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

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 49 54
Rank change year-on-year +3 +5 -5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,126 1,309 1,551
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.25% 4.45% 3.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.02% 4.89% 4.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,375 924 1,024
10th Percentile £345 £320 £363
25th Percentile £402 £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 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £465 £500
% change year-on-year -0.54% -7.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 25 52
10th Percentile £36.22 £37.34 £51.25
25th Percentile £59.19 £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 £68.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £74.30 £77.38 £89.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.25 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +20.45% -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 42,365 26,787 37,171
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.77% 91.01% 85.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,429 17,005 23,768
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £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 2,540 1,187 2,585
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.21 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.56% -25.45% +4.20%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +15.02%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 1,820 £475 -3.26% 457
UK excluding London +6 1,042 £463 -0.54% 388
London +2 837 £500 -1.23% 134
Work from Home -3 603 £475 - 218
North of England +13 366 £463 +2.78% 100
Midlands +11 223 £450 +7.46% 57
West Midlands +31 203 £455 -7.53% 39
South East -34 191 £481 -3.75% 122
Yorkshire +1 152 £500 +5.26% 26
North West +11 148 £475 +11.76% 58
South West +26 103 £463 -2.63% 42
East of England +21 84 £495 +7.90% 54
North East +1 74 £425 +6.25% 17
Scotland -31 54 £440 -9.04% 16
Wales -1 32 £475 +18.75% 6
Northern Ireland +21 21 £475 +16.28% 6
East Midlands -43 20 £418 +51.82% 18
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 (8.33%) Confluence
2 48 (2.26%) SAS
3 44 (2.07%) Apache Spark
4 43 (2.02%) Apache Airflow
5 17 (0.80%) Apache
6 13 (0.61%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.56%) CMS
8 9 (0.42%) Appian
9 8 (0.38%) Camunda
9 8 (0.38%) nginx
9 8 (0.38%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.19%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.14%) Jupyter
12 3 (0.14%) Kentico
12 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.094%) Mendix
13 2 (0.094%) Mule
Applications
1 29 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
4 10 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.14%) Simulink
7 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.047%) Mingle
7 1 (0.047%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 18 (0.85%) Aladdin
1 18 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
2 12 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
3 9 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
3 9 (0.42%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.38%) Findur
5 6 (0.28%) SAP ERP
5 6 (0.28%) Shopify
6 5 (0.24%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.24%) Loan IQ
6 5 (0.24%) SAP MDG
7 4 (0.19%) Infor CloudSuite
7 4 (0.19%) Infor LN
7 4 (0.19%) Infor M3
8 3 (0.14%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.14%) Maximo
8 3 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.14%) Workday HCM
9 2 (0.094%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 613 (28.83%) Azure
2 608 (28.60%) AWS
3 357 (16.79%) GitHub
4 276 (12.98%) Azure DevOps
5 212 (9.97%) GitHub Actions
6 164 (7.71%) GCP
7 148 (6.96%) Serverless
8 100 (4.70%) AWS Lambda
9 94 (4.42%) Power Platform
10 91 (4.28%) Amazon S3
11 64 (3.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 62 (2.92%) OpenShift
13 58 (2.73%) Amazon ECS
14 46 (2.16%) AWS CloudFormation
15 45 (2.12%) Amazon EC2
16 42 (1.98%) Azure Data Factory
17 40 (1.88%) Amazon EKS
18 39 (1.83%) Snowflake
19 36 (1.69%) dbt
20 28 (1.32%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.13%) HTTP
2 22 (1.03%) Firewall
3 16 (0.75%) SAN
4 11 (0.52%) Network Security
4 11 (0.52%) WAN
5 10 (0.47%) TCP/IP
5 10 (0.47%) VPN
6 9 (0.42%) MPLS
7 7 (0.33%) Wireshark
8 6 (0.28%) BGP
8 6 (0.28%) Ethernet
8 6 (0.28%) LAN
8 6 (0.28%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.28%) VLAN
8 6 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (0.24%) 5G
9 5 (0.24%) Multicast
9 5 (0.24%) SSL
10 4 (0.19%) 4G
10 4 (0.19%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (5.64%) PostgreSQL
2 107 (5.03%) MongoDB
3 93 (4.37%) Data Warehouse
4 91 (4.28%) NoSQL
5 85 (4.00%) SQL Server
6 71 (3.34%) Relational Database
7 68 (3.20%) Power BI
8 47 (2.21%) DynamoDB
9 41 (1.93%) Metadata
10 37 (1.74%) Oracle Reports
11 36 (1.69%) Big Data
12 35 (1.65%) Pentaho
13 31 (1.46%) Amazon Athena
13 31 (1.46%) MySQL
14 28 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
15 26 (1.22%) Redis
16 25 (1.18%) Amazon Redshift
16 25 (1.18%) Data Lake
16 25 (1.18%) Tableau
17 23 (1.08%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 410 (19.29%) JIRA
2 381 (17.92%) Git
3 350 (16.46%) Jenkins
4 307 (14.44%) GitLab
5 285 (13.41%) Selenium
6 171 (8.04%) Postman
7 152 (7.15%) Cucumber
8 122 (5.74%) REST Assured
9 106 (4.99%) JUnit
10 102 (4.80%) JMeter
11 100 (4.70%) Cypress.io
12 66 (3.10%) WebDriver
13 59 (2.78%) Zephyr
14 56 (2.63%) SonarQube
15 47 (2.21%) Gatling
16 44 (2.07%) Gradle
17 36 (1.69%) Mockito
18 35 (1.65%) Bitbucket
19 34 (1.60%) Maven
20 31 (1.46%) SpecFlow
General
1 560 (26.34%) Social Skills
2 358 (16.84%) Finance
3 292 (13.73%) Public Sector
4 257 (12.09%) Analytical Skills
5 171 (8.04%) Banking
6 49 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 44 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
8 39 (1.83%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.65%) Front Office
10 27 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
11 24 (1.13%) Telecoms
12 22 (1.03%) Military
13 19 (0.89%) Retail
14 17 (0.80%) Aerospace
14 17 (0.80%) Financial Institution
14 17 (0.80%) Legal
14 17 (0.80%) Manufacturing
14 17 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
15 14 (0.66%) Marketing
15 14 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 429 (20.18%) Developer
2 331 (15.57%) Senior
3 238 (11.19%) Test Engineer
4 232 (10.91%) Lead
5 222 (10.44%) Tester
6 132 (6.21%) Data Engineer
7 127 (5.97%) Java Developer
8 112 (5.27%) Analyst
9 105 (4.94%) Software Engineer
10 99 (4.66%) Test Automation Engineer
11 97 (4.56%) Architect
11 97 (4.56%) DevOps Engineer
12 89 (4.19%) Automation Tester
13 85 (4.00%) QA Engineer
13 85 (4.00%) Test Leader
14 81 (3.81%) Senior Developer
15 68 (3.20%) Test Analyst
16 60 (2.82%) Full-Stack Developer
16 60 (2.82%) Test Manager
17 56 (2.63%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 251 (11.81%) REST
2 250 (11.76%) Playwright
3 191 (8.98%) React
4 161 (7.57%) RESTful
5 153 (7.20%) Spring
6 144 (6.77%) Kafka
7 138 (6.49%) .NET
8 127 (5.97%) Spring Boot
9 117 (5.50%) Node.js
10 85 (4.00%) AngularJS
11 73 (3.43%) HTML
12 67 (3.15%) pytest
13 62 (2.92%) CSS
14 60 (2.82%) OAuth
15 50 (2.35%) Jest
16 47 (2.21%) Swagger
17 43 (2.02%) Gherkin
17 43 (2.02%) OpenID
18 41 (1.93%) JSON
19 39 (1.83%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 243 (11.43%) Cloud Native
2 160 (7.53%) Product Ownership
3 117 (5.50%) Distributed Systems
4 59 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
5 55 (2.59%) Data Protection Act
6 54 (2.54%) Enterprise Software
7 46 (2.16%) Mobile App
8 42 (1.98%) Self-Motivation
9 41 (1.93%) Virtual Team
10 39 (1.83%) Onboarding
11 33 (1.55%) Distributed Architecture
12 31 (1.46%) NHS
13 24 (1.13%) Algorithms
14 23 (1.08%) Management Information System
15 22 (1.03%) Data Centre
15 22 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
15 22 (1.03%) Security Posture
16 21 (0.99%) Embedded Systems
17 20 (0.94%) Fixed Income
18 19 (0.89%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 131 (6.16%) Linux
2 81 (3.81%) Windows
3 60 (2.82%) Unix
4 45 (2.12%) Android
5 40 (1.88%) Apple iOS
6 21 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 21 (0.99%) Windows Server
7 12 (0.56%) Mac OS X
8 10 (0.47%) Solaris
9 9 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.38%) 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 (0.094%) CentOS
15 2 (0.094%) Kali Linux
15 2 (0.094%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.047%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,156 (54.37%) CI/CD
2 983 (46.24%) Agile
3 750 (35.28%) DevOps
4 383 (18.02%) Problem-Solving
5 342 (16.09%) Microservices
6 339 (15.95%) Continuous Improvement
7 325 (15.29%) Scrum
8 322 (15.15%) Test Strategy
9 308 (14.49%) Validation
10 293 (13.78%) Software Engineering
11 289 (13.59%) Infrastructure as Code
12 261 (12.28%) Containerisation
13 259 (12.18%) Observability
14 246 (11.57%) TDD
15 245 (11.52%) AI
16 215 (10.11%) ETL
17 208 (9.78%) End-to-End Testing
17 208 (9.78%) User Acceptance Testing
18 205 (9.64%) API Testing
19 201 (9.45%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 550 (25.87%) Python
2 536 (25.21%) Java
3 489 (23.00%) SQL
4 282 (13.26%) JavaScript
5 242 (11.38%) TypeScript
6 203 (9.55%) C#
7 75 (3.53%) PowerShell
8 71 (3.34%) Bash
9 53 (2.49%) C++
10 48 (2.26%) Kotlin
11 40 (1.88%) PL/SQL
12 36 (1.69%) Scala
13 31 (1.46%) C
14 29 (1.36%) Go
15 28 (1.32%) Apex Code
15 28 (1.32%) Bicep
16 21 (0.99%) Swift
17 20 (0.94%) Ruby
18 17 (0.80%) Groovy
19 14 (0.66%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 667 (31.37%) Security Cleared
2 545 (25.63%) SC Cleared
3 100 (4.70%) BPSS Clearance
3 100 (4.70%) ISTQB
4 85 (4.00%) Degree
5 75 (3.53%) DV Cleared
6 42 (1.98%) Computer Science Degree
7 24 (1.13%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 18 (0.85%) AWS Certification
9 16 (0.75%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 15 (0.71%) Master's Degree
11 14 (0.66%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 13 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
13 11 (0.52%) CCNP
13 11 (0.52%) SAFe Agilist
14 9 (0.42%) Azure Certification
14 9 (0.42%) DBS Check
15 8 (0.38%) CISSP
16 5 (0.24%) CCIE
16 5 (0.24%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 464 (21.83%) QA
2 160 (7.53%) Accessibility
3 139 (6.54%) Data Quality
4 68 (3.20%) WCAG
5 35 (1.65%) GDPR
6 15 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.71%) SLA
7 12 (0.56%) ISO 20022
7 12 (0.56%) NCSC
8 10 (0.47%) Def Stans
8 10 (0.47%) NIST
9 7 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 6 (0.28%) PCI DSS
10 6 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 5 (0.24%) FATCA
11 5 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
12 4 (0.19%) HL7
12 4 (0.19%) SEPA
13 3 (0.14%) HIPAA
13 3 (0.14%) MiFID
System Software
1 358 (16.84%) Docker
2 30 (1.41%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (0.99%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.66%) Firmware
5 13 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.33%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
9 4 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.094%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.094%) SRDF
11 1 (0.047%) KVM
11 1 (0.047%) Squid
11 1 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.047%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 356 (16.75%) Kubernetes
2 257 (12.09%) Terraform
3 106 (4.99%) Grafana
4 102 (4.80%) Ansible
5 93 (4.37%) Prometheus
6 37 (1.74%) Argo
7 19 (0.89%) HP ALM
8 14 (0.66%) Puppet
9 13 (0.61%) Kibana
10 12 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.47%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.47%) HP Quality Center
12 8 (0.38%) Kustomize
12 8 (0.38%) NetBackup
13 7 (0.33%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 7 (0.33%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 6 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.24%) Progress Chef
16 4 (0.19%) Nmap
16 4 (0.19%) WMI
Vendors
1 176 (8.28%) Microsoft
1 176 (8.28%) Oracle
2 90 (4.23%) Salesforce
3 66 (3.10%) Databricks
4 64 (3.01%) Talend
5 63 (2.96%) ServiceNow
6 61 (2.87%) Google
7 60 (2.82%) Red Hat
8 56 (2.63%) Splunk
9 46 (2.16%) Denodo
10 35 (1.65%) SAP
10 35 (1.65%) VMware
11 33 (1.55%) IBM
12 29 (1.36%) Informatica
12 29 (1.36%) UiPath
13 27 (1.27%) Dynatrace
14 22 (1.03%) Cisco
14 22 (1.03%) HP
14 22 (1.03%) MuleSoft
15 16 (0.75%) Blue Prism