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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 49 44
Rank change year-on-year +6 -5 +8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,499 1,540 1,584
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.55% 4.66% 4.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.39% 5.14% 4.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,604 1,050 1,073
10th Percentile £325 £315 £350
25th Percentile £405 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £669 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 37 17
10th Percentile £40.00 £28.42 £42.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £45.00 £47.50
Median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -4.35% -23.33%
75th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 £74.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £70.20 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.22 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +18.63% - -22.03%

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 46,382 29,970 32,481
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.48% 90.66% 85.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,008 18,622 19,630
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £733 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,245 1,858 1,349
10th Percentile £13.70 £14.32 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.19 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £39.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.07% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £65.60 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.64 £65.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.01% -48.10% +1.18%

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 1 October 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 1 October 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 1 October 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 +6 2,091 £475 -5.00% 3,359
UK excluding London 0 1,206 £450 -5.26% 2,103
London +8 951 £500 - 1,597
Work from Home -2 661 £480 +0.52% 1,398
North of England -2 422 £453 -4.63% 503
Midlands +9 261 £450 -2.70% 250
West Midlands +27 246 £450 -13.34% 162
South East -13 223 £449 -5.53% 448
Yorkshire -2 178 £463 -7.50% 152
North West -13 149 £492 +16.23% 276
South West -6 116 £475 -12.84% 316
North East +6 102 £425 -11.69% 75
Scotland -13 101 £475 -5.00% 276
East of England +16 94 £375 +17.19% 213
Wales -9 24 £425 +3.03% 45
East Midlands -44 15 £418 +15.97% 88
Northern Ireland +6 8 £513 +345.65% 63
Channel Islands - 1 £450 - 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
1 194 (7.76%) Confluence
2 67 (2.68%) Apache Airflow
3 50 (2.00%) Apache Spark
4 46 (1.84%) SharePoint
5 37 (1.48%) Apache
6 32 (1.28%) SAS
7 17 (0.68%) CMS
8 13 (0.52%) Camunda
9 11 (0.44%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.28%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
12 5 (0.20%) nginx
12 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.16%) Anypoint
13 4 (0.16%) ColdFusion
13 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 4 (0.16%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.12%) Kentico
15 2 (0.080%) Apache Pulsar
Applications
1 21 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.28%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.16%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.12%) Mingle
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 2 (0.080%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.040%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.040%) Simulink
8 1 (0.040%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 30 (1.20%) Dynamics CRM
2 29 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.40%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.28%) SAP GRC
6 6 (0.24%) FLEXCUBE
6 6 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.24%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.16%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.12%) Finacle
9 2 (0.080%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.080%) Findur
9 2 (0.080%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.080%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.080%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.080%) Shopify
9 2 (0.080%) Workday HCM
10 1 (0.040%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 794 (31.77%) AWS
2 754 (30.17%) Azure
3 450 (18.01%) GitHub
4 350 (14.01%) Azure DevOps
5 266 (10.64%) GitHub Actions
6 193 (7.72%) GCP
7 181 (7.24%) Serverless
8 135 (5.40%) AWS Lambda
9 118 (4.72%) Power Platform
10 111 (4.44%) Amazon S3
11 89 (3.56%) GitHub Copilot
12 88 (3.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 80 (3.20%) OpenShift
14 74 (2.96%) Amazon EKS
15 71 (2.84%) AWS CloudFormation
16 70 (2.80%) Amazon ECS
17 61 (2.44%) dbt
17 61 (2.44%) Snowflake
18 54 (2.16%) Anthropic Claude
19 52 (2.08%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.08%) DNS
2 26 (1.04%) Firewall
3 25 (1.00%) HTTP
4 24 (0.96%) 4G
5 22 (0.88%) TCP/IP
5 22 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
6 21 (0.84%) 5G
7 20 (0.80%) Broadband
8 18 (0.72%) Network Security
9 14 (0.56%) 2G
9 14 (0.56%) 3G
9 14 (0.56%) Diameter Protocol
9 14 (0.56%) SIGTRAN
9 14 (0.56%) SS7
9 14 (0.56%) WAN
10 13 (0.52%) BGP
10 13 (0.52%) LAN
11 12 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
11 12 (0.48%) VXLAN
12 11 (0.44%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 154 (6.16%) PostgreSQL
2 131 (5.24%) MongoDB
3 126 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
4 114 (4.56%) Relational Database
5 106 (4.24%) NoSQL
6 99 (3.96%) SQL Server
7 87 (3.48%) Power BI
8 59 (2.36%) Metadata
9 43 (1.72%) Data Lake
9 43 (1.72%) DynamoDB
10 39 (1.56%) MySQL
10 39 (1.56%) Oracle Reports
11 37 (1.48%) Big Data
12 33 (1.32%) Amazon Redshift
13 32 (1.28%) Amazon Athena
13 32 (1.28%) Redis
14 30 (1.20%) Amazon RDS
14 30 (1.20%) Pentaho
15 28 (1.12%) Oracle Database
16 26 (1.04%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 572 (22.89%) Git
2 408 (16.33%) Jenkins
3 397 (15.89%) JIRA
4 350 (14.01%) GitLab
5 321 (12.85%) Selenium
6 180 (7.20%) Cucumber
7 171 (6.84%) Postman
8 153 (6.12%) JUnit
9 125 (5.00%) Cypress.io
10 112 (4.48%) REST Assured
11 101 (4.04%) JMeter
12 87 (3.48%) SonarQube
13 73 (2.92%) Gatling
14 70 (2.80%) Maven
15 66 (2.64%) Zephyr
16 63 (2.52%) Mockito
17 60 (2.40%) Gradle
18 50 (2.00%) WebDriver
19 38 (1.52%) Bitbucket
20 31 (1.24%) TestNG
General
1 694 (27.77%) Social Skills
2 469 (18.77%) Finance
3 355 (14.21%) Analytical Skills
4 346 (13.85%) Public Sector
5 235 (9.40%) Banking
6 79 (3.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 60 (2.40%) Telecoms
8 41 (1.64%) Front Office
9 38 (1.52%) Investment Banking
10 35 (1.40%) Retail
11 34 (1.36%) Military
12 32 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
13 29 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
14 24 (0.96%) Financial Institution
15 20 (0.80%) Law
15 20 (0.80%) Manufacturing
15 20 (0.80%) Marketing
16 19 (0.76%) Aerospace
17 16 (0.64%) Back Office
18 14 (0.56%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 568 (22.73%) Developer
2 416 (16.65%) Senior
3 257 (10.28%) Lead
4 243 (9.72%) Test Engineer
5 193 (7.72%) Tester
6 180 (7.20%) Java Developer
7 164 (6.56%) Data Engineer
8 122 (4.88%) Software Engineer
9 120 (4.80%) Senior Developer
10 118 (4.72%) Analyst
11 112 (4.48%) Architect
12 111 (4.44%) DevOps Engineer
13 106 (4.24%) Test Automation Engineer
14 102 (4.08%) QA Engineer
15 86 (3.44%) Automation Tester
16 81 (3.24%) Full-Stack Developer
17 78 (3.12%) Test Analyst
17 78 (3.12%) Test Leader
18 76 (3.04%) Automation Engineer
19 74 (2.96%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 435 (17.41%) REST
2 372 (14.89%) Terraform
3 293 (11.72%) Playwright
4 262 (10.48%) Kafka
4 262 (10.48%) RESTful
5 254 (10.16%) Spring
6 227 (9.08%) React
7 216 (8.64%) Spring Boot
8 179 (7.16%) .NET
9 154 (6.16%) HTML
10 139 (5.56%) Node.js
11 129 (5.16%) CSS
12 103 (4.12%) OAuth
13 101 (4.04%) AngularJS
14 88 (3.52%) JSON
15 75 (3.00%) Middleware
16 65 (2.60%) OAuth2
17 64 (2.56%) pytest
18 62 (2.48%) XML
19 61 (2.44%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 394 (15.77%) Cloud Native
2 217 (8.68%) Product Ownership
3 182 (7.28%) Distributed Systems
4 106 (4.24%) Enterprise Software
5 85 (3.40%) Onboarding
6 73 (2.92%) AI Agents
7 64 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
8 53 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
8 53 (2.12%) Mobile App
9 52 (2.08%) Self-Motivation
10 36 (1.44%) Security Posture
11 33 (1.32%) Data Structures
12 31 (1.24%) Virtual Team
13 30 (1.20%) Private Cloud
14 28 (1.12%) Management Information System
15 25 (1.00%) Data Centre
16 24 (0.96%) Life Science
17 23 (0.92%) Legacy Applications
18 21 (0.84%) Embedded Systems
19 20 (0.80%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 181 (7.24%) Linux
2 109 (4.36%) Windows
3 99 (3.96%) Unix
4 50 (2.00%) Apple iOS
5 45 (1.80%) Android
6 32 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (1.00%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.32%) VMS
9 7 (0.28%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.24%) Mac OS X
10 6 (0.24%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.20%) AIX
11 5 (0.20%) Windows 7
11 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.16%) Solaris
12 4 (0.16%) zOS
13 3 (0.12%) CentOS
13 3 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.12%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.080%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,546 (61.86%) CI/CD
2 1,202 (48.10%) Agile
3 925 (37.01%) DevOps
4 501 (20.05%) Microservices
5 486 (19.45%) Problem-Solving
6 485 (19.41%) Continuous Improvement
7 464 (18.57%) Software Engineering
8 450 (18.01%) Infrastructure as Code
9 428 (17.13%) AI
10 424 (16.97%) Validation
11 423 (16.93%) Scrum
12 371 (14.85%) Containerisation
13 368 (14.73%) Test Strategy
14 333 (13.33%) Observability
15 326 (13.05%) TDD
16 303 (12.12%) Software Testing
17 298 (11.92%) Stakeholder Management
18 295 (11.80%) SDLC
19 262 (10.48%) End-to-End Testing
20 248 (9.92%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 705 (28.21%) Python
2 701 (28.05%) Java
3 631 (25.25%) SQL
4 383 (15.33%) JavaScript
5 284 (11.36%) TypeScript
6 208 (8.32%) C#
7 103 (4.12%) PowerShell
8 93 (3.72%) Bash
9 55 (2.20%) Bicep
10 50 (2.00%) Scala
11 49 (1.96%) Kotlin
12 48 (1.92%) C++
13 42 (1.68%) Go
14 33 (1.32%) Shell Script
15 31 (1.24%) PL/SQL
16 28 (1.12%) Perl
17 22 (0.88%) Apex Code
18 21 (0.84%) C
19 17 (0.68%) Ruby
20 16 (0.64%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 792 (31.69%) Security Cleared
2 667 (26.69%) SC Cleared
3 144 (5.76%) BPSS Clearance
4 140 (5.60%) Degree
5 102 (4.08%) ISTQB
6 95 (3.80%) DV Cleared
7 81 (3.24%) Computer Science Degree
8 46 (1.84%) AWS Certification
9 36 (1.44%) Azure Certification
10 25 (1.00%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.64%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 15 (0.60%) Master's Degree
13 14 (0.56%) CISSP
13 14 (0.56%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 13 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
14 13 (0.52%) ISEB
15 12 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 9 (0.36%) DBS Check
17 8 (0.32%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 651 (26.05%) QA
2 232 (9.28%) Accessibility
3 177 (7.08%) Data Quality
4 102 (4.08%) WCAG
5 45 (1.80%) GDPR
6 26 (1.04%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 16 (0.64%) NIST
9 15 (0.60%) GRC
10 14 (0.56%) SLA
11 12 (0.48%) NCSC
12 8 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
13 7 (0.28%) SEPA
13 7 (0.28%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.24%) HL7
14 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
14 6 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
15 5 (0.20%) FATCA
16 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
16 4 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 514 (20.57%) Docker
2 41 (1.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 39 (1.56%) Active Directory
4 20 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.44%) Firmware
6 10 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 8 (0.32%) VMware NSX
8 6 (0.24%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
9 2 (0.080%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.040%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.040%) KVM
10 1 (0.040%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.040%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.040%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 503 (20.13%) Kubernetes
2 147 (5.88%) Ansible
3 139 (5.56%) Grafana
4 93 (3.72%) Prometheus
5 36 (1.44%) Argo
6 33 (1.32%) Kibana
7 26 (1.04%) Puppet
8 25 (1.00%) Progress Chef
9 14 (0.56%) HP ALM
9 14 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.52%) Control-M
11 10 (0.40%) Microsoft Intune
12 8 (0.32%) SCCM
13 7 (0.28%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.24%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.24%) Istio
15 5 (0.20%) Dell DRAC
15 5 (0.20%) Packer
15 5 (0.20%) WMI
16 4 (0.16%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 242 (9.68%) Microsoft
2 191 (7.64%) Oracle
3 100 (4.00%) Databricks
4 82 (3.28%) Google
5 73 (2.92%) Salesforce
6 70 (2.80%) IBM
7 66 (2.64%) ServiceNow
8 59 (2.36%) SAP
8 59 (2.36%) Splunk
9 54 (2.16%) Talend
10 53 (2.12%) Red Hat
11 51 (2.04%) VMware
12 46 (1.84%) Informatica
13 43 (1.72%) Denodo
14 42 (1.68%) Dynatrace
15 34 (1.36%) Cisco
15 34 (1.36%) MuleSoft
16 31 (1.24%) UiPath
17 26 (1.04%) OpenAI
18 23 (0.92%) Foundry