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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 49 49
Rank change year-on-year +3 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,314 1,503 1,553
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.31% 4.59% 4.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.10% 5.07% 4.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,494 1,042 1,029
10th Percentile £331 £313 £350
25th Percentile £407 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £507
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -1.38% -3.43%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £663 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -3.37% -5.05% +0.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 103 36 23
10th Percentile £37.80 £32.63 £42.50
25th Percentile £59.13 £44.88 £49.00
Median hourly rate £69.50 £52.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.38% -4.55% -19.85%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.50 £67.81
90th Percentile £74.00 £71.75 £82.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.00 £55.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +25.45% - -13.30%

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 45,365 29,616 33,160
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.47% 85.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,789 18,444 20,998
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,884 1,758 1,700
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £13.87
25th Percentile £18.00 £17.30 £18.13
Median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +65.23% -38.57% -3.67%
75th Percentile £67.99 £47.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.63 £42.50
% change year-on-year +94.26% -46.75% +6.25%

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 25 August 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 25 August 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 25 August 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 1,956 £475 -5.00% 687
UK excluding London -7 1,126 £459 -3.37% 610
London +6 902 £500 -1.96% 213
Work from Home -5 627 £476 +0.11% 307
North of England +5 391 £461 +0.27% 131
Midlands +6 246 £450 - 77
West Midlands +23 230 £458 -9.63% 53
South East -28 213 £459 -8.20% 150
Yorkshire -8 156 £463 -7.50% 37
North West -18 140 £492 +15.09% 68
South West +1 115 £475 +5.56% 155
North East +13 103 £450 - 27
East of England +14 77 £450 +9.09% 54
Scotland -21 76 £460 -8.00% 40
Wales -6 30 £488 +21.88% 8
Northern Ireland +14 16 £488 +323.91% 11
East Midlands -43 16 £418 +19.29% 24
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

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
1 190 (8.21%) Confluence
2 53 (2.29%) Apache Airflow
3 47 (2.03%) Apache Spark
4 44 (1.90%) SharePoint
5 40 (1.73%) SAS
6 24 (1.04%) Apache
7 14 (0.61%) CMS
8 12 (0.52%) WebLogic
9 9 (0.39%) Camunda
10 6 (0.26%) nginx
10 6 (0.26%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.26%) Tomcat
11 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
12 4 (0.17%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.17%) Jupyter
12 4 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 3 (0.13%) Kentico
14 2 (0.086%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.086%) Mendix
Applications
1 25 (1.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.69%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.26%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.26%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.17%) Simulink
6 3 (0.13%) Trello
7 1 (0.043%) Mingle
7 1 (0.043%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 29 (1.25%) Dynamics CRM
2 22 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.61%) Aladdin
4 13 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
5 10 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.35%) Findur
7 6 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.26%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.26%) SAP GRC
7 6 (0.26%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.22%) BambooHR
9 4 (0.17%) Infor CloudSuite
9 4 (0.17%) Infor LN
9 4 (0.17%) Infor M3
9 4 (0.17%) Shopify
10 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
11 2 (0.086%) Advent Geneva
11 2 (0.086%) Oracle ERP
12 1 (0.043%) Summit
12 1 (0.043%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 707 (30.55%) Azure
2 700 (30.25%) AWS
3 428 (18.50%) GitHub
4 334 (14.43%) Azure DevOps
5 259 (11.19%) GitHub Actions
6 175 (7.56%) Serverless
7 167 (7.22%) GCP
8 127 (5.49%) AWS Lambda
9 108 (4.67%) Power Platform
10 98 (4.24%) Amazon S3
11 80 (3.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 70 (3.03%) Amazon ECS
13 68 (2.94%) OpenShift
14 67 (2.90%) GitHub Copilot
15 65 (2.81%) AWS CloudFormation
16 62 (2.68%) Amazon EKS
17 60 (2.59%) dbt
18 58 (2.51%) Snowflake
19 52 (2.25%) Amazon EC2
20 46 (1.99%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.04%) Firewall
1 24 (1.04%) HTTP
2 19 (0.82%) DNS
3 18 (0.78%) 4G
3 18 (0.78%) 5G
4 16 (0.69%) Network Security
4 16 (0.69%) WAN
5 15 (0.65%) 2G
5 15 (0.65%) 3G
5 15 (0.65%) Diameter Protocol
5 15 (0.65%) SIGTRAN
5 15 (0.65%) SS7
6 14 (0.61%) TCP/IP
7 13 (0.56%) LAN
8 12 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
9 10 (0.43%) BGP
9 10 (0.43%) SAN
10 8 (0.35%) DHCP
10 8 (0.35%) Ethernet VPN
10 8 (0.35%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 138 (5.96%) PostgreSQL
2 124 (5.36%) Data Warehouse
3 120 (5.19%) MongoDB
4 110 (4.75%) NoSQL
5 98 (4.24%) SQL Server
6 89 (3.85%) Relational Database
7 84 (3.63%) Power BI
8 49 (2.12%) DynamoDB
8 49 (2.12%) Metadata
9 37 (1.60%) Oracle Reports
10 36 (1.56%) MySQL
11 35 (1.51%) Amazon Athena
12 34 (1.47%) Big Data
12 34 (1.47%) Data Lake
13 33 (1.43%) Amazon Redshift
14 32 (1.38%) Pentaho
15 30 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
16 29 (1.25%) Elasticsearch
16 29 (1.25%) Redis
17 24 (1.04%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 468 (20.22%) Git
2 400 (17.29%) JIRA
3 372 (16.08%) Jenkins
4 315 (13.61%) GitLab
5 295 (12.75%) Selenium
6 160 (6.91%) Postman
7 147 (6.35%) Cucumber
8 122 (5.27%) Cypress.io
9 121 (5.23%) JUnit
10 103 (4.45%) REST Assured
11 100 (4.32%) JMeter
12 74 (3.20%) SonarQube
13 65 (2.81%) Zephyr
14 58 (2.51%) Gatling
15 57 (2.46%) WebDriver
16 56 (2.42%) Gradle
17 51 (2.20%) Maven
18 43 (1.86%) Bitbucket
19 42 (1.82%) Mockito
20 28 (1.21%) SpecFlow
General
1 639 (27.61%) Social Skills
2 429 (18.54%) Finance
3 333 (14.39%) Public Sector
4 316 (13.66%) Analytical Skills
5 196 (8.47%) Banking
6 73 (3.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 45 (1.94%) Telecoms
8 44 (1.90%) Documentation Skills
9 39 (1.69%) Front Office
10 35 (1.51%) Investment Banking
11 34 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
12 33 (1.43%) Retail
13 27 (1.17%) Military
14 24 (1.04%) Financial Institution
15 19 (0.82%) Aerospace
15 19 (0.82%) Back Office
16 17 (0.73%) Manufacturing
16 17 (0.73%) Marketing
17 16 (0.69%) Law
17 16 (0.69%) Legal
Job Titles
1 506 (21.87%) Developer
2 383 (16.55%) Senior
3 244 (10.54%) Lead
4 224 (9.68%) Test Engineer
5 204 (8.82%) Tester
6 156 (6.74%) Java Developer
7 138 (5.96%) Data Engineer
8 124 (5.36%) DevOps Engineer
9 121 (5.23%) Analyst
10 119 (5.14%) Software Engineer
11 108 (4.67%) Senior Developer
12 104 (4.49%) Architect
13 103 (4.45%) Test Automation Engineer
14 98 (4.24%) QA Engineer
15 89 (3.85%) Automation Tester
16 83 (3.59%) Test Leader
17 79 (3.41%) Test Analyst
18 74 (3.20%) Full-Stack Developer
19 67 (2.90%) Test Manager
20 66 (2.85%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 359 (15.51%) REST
2 336 (14.52%) Terraform
3 275 (11.88%) Playwright
4 219 (9.46%) RESTful
5 210 (9.08%) React
6 209 (9.03%) Kafka
7 207 (8.95%) Spring
8 173 (7.48%) Spring Boot
9 164 (7.09%) .NET
10 124 (5.36%) Node.js
11 123 (5.32%) HTML
12 105 (4.54%) CSS
13 98 (4.24%) AngularJS
14 79 (3.41%) OAuth
15 72 (3.11%) JSON
16 59 (2.55%) pytest
17 58 (2.51%) OAuth2
18 57 (2.46%) Middleware
19 55 (2.38%) Jest
19 55 (2.38%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 346 (14.95%) Cloud Native
2 187 (8.08%) Product Ownership
3 158 (6.83%) Distributed Systems
4 94 (4.06%) Enterprise Software
5 65 (2.81%) Onboarding
6 58 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
7 53 (2.29%) Data Protection Act
8 50 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
9 49 (2.12%) Mobile App
10 41 (1.77%) AI Agents
11 36 (1.56%) Virtual Team
12 25 (1.08%) Embedded Systems
13 24 (1.04%) NHS
14 23 (0.99%) Security Posture
15 22 (0.95%) Data Centre
15 22 (0.95%) Distributed Architecture
15 22 (0.95%) Management Information System
16 19 (0.82%) Data Structures
17 18 (0.78%) Derivative
18 17 (0.73%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 164 (7.09%) Linux
2 96 (4.15%) Unix
3 94 (4.06%) Windows
4 41 (1.77%) Android
4 41 (1.77%) Apple iOS
5 28 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 20 (0.86%) Windows Server
7 7 (0.30%) Solaris
8 6 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
9 5 (0.22%) Mac OS X
9 5 (0.22%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.22%) Windows 7
9 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.17%) AIX
10 4 (0.17%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.17%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.17%) VMS
10 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.086%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,369 (59.16%) CI/CD
2 1,070 (46.24%) Agile
3 886 (38.29%) DevOps
4 438 (18.93%) Problem-Solving
5 434 (18.76%) Microservices
6 431 (18.63%) Continuous Improvement
7 397 (17.16%) Software Engineering
8 391 (16.90%) Infrastructure as Code
9 371 (16.03%) Scrum
10 365 (15.77%) Validation
11 353 (15.25%) Test Strategy
12 333 (14.39%) AI
13 318 (13.74%) Containerisation
14 300 (12.96%) Observability
15 294 (12.71%) TDD
16 256 (11.06%) SDLC
17 244 (10.54%) Software Testing
18 242 (10.46%) End-to-End Testing
19 237 (10.24%) Stakeholder Management
20 219 (9.46%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 625 (27.01%) Python
2 616 (26.62%) Java
3 570 (24.63%) SQL
4 329 (14.22%) JavaScript
5 247 (10.67%) TypeScript
6 200 (8.64%) C#
7 111 (4.80%) PowerShell
8 93 (4.02%) Bash
9 56 (2.42%) Bicep
10 50 (2.16%) C++
10 50 (2.16%) Kotlin
11 35 (1.51%) PL/SQL
12 31 (1.34%) C
12 31 (1.34%) Scala
13 28 (1.21%) Apex Code
13 28 (1.21%) Go
14 27 (1.17%) Shell Script
15 24 (1.04%) Ruby
16 17 (0.73%) Groovy
17 16 (0.69%) Swift
Qualifications
1 748 (32.32%) Security Cleared
2 636 (27.48%) SC Cleared
3 124 (5.36%) Degree
4 113 (4.88%) BPSS Clearance
5 107 (4.62%) ISTQB
6 70 (3.03%) DV Cleared
7 69 (2.98%) Computer Science Degree
8 36 (1.56%) AWS Certification
9 31 (1.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 29 (1.25%) Azure Certification
11 19 (0.82%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 13 (0.56%) Cisco Certification
12 13 (0.56%) ISEB
12 13 (0.56%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.52%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 11 (0.48%) SAFe Agilist
15 10 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.39%) CCNP
16 9 (0.39%) CISSP
17 8 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 591 (25.54%) QA
2 191 (8.25%) Accessibility
3 165 (7.13%) Data Quality
4 88 (3.80%) WCAG
5 41 (1.77%) GDPR
6 18 (0.78%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.69%) SLA
8 14 (0.61%) NCSC
9 12 (0.52%) GRC
10 10 (0.43%) NIST
11 7 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 7 (0.30%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.22%) Def Stans
13 5 (0.22%) FATCA
13 5 (0.22%) HL7
13 5 (0.22%) MiFID
14 4 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 458 (19.79%) Docker
2 33 (1.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (1.30%) Active Directory
4 17 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (0.56%) Firmware
6 6 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
7 5 (0.22%) VMware NSX
8 4 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.043%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.043%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.043%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 444 (19.19%) Kubernetes
2 128 (5.53%) Ansible
3 125 (5.40%) Grafana
4 95 (4.11%) Prometheus
5 41 (1.77%) Argo
6 22 (0.95%) Puppet
7 21 (0.91%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.78%) HP ALM
9 15 (0.65%) Kibana
10 11 (0.48%) Control-M
10 11 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.39%) Dell DRAC
12 7 (0.30%) Istio
12 7 (0.30%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
13 6 (0.26%) Packer
14 5 (0.22%) HP Fortify
14 5 (0.22%) SCCM
15 4 (0.17%) Consul
15 4 (0.17%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 223 (9.64%) Microsoft
2 193 (8.34%) Oracle
3 88 (3.80%) Databricks
3 88 (3.80%) Salesforce
4 63 (2.72%) Google
4 63 (2.72%) Red Hat
5 59 (2.55%) Splunk
6 57 (2.46%) Talend
7 55 (2.38%) ServiceNow
8 54 (2.33%) IBM
9 50 (2.16%) SAP
10 43 (1.86%) Denodo
10 43 (1.86%) Informatica
11 40 (1.73%) VMware
12 38 (1.64%) Dynatrace
13 31 (1.34%) Cisco
14 30 (1.30%) MuleSoft
15 26 (1.12%) UiPath
16 23 (0.99%) HP
17 14 (0.61%) OpenAI