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

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 52 46
Rank change year-on-year +7 -6 +4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,406 1,484 1,587
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.41% 4.50% 4.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.21% 4.97% 4.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,530 1,007 1,063
10th Percentile £325 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £503
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -0.50% -4.29%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £665 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 38 18
10th Percentile £39.73 £30.06 £40.88
25th Percentile £59.06 £46.93 £43.75
Median hourly rate £69.75 £55.88 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +24.83% -2.83% -23.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £77.50 £70.45 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £57.13 £57.50
% change year-on-year +18.16% -0.65% -16.21%

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 46,152 29,871 33,024
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.59% 90.49% 85.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,085 18,553 20,430
10th Percentile £325 £300 £311
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,056 1,793 1,507
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.23 £14.70
25th Percentile £17.44 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.92%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.78 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.50 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.03 £22.58 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.32% -47.50% +7.50%

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 12 September 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 2,026 £475 -5.00% 1,737
UK excluding London -4 1,165 £450 -5.26% 1,019
London +10 925 £500 - 939
Work from Home -2 655 £480 +1.05% 2,165
North of England +2 405 £455 -0.98% 221
Midlands +6 248 £450 -2.70% 110
West Midlands +17 233 £459 -11.48% 71
South East -14 232 £450 -10.00% 246
Yorkshire -9 163 £470 -6.00% 68
North West -10 142 £492 +16.59% 119
South West -3 114 £475 -5.00% 163
North East +11 107 £425 -4.49% 34
Scotland -26 87 £473 -5.50% 139
East of England +20 83 £450 +31.39% 114
Wales -5 29 £488 +30.00% 22
East Midlands -45 15 £418 +19.29% 39
Northern Ireland +5 8 £513 +345.65% 21
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
1 195 (8.10%) Confluence
2 55 (2.29%) Apache Airflow
3 48 (2.00%) SharePoint
4 46 (1.91%) Apache Spark
5 39 (1.62%) SAS
6 26 (1.08%) Apache
7 15 (0.62%) CMS
8 12 (0.50%) Camunda
8 12 (0.50%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.25%) nginx
10 6 (0.25%) Tomcat
11 4 (0.17%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.17%) ColdFusion
11 4 (0.17%) Jupyter
11 4 (0.17%) OpenStack
11 4 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.12%) Kentico
13 2 (0.083%) Mule
Applications
1 25 (1.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.29%) Chatbot
3 7 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.17%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.12%) Simulink
5 3 (0.12%) Trello
6 2 (0.083%) Mingle
6 2 (0.083%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 29 (1.21%) Dynamics CRM
2 24 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.54%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.46%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.33%) Findur
5 8 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
6 7 (0.29%) SAP GRC
7 6 (0.25%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.25%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.17%) FLEXCUBE
9 3 (0.12%) Distributed Ledger
9 3 (0.12%) Finacle
9 3 (0.12%) Shopify
9 3 (0.12%) Temenos T24
10 2 (0.083%) BambooHR
10 2 (0.083%) Oracle ERP
10 2 (0.083%) SAP HR
10 2 (0.083%) SAP Payroll
11 1 (0.042%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 743 (30.88%) AWS
2 713 (29.63%) Azure
3 421 (17.50%) GitHub
4 332 (13.80%) Azure DevOps
5 260 (10.81%) GitHub Actions
6 180 (7.48%) Serverless
7 174 (7.23%) GCP
8 135 (5.61%) AWS Lambda
9 111 (4.61%) Power Platform
10 103 (4.28%) Amazon S3
11 86 (3.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 77 (3.20%) OpenShift
13 74 (3.08%) Amazon ECS
14 73 (3.03%) GitHub Copilot
15 69 (2.87%) Amazon EKS
15 69 (2.87%) AWS CloudFormation
16 59 (2.45%) dbt
17 56 (2.33%) Snowflake
18 51 (2.12%) Amazon EC2
19 45 (1.87%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.08%) HTTP
2 23 (0.96%) Firewall
3 22 (0.91%) DNS
4 21 (0.87%) 4G
5 20 (0.83%) 5G
6 18 (0.75%) TCP/IP
7 17 (0.71%) Network Security
8 16 (0.67%) 2G
8 16 (0.67%) 3G
8 16 (0.67%) Diameter Protocol
8 16 (0.67%) SIGTRAN
8 16 (0.67%) SS7
8 16 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
9 15 (0.62%) WAN
10 13 (0.54%) LAN
11 10 (0.42%) BGP
11 10 (0.42%) Broadband
11 10 (0.42%) DHCP
12 9 (0.37%) SAN
13 8 (0.33%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 147 (6.11%) PostgreSQL
2 126 (5.24%) Data Warehouse
2 126 (5.24%) MongoDB
3 117 (4.86%) Relational Database
4 109 (4.53%) NoSQL
5 97 (4.03%) SQL Server
6 82 (3.41%) Power BI
7 50 (2.08%) Metadata
8 45 (1.87%) DynamoDB
9 39 (1.62%) Oracle Reports
10 37 (1.54%) Data Lake
10 37 (1.54%) MySQL
11 35 (1.45%) Big Data
12 34 (1.41%) Amazon Athena
13 33 (1.37%) Pentaho
14 31 (1.29%) Amazon Redshift
14 31 (1.29%) Redis
15 30 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
15 30 (1.25%) Elasticsearch
16 25 (1.04%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 518 (21.53%) Git
2 405 (16.83%) JIRA
3 390 (16.21%) Jenkins
4 326 (13.55%) GitLab
5 297 (12.34%) Selenium
6 168 (6.98%) Postman
7 149 (6.19%) Cucumber
8 133 (5.53%) JUnit
9 127 (5.28%) Cypress.io
10 109 (4.53%) REST Assured
11 96 (3.99%) JMeter
12 85 (3.53%) SonarQube
13 66 (2.74%) Zephyr
14 65 (2.70%) Maven
15 62 (2.58%) Gatling
16 60 (2.49%) Gradle
17 57 (2.37%) Mockito
18 52 (2.16%) WebDriver
19 41 (1.70%) Bitbucket
20 29 (1.21%) SpecFlow
General
1 668 (27.76%) Social Skills
2 439 (18.25%) Finance
3 348 (14.46%) Public Sector
4 337 (14.01%) Analytical Skills
5 211 (8.77%) Banking
6 80 (3.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 47 (1.95%) Telecoms
8 45 (1.87%) Front Office
9 35 (1.45%) Retail
10 34 (1.41%) Documentation Skills
10 34 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
11 33 (1.37%) Investment Banking
12 31 (1.29%) Military
13 22 (0.91%) Financial Institution
14 20 (0.83%) Law
15 19 (0.79%) Aerospace
15 19 (0.79%) Back Office
15 19 (0.79%) Marketing
16 16 (0.67%) Manufacturing
17 14 (0.58%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 553 (22.98%) Developer
2 400 (16.63%) Senior
3 241 (10.02%) Lead
4 232 (9.64%) Test Engineer
5 198 (8.23%) Tester
6 182 (7.56%) Java Developer
7 143 (5.94%) Data Engineer
8 127 (5.28%) Analyst
8 127 (5.28%) Software Engineer
9 124 (5.15%) Senior Developer
10 123 (5.11%) DevOps Engineer
11 103 (4.28%) Test Automation Engineer
12 100 (4.16%) QA Engineer
13 98 (4.07%) Architect
14 85 (3.53%) Automation Tester
15 83 (3.45%) Test Analyst
16 80 (3.33%) Full-Stack Developer
17 77 (3.20%) Test Leader
18 74 (3.08%) Test Manager
19 70 (2.91%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 404 (16.79%) REST
2 346 (14.38%) Terraform
3 283 (11.76%) Playwright
4 250 (10.39%) RESTful
5 238 (9.89%) Kafka
6 236 (9.81%) Spring
7 220 (9.14%) React
8 207 (8.60%) Spring Boot
9 169 (7.02%) .NET
10 140 (5.82%) HTML
11 133 (5.53%) Node.js
12 121 (5.03%) CSS
13 110 (4.57%) AngularJS
14 80 (3.33%) OAuth
15 72 (2.99%) JSON
16 62 (2.58%) pytest
17 61 (2.54%) XML
18 58 (2.41%) Middleware
19 56 (2.33%) SOAP
20 55 (2.29%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 374 (15.54%) Cloud Native
2 206 (8.56%) Product Ownership
3 173 (7.19%) Distributed Systems
4 99 (4.11%) Enterprise Software
5 66 (2.74%) Onboarding
6 63 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
7 59 (2.45%) Data Protection Act
8 58 (2.41%) AI Agents
9 53 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
10 51 (2.12%) Mobile App
11 40 (1.66%) Virtual Team
12 29 (1.21%) Security Posture
13 25 (1.04%) Data Structures
14 24 (1.00%) Management Information System
15 22 (0.91%) Legacy Applications
15 22 (0.91%) Life Science
16 21 (0.87%) Data Centre
16 21 (0.87%) Embedded Systems
17 20 (0.83%) NHS
17 20 (0.83%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 170 (7.07%) Linux
2 100 (4.16%) Unix
3 93 (3.87%) Windows
4 45 (1.87%) Apple iOS
5 44 (1.83%) Android
6 33 (1.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 24 (1.00%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.25%) Solaris
8 6 (0.25%) VMS
9 5 (0.21%) Embedded Linux
9 5 (0.21%) Mac OS X
9 5 (0.21%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.21%) Windows 7
9 5 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.17%) AIX
10 4 (0.17%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.17%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,447 (60.14%) CI/CD
2 1,150 (47.80%) Agile
3 899 (37.36%) DevOps
4 467 (19.41%) Microservices
5 462 (19.20%) Continuous Improvement
6 460 (19.12%) Problem-Solving
7 445 (18.50%) Software Engineering
8 423 (17.58%) Infrastructure as Code
9 407 (16.92%) Scrum
10 383 (15.92%) Validation
11 381 (15.84%) AI
12 359 (14.92%) Test Strategy
13 354 (14.71%) Containerisation
14 321 (13.34%) Observability
15 310 (12.88%) TDD
16 293 (12.18%) SDLC
17 274 (11.39%) Software Testing
18 266 (11.06%) Stakeholder Management
19 252 (10.47%) End-to-End Testing
20 238 (9.89%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 667 (27.72%) Java
2 665 (27.64%) Python
3 589 (24.48%) SQL
4 358 (14.88%) JavaScript
5 271 (11.26%) TypeScript
6 199 (8.27%) C#
7 102 (4.24%) PowerShell
8 93 (3.87%) Bash
9 53 (2.20%) Bicep
10 50 (2.08%) Kotlin
11 45 (1.87%) C++
12 36 (1.50%) Scala
13 33 (1.37%) PL/SQL
14 30 (1.25%) Go
15 27 (1.12%) Apex Code
15 27 (1.12%) Shell Script
16 26 (1.08%) C
17 22 (0.91%) Perl
17 22 (0.91%) Ruby
18 17 (0.71%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 787 (32.71%) Security Cleared
2 664 (27.60%) SC Cleared
3 132 (5.49%) Degree
4 120 (4.99%) BPSS Clearance
5 105 (4.36%) ISTQB
6 92 (3.82%) DV Cleared
7 74 (3.08%) Computer Science Degree
8 39 (1.62%) AWS Certification
9 35 (1.45%) Azure Certification
10 29 (1.21%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 19 (0.79%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 14 (0.58%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 14 (0.58%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.50%) ISEB
14 11 (0.46%) SAFe Agilist
15 10 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
15 10 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.37%) CISSP
16 9 (0.37%) DBS Check
17 8 (0.33%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 618 (25.69%) QA
2 214 (8.89%) Accessibility
3 166 (6.90%) Data Quality
4 97 (4.03%) WCAG
5 44 (1.83%) GDPR
6 21 (0.87%) ISO 20022
7 14 (0.58%) GRC
7 14 (0.58%) NCSC
7 14 (0.58%) SLA
8 12 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 11 (0.46%) NIST
10 7 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
10 7 (0.29%) Software Quality Assurance
11 6 (0.25%) PCI DSS
12 5 (0.21%) FATCA
13 4 (0.17%) Def Stans
13 4 (0.17%) HL7
13 4 (0.17%) MiFID
13 4 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.17%) SEPA
System Software
1 485 (20.16%) Docker
2 37 (1.54%) VMware Infrastructure
3 34 (1.41%) Active Directory
4 19 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.50%) Firmware
6 9 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (0.25%) Hyper-V
8 5 (0.21%) VMware NSX
9 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
10 2 (0.083%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.042%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.042%) KVM
11 1 (0.042%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.042%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 474 (19.70%) Kubernetes
2 129 (5.36%) Ansible
3 124 (5.15%) Grafana
4 91 (3.78%) Prometheus
5 40 (1.66%) Argo
6 24 (1.00%) Progress Chef
6 24 (1.00%) Puppet
7 16 (0.67%) HP ALM
7 16 (0.67%) Kibana
8 13 (0.54%) Control-M
8 13 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.29%) Kustomize
9 7 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
10 6 (0.25%) Dell DRAC
10 6 (0.25%) Istio
10 6 (0.25%) SCCM
11 5 (0.21%) HP Fortify
11 5 (0.21%) Packer
11 5 (0.21%) WMI
12 4 (0.17%) Rancher
Vendors
1 227 (9.43%) Microsoft
2 198 (8.23%) Oracle
3 90 (3.74%) Databricks
4 87 (3.62%) Salesforce
5 70 (2.91%) Google
6 63 (2.62%) IBM
7 61 (2.54%) Red Hat
8 59 (2.45%) Talend
9 56 (2.33%) ServiceNow
10 54 (2.24%) SAP
10 54 (2.24%) Splunk
11 45 (1.87%) VMware
12 43 (1.79%) Denodo
12 43 (1.79%) Informatica
13 42 (1.75%) Dynatrace
14 31 (1.29%) Cisco
15 30 (1.25%) MuleSoft
16 28 (1.16%) UiPath
17 20 (0.83%) HP
17 20 (0.83%) OpenAI