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

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 49 45
Rank change year-on-year +5 -4 +7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,437 1,522 1,586
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.48% 4.64% 4.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.32% 5.12% 4.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,572 1,042 1,074
10th Percentile £322 £313 £350
25th Percentile £405 £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 99 37 17
10th Percentile £39.45 £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 £74.50 £67.00 £74.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £70.20 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +17.39% - -22.03%

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 45,850 29,737 32,777
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.30% 90.62% 85.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,722 18,491 19,844
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £403 £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 £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,198 1,854 1,372
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.25 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.23 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £39.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.07% -40.82% -1.16%
75th Percentile £65.60 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.72 £65.00 £74.49
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.25% -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 28 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 28 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 28 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 2,041 £475 -5.00% 2,673
UK excluding London -2 1,175 £450 -5.26% 1,682
London +6 931 £500 - 1,199
Work from Home -1 647 £480 +1.05% 1,146
North of England -1 404 £453 -4.63% 431
Midlands +12 261 £450 -2.70% 205
West Midlands +25 246 £450 -13.21% 143
South East -15 216 £448 -5.79% 344
Yorkshire -5 171 £463 -7.50% 132
North West -19 141 £492 +15.82% 234
South West -11 110 £469 -13.19% 236
North East +4 99 £425 -10.53% 65
Scotland -19 98 £475 -5.00% 194
East of England +16 92 £375 +17.19% 169
Wales -8 25 £419 +1.52% 39
East Midlands -44 15 £418 +15.97% 62
Northern Ireland +4 8 £513 +345.65% 76
Channel Islands - 2 £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
1 189 (7.76%) Confluence
2 64 (2.63%) Apache Airflow
3 46 (1.89%) Apache Spark
3 46 (1.89%) SharePoint
4 34 (1.40%) SAS
5 32 (1.31%) Apache
6 17 (0.70%) CMS
7 14 (0.57%) Camunda
8 11 (0.45%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.29%) Jupyter
9 7 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.25%) nginx
11 5 (0.21%) OpenStack
11 5 (0.21%) Tomcat
12 4 (0.16%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.16%) ColdFusion
12 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 3 (0.12%) Kentico
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 22 (0.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.74%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.29%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.16%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 2 (0.082%) Mingle
7 2 (0.082%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.041%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.041%) Simulink
8 1 (0.041%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 30 (1.23%) Dynamics CRM
2 28 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.41%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.41%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.29%) SAP GRC
6 6 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.25%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.16%) FLEXCUBE
7 4 (0.16%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.12%) Finacle
9 2 (0.082%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.082%) Findur
9 2 (0.082%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.082%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.082%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.082%) Shopify
9 2 (0.082%) Workday HCM
10 1 (0.041%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 775 (31.80%) AWS
2 731 (30.00%) Azure
3 436 (17.89%) GitHub
4 340 (13.95%) Azure DevOps
5 257 (10.55%) GitHub Actions
6 187 (7.67%) GCP
7 174 (7.14%) Serverless
8 130 (5.33%) AWS Lambda
9 115 (4.72%) Power Platform
10 103 (4.23%) Amazon S3
11 86 (3.53%) GitHub Copilot
12 85 (3.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 74 (3.04%) OpenShift
14 69 (2.83%) Amazon EKS
14 69 (2.83%) AWS CloudFormation
15 67 (2.75%) Amazon ECS
16 60 (2.46%) dbt
17 59 (2.42%) Snowflake
18 53 (2.17%) Anthropic Claude
19 47 (1.93%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.03%) DNS
1 25 (1.03%) Firewall
1 25 (1.03%) HTTP
2 24 (0.98%) 4G
3 22 (0.90%) Wi-Fi
4 21 (0.86%) 5G
4 21 (0.86%) TCP/IP
5 19 (0.78%) Broadband
6 16 (0.66%) Network Security
7 14 (0.57%) 2G
7 14 (0.57%) 3G
7 14 (0.57%) Diameter Protocol
7 14 (0.57%) SIGTRAN
7 14 (0.57%) SS7
7 14 (0.57%) WAN
8 13 (0.53%) BGP
8 13 (0.53%) LAN
9 12 (0.49%) Ethernet VPN
9 12 (0.49%) VXLAN
10 11 (0.45%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 149 (6.11%) PostgreSQL
2 128 (5.25%) MongoDB
3 125 (5.13%) Data Warehouse
4 112 (4.60%) Relational Database
5 105 (4.31%) NoSQL
6 97 (3.98%) SQL Server
7 84 (3.45%) Power BI
8 53 (2.17%) Metadata
9 41 (1.68%) Data Lake
9 41 (1.68%) DynamoDB
10 39 (1.60%) Oracle Reports
11 37 (1.52%) MySQL
12 33 (1.35%) Big Data
13 32 (1.31%) Amazon Redshift
13 32 (1.31%) Redis
14 31 (1.27%) Amazon Athena
14 31 (1.27%) Pentaho
15 28 (1.15%) Oracle Database
16 27 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
17 26 (1.07%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 557 (22.86%) Git
2 397 (16.29%) Jenkins
3 393 (16.13%) JIRA
4 342 (14.03%) GitLab
5 311 (12.76%) Selenium
6 169 (6.93%) Cucumber
6 169 (6.93%) Postman
7 147 (6.03%) JUnit
8 126 (5.17%) Cypress.io
9 111 (4.55%) REST Assured
10 100 (4.10%) JMeter
11 83 (3.41%) SonarQube
12 72 (2.95%) Gatling
13 69 (2.83%) Maven
14 65 (2.67%) Zephyr
15 60 (2.46%) Gradle
15 60 (2.46%) Mockito
16 51 (2.09%) WebDriver
17 36 (1.48%) Bitbucket
18 30 (1.23%) TestNG
General
1 674 (27.66%) Social Skills
2 455 (18.67%) Finance
3 344 (14.12%) Public Sector
4 341 (13.99%) Analytical Skills
5 228 (9.36%) Banking
6 79 (3.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 58 (2.38%) Telecoms
8 40 (1.64%) Front Office
9 36 (1.48%) Investment Banking
10 34 (1.40%) Retail
11 33 (1.35%) Military
12 32 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
13 30 (1.23%) Documentation Skills
14 23 (0.94%) Financial Institution
15 20 (0.82%) Law
15 20 (0.82%) Manufacturing
16 18 (0.74%) Marketing
17 17 (0.70%) Aerospace
18 14 (0.57%) Automotive
18 14 (0.57%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 549 (22.53%) Developer
2 404 (16.58%) Senior
3 251 (10.30%) Lead
4 232 (9.52%) Test Engineer
5 195 (8.00%) Tester
6 173 (7.10%) Java Developer
7 156 (6.40%) Data Engineer
8 120 (4.92%) Analyst
9 119 (4.88%) Senior Developer
9 119 (4.88%) Software Engineer
10 113 (4.64%) DevOps Engineer
11 110 (4.51%) Architect
12 102 (4.19%) Test Automation Engineer
13 99 (4.06%) QA Engineer
14 86 (3.53%) Automation Tester
15 79 (3.24%) Test Analyst
16 78 (3.20%) Full-Stack Developer
17 75 (3.08%) Test Leader
18 74 (3.04%) Automation Engineer
18 74 (3.04%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 420 (17.23%) REST
2 362 (14.85%) Terraform
3 291 (11.94%) Playwright
4 255 (10.46%) RESTful
5 252 (10.34%) Kafka
6 248 (10.18%) Spring
7 224 (9.19%) React
8 212 (8.70%) Spring Boot
9 180 (7.39%) .NET
10 149 (6.11%) HTML
11 137 (5.62%) Node.js
12 128 (5.25%) CSS
13 99 (4.06%) OAuth
14 96 (3.94%) AngularJS
15 84 (3.45%) JSON
16 74 (3.04%) Middleware
17 66 (2.71%) pytest
18 64 (2.63%) OAuth2
19 62 (2.54%) XML
20 60 (2.46%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 393 (16.13%) Cloud Native
2 210 (8.62%) Product Ownership
3 178 (7.30%) Distributed Systems
4 102 (4.19%) Enterprise Software
5 82 (3.36%) Onboarding
6 67 (2.75%) AI Agents
7 63 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
8 52 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
8 52 (2.13%) Self-Motivation
9 50 (2.05%) Mobile App
10 34 (1.40%) Virtual Team
11 31 (1.27%) Data Structures
12 30 (1.23%) Security Posture
13 27 (1.11%) Management Information System
13 27 (1.11%) Private Cloud
14 25 (1.03%) Data Centre
15 24 (0.98%) Legacy Applications
16 22 (0.90%) Life Science
17 21 (0.86%) Embedded Systems
18 19 (0.78%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 175 (7.18%) Linux
2 106 (4.35%) Windows
3 99 (4.06%) Unix
4 46 (1.89%) Apple iOS
5 42 (1.72%) Android
6 30 (1.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 24 (0.98%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.33%) VMS
9 6 (0.25%) Mac OS X
10 5 (0.21%) AIX
10 5 (0.21%) Solaris
10 5 (0.21%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.21%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.21%) 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 1,507 (61.84%) CI/CD
2 1,174 (48.17%) Agile
3 905 (37.14%) DevOps
4 486 (19.94%) Microservices
5 475 (19.49%) Continuous Improvement
6 470 (19.29%) Problem-Solving
7 450 (18.47%) Software Engineering
8 440 (18.05%) Infrastructure as Code
9 415 (17.03%) Scrum
9 415 (17.03%) Validation
10 414 (16.99%) AI
11 363 (14.90%) Test Strategy
12 360 (14.77%) Containerisation
13 328 (13.46%) Observability
14 318 (13.05%) TDD
15 293 (12.02%) Stakeholder Management
16 292 (11.98%) SDLC
16 292 (11.98%) Software Testing
17 260 (10.67%) End-to-End Testing
18 244 (10.01%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 685 (28.11%) Python
2 679 (27.86%) Java
3 609 (24.99%) SQL
4 376 (15.43%) JavaScript
5 277 (11.37%) TypeScript
6 206 (8.45%) C#
7 100 (4.10%) PowerShell
8 90 (3.69%) Bash
9 53 (2.17%) Bicep
10 47 (1.93%) Kotlin
10 47 (1.93%) Scala
11 45 (1.85%) C++
12 42 (1.72%) Go
13 33 (1.35%) Shell Script
14 32 (1.31%) PL/SQL
15 27 (1.11%) Perl
16 22 (0.90%) Apex Code
17 21 (0.86%) C
18 17 (0.70%) Ruby
19 16 (0.66%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 769 (31.56%) Security Cleared
2 651 (26.71%) SC Cleared
3 139 (5.70%) BPSS Clearance
4 136 (5.58%) Degree
5 102 (4.19%) ISTQB
6 92 (3.78%) DV Cleared
7 81 (3.32%) Computer Science Degree
8 45 (1.85%) AWS Certification
9 35 (1.44%) Azure Certification
10 25 (1.03%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.66%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 15 (0.62%) Master's Degree
13 14 (0.57%) CISSP
13 14 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 13 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
14 13 (0.53%) ISEB
15 12 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.37%) DBS Check
17 8 (0.33%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 8 (0.33%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 639 (26.22%) QA
2 223 (9.15%) Accessibility
3 174 (7.14%) Data Quality
4 98 (4.02%) WCAG
5 44 (1.81%) GDPR
6 24 (0.98%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.62%) GRC
8 15 (0.62%) NIST
9 14 (0.57%) SLA
10 12 (0.49%) NCSC
11 8 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.25%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.25%) SEPA
12 6 (0.25%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.25%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.21%) FATCA
13 5 (0.21%) HL7
14 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
14 4 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 500 (20.52%) Docker
2 42 (1.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 36 (1.48%) Active Directory
4 20 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.45%) Firmware
5 11 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
6 8 (0.33%) VMware NSX
7 6 (0.25%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.082%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.082%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.041%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.041%) KVM
9 1 (0.041%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.041%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 482 (19.78%) Kubernetes
2 140 (5.74%) Ansible
3 131 (5.38%) Grafana
4 88 (3.61%) Prometheus
5 33 (1.35%) Argo
6 29 (1.19%) Kibana
7 24 (0.98%) Progress Chef
8 23 (0.94%) Puppet
9 15 (0.62%) HP ALM
10 14 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 13 (0.53%) Control-M
12 8 (0.33%) Microsoft Intune
13 7 (0.29%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.25%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.25%) Istio
14 6 (0.25%) SCCM
15 5 (0.21%) Dell DRAC
15 5 (0.21%) Packer
15 5 (0.21%) WMI
16 4 (0.16%) Rancher
Vendors
1 235 (9.64%) Microsoft
2 189 (7.76%) Oracle
3 97 (3.98%) Databricks
4 81 (3.32%) Google
5 72 (2.95%) Salesforce
6 70 (2.87%) IBM
7 66 (2.71%) ServiceNow
8 59 (2.42%) SAP
8 59 (2.42%) Splunk
9 55 (2.26%) Talend
10 52 (2.13%) Red Hat
11 51 (2.09%) VMware
12 43 (1.76%) Denodo
12 43 (1.76%) Informatica
13 42 (1.72%) Dynatrace
14 35 (1.44%) Cisco
15 34 (1.40%) MuleSoft
16 31 (1.27%) UiPath
17 24 (0.98%) OpenAI
18 22 (0.90%) Foundry