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

6 months to
25 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 45 58
Rank change year-on-year -3 +13 -12
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,968 1,345 1,472
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.22% 4.56% 3.37%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.98% 5.02% 3.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,310 925 966
10th Percentile £329 £325 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £516
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -3.10% -6.18%
75th Percentile £575 £618 £638
90th Percentile £671 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.26% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 17 55
10th Percentile £35.23 £33.10 £49.30
25th Percentile £54.89 £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 39,506 26,799 37,659
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.73% 90.79% 86.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,946 17,322 24,335
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.72% -0.05% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £487 £500
% change year-on-year -0.36% -2.65% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,360 1,068 2,432
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £29.07 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.60% -16.94% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.24 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.86 £28.00 £35.58
% change year-on-year +49.48% -21.29% -4.62%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 1,678 £475 -5.00% 521
UK excluding London -2 899 £469 -1.26% 469
London +3 829 £500 - 136
Work from Home -5 570 £469 -6.20% 383
North of England +14 336 £469 +3.54% 126
Midlands +4 179 £447 -3.35% 68
South East -39 173 £500 -2.44% 117
West Midlands +16 153 £463 -7.73% 44
North West +13 145 £463 +2.78% 59
Yorkshire -11 143 £493 +1.03% 29
South West -9 86 £463 -8.42% 56
North East +10 53 £413 +5.77% 38
East of England -8 52 £600 +22.45% 59
Scotland -14 47 £425 -3.41% 34
Wales -1 29 £475 +18.75% 11
East Midlands -34 26 £400 -9.86% 23
Northern Ireland +19 19 £475 +16.28% 11
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
1 141 (7.16%) Confluence
2 44 (2.24%) SAS
3 40 (2.03%) Apache Spark
4 30 (1.52%) Apache Airflow
5 11 (0.56%) Apache
5 11 (0.56%) SharePoint
6 8 (0.41%) Appian
7 7 (0.36%) nginx
7 7 (0.36%) Tomcat
7 7 (0.36%) WebLogic
8 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.30%) Camunda
9 5 (0.25%) 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%) CICS
13 1 (0.051%) OpenStack
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 21 (1.07%) 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 (0.30%) 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%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.10%) SAP FI
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 566 (28.76%) Azure
2 528 (26.83%) AWS
3 339 (17.23%) GitHub
4 260 (13.21%) Azure DevOps
5 194 (9.86%) GitHub Actions
6 154 (7.83%) GCP
7 136 (6.91%) Serverless
8 84 (4.27%) AWS Lambda
9 80 (4.07%) Amazon S3
10 67 (3.40%) Power Platform
11 60 (3.05%) OpenShift
12 55 (2.79%) AWS CloudFormation
13 53 (2.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 52 (2.64%) Amazon ECS
15 39 (1.98%) Azure AKS
15 39 (1.98%) Snowflake
16 35 (1.78%) Amazon EKS
17 34 (1.73%) Azure Data Factory
18 32 (1.63%) SaaS
19 30 (1.52%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 29 (1.47%) HTTP
2 24 (1.22%) Firewall
3 13 (0.66%) FTP
3 13 (0.66%) SAN
3 13 (0.66%) SSL
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 (0.30%) 5G
8 6 (0.30%) DNS
8 6 (0.30%) Multicast
9 5 (0.25%) AMQP
9 5 (0.25%) Cisco IPT
9 5 (0.25%) HTTPS
9 5 (0.25%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 107 (5.44%) PostgreSQL
2 99 (5.03%) NoSQL
3 94 (4.78%) MongoDB
4 85 (4.32%) SQL Server
5 67 (3.40%) Data Warehouse
6 66 (3.35%) Relational Database
7 47 (2.39%) Power BI
8 45 (2.29%) DynamoDB
9 34 (1.73%) Metadata
9 34 (1.73%) MySQL
9 34 (1.73%) Pentaho
10 30 (1.52%) Big Data
11 26 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
11 26 (1.32%) BigQuery
11 26 (1.32%) Oracle Reports
11 26 (1.32%) Tableau
12 24 (1.22%) Redis
13 23 (1.17%) Amazon Athena
14 22 (1.12%) Amazon Aurora
15 19 (0.97%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 391 (19.87%) JIRA
2 366 (18.60%) Git
3 321 (16.31%) Jenkins
4 281 (14.28%) Selenium
5 261 (13.26%) GitLab
6 163 (8.28%) Postman
7 157 (7.98%) Cucumber
8 99 (5.03%) Cypress.io
8 99 (5.03%) JUnit
9 91 (4.62%) JMeter
10 88 (4.47%) REST Assured
11 59 (3.00%) WebDriver
12 52 (2.64%) Zephyr
13 46 (2.34%) SonarQube
14 37 (1.88%) SpecFlow
15 34 (1.73%) Gatling
15 34 (1.73%) Maven
15 34 (1.73%) TestRail
16 33 (1.68%) Mockito
17 31 (1.58%) Gradle
General
1 513 (26.07%) Social Skills
2 346 (17.58%) Finance
3 296 (15.04%) Public Sector
4 220 (11.18%) Analytical Skills
5 158 (8.03%) Banking
6 42 (2.13%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (1.93%) Investment Banking
8 34 (1.73%) Front Office
9 33 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 28 (1.42%) Telecoms
11 23 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
12 22 (1.12%) Legal
13 21 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (0.86%) Aerospace
14 17 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
15 14 (0.71%) Military
16 13 (0.66%) Back Office
16 13 (0.66%) Publishing
17 12 (0.61%) Financial Institution
18 11 (0.56%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 426 (21.65%) Developer
2 298 (15.14%) Senior
3 214 (10.87%) Test Engineer
4 210 (10.67%) Tester
5 207 (10.52%) Lead
6 114 (5.79%) Java Developer
7 111 (5.64%) Data Engineer
8 104 (5.28%) Analyst
9 103 (5.23%) Automation Tester
10 100 (5.08%) Test Automation Engineer
11 88 (4.47%) QA Engineer
12 85 (4.32%) Test Leader
13 83 (4.22%) DevOps Engineer
14 82 (4.17%) Architect
15 79 (4.01%) Software Engineer
16 71 (3.61%) Senior Developer
16 71 (3.61%) Test Analyst
17 65 (3.30%) Test Manager
18 60 (3.05%) Full-Stack Developer
19 52 (2.64%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 244 (12.40%) Playwright
2 234 (11.89%) REST
3 173 (8.79%) React
4 148 (7.52%) RESTful
5 146 (7.42%) Node.js
6 145 (7.37%) Spring
7 135 (6.86%) .NET
8 129 (6.55%) Kafka
9 119 (6.05%) Spring Boot
10 82 (4.17%) AngularJS
11 74 (3.76%) HTML
12 69 (3.51%) pytest
13 60 (3.05%) OAuth
14 58 (2.95%) CSS
15 57 (2.90%) Jest
16 45 (2.29%) JSON
17 42 (2.13%) Gherkin
18 41 (2.08%) GraphQL
18 41 (2.08%) OpenID
19 36 (1.83%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 208 (10.57%) Cloud Native
2 150 (7.62%) Product Ownership
3 98 (4.98%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
4 48 (2.44%) Mobile App
5 44 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
6 38 (1.93%) Onboarding
7 34 (1.73%) Virtual Team
8 33 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
9 32 (1.63%) NHS
10 29 (1.47%) Algorithms
11 28 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
12 26 (1.32%) Security Posture
13 24 (1.22%) Data Centre
14 23 (1.17%) Management Information System
15 21 (1.07%) Derivative
16 20 (1.02%) Data Structures
16 20 (1.02%) Distributed Architecture
17 19 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
18 18 (0.91%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 131 (6.66%) Linux
2 87 (4.42%) Windows
3 46 (2.34%) Android
4 41 (2.08%) Unix
5 37 (1.88%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.02%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.66%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.51%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.41%) Solaris
11 7 (0.36%) 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
14 3 (0.15%) AIX
15 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.051%) FreeRTOS
16 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
16 1 (0.051%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,045 (53.10%) CI/CD
2 903 (45.88%) Agile
3 706 (35.87%) DevOps
4 397 (20.17%) Problem-Solving
5 321 (16.31%) Continuous Improvement
6 301 (15.29%) Microservices
7 284 (14.43%) Test Strategy
8 276 (14.02%) Scrum
9 268 (13.62%) Infrastructure as Code
10 266 (13.52%) Validation
11 255 (12.96%) Containerisation
12 224 (11.38%) Software Engineering
13 223 (11.33%) AI
14 222 (11.28%) Observability
15 218 (11.08%) TDD
16 210 (10.67%) Test Scripting
17 203 (10.32%) Regression Testing
18 201 (10.21%) Analytics
18 201 (10.21%) SDLC
19 194 (9.86%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 546 (27.74%) Python
2 499 (25.36%) Java
3 426 (21.65%) SQL
4 291 (14.79%) JavaScript
5 269 (13.67%) TypeScript
6 205 (10.42%) C#
7 74 (3.76%) PowerShell
8 67 (3.40%) Bash
9 53 (2.69%) C++
10 35 (1.78%) Kotlin
11 32 (1.63%) C
12 31 (1.58%) Scala
13 29 (1.47%) PL/SQL
14 28 (1.42%) Ruby
15 27 (1.37%) Apex Code
16 26 (1.32%) Bicep
17 20 (1.02%) Go
18 15 (0.76%) Swift
19 14 (0.71%) Groovy
20 12 (0.61%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 597 (30.34%) Security Cleared
2 473 (24.03%) SC Cleared
3 93 (4.73%) ISTQB
4 87 (4.42%) Degree
5 82 (4.17%) BPSS Clearance
6 59 (3.00%) DV Cleared
7 49 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
8 27 (1.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 17 (0.86%) Master's Degree
10 13 (0.66%) Cisco Certification
11 12 (0.61%) Azure Certification
12 11 (0.56%) AWS Certification
13 9 (0.46%) CCNP
13 9 (0.46%) DBS Check
13 9 (0.46%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 9 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.41%) ISEB
14 8 (0.41%) Oracle Certification
15 7 (0.36%) CISSP
15 7 (0.36%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 444 (22.56%) QA
2 140 (7.11%) Accessibility
3 118 (6.00%) Data Quality
4 59 (3.00%) WCAG
5 45 (2.29%) 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%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.41%) NIST
13 7 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 7 (0.36%) PSD2
13 7 (0.36%) SEPA
14 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
15 5 (0.25%) FATCA
15 5 (0.25%) PERC
16 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 350 (17.78%) Docker
2 27 (1.37%) Active Directory
3 15 (0.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.71%) Firmware
5 9 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.36%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 7 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (0.30%) 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
1 337 (17.12%) Kubernetes
2 241 (12.25%) Terraform
3 110 (5.59%) Grafana
4 82 (4.17%) Prometheus
5 73 (3.71%) Ansible
6 27 (1.37%) Argo
7 24 (1.22%) HP ALM
8 18 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.86%) Puppet
10 14 (0.71%) Kibana
11 10 (0.51%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.51%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.51%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 10 (0.51%) Progress Chef
12 8 (0.41%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.41%) NetBackup
13 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
14 5 (0.25%) Nmap
14 5 (0.25%) Rancher
15 4 (0.20%) Podman
Vendors
1 171 (8.69%) Microsoft
2 167 (8.49%) Oracle
3 80 (4.07%) Salesforce
4 71 (3.61%) Databricks
5 66 (3.35%) ServiceNow
6 58 (2.95%) Splunk
7 57 (2.90%) Google
8 47 (2.39%) Red Hat
9 46 (2.34%) Talend
10 45 (2.29%) SAP
11 30 (1.52%) Denodo
12 29 (1.47%) IBM
13 27 (1.37%) HP
14 25 (1.27%) VMware
15 20 (1.02%) Cisco
15 20 (1.02%) Dynatrace
16 18 (0.91%) Informatica
17 17 (0.86%) MuleSoft
17 17 (0.86%) UiPath
18 16 (0.81%) Blue Prism