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

6 months to
13 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 44 53
Rank change year-on-year -2 +9 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,930 1,363 1,575
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.51% 4.63% 3.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.24% 5.12% 4.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,315 947 1,079
10th Percentile £331 £330 £363
25th Percentile £400 £402 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -2.91% -6.36%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £625
90th Percentile £676 £735 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £498
% change year-on-year -0.99% -3.57% -5.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 8 61
10th Percentile £28.25 £40.23 £45.00
25th Percentile £50.63 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +9.65%
75th Percentile £70.00 £75.92 £82.50
90th Percentile - £80.28 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +9.65%

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 36,854 26,627 38,581
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.05% 90.37% 86.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,339 16,995 25,088
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £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 £725 £744 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,197 898 2,338
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.48 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.36 £32.50 £31.50
% change year-on-year -15.82% +3.17% -10.00%

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 13 March 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 13 March 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 13 March 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 1,654 £484 -3.20% 739
UK excluding London -2 893 £475 -0.99% 667
London 0 807 £500 -2.68% 221
Work from Home -4 554 £475 -5.00% 408
North of England +5 325 £488 +9.55% 168
Midlands +7 192 £474 +1.01% 85
South East -31 165 £500 -13.04% 179
West Midlands +14 159 £480 -1.94% 47
North West +3 145 £456 +1.39% 83
Yorkshire -12 136 £500 +5.26% 53
South West +5 82 £511 -2.62% 87
East of England 0 60 £570 +19.06% 60
North East +8 48 £488 +28.09% 32
Scotland -13 40 £440 -2.22% 67
Wales +1 33 £502 +18.12% 32
East Midlands -23 33 £400 +7.38% 36
Northern Ireland +15 22 £475 -2.56% 7

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
1 135 (6.99%) Confluence
2 58 (3.01%) SAS
3 35 (1.81%) Apache Spark
4 17 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.67%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.57%) Apache
7 8 (0.41%) Appian
8 6 (0.31%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.31%) nginx
8 6 (0.31%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.26%) CMS
9 5 (0.26%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.21%) Camunda
10 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.21%) Oracle Application Server
11 3 (0.16%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.16%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.10%) Mendix
12 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.62%) MS Visio
4 11 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.16%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.052%) Mingle
7 1 (0.052%) Simulink
7 1 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.14%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
4 6 (0.31%) Loan IQ
5 5 (0.26%) Maximo
5 5 (0.26%) Shopify
5 5 (0.26%) Workday HCM
6 4 (0.21%) SAP HR
7 3 (0.16%) BambooHR
7 3 (0.16%) Infor CloudSuite
7 3 (0.16%) Infor LN
7 3 (0.16%) Infor M3
7 3 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
7 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
8 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
8 2 (0.10%) iTrent
8 2 (0.10%) NetSuite
8 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.10%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 567 (29.38%) Azure
2 498 (25.80%) AWS
3 349 (18.08%) GitHub
4 256 (13.26%) Azure DevOps
5 191 (9.90%) GCP
6 187 (9.69%) GitHub Actions
7 136 (7.05%) Serverless
8 83 (4.30%) Power Platform
9 74 (3.83%) OpenShift
10 66 (3.42%) AWS Lambda
11 64 (3.32%) Amazon S3
12 47 (2.44%) Azure AKS
13 46 (2.38%) AWS CloudFormation
14 45 (2.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 43 (2.23%) Snowflake
16 35 (1.81%) Amazon ECS
16 35 (1.81%) Azure Data Factory
16 35 (1.81%) SaaS
17 34 (1.76%) Amazon EKS
17 34 (1.76%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.71%) Firewall
2 25 (1.30%) HTTP
3 21 (1.09%) Wireshark
4 18 (0.93%) TCP/IP
5 17 (0.88%) SSL
5 17 (0.88%) VPN
6 13 (0.67%) HTTPS
6 13 (0.67%) SD-WAN
6 13 (0.67%) WAN
7 12 (0.62%) Network Security
8 10 (0.52%) DNS
8 10 (0.52%) FTP
9 8 (0.41%) Ethernet
9 8 (0.41%) MPLS
9 8 (0.41%) SAN
10 7 (0.36%) Multicast
11 6 (0.31%) AMQP
12 5 (0.26%) Cisco IPT
12 5 (0.26%) VLAN
13 4 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (5.91%) PostgreSQL
2 91 (4.72%) NoSQL
3 75 (3.89%) SQL Server
4 74 (3.83%) MongoDB
5 60 (3.11%) Relational Database
6 53 (2.75%) Data Warehouse
7 50 (2.59%) Power BI
8 34 (1.76%) DynamoDB
9 32 (1.66%) BigQuery
10 30 (1.55%) MySQL
11 29 (1.50%) Pentaho
12 25 (1.30%) Oracle Database
13 23 (1.19%) Tableau
14 20 (1.04%) Azure SQL Database
14 20 (1.04%) Redis
15 19 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
15 19 (0.98%) Big Data
16 18 (0.93%) Metadata
16 18 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
17 17 (0.88%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 366 (18.96%) JIRA
2 364 (18.86%) Git
3 349 (18.08%) Jenkins
4 299 (15.49%) Selenium
5 293 (15.18%) GitLab
6 175 (9.07%) Cucumber
7 165 (8.55%) Postman
8 115 (5.96%) Cypress.io
9 114 (5.91%) JUnit
10 109 (5.65%) JMeter
11 101 (5.23%) REST Assured
12 52 (2.69%) WebDriver
13 41 (2.12%) SpecFlow
14 39 (2.02%) Gatling
14 39 (2.02%) SonarQube
15 38 (1.97%) Zephyr
16 34 (1.76%) Maven
17 33 (1.71%) TestRail
18 32 (1.66%) Gradle
19 31 (1.61%) Mockito
General
1 515 (26.68%) Social Skills
2 311 (16.11%) Finance
3 277 (14.35%) Public Sector
4 206 (10.67%) Analytical Skills
5 151 (7.82%) Banking
6 37 (1.92%) Documentation Skills
7 31 (1.61%) Investment Banking
8 24 (1.24%) Front Office
8 24 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 22 (1.14%) Pharmaceutical
10 21 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
10 21 (1.09%) Telecoms
11 18 (0.93%) Influencing Skills
12 17 (0.88%) Military
12 17 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
13 15 (0.78%) Financial Institution
13 15 (0.78%) Legal
14 13 (0.67%) Aerospace
15 10 (0.52%) Electronics
16 9 (0.47%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 403 (20.88%) Developer
2 319 (16.53%) Senior
3 226 (11.71%) Tester
4 222 (11.50%) Lead
5 211 (10.93%) Test Engineer
6 118 (6.11%) Automation Tester
7 100 (5.18%) Data Engineer
8 95 (4.92%) Java Developer
9 92 (4.77%) Analyst
10 87 (4.51%) Test Automation Engineer
11 81 (4.20%) Test Leader
12 79 (4.09%) QA Engineer
12 79 (4.09%) Software Engineer
13 72 (3.73%) DevOps Engineer
14 71 (3.68%) Architect
15 66 (3.42%) Senior Developer
15 66 (3.42%) Test Manager
16 59 (3.06%) Test Analyst
17 57 (2.95%) Automation Engineer
18 49 (2.54%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (12.90%) REST
2 235 (12.18%) Playwright
3 170 (8.81%) React
4 151 (7.82%) .NET
4 151 (7.82%) RESTful
5 147 (7.62%) Node.js
6 144 (7.46%) Spring
7 129 (6.68%) Kafka
8 117 (6.06%) Spring Boot
9 90 (4.66%) pytest
10 67 (3.47%) AngularJS
10 67 (3.47%) HTML
11 63 (3.26%) OAuth
12 57 (2.95%) CSS
13 56 (2.90%) Jest
14 55 (2.85%) Web Services
15 49 (2.54%) JSON
16 45 (2.33%) GraphQL
17 42 (2.18%) OpenID
18 41 (2.12%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 213 (11.04%) Cloud Native
2 127 (6.58%) Product Ownership
3 86 (4.46%) Distributed Systems
4 49 (2.54%) Mobile App
5 48 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
6 42 (2.18%) Algorithms
7 41 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
8 37 (1.92%) Onboarding
9 33 (1.71%) Security Posture
10 30 (1.55%) Virtual Team
11 29 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
12 26 (1.35%) NHS
13 25 (1.30%) Data Structures
13 25 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
14 23 (1.19%) Greenfield Project
15 22 (1.14%) Equities
15 22 (1.14%) Management Information System
16 21 (1.09%) Distributed Architecture
17 20 (1.04%) Data Centre
17 20 (1.04%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 144 (7.46%) Linux
2 89 (4.61%) Windows
3 44 (2.28%) Android
4 39 (2.02%) Apple iOS
4 39 (2.02%) Unix
5 22 (1.14%) Windows Server
6 14 (0.73%) Mac OS X
6 14 (0.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 11 (0.57%) Kali Linux
8 9 (0.47%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.31%) Solaris
10 5 (0.26%) CentOS
10 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
10 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.10%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.052%) Embedded Linux
12 1 (0.052%) VMS
12 1 (0.052%) Windows Embedded Compact
12 1 (0.052%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,027 (53.21%) CI/CD
2 921 (47.72%) Agile
3 720 (37.31%) DevOps
4 443 (22.95%) Problem-Solving
5 316 (16.37%) Continuous Improvement
6 311 (16.11%) Test Strategy
7 300 (15.54%) Microservices
8 281 (14.56%) Containerisation
9 267 (13.83%) Scrum
10 255 (13.21%) Validation
11 243 (12.59%) AI
12 237 (12.28%) Infrastructure as Code
13 228 (11.81%) Test Scripting
14 224 (11.61%) Software Engineering
15 219 (11.35%) TDD
16 215 (11.14%) Analytics
17 205 (10.62%) Observability
18 197 (10.21%) Regression Testing
19 196 (10.16%) API Testing
19 196 (10.16%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 606 (31.40%) Python
2 461 (23.89%) Java
3 404 (20.93%) SQL
4 301 (15.60%) JavaScript
5 276 (14.30%) TypeScript
6 194 (10.05%) C#
7 81 (4.20%) PowerShell
8 79 (4.09%) Bash
9 48 (2.49%) C++
10 32 (1.66%) Go
11 28 (1.45%) PL/SQL
12 27 (1.40%) Bicep
12 27 (1.40%) Kotlin
13 25 (1.30%) C
14 24 (1.24%) Ruby
15 23 (1.19%) Scala
16 20 (1.04%) Apex Code
17 17 (0.88%) Swift
18 15 (0.78%) Shell Script
19 14 (0.73%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 550 (28.50%) Security Cleared
2 424 (21.97%) SC Cleared
3 107 (5.54%) Degree
4 98 (5.08%) ISTQB
5 74 (3.83%) BPSS Clearance
6 60 (3.11%) Computer Science Degree
7 56 (2.90%) DV Cleared
8 35 (1.81%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 26 (1.35%) Master's Degree
10 15 (0.78%) Azure Certification
11 14 (0.73%) AWS Certification
11 14 (0.73%) Cisco Certification
11 14 (0.73%) Microsoft Certification
11 14 (0.73%) OSCP
12 13 (0.67%) CISSP
12 13 (0.67%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 12 (0.62%) CEH
13 12 (0.62%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 11 (0.57%) ISEB
15 9 (0.47%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 437 (22.64%) QA
2 145 (7.51%) Accessibility
3 106 (5.49%) Data Quality
4 47 (2.44%) WCAG
5 38 (1.97%) GDPR
6 34 (1.76%) NIST
7 29 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 18 (0.93%) EU AI Act
9 16 (0.83%) NCSC
9 16 (0.83%) SLA
10 13 (0.67%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 11 (0.57%) ISO 20022
12 10 (0.52%) PCI DSS
13 9 (0.47%) PSD2
14 8 (0.41%) Def Stans
14 8 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 8 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 7 (0.36%) SEPA
16 6 (0.31%) HIPAA
16 6 (0.31%) SOC 2
System Software
1 402 (20.83%) Docker
2 32 (1.66%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.57%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.41%) Firmware
4 8 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
5 7 (0.36%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 5 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.16%) ISA Server
9 2 (0.10%) SRDF
10 1 (0.052%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.052%) HDFS
10 1 (0.052%) KVM
10 1 (0.052%) Squid
10 1 (0.052%) Time Sharing Option
10 1 (0.052%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.052%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 370 (19.17%) Kubernetes
2 224 (11.61%) Terraform
3 114 (5.91%) Grafana
4 105 (5.44%) Ansible
5 84 (4.35%) Prometheus
6 25 (1.30%) HP ALM
7 21 (1.09%) Argo
8 20 (1.04%) Puppet
9 16 (0.83%) Progress Chef
10 15 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
11 14 (0.73%) Nmap
12 12 (0.62%) NetBackup
13 11 (0.57%) HP Quality Center
14 8 (0.41%) Podman
15 7 (0.36%) Forefront Identity Manager
15 7 (0.36%) Kibana
15 7 (0.36%) NetIQ Identity Manager
16 6 (0.31%) CSIRT
17 5 (0.26%) Rancher
18 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 176 (9.12%) Microsoft
2 154 (7.98%) Oracle
3 76 (3.94%) Databricks
4 68 (3.52%) Google
5 65 (3.37%) Splunk
6 64 (3.32%) ServiceNow
7 61 (3.16%) Salesforce
8 48 (2.49%) SAP
9 38 (1.97%) Red Hat
10 33 (1.71%) Talend
11 28 (1.45%) HP
11 28 (1.45%) VMware
12 25 (1.30%) Denodo
12 25 (1.30%) IBM
13 23 (1.19%) Cisco
14 19 (0.98%) Workday
15 17 (0.88%) Dynatrace
16 16 (0.83%) Atlassian
16 16 (0.83%) MuleSoft
17 15 (0.78%) OpenAI