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

6 months to
7 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 44 51
Rank change year-on-year -4 +7 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,791 1,383 1,685
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.59% 4.45% 3.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.27% 4.98% 4.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,219 920 1,205
10th Percentile £338 £330 £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 £614 £625
90th Percentile £688 £734 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.21% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 5 63
10th Percentile £21.12 £41.75 £46.25
25th Percentile £43.22 £42.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £74.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.54% +5.71% +22.81%
75th Percentile £67.25 £77.19 £90.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £83.38 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £61.25 £75.60 £73.75
% change year-on-year -18.98% +2.50% +29.39%

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 33,986 27,793 39,321
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.08% 89.38% 87.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,549 16,924 25,862
10th Percentile £306 £306 £300
25th Percentile £406 £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 £716 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -3.88% -0.80% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,070 859 2,130
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £16.35
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% +7.69%
75th Percentile £58.75 £63.50 £61.13
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.51 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.20% -9.97% +11.43%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 1,545 £500 - 618
UK excluding London 0 815 £495 +4.21% 513
London 0 755 £500 -2.20% 205
Work from Home +3 538 £500 - 335
North of England +1 321 £500 +17.65% 125
South East -20 160 £484 -3.30% 169
Midlands +8 144 £492 +3.96% 55
Yorkshire -12 144 £525 +16.67% 33
North West +5 130 £447 +11.12% 80
West Midlands +4 114 £515 +5.97% 33
South West +8 79 £523 -6.70% 71
East of England +4 53 £570 +42.50% 60
North East +16 51 £488 +31.33% 12
Scotland -21 42 £465 -1.27% 32
East Midlands -11 30 £400 -13.51% 22
Wales +6 27 £509 +1.80% 13
Northern Ireland +12 18 £475 -2.56% 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
1 106 (5.92%) Confluence
2 46 (2.57%) SAS
3 23 (1.28%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.78%) SharePoint
5 11 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
6 10 (0.56%) Apache
7 7 (0.39%) Appian
8 6 (0.34%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.34%) Oracle Application Server
9 5 (0.28%) CMS
9 5 (0.28%) nginx
9 5 (0.28%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.22%) Camunda
10 4 (0.22%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.17%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.17%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.11%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 24 (1.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
4 10 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.056%) Oracle Smart View
8 1 (0.056%) SOLIDWORKS
8 1 (0.056%) Trello
Business Applications
1 19 (1.06%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.28%) Workday HCM
4 4 (0.22%) Loan IQ
4 4 (0.22%) Maximo
4 4 (0.22%) SAP HR
5 3 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
5 3 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
6 2 (0.11%) Eagle PACE
6 2 (0.11%) iTrent
6 2 (0.11%) Markit EDM
6 2 (0.11%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.11%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.11%) Shopify
6 2 (0.11%) Summit
7 1 (0.056%) Algo Collateral
7 1 (0.056%) CODA-Financials
7 1 (0.056%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 504 (28.14%) Azure
2 445 (24.85%) AWS
3 288 (16.08%) GitHub
4 221 (12.34%) Azure DevOps
5 182 (10.16%) GCP
6 155 (8.65%) GitHub Actions
7 126 (7.04%) Serverless
8 73 (4.08%) Power Platform
9 64 (3.57%) OpenShift
10 58 (3.24%) AWS Lambda
11 51 (2.85%) Amazon S3
12 42 (2.35%) Azure AKS
12 42 (2.35%) SaaS
13 41 (2.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 41 (2.29%) AWS CloudFormation
14 37 (2.07%) Amazon EKS
14 37 (2.07%) Snowflake
15 34 (1.90%) Dynamics 365
16 32 (1.79%) Tricentis Tosca
17 31 (1.73%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 39 (2.18%) Firewall
2 32 (1.79%) Wireshark
3 26 (1.45%) HTTP
3 26 (1.45%) HTTPS
4 23 (1.28%) SSL
5 21 (1.17%) VPN
6 20 (1.12%) TCP/IP
7 14 (0.78%) Network Security
8 13 (0.73%) SD-WAN
9 11 (0.61%) WAN
10 10 (0.56%) DNS
10 10 (0.56%) Ethernet
10 10 (0.56%) FTP
10 10 (0.56%) MPLS
11 9 (0.50%) Multicast
11 9 (0.50%) VLAN
12 7 (0.39%) AMQP
13 5 (0.28%) BGP
13 5 (0.28%) Cisco IPT
13 5 (0.28%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 99 (5.53%) PostgreSQL
2 89 (4.97%) NoSQL
3 86 (4.80%) MongoDB
4 68 (3.80%) SQL Server
5 62 (3.46%) Relational Database
6 41 (2.29%) Power BI
7 34 (1.90%) Data Warehouse
8 29 (1.62%) BigQuery
9 27 (1.51%) MySQL
10 24 (1.34%) DynamoDB
10 24 (1.34%) Oracle Database
11 22 (1.23%) Pentaho
12 20 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
13 19 (1.06%) Big Data
14 17 (0.95%) Redis
14 17 (0.95%) Star Schema
14 17 (0.95%) Tableau
15 16 (0.89%) Apache Cassandra
16 15 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
17 14 (0.78%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 323 (18.03%) Jenkins
2 315 (17.59%) JIRA
3 299 (16.69%) Git
4 273 (15.24%) GitLab
5 267 (14.91%) Selenium
6 162 (9.05%) Cucumber
7 157 (8.77%) Postman
8 113 (6.31%) Cypress.io
9 100 (5.58%) REST Assured
10 90 (5.03%) JMeter
11 89 (4.97%) JUnit
12 38 (2.12%) Gatling
12 38 (2.12%) SonarQube
13 37 (2.07%) Mockito
13 37 (2.07%) WebDriver
14 36 (2.01%) TestRail
15 35 (1.95%) Maven
16 34 (1.90%) SpecFlow
17 33 (1.84%) Bitbucket
17 33 (1.84%) Gradle
General
1 458 (25.57%) Social Skills
2 290 (16.19%) Finance
3 254 (14.18%) Public Sector
4 197 (11.00%) Analytical Skills
5 133 (7.43%) Banking
6 31 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 30 (1.68%) Documentation Skills
8 27 (1.51%) Investment Banking
8 27 (1.51%) Telecoms
9 22 (1.23%) Front Office
9 22 (1.23%) Pharmaceutical
10 18 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
11 17 (0.95%) Military
12 16 (0.89%) Manufacturing
13 13 (0.73%) Financial Institution
14 12 (0.67%) Aerospace
14 12 (0.67%) Electronics
14 12 (0.67%) Legal
14 12 (0.67%) Marketing
15 11 (0.61%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 419 (23.39%) Developer
2 300 (16.75%) Senior
3 216 (12.06%) Tester
4 199 (11.11%) Test Engineer
5 181 (10.11%) Lead
6 117 (6.53%) Automation Tester
7 109 (6.09%) Java Developer
8 84 (4.69%) Software Engineer
9 82 (4.58%) Analyst
10 80 (4.47%) Test Automation Engineer
11 74 (4.13%) Senior Developer
12 70 (3.91%) DevOps Engineer
13 69 (3.85%) QA Engineer
14 66 (3.69%) Test Leader
15 65 (3.63%) Data Engineer
16 57 (3.18%) Test Manager
17 55 (3.07%) Automation Engineer
17 55 (3.07%) Test Analyst
18 50 (2.79%) Full-Stack Developer
19 47 (2.62%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 247 (13.79%) REST
2 211 (11.78%) Playwright
3 161 (8.99%) React
4 149 (8.32%) Node.js
5 146 (8.15%) RESTful
6 138 (7.71%) .NET
7 131 (7.31%) Spring
8 127 (7.09%) Kafka
9 121 (6.76%) Spring Boot
10 82 (4.58%) pytest
11 63 (3.52%) JSON
12 61 (3.41%) AngularJS
12 61 (3.41%) HTML
13 57 (3.18%) OAuth
14 56 (3.13%) SOAP
15 54 (3.02%) XML
16 52 (2.90%) Web Services
17 51 (2.85%) CSS
17 51 (2.85%) Jest
18 42 (2.35%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 186 (10.39%) Cloud Native
2 126 (7.04%) Product Ownership
3 65 (3.63%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (2.68%) Mobile App
5 44 (2.46%) Security Posture
6 39 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
7 37 (2.07%) Algorithms
7 37 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
8 31 (1.73%) Onboarding
9 28 (1.56%) Virtual Team
10 25 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
11 22 (1.23%) Data Structures
12 21 (1.17%) Greenfield Project
13 20 (1.12%) Management Information System
13 20 (1.12%) NHS
14 19 (1.06%) Public Cloud
14 19 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
15 18 (1.01%) Equities
16 15 (0.84%) Derivative
17 14 (0.78%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 157 (8.77%) Linux
2 81 (4.52%) Windows
3 47 (2.62%) Unix
4 42 (2.35%) Android
5 37 (2.07%) Apple iOS
6 22 (1.23%) Windows Server
7 21 (1.17%) Mac OS X
8 11 (0.61%) Kali Linux
9 9 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 4 (0.22%) CentOS
10 4 (0.22%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.17%) Solaris
11 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.11%) VMS
12 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.056%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.056%) Windows Embedded Compact
13 1 (0.056%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 914 (51.03%) CI/CD
2 856 (47.79%) Agile
3 663 (37.02%) DevOps
4 440 (24.57%) Problem-Solving
5 278 (15.52%) Microservices
6 270 (15.08%) Test Strategy
7 264 (14.74%) Continuous Improvement
8 256 (14.29%) Containerisation
9 233 (13.01%) Scrum
10 220 (12.28%) Infrastructure as Code
11 216 (12.06%) Test Scripting
12 211 (11.78%) Validation
13 207 (11.56%) AI
13 207 (11.56%) Software Engineering
14 202 (11.28%) TDD
15 179 (9.99%) API Testing
15 179 (9.99%) Software Testing
16 168 (9.38%) Regression Testing
17 166 (9.27%) BDD
18 165 (9.21%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 539 (30.09%) Python
2 448 (25.01%) Java
3 338 (18.87%) SQL
4 279 (15.58%) JavaScript
5 258 (14.41%) TypeScript
6 171 (9.55%) C#
7 83 (4.63%) Bash
8 65 (3.63%) PowerShell
9 40 (2.23%) Go
10 39 (2.18%) C++
11 25 (1.40%) PL/SQL
12 24 (1.34%) Bicep
13 23 (1.28%) Scala
14 22 (1.23%) Kotlin
15 18 (1.01%) Ruby
16 16 (0.89%) Apex Code
17 14 (0.78%) C
17 14 (0.78%) Swift
18 12 (0.67%) Groovy
18 12 (0.67%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 493 (27.53%) Security Cleared
2 379 (21.16%) SC Cleared
3 102 (5.70%) Degree
4 78 (4.36%) ISTQB
5 69 (3.85%) BPSS Clearance
6 58 (3.24%) DV Cleared
7 55 (3.07%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (1.68%) Master's Degree
9 27 (1.51%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 18 (1.01%) OSCP
11 16 (0.89%) AWS Certification
12 15 (0.84%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 14 (0.78%) Cisco Certification
14 13 (0.73%) CEH
14 13 (0.73%) GPEN
14 13 (0.73%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 12 (0.67%) CISSP
15 12 (0.67%) Oracle Certification
16 11 (0.61%) CISM
16 11 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 378 (21.11%) QA
2 145 (8.10%) Accessibility
3 81 (4.52%) Data Quality
4 48 (2.68%) WCAG
5 40 (2.23%) GDPR
6 37 (2.07%) NIST
7 24 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 20 (1.12%) NCSC
9 18 (1.01%) EU AI Act
10 14 (0.78%) ISO 20022
11 13 (0.73%) SLA
12 12 (0.67%) PSD2
13 11 (0.61%) PCI DSS
14 10 (0.56%) NIST 800
14 10 (0.56%) SEPA
15 9 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 7 (0.39%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 7 (0.39%) SOC 2
17 6 (0.34%) HIPAA
18 5 (0.28%) Def Stans
System Software
1 373 (20.83%) Docker
2 30 (1.68%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.39%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
3 7 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
4 5 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.28%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.22%) Firmware
6 3 (0.17%) ISA Server
6 3 (0.17%) QEMU
6 3 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.056%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.056%) HDFS
8 1 (0.056%) KVM
8 1 (0.056%) Squid
8 1 (0.056%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.056%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.056%) vSphere
8 1 (0.056%) zsh
Systems Management
1 328 (18.31%) Kubernetes
2 209 (11.67%) Terraform
3 104 (5.81%) Ansible
4 93 (5.19%) Grafana
5 63 (3.52%) Prometheus
6 21 (1.17%) HP ALM
7 19 (1.06%) Nmap
8 17 (0.95%) Argo
9 16 (0.89%) Progress Chef
10 15 (0.84%) CSIRT
10 15 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
11 14 (0.78%) Puppet
12 11 (0.61%) NetBackup
13 9 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
14 8 (0.45%) Kibana
15 7 (0.39%) Nessus
15 7 (0.39%) Podman
16 5 (0.28%) Forefront Identity Manager
16 5 (0.28%) NetIQ Identity Manager
17 4 (0.22%) Iperf
Vendors
1 159 (8.88%) Microsoft
2 142 (7.93%) Oracle
3 67 (3.74%) Splunk
4 61 (3.41%) Salesforce
4 61 (3.41%) ServiceNow
5 60 (3.35%) Databricks
6 58 (3.24%) Google
6 58 (3.24%) SAP
7 26 (1.45%) Red Hat
8 25 (1.40%) VMware
9 24 (1.34%) Cisco
10 23 (1.28%) Talend
11 22 (1.23%) Denodo
12 21 (1.17%) HP
12 21 (1.17%) IBM
12 21 (1.17%) webMethods
13 19 (1.06%) F5
14 17 (0.95%) MuleSoft
15 16 (0.89%) Atlassian
15 16 (0.89%) OpenAI