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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 52 45
Rank change year-on-year +8 -7 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,383 1,483 1,574
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.39% 4.50% 4.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.20% 4.97% 4.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,523 1,009 1,052
10th Percentile £323 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £600
90th Percentile £665 £695 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 38 18
10th Percentile £40.00 £30.06 £40.88
25th Percentile £59.44 £47.19 £43.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 £56.25 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +24.44% -2.17% -20.69%
75th Percentile £72.37 £67.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £77.50 £70.45 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +17.39% - -16.21%

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 45,839 29,816 32,769
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.46% 90.52% 85.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,855 18,531 20,147
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £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 3,070 1,799 1,460
10th Percentile £13.84 £14.25 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.36 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.68 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +83.63% -47.37% +5.81%

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 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 16 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 16 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 +6 2,007 £475 -5.00% 3,445
UK excluding London -2 1,163 £450 -5.26% 2,059
London +3 905 £500 - 1,774
Work from Home -2 649 £475 - 1,508
North of England +5 403 £454 -1.30% 486
Midlands +12 249 £450 -2.70% 210
West Midlands +15 234 £458 -11.62% 135
South East -10 233 £450 -10.00% 453
Yorkshire -15 166 £473 -5.59% 142
North West -15 138 £492 +15.79% 281
South West -7 114 £456 -15.12% 270
North East +12 106 £425 -4.49% 64
Scotland -22 87 £475 -5.00% 311
East of England +19 84 £425 +24.09% 224
Wales -4 26 £475 +26.67% 38
East Midlands -39 15 £418 +19.29% 74
Northern Ireland +6 8 £513 +345.65% 76
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 1

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
1 191 (8.02%) Confluence
2 54 (2.27%) Apache Airflow
3 47 (1.97%) SharePoint
4 45 (1.89%) Apache Spark
5 40 (1.68%) SAS
6 26 (1.09%) Apache
7 16 (0.67%) CMS
8 12 (0.50%) Camunda
8 12 (0.50%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.25%) nginx
10 6 (0.25%) Tomcat
11 5 (0.21%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.17%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.17%) ColdFusion
12 4 (0.17%) Jupyter
12 4 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 3 (0.13%) Kentico
14 2 (0.084%) Apache Pulsar
Applications
1 24 (1.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.29%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.17%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.13%) Simulink
6 3 (0.13%) Trello
7 2 (0.084%) Mingle
7 2 (0.084%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 29 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 24 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.55%) Payment Gateway
4 9 (0.38%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
5 7 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.29%) SAP GRC
6 6 (0.25%) Findur
6 6 (0.25%) SAP ERP
6 6 (0.25%) SAP MDG
7 4 (0.17%) FLEXCUBE
8 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.13%) Finacle
8 3 (0.13%) Temenos T24
9 2 (0.084%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.084%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.084%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.084%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.084%) Shopify
10 1 (0.042%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 733 (30.76%) AWS
2 701 (29.42%) Azure
3 412 (17.29%) GitHub
4 324 (13.60%) Azure DevOps
5 252 (10.57%) GitHub Actions
6 173 (7.26%) Serverless
7 171 (7.18%) GCP
8 130 (5.46%) AWS Lambda
9 112 (4.70%) Power Platform
10 98 (4.11%) Amazon S3
11 83 (3.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 77 (3.23%) OpenShift
13 75 (3.15%) GitHub Copilot
14 69 (2.90%) Amazon ECS
15 66 (2.77%) Amazon EKS
15 66 (2.77%) AWS CloudFormation
16 59 (2.48%) dbt
17 57 (2.39%) Snowflake
18 46 (1.93%) Amazon EC2
19 45 (1.89%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.13%) HTTP
2 24 (1.01%) Firewall
3 23 (0.97%) DNS
4 22 (0.92%) 4G
5 21 (0.88%) 5G
6 19 (0.80%) TCP/IP
7 16 (0.67%) 2G
7 16 (0.67%) 3G
7 16 (0.67%) Diameter Protocol
7 16 (0.67%) Network Security
7 16 (0.67%) SIGTRAN
7 16 (0.67%) SS7
7 16 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
8 14 (0.59%) WAN
9 13 (0.55%) LAN
10 11 (0.46%) Broadband
11 10 (0.42%) BGP
11 10 (0.42%) DHCP
12 9 (0.38%) SAN
13 8 (0.34%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 147 (6.17%) PostgreSQL
2 126 (5.29%) MongoDB
3 125 (5.25%) Data Warehouse
4 117 (4.91%) Relational Database
5 109 (4.57%) NoSQL
6 99 (4.15%) SQL Server
7 83 (3.48%) Power BI
8 50 (2.10%) Metadata
9 44 (1.85%) DynamoDB
10 39 (1.64%) Oracle Reports
11 38 (1.59%) Data Lake
12 36 (1.51%) MySQL
13 35 (1.47%) Big Data
14 34 (1.43%) Pentaho
15 32 (1.34%) Amazon Athena
15 32 (1.34%) Redis
16 31 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
17 28 (1.17%) Amazon RDS
17 28 (1.17%) Elasticsearch
18 26 (1.09%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 516 (21.65%) Git
2 398 (16.70%) JIRA
3 385 (16.16%) Jenkins
4 325 (13.64%) GitLab
5 297 (12.46%) Selenium
6 162 (6.80%) Postman
7 152 (6.38%) Cucumber
8 135 (5.67%) JUnit
9 123 (5.16%) Cypress.io
10 105 (4.41%) REST Assured
11 93 (3.90%) JMeter
12 86 (3.61%) SonarQube
13 66 (2.77%) Maven
14 65 (2.73%) Gatling
14 65 (2.73%) Zephyr
15 60 (2.52%) Gradle
16 57 (2.39%) Mockito
17 51 (2.14%) WebDriver
18 38 (1.59%) Bitbucket
19 29 (1.22%) SpecFlow
General
1 664 (27.86%) Social Skills
2 436 (18.30%) Finance
3 341 (14.31%) Public Sector
4 335 (14.06%) Analytical Skills
5 213 (8.94%) Banking
6 80 (3.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 48 (2.01%) Telecoms
8 42 (1.76%) Front Office
9 35 (1.47%) Investment Banking
10 34 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
11 33 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
11 33 (1.38%) Retail
12 31 (1.30%) Military
13 22 (0.92%) Financial Institution
14 20 (0.84%) Law
14 20 (0.84%) Marketing
15 18 (0.76%) Aerospace
16 17 (0.71%) Manufacturing
17 16 (0.67%) Back Office
18 14 (0.59%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 551 (23.12%) Developer
2 392 (16.45%) Senior
3 239 (10.03%) Lead
4 231 (9.69%) Test Engineer
5 192 (8.06%) Tester
6 183 (7.68%) Java Developer
7 144 (6.04%) Data Engineer
8 128 (5.37%) Software Engineer
9 125 (5.25%) Analyst
10 121 (5.08%) DevOps Engineer
11 120 (5.04%) Senior Developer
12 104 (4.36%) Test Automation Engineer
13 100 (4.20%) QA Engineer
14 95 (3.99%) Architect
15 83 (3.48%) Automation Tester
16 81 (3.40%) Full-Stack Developer
16 81 (3.40%) Test Analyst
17 77 (3.23%) Test Leader
18 72 (3.02%) Test Manager
19 68 (2.85%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 404 (16.95%) REST
2 339 (14.23%) Terraform
3 280 (11.75%) Playwright
4 249 (10.45%) RESTful
5 238 (9.99%) Spring
6 236 (9.90%) Kafka
7 219 (9.19%) React
8 206 (8.64%) Spring Boot
9 174 (7.30%) .NET
10 141 (5.92%) HTML
11 134 (5.62%) Node.js
12 122 (5.12%) CSS
13 106 (4.45%) AngularJS
14 78 (3.27%) OAuth
15 70 (2.94%) JSON
16 62 (2.60%) pytest
17 59 (2.48%) XML
18 57 (2.39%) Middleware
18 57 (2.39%) Next.js
19 55 (2.31%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 370 (15.53%) Cloud Native
2 201 (8.43%) Product Ownership
3 172 (7.22%) Distributed Systems
4 99 (4.15%) Enterprise Software
5 68 (2.85%) Onboarding
6 62 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
7 60 (2.52%) AI Agents
8 56 (2.35%) Data Protection Act
9 53 (2.22%) Self-Motivation
10 49 (2.06%) Mobile App
11 39 (1.64%) Virtual Team
12 30 (1.26%) Security Posture
13 25 (1.05%) Data Structures
14 24 (1.01%) Management Information System
15 23 (0.97%) Legacy Applications
16 22 (0.92%) Life Science
17 21 (0.88%) Data Centre
17 21 (0.88%) Embedded Systems
17 21 (0.88%) Private Cloud
18 20 (0.84%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 170 (7.13%) Linux
2 100 (4.20%) Unix
3 95 (3.99%) Windows
4 44 (1.85%) Apple iOS
5 43 (1.80%) Android
6 31 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 24 (1.01%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.25%) Solaris
8 6 (0.25%) VMS
9 5 (0.21%) Mac OS X
9 5 (0.21%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.21%) Windows 7
9 5 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.17%) AIX
10 4 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
10 4 (0.17%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.17%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.13%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,442 (60.51%) CI/CD
2 1,145 (48.05%) Agile
3 883 (37.05%) DevOps
4 465 (19.51%) Microservices
4 465 (19.51%) Problem-Solving
5 457 (19.18%) Continuous Improvement
6 447 (18.76%) Software Engineering
7 420 (17.62%) Infrastructure as Code
8 411 (17.25%) Scrum
9 386 (16.20%) Validation
10 384 (16.11%) AI
11 357 (14.98%) Test Strategy
12 350 (14.69%) Containerisation
13 314 (13.18%) TDD
14 313 (13.13%) Observability
15 296 (12.42%) SDLC
16 275 (11.54%) Software Testing
17 265 (11.12%) Stakeholder Management
18 249 (10.45%) End-to-End Testing
19 235 (9.86%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 666 (27.95%) Java
2 656 (27.53%) Python
3 587 (24.63%) SQL
4 356 (14.94%) JavaScript
5 266 (11.16%) TypeScript
6 197 (8.27%) C#
7 99 (4.15%) PowerShell
8 91 (3.82%) Bash
9 52 (2.18%) Bicep
10 48 (2.01%) Kotlin
11 45 (1.89%) C++
12 34 (1.43%) Scala
13 33 (1.38%) PL/SQL
14 32 (1.34%) Go
15 29 (1.22%) Shell Script
16 27 (1.13%) Apex Code
17 24 (1.01%) C
18 23 (0.97%) Perl
19 21 (0.88%) Ruby
20 16 (0.67%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 773 (32.44%) Security Cleared
2 656 (27.53%) SC Cleared
3 131 (5.50%) Degree
4 121 (5.08%) BPSS Clearance
5 102 (4.28%) ISTQB
6 90 (3.78%) DV Cleared
7 75 (3.15%) Computer Science Degree
8 38 (1.59%) AWS Certification
9 35 (1.47%) Azure Certification
10 28 (1.17%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 17 (0.71%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 14 (0.59%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 13 (0.55%) Master's Degree
14 12 (0.50%) ISEB
15 10 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
15 10 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.38%) CISSP
16 9 (0.38%) DBS Check
16 9 (0.38%) SAFe Agilist
17 8 (0.34%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 619 (25.98%) QA
2 214 (8.98%) Accessibility
3 166 (6.97%) Data Quality
4 97 (4.07%) WCAG
5 44 (1.85%) GDPR
6 23 (0.97%) ISO 20022
7 14 (0.59%) GRC
8 13 (0.55%) NCSC
8 13 (0.55%) SLA
9 11 (0.46%) NIST
10 9 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 7 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.29%) Software Quality Assurance
12 6 (0.25%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.25%) SEPA
13 5 (0.21%) FATCA
14 4 (0.17%) HL7
14 4 (0.17%) MiFID
14 4 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.13%) Def Stans
System Software
1 479 (20.10%) Docker
2 38 (1.59%) VMware Infrastructure
3 34 (1.43%) Active Directory
4 19 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.50%) Firmware
6 10 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (0.25%) Hyper-V
8 5 (0.21%) VMware NSX
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
10 2 (0.084%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.042%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.042%) KVM
11 1 (0.042%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.042%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 472 (19.81%) Kubernetes
2 129 (5.41%) Ansible
3 123 (5.16%) Grafana
4 90 (3.78%) Prometheus
5 40 (1.68%) Argo
6 24 (1.01%) Progress Chef
6 24 (1.01%) Puppet
7 17 (0.71%) Kibana
8 15 (0.63%) HP ALM
9 13 (0.55%) Control-M
9 13 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.29%) Kustomize
10 7 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (0.25%) Dell DRAC
11 6 (0.25%) Istio
11 6 (0.25%) SCCM
12 5 (0.21%) HP Fortify
12 5 (0.21%) Packer
12 5 (0.21%) WMI
13 4 (0.17%) Rancher
Vendors
1 226 (9.48%) Microsoft
2 197 (8.27%) Oracle
3 90 (3.78%) Databricks
4 84 (3.52%) Salesforce
5 69 (2.90%) Google
6 63 (2.64%) IBM
7 59 (2.48%) Red Hat
7 59 (2.48%) Talend
8 55 (2.31%) ServiceNow
9 53 (2.22%) SAP
9 53 (2.22%) Splunk
10 46 (1.93%) VMware
11 44 (1.85%) Denodo
12 43 (1.80%) Informatica
13 41 (1.72%) Dynatrace
14 31 (1.30%) Cisco
15 30 (1.26%) MuleSoft
15 30 (1.26%) UiPath
16 20 (0.84%) OpenAI
17 19 (0.80%) HP