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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 47 53
Rank change year-on-year +2 +6 -4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,169 1,347 1,573
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.26% 4.49% 3.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.02% 4.93% 4.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,401 942 1,029
10th Percentile £332 £318 £363
25th Percentile £403 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% -4.39% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £665 £725 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £465 £505
% change year-on-year -1.29% -7.92% -2.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 109 28 52
10th Percentile £36.26 £39.09 £50.13
25th Percentile £60.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.57% -8.70% -12.88%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.38 £72.03
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.28 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -4.35% -9.36%

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 43,234 27,342 36,961
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.93% 91.04% 85.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,976 17,315 23,545
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £502 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.09% -4.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,595 1,301 2,587
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.65
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.79 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.08 £38.12
% change year-on-year +77.47% -34.22% +17.29%

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 24 June 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 24 June 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 24 June 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 1,846 £475 -2.06% 458
UK excluding London +1 1,069 £459 -1.29% 407
London +2 839 £500 - 148
Work from Home -6 619 £475 - 210
North of England +8 368 £455 +1.11% 103
Midlands +11 236 £450 +6.51% 54
West Midlands +31 217 £450 -10.00% 28
South East -34 194 £475 -5.00% 133
North West -3 149 £475 +6.26% 47
Yorkshire +3 147 £500 +2.56% 29
South West +17 106 £450 - 43
East of England +17 84 £495 +5.88% 48
North East +8 80 £425 +6.25% 28
Scotland -28 61 £440 -8.33% 17
Wales 0 32 £475 +16.92% 8
Northern Ireland +19 21 £475 +16.28% 14
East Midlands -42 19 £418 +51.82% 26
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
1 183 (8.44%) Confluence
2 48 (2.21%) SAS
3 46 (2.12%) Apache Airflow
4 45 (2.07%) Apache Spark
5 19 (0.88%) Apache
6 15 (0.69%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.55%) CMS
8 8 (0.37%) Appian
8 8 (0.37%) Camunda
8 8 (0.37%) nginx
8 8 (0.37%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.28%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.18%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.18%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.14%) Kentico
11 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.092%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.092%) Mendix
12 2 (0.092%) Mule
Applications
1 31 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.78%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
4 9 (0.41%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.14%) Simulink
7 2 (0.092%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.046%) Mingle
8 1 (0.046%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.78%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
4 11 (0.51%) Payment Gateway
5 10 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.37%) Findur
7 6 (0.28%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.28%) Shopify
8 5 (0.23%) BambooHR
8 5 (0.23%) Loan IQ
8 5 (0.23%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.18%) Infor CloudSuite
9 4 (0.18%) Infor LN
9 4 (0.18%) Infor M3
10 3 (0.14%) Distributed Ledger
10 3 (0.14%) Maximo
10 3 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
10 3 (0.14%) Workday HCM
11 2 (0.092%) Oracle ERP
11 2 (0.092%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 630 (29.05%) Azure
2 626 (28.86%) AWS
3 364 (16.78%) GitHub
4 285 (13.14%) Azure DevOps
5 221 (10.19%) GitHub Actions
6 158 (7.28%) GCP
7 151 (6.96%) Serverless
8 101 (4.66%) AWS Lambda
9 93 (4.29%) Amazon S3
10 92 (4.24%) Power Platform
11 67 (3.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 64 (2.95%) OpenShift
13 57 (2.63%) Amazon ECS
14 50 (2.31%) Amazon EC2
15 47 (2.17%) AWS CloudFormation
16 45 (2.07%) dbt
17 44 (2.03%) Azure Data Factory
18 41 (1.89%) Snowflake
19 40 (1.84%) Amazon EKS
20 31 (1.43%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.15%) HTTP
2 22 (1.01%) Firewall
3 16 (0.74%) SAN
4 11 (0.51%) Network Security
4 11 (0.51%) WAN
5 9 (0.41%) MPLS
5 9 (0.41%) VPN
6 8 (0.37%) TCP/IP
7 7 (0.32%) 5G
7 7 (0.32%) BGP
7 7 (0.32%) Wireshark
8 6 (0.28%) 4G
8 6 (0.28%) Ethernet
8 6 (0.28%) LAN
8 6 (0.28%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (0.23%) 2G
9 5 (0.23%) 3G
9 5 (0.23%) SS7
9 5 (0.23%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 119 (5.49%) PostgreSQL
2 112 (5.16%) MongoDB
3 100 (4.61%) Data Warehouse
4 94 (4.33%) NoSQL
5 81 (3.73%) Relational Database
6 75 (3.46%) SQL Server
7 69 (3.18%) Power BI
8 47 (2.17%) DynamoDB
9 41 (1.89%) Metadata
10 37 (1.71%) Oracle Reports
11 36 (1.66%) Big Data
11 36 (1.66%) Pentaho
12 34 (1.57%) Amazon Athena
13 30 (1.38%) MySQL
14 29 (1.34%) Amazon RDS
14 29 (1.34%) Redis
15 28 (1.29%) Amazon Redshift
16 27 (1.24%) Data Lake
17 22 (1.01%) Tableau
18 21 (0.97%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 415 (19.13%) JIRA
2 394 (18.17%) Git
3 356 (16.41%) Jenkins
4 310 (14.29%) GitLab
5 282 (13.00%) Selenium
6 177 (8.16%) Postman
7 156 (7.19%) Cucumber
8 117 (5.39%) REST Assured
9 113 (5.21%) JUnit
10 105 (4.84%) Cypress.io
10 105 (4.84%) JMeter
11 64 (2.95%) WebDriver
12 60 (2.77%) Zephyr
13 58 (2.67%) SonarQube
14 48 (2.21%) Gatling
15 47 (2.17%) Gradle
16 41 (1.89%) Mockito
17 37 (1.71%) Bitbucket
18 36 (1.66%) Maven
19 30 (1.38%) SpecFlow
General
1 578 (26.65%) Social Skills
2 389 (17.93%) Finance
3 300 (13.83%) Public Sector
4 269 (12.40%) Analytical Skills
5 186 (8.58%) Banking
6 57 (2.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 41 (1.89%) Documentation Skills
8 40 (1.84%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.61%) Front Office
10 28 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
10 28 (1.29%) Telecoms
11 25 (1.15%) Military
12 23 (1.06%) Financial Institution
13 20 (0.92%) Retail
14 18 (0.83%) Aerospace
15 17 (0.78%) Legal
15 17 (0.78%) Manufacturing
15 17 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
16 14 (0.65%) Marketing
16 14 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 437 (20.15%) Developer
2 343 (15.81%) Senior
3 234 (10.79%) Lead
4 230 (10.60%) Test Engineer
5 229 (10.56%) Tester
6 143 (6.59%) Data Engineer
7 133 (6.13%) Java Developer
8 115 (5.30%) Analyst
9 110 (5.07%) Software Engineer
10 102 (4.70%) Architect
11 101 (4.66%) DevOps Engineer
12 96 (4.43%) Test Automation Engineer
13 91 (4.20%) Automation Tester
14 85 (3.92%) Senior Developer
15 84 (3.87%) Test Leader
16 82 (3.78%) QA Engineer
17 72 (3.32%) Test Analyst
18 60 (2.77%) Full-Stack Developer
19 58 (2.67%) Automation Engineer
20 56 (2.58%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 259 (11.94%) REST
2 252 (11.62%) Playwright
3 201 (9.27%) React
4 168 (7.75%) RESTful
5 166 (7.65%) Spring
6 152 (7.01%) Kafka
7 137 (6.32%) Spring Boot
8 127 (5.86%) .NET
9 114 (5.26%) Node.js
10 89 (4.10%) AngularJS
11 74 (3.41%) HTML
12 64 (2.95%) CSS
13 63 (2.90%) pytest
14 62 (2.86%) OAuth
15 50 (2.31%) Jest
16 46 (2.12%) Gherkin
16 46 (2.12%) Swagger
17 45 (2.07%) JSON
18 40 (1.84%) OAuth2
19 39 (1.80%) Quarkus
Miscellaneous
1 264 (12.17%) Cloud Native
2 167 (7.70%) Product Ownership
3 129 (5.95%) Distributed Systems
4 65 (3.00%) Enterprise Software
5 61 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
6 54 (2.49%) Data Protection Act
7 46 (2.12%) Mobile App
8 44 (2.03%) Self-Motivation
9 43 (1.98%) Virtual Team
10 40 (1.84%) Onboarding
11 32 (1.48%) Distributed Architecture
12 30 (1.38%) Management Information System
13 27 (1.24%) Security Posture
14 26 (1.20%) NHS
15 24 (1.11%) AI Agents
16 23 (1.06%) Embedded Systems
16 23 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
17 21 (0.97%) Algorithms
17 21 (0.97%) Data Centre
18 19 (0.88%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 128 (5.90%) Linux
2 79 (3.64%) Windows
3 62 (2.86%) Unix
4 44 (2.03%) Android
5 42 (1.94%) Apple iOS
6 24 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 19 (0.88%) Windows Server
8 12 (0.55%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.46%) Mac OS
9 10 (0.46%) Solaris
10 8 (0.37%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.18%) Embedded Linux
13 4 (0.18%) Ubuntu
14 3 (0.14%) AIX
15 2 (0.092%) CentOS
15 2 (0.092%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,203 (55.46%) CI/CD
2 1,011 (46.61%) Agile
3 777 (35.82%) DevOps
4 391 (18.03%) Problem-Solving
5 359 (16.55%) Microservices
6 351 (16.18%) Continuous Improvement
7 333 (15.35%) Scrum
8 324 (14.94%) Test Strategy
9 318 (14.66%) Validation
10 312 (14.38%) Software Engineering
11 306 (14.11%) Infrastructure as Code
12 271 (12.49%) Observability
13 269 (12.40%) Containerisation
14 262 (12.08%) AI
15 253 (11.66%) TDD
16 215 (9.91%) End-to-End Testing
17 213 (9.82%) ETL
18 211 (9.73%) User Acceptance Testing
19 208 (9.59%) API Testing
20 205 (9.45%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 558 (25.73%) Python
2 543 (25.03%) Java
3 494 (22.78%) SQL
4 291 (13.42%) JavaScript
5 244 (11.25%) TypeScript
6 199 (9.17%) C#
7 72 (3.32%) Bash
8 67 (3.09%) PowerShell
9 52 (2.40%) C++
10 48 (2.21%) Kotlin
11 37 (1.71%) PL/SQL
12 36 (1.66%) Scala
13 33 (1.52%) Apex Code
14 32 (1.48%) Go
15 31 (1.43%) Bicep
15 31 (1.43%) C
16 22 (1.01%) Swift
17 21 (0.97%) Ruby
18 17 (0.78%) Groovy
19 15 (0.69%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 682 (31.44%) Security Cleared
2 565 (26.05%) SC Cleared
3 103 (4.75%) ISTQB
4 100 (4.61%) BPSS Clearance
5 95 (4.38%) Degree
6 72 (3.32%) DV Cleared
7 47 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
8 26 (1.20%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 21 (0.97%) AWS Certification
10 17 (0.78%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 16 (0.74%) Master's Degree
12 14 (0.65%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 12 (0.55%) Cisco Certification
14 11 (0.51%) SAFe Agilist
15 10 (0.46%) CCNP
16 9 (0.41%) CISSP
16 9 (0.41%) DBS Check
17 8 (0.37%) Azure Certification
18 5 (0.23%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 476 (21.95%) QA
2 167 (7.70%) Accessibility
3 145 (6.69%) Data Quality
4 72 (3.32%) WCAG
5 38 (1.75%) GDPR
6 15 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.69%) SLA
7 13 (0.60%) ISO 20022
7 13 (0.60%) NCSC
8 11 (0.51%) NIST
9 10 (0.46%) Def Stans
10 7 (0.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 6 (0.28%) PCI DSS
12 5 (0.23%) FATCA
12 5 (0.23%) SEPA
13 4 (0.18%) HL7
13 4 (0.18%) MiFID
13 4 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.18%) Software Quality Assurance
14 3 (0.14%) HIPAA
System Software
1 364 (16.78%) Docker
2 30 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (0.78%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.65%) Firmware
5 12 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 4 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.092%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.092%) SRDF
10 1 (0.046%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.046%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 367 (16.92%) Kubernetes
2 269 (12.40%) Terraform
3 105 (4.84%) Ansible
4 104 (4.79%) Grafana
5 93 (4.29%) Prometheus
6 37 (1.71%) Argo
7 19 (0.88%) HP ALM
8 14 (0.65%) Puppet
9 13 (0.60%) Kibana
10 10 (0.46%) Dell DRAC
10 10 (0.46%) HP Quality Center
10 10 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (0.37%) Kustomize
11 8 (0.37%) NetBackup
12 6 (0.28%) Forefront Identity Manager
12 6 (0.28%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 6 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
13 5 (0.23%) Istio
13 5 (0.23%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.18%) Rancher
Vendors
1 180 (8.30%) Microsoft
2 172 (7.93%) Oracle
3 99 (4.56%) Salesforce
4 66 (3.04%) Databricks
5 65 (3.00%) Talend
6 64 (2.95%) Google
7 60 (2.77%) Red Hat
7 60 (2.77%) ServiceNow
8 56 (2.58%) Splunk
9 46 (2.12%) Denodo
10 37 (1.71%) IBM
11 35 (1.61%) Informatica
11 35 (1.61%) SAP
12 33 (1.52%) VMware
13 29 (1.34%) Dynatrace
13 29 (1.34%) UiPath
14 23 (1.06%) MuleSoft
15 22 (1.01%) HP
16 21 (0.97%) Cisco
17 17 (0.78%) OpenAI