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

6 months to
10 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 45 53
Rank change year-on-year -4 +8 -12
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,671 1,397 1,652
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.56% 4.38% 3.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.19% 4.94% 4.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,141 939 1,200
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% -6.25%
75th Percentile £588 £607 £630
90th Percentile £695 £703 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 4 45
10th Percentile £41.94 £41.63 £37.50
25th Percentile £46.25 £42.19 £51.25
Median hourly rate £61.75 £47.50 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year +30.00% -38.71% +32.64%
75th Percentile £66.88 £61.25 £90.00
90th Percentile £67.30 £77.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £50.00 £77.50
% change year-on-year +25.00% -35.48% +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 32,180 28,256 37,599
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.89% 88.57% 87.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,310 17,164 24,974
10th Percentile £304 £306 £305
25th Percentile £406 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £724 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,978 898 1,563
10th Percentile £14.59 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.50 £18.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £42.19
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -22.97% +23.04%
75th Percentile £55.00 £62.12 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.65 £75.00 £77.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.41 £44.50
% change year-on-year -21.64% -31.67% +62.56%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -4 1,449 £500 - 1,045
UK excluding London 0 769 £500 +2.56% 971
London -3 698 £500 -3.85% 188
Work from Home +3 496 £500 - 391
North of England +7 306 £490 +11.94% 211
Midlands +12 152 £495 +0.51% 122
Yorkshire -5 149 £513 +13.89% 97
South East -26 135 £500 -3.61% 287
West Midlands +11 114 £519 +2.17% 47
North West -5 114 £430 +6.30% 83
South West -4 72 £550 -3.51% 148
Scotland -24 47 £500 +8.70% 37
East of England -5 46 £570 +42.50% 132
North East +22 45 £488 +41.82% 31
East Midlands +4 38 £400 -13.51% 75
Wales +1 23 £513 -1.30% 38
Northern Ireland +4 12 £295 -43.13% 15

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 94 (5.63%) Confluence
2 55 (3.29%) SAS
3 21 (1.26%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.78%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.66%) Apache
7 6 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 6 (0.36%) CMS
7 6 (0.36%) OpenStack
7 6 (0.36%) Oracle Application Server
8 4 (0.24%) Appian
8 4 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
9 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.18%) nginx
9 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.12%) Camunda
10 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
10 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
10 2 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 15 (0.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (0.54%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.42%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.18%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.12%) Simulink
6 2 (0.12%) Trello
6 2 (0.12%) Windchill
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle Smart View
7 1 (0.060%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 17 (1.02%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.24%) SAP HR
4 3 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
4 3 (0.18%) SAP BRIM
4 3 (0.18%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.12%) Eagle PACE
5 2 (0.12%) Markit EDM
5 2 (0.12%) Maximo
5 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.12%) SAP PLM
5 2 (0.12%) Shopify
6 1 (0.060%) CODA-Financials
6 1 (0.060%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.060%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.060%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.060%) PORTIA
6 1 (0.060%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.060%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 466 (27.89%) Azure
2 419 (25.07%) AWS
3 263 (15.74%) GitHub
4 191 (11.43%) Azure DevOps
5 160 (9.58%) GCP
6 138 (8.26%) GitHub Actions
7 125 (7.48%) Serverless
8 58 (3.47%) OpenShift
9 57 (3.41%) AWS Lambda
10 53 (3.17%) Power Platform
11 49 (2.93%) Amazon S3
12 46 (2.75%) Azure AKS
13 44 (2.63%) AWS CloudFormation
14 42 (2.51%) Amazon EKS
15 38 (2.27%) SaaS
16 37 (2.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 33 (1.97%) Snowflake
18 30 (1.80%) Azure Functions
18 30 (1.80%) Dynamics 365
18 30 (1.80%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 44 (2.63%) Firewall
2 34 (2.03%) Wireshark
3 31 (1.86%) HTTP
4 26 (1.56%) HTTPS
5 25 (1.50%) SSL
6 22 (1.32%) TCP/IP
7 19 (1.14%) VPN
8 16 (0.96%) Network Security
9 15 (0.90%) SD-WAN
10 12 (0.72%) Ethernet
11 10 (0.60%) FTP
11 10 (0.60%) WAN
12 9 (0.54%) DNS
13 8 (0.48%) Multicast
13 8 (0.48%) VLAN
14 7 (0.42%) AMQP
15 5 (0.30%) Cisco IPT
15 5 (0.30%) MPLS
16 4 (0.24%) DHCP
16 4 (0.24%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (6.46%) PostgreSQL
2 85 (5.09%) NoSQL
3 83 (4.97%) MongoDB
4 68 (4.07%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.89%) SQL Server
6 33 (1.97%) Data Warehouse
7 29 (1.74%) Pentaho
8 25 (1.50%) BigQuery
9 24 (1.44%) DynamoDB
9 24 (1.44%) Power BI
10 23 (1.38%) Amazon RDS
11 20 (1.20%) MySQL
11 20 (1.20%) Oracle Database
11 20 (1.20%) Redis
12 19 (1.14%) Big Data
13 15 (0.90%) Apache Cassandra
13 15 (0.90%) Data Lake
13 15 (0.90%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 13 (0.78%) Azure SQL Database
15 12 (0.72%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 311 (18.61%) Jenkins
2 308 (18.43%) Git
3 291 (17.41%) JIRA
4 260 (15.56%) Selenium
5 248 (14.84%) GitLab
6 150 (8.98%) Cucumber
7 135 (8.08%) Postman
8 109 (6.52%) Cypress.io
9 87 (5.21%) JUnit
10 78 (4.67%) REST Assured
11 77 (4.61%) JMeter
12 42 (2.51%) Bitbucket
13 41 (2.45%) SonarQube
14 34 (2.03%) SpecFlow
15 33 (1.97%) Mockito
16 32 (1.92%) Gatling
17 31 (1.86%) TestRail
18 29 (1.74%) Maven
19 28 (1.68%) WebDriver
20 27 (1.62%) Gradle
General
1 442 (26.45%) Social Skills
2 281 (16.82%) Finance
3 244 (14.60%) Public Sector
4 178 (10.65%) Analytical Skills
5 115 (6.88%) Banking
6 34 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
7 31 (1.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 24 (1.44%) Telecoms
9 23 (1.38%) Investment Banking
9 23 (1.38%) Pharmaceutical
10 20 (1.20%) Front Office
10 20 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
11 16 (0.96%) Financial Institution
11 16 (0.96%) Manufacturing
12 14 (0.84%) Military
13 12 (0.72%) Marketing
14 11 (0.66%) Electronics
15 10 (0.60%) Aerospace
15 10 (0.60%) Organisational Skills
16 9 (0.54%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 375 (22.44%) Developer
2 283 (16.94%) Senior
3 193 (11.55%) Tester
4 182 (10.89%) Test Engineer
5 150 (8.98%) Lead
6 112 (6.70%) Automation Tester
7 106 (6.34%) Java Developer
8 82 (4.91%) Software Engineer
9 79 (4.73%) Test Automation Engineer
10 70 (4.19%) DevOps Engineer
11 69 (4.13%) Data Engineer
11 69 (4.13%) Senior Developer
12 67 (4.01%) QA Engineer
13 66 (3.95%) Analyst
14 52 (3.11%) Test Leader
15 51 (3.05%) Automation Engineer
16 49 (2.93%) Test Manager
17 46 (2.75%) Test Analyst
18 44 (2.63%) Full-Stack Developer
19 41 (2.45%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 229 (13.70%) REST
2 173 (10.35%) Playwright
3 140 (8.38%) React
4 138 (8.26%) .NET
5 132 (7.90%) RESTful
6 130 (7.78%) Node.js
7 121 (7.24%) Kafka
8 116 (6.94%) Spring
9 109 (6.52%) Spring Boot
10 73 (4.37%) pytest
11 69 (4.13%) JSON
12 63 (3.77%) HTML
13 61 (3.65%) AngularJS
14 58 (3.47%) XML
15 57 (3.41%) CSS
16 55 (3.29%) SOAP
17 49 (2.93%) Web Services
18 45 (2.69%) Jest
19 44 (2.63%) OAuth
20 38 (2.27%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 168 (10.05%) Cloud Native
2 123 (7.36%) Product Ownership
3 54 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
4 46 (2.75%) Mobile App
5 41 (2.45%) Security Posture
6 33 (1.97%) Algorithms
7 30 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
8 28 (1.68%) Onboarding
9 27 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
10 22 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
10 22 (1.32%) Public Cloud
11 21 (1.26%) Data Structures
11 21 (1.26%) Management Information System
12 19 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
12 19 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
12 19 (1.14%) Virtual Team
13 17 (1.02%) NHS
14 16 (0.96%) Derivative
14 16 (0.96%) Genomics
14 16 (0.96%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 161 (9.63%) Linux
2 79 (4.73%) Windows
3 52 (3.11%) Unix
4 40 (2.39%) Android
5 33 (1.97%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.20%) Mac OS X
6 20 (1.20%) Windows Server
7 10 (0.60%) Kali Linux
8 7 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.24%) CentOS
10 3 (0.18%) Mac OS
10 3 (0.18%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.12%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.12%) VMS
12 1 (0.060%) FreeRTOS
12 1 (0.060%) Solaris
12 1 (0.060%) Windows Embedded Compact
12 1 (0.060%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 846 (50.63%) CI/CD
2 821 (49.13%) Agile
3 642 (38.42%) DevOps
4 424 (25.37%) Problem-Solving
5 265 (15.86%) Microservices
6 255 (15.26%) Containerisation
7 251 (15.02%) Continuous Improvement
8 237 (14.18%) Test Strategy
9 232 (13.88%) Scrum
10 218 (13.05%) Infrastructure as Code
11 205 (12.27%) Test Scripting
12 204 (12.21%) TDD
13 200 (11.97%) Software Engineering
14 176 (10.53%) AI
15 172 (10.29%) Validation
16 166 (9.93%) SDLC
17 160 (9.58%) BDD
18 156 (9.34%) Software Testing
19 151 (9.04%) API Testing
20 147 (8.80%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 502 (30.04%) Python
2 398 (23.82%) Java
3 319 (19.09%) SQL
4 240 (14.36%) JavaScript
5 208 (12.45%) TypeScript
6 167 (9.99%) C#
7 91 (5.45%) Bash
8 71 (4.25%) PowerShell
9 39 (2.33%) C++
10 34 (2.03%) Go
11 24 (1.44%) Bicep
12 23 (1.38%) Kotlin
13 21 (1.26%) PL/SQL
14 18 (1.08%) Ruby
15 15 (0.90%) Scala
16 14 (0.84%) PHP
17 12 (0.72%) Apex Code
17 12 (0.72%) Groovy
17 12 (0.72%) Rust
17 12 (0.72%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 446 (26.69%) Security Cleared
2 339 (20.29%) SC Cleared
3 96 (5.75%) Degree
4 69 (4.13%) ISTQB
5 54 (3.23%) Computer Science Degree
6 52 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
7 50 (2.99%) DV Cleared
8 23 (1.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 23 (1.38%) Master's Degree
9 22 (1.32%) AWS Certification
10 18 (1.08%) OSCP
11 17 (1.02%) CISSP
12 16 (0.96%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 15 (0.90%) Cisco Certification
14 14 (0.84%) Azure Certification
14 14 (0.84%) MCP
15 13 (0.78%) CEH
16 12 (0.72%) GPEN
16 12 (0.72%) Oracle Certification
17 11 (0.66%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 368 (22.02%) QA
2 134 (8.02%) Accessibility
3 75 (4.49%) Data Quality
4 45 (2.69%) WCAG
5 39 (2.33%) GDPR
5 39 (2.33%) NIST
6 28 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 21 (1.26%) NCSC
8 18 (1.08%) EU AI Act
9 16 (0.96%) PCI DSS
10 14 (0.84%) PSD2
11 12 (0.72%) ISO 20022
12 10 (0.60%) NIST 800
13 9 (0.54%) SEPA
14 8 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 7 (0.42%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 5 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
16 5 (0.30%) MiFID
16 5 (0.30%) SLA
16 5 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 370 (22.14%) Docker
2 32 (1.92%) Active Directory
3 5 (0.30%) Firmware
3 5 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
4 4 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
5 3 (0.18%) QEMU
5 3 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
5 3 (0.18%) zsh
6 2 (0.12%) vSphere
7 1 (0.060%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.060%) HDFS
7 1 (0.060%) KVM
7 1 (0.060%) Squid
7 1 (0.060%) Time Sharing Option
7 1 (0.060%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 323 (19.33%) Kubernetes
2 208 (12.45%) Terraform
3 120 (7.18%) Ansible
4 87 (5.21%) Grafana
5 55 (3.29%) Prometheus
6 17 (1.02%) Progress Chef
7 16 (0.96%) Argo
7 16 (0.96%) CSIRT
7 16 (0.96%) Nmap
8 14 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.78%) HP ALM
9 13 (0.78%) NetBackup
10 12 (0.72%) Puppet
11 7 (0.42%) Nessus
11 7 (0.42%) Podman
12 6 (0.36%) Kibana
13 5 (0.30%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 5 (0.30%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 4 (0.24%) SCCM
14 4 (0.24%) vRealize
Vendors
1 156 (9.34%) Microsoft
2 154 (9.22%) Oracle
3 67 (4.01%) Splunk
4 58 (3.47%) Databricks
5 56 (3.35%) SAP
5 56 (3.35%) ServiceNow
6 53 (3.17%) Salesforce
7 42 (2.51%) Google
8 29 (1.74%) Denodo
8 29 (1.74%) Talend
9 28 (1.68%) VMware
10 26 (1.56%) Cisco
11 24 (1.44%) F5
11 24 (1.44%) Red Hat
12 21 (1.26%) webMethods
13 19 (1.14%) IBM
14 18 (1.08%) Atlassian
15 17 (1.02%) Dynatrace
15 17 (1.02%) MuleSoft
16 15 (0.90%) Workday