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 28 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 46 56
Rank change year-on-year -1 +10 -10
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,977 1,335 1,480
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.21% 4.55% 3.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.98% 5.01% 3.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,309 921 963
10th Percentile £331 £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 £619 £630
90th Percentile £671 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.26% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 17 56
10th Percentile £35.44 £33.10 £49.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £78.75
90th Percentile - £71.30 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% +6.38%

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 39,735 26,655 37,382
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.58% 90.81% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,044 17,231 24,097
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.40% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £631 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,400 1,068 2,424
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.98 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.25 £29.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.08% -16.71% -6.27%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.24 £59.44
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.00 £28.00 £35.98
% change year-on-year +50.00% -22.17% -0.07%

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 28 April 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 28 April 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 28 April 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 -2 1,685 £475 -5.00% 622
UK excluding London -1 906 £469 -1.26% 559
London +2 830 £500 - 186
Work from Home -5 568 £470 -6.00% 284
North of England +14 335 £468 +4.06% 146
Midlands 0 182 £450 -2.70% 74
South East -39 174 £500 -2.44% 175
West Midlands +15 156 £463 -7.73% 48
North West +20 146 £463 +2.78% 68
Yorkshire -15 141 £490 -2.05% 38
South West -1 88 £475 -5.00% 68
East of England +3 54 £569 +16.07% 62
North East +7 53 £419 +7.37% 40
Scotland -26 48 £433 -1.70% 29
Wales -2 29 £475 +20.25% 12
East Midlands -37 26 £400 -9.86% 25
Northern Ireland +21 19 £475 +16.28% 10
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
1 145 (7.33%) Confluence
2 44 (2.23%) SAS
3 41 (2.07%) Apache Spark
4 31 (1.57%) Apache Airflow
5 12 (0.61%) Apache
5 12 (0.61%) SharePoint
6 8 (0.40%) Appian
7 7 (0.35%) nginx
7 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.30%) Camunda
8 6 (0.30%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.25%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.20%) CMS
11 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.10%) Mendix
12 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
13 1 (0.051%) CICS
13 1 (0.051%) Solana
Applications
1 26 (1.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (0.56%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.15%) Simulink
6 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.051%) Mingle
7 1 (0.051%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (1.01%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.35%) Findur
4 7 (0.35%) Shopify
5 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
6 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.25%) Maximo
7 4 (0.20%) Workday HCM
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%) SAP BRIM
8 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
9 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.10%) iTrent
9 2 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.10%) SAP FI
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 569 (28.78%) Azure
2 532 (26.91%) AWS
3 345 (17.45%) GitHub
4 263 (13.30%) Azure DevOps
5 196 (9.91%) GitHub Actions
6 152 (7.69%) GCP
7 139 (7.03%) Serverless
8 87 (4.40%) AWS Lambda
9 82 (4.15%) Amazon S3
10 68 (3.44%) Power Platform
11 61 (3.09%) OpenShift
12 57 (2.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 57 (2.88%) AWS CloudFormation
13 55 (2.78%) Amazon ECS
14 39 (1.97%) Azure AKS
15 38 (1.92%) Amazon EKS
15 38 (1.92%) Snowflake
16 34 (1.72%) Azure Data Factory
17 33 (1.67%) Amazon EC2
18 32 (1.62%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.37%) HTTP
2 24 (1.21%) Firewall
3 14 (0.71%) SAN
4 13 (0.66%) SSL
4 13 (0.66%) VPN
5 12 (0.61%) FTP
5 12 (0.61%) TCP/IP
6 9 (0.46%) Ethernet
6 9 (0.46%) MPLS
6 9 (0.46%) Network Security
6 9 (0.46%) WAN
7 8 (0.40%) SD-WAN
7 8 (0.40%) Wireshark
8 6 (0.30%) 5G
8 6 (0.30%) DNS
8 6 (0.30%) Multicast
9 5 (0.25%) AMQP
9 5 (0.25%) Cisco IPT
9 5 (0.25%) HTTPS
9 5 (0.25%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 109 (5.51%) PostgreSQL
2 99 (5.01%) NoSQL
3 95 (4.81%) MongoDB
4 87 (4.40%) SQL Server
5 69 (3.49%) Data Warehouse
5 69 (3.49%) Relational Database
6 48 (2.43%) Power BI
7 46 (2.33%) DynamoDB
8 35 (1.77%) MySQL
9 34 (1.72%) Metadata
9 34 (1.72%) Pentaho
10 31 (1.57%) Big Data
11 26 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
11 26 (1.32%) Oracle Reports
11 26 (1.32%) Tableau
12 24 (1.21%) BigQuery
12 24 (1.21%) Redis
13 23 (1.16%) Amazon Athena
13 23 (1.16%) Amazon Aurora
14 20 (1.01%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 389 (19.68%) JIRA
2 365 (18.46%) Git
3 322 (16.29%) Jenkins
4 280 (14.16%) Selenium
5 264 (13.35%) GitLab
6 161 (8.14%) Postman
7 156 (7.89%) Cucumber
8 100 (5.06%) Cypress.io
9 99 (5.01%) JUnit
10 89 (4.50%) JMeter
10 89 (4.50%) REST Assured
11 60 (3.03%) WebDriver
12 50 (2.53%) Zephyr
13 48 (2.43%) SonarQube
14 35 (1.77%) SpecFlow
15 34 (1.72%) Maven
15 34 (1.72%) Mockito
16 33 (1.67%) Gatling
16 33 (1.67%) Gradle
17 32 (1.62%) Bitbucket
General
1 518 (26.20%) Social Skills
2 346 (17.50%) Finance
3 297 (15.02%) Public Sector
4 223 (11.28%) Analytical Skills
5 159 (8.04%) Banking
6 42 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (1.92%) Investment Banking
8 34 (1.72%) Front Office
9 33 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 29 (1.47%) Telecoms
11 23 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
12 22 (1.11%) Legal
13 21 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (0.86%) Aerospace
14 17 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
15 15 (0.76%) Military
16 13 (0.66%) Back Office
16 13 (0.66%) Publishing
17 12 (0.61%) Financial Institution
18 11 (0.56%) Retail
Job Titles
1 426 (21.55%) Developer
2 300 (15.17%) Senior
3 217 (10.98%) Test Engineer
4 209 (10.57%) Tester
5 206 (10.42%) Lead
6 114 (5.77%) Java Developer
7 113 (5.72%) Data Engineer
8 102 (5.16%) Test Automation Engineer
9 101 (5.11%) Analyst
9 101 (5.11%) Automation Tester
10 85 (4.30%) Test Leader
11 84 (4.25%) QA Engineer
12 83 (4.20%) DevOps Engineer
13 81 (4.10%) Architect
14 79 (4.00%) Software Engineer
15 72 (3.64%) Senior Developer
16 68 (3.44%) Test Analyst
17 67 (3.39%) Test Manager
18 60 (3.03%) Full-Stack Developer
19 52 (2.63%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 243 (12.29%) Playwright
2 234 (11.84%) REST
3 178 (9.00%) React
4 149 (7.54%) RESTful
5 147 (7.44%) Node.js
6 144 (7.28%) Spring
7 137 (6.93%) .NET
8 131 (6.63%) Kafka
9 120 (6.07%) Spring Boot
10 83 (4.20%) AngularJS
11 74 (3.74%) HTML
12 69 (3.49%) pytest
13 60 (3.03%) OAuth
14 58 (2.93%) CSS
14 58 (2.93%) Jest
15 43 (2.18%) Gherkin
15 43 (2.18%) JSON
16 41 (2.07%) GraphQL
16 41 (2.07%) OpenID
17 36 (1.82%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 212 (10.72%) Cloud Native
2 153 (7.74%) Product Ownership
3 99 (5.01%) Distributed Systems
4 49 (2.48%) Mobile App
5 47 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
6 45 (2.28%) Data Protection Act
7 38 (1.92%) Onboarding
8 34 (1.72%) Virtual Team
9 33 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
10 32 (1.62%) NHS
11 28 (1.42%) Algorithms
11 28 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
12 26 (1.32%) Security Posture
13 24 (1.21%) Data Centre
14 23 (1.16%) Management Information System
15 21 (1.06%) Derivative
16 20 (1.01%) Distributed Architecture
17 19 (0.96%) Data Structures
17 19 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
18 17 (0.86%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 129 (6.53%) Linux
2 84 (4.25%) Windows
3 46 (2.33%) Android
4 42 (2.12%) Unix
5 37 (1.87%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.01%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.66%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.51%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.40%) Solaris
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.20%) CentOS
13 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.15%) AIX
15 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.051%) FreeRTOS
16 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
16 1 (0.051%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,050 (53.11%) CI/CD
2 909 (45.98%) Agile
3 710 (35.91%) DevOps
4 398 (20.13%) Problem-Solving
5 324 (16.39%) Continuous Improvement
6 305 (15.43%) Microservices
7 289 (14.62%) Test Strategy
8 283 (14.31%) Scrum
9 271 (13.71%) Infrastructure as Code
10 263 (13.30%) Validation
11 259 (13.10%) Containerisation
12 228 (11.53%) Software Engineering
13 225 (11.38%) AI
13 225 (11.38%) Observability
14 220 (11.13%) TDD
15 207 (10.47%) Test Scripting
16 202 (10.22%) Regression Testing
17 200 (10.12%) Analytics
18 198 (10.02%) SDLC
19 195 (9.86%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 543 (27.47%) Python
2 500 (25.29%) Java
3 424 (21.45%) SQL
4 293 (14.82%) JavaScript
5 272 (13.76%) TypeScript
6 205 (10.37%) C#
7 74 (3.74%) PowerShell
8 67 (3.39%) Bash
9 52 (2.63%) C++
10 35 (1.77%) Kotlin
11 32 (1.62%) C
12 31 (1.57%) Scala
13 28 (1.42%) Ruby
14 27 (1.37%) PL/SQL
15 26 (1.32%) Apex Code
15 26 (1.32%) Bicep
16 20 (1.01%) Go
17 15 (0.76%) Swift
18 14 (0.71%) Groovy
19 12 (0.61%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 603 (30.50%) Security Cleared
2 478 (24.18%) SC Cleared
3 91 (4.60%) ISTQB
4 88 (4.45%) Degree
5 80 (4.05%) BPSS Clearance
6 60 (3.03%) DV Cleared
7 50 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
8 26 (1.32%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 17 (0.86%) Master's Degree
10 14 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
11 12 (0.61%) Azure Certification
12 11 (0.56%) AWS Certification
13 10 (0.51%) CCNP
14 9 (0.46%) DBS Check
14 9 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
15 8 (0.40%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 7 (0.35%) CISSP
16 7 (0.35%) ISEB
16 7 (0.35%) SAFe Agilist
17 6 (0.30%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 444 (22.46%) QA
2 141 (7.13%) Accessibility
3 118 (5.97%) Data Quality
4 61 (3.09%) WCAG
5 43 (2.18%) GDPR
6 19 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 15 (0.76%) SLA
8 14 (0.71%) ISO 20022
9 13 (0.66%) NCSC
10 10 (0.51%) Def Stans
10 10 (0.51%) PCI DSS
11 9 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.40%) NIST
13 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 7 (0.35%) PSD2
13 7 (0.35%) SEPA
14 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
15 5 (0.25%) FATCA
15 5 (0.25%) PERC
16 4 (0.20%) PMO
System Software
1 354 (17.91%) Docker
2 27 (1.37%) Active Directory
3 15 (0.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.71%) Firmware
5 9 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 7 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
8 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.10%) SRDF
11 1 (0.051%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.051%) HDFS
11 1 (0.051%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.051%) KVM
11 1 (0.051%) Squid
11 1 (0.051%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.051%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 340 (17.20%) Kubernetes
2 243 (12.29%) Terraform
3 111 (5.61%) Grafana
4 83 (4.20%) Prometheus
5 74 (3.74%) Ansible
6 28 (1.42%) Argo
7 24 (1.21%) HP ALM
8 18 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.86%) Puppet
10 14 (0.71%) Kibana
11 10 (0.51%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.51%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.51%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 9 (0.46%) Progress Chef
13 8 (0.40%) Dell DRAC
13 8 (0.40%) NetBackup
14 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.25%) Nmap
15 5 (0.25%) Rancher
16 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 173 (8.75%) Microsoft
2 165 (8.35%) Oracle
3 78 (3.95%) Salesforce
4 69 (3.49%) Databricks
5 66 (3.34%) ServiceNow
6 58 (2.93%) Splunk
7 57 (2.88%) Google
8 48 (2.43%) Red Hat
9 46 (2.33%) Talend
10 44 (2.23%) SAP
11 30 (1.52%) Denodo
11 30 (1.52%) IBM
12 27 (1.37%) HP
13 24 (1.21%) VMware
14 21 (1.06%) Cisco
15 20 (1.01%) Dynatrace
16 19 (0.96%) UiPath
17 18 (0.91%) Informatica
18 16 (0.81%) Blue Prism
18 16 (0.81%) MuleSoft