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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 50 46
Rank change year-on-year +6 -4 +5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,463 1,528 1,578
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.49% 4.63% 4.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.32% 5.12% 4.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,585 1,045 1,064
10th Percentile £322 £313 £350
25th Percentile £405 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -0.10% -4.67%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £665 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 39 18
10th Percentile £40.00 £31.71 £40.88
25th Percentile £55.63 £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 £69.00 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +20.00% - -20.69%

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 46,295 29,870 32,935
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.37% 90.52% 85.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,040 18,573 20,019
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 £627 £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 3,185 1,844 1,407
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.33 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.33 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.03 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.91% -47.67% +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 25 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 25 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 25 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 2,065 £475 -5.00% 2,966
UK excluding London -4 1,197 £450 -5.26% 1,837
London +4 933 £500 -1.72% 1,428
Work from Home -2 660 £480 +1.05% 1,238
North of England -1 414 £450 -5.26% 459
Midlands +9 263 £450 -2.70% 200
West Midlands +26 248 £450 -13.18% 141
South East -14 225 £448 -5.79% 404
Yorkshire -5 175 £463 -7.50% 140
North West -18 142 £492 +15.12% 247
South West -5 112 £463 -14.35% 257
North East +2 104 £425 -10.53% 72
Scotland -17 97 £475 -5.00% 228
East of England +9 94 £375 +17.19% 179
Wales -7 25 £444 +7.58% 43
East Midlands -40 15 £418 +15.97% 58
Northern Ireland +3 7 £513 +345.65% 79
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
1 191 (7.75%) Confluence
2 66 (2.68%) Apache Airflow
3 46 (1.87%) Apache Spark
3 46 (1.87%) SharePoint
4 38 (1.54%) SAS
5 32 (1.30%) Apache
6 17 (0.69%) CMS
7 15 (0.61%) Camunda
8 12 (0.49%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.28%) Jupyter
9 7 (0.28%) nginx
9 7 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.24%) Tomcat
11 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.16%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.16%) ColdFusion
12 4 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 3 (0.12%) Kentico
Applications
1 23 (0.93%) 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%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 4 (0.16%) FLEXCUBE
8 4 (0.16%) Temenos T24
9 3 (0.12%) Finacle
10 2 (0.081%) BambooHR
10 2 (0.081%) Distributed Ledger
10 2 (0.081%) Findur
10 2 (0.081%) Oracle ERP
10 2 (0.081%) SAP HR
10 2 (0.081%) SAP Payroll
10 2 (0.081%) Shopify
11 1 (0.041%) Infor LN
Cloud Services
1 781 (31.71%) AWS
2 738 (29.96%) Azure
3 437 (17.74%) GitHub
4 341 (13.84%) Azure DevOps
5 256 (10.39%) GitHub Actions
6 188 (7.63%) GCP
7 176 (7.15%) Serverless
8 132 (5.36%) AWS Lambda
9 115 (4.67%) Power Platform
10 103 (4.18%) Amazon S3
11 86 (3.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 85 (3.45%) GitHub Copilot
13 79 (3.21%) OpenShift
14 71 (2.88%) AWS CloudFormation
15 68 (2.76%) Amazon EKS
16 67 (2.72%) Amazon ECS
17 62 (2.52%) dbt
18 60 (2.44%) Snowflake
19 52 (2.11%) Anthropic Claude
20 47 (1.91%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.06%) HTTP
2 25 (1.02%) 4G
2 25 (1.02%) DNS
2 25 (1.02%) Firewall
3 22 (0.89%) 5G
3 22 (0.89%) Wi-Fi
4 21 (0.85%) TCP/IP
5 19 (0.77%) Broadband
6 16 (0.65%) Network Security
7 15 (0.61%) 2G
7 15 (0.61%) 3G
7 15 (0.61%) Diameter Protocol
7 15 (0.61%) SIGTRAN
7 15 (0.61%) SS7
8 14 (0.57%) WAN
9 13 (0.53%) BGP
9 13 (0.53%) LAN
10 12 (0.49%) Ethernet VPN
10 12 (0.49%) VXLAN
11 11 (0.45%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 150 (6.09%) PostgreSQL
2 130 (5.28%) MongoDB
3 125 (5.08%) Data Warehouse
4 116 (4.71%) Relational Database
5 107 (4.34%) NoSQL
6 101 (4.10%) SQL Server
7 84 (3.41%) Power BI
8 54 (2.19%) Metadata
9 43 (1.75%) DynamoDB
10 40 (1.62%) Data Lake
11 39 (1.58%) Oracle Reports
12 38 (1.54%) MySQL
13 34 (1.38%) Pentaho
14 33 (1.34%) Big Data
14 33 (1.34%) Redis
15 32 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
16 31 (1.26%) Amazon Athena
17 28 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
17 28 (1.14%) Oracle Database
18 27 (1.10%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 563 (22.86%) Git
2 402 (16.32%) Jenkins
3 399 (16.20%) JIRA
4 346 (14.05%) GitLab
5 313 (12.71%) Selenium
6 173 (7.02%) Postman
7 167 (6.78%) Cucumber
8 150 (6.09%) JUnit
9 123 (4.99%) Cypress.io
10 109 (4.43%) REST Assured
11 99 (4.02%) JMeter
12 90 (3.65%) SonarQube
13 73 (2.96%) Gatling
14 69 (2.80%) Maven
15 65 (2.64%) Zephyr
16 61 (2.48%) Mockito
17 60 (2.44%) Gradle
18 52 (2.11%) WebDriver
19 38 (1.54%) Bitbucket
20 30 (1.22%) TestNG
General
1 673 (27.32%) Social Skills
2 455 (18.47%) Finance
3 344 (13.97%) Public Sector
4 339 (13.76%) Analytical Skills
5 230 (9.34%) Banking
6 79 (3.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 59 (2.40%) Telecoms
8 40 (1.62%) Front Office
9 36 (1.46%) Investment Banking
10 33 (1.34%) Retail
11 32 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 31 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
12 31 (1.26%) Military
13 23 (0.93%) Financial Institution
14 20 (0.81%) Law
14 20 (0.81%) Manufacturing
15 19 (0.77%) Aerospace
15 19 (0.77%) Marketing
16 14 (0.57%) Automotive
17 13 (0.53%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 559 (22.70%) Developer
2 407 (16.52%) Senior
3 251 (10.19%) Lead
4 235 (9.54%) Test Engineer
5 198 (8.04%) Tester
6 180 (7.31%) Java Developer
7 157 (6.37%) Data Engineer
8 125 (5.08%) Software Engineer
9 121 (4.91%) Analyst
9 121 (4.91%) Senior Developer
10 118 (4.79%) DevOps Engineer
11 108 (4.38%) Architect
12 102 (4.14%) Test Automation Engineer
13 99 (4.02%) QA Engineer
14 87 (3.53%) Automation Tester
15 81 (3.29%) Full-Stack Developer
16 79 (3.21%) Test Analyst
17 76 (3.09%) Test Leader
18 74 (3.00%) Automation Engineer
18 74 (3.00%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 427 (17.34%) REST
2 366 (14.86%) Terraform
3 293 (11.90%) Playwright
4 257 (10.43%) RESTful
5 256 (10.39%) Kafka
6 253 (10.27%) Spring
7 226 (9.18%) React
8 217 (8.81%) Spring Boot
9 183 (7.43%) .NET
10 149 (6.05%) HTML
11 139 (5.64%) Node.js
12 127 (5.16%) CSS
13 102 (4.14%) AngularJS
14 98 (3.98%) OAuth
15 85 (3.45%) JSON
16 73 (2.96%) Middleware
17 68 (2.76%) pytest
18 64 (2.60%) OAuth2
19 61 (2.48%) XML
20 60 (2.44%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 393 (15.96%) Cloud Native
2 210 (8.53%) Product Ownership
3 177 (7.19%) Distributed Systems
4 102 (4.14%) Enterprise Software
5 82 (3.33%) Onboarding
6 67 (2.72%) AI Agents
7 62 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
8 56 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
9 54 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
10 48 (1.95%) Mobile App
11 35 (1.42%) Virtual Team
12 30 (1.22%) Data Structures
13 29 (1.18%) Security Posture
14 27 (1.10%) Management Information System
14 27 (1.10%) Private Cloud
15 25 (1.02%) Data Centre
15 25 (1.02%) Legacy Applications
16 22 (0.89%) Embedded Systems
16 22 (0.89%) Life Science
17 19 (0.77%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 178 (7.23%) Linux
2 106 (4.30%) Windows
3 101 (4.10%) Unix
4 44 (1.79%) Apple iOS
5 41 (1.66%) Android
6 31 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (1.02%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.32%) 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
11 4 (0.16%) zOS
12 3 (0.12%) CentOS
12 3 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,517 (61.59%) CI/CD
2 1,192 (48.40%) Agile
3 913 (37.07%) DevOps
4 490 (19.89%) Microservices
5 480 (19.49%) Continuous Improvement
6 476 (19.33%) Problem-Solving
7 457 (18.55%) Software Engineering
8 441 (17.90%) Infrastructure as Code
9 419 (17.01%) Scrum
9 419 (17.01%) Validation
10 412 (16.73%) AI
11 368 (14.94%) Test Strategy
12 367 (14.90%) Containerisation
13 331 (13.44%) Observability
14 319 (12.95%) TDD
15 298 (12.10%) Software Testing
16 296 (12.02%) SDLC
17 291 (11.81%) Stakeholder Management
18 261 (10.60%) End-to-End Testing
19 246 (9.99%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 690 (28.01%) Python
2 689 (27.97%) Java
3 615 (24.97%) SQL
4 375 (15.23%) JavaScript
5 277 (11.25%) TypeScript
6 210 (8.53%) C#
7 100 (4.06%) PowerShell
8 91 (3.69%) Bash
9 53 (2.15%) Bicep
10 47 (1.91%) Kotlin
10 47 (1.91%) Scala
11 46 (1.87%) C++
12 42 (1.71%) Go
13 33 (1.34%) PL/SQL
13 33 (1.34%) Shell Script
14 27 (1.10%) Perl
15 23 (0.93%) Apex Code
16 22 (0.89%) C
17 16 (0.65%) Ruby
17 16 (0.65%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 785 (31.87%) Security Cleared
2 665 (27.00%) SC Cleared
3 138 (5.60%) Degree
4 137 (5.56%) BPSS Clearance
5 104 (4.22%) ISTQB
6 91 (3.69%) DV Cleared
7 81 (3.29%) 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 15 (0.61%) Master's Degree
13 14 (0.57%) CISSP
13 14 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 13 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
15 12 (0.49%) ISEB
15 12 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.37%) DBS Check
17 8 (0.32%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 8 (0.32%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 642 (26.07%) QA
2 221 (8.97%) Accessibility
3 175 (7.11%) Data Quality
4 98 (3.98%) WCAG
5 44 (1.79%) GDPR
6 24 (0.97%) 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 (0.32%) 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
1 512 (20.79%) Docker
2 43 (1.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 36 (1.46%) Active Directory
4 20 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.49%) Firmware
5 12 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
6 8 (0.32%) VMware NSX
7 6 (0.24%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
9 2 (0.081%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.041%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.041%) KVM
10 1 (0.041%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.041%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 498 (20.22%) Kubernetes
2 139 (5.64%) Ansible
3 133 (5.40%) Grafana
4 90 (3.65%) Prometheus
5 37 (1.50%) Argo
6 29 (1.18%) Kibana
7 24 (0.97%) Progress Chef
8 23 (0.93%) Puppet
9 15 (0.61%) HP ALM
10 14 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 13 (0.53%) Control-M
12 8 (0.32%) Microsoft Intune
13 7 (0.28%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.24%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.24%) Istio
14 6 (0.24%) SCCM
15 5 (0.20%) Dell DRAC
15 5 (0.20%) Packer
15 5 (0.20%) WMI
16 4 (0.16%) Rancher
Vendors
1 236 (9.58%) Microsoft
2 196 (7.96%) Oracle
3 98 (3.98%) Databricks
4 80 (3.25%) Google
5 74 (3.00%) Salesforce
6 71 (2.88%) IBM
7 66 (2.68%) ServiceNow
8 59 (2.40%) Splunk
8 59 (2.40%) Talend
9 56 (2.27%) Red Hat
9 56 (2.27%) 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 24 (0.97%) OpenAI
18 22 (0.89%) Foundry