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

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 44 52
Rank change year-on-year -5 +8 -12
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,711 1,406 1,650
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.60% 4.41% 3.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.24% 4.97% 4.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,180 946 1,196
10th Percentile £340 £325 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -7.08%
75th Percentile £588 £611 £630
90th Percentile £695 £725 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.71% -4.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 6 48
10th Percentile £41.94 £41.88 £37.50
25th Percentile £50.63 £43.75 £57.81
Median hourly rate £63.50 £62.00 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -20.00% +32.64%
75th Percentile £67.00 £76.77 £90.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £82.35 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £74.00 £77.50
% change year-on-year -15.54% -4.52% +32.64%

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 32,654 28,287 37,362
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.81% 88.79% 87.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,662 17,217 24,715
10th Percentile £304 £306 £304
25th Percentile £406 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,980 898 1,602
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.75 £18.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +16.41%
75th Percentile £56.06 £62.24 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.80 £74.91 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.45 £43.83
% change year-on-year -21.76% -30.52% +51.12%

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 January 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 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 17 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 January 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 -3 1,494 £500 - 1,081
UK excluding London +1 794 £500 +4.71% 1,012
London -2 717 £500 -3.15% 199
Work from Home 0 508 £500 - 484
North of England +5 319 £492 +12.46% 199
Yorkshire -6 160 £513 +13.89% 82
Midlands +12 156 £503 +2.76% 115
South East -18 147 £500 -3.61% 315
West Midlands +9 121 £525 +5.00% 41
North West +3 113 £430 +6.30% 86
South West -3 71 £550 -3.51% 146
North East +17 48 £488 +34.48% 31
East of England +1 47 £570 +42.50% 155
Scotland -27 46 £500 +8.70% 43
East Midlands -6 35 £400 -13.51% 74
Wales +2 23 £513 -1.30% 45
Northern Ireland +7 12 £295 -43.13% 21

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
1 100 (5.84%) Confluence
2 58 (3.39%) SAS
3 21 (1.23%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.76%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.64%) Apache
7 6 (0.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 6 (0.35%) OpenStack
7 6 (0.35%) Oracle Application Server
8 5 (0.29%) CMS
9 4 (0.23%) Appian
9 4 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.18%) nginx
10 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.12%) Camunda
11 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 16 (0.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (0.53%) MS Visio
4 8 (0.47%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.18%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.12%) Trello
7 1 (0.058%) Oracle Smart View
7 1 (0.058%) Simulink
7 1 (0.058%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.058%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 18 (1.05%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.29%) Workday HCM
4 4 (0.23%) SAP HR
5 3 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
5 3 (0.18%) SAP BRIM
6 2 (0.12%) Eagle PACE
6 2 (0.12%) iTrent
6 2 (0.12%) Loan IQ
6 2 (0.12%) Markit EDM
6 2 (0.12%) Maximo
6 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.12%) Shopify
7 1 (0.058%) Algo Collateral
7 1 (0.058%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.058%) CODA-Financials
7 1 (0.058%) IntelliMatch
7 1 (0.058%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.058%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 482 (28.17%) Azure
2 427 (24.96%) AWS
3 263 (15.37%) GitHub
4 197 (11.51%) Azure DevOps
5 171 (9.99%) GCP
6 139 (8.12%) GitHub Actions
7 122 (7.13%) Serverless
8 59 (3.45%) OpenShift
9 58 (3.39%) Power Platform
10 55 (3.21%) AWS Lambda
11 45 (2.63%) Amazon S3
11 45 (2.63%) Azure AKS
12 44 (2.57%) AWS CloudFormation
13 40 (2.34%) Amazon EKS
14 39 (2.28%) SaaS
15 36 (2.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 35 (2.05%) Snowflake
17 33 (1.93%) Tricentis Tosca
18 32 (1.87%) Entra ID
19 31 (1.81%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 43 (2.51%) Firewall
2 35 (2.05%) Wireshark
3 30 (1.75%) HTTP
4 26 (1.52%) HTTPS
4 26 (1.52%) SSL
5 22 (1.29%) TCP/IP
6 19 (1.11%) VPN
7 17 (0.99%) Network Security
8 15 (0.88%) SD-WAN
9 12 (0.70%) Ethernet
10 10 (0.58%) FTP
10 10 (0.58%) WAN
11 9 (0.53%) DNS
12 8 (0.47%) VLAN
13 7 (0.41%) AMQP
13 7 (0.41%) Multicast
14 5 (0.29%) Cisco IPT
14 5 (0.29%) MPLS
15 4 (0.23%) DHCP
15 4 (0.23%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 102 (5.96%) PostgreSQL
2 84 (4.91%) NoSQL
3 80 (4.68%) MongoDB
4 66 (3.86%) Relational Database
5 61 (3.57%) SQL Server
6 33 (1.93%) Data Warehouse
7 31 (1.81%) Pentaho
8 28 (1.64%) Power BI
9 26 (1.52%) BigQuery
10 23 (1.34%) DynamoDB
11 20 (1.17%) MySQL
11 20 (1.17%) Oracle Database
12 19 (1.11%) Big Data
13 18 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
14 17 (0.99%) Redis
15 15 (0.88%) Apache Cassandra
15 15 (0.88%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 14 (0.82%) Data Lake
17 13 (0.76%) Azure SQL Database
17 13 (0.76%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 321 (18.76%) Jenkins
2 309 (18.06%) JIRA
3 306 (17.88%) Git
4 270 (15.78%) Selenium
5 251 (14.67%) GitLab
6 154 (9.00%) Cucumber
7 146 (8.53%) Postman
8 109 (6.37%) Cypress.io
9 87 (5.08%) JUnit
10 80 (4.68%) JMeter
10 80 (4.68%) REST Assured
11 41 (2.40%) SonarQube
12 40 (2.34%) Bitbucket
13 35 (2.05%) Gatling
13 35 (2.05%) SpecFlow
14 34 (1.99%) Mockito
15 32 (1.87%) TestRail
16 31 (1.81%) Maven
16 31 (1.81%) WebDriver
17 28 (1.64%) Gradle
General
1 453 (26.48%) Social Skills
2 285 (16.66%) Finance
3 247 (14.44%) Public Sector
4 185 (10.81%) Analytical Skills
5 123 (7.19%) Banking
6 33 (1.93%) Documentation Skills
7 30 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 25 (1.46%) Telecoms
9 24 (1.40%) Investment Banking
10 23 (1.34%) Pharmaceutical
11 19 (1.11%) Front Office
11 19 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
12 16 (0.94%) Financial Institution
12 16 (0.94%) Manufacturing
13 14 (0.82%) Military
14 13 (0.76%) Marketing
15 11 (0.64%) Electronics
16 10 (0.58%) Aerospace
16 10 (0.58%) Influencing Skills
16 10 (0.58%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 386 (22.56%) Developer
2 286 (16.72%) Senior
3 202 (11.81%) Tester
4 187 (10.93%) Test Engineer
5 157 (9.18%) Lead
6 113 (6.60%) Automation Tester
7 109 (6.37%) Java Developer
8 82 (4.79%) Software Engineer
9 81 (4.73%) Test Automation Engineer
10 72 (4.21%) Data Engineer
10 72 (4.21%) DevOps Engineer
11 70 (4.09%) Senior Developer
12 68 (3.97%) Analyst
12 68 (3.97%) QA Engineer
13 54 (3.16%) Automation Engineer
14 53 (3.10%) Test Leader
15 52 (3.04%) Test Manager
16 47 (2.75%) Test Analyst
17 45 (2.63%) Full-Stack Developer
18 44 (2.57%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 234 (13.68%) REST
2 190 (11.10%) Playwright
3 140 (8.18%) React
4 137 (8.01%) .NET
5 135 (7.89%) Node.js
6 133 (7.77%) RESTful
7 121 (7.07%) Kafka
8 118 (6.90%) Spring
9 111 (6.49%) Spring Boot
10 74 (4.32%) pytest
11 67 (3.92%) JSON
12 62 (3.62%) HTML
13 58 (3.39%) AngularJS
13 58 (3.39%) XML
14 57 (3.33%) SOAP
15 54 (3.16%) CSS
16 51 (2.98%) Web Services
17 48 (2.81%) Jest
18 47 (2.75%) OAuth
19 40 (2.34%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 177 (10.34%) Cloud Native
2 127 (7.42%) Product Ownership
3 55 (3.21%) Distributed Systems
4 44 (2.57%) Mobile App
5 42 (2.45%) Security Posture
6 33 (1.93%) Algorithms
7 31 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
8 30 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
9 28 (1.64%) Onboarding
10 23 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
10 23 (1.34%) Public Cloud
11 22 (1.29%) Data Structures
11 22 (1.29%) Management Information System
12 21 (1.23%) Virtual Team
13 20 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
14 19 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
15 17 (0.99%) NHS
16 16 (0.94%) Genomics
16 16 (0.94%) Life Science
17 15 (0.88%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 160 (9.35%) Linux
2 80 (4.68%) Windows
3 52 (3.04%) Unix
4 38 (2.22%) Android
5 34 (1.99%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.17%) Mac OS X
6 20 (1.17%) Windows Server
7 12 (0.70%) Kali Linux
8 6 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.23%) CentOS
10 3 (0.18%) Mac OS
10 3 (0.18%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.12%) VMS
12 1 (0.058%) FreeRTOS
12 1 (0.058%) Robot Operating System
12 1 (0.058%) Solaris
12 1 (0.058%) Windows Embedded Compact
12 1 (0.058%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 868 (50.73%) CI/CD
2 843 (49.27%) Agile
3 656 (38.34%) DevOps
4 434 (25.37%) Problem-Solving
5 268 (15.66%) Microservices
6 262 (15.31%) Containerisation
7 259 (15.14%) Continuous Improvement
8 249 (14.55%) Test Strategy
9 238 (13.91%) Scrum
10 219 (12.80%) Infrastructure as Code
11 212 (12.39%) Test Scripting
12 201 (11.75%) Software Engineering
12 201 (11.75%) TDD
13 184 (10.75%) AI
14 183 (10.70%) Validation
15 170 (9.94%) SDLC
16 166 (9.70%) Software Testing
17 163 (9.53%) BDD
18 156 (9.12%) API Testing
19 153 (8.94%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 513 (29.98%) Python
2 417 (24.37%) Java
3 331 (19.35%) SQL
4 251 (14.67%) JavaScript
5 219 (12.80%) TypeScript
6 170 (9.94%) C#
7 90 (5.26%) Bash
8 71 (4.15%) PowerShell
9 38 (2.22%) C++
10 35 (2.05%) Go
11 24 (1.40%) Bicep
12 22 (1.29%) PL/SQL
12 22 (1.29%) Scala
13 21 (1.23%) Kotlin
14 18 (1.05%) Ruby
15 14 (0.82%) PHP
16 13 (0.76%) Groovy
17 12 (0.70%) Rust
17 12 (0.70%) Shell Script
17 12 (0.70%) Swift
Qualifications
1 464 (27.12%) Security Cleared
2 354 (20.69%) SC Cleared
3 99 (5.79%) Degree
4 71 (4.15%) ISTQB
5 58 (3.39%) Computer Science Degree
6 57 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 51 (2.98%) DV Cleared
8 25 (1.46%) Master's Degree
9 24 (1.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 20 (1.17%) AWS Certification
11 19 (1.11%) OSCP
12 16 (0.94%) CISSP
12 16 (0.94%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 15 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
14 14 (0.82%) Azure Certification
14 14 (0.82%) CEH
14 14 (0.82%) MCP
15 13 (0.76%) GPEN
16 12 (0.70%) Oracle Certification
17 11 (0.64%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 373 (21.80%) QA
2 129 (7.54%) Accessibility
3 79 (4.62%) Data Quality
4 44 (2.57%) WCAG
5 40 (2.34%) GDPR
6 39 (2.28%) NIST
7 28 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 20 (1.17%) NCSC
9 18 (1.05%) EU AI Act
10 16 (0.94%) PSD2
11 15 (0.88%) ISO 20022
11 15 (0.88%) PCI DSS
12 11 (0.64%) SEPA
13 10 (0.58%) NIST 800
14 9 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 8 (0.47%) SLA
16 7 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 6 (0.35%) SOC 2
18 5 (0.29%) PERC
18 5 (0.29%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 378 (22.09%) Docker
2 32 (1.87%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.41%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 5 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
5 4 (0.23%) Firmware
5 4 (0.23%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
6 3 (0.18%) QEMU
6 3 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.12%) vSphere
7 2 (0.12%) zsh
8 1 (0.058%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.058%) HDFS
8 1 (0.058%) KVM
8 1 (0.058%) Squid
8 1 (0.058%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.058%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 330 (19.29%) Kubernetes
2 210 (12.27%) Terraform
3 118 (6.90%) Ansible
4 84 (4.91%) Grafana
5 54 (3.16%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.05%) Nmap
6 18 (1.05%) Progress Chef
7 16 (0.94%) CSIRT
8 15 (0.88%) Argo
9 14 (0.82%) HP ALM
9 14 (0.82%) Puppet
9 14 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.76%) NetBackup
11 8 (0.47%) Nessus
12 7 (0.41%) Podman
13 6 (0.35%) Kibana
14 5 (0.29%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 5 (0.29%) NetIQ Identity Manager
15 4 (0.23%) SCCM
15 4 (0.23%) vRealize
Vendors
1 158 (9.23%) Microsoft
2 151 (8.83%) Oracle
3 67 (3.92%) Splunk
4 61 (3.57%) ServiceNow
5 59 (3.45%) SAP
6 58 (3.39%) Databricks
7 52 (3.04%) Salesforce
8 48 (2.81%) Google
9 31 (1.81%) Denodo
9 31 (1.81%) Talend
10 27 (1.58%) VMware
11 26 (1.52%) Cisco
12 25 (1.46%) Red Hat
13 24 (1.40%) F5
14 21 (1.23%) webMethods
15 19 (1.11%) IBM
16 17 (0.99%) Atlassian
16 17 (0.99%) MuleSoft
16 17 (0.99%) Workday
17 16 (0.94%) Dynatrace