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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 51 47
Rank change year-on-year +7 -4 +4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,408 1,496 1,571
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.43% 4.54% 4.08%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.24% 5.02% 4.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,539 1,018 1,050
10th Percentile £325 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £668 £695 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 39 18
10th Percentile £40.00 £31.71 £40.88
25th Percentile £56.25 £45.63 £43.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -4.35% -22.03%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £77.50 £69.80 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.22 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +18.63% - -16.36%

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 45,960 29,830 33,021
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.47% 90.53% 85.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,897 18,534 20,247
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £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 £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,123 1,812 1,459
10th Percentile £13.84 £14.23 £14.96
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -1.91%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.76 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +84.69% -47.67% +1.18%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 2,022 £475 -5.00% 2,740
UK excluding London -2 1,178 £450 -5.26% 1,646
London +6 911 £500 -1.72% 1,365
Work from Home 0 657 £476 +0.11% 1,130
North of England +4 409 £453 -1.52% 407
Midlands +13 254 £450 -2.70% 180
West Midlands +20 239 £459 -11.48% 117
South East -12 230 £449 -10.25% 379
Yorkshire -6 171 £470 -6.09% 122
North West -16 137 £492 +15.76% 224
South West 0 113 £456 -15.08% 221
North East +7 108 £425 -5.03% 61
Scotland -18 93 £475 -5.00% 208
East of England +13 87 £425 +24.09% 177
Wales -4 26 £475 +20.63% 31
East Midlands -43 15 £418 +17.61% 63
Northern Ireland +3 7 £513 +345.65% 51
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 1

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
1 190 (7.89%) Confluence
2 60 (2.49%) Apache Airflow
3 47 (1.95%) SharePoint
4 46 (1.91%) Apache Spark
5 40 (1.66%) SAS
6 26 (1.08%) Apache
7 16 (0.66%) 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 5 (0.21%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.17%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.17%) ColdFusion
12 4 (0.17%) Jupyter
12 4 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 3 (0.12%) Kentico
Applications
1 24 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.29%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.17%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 2 (0.083%) Mingle
7 2 (0.083%) Simulink
7 2 (0.083%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 29 (1.20%) Dynamics CRM
2 28 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.54%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.42%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.42%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.29%) SAP GRC
6 6 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.25%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.17%) Findur
7 4 (0.17%) FLEXCUBE
8 3 (0.12%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.12%) Finacle
8 3 (0.12%) Temenos T24
9 2 (0.083%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.083%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.083%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.083%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.083%) Shopify
10 1 (0.042%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 747 (31.02%) AWS
2 713 (29.61%) Azure
3 417 (17.32%) GitHub
4 329 (13.66%) Azure DevOps
5 253 (10.51%) GitHub Actions
6 173 (7.18%) GCP
7 171 (7.10%) Serverless
8 129 (5.36%) AWS Lambda
9 113 (4.69%) Power Platform
10 98 (4.07%) Amazon S3
11 83 (3.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 79 (3.28%) GitHub Copilot
13 78 (3.24%) OpenShift
14 68 (2.82%) Amazon ECS
15 66 (2.74%) Amazon EKS
15 66 (2.74%) AWS CloudFormation
16 61 (2.53%) dbt
17 60 (2.49%) Snowflake
18 49 (2.03%) Anthropic Claude
19 48 (1.99%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.12%) HTTP
2 24 (1.00%) DNS
2 24 (1.00%) Firewall
3 22 (0.91%) 4G
4 21 (0.87%) 5G
5 20 (0.83%) TCP/IP
6 18 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
7 16 (0.66%) Network Security
8 15 (0.62%) 2G
8 15 (0.62%) 3G
8 15 (0.62%) Diameter Protocol
8 15 (0.62%) SIGTRAN
8 15 (0.62%) SS7
9 14 (0.58%) WAN
10 13 (0.54%) Broadband
10 13 (0.54%) LAN
11 12 (0.50%) BGP
12 11 (0.46%) DHCP
12 11 (0.46%) Ethernet VPN
12 11 (0.46%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 146 (6.06%) PostgreSQL
2 125 (5.19%) Data Warehouse
2 125 (5.19%) MongoDB
3 115 (4.78%) Relational Database
4 109 (4.53%) NoSQL
5 98 (4.07%) SQL Server
6 84 (3.49%) Power BI
7 53 (2.20%) Metadata
8 43 (1.79%) DynamoDB
9 39 (1.62%) Oracle Reports
10 38 (1.58%) Data Lake
11 36 (1.50%) MySQL
12 35 (1.45%) Big Data
13 34 (1.41%) Pentaho
14 32 (1.33%) Amazon Athena
14 32 (1.33%) Redis
15 31 (1.29%) Amazon Redshift
16 28 (1.16%) Amazon RDS
16 28 (1.16%) Elasticsearch
17 26 (1.08%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 538 (22.34%) Git
2 399 (16.57%) JIRA
3 392 (16.28%) Jenkins
4 328 (13.62%) GitLab
5 299 (12.42%) Selenium
6 167 (6.94%) Postman
7 155 (6.44%) Cucumber
8 134 (5.56%) JUnit
9 124 (5.15%) Cypress.io
10 106 (4.40%) REST Assured
11 93 (3.86%) JMeter
12 87 (3.61%) SonarQube
13 66 (2.74%) Gatling
13 66 (2.74%) Maven
14 63 (2.62%) Zephyr
15 60 (2.49%) Gradle
16 56 (2.33%) Mockito
17 50 (2.08%) WebDriver
18 36 (1.50%) Bitbucket
19 29 (1.20%) SpecFlow
General
1 664 (27.57%) Social Skills
2 444 (18.44%) Finance
3 339 (14.08%) Public Sector
4 334 (13.87%) Analytical Skills
5 217 (9.01%) Banking
6 79 (3.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 51 (2.12%) Telecoms
8 43 (1.79%) Front Office
9 36 (1.50%) Investment Banking
10 33 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
10 33 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
10 33 (1.37%) Retail
11 31 (1.29%) Military
12 22 (0.91%) Financial Institution
13 21 (0.87%) Law
14 20 (0.83%) Marketing
15 19 (0.79%) Aerospace
16 18 (0.75%) Manufacturing
17 15 (0.62%) Back Office
18 14 (0.58%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 559 (23.21%) Developer
2 399 (16.57%) Senior
3 238 (9.88%) Lead
4 230 (9.55%) Test Engineer
5 194 (8.06%) Tester
6 182 (7.56%) Java Developer
7 148 (6.15%) Data Engineer
8 129 (5.36%) Software Engineer
9 124 (5.15%) Analyst
10 122 (5.07%) DevOps Engineer
11 121 (5.02%) Senior Developer
12 104 (4.32%) Architect
13 102 (4.24%) Test Automation Engineer
14 97 (4.03%) QA Engineer
15 85 (3.53%) Automation Tester
16 81 (3.36%) Test Analyst
17 80 (3.32%) Full-Stack Developer
18 75 (3.11%) Test Leader
19 74 (3.07%) Test Manager
20 68 (2.82%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 418 (17.36%) REST
2 344 (14.29%) Terraform
3 287 (11.92%) Playwright
4 251 (10.42%) RESTful
5 239 (9.93%) Spring
6 237 (9.84%) Kafka
7 223 (9.26%) React
8 207 (8.60%) Spring Boot
9 174 (7.23%) .NET
10 144 (5.98%) HTML
11 140 (5.81%) Node.js
12 125 (5.19%) CSS
13 105 (4.36%) AngularJS
14 86 (3.57%) OAuth
15 79 (3.28%) JSON
16 64 (2.66%) pytest
17 62 (2.57%) Middleware
18 60 (2.49%) OAuth2
19 58 (2.41%) Swagger
19 58 (2.41%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 376 (15.61%) Cloud Native
2 208 (8.64%) Product Ownership
3 175 (7.27%) Distributed Systems
4 98 (4.07%) Enterprise Software
5 72 (2.99%) Onboarding
6 63 (2.62%) AI Agents
6 63 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
7 57 (2.37%) Self-Motivation
8 55 (2.28%) Data Protection Act
9 49 (2.03%) Mobile App
10 38 (1.58%) Virtual Team
11 30 (1.25%) Security Posture
12 28 (1.16%) Data Structures
13 25 (1.04%) Data Centre
13 25 (1.04%) Management Information System
14 24 (1.00%) Legacy Applications
15 22 (0.91%) Life Science
15 22 (0.91%) Private Cloud
16 21 (0.87%) Embedded Systems
17 20 (0.83%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 171 (7.10%) Linux
2 100 (4.15%) Unix
2 100 (4.15%) Windows
3 45 (1.87%) Apple iOS
4 43 (1.79%) Android
5 30 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (1.04%) Windows Server
7 7 (0.29%) VMS
8 6 (0.25%) Solaris
9 5 (0.21%) Mac OS X
9 5 (0.21%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.21%) Windows 7
9 5 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.17%) AIX
10 4 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
10 4 (0.17%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.17%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,465 (60.84%) CI/CD
2 1,166 (48.42%) Agile
3 889 (36.92%) DevOps
4 470 (19.52%) Microservices
5 467 (19.39%) Problem-Solving
6 466 (19.35%) Continuous Improvement
7 450 (18.69%) Software Engineering
8 427 (17.73%) Infrastructure as Code
9 412 (17.11%) Scrum
10 396 (16.45%) Validation
11 395 (16.40%) AI
12 358 (14.87%) Containerisation
13 354 (14.70%) Test Strategy
14 320 (13.29%) Observability
15 314 (13.04%) TDD
16 295 (12.25%) SDLC
17 280 (11.63%) Software Testing
18 272 (11.30%) Stakeholder Management
19 254 (10.55%) End-to-End Testing
20 236 (9.80%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 669 (27.78%) Java
2 666 (27.66%) Python
3 599 (24.88%) SQL
4 359 (14.91%) JavaScript
5 269 (11.17%) TypeScript
6 198 (8.22%) C#
7 99 (4.11%) PowerShell
8 90 (3.74%) Bash
9 52 (2.16%) Bicep
10 48 (1.99%) Kotlin
11 45 (1.87%) C++
12 43 (1.79%) Scala
13 34 (1.41%) Go
14 33 (1.37%) PL/SQL
15 30 (1.25%) Shell Script
16 26 (1.08%) Apex Code
17 24 (1.00%) C
18 23 (0.96%) Perl
19 20 (0.83%) Ruby
20 16 (0.66%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 777 (32.27%) Security Cleared
2 658 (27.33%) SC Cleared
3 133 (5.52%) Degree
4 125 (5.19%) BPSS Clearance
5 104 (4.32%) ISTQB
6 90 (3.74%) DV Cleared
7 76 (3.16%) Computer Science Degree
8 38 (1.58%) AWS Certification
9 36 (1.50%) Azure Certification
10 28 (1.16%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.66%) 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%) Microsoft Certification
15 10 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
16 9 (0.37%) CISSP
17 8 (0.33%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 8 (0.33%) DBS Check
17 8 (0.33%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 622 (25.83%) QA
2 218 (9.05%) Accessibility
3 172 (7.14%) Data Quality
4 98 (4.07%) WCAG
5 44 (1.83%) GDPR
6 23 (0.96%) ISO 20022
7 14 (0.58%) GRC
8 13 (0.54%) NCSC
8 13 (0.54%) SLA
9 11 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 11 (0.46%) NIST
10 7 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.25%) SEPA
11 6 (0.25%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.21%) FATCA
12 5 (0.21%) PCI DSS
13 4 (0.17%) HL7
13 4 (0.17%) MiFID
13 4 (0.17%) SOC 2
14 3 (0.12%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 489 (20.31%) Docker
2 40 (1.66%) VMware Infrastructure
3 35 (1.45%) Active Directory
4 19 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (0.54%) Firmware
6 10 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.29%) VMware NSX
8 6 (0.25%) Hyper-V
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
1 477 (19.81%) Kubernetes
2 133 (5.52%) Ansible
3 129 (5.36%) Grafana
4 90 (3.74%) Prometheus
5 39 (1.62%) Argo
6 24 (1.00%) Progress Chef
7 23 (0.96%) Kibana
7 23 (0.96%) Puppet
8 16 (0.66%) HP ALM
9 13 (0.54%) Control-M
9 13 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.33%) Microsoft Intune
11 7 (0.29%) Kustomize
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%) Packer
13 5 (0.21%) WMI
14 4 (0.17%) Rancher
Vendors
1 229 (9.51%) Microsoft
2 196 (8.14%) Oracle
3 95 (3.95%) Databricks
4 81 (3.36%) Salesforce
5 70 (2.91%) Google
6 64 (2.66%) ServiceNow
7 63 (2.62%) IBM
8 59 (2.45%) Red Hat
8 59 (2.45%) Talend
9 58 (2.41%) SAP
9 58 (2.41%) Splunk
10 49 (2.03%) VMware
11 45 (1.87%) Denodo
11 45 (1.87%) Informatica
12 42 (1.74%) Dynatrace
13 34 (1.41%) Cisco
13 34 (1.41%) MuleSoft
14 29 (1.20%) UiPath
15 21 (0.87%) HP
15 21 (0.87%) OpenAI