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

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 47 53
Rank change year-on-year +2 +6 -2
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,203 1,371 1,584
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.32% 4.49% 3.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.08% 4.93% 4.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,423 957 1,040
10th Percentile £331 £314 £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 £619
90th Percentile £663 £715 £721
UK excluding London median daily rate £458 £466 £502
% change year-on-year -1.72% -7.08% -2.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 29 52
10th Percentile £36.19 £39.67 £50.13
25th Percentile £60.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% -4.35% -14.66%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £72.03
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.25 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -4.35% -9.36%

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 43,357 27,782 37,042
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.94% 85.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,993 17,554 23,597
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £414 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.23% -4.05% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £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 2,598 1,350 2,559
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.44 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +2.63%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.95 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.45 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.00 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.00% -34.42% +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 28 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 28 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 28 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 1,872 £475 -2.56% 502
UK excluding London +1 1,087 £458 -1.72% 421
London +4 851 £500 - 181
Work from Home 0 628 £475 +2.15% 229
North of England +17 377 £453 +0.67% 104
Midlands +8 238 £450 +7.14% 56
West Midlands +31 220 £450 -10.00% 28
South East -32 193 £475 -5.00% 142
Yorkshire +6 154 £500 +2.56% 27
North West +3 150 £475 +6.26% 51
South West +9 107 £450 - 50
East of England +18 86 £495 +5.88% 45
North East +9 82 £425 +6.25% 26
Scotland -20 64 £440 -8.33% 17
Wales -5 32 £475 +18.75% 6
Northern Ireland +21 22 £475 +16.28% 13
East Midlands -40 18 £425 +54.55% 28
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
1 189 (8.58%) Confluence
2 48 (2.18%) SAS
3 47 (2.13%) Apache Airflow
3 47 (2.13%) Apache Spark
4 21 (0.95%) Apache
5 15 (0.68%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.54%) CMS
7 8 (0.36%) nginx
7 8 (0.36%) Tomcat
8 7 (0.32%) Appian
8 7 (0.32%) Camunda
9 6 (0.27%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.18%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.18%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.14%) Kentico
11 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.091%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.091%) Mendix
12 2 (0.091%) Mule
Applications
1 31 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.77%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
4 9 (0.41%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.18%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.14%) Simulink
8 1 (0.045%) Mingle
8 1 (0.045%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.77%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
4 11 (0.50%) Oracle EBS
4 11 (0.50%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.36%) Findur
6 6 (0.27%) SAP ERP
6 6 (0.27%) Shopify
7 5 (0.23%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.23%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.23%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.18%) Infor CloudSuite
8 4 (0.18%) Infor LN
8 4 (0.18%) Infor M3
9 3 (0.14%) Distributed Ledger
9 3 (0.14%) Maximo
9 3 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
9 3 (0.14%) Workday HCM
10 2 (0.091%) Advent Geneva
10 2 (0.091%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 637 (28.92%) Azure
2 636 (28.87%) AWS
3 375 (17.02%) GitHub
4 287 (13.03%) Azure DevOps
5 222 (10.08%) GitHub Actions
6 163 (7.40%) GCP
7 151 (6.85%) Serverless
8 100 (4.54%) AWS Lambda
9 94 (4.27%) Power Platform
10 92 (4.18%) Amazon S3
11 65 (2.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 63 (2.86%) OpenShift
13 56 (2.54%) Amazon ECS
14 49 (2.22%) Amazon EC2
14 49 (2.22%) AWS CloudFormation
15 47 (2.13%) dbt
16 42 (1.91%) Snowflake
17 41 (1.86%) Amazon EKS
17 41 (1.86%) Azure Data Factory
18 32 (1.45%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.09%) HTTP
2 21 (0.95%) Firewall
3 16 (0.73%) SAN
4 12 (0.54%) Network Security
5 11 (0.50%) WAN
6 9 (0.41%) MPLS
6 9 (0.41%) VPN
7 8 (0.36%) 5G
8 7 (0.32%) 4G
8 7 (0.32%) BGP
8 7 (0.32%) TCP/IP
8 7 (0.32%) Wireshark
9 6 (0.27%) 2G
9 6 (0.27%) 3G
9 6 (0.27%) Diameter Protocol
9 6 (0.27%) Ethernet
9 6 (0.27%) LAN
9 6 (0.27%) SIGTRAN
9 6 (0.27%) SS7
9 6 (0.27%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (5.45%) PostgreSQL
2 115 (5.22%) MongoDB
3 102 (4.63%) Data Warehouse
4 96 (4.36%) NoSQL
5 81 (3.68%) Relational Database
5 81 (3.68%) SQL Server
6 71 (3.22%) Power BI
7 46 (2.09%) DynamoDB
8 41 (1.86%) Metadata
9 37 (1.68%) Oracle Reports
10 36 (1.63%) Big Data
10 36 (1.63%) Pentaho
11 34 (1.54%) Amazon Athena
12 30 (1.36%) MySQL
13 29 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
14 28 (1.27%) Amazon Redshift
14 28 (1.27%) Redis
15 26 (1.18%) Data Lake
16 22 (1.00%) Tableau
17 21 (0.95%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 425 (19.29%) JIRA
2 400 (18.16%) Git
3 365 (16.57%) Jenkins
4 311 (14.12%) GitLab
5 290 (13.16%) Selenium
6 177 (8.03%) Postman
7 155 (7.04%) Cucumber
8 122 (5.54%) REST Assured
9 114 (5.17%) JUnit
10 108 (4.90%) Cypress.io
11 104 (4.72%) JMeter
12 64 (2.91%) WebDriver
13 63 (2.86%) Zephyr
14 56 (2.54%) SonarQube
15 50 (2.27%) Gatling
16 47 (2.13%) Gradle
17 42 (1.91%) Mockito
18 37 (1.68%) Bitbucket
19 36 (1.63%) Maven
20 30 (1.36%) SpecFlow
General
1 593 (26.92%) Social Skills
2 399 (18.11%) Finance
3 297 (13.48%) Public Sector
4 270 (12.26%) Analytical Skills
5 190 (8.62%) Banking
6 57 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 43 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
8 41 (1.86%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.59%) Front Office
10 30 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
11 29 (1.32%) Telecoms
12 25 (1.13%) Military
13 24 (1.09%) Financial Institution
14 21 (0.95%) Retail
15 18 (0.82%) Aerospace
16 17 (0.77%) Legal
16 17 (0.77%) Manufacturing
16 17 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
17 14 (0.64%) Back Office
17 14 (0.64%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 451 (20.47%) Developer
2 345 (15.66%) Senior
3 235 (10.67%) Lead
4 231 (10.49%) Test Engineer
4 231 (10.49%) Tester
5 144 (6.54%) Data Engineer
6 142 (6.45%) Java Developer
7 117 (5.31%) Analyst
8 110 (4.99%) Software Engineer
9 102 (4.63%) Architect
9 102 (4.63%) DevOps Engineer
10 97 (4.40%) Test Automation Engineer
11 92 (4.18%) Automation Tester
12 88 (3.99%) Senior Developer
12 88 (3.99%) Test Leader
13 86 (3.90%) QA Engineer
14 75 (3.40%) Test Analyst
15 61 (2.77%) Full-Stack Developer
16 60 (2.72%) Automation Engineer
17 56 (2.54%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 265 (12.03%) Playwright
2 264 (11.98%) REST
3 200 (9.08%) React
4 173 (7.85%) Spring
5 166 (7.54%) RESTful
6 155 (7.04%) Kafka
7 140 (6.35%) Spring Boot
8 136 (6.17%) .NET
9 116 (5.27%) Node.js
10 90 (4.09%) AngularJS
11 76 (3.45%) HTML
12 67 (3.04%) CSS
13 64 (2.91%) pytest
14 61 (2.77%) OAuth
15 49 (2.22%) Jest
16 46 (2.09%) Gherkin
17 45 (2.04%) Swagger
18 44 (2.00%) JSON
19 40 (1.82%) OAuth2
20 39 (1.77%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 270 (12.26%) Cloud Native
2 169 (7.67%) Product Ownership
3 128 (5.81%) Distributed Systems
4 71 (3.22%) Enterprise Software
5 61 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
6 52 (2.36%) Data Protection Act
7 46 (2.09%) Self-Motivation
8 45 (2.04%) Mobile App
9 44 (2.00%) Virtual Team
10 42 (1.91%) Onboarding
11 32 (1.45%) Distributed Architecture
12 30 (1.36%) Management Information System
13 27 (1.23%) Security Posture
14 26 (1.18%) NHS
15 24 (1.09%) Embedded Systems
16 23 (1.04%) AI Agents
17 22 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
18 21 (0.95%) Data Centre
19 20 (0.91%) Algorithms
20 19 (0.86%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 130 (5.90%) Linux
2 79 (3.59%) Windows
3 66 (3.00%) Unix
4 43 (1.95%) Android
5 41 (1.86%) Apple iOS
6 24 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 18 (0.82%) Windows Server
8 12 (0.54%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.45%) Mac OS
9 10 (0.45%) Solaris
10 8 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.18%) Embedded Linux
13 4 (0.18%) Ubuntu
14 3 (0.14%) AIX
15 2 (0.091%) CentOS
15 2 (0.091%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,230 (55.83%) CI/CD
2 1,027 (46.62%) Agile
3 792 (35.95%) DevOps
4 398 (18.07%) Problem-Solving
5 365 (16.57%) Microservices
6 359 (16.30%) Continuous Improvement
7 337 (15.30%) Scrum
8 333 (15.12%) Test Strategy
9 323 (14.66%) Validation
10 317 (14.39%) Software Engineering
11 310 (14.07%) Infrastructure as Code
12 276 (12.53%) Containerisation
13 271 (12.30%) Observability
14 267 (12.12%) AI
14 267 (12.12%) TDD
15 219 (9.94%) End-to-End Testing
16 215 (9.76%) ETL
17 214 (9.71%) User Acceptance Testing
18 212 (9.62%) API Testing
19 211 (9.58%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 568 (25.78%) Python
2 557 (25.28%) Java
3 504 (22.88%) SQL
4 289 (13.12%) JavaScript
5 247 (11.21%) TypeScript
6 205 (9.31%) C#
7 74 (3.36%) Bash
8 71 (3.22%) PowerShell
9 52 (2.36%) C++
10 49 (2.22%) Kotlin
11 37 (1.68%) PL/SQL
11 37 (1.68%) Scala
12 33 (1.50%) Apex Code
13 32 (1.45%) Bicep
13 32 (1.45%) C
13 32 (1.45%) Go
14 22 (1.00%) Swift
15 21 (0.95%) Ruby
16 17 (0.77%) Groovy
17 16 (0.73%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 691 (31.37%) Security Cleared
2 574 (26.06%) SC Cleared
3 102 (4.63%) ISTQB
4 101 (4.58%) BPSS Clearance
5 100 (4.54%) Degree
6 73 (3.31%) DV Cleared
7 49 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
8 26 (1.18%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 21 (0.95%) AWS Certification
10 17 (0.77%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 16 (0.73%) Master's Degree
12 12 (0.54%) Cisco Certification
12 12 (0.54%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 11 (0.50%) SAFe Agilist
14 10 (0.45%) CCNP
15 9 (0.41%) DBS Check
16 8 (0.36%) Azure Certification
16 8 (0.36%) CISSP
17 5 (0.23%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 5 (0.23%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 485 (22.02%) QA
2 171 (7.76%) Accessibility
3 147 (6.67%) Data Quality
4 72 (3.27%) WCAG
5 39 (1.77%) GDPR
6 15 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.68%) SLA
7 13 (0.59%) ISO 20022
8 12 (0.54%) NCSC
9 10 (0.45%) Def Stans
10 9 (0.41%) NIST
11 7 (0.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 6 (0.27%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.23%) FATCA
13 5 (0.23%) SEPA
14 4 (0.18%) HL7
14 4 (0.18%) MiFID
14 4 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 4 (0.18%) Software Quality Assurance
15 3 (0.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 377 (17.11%) Docker
2 30 (1.36%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (0.86%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.64%) Firmware
5 13 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 4 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.091%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.091%) SRDF
10 1 (0.045%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.045%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 381 (17.29%) Kubernetes
2 275 (12.48%) Terraform
3 110 (4.99%) Ansible
4 107 (4.86%) Grafana
5 91 (4.13%) Prometheus
6 36 (1.63%) Argo
7 21 (0.95%) HP ALM
8 14 (0.64%) Puppet
9 13 (0.59%) Kibana
10 11 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
10 11 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.45%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.36%) Kustomize
12 8 (0.36%) NetBackup
13 6 (0.27%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 6 (0.27%) NetIQ Identity Manager
13 6 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
14 5 (0.23%) Istio
14 5 (0.23%) Progress Chef
15 4 (0.18%) Nmap
Vendors
1 186 (8.44%) Microsoft
2 173 (7.85%) Oracle
3 99 (4.49%) Salesforce
4 67 (3.04%) Databricks
5 65 (2.95%) Talend
6 63 (2.86%) Google
7 60 (2.72%) ServiceNow
8 58 (2.63%) Red Hat
9 56 (2.54%) Splunk
10 46 (2.09%) Denodo
11 38 (1.72%) IBM
12 36 (1.63%) Informatica
13 35 (1.59%) SAP
14 33 (1.50%) VMware
15 30 (1.36%) UiPath
16 28 (1.27%) Dynatrace
17 24 (1.09%) HP
18 23 (1.04%) MuleSoft
19 21 (0.95%) Cisco
20 16 (0.73%) Blue Prism