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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 50 45
Rank change year-on-year +7 -5 +7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,460 1,514 1,581
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.50% 4.64% 4.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.34% 5.12% 4.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,588 1,036 1,073
10th Percentile £324 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £666 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 100 37 17
10th Percentile £39.73 £28.42 £42.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £45.00 £47.50
Median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -4.35% -23.33%
75th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 £74.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £70.20 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.86 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +18.01% - -20.69%

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 46,073 29,551 32,512
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.35% 90.64% 85.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,867 18,364 19,652
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
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 £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,200 1,847 1,359
10th Percentile £13.74 £14.25 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.23 £17.30 £20.06
Median hourly rate £39.75 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.05% -40.82% -1.16%
75th Percentile £65.88 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £74.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.25% -48.10% +1.18%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +4 2,057 £475 -5.00% 2,643
UK excluding London -1 1,186 £450 -5.26% 1,664
London +5 938 £500 - 1,193
Work from Home -1 654 £483 +1.58% 1,138
North of England -2 408 £453 -4.63% 433
Midlands +12 265 £450 -2.70% 200
West Midlands +25 250 £450 -13.21% 138
South East -21 216 £448 -5.79% 324
Yorkshire -4 173 £463 -7.50% 133
North West -12 142 £492 +15.82% 235
South West -11 110 £469 -13.19% 245
North East +5 100 £425 -11.69% 65
Scotland -20 100 £475 -5.00% 195
East of England +15 93 £375 +17.19% 165
Wales -7 25 £419 +1.52% 37
East Midlands -47 15 £418 +15.97% 62
Northern Ireland +4 8 £513 +345.65% 75
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 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
1 189 (7.68%) Confluence
2 65 (2.64%) Apache Airflow
3 46 (1.87%) Apache Spark
3 46 (1.87%) SharePoint
4 34 (1.38%) SAS
5 32 (1.30%) Apache
6 17 (0.69%) CMS
7 14 (0.57%) Camunda
8 11 (0.45%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.28%) Jupyter
9 7 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.24%) nginx
11 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
11 5 (0.20%) Tomcat
12 4 (0.16%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.16%) ColdFusion
12 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 3 (0.12%) Kentico
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 22 (0.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.73%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.28%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.16%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.12%) Mingle
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 2 (0.081%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.041%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.041%) Simulink
8 1 (0.041%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 30 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 28 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.41%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.41%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.28%) SAP GRC
6 6 (0.24%) FLEXCUBE
6 6 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.24%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.16%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.12%) Finacle
9 2 (0.081%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.081%) Findur
9 2 (0.081%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.081%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.081%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.081%) Shopify
9 2 (0.081%) Workday HCM
10 1 (0.041%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 782 (31.79%) AWS
2 738 (30.00%) Azure
3 439 (17.85%) GitHub
4 344 (13.98%) Azure DevOps
5 258 (10.49%) GitHub Actions
6 190 (7.72%) GCP
7 174 (7.07%) Serverless
8 130 (5.28%) AWS Lambda
9 117 (4.76%) Power Platform
10 103 (4.19%) Amazon S3
11 88 (3.58%) GitHub Copilot
12 85 (3.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 74 (3.01%) OpenShift
14 69 (2.80%) Amazon EKS
14 69 (2.80%) AWS CloudFormation
15 67 (2.72%) Amazon ECS
16 60 (2.44%) dbt
17 59 (2.40%) Snowflake
18 53 (2.15%) Anthropic Claude
19 47 (1.91%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.10%) DNS
2 26 (1.06%) Firewall
3 25 (1.02%) HTTP
4 24 (0.98%) 4G
5 22 (0.89%) TCP/IP
5 22 (0.89%) Wi-Fi
6 21 (0.85%) 5G
7 19 (0.77%) Broadband
8 17 (0.69%) Network Security
9 14 (0.57%) 2G
9 14 (0.57%) 3G
9 14 (0.57%) Diameter Protocol
9 14 (0.57%) SIGTRAN
9 14 (0.57%) SS7
9 14 (0.57%) WAN
10 13 (0.53%) BGP
10 13 (0.53%) LAN
11 12 (0.49%) Ethernet VPN
11 12 (0.49%) VXLAN
12 11 (0.45%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 151 (6.14%) PostgreSQL
2 128 (5.20%) MongoDB
3 125 (5.08%) Data Warehouse
4 113 (4.59%) Relational Database
5 105 (4.27%) NoSQL
6 98 (3.98%) SQL Server
7 86 (3.50%) Power BI
8 53 (2.15%) Metadata
9 41 (1.67%) Data Lake
9 41 (1.67%) DynamoDB
10 39 (1.59%) Oracle Reports
11 37 (1.50%) MySQL
12 33 (1.34%) Big Data
13 32 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
13 32 (1.30%) Redis
14 31 (1.26%) Amazon Athena
14 31 (1.26%) Pentaho
15 28 (1.14%) Oracle Database
16 27 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
17 26 (1.06%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 566 (23.01%) Git
2 402 (16.34%) Jenkins
3 395 (16.06%) JIRA
4 347 (14.11%) GitLab
5 315 (12.80%) Selenium
6 173 (7.03%) Cucumber
7 169 (6.87%) Postman
8 150 (6.10%) JUnit
9 126 (5.12%) Cypress.io
10 112 (4.55%) REST Assured
11 101 (4.11%) JMeter
12 85 (3.46%) SonarQube
13 73 (2.97%) Gatling
14 69 (2.80%) Maven
15 66 (2.68%) Zephyr
16 61 (2.48%) Mockito
17 60 (2.44%) Gradle
18 51 (2.07%) WebDriver
19 36 (1.46%) Bitbucket
20 30 (1.22%) SpecFlow
General
1 678 (27.56%) Social Skills
2 458 (18.62%) Finance
3 345 (14.02%) Public Sector
4 342 (13.90%) Analytical Skills
5 231 (9.39%) Banking
6 79 (3.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 58 (2.36%) Telecoms
8 42 (1.71%) Front Office
9 37 (1.50%) Investment Banking
10 34 (1.38%) Retail
11 33 (1.34%) Military
12 32 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
13 30 (1.22%) Documentation Skills
14 24 (0.98%) Financial Institution
15 20 (0.81%) Law
15 20 (0.81%) Manufacturing
16 18 (0.73%) Marketing
17 17 (0.69%) Aerospace
18 15 (0.61%) Back Office
19 14 (0.57%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 557 (22.64%) Developer
2 407 (16.54%) Senior
3 255 (10.37%) Lead
4 235 (9.55%) Test Engineer
5 195 (7.93%) Tester
6 175 (7.11%) Java Developer
7 156 (6.34%) Data Engineer
8 120 (4.88%) Analyst
8 120 (4.88%) Senior Developer
8 120 (4.88%) Software Engineer
9 113 (4.59%) DevOps Engineer
10 111 (4.51%) Architect
11 104 (4.23%) Test Automation Engineer
12 101 (4.11%) QA Engineer
13 86 (3.50%) Automation Tester
14 80 (3.25%) Full-Stack Developer
15 79 (3.21%) Test Analyst
16 78 (3.17%) Test Leader
17 75 (3.05%) Automation Engineer
18 74 (3.01%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 425 (17.28%) REST
2 365 (14.84%) Terraform
3 295 (11.99%) Playwright
4 257 (10.45%) RESTful
5 255 (10.37%) Kafka
6 253 (10.28%) Spring
7 227 (9.23%) React
8 216 (8.78%) Spring Boot
9 181 (7.36%) .NET
10 150 (6.10%) HTML
11 138 (5.61%) Node.js
12 129 (5.24%) CSS
13 100 (4.07%) OAuth
14 97 (3.94%) AngularJS
15 85 (3.46%) JSON
16 74 (3.01%) Middleware
17 67 (2.72%) pytest
18 64 (2.60%) OAuth2
19 62 (2.52%) XML
20 61 (2.48%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 395 (16.06%) Cloud Native
2 211 (8.58%) Product Ownership
3 180 (7.32%) Distributed Systems
4 104 (4.23%) Enterprise Software
5 83 (3.37%) Onboarding
6 68 (2.76%) AI Agents
7 64 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
8 52 (2.11%) Data Protection Act
8 52 (2.11%) Self-Motivation
9 50 (2.03%) Mobile App
10 34 (1.38%) Virtual Team
11 32 (1.30%) Data Structures
12 30 (1.22%) Security Posture
13 28 (1.14%) Private Cloud
14 27 (1.10%) Management Information System
15 25 (1.02%) Data Centre
16 24 (0.98%) Legacy Applications
17 22 (0.89%) Life Science
18 21 (0.85%) Embedded Systems
19 20 (0.81%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 177 (7.20%) Linux
2 107 (4.35%) Windows
3 99 (4.02%) Unix
4 46 (1.87%) Apple iOS
5 42 (1.71%) Android
6 30 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 24 (0.98%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.33%) VMS
9 6 (0.24%) Mac OS X
10 5 (0.20%) AIX
10 5 (0.20%) Solaris
10 5 (0.20%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.20%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.16%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.16%) zOS
12 3 (0.12%) CentOS
12 3 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.12%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,522 (61.87%) CI/CD
2 1,183 (48.09%) Agile
3 913 (37.11%) DevOps
4 491 (19.96%) Microservices
5 480 (19.51%) Continuous Improvement
6 472 (19.19%) Problem-Solving
7 455 (18.50%) Software Engineering
8 444 (18.05%) Infrastructure as Code
9 418 (16.99%) Scrum
9 418 (16.99%) Validation
10 417 (16.95%) AI
11 364 (14.80%) Containerisation
11 364 (14.80%) Test Strategy
12 331 (13.46%) Observability
13 322 (13.09%) TDD
14 297 (12.07%) Software Testing
15 294 (11.95%) Stakeholder Management
16 293 (11.91%) SDLC
17 261 (10.61%) End-to-End Testing
18 246 (10.00%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 690 (28.05%) Java
1 690 (28.05%) Python
2 616 (25.04%) SQL
3 379 (15.41%) JavaScript
4 282 (11.46%) TypeScript
5 209 (8.50%) C#
6 100 (4.07%) PowerShell
7 90 (3.66%) Bash
8 53 (2.15%) Bicep
9 48 (1.95%) Scala
10 47 (1.91%) C++
10 47 (1.91%) Kotlin
11 42 (1.71%) Go
12 33 (1.34%) Shell Script
13 32 (1.30%) PL/SQL
14 27 (1.10%) Perl
15 22 (0.89%) Apex Code
16 21 (0.85%) C
17 17 (0.69%) Ruby
18 16 (0.65%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 777 (31.59%) Security Cleared
2 658 (26.75%) SC Cleared
3 142 (5.77%) BPSS Clearance
4 136 (5.53%) Degree
5 102 (4.15%) ISTQB
6 93 (3.78%) DV Cleared
7 81 (3.29%) Computer Science Degree
8 45 (1.83%) AWS Certification
9 35 (1.42%) Azure Certification
10 25 (1.02%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.65%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 15 (0.61%) Master's Degree
13 14 (0.57%) CISSP
13 14 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 13 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
14 13 (0.53%) ISEB
15 12 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.37%) DBS Check
17 8 (0.33%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 8 (0.33%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 644 (26.18%) QA
2 228 (9.27%) Accessibility
3 174 (7.07%) Data Quality
4 102 (4.15%) WCAG
5 45 (1.83%) GDPR
6 26 (1.06%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.65%) NIST
8 15 (0.61%) GRC
9 14 (0.57%) SLA
10 12 (0.49%) NCSC
11 8 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.28%) SEPA
13 6 (0.24%) HL7
13 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
13 6 (0.24%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
14 5 (0.20%) FATCA
15 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
15 4 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 510 (20.73%) Docker
2 42 (1.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 36 (1.46%) Active Directory
4 20 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.45%) Firmware
5 11 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
6 8 (0.33%) VMware NSX
7 6 (0.24%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.081%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.081%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.041%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.041%) KVM
9 1 (0.041%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.041%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 487 (19.80%) Kubernetes
2 142 (5.77%) Ansible
3 133 (5.41%) Grafana
4 89 (3.62%) Prometheus
5 34 (1.38%) Argo
6 30 (1.22%) Kibana
7 25 (1.02%) Progress Chef
8 24 (0.98%) Puppet
9 15 (0.61%) HP ALM
10 14 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 13 (0.53%) Control-M
12 8 (0.33%) Microsoft Intune
13 7 (0.28%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.24%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.24%) Istio
14 6 (0.24%) SCCM
15 5 (0.20%) Dell DRAC
15 5 (0.20%) Packer
15 5 (0.20%) WMI
16 4 (0.16%) Rancher
Vendors
1 238 (9.67%) Microsoft
2 192 (7.80%) Oracle
3 97 (3.94%) Databricks
4 82 (3.33%) Google
5 72 (2.93%) Salesforce
6 71 (2.89%) IBM
7 66 (2.68%) ServiceNow
8 59 (2.40%) SAP
8 59 (2.40%) Splunk
9 55 (2.24%) Talend
10 52 (2.11%) Red Hat
11 51 (2.07%) VMware
12 43 (1.75%) Denodo
12 43 (1.75%) Informatica
13 42 (1.71%) Dynatrace
14 35 (1.42%) Cisco
15 34 (1.38%) MuleSoft
16 31 (1.26%) UiPath
17 24 (0.98%) OpenAI
18 22 (0.89%) Foundry