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

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 46 56
Rank change year-on-year -1 +10 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,981 1,325 1,506
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.20% 4.53% 3.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.96% 4.99% 4.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,311 914 980
10th Percentile £328 £327 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £511
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -2.20% -7.05%
75th Percentile £575 £618 £630
90th Percentile £671 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.26% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 17 56
10th Percentile £35.88 £33.10 £49.00
25th Percentile £57.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £66.00 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.00% -8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £78.75
90th Percentile - £71.30 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -12.00% +6.38%

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 39,921 26,554 37,629
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.61% 90.86% 86.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,152 17,143 24,256
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +1.04% -3.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,393 1,068 2,439
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.81 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.07 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +42.95% -16.94% -6.17%
75th Percentile £66.00 £62.24 £59.95
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.71 £28.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year +52.52% -23.29% +1.39%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -1 1,689 £475 -5.00% 509
UK excluding London -3 914 £469 -1.26% 441
London -1 825 £500 -0.50% 142
Work from Home -4 569 £470 -6.00% 234
North of England +11 338 £469 +4.11% 116
Midlands +4 183 £450 -2.70% 65
South East -38 169 £500 -2.44% 111
West Midlands +15 157 £463 -7.73% 44
North West +11 147 £463 +3.12% 53
Yorkshire -9 142 £500 +2.56% 28
South West +7 91 £475 -5.00% 55
East of England -2 57 £522 +6.58% 59
North East +10 54 £413 +4.43% 35
Scotland -24 49 £425 -3.41% 26
Wales -3 28 £475 +20.25% 10
East Midlands -30 26 £400 -9.86% 21
Northern Ireland +20 19 £475 +16.28% 12
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
1 146 (7.37%) Confluence
2 43 (2.17%) SAS
3 42 (2.12%) Apache Spark
4 32 (1.62%) Apache Airflow
5 14 (0.71%) Apache
6 12 (0.61%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.40%) Appian
8 7 (0.35%) nginx
8 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.30%) Camunda
10 5 (0.25%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.20%) CMS
11 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.10%) Mendix
13 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
14 1 (0.050%) Apache Synapse
14 1 (0.050%) Solana
Applications
1 26 (1.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (0.56%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.15%) Simulink
6 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.050%) Mingle
7 1 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (1.01%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.35%) Findur
4 7 (0.35%) Shopify
5 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
6 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.25%) Maximo
7 4 (0.20%) Workday HCM
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%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
10 1 (0.050%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 566 (28.57%) Azure
2 541 (27.31%) AWS
3 342 (17.26%) GitHub
4 260 (13.12%) Azure DevOps
5 194 (9.79%) GitHub Actions
6 152 (7.67%) GCP
7 138 (6.97%) Serverless
8 88 (4.44%) AWS Lambda
9 84 (4.24%) Amazon S3
10 68 (3.43%) Power Platform
11 61 (3.08%) OpenShift
12 59 (2.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 59 (2.98%) AWS CloudFormation
13 56 (2.83%) Amazon ECS
14 39 (1.97%) Amazon EKS
14 39 (1.97%) Azure AKS
14 39 (1.97%) Snowflake
15 35 (1.77%) Amazon EC2
15 35 (1.77%) Azure Data Factory
16 30 (1.51%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.31%) HTTP
2 23 (1.16%) Firewall
3 14 (0.71%) SAN
4 13 (0.66%) VPN
5 12 (0.61%) FTP
5 12 (0.61%) TCP/IP
6 11 (0.56%) SSL
7 10 (0.50%) WAN
8 9 (0.45%) Ethernet
8 9 (0.45%) MPLS
8 9 (0.45%) SD-WAN
9 8 (0.40%) Wireshark
10 7 (0.35%) Network Security
11 6 (0.30%) 5G
11 6 (0.30%) DNS
11 6 (0.30%) Multicast
11 6 (0.30%) VLAN
12 5 (0.25%) Cisco IPT
12 5 (0.25%) HTTPS
12 5 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (5.60%) PostgreSQL
2 101 (5.10%) NoSQL
3 98 (4.95%) MongoDB
4 88 (4.44%) SQL Server
5 70 (3.53%) Relational Database
6 69 (3.48%) Data Warehouse
7 49 (2.47%) Power BI
8 47 (2.37%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.77%) Metadata
9 35 (1.77%) MySQL
10 34 (1.72%) Pentaho
11 31 (1.56%) Big Data
12 26 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
12 26 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
12 26 (1.31%) Tableau
13 25 (1.26%) Redis
14 24 (1.21%) Amazon Athena
14 24 (1.21%) BigQuery
15 23 (1.16%) Amazon Aurora
16 20 (1.01%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 381 (19.23%) JIRA
2 368 (18.58%) Git
3 319 (16.10%) Jenkins
4 278 (14.03%) Selenium
5 268 (13.53%) GitLab
6 159 (8.03%) Postman
7 153 (7.72%) Cucumber
8 101 (5.10%) Cypress.io
9 100 (5.05%) JUnit
10 92 (4.64%) JMeter
11 88 (4.44%) REST Assured
12 60 (3.03%) WebDriver
13 49 (2.47%) SonarQube
14 47 (2.37%) Zephyr
15 35 (1.77%) Gradle
16 34 (1.72%) Gatling
16 34 (1.72%) Maven
16 34 (1.72%) Mockito
17 33 (1.67%) SpecFlow
18 32 (1.62%) Bitbucket
General
1 516 (26.05%) Social Skills
2 344 (17.36%) Finance
3 296 (14.94%) Public Sector
4 220 (11.11%) Analytical Skills
5 160 (8.08%) Banking
6 42 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (1.82%) Investment Banking
8 34 (1.72%) Front Office
8 34 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 29 (1.46%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.11%) Legal
11 22 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
12 17 (0.86%) Aerospace
12 17 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
13 16 (0.81%) Military
14 14 (0.71%) Financial Institution
15 13 (0.66%) Back Office
15 13 (0.66%) Publishing
16 12 (0.61%) Retail
Job Titles
1 428 (21.61%) Developer
2 308 (15.55%) Senior
3 217 (10.95%) Test Engineer
4 211 (10.65%) Tester
5 207 (10.45%) Lead
6 115 (5.81%) Data Engineer
7 114 (5.75%) Java Developer
8 101 (5.10%) Analyst
8 101 (5.10%) Automation Tester
8 101 (5.10%) Test Automation Engineer
9 84 (4.24%) Test Leader
10 83 (4.19%) DevOps Engineer
11 82 (4.14%) QA Engineer
11 82 (4.14%) Software Engineer
12 80 (4.04%) Architect
13 77 (3.89%) Senior Developer
14 66 (3.33%) Test Analyst
15 65 (3.28%) Test Manager
16 62 (3.13%) Full-Stack Developer
17 52 (2.62%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 239 (12.06%) Playwright
2 230 (11.61%) REST
3 177 (8.93%) React
4 152 (7.67%) RESTful
5 147 (7.42%) Spring
6 143 (7.22%) Node.js
7 134 (6.76%) .NET
8 133 (6.71%) Kafka
9 122 (6.16%) Spring Boot
10 85 (4.29%) AngularJS
11 74 (3.74%) HTML
12 69 (3.48%) pytest
13 61 (3.08%) OAuth
14 58 (2.93%) CSS
14 58 (2.93%) Jest
15 42 (2.12%) Gherkin
15 42 (2.12%) JSON
15 42 (2.12%) OpenID
16 40 (2.02%) GraphQL
17 36 (1.82%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 216 (10.90%) Cloud Native
2 154 (7.77%) Product Ownership
3 100 (5.05%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (2.42%) Mobile App
5 47 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
6 46 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
7 37 (1.87%) Onboarding
8 34 (1.72%) Virtual Team
9 32 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
9 32 (1.62%) NHS
10 28 (1.41%) Algorithms
10 28 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
11 25 (1.26%) Security Posture
12 24 (1.21%) Data Centre
13 23 (1.16%) Management Information System
14 20 (1.01%) Derivative
14 20 (1.01%) Distributed Architecture
15 19 (0.96%) Data Structures
15 19 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
16 18 (0.91%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 131 (6.61%) Linux
2 81 (4.09%) Windows
3 45 (2.27%) Android
4 42 (2.12%) Unix
5 37 (1.87%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.01%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.66%) Mac OS X
9 11 (0.56%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.40%) Solaris
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
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 3 (0.15%) AIX
15 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.050%) Robot Operating System
16 1 (0.050%) VMS
16 1 (0.050%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,055 (53.26%) CI/CD
2 915 (46.19%) Agile
3 713 (35.99%) DevOps
4 394 (19.89%) Problem-Solving
5 324 (16.36%) Continuous Improvement
6 314 (15.85%) Microservices
7 287 (14.49%) Test Strategy
8 286 (14.44%) Scrum
9 272 (13.73%) Infrastructure as Code
10 266 (13.43%) Containerisation
11 263 (13.28%) Validation
12 234 (11.81%) Software Engineering
13 227 (11.46%) Observability
14 222 (11.21%) AI
15 218 (11.00%) TDD
16 202 (10.20%) Regression Testing
17 200 (10.10%) Test Scripting
18 199 (10.05%) Analytics
19 197 (9.94%) User Acceptance Testing
20 195 (9.84%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 544 (27.46%) Python
2 496 (25.04%) Java
3 429 (21.66%) SQL
4 289 (14.59%) JavaScript
5 270 (13.63%) TypeScript
6 201 (10.15%) C#
7 72 (3.63%) PowerShell
8 67 (3.38%) Bash
9 52 (2.62%) C++
10 35 (1.77%) Kotlin
11 33 (1.67%) C
11 33 (1.67%) Scala
12 27 (1.36%) Bicep
12 27 (1.36%) PL/SQL
12 27 (1.36%) Ruby
13 26 (1.31%) Apex Code
14 22 (1.11%) Go
15 15 (0.76%) Swift
16 14 (0.71%) Groovy
17 13 (0.66%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 612 (30.89%) Security Cleared
2 486 (24.53%) SC Cleared
3 89 (4.49%) ISTQB
4 88 (4.44%) Degree
5 79 (3.99%) BPSS Clearance
6 61 (3.08%) DV Cleared
7 50 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
8 23 (1.16%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 16 (0.81%) Master's Degree
10 13 (0.66%) Cisco Certification
11 12 (0.61%) Azure Certification
12 11 (0.56%) AWS Certification
13 10 (0.50%) CCNP
14 9 (0.45%) DBS Check
14 9 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
15 8 (0.40%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 8 (0.40%) SAFe Agilist
16 6 (0.30%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
16 6 (0.30%) CISSP
16 6 (0.30%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 447 (22.56%) QA
2 143 (7.22%) Accessibility
3 118 (5.96%) Data Quality
4 62 (3.13%) WCAG
5 42 (2.12%) GDPR
6 18 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 15 (0.76%) SLA
8 14 (0.71%) ISO 20022
9 13 (0.66%) NCSC
10 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
11 9 (0.45%) PCI DSS
12 8 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 7 (0.35%) NIST
13 7 (0.35%) SEPA
14 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
14 6 (0.30%) PSD2
15 5 (0.25%) FATCA
15 5 (0.25%) PERC
16 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 359 (18.12%) Docker
2 25 (1.26%) Active Directory
3 15 (0.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.71%) Firmware
5 9 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
6 8 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
9 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.10%) SRDF
12 1 (0.050%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.050%) HDFS
12 1 (0.050%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.050%) KVM
12 1 (0.050%) Squid
12 1 (0.050%) Time Sharing Option
12 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 346 (17.47%) Kubernetes
2 243 (12.27%) Terraform
3 112 (5.65%) Grafana
4 84 (4.24%) Prometheus
5 79 (3.99%) Ansible
6 29 (1.46%) Argo
7 24 (1.21%) HP ALM
8 18 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.86%) Puppet
10 14 (0.71%) Kibana
11 10 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 9 (0.45%) Progress Chef
13 8 (0.40%) Dell DRAC
13 8 (0.40%) NetBackup
14 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.25%) Nmap
15 5 (0.25%) Rancher
16 4 (0.20%) Podman
Vendors
1 170 (8.58%) Microsoft
2 162 (8.18%) Oracle
3 78 (3.94%) Salesforce
4 68 (3.43%) Databricks
5 66 (3.33%) ServiceNow
6 58 (2.93%) Google
6 58 (2.93%) Splunk
7 49 (2.47%) Red Hat
8 46 (2.32%) Talend
9 40 (2.02%) SAP
10 31 (1.56%) IBM
11 30 (1.51%) Denodo
12 27 (1.36%) HP
13 24 (1.21%) VMware
14 21 (1.06%) Cisco
15 20 (1.01%) Dynatrace
16 19 (0.96%) UiPath
17 18 (0.91%) Informatica
18 16 (0.81%) Blue Prism
18 16 (0.81%) MuleSoft