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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 51 43
Rank change year-on-year +6 -8 +8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,407 1,481 1,585
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.41% 4.49% 4.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.21% 4.96% 4.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,532 1,005 1,062
10th Percentile £331 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £502
Median % change year-on-year -4.95% -0.30% -4.48%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £669 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £454 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -4.42% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 109 38 18
10th Percentile £39.45 £30.06 £40.88
25th Percentile £59.00 £46.93 £43.75
Median hourly rate £69.50 £55.88 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +24.38% -2.83% -23.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £77.50 £70.45 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £57.13 £57.50
% change year-on-year +18.16% -0.65% -13.86%

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 46,202 29,871 32,996
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.62% 90.47% 85.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,118 18,549 20,447
10th Percentile £325 £300 £311
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,059 1,786 1,512
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.23 £14.71
25th Percentile £17.36 £17.30 £20.09
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +3.61%
75th Percentile £67.50 £45.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +76.76% -47.37% +8.72%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 +5 2,025 £475 -5.00% 1,366
UK excluding London -3 1,170 £454 -4.42% 861
London +6 928 £500 - 685
Work from Home -1 649 £485 +2.11% 563
North of England +3 405 £460 +0.05% 196
Midlands +7 248 £450 -2.70% 100
West Midlands +23 233 £458 -11.02% 62
South East -12 232 £450 -10.00% 208
Yorkshire -13 163 £470 -6.09% 60
North West -11 143 £492 +16.59% 104
South West -8 114 £475 -5.00% 157
North East +11 106 £425 -4.49% 32
Scotland -18 86 £475 -5.00% 97
East of England +11 85 £450 +31.39% 88
Wales -3 31 £500 +33.33% 20
East Midlands -41 15 £418 +17.61% 38
Northern Ireland +7 10 £475 +313.04% 11
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

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
1 194 (8.06%) Confluence
2 53 (2.20%) Apache Airflow
3 47 (1.95%) SharePoint
4 45 (1.87%) Apache Spark
5 38 (1.58%) SAS
6 25 (1.04%) Apache
7 15 (0.62%) CMS
8 12 (0.50%) Camunda
8 12 (0.50%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.25%) nginx
10 6 (0.25%) Tomcat
11 4 (0.17%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.17%) ColdFusion
11 4 (0.17%) Jupyter
11 4 (0.17%) OpenStack
11 4 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.12%) Kentico
13 2 (0.083%) Mule
Applications
1 24 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.29%) Chatbot
3 7 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.12%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.12%) Simulink
4 3 (0.12%) Trello
5 2 (0.083%) Mingle
5 2 (0.083%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 28 (1.16%) Dynamics CRM
2 24 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.54%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.46%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.33%) Findur
7 7 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
7 7 (0.29%) SAP GRC
8 6 (0.25%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.25%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.17%) FLEXCUBE
10 3 (0.12%) Distributed Ledger
10 3 (0.12%) Finacle
10 3 (0.12%) Shopify
10 3 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 2 (0.083%) BambooHR
11 2 (0.083%) Infor CloudSuite
11 2 (0.083%) Infor LN
11 2 (0.083%) Infor M3
11 2 (0.083%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 744 (30.91%) AWS
2 714 (29.66%) Azure
3 428 (17.78%) GitHub
4 333 (13.83%) Azure DevOps
5 261 (10.84%) GitHub Actions
6 177 (7.35%) Serverless
7 174 (7.23%) GCP
8 134 (5.57%) AWS Lambda
9 109 (4.53%) Power Platform
10 103 (4.28%) Amazon S3
11 85 (3.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 74 (3.07%) Amazon ECS
13 73 (3.03%) OpenShift
14 72 (2.99%) GitHub Copilot
15 68 (2.83%) Amazon EKS
15 68 (2.83%) AWS CloudFormation
16 59 (2.45%) dbt
17 56 (2.33%) Snowflake
18 51 (2.12%) Amazon EC2
19 45 (1.87%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.08%) HTTP
2 23 (0.96%) Firewall
3 22 (0.91%) DNS
4 21 (0.87%) 4G
5 20 (0.83%) 5G
6 18 (0.75%) TCP/IP
7 17 (0.71%) Network Security
8 16 (0.66%) 2G
8 16 (0.66%) 3G
8 16 (0.66%) Diameter Protocol
8 16 (0.66%) SIGTRAN
8 16 (0.66%) SS7
8 16 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
9 15 (0.62%) WAN
10 13 (0.54%) LAN
11 10 (0.42%) BGP
11 10 (0.42%) Broadband
11 10 (0.42%) DHCP
12 9 (0.37%) SAN
13 8 (0.33%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 145 (6.02%) PostgreSQL
2 126 (5.23%) Data Warehouse
3 123 (5.11%) MongoDB
4 115 (4.78%) Relational Database
5 107 (4.45%) NoSQL
6 96 (3.99%) SQL Server
7 82 (3.41%) Power BI
8 49 (2.04%) Metadata
9 45 (1.87%) DynamoDB
10 39 (1.62%) Oracle Reports
11 38 (1.58%) MySQL
12 36 (1.50%) Data Lake
13 35 (1.45%) Big Data
14 34 (1.41%) Amazon Athena
15 32 (1.33%) Pentaho
16 31 (1.29%) Amazon Redshift
17 30 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
17 30 (1.25%) Elasticsearch
18 29 (1.20%) Redis
19 26 (1.08%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 517 (21.48%) Git
2 405 (16.83%) JIRA
3 391 (16.24%) Jenkins
4 330 (13.71%) GitLab
5 301 (12.51%) Selenium
6 167 (6.94%) Postman
7 148 (6.15%) Cucumber
8 134 (5.57%) JUnit
9 125 (5.19%) Cypress.io
10 109 (4.53%) REST Assured
11 102 (4.24%) JMeter
12 85 (3.53%) SonarQube
13 65 (2.70%) Zephyr
14 64 (2.66%) Maven
15 62 (2.58%) Gatling
16 59 (2.45%) Gradle
17 58 (2.41%) Mockito
18 53 (2.20%) WebDriver
19 41 (1.70%) Bitbucket
20 29 (1.20%) SpecFlow
General
1 668 (27.75%) Social Skills
2 438 (18.20%) Finance
3 346 (14.37%) Public Sector
4 335 (13.92%) Analytical Skills
5 212 (8.81%) Banking
6 78 (3.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 47 (1.95%) Telecoms
8 44 (1.83%) Front Office
9 37 (1.54%) Documentation Skills
10 36 (1.50%) Investment Banking
11 34 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
11 34 (1.41%) Retail
12 31 (1.29%) Military
13 24 (1.00%) Financial Institution
14 20 (0.83%) Law
15 19 (0.79%) Aerospace
15 19 (0.79%) Back Office
16 18 (0.75%) Marketing
17 16 (0.66%) Manufacturing
18 14 (0.58%) Legal
Job Titles
1 549 (22.81%) Developer
2 404 (16.78%) Senior
3 241 (10.01%) Lead
4 234 (9.72%) Test Engineer
5 202 (8.39%) Tester
6 180 (7.48%) Java Developer
7 143 (5.94%) Data Engineer
8 126 (5.23%) Analyst
9 125 (5.19%) Software Engineer
10 123 (5.11%) DevOps Engineer
11 122 (5.07%) Senior Developer
12 105 (4.36%) Test Automation Engineer
13 101 (4.20%) Architect
14 97 (4.03%) QA Engineer
15 88 (3.66%) Automation Tester
16 82 (3.41%) Test Analyst
17 78 (3.24%) Full-Stack Developer
18 76 (3.16%) Test Leader
19 73 (3.03%) Test Manager
20 68 (2.83%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 397 (16.49%) REST
2 341 (14.17%) Terraform
3 280 (11.63%) Playwright
4 247 (10.26%) RESTful
5 237 (9.85%) Kafka
5 237 (9.85%) Spring
6 219 (9.10%) React
7 207 (8.60%) Spring Boot
8 170 (7.06%) .NET
9 139 (5.77%) HTML
10 131 (5.44%) Node.js
11 120 (4.99%) CSS
12 109 (4.53%) AngularJS
13 78 (3.24%) OAuth
14 72 (2.99%) JSON
15 62 (2.58%) pytest
16 61 (2.53%) XML
17 59 (2.45%) Middleware
18 56 (2.33%) OAuth2
18 56 (2.33%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 369 (15.33%) Cloud Native
2 204 (8.48%) Product Ownership
3 169 (7.02%) Distributed Systems
4 98 (4.07%) Enterprise Software
5 66 (2.74%) Onboarding
6 62 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
7 60 (2.49%) Data Protection Act
8 55 (2.29%) AI Agents
9 53 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
10 52 (2.16%) Mobile App
11 39 (1.62%) Virtual Team
12 28 (1.16%) Security Posture
13 24 (1.00%) Data Structures
14 23 (0.96%) Management Information System
15 22 (0.91%) Life Science
16 21 (0.87%) Data Centre
16 21 (0.87%) Embedded Systems
16 21 (0.87%) Legacy Applications
17 20 (0.83%) NHS
18 19 (0.79%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 167 (6.94%) Linux
2 99 (4.11%) Unix
3 93 (3.86%) Windows
4 46 (1.91%) Apple iOS
5 45 (1.87%) Android
6 33 (1.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 24 (1.00%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.29%) Solaris
9 6 (0.25%) VMS
10 5 (0.21%) Embedded Linux
10 5 (0.21%) Mac OS X
10 5 (0.21%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.21%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.17%) AIX
11 4 (0.17%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.17%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,442 (59.91%) CI/CD
2 1,144 (47.53%) Agile
3 894 (37.14%) DevOps
4 463 (19.24%) Microservices
5 458 (19.03%) Problem-Solving
6 457 (18.99%) Continuous Improvement
7 439 (18.24%) Software Engineering
8 420 (17.45%) Infrastructure as Code
9 406 (16.87%) Scrum
10 384 (15.95%) Validation
11 376 (15.62%) AI
12 358 (14.87%) Test Strategy
13 351 (14.58%) Containerisation
14 317 (13.17%) Observability
15 309 (12.84%) TDD
16 293 (12.17%) SDLC
17 274 (11.38%) Software Testing
18 266 (11.05%) Stakeholder Management
19 250 (10.39%) End-to-End Testing
20 234 (9.72%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 665 (27.63%) Python
2 657 (27.30%) Java
3 593 (24.64%) SQL
4 359 (14.91%) JavaScript
5 270 (11.22%) TypeScript
6 202 (8.39%) C#
7 102 (4.24%) PowerShell
8 92 (3.82%) Bash
9 53 (2.20%) Bicep
10 50 (2.08%) Kotlin
11 45 (1.87%) C++
12 35 (1.45%) Scala
13 33 (1.37%) PL/SQL
14 30 (1.25%) Go
15 28 (1.16%) Apex Code
16 27 (1.12%) Shell Script
17 26 (1.08%) C
18 23 (0.96%) Ruby
19 22 (0.91%) Perl
20 17 (0.71%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 788 (32.74%) Security Cleared
2 664 (27.59%) SC Cleared
3 131 (5.44%) Degree
4 119 (4.94%) BPSS Clearance
5 107 (4.45%) ISTQB
6 90 (3.74%) DV Cleared
7 74 (3.07%) Computer Science Degree
8 40 (1.66%) AWS Certification
9 34 (1.41%) Azure Certification
10 31 (1.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 19 (0.79%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 14 (0.58%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 14 (0.58%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.50%) ISEB
14 11 (0.46%) SAFe Agilist
15 10 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
15 10 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.37%) CISSP
16 9 (0.37%) DBS Check
17 8 (0.33%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 615 (25.55%) QA
2 209 (8.68%) Accessibility
3 166 (6.90%) Data Quality
4 95 (3.95%) WCAG
5 43 (1.79%) GDPR
6 21 (0.87%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 14 (0.58%) GRC
8 14 (0.58%) NCSC
8 14 (0.58%) SLA
9 11 (0.46%) NIST
10 7 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 6 (0.25%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.25%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.21%) FATCA
12 5 (0.21%) HL7
13 4 (0.17%) Def Stans
13 4 (0.17%) MiFID
13 4 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 483 (20.07%) Docker
2 36 (1.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 34 (1.41%) Active Directory
4 19 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.50%) Firmware
6 9 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (0.25%) Hyper-V
8 5 (0.21%) VMware NSX
9 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
10 2 (0.083%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.042%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.042%) KVM
11 1 (0.042%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.042%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 469 (19.48%) Kubernetes
2 127 (5.28%) Ansible
3 123 (5.11%) Grafana
4 92 (3.82%) Prometheus
5 40 (1.66%) Argo
6 23 (0.96%) Progress Chef
6 23 (0.96%) Puppet
7 16 (0.66%) Kibana
8 15 (0.62%) HP ALM
9 13 (0.54%) Control-M
10 11 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.29%) Kustomize
11 7 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
12 6 (0.25%) Dell DRAC
12 6 (0.25%) Istio
12 6 (0.25%) SCCM
13 5 (0.21%) HP Fortify
13 5 (0.21%) HP Quality Center
13 5 (0.21%) Packer
13 5 (0.21%) WMI
Vendors
1 227 (9.43%) Microsoft
2 199 (8.27%) Oracle
3 89 (3.70%) Databricks
4 88 (3.66%) Salesforce
5 70 (2.91%) Google
6 64 (2.66%) IBM
7 61 (2.53%) Red Hat
8 59 (2.45%) Talend
9 56 (2.33%) ServiceNow
10 55 (2.29%) SAP
11 52 (2.16%) Splunk
12 44 (1.83%) VMware
13 43 (1.79%) Informatica
14 42 (1.74%) Denodo
15 41 (1.70%) Dynatrace
16 31 (1.29%) Cisco
16 31 (1.29%) MuleSoft
17 28 (1.16%) UiPath
18 20 (0.83%) HP
18 20 (0.83%) OpenAI