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 10 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 48 50
Rank change year-on-year +2 +2 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,288 1,452 1,620
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.35% 4.49% 3.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.10% 4.96% 4.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,482 1,016 1,061
10th Percentile £329 £313 £363
25th Percentile £403 £400 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £483 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.66% -5.76% -4.21%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £610
90th Percentile £663 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £453 £465 £501
% change year-on-year -2.58% -7.19% -1.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 31 50
10th Percentile £36.22 £35.00 £49.80
25th Percentile £60.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -11.11% -19.50%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £71.87
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.19 £82.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £56.25
% change year-on-year +28.57% -6.67% -12.62%

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 44,833 29,276 36,875
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.19% 90.47% 85.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,910 18,456 23,540
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.48% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £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 2,660 1,489 2,488
10th Percentile £14.95 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.44 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -6.25%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.45% -35.31% -3.62%

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 10 July 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 10 July 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 10 July 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 1,944 £475 -1.86% 615
UK excluding London +7 1,137 £453 -2.58% 487
London +4 876 £500 - 237
Work from Home +1 648 £475 +3.26% 297
North of England +16 394 £460 +2.91% 122
Midlands +4 249 £450 +9.09% 57
West Midlands +24 232 £450 -6.83% 27
South East -32 203 £459 -8.20% 156
Yorkshire +12 162 £493 -1.50% 39
North West +7 155 £475 +18.16% 60
South West +11 115 £450 +2.86% 65
East of England +14 87 £475 +3.54% 44
North East +8 87 £425 +6.25% 23
Scotland -27 67 £440 -9.74% 19
Wales -3 35 £475 +15.15% 12
Northern Ireland +23 22 £475 +16.28% 21
East Midlands -41 17 £425 +54.55% 30
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
1 197 (8.61%) Confluence
2 51 (2.23%) Apache Spark
3 48 (2.10%) SAS
4 46 (2.01%) Apache Airflow
5 22 (0.96%) Apache
6 16 (0.70%) SharePoint
7 13 (0.57%) CMS
8 10 (0.44%) nginx
8 10 (0.44%) Tomcat
8 10 (0.44%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.26%) Camunda
10 5 (0.22%) Appian
11 4 (0.17%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.17%) Jupyter
12 3 (0.13%) Kentico
12 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.087%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.087%) Mendix
13 2 (0.087%) Mule
Applications
1 30 (1.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.74%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (0.35%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.17%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.17%) Simulink
5 4 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.044%) Mingle
6 1 (0.044%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 23 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.79%) Aladdin
3 16 (0.70%) SAP S/4HANA
4 12 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
4 12 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.35%) Findur
6 7 (0.31%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.26%) SAP MDG
7 6 (0.26%) Shopify
8 5 (0.22%) BambooHR
8 5 (0.22%) Loan IQ
9 4 (0.17%) Infor CloudSuite
9 4 (0.17%) Infor LN
9 4 (0.17%) Infor M3
10 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
10 3 (0.13%) Maximo
10 3 (0.13%) Workday HCM
11 2 (0.087%) Advent Geneva
11 2 (0.087%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 675 (29.50%) Azure
2 664 (29.02%) AWS
3 389 (17.00%) GitHub
4 301 (13.16%) Azure DevOps
5 231 (10.10%) GitHub Actions
6 169 (7.39%) GCP
7 156 (6.82%) Serverless
8 106 (4.63%) AWS Lambda
9 100 (4.37%) Power Platform
10 97 (4.24%) Amazon S3
11 65 (2.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 63 (2.75%) OpenShift
13 60 (2.62%) Amazon ECS
14 51 (2.23%) Amazon EC2
14 51 (2.23%) AWS CloudFormation
15 47 (2.05%) dbt
16 43 (1.88%) Amazon EKS
16 43 (1.88%) Snowflake
17 41 (1.79%) Azure Data Factory
18 35 (1.53%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.09%) HTTP
2 19 (0.83%) Firewall
3 16 (0.70%) SAN
4 12 (0.52%) Network Security
5 11 (0.48%) WAN
6 9 (0.39%) 5G
6 9 (0.39%) MPLS
7 8 (0.35%) 4G
7 8 (0.35%) VPN
8 7 (0.31%) 2G
8 7 (0.31%) 3G
8 7 (0.31%) BGP
8 7 (0.31%) Diameter Protocol
8 7 (0.31%) SIGTRAN
8 7 (0.31%) SS7
8 7 (0.31%) Wireshark
9 6 (0.26%) Ethernet
9 6 (0.26%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.26%) TCP/IP
9 6 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 119 (5.20%) PostgreSQL
2 117 (5.11%) MongoDB
3 109 (4.76%) Data Warehouse
4 96 (4.20%) NoSQL
5 84 (3.67%) SQL Server
6 82 (3.58%) Relational Database
7 77 (3.37%) Power BI
8 46 (2.01%) DynamoDB
8 46 (2.01%) Metadata
9 40 (1.75%) Big Data
10 38 (1.66%) Oracle Reports
11 36 (1.57%) Pentaho
12 34 (1.49%) Amazon Athena
13 31 (1.35%) Amazon RDS
14 30 (1.31%) MySQL
15 27 (1.18%) Amazon Redshift
16 26 (1.14%) Data Lake
17 25 (1.09%) Redis
18 22 (0.96%) Elasticsearch
18 22 (0.96%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 438 (19.14%) JIRA
2 417 (18.23%) Git
3 369 (16.13%) Jenkins
4 311 (13.59%) GitLab
5 297 (12.98%) Selenium
6 180 (7.87%) Postman
7 158 (6.91%) Cucumber
8 123 (5.38%) REST Assured
9 117 (5.11%) JUnit
10 114 (4.98%) Cypress.io
11 106 (4.63%) JMeter
12 66 (2.88%) WebDriver
13 65 (2.84%) Zephyr
14 56 (2.45%) SonarQube
15 55 (2.40%) Gatling
16 48 (2.10%) Gradle
17 42 (1.84%) Mockito
18 38 (1.66%) Bitbucket
18 38 (1.66%) Maven
19 37 (1.62%) SpecFlow
General
1 611 (26.70%) Social Skills
2 412 (18.01%) Finance
3 305 (13.33%) Public Sector
4 285 (12.46%) Analytical Skills
5 190 (8.30%) Banking
6 59 (2.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 45 (1.97%) Documentation Skills
8 39 (1.70%) Investment Banking
9 36 (1.57%) Front Office
10 30 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
10 30 (1.31%) Telecoms
11 27 (1.18%) Military
12 24 (1.05%) Financial Institution
12 24 (1.05%) Retail
13 20 (0.87%) Aerospace
14 18 (0.79%) Manufacturing
15 17 (0.74%) Legal
15 17 (0.74%) Organisational Skills
16 15 (0.66%) Back Office
17 14 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 475 (20.76%) Developer
2 363 (15.87%) Senior
3 249 (10.88%) Lead
4 238 (10.40%) Test Engineer
5 236 (10.31%) Tester
6 155 (6.77%) Data Engineer
6 155 (6.77%) Java Developer
7 118 (5.16%) Analyst
8 113 (4.94%) Software Engineer
9 108 (4.72%) DevOps Engineer
10 106 (4.63%) Architect
11 104 (4.55%) Test Automation Engineer
12 96 (4.20%) Senior Developer
13 92 (4.02%) Test Leader
14 91 (3.98%) QA Engineer
15 90 (3.93%) Automation Tester
16 76 (3.32%) Test Analyst
17 65 (2.84%) Full-Stack Developer
18 62 (2.71%) Automation Engineer
19 59 (2.58%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 280 (12.24%) REST
2 279 (12.19%) Playwright
3 208 (9.09%) React
4 182 (7.95%) RESTful
4 182 (7.95%) Spring
5 160 (6.99%) Kafka
6 152 (6.64%) .NET
7 148 (6.47%) Spring Boot
8 120 (5.24%) Node.js
9 93 (4.06%) AngularJS
10 87 (3.80%) HTML
11 77 (3.37%) CSS
12 65 (2.84%) OAuth
13 61 (2.67%) pytest
14 54 (2.36%) Jest
15 51 (2.23%) Swagger
16 48 (2.10%) JSON
17 46 (2.01%) Gherkin
18 44 (1.92%) OAuth2
19 42 (1.84%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 299 (13.07%) Cloud Native
2 166 (7.26%) Product Ownership
3 133 (5.81%) Distributed Systems
4 77 (3.37%) Enterprise Software
5 64 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
6 53 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
6 53 (2.32%) Onboarding
7 47 (2.05%) Mobile App
7 47 (2.05%) Self-Motivation
8 44 (1.92%) Virtual Team
9 32 (1.40%) Distributed Architecture
10 29 (1.27%) Security Posture
11 28 (1.22%) Management Information System
12 27 (1.18%) AI Agents
13 26 (1.14%) Embedded Systems
13 26 (1.14%) NHS
14 22 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
15 20 (0.87%) Data Centre
15 20 (0.87%) Fixed Income
16 19 (0.83%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 136 (5.94%) Linux
2 79 (3.45%) Windows
3 70 (3.06%) Unix
4 42 (1.84%) Android
5 40 (1.75%) Apple iOS
6 25 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 18 (0.79%) Windows Server
8 14 (0.61%) Mac OS X
9 11 (0.48%) Solaris
10 10 (0.44%) Mac OS
11 8 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
12 7 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
13 6 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.17%) Ubuntu
15 3 (0.13%) AIX
16 2 (0.087%) CentOS
16 2 (0.087%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,299 (56.77%) CI/CD
2 1,058 (46.24%) Agile
3 840 (36.71%) DevOps
4 412 (18.01%) Problem-Solving
5 390 (17.05%) Microservices
6 382 (16.70%) Continuous Improvement
7 357 (15.60%) Scrum
8 348 (15.21%) Test Strategy
9 344 (15.03%) Validation
10 334 (14.60%) Infrastructure as Code
11 333 (14.55%) Software Engineering
12 300 (13.11%) Containerisation
13 287 (12.54%) TDD
14 282 (12.33%) AI
15 280 (12.24%) Observability
16 236 (10.31%) End-to-End Testing
17 232 (10.14%) ETL
18 223 (9.75%) Software Testing
19 222 (9.70%) User Acceptance Testing
20 219 (9.57%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 595 (26.01%) Python
2 578 (25.26%) Java
3 523 (22.86%) SQL
4 305 (13.33%) JavaScript
5 260 (11.36%) TypeScript
6 212 (9.27%) C#
7 80 (3.50%) Bash
8 75 (3.28%) PowerShell
9 54 (2.36%) C++
10 49 (2.14%) Kotlin
11 39 (1.70%) PL/SQL
12 38 (1.66%) Scala
13 36 (1.57%) Bicep
14 34 (1.49%) Apex Code
14 34 (1.49%) C
15 33 (1.44%) Go
16 23 (1.01%) Ruby
16 23 (1.01%) Swift
17 19 (0.83%) Shell Script
18 17 (0.74%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 709 (30.99%) Security Cleared
2 592 (25.87%) SC Cleared
3 110 (4.81%) Degree
4 109 (4.76%) BPSS Clearance
5 103 (4.50%) ISTQB
6 73 (3.19%) DV Cleared
7 57 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
8 26 (1.14%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 23 (1.01%) AWS Certification
10 18 (0.79%) Master's Degree
11 17 (0.74%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 13 (0.57%) Azure Certification
13 12 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
14 11 (0.48%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 11 (0.48%) SAFe Agilist
15 10 (0.44%) CCNP
16 9 (0.39%) CISSP
16 9 (0.39%) DBS Check
17 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Certification
18 5 (0.22%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 522 (22.81%) QA
2 179 (7.82%) Accessibility
3 159 (6.95%) Data Quality
4 76 (3.32%) WCAG
5 41 (1.79%) GDPR
6 16 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 15 (0.66%) SLA
8 13 (0.57%) NCSC
9 12 (0.52%) ISO 20022
10 10 (0.44%) Def Stans
11 9 (0.39%) NIST
12 7 (0.31%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 6 (0.26%) PCI DSS
14 5 (0.22%) FATCA
14 5 (0.22%) SEPA
14 5 (0.22%) Software Quality Assurance
15 4 (0.17%) GRC
15 4 (0.17%) HL7
15 4 (0.17%) MiFID
15 4 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 401 (17.53%) Docker
2 31 (1.35%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (0.79%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.61%) Firmware
5 13 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 4 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.087%) SRDF
11 1 (0.044%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.044%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 404 (17.66%) Kubernetes
2 291 (12.72%) Terraform
3 116 (5.07%) Ansible
4 114 (4.98%) Grafana
5 94 (4.11%) Prometheus
6 37 (1.62%) Argo
7 22 (0.96%) HP ALM
8 15 (0.66%) Puppet
9 13 (0.57%) Kibana
10 12 (0.52%) HP Quality Center
11 11 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
12 10 (0.44%) Dell DRAC
13 8 (0.35%) Kustomize
13 8 (0.35%) NetBackup
14 6 (0.26%) Oracle RMAN
14 6 (0.26%) Progress Chef
15 5 (0.22%) Forefront Identity Manager
15 5 (0.22%) Istio
15 5 (0.22%) NetIQ Identity Manager
16 4 (0.17%) Control-M
Vendors
1 198 (8.65%) Microsoft
2 180 (7.87%) Oracle
3 106 (4.63%) Salesforce
4 74 (3.23%) Databricks
5 65 (2.84%) Talend
6 63 (2.75%) Google
7 59 (2.58%) Red Hat
8 58 (2.53%) Splunk
9 56 (2.45%) ServiceNow
10 45 (1.97%) Denodo
11 39 (1.70%) IBM
11 39 (1.70%) SAP
12 38 (1.66%) Informatica
13 34 (1.49%) VMware
14 30 (1.31%) UiPath
15 29 (1.27%) Dynatrace
16 25 (1.09%) HP
16 25 (1.09%) MuleSoft
17 21 (0.92%) Cisco
18 16 (0.70%) Blue Prism