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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 45 53
Rank change year-on-year -3 +8 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,848 1,365 1,628
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.51% 4.52% 3.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.20% 5.03% 4.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,262 924 1,143
10th Percentile £338 £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 £703
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.55% -6.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 5 60
10th Percentile £33.09 £42.56 £44.25
25th Percentile £50.63 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £74.00 £68.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.16% +8.82% +19.30%
75th Percentile £68.13 £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 35,552 27,150 38,650
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.77% 89.86% 87.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,564 16,816 25,267
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 -2.38% -1.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,120 854 2,192
10th Percentile £14.61 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.96 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.77 £33.00 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.91% -2.94% -2.86%
75th Percentile £60.90 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.43 £72.00
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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -3 1,592 £492 -1.60% 570
UK excluding London +2 846 £492 +3.58% 500
London -2 774 £500 -4.76% 173
Work from Home -3 542 £486 -2.75% 299
North of England +2 320 £500 +17.65% 123
Midlands +2 169 £480 +3.78% 61
South East -19 161 £500 - 153
Yorkshire -12 140 £525 +16.67% 37
West Midlands +1 137 £494 +2.23% 40
North West +4 134 £450 +9.09% 68
South West 0 79 £525 -6.25% 62
East of England +13 60 £570 +26.11% 58
North East +10 49 £481 +26.45% 18
Scotland -15 38 £445 -1.22% 41
East Midlands -21 32 £400 +8.11% 20
Wales +1 30 £485 -4.90% 13
Northern Ireland +11 16 £475 -2.56% 4

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
1 116 (6.28%) Confluence
2 59 (3.19%) SAS
3 28 (1.52%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
5 12 (0.65%) SharePoint
6 10 (0.54%) Apache
7 8 (0.43%) Appian
8 6 (0.32%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.32%) nginx
8 6 (0.32%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.27%) CMS
9 5 (0.27%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.22%) Camunda
10 4 (0.22%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.22%) Oracle Application Server
11 3 (0.16%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Exchange
12 2 (0.11%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.70%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (0.43%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.16%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.054%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.054%) Trello
Business Applications
1 18 (0.97%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.32%) 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
5 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
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%) Summit
7 1 (0.054%) Algo Collateral
7 1 (0.054%) Oracle EBS R12
7 1 (0.054%) Oracle General Ledger
7 1 (0.054%) PORTIA
7 1 (0.054%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 534 (28.90%) Azure
2 465 (25.16%) AWS
3 318 (17.21%) GitHub
4 233 (12.61%) Azure DevOps
5 189 (10.23%) GCP
6 170 (9.20%) GitHub Actions
7 125 (6.76%) Serverless
8 77 (4.17%) Power Platform
9 72 (3.90%) OpenShift
10 56 (3.03%) AWS Lambda
11 55 (2.98%) Amazon S3
12 44 (2.38%) Azure AKS
13 43 (2.33%) AWS CloudFormation
14 41 (2.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 41 (2.22%) SaaS
15 35 (1.89%) Amazon EKS
16 34 (1.84%) Snowflake
17 32 (1.73%) Dynamics 365
17 32 (1.73%) Entra ID
18 31 (1.68%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 36 (1.95%) Firewall
2 26 (1.41%) HTTP
3 23 (1.24%) Wireshark
4 21 (1.14%) TCP/IP
4 21 (1.14%) VPN
5 20 (1.08%) HTTPS
5 20 (1.08%) SSL
6 13 (0.70%) Network Security
6 13 (0.70%) SD-WAN
7 11 (0.60%) DNS
7 11 (0.60%) WAN
8 10 (0.54%) FTP
8 10 (0.54%) MPLS
9 9 (0.49%) Ethernet
9 9 (0.49%) Multicast
9 9 (0.49%) VLAN
10 7 (0.38%) AMQP
11 6 (0.32%) BGP
11 6 (0.32%) SAN
12 5 (0.27%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 103 (5.57%) PostgreSQL
2 87 (4.71%) NoSQL
3 83 (4.49%) MongoDB
4 70 (3.79%) SQL Server
5 63 (3.41%) Relational Database
6 45 (2.44%) Data Warehouse
7 44 (2.38%) Power BI
8 32 (1.73%) Pentaho
9 28 (1.52%) BigQuery
9 28 (1.52%) Oracle Database
10 27 (1.46%) DynamoDB
10 27 (1.46%) MySQL
11 21 (1.14%) Big Data
12 19 (1.03%) Azure SQL Database
13 18 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
14 17 (0.92%) Redis
14 17 (0.92%) Tableau
15 16 (0.87%) Star Schema
16 15 (0.81%) Data Lake
16 15 (0.81%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 346 (18.72%) JIRA
2 345 (18.67%) Jenkins
3 344 (18.61%) Git
4 285 (15.42%) GitLab
5 278 (15.04%) Selenium
6 167 (9.04%) Cucumber
7 166 (8.98%) Postman
8 117 (6.33%) Cypress.io
9 105 (5.68%) JUnit
10 100 (5.41%) REST Assured
11 98 (5.30%) JMeter
12 44 (2.38%) WebDriver
13 40 (2.16%) SonarQube
13 40 (2.16%) SpecFlow
14 39 (2.11%) Gatling
15 36 (1.95%) Maven
16 35 (1.89%) Mockito
17 34 (1.84%) TestRail
17 34 (1.84%) Zephyr
18 32 (1.73%) Gradle
General
1 473 (25.60%) Social Skills
2 284 (15.37%) Finance
3 263 (14.23%) Public Sector
4 197 (10.66%) Analytical Skills
5 137 (7.41%) Banking
6 30 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
7 29 (1.57%) Investment Banking
8 28 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 21 (1.14%) Front Office
9 21 (1.14%) Pharmaceutical
9 21 (1.14%) Telecoms
10 18 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
11 17 (0.92%) Military
12 15 (0.81%) Organisational Skills
13 14 (0.76%) Influencing Skills
14 13 (0.70%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.65%) Financial Institution
16 11 (0.60%) Legal
17 10 (0.54%) Electronics
18 8 (0.43%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 414 (22.40%) Developer
2 314 (16.99%) Senior
3 221 (11.96%) Tester
4 207 (11.20%) Test Engineer
5 199 (10.77%) Lead
6 114 (6.17%) Automation Tester
7 110 (5.95%) Java Developer
8 89 (4.82%) Data Engineer
9 87 (4.71%) Software Engineer
10 86 (4.65%) Analyst
11 85 (4.60%) Test Automation Engineer
12 75 (4.06%) Senior Developer
13 71 (3.84%) Test Leader
14 70 (3.79%) DevOps Engineer
15 67 (3.63%) QA Engineer
16 61 (3.30%) Test Manager
17 56 (3.03%) Test Analyst
18 53 (2.87%) Architect
19 51 (2.76%) Automation Engineer
20 49 (2.65%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 245 (13.26%) REST
2 233 (12.61%) Playwright
3 170 (9.20%) React
4 147 (7.95%) Node.js
5 145 (7.85%) RESTful
6 143 (7.74%) .NET
7 140 (7.58%) Spring
8 126 (6.82%) Kafka
9 120 (6.49%) Spring Boot
10 91 (4.92%) pytest
11 66 (3.57%) AngularJS
11 66 (3.57%) HTML
12 61 (3.30%) OAuth
13 56 (3.03%) CSS
14 54 (2.92%) Jest
15 52 (2.81%) JSON
15 52 (2.81%) Web Services
16 45 (2.44%) GraphQL
17 43 (2.33%) SOAP
17 43 (2.33%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 198 (10.71%) Cloud Native
2 124 (6.71%) Product Ownership
3 73 (3.95%) Distributed Systems
4 46 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
5 45 (2.44%) Mobile App
6 43 (2.33%) Algorithms
7 40 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
8 38 (2.06%) Security Posture
9 34 (1.84%) Onboarding
10 29 (1.57%) Virtual Team
11 27 (1.46%) Data Structures
12 25 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
13 22 (1.19%) NHS
13 22 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
14 21 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
14 21 (1.14%) Management Information System
15 20 (1.08%) Public Cloud
16 19 (1.03%) Equities
17 17 (0.92%) Data Centre
18 16 (0.87%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 150 (8.12%) Linux
2 81 (4.38%) Windows
3 49 (2.65%) Unix
4 43 (2.33%) Android
5 39 (2.11%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.14%) Mac OS X
7 20 (1.08%) Windows Server
8 14 (0.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 11 (0.60%) Kali Linux
10 9 (0.49%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.27%) CentOS
11 5 (0.27%) Solaris
11 5 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
11 5 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
11 5 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.11%) VMS
12 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.054%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.054%) Windows Embedded Compact
13 1 (0.054%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 971 (52.54%) CI/CD
2 904 (48.92%) Agile
3 695 (37.61%) DevOps
4 446 (24.13%) Problem-Solving
5 302 (16.34%) Microservices
6 286 (15.48%) Continuous Improvement
7 284 (15.37%) Test Strategy
8 271 (14.66%) Containerisation
9 261 (14.12%) Scrum
10 234 (12.66%) Infrastructure as Code
11 233 (12.61%) AI
12 231 (12.50%) Validation
13 227 (12.28%) Test Scripting
14 223 (12.07%) Software Engineering
15 216 (11.69%) TDD
16 195 (10.55%) Analytics
17 190 (10.28%) Software Testing
18 186 (10.06%) Observability
19 184 (9.96%) API Testing
20 174 (9.42%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 571 (30.90%) Python
2 459 (24.84%) Java
3 356 (19.26%) SQL
4 291 (15.75%) JavaScript
5 270 (14.61%) TypeScript
6 180 (9.74%) C#
7 80 (4.33%) Bash
8 68 (3.68%) PowerShell
9 44 (2.38%) C++
10 35 (1.89%) Go
11 26 (1.41%) Bicep
12 25 (1.35%) PL/SQL
13 23 (1.24%) Kotlin
13 23 (1.24%) Scala
14 19 (1.03%) Ruby
15 18 (0.97%) C
16 17 (0.92%) Swift
17 16 (0.87%) Apex Code
18 14 (0.76%) Shell Script
19 12 (0.65%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 536 (29.00%) Security Cleared
2 413 (22.35%) SC Cleared
3 106 (5.74%) Degree
4 86 (4.65%) ISTQB
5 71 (3.84%) BPSS Clearance
6 58 (3.14%) Computer Science Degree
6 58 (3.14%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.73%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 29 (1.57%) Master's Degree
9 18 (0.97%) OSCP
10 17 (0.92%) AWS Certification
11 14 (0.76%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 13 (0.70%) Azure Certification
12 13 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
12 13 (0.70%) CISSP
12 13 (0.70%) GPEN
12 13 (0.70%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 12 (0.65%) CEH
13 12 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
14 11 (0.60%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 397 (21.48%) QA
2 149 (8.06%) Accessibility
3 97 (5.25%) Data Quality
4 50 (2.71%) WCAG
5 41 (2.22%) GDPR
6 35 (1.89%) NIST
7 22 (1.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 18 (0.97%) EU AI Act
8 18 (0.97%) NCSC
9 13 (0.70%) SLA
10 11 (0.60%) ISO 20022
11 10 (0.54%) 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 (0.32%) HIPAA
System Software
1 395 (21.37%) Docker
2 34 (1.84%) Active Directory
3 9 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
3 9 (0.49%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (0.38%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 5 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (0.22%) Firmware
6 4 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
7 3 (0.16%) ISA Server
8 2 (0.11%) SRDF
9 1 (0.054%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.054%) HDFS
9 1 (0.054%) KVM
9 1 (0.054%) QEMU
9 1 (0.054%) Squid
9 1 (0.054%) Time Sharing Option
9 1 (0.054%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.054%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.054%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 354 (19.16%) Kubernetes
2 217 (11.74%) Terraform
3 105 (5.68%) Ansible
4 100 (5.41%) Grafana
5 70 (3.79%) Prometheus
6 20 (1.08%) Puppet
7 19 (1.03%) HP ALM
7 19 (1.03%) Nmap
8 18 (0.97%) Argo
8 18 (0.97%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
9 12 (0.65%) NetBackup
10 9 (0.49%) HP Quality Center
11 8 (0.43%) Podman
12 7 (0.38%) Kibana
12 7 (0.38%) Nessus
13 6 (0.32%) CSIRT
13 6 (0.32%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 6 (0.32%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 167 (9.04%) Microsoft
2 149 (8.06%) Oracle
3 65 (3.52%) Salesforce
3 65 (3.52%) ServiceNow
4 64 (3.46%) Databricks
4 64 (3.46%) Google
5 59 (3.19%) Splunk
6 50 (2.71%) SAP
7 35 (1.89%) Talend
8 33 (1.79%) Red Hat
9 28 (1.52%) Denodo
9 28 (1.52%) VMware
10 25 (1.35%) Cisco
11 24 (1.30%) IBM
12 21 (1.14%) HP
13 17 (0.92%) MuleSoft
14 16 (0.87%) webMethods
14 16 (0.87%) Workday
15 15 (0.81%) OpenAI
16 14 (0.76%) UiPath