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

6 months to
19 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 45 58
Rank change year-on-year -2 +13 -12
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,992 1,370 1,462
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.31% 4.66% 3.34%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.08% 5.13% 3.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,325 939 959
10th Percentile £330 £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 £618 £634
90th Percentile £671 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 17 55
10th Percentile £34.57 £33.10 £41.70
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £80.00
90th Percentile - £71.30 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £61.25
% change year-on-year +22.73% -10.20% +4.26%

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 39,218 26,699 37,767
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.91% 90.74% 86.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,782 17,291 24,442
10th Percentile £316 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +0.41% -3.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,336 1,037 2,416
10th Percentile £14.93 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.74 £18.51 £15.91
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -14.29% -2.78%
75th Percentile £65.33 £62.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £78.13 £75.00 £71.81
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £28.88 £35.00
% change year-on-year +38.53% -17.50% -

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 1,700 £475 -5.00% 614
UK excluding London -4 906 £475 - 516
London -2 840 £500 - 180
Work from Home -3 580 £475 -5.00% 298
North of England +6 324 £475 +5.56% 126
Midlands +3 195 £461 -1.44% 72
South East -34 175 £500 -2.44% 139
West Midlands +15 168 £467 -7.97% 47
North West +15 142 £463 +2.78% 55
Yorkshire -13 136 £500 +2.56% 38
South West +6 88 £475 -8.21% 69
East of England +1 54 £600 +24.35% 64
North East +11 51 £419 +7.37% 33
Scotland -21 45 £415 -5.74% 39
Wales -4 28 £475 +20.25% 14
East Midlands -30 27 £400 -0.93% 25
Northern Ireland +20 20 £475 +16.28% 7
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
1 139 (6.98%) Confluence
2 63 (3.16%) SAS
3 38 (1.91%) Apache Spark
4 29 (1.46%) Apache Airflow
5 11 (0.55%) Apache
5 11 (0.55%) SharePoint
6 8 (0.40%) Appian
7 7 (0.35%) nginx
7 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
7 7 (0.35%) WebLogic
8 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.30%) Camunda
8 6 (0.30%) CMS
9 4 (0.20%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.10%) Mendix
11 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 13 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
4 12 (0.60%) MS Visio
5 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.15%) Simulink
8 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.050%) Mingle
9 1 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 24 (1.20%) Aladdin
2 13 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.35%) Findur
4 7 (0.35%) Shopify
5 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
6 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.25%) Maximo
7 4 (0.20%) Workday HCM
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%) SAP BRIM
8 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
9 2 (0.10%) iTrent
9 2 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.10%) SAP FI
9 2 (0.10%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 566 (28.41%) Azure
2 523 (26.26%) AWS
3 339 (17.02%) GitHub
4 258 (12.95%) Azure DevOps
5 193 (9.69%) GitHub Actions
6 158 (7.93%) GCP
7 135 (6.78%) Serverless
8 83 (4.17%) AWS Lambda
9 80 (4.02%) Amazon S3
10 71 (3.56%) OpenShift
11 66 (3.31%) Power Platform
12 53 (2.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 53 (2.66%) AWS CloudFormation
13 50 (2.51%) Amazon ECS
14 43 (2.16%) Snowflake
15 39 (1.96%) Azure AKS
16 35 (1.76%) Amazon EKS
17 34 (1.71%) Azure Data Factory
18 32 (1.61%) SaaS
19 31 (1.56%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.36%) HTTP
2 24 (1.20%) Firewall
3 13 (0.65%) SSL
4 12 (0.60%) FTP
4 12 (0.60%) SAN
4 12 (0.60%) TCP/IP
4 12 (0.60%) VPN
5 11 (0.55%) Network Security
6 9 (0.45%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.40%) MPLS
7 8 (0.40%) SD-WAN
7 8 (0.40%) WAN
8 7 (0.35%) Wireshark
9 6 (0.30%) 5G
9 6 (0.30%) DNS
9 6 (0.30%) HTTPS
9 6 (0.30%) Multicast
10 5 (0.25%) AMQP
10 5 (0.25%) Cisco IPT
10 5 (0.25%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (5.52%) PostgreSQL
2 101 (5.07%) NoSQL
3 92 (4.62%) MongoDB
4 83 (4.17%) SQL Server
5 66 (3.31%) Data Warehouse
6 65 (3.26%) Relational Database
7 45 (2.26%) Power BI
8 44 (2.21%) DynamoDB
9 38 (1.91%) Pentaho
10 35 (1.76%) Metadata
11 33 (1.66%) MySQL
12 29 (1.46%) BigQuery
13 27 (1.36%) Big Data
14 26 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
14 26 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
14 26 (1.31%) Tableau
15 25 (1.26%) Redis
16 23 (1.15%) Amazon Athena
16 23 (1.15%) Oracle Database
17 22 (1.10%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 397 (19.93%) JIRA
2 388 (19.48%) Git
3 337 (16.92%) Jenkins
4 295 (14.81%) Selenium
5 273 (13.70%) GitLab
6 169 (8.48%) Postman
7 154 (7.73%) Cucumber
8 109 (5.47%) JUnit
9 101 (5.07%) Cypress.io
10 94 (4.72%) REST Assured
11 89 (4.47%) JMeter
12 56 (2.81%) WebDriver
13 54 (2.71%) Zephyr
14 44 (2.21%) SonarQube
15 39 (1.96%) SpecFlow
16 34 (1.71%) Maven
16 34 (1.71%) Mockito
16 34 (1.71%) TestRail
17 33 (1.66%) Gatling
18 32 (1.61%) Gradle
General
1 528 (26.51%) Social Skills
2 341 (17.12%) Finance
3 300 (15.06%) Public Sector
4 215 (10.79%) Analytical Skills
5 156 (7.83%) Banking
6 42 (2.11%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (1.81%) Investment Banking
8 33 (1.66%) Front Office
9 30 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 26 (1.31%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
11 21 (1.05%) Legal
11 21 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
12 17 (0.85%) Aerospace
12 17 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
13 14 (0.70%) Military
13 14 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
14 12 (0.60%) Back Office
14 12 (0.60%) Financial Institution
14 12 (0.60%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 430 (21.59%) Developer
2 302 (15.16%) Senior
3 216 (10.84%) Tester
4 214 (10.74%) Test Engineer
5 207 (10.39%) Lead
6 112 (5.62%) Analyst
7 109 (5.47%) Data Engineer
7 109 (5.47%) Java Developer
8 107 (5.37%) Automation Tester
9 99 (4.97%) Test Automation Engineer
10 85 (4.27%) QA Engineer
11 83 (4.17%) Test Leader
12 81 (4.07%) Architect
13 79 (3.97%) DevOps Engineer
13 79 (3.97%) Software Engineer
14 76 (3.82%) Test Analyst
15 73 (3.66%) Senior Developer
16 63 (3.16%) Test Manager
17 60 (3.01%) Full-Stack Developer
18 52 (2.61%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 245 (12.30%) REST
2 240 (12.05%) Playwright
3 181 (9.09%) React
4 154 (7.73%) RESTful
5 146 (7.33%) Node.js
6 144 (7.23%) Spring
7 139 (6.98%) .NET
8 130 (6.53%) Kafka
9 119 (5.97%) Spring Boot
10 83 (4.17%) AngularJS
11 82 (4.12%) pytest
12 72 (3.61%) HTML
13 59 (2.96%) CSS
13 59 (2.96%) Jest
13 59 (2.96%) OAuth
14 46 (2.31%) JSON
15 42 (2.11%) GraphQL
16 41 (2.06%) Gherkin
17 40 (2.01%) OpenID
18 39 (1.96%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 210 (10.54%) Cloud Native
2 150 (7.53%) Product Ownership
3 94 (4.72%) Distributed Systems
4 51 (2.56%) Mobile App
5 47 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
6 45 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
7 36 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
7 36 (1.81%) Onboarding
8 35 (1.76%) Virtual Team
9 31 (1.56%) Algorithms
9 31 (1.56%) NHS
10 29 (1.46%) Security Posture
11 28 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
12 23 (1.15%) Management Information System
13 22 (1.10%) Data Centre
14 21 (1.05%) Data Structures
15 20 (1.00%) Derivative
15 20 (1.00%) Equities
16 19 (0.95%) Distributed Architecture
16 19 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 128 (6.43%) Linux
2 88 (4.42%) Windows
3 50 (2.51%) Android
4 42 (2.11%) Apple iOS
4 42 (2.11%) Unix
5 21 (1.05%) Windows Server
6 20 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (0.65%) Mac OS X
8 9 (0.45%) Mac OS
9 8 (0.40%) Solaris
10 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
11 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
11 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.20%) CentOS
12 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.15%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.050%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.050%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.050%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.050%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,053 (52.86%) CI/CD
2 930 (46.69%) Agile
3 711 (35.69%) DevOps
4 421 (21.13%) Problem-Solving
5 328 (16.47%) Continuous Improvement
6 299 (15.01%) Microservices
7 292 (14.66%) Test Strategy
8 288 (14.46%) Scrum
9 266 (13.35%) Infrastructure as Code
10 265 (13.30%) Validation
11 262 (13.15%) Containerisation
12 225 (11.30%) AI
12 225 (11.30%) Test Scripting
13 224 (11.24%) TDD
14 223 (11.19%) Analytics
15 222 (11.14%) Software Engineering
16 220 (11.04%) Observability
17 212 (10.64%) Regression Testing
18 205 (10.29%) SDLC
19 192 (9.64%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 572 (28.71%) Python
2 492 (24.70%) Java
3 428 (21.49%) SQL
4 293 (14.71%) JavaScript
5 274 (13.76%) TypeScript
6 208 (10.44%) C#
7 74 (3.71%) PowerShell
8 69 (3.46%) Bash
9 53 (2.66%) C++
10 32 (1.61%) C
10 32 (1.61%) Kotlin
11 31 (1.56%) Scala
12 29 (1.46%) Ruby
13 28 (1.41%) PL/SQL
14 27 (1.36%) Apex Code
15 26 (1.31%) Bicep
16 21 (1.05%) Go
17 18 (0.90%) Swift
18 13 (0.65%) Groovy
19 10 (0.50%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 612 (30.72%) Security Cleared
2 485 (24.35%) SC Cleared
3 96 (4.82%) ISTQB
4 89 (4.47%) Degree
5 82 (4.12%) BPSS Clearance
6 61 (3.06%) DV Cleared
7 52 (2.61%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (1.51%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 18 (0.90%) Master's Degree
10 15 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
11 13 (0.65%) Azure Certification
12 12 (0.60%) AWS Certification
13 9 (0.45%) CCNP
13 9 (0.45%) CISSP
13 9 (0.45%) DBS Check
13 9 (0.45%) ISEB
13 9 (0.45%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 9 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
15 7 (0.35%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 444 (22.29%) QA
2 140 (7.03%) Accessibility
3 118 (5.92%) Data Quality
4 59 (2.96%) WCAG
5 45 (2.26%) GDPR
6 21 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.80%) SLA
8 14 (0.70%) ISO 20022
9 13 (0.65%) NCSC
10 11 (0.55%) NIST
10 11 (0.55%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
12 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.40%) PSD2
14 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 7 (0.35%) SEPA
15 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
16 5 (0.25%) HL7
16 5 (0.25%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.25%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 373 (18.72%) Docker
2 28 (1.41%) Active Directory
3 14 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (0.65%) Firmware
5 10 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
7 6 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.10%) SRDF
11 1 (0.050%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.050%) HDFS
11 1 (0.050%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.050%) KVM
11 1 (0.050%) Squid
11 1 (0.050%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 351 (17.62%) Kubernetes
2 237 (11.90%) Terraform
3 109 (5.47%) Grafana
4 81 (4.07%) Prometheus
5 70 (3.51%) Ansible
6 27 (1.36%) Argo
7 25 (1.26%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.85%) Puppet
9 16 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (0.70%) Kibana
11 10 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 10 (0.50%) Progress Chef
12 8 (0.40%) NetBackup
13 7 (0.35%) Dell DRAC
14 6 (0.30%) Nmap
14 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
14 6 (0.30%) Rancher
15 4 (0.20%) Nessus
Vendors
1 176 (8.84%) Oracle
2 171 (8.58%) Microsoft
3 80 (4.02%) Salesforce
4 74 (3.71%) Databricks
5 67 (3.36%) ServiceNow
6 59 (2.96%) Google
7 57 (2.86%) Splunk
8 50 (2.51%) Talend
9 49 (2.46%) SAP
10 47 (2.36%) Red Hat
11 36 (1.81%) Denodo
12 30 (1.51%) IBM
13 28 (1.41%) HP
14 26 (1.31%) VMware
15 20 (1.00%) Cisco
15 20 (1.00%) Dynatrace
16 16 (0.80%) Blue Prism
16 16 (0.80%) Informatica
16 16 (0.80%) MuleSoft
16 16 (0.80%) Workday