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

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 56
Rank change year-on-year -1 +9 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,981 1,334 1,504
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.13% 4.54% 3.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.90% 4.99% 4.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,298 935 988
10th Percentile £331 £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 £606 £625
90th Percentile £663 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.32% -5.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 22 53
10th Percentile £36.79 £35.58 £51.50
25th Percentile £56.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £66.75 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.14% -12.50% -14.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £74.50
90th Percentile - £75.45 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -12.00% -9.09%

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 40,423 26,734 36,712
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.29% 90.97% 86.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,371 17,185 23,631
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.68% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,395 1,096 2,442
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.35 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.72 £18.22 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.18 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +50.82% -21.77% +1.04%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.23 £37.50
% change year-on-year +78.39% -32.73% +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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -1 1,694 £475 -5.00% 632
UK excluding London -6 925 £469 -1.32% 504
London 0 818 £500 - 221
Work from Home -3 577 £473 -3.96% 374
North of England +8 342 £464 +3.75% 132
Midlands +6 195 £450 - 63
West Midlands +27 171 £463 -7.73% 47
South East -45 162 £500 -0.10% 130
North West +12 151 £466 +4.25% 75
Yorkshire -7 144 £490 +3.11% 24
South West +14 95 £469 -8.54% 74
East of England +12 64 £507 +5.08% 59
North East +6 54 £425 +8.97% 33
Scotland -31 43 £440 -4.35% 26
Wales 0 30 £475 +16.92% 19
East Midlands -38 24 £400 +22.70% 16
Northern Ireland +18 18 £475 +16.28% 10
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
1 160 (8.08%) Confluence
2 42 (2.12%) SAS
3 40 (2.02%) Apache Spark
4 33 (1.67%) Apache Airflow
5 14 (0.71%) Apache
6 11 (0.56%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.40%) Appian
8 7 (0.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 7 (0.35%) nginx
8 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.30%) Camunda
9 6 (0.30%) CMS
10 4 (0.20%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.10%) Mendix
13 1 (0.050%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.050%) Jupyter
13 1 (0.050%) Solana
Applications
1 27 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (0.56%) MS Visio
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 20 (1.01%) Aladdin
2 13 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 9 (0.45%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.35%) Findur
7 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
7 6 (0.30%) Shopify
8 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
8 5 (0.25%) Maximo
8 5 (0.25%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.25%) SAP MDG
9 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
9 3 (0.15%) Infor CloudSuite
9 3 (0.15%) Infor LN
9 3 (0.15%) Infor M3
9 3 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
9 3 (0.15%) Workday HCM
10 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
10 2 (0.10%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 565 (28.52%) Azure
2 544 (27.46%) AWS
3 342 (17.26%) GitHub
4 257 (12.97%) Azure DevOps
5 195 (9.84%) GitHub Actions
6 145 (7.32%) GCP
7 126 (6.36%) Serverless
8 81 (4.09%) Amazon S3
9 80 (4.04%) AWS Lambda
10 75 (3.79%) Power Platform
11 55 (2.78%) OpenShift
12 54 (2.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 53 (2.68%) Amazon ECS
14 49 (2.47%) AWS CloudFormation
15 42 (2.12%) Amazon EKS
16 37 (1.87%) Amazon EC2
16 37 (1.87%) Snowflake
17 36 (1.82%) Azure Data Factory
18 34 (1.72%) Azure AKS
19 29 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.21%) HTTP
2 20 (1.01%) Firewall
3 14 (0.71%) SAN
4 12 (0.61%) TCP/IP
5 11 (0.56%) FTP
5 11 (0.56%) SSL
6 10 (0.50%) VPN
7 9 (0.45%) Ethernet
8 8 (0.40%) WAN
8 8 (0.40%) Wireshark
9 7 (0.35%) MPLS
9 7 (0.35%) Network Security
9 7 (0.35%) SD-WAN
9 7 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
10 6 (0.30%) VLAN
11 5 (0.25%) 5G
11 5 (0.25%) Multicast
12 4 (0.20%) RS-232
12 4 (0.20%) RS-485
12 4 (0.20%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 109 (5.50%) PostgreSQL
2 105 (5.30%) MongoDB
3 98 (4.95%) NoSQL
4 89 (4.49%) SQL Server
5 73 (3.69%) Data Warehouse
6 72 (3.63%) Relational Database
7 53 (2.68%) Power BI
8 42 (2.12%) DynamoDB
9 36 (1.82%) Metadata
10 35 (1.77%) Pentaho
11 32 (1.62%) Big Data
11 32 (1.62%) MySQL
12 26 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
12 26 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
13 25 (1.26%) Redis
13 25 (1.26%) Tableau
14 22 (1.11%) Amazon Aurora
14 22 (1.11%) BigQuery
14 22 (1.11%) Data Lake
15 20 (1.01%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 391 (19.74%) JIRA
2 362 (18.27%) Git
3 335 (16.91%) Jenkins
4 277 (13.98%) GitLab
5 276 (13.93%) Selenium
6 165 (8.33%) Postman
7 146 (7.37%) Cucumber
8 101 (5.10%) JUnit
8 101 (5.10%) REST Assured
9 95 (4.80%) JMeter
10 94 (4.75%) Cypress.io
11 57 (2.88%) WebDriver
12 48 (2.42%) Zephyr
13 47 (2.37%) SonarQube
14 40 (2.02%) Gatling
15 35 (1.77%) Gradle
15 35 (1.77%) Mockito
16 31 (1.56%) Bitbucket
17 30 (1.51%) Maven
17 30 (1.51%) SpecFlow
General
1 516 (26.05%) Social Skills
2 334 (16.86%) Finance
3 287 (14.49%) Public Sector
4 234 (11.81%) Analytical Skills
5 163 (8.23%) Banking
6 41 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (1.82%) Investment Banking
8 35 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 34 (1.72%) Front Office
10 24 (1.21%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
12 18 (0.91%) Legal
12 18 (0.91%) Military
12 18 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
13 17 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.81%) Aerospace
14 16 (0.81%) Retail
15 13 (0.66%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.61%) Back Office
16 12 (0.61%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 416 (21.00%) Developer
2 312 (15.75%) Senior
3 225 (11.36%) Test Engineer
4 210 (10.60%) Tester
5 203 (10.25%) Lead
6 115 (5.81%) Data Engineer
7 113 (5.70%) Java Developer
8 110 (5.55%) Analyst
9 99 (5.00%) Test Automation Engineer
10 98 (4.95%) Automation Tester
11 95 (4.80%) Software Engineer
12 84 (4.24%) Architect
13 81 (4.09%) DevOps Engineer
13 81 (4.09%) QA Engineer
14 79 (3.99%) Senior Developer
14 79 (3.99%) Test Leader
15 68 (3.43%) Test Analyst
16 64 (3.23%) Full-Stack Developer
17 58 (2.93%) Test Manager
18 52 (2.62%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (12.62%) Playwright
2 237 (11.96%) REST
3 181 (9.14%) React
4 158 (7.98%) RESTful
5 148 (7.47%) Spring
6 144 (7.27%) Kafka
7 141 (7.12%) .NET
8 127 (6.41%) Node.js
9 126 (6.36%) Spring Boot
10 82 (4.14%) AngularJS
11 75 (3.79%) HTML
12 66 (3.33%) pytest
13 60 (3.03%) CSS
13 60 (3.03%) OAuth
14 52 (2.62%) Jest
15 45 (2.27%) Swagger
16 44 (2.22%) OpenID
17 42 (2.12%) JSON
18 41 (2.07%) Gherkin
19 39 (1.97%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 214 (10.80%) Cloud Native
2 150 (7.57%) Product Ownership
3 102 (5.15%) Distributed Systems
4 50 (2.52%) Data Protection Act
5 48 (2.42%) Mobile App
6 47 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
7 39 (1.97%) Virtual Team
8 37 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
9 35 (1.77%) Onboarding
9 35 (1.77%) Self-Motivation
10 30 (1.51%) NHS
11 26 (1.31%) Algorithms
12 24 (1.21%) Management Information System
13 23 (1.16%) Data Centre
14 21 (1.06%) Derivative
14 21 (1.06%) Distributed Architecture
15 20 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
16 18 (0.91%) Fixed Income
17 17 (0.86%) Data Structures
18 16 (0.81%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 125 (6.31%) Linux
2 78 (3.94%) Windows
3 49 (2.47%) Unix
4 42 (2.12%) Android
5 36 (1.82%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.06%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.66%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.45%) 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%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.15%) AIX
14 3 (0.15%) CentOS
15 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.050%) FreeRTOS
16 1 (0.050%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,072 (54.11%) CI/CD
2 912 (46.04%) Agile
3 713 (35.99%) DevOps
4 389 (19.64%) Problem-Solving
5 327 (16.51%) Continuous Improvement
6 320 (16.15%) Microservices
7 291 (14.69%) Test Strategy
8 290 (14.64%) Scrum
9 266 (13.43%) Validation
10 261 (13.18%) Infrastructure as Code
11 256 (12.92%) Containerisation
12 247 (12.47%) Software Engineering
13 239 (12.06%) Observability
14 223 (11.26%) TDD
15 210 (10.60%) AI
16 203 (10.25%) Test Scripting
17 197 (9.94%) User Acceptance Testing
18 191 (9.64%) ETL
18 191 (9.64%) Regression Testing
19 190 (9.59%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 517 (26.10%) Python
2 499 (25.19%) Java
3 440 (22.21%) SQL
4 282 (14.24%) JavaScript
5 251 (12.67%) TypeScript
6 198 (9.99%) C#
7 73 (3.69%) PowerShell
8 69 (3.48%) Bash
9 52 (2.62%) C++
10 42 (2.12%) Kotlin
11 35 (1.77%) PL/SQL
12 33 (1.67%) C
13 32 (1.62%) Scala
14 31 (1.56%) Apex Code
15 26 (1.31%) Bicep
16 23 (1.16%) Go
16 23 (1.16%) Ruby
17 18 (0.91%) Swift
18 14 (0.71%) Groovy
18 14 (0.71%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 619 (31.25%) Security Cleared
2 488 (24.63%) SC Cleared
3 91 (4.59%) ISTQB
4 85 (4.29%) Degree
5 80 (4.04%) BPSS Clearance
6 67 (3.38%) DV Cleared
7 43 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (1.26%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 13 (0.66%) Master's Degree
10 11 (0.56%) Cisco Certification
10 11 (0.56%) SAFe Agilist
11 10 (0.50%) CCNP
11 10 (0.50%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 9 (0.45%) AWS Certification
12 9 (0.45%) Azure Certification
12 9 (0.45%) DBS Check
13 8 (0.40%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 7 (0.35%) CISSP
14 7 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
15 5 (0.25%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 427 (21.55%) QA
2 154 (7.77%) Accessibility
3 119 (6.01%) Data Quality
4 68 (3.43%) WCAG
5 34 (1.72%) GDPR
6 14 (0.71%) ISO 20022
6 14 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 14 (0.71%) SLA
7 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
8 9 (0.45%) NCSC
9 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 7 (0.35%) NIST
9 7 (0.35%) SEPA
10 6 (0.30%) PCI DSS
10 6 (0.30%) PSD2
10 6 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 5 (0.25%) FATCA
12 4 (0.20%) HL7
12 4 (0.20%) MiFID
12 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 348 (17.57%) Docker
2 22 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (1.06%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.66%) Firmware
5 11 (0.56%) 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%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 330 (16.66%) Kubernetes
2 227 (11.46%) Terraform
3 116 (5.86%) Grafana
4 95 (4.80%) Prometheus
5 84 (4.24%) Ansible
6 28 (1.41%) Argo
7 22 (1.11%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.86%) Puppet
9 14 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.66%) 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
13 7 (0.35%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.25%) Rancher
16 4 (0.20%) Istio
16 4 (0.20%) Nmap
Vendors
1 164 (8.28%) Oracle
2 158 (7.98%) Microsoft
3 83 (4.19%) Salesforce
4 65 (3.28%) Databricks
5 62 (3.13%) ServiceNow
5 62 (3.13%) Splunk
6 55 (2.78%) Talend
7 54 (2.73%) Google
8 49 (2.47%) Red Hat
9 37 (1.87%) SAP
10 36 (1.82%) Denodo
11 29 (1.46%) VMware
12 27 (1.36%) IBM
13 25 (1.26%) HP
14 22 (1.11%) Dynatrace
15 21 (1.06%) Cisco
16 20 (1.01%) Informatica
16 20 (1.01%) MuleSoft
16 20 (1.01%) UiPath
17 16 (0.81%) Blue Prism