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

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 49 52
Rank change year-on-year +3 +3 -3
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,144 1,334 1,573
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.24% 4.47% 3.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.00% 4.91% 4.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,384 938 1,029
10th Percentile £336 £320 £363
25th Percentile £403 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% -4.39% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £725 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £464 £503
% change year-on-year -0.81% -7.71% -3.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 26 53
10th Percentile £36.19 £37.92 £50.25
25th Percentile £59.63 £44.95 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.57% -8.70% -14.66%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £74.40 £77.35 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +28.57% -8.70% -10.68%

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 42,883 27,154 37,300
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.85% 91.05% 85.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,719 17,238 23,736
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.49% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,572 1,254 2,607
10th Percentile £14.70 £14.20 £12.70
25th Percentile £20.07 £17.79 £16.04
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.40 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +73.07% -32.27% +7.05%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.19 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.08 £38.12
% change year-on-year +79.46% -34.22% +17.29%

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 19 June 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 19 June 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 19 June 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 +4 1,829 £475 -3.06% 453
UK excluding London 0 1,058 £460 -0.81% 372
London +1 832 £500 - 160
Work from Home -2 610 £475 - 198
North of England +13 366 £455 +1.11% 91
Midlands +12 229 £450 +6.51% 49
West Midlands +27 210 £450 -10.00% 29
South East -30 196 £475 -5.00% 125
North West +4 148 £475 +8.94% 44
Yorkshire -4 147 £500 +2.56% 26
South West +23 106 £450 - 41
East of England +18 83 £495 +7.90% 50
North East +6 79 £425 +6.25% 22
Scotland -30 57 £440 -8.33% 19
Wales -3 32 £475 +16.92% 3
Northern Ireland +20 21 £475 +16.28% 8
East Midlands -40 19 £418 +51.82% 20
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
1 184 (8.58%) Confluence
2 48 (2.24%) SAS
3 45 (2.10%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (2.10%) Apache Spark
4 18 (0.84%) Apache
5 14 (0.65%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.56%) CMS
7 8 (0.37%) Appian
7 8 (0.37%) Camunda
7 8 (0.37%) nginx
7 8 (0.37%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.28%) WebLogic
9 4 (0.19%) Anypoint
9 4 (0.19%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.14%) Kentico
10 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.093%) Apache Pulsar
11 2 (0.093%) Mendix
11 2 (0.093%) Mule
Applications
1 31 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
4 10 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.14%) Simulink
7 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.047%) Mingle
7 1 (0.047%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.84%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 11 (0.51%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.37%) Findur
7 6 (0.28%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.28%) Shopify
8 5 (0.23%) BambooHR
8 5 (0.23%) Loan IQ
8 5 (0.23%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.19%) Infor CloudSuite
9 4 (0.19%) Infor LN
9 4 (0.19%) Infor M3
10 3 (0.14%) Distributed Ledger
10 3 (0.14%) Maximo
10 3 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
10 3 (0.14%) Workday HCM
11 2 (0.093%) Advent Geneva
11 2 (0.093%) IntelliMatch
Cloud Services
1 615 (28.68%) Azure
2 607 (28.31%) AWS
3 353 (16.46%) GitHub
4 279 (13.01%) Azure DevOps
5 214 (9.98%) GitHub Actions
6 157 (7.32%) GCP
7 151 (7.04%) Serverless
8 102 (4.76%) AWS Lambda
9 94 (4.38%) Amazon S3
10 93 (4.34%) Power Platform
11 67 (3.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 63 (2.94%) OpenShift
13 58 (2.71%) Amazon ECS
14 49 (2.29%) Amazon EC2
15 46 (2.15%) AWS CloudFormation
16 44 (2.05%) Azure Data Factory
17 42 (1.96%) dbt
18 40 (1.87%) Snowflake
19 39 (1.82%) Amazon EKS
20 29 (1.35%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.17%) HTTP
2 22 (1.03%) Firewall
3 16 (0.75%) SAN
4 12 (0.56%) Network Security
5 11 (0.51%) WAN
6 10 (0.47%) VPN
7 9 (0.42%) MPLS
7 9 (0.42%) TCP/IP
8 7 (0.33%) 5G
8 7 (0.33%) BGP
8 7 (0.33%) Wireshark
9 6 (0.28%) 4G
9 6 (0.28%) Ethernet
9 6 (0.28%) LAN
9 6 (0.28%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.28%) VLAN
9 6 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
10 5 (0.23%) 3G
10 5 (0.23%) Diameter Protocol
10 5 (0.23%) SS7
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (5.36%) PostgreSQL
2 108 (5.04%) MongoDB
3 98 (4.57%) Data Warehouse
4 91 (4.24%) NoSQL
5 76 (3.54%) Relational Database
6 73 (3.40%) SQL Server
7 69 (3.22%) Power BI
8 46 (2.15%) DynamoDB
9 41 (1.91%) Metadata
10 37 (1.73%) Oracle Reports
11 36 (1.68%) Big Data
11 36 (1.68%) Pentaho
12 33 (1.54%) Amazon Athena
13 28 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
13 28 (1.31%) Amazon Redshift
14 27 (1.26%) MySQL
15 26 (1.21%) Data Lake
15 26 (1.21%) Redis
16 23 (1.07%) BigQuery
17 22 (1.03%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 411 (19.17%) JIRA
2 387 (18.05%) Git
3 346 (16.14%) Jenkins
4 309 (14.41%) GitLab
5 277 (12.92%) Selenium
6 170 (7.93%) Postman
7 152 (7.09%) Cucumber
8 114 (5.32%) REST Assured
9 107 (4.99%) JUnit
10 104 (4.85%) JMeter
11 103 (4.80%) Cypress.io
12 61 (2.85%) WebDriver
13 59 (2.75%) Zephyr
14 57 (2.66%) SonarQube
15 46 (2.15%) Gatling
16 45 (2.10%) Gradle
17 39 (1.82%) Mockito
18 36 (1.68%) Bitbucket
19 34 (1.59%) Maven
20 31 (1.45%) SpecFlow
General
1 571 (26.63%) Social Skills
2 379 (17.68%) Finance
3 300 (13.99%) Public Sector
4 261 (12.17%) Analytical Skills
5 179 (8.35%) Banking
6 54 (2.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 41 (1.91%) Documentation Skills
8 38 (1.77%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.63%) Front Office
10 28 (1.31%) Telecoms
11 27 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
12 26 (1.21%) Military
13 21 (0.98%) Financial Institution
14 19 (0.89%) Retail
15 18 (0.84%) Aerospace
16 17 (0.79%) Legal
16 17 (0.79%) Manufacturing
16 17 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
17 14 (0.65%) Marketing
18 13 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 432 (20.15%) Developer
2 339 (15.81%) Senior
3 233 (10.87%) Test Engineer
4 231 (10.77%) Lead
5 228 (10.63%) Tester
6 140 (6.53%) Data Engineer
7 130 (6.06%) Java Developer
8 113 (5.27%) Analyst
9 107 (4.99%) Software Engineer
10 99 (4.62%) Architect
10 99 (4.62%) DevOps Engineer
11 95 (4.43%) Test Automation Engineer
12 91 (4.24%) Automation Tester
13 84 (3.92%) Test Leader
14 82 (3.82%) Senior Developer
15 81 (3.78%) QA Engineer
16 70 (3.26%) Test Analyst
17 60 (2.80%) Full-Stack Developer
18 57 (2.66%) Automation Engineer
18 57 (2.66%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 252 (11.75%) REST
2 249 (11.61%) Playwright
3 196 (9.14%) React
4 165 (7.70%) RESTful
5 161 (7.51%) Spring
6 149 (6.95%) Kafka
7 132 (6.16%) Spring Boot
8 127 (5.92%) .NET
9 112 (5.22%) Node.js
10 88 (4.10%) AngularJS
11 72 (3.36%) HTML
12 63 (2.94%) CSS
13 62 (2.89%) pytest
14 60 (2.80%) OAuth
15 49 (2.29%) Jest
16 45 (2.10%) Swagger
17 43 (2.01%) Gherkin
17 43 (2.01%) JSON
18 40 (1.87%) OAuth2
19 38 (1.77%) Quarkus
Miscellaneous
1 252 (11.75%) Cloud Native
2 163 (7.60%) Product Ownership
3 127 (5.92%) Distributed Systems
4 62 (2.89%) Enterprise Software
5 60 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
6 55 (2.57%) Data Protection Act
7 44 (2.05%) Mobile App
8 43 (2.01%) Self-Motivation
9 42 (1.96%) Virtual Team
10 40 (1.87%) Onboarding
11 33 (1.54%) Distributed Architecture
12 27 (1.26%) NHS
13 25 (1.17%) Management Information System
14 23 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
14 23 (1.07%) Security Posture
15 22 (1.03%) AI Agents
15 22 (1.03%) Data Centre
15 22 (1.03%) Embedded Systems
16 21 (0.98%) Algorithms
17 19 (0.89%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 126 (5.88%) Linux
2 83 (3.87%) Windows
3 62 (2.89%) Unix
4 43 (2.01%) Android
5 41 (1.91%) Apple iOS
6 22 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 20 (0.93%) Windows Server
8 12 (0.56%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.47%) Mac OS
9 10 (0.47%) Solaris
10 8 (0.37%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.19%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.14%) AIX
15 2 (0.093%) CentOS
15 2 (0.093%) Kali Linux
15 2 (0.093%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,177 (54.90%) CI/CD
2 998 (46.55%) Agile
3 763 (35.59%) DevOps
4 385 (17.96%) Problem-Solving
5 350 (16.32%) Microservices
6 343 (16.00%) Continuous Improvement
7 322 (15.02%) Test Strategy
8 321 (14.97%) Scrum
9 313 (14.60%) Validation
10 304 (14.18%) Software Engineering
11 300 (13.99%) Infrastructure as Code
12 263 (12.27%) Observability
13 262 (12.22%) Containerisation
14 251 (11.71%) AI
15 239 (11.15%) TDD
16 212 (9.89%) End-to-End Testing
17 210 (9.79%) ETL
17 210 (9.79%) User Acceptance Testing
18 201 (9.38%) Software Testing
19 200 (9.33%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 554 (25.84%) Python
2 532 (24.81%) Java
3 488 (22.76%) SQL
4 284 (13.25%) JavaScript
5 242 (11.29%) TypeScript
6 198 (9.24%) C#
7 72 (3.36%) Bash
8 71 (3.31%) PowerShell
9 52 (2.43%) C++
10 48 (2.24%) Kotlin
11 37 (1.73%) PL/SQL
12 36 (1.68%) Scala
13 33 (1.54%) Apex Code
14 31 (1.45%) Bicep
14 31 (1.45%) C
15 30 (1.40%) Go
16 22 (1.03%) Swift
17 20 (0.93%) Ruby
18 17 (0.79%) Groovy
19 15 (0.70%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 680 (31.72%) Security Cleared
2 558 (26.03%) SC Cleared
3 102 (4.76%) ISTQB
4 95 (4.43%) BPSS Clearance
5 89 (4.15%) Degree
6 75 (3.50%) DV Cleared
7 42 (1.96%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (1.17%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 20 (0.93%) AWS Certification
10 17 (0.79%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 16 (0.75%) Master's Degree
12 14 (0.65%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 13 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
14 11 (0.51%) CCNP
14 11 (0.51%) SAFe Agilist
15 9 (0.42%) DBS Check
16 8 (0.37%) Azure Certification
16 8 (0.37%) CISSP
17 5 (0.23%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 5 (0.23%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 466 (21.74%) QA
2 165 (7.70%) Accessibility
3 145 (6.76%) Data Quality
4 70 (3.26%) WCAG
5 35 (1.63%) GDPR
6 15 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.70%) SLA
7 13 (0.61%) ISO 20022
7 13 (0.61%) NCSC
8 11 (0.51%) NIST
9 10 (0.47%) Def Stans
10 7 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 6 (0.28%) PCI DSS
12 5 (0.23%) FATCA
13 4 (0.19%) HL7
13 4 (0.19%) MiFID
13 4 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.19%) SEPA
13 4 (0.19%) Software Quality Assurance
14 3 (0.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 356 (16.60%) Docker
2 30 (1.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (0.84%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.65%) Firmware
5 12 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 4 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.093%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.093%) SRDF
10 1 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.047%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 358 (16.70%) Kubernetes
2 265 (12.36%) Terraform
3 104 (4.85%) Grafana
4 102 (4.76%) Ansible
5 93 (4.34%) Prometheus
6 36 (1.68%) Argo
7 19 (0.89%) HP ALM
8 14 (0.65%) Puppet
9 13 (0.61%) Kibana
10 10 (0.47%) Dell DRAC
10 10 (0.47%) HP Quality Center
10 10 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (0.37%) Kustomize
11 8 (0.37%) NetBackup
12 7 (0.33%) Forefront Identity Manager
12 7 (0.33%) NetIQ Identity Manager
13 6 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
14 5 (0.23%) Istio
14 5 (0.23%) Progress Chef
15 4 (0.19%) Rancher
Vendors
1 181 (8.44%) Microsoft
2 170 (7.93%) Oracle
3 97 (4.52%) Salesforce
4 67 (3.13%) Databricks
5 65 (3.03%) Talend
6 63 (2.94%) Google
7 59 (2.75%) Red Hat
7 59 (2.75%) ServiceNow
8 56 (2.61%) Splunk
9 46 (2.15%) Denodo
10 35 (1.63%) IBM
10 35 (1.63%) SAP
11 34 (1.59%) Informatica
11 34 (1.59%) VMware
12 29 (1.35%) Dynatrace
12 29 (1.35%) UiPath
13 22 (1.03%) Cisco
13 22 (1.03%) HP
14 21 (0.98%) MuleSoft
15 16 (0.75%) Blue Prism