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 9 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 55
Rank change year-on-year -1 +8 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,987 1,344 1,512
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.34% 4.60% 3.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.09% 5.07% 3.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,329 923 1,007
10th Percentile £331 £330 £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 £623 £638
90th Percentile £675 £735 £720
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £483 £500
% change year-on-year -1.66% -3.40% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 12 56
10th Percentile £34.57 £31.68 £37.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.88 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.33% +1.59% -12.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.51 £73.75
90th Percentile - £74.80 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.88 £55.00
% change year-on-year +20.81% +1.59% -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 39,074 26,483 37,997
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.36% 90.62% 86.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,751 17,195 24,633
10th Percentile £315 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £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 £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.10% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,316 997 2,379
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.79
25th Percentile £19.34 £20.00 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.70 £31.64 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +15.99% -4.31% -8.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.91
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.80 £70.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.71 £30.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year +22.37% -9.09% -8.08%

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 9 April 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 9 April 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 9 April 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 1,694 £481 -3.80% 674
UK excluding London +2 915 £475 -1.66% 573
London -1 830 £500 - 183
Work from Home -2 573 £475 -5.00% 333
North of England +9 327 £475 +5.56% 162
Midlands +6 191 £470 -1.53% 83
South East -31 178 £500 -2.72% 145
West Midlands +13 163 £475 -6.40% 57
North West +13 144 £465 +1.92% 82
Yorkshire -12 137 £500 +5.26% 41
South West +3 87 £475 -9.52% 72
East of England -2 59 £608 +23.98% 65
North East +10 51 £425 +8.97% 39
Scotland -16 39 £415 -7.83% 30
Wales 0 36 £509 +27.25% 27
East Midlands -27 28 £400 -0.93% 26
Northern Ireland +16 20 £475 -2.56% 7
Channel Islands - 2 - - 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
1 129 (6.49%) Confluence
2 69 (3.47%) SAS
3 28 (1.41%) Apache Spark
4 22 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
5 15 (0.75%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.55%) Apache
7 8 (0.40%) Appian
7 8 (0.40%) nginx
8 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
8 7 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.30%) Camunda
9 6 (0.30%) CMS
10 3 (0.15%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.10%) Oracle Application Server
11 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 13 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
4 12 (0.60%) MS Visio
5 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.15%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.15%) Simulink
8 1 (0.050%) Mingle
8 1 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.11%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.35%) Findur
5 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
5 6 (0.30%) Shopify
6 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.25%) Maximo
7 4 (0.20%) Workday HCM
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%) SAP BRIM
8 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
9 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.10%) iTrent
9 2 (0.10%) NetSuite
9 2 (0.10%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 576 (28.99%) Azure
2 512 (25.77%) AWS
3 348 (17.51%) GitHub
4 271 (13.64%) Azure DevOps
5 194 (9.76%) GitHub Actions
6 161 (8.10%) GCP
7 132 (6.64%) Serverless
8 80 (4.03%) OpenShift
9 76 (3.82%) Power Platform
10 72 (3.62%) AWS Lambda
11 68 (3.42%) Amazon S3
12 51 (2.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 50 (2.52%) AWS CloudFormation
14 43 (2.16%) Snowflake
15 40 (2.01%) Azure AKS
16 39 (1.96%) Amazon ECS
17 35 (1.76%) Azure Data Factory
18 34 (1.71%) Dynamics 365
19 33 (1.66%) Amazon EKS
20 32 (1.61%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.36%) HTTP
2 23 (1.16%) Firewall
3 13 (0.65%) SSL
3 13 (0.65%) TCP/IP
4 12 (0.60%) FTP
4 12 (0.60%) Network Security
4 12 (0.60%) VPN
5 11 (0.55%) SAN
6 9 (0.45%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.40%) MPLS
7 8 (0.40%) SD-WAN
7 8 (0.40%) WAN
7 8 (0.40%) Wireshark
8 7 (0.35%) 5G
8 7 (0.35%) DNS
8 7 (0.35%) HTTPS
8 7 (0.35%) Multicast
9 5 (0.25%) AMQP
9 5 (0.25%) Cisco IPT
9 5 (0.25%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 105 (5.28%) PostgreSQL
2 86 (4.33%) NoSQL
3 82 (4.13%) SQL Server
4 79 (3.98%) MongoDB
5 63 (3.17%) Relational Database
6 55 (2.77%) Data Warehouse
7 43 (2.16%) Power BI
8 42 (2.11%) DynamoDB
9 34 (1.71%) Pentaho
10 33 (1.66%) MySQL
11 30 (1.51%) BigQuery
12 26 (1.31%) Metadata
13 25 (1.26%) Tableau
14 23 (1.16%) Oracle Database
15 22 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
15 22 (1.11%) Redis
16 19 (0.96%) Amazon Athena
16 19 (0.96%) Big Data
16 19 (0.96%) Oracle Reports
17 17 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 388 (19.53%) Git
2 384 (19.33%) JIRA
3 342 (17.21%) Jenkins
4 299 (15.05%) Selenium
5 274 (13.79%) GitLab
6 163 (8.20%) Postman
7 160 (8.05%) Cucumber
8 118 (5.94%) JUnit
9 102 (5.13%) JMeter
10 101 (5.08%) Cypress.io
10 101 (5.08%) REST Assured
11 55 (2.77%) WebDriver
12 44 (2.21%) SonarQube
13 43 (2.16%) Zephyr
14 38 (1.91%) SpecFlow
15 35 (1.76%) Maven
15 35 (1.76%) Mockito
16 34 (1.71%) Gatling
16 34 (1.71%) TestRail
17 32 (1.61%) Gradle
General
1 516 (25.97%) Social Skills
2 332 (16.71%) Finance
3 294 (14.80%) Public Sector
4 201 (10.12%) Analytical Skills
5 152 (7.65%) Banking
6 37 (1.86%) Documentation Skills
7 31 (1.56%) Investment Banking
8 30 (1.51%) Front Office
9 26 (1.31%) Telecoms
10 25 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 21 (1.06%) Legal
12 20 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
13 18 (0.91%) Aerospace
13 18 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
14 17 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
15 15 (0.75%) Military
16 13 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
17 12 (0.60%) Financial Institution
18 11 (0.55%) Electronics
18 11 (0.55%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 423 (21.29%) Developer
2 320 (16.10%) Senior
3 221 (11.12%) Tester
4 213 (10.72%) Test Engineer
5 212 (10.67%) Lead
6 112 (5.64%) Automation Tester
7 107 (5.39%) Java Developer
8 103 (5.18%) Analyst
9 99 (4.98%) Data Engineer
10 93 (4.68%) Test Automation Engineer
11 84 (4.23%) QA Engineer
12 82 (4.13%) Test Leader
13 80 (4.03%) DevOps Engineer
14 79 (3.98%) Software Engineer
15 77 (3.88%) Senior Developer
16 75 (3.77%) Architect
17 67 (3.37%) Test Analyst
18 61 (3.07%) Test Manager
19 57 (2.87%) Automation Engineer
20 55 (2.77%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 256 (12.88%) REST
2 234 (11.78%) Playwright
3 174 (8.76%) React
4 153 (7.70%) RESTful
5 149 (7.50%) Node.js
6 148 (7.45%) Spring
7 140 (7.05%) .NET
8 129 (6.49%) Kafka
9 119 (5.99%) Spring Boot
10 91 (4.58%) pytest
11 82 (4.13%) AngularJS
12 64 (3.22%) HTML
13 59 (2.97%) OAuth
14 57 (2.87%) Jest
15 52 (2.62%) CSS
16 50 (2.52%) Web Services
17 46 (2.32%) JSON
18 42 (2.11%) GraphQL
19 40 (2.01%) OpenID
20 39 (1.96%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 209 (10.52%) Cloud Native
2 141 (7.10%) Product Ownership
3 91 (4.58%) Distributed Systems
4 52 (2.62%) Mobile App
5 46 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
6 43 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
7 38 (1.91%) Onboarding
8 37 (1.86%) Virtual Team
9 36 (1.81%) Algorithms
10 34 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
11 32 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
12 31 (1.56%) NHS
13 29 (1.46%) Security Posture
14 22 (1.11%) Data Structures
14 22 (1.11%) Management Information System
15 21 (1.06%) Data Centre
15 21 (1.06%) Equities
16 19 (0.96%) Distributed Architecture
16 19 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
17 17 (0.86%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 135 (6.79%) Linux
2 92 (4.63%) Windows
3 51 (2.57%) Android
4 43 (2.16%) Apple iOS
5 38 (1.91%) Unix
6 22 (1.11%) Windows Server
7 20 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.65%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.40%) Solaris
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.20%) CentOS
13 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
13 4 (0.20%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.050%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.050%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.050%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.050%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,059 (53.30%) CI/CD
2 932 (46.90%) Agile
3 732 (36.84%) DevOps
4 431 (21.69%) Problem-Solving
5 327 (16.46%) Continuous Improvement
6 307 (15.45%) Test Strategy
7 301 (15.15%) Microservices
8 286 (14.39%) Scrum
9 271 (13.64%) Containerisation
10 270 (13.59%) Validation
11 257 (12.93%) Infrastructure as Code
12 233 (11.73%) AI
13 229 (11.52%) Analytics
14 226 (11.37%) Observability
15 222 (11.17%) Software Engineering
15 222 (11.17%) Test Scripting
16 221 (11.12%) TDD
17 211 (10.62%) Regression Testing
18 206 (10.37%) SDLC
19 196 (9.86%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 583 (29.34%) Python
2 479 (24.11%) Java
3 423 (21.29%) SQL
4 286 (14.39%) JavaScript
5 263 (13.24%) TypeScript
6 211 (10.62%) C#
7 81 (4.08%) PowerShell
8 75 (3.77%) Bash
9 51 (2.57%) C++
10 33 (1.66%) C
11 31 (1.56%) Kotlin
12 30 (1.51%) Ruby
13 28 (1.41%) PL/SQL
14 27 (1.36%) Apex Code
14 27 (1.36%) Bicep
15 23 (1.16%) Scala
16 21 (1.06%) Go
17 19 (0.96%) Swift
18 15 (0.75%) Groovy
19 14 (0.70%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 612 (30.80%) Security Cleared
2 482 (24.26%) SC Cleared
3 100 (5.03%) ISTQB
4 96 (4.83%) Degree
5 81 (4.08%) BPSS Clearance
6 62 (3.12%) DV Cleared
7 53 (2.67%) Computer Science Degree
8 37 (1.86%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 19 (0.96%) Master's Degree
10 15 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
11 13 (0.65%) AWS Certification
11 13 (0.65%) Azure Certification
12 10 (0.50%) CISSP
12 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
13 9 (0.45%) CCNP
13 9 (0.45%) ISEB
13 9 (0.45%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 8 (0.40%) DBS Check
14 8 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
15 7 (0.35%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 445 (22.40%) QA
2 137 (6.89%) Accessibility
3 118 (5.94%) Data Quality
4 56 (2.82%) WCAG
5 45 (2.26%) GDPR
6 29 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.81%) NIST
7 16 (0.81%) SLA
8 14 (0.70%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 14 (0.70%) NCSC
9 12 (0.60%) ISO 20022
10 11 (0.55%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
12 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.40%) PSD2
14 7 (0.35%) SEPA
15 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
15 6 (0.30%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.25%) EU AI Act
16 5 (0.25%) PERC
System Software
1 385 (19.38%) Docker
2 29 (1.46%) Active Directory
3 14 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (0.60%) Firmware
5 10 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
7 6 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.10%) SRDF
11 1 (0.050%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.050%) HDFS
11 1 (0.050%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.050%) KVM
11 1 (0.050%) Squid
11 1 (0.050%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 363 (18.27%) Kubernetes
2 232 (11.68%) Terraform
3 103 (5.18%) Grafana
4 81 (4.08%) Prometheus
5 78 (3.93%) Ansible
6 29 (1.46%) Argo
7 25 (1.26%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.86%) Puppet
8 17 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
9 14 (0.70%) Progress Chef
10 10 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
10 10 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
10 10 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 9 (0.45%) NetBackup
12 7 (0.35%) Kibana
12 7 (0.35%) Nmap
13 6 (0.30%) Dell DRAC
13 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
13 6 (0.30%) Podman
13 6 (0.30%) Rancher
Vendors
1 175 (8.81%) Microsoft
2 164 (8.25%) Oracle
3 78 (3.93%) Salesforce
4 74 (3.72%) Databricks
5 65 (3.27%) ServiceNow
6 60 (3.02%) Google
7 51 (2.57%) Splunk
8 48 (2.42%) Red Hat
8 48 (2.42%) SAP
9 41 (2.06%) Talend
10 35 (1.76%) Denodo
11 30 (1.51%) VMware
12 29 (1.46%) IBM
13 28 (1.41%) HP
14 20 (1.01%) Cisco
14 20 (1.01%) Dynatrace
15 16 (0.81%) Workday
16 15 (0.75%) MuleSoft
16 15 (0.75%) OpenAI
17 14 (0.70%) Blue Prism