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 22 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 45 52
Rank change year-on-year -4 +7 -8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,833 1,391 1,665
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.50% 4.52% 3.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.18% 5.04% 4.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,246 939 1,171
10th Percentile £341 £325 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% -4.76% -5.41%
75th Percentile £575 £618 £625
90th Percentile £688 £734 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 5 62
10th Percentile £33.90 £42.56 £45.63
25th Percentile £50.94 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £74.00 £69.25
Median % change year-on-year -12.16% +6.86% +21.49%
75th Percentile £67.81 £77.19 £90.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £83.38 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £74.00 £71.87
% change year-on-year -12.16% +2.96% +26.09%

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 35,362 27,619 38,854
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.73% 89.84% 87.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,416 17,059 25,415
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £410 £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 £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -2.34% -1.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,120 859 2,186
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.96 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.77 £32.81 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.46% -6.26% -
75th Percentile £60.75 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.30 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.81% -9.26% -

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 22 February 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 22 February 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 22 February 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 1,578 £493 -1.50% 580
UK excluding London +1 830 £492 +3.58% 506
London -1 773 £500 -4.53% 174
Work from Home -3 543 £488 -2.50% 316
North of England +1 316 £500 +17.65% 129
Midlands +5 161 £491 +6.16% 62
South East -21 158 £500 - 157
Yorkshire -18 135 £525 +16.67% 36
North West +5 134 £447 +10.51% 72
West Midlands -2 130 £500 +3.52% 45
South West -4 78 £525 -4.55% 65
East of England +10 61 £570 +30.29% 56
North East +9 50 £488 +28.09% 21
Scotland -24 38 £445 -1.22% 40
East Midlands -20 31 £400 +8.11% 16
Wales +2 30 £485 -4.90% 12
Northern Ireland +8 15 £475 -2.56% 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
1 113 (6.16%) Confluence
2 58 (3.16%) SAS
3 28 (1.53%) Apache Spark
4 12 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
4 12 (0.65%) SharePoint
5 11 (0.60%) Apache
6 8 (0.44%) Appian
7 6 (0.33%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 6 (0.33%) nginx
7 6 (0.33%) WebLogic
8 5 (0.27%) CMS
8 5 (0.27%) Tomcat
9 4 (0.22%) Camunda
9 4 (0.22%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.22%) Oracle Application Server
10 3 (0.16%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.11%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (0.44%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.16%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.055%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.055%) Trello
Business Applications
1 18 (0.98%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.33%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.27%) Loan IQ
3 5 (0.27%) Workday HCM
4 4 (0.22%) Maximo
4 4 (0.22%) SAP HR
4 4 (0.22%) Shopify
5 3 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
6 2 (0.11%) iTrent
6 2 (0.11%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.11%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.11%) Summit
7 1 (0.055%) Algo Collateral
7 1 (0.055%) Oracle EBS R12
7 1 (0.055%) Oracle General Ledger
7 1 (0.055%) PORTIA
7 1 (0.055%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 536 (29.24%) Azure
2 461 (25.15%) AWS
3 317 (17.29%) GitHub
4 232 (12.66%) Azure DevOps
5 191 (10.42%) GCP
6 170 (9.27%) GitHub Actions
7 125 (6.82%) Serverless
8 78 (4.26%) Power Platform
9 71 (3.87%) OpenShift
10 56 (3.06%) Amazon S3
10 56 (3.06%) AWS Lambda
11 43 (2.35%) AWS CloudFormation
11 43 (2.35%) Azure AKS
12 41 (2.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 41 (2.24%) SaaS
13 35 (1.91%) Amazon EKS
13 35 (1.91%) Snowflake
14 32 (1.75%) Azure Data Factory
14 32 (1.75%) Dynamics 365
14 32 (1.75%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 35 (1.91%) Firewall
2 26 (1.42%) HTTP
3 23 (1.25%) Wireshark
4 21 (1.15%) TCP/IP
4 21 (1.15%) VPN
5 20 (1.09%) HTTPS
5 20 (1.09%) SSL
6 14 (0.76%) Network Security
7 13 (0.71%) SD-WAN
8 11 (0.60%) DNS
8 11 (0.60%) WAN
9 10 (0.55%) Ethernet
9 10 (0.55%) FTP
9 10 (0.55%) MPLS
10 9 (0.49%) Multicast
10 9 (0.49%) VLAN
11 7 (0.38%) AMQP
12 6 (0.33%) BGP
13 5 (0.27%) Cisco IPT
13 5 (0.27%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 102 (5.56%) PostgreSQL
2 85 (4.64%) NoSQL
3 83 (4.53%) MongoDB
4 69 (3.76%) SQL Server
5 63 (3.44%) Relational Database
6 44 (2.40%) Power BI
7 39 (2.13%) Data Warehouse
8 30 (1.64%) Pentaho
9 28 (1.53%) BigQuery
9 28 (1.53%) Oracle Database
10 27 (1.47%) DynamoDB
10 27 (1.47%) MySQL
11 21 (1.15%) Big Data
12 19 (1.04%) Azure SQL Database
13 18 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
14 17 (0.93%) Redis
14 17 (0.93%) Tableau
15 16 (0.87%) Star Schema
16 15 (0.82%) Data Lake
16 15 (0.82%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 341 (18.60%) Jenkins
2 339 (18.49%) Git
3 338 (18.44%) JIRA
4 285 (15.55%) GitLab
5 279 (15.22%) Selenium
6 169 (9.22%) Cucumber
7 163 (8.89%) Postman
8 116 (6.33%) Cypress.io
9 105 (5.73%) JUnit
10 101 (5.51%) REST Assured
11 100 (5.46%) JMeter
12 44 (2.40%) WebDriver
13 40 (2.18%) Gatling
13 40 (2.18%) SonarQube
13 40 (2.18%) SpecFlow
14 36 (1.96%) Maven
15 35 (1.91%) Mockito
15 35 (1.91%) TestRail
16 32 (1.75%) Gradle
17 30 (1.64%) Zephyr
General
1 471 (25.70%) Social Skills
2 280 (15.28%) Finance
3 265 (14.46%) Public Sector
4 199 (10.86%) Analytical Skills
5 134 (7.31%) Banking
6 30 (1.64%) Documentation Skills
7 29 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 29 (1.58%) Investment Banking
8 21 (1.15%) Front Office
8 21 (1.15%) Pharmaceutical
8 21 (1.15%) Telecoms
9 19 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
10 17 (0.93%) Military
11 15 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
12 14 (0.76%) Aerospace
12 14 (0.76%) Influencing Skills
13 13 (0.71%) Financial Institution
14 11 (0.60%) Legal
15 10 (0.55%) Electronics
16 9 (0.49%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 412 (22.48%) Developer
2 314 (17.13%) Senior
3 217 (11.84%) Tester
4 207 (11.29%) Test Engineer
5 198 (10.80%) Lead
6 115 (6.27%) Automation Tester
7 110 (6.00%) Java Developer
8 89 (4.86%) Software Engineer
9 85 (4.64%) Data Engineer
9 85 (4.64%) Test Automation Engineer
10 84 (4.58%) Analyst
11 75 (4.09%) Senior Developer
12 71 (3.87%) Test Leader
13 70 (3.82%) DevOps Engineer
14 68 (3.71%) QA Engineer
15 59 (3.22%) Test Manager
16 54 (2.95%) Test Analyst
17 53 (2.89%) Architect
18 51 (2.78%) Automation Engineer
19 49 (2.67%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 245 (13.37%) REST
2 228 (12.44%) Playwright
3 168 (9.17%) React
4 148 (8.07%) Node.js
5 145 (7.91%) RESTful
6 143 (7.80%) .NET
7 140 (7.64%) Spring
8 124 (6.76%) Kafka
9 120 (6.55%) Spring Boot
10 91 (4.96%) pytest
11 66 (3.60%) AngularJS
11 66 (3.60%) HTML
12 61 (3.33%) OAuth
13 56 (3.06%) CSS
14 53 (2.89%) Jest
15 52 (2.84%) JSON
15 52 (2.84%) Web Services
16 44 (2.40%) GraphQL
17 43 (2.35%) SOAP
17 43 (2.35%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 197 (10.75%) Cloud Native
2 125 (6.82%) Product Ownership
3 73 (3.98%) Distributed Systems
4 45 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
4 45 (2.45%) Mobile App
5 42 (2.29%) Algorithms
6 40 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
7 38 (2.07%) Security Posture
8 35 (1.91%) Onboarding
9 29 (1.58%) Virtual Team
10 26 (1.42%) Data Structures
11 25 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
12 23 (1.25%) NHS
13 22 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
14 21 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
14 21 (1.15%) Management Information System
15 20 (1.09%) Public Cloud
16 19 (1.04%) Equities
17 17 (0.93%) Data Centre
18 16 (0.87%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 151 (8.24%) Linux
2 81 (4.42%) Windows
3 48 (2.62%) Unix
4 43 (2.35%) Android
5 39 (2.13%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.15%) Mac OS X
6 21 (1.15%) Windows Server
7 11 (0.60%) Kali Linux
7 11 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 9 (0.49%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.27%) Solaris
9 5 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
9 5 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
9 5 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (0.22%) CentOS
11 2 (0.11%) VMS
11 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.055%) FreeRTOS
12 1 (0.055%) Robot Operating System
12 1 (0.055%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 965 (52.65%) CI/CD
2 895 (48.83%) Agile
3 689 (37.59%) DevOps
4 446 (24.33%) Problem-Solving
5 300 (16.37%) Microservices
6 288 (15.71%) Continuous Improvement
7 284 (15.49%) Test Strategy
8 271 (14.78%) Containerisation
9 258 (14.08%) Scrum
10 233 (12.71%) Validation
11 232 (12.66%) Infrastructure as Code
12 228 (12.44%) AI
13 224 (12.22%) Test Scripting
14 223 (12.17%) Software Engineering
15 214 (11.67%) TDD
16 193 (10.53%) Analytics
17 188 (10.26%) Software Testing
18 186 (10.15%) API Testing
19 185 (10.09%) Observability
20 174 (9.49%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 564 (30.77%) Python
2 461 (25.15%) Java
3 350 (19.09%) SQL
4 289 (15.77%) JavaScript
5 268 (14.62%) TypeScript
6 181 (9.87%) C#
7 80 (4.36%) Bash
8 68 (3.71%) PowerShell
9 45 (2.45%) C++
10 34 (1.85%) Go
11 26 (1.42%) Bicep
12 25 (1.36%) PL/SQL
13 23 (1.25%) Kotlin
13 23 (1.25%) Scala
14 19 (1.04%) C
14 19 (1.04%) Ruby
15 17 (0.93%) Swift
16 16 (0.87%) Apex Code
17 12 (0.65%) Groovy
17 12 (0.65%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 529 (28.86%) Security Cleared
2 408 (22.26%) SC Cleared
3 105 (5.73%) Degree
4 84 (4.58%) ISTQB
5 71 (3.87%) BPSS Clearance
6 57 (3.11%) Computer Science Degree
7 56 (3.06%) DV Cleared
8 31 (1.69%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 29 (1.58%) Master's Degree
10 18 (0.98%) OSCP
11 16 (0.87%) AWS Certification
12 15 (0.82%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 13 (0.71%) Azure Certification
13 13 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
13 13 (0.71%) GPEN
13 13 (0.71%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 12 (0.65%) CEH
14 12 (0.65%) CISSP
14 12 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
15 11 (0.60%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 390 (21.28%) QA
2 149 (8.13%) Accessibility
3 96 (5.24%) Data Quality
4 50 (2.73%) WCAG
5 41 (2.24%) GDPR
6 35 (1.91%) NIST
7 22 (1.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 18 (0.98%) EU AI Act
8 18 (0.98%) NCSC
9 13 (0.71%) SLA
10 11 (0.60%) ISO 20022
11 10 (0.55%) PCI DSS
12 9 (0.49%) NIST 800
12 9 (0.49%) PSD2
12 9 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.38%) Def Stans
13 7 (0.38%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 7 (0.38%) SEPA
13 7 (0.38%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.33%) HIPAA
System Software
1 394 (21.49%) Docker
2 34 (1.85%) Active Directory
3 9 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
4 7 (0.38%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 6 (0.33%) VMware Infrastructure
6 5 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (0.22%) Firmware
7 4 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.16%) ISA Server
9 2 (0.11%) QEMU
9 2 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.055%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.055%) HDFS
10 1 (0.055%) KVM
10 1 (0.055%) Squid
10 1 (0.055%) Time Sharing Option
10 1 (0.055%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.055%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 351 (19.15%) Kubernetes
2 216 (11.78%) Terraform
3 102 (5.56%) Ansible
4 99 (5.40%) Grafana
5 69 (3.76%) Prometheus
6 19 (1.04%) HP ALM
6 19 (1.04%) Nmap
7 18 (0.98%) Argo
7 18 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
8 17 (0.93%) Puppet
9 16 (0.87%) Progress Chef
10 11 (0.60%) NetBackup
11 9 (0.49%) HP Quality Center
12 7 (0.38%) Kibana
12 7 (0.38%) Nessus
12 7 (0.38%) Podman
13 6 (0.33%) CSIRT
13 6 (0.33%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 6 (0.33%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 167 (9.11%) Microsoft
2 141 (7.69%) Oracle
3 65 (3.55%) ServiceNow
4 64 (3.49%) Databricks
5 63 (3.44%) Salesforce
6 62 (3.38%) Google
7 58 (3.16%) Splunk
8 49 (2.67%) SAP
9 31 (1.69%) Red Hat
9 31 (1.69%) Talend
10 27 (1.47%) Denodo
11 25 (1.36%) VMware
12 23 (1.25%) Cisco
12 23 (1.25%) IBM
13 19 (1.04%) HP
14 17 (0.93%) MuleSoft
15 16 (0.87%) webMethods
15 16 (0.87%) Workday
16 15 (0.82%) OpenAI
17 14 (0.76%) UiPath