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 19 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 56
Rank change year-on-year -1 +9 -8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,975 1,323 1,504
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.11% 4.53% 3.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.88% 4.98% 4.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,292 924 988
10th Percentile £332 £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 £606 £625
90th Percentile £663 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.26% -5.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 22 53
10th Percentile £36.79 £35.58 £51.50
25th Percentile £56.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £66.75 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.14% -12.50% -14.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £74.50
90th Percentile - £75.45 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -12.00% -9.09%

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 40,493 26,571 36,681
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.28% 90.99% 86.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,428 17,064 23,633
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.65% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £494 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.00% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,382 1,097 2,442
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.26 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.72 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.40 £28.18 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +50.46% -21.77% +0.06%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.23 £37.50
% change year-on-year +78.39% -32.73% +7.14%

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 19 May 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 19 May 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 19 May 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 -1 1,691 £475 -5.00% 623
UK excluding London -6 925 £469 -1.26% 500
London -1 813 £500 -0.50% 219
Work from Home -3 571 £475 -3.65% 295
North of England +10 341 £465 +4.26% 130
Midlands +6 193 £450 - 59
West Midlands +26 169 £463 -7.73% 43
South East -45 165 £500 -0.10% 133
North West +9 149 £468 +4.59% 76
Yorkshire -5 145 £487 +2.53% 23
South West +14 97 £469 -8.54% 68
East of England +11 64 £507 +5.08% 61
North East +7 54 £425 +8.97% 31
Scotland -34 43 £440 -4.35% 25
Wales -3 28 £475 +16.92% 20
East Midlands -41 24 £400 +22.70% 16
Northern Ireland +15 18 £475 +16.28% 13
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
1 158 (8.00%) Confluence
2 40 (2.03%) Apache Spark
2 40 (2.03%) SAS
3 33 (1.67%) Apache Airflow
4 14 (0.71%) Apache
5 11 (0.56%) SharePoint
6 8 (0.41%) Appian
7 7 (0.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 7 (0.35%) nginx
7 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.30%) Camunda
8 6 (0.30%) CMS
9 4 (0.20%) Anypoint
9 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
10 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.10%) Mendix
12 1 (0.051%) Ethereum
12 1 (0.051%) OpenStack
12 1 (0.051%) Solana
Applications
1 27 (1.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.15%) Simulink
7 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.051%) Mingle
8 1 (0.051%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (1.01%) Aladdin
2 13 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 9 (0.46%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.41%) Findur
5 8 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
6 6 (0.30%) Shopify
7 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.25%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.25%) SAP MDG
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%) Maximo
8 3 (0.15%) Workday HCM
9 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.10%) iTrent
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 565 (28.61%) Azure
2 543 (27.49%) AWS
3 342 (17.32%) GitHub
4 257 (13.01%) Azure DevOps
5 194 (9.82%) GitHub Actions
6 145 (7.34%) GCP
7 125 (6.33%) Serverless
8 81 (4.10%) Amazon S3
9 78 (3.95%) AWS Lambda
10 75 (3.80%) Power Platform
11 55 (2.78%) OpenShift
12 54 (2.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 52 (2.63%) Amazon ECS
14 47 (2.38%) AWS CloudFormation
15 41 (2.08%) Amazon EKS
16 37 (1.87%) Amazon EC2
16 37 (1.87%) Azure Data Factory
16 37 (1.87%) Snowflake
17 34 (1.72%) Azure AKS
18 29 (1.47%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.22%) HTTP
2 21 (1.06%) Firewall
3 14 (0.71%) SAN
4 12 (0.61%) TCP/IP
5 11 (0.56%) SSL
5 11 (0.56%) VPN
6 9 (0.46%) WAN
6 9 (0.46%) Wireshark
7 8 (0.41%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.41%) FTP
7 8 (0.41%) MPLS
7 8 (0.41%) Network Security
8 7 (0.35%) SD-WAN
8 7 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
9 6 (0.30%) VLAN
10 5 (0.25%) 5G
10 5 (0.25%) Multicast
11 4 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
11 4 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
11 4 (0.20%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 109 (5.52%) PostgreSQL
2 105 (5.32%) MongoDB
3 99 (5.01%) NoSQL
4 88 (4.46%) SQL Server
5 73 (3.70%) Data Warehouse
6 72 (3.65%) Relational Database
7 53 (2.68%) Power BI
8 43 (2.18%) DynamoDB
9 36 (1.82%) Metadata
10 33 (1.67%) Pentaho
11 32 (1.62%) Big Data
11 32 (1.62%) MySQL
12 26 (1.32%) Oracle Reports
13 25 (1.27%) Amazon RDS
13 25 (1.27%) Tableau
14 24 (1.22%) Redis
15 22 (1.11%) Data Lake
16 21 (1.06%) Amazon Aurora
16 21 (1.06%) BigQuery
17 20 (1.01%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 382 (19.34%) JIRA
2 356 (18.03%) Git
3 334 (16.91%) Jenkins
4 275 (13.92%) GitLab
4 275 (13.92%) Selenium
5 165 (8.35%) Postman
6 144 (7.29%) Cucumber
7 102 (5.16%) JUnit
7 102 (5.16%) REST Assured
8 97 (4.91%) JMeter
9 96 (4.86%) Cypress.io
10 57 (2.89%) WebDriver
11 48 (2.43%) SonarQube
12 47 (2.38%) Zephyr
13 40 (2.03%) Gatling
14 35 (1.77%) Gradle
14 35 (1.77%) Mockito
15 31 (1.57%) Bitbucket
15 31 (1.57%) Maven
16 30 (1.52%) SpecFlow
General
1 514 (26.03%) Social Skills
2 330 (16.71%) Finance
3 284 (14.38%) Public Sector
4 234 (11.85%) Analytical Skills
5 162 (8.20%) Banking
6 40 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (1.82%) Investment Banking
8 35 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 34 (1.72%) Front Office
10 25 (1.27%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
12 18 (0.91%) Legal
12 18 (0.91%) Military
12 18 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
13 17 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.81%) Aerospace
15 15 (0.76%) Retail
16 13 (0.66%) Back Office
16 13 (0.66%) Financial Institution
17 12 (0.61%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 414 (20.96%) Developer
2 311 (15.75%) Senior
3 225 (11.39%) Test Engineer
4 208 (10.53%) Tester
5 203 (10.28%) Lead
6 115 (5.82%) Java Developer
7 113 (5.72%) Data Engineer
8 110 (5.57%) Analyst
9 99 (5.01%) Test Automation Engineer
10 97 (4.91%) Automation Tester
11 94 (4.76%) Software Engineer
12 84 (4.25%) Architect
13 82 (4.15%) DevOps Engineer
14 81 (4.10%) QA Engineer
15 80 (4.05%) Senior Developer
16 79 (4.00%) Test Leader
17 67 (3.39%) Test Analyst
18 64 (3.24%) Full-Stack Developer
19 58 (2.94%) Test Manager
20 52 (2.63%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (12.61%) Playwright
2 235 (11.90%) REST
3 181 (9.16%) React
4 158 (8.00%) RESTful
5 147 (7.44%) Spring
6 142 (7.19%) .NET
7 141 (7.14%) Kafka
8 125 (6.33%) Node.js
9 124 (6.28%) Spring Boot
10 82 (4.15%) AngularJS
11 75 (3.80%) HTML
12 66 (3.34%) pytest
13 61 (3.09%) OAuth
14 60 (3.04%) CSS
15 52 (2.63%) Jest
16 45 (2.28%) Swagger
17 44 (2.23%) OpenID
18 42 (2.13%) JSON
19 41 (2.08%) Gherkin
20 40 (2.03%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 213 (10.78%) Cloud Native
2 151 (7.65%) Product Ownership
3 102 (5.16%) Distributed Systems
4 49 (2.48%) Data Protection Act
5 48 (2.43%) Mobile App
6 47 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
7 39 (1.97%) Virtual Team
8 37 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
8 37 (1.87%) Self-Motivation
9 35 (1.77%) Onboarding
10 29 (1.47%) NHS
11 26 (1.32%) Algorithms
12 24 (1.22%) Management Information System
13 23 (1.16%) Data Centre
14 21 (1.06%) Derivative
14 21 (1.06%) Distributed Architecture
15 20 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
16 18 (0.91%) Fixed Income
17 17 (0.86%) Data Structures
17 17 (0.86%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 125 (6.33%) Linux
2 77 (3.90%) Windows
3 49 (2.48%) Unix
4 42 (2.13%) Android
5 37 (1.87%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.06%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.66%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.46%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.41%) Solaris
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.15%) AIX
14 3 (0.15%) CentOS
15 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.051%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,070 (54.18%) CI/CD
2 904 (45.77%) Agile
3 712 (36.05%) DevOps
4 384 (19.44%) Problem-Solving
5 323 (16.35%) Continuous Improvement
6 322 (16.30%) Microservices
7 292 (14.78%) Test Strategy
8 285 (14.43%) Scrum
9 264 (13.37%) Validation
10 260 (13.16%) Infrastructure as Code
11 253 (12.81%) Containerisation
12 248 (12.56%) Software Engineering
13 239 (12.10%) Observability
14 227 (11.49%) TDD
15 211 (10.68%) AI
16 200 (10.13%) Test Scripting
17 194 (9.82%) User Acceptance Testing
18 192 (9.72%) API Testing
19 190 (9.62%) ETL
20 189 (9.57%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 516 (26.13%) Python
2 498 (25.22%) Java
3 437 (22.13%) SQL
4 283 (14.33%) JavaScript
5 251 (12.71%) TypeScript
6 199 (10.08%) C#
7 73 (3.70%) PowerShell
8 68 (3.44%) Bash
9 51 (2.58%) C++
10 43 (2.18%) Kotlin
11 35 (1.77%) PL/SQL
12 32 (1.62%) C
12 32 (1.62%) Scala
13 31 (1.57%) Apex Code
14 27 (1.37%) Bicep
15 23 (1.16%) Go
16 21 (1.06%) Ruby
17 19 (0.96%) Swift
18 14 (0.71%) Shell Script
19 13 (0.66%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 617 (31.24%) Security Cleared
2 488 (24.71%) SC Cleared
3 91 (4.61%) ISTQB
4 84 (4.25%) Degree
5 80 (4.05%) BPSS Clearance
6 67 (3.39%) DV Cleared
7 42 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (1.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 13 (0.66%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.56%) CCNP
12 10 (0.51%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 10 (0.51%) SAFe Agilist
13 9 (0.46%) AWS Certification
13 9 (0.46%) Azure Certification
13 9 (0.46%) DBS Check
14 8 (0.41%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 7 (0.35%) CISSP
15 7 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
16 5 (0.25%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 423 (21.42%) QA
2 156 (7.90%) Accessibility
3 117 (5.92%) Data Quality
4 69 (3.49%) WCAG
5 34 (1.72%) GDPR
6 14 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 14 (0.71%) SLA
7 12 (0.61%) ISO 20022
8 10 (0.51%) Def Stans
9 9 (0.46%) NCSC
10 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 7 (0.35%) NIST
11 6 (0.30%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.25%) FATCA
12 5 (0.25%) SEPA
13 4 (0.20%) HL7
13 4 (0.20%) MiFID
13 4 (0.20%) PSD2
13 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 341 (17.27%) Docker
2 22 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (1.06%) Active Directory
4 12 (0.61%) Firmware
5 11 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
9 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.10%) SRDF
12 1 (0.051%) HDFS
12 1 (0.051%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.051%) KVM
12 1 (0.051%) Squid
12 1 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.051%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 325 (16.46%) Kubernetes
2 226 (11.44%) Terraform
3 115 (5.82%) Grafana
4 94 (4.76%) Prometheus
5 85 (4.30%) Ansible
6 28 (1.42%) Argo
7 22 (1.11%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.86%) Puppet
9 14 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.66%) Kibana
11 10 (0.51%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.51%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.51%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 8 (0.41%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.41%) NetBackup
13 7 (0.35%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
15 4 (0.20%) Istio
15 4 (0.20%) Nmap
15 4 (0.20%) Podman
Vendors
1 159 (8.05%) Oracle
2 158 (8.00%) Microsoft
3 83 (4.20%) Salesforce
4 66 (3.34%) Databricks
5 62 (3.14%) Splunk
6 61 (3.09%) ServiceNow
7 54 (2.73%) Google
8 53 (2.68%) Talend
9 49 (2.48%) Red Hat
10 35 (1.77%) SAP
11 34 (1.72%) Denodo
12 29 (1.47%) VMware
13 25 (1.27%) HP
13 25 (1.27%) IBM
14 22 (1.11%) Cisco
15 21 (1.06%) Dynatrace
16 20 (1.01%) Informatica
16 20 (1.01%) MuleSoft
16 20 (1.01%) UiPath
17 16 (0.81%) Blue Prism