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

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 56
Rank change year-on-year -1 +9 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,963 1,321 1,511
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.13% 4.56% 3.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.89% 5.01% 4.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,294 916 989
10th Percentile £330 £326 £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 £616 £625
90th Percentile £663 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.32% -5.00% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 21 53
10th Percentile £36.69 £35.00 £51.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £66.00 £50.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +32.00% -20.00% -9.91%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £77.50
90th Percentile - £75.50 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +28.57% -16.00% -4.58%

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 40,111 26,361 36,876
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.33% 90.96% 86.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,183 16,941 23,723
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £516 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.13% -1.71% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.71% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,380 1,073 2,431
10th Percentile £14.89 £14.41 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.38 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.60 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +48.60% -21.64% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.78 £38.00
% change year-on-year +74.59% -32.17% +8.57%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 +1 1,675 £475 -5.00% 621
UK excluding London -5 914 £469 -1.32% 477
London -1 813 £491 -1.80% 219
Work from Home -2 569 £469 -5.73% 300
North of England +11 333 £465 +3.33% 136
Midlands +4 193 £450 - 62
West Midlands +22 168 £461 -6.92% 38
South East -42 166 £500 -0.10% 129
North West +10 146 £465 +3.73% 61
Yorkshire -6 140 £478 -5.35% 38
South West +2 88 £463 -11.90% 63
East of England +7 62 £522 +8.24% 52
North East +9 52 £425 +7.59% 37
Scotland -25 43 £440 -2.22% 21
Wales +2 33 £475 +18.75% 16
East Midlands -37 25 £400 +13.15% 24
Northern Ireland +17 18 £475 +16.28% 8
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
1 161 (8.20%) Confluence
2 43 (2.19%) SAS
3 41 (2.09%) Apache Spark
4 33 (1.68%) Apache Airflow
5 15 (0.76%) Apache
6 11 (0.56%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.41%) Appian
8 7 (0.36%) nginx
8 7 (0.36%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.31%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.31%) Camunda
10 4 (0.20%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.20%) CMS
10 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.10%) Mendix
13 1 (0.051%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.051%) Jupyter
13 1 (0.051%) OpenStack
Applications
1 27 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.61%) MS Visio
4 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.15%) Simulink
7 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.051%) Mingle
8 1 (0.051%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (1.02%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 8 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
5 7 (0.36%) Findur
5 7 (0.36%) Shopify
6 6 (0.31%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.25%) Maximo
7 5 (0.25%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.25%) SAP MDG
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%) Payment Gateway
8 3 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
8 3 (0.15%) Workday HCM
9 2 (0.10%) iTrent
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 565 (28.78%) Azure
2 538 (27.41%) AWS
3 340 (17.32%) GitHub
4 258 (13.14%) Azure DevOps
5 197 (10.04%) GitHub Actions
6 145 (7.39%) GCP
7 126 (6.42%) Serverless
8 81 (4.13%) Amazon S3
9 79 (4.02%) AWS Lambda
10 74 (3.77%) Power Platform
11 56 (2.85%) OpenShift
12 55 (2.80%) Amazon ECS
13 54 (2.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 51 (2.60%) AWS CloudFormation
15 42 (2.14%) Amazon EKS
16 39 (1.99%) Snowflake
17 36 (1.83%) Azure Data Factory
18 35 (1.78%) Amazon EC2
19 34 (1.73%) Azure AKS
20 28 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.22%) HTTP
2 20 (1.02%) Firewall
3 14 (0.71%) SAN
4 12 (0.61%) TCP/IP
5 11 (0.56%) FTP
5 11 (0.56%) SSL
6 10 (0.51%) VPN
7 9 (0.46%) Ethernet
8 8 (0.41%) WAN
8 8 (0.41%) Wireshark
9 7 (0.36%) MPLS
9 7 (0.36%) Network Security
9 7 (0.36%) SD-WAN
10 6 (0.31%) VLAN
10 6 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
11 5 (0.25%) 5G
11 5 (0.25%) Multicast
12 4 (0.20%) Modbus
12 4 (0.20%) RS-232
12 4 (0.20%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (5.71%) PostgreSQL
2 99 (5.04%) NoSQL
3 98 (4.99%) MongoDB
4 90 (4.58%) SQL Server
5 73 (3.72%) Data Warehouse
6 69 (3.52%) Relational Database
7 53 (2.70%) Power BI
8 44 (2.24%) DynamoDB
9 36 (1.83%) Metadata
9 36 (1.83%) Pentaho
10 34 (1.73%) MySQL
11 33 (1.68%) Big Data
12 26 (1.32%) Oracle Reports
13 25 (1.27%) Redis
13 25 (1.27%) Tableau
14 24 (1.22%) Amazon RDS
15 22 (1.12%) Amazon Aurora
15 22 (1.12%) BigQuery
16 21 (1.07%) Data Lake
17 20 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 396 (20.17%) JIRA
2 363 (18.49%) Git
3 325 (16.56%) Jenkins
4 277 (14.11%) GitLab
5 265 (13.50%) Selenium
6 161 (8.20%) Postman
7 143 (7.28%) Cucumber
8 101 (5.15%) JUnit
9 95 (4.84%) Cypress.io
10 93 (4.74%) JMeter
11 86 (4.38%) REST Assured
12 57 (2.90%) WebDriver
13 48 (2.45%) SonarQube
13 48 (2.45%) Zephyr
14 35 (1.78%) Mockito
15 33 (1.68%) Gatling
15 33 (1.68%) Gradle
16 31 (1.58%) SpecFlow
17 30 (1.53%) Bitbucket
17 30 (1.53%) Maven
General
1 504 (25.67%) Social Skills
2 337 (17.17%) Finance
3 280 (14.26%) Public Sector
4 233 (11.87%) Analytical Skills
5 161 (8.20%) Banking
6 40 (2.04%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 35 (1.78%) Investment Banking
8 33 (1.68%) Front Office
9 25 (1.27%) Telecoms
10 21 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
11 20 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
12 18 (0.92%) Legal
13 17 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.82%) Aerospace
14 16 (0.82%) Military
15 15 (0.76%) Retail
16 12 (0.61%) Back Office
16 12 (0.61%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.61%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 411 (20.94%) Developer
2 307 (15.64%) Senior
3 212 (10.80%) Test Engineer
4 210 (10.70%) Tester
5 198 (10.09%) Lead
6 117 (5.96%) Data Engineer
7 113 (5.76%) Java Developer
8 110 (5.60%) Analyst
9 101 (5.15%) Test Automation Engineer
10 98 (4.99%) Automation Tester
11 91 (4.64%) Software Engineer
12 84 (4.28%) Architect
12 84 (4.28%) QA Engineer
13 80 (4.08%) DevOps Engineer
14 79 (4.02%) Test Leader
15 78 (3.97%) Senior Developer
16 68 (3.46%) Test Analyst
17 63 (3.21%) Full-Stack Developer
18 59 (3.01%) Test Manager
19 52 (2.65%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 238 (12.12%) Playwright
2 234 (11.92%) REST
3 176 (8.97%) React
4 156 (7.95%) RESTful
5 145 (7.39%) Spring
6 139 (7.08%) .NET
7 137 (6.98%) Kafka
8 130 (6.62%) Node.js
9 121 (6.16%) Spring Boot
10 82 (4.18%) AngularJS
11 75 (3.82%) HTML
12 67 (3.41%) pytest
13 63 (3.21%) OAuth
14 60 (3.06%) CSS
15 54 (2.75%) Jest
16 43 (2.19%) OpenID
16 43 (2.19%) Swagger
17 42 (2.14%) JSON
18 41 (2.09%) Gherkin
19 39 (1.99%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 213 (10.85%) Cloud Native
2 150 (7.64%) Product Ownership
3 100 (5.09%) Distributed Systems
4 50 (2.55%) Data Protection Act
5 48 (2.45%) Mobile App
6 46 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
7 39 (1.99%) Virtual Team
8 35 (1.78%) Onboarding
9 33 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
10 32 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
11 28 (1.43%) NHS
12 26 (1.32%) Algorithms
13 24 (1.22%) Management Information System
14 23 (1.17%) Data Centre
15 21 (1.07%) Distributed Architecture
16 20 (1.02%) Derivative
16 20 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
17 19 (0.97%) Fixed Income
18 18 (0.92%) Security Posture
19 17 (0.87%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 125 (6.37%) Linux
2 79 (4.02%) Windows
3 48 (2.45%) Unix
4 43 (2.19%) Android
5 37 (1.88%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.07%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.66%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.46%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.41%) Solaris
11 7 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.15%) AIX
14 3 (0.15%) CentOS
15 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.051%) FreeRTOS
16 1 (0.051%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,059 (53.95%) CI/CD
2 910 (46.36%) Agile
3 702 (35.76%) DevOps
4 393 (20.02%) Problem-Solving
5 314 (16.00%) Microservices
6 313 (15.94%) Continuous Improvement
7 289 (14.72%) Scrum
8 284 (14.47%) Test Strategy
9 263 (13.40%) Infrastructure as Code
10 262 (13.35%) Validation
11 259 (13.19%) Containerisation
12 242 (12.33%) Software Engineering
13 233 (11.87%) Observability
14 214 (10.90%) AI
14 214 (10.90%) TDD
15 198 (10.09%) Test Scripting
16 196 (9.98%) Regression Testing
17 190 (9.68%) ETL
18 189 (9.63%) Analytics
18 189 (9.63%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 519 (26.44%) Python
2 484 (24.66%) Java
3 439 (22.36%) SQL
4 277 (14.11%) JavaScript
5 254 (12.94%) TypeScript
6 199 (10.14%) C#
7 72 (3.67%) PowerShell
8 68 (3.46%) Bash
9 52 (2.65%) C++
10 41 (2.09%) Kotlin
11 37 (1.88%) PL/SQL
12 33 (1.68%) C
13 32 (1.63%) Scala
14 28 (1.43%) Ruby
15 25 (1.27%) Apex Code
15 25 (1.27%) Bicep
16 24 (1.22%) Go
17 17 (0.87%) Swift
18 14 (0.71%) Groovy
18 14 (0.71%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 614 (31.28%) Security Cleared
2 484 (24.66%) SC Cleared
3 86 (4.38%) ISTQB
4 83 (4.23%) Degree
5 78 (3.97%) BPSS Clearance
6 68 (3.46%) DV Cleared
7 47 (2.39%) Computer Science Degree
8 21 (1.07%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 15 (0.76%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
11 10 (0.51%) CCNP
11 10 (0.51%) DBS Check
11 10 (0.51%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 10 (0.51%) SAFe Agilist
12 9 (0.46%) AWS Certification
12 9 (0.46%) Azure Certification
13 8 (0.41%) CISSP
14 7 (0.36%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 7 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
15 5 (0.25%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 433 (22.06%) QA
2 149 (7.59%) Accessibility
3 119 (6.06%) Data Quality
4 66 (3.36%) WCAG
5 35 (1.78%) GDPR
6 15 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 14 (0.71%) ISO 20022
7 14 (0.71%) SLA
8 11 (0.56%) NCSC
9 10 (0.51%) Def Stans
10 8 (0.41%) NIST
11 7 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 7 (0.36%) SEPA
12 6 (0.31%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.31%) PSD2
12 6 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 5 (0.25%) FATCA
14 4 (0.20%) HL7
14 4 (0.20%) MiFID
14 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 348 (17.73%) Docker
2 22 (1.12%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (1.07%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.66%) Firmware
5 11 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.36%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.31%) 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%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.051%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 334 (17.01%) Kubernetes
2 231 (11.77%) Terraform
3 109 (5.55%) Grafana
4 88 (4.48%) Prometheus
5 84 (4.28%) Ansible
6 28 (1.43%) Argo
7 22 (1.12%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.87%) Puppet
9 14 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.66%) 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
13 7 (0.36%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.25%) Rancher
16 4 (0.20%) Istio
16 4 (0.20%) Podman
Vendors
1 168 (8.56%) Oracle
2 162 (8.25%) Microsoft
3 73 (3.72%) Salesforce
4 66 (3.36%) Databricks
5 62 (3.16%) ServiceNow
6 58 (2.95%) Splunk
7 55 (2.80%) Talend
8 54 (2.75%) Google
9 49 (2.50%) Red Hat
10 38 (1.94%) SAP
11 37 (1.88%) Denodo
12 29 (1.48%) VMware
13 27 (1.38%) IBM
14 25 (1.27%) HP
15 21 (1.07%) Cisco
15 21 (1.07%) Dynatrace
16 20 (1.02%) Informatica
16 20 (1.02%) MuleSoft
17 19 (0.97%) UiPath
18 16 (0.82%) Blue Prism