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

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 46 55
Rank change year-on-year -2 +9 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,017 1,308 1,503
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.15% 4.57% 3.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.92% 5.02% 4.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,309 919 993
10th Percentile £350 £325 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £738 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £469 £500
% change year-on-year - -6.20% -4.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 94 22 52
10th Percentile £36.10 £35.58 £51.38
25th Percentile £56.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.57% -12.50% -13.51%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £73.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £75.45 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £61.25
% change year-on-year +22.73% -10.20% -5.68%

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 40,998 26,034 36,602
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.45% 91.02% 85.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,676 16,714 23,582
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.74% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,430 1,064 2,485
10th Percentile £14.80 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.12 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.28 £27.45 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.01% -23.75% -3.49%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.01 £74.63 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.35 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +76.32% -32.93% +7.14%

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 26 May 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 26 May 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 26 May 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 1,724 £475 -5.00% 626
UK excluding London -4 965 £469 - 444
London -1 812 £500 -2.20% 262
Work from Home -2 575 £475 - 366
North of England +8 349 £466 +4.25% 129
Midlands +10 201 £459 +8.00% 61
West Midlands +27 180 £459 -4.97% 43
South East -39 176 £500 - 104
North West +12 154 £472 +5.54% 78
Yorkshire -7 149 £493 +3.68% 24
South West +13 100 £475 -5.00% 57
East of England +9 74 £501 +7.17% 48
North East +3 54 £425 +6.25% 27
Scotland -36 44 £440 -4.35% 23
Wales 0 31 £475 +16.92% 14
East Midlands -43 21 £400 +48.15% 18
Northern Ireland +19 19 £475 +16.28% 19
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
1 164 (8.13%) Confluence
2 44 (2.18%) SAS
3 39 (1.93%) Apache Spark
4 37 (1.83%) Apache Airflow
5 14 (0.69%) Apache
6 12 (0.59%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.40%) Appian
8 7 (0.35%) CMS
8 7 (0.35%) nginx
8 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.30%) Camunda
10 4 (0.20%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.099%) Mendix
13 1 (0.050%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.050%) Jupyter
13 1 (0.050%) Kentico
Applications
1 27 (1.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.69%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (0.55%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.15%) Simulink
6 2 (0.099%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.050%) Mingle
7 1 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 21 (1.04%) Aladdin
2 15 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
4 9 (0.45%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.40%) Findur
5 8 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.30%) Shopify
7 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.25%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.25%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.25%) SAP MDG
8 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.15%) Infor CloudSuite
8 3 (0.15%) Infor LN
8 3 (0.15%) Infor M3
8 3 (0.15%) Maximo
8 3 (0.15%) Workday HCM
9 2 (0.099%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.099%) iTrent
9 2 (0.099%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 574 (28.46%) Azure
2 563 (27.91%) AWS
3 348 (17.25%) GitHub
4 265 (13.14%) Azure DevOps
5 198 (9.82%) GitHub Actions
6 150 (7.44%) GCP
7 132 (6.54%) Serverless
8 84 (4.16%) AWS Lambda
9 80 (3.97%) Amazon S3
10 78 (3.87%) Power Platform
11 55 (2.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 55 (2.73%) OpenShift
12 52 (2.58%) Amazon ECS
13 46 (2.28%) AWS CloudFormation
14 42 (2.08%) Azure Data Factory
15 39 (1.93%) Snowflake
16 38 (1.88%) Amazon EC2
16 38 (1.88%) Amazon EKS
17 30 (1.49%) Dynamics 365
18 29 (1.44%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.19%) HTTP
2 23 (1.14%) Firewall
3 15 (0.74%) SAN
4 11 (0.55%) Network Security
4 11 (0.55%) TCP/IP
4 11 (0.55%) VPN
5 9 (0.45%) SSL
6 8 (0.40%) MPLS
6 8 (0.40%) WAN
7 7 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (0.30%) Ethernet
8 6 (0.30%) VLAN
8 6 (0.30%) Wireshark
9 5 (0.25%) 5G
9 5 (0.25%) FTP
9 5 (0.25%) Multicast
10 4 (0.20%) BGP
10 4 (0.20%) NAS
10 4 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
10 4 (0.20%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 109 (5.40%) PostgreSQL
2 106 (5.26%) MongoDB
3 97 (4.81%) NoSQL
4 86 (4.26%) SQL Server
5 79 (3.92%) Data Warehouse
6 72 (3.57%) Relational Database
7 54 (2.68%) Power BI
8 46 (2.28%) DynamoDB
9 41 (2.03%) Metadata
10 33 (1.64%) Pentaho
11 32 (1.59%) Big Data
11 32 (1.59%) MySQL
12 30 (1.49%) Oracle Reports
13 26 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
14 25 (1.24%) Tableau
15 24 (1.19%) Data Lake
15 24 (1.19%) Redis
16 21 (1.04%) Amazon Athena
16 21 (1.04%) Amazon Aurora
16 21 (1.04%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 389 (19.29%) JIRA
2 355 (17.60%) Git
3 337 (16.71%) Jenkins
4 280 (13.88%) Selenium
5 279 (13.83%) GitLab
6 168 (8.33%) Postman
7 149 (7.39%) Cucumber
8 110 (5.45%) REST Assured
9 101 (5.01%) JUnit
10 100 (4.96%) Cypress.io
11 98 (4.86%) JMeter
12 59 (2.93%) WebDriver
13 52 (2.58%) Zephyr
14 48 (2.38%) SonarQube
15 42 (2.08%) Gatling
16 36 (1.78%) Gradle
16 36 (1.78%) Mockito
17 31 (1.54%) SpecFlow
18 30 (1.49%) Bitbucket
18 30 (1.49%) Maven
General
1 528 (26.18%) Social Skills
2 344 (17.06%) Finance
3 276 (13.68%) Public Sector
4 239 (11.85%) Analytical Skills
5 169 (8.38%) Banking
6 43 (2.13%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.93%) Investment Banking
8 38 (1.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 36 (1.78%) Front Office
10 25 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
11 21 (1.04%) Telecoms
12 19 (0.94%) Military
13 18 (0.89%) Legal
14 17 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
15 16 (0.79%) Aerospace
15 16 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
15 16 (0.79%) Retail
16 14 (0.69%) Manufacturing
17 13 (0.64%) Back Office
17 13 (0.64%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 413 (20.48%) Developer
2 308 (15.27%) Senior
3 227 (11.25%) Test Engineer
4 212 (10.51%) Lead
5 207 (10.26%) Tester
6 120 (5.95%) Data Engineer
7 112 (5.55%) Java Developer
8 108 (5.35%) Analyst
9 101 (5.01%) Test Automation Engineer
10 99 (4.91%) Software Engineer
11 92 (4.56%) Automation Tester
12 91 (4.51%) Architect
12 91 (4.51%) DevOps Engineer
13 84 (4.16%) Test Leader
14 79 (3.92%) QA Engineer
14 79 (3.92%) Senior Developer
15 65 (3.22%) Test Analyst
16 61 (3.02%) Full-Stack Developer
17 60 (2.97%) Test Manager
18 57 (2.83%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 247 (12.25%) Playwright
2 238 (11.80%) REST
3 180 (8.92%) React
4 155 (7.68%) RESTful
5 143 (7.09%) Spring
6 142 (7.04%) .NET
6 142 (7.04%) Kafka
7 120 (5.95%) Node.js
8 119 (5.90%) Spring Boot
9 75 (3.72%) AngularJS
10 72 (3.57%) HTML
11 64 (3.17%) pytest
12 62 (3.07%) OAuth
13 59 (2.93%) CSS
14 50 (2.48%) Jest
15 46 (2.28%) Swagger
16 44 (2.18%) Gherkin
16 44 (2.18%) OpenID
17 43 (2.13%) JSON
18 41 (2.03%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 220 (10.91%) Cloud Native
2 149 (7.39%) Product Ownership
3 104 (5.16%) Distributed Systems
4 52 (2.58%) Data Protection Act
5 47 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
6 45 (2.23%) Mobile App
7 42 (2.08%) Enterprise Software
8 39 (1.93%) Virtual Team
9 38 (1.88%) Self-Motivation
10 36 (1.78%) Onboarding
11 30 (1.49%) NHS
12 25 (1.24%) Algorithms
13 24 (1.19%) Distributed Architecture
13 24 (1.19%) Management Information System
14 23 (1.14%) Data Centre
14 23 (1.14%) Derivative
15 22 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
16 19 (0.94%) Fixed Income
17 18 (0.89%) Embedded Systems
18 16 (0.79%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 127 (6.30%) Linux
2 79 (3.92%) Windows
3 56 (2.78%) Unix
4 41 (2.03%) Android
5 35 (1.74%) Apple iOS
6 22 (1.09%) Windows Server
7 20 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.59%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.40%) Solaris
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.15%) AIX
14 3 (0.15%) CentOS
15 2 (0.099%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.050%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,089 (53.99%) CI/CD
2 923 (45.76%) Agile
3 728 (36.09%) DevOps
4 373 (18.49%) Problem-Solving
5 330 (16.36%) Continuous Improvement
6 322 (15.96%) Microservices
7 312 (15.47%) Test Strategy
8 281 (13.93%) Scrum
9 275 (13.63%) Validation
10 264 (13.09%) Software Engineering
11 263 (13.04%) Infrastructure as Code
12 248 (12.30%) Containerisation
13 246 (12.20%) Observability
14 231 (11.45%) TDD
15 219 (10.86%) AI
16 203 (10.06%) API Testing
17 197 (9.77%) ETL
18 195 (9.67%) Test Scripting
19 193 (9.57%) Software Testing
19 193 (9.57%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 530 (26.28%) Python
2 508 (25.19%) Java
3 456 (22.61%) SQL
4 282 (13.98%) JavaScript
5 240 (11.90%) TypeScript
6 202 (10.01%) C#
7 74 (3.67%) PowerShell
8 66 (3.27%) Bash
9 55 (2.73%) C++
10 44 (2.18%) Kotlin
11 39 (1.93%) PL/SQL
12 35 (1.74%) Scala
13 32 (1.59%) C
14 31 (1.54%) Apex Code
15 27 (1.34%) Go
16 26 (1.29%) Bicep
17 21 (1.04%) Ruby
18 19 (0.94%) Swift
19 15 (0.74%) Groovy
20 14 (0.69%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 625 (30.99%) Security Cleared
2 496 (24.59%) SC Cleared
3 92 (4.56%) ISTQB
4 84 (4.16%) Degree
5 82 (4.07%) BPSS Clearance
6 71 (3.52%) DV Cleared
7 40 (1.98%) Computer Science Degree
8 26 (1.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 13 (0.64%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.59%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.55%) CCNP
11 11 (0.55%) DBS Check
12 10 (0.50%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 10 (0.50%) SAFe Agilist
13 9 (0.45%) AWS Certification
14 8 (0.40%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 8 (0.40%) Azure Certification
15 7 (0.35%) CISSP
16 6 (0.30%) Microsoft Certification
17 5 (0.25%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 429 (21.27%) QA
2 153 (7.59%) Accessibility
3 121 (6.00%) Data Quality
4 68 (3.37%) WCAG
5 34 (1.69%) GDPR
6 15 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.74%) SLA
7 12 (0.59%) ISO 20022
8 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
9 9 (0.45%) NCSC
10 8 (0.40%) NIST
11 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 6 (0.30%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 5 (0.25%) FATCA
13 5 (0.25%) SEPA
14 4 (0.20%) HL7
14 4 (0.20%) MiFID
14 4 (0.20%) PSD2
14 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 343 (17.01%) Docker
2 25 (1.24%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (1.04%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.64%) Firmware
5 11 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
9 4 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.099%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.099%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.099%) SRDF
11 1 (0.050%) HDFS
11 1 (0.050%) KVM
11 1 (0.050%) Squid
11 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 333 (16.51%) Kubernetes
2 232 (11.50%) Terraform
3 110 (5.45%) Grafana
4 92 (4.56%) Prometheus
5 90 (4.46%) Ansible
6 28 (1.39%) Argo
7 19 (0.94%) HP ALM
8 16 (0.79%) Puppet
9 14 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.64%) Kibana
11 10 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 9 (0.45%) Dell DRAC
13 8 (0.40%) Kustomize
13 8 (0.40%) NetBackup
14 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
14 6 (0.30%) Progress Chef
15 4 (0.20%) Nmap
15 4 (0.20%) Rancher
Vendors
1 168 (8.33%) Oracle
2 160 (7.93%) Microsoft
3 84 (4.16%) Salesforce
4 68 (3.37%) Databricks
5 61 (3.02%) ServiceNow
6 60 (2.97%) Splunk
6 60 (2.97%) Talend
7 55 (2.73%) Google
8 50 (2.48%) Red Hat
9 41 (2.03%) Denodo
10 35 (1.74%) SAP
11 31 (1.54%) VMware
12 27 (1.34%) IBM
13 22 (1.09%) HP
14 21 (1.04%) Dynatrace
14 21 (1.04%) UiPath
15 20 (0.99%) Informatica
15 20 (0.99%) MuleSoft
16 19 (0.94%) Cisco
17 16 (0.79%) Blue Prism