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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 50 51
Rank change year-on-year +5 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,332 1,498 1,526
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.35% 4.56% 3.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.14% 5.05% 4.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,518 1,035 1,016
10th Percentile £326 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £494 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.80% -3.61% -2.38%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £603
90th Percentile £663 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £475 £506
% change year-on-year -3.37% -6.13% +1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 102 34 24
10th Percentile £37.53 £36.75 £42.50
25th Percentile £60.08 £44.63 £49.50
Median hourly rate £69.75 £50.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.50% -9.09% -16.03%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £71.87
90th Percentile £74.00 £73.05 £81.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.00 £52.50 £56.25
% change year-on-year +31.43% -6.67% -10.00%

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 45,377 29,691 33,202
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.71% 90.48% 85.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,881 18,495 21,183
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,839 1,731 1,775
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.38 £17.30 £18.15
Median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +65.23% -38.57% +0.61%
75th Percentile £68.00 £49.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.30 £42.50
% change year-on-year +88.67% -45.18% +18.88%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 1,985 £479 -4.20% 1,398
UK excluding London -5 1,153 £459 -3.37% 957
London +6 902 £500 -1.48% 660
Work from Home -4 630 £475 - 626
North of England +7 396 £466 +3.56% 202
Midlands +7 269 £450 - 120
West Midlands +23 253 £450 -10.00% 77
South East -33 216 £459 -8.20% 229
Yorkshire -4 162 £475 -5.00% 50
North West -11 140 £492 +15.76% 105
South West -6 113 £469 +7.14% 142
North East +16 102 £450 +3.45% 47
East of England +8 79 £450 -1.91% 113
Scotland -29 71 £450 -10.00% 119
Wales -6 30 £488 +21.88% 12
Northern Ireland +22 17 £488 +60.63% 36
East Midlands -44 16 £425 +23.19% 43
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

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 (8.10%) Confluence
2 54 (2.32%) Apache Airflow
3 52 (2.23%) Apache Spark
3 52 (2.23%) SAS
4 42 (1.80%) SharePoint
5 24 (1.03%) Apache
6 14 (0.60%) CMS
7 13 (0.56%) WebLogic
8 7 (0.30%) nginx
8 7 (0.30%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.26%) Camunda
9 6 (0.26%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 5 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
11 4 (0.17%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.17%) Jupyter
11 4 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.13%) Kentico
12 3 (0.13%) OpenStack
13 2 (0.086%) ColdFusion
13 2 (0.086%) Mule
Applications
1 25 (1.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.69%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.30%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.26%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
7 4 (0.17%) Simulink
8 3 (0.13%) Trello
9 1 (0.043%) Mingle
9 1 (0.043%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 26 (1.11%) Dynamics CRM
2 21 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.64%) Aladdin
4 13 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.34%) Findur
7 6 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.26%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.26%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.21%) BambooHR
9 4 (0.17%) Infor CloudSuite
9 4 (0.17%) Infor LN
9 4 (0.17%) Infor M3
9 4 (0.17%) SAP GRC
9 4 (0.17%) Shopify
10 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
11 2 (0.086%) Advent Geneva
11 2 (0.086%) Loan IQ
11 2 (0.086%) Oracle ERP
12 1 (0.043%) Misys Midas
Cloud Services
1 703 (30.15%) Azure
2 701 (30.06%) AWS
3 423 (18.14%) GitHub
4 329 (14.11%) Azure DevOps
5 258 (11.06%) GitHub Actions
6 171 (7.33%) Serverless
7 164 (7.03%) GCP
8 124 (5.32%) AWS Lambda
9 102 (4.37%) Power Platform
10 98 (4.20%) Amazon S3
11 79 (3.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 71 (3.04%) Amazon ECS
13 69 (2.96%) OpenShift
14 64 (2.74%) AWS CloudFormation
15 63 (2.70%) GitHub Copilot
16 61 (2.62%) Amazon EKS
17 57 (2.44%) dbt
18 54 (2.32%) Snowflake
19 53 (2.27%) Amazon EC2
20 44 (1.89%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.20%) Firewall
2 21 (0.90%) HTTP
3 17 (0.73%) 4G
3 17 (0.73%) 5G
3 17 (0.73%) DNS
4 16 (0.69%) Network Security
5 15 (0.64%) 2G
5 15 (0.64%) 3G
5 15 (0.64%) Diameter Protocol
5 15 (0.64%) SIGTRAN
5 15 (0.64%) SS7
5 15 (0.64%) WAN
6 13 (0.56%) TCP/IP
7 12 (0.51%) LAN
7 12 (0.51%) SAN
8 11 (0.47%) Wi-Fi
9 9 (0.39%) BGP
10 8 (0.34%) Ethernet VPN
10 8 (0.34%) VXLAN
11 7 (0.30%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 140 (6.00%) PostgreSQL
2 133 (5.70%) Data Warehouse
3 118 (5.06%) MongoDB
4 114 (4.89%) NoSQL
5 92 (3.95%) SQL Server
6 86 (3.69%) Relational Database
7 82 (3.52%) Power BI
8 50 (2.14%) DynamoDB
9 48 (2.06%) Metadata
10 46 (1.97%) Oracle Reports
11 43 (1.84%) Pentaho
12 36 (1.54%) Data Lake
13 34 (1.46%) Amazon Athena
13 34 (1.46%) MySQL
14 32 (1.37%) Big Data
15 30 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
15 30 (1.29%) Amazon Redshift
16 28 (1.20%) Redis
17 26 (1.11%) Elasticsearch
18 24 (1.03%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 473 (20.28%) Git
2 413 (17.71%) JIRA
3 384 (16.47%) Jenkins
4 312 (13.38%) GitLab
5 290 (12.44%) Selenium
6 174 (7.46%) Postman
7 146 (6.26%) Cucumber
8 122 (5.23%) Cypress.io
9 117 (5.02%) JUnit
10 100 (4.29%) REST Assured
11 98 (4.20%) JMeter
12 77 (3.30%) Zephyr
13 64 (2.74%) SonarQube
14 57 (2.44%) WebDriver
15 54 (2.32%) Gatling
16 52 (2.23%) Gradle
17 47 (2.02%) Maven
18 43 (1.84%) Bitbucket
19 41 (1.76%) Mockito
20 29 (1.24%) SpecFlow
General
1 637 (27.32%) Social Skills
2 427 (18.31%) Finance
3 329 (14.11%) Public Sector
4 315 (13.51%) Analytical Skills
5 196 (8.40%) Banking
6 72 (3.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 46 (1.97%) Documentation Skills
8 43 (1.84%) Telecoms
9 37 (1.59%) Front Office
10 35 (1.50%) Investment Banking
11 34 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
12 32 (1.37%) Retail
13 26 (1.11%) Military
14 25 (1.07%) Financial Institution
15 20 (0.86%) Aerospace
16 19 (0.81%) Back Office
17 17 (0.73%) Manufacturing
18 15 (0.64%) Law
18 15 (0.64%) Legal
18 15 (0.64%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 499 (21.40%) Developer
2 381 (16.34%) Senior
3 254 (10.89%) Lead
4 224 (9.61%) Test Engineer
5 211 (9.05%) Tester
6 160 (6.86%) Data Engineer
7 159 (6.82%) Java Developer
8 121 (5.19%) Analyst
9 116 (4.97%) DevOps Engineer
10 112 (4.80%) Software Engineer
11 108 (4.63%) Senior Developer
12 104 (4.46%) Test Automation Engineer
13 103 (4.42%) Architect
14 94 (4.03%) QA Engineer
15 86 (3.69%) Automation Tester
16 85 (3.64%) Test Leader
17 81 (3.47%) Test Analyst
18 75 (3.22%) Full-Stack Developer
19 68 (2.92%) Test Manager
20 67 (2.87%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 358 (15.35%) REST
2 277 (11.88%) Playwright
3 218 (9.35%) RESTful
4 209 (8.96%) React
5 208 (8.92%) Kafka
6 198 (8.49%) Spring
7 166 (7.12%) Spring Boot
8 163 (6.99%) .NET
9 125 (5.36%) Node.js
10 113 (4.85%) HTML
11 98 (4.20%) AngularJS
11 98 (4.20%) CSS
12 77 (3.30%) OAuth
13 69 (2.96%) JSON
14 62 (2.66%) pytest
15 58 (2.49%) OAuth2
16 57 (2.44%) Jest
17 53 (2.27%) XML
18 50 (2.14%) Gherkin
18 50 (2.14%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 348 (14.92%) Cloud Native
2 181 (7.76%) Product Ownership
3 153 (6.56%) Distributed Systems
4 92 (3.95%) Enterprise Software
5 61 (2.62%) Onboarding
6 59 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
7 54 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
8 51 (2.19%) Self-Motivation
9 45 (1.93%) Mobile App
10 41 (1.76%) AI Agents
11 36 (1.54%) Virtual Team
12 25 (1.07%) Embedded Systems
12 25 (1.07%) Security Posture
13 24 (1.03%) NHS
14 23 (0.99%) Distributed Architecture
14 23 (0.99%) Management Information System
15 22 (0.94%) Data Centre
16 19 (0.81%) Derivative
17 18 (0.77%) Fixed Income
18 17 (0.73%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 164 (7.03%) Linux
2 97 (4.16%) Unix
3 95 (4.07%) Windows
4 41 (1.76%) Apple iOS
5 40 (1.72%) Android
6 31 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 21 (0.90%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.34%) Solaris
9 6 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
9 6 (0.26%) Mac OS X
10 5 (0.21%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.21%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
10 5 (0.21%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.17%) AIX
11 4 (0.17%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.17%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.086%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,370 (58.75%) CI/CD
2 1,083 (46.44%) Agile
3 893 (38.29%) DevOps
4 447 (19.17%) Problem-Solving
5 440 (18.87%) Continuous Improvement
6 423 (18.14%) Microservices
7 385 (16.51%) Software Engineering
8 383 (16.42%) Infrastructure as Code
9 376 (16.12%) Scrum
10 359 (15.39%) Validation
11 351 (15.05%) Test Strategy
12 335 (14.37%) AI
13 318 (13.64%) Containerisation
14 292 (12.52%) Observability
15 290 (12.44%) TDD
16 251 (10.76%) SDLC
17 250 (10.72%) End-to-End Testing
18 249 (10.68%) ETL
19 239 (10.25%) Data Pipeline
20 236 (10.12%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 626 (26.84%) Python
2 603 (25.86%) Java
3 586 (25.13%) SQL
4 325 (13.94%) JavaScript
5 249 (10.68%) TypeScript
6 204 (8.75%) C#
7 104 (4.46%) PowerShell
8 86 (3.69%) Bash
9 51 (2.19%) Kotlin
10 50 (2.14%) Bicep
10 50 (2.14%) C++
11 37 (1.59%) PL/SQL
12 33 (1.42%) C
13 30 (1.29%) Scala
14 28 (1.20%) Apex Code
14 28 (1.20%) Go
15 26 (1.11%) Shell Script
16 24 (1.03%) Ruby
17 17 (0.73%) Groovy
17 17 (0.73%) Swift
Qualifications
1 763 (32.72%) Security Cleared
2 653 (28.00%) SC Cleared
3 116 (4.97%) ISTQB
4 115 (4.93%) Degree
5 104 (4.46%) BPSS Clearance
6 70 (3.00%) DV Cleared
7 63 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
8 35 (1.50%) AWS Certification
9 32 (1.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 24 (1.03%) Azure Certification
11 17 (0.73%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 13 (0.56%) ISEB
13 12 (0.51%) Cisco Certification
13 12 (0.51%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 11 (0.47%) Master's Degree
14 11 (0.47%) SAFe Agilist
15 10 (0.43%) CISSP
15 10 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
16 8 (0.34%) CCNP
16 8 (0.34%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 591 (25.34%) QA
2 192 (8.23%) Accessibility
3 171 (7.33%) Data Quality
4 84 (3.60%) WCAG
5 41 (1.76%) GDPR
6 17 (0.73%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.69%) SLA
8 14 (0.60%) NCSC
9 10 (0.43%) NIST
10 8 (0.34%) GRC
11 7 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.30%) Def Stans
11 7 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 7 (0.30%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.21%) FATCA
14 4 (0.17%) MiFID
14 4 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.13%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 459 (19.68%) Docker
2 35 (1.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 31 (1.33%) Active Directory
4 17 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.60%) Firmware
6 5 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
6 5 (0.21%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.086%) SRDF
10 1 (0.043%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.043%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 451 (19.34%) Kubernetes
2 331 (14.19%) Terraform
3 128 (5.49%) Ansible
4 121 (5.19%) Grafana
5 94 (4.03%) Prometheus
6 41 (1.76%) Argo
7 24 (1.03%) Puppet
8 23 (0.99%) Progress Chef
9 18 (0.77%) HP ALM
10 14 (0.60%) Kibana
11 12 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
12 11 (0.47%) Control-M
13 10 (0.43%) Dell DRAC
14 7 (0.30%) Istio
14 7 (0.30%) Kustomize
15 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
15 6 (0.26%) Packer
16 5 (0.21%) HP Fortify
16 5 (0.21%) HP Quality Center
16 5 (0.21%) SCCM
Vendors
1 224 (9.61%) Microsoft
2 212 (9.09%) Oracle
3 92 (3.95%) Salesforce
4 89 (3.82%) Databricks
5 70 (3.00%) Talend
6 67 (2.87%) Google
7 65 (2.79%) Red Hat
8 61 (2.62%) Splunk
9 56 (2.40%) IBM
10 55 (2.36%) ServiceNow
11 50 (2.14%) Denodo
12 49 (2.10%) SAP
13 43 (1.84%) Informatica
14 42 (1.80%) VMware
15 36 (1.54%) Dynatrace
16 31 (1.33%) Cisco
17 29 (1.24%) MuleSoft
18 25 (1.07%) HP
18 25 (1.07%) UiPath
19 14 (0.60%) OpenAI