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

6 months to
10 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 45 51
Rank change year-on-year -2 +6 -5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,903 1,357 1,589
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.49% 4.59% 3.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.21% 5.08% 4.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,299 941 1,085
10th Percentile £331 £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 £625 £625
90th Percentile £675 £738 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +0.32% -3.55% -6.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 7 64
10th Percentile £33.09 £38.81 £45.90
25th Percentile £50.63 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +6.84%
75th Percentile £69.38 £76.35 £82.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £81.31 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +9.65%

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 36,537 26,694 38,745
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.12% 90.29% 86.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,174 17,018 25,183
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -2.28% -1.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,160 902 2,347
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.51 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £29.61 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.89% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £77.10 £71.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.55 £31.76 £31.80
% change year-on-year -16.40% -0.13% -9.14%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 -2 1,630 £488 -2.50% 940
UK excluding London 0 877 £477 +0.32% 841
London +2 794 £500 -4.76% 210
Work from Home -3 547 £475 -5.00% 586
North of England +3 319 £488 +9.55% 179
Midlands +4 192 £475 +2.70% 107
South East -20 164 £500 -9.09% 236
West Midlands +5 159 £481 -0.41% 60
North West +6 140 £450 +0.56% 85
Yorkshire -10 134 £500 +5.26% 64
South West -2 80 £515 -1.90% 109
East of England -5 57 £570 +21.93% 110
North East +11 49 £488 +28.09% 30
Scotland -17 41 £440 -2.22% 72
East Midlands -22 33 £400 +7.38% 47
Wales +5 30 £485 +14.12% 39
Northern Ireland +13 20 £475 -2.56% 5

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
1 132 (6.94%) Confluence
2 63 (3.31%) SAS
3 34 (1.79%) Apache Spark
4 17 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.68%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.58%) Apache
7 8 (0.42%) Appian
8 6 (0.32%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.32%) nginx
8 6 (0.32%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.26%) CMS
9 5 (0.26%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.21%) Camunda
10 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.21%) Oracle Application Server
11 3 (0.16%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.16%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.11%) Mendix
12 2 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.63%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.63%) MS Visio
4 11 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.16%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.053%) Mingle
7 1 (0.053%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.16%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.32%) Loan IQ
4 5 (0.26%) Maximo
4 5 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
4 5 (0.26%) Shopify
4 5 (0.26%) Workday HCM
5 4 (0.21%) SAP HR
6 3 (0.16%) BambooHR
6 3 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
6 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
7 2 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
7 2 (0.11%) Infor CloudSuite
7 2 (0.11%) Infor LN
7 2 (0.11%) Infor M3
7 2 (0.11%) iTrent
7 2 (0.11%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (0.11%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.11%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 556 (29.22%) Azure
2 484 (25.43%) AWS
3 332 (17.45%) GitHub
4 248 (13.03%) Azure DevOps
5 188 (9.88%) GCP
6 184 (9.67%) GitHub Actions
7 131 (6.88%) Serverless
8 83 (4.36%) Power Platform
9 74 (3.89%) OpenShift
10 63 (3.31%) AWS Lambda
11 61 (3.21%) Amazon S3
12 47 (2.47%) Azure AKS
13 45 (2.36%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 45 (2.36%) AWS CloudFormation
14 43 (2.26%) Snowflake
15 35 (1.84%) Amazon EKS
15 35 (1.84%) Azure Data Factory
16 34 (1.79%) Dynamics 365
17 33 (1.73%) Amazon ECS
18 32 (1.68%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.73%) Firewall
2 26 (1.37%) HTTP
3 20 (1.05%) Wireshark
4 18 (0.95%) TCP/IP
5 17 (0.89%) SSL
5 17 (0.89%) VPN
6 13 (0.68%) HTTPS
6 13 (0.68%) SD-WAN
7 12 (0.63%) Network Security
7 12 (0.63%) WAN
8 10 (0.53%) DNS
8 10 (0.53%) FTP
9 8 (0.42%) Ethernet
9 8 (0.42%) MPLS
9 8 (0.42%) SAN
10 7 (0.37%) AMQP
10 7 (0.37%) Multicast
11 5 (0.26%) Cisco IPT
11 5 (0.26%) VLAN
12 4 (0.21%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (5.89%) PostgreSQL
2 89 (4.68%) NoSQL
3 76 (3.99%) MongoDB
4 75 (3.94%) SQL Server
5 61 (3.21%) Relational Database
6 53 (2.79%) Data Warehouse
7 49 (2.57%) Power BI
8 34 (1.79%) Pentaho
9 31 (1.63%) BigQuery
9 31 (1.63%) DynamoDB
10 28 (1.47%) MySQL
11 27 (1.42%) Oracle Database
12 23 (1.21%) Tableau
13 20 (1.05%) Big Data
14 19 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
14 19 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
14 19 (1.00%) Redis
15 18 (0.95%) Oracle Reports
16 17 (0.89%) Data Lake
16 17 (0.89%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 367 (19.29%) JIRA
2 365 (19.18%) Git
3 352 (18.50%) Jenkins
4 289 (15.19%) Selenium
5 288 (15.13%) GitLab
6 179 (9.41%) Cucumber
7 167 (8.78%) Postman
8 115 (6.04%) Cypress.io
9 110 (5.78%) JUnit
10 102 (5.36%) JMeter
10 102 (5.36%) REST Assured
11 48 (2.52%) WebDriver
12 43 (2.26%) SpecFlow
13 39 (2.05%) Gatling
14 38 (2.00%) Zephyr
15 37 (1.94%) SonarQube
16 36 (1.89%) Maven
17 33 (1.73%) TestRail
18 32 (1.68%) Gradle
19 31 (1.63%) Mockito
General
1 500 (26.27%) Social Skills
2 308 (16.18%) Finance
3 271 (14.24%) Public Sector
4 199 (10.46%) Analytical Skills
5 148 (7.78%) Banking
6 33 (1.73%) Documentation Skills
7 28 (1.47%) Investment Banking
8 27 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 23 (1.21%) Front Office
10 22 (1.16%) Pharmaceutical
11 21 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
12 20 (1.05%) Telecoms
13 16 (0.84%) Influencing Skills
13 16 (0.84%) Military
13 16 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
14 14 (0.74%) Legal
15 13 (0.68%) Aerospace
15 13 (0.68%) Financial Institution
16 10 (0.53%) Electronics
17 8 (0.42%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 397 (20.86%) Developer
2 311 (16.34%) Senior
3 223 (11.72%) Tester
4 222 (11.67%) Lead
5 212 (11.14%) Test Engineer
6 116 (6.10%) Automation Tester
7 99 (5.20%) Data Engineer
8 98 (5.15%) Java Developer
9 91 (4.78%) Analyst
10 86 (4.52%) Test Automation Engineer
11 81 (4.26%) Test Leader
12 79 (4.15%) Software Engineer
13 76 (3.99%) QA Engineer
14 71 (3.73%) DevOps Engineer
15 69 (3.63%) Senior Developer
16 65 (3.42%) Test Manager
17 63 (3.31%) Architect
18 59 (3.10%) Test Analyst
19 54 (2.84%) Automation Engineer
20 48 (2.52%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 245 (12.87%) REST
2 239 (12.56%) Playwright
3 168 (8.83%) React
4 152 (7.99%) RESTful
5 149 (7.83%) .NET
6 147 (7.72%) Node.js
7 143 (7.51%) Spring
8 128 (6.73%) Kafka
9 117 (6.15%) Spring Boot
10 92 (4.83%) pytest
11 67 (3.52%) HTML
12 64 (3.36%) AngularJS
13 58 (3.05%) OAuth
14 57 (3.00%) CSS
15 56 (2.94%) Jest
16 50 (2.63%) Web Services
17 49 (2.57%) JSON
18 43 (2.26%) GraphQL
19 40 (2.10%) Gherkin
19 40 (2.10%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 207 (10.88%) Cloud Native
2 127 (6.67%) Product Ownership
3 79 (4.15%) Distributed Systems
4 47 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
4 47 (2.47%) Mobile App
5 42 (2.21%) Algorithms
5 42 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
6 34 (1.79%) Onboarding
7 33 (1.73%) Security Posture
8 30 (1.58%) Virtual Team
9 26 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
9 26 (1.37%) NHS
10 25 (1.31%) Data Structures
10 25 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
11 22 (1.16%) Equities
12 21 (1.10%) Data Centre
12 21 (1.10%) Management Information System
13 20 (1.05%) Derivative
13 20 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
13 20 (1.05%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 147 (7.72%) Linux
2 87 (4.57%) Windows
3 44 (2.31%) Android
4 40 (2.10%) Apple iOS
4 40 (2.10%) Unix
5 22 (1.16%) Windows Server
6 16 (0.84%) Mac OS X
7 15 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (0.58%) Kali Linux
9 9 (0.47%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.32%) CentOS
11 5 (0.26%) Solaris
11 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
11 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
11 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.053%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.053%) VMS
13 1 (0.053%) Windows Embedded Compact
13 1 (0.053%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,018 (53.49%) CI/CD
2 914 (48.03%) Agile
3 714 (37.52%) DevOps
4 448 (23.54%) Problem-Solving
5 317 (16.66%) Continuous Improvement
6 307 (16.13%) Test Strategy
7 298 (15.66%) Microservices
8 275 (14.45%) Containerisation
9 270 (14.19%) Scrum
10 243 (12.77%) Validation
11 242 (12.72%) AI
12 235 (12.35%) Infrastructure as Code
13 229 (12.03%) Test Scripting
14 219 (11.51%) Software Engineering
15 216 (11.35%) Analytics
16 215 (11.30%) TDD
17 199 (10.46%) Observability
18 194 (10.19%) API Testing
19 193 (10.14%) Software Testing
20 190 (9.98%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 591 (31.06%) Python
2 458 (24.07%) Java
3 395 (20.76%) SQL
4 292 (15.34%) JavaScript
5 272 (14.29%) TypeScript
6 187 (9.83%) C#
7 78 (4.10%) Bash
8 77 (4.05%) PowerShell
9 46 (2.42%) C++
10 32 (1.68%) Go
11 28 (1.47%) PL/SQL
12 25 (1.31%) Bicep
13 24 (1.26%) C
13 24 (1.26%) Kotlin
14 22 (1.16%) Ruby
14 22 (1.16%) Scala
15 19 (1.00%) Apex Code
16 16 (0.84%) Swift
17 15 (0.79%) Shell Script
18 14 (0.74%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 544 (28.59%) Security Cleared
2 422 (22.18%) SC Cleared
3 107 (5.62%) Degree
4 91 (4.78%) ISTQB
5 73 (3.84%) BPSS Clearance
6 60 (3.15%) Computer Science Degree
7 57 (3.00%) DV Cleared
8 32 (1.68%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 27 (1.42%) Master's Degree
10 15 (0.79%) Azure Certification
11 14 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
11 14 (0.74%) OSCP
12 13 (0.68%) AWS Certification
12 13 (0.68%) CISSP
12 13 (0.68%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 13 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
12 13 (0.68%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 12 (0.63%) CEH
14 11 (0.58%) ISEB
15 10 (0.53%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 429 (22.54%) QA
2 149 (7.83%) Accessibility
3 110 (5.78%) Data Quality
4 47 (2.47%) WCAG
5 38 (2.00%) GDPR
6 35 (1.84%) NIST
7 22 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 18 (0.95%) EU AI Act
9 16 (0.84%) NCSC
10 15 (0.79%) SLA
11 11 (0.58%) ISO 20022
12 10 (0.53%) PCI DSS
13 9 (0.47%) NIST 800
13 9 (0.47%) PSD2
14 8 (0.42%) Def Stans
14 8 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 7 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 7 (0.37%) SEPA
16 6 (0.32%) HIPAA
16 6 (0.32%) SOC 2
System Software
1 402 (21.12%) Docker
2 31 (1.63%) Active Directory
3 10 (0.53%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.42%) Firmware
4 8 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
5 7 (0.37%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 5 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.16%) ISA Server
8 3 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.11%) SRDF
10 1 (0.053%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.053%) HDFS
10 1 (0.053%) KVM
10 1 (0.053%) Squid
10 1 (0.053%) Time Sharing Option
10 1 (0.053%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.053%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 369 (19.39%) Kubernetes
2 222 (11.67%) Terraform
3 111 (5.83%) Grafana
4 107 (5.62%) Ansible
5 80 (4.20%) Prometheus
6 24 (1.26%) HP ALM
7 20 (1.05%) Puppet
8 19 (1.00%) Argo
9 17 (0.89%) Progress Chef
10 15 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
11 14 (0.74%) Nmap
12 12 (0.63%) NetBackup
13 10 (0.53%) HP Quality Center
14 7 (0.37%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 7 (0.37%) Kibana
14 7 (0.37%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 7 (0.37%) Podman
15 6 (0.32%) CSIRT
16 5 (0.26%) Rancher
17 4 (0.21%) Dell DRAC
Vendors
1 172 (9.04%) Microsoft
2 156 (8.20%) Oracle
3 76 (3.99%) Databricks
4 66 (3.47%) Google
5 65 (3.42%) Splunk
6 64 (3.36%) ServiceNow
7 60 (3.15%) Salesforce
8 47 (2.47%) SAP
9 38 (2.00%) Talend
10 35 (1.84%) Red Hat
11 30 (1.58%) Denodo
12 28 (1.47%) VMware
13 26 (1.37%) HP
14 24 (1.26%) IBM
15 23 (1.21%) Cisco
16 19 (1.00%) Workday
17 16 (0.84%) Dynatrace
18 15 (0.79%) Atlassian
18 15 (0.79%) MuleSoft
18 15 (0.79%) OpenAI