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

6 months to
8 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 55
Rank change year-on-year -1 +8 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,981 1,338 1,512
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.33% 4.58% 3.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.07% 5.05% 3.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,326 917 1,006
10th Percentile £331 £328 £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 £623 £638
90th Percentile £675 £730 £720
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £482 £500
% change year-on-year -1.35% -3.70% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 10 56
10th Percentile £34.57 £29.08 £37.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £53.38 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.78% -2.95% -12.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.50 £73.75
90th Percentile - £75.67 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £53.38 £55.00
% change year-on-year +26.46% -2.95% -12.00%

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 39,061 26,469 37,905
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.38% 90.57% 86.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,736 17,183 24,573
10th Percentile £314 £308 £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 £636 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.51% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,329 996 2,365
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.77
25th Percentile £19.10 £19.99 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.00 £31.51 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.25% -4.52% -11.17%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.38 £70.23
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £30.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +20.00% -7.69% -10.34%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 -3 1,687 £481 -3.80% 674
UK excluding London +2 912 £475 -1.35% 573
London -1 827 £500 - 183
Work from Home -6 573 £475 -5.00% 333
North of England +8 322 £475 +5.56% 162
Midlands +9 191 £469 -1.58% 83
South East -23 179 £505 -2.98% 145
West Midlands +6 163 £475 -6.40% 57
North West +13 142 £465 +3.33% 82
Yorkshire -11 135 £500 +5.26% 41
South West -4 84 £475 -9.52% 72
East of England +2 60 £615 +25.51% 65
North East +4 48 £425 +8.97% 39
Scotland -20 40 £415 -7.83% 30
Wales +3 36 £509 +27.25% 27
East Midlands -24 28 £400 -0.93% 26
Northern Ireland +14 20 £475 -2.56% 7
Channel Islands - 2 - - 1

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
1 130 (6.56%) Confluence
2 69 (3.48%) SAS
3 29 (1.46%) Apache Spark
4 22 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
5 15 (0.76%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.56%) Apache
7 8 (0.40%) Appian
7 8 (0.40%) nginx
8 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
8 7 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.30%) Camunda
10 5 (0.25%) CMS
11 3 (0.15%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.10%) Mendix
12 2 (0.10%) Oracle Application Server
12 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 13 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
4 12 (0.61%) MS Visio
5 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.15%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.15%) Simulink
8 1 (0.050%) Mingle
8 1 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.11%) Aladdin
2 9 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
3 8 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
4 7 (0.35%) Findur
5 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
5 6 (0.30%) Shopify
6 5 (0.25%) Maximo
6 5 (0.25%) Workday HCM
7 4 (0.20%) BambooHR
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%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.10%) iTrent
9 2 (0.10%) NetSuite
9 2 (0.10%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 573 (28.92%) Azure
2 504 (25.44%) AWS
3 348 (17.57%) GitHub
4 269 (13.58%) Azure DevOps
5 193 (9.74%) GitHub Actions
6 162 (8.18%) GCP
7 131 (6.61%) Serverless
8 80 (4.04%) OpenShift
9 76 (3.84%) Power Platform
10 72 (3.63%) AWS Lambda
11 68 (3.43%) Amazon S3
12 51 (2.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 50 (2.52%) AWS CloudFormation
14 42 (2.12%) Snowflake
15 40 (2.02%) Azure AKS
16 39 (1.97%) Amazon ECS
17 34 (1.72%) Azure Data Factory
18 33 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
19 32 (1.62%) Amazon EKS
19 32 (1.62%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.36%) HTTP
2 23 (1.16%) Firewall
3 14 (0.71%) SSL
4 13 (0.66%) TCP/IP
5 12 (0.61%) FTP
5 12 (0.61%) Network Security
5 12 (0.61%) VPN
6 11 (0.56%) SAN
7 10 (0.50%) Wireshark
8 9 (0.45%) Ethernet
9 8 (0.40%) HTTPS
9 8 (0.40%) MPLS
9 8 (0.40%) SD-WAN
9 8 (0.40%) WAN
10 7 (0.35%) 5G
10 7 (0.35%) DNS
10 7 (0.35%) Multicast
11 5 (0.25%) AMQP
11 5 (0.25%) Cisco IPT
11 5 (0.25%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 104 (5.25%) PostgreSQL
2 87 (4.39%) NoSQL
3 81 (4.09%) SQL Server
4 78 (3.94%) MongoDB
5 62 (3.13%) Relational Database
6 54 (2.73%) Data Warehouse
7 43 (2.17%) Power BI
8 42 (2.12%) DynamoDB
9 34 (1.72%) Pentaho
10 33 (1.67%) MySQL
11 30 (1.51%) BigQuery
12 26 (1.31%) Metadata
13 25 (1.26%) Oracle Database
14 24 (1.21%) Tableau
15 22 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
15 22 (1.11%) Redis
16 19 (0.96%) Amazon Athena
16 19 (0.96%) Big Data
16 19 (0.96%) Oracle Reports
17 17 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 385 (19.43%) Git
2 381 (19.23%) JIRA
3 340 (17.16%) Jenkins
4 300 (15.14%) Selenium
5 271 (13.68%) GitLab
6 163 (8.23%) Postman
7 162 (8.18%) Cucumber
8 118 (5.96%) JUnit
9 101 (5.10%) Cypress.io
9 101 (5.10%) JMeter
9 101 (5.10%) REST Assured
10 55 (2.78%) WebDriver
11 43 (2.17%) SonarQube
11 43 (2.17%) Zephyr
12 38 (1.92%) SpecFlow
13 35 (1.77%) Maven
13 35 (1.77%) Mockito
14 34 (1.72%) Gatling
14 34 (1.72%) TestRail
15 32 (1.62%) Gradle
General
1 516 (26.05%) Social Skills
2 331 (16.71%) Finance
3 292 (14.74%) Public Sector
4 203 (10.25%) Analytical Skills
5 154 (7.77%) Banking
6 37 (1.87%) Documentation Skills
7 32 (1.62%) Investment Banking
8 31 (1.56%) Front Office
9 25 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 25 (1.26%) Telecoms
10 20 (1.01%) Legal
10 20 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
11 18 (0.91%) Aerospace
11 18 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
12 17 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
13 14 (0.71%) Military
14 13 (0.66%) Pharmaceutical
15 12 (0.61%) Financial Institution
16 11 (0.56%) Electronics
16 11 (0.56%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 420 (21.20%) Developer
2 314 (15.85%) Senior
3 222 (11.21%) Tester
4 214 (10.80%) Test Engineer
5 211 (10.65%) Lead
6 112 (5.65%) Automation Tester
7 104 (5.25%) Analyst
7 104 (5.25%) Java Developer
8 98 (4.95%) Data Engineer
9 94 (4.75%) Test Automation Engineer
10 84 (4.24%) QA Engineer
11 82 (4.14%) Test Leader
12 81 (4.09%) DevOps Engineer
13 78 (3.94%) Software Engineer
14 77 (3.89%) Senior Developer
15 75 (3.79%) Architect
16 67 (3.38%) Test Analyst
17 60 (3.03%) Test Manager
18 58 (2.93%) Automation Engineer
19 54 (2.73%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 255 (12.87%) REST
2 234 (11.81%) Playwright
3 172 (8.68%) React
4 153 (7.72%) RESTful
5 148 (7.47%) Node.js
6 147 (7.42%) Spring
7 140 (7.07%) .NET
8 129 (6.51%) Kafka
9 119 (6.01%) Spring Boot
10 90 (4.54%) pytest
11 81 (4.09%) AngularJS
12 64 (3.23%) HTML
13 60 (3.03%) OAuth
14 57 (2.88%) Jest
15 52 (2.62%) CSS
16 51 (2.57%) Web Services
17 47 (2.37%) JSON
18 41 (2.07%) GraphQL
19 40 (2.02%) Gherkin
19 40 (2.02%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 203 (10.25%) Cloud Native
2 142 (7.17%) Product Ownership
3 91 (4.59%) Distributed Systems
4 52 (2.62%) Mobile App
5 47 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
6 43 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
7 38 (1.92%) Onboarding
7 38 (1.92%) Virtual Team
8 36 (1.82%) Algorithms
9 34 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
10 32 (1.62%) Self-Motivation
11 30 (1.51%) NHS
12 29 (1.46%) Security Posture
13 22 (1.11%) Data Structures
13 22 (1.11%) Management Information System
14 21 (1.06%) Data Centre
14 21 (1.06%) Equities
15 19 (0.96%) Distributed Architecture
15 19 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
16 17 (0.86%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 136 (6.87%) Linux
2 91 (4.59%) Windows
3 51 (2.57%) Android
4 43 (2.17%) Apple iOS
5 38 (1.92%) Unix
6 22 (1.11%) Windows Server
7 20 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.66%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.40%) Solaris
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
12 6 (0.30%) Kali Linux
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.20%) CentOS
13 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
14 1 (0.050%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.050%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.050%) VMS
14 1 (0.050%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,048 (52.90%) CI/CD
2 928 (46.85%) Agile
3 730 (36.85%) DevOps
4 431 (21.76%) Problem-Solving
5 324 (16.36%) Continuous Improvement
6 306 (15.45%) Test Strategy
7 297 (14.99%) Microservices
8 283 (14.29%) Scrum
9 271 (13.68%) Validation
10 269 (13.58%) Containerisation
11 252 (12.72%) Infrastructure as Code
12 230 (11.61%) AI
13 227 (11.46%) Analytics
14 225 (11.36%) Test Scripting
15 224 (11.31%) Observability
16 219 (11.06%) TDD
17 217 (10.95%) Software Engineering
18 212 (10.70%) Regression Testing
19 207 (10.45%) SDLC
20 197 (9.94%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 583 (29.43%) Python
2 477 (24.08%) Java
3 422 (21.30%) SQL
4 285 (14.39%) JavaScript
5 261 (13.18%) TypeScript
6 211 (10.65%) C#
7 82 (4.14%) PowerShell
8 76 (3.84%) Bash
9 51 (2.57%) C++
10 33 (1.67%) C
11 31 (1.56%) Kotlin
12 30 (1.51%) Ruby
13 28 (1.41%) PL/SQL
14 27 (1.36%) Bicep
15 26 (1.31%) Apex Code
16 24 (1.21%) Scala
17 21 (1.06%) Go
18 19 (0.96%) Swift
19 16 (0.81%) Groovy
19 16 (0.81%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 609 (30.74%) Security Cleared
2 478 (24.13%) SC Cleared
3 101 (5.10%) ISTQB
4 96 (4.85%) Degree
5 80 (4.04%) BPSS Clearance
6 61 (3.08%) DV Cleared
7 54 (2.73%) Computer Science Degree
8 37 (1.87%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 19 (0.96%) Master's Degree
10 15 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
11 13 (0.66%) AWS Certification
11 13 (0.66%) Azure Certification
12 10 (0.50%) CISSP
12 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
13 9 (0.45%) CCNP
13 9 (0.45%) ISEB
13 9 (0.45%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 9 (0.45%) OSCP
14 8 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
15 7 (0.35%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 443 (22.36%) QA
2 137 (6.92%) Accessibility
3 117 (5.91%) Data Quality
4 56 (2.83%) WCAG
5 44 (2.22%) GDPR
6 29 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.81%) NIST
7 16 (0.81%) SLA
8 14 (0.71%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 14 (0.71%) NCSC
9 12 (0.61%) ISO 20022
10 11 (0.56%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
12 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.40%) PSD2
14 7 (0.35%) SEPA
15 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
15 6 (0.30%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.25%) EU AI Act
16 5 (0.25%) PERC
System Software
1 385 (19.43%) Docker
2 29 (1.46%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (0.61%) 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%) 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
1 363 (18.32%) Kubernetes
2 229 (11.56%) Terraform
3 104 (5.25%) Grafana
4 80 (4.04%) Ansible
4 80 (4.04%) Prometheus
5 29 (1.46%) Argo
6 26 (1.31%) HP ALM
7 18 (0.91%) Puppet
8 17 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
9 14 (0.71%) Progress Chef
10 10 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
10 10 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
10 10 (0.50%) NetBackup
10 10 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 9 (0.45%) Nmap
12 6 (0.30%) Dell DRAC
12 6 (0.30%) Kibana
12 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
12 6 (0.30%) Podman
12 6 (0.30%) Rancher
Vendors
1 173 (8.73%) Microsoft
2 166 (8.38%) Oracle
3 77 (3.89%) Salesforce
4 72 (3.63%) Databricks
5 61 (3.08%) ServiceNow
6 60 (3.03%) Google
7 51 (2.57%) Splunk
8 49 (2.47%) Red Hat
8 49 (2.47%) SAP
9 41 (2.07%) Talend
10 35 (1.77%) Denodo
11 29 (1.46%) HP
11 29 (1.46%) IBM
11 29 (1.46%) VMware
12 20 (1.01%) Cisco
12 20 (1.01%) Dynatrace
13 16 (0.81%) Workday
14 15 (0.76%) MuleSoft
15 14 (0.71%) OpenAI
15 14 (0.71%) UiPath