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 15 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 45 44 52
Rank change year-on-year -1 +8 -14
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,708 1,497 1,757
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.69% 4.37% 3.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.30% 4.97% 4.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,157 1,009 1,272
10th Percentile £330 £325 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £688 £700 £712
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.41% -2.35% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 4 52
10th Percentile £39.48 £41.63 £34.78
25th Percentile £50.00 £42.19 £45.88
Median hourly rate £65.00 £47.50 £76.25
Median % change year-on-year +36.84% -37.70% +27.08%
75th Percentile £67.00 £61.25 £90.00
90th Percentile £67.30 £77.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £50.00 £76.25
% change year-on-year +30.00% -34.43% +27.08%

All Process and 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 32,245 30,148 39,308
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.48% 87.93% 88.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,297 18,397 26,233
10th Percentile £300 £306 £308
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £531
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.13% -3.45%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £744 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,086 1,007 1,510
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £14.41
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.30 £19.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.79
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -25.79% +25.12%
75th Percentile £48.75 £62.53 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £73.85 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £32.39 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.99% -27.21% +39.06%

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 15 December 2025.

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 15 December 2025.

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 15 December 2025. 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 1,465 £500 - 512
UK excluding London +1 799 £500 +2.41% 449
London -4 698 £510 -2.16% 166
Work from Home +6 523 £500 - 260
North of England +2 296 £488 +8.33% 110
Midlands +10 156 £495 - 57
Yorkshire -3 141 £513 +13.89% 36
South East -24 141 £500 - 151
West Midlands +7 120 £515 -2.60% 35
North West +2 114 £425 +5.07% 59
South West +7 80 £540 -0.46% 60
Scotland -12 61 £500 +6.95% 28
East of England -1 47 £550 +37.50% 47
North East +16 43 £488 +23.81% 15
East Midlands +5 36 £400 -13.51% 22
Wales +3 29 £495 -2.94% 4
Northern Ireland +1 11 £295 -43.13% 3

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 93 (5.44%) Confluence
2 54 (3.16%) SAS
3 26 (1.52%) Apache Spark
4 19 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.76%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.70%) Apache
7 8 (0.47%) Oracle Application Server
8 6 (0.35%) CMS
8 6 (0.35%) OpenStack
9 5 (0.29%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.18%) nginx
11 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.18%) WordPress
12 2 (0.12%) JBoss
12 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
12 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
13 1 (0.059%) Jupyter
Applications
1 19 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.23%) Simulink
5 4 (0.23%) Windchill
6 3 (0.18%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.12%) Trello
8 1 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 17 (1.00%) Aladdin
2 11 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.23%) SAP HR
3 4 (0.23%) SAP PLM
4 3 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
4 3 (0.18%) SAP BRIM
4 3 (0.18%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.12%) Eagle PACE
5 2 (0.12%) Markit EDM
5 2 (0.12%) Maximo
5 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.12%) Shopify
6 1 (0.059%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.059%) Algo Collateral
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.059%) PORTIA
6 1 (0.059%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 486 (28.45%) Azure
2 429 (25.12%) AWS
3 255 (14.93%) GitHub
4 204 (11.94%) Azure DevOps
5 165 (9.66%) GCP
6 134 (7.85%) GitHub Actions
7 122 (7.14%) Serverless
8 59 (3.45%) AWS Lambda
9 58 (3.40%) OpenShift
10 57 (3.34%) Power Platform
11 52 (3.04%) Amazon S3
12 46 (2.69%) AWS CloudFormation
13 45 (2.63%) Azure AKS
14 44 (2.58%) SaaS
15 39 (2.28%) Amazon EKS
15 39 (2.28%) Snowflake
16 36 (2.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 28 (1.64%) Azure Data Factory
17 28 (1.64%) Tricentis Tosca
18 27 (1.58%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 42 (2.46%) Firewall
2 36 (2.11%) HTTP
3 34 (1.99%) Wireshark
4 27 (1.58%) HTTPS
5 26 (1.52%) SSL
6 18 (1.05%) TCP/IP
6 18 (1.05%) VPN
7 15 (0.88%) SD-WAN
8 14 (0.82%) Network Security
9 12 (0.70%) DNS
9 12 (0.70%) Ethernet
10 11 (0.64%) Multicast
11 10 (0.59%) WAN
12 9 (0.53%) FTP
13 8 (0.47%) AMQP
14 6 (0.35%) Internet
14 6 (0.35%) VLAN
15 5 (0.29%) Broadband
15 5 (0.29%) Cisco IPT
15 5 (0.29%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 109 (6.38%) PostgreSQL
2 94 (5.50%) NoSQL
3 90 (5.27%) MongoDB
4 76 (4.45%) Relational Database
5 62 (3.63%) SQL Server
6 45 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
7 29 (1.70%) Power BI
8 28 (1.64%) Pentaho
9 25 (1.46%) BigQuery
10 24 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
10 24 (1.41%) DynamoDB
11 23 (1.35%) MySQL
12 21 (1.23%) Oracle Database
13 20 (1.17%) Big Data
13 20 (1.17%) Data Lake
14 16 (0.94%) Apache Cassandra
14 16 (0.94%) Redis
15 15 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
15 15 (0.88%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 14 (0.82%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 316 (18.50%) Git
2 312 (18.27%) Jenkins
3 309 (18.09%) JIRA
4 268 (15.69%) Selenium
5 237 (13.88%) GitLab
6 153 (8.96%) Cucumber
7 132 (7.73%) Postman
8 116 (6.79%) Cypress.io
9 86 (5.04%) JUnit
10 75 (4.39%) JMeter
11 74 (4.33%) REST Assured
12 52 (3.04%) Bitbucket
13 43 (2.52%) SonarQube
14 39 (2.28%) SpecFlow
15 33 (1.93%) Mockito
16 31 (1.81%) Maven
16 31 (1.81%) TestRail
17 30 (1.76%) Gatling
18 26 (1.52%) Zephyr
19 24 (1.41%) Appium
General
1 469 (27.46%) Social Skills
2 298 (17.45%) Finance
3 218 (12.76%) Public Sector
4 173 (10.13%) Analytical Skills
5 124 (7.26%) Banking
6 33 (1.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 32 (1.87%) Telecoms
8 29 (1.70%) Documentation Skills
9 23 (1.35%) Front Office
9 23 (1.35%) Pharmaceutical
10 22 (1.29%) Investment Banking
10 22 (1.29%) Manufacturing
10 22 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
11 17 (1.00%) Financial Institution
12 16 (0.94%) Marketing
13 15 (0.88%) Electronics
14 13 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
15 12 (0.70%) Military
16 11 (0.64%) Aerospace
16 11 (0.64%) Retail
Job Titles
1 379 (22.19%) Developer
2 280 (16.39%) Senior
3 208 (12.18%) Tester
4 170 (9.95%) Test Engineer
5 144 (8.43%) Lead
6 120 (7.03%) Automation Tester
7 113 (6.62%) Java Developer
8 80 (4.68%) Software Engineer
9 76 (4.45%) Data Engineer
10 73 (4.27%) Analyst
11 71 (4.16%) Test Automation Engineer
12 67 (3.92%) DevOps Engineer
12 67 (3.92%) QA Engineer
13 64 (3.75%) Senior Developer
14 55 (3.22%) Automation Engineer
14 55 (3.22%) Test Analyst
15 49 (2.87%) Test Manager
16 47 (2.75%) Test Leader
17 41 (2.40%) Full-Stack Developer
18 40 (2.34%) Senior Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 217 (12.70%) REST
2 173 (10.13%) Playwright
3 146 (8.55%) React
4 133 (7.79%) .NET
5 131 (7.67%) RESTful
6 125 (7.32%) Node.js
7 124 (7.26%) Spring
8 122 (7.14%) Kafka
9 117 (6.85%) Spring Boot
10 79 (4.63%) JSON
11 73 (4.27%) XML
12 72 (4.22%) HTML
13 68 (3.98%) CSS
13 68 (3.98%) SOAP
14 67 (3.92%) pytest
15 64 (3.75%) AngularJS
16 48 (2.81%) Jest
17 44 (2.58%) JMS
18 41 (2.40%) Web Services
19 37 (2.17%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 165 (9.66%) Cloud Native
2 118 (6.91%) Product Ownership
3 48 (2.81%) Mobile App
4 47 (2.75%) Distributed Systems
5 45 (2.63%) Security Posture
6 32 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
7 31 (1.81%) Onboarding
8 30 (1.76%) Public Cloud
9 29 (1.70%) Algorithms
10 24 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
10 24 (1.41%) Virtual Team
11 22 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
11 22 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
12 20 (1.17%) Data Structures
13 19 (1.11%) Management Information System
14 17 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
15 16 (0.94%) Genomics
15 16 (0.94%) Life Science
16 15 (0.88%) Data Centre
16 15 (0.88%) Synthetic Data
Operating Systems
1 170 (9.95%) Linux
2 82 (4.80%) Windows
3 57 (3.34%) Unix
4 40 (2.34%) Android
5 34 (1.99%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.17%) Mac OS X
7 16 (0.94%) Windows Server
8 13 (0.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 10 (0.59%) Kali Linux
10 8 (0.47%) CentOS
11 3 (0.18%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.18%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
12 2 (0.12%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.12%) VMS
13 1 (0.059%) Solaris
13 1 (0.059%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.059%) Windows Embedded Compact
13 1 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.059%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 857 (50.18%) CI/CD
2 845 (49.47%) Agile
3 659 (38.58%) DevOps
4 424 (24.82%) Problem-Solving
5 277 (16.22%) Microservices
6 256 (14.99%) Containerisation
7 254 (14.87%) Scrum
8 250 (14.64%) Test Strategy
9 246 (14.40%) Continuous Improvement
10 223 (13.06%) TDD
11 209 (12.24%) Infrastructure as Code
12 207 (12.12%) Test Scripting
13 206 (12.06%) Software Engineering
14 180 (10.54%) SDLC
15 171 (10.01%) AI
16 169 (9.89%) BDD
16 169 (9.89%) Software Testing
17 168 (9.84%) Validation
18 156 (9.13%) Analytics
19 146 (8.55%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 506 (29.63%) Python
2 406 (23.77%) Java
3 323 (18.91%) SQL
4 239 (13.99%) JavaScript
5 201 (11.77%) TypeScript
6 173 (10.13%) C#
7 98 (5.74%) Bash
8 65 (3.81%) PowerShell
9 42 (2.46%) C++
10 39 (2.28%) Go
11 23 (1.35%) Kotlin
12 22 (1.29%) Bicep
13 19 (1.11%) PL/SQL
14 16 (0.94%) PHP
14 16 (0.94%) Ruby
15 15 (0.88%) Scala
16 13 (0.76%) Shell Script
16 13 (0.76%) Swift
17 12 (0.70%) Groovy
17 12 (0.70%) Perl
Qualifications
1 429 (25.12%) Security Cleared
2 333 (19.50%) SC Cleared
3 110 (6.44%) Degree
4 71 (4.16%) ISTQB
5 57 (3.34%) Computer Science Degree
6 48 (2.81%) DV Cleared
7 45 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
8 27 (1.58%) AWS Certification
9 24 (1.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 24 (1.41%) Master's Degree
10 20 (1.17%) CISSP
11 18 (1.05%) OSCP
12 15 (0.88%) Azure Certification
13 14 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
13 14 (0.82%) CISM
13 14 (0.82%) MCP
14 13 (0.76%) CEH
14 13 (0.76%) GPEN
15 12 (0.70%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 12 (0.70%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (22.31%) QA
2 136 (7.96%) Accessibility
3 74 (4.33%) Data Quality
4 42 (2.46%) NIST
5 37 (2.17%) GDPR
5 37 (2.17%) WCAG
6 36 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 19 (1.11%) NCSC
8 18 (1.05%) EU AI Act
8 18 (1.05%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.94%) NIST 800
10 14 (0.82%) PSD2
11 10 (0.59%) SEPA
12 9 (0.53%) ISO 20022
13 8 (0.47%) COBIT
13 8 (0.47%) SLA
14 7 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 7 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 7 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.41%) SOC 2
System Software
1 367 (21.49%) Docker
2 27 (1.58%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.47%) Firmware
4 5 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
6 3 (0.18%) QEMU
6 3 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
6 3 (0.18%) zsh
7 2 (0.12%) Embedded Firmware
7 2 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.12%) vSphere
8 1 (0.059%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 1 (0.059%) HDFS
8 1 (0.059%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.059%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 326 (19.09%) Kubernetes
2 216 (12.65%) Terraform
3 131 (7.67%) Ansible
4 86 (5.04%) Grafana
5 51 (2.99%) Prometheus
6 17 (1.00%) Progress Chef
7 16 (0.94%) CSIRT
7 16 (0.94%) Nmap
8 15 (0.88%) Argo
8 15 (0.88%) HP ALM
9 13 (0.76%) NetBackup
10 12 (0.70%) Puppet
10 12 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.41%) Kibana
11 7 (0.41%) Nessus
11 7 (0.41%) Podman
12 5 (0.29%) RSA Archer
13 4 (0.23%) Rancher
13 4 (0.23%) SCCM
13 4 (0.23%) vRealize
Vendors
1 169 (9.89%) Microsoft
2 155 (9.07%) Oracle
3 68 (3.98%) ServiceNow
4 67 (3.92%) Splunk
5 65 (3.81%) SAP
6 64 (3.75%) Databricks
7 59 (3.45%) Salesforce
8 45 (2.63%) Google
9 30 (1.76%) Talend
10 28 (1.64%) Denodo
11 26 (1.52%) VMware
12 24 (1.41%) Cisco
13 23 (1.35%) F5
14 22 (1.29%) webMethods
15 20 (1.17%) IBM
16 19 (1.11%) Red Hat
17 18 (1.05%) Atlassian
18 17 (1.00%) MuleSoft
19 16 (0.94%) Dynatrace
19 16 (0.94%) HP