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 30 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 49 44
Rank change year-on-year +5 -5 +8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,486 1,524 1,572
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.53% 4.64% 4.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.36% 5.12% 4.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,603 1,042 1,066
10th Percentile £325 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £665 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 101 37 17
10th Percentile £40.00 £28.42 £42.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £45.00 £47.50
Median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -4.35% -23.33%
75th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 £74.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £70.20 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.22 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +18.63% - -20.69%

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 46,343 29,774 32,275
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.43% 90.67% 85.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,026 18,502 19,486
10th Percentile £325 £296 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,222 1,849 1,345
10th Percentile £13.70 £14.29 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.19 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.86 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.51% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £65.60 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £74.48
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.27 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +75.98% -48.10% +1.18%

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 30 September 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 30 September 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 30 September 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 +4 2,078 £475 -5.00% 2,760
UK excluding London -2 1,199 £450 -5.26% 1,743
London +4 946 £500 - 1,244
Work from Home 0 658 £483 +1.58% 1,158
North of England +2 415 £453 -4.63% 454
Midlands +14 265 £450 -2.70% 205
West Midlands +26 250 £450 -13.21% 142
South East -16 220 £450 -5.26% 341
Yorkshire -7 177 £463 -7.50% 143
North West -14 145 £492 +15.12% 242
South West -10 112 £469 -13.19% 259
Scotland -11 101 £475 -5.00% 209
North East +4 100 £425 -11.69% 69
East of England +19 93 £375 +17.19% 170
Wales -6 25 £419 +1.52% 36
East Midlands -45 15 £418 +15.97% 63
Northern Ireland +3 8 £513 +345.65% 80
Channel Islands - 1 £450 - 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
1 193 (7.76%) Confluence
2 67 (2.70%) Apache Airflow
3 47 (1.89%) SharePoint
4 46 (1.85%) Apache Spark
5 34 (1.37%) SAS
6 32 (1.29%) Apache
7 17 (0.68%) CMS
8 14 (0.56%) Camunda
9 11 (0.44%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.28%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
11 6 (0.24%) nginx
12 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 5 (0.20%) Tomcat
13 4 (0.16%) Anypoint
13 4 (0.16%) ColdFusion
13 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
14 3 (0.12%) Kentico
14 3 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 22 (0.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.28%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.16%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.12%) Mingle
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 2 (0.080%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.040%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.040%) Simulink
8 1 (0.040%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 30 (1.21%) Dynamics CRM
2 28 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.40%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.28%) SAP GRC
6 6 (0.24%) FLEXCUBE
6 6 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.24%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.16%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.12%) Finacle
9 2 (0.080%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.080%) Findur
9 2 (0.080%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.080%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.080%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.080%) Shopify
9 2 (0.080%) Workday HCM
10 1 (0.040%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 791 (31.82%) AWS
2 747 (30.05%) Azure
3 448 (18.02%) GitHub
4 351 (14.12%) Azure DevOps
5 263 (10.58%) GitHub Actions
6 192 (7.72%) GCP
7 178 (7.16%) Serverless
8 133 (5.35%) AWS Lambda
9 118 (4.75%) Power Platform
10 103 (4.14%) Amazon S3
11 89 (3.58%) GitHub Copilot
12 87 (3.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 74 (2.98%) OpenShift
14 70 (2.82%) Amazon EKS
14 70 (2.82%) AWS CloudFormation
15 68 (2.74%) Amazon ECS
16 60 (2.41%) dbt
16 60 (2.41%) Snowflake
17 53 (2.13%) Anthropic Claude
18 48 (1.93%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.09%) DNS
2 26 (1.05%) Firewall
3 25 (1.01%) HTTP
4 24 (0.97%) 4G
5 22 (0.88%) TCP/IP
5 22 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
6 21 (0.84%) 5G
7 19 (0.76%) Broadband
8 17 (0.68%) Network Security
9 14 (0.56%) 2G
9 14 (0.56%) 3G
9 14 (0.56%) Diameter Protocol
9 14 (0.56%) SIGTRAN
9 14 (0.56%) SS7
9 14 (0.56%) WAN
10 13 (0.52%) BGP
10 13 (0.52%) LAN
11 12 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
11 12 (0.48%) VXLAN
12 11 (0.44%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 152 (6.11%) PostgreSQL
2 128 (5.15%) MongoDB
3 126 (5.07%) Data Warehouse
4 114 (4.59%) Relational Database
5 105 (4.22%) NoSQL
6 99 (3.98%) SQL Server
7 86 (3.46%) Power BI
8 53 (2.13%) Metadata
9 43 (1.73%) Data Lake
10 41 (1.65%) DynamoDB
11 39 (1.57%) Oracle Reports
12 37 (1.49%) MySQL
13 33 (1.33%) Big Data
14 32 (1.29%) Amazon Redshift
14 32 (1.29%) Redis
15 31 (1.25%) Amazon Athena
15 31 (1.25%) Pentaho
16 28 (1.13%) Oracle Database
17 27 (1.09%) Amazon RDS
18 26 (1.05%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 569 (22.89%) Git
2 407 (16.37%) Jenkins
3 399 (16.05%) JIRA
4 348 (14.00%) GitLab
5 317 (12.75%) Selenium
6 176 (7.08%) Cucumber
7 168 (6.76%) Postman
8 153 (6.15%) JUnit
9 125 (5.03%) Cypress.io
10 112 (4.51%) REST Assured
11 100 (4.02%) JMeter
12 86 (3.46%) SonarQube
13 73 (2.94%) Gatling
14 70 (2.82%) Maven
15 66 (2.65%) Zephyr
16 63 (2.53%) Mockito
17 60 (2.41%) Gradle
18 51 (2.05%) WebDriver
19 38 (1.53%) Bitbucket
20 31 (1.25%) TestNG
General
1 688 (27.67%) Social Skills
2 462 (18.58%) Finance
3 350 (14.08%) Analytical Skills
4 347 (13.96%) Public Sector
5 233 (9.37%) Banking
6 79 (3.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 58 (2.33%) Telecoms
8 42 (1.69%) Front Office
9 37 (1.49%) Investment Banking
10 35 (1.41%) Retail
11 33 (1.33%) Military
12 32 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
13 30 (1.21%) Documentation Skills
14 24 (0.97%) Financial Institution
15 20 (0.80%) Law
15 20 (0.80%) Manufacturing
16 19 (0.76%) Marketing
17 17 (0.68%) Aerospace
17 17 (0.68%) Back Office
18 14 (0.56%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 564 (22.69%) Developer
2 411 (16.53%) Senior
3 255 (10.26%) Lead
4 241 (9.69%) Test Engineer
5 195 (7.84%) Tester
6 177 (7.12%) Java Developer
7 159 (6.40%) Data Engineer
8 122 (4.91%) Software Engineer
9 121 (4.87%) Analyst
9 121 (4.87%) Senior Developer
10 113 (4.55%) DevOps Engineer
11 111 (4.47%) Architect
12 106 (4.26%) Test Automation Engineer
13 101 (4.06%) QA Engineer
14 86 (3.46%) Automation Tester
15 80 (3.22%) Full-Stack Developer
15 80 (3.22%) Test Analyst
16 77 (3.10%) Test Leader
17 75 (3.02%) Automation Engineer
18 74 (2.98%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 429 (17.26%) REST
2 367 (14.76%) Terraform
3 298 (11.99%) Playwright
4 260 (10.46%) RESTful
5 255 (10.26%) Kafka
6 254 (10.22%) Spring
7 227 (9.13%) React
8 217 (8.73%) Spring Boot
9 183 (7.36%) .NET
10 153 (6.15%) HTML
11 140 (5.63%) Node.js
12 129 (5.19%) CSS
13 100 (4.02%) OAuth
14 98 (3.94%) AngularJS
15 85 (3.42%) JSON
16 74 (2.98%) Middleware
17 67 (2.70%) pytest
18 64 (2.57%) OAuth2
19 62 (2.49%) XML
20 61 (2.45%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 397 (15.97%) Cloud Native
2 216 (8.69%) Product Ownership
3 182 (7.32%) Distributed Systems
4 105 (4.22%) Enterprise Software
5 85 (3.42%) Onboarding
6 72 (2.90%) AI Agents
7 64 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
8 53 (2.13%) Mobile App
9 52 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
9 52 (2.09%) Self-Motivation
10 34 (1.37%) Security Posture
10 34 (1.37%) Virtual Team
11 32 (1.29%) Data Structures
12 29 (1.17%) Private Cloud
13 27 (1.09%) Management Information System
14 25 (1.01%) Data Centre
15 24 (0.97%) Legacy Applications
15 24 (0.97%) Life Science
16 21 (0.84%) Embedded Systems
17 20 (0.80%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 178 (7.16%) Linux
2 108 (4.34%) Windows
3 99 (3.98%) Unix
4 50 (2.01%) Apple iOS
5 45 (1.81%) Android
6 30 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (1.01%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.32%) VMS
9 6 (0.24%) Mac OS X
10 5 (0.20%) AIX
10 5 (0.20%) Solaris
10 5 (0.20%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.20%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.16%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.16%) zOS
12 3 (0.12%) CentOS
12 3 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.12%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,536 (61.79%) CI/CD
2 1,196 (48.11%) Agile
3 920 (37.01%) DevOps
4 497 (19.99%) Microservices
5 482 (19.39%) Continuous Improvement
6 478 (19.23%) Problem-Solving
7 459 (18.46%) Software Engineering
8 447 (17.98%) Infrastructure as Code
9 422 (16.98%) AI
9 422 (16.98%) Scrum
10 421 (16.93%) Validation
11 369 (14.84%) Containerisation
12 366 (14.72%) Test Strategy
13 332 (13.35%) Observability
14 324 (13.03%) TDD
15 300 (12.07%) Software Testing
16 297 (11.95%) Stakeholder Management
17 295 (11.87%) SDLC
18 262 (10.54%) End-to-End Testing
19 246 (9.90%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 698 (28.08%) Java
2 694 (27.92%) Python
3 623 (25.06%) SQL
4 384 (15.45%) JavaScript
5 284 (11.42%) TypeScript
6 210 (8.45%) C#
7 101 (4.06%) PowerShell
8 90 (3.62%) Bash
9 53 (2.13%) Bicep
10 50 (2.01%) Scala
11 49 (1.97%) Kotlin
12 47 (1.89%) C++
13 42 (1.69%) Go
14 33 (1.33%) Shell Script
15 32 (1.29%) PL/SQL
16 28 (1.13%) Perl
17 22 (0.88%) Apex Code
18 21 (0.84%) C
19 17 (0.68%) Ruby
20 16 (0.64%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 784 (31.54%) Security Cleared
2 664 (26.71%) SC Cleared
3 143 (5.75%) BPSS Clearance
4 136 (5.47%) Degree
5 102 (4.10%) ISTQB
6 93 (3.74%) DV Cleared
7 81 (3.26%) Computer Science Degree
8 45 (1.81%) AWS Certification
9 35 (1.41%) Azure Certification
10 25 (1.01%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.64%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 15 (0.60%) Master's Degree
13 14 (0.56%) CISSP
13 14 (0.56%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 13 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
14 13 (0.52%) ISEB
15 12 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.36%) DBS Check
17 8 (0.32%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 8 (0.32%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 650 (26.15%) QA
2 229 (9.21%) Accessibility
3 175 (7.04%) Data Quality
4 102 (4.10%) WCAG
5 45 (1.81%) GDPR
6 26 (1.05%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.64%) NIST
8 15 (0.60%) GRC
9 14 (0.56%) SLA
10 12 (0.48%) NCSC
11 8 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.28%) SEPA
13 6 (0.24%) HL7
13 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
13 6 (0.24%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
14 5 (0.20%) FATCA
15 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
15 4 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 513 (20.64%) Docker
2 42 (1.69%) VMware Infrastructure
3 36 (1.45%) Active Directory
4 20 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.44%) Firmware
5 11 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
6 8 (0.32%) VMware NSX
7 6 (0.24%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.080%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.080%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.040%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.040%) KVM
9 1 (0.040%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.040%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 489 (19.67%) Kubernetes
2 143 (5.75%) Ansible
3 135 (5.43%) Grafana
4 89 (3.58%) Prometheus
5 34 (1.37%) Argo
6 32 (1.29%) Kibana
7 25 (1.01%) Progress Chef
8 24 (0.97%) Puppet
9 14 (0.56%) HP ALM
9 14 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.52%) Control-M
11 8 (0.32%) Microsoft Intune
12 7 (0.28%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.24%) HP Fortify
13 6 (0.24%) Istio
13 6 (0.24%) SCCM
14 5 (0.20%) Dell DRAC
14 5 (0.20%) Packer
14 5 (0.20%) WMI
15 4 (0.16%) Rancher
Vendors
1 240 (9.65%) Microsoft
2 192 (7.72%) Oracle
3 99 (3.98%) Databricks
4 82 (3.30%) Google
5 73 (2.94%) Salesforce
6 71 (2.86%) IBM
7 66 (2.65%) ServiceNow
8 59 (2.37%) SAP
8 59 (2.37%) Splunk
9 55 (2.21%) Talend
10 52 (2.09%) Red Hat
10 52 (2.09%) VMware
11 43 (1.73%) Denodo
11 43 (1.73%) Informatica
12 42 (1.69%) Dynatrace
13 35 (1.41%) Cisco
14 34 (1.37%) MuleSoft
15 31 (1.25%) UiPath
16 24 (0.97%) OpenAI
17 22 (0.88%) SaltStack