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 4 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 47 56
Rank change year-on-year +1 +9 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,079 1,303 1,495
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.25% 4.52% 3.49%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.02% 4.97% 4.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,352 915 982
10th Percentile £350 £322 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -7.27%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £733 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £465 £500
% change year-on-year -0.54% -7.00% -4.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 98 23 52
10th Percentile £35.44 £36.17 £51.25
25th Percentile £56.94 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% -8.33% -12.73%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.51 £72.50
90th Percentile £74.30 £76.85 £89.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +22.73% -8.33% -6.80%

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 41,432 26,234 36,612
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.66% 91.00% 85.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,858 16,712 23,486
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £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 2,493 1,127 2,523
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.71 £27.64 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.50% -24.27% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.84 £56.25 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +8.91%

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 4 June 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 4 June 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 4 June 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 1,776 £475 -5.00% 796
UK excluding London -3 1,008 £463 -0.54% 569
London +3 825 £500 -2.44% 321
Work from Home 0 597 £475 - 706
North of England +8 359 £463 +2.78% 160
Midlands +11 220 £450 +9.09% 80
West Midlands +30 197 £459 -2.91% 53
South East -33 184 £495 -1.10% 132
Yorkshire -6 153 £496 +4.47% 38
North West +10 151 £475 +6.26% 96
South West +18 101 £463 -2.63% 66
East of England +11 74 £501 +9.21% 63
North East +3 63 £425 +6.25% 27
Scotland -39 46 £440 -8.33% 37
Wales -2 32 £475 +16.92% 15
East Midlands -38 23 £400 +48.15% 27
Northern Ireland +25 21 £475 +16.28% 29
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
1 176 (8.47%) Confluence
2 47 (2.26%) SAS
3 42 (2.02%) Apache Airflow
3 42 (2.02%) Apache Spark
4 16 (0.77%) Apache
5 12 (0.58%) CMS
5 12 (0.58%) SharePoint
6 9 (0.43%) Appian
7 8 (0.38%) Camunda
7 8 (0.38%) nginx
7 8 (0.38%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.24%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 4 (0.19%) Anypoint
9 4 (0.19%) WebLogic
10 3 (0.14%) Kentico
10 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.096%) Jupyter
11 2 (0.096%) Mendix
12 1 (0.048%) Ethereum
Applications
1 28 (1.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (0.53%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.14%) Simulink
6 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.048%) Mingle
6 1 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 19 (0.91%) Aladdin
2 18 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
4 9 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 9 (0.43%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.38%) Findur
6 6 (0.29%) Shopify
7 5 (0.24%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.24%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.24%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.24%) SAP MDG
8 3 (0.14%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.14%) Infor CloudSuite
8 3 (0.14%) Infor LN
8 3 (0.14%) Infor M3
8 3 (0.14%) Maximo
8 3 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.14%) Workday HCM
9 2 (0.096%) iTrent
9 2 (0.096%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 600 (28.86%) Azure
2 599 (28.81%) AWS
3 360 (17.32%) GitHub
4 271 (13.04%) Azure DevOps
5 209 (10.05%) GitHub Actions
6 165 (7.94%) GCP
7 141 (6.78%) Serverless
8 94 (4.52%) AWS Lambda
9 89 (4.28%) Power Platform
10 87 (4.18%) Amazon S3
11 61 (2.93%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 57 (2.74%) Amazon ECS
13 55 (2.65%) OpenShift
14 45 (2.16%) AWS CloudFormation
15 44 (2.12%) Azure Data Factory
16 43 (2.07%) Snowflake
17 42 (2.02%) Amazon EKS
18 41 (1.97%) Amazon EC2
19 34 (1.64%) dbt
20 30 (1.44%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.20%) HTTP
2 23 (1.11%) Firewall
3 16 (0.77%) SAN
4 11 (0.53%) Network Security
4 11 (0.53%) TCP/IP
5 10 (0.48%) VPN
6 8 (0.38%) MPLS
6 8 (0.38%) SSL
6 8 (0.38%) WAN
7 6 (0.29%) Ethernet
7 6 (0.29%) VLAN
7 6 (0.29%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.29%) Wireshark
8 5 (0.24%) 5G
8 5 (0.24%) BGP
8 5 (0.24%) Multicast
9 4 (0.19%) FTP
9 4 (0.19%) NAS
9 4 (0.19%) Reverse Proxy
9 4 (0.19%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 113 (5.44%) PostgreSQL
2 109 (5.24%) MongoDB
3 94 (4.52%) NoSQL
4 91 (4.38%) Data Warehouse
5 88 (4.23%) SQL Server
6 72 (3.46%) Relational Database
7 63 (3.03%) Power BI
8 48 (2.31%) DynamoDB
9 41 (1.97%) Metadata
10 37 (1.78%) Oracle Reports
11 35 (1.68%) Big Data
11 35 (1.68%) Pentaho
12 31 (1.49%) MySQL
13 27 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
14 26 (1.25%) Amazon Athena
14 26 (1.25%) Data Lake
14 26 (1.25%) Tableau
15 24 (1.15%) Redis
16 22 (1.06%) BigQuery
17 21 (1.01%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 405 (19.48%) JIRA
2 365 (17.56%) Git
3 343 (16.50%) Jenkins
4 299 (14.38%) GitLab
5 288 (13.85%) Selenium
6 172 (8.27%) Postman
7 152 (7.31%) Cucumber
8 115 (5.53%) REST Assured
9 104 (5.00%) JUnit
10 102 (4.91%) JMeter
11 100 (4.81%) Cypress.io
12 64 (3.08%) WebDriver
13 59 (2.84%) Zephyr
14 48 (2.31%) SonarQube
15 43 (2.07%) Gatling
16 39 (1.88%) Gradle
17 38 (1.83%) Mockito
18 33 (1.59%) Bitbucket
19 30 (1.44%) Maven
19 30 (1.44%) SpecFlow
General
1 554 (26.65%) Social Skills
2 351 (16.88%) Finance
3 286 (13.76%) Public Sector
4 247 (11.88%) Analytical Skills
5 172 (8.27%) Banking
6 46 (2.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 44 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
8 40 (1.92%) Investment Banking
9 36 (1.73%) Front Office
10 25 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.06%) Telecoms
12 20 (0.96%) Military
13 18 (0.87%) Legal
14 17 (0.82%) Aerospace
14 17 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
14 17 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (0.82%) Retail
15 16 (0.77%) Financial Institution
15 16 (0.77%) Manufacturing
16 14 (0.67%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 416 (20.01%) Developer
2 321 (15.44%) Senior
3 237 (11.40%) Test Engineer
4 225 (10.82%) Lead
5 220 (10.58%) Tester
6 127 (6.11%) Data Engineer
7 111 (5.34%) Analyst
8 110 (5.29%) Java Developer
9 101 (4.86%) Test Automation Engineer
10 99 (4.76%) Software Engineer
11 96 (4.62%) Architect
12 92 (4.43%) DevOps Engineer
13 91 (4.38%) Automation Tester
14 87 (4.18%) Test Leader
15 80 (3.85%) QA Engineer
16 78 (3.75%) Senior Developer
17 68 (3.27%) Test Analyst
18 62 (2.98%) Full-Stack Developer
19 61 (2.93%) Test Manager
20 55 (2.65%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (11.98%) Playwright
2 241 (11.59%) REST
3 187 (8.99%) React
4 159 (7.65%) RESTful
5 146 (7.02%) Spring
6 143 (6.88%) Kafka
7 139 (6.69%) .NET
8 121 (5.82%) Spring Boot
9 119 (5.72%) Node.js
10 79 (3.80%) AngularJS
11 73 (3.51%) HTML
12 66 (3.17%) pytest
13 60 (2.89%) CSS
14 58 (2.79%) OAuth
15 51 (2.45%) Jest
16 48 (2.31%) Swagger
17 44 (2.12%) OpenID
18 42 (2.02%) JSON
19 41 (1.97%) Gherkin
20 38 (1.83%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 235 (11.30%) Cloud Native
2 155 (7.46%) Product Ownership
3 109 (5.24%) Distributed Systems
4 56 (2.69%) Data Protection Act
5 49 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
6 47 (2.26%) Enterprise Software
7 45 (2.16%) Mobile App
8 40 (1.92%) Self-Motivation
9 39 (1.88%) Virtual Team
10 36 (1.73%) Onboarding
11 31 (1.49%) NHS
12 28 (1.35%) Distributed Architecture
13 24 (1.15%) Algorithms
13 24 (1.15%) Data Centre
14 23 (1.11%) Management Information System
15 22 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
16 20 (0.96%) Derivative
17 19 (0.91%) Fixed Income
18 18 (0.87%) Embedded Systems
19 17 (0.82%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 130 (6.25%) Linux
2 82 (3.94%) Windows
3 61 (2.93%) Unix
4 44 (2.12%) Android
5 38 (1.83%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.01%) Windows Server
7 20 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.58%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.48%) Solaris
10 9 (0.43%) Mac OS
11 8 (0.38%) Windows Server 2008
12 7 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.19%) Embedded Linux
15 3 (0.14%) AIX
15 3 (0.14%) CentOS
16 2 (0.096%) Kali Linux
17 1 (0.048%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,130 (54.35%) CI/CD
2 954 (45.89%) Agile
3 744 (35.79%) DevOps
4 378 (18.18%) Problem-Solving
5 340 (16.35%) Continuous Improvement
6 336 (16.16%) Microservices
7 323 (15.54%) Test Strategy
8 296 (14.24%) Scrum
9 288 (13.85%) Validation
10 276 (13.28%) Software Engineering
11 275 (13.23%) Infrastructure as Code
12 259 (12.46%) Containerisation
13 253 (12.17%) Observability
14 234 (11.26%) TDD
15 228 (10.97%) AI
16 213 (10.25%) ETL
17 202 (9.72%) API Testing
18 200 (9.62%) End-to-End Testing
19 199 (9.57%) Test Scripting
20 198 (9.52%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 541 (26.02%) Python
2 519 (24.96%) Java
3 478 (22.99%) SQL
4 285 (13.71%) JavaScript
5 239 (11.50%) TypeScript
6 199 (9.57%) C#
7 76 (3.66%) PowerShell
8 70 (3.37%) Bash
9 55 (2.65%) C++
10 42 (2.02%) Kotlin
11 41 (1.97%) PL/SQL
12 36 (1.73%) Scala
13 32 (1.54%) C
14 31 (1.49%) Apex Code
15 28 (1.35%) Go
16 25 (1.20%) Bicep
17 20 (0.96%) Ruby
17 20 (0.96%) Swift
18 17 (0.82%) Groovy
19 15 (0.72%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 653 (31.41%) Security Cleared
2 529 (25.44%) SC Cleared
3 100 (4.81%) ISTQB
4 93 (4.47%) BPSS Clearance
5 87 (4.18%) Degree
6 78 (3.75%) DV Cleared
7 43 (2.07%) Computer Science Degree
8 26 (1.25%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 15 (0.72%) Master's Degree
10 13 (0.63%) AWS Certification
10 13 (0.63%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 12 (0.58%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 12 (0.58%) Cisco Certification
12 11 (0.53%) CCNP
12 11 (0.53%) DBS Check
12 11 (0.53%) SAFe Agilist
13 8 (0.38%) Azure Certification
14 7 (0.34%) CISSP
15 5 (0.24%) CCIE
16 4 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 449 (21.60%) QA
2 155 (7.46%) Accessibility
3 133 (6.40%) Data Quality
4 68 (3.27%) WCAG
5 35 (1.68%) GDPR
6 16 (0.77%) SLA
7 15 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 11 (0.53%) ISO 20022
9 10 (0.48%) Def Stans
9 10 (0.48%) NCSC
10 9 (0.43%) NIST
11 7 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 6 (0.29%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 5 (0.24%) FATCA
14 4 (0.19%) HL7
14 4 (0.19%) MiFID
14 4 (0.19%) SEPA
14 4 (0.19%) Software Quality Assurance
15 3 (0.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 356 (17.12%) Docker
2 28 (1.35%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (0.96%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.67%) Firmware
5 12 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.34%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
9 4 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.096%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.096%) SRDF
11 1 (0.048%) ISA Server
11 1 (0.048%) KVM
11 1 (0.048%) Squid
11 1 (0.048%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.048%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 343 (16.50%) Kubernetes
2 246 (11.83%) Terraform
3 109 (5.24%) Grafana
4 94 (4.52%) Ansible
5 93 (4.47%) Prometheus
6 28 (1.35%) Argo
7 19 (0.91%) HP ALM
8 16 (0.77%) Puppet
9 13 (0.63%) Kibana
10 12 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.48%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.48%) HP Quality Center
12 9 (0.43%) Forefront Identity Manager
12 9 (0.43%) NetIQ Identity Manager
13 8 (0.38%) Kustomize
13 8 (0.38%) NetBackup
14 6 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
14 6 (0.29%) Progress Chef
15 4 (0.19%) Istio
15 4 (0.19%) Nmap
Vendors
1 173 (8.32%) Oracle
2 170 (8.18%) Microsoft
3 90 (4.33%) Salesforce
4 68 (3.27%) Databricks
5 64 (3.08%) Talend
6 63 (3.03%) ServiceNow
7 60 (2.89%) Google
8 57 (2.74%) Splunk
9 51 (2.45%) Red Hat
10 46 (2.21%) Denodo
11 35 (1.68%) SAP
12 34 (1.64%) VMware
13 29 (1.39%) IBM
14 25 (1.20%) Dynatrace
14 25 (1.20%) Informatica
14 25 (1.20%) UiPath
15 22 (1.06%) HP
16 20 (0.96%) Cisco
16 20 (0.96%) MuleSoft
17 16 (0.77%) Blue Prism