%) Docker
2 41 (1.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (1.60%) Active Directory
4 20 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.44%) Firmware
6 10 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.28%) VMware NSX
8 6 (0.24%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
9 2 (0.080%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.040%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.040%) KVM
10 1 (0.040%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.040%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 500 (19.98%) Kubernetes
2 146 (5.83%) Ansible
3 138 (5.51%) Grafana
4 92 (3.68%) Prometheus
5 36 (1.44%) Argo
6 33 (1.32%) Kibana
7 26 (1.04%) Puppet
8 25 (1.00%) Progress Chef
9 14 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.52%) Control-M
10 13 (0.52%) HP ALM
11 9 (0.36%) Microsoft Intune
12 8 (0.32%) SCCM
13 7 (0.28%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.24%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.24%) Istio
15 5 (0.20%) Dell DRAC
15 5 (0.20%) Packer
15 5 (0.20%) WMI
16 4 (0.16%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 243 (9.71%) Microsoft
2 193 (7.71%) Oracle
3 102 (4.08%) Databricks
4 84 (3.36%) Google
5 69 (2.76%) Salesforce
6 68 (2.72%) IBM
7 66 (2.64%) ServiceNow
8 59 (2.36%) SAP
9 58 (2.32%) Splunk
10 57 (2.28%) Talend
11 52 (2.08%) Red Hat
11 52 (2.08%) VMware
12 51 (2.04%) Informatica
13 42 (1.68%) Dynatrace
14 39 (1.56%) Denodo
15 34 (1.36%) MuleSoft
16 33 (1.32%) Cisco
17 32 (1.28%) UiPath
18 26 (1.04%) OpenAI
19 23 (0.92%) Foundry