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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 48 51
Rank change year-on-year +2 +3 0
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,250 1,426 1,609
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.32% 4.48% 3.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.08% 4.94% 4.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,455 996 1,058
10th Percentile £328 £313 £363
25th Percentile £403 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £480 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.04% -6.34% -4.65%
75th Percentile £575 £591 £612
90th Percentile £663 £706 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £458 £463 £501
% change year-on-year -1.08% -7.68% -1.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 30 50
10th Percentile £36.19 £40.26 £49.80
25th Percentile £60.17 £44.95 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +28.57% -6.67% -16.51%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.50 £71.87
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.22 £82.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £56.25
% change year-on-year +22.73% -2.22% -10.00%

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 44,261 28,859 36,923
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.68% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,507 18,191 23,560
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.28% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,650 1,433 2,509
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £17.50 £16.12
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.32 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.83 £38.12
% change year-on-year +77.04% -34.86% +8.82%

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 7 July 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 7 July 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 7 July 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 1,916 £475 - 698
UK excluding London +6 1,119 £458 -1.08% 567
London +6 865 £500 - 259
Work from Home -1 634 £475 +2.15% 2,804
North of England +19 391 £460 +2.22% 132
Midlands +11 243 £450 +9.09% 74
West Midlands +29 226 £450 -6.83% 33
South East -39 200 £465 -7.00% 177
Yorkshire +8 163 £500 - 44
North West +5 152 £475 +12.56% 63
South West +8 111 £450 +4.35% 70
East of England +13 87 £475 +3.54% 56
North East +8 86 £425 +6.25% 25
Scotland -31 65 £440 -8.33% 31
Wales -4 34 £475 +18.75% 16
Northern Ireland +24 22 £475 +16.28% 25
East Midlands -42 17 £425 +54.55% 41
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
1 194 (8.62%) Confluence
2 48 (2.13%) SAS
3 47 (2.09%) Apache Spark
4 46 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
5 19 (0.84%) Apache
6 16 (0.71%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.53%) CMS
8 8 (0.36%) nginx
8 8 (0.36%) Tomcat
9 7 (0.31%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.27%) Appian
10 6 (0.27%) Camunda
11 4 (0.18%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.18%) Jupyter
12 3 (0.13%) Kentico
12 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.089%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.089%) Mendix
13 2 (0.089%) Mule
Applications
1 31 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.76%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
4 9 (0.40%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.18%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.18%) Simulink
7 1 (0.044%) Mingle
7 1 (0.044%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.80%) Aladdin
3 15 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
4 12 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.36%) Findur
7 6 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.27%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.27%) SAP MDG
7 6 (0.27%) Shopify
8 5 (0.22%) BambooHR
8 5 (0.22%) Loan IQ
9 4 (0.18%) Infor CloudSuite
9 4 (0.18%) Infor LN
9 4 (0.18%) Infor M3
10 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
10 3 (0.13%) Maximo
10 3 (0.13%) Workday HCM
11 2 (0.089%) Oracle ERP
11 2 (0.089%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 659 (29.29%) Azure
2 645 (28.67%) AWS
3 382 (16.98%) GitHub
4 296 (13.16%) Azure DevOps
5 226 (10.04%) GitHub Actions
6 166 (7.38%) GCP
7 153 (6.80%) Serverless
8 104 (4.62%) AWS Lambda
9 99 (4.40%) Power Platform
10 96 (4.27%) Amazon S3
11 64 (2.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 63 (2.80%) OpenShift
13 57 (2.53%) Amazon ECS
14 50 (2.22%) Amazon EC2
14 50 (2.22%) AWS CloudFormation
15 47 (2.09%) dbt
16 43 (1.91%) Snowflake
17 42 (1.87%) Azure Data Factory
18 41 (1.82%) Amazon EKS
19 32 (1.42%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.02%) HTTP
2 20 (0.89%) Firewall
3 16 (0.71%) SAN
4 13 (0.58%) Network Security
5 11 (0.49%) WAN
6 9 (0.40%) 5G
6 9 (0.40%) MPLS
6 9 (0.40%) VPN
7 8 (0.36%) 4G
8 7 (0.31%) 2G
8 7 (0.31%) 3G
8 7 (0.31%) BGP
8 7 (0.31%) Diameter Protocol
8 7 (0.31%) SIGTRAN
8 7 (0.31%) SS7
8 7 (0.31%) Wireshark
9 6 (0.27%) Ethernet
9 6 (0.27%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.27%) TCP/IP
9 6 (0.27%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 116 (5.16%) MongoDB
1 116 (5.16%) PostgreSQL
2 105 (4.67%) Data Warehouse
3 95 (4.22%) NoSQL
4 83 (3.69%) SQL Server
5 79 (3.51%) Relational Database
6 76 (3.38%) Power BI
7 46 (2.04%) DynamoDB
8 45 (2.00%) Metadata
9 38 (1.69%) Oracle Reports
10 36 (1.60%) Big Data
10 36 (1.60%) Pentaho
11 34 (1.51%) Amazon Athena
12 31 (1.38%) Amazon RDS
13 30 (1.33%) MySQL
14 27 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
15 26 (1.16%) Data Lake
16 25 (1.11%) Redis
17 22 (0.98%) Oracle Database
18 21 (0.93%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 433 (19.24%) JIRA
2 405 (18.00%) Git
3 367 (16.31%) Jenkins
4 308 (13.69%) GitLab
5 294 (13.07%) Selenium
6 177 (7.87%) Postman
7 157 (6.98%) Cucumber
8 124 (5.51%) REST Assured
9 116 (5.16%) JUnit
10 110 (4.89%) Cypress.io
11 104 (4.62%) JMeter
12 65 (2.89%) Zephyr
13 63 (2.80%) WebDriver
14 56 (2.49%) SonarQube
15 52 (2.31%) Gatling
16 48 (2.13%) Gradle
17 42 (1.87%) Mockito
18 38 (1.69%) Bitbucket
18 38 (1.69%) Maven
19 35 (1.56%) SpecFlow
General
1 599 (26.62%) Social Skills
2 412 (18.31%) Finance
3 297 (13.20%) Public Sector
4 274 (12.18%) Analytical Skills
5 189 (8.40%) Banking
6 56 (2.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 45 (2.00%) Documentation Skills
8 40 (1.78%) Investment Banking
9 37 (1.64%) Front Office
10 30 (1.33%) Telecoms
11 29 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
12 26 (1.16%) Military
13 24 (1.07%) Financial Institution
14 22 (0.98%) Retail
15 19 (0.84%) Aerospace
16 17 (0.76%) Legal
16 17 (0.76%) Manufacturing
16 17 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
17 15 (0.67%) Back Office
18 14 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 462 (20.53%) Developer
2 357 (15.87%) Senior
3 241 (10.71%) Lead
4 236 (10.49%) Test Engineer
5 232 (10.31%) Tester
6 154 (6.84%) Data Engineer
7 150 (6.67%) Java Developer
8 116 (5.16%) Analyst
9 112 (4.98%) Software Engineer
10 106 (4.71%) DevOps Engineer
11 105 (4.67%) Architect
12 104 (4.62%) Test Automation Engineer
13 93 (4.13%) Senior Developer
14 91 (4.04%) Test Leader
15 89 (3.96%) Automation Tester
16 88 (3.91%) QA Engineer
17 74 (3.29%) Test Analyst
18 62 (2.76%) Automation Engineer
18 62 (2.76%) Full-Stack Developer
19 58 (2.58%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 276 (12.27%) Playwright
2 273 (12.13%) REST
3 204 (9.07%) React
4 180 (8.00%) Spring
5 173 (7.69%) RESTful
6 157 (6.98%) Kafka
7 148 (6.58%) .NET
8 146 (6.49%) Spring Boot
9 117 (5.20%) Node.js
10 92 (4.09%) AngularJS
11 83 (3.69%) HTML
12 73 (3.24%) CSS
13 62 (2.76%) OAuth
13 62 (2.76%) pytest
14 53 (2.36%) Jest
15 50 (2.22%) Swagger
16 45 (2.00%) Gherkin
16 45 (2.00%) JSON
17 41 (1.82%) GraphQL
17 41 (1.82%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 285 (12.67%) Cloud Native
2 163 (7.24%) Product Ownership
3 130 (5.78%) Distributed Systems
4 75 (3.33%) Enterprise Software
5 62 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
6 52 (2.31%) Data Protection Act
7 47 (2.09%) Self-Motivation
8 46 (2.04%) Mobile App
8 46 (2.04%) Onboarding
9 43 (1.91%) Virtual Team
10 32 (1.42%) Distributed Architecture
11 29 (1.29%) Security Posture
12 27 (1.20%) Management Information System
13 26 (1.16%) NHS
14 25 (1.11%) AI Agents
14 25 (1.11%) Embedded Systems
15 22 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
16 21 (0.93%) Data Centre
16 21 (0.93%) Fixed Income
17 19 (0.84%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 131 (5.82%) Linux
2 81 (3.60%) Windows
3 69 (3.07%) Unix
4 42 (1.87%) Android
5 39 (1.73%) Apple iOS
6 24 (1.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 19 (0.84%) Windows Server
8 14 (0.62%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.44%) Mac OS
9 10 (0.44%) Solaris
10 8 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.18%) Embedded Linux
13 4 (0.18%) Ubuntu
14 3 (0.13%) AIX
15 2 (0.089%) CentOS
15 2 (0.089%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,266 (56.27%) CI/CD
2 1,040 (46.22%) Agile
3 816 (36.27%) DevOps
4 401 (17.82%) Problem-Solving
5 379 (16.84%) Microservices
6 371 (16.49%) Continuous Improvement
7 347 (15.42%) Scrum
8 341 (15.16%) Test Strategy
9 338 (15.02%) Validation
10 324 (14.40%) Software Engineering
11 321 (14.27%) Infrastructure as Code
12 287 (12.76%) Containerisation
13 279 (12.40%) AI
13 279 (12.40%) TDD
14 270 (12.00%) Observability
15 232 (10.31%) End-to-End Testing
16 226 (10.04%) ETL
17 220 (9.78%) User Acceptance Testing
18 216 (9.60%) Software Testing
19 212 (9.42%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 581 (25.82%) Python
2 565 (25.11%) Java
3 516 (22.93%) SQL
4 297 (13.20%) JavaScript
5 256 (11.38%) TypeScript
6 209 (9.29%) C#
7 78 (3.47%) Bash
8 76 (3.38%) PowerShell
9 53 (2.36%) C++
10 49 (2.18%) Kotlin
11 37 (1.64%) PL/SQL
11 37 (1.64%) Scala
12 36 (1.60%) Bicep
13 34 (1.51%) Apex Code
13 34 (1.51%) C
14 32 (1.42%) Go
15 22 (0.98%) Swift
16 21 (0.93%) Ruby
17 18 (0.80%) Shell Script
18 17 (0.76%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 702 (31.20%) Security Cleared
2 585 (26.00%) SC Cleared
3 105 (4.67%) Degree
4 103 (4.58%) BPSS Clearance
5 101 (4.49%) ISTQB
6 74 (3.29%) DV Cleared
7 53 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
8 26 (1.16%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 22 (0.98%) AWS Certification
10 17 (0.76%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 16 (0.71%) Master's Degree
12 12 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
13 11 (0.49%) Azure Certification
13 11 (0.49%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 11 (0.49%) SAFe Agilist
14 10 (0.44%) CCNP
15 9 (0.40%) CISSP
15 9 (0.40%) DBS Check
16 5 (0.22%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 5 (0.22%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 502 (22.31%) QA
2 174 (7.73%) Accessibility
3 152 (6.76%) Data Quality
4 75 (3.33%) WCAG
5 39 (1.73%) GDPR
6 16 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 15 (0.67%) SLA
8 13 (0.58%) NCSC
9 12 (0.53%) ISO 20022
10 10 (0.44%) Def Stans
11 9 (0.40%) NIST
12 7 (0.31%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 6 (0.27%) PCI DSS
14 5 (0.22%) FATCA
14 5 (0.22%) SEPA
14 5 (0.22%) Software Quality Assurance
15 4 (0.18%) GRC
15 4 (0.18%) HL7
15 4 (0.18%) MiFID
15 4 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 386 (17.16%) Docker
2 31 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (0.84%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.62%) Firmware
5 13 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 4 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.089%) SRDF
11 1 (0.044%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.044%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 391 (17.38%) Kubernetes
2 284 (12.62%) Terraform
3 115 (5.11%) Ansible
4 111 (4.93%) Grafana
5 92 (4.09%) Prometheus
6 37 (1.64%) Argo
7 22 (0.98%) HP ALM
8 14 (0.62%) Puppet
9 13 (0.58%) Kibana
10 11 (0.49%) HP Quality Center
10 11 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.44%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.36%) Kustomize
12 8 (0.36%) NetBackup
13 6 (0.27%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 6 (0.27%) NetIQ Identity Manager
13 6 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
14 5 (0.22%) Istio
14 5 (0.22%) Progress Chef
15 4 (0.18%) Nmap
Vendors
1 194 (8.62%) Microsoft
2 176 (7.82%) Oracle
3 105 (4.67%) Salesforce
4 69 (3.07%) Databricks
5 65 (2.89%) Talend
6 63 (2.80%) Google
7 58 (2.58%) Red Hat
7 58 (2.58%) ServiceNow
7 58 (2.58%) Splunk
8 45 (2.00%) Denodo
9 38 (1.69%) IBM
9 38 (1.69%) Informatica
9 38 (1.69%) SAP
10 34 (1.51%) VMware
11 31 (1.38%) UiPath
12 28 (1.24%) Dynatrace
13 25 (1.11%) HP
13 25 (1.11%) MuleSoft
14 21 (0.93%) Cisco
15 16 (0.71%) Blue Prism