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 19 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 45 47 53
Rank change year-on-year +2 +6 -13
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,723 1,498 1,858
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.83% 4.13% 4.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.38% 4.79% 4.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,192 1,001 1,342
10th Percentile £325 £325 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -6.91%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £688 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £494 £495
% change year-on-year +1.21% -0.20% -5.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 8 62
10th Percentile £34.55 £40.88 £35.25
25th Percentile £45.94 £42.19 £48.44
Median hourly rate £65.00 £47.50 £73.75
Median % change year-on-year +36.84% -35.59% +22.92%
75th Percentile £67.00 £63.75 £90.00
90th Percentile £69.40 £70.88 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £50.00 £68.50
% change year-on-year +30.00% -27.01% +14.17%

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 32,049 31,289 41,011
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.77% 86.33% 88.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,064 18,819 27,584
10th Percentile £300 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,120 1,102 1,587
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.11 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.14 £19.03
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +27.14%
75th Percentile £45.00 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £33.54 £44.50
% change year-on-year -31.43% -24.63% +50.85%

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 19 November 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 19 November 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 19 November 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 -1 1,469 £500 - 1,101
UK excluding London +5 835 £500 +1.21% 698
London -7 681 £513 -2.38% 533
Work from Home +11 549 £500 - 592
North of England -5 280 £488 +8.33% 160
Midlands +21 161 £495 +5.88% 69
South East -13 156 £492 -4.00% 203
Yorkshire -9 130 £514 +8.16% 42
West Midlands +17 126 £514 +2.80% 45
North West -6 109 £401 -10.83% 97
South West +19 88 £523 -5.00% 104
Scotland +3 76 £500 +11.11% 56
East of England +8 55 £413 +3.13% 65
North East +17 43 £494 +16.18% 21
East Midlands 0 35 £360 -10.00% 24
Wales +10 31 £495 -5.26% 32
Northern Ireland 0 11 £295 -43.13% 20

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 87 (5.05%) Confluence
2 53 (3.08%) SAS
3 26 (1.51%) Apache Spark
4 22 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
5 19 (1.10%) Apache
6 14 (0.81%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.46%) CMS
7 8 (0.46%) Oracle Application Server
8 5 (0.29%) Anypoint
8 5 (0.29%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.23%) JBoss
9 4 (0.23%) nginx
9 4 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
9 4 (0.23%) WebLogic
9 4 (0.23%) WordPress
10 3 (0.17%) CICS
10 3 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.12%) IIS
11 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 26 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.70%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.41%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.23%) Simulink
5 4 (0.23%) Windchill
6 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.12%) Trello
7 1 (0.058%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 15 (0.87%) Aladdin
2 14 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.23%) Maximo
3 4 (0.23%) SAP HR
3 4 (0.23%) SAP PLM
4 3 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.17%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.12%) Eagle PACE
5 2 (0.12%) Markit EDM
5 2 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.12%) Oracle Financials
5 2 (0.12%) SAP BRIM
5 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.12%) Shopify
6 1 (0.058%) Algo Collateral
6 1 (0.058%) CODA-Financials
6 1 (0.058%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.058%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.058%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.058%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 483 (28.03%) Azure
2 431 (25.01%) AWS
3 248 (14.39%) GitHub
4 211 (12.25%) Azure DevOps
5 158 (9.17%) GCP
6 130 (7.54%) Serverless
7 126 (7.31%) GitHub Actions
8 65 (3.77%) AWS Lambda
9 56 (3.25%) Power Platform
10 54 (3.13%) OpenShift
11 51 (2.96%) Amazon S3
12 48 (2.79%) AWS CloudFormation
13 37 (2.15%) Azure AKS
13 37 (2.15%) SaaS
13 37 (2.15%) Snowflake
14 36 (2.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 31 (1.80%) Amazon ECS
16 30 (1.74%) Amazon EKS
17 27 (1.57%) Entra ID
18 25 (1.45%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 43 (2.50%) Firewall
2 35 (2.03%) HTTP
3 31 (1.80%) Wireshark
4 27 (1.57%) HTTPS
5 23 (1.33%) SSL
6 17 (0.99%) VPN
7 16 (0.93%) Network Security
7 16 (0.93%) TCP/IP
8 13 (0.75%) Multicast
9 12 (0.70%) DNS
9 12 (0.70%) SD-WAN
10 10 (0.58%) Ethernet
10 10 (0.58%) WAN
11 6 (0.35%) AMQP
11 6 (0.35%) Bluetooth
11 6 (0.35%) Internet
12 5 (0.29%) Broadband
12 5 (0.29%) Cisco IPT
12 5 (0.29%) MPLS
12 5 (0.29%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 116 (6.73%) PostgreSQL
2 96 (5.57%) NoSQL
3 89 (5.17%) MongoDB
4 71 (4.12%) Relational Database
5 67 (3.89%) SQL Server
6 43 (2.50%) Data Warehouse
7 28 (1.63%) Amazon RDS
7 28 (1.63%) Pentaho
8 27 (1.57%) Power BI
9 25 (1.45%) BigQuery
9 25 (1.45%) DynamoDB
10 23 (1.33%) Oracle Database
11 21 (1.22%) Data Lake
12 20 (1.16%) Big Data
13 19 (1.10%) MySQL
14 17 (0.99%) Apache Cassandra
15 15 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
15 15 (0.87%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 14 (0.81%) RDBMS
17 13 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 318 (18.46%) Git
2 305 (17.70%) JIRA
3 302 (17.53%) Jenkins
4 276 (16.02%) Selenium
5 216 (12.54%) GitLab
6 153 (8.88%) Cucumber
7 129 (7.49%) Postman
8 116 (6.73%) Cypress.io
9 101 (5.86%) JUnit
10 73 (4.24%) JMeter
11 69 (4.00%) REST Assured
12 57 (3.31%) Bitbucket
13 49 (2.84%) SonarQube
14 41 (2.38%) Maven
15 36 (2.09%) SpecFlow
16 33 (1.92%) Mockito
17 32 (1.86%) Gatling
18 31 (1.80%) Sonatype Nexus
19 27 (1.57%) Appium
20 26 (1.51%) Zephyr
General
1 486 (28.21%) Social Skills
2 300 (17.41%) Finance
3 202 (11.72%) Public Sector
4 196 (11.38%) Analytical Skills
5 136 (7.89%) Banking
6 35 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
6 35 (2.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 28 (1.63%) Telecoms
8 27 (1.57%) Investment Banking
9 24 (1.39%) Front Office
9 24 (1.39%) Manufacturing
10 21 (1.22%) Pharmaceutical
11 20 (1.16%) Financial Institution
12 19 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
12 19 (1.10%) Retail
13 17 (0.99%) Electronics
13 17 (0.99%) Marketing
14 14 (0.81%) Organisational Skills
15 12 (0.70%) Retail Banking
16 11 (0.64%) Military
Job Titles
1 384 (22.29%) Developer
2 258 (14.97%) Senior
3 212 (12.30%) Tester
4 149 (8.65%) Lead
5 146 (8.47%) Test Engineer
6 117 (6.79%) Automation Tester
7 110 (6.38%) Java Developer
8 87 (5.05%) Analyst
9 81 (4.70%) Software Engineer
10 68 (3.95%) Data Engineer
10 68 (3.95%) DevOps Engineer
11 66 (3.83%) Test Analyst
12 61 (3.54%) QA Engineer
13 60 (3.48%) Test Automation Engineer
14 58 (3.37%) Senior Developer
15 55 (3.19%) Automation Engineer
15 55 (3.19%) Test Manager
16 50 (2.90%) Test Leader
17 39 (2.26%) Consultant
17 39 (2.26%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 214 (12.42%) REST
2 155 (9.00%) Playwright
3 150 (8.71%) React
4 131 (7.60%) RESTful
5 130 (7.54%) .NET
6 111 (6.44%) Kafka
6 111 (6.44%) Spring
7 110 (6.38%) Node.js
8 103 (5.98%) Spring Boot
9 85 (4.93%) JSON
10 79 (4.59%) XML
11 78 (4.53%) SOAP
12 74 (4.29%) CSS
12 74 (4.29%) HTML
13 63 (3.66%) AngularJS
14 59 (3.42%) pytest
15 51 (2.96%) Jest
15 51 (2.96%) Web Services
16 40 (2.32%) Gherkin
17 39 (2.26%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 148 (8.59%) Cloud Native
2 113 (6.56%) Product Ownership
3 52 (3.02%) Mobile App
4 44 (2.55%) Security Posture
5 37 (2.15%) Distributed Systems
6 36 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
7 33 (1.92%) Algorithms
7 33 (1.92%) Public Cloud
8 29 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
8 29 (1.68%) Virtual Team
9 28 (1.63%) Onboarding
10 27 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
11 25 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
12 19 (1.10%) Data Structures
12 19 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 19 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
12 19 (1.10%) Management Information System
13 16 (0.93%) Genomics
14 15 (0.87%) Life Science
15 14 (0.81%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 179 (10.39%) Linux
2 85 (4.93%) Windows
3 59 (3.42%) Unix
4 54 (3.13%) Android
5 42 (2.44%) Apple iOS
6 19 (1.10%) Mac OS X
7 17 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 16 (0.93%) Windows Server
9 10 (0.58%) CentOS
9 10 (0.58%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.17%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.17%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
12 2 (0.12%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.058%) Solaris
13 1 (0.058%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.058%) VMS
13 1 (0.058%) Windows Embedded Compact
13 1 (0.058%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 849 (49.27%) CI/CD
2 843 (48.93%) Agile
3 665 (38.60%) DevOps
4 421 (24.43%) Problem-Solving
5 267 (15.50%) Microservices
6 256 (14.86%) Scrum
7 251 (14.57%) Test Strategy
8 241 (13.99%) Containerisation
9 237 (13.76%) Continuous Improvement
10 219 (12.71%) TDD
11 209 (12.13%) Infrastructure as Code
11 209 (12.13%) Software Engineering
12 204 (11.84%) Test Scripting
13 192 (11.14%) SDLC
14 183 (10.62%) Software Testing
15 164 (9.52%) BDD
15 164 (9.52%) Validation
16 162 (9.40%) AI
17 148 (8.59%) Analytics
18 143 (8.30%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 489 (28.38%) Python
2 411 (23.85%) Java
3 316 (18.34%) SQL
4 243 (14.10%) JavaScript
5 189 (10.97%) TypeScript
6 183 (10.62%) C#
7 101 (5.86%) Bash
8 71 (4.12%) PowerShell
9 41 (2.38%) C++
10 39 (2.26%) Go
11 23 (1.33%) Kotlin
12 21 (1.22%) Bicep
13 15 (0.87%) Scala
13 15 (0.87%) Shell Script
14 14 (0.81%) Ruby
14 14 (0.81%) Swift
15 13 (0.75%) PHP
15 13 (0.75%) PL/SQL
16 12 (0.70%) Perl
17 11 (0.64%) C
Qualifications
1 399 (23.16%) Security Cleared
2 313 (18.17%) SC Cleared
3 111 (6.44%) Degree
4 71 (4.12%) ISTQB
5 56 (3.25%) Computer Science Degree
6 49 (2.84%) DV Cleared
7 48 (2.79%) BPSS Clearance
8 27 (1.57%) AWS Certification
9 25 (1.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 25 (1.45%) Master's Degree
10 20 (1.16%) CISSP
11 18 (1.04%) OSCP
12 15 (0.87%) Azure Certification
13 14 (0.81%) Cisco Certification
13 14 (0.81%) CISM
13 14 (0.81%) MCP
14 13 (0.75%) CEH
14 13 (0.75%) GPEN
14 13 (0.75%) ISEB
15 12 (0.70%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (22.11%) QA
2 129 (7.49%) Accessibility
3 76 (4.41%) Data Quality
4 42 (2.44%) NIST
5 39 (2.26%) GDPR
6 36 (2.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 34 (1.97%) WCAG
8 19 (1.10%) PCI DSS
9 18 (1.04%) EU AI Act
9 18 (1.04%) NCSC
10 17 (0.99%) SEPA
11 16 (0.93%) NIST 800
12 13 (0.75%) PSD2
13 8 (0.46%) COBIT
13 8 (0.46%) ISO 20022
13 8 (0.46%) 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
1 345 (20.02%) Docker
2 29 (1.68%) Active Directory
3 9 (0.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.46%) Firmware
5 5 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.29%) zsh
6 3 (0.17%) QEMU
6 3 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
6 3 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.12%) Embedded Firmware
7 2 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.12%) vSphere
8 1 (0.058%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 314 (18.22%) Kubernetes
2 211 (12.25%) Terraform
3 136 (7.89%) Ansible
4 75 (4.35%) Grafana
5 45 (2.61%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.04%) HP ALM
7 17 (0.99%) Argo
8 16 (0.93%) CSIRT
8 16 (0.93%) Nmap
9 15 (0.87%) Progress Chef
10 13 (0.75%) NetBackup
11 10 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
12 9 (0.52%) Puppet
13 7 (0.41%) Kibana
13 7 (0.41%) Nessus
14 6 (0.35%) Podman
15 5 (0.29%) HP Quality Center
15 5 (0.29%) RSA Archer
16 4 (0.23%) SCCM
16 4 (0.23%) WMI
Vendors
1 180 (10.45%) Microsoft
2 152 (8.82%) Oracle
3 65 (3.77%) SAP
3 65 (3.77%) ServiceNow
4 64 (3.71%) Salesforce
5 62 (3.60%) Splunk
6 53 (3.08%) Google
7 52 (3.02%) Databricks
8 30 (1.74%) Talend
9 28 (1.63%) Denodo
10 27 (1.57%) VMware
11 23 (1.33%) Cisco
12 22 (1.28%) F5
12 22 (1.28%) webMethods
13 21 (1.22%) IBM
14 19 (1.10%) HP
14 19 (1.10%) Red Hat
14 19 (1.10%) UiPath
15 17 (0.99%) Atlassian
15 17 (0.99%) Dynatrace