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

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 46 56
Rank change year-on-year -2 +10 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,969 1,332 1,514
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.17% 4.55% 3.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.94% 5.00% 4.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,300 917 992
10th Percentile £330 £328 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -7.27%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £625
90th Percentile £665 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.17% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 18 56
10th Percentile £36.32 £33.58 £50.63
25th Percentile £54.55 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £52.50 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year +23.81% -14.29% -6.84%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.07 £78.75
90th Percentile - £70.60 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -12.00% -

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 39,853 26,632 37,270
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.47% 90.92% 86.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,078 17,168 24,015
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +1.46% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,383 1,080 2,442
10th Percentile £14.84 £14.63 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.83
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -19.06% -0.47%
75th Percentile £67.13 £61.69 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.40 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.57 £37.50
% change year-on-year +59.59% -26.48% +7.14%

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 4 May 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 4 May 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 4 May 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 -2 1,677 £475 -5.00% 608
UK excluding London -3 910 £469 -1.17% 499
London 0 817 £496 -3.45% 190
Work from Home -4 567 £475 -5.00% 285
North of England +12 332 £469 +4.11% 137
Midlands +1 183 £447 -3.35% 76
South East -38 169 £509 -0.68% 120
West Midlands +17 158 £463 -6.57% 51
North West +12 145 £463 +2.78% 63
Yorkshire -4 141 £490 +3.11% 36
South West +8 92 £475 -5.00% 62
East of England +3 58 £522 +6.58% 66
North East +7 51 £419 +6.01% 38
Scotland -27 49 £425 -5.03% 31
Wales -1 29 £475 +18.75% 16
East Midlands -35 25 £400 -9.86% 25
Northern Ireland +17 18 £475 +16.28% 5
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
1 148 (7.52%) Confluence
2 43 (2.18%) SAS
3 41 (2.08%) Apache Spark
4 31 (1.57%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.66%) Apache
6 12 (0.61%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.41%) Appian
8 7 (0.36%) nginx
8 7 (0.36%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.30%) Camunda
10 5 (0.25%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.20%) CMS
11 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.10%) Mendix
13 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
14 1 (0.051%) Ethereum
14 1 (0.051%) Solana
Applications
1 25 (1.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (0.56%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.15%) Simulink
6 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.051%) Mingle
7 1 (0.051%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 19 (0.96%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.36%) Findur
4 7 (0.36%) Shopify
5 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
5 6 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
6 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.25%) Maximo
7 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.15%) Infor CloudSuite
7 3 (0.15%) Infor LN
7 3 (0.15%) Infor M3
7 3 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
7 3 (0.15%) SAP ERP
7 3 (0.15%) Workday HCM
8 2 (0.10%) iTrent
8 2 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
8 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
8 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 567 (28.80%) Azure
2 539 (27.37%) AWS
3 339 (17.22%) GitHub
4 259 (13.15%) Azure DevOps
5 193 (9.80%) GitHub Actions
6 150 (7.62%) GCP
7 137 (6.96%) Serverless
8 87 (4.42%) AWS Lambda
9 84 (4.27%) Amazon S3
10 69 (3.50%) Power Platform
11 60 (3.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 60 (3.05%) OpenShift
12 59 (3.00%) AWS CloudFormation
13 56 (2.84%) Amazon ECS
14 39 (1.98%) Amazon EKS
14 39 (1.98%) Azure AKS
14 39 (1.98%) Snowflake
15 35 (1.78%) Amazon EC2
16 34 (1.73%) Azure Data Factory
17 30 (1.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.32%) HTTP
2 21 (1.07%) Firewall
3 14 (0.71%) SAN
4 12 (0.61%) TCP/IP
5 11 (0.56%) FTP
5 11 (0.56%) SSL
5 11 (0.56%) VPN
6 9 (0.46%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.41%) WAN
7 8 (0.41%) Wireshark
8 7 (0.36%) MPLS
8 7 (0.36%) Network Security
8 7 (0.36%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.30%) 5G
9 6 (0.30%) Multicast
9 6 (0.30%) VLAN
10 5 (0.25%) AMQP
10 5 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
11 4 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
11 4 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 109 (5.54%) PostgreSQL
2 100 (5.08%) NoSQL
3 96 (4.88%) MongoDB
4 88 (4.47%) SQL Server
5 70 (3.56%) Relational Database
6 69 (3.50%) Data Warehouse
7 51 (2.59%) Power BI
8 47 (2.39%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.78%) Metadata
9 35 (1.78%) MySQL
10 34 (1.73%) Pentaho
11 32 (1.63%) Big Data
12 26 (1.32%) Oracle Reports
13 25 (1.27%) Amazon RDS
13 25 (1.27%) Redis
13 25 (1.27%) Tableau
14 24 (1.22%) Amazon Athena
14 24 (1.22%) BigQuery
15 23 (1.17%) Amazon Aurora
16 20 (1.02%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 386 (19.60%) JIRA
2 370 (18.79%) Git
3 321 (16.30%) Jenkins
4 273 (13.86%) Selenium
5 271 (13.76%) GitLab
6 161 (8.18%) Postman
7 148 (7.52%) Cucumber
8 100 (5.08%) JUnit
9 98 (4.98%) Cypress.io
10 91 (4.62%) JMeter
11 86 (4.37%) REST Assured
12 60 (3.05%) WebDriver
13 49 (2.49%) SonarQube
14 47 (2.39%) Zephyr
15 35 (1.78%) Gradle
16 34 (1.73%) Gatling
16 34 (1.73%) Maven
16 34 (1.73%) Mockito
17 32 (1.63%) SpecFlow
18 29 (1.47%) Bitbucket
General
1 512 (26.00%) Social Skills
2 341 (17.32%) Finance
3 289 (14.68%) Public Sector
4 225 (11.43%) Analytical Skills
5 161 (8.18%) Banking
6 41 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (1.83%) Investment Banking
8 34 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 32 (1.63%) Front Office
10 27 (1.37%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
12 19 (0.96%) Legal
13 17 (0.86%) Aerospace
13 17 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.81%) Military
15 13 (0.66%) Financial Institution
15 13 (0.66%) Retail
16 12 (0.61%) Back Office
16 12 (0.61%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 425 (21.58%) Developer
2 302 (15.34%) Senior
3 212 (10.77%) Test Engineer
4 211 (10.72%) Tester
5 202 (10.26%) Lead
6 113 (5.74%) Data Engineer
7 112 (5.69%) Java Developer
8 106 (5.38%) Analyst
9 101 (5.13%) Automation Tester
10 100 (5.08%) Test Automation Engineer
11 84 (4.27%) QA Engineer
12 83 (4.22%) Software Engineer
13 82 (4.16%) Architect
13 82 (4.16%) Test Leader
14 79 (4.01%) DevOps Engineer
15 77 (3.91%) Senior Developer
16 67 (3.40%) Test Analyst
17 65 (3.30%) Test Manager
18 64 (3.25%) Full-Stack Developer
19 52 (2.64%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 239 (12.14%) Playwright
2 232 (11.78%) REST
3 173 (8.79%) React
4 153 (7.77%) RESTful
5 148 (7.52%) Spring
6 139 (7.06%) Node.js
7 135 (6.86%) .NET
8 133 (6.75%) Kafka
9 122 (6.20%) Spring Boot
10 85 (4.32%) AngularJS
11 75 (3.81%) HTML
12 68 (3.45%) pytest
13 63 (3.20%) OAuth
14 59 (3.00%) CSS
15 54 (2.74%) Jest
16 44 (2.23%) Gherkin
16 44 (2.23%) JSON
17 42 (2.13%) OpenID
18 38 (1.93%) GraphQL
18 38 (1.93%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 216 (10.97%) Cloud Native
2 150 (7.62%) Product Ownership
3 101 (5.13%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (2.44%) Data Protection Act
4 48 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
5 47 (2.39%) Mobile App
6 37 (1.88%) Onboarding
7 36 (1.83%) Virtual Team
8 31 (1.57%) Enterprise Software
9 30 (1.52%) NHS
9 30 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
10 27 (1.37%) Algorithms
11 25 (1.27%) Data Centre
12 24 (1.22%) Management Information System
13 21 (1.07%) Distributed Architecture
14 20 (1.02%) Derivative
14 20 (1.02%) Security Posture
15 19 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
16 18 (0.91%) Data Structures
17 17 (0.86%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 127 (6.45%) Linux
2 82 (4.16%) Windows
3 44 (2.23%) Android
4 40 (2.03%) Unix
5 36 (1.83%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.07%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.66%) Mac OS X
9 11 (0.56%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.41%) Solaris
11 7 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.20%) CentOS
13 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.15%) AIX
15 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.051%) FreeRTOS
16 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
16 1 (0.051%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,054 (53.53%) CI/CD
2 907 (46.06%) Agile
3 713 (36.21%) DevOps
4 395 (20.06%) Problem-Solving
5 318 (16.15%) Continuous Improvement
6 314 (15.95%) Microservices
7 289 (14.68%) Scrum
8 284 (14.42%) Test Strategy
9 267 (13.56%) Infrastructure as Code
10 262 (13.31%) Validation
11 261 (13.26%) Containerisation
12 236 (11.99%) Software Engineering
13 226 (11.48%) Observability
14 219 (11.12%) AI
15 211 (10.72%) TDD
16 202 (10.26%) Test Scripting
17 200 (10.16%) Regression Testing
18 197 (10.01%) Analytics
19 195 (9.90%) User Acceptance Testing
20 193 (9.80%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 540 (27.43%) Python
2 493 (25.04%) Java
3 428 (21.74%) SQL
4 286 (14.53%) JavaScript
5 265 (13.46%) TypeScript
6 200 (10.16%) C#
7 73 (3.71%) PowerShell
8 68 (3.45%) Bash
9 52 (2.64%) C++
10 36 (1.83%) Kotlin
11 33 (1.68%) C
12 32 (1.63%) Scala
13 28 (1.42%) PL/SQL
14 27 (1.37%) Ruby
15 26 (1.32%) Apex Code
16 25 (1.27%) Bicep
17 23 (1.17%) Go
18 15 (0.76%) Swift
19 14 (0.71%) Groovy
20 13 (0.66%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 606 (30.78%) Security Cleared
2 479 (24.33%) SC Cleared
3 86 (4.37%) Degree
3 86 (4.37%) ISTQB
4 77 (3.91%) BPSS Clearance
5 65 (3.30%) DV Cleared
6 49 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
7 21 (1.07%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 16 (0.81%) Master's Degree
9 12 (0.61%) Azure Certification
9 12 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
10 11 (0.56%) AWS Certification
11 10 (0.51%) CCNP
12 9 (0.46%) DBS Check
12 9 (0.46%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 9 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
13 8 (0.41%) SAFe Agilist
14 6 (0.30%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 6 (0.30%) CISSP
14 6 (0.30%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 445 (22.60%) QA
2 141 (7.16%) Accessibility
3 117 (5.94%) Data Quality
4 60 (3.05%) WCAG
5 39 (1.98%) GDPR
6 18 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 14 (0.71%) ISO 20022
8 13 (0.66%) SLA
9 11 (0.56%) NCSC
10 10 (0.51%) Def Stans
11 9 (0.46%) PCI DSS
12 8 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 7 (0.36%) NIST
13 7 (0.36%) SEPA
14 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
14 6 (0.30%) PSD2
15 5 (0.25%) FATCA
16 4 (0.20%) HL7
16 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 356 (18.08%) Docker
2 23 (1.17%) Active Directory
3 18 (0.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.71%) Firmware
5 10 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.36%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
9 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.10%) SRDF
12 1 (0.051%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.051%) HDFS
12 1 (0.051%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.051%) KVM
12 1 (0.051%) Squid
12 1 (0.051%) Time Sharing Option
12 1 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.051%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 343 (17.42%) Kubernetes
2 240 (12.19%) Terraform
3 109 (5.54%) Grafana
4 84 (4.27%) Prometheus
5 80 (4.06%) Ansible
6 29 (1.47%) Argo
7 22 (1.12%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.86%) Puppet
9 15 (0.76%) 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
12 8 (0.41%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.41%) NetBackup
12 8 (0.41%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
14 5 (0.25%) Nmap
14 5 (0.25%) Rancher
15 4 (0.20%) Podman
Vendors
1 166 (8.43%) Microsoft
2 161 (8.18%) Oracle
3 80 (4.06%) Salesforce
4 66 (3.35%) Databricks
4 66 (3.35%) ServiceNow
5 56 (2.84%) Google
5 56 (2.84%) Splunk
6 49 (2.49%) Red Hat
7 46 (2.34%) Talend
8 42 (2.13%) SAP
9 30 (1.52%) Denodo
9 30 (1.52%) IBM
10 26 (1.32%) VMware
11 25 (1.27%) HP
12 21 (1.07%) Cisco
13 20 (1.02%) Dynatrace
14 18 (0.91%) Informatica
14 18 (0.91%) MuleSoft
14 18 (0.91%) UiPath
15 16 (0.81%) Blue Prism