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

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 45 58
Rank change year-on-year -3 +13 -13
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,969 1,370 1,450
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.25% 4.65% 3.34%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.02% 5.13% 3.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,306 938 953
10th Percentile £331 £325 £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 £638
90th Percentile £671 £738 £720
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.05% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 17 55
10th Percentile £34.57 £33.10 £49.30
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £83.75
90th Percentile - £71.30 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -12.00% +6.38%

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 39,258 26,720 37,503
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.83% 90.74% 86.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,768 17,301 24,236
10th Percentile £318 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £484 £500
% change year-on-year +0.31% -3.30% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,351 1,041 2,413
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -14.29% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.00 £71.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £29.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.93% -17.14% -6.67%

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 21 April 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 21 April 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 21 April 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 1,678 £475 -5.00% 608
UK excluding London -5 889 £470 -1.05% 536
London -2 835 £500 - 172
Work from Home -5 571 £475 -5.00% 292
North of England +9 323 £475 +5.56% 125
Midlands +2 179 £449 -4.06% 82
South East -38 174 £505 -1.56% 137
West Midlands +10 152 £463 -8.86% 48
North West +12 141 £463 +2.78% 59
Yorkshire -15 136 £500 - 33
South West 0 89 £475 -8.21% 66
East of England +1 54 £600 +24.35% 66
North East +11 51 £419 +7.37% 33
Scotland -23 45 £415 -5.74% 40
Wales -4 28 £475 +20.25% 14
East Midlands -33 27 £400 -0.93% 34
Northern Ireland +20 20 £475 +16.28% 21
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
1 136 (6.91%) Confluence
2 47 (2.39%) SAS
3 38 (1.93%) Apache Spark
4 29 (1.47%) Apache Airflow
5 11 (0.56%) Apache
5 11 (0.56%) SharePoint
6 8 (0.41%) Appian
7 7 (0.36%) nginx
7 7 (0.36%) Tomcat
7 7 (0.36%) WebLogic
8 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.30%) Camunda
8 6 (0.30%) CMS
9 4 (0.20%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.10%) Mendix
11 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 27 (1.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 13 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
4 11 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 10 (0.51%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.15%) Simulink
8 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.051%) Mingle
9 1 (0.051%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 23 (1.17%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.36%) Findur
4 7 (0.36%) Shopify
5 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
6 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.25%) Maximo
7 4 (0.20%) Workday HCM
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%) SAP BRIM
8 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
9 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.10%) NetSuite
9 2 (0.10%) SAP FI
9 2 (0.10%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 565 (28.69%) Azure
2 521 (26.46%) AWS
3 339 (17.22%) GitHub
4 258 (13.10%) Azure DevOps
5 193 (9.80%) GitHub Actions
6 153 (7.77%) GCP
7 135 (6.86%) Serverless
8 83 (4.22%) AWS Lambda
9 79 (4.01%) Amazon S3
10 65 (3.30%) Power Platform
11 60 (3.05%) OpenShift
12 53 (2.69%) AWS CloudFormation
13 52 (2.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 50 (2.54%) Amazon ECS
15 42 (2.13%) Snowflake
16 40 (2.03%) Azure AKS
17 35 (1.78%) Amazon EKS
18 34 (1.73%) Azure Data Factory
19 32 (1.63%) SaaS
20 31 (1.57%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.37%) HTTP
2 24 (1.22%) Firewall
3 12 (0.61%) FTP
3 12 (0.61%) SAN
3 12 (0.61%) SSL
3 12 (0.61%) VPN
4 11 (0.56%) Network Security
4 11 (0.56%) TCP/IP
5 9 (0.46%) Ethernet
6 8 (0.41%) MPLS
6 8 (0.41%) SD-WAN
6 8 (0.41%) WAN
7 7 (0.36%) Wireshark
8 6 (0.30%) 5G
8 6 (0.30%) HTTPS
8 6 (0.30%) Multicast
9 5 (0.25%) AMQP
9 5 (0.25%) Cisco IPT
9 5 (0.25%) DNS
9 5 (0.25%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (5.59%) PostgreSQL
2 101 (5.13%) NoSQL
3 92 (4.67%) MongoDB
4 82 (4.16%) SQL Server
5 66 (3.35%) Data Warehouse
6 65 (3.30%) Relational Database
7 45 (2.29%) Power BI
8 44 (2.23%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.78%) Metadata
10 33 (1.68%) MySQL
10 33 (1.68%) Pentaho
11 27 (1.37%) Big Data
12 26 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
12 26 (1.32%) Oracle Reports
12 26 (1.32%) Tableau
13 25 (1.27%) Redis
14 24 (1.22%) BigQuery
15 23 (1.17%) Amazon Athena
16 22 (1.12%) Amazon Aurora
17 16 (0.81%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 391 (19.86%) JIRA
2 370 (18.79%) Git
3 318 (16.15%) Jenkins
4 282 (14.32%) Selenium
5 260 (13.20%) GitLab
6 166 (8.43%) Postman
7 153 (7.77%) Cucumber
8 100 (5.08%) Cypress.io
9 98 (4.98%) JUnit
10 91 (4.62%) REST Assured
11 89 (4.52%) JMeter
12 56 (2.84%) WebDriver
13 53 (2.69%) Zephyr
14 44 (2.23%) SonarQube
15 38 (1.93%) SpecFlow
16 34 (1.73%) Maven
16 34 (1.73%) TestRail
17 33 (1.68%) Gatling
17 33 (1.68%) Mockito
18 31 (1.57%) Gradle
General
1 515 (26.16%) Social Skills
2 342 (17.37%) Finance
3 298 (15.13%) Public Sector
4 214 (10.87%) Analytical Skills
5 156 (7.92%) Banking
6 42 (2.13%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (1.83%) Investment Banking
8 33 (1.68%) Front Office
9 30 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 26 (1.32%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
12 21 (1.07%) Legal
12 21 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
13 17 (0.86%) Aerospace
13 17 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
14 14 (0.71%) Military
14 14 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
15 12 (0.61%) Back Office
15 12 (0.61%) Financial Institution
15 12 (0.61%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 427 (21.69%) Developer
2 297 (15.08%) Senior
3 215 (10.92%) Tester
4 211 (10.72%) Test Engineer
5 206 (10.46%) Lead
6 109 (5.54%) Java Developer
7 107 (5.43%) Analyst
7 107 (5.43%) Automation Tester
7 107 (5.43%) Data Engineer
8 97 (4.93%) Test Automation Engineer
9 85 (4.32%) QA Engineer
10 84 (4.27%) Test Leader
11 82 (4.16%) Architect
12 80 (4.06%) DevOps Engineer
12 80 (4.06%) Software Engineer
13 73 (3.71%) Senior Developer
14 72 (3.66%) Test Analyst
15 63 (3.20%) Test Manager
16 60 (3.05%) Full-Stack Developer
17 52 (2.64%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 242 (12.29%) Playwright
2 234 (11.88%) REST
3 179 (9.09%) React
4 150 (7.62%) RESTful
5 146 (7.41%) Node.js
6 143 (7.26%) Spring
7 137 (6.96%) .NET
8 130 (6.60%) Kafka
9 118 (5.99%) Spring Boot
10 81 (4.11%) AngularJS
11 72 (3.66%) HTML
11 72 (3.66%) pytest
12 59 (3.00%) CSS
12 59 (3.00%) Jest
12 59 (3.00%) OAuth
13 46 (2.34%) JSON
14 41 (2.08%) Gherkin
15 40 (2.03%) GraphQL
15 40 (2.03%) OpenID
16 38 (1.93%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 210 (10.67%) Cloud Native
2 150 (7.62%) Product Ownership
3 95 (4.82%) Distributed Systems
4 50 (2.54%) Mobile App
5 47 (2.39%) Legacy Systems
6 44 (2.23%) Data Protection Act
7 37 (1.88%) Onboarding
8 35 (1.78%) Enterprise Software
8 35 (1.78%) Virtual Team
9 31 (1.57%) NHS
10 30 (1.52%) Algorithms
11 29 (1.47%) Security Posture
12 28 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
13 23 (1.17%) Management Information System
14 22 (1.12%) Data Centre
15 20 (1.02%) Data Structures
15 20 (1.02%) Derivative
16 19 (0.96%) Distributed Architecture
16 19 (0.96%) Equities
16 19 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 127 (6.45%) Linux
2 84 (4.27%) Windows
3 48 (2.44%) Android
4 42 (2.13%) Unix
5 40 (2.03%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 20 (1.02%) Windows Server
7 13 (0.66%) Mac OS X
8 9 (0.46%) Mac OS
9 8 (0.41%) Solaris
10 7 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
11 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
11 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.20%) CentOS
12 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.15%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.051%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.051%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.051%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,037 (52.67%) CI/CD
2 906 (46.01%) Agile
3 699 (35.50%) DevOps
4 405 (20.57%) Problem-Solving
5 325 (16.51%) Continuous Improvement
6 299 (15.19%) Microservices
7 282 (14.32%) Test Strategy
8 274 (13.92%) Scrum
9 268 (13.61%) Infrastructure as Code
10 259 (13.15%) Validation
11 252 (12.80%) Containerisation
12 224 (11.38%) AI
12 224 (11.38%) Software Engineering
13 222 (11.27%) TDD
14 220 (11.17%) Observability
15 210 (10.67%) Test Scripting
16 204 (10.36%) SDLC
17 203 (10.31%) Analytics
17 203 (10.31%) Regression Testing
18 193 (9.80%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 556 (28.24%) Python
2 489 (24.83%) Java
3 423 (21.48%) SQL
4 291 (14.78%) JavaScript
5 273 (13.86%) TypeScript
6 206 (10.46%) C#
7 75 (3.81%) PowerShell
8 69 (3.50%) Bash
9 52 (2.64%) C++
10 32 (1.63%) C
11 31 (1.57%) Kotlin
11 31 (1.57%) Scala
12 29 (1.47%) Ruby
13 28 (1.42%) PL/SQL
14 27 (1.37%) Apex Code
14 27 (1.37%) Bicep
15 21 (1.07%) Go
16 17 (0.86%) Swift
17 13 (0.66%) Groovy
18 10 (0.51%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 597 (30.32%) Security Cleared
2 470 (23.87%) SC Cleared
3 96 (4.88%) ISTQB
4 89 (4.52%) Degree
5 82 (4.16%) BPSS Clearance
6 60 (3.05%) DV Cleared
7 52 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (1.52%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 18 (0.91%) Master's Degree
10 15 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
11 13 (0.66%) Azure Certification
12 12 (0.61%) AWS Certification
13 9 (0.46%) CCNP
13 9 (0.46%) CISSP
13 9 (0.46%) DBS Check
13 9 (0.46%) ISEB
13 9 (0.46%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 9 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.41%) Oracle Certification
15 7 (0.36%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 437 (22.19%) QA
2 139 (7.06%) Accessibility
3 115 (5.84%) Data Quality
4 59 (3.00%) WCAG
5 45 (2.29%) GDPR
6 21 (1.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 15 (0.76%) SLA
8 14 (0.71%) ISO 20022
9 13 (0.66%) NCSC
10 11 (0.56%) NIST
10 11 (0.56%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.51%) Def Stans
12 9 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.41%) PSD2
14 7 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 7 (0.36%) SEPA
15 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
16 5 (0.25%) HL7
16 5 (0.25%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.25%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 359 (18.23%) Docker
2 27 (1.37%) Active Directory
3 14 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (0.66%) Firmware
5 9 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.36%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 7 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
8 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.10%) SRDF
11 1 (0.051%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.051%) HDFS
11 1 (0.051%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.051%) KVM
11 1 (0.051%) Squid
11 1 (0.051%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.051%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 338 (17.17%) Kubernetes
2 239 (12.14%) Terraform
3 109 (5.54%) Grafana
4 81 (4.11%) Prometheus
5 70 (3.56%) Ansible
6 27 (1.37%) Argo
7 25 (1.27%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.86%) Puppet
9 16 (0.81%) 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
11 10 (0.51%) Progress Chef
12 8 (0.41%) NetBackup
13 7 (0.36%) Dell DRAC
14 6 (0.30%) Nmap
14 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
14 6 (0.30%) Rancher
15 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 169 (8.58%) Microsoft
2 167 (8.48%) Oracle
3 80 (4.06%) Salesforce
4 73 (3.71%) Databricks
5 67 (3.40%) ServiceNow
6 57 (2.89%) Google
6 57 (2.89%) Splunk
7 48 (2.44%) SAP
8 47 (2.39%) Red Hat
9 45 (2.29%) Talend
10 31 (1.57%) Denodo
11 30 (1.52%) IBM
12 28 (1.42%) HP
13 25 (1.27%) VMware
14 20 (1.02%) Cisco
14 20 (1.02%) Dynatrace
15 16 (0.81%) Blue Prism
15 16 (0.81%) MuleSoft
15 16 (0.81%) UiPath
15 16 (0.81%) Workday