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

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 50 50
Rank change year-on-year +5 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,260 1,462 1,577
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.28% 4.44% 3.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.04% 4.91% 4.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,458 1,011 1,049
10th Percentile £325 £313 £363
25th Percentile £402 £384 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -7.77% -1.90%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £610
90th Percentile £663 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £458 £461 £509
% change year-on-year -0.65% -9.29% +1.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 101 32 36
10th Percentile £40.00 £35.58 £47.75
25th Percentile £60.33 £44.51 £51.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -11.11% -13.79%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.50 £71.87
90th Percentile £74.00 £74.35 £76.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £56.25
% change year-on-year +28.57% -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 44,856 29,798 34,328
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.96% 90.42% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,798 18,719 22,071
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,670 1,616 2,026
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £13.56
25th Percentile £20.02 £17.33 £17.55
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.38 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.38 £68.75 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.82 £40.00
% change year-on-year +84.59% -40.46% -

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 27 July 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 27 July 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 27 July 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 1,915 £475 - 757
UK excluding London +4 1,119 £458 -0.65% 513
London +6 867 £500 - 329
Work from Home -1 628 £475 +4.40% 338
North of England +15 385 £465 +4.03% 143
Midlands +8 255 £447 +8.69% 59
West Midlands +34 237 £450 -2.70% 36
South East -36 198 £459 -8.20% 151
Yorkshire +5 154 £500 +5.26% 39
North West -12 146 £489 +18.63% 79
South West +3 113 £463 +7.25% 75
North East +12 95 £425 +6.25% 27
East of England +18 81 £450 - 57
Scotland -16 71 £440 -10.34% 26
Wales -3 35 £475 +13.43% 10
Northern Ireland +19 19 £475 +16.28% 12
East Midlands -41 18 £425 +30.37% 23
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
1 201 (8.89%) Confluence
2 50 (2.21%) Apache Spark
3 48 (2.12%) SAS
4 46 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
5 25 (1.11%) SharePoint
6 24 (1.06%) Apache
7 14 (0.62%) CMS
8 13 (0.58%) WebLogic
9 8 (0.35%) nginx
9 8 (0.35%) Tomcat
10 5 (0.22%) Camunda
10 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
11 4 (0.18%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.18%) Jupyter
11 4 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.13%) Appian
12 3 (0.13%) Kentico
13 2 (0.088%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.088%) Mendix
13 2 (0.088%) Mule
Applications
1 22 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (0.35%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.18%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.18%) Simulink
5 4 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.13%) Trello
7 1 (0.044%) Mingle
7 1 (0.044%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 26 (1.15%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.75%) Aladdin
2 17 (0.75%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.58%) Oracle EBS
4 12 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.35%) Findur
6 6 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.27%) SAP ERP
6 6 (0.27%) SAP MDG
6 6 (0.27%) Shopify
7 5 (0.22%) BambooHR
8 4 (0.18%) Infor CloudSuite
8 4 (0.18%) Infor LN
8 4 (0.18%) Infor M3
9 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
9 3 (0.13%) Loan IQ
10 2 (0.088%) Advent Geneva
10 2 (0.088%) Oracle EBS R12
10 2 (0.088%) SAP GRC
10 2 (0.088%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 673 (29.78%) Azure
2 671 (29.69%) AWS
3 408 (18.05%) GitHub
4 307 (13.58%) Azure DevOps
5 249 (11.02%) GitHub Actions
6 167 (7.39%) GCP
7 160 (7.08%) Serverless
8 109 (4.82%) AWS Lambda
9 97 (4.29%) Power Platform
10 96 (4.25%) Amazon S3
11 70 (3.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 66 (2.92%) OpenShift
13 64 (2.83%) Amazon ECS
14 57 (2.52%) AWS CloudFormation
15 51 (2.26%) Amazon EC2
15 51 (2.26%) Amazon EKS
16 50 (2.21%) GitHub Copilot
17 48 (2.12%) dbt
18 44 (1.95%) Snowflake
19 41 (1.81%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 22 (0.97%) Firewall
1 22 (0.97%) HTTP
2 17 (0.75%) Network Security
3 16 (0.71%) SAN
4 12 (0.53%) 2G
4 12 (0.53%) 3G
4 12 (0.53%) 4G
4 12 (0.53%) 5G
4 12 (0.53%) Diameter Protocol
4 12 (0.53%) SIGTRAN
4 12 (0.53%) SS7
4 12 (0.53%) WAN
5 9 (0.40%) LAN
5 9 (0.40%) TCP/IP
6 8 (0.35%) DNS
6 8 (0.35%) VPN
6 8 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (0.31%) BGP
8 6 (0.27%) HTTPS
8 6 (0.27%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (5.66%) PostgreSQL
2 122 (5.40%) MongoDB
3 118 (5.22%) Data Warehouse
4 105 (4.65%) NoSQL
5 89 (3.94%) SQL Server
6 81 (3.58%) Relational Database
7 76 (3.36%) Power BI
8 48 (2.12%) DynamoDB
9 44 (1.95%) Metadata
10 42 (1.86%) Oracle Reports
11 37 (1.64%) Big Data
12 36 (1.59%) Pentaho
13 35 (1.55%) MySQL
14 32 (1.42%) Amazon Athena
15 28 (1.24%) Amazon RDS
15 28 (1.24%) Data Lake
16 26 (1.15%) Amazon Redshift
16 26 (1.15%) Redis
17 24 (1.06%) Elasticsearch
18 22 (0.97%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 431 (19.07%) JIRA
2 420 (18.58%) Git
3 367 (16.24%) Jenkins
4 297 (13.14%) GitLab
5 287 (12.70%) Selenium
6 164 (7.26%) Postman
7 151 (6.68%) Cucumber
8 116 (5.13%) Cypress.io
8 116 (5.13%) REST Assured
9 114 (5.04%) JUnit
10 99 (4.38%) JMeter
11 71 (3.14%) Zephyr
12 63 (2.79%) WebDriver
13 58 (2.57%) SonarQube
14 54 (2.39%) Gatling
15 47 (2.08%) Gradle
16 43 (1.90%) Bitbucket
17 42 (1.86%) Mockito
18 41 (1.81%) Maven
19 36 (1.59%) SpecFlow
General
1 609 (26.95%) Social Skills
2 412 (18.23%) Finance
3 318 (14.07%) Public Sector
4 281 (12.43%) Analytical Skills
5 190 (8.41%) Banking
6 62 (2.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 42 (1.86%) Documentation Skills
8 37 (1.64%) Front Office
9 35 (1.55%) Investment Banking
10 34 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
11 33 (1.46%) Telecoms
12 30 (1.33%) Military
13 29 (1.28%) Retail
14 23 (1.02%) Financial Institution
15 18 (0.80%) Aerospace
15 18 (0.80%) Manufacturing
16 16 (0.71%) Back Office
16 16 (0.71%) Legal
16 16 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
17 14 (0.62%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 482 (21.33%) Developer
2 373 (16.50%) Senior
3 249 (11.02%) Lead
4 227 (10.04%) Test Engineer
5 222 (9.82%) Tester
6 160 (7.08%) Java Developer
7 153 (6.77%) Data Engineer
8 124 (5.49%) Analyst
9 116 (5.13%) Software Engineer
10 113 (5.00%) DevOps Engineer
11 107 (4.73%) Senior Developer
12 105 (4.65%) Architect
13 100 (4.42%) Test Automation Engineer
14 92 (4.07%) Automation Tester
15 91 (4.03%) Test Leader
16 88 (3.89%) QA Engineer
17 85 (3.76%) Test Analyst
18 74 (3.27%) Full-Stack Developer
19 58 (2.57%) Test Manager
20 57 (2.52%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 302 (13.36%) REST
2 269 (11.90%) Playwright
3 200 (8.85%) React
4 193 (8.54%) RESTful
5 186 (8.23%) Spring
6 173 (7.65%) Kafka
7 157 (6.95%) .NET
8 152 (6.73%) Spring Boot
9 120 (5.31%) Node.js
10 93 (4.12%) HTML
11 90 (3.98%) AngularJS
12 86 (3.81%) CSS
13 69 (3.05%) OAuth
14 56 (2.48%) pytest
15 55 (2.43%) JSON
16 54 (2.39%) Jest
17 49 (2.17%) HTML5
18 48 (2.12%) Gherkin
19 47 (2.08%) OAuth2
20 46 (2.04%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 314 (13.89%) Cloud Native
2 165 (7.30%) Product Ownership
3 147 (6.50%) Distributed Systems
4 81 (3.58%) Enterprise Software
5 62 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
6 55 (2.43%) Data Protection Act
7 54 (2.39%) Onboarding
8 51 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
9 40 (1.77%) Mobile App
10 34 (1.50%) Virtual Team
11 33 (1.46%) AI Agents
12 31 (1.37%) Distributed Architecture
13 28 (1.24%) NHS
14 27 (1.19%) Embedded Systems
14 27 (1.19%) Security Posture
15 23 (1.02%) Management Information System
16 21 (0.93%) Fixed Income
16 21 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
17 20 (0.88%) Data Centre
18 19 (0.84%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 139 (6.15%) Linux
2 82 (3.63%) Windows
3 77 (3.41%) Unix
4 42 (1.86%) Android
5 41 (1.81%) Apple iOS
6 24 (1.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 20 (0.88%) Windows Server
8 14 (0.62%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 9 (0.40%) Solaris
11 6 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
11 6 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
12 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.18%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.13%) AIX
15 2 (0.088%) CentOS
16 1 (0.044%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,315 (58.19%) CI/CD
2 1,069 (47.30%) Agile
3 842 (37.26%) DevOps
4 419 (18.54%) Microservices
5 418 (18.50%) Problem-Solving
6 397 (17.57%) Continuous Improvement
7 366 (16.19%) Scrum
8 351 (15.53%) Infrastructure as Code
8 351 (15.53%) Software Engineering
9 344 (15.22%) Test Strategy
10 338 (14.96%) Validation
11 304 (13.45%) Containerisation
12 299 (13.23%) AI
13 296 (13.10%) TDD
14 293 (12.96%) Observability
15 232 (10.27%) End-to-End Testing
16 231 (10.22%) ETL
17 230 (10.18%) SDLC
18 225 (9.96%) Data Pipeline
19 219 (9.69%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 576 (25.49%) Python
2 574 (25.40%) Java
3 526 (23.27%) SQL
4 286 (12.65%) JavaScript
5 241 (10.66%) TypeScript
6 206 (9.12%) C#
7 83 (3.67%) Bash
8 81 (3.58%) PowerShell
9 54 (2.39%) Kotlin
10 48 (2.12%) C++
11 44 (1.95%) Bicep
12 36 (1.59%) PL/SQL
13 29 (1.28%) Apex Code
13 29 (1.28%) C
13 29 (1.28%) Scala
14 28 (1.24%) Go
15 23 (1.02%) Ruby
16 22 (0.97%) Shell Script
16 22 (0.97%) Swift
17 16 (0.71%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 715 (31.64%) Security Cleared
2 603 (26.68%) SC Cleared
3 108 (4.78%) BPSS Clearance
4 107 (4.73%) Degree
5 101 (4.47%) ISTQB
6 69 (3.05%) DV Cleared
7 53 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
8 29 (1.28%) AWS Certification
9 28 (1.24%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 22 (0.97%) Azure Certification
11 17 (0.75%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 12 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
12 12 (0.53%) Master's Degree
13 11 (0.49%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 11 (0.49%) SAFe Agilist
14 10 (0.44%) CCNP
15 9 (0.40%) CISSP
15 9 (0.40%) DBS Check
15 9 (0.40%) Microsoft Certification
16 7 (0.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 540 (23.89%) QA
2 188 (8.32%) Accessibility
3 156 (6.90%) Data Quality
4 81 (3.58%) WCAG
5 41 (1.81%) GDPR
6 16 (0.71%) SLA
7 14 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 13 (0.58%) NCSC
9 10 (0.44%) NIST
10 9 (0.40%) ISO 20022
11 7 (0.31%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 7 (0.31%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.27%) Def Stans
12 6 (0.27%) GRC
13 5 (0.22%) FATCA
13 5 (0.22%) Software Quality Assurance
14 4 (0.18%) MiFID
15 3 (0.13%) HL7
15 3 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.13%) SEPA
System Software
1 416 (18.41%) Docker
2 32 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 25 (1.11%) Active Directory
4 15 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.53%) Firmware
6 6 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
7 5 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.088%) SRDF
10 2 (0.088%) VMware NSX
11 1 (0.044%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 414 (18.32%) Kubernetes
2 307 (13.58%) Terraform
3 118 (5.22%) Grafana
4 117 (5.18%) Ansible
5 100 (4.42%) Prometheus
6 40 (1.77%) Argo
7 22 (0.97%) HP ALM
8 19 (0.84%) Puppet
9 14 (0.62%) Kibana
10 11 (0.49%) Progress Chef
10 11 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.44%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.35%) NetBackup
13 7 (0.31%) HP Quality Center
13 7 (0.31%) Kustomize
14 5 (0.22%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 5 (0.22%) Istio
14 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
14 5 (0.22%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 5 (0.22%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 205 (9.07%) Microsoft
2 190 (8.41%) Oracle
3 97 (4.29%) Salesforce
4 77 (3.41%) Databricks
5 65 (2.88%) Talend
6 64 (2.83%) Google
7 60 (2.65%) Red Hat
8 59 (2.61%) Splunk
9 48 (2.12%) ServiceNow
10 44 (1.95%) Denodo
11 43 (1.90%) IBM
12 40 (1.77%) SAP
13 39 (1.73%) Informatica
14 38 (1.68%) VMware
15 31 (1.37%) Dynatrace
16 28 (1.24%) HP
16 28 (1.24%) MuleSoft
16 28 (1.24%) UiPath
17 24 (1.06%) Cisco
18 13 (0.58%) Fortinet