Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 26 September 2020

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Test Automation skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Test Automation over the 6 months to 26 September 2020 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Automated Testing
UK
6 months to
26 Sep 2020		 Same period 2019 Same period 2018
Rank 31 36 29
Rank change year-on-year +5 -7 +12
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,699 4,825 6,887
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 5.77% 5.49% 6.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.67% 6.32% 7.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,228 3,219 4,709
Median daily rate £475 £475 £450
Median daily rate % change year-on-year - +5.56% +5.88%
10th Percentile £314 £325 £313
90th Percentile £636 £619 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £410
% change year-on-year +2.86% +6.71% +2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 37 42
Median hourly rate £35.00 £42.50 £40.00
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -17.65% +6.25% -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £40.00 £39.00
% change year-on-year -12.50% +2.56% -2.50%

Test Automation is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK
Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 25,475 76,387 89,375
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.48% 86.84% 86.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,067 50,073 59,020
Median daily rate £475 £475 £450
Median daily rate % change year-on-year - +5.56% -
10th Percentile £300 £300 £300
90th Percentile £675 £650 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £436 £425
% change year-on-year +3.30% +2.50% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 908 2,290 2,449
Median hourly rate £35.00 £24.50 £20.50
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year +42.86% +19.51% -14.58%
10th Percentile £12.68 £11.80 £11.17
90th Percentile £54.21 £53.75 £50.00
Median hourly rate £31.39 £24.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +30.79% +20.00% -16.67%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Test Automation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Test Automation.

Daily rate trend for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation over the 6 months to 26 September 2020.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Test Automation.

Hourly rate trend for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Automation over the 6 months to 26 September 2020.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 17 Contract 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 26 September 2020. 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
Job
Vacancies
England 0 1,476 £475 - 617
London -4 812 £525 +5.00% 226
UK excluding London +8 760 £450 +2.86% 452
North of England +9 255 £450 +4.65% 145
Work from Home +8 243 £450 -2.70% 92
South East -12 141 £465 +3.33% 116
North West +16 119 £450 +3.45% 66
Yorkshire +11 105 £450 - 52
Scotland +14 102 £450 +7.46% 48
Midlands +7 88 £358 -10.54% 41
East of England +17 81 £450 - 37
South West -15 73 £406 -4.41% 47
West Midlands +17 52 £360 -10.00% 30
East Midlands +6 34 £315 -23.40% 11
North East -7 32 £495 +20.00% 27
Northern Ireland +22 11 £428 -14.50% 4
Wales -15 10 £425 +13.33% 14

For the 6 months to 26 September 2020, IT contractor jobs citing Test Automation also mentioned the following skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads with a requirement for Test Automation.

1 1,017 (59.86%) Agile Software Development
2 737 (43.38%) Java
3 574 (33.78%) DevOps
4 423 (24.90%) AWS
5 416 (24.48%) Git (software)
5 416 (24.48%) TDD
6 401 (23.60%) Azure
7 394 (23.19%) Jenkins
8 392 (23.07%) Selenium
9 372 (21.90%) Scrum
10 369 (21.72%) Python
11 362 (21.31%) Continuous Integration
12 361 (21.25%) BDD
13 341 (20.07%) SQL
14 335 (19.72%) Security Cleared
15 328 (19.31%) Microservices
16 301 (17.72%) Linux
17 297 (17.48%) JavaScript
17 297 (17.48%) JIRA
18 285 (16.77%) Cucumber
19 283 (16.66%) QA
20 266 (15.66%) Docker
21 262 (15.42%) SC Cleared
22 261 (15.36%) Finance
23 243 (14.30%) Public Sector
24 238 (14.01%) C#
25 236 (13.89%) REST
26 216 (12.71%) Unix
27 214 (12.60%) Kubernetes
28 186 (10.95%) Continuous Delivery

Test Automation
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same job type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 167 (9.83%) Confluence
2 43 (2.53%) Mule
3 41 (2.41%) Apache Spark
3 41 (2.41%) Elasticsearch
4 34 (2.00%) Cloud Foundry
5 31 (1.82%) SharePoint
5 31 (1.82%) WebLogic
6 28 (1.65%) Apache
7 21 (1.24%) Tomcat
8 20 (1.18%) JBoss
9 12 (0.71%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 10 (0.59%) nginx
10 10 (0.59%) Red Hat Fuse
11 9 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
11 9 (0.53%) CMS
12 7 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
13 6 (0.35%) WebSphere
14 5 (0.29%) Jetty
14 5 (0.29%) MQSeries
14 5 (0.29%) WordPress
Applications
1 35 (2.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.29%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.24%) Figma
6 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.059%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 49 (2.88%) Dynamics CRM
2 14 (0.82%) BASE24
3 12 (0.71%) SunGard Martini
3 12 (0.71%) Teamcenter
4 8 (0.47%) ION MarketView
4 8 (0.47%) Oracle Applications
5 5 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
5 5 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
5 5 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 4 (0.24%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 4 (0.24%) Workfront
7 3 (0.18%) Endur
7 3 (0.18%) Magento
7 3 (0.18%) Oracle 11i
7 3 (0.18%) Oracle BPM
7 3 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
7 3 (0.18%) SAP FI-CA
7 3 (0.18%) SAP Hybris
8 2 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
8 2 (0.12%) Dynamics NAV
Cloud Services
1 423 (24.90%) AWS
2 401 (23.60%) Azure
3 124 (7.30%) GitHub
4 90 (5.30%) Serverless
5 80 (4.71%) GCP
6 64 (3.77%) Power Platform
7 62 (3.65%) Slack
8 61 (3.59%) AWS Lambda
9 57 (3.35%) PaaS
10 49 (2.88%) IaaS
11 46 (2.71%) Logic Apps
12 40 (2.35%) SaaS
13 39 (2.30%) Azure Functions
14 34 (2.00%) Amazon S3
15 31 (1.82%) AWS CloudFormation
16 30 (1.77%) Power Automate
16 30 (1.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 29 (1.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 29 (1.71%) OpenShift
18 27 (1.59%) BrowserStack
Communications & Networking
1 57 (3.35%) HTTP
2 48 (2.83%) SSL
3 37 (2.18%) DNS
4 33 (1.94%) TCP/IP
5 29 (1.71%) HTTPS
6 24 (1.41%) Firewall
7 14 (0.82%) ATM
7 14 (0.82%) DSL
8 12 (0.71%) Internet
8 12 (0.71%) Kerberos
9 9 (0.53%) Reverse Proxy
10 8 (0.47%) DHCP
10 8 (0.47%) Wireless
11 6 (0.35%) Fibre Channel
11 6 (0.35%) Skype
11 6 (0.35%) SSH
11 6 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
12 5 (0.29%) Broadband
12 5 (0.29%) LTE
13 4 (0.24%) 3GPP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (7.47%) MongoDB
2 113 (6.65%) SQL Server
3 101 (5.94%) Relational Database
4 93 (5.47%) NoSQL
5 62 (3.65%) Oracle Database
6 61 (3.59%) Big Data
6 61 (3.59%) MySQL
7 49 (2.88%) PostgreSQL
8 43 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
9 42 (2.47%) RDBMS
10 40 (2.35%) Hadoop
11 39 (2.30%) Data Lake
12 36 (2.12%) Power BI
13 25 (1.47%) OLTP
14 24 (1.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 22 (1.29%) Azure SQL Database
16 21 (1.24%) Oracle Database 11g
17 19 (1.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
18 17 (1.00%) Amazon DynamoDB
18 17 (1.00%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 416 (24.48%) Git (software)
2 394 (23.19%) Jenkins
3 392 (23.07%) Selenium
4 297 (17.48%) JIRA
5 285 (16.77%) Cucumber
6 130 (7.65%) JUnit
7 128 (7.53%) Maven
8 116 (6.83%) JMeter
9 94 (5.53%) SoapUI
10 86 (5.06%) Mockito
11 79 (4.65%) WebDriver
12 78 (4.59%) Subversion
13 73 (4.30%) GitLab
14 72 (4.24%) Visual Studio
15 65 (3.83%) Jasmine
16 64 (3.77%) Sonatype Nexus
17 61 (3.59%) Postman
17 61 (3.59%) TeamCity
18 59 (3.47%) REST Assured
19 58 (3.41%) Cypress.io
General
1 261 (15.36%) Finance
2 243 (14.30%) Public Sector
3 156 (9.18%) Banking
4 55 (3.24%) Investment Banking
5 47 (2.77%) Front Office
6 25 (1.47%) Marketing
7 22 (1.29%) Telecoms
8 14 (0.82%) Financial Institution
9 13 (0.77%) Electronics
9 13 (0.77%) Manufacturing
10 12 (0.71%) Police
11 11 (0.65%) Retail
11 11 (0.65%) Retail Banking
12 9 (0.53%) Games
13 8 (0.47%) Legal
14 7 (0.41%) Pharmaceutical
15 6 (0.35%) Back Office
15 6 (0.35%) Social Housing
16 5 (0.29%) Law
17 4 (0.24%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 652 (38.38%) Developer
2 199 (11.71%) Tester
3 196 (11.54%) Java Developer
4 154 (9.06%) Test Engineer
5 121 (7.12%) DevOps Engineer
6 111 (6.53%) Automation Tester
7 108 (6.36%) Analyst
8 83 (4.89%) Test Automation Engineer
9 80 (4.71%) Test Analyst
10 79 (4.65%) Senior Developer
11 71 (4.18%) Front End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
12 64 (3.77%) Architect
13 59 (3.47%) QA Engineer
14 58 (3.41%) Test Manager
15 48 (2.83%) Python Developer
16 46 (2.71%) AWS Engineer
16 46 (2.71%) Software Engineer
17 45 (2.65%) Azure Engineer
18 44 (2.59%) React Developer
19 43 (2.53%) .NET Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 236 (13.89%) REST
2 171 (10.06%) Spring
3 170 (10.01%) HTML
4 156 (9.18%) Node.js
5 155 (9.12%) CSS
6 153 (9.01%) .NET
7 140 (8.24%) Web Services
8 128 (7.53%) JSON
9 121 (7.12%) React
10 116 (6.83%) Spring Boot
11 114 (6.71%) RESTful
12 113 (6.65%) XML
13 107 (6.30%) SOAP
14 96 (5.65%) Gherkin
15 91 (5.36%) HTML5
16 90 (5.30%) AngularJS
17 81 (4.77%) Redux
18 65 (3.83%) Kafka
19 64 (3.77%) Sass
20 56 (3.30%) jQuery
Miscellaneous
1 132 (7.77%) User Experience
2 109 (6.42%) Mobile App
3 80 (4.71%) Analytical Skills
4 36 (2.12%) Enterprise Software
5 32 (1.88%) Greenfield Project
6 30 (1.77%) Fixed Income
7 29 (1.71%) Algorithms
8 27 (1.59%) Data Structures
8 27 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
9 23 (1.35%) Virtual Team
10 22 (1.29%) Derivative
11 21 (1.24%) Management Information System
12 19 (1.12%) Client/Server
13 17 (1.00%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 14 (0.82%) EMV
14 14 (0.82%) Linux Command Line
15 13 (0.77%) N-Tier
16 12 (0.71%) Tandem
17 11 (0.65%) Equities
18 10 (0.59%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 301 (17.72%) Linux
2 216 (12.71%) Unix
3 129 (7.59%) Windows
4 93 (5.47%) Mac OS X
5 74 (4.36%) Android
6 73 (4.30%) Apple iOS
7 18 (1.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 10 (0.59%) Ubuntu
9 9 (0.53%) Windows Server
10 7 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.29%) CentOS
11 5 (0.29%) Debian
12 4 (0.24%) Oracle Linux
13 3 (0.18%) Windows 10
14 2 (0.12%) AIX
14 2 (0.12%) Android TV
14 2 (0.12%) Solaris
14 2 (0.12%) VMS
14 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
14 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,017 (59.86%) Agile Software Development
2 574 (33.78%) DevOps
3 416 (24.48%) TDD
4 372 (21.90%) Scrum
5 362 (21.31%) Continuous Integration
6 361 (21.25%) BDD
7 328 (19.31%) Microservices
8 186 (10.95%) Continuous Delivery
9 179 (10.54%) Kanban
10 155 (9.12%) Test Scripting
11 149 (8.77%) Continuous Deployment
12 143 (8.42%) Problem-Solving
13 142 (8.36%) Regression Testing
14 136 (8.00%) Pair Programming
15 135 (7.95%) Unit Testing
16 134 (7.89%) Performance Testing
17 124 (7.30%) Software Engineering
18 122 (7.18%) Front End Development
18 122 (7.18%) Test Strategy
19 120 (7.06%) Web Development
Programming Languages
1 737 (43.38%) Java
2 369 (21.72%) Python
3 341 (20.07%) SQL
4 297 (17.48%) JavaScript
5 238 (14.01%) C#
6 155 (9.12%) Java 8
7 77 (4.53%) Kotlin
8 70 (4.12%) Scala
9 69 (4.06%) Bash Shell
10 64 (3.77%) Shell Script
11 62 (3.65%) Ruby
12 54 (3.18%) PowerShell
13 53 (3.12%) Apple Swift
14 51 (3.00%) C++
15 48 (2.83%) Perl
15 48 (2.83%) TypeScript
16 36 (2.12%) PL/SQL
17 32 (1.88%) C
18 29 (1.71%) Groovy
19 23 (1.35%) PHP
Qualifications
1 335 (19.72%) Security Cleared
2 262 (15.42%) SC Cleared
3 93 (5.47%) ISTQB
4 76 (4.47%) ISEB
5 63 (3.71%) Degree
6 59 (3.47%) BPSS Clearance
7 50 (2.94%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 29 (1.71%) DV Cleared
9 25 (1.47%) DBS Check
10 23 (1.35%) Computer Science Degree
11 10 (0.59%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 6 (0.35%) ISEB Practitioner
13 5 (0.29%) Cisco Certification
14 4 (0.24%) PhD
15 3 (0.18%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 3 (0.18%) AWS Certification
16 2 (0.12%) CCNA
16 2 (0.12%) CEH
16 2 (0.12%) CISSP
16 2 (0.12%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 283 (16.66%) QA
2 47 (2.77%) WCAG
3 33 (1.94%) Data Quality
4 11 (0.65%) ISO 8583
5 7 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
6 6 (0.35%) GDPR
6 6 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.29%) ISO 9001
8 3 (0.18%) IEC 62304
8 3 (0.18%) PMO
8 3 (0.18%) SLA
9 2 (0.12%) NCSC
9 2 (0.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (0.12%) WAI
10 1 (0.059%) GMP
10 1 (0.059%) GxP
10 1 (0.059%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.059%) JTAG
10 1 (0.059%) MiFID
10 1 (0.059%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 266 (15.66%) Docker
2 24 (1.41%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
4 10 (0.59%) Oracle Clusterware
4 10 (0.59%) Oracle RAC
5 5 (0.29%) Firmware
6 4 (0.24%) HDFS
6 4 (0.24%) NDS
6 4 (0.24%) NetIQ eDirectory
6 4 (0.24%) NFS
6 4 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (0.24%) vSphere
7 3 (0.18%) Apache Flume
7 3 (0.18%) XenApp
7 3 (0.18%) XenDesktop
8 2 (0.12%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.059%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.059%) RACF
9 1 (0.059%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 214 (12.60%) Kubernetes
2 106 (6.24%) Terraform
3 101 (5.94%) Ansible
4 79 (4.65%) Puppet
5 76 (4.47%) Opscode Chef
6 32 (1.88%) Prometheus
7 22 (1.29%) Grafana
7 22 (1.29%) Kibana
8 17 (1.00%) HP Quality Center
9 16 (0.94%) Zipkin
10 15 (0.88%) Salt
11 14 (0.82%) HP ALM
12 12 (0.71%) Data Guard
13 11 (0.65%) ZABBIX
14 10 (0.59%) Nagios
14 10 (0.59%) Oracle RMAN
15 9 (0.53%) Rancher
16 8 (0.47%) logstash
17 7 (0.41%) Packer
17 7 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 177 (10.42%) Oracle
2 167 (9.83%) Microsoft
3 63 (3.71%) Splunk
4 57 (3.35%) AppDynamics
5 44 (2.59%) Google
6 37 (2.18%) SAP
7 31 (1.82%) Databricks
8 25 (1.47%) MuleSoft
9 24 (1.41%) Atlassian
9 24 (1.41%) IBM
10 23 (1.35%) Informatica
11 22 (1.29%) HP
12 16 (0.94%) webMethods
13 14 (0.82%) Blue Coat
13 14 (0.82%) F5
14 13 (0.77%) Hortonworks
14 13 (0.77%) Salesforce.com
15 12 (0.71%) SaltStack
15 12 (0.71%) SunGard
16 11 (0.65%) Red Hat
696 Test Automation job vacancies Nationwide