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 3 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 50 50
Rank change year-on-year +4 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,255 1,476 1,541
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.24% 4.46% 3.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.00% 4.93% 4.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,453 1,022 1,038
10th Percentile £325 £313 £360
25th Percentile £405 £386 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £486 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.31% -5.12% -2.38%
75th Percentile £575 £583 £612
90th Percentile £663 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £458 £463 £509
% change year-on-year -1.08% -9.05% +1.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 32 28
10th Percentile £40.00 £35.58 £46.00
25th Percentile £60.25 £44.51 £51.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -13.04% -12.21%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.50 £72.03
90th Percentile £74.00 £74.35 £79.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +28.57% -8.70% -8.00%

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 45,145 29,940 33,399
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.95% 90.42% 85.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,873 18,766 21,491
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £734 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,760 1,664 1,872
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.30 £18.14
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.63% -5.12%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.63 £40.94
% change year-on-year +86.03% -42.28% +2.35%

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 3 August 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 3 August 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 3 August 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 1,919 £475 -2.56% 1,011
UK excluding London +3 1,127 £458 -1.08% 657
London +3 863 £500 -1.72% 489
Work from Home -3 619 £475 +3.26% 467
North of England +12 384 £464 +3.06% 155
Midlands +13 265 £450 +9.76% 79
West Midlands +36 247 £450 -2.44% 56
South East -34 205 £459 -8.20% 173
Yorkshire -2 154 £493 +3.68% 49
North West -9 140 £490 +16.11% 86
South West +4 109 £475 +11.76% 105
North East +14 98 £425 +6.25% 21
East of England +19 79 £450 - 58
Scotland -23 71 £440 -11.65% 36
Wales -3 34 £475 +16.92% 10
Northern Ireland +19 18 £488 +19.34% 57
East Midlands -41 18 £425 +27.63% 23
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
1 198 (8.78%) Confluence
2 50 (2.22%) Apache Airflow
2 50 (2.22%) SAS
3 49 (2.17%) Apache Spark
4 27 (1.20%) SharePoint
5 24 (1.06%) Apache
6 14 (0.62%) CMS
7 13 (0.58%) WebLogic
8 7 (0.31%) nginx
8 7 (0.31%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.22%) Camunda
11 4 (0.18%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.18%) Jupyter
11 4 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.13%) Kentico
13 2 (0.089%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.089%) Appian
13 2 (0.089%) Mendix
13 2 (0.089%) Mule
Applications
1 21 (0.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.35%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.18%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.18%) Simulink
6 3 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.13%) Trello
7 1 (0.044%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 27 (1.20%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.80%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.71%) Aladdin
4 12 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
4 12 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.35%) Findur
6 6 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.27%) SAP ERP
6 6 (0.27%) SAP MDG
6 6 (0.27%) Shopify
7 5 (0.22%) BambooHR
8 4 (0.18%) Infor CloudSuite
8 4 (0.18%) Infor LN
8 4 (0.18%) Infor M3
9 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
10 2 (0.089%) Advent Geneva
10 2 (0.089%) Loan IQ
10 2 (0.089%) Oracle ERP
10 2 (0.089%) SAP GRC
11 1 (0.044%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 681 (30.20%) Azure
2 679 (30.11%) AWS
3 413 (18.31%) GitHub
4 307 (13.61%) Azure DevOps
5 249 (11.04%) GitHub Actions
6 168 (7.45%) GCP
7 164 (7.27%) Serverless
8 111 (4.92%) AWS Lambda
9 98 (4.35%) Amazon S3
10 97 (4.30%) Power Platform
11 71 (3.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 67 (2.97%) Amazon ECS
13 65 (2.88%) OpenShift
14 59 (2.62%) AWS CloudFormation
15 56 (2.48%) GitHub Copilot
16 54 (2.39%) Amazon EKS
17 53 (2.35%) dbt
18 51 (2.26%) Amazon EC2
19 47 (2.08%) Snowflake
20 42 (1.86%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 22 (0.98%) Firewall
2 19 (0.84%) HTTP
3 18 (0.80%) Network Security
4 13 (0.58%) 2G
4 13 (0.58%) 3G
4 13 (0.58%) 4G
4 13 (0.58%) 5G
4 13 (0.58%) Diameter Protocol
4 13 (0.58%) SAN
4 13 (0.58%) SIGTRAN
4 13 (0.58%) SS7
4 13 (0.58%) WAN
5 10 (0.44%) LAN
6 9 (0.40%) DNS
7 8 (0.35%) TCP/IP
7 8 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
8 7 (0.31%) VPN
9 6 (0.27%) BGP
9 6 (0.27%) Broadband
9 6 (0.27%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 137 (6.08%) PostgreSQL
2 122 (5.41%) MongoDB
3 121 (5.37%) Data Warehouse
4 107 (4.75%) NoSQL
5 89 (3.95%) SQL Server
6 81 (3.59%) Relational Database
7 76 (3.37%) Power BI
8 49 (2.17%) DynamoDB
9 44 (1.95%) Metadata
10 42 (1.86%) Oracle Reports
11 40 (1.77%) Pentaho
12 35 (1.55%) Big Data
12 35 (1.55%) MySQL
13 33 (1.46%) Amazon Athena
14 30 (1.33%) Data Lake
15 27 (1.20%) Amazon RDS
15 27 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
15 27 (1.20%) Redis
16 23 (1.02%) Elasticsearch
17 20 (0.89%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 442 (19.60%) Git
2 424 (18.80%) JIRA
3 371 (16.45%) Jenkins
4 301 (13.35%) GitLab
5 283 (12.55%) Selenium
6 162 (7.18%) Postman
7 154 (6.83%) Cucumber
8 123 (5.45%) JUnit
9 116 (5.14%) Cypress.io
10 109 (4.83%) REST Assured
11 99 (4.39%) JMeter
12 70 (3.10%) Zephyr
13 64 (2.84%) SonarQube
14 62 (2.75%) WebDriver
15 54 (2.39%) Gatling
16 48 (2.13%) Gradle
17 46 (2.04%) Mockito
18 44 (1.95%) Bitbucket
19 43 (1.91%) Maven
20 33 (1.46%) SpecFlow
General
1 596 (26.43%) Social Skills
2 408 (18.09%) Finance
3 323 (14.32%) Public Sector
4 289 (12.82%) Analytical Skills
5 187 (8.29%) Banking
6 65 (2.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 40 (1.77%) Documentation Skills
8 36 (1.60%) Front Office
8 36 (1.60%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
9 35 (1.55%) Telecoms
10 32 (1.42%) Retail
11 28 (1.24%) Military
12 24 (1.06%) Financial Institution
13 18 (0.80%) Aerospace
14 16 (0.71%) Back Office
15 15 (0.67%) Manufacturing
15 15 (0.67%) Organisational Skills
16 14 (0.62%) Legal
16 14 (0.62%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 486 (21.55%) Developer
2 368 (16.32%) Senior
3 243 (10.78%) Lead
4 221 (9.80%) Test Engineer
5 210 (9.31%) Tester
6 164 (7.27%) Java Developer
7 158 (7.01%) Data Engineer
8 118 (5.23%) Analyst
9 117 (5.19%) Software Engineer
10 112 (4.97%) DevOps Engineer
11 108 (4.79%) Senior Developer
12 101 (4.48%) Architect
12 101 (4.48%) Test Automation Engineer
13 91 (4.04%) QA Engineer
14 87 (3.86%) Automation Tester
15 84 (3.73%) Test Leader
16 79 (3.50%) Test Analyst
17 73 (3.24%) Full-Stack Developer
18 61 (2.71%) Automation Engineer
19 59 (2.62%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 313 (13.88%) REST
2 271 (12.02%) Playwright
3 205 (9.09%) React
4 198 (8.78%) RESTful
5 190 (8.43%) Spring
6 179 (7.94%) Kafka
7 155 (6.87%) .NET
8 153 (6.78%) Spring Boot
9 127 (5.63%) Node.js
10 96 (4.26%) AngularJS
11 91 (4.04%) HTML
12 84 (3.73%) CSS
13 70 (3.10%) OAuth
14 60 (2.66%) JSON
15 56 (2.48%) Jest
16 55 (2.44%) pytest
17 52 (2.31%) Gherkin
18 50 (2.22%) OAuth2
19 49 (2.17%) HTML5
20 45 (2.00%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 327 (14.50%) Cloud Native
2 165 (7.32%) Product Ownership
3 158 (7.01%) Distributed Systems
4 81 (3.59%) Enterprise Software
5 58 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
6 56 (2.48%) Onboarding
7 55 (2.44%) Data Protection Act
8 51 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
9 41 (1.82%) Mobile App
10 37 (1.64%) Virtual Team
11 33 (1.46%) AI Agents
12 32 (1.42%) Distributed Architecture
13 27 (1.20%) Embedded Systems
13 27 (1.20%) NHS
13 27 (1.20%) Security Posture
14 23 (1.02%) Management Information System
15 20 (0.89%) Data Centre
15 20 (0.89%) Fixed Income
16 19 (0.84%) Algorithms
16 19 (0.84%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 140 (6.21%) Linux
2 84 (3.73%) Windows
3 81 (3.59%) Unix
4 43 (1.91%) Android
5 42 (1.86%) Apple iOS
6 26 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 20 (0.89%) Windows Server
8 13 (0.58%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.35%) Solaris
11 6 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
12 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
13 4 (0.18%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 3 (0.13%) AIX
14 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
15 2 (0.089%) CentOS
16 1 (0.044%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,327 (58.85%) CI/CD
2 1,070 (47.45%) Agile
3 856 (37.96%) DevOps
4 429 (19.02%) Microservices
5 418 (18.54%) Problem-Solving
6 415 (18.40%) Continuous Improvement
7 372 (16.50%) Scrum
8 361 (16.01%) Infrastructure as Code
8 361 (16.01%) Software Engineering
9 337 (14.94%) Validation
10 331 (14.68%) Test Strategy
11 309 (13.70%) TDD
12 307 (13.61%) AI
13 306 (13.57%) Containerisation
14 295 (13.08%) Observability
15 242 (10.73%) SDLC
16 232 (10.29%) Data Pipeline
16 232 (10.29%) ETL
17 228 (10.11%) Software Testing
18 227 (10.07%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 583 (25.85%) Java
2 576 (25.54%) Python
3 531 (23.55%) SQL
4 292 (12.95%) JavaScript
5 240 (10.64%) TypeScript
6 203 (9.00%) C#
7 84 (3.73%) PowerShell
8 83 (3.68%) Bash
9 55 (2.44%) Kotlin
10 50 (2.22%) C++
11 46 (2.04%) Bicep
12 35 (1.55%) PL/SQL
13 30 (1.33%) C
13 30 (1.33%) Scala
14 28 (1.24%) Apex Code
14 28 (1.24%) Go
15 23 (1.02%) Ruby
16 22 (0.98%) Swift
17 21 (0.93%) Shell Script
18 17 (0.75%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 708 (31.40%) Security Cleared
2 597 (26.47%) SC Cleared
3 105 (4.66%) BPSS Clearance
3 105 (4.66%) Degree
4 98 (4.35%) ISTQB
5 67 (2.97%) DV Cleared
6 52 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
7 31 (1.37%) AWS Certification
8 29 (1.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 22 (0.98%) Azure Certification
10 17 (0.75%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 12 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
11 12 (0.53%) Master's Degree
12 11 (0.49%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.49%) SAFe Agilist
13 10 (0.44%) CISSP
13 10 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
14 9 (0.40%) CCNP
14 9 (0.40%) DBS Check
15 7 (0.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 550 (24.39%) QA
2 187 (8.29%) Accessibility
3 161 (7.14%) Data Quality
4 84 (3.73%) WCAG
5 41 (1.82%) GDPR
6 16 (0.71%) SLA
7 15 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 13 (0.58%) NCSC
9 11 (0.49%) NIST
10 9 (0.40%) ISO 20022
11 7 (0.31%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 7 (0.31%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.27%) GRC
12 6 (0.27%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.22%) Def Stans
13 5 (0.22%) FATCA
14 4 (0.18%) MiFID
15 3 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
15 3 (0.13%) EU AI Act
15 3 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 426 (18.89%) Docker
2 31 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
3 26 (1.15%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.53%) Firmware
6 5 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.089%) SRDF
9 2 (0.089%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.044%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 431 (19.11%) Kubernetes
2 311 (13.79%) Terraform
3 115 (5.10%) Ansible
4 114 (5.06%) Grafana
5 94 (4.17%) Prometheus
6 42 (1.86%) Argo
7 23 (1.02%) Puppet
8 20 (0.89%) HP ALM
9 16 (0.71%) Kibana
10 15 (0.67%) Progress Chef
11 11 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
12 10 (0.44%) Dell DRAC
13 8 (0.35%) NetBackup
14 7 (0.31%) Kustomize
15 6 (0.27%) Istio
15 6 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
16 5 (0.22%) Forefront Identity Manager
16 5 (0.22%) HP Quality Center
16 5 (0.22%) NetIQ Identity Manager
17 4 (0.18%) Control-M
Vendors
1 207 (9.18%) Microsoft
2 191 (8.47%) Oracle
3 94 (4.17%) Salesforce
4 81 (3.59%) Databricks
5 69 (3.06%) Talend
6 64 (2.84%) Red Hat
7 62 (2.75%) Google
8 55 (2.44%) Splunk
9 51 (2.26%) ServiceNow
10 47 (2.08%) Denodo
11 42 (1.86%) IBM
12 41 (1.82%) Informatica
12 41 (1.82%) SAP
13 38 (1.69%) VMware
14 33 (1.46%) Dynatrace
15 29 (1.29%) MuleSoft
16 27 (1.20%) HP
16 27 (1.20%) UiPath
17 24 (1.06%) Cisco
18 13 (0.58%) Fortinet