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

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 46 58
Rank change year-on-year -1 +12 -12
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,964 1,360 1,475
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.23% 4.61% 3.37%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.99% 5.07% 3.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,303 934 973
10th Percentile £330 £325 £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 £618 £638
90th Percentile £671 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.11% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 17 55
10th Percentile £35.01 £33.10 £49.30
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £83.75
90th Percentile - £71.30 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% +8.70%

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 39,369 26,799 37,747
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.81% 90.74% 86.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,829 17,326 24,410
10th Percentile £318 £307 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,359 1,054 2,423
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.88 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £39.50 £29.90 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.11% -14.57% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.25 £58.70
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £28.18 £35.00
% change year-on-year +47.46% -19.49% -6.17%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 -4 1,676 £475 -5.00% 673
UK excluding London -1 890 £470 -1.11% 581
London 0 835 £500 - 215
Work from Home -4 571 £473 -5.50% 360
North of England +9 327 £475 +5.56% 129
Midlands 0 178 £447 -3.35% 76
South East -35 172 £500 -2.44% 160
West Midlands +10 152 £463 -8.19% 44
North West +16 142 £463 +2.78% 63
Yorkshire -8 136 £500 +2.56% 27
South West -2 87 £463 -9.31% 75
North East +9 54 £419 +7.37% 39
East of England +6 54 £600 +24.35% 91
Scotland -19 46 £415 -5.74% 34
Wales -3 28 £475 +18.75% 13
East Midlands -35 26 £400 -0.93% 31
Northern Ireland +20 20 £475 +16.28% 17
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
1 134 (6.82%) Confluence
2 44 (2.24%) SAS
3 40 (2.04%) Apache Spark
4 30 (1.53%) Apache Airflow
5 11 (0.56%) Apache
6 10 (0.51%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.41%) Appian
8 7 (0.36%) nginx
8 7 (0.36%) Tomcat
8 7 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.31%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.31%) Camunda
10 4 (0.20%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.20%) CMS
11 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.10%) Mendix
12 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
13 1 (0.051%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.051%) Ethereum
Applications
1 26 (1.32%) 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 22 (1.12%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.36%) Findur
4 7 (0.36%) Shopify
5 6 (0.31%) Loan IQ
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%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 560 (28.51%) Azure
2 522 (26.58%) AWS
3 338 (17.21%) GitHub
4 258 (13.14%) Azure DevOps
5 193 (9.83%) GitHub Actions
6 150 (7.64%) GCP
7 137 (6.98%) Serverless
8 85 (4.33%) AWS Lambda
9 81 (4.12%) Amazon S3
10 66 (3.36%) Power Platform
11 60 (3.05%) OpenShift
12 54 (2.75%) AWS CloudFormation
13 53 (2.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 52 (2.65%) Amazon ECS
15 40 (2.04%) Azure AKS
15 40 (2.04%) Snowflake
16 36 (1.83%) Amazon EKS
17 34 (1.73%) Azure Data Factory
18 32 (1.63%) SaaS
19 31 (1.58%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.43%) HTTP
2 23 (1.17%) Firewall
3 13 (0.66%) SSL
4 12 (0.61%) FTP
4 12 (0.61%) SAN
4 12 (0.61%) TCP/IP
4 12 (0.61%) VPN
5 9 (0.46%) Ethernet
5 9 (0.46%) Network Security
6 8 (0.41%) MPLS
6 8 (0.41%) SD-WAN
6 8 (0.41%) WAN
7 7 (0.36%) Wireshark
8 6 (0.31%) 5G
8 6 (0.31%) DNS
8 6 (0.31%) HTTPS
8 6 (0.31%) Multicast
9 5 (0.25%) AMQP
9 5 (0.25%) Cisco IPT
9 5 (0.25%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (5.50%) PostgreSQL
2 99 (5.04%) NoSQL
3 94 (4.79%) MongoDB
4 84 (4.28%) SQL Server
5 66 (3.36%) Data Warehouse
5 66 (3.36%) Relational Database
6 47 (2.39%) Power BI
7 45 (2.29%) DynamoDB
8 34 (1.73%) Metadata
8 34 (1.73%) Pentaho
9 33 (1.68%) MySQL
10 30 (1.53%) Big Data
11 27 (1.37%) Amazon RDS
12 26 (1.32%) Oracle Reports
12 26 (1.32%) Tableau
13 25 (1.27%) BigQuery
13 25 (1.27%) Redis
14 23 (1.17%) Amazon Athena
15 22 (1.12%) Amazon Aurora
16 19 (0.97%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 386 (19.65%) JIRA
2 365 (18.58%) Git
3 317 (16.14%) Jenkins
4 280 (14.26%) Selenium
5 262 (13.34%) GitLab
6 164 (8.35%) Postman
7 155 (7.89%) Cucumber
8 99 (5.04%) JUnit
9 98 (4.99%) Cypress.io
10 92 (4.68%) JMeter
11 88 (4.48%) REST Assured
12 57 (2.90%) WebDriver
13 52 (2.65%) Zephyr
14 45 (2.29%) SonarQube
15 37 (1.88%) SpecFlow
16 35 (1.78%) TestRail
17 34 (1.73%) Gatling
17 34 (1.73%) Maven
18 33 (1.68%) Mockito
19 31 (1.58%) Gradle
General
1 508 (25.87%) Social Skills
2 342 (17.41%) Finance
3 295 (15.02%) Public Sector
4 215 (10.95%) Analytical Skills
5 157 (7.99%) Banking
6 42 (2.14%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.88%) Investment Banking
8 34 (1.73%) Front Office
9 33 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 27 (1.37%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
12 21 (1.07%) Legal
12 21 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
13 17 (0.87%) Aerospace
13 17 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
14 14 (0.71%) Military
14 14 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
15 12 (0.61%) Back Office
15 12 (0.61%) Financial Institution
15 12 (0.61%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 423 (21.54%) Developer
2 299 (15.22%) Senior
3 213 (10.85%) Tester
4 211 (10.74%) Test Engineer
5 207 (10.54%) Lead
6 110 (5.60%) Java Developer
7 109 (5.55%) Data Engineer
8 106 (5.40%) Analyst
9 105 (5.35%) Automation Tester
10 99 (5.04%) Test Automation Engineer
11 88 (4.48%) QA Engineer
12 85 (4.33%) Test Leader
13 81 (4.12%) Architect
13 81 (4.12%) DevOps Engineer
14 79 (4.02%) Software Engineer
15 71 (3.62%) Senior Developer
15 71 (3.62%) Test Analyst
16 64 (3.26%) Test Manager
17 60 (3.05%) Full-Stack Developer
18 53 (2.70%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 242 (12.32%) Playwright
2 233 (11.86%) REST
3 172 (8.76%) React
4 150 (7.64%) RESTful
5 146 (7.43%) Node.js
6 144 (7.33%) Spring
7 134 (6.82%) .NET
8 129 (6.57%) Kafka
9 119 (6.06%) Spring Boot
10 82 (4.18%) AngularJS
11 71 (3.62%) HTML
11 71 (3.62%) pytest
12 60 (3.05%) OAuth
13 58 (2.95%) CSS
14 57 (2.90%) Jest
15 45 (2.29%) JSON
16 41 (2.09%) Gherkin
16 41 (2.09%) GraphQL
16 41 (2.09%) OpenID
17 37 (1.88%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 211 (10.74%) Cloud Native
2 150 (7.64%) Product Ownership
3 97 (4.94%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (2.44%) Mobile App
5 47 (2.39%) Legacy Systems
6 44 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
7 37 (1.88%) Onboarding
8 35 (1.78%) Virtual Team
9 33 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
10 31 (1.58%) NHS
11 30 (1.53%) Algorithms
12 28 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
13 26 (1.32%) Security Posture
14 23 (1.17%) Management Information System
15 22 (1.12%) Data Centre
16 21 (1.07%) Derivative
17 20 (1.02%) Data Structures
17 20 (1.02%) Distributed Architecture
18 19 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
19 18 (0.92%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 127 (6.47%) Linux
2 85 (4.33%) Windows
3 46 (2.34%) Android
4 41 (2.09%) Unix
5 38 (1.93%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 20 (1.02%) Windows Server
7 13 (0.66%) Mac OS X
8 10 (0.51%) Mac OS
9 8 (0.41%) Solaris
10 7 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
11 6 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
11 6 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.20%) CentOS
12 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
13 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.051%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.051%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.051%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,035 (52.70%) CI/CD
2 897 (45.67%) Agile
3 703 (35.79%) DevOps
4 399 (20.32%) Problem-Solving
5 322 (16.40%) Continuous Improvement
6 298 (15.17%) Microservices
7 282 (14.36%) Test Strategy
8 274 (13.95%) Scrum
9 268 (13.65%) Infrastructure as Code
10 265 (13.49%) Validation
11 253 (12.88%) Containerisation
12 227 (11.56%) Software Engineering
13 226 (11.51%) AI
14 223 (11.35%) Observability
15 219 (11.15%) TDD
16 207 (10.54%) Test Scripting
17 202 (10.29%) Regression Testing
18 200 (10.18%) Analytics
19 199 (10.13%) SDLC
20 193 (9.83%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 553 (28.16%) Python
2 492 (25.05%) Java
3 424 (21.59%) SQL
4 286 (14.56%) JavaScript
5 269 (13.70%) TypeScript
6 205 (10.44%) C#
7 74 (3.77%) PowerShell
8 70 (3.56%) Bash
9 53 (2.70%) C++
10 32 (1.63%) C
11 31 (1.58%) Scala
12 30 (1.53%) Kotlin
13 28 (1.43%) PL/SQL
13 28 (1.43%) Ruby
14 27 (1.37%) Apex Code
15 26 (1.32%) Bicep
16 20 (1.02%) Go
17 16 (0.81%) Swift
18 14 (0.71%) Groovy
19 12 (0.61%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 599 (30.50%) Security Cleared
2 475 (24.19%) SC Cleared
3 97 (4.94%) ISTQB
4 86 (4.38%) Degree
5 82 (4.18%) BPSS Clearance
6 59 (3.00%) DV Cleared
7 49 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (1.53%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 17 (0.87%) Master's Degree
10 13 (0.66%) Cisco Certification
11 12 (0.61%) Azure Certification
12 11 (0.56%) AWS Certification
13 10 (0.51%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 9 (0.46%) CCNP
14 9 (0.46%) DBS Check
14 9 (0.46%) ISEB
14 9 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
15 8 (0.41%) Oracle Certification
16 7 (0.36%) CISSP
16 7 (0.36%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 442 (22.51%) QA
2 137 (6.98%) Accessibility
3 117 (5.96%) Data Quality
4 58 (2.95%) WCAG
5 44 (2.24%) GDPR
6 19 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 15 (0.76%) SLA
8 14 (0.71%) ISO 20022
9 13 (0.66%) NCSC
10 10 (0.51%) Def Stans
10 10 (0.51%) PCI DSS
11 9 (0.46%) NIST
11 9 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 7 (0.36%) PSD2
12 7 (0.36%) SEPA
13 6 (0.31%) HIPAA
14 5 (0.25%) FATCA
14 5 (0.25%) HL7
14 5 (0.25%) PERC
System Software
1 352 (17.92%) Docker
2 27 (1.37%) Active Directory
3 14 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (0.66%) Firmware
5 9 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.36%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 7 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
8 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.10%) SRDF
11 1 (0.051%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.051%) HDFS
11 1 (0.051%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.051%) KVM
11 1 (0.051%) Squid
11 1 (0.051%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.051%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 336 (17.11%) Kubernetes
2 240 (12.22%) Terraform
3 111 (5.65%) Grafana
4 84 (4.28%) Prometheus
5 73 (3.72%) Ansible
6 28 (1.43%) Argo
7 25 (1.27%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.87%) Puppet
8 17 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
9 14 (0.71%) Kibana
10 10 (0.51%) Forefront Identity Manager
10 10 (0.51%) HP Quality Center
10 10 (0.51%) NetIQ Identity Manager
10 10 (0.51%) Progress Chef
11 8 (0.41%) NetBackup
12 7 (0.36%) Dell DRAC
13 6 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
13 6 (0.31%) Rancher
14 5 (0.25%) Nmap
15 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 170 (8.66%) Microsoft
2 168 (8.55%) Oracle
3 80 (4.07%) Salesforce
4 72 (3.67%) Databricks
5 67 (3.41%) ServiceNow
6 58 (2.95%) Splunk
7 57 (2.90%) Google
8 48 (2.44%) Red Hat
8 48 (2.44%) SAP
9 46 (2.34%) Talend
10 31 (1.58%) IBM
11 29 (1.48%) Denodo
12 28 (1.43%) HP
13 25 (1.27%) VMware
14 21 (1.07%) Dynatrace
15 20 (1.02%) Cisco
16 19 (0.97%) Informatica
17 17 (0.87%) UiPath
18 16 (0.81%) MuleSoft
18 16 (0.81%) Workday