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

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 56
Rank change year-on-year -1 +9 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,980 1,338 1,518
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.16% 4.55% 3.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.93% 5.00% 4.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,308 924 995
10th Percentile £331 £327 £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 £618 £625
90th Percentile £663 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.26% -5.00% -4.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 21 54
10th Percentile £36.69 £35.00 £51.25
25th Percentile £54.55 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £50.00 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year +30.00% -18.37% -11.71%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £76.75
90th Percentile - £75.50 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.25 £52.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +26.19% -16.00% -4.58%

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 40,197 26,741 37,098
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.41% 90.94% 86.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,242 17,210 23,886
10th Percentile £320 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.30% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,406 1,094 2,440
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.44 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.87 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.13 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +46.52% -21.23% +0.69%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.00 £38.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -28.95% +8.57%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 1,690 £475 -5.00% 585
UK excluding London -5 920 £469 -1.26% 467
London -1 819 £496 -2.27% 202
Work from Home -3 577 £475 -5.00% 275
North of England +10 339 £468 +4.00% 126
Midlands +2 195 £450 - 59
West Midlands +23 170 £461 -6.92% 37
South East -46 164 £509 +1.70% 117
North West +8 146 £465 +3.39% 59
Yorkshire -8 145 £493 -2.48% 34
South West +4 90 £469 -8.54% 67
East of England +10 62 £522 +6.58% 59
North East +9 53 £425 +7.59% 33
Scotland -27 43 £440 -1.95% 27
Wales +1 31 £475 +18.75% 18
East Midlands -40 25 £400 +13.15% 22
Northern Ireland +18 18 £475 +16.28% 6
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
1 158 (7.98%) Confluence
2 43 (2.17%) SAS
3 41 (2.07%) Apache Spark
4 32 (1.62%) Apache Airflow
5 14 (0.71%) Apache
6 12 (0.61%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.40%) Appian
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%) CMS
10 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.10%) Mendix
13 1 (0.051%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.051%) Jupyter
13 1 (0.051%) Solana
Applications
1 27 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.61%) MS Visio
4 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.15%) Simulink
7 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.051%) Mingle
8 1 (0.051%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (1.01%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
4 8 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
5 7 (0.35%) Findur
5 7 (0.35%) Shopify
6 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.25%) Maximo
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%) Payment Gateway
8 3 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
8 3 (0.15%) SAP ERP
8 3 (0.15%) Workday HCM
9 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.10%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 573 (28.94%) Azure
2 543 (27.42%) AWS
3 343 (17.32%) GitHub
4 264 (13.33%) Azure DevOps
5 199 (10.05%) GitHub Actions
6 147 (7.42%) GCP
7 132 (6.67%) Serverless
8 83 (4.19%) Amazon S3
9 82 (4.14%) AWS Lambda
10 73 (3.69%) Power Platform
11 57 (2.88%) Amazon ECS
11 57 (2.88%) OpenShift
12 56 (2.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 54 (2.73%) AWS CloudFormation
14 42 (2.12%) Amazon EKS
15 40 (2.02%) Snowflake
16 39 (1.97%) Azure AKS
17 35 (1.77%) Amazon EC2
17 35 (1.77%) Azure Data Factory
18 29 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.21%) HTTP
2 20 (1.01%) Firewall
3 14 (0.71%) SAN
4 12 (0.61%) TCP/IP
5 11 (0.56%) FTP
5 11 (0.56%) SSL
6 10 (0.51%) VPN
7 9 (0.45%) Ethernet
8 8 (0.40%) WAN
8 8 (0.40%) Wireshark
9 7 (0.35%) MPLS
9 7 (0.35%) Network Security
9 7 (0.35%) SD-WAN
10 6 (0.30%) Multicast
10 6 (0.30%) VLAN
10 6 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
11 5 (0.25%) 5G
12 4 (0.20%) NAS
12 4 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
12 4 (0.20%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (5.66%) PostgreSQL
2 100 (5.05%) NoSQL
3 98 (4.95%) MongoDB
4 90 (4.55%) SQL Server
5 72 (3.64%) Data Warehouse
6 69 (3.48%) Relational Database
7 52 (2.63%) Power BI
8 45 (2.27%) DynamoDB
9 36 (1.82%) Pentaho
10 35 (1.77%) Metadata
11 34 (1.72%) MySQL
12 33 (1.67%) Big Data
13 27 (1.36%) Oracle Reports
14 25 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
14 25 (1.26%) Redis
15 24 (1.21%) Tableau
16 23 (1.16%) BigQuery
17 22 (1.11%) Amazon Aurora
18 21 (1.06%) Data Lake
19 20 (1.01%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 393 (19.85%) JIRA
2 365 (18.43%) Git
3 328 (16.57%) Jenkins
4 284 (14.34%) GitLab
5 266 (13.43%) Selenium
6 160 (8.08%) Postman
7 143 (7.22%) Cucumber
8 100 (5.05%) JUnit
9 95 (4.80%) Cypress.io
10 93 (4.70%) JMeter
11 85 (4.29%) REST Assured
12 58 (2.93%) WebDriver
13 48 (2.42%) SonarQube
13 48 (2.42%) Zephyr
14 35 (1.77%) Mockito
15 34 (1.72%) Gatling
15 34 (1.72%) Gradle
16 31 (1.57%) SpecFlow
17 30 (1.52%) Bitbucket
17 30 (1.52%) Maven
General
1 513 (25.91%) Social Skills
2 340 (17.17%) Finance
3 285 (14.39%) Public Sector
4 232 (11.72%) Analytical Skills
5 163 (8.23%) Banking
6 40 (2.02%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (1.82%) Investment Banking
8 35 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 34 (1.72%) Front Office
10 26 (1.31%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
12 20 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
13 18 (0.91%) Legal
14 17 (0.86%) Aerospace
14 17 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
15 16 (0.81%) Military
16 14 (0.71%) Retail
17 13 (0.66%) Financial Institution
18 12 (0.61%) Back Office
18 12 (0.61%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 420 (21.21%) Developer
2 307 (15.51%) Senior
3 212 (10.71%) Tester
4 211 (10.66%) Test Engineer
5 201 (10.15%) Lead
6 116 (5.86%) Data Engineer
7 113 (5.71%) Java Developer
8 106 (5.35%) Analyst
9 100 (5.05%) Test Automation Engineer
10 99 (5.00%) Automation Tester
11 90 (4.55%) Software Engineer
12 87 (4.39%) Architect
13 85 (4.29%) QA Engineer
14 81 (4.09%) DevOps Engineer
14 81 (4.09%) Test Leader
15 78 (3.94%) Senior Developer
16 66 (3.33%) Test Analyst
17 63 (3.18%) Full-Stack Developer
18 61 (3.08%) Test Manager
19 52 (2.63%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 243 (12.27%) Playwright
2 234 (11.82%) REST
3 176 (8.89%) React
4 156 (7.88%) RESTful
5 152 (7.68%) Spring
6 141 (7.12%) .NET
7 137 (6.92%) Kafka
8 132 (6.67%) Node.js
9 127 (6.41%) Spring Boot
10 87 (4.39%) AngularJS
11 76 (3.84%) HTML
12 67 (3.38%) pytest
13 64 (3.23%) OAuth
14 61 (3.08%) CSS
15 55 (2.78%) Jest
16 43 (2.17%) JSON
16 43 (2.17%) Swagger
17 42 (2.12%) Gherkin
17 42 (2.12%) OpenID
18 39 (1.97%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 219 (11.06%) Cloud Native
2 155 (7.83%) Product Ownership
3 102 (5.15%) Distributed Systems
4 50 (2.53%) Mobile App
5 49 (2.47%) Data Protection Act
6 47 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
7 38 (1.92%) Virtual Team
8 37 (1.87%) Onboarding
9 33 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
9 33 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
10 27 (1.36%) NHS
11 25 (1.26%) Algorithms
12 24 (1.21%) Management Information System
13 23 (1.16%) Data Centre
14 21 (1.06%) Distributed Architecture
15 20 (1.01%) Derivative
15 20 (1.01%) Security Posture
16 19 (0.96%) Fixed Income
16 19 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
17 18 (0.91%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 125 (6.31%) Linux
2 81 (4.09%) Windows
3 47 (2.37%) Unix
4 44 (2.22%) Android
5 39 (1.97%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.06%) 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
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 (0.10%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.051%) FreeRTOS
16 1 (0.051%) VMS
16 1 (0.051%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,068 (53.94%) CI/CD
2 922 (46.57%) Agile
3 717 (36.21%) DevOps
4 396 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
5 319 (16.11%) Microservices
6 318 (16.06%) Continuous Improvement
7 295 (14.90%) Scrum
8 287 (14.49%) Test Strategy
9 269 (13.59%) Infrastructure as Code
10 268 (13.54%) Containerisation
11 264 (13.33%) Validation
12 244 (12.32%) Software Engineering
13 233 (11.77%) Observability
14 218 (11.01%) AI
15 216 (10.91%) TDD
16 200 (10.10%) Regression Testing
17 199 (10.05%) Test Scripting
18 192 (9.70%) Analytics
18 192 (9.70%) User Acceptance Testing
19 191 (9.65%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 533 (26.92%) Python
2 492 (24.85%) Java
3 444 (22.42%) SQL
4 283 (14.29%) JavaScript
5 265 (13.38%) TypeScript
6 202 (10.20%) C#
7 75 (3.79%) PowerShell
8 71 (3.59%) Bash
9 52 (2.63%) C++
10 39 (1.97%) Kotlin
11 36 (1.82%) PL/SQL
12 33 (1.67%) C
13 32 (1.62%) Scala
14 28 (1.41%) Ruby
15 26 (1.31%) Bicep
16 25 (1.26%) Apex Code
17 24 (1.21%) Go
18 17 (0.86%) Swift
19 14 (0.71%) Groovy
19 14 (0.71%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 613 (30.96%) Security Cleared
2 486 (24.55%) SC Cleared
3 85 (4.29%) ISTQB
4 83 (4.19%) Degree
5 79 (3.99%) BPSS Clearance
6 66 (3.33%) DV Cleared
7 47 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
8 20 (1.01%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 15 (0.76%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.56%) Azure Certification
12 10 (0.51%) AWS Certification
12 10 (0.51%) CCNP
12 10 (0.51%) DBS Check
12 10 (0.51%) SAFe Agilist
13 9 (0.45%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 9 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
14 7 (0.35%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 7 (0.35%) CISSP
15 5 (0.25%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 440 (22.22%) QA
2 150 (7.58%) Accessibility
3 118 (5.96%) Data Quality
4 65 (3.28%) WCAG
5 36 (1.82%) GDPR
6 15 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 14 (0.71%) ISO 20022
7 14 (0.71%) SLA
8 11 (0.56%) NCSC
9 10 (0.51%) Def Stans
10 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 7 (0.35%) NIST
10 7 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 7 (0.35%) SEPA
11 6 (0.30%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.30%) PSD2
12 5 (0.25%) FATCA
13 4 (0.20%) HL7
13 4 (0.20%) MiFID
13 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 357 (18.03%) Docker
2 24 (1.21%) Active Directory
3 21 (1.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.71%) Firmware
5 11 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
9 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.10%) SRDF
12 1 (0.051%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.051%) HDFS
12 1 (0.051%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.051%) KVM
12 1 (0.051%) Squid
12 1 (0.051%) Time Sharing Option
12 1 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.051%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 346 (17.47%) Kubernetes
2 239 (12.07%) Terraform
3 111 (5.61%) Grafana
4 88 (4.44%) Prometheus
5 85 (4.29%) Ansible
6 29 (1.46%) Argo
7 22 (1.11%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.86%) Puppet
9 15 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
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 8 (0.40%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.40%) NetBackup
13 7 (0.35%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.25%) Nmap
15 5 (0.25%) Rancher
16 4 (0.20%) Podman
Vendors
1 169 (8.54%) Oracle
2 168 (8.48%) Microsoft
3 73 (3.69%) Salesforce
4 65 (3.28%) Databricks
5 63 (3.18%) ServiceNow
6 60 (3.03%) Splunk
7 56 (2.83%) Google
8 55 (2.78%) Talend
9 50 (2.53%) Red Hat
10 37 (1.87%) Denodo
11 36 (1.82%) SAP
12 28 (1.41%) IBM
12 28 (1.41%) VMware
13 25 (1.26%) HP
14 22 (1.11%) Dynatrace
15 20 (1.01%) Cisco
15 20 (1.01%) Informatica
15 20 (1.01%) MuleSoft
16 19 (0.96%) UiPath
17 16 (0.81%) Blue Prism