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

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 47 55
Rank change year-on-year +1 +8 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,103 1,310 1,513
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.26% 4.51% 3.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.03% 4.96% 4.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,365 924 994
10th Percentile £347 £322 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £495 £513
Median % change year-on-year -4.04% -3.41% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £662 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £463 £500
% change year-on-year - -7.50% -4.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 99 23 52
10th Percentile £35.63 £36.17 £51.25
25th Percentile £57.63 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% -8.33% -10.95%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.51 £72.50
90th Percentile £74.20 £76.85 £89.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +22.73% -8.33% -5.42%

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 41,843 26,418 36,777
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.72% 90.98% 85.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,135 16,804 23,539
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £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 2,505 1,141 2,540
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.76 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.36% -23.95% +1.39%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.78 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +82.03% -34.02% +8.91%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 +2 1,796 £475 -3.06% 787
UK excluding London -1 1,024 £463 - 556
London +1 831 £500 -1.48% 297
Work from Home -1 602 £475 - 439
North of England +8 364 £461 +3.19% 161
Midlands +15 222 £450 +9.09% 80
West Midlands +28 198 £459 -4.97% 54
South East -29 188 £495 -1.00% 136
North West +9 154 £475 +12.16% 95
Yorkshire -4 154 £496 +4.47% 39
South West +23 102 £463 -2.63% 62
East of England +16 77 £495 +10.00% 70
North East +4 64 £425 +6.25% 28
Scotland -36 48 £440 -9.65% 27
Wales -3 32 £475 +18.75% 9
East Midlands -39 24 £400 +42.86% 26
Northern Ireland +23 21 £475 +16.28% 23
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
1 177 (8.42%) Confluence
2 48 (2.28%) SAS
3 42 (2.00%) Apache Airflow
3 42 (2.00%) Apache Spark
4 16 (0.76%) Apache
5 12 (0.57%) CMS
5 12 (0.57%) SharePoint
6 9 (0.43%) Appian
7 8 (0.38%) Camunda
7 8 (0.38%) nginx
7 8 (0.38%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.24%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 5 (0.24%) Anypoint
9 4 (0.19%) WebLogic
10 3 (0.14%) Kentico
10 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.095%) Jupyter
11 2 (0.095%) Mendix
12 1 (0.048%) Ethereum
Applications
1 28 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (0.52%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.14%) Simulink
6 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.048%) Mingle
6 1 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 19 (0.90%) Aladdin
2 18 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
4 9 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 9 (0.43%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.38%) Findur
6 6 (0.29%) Shopify
7 5 (0.24%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.24%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.24%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.24%) SAP MDG
8 3 (0.14%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.14%) Infor CloudSuite
8 3 (0.14%) Infor LN
8 3 (0.14%) Infor M3
8 3 (0.14%) Maximo
8 3 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.14%) Workday HCM
9 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.095%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 608 (28.91%) AWS
2 606 (28.82%) Azure
3 361 (17.17%) GitHub
4 273 (12.98%) Azure DevOps
5 210 (9.99%) GitHub Actions
6 166 (7.89%) GCP
7 143 (6.80%) Serverless
8 96 (4.56%) AWS Lambda
9 91 (4.33%) Power Platform
10 88 (4.18%) Amazon S3
11 62 (2.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 58 (2.76%) Amazon ECS
13 55 (2.62%) OpenShift
14 45 (2.14%) AWS CloudFormation
15 43 (2.04%) Amazon EKS
15 43 (2.04%) Azure Data Factory
16 42 (2.00%) Amazon EC2
16 42 (2.00%) Snowflake
17 34 (1.62%) dbt
18 30 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.19%) HTTP
2 23 (1.09%) Firewall
3 16 (0.76%) SAN
4 11 (0.52%) Network Security
4 11 (0.52%) TCP/IP
4 11 (0.52%) VPN
5 9 (0.43%) MPLS
5 9 (0.43%) WAN
6 8 (0.38%) SSL
7 7 (0.33%) Wireshark
8 6 (0.29%) Ethernet
8 6 (0.29%) VLAN
8 6 (0.29%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (0.24%) 5G
9 5 (0.24%) BGP
9 5 (0.24%) Multicast
10 4 (0.19%) FTP
10 4 (0.19%) NAS
10 4 (0.19%) Reverse Proxy
10 4 (0.19%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 113 (5.37%) PostgreSQL
2 111 (5.28%) MongoDB
3 94 (4.47%) NoSQL
4 91 (4.33%) Data Warehouse
5 89 (4.23%) SQL Server
6 72 (3.42%) Relational Database
7 65 (3.09%) Power BI
8 48 (2.28%) DynamoDB
9 41 (1.95%) Metadata
10 37 (1.76%) Oracle Reports
11 35 (1.66%) Big Data
11 35 (1.66%) Pentaho
12 31 (1.47%) MySQL
13 28 (1.33%) Amazon RDS
14 27 (1.28%) Amazon Athena
15 26 (1.24%) Data Lake
15 26 (1.24%) Tableau
16 24 (1.14%) Redis
17 22 (1.05%) Amazon Redshift
17 22 (1.05%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 408 (19.40%) JIRA
2 369 (17.55%) Git
3 349 (16.60%) Jenkins
4 302 (14.36%) GitLab
5 291 (13.84%) Selenium
6 174 (8.27%) Postman
7 152 (7.23%) Cucumber
8 118 (5.61%) REST Assured
9 105 (4.99%) JUnit
10 103 (4.90%) JMeter
11 101 (4.80%) Cypress.io
12 64 (3.04%) WebDriver
13 60 (2.85%) Zephyr
14 48 (2.28%) SonarQube
15 43 (2.04%) Gatling
16 41 (1.95%) Gradle
17 38 (1.81%) Mockito
18 33 (1.57%) Bitbucket
19 32 (1.52%) Maven
20 30 (1.43%) SpecFlow
General
1 562 (26.72%) Social Skills
2 356 (16.93%) Finance
3 291 (13.84%) Public Sector
4 250 (11.89%) Analytical Skills
5 174 (8.27%) Banking
6 47 (2.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 44 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
8 40 (1.90%) Investment Banking
9 36 (1.71%) Front Office
10 25 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
11 23 (1.09%) Telecoms
12 20 (0.95%) Military
13 18 (0.86%) Legal
14 17 (0.81%) Aerospace
14 17 (0.81%) Organisational Skills
14 17 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (0.81%) Retail
15 16 (0.76%) Financial Institution
15 16 (0.76%) Manufacturing
16 14 (0.67%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 422 (20.07%) Developer
2 323 (15.36%) Senior
3 239 (11.36%) Test Engineer
4 230 (10.94%) Lead
5 223 (10.60%) Tester
6 127 (6.04%) Data Engineer
7 114 (5.42%) Java Developer
8 111 (5.28%) Analyst
9 103 (4.90%) Software Engineer
10 101 (4.80%) Test Automation Engineer
11 96 (4.56%) Architect
12 93 (4.42%) DevOps Engineer
13 91 (4.33%) Automation Tester
14 87 (4.14%) Test Leader
15 82 (3.90%) QA Engineer
16 78 (3.71%) Senior Developer
17 68 (3.23%) Test Analyst
18 63 (3.00%) Full-Stack Developer
19 61 (2.90%) Test Manager
20 55 (2.62%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 251 (11.94%) Playwright
2 248 (11.79%) REST
3 190 (9.03%) React
4 162 (7.70%) RESTful
5 151 (7.18%) Spring
6 147 (6.99%) Kafka
7 140 (6.66%) .NET
8 126 (5.99%) Spring Boot
9 120 (5.71%) Node.js
10 79 (3.76%) AngularJS
11 74 (3.52%) HTML
12 66 (3.14%) pytest
13 61 (2.90%) CSS
14 58 (2.76%) OAuth
15 52 (2.47%) Jest
16 48 (2.28%) Swagger
17 44 (2.09%) OpenID
18 43 (2.04%) JSON
19 41 (1.95%) Gherkin
20 38 (1.81%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 240 (11.41%) Cloud Native
2 158 (7.51%) Product Ownership
3 112 (5.33%) Distributed Systems
4 57 (2.71%) Data Protection Act
5 50 (2.38%) Enterprise Software
6 49 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
7 46 (2.19%) Mobile App
8 41 (1.95%) Self-Motivation
9 39 (1.85%) Virtual Team
10 36 (1.71%) Onboarding
11 31 (1.47%) NHS
12 28 (1.33%) Distributed Architecture
13 24 (1.14%) Algorithms
13 24 (1.14%) Data Centre
14 23 (1.09%) Management Information System
15 22 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
16 21 (1.00%) Embedded Systems
17 20 (0.95%) Derivative
17 20 (0.95%) Fixed Income
18 19 (0.90%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 130 (6.18%) Linux
2 83 (3.95%) Windows
3 61 (2.90%) Unix
4 44 (2.09%) Android
5 39 (1.85%) Apple iOS
6 22 (1.05%) Windows Server
7 20 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.57%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.48%) Solaris
10 9 (0.43%) Mac OS
11 8 (0.38%) Windows Server 2008
12 7 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.19%) Embedded Linux
15 3 (0.14%) AIX
15 3 (0.14%) CentOS
16 2 (0.095%) Kali Linux
17 1 (0.048%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,140 (54.21%) CI/CD
2 966 (45.93%) Agile
3 751 (35.71%) DevOps
4 384 (18.26%) Problem-Solving
5 343 (16.31%) Microservices
6 342 (16.26%) Continuous Improvement
7 326 (15.50%) Test Strategy
8 304 (14.46%) Scrum
9 292 (13.88%) Validation
10 281 (13.36%) Software Engineering
11 278 (13.22%) Infrastructure as Code
12 263 (12.51%) Containerisation
13 258 (12.27%) Observability
14 241 (11.46%) TDD
15 234 (11.13%) AI
16 214 (10.18%) ETL
17 202 (9.61%) API Testing
17 202 (9.61%) Test Scripting
17 202 (9.61%) User Acceptance Testing
18 201 (9.56%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 546 (25.96%) Python
2 527 (25.06%) Java
3 482 (22.92%) SQL
4 288 (13.69%) JavaScript
5 239 (11.36%) TypeScript
6 200 (9.51%) C#
7 77 (3.66%) PowerShell
8 70 (3.33%) Bash
9 55 (2.62%) C++
10 43 (2.04%) Kotlin
11 41 (1.95%) PL/SQL
12 36 (1.71%) Scala
13 32 (1.52%) C
14 31 (1.47%) Apex Code
15 28 (1.33%) Go
16 25 (1.19%) Bicep
17 21 (1.00%) Swift
18 20 (0.95%) Ruby
19 17 (0.81%) Groovy
20 15 (0.71%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 658 (31.29%) Security Cleared
2 532 (25.30%) SC Cleared
3 101 (4.80%) ISTQB
4 95 (4.52%) BPSS Clearance
5 88 (4.18%) Degree
6 79 (3.76%) DV Cleared
7 44 (2.09%) Computer Science Degree
8 26 (1.24%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 16 (0.76%) AWS Certification
10 15 (0.71%) Master's Degree
11 13 (0.62%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 13 (0.62%) Cisco Certification
11 13 (0.62%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 12 (0.57%) CCNP
13 11 (0.52%) DBS Check
13 11 (0.52%) SAFe Agilist
14 9 (0.43%) Azure Certification
15 7 (0.33%) CISSP
16 5 (0.24%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 5 (0.24%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 456 (21.68%) QA
2 160 (7.61%) Accessibility
3 134 (6.37%) Data Quality
4 69 (3.28%) WCAG
5 35 (1.66%) GDPR
6 16 (0.76%) SLA
7 15 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 11 (0.52%) ISO 20022
9 10 (0.48%) Def Stans
9 10 (0.48%) NCSC
9 10 (0.48%) NIST
10 7 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 6 (0.29%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.24%) FATCA
12 5 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
13 4 (0.19%) HL7
13 4 (0.19%) MiFID
13 4 (0.19%) SEPA
14 3 (0.14%) HIPAA
System Software
1 360 (17.12%) Docker
2 29 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (1.00%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.67%) Firmware
5 12 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.33%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
9 4 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.095%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.095%) SRDF
11 1 (0.048%) ISA Server
11 1 (0.048%) KVM
11 1 (0.048%) Squid
11 1 (0.048%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.048%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 348 (16.55%) Kubernetes
2 249 (11.84%) Terraform
3 108 (5.14%) Grafana
4 98 (4.66%) Ansible
5 94 (4.47%) Prometheus
6 28 (1.33%) Argo
7 19 (0.90%) HP ALM
8 16 (0.76%) Puppet
9 13 (0.62%) Kibana
10 12 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.48%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.48%) HP Quality Center
12 9 (0.43%) Forefront Identity Manager
12 9 (0.43%) NetIQ Identity Manager
13 8 (0.38%) Kustomize
13 8 (0.38%) NetBackup
14 6 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
14 6 (0.29%) Progress Chef
15 4 (0.19%) Nmap
15 4 (0.19%) WMI
Vendors
1 175 (8.32%) Oracle
2 172 (8.18%) Microsoft
3 92 (4.37%) Salesforce
4 67 (3.19%) Databricks
5 64 (3.04%) Talend
6 63 (3.00%) ServiceNow
7 60 (2.85%) Google
8 57 (2.71%) Splunk
9 51 (2.43%) Red Hat
10 46 (2.19%) Denodo
11 35 (1.66%) SAP
11 35 (1.66%) VMware
12 29 (1.38%) IBM
13 26 (1.24%) Dynatrace
13 26 (1.24%) Informatica
13 26 (1.24%) UiPath
14 22 (1.05%) HP
14 22 (1.05%) MuleSoft
15 21 (1.00%) Cisco
16 16 (0.76%) Blue Prism