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 16 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 49 53
Rank change year-on-year +4 +4 -3
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,137 1,323 1,555
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.26% 4.47% 3.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.02% 4.91% 4.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,386 934 1,020
10th Percentile £342 £320 £363
25th Percentile £402 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £494 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -3.71% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £725 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £465 £501
% change year-on-year -1.08% -7.19% -4.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 26 54
10th Percentile £36.22 £37.92 £50.38
25th Percentile £59.19 £44.95 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.57% -8.70% -14.66%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.50 £72.34
90th Percentile £74.30 £77.35 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.25 £52.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +26.19% -8.70% -10.68%

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 42,574 26,968 37,058
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.80% 91.03% 85.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,549 17,103 23,600
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £506 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.28% -3.62% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,556 1,231 2,598
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.01
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.32 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +67.02% -29.21% +6.23%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +76.94% -34.02% +17.29%

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 16 June 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 16 June 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 16 June 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 1,826 £475 -3.06% 709
UK excluding London -1 1,047 £460 -1.08% 532
London +2 837 £500 -1.23% 264
Work from Home 0 608 £475 - 323
North of England +14 362 £458 +2.35% 143
Midlands +9 228 £450 +5.88% 71
West Midlands +26 209 £450 -10.00% 43
South East -31 191 £481 -3.75% 155
North West +4 150 £475 +15.29% 81
Yorkshire +1 143 £500 +5.26% 37
South West +16 105 £463 -2.63% 55
East of England +15 84 £495 +10.00% 65
North East +6 77 £425 +6.25% 26
Scotland -28 55 £440 -9.04% 30
Wales -2 32 £475 +18.75% 10
Northern Ireland +22 22 £475 +16.28% 18
East Midlands -44 19 £418 +51.82% 28
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
1 179 (8.38%) Confluence
2 48 (2.25%) SAS
3 44 (2.06%) Apache Spark
4 43 (2.01%) Apache Airflow
5 17 (0.80%) Apache
6 14 (0.66%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.56%) CMS
8 9 (0.42%) Appian
9 8 (0.37%) Camunda
9 8 (0.37%) nginx
9 8 (0.37%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.19%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.14%) Jupyter
12 3 (0.14%) Kentico
12 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.094%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 2 (0.094%) Mendix
13 2 (0.094%) Mule
Applications
1 30 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.70%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
4 10 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.14%) Simulink
7 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.047%) Mingle
7 1 (0.047%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.84%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 9 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 9 (0.42%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.37%) Findur
6 6 (0.28%) SAP ERP
6 6 (0.28%) Shopify
7 5 (0.23%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.23%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.23%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.19%) Infor CloudSuite
8 4 (0.19%) Infor LN
8 4 (0.19%) Infor M3
9 3 (0.14%) Distributed Ledger
9 3 (0.14%) Maximo
9 3 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
9 3 (0.14%) Workday HCM
10 2 (0.094%) Advent Geneva
10 2 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 613 (28.69%) Azure
2 607 (28.40%) AWS
3 358 (16.75%) GitHub
4 281 (13.15%) Azure DevOps
5 214 (10.01%) GitHub Actions
6 156 (7.30%) GCP
7 152 (7.11%) Serverless
8 102 (4.77%) AWS Lambda
9 94 (4.40%) Power Platform
10 93 (4.35%) Amazon S3
11 66 (3.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 62 (2.90%) OpenShift
13 59 (2.76%) Amazon ECS
14 47 (2.20%) Amazon EC2
15 46 (2.15%) AWS CloudFormation
16 44 (2.06%) Azure Data Factory
17 42 (1.97%) Amazon EKS
18 40 (1.87%) Snowflake
19 38 (1.78%) dbt
20 30 (1.40%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.17%) HTTP
2 22 (1.03%) Firewall
3 16 (0.75%) SAN
4 12 (0.56%) Network Security
5 11 (0.51%) WAN
6 10 (0.47%) TCP/IP
6 10 (0.47%) VPN
7 9 (0.42%) MPLS
8 7 (0.33%) Wireshark
9 6 (0.28%) BGP
9 6 (0.28%) Ethernet
9 6 (0.28%) LAN
9 6 (0.28%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.28%) VLAN
9 6 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
10 5 (0.23%) 5G
10 5 (0.23%) Multicast
10 5 (0.23%) SSL
11 4 (0.19%) 4G
11 4 (0.19%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (5.66%) PostgreSQL
2 109 (5.10%) MongoDB
3 96 (4.49%) Data Warehouse
4 91 (4.26%) NoSQL
5 82 (3.84%) SQL Server
6 72 (3.37%) Relational Database
7 68 (3.18%) Power BI
8 47 (2.20%) DynamoDB
9 41 (1.92%) Metadata
10 37 (1.73%) Oracle Reports
11 36 (1.68%) Pentaho
12 35 (1.64%) Big Data
13 32 (1.50%) Amazon Athena
14 28 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
14 28 (1.31%) MySQL
15 26 (1.22%) Amazon Redshift
15 26 (1.22%) Redis
16 25 (1.17%) Data Lake
17 24 (1.12%) Tableau
18 22 (1.03%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 405 (18.95%) JIRA
2 383 (17.92%) Git
3 345 (16.14%) Jenkins
4 305 (14.27%) GitLab
5 276 (12.92%) Selenium
6 167 (7.81%) Postman
7 149 (6.97%) Cucumber
8 116 (5.43%) REST Assured
9 104 (4.87%) JUnit
10 103 (4.82%) Cypress.io
11 102 (4.77%) JMeter
12 64 (2.99%) WebDriver
13 58 (2.71%) Zephyr
14 57 (2.67%) SonarQube
15 48 (2.25%) Gatling
16 44 (2.06%) Gradle
17 37 (1.73%) Mockito
18 35 (1.64%) Bitbucket
19 31 (1.45%) Maven
19 31 (1.45%) SpecFlow
General
1 563 (26.35%) Social Skills
2 366 (17.13%) Finance
3 298 (13.94%) Public Sector
4 261 (12.21%) Analytical Skills
5 172 (8.05%) Banking
6 52 (2.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 44 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
8 39 (1.82%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.64%) Front Office
10 27 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
11 25 (1.17%) Telecoms
12 23 (1.08%) Military
13 20 (0.94%) Financial Institution
14 19 (0.89%) Retail
15 17 (0.80%) Aerospace
15 17 (0.80%) Legal
15 17 (0.80%) Manufacturing
15 17 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
16 14 (0.66%) Marketing
16 14 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 433 (20.26%) Developer
2 334 (15.63%) Senior
3 236 (11.04%) Test Engineer
4 228 (10.67%) Lead
5 224 (10.48%) Tester
6 136 (6.36%) Data Engineer
7 127 (5.94%) Java Developer
8 113 (5.29%) Analyst
9 107 (5.01%) Software Engineer
10 101 (4.73%) DevOps Engineer
11 97 (4.54%) Architect
12 96 (4.49%) Test Automation Engineer
13 89 (4.16%) Automation Tester
14 83 (3.88%) QA Engineer
14 83 (3.88%) Test Leader
15 81 (3.79%) Senior Developer
16 69 (3.23%) Test Analyst
17 60 (2.81%) Test Manager
18 59 (2.76%) Full-Stack Developer
19 58 (2.71%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 253 (11.84%) Playwright
2 248 (11.61%) REST
3 192 (8.98%) React
4 161 (7.53%) RESTful
5 154 (7.21%) Spring
6 148 (6.93%) Kafka
7 132 (6.18%) .NET
8 128 (5.99%) Spring Boot
9 118 (5.52%) Node.js
10 85 (3.98%) AngularJS
11 72 (3.37%) HTML
12 65 (3.04%) pytest
13 61 (2.85%) CSS
14 60 (2.81%) OAuth
15 51 (2.39%) Jest
16 47 (2.20%) Swagger
17 43 (2.01%) Gherkin
18 42 (1.97%) JSON
19 39 (1.82%) OAuth2
20 37 (1.73%) Quarkus
Miscellaneous
1 247 (11.56%) Cloud Native
2 160 (7.49%) Product Ownership
3 120 (5.62%) Distributed Systems
4 60 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
5 56 (2.62%) Data Protection Act
6 54 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
7 47 (2.20%) Mobile App
8 42 (1.97%) Self-Motivation
8 42 (1.97%) Virtual Team
9 40 (1.87%) Onboarding
10 33 (1.54%) Distributed Architecture
11 31 (1.45%) NHS
12 24 (1.12%) Algorithms
12 24 (1.12%) Management Information System
13 23 (1.08%) Data Centre
14 22 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
14 22 (1.03%) Security Posture
15 21 (0.98%) Embedded Systems
16 20 (0.94%) AI Agents
16 20 (0.94%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 131 (6.13%) Linux
2 81 (3.79%) Windows
3 60 (2.81%) Unix
4 45 (2.11%) Android
5 41 (1.92%) Apple iOS
6 21 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 21 (0.98%) Windows Server
7 12 (0.56%) Mac OS X
8 10 (0.47%) Solaris
9 9 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.37%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.19%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.14%) AIX
15 2 (0.094%) CentOS
15 2 (0.094%) Kali Linux
15 2 (0.094%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,164 (54.47%) CI/CD
2 994 (46.51%) Agile
3 759 (35.52%) DevOps
4 386 (18.06%) Problem-Solving
5 344 (16.10%) Microservices
6 342 (16.00%) Continuous Improvement
7 324 (15.16%) Scrum
8 322 (15.07%) Test Strategy
9 310 (14.51%) Validation
10 298 (13.94%) Software Engineering
11 294 (13.76%) Infrastructure as Code
12 266 (12.45%) Observability
13 264 (12.35%) Containerisation
14 252 (11.79%) AI
15 244 (11.42%) TDD
16 212 (9.92%) End-to-End Testing
16 212 (9.92%) ETL
17 207 (9.69%) User Acceptance Testing
18 203 (9.50%) Software Testing
19 202 (9.45%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 551 (25.78%) Python
2 528 (24.71%) Java
3 486 (22.74%) SQL
4 281 (13.15%) JavaScript
5 244 (11.42%) TypeScript
6 201 (9.41%) C#
7 75 (3.51%) PowerShell
8 72 (3.37%) Bash
9 53 (2.48%) C++
10 49 (2.29%) Kotlin
11 39 (1.82%) PL/SQL
12 36 (1.68%) Scala
13 33 (1.54%) Apex Code
14 31 (1.45%) C
15 30 (1.40%) Go
16 29 (1.36%) Bicep
17 22 (1.03%) Swift
18 20 (0.94%) Ruby
19 17 (0.80%) Groovy
20 14 (0.66%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 677 (31.68%) Security Cleared
2 554 (25.92%) SC Cleared
3 102 (4.77%) BPSS Clearance
4 101 (4.73%) ISTQB
5 87 (4.07%) Degree
6 76 (3.56%) DV Cleared
7 43 (2.01%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (1.17%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 19 (0.89%) AWS Certification
10 17 (0.80%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 16 (0.75%) Master's Degree
12 14 (0.66%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 13 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
14 11 (0.51%) CCNP
14 11 (0.51%) SAFe Agilist
15 9 (0.42%) Azure Certification
15 9 (0.42%) DBS Check
16 8 (0.37%) CISSP
17 5 (0.23%) CCIE
17 5 (0.23%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 465 (21.76%) QA
2 166 (7.77%) Accessibility
3 142 (6.64%) Data Quality
4 72 (3.37%) WCAG
5 36 (1.68%) GDPR
6 15 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.70%) SLA
7 12 (0.56%) ISO 20022
7 12 (0.56%) NCSC
8 10 (0.47%) Def Stans
8 10 (0.47%) NIST
9 7 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 6 (0.28%) PCI DSS
11 5 (0.23%) FATCA
11 5 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 5 (0.23%) Software Quality Assurance
12 4 (0.19%) HL7
12 4 (0.19%) SEPA
13 3 (0.14%) HIPAA
13 3 (0.14%) MiFID
System Software
1 363 (16.99%) Docker
2 30 (1.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (0.98%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.66%) Firmware
5 13 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 4 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.094%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.094%) SRDF
10 1 (0.047%) KVM
10 1 (0.047%) Squid
10 1 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.047%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 361 (16.89%) Kubernetes
2 260 (12.17%) Terraform
3 106 (4.96%) Grafana
4 103 (4.82%) Ansible
5 94 (4.40%) Prometheus
6 37 (1.73%) Argo
7 19 (0.89%) HP ALM
8 14 (0.66%) Puppet
9 13 (0.61%) Kibana
10 11 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.47%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.47%) HP Quality Center
12 8 (0.37%) Kustomize
12 8 (0.37%) NetBackup
13 7 (0.33%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 7 (0.33%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 6 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.23%) Istio
15 5 (0.23%) Progress Chef
16 4 (0.19%) Nmap
Vendors
1 177 (8.28%) Microsoft
2 176 (8.24%) Oracle
3 96 (4.49%) Salesforce
4 67 (3.14%) Databricks
5 65 (3.04%) Talend
6 61 (2.85%) Google
7 60 (2.81%) Red Hat
8 56 (2.62%) ServiceNow
8 56 (2.62%) Splunk
9 46 (2.15%) Denodo
10 35 (1.64%) SAP
10 35 (1.64%) VMware
11 33 (1.54%) IBM
12 31 (1.45%) Informatica
13 30 (1.40%) UiPath
14 28 (1.31%) Dynatrace
15 22 (1.03%) Cisco
15 22 (1.03%) HP
15 22 (1.03%) MuleSoft
16 16 (0.75%) Blue Prism