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

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 45 50
Rank change year-on-year -3 +5 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,797 1,388 1,673
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.59% 4.45% 3.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.27% 4.99% 4.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,224 922 1,194
10th Percentile £338 £332 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -4.76% -6.08%
75th Percentile £575 £613 £625
90th Percentile £688 £733 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.21% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 5 62
10th Percentile £20.23 £41.75 £45.75
25th Percentile £42.58 £42.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £61.25 £74.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.23% +5.71% +22.96%
75th Percentile £67.00 £77.19 £90.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £83.38 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 £75.60 £75.00
% change year-on-year -20.63% +0.79% +31.74%

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 34,126 27,826 38,980
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.15% 89.30% 87.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,616 16,956 25,656
10th Percentile £306 £306 £300
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £497 £500
% change year-on-year -3.47% -0.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,067 860 2,108
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £16.45
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% +9.38%
75th Percentile £58.75 £62.55 £61.31
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £30.88 £35.50
% change year-on-year -19.03% -13.03% +18.89%

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 February 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 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 17 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 February 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 -1 1,548 £500 - 647
UK excluding London +2 816 £495 +4.21% 538
London +2 756 £500 -2.20% 211
Work from Home 0 538 £500 - 371
North of England 0 320 £500 +17.65% 133
South East -16 160 £484 -3.30% 177
Midlands +8 145 £493 +2.60% 53
Yorkshire -16 144 £525 +16.67% 34
North West +5 130 £447 +11.12% 87
West Midlands +12 115 £515 +5.21% 31
South West +8 81 £523 -6.70% 77
East of England -1 53 £570 +42.50% 58
North East +15 50 £488 +31.33% 12
Scotland -23 43 £465 -0.91% 36
East Midlands -10 30 £400 -13.51% 22
Wales +2 26 £509 +1.80% 14
Northern Ireland +10 18 £475 -8.43% 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
1 104 (5.79%) Confluence
2 47 (2.62%) SAS
3 24 (1.34%) Apache Spark
4 13 (0.72%) SharePoint
5 11 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
6 10 (0.56%) Apache
7 7 (0.39%) Appian
8 6 (0.33%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.33%) Oracle Application Server
9 5 (0.28%) CMS
9 5 (0.28%) nginx
9 5 (0.28%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.22%) Camunda
10 4 (0.22%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.17%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.17%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.11%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 24 (1.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
4 10 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.056%) Oracle Smart View
8 1 (0.056%) SOLIDWORKS
8 1 (0.056%) Trello
Business Applications
1 19 (1.06%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.28%) Workday HCM
4 4 (0.22%) Loan IQ
4 4 (0.22%) Maximo
4 4 (0.22%) SAP HR
5 3 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
5 3 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
6 2 (0.11%) Eagle PACE
6 2 (0.11%) iTrent
6 2 (0.11%) Markit EDM
6 2 (0.11%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.11%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.11%) Shopify
6 2 (0.11%) Summit
7 1 (0.056%) Algo Collateral
7 1 (0.056%) Oracle EBS R12
7 1 (0.056%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 508 (28.27%) Azure
2 448 (24.93%) AWS
3 288 (16.03%) GitHub
4 220 (12.24%) Azure DevOps
5 184 (10.24%) GCP
6 155 (8.63%) GitHub Actions
7 126 (7.01%) Serverless
8 73 (4.06%) Power Platform
9 64 (3.56%) OpenShift
10 58 (3.23%) AWS Lambda
11 51 (2.84%) Amazon S3
12 43 (2.39%) SaaS
13 42 (2.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 42 (2.34%) AWS CloudFormation
13 42 (2.34%) Azure AKS
14 37 (2.06%) Amazon EKS
14 37 (2.06%) Snowflake
15 33 (1.84%) Dynamics 365
16 32 (1.78%) Tricentis Tosca
17 31 (1.73%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 39 (2.17%) Firewall
2 32 (1.78%) Wireshark
3 26 (1.45%) HTTP
3 26 (1.45%) HTTPS
4 24 (1.34%) SSL
5 21 (1.17%) TCP/IP
5 21 (1.17%) VPN
6 14 (0.78%) Network Security
7 13 (0.72%) SD-WAN
8 11 (0.61%) WAN
9 10 (0.56%) DNS
9 10 (0.56%) Ethernet
9 10 (0.56%) FTP
9 10 (0.56%) MPLS
10 9 (0.50%) Multicast
10 9 (0.50%) VLAN
11 7 (0.39%) AMQP
12 5 (0.28%) BGP
12 5 (0.28%) Cisco IPT
12 5 (0.28%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 99 (5.51%) PostgreSQL
2 90 (5.01%) NoSQL
3 87 (4.84%) MongoDB
4 68 (3.78%) SQL Server
5 63 (3.51%) Relational Database
6 41 (2.28%) Power BI
7 35 (1.95%) Data Warehouse
8 29 (1.61%) BigQuery
9 27 (1.50%) MySQL
10 24 (1.34%) DynamoDB
10 24 (1.34%) Oracle Database
11 22 (1.22%) Pentaho
12 21 (1.17%) Big Data
13 20 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
14 17 (0.95%) Redis
14 17 (0.95%) Star Schema
14 17 (0.95%) Tableau
15 16 (0.89%) Apache Cassandra
16 15 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
16 15 (0.83%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 324 (18.03%) Jenkins
2 314 (17.47%) JIRA
3 299 (16.64%) Git
4 275 (15.30%) GitLab
5 268 (14.91%) Selenium
6 161 (8.96%) Cucumber
7 156 (8.68%) Postman
8 114 (6.34%) Cypress.io
9 99 (5.51%) REST Assured
10 89 (4.95%) JMeter
11 87 (4.84%) JUnit
12 38 (2.11%) SonarQube
13 37 (2.06%) Gatling
13 37 (2.06%) Mockito
13 37 (2.06%) WebDriver
14 36 (2.00%) TestRail
15 34 (1.89%) Maven
15 34 (1.89%) SpecFlow
16 33 (1.84%) Bitbucket
17 32 (1.78%) Gradle
General
1 459 (25.54%) Social Skills
2 291 (16.19%) Finance
3 254 (14.13%) Public Sector
4 196 (10.91%) Analytical Skills
5 132 (7.35%) Banking
6 31 (1.73%) Documentation Skills
6 31 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 27 (1.50%) Investment Banking
7 27 (1.50%) Telecoms
8 23 (1.28%) Pharmaceutical
9 22 (1.22%) Front Office
10 18 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
11 17 (0.95%) Military
12 16 (0.89%) Manufacturing
13 14 (0.78%) Financial Institution
14 12 (0.67%) Aerospace
14 12 (0.67%) Electronics
14 12 (0.67%) Legal
14 12 (0.67%) Marketing
15 11 (0.61%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 420 (23.37%) Developer
2 300 (16.69%) Senior
3 215 (11.96%) Tester
4 199 (11.07%) Test Engineer
5 181 (10.07%) Lead
6 117 (6.51%) Automation Tester
7 110 (6.12%) Java Developer
8 83 (4.62%) Software Engineer
9 82 (4.56%) Analyst
10 81 (4.51%) Test Automation Engineer
11 74 (4.12%) Senior Developer
12 71 (3.95%) DevOps Engineer
13 70 (3.90%) QA Engineer
14 66 (3.67%) Test Leader
15 65 (3.62%) Data Engineer
16 57 (3.17%) Test Manager
17 55 (3.06%) Automation Engineer
18 54 (3.01%) Test Analyst
19 51 (2.84%) Full-Stack Developer
20 47 (2.62%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 247 (13.75%) REST
2 209 (11.63%) Playwright
3 161 (8.96%) React
4 149 (8.29%) Node.js
5 146 (8.12%) RESTful
6 139 (7.74%) .NET
7 132 (7.35%) Spring
8 128 (7.12%) Kafka
9 122 (6.79%) Spring Boot
10 84 (4.67%) pytest
11 62 (3.45%) JSON
12 61 (3.39%) AngularJS
12 61 (3.39%) HTML
13 57 (3.17%) OAuth
14 56 (3.12%) SOAP
15 53 (2.95%) XML
16 52 (2.89%) Web Services
17 51 (2.84%) CSS
17 51 (2.84%) Jest
18 42 (2.34%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 188 (10.46%) Cloud Native
2 126 (7.01%) Product Ownership
3 64 (3.56%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (2.67%) Mobile App
5 43 (2.39%) Security Posture
6 39 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
7 37 (2.06%) Algorithms
8 35 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
9 31 (1.73%) Onboarding
10 28 (1.56%) Virtual Team
11 25 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
12 21 (1.17%) Data Structures
12 21 (1.17%) Greenfield Project
13 20 (1.11%) Management Information System
13 20 (1.11%) NHS
13 20 (1.11%) Public Cloud
14 19 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
15 18 (1.00%) Equities
16 15 (0.83%) Derivative
16 15 (0.83%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 160 (8.90%) Linux
2 80 (4.45%) Windows
3 48 (2.67%) Unix
4 40 (2.23%) Android
5 36 (2.00%) Apple iOS
6 22 (1.22%) Windows Server
7 21 (1.17%) Mac OS X
8 12 (0.67%) Kali Linux
9 9 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 4 (0.22%) CentOS
11 3 (0.17%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.17%) Solaris
11 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.11%) VMS
12 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.056%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.056%) Windows Embedded Compact
13 1 (0.056%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 917 (51.03%) CI/CD
2 857 (47.69%) Agile
3 669 (37.23%) DevOps
4 439 (24.43%) Problem-Solving
5 279 (15.53%) Microservices
6 271 (15.08%) Test Strategy
7 263 (14.64%) Continuous Improvement
8 262 (14.58%) Containerisation
9 234 (13.02%) Scrum
10 222 (12.35%) Infrastructure as Code
11 217 (12.08%) Test Scripting
12 210 (11.69%) Validation
13 209 (11.63%) AI
14 206 (11.46%) Software Engineering
15 202 (11.24%) TDD
16 179 (9.96%) API Testing
17 178 (9.91%) Software Testing
18 168 (9.35%) Regression Testing
19 167 (9.29%) Analytics
20 165 (9.18%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 545 (30.33%) Python
2 446 (24.82%) Java
3 338 (18.81%) SQL
4 278 (15.47%) JavaScript
5 257 (14.30%) TypeScript
6 173 (9.63%) C#
7 85 (4.73%) Bash
8 65 (3.62%) PowerShell
9 40 (2.23%) C++
9 40 (2.23%) Go
10 25 (1.39%) PL/SQL
11 24 (1.34%) Bicep
12 23 (1.28%) Scala
13 20 (1.11%) Kotlin
14 18 (1.00%) Ruby
15 16 (0.89%) Apex Code
16 14 (0.78%) C
17 13 (0.72%) Swift
18 12 (0.67%) Groovy
18 12 (0.67%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 496 (27.60%) Security Cleared
2 383 (21.31%) SC Cleared
3 103 (5.73%) Degree
4 78 (4.34%) ISTQB
5 69 (3.84%) BPSS Clearance
6 59 (3.28%) DV Cleared
7 55 (3.06%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (1.67%) Master's Degree
9 27 (1.50%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 19 (1.06%) OSCP
11 16 (0.89%) AWS Certification
12 15 (0.83%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 14 (0.78%) CEH
13 14 (0.78%) Cisco Certification
14 13 (0.72%) CISSP
14 13 (0.72%) GPEN
14 13 (0.72%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 12 (0.67%) Oracle Certification
16 11 (0.61%) CISM
16 11 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 377 (20.98%) QA
2 145 (8.07%) Accessibility
3 81 (4.51%) Data Quality
4 48 (2.67%) WCAG
5 40 (2.23%) GDPR
6 37 (2.06%) NIST
7 25 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 21 (1.17%) NCSC
9 18 (1.00%) EU AI Act
10 14 (0.78%) ISO 20022
11 13 (0.72%) SLA
12 12 (0.67%) PCI DSS
12 12 (0.67%) PSD2
13 10 (0.56%) NIST 800
13 10 (0.56%) SEPA
14 9 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 7 (0.39%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 7 (0.39%) SOC 2
16 6 (0.33%) HIPAA
17 5 (0.28%) PERC
System Software
1 380 (21.15%) Docker
2 30 (1.67%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.39%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
3 7 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
4 5 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.28%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.22%) Firmware
6 3 (0.17%) ISA Server
6 3 (0.17%) QEMU
6 3 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.056%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.056%) HDFS
8 1 (0.056%) KVM
8 1 (0.056%) Squid
8 1 (0.056%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.056%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.056%) vSphere
8 1 (0.056%) zsh
Systems Management
1 333 (18.53%) Kubernetes
2 213 (11.85%) Terraform
3 105 (5.84%) Ansible
4 94 (5.23%) Grafana
5 64 (3.56%) Prometheus
6 21 (1.17%) HP ALM
7 19 (1.06%) Nmap
8 16 (0.89%) Argo
8 16 (0.89%) Progress Chef
9 15 (0.83%) CSIRT
9 15 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (0.78%) Puppet
11 11 (0.61%) NetBackup
12 9 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
13 8 (0.45%) Kibana
13 8 (0.45%) Nessus
14 7 (0.39%) Podman
15 5 (0.28%) Forefront Identity Manager
15 5 (0.28%) NetIQ Identity Manager
16 4 (0.22%) Iperf
Vendors
1 161 (8.96%) Microsoft
2 144 (8.01%) Oracle
3 68 (3.78%) Splunk
4 61 (3.39%) Salesforce
5 60 (3.34%) Databricks
5 60 (3.34%) ServiceNow
6 58 (3.23%) Google
6 58 (3.23%) SAP
7 25 (1.39%) Red Hat
7 25 (1.39%) VMware
8 24 (1.34%) Cisco
9 23 (1.28%) Talend
10 22 (1.22%) Denodo
11 21 (1.17%) HP
11 21 (1.17%) IBM
11 21 (1.17%) webMethods
12 20 (1.11%) F5
13 18 (1.00%) OpenAI
14 17 (0.95%) MuleSoft
15 16 (0.89%) Atlassian