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 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 45 47 51
Rank change year-on-year +2 +4 -11
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,671 1,505 1,904
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.78% 4.11% 4.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.30% 4.78% 4.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,156 1,018 1,375
10th Percentile £320 £325 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -7.28%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £630
90th Percentile £688 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £492 £500
% change year-on-year +0.05% -1.60% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 9 61
10th Percentile £37.01 £41.00 £37.50
25th Percentile £45.00 £42.50 £47.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £50.00 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.00% -33.33% +25.00%
75th Percentile £67.00 £63.75 £90.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £53.75 £70.50
% change year-on-year +20.93% -23.76% +15.10%

All Process and 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 31,506 31,506 41,665
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.04% 86.11% 88.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,718 18,972 28,134
10th Percentile £294 £310 £310
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.69% -2.91%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,047 1,115 1,606
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.01 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.32 £20.06 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.79
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -20.08% +25.12%
75th Percentile £43.75 £64.73 £65.00
90th Percentile £66.50 £73.68 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £35.00 £43.83
% change year-on-year -35.71% -20.14% +48.56%

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 17 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 November 2025. 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 0 1,419 £500 - 1,956
UK excluding London +5 817 £492 +0.05% 1,628
London -6 645 £513 -2.38% 881
Work from Home +7 537 £500 - 1,060
North of England -3 272 £475 +5.56% 276
Midlands +21 155 £493 +5.35% 108
South East -13 152 £475 -7.32% 818
Yorkshire -10 128 £513 +7.89% 55
West Midlands +12 118 £515 +0.39% 50
North West -3 105 £400 -11.11% 187
South West +15 86 £537 -2.36% 132
Scotland +12 79 £500 +9.59% 104
East of England +17 58 £413 +3.13% 112
North East +17 41 £481 +13.24% 35
East Midlands +5 37 £360 -10.00% 48
Wales +5 26 £485 -7.18% 44
Northern Ireland +2 11 £295 -43.13% 33

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 85 (5.09%) Confluence
2 50 (2.99%) SAS
3 25 (1.50%) Apache Spark
4 21 (1.26%) Apache Airflow
5 18 (1.08%) Apache
6 12 (0.72%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.48%) CMS
7 8 (0.48%) Oracle Application Server
8 7 (0.42%) WordPress
9 5 (0.30%) Anypoint
9 5 (0.30%) JBoss
9 5 (0.30%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.24%) Drupal
10 4 (0.24%) nginx
10 4 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
10 4 (0.24%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
12 2 (0.12%) CICS
12 2 (0.12%) Mule
12 2 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 26 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.36%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.24%) Simulink
5 4 (0.24%) Windchill
6 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.12%) Trello
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 14 (0.84%) Aladdin
1 14 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.24%) SAP HR
2 4 (0.24%) SAP PLM
3 3 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.18%) Workday HCM
4 2 (0.12%) Eagle PACE
4 2 (0.12%) Markit EDM
4 2 (0.12%) Maximo
4 2 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.12%) Oracle Financials
4 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
4 2 (0.12%) Temenos T24
5 1 (0.060%) Adobe Campaign
5 1 (0.060%) Algo Collateral
5 1 (0.060%) Magento
5 1 (0.060%) MoSes
5 1 (0.060%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.060%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.060%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 462 (27.65%) Azure
2 420 (25.13%) AWS
3 225 (13.46%) GitHub
4 200 (11.97%) Azure DevOps
5 153 (9.16%) GCP
6 114 (6.82%) Serverless
7 113 (6.76%) GitHub Actions
8 56 (3.35%) Power Platform
9 53 (3.17%) AWS Lambda
10 52 (3.11%) OpenShift
11 43 (2.57%) Amazon S3
12 41 (2.45%) AWS CloudFormation
13 35 (2.09%) SaaS
14 34 (2.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 34 (2.03%) Snowflake
15 30 (1.80%) Azure AKS
16 27 (1.62%) Amazon EKS
17 23 (1.38%) Entra ID
18 22 (1.32%) Azure Data Factory
18 22 (1.32%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 45 (2.69%) Firewall
2 33 (1.97%) HTTP
3 31 (1.86%) Wireshark
4 26 (1.56%) HTTPS
5 23 (1.38%) SSL
6 16 (0.96%) Network Security
6 16 (0.96%) TCP/IP
6 16 (0.96%) VPN
7 13 (0.78%) SD-WAN
8 12 (0.72%) DNS
8 12 (0.72%) Multicast
8 12 (0.72%) WAN
9 9 (0.54%) Ethernet
10 6 (0.36%) AMQP
10 6 (0.36%) Internet
10 6 (0.36%) MPLS
11 5 (0.30%) 5G
11 5 (0.30%) Bluetooth
11 5 (0.30%) Broadband
11 5 (0.30%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (6.70%) PostgreSQL
2 93 (5.57%) NoSQL
3 86 (5.15%) MongoDB
4 67 (4.01%) Relational Database
5 66 (3.95%) SQL Server
6 43 (2.57%) Data Warehouse
7 25 (1.50%) Pentaho
7 25 (1.50%) Power BI
8 24 (1.44%) Amazon RDS
9 23 (1.38%) Oracle Database
10 22 (1.32%) BigQuery
10 22 (1.32%) Data Lake
10 22 (1.32%) DynamoDB
11 20 (1.20%) Big Data
12 17 (1.02%) Apache Cassandra
13 16 (0.96%) MySQL
14 15 (0.90%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 14 (0.84%) RDBMS
16 12 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
16 12 (0.72%) Redis
Development Applications
1 303 (18.13%) Git
2 299 (17.89%) JIRA
3 297 (17.77%) Jenkins
4 283 (16.94%) Selenium
5 203 (12.15%) GitLab
6 150 (8.98%) Cucumber
7 127 (7.60%) Postman
8 123 (7.36%) Cypress.io
9 105 (6.28%) JUnit
10 78 (4.67%) JMeter
10 78 (4.67%) REST Assured
11 56 (3.35%) Bitbucket
12 48 (2.87%) SonarQube
13 44 (2.63%) Maven
14 34 (2.03%) SpecFlow
15 33 (1.97%) Mockito
16 31 (1.86%) Gatling
17 30 (1.80%) Sonatype Nexus
18 28 (1.68%) Appium
19 26 (1.56%) TestRail
General
1 470 (28.13%) Social Skills
2 289 (17.30%) Finance
3 197 (11.79%) Analytical Skills
4 192 (11.49%) Public Sector
5 132 (7.90%) Banking
6 33 (1.97%) Documentation Skills
6 33 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (1.56%) Telecoms
8 25 (1.50%) Investment Banking
8 25 (1.50%) Manufacturing
9 24 (1.44%) Front Office
10 19 (1.14%) Pharmaceutical
11 18 (1.08%) Financial Institution
11 18 (1.08%) Retail
12 17 (1.02%) Electronics
13 16 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
14 15 (0.90%) Marketing
15 14 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
16 12 (0.72%) Retail Banking
17 11 (0.66%) Military
Job Titles
1 366 (21.90%) Developer
2 258 (15.44%) Senior
3 210 (12.57%) Tester
4 147 (8.80%) Test Engineer
5 140 (8.38%) Lead
6 116 (6.94%) Automation Tester
7 105 (6.28%) Java Developer
8 91 (5.45%) Analyst
9 80 (4.79%) Software Engineer
10 70 (4.19%) Test Analyst
11 68 (4.07%) DevOps Engineer
12 60 (3.59%) Data Engineer
13 56 (3.35%) QA Engineer
14 55 (3.29%) Senior Developer
14 55 (3.29%) Test Automation Engineer
15 53 (3.17%) Automation Engineer
16 52 (3.11%) Test Manager
17 45 (2.69%) Test Leader
18 41 (2.45%) Senior Tester
19 38 (2.27%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 210 (12.57%) REST
2 146 (8.74%) Playwright
3 145 (8.68%) React
4 126 (7.54%) .NET
5 123 (7.36%) RESTful
6 103 (6.16%) Kafka
7 100 (5.98%) Node.js
8 98 (5.86%) Spring
9 91 (5.45%) Spring Boot
10 85 (5.09%) JSON
11 82 (4.91%) SOAP
12 80 (4.79%) XML
13 78 (4.67%) HTML
14 75 (4.49%) CSS
15 56 (3.35%) pytest
16 55 (3.29%) AngularJS
17 51 (3.05%) Web Services
18 47 (2.81%) Jest
19 41 (2.45%) Gherkin
20 36 (2.15%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 132 (7.90%) Cloud Native
2 103 (6.16%) Product Ownership
3 49 (2.93%) Mobile App
4 40 (2.39%) Security Posture
5 36 (2.15%) Data Protection Act
6 35 (2.09%) Public Cloud
7 33 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
7 33 (1.97%) Self-Motivation
8 31 (1.86%) Algorithms
8 31 (1.86%) Virtual Team
9 29 (1.74%) Legacy Systems
10 25 (1.50%) Onboarding
11 24 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
12 20 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
13 19 (1.14%) Management Information System
14 18 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 17 (1.02%) Data Structures
16 15 (0.90%) Data Centre
16 15 (0.90%) Genomics
17 14 (0.84%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 177 (10.59%) Linux
2 86 (5.15%) Windows
3 59 (3.53%) Unix
4 52 (3.11%) Android
5 39 (2.33%) Apple iOS
6 19 (1.14%) Mac OS X
7 18 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 16 (0.96%) Windows Server
9 10 (0.60%) CentOS
9 10 (0.60%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.18%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.12%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.060%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.060%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.060%) Solaris
13 1 (0.060%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.060%) VMS
13 1 (0.060%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 813 (48.65%) Agile
2 807 (48.29%) CI/CD
3 636 (38.06%) DevOps
4 403 (24.12%) Problem-Solving
5 253 (15.14%) Microservices
6 242 (14.48%) Test Strategy
7 237 (14.18%) Scrum
8 222 (13.29%) Continuous Improvement
9 220 (13.17%) Containerisation
10 218 (13.05%) TDD
11 201 (12.03%) Software Engineering
11 201 (12.03%) Test Scripting
12 190 (11.37%) Infrastructure as Code
13 178 (10.65%) Software Testing
14 176 (10.53%) SDLC
15 170 (10.17%) BDD
16 157 (9.40%) Validation
17 148 (8.86%) AI
18 141 (8.44%) Mentoring
19 134 (8.02%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 466 (27.89%) Python
2 402 (24.06%) Java
3 299 (17.89%) SQL
4 232 (13.88%) JavaScript
5 178 (10.65%) C#
6 169 (10.11%) TypeScript
7 98 (5.86%) Bash
8 68 (4.07%) PowerShell
9 39 (2.33%) Go
10 37 (2.21%) C++
11 23 (1.38%) Kotlin
12 19 (1.14%) Bicep
13 16 (0.96%) PHP
13 16 (0.96%) Scala
14 15 (0.90%) Shell Script
15 13 (0.78%) Swift
16 12 (0.72%) Perl
16 12 (0.72%) PL/SQL
17 11 (0.66%) Groovy
18 10 (0.60%) C
Qualifications
1 378 (22.62%) Security Cleared
2 294 (17.59%) SC Cleared
3 105 (6.28%) Degree
4 74 (4.43%) ISTQB
5 53 (3.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 49 (2.93%) DV Cleared
7 48 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
8 27 (1.62%) AWS Certification
9 24 (1.44%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 22 (1.32%) Master's Degree
11 19 (1.14%) CISSP
12 16 (0.96%) OSCP
13 15 (0.90%) Cisco Certification
14 14 (0.84%) Azure Certification
14 14 (0.84%) CISM
14 14 (0.84%) ISEB
14 14 (0.84%) MCP
15 13 (0.78%) GPEN
16 12 (0.72%) CEH
16 12 (0.72%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 356 (21.30%) QA
2 131 (7.84%) Accessibility
3 73 (4.37%) Data Quality
4 40 (2.39%) NIST
5 39 (2.33%) WCAG
6 34 (2.03%) GDPR
6 34 (2.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 18 (1.08%) EU AI Act
7 18 (1.08%) PCI DSS
7 18 (1.08%) SEPA
8 16 (0.96%) NCSC
9 15 (0.90%) NIST 800
10 11 (0.66%) PSD2
11 8 (0.48%) COBIT
11 8 (0.48%) SLA
12 7 (0.42%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 7 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 7 (0.42%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.36%) ISO 20022
13 6 (0.36%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 322 (19.27%) Docker
2 27 (1.62%) Active Directory
3 9 (0.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.36%) Firmware
5 5 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.30%) zsh
6 3 (0.18%) QEMU
6 3 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
6 3 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.12%) vSphere
8 1 (0.060%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 290 (17.35%) Kubernetes
2 194 (11.61%) Terraform
3 137 (8.20%) Ansible
4 73 (4.37%) Grafana
5 43 (2.57%) Prometheus
6 22 (1.32%) HP ALM
7 17 (1.02%) Argo
8 16 (0.96%) CSIRT
9 15 (0.90%) Nmap
10 14 (0.84%) Progress Chef
11 13 (0.78%) NetBackup
12 9 (0.54%) Puppet
12 9 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
13 6 (0.36%) Kibana
13 6 (0.36%) Nessus
13 6 (0.36%) Podman
14 5 (0.30%) HP Quality Center
14 5 (0.30%) RSA Archer
15 4 (0.24%) vRealize
15 4 (0.24%) WMI
Vendors
1 165 (9.87%) Microsoft
2 143 (8.56%) Oracle
3 65 (3.89%) Salesforce
4 63 (3.77%) ServiceNow
5 60 (3.59%) SAP
5 60 (3.59%) Splunk
6 51 (3.05%) Databricks
7 49 (2.93%) Google
8 27 (1.62%) Talend
9 26 (1.56%) VMware
10 25 (1.50%) Denodo
11 24 (1.44%) Cisco
12 23 (1.38%) F5
12 23 (1.38%) HP
13 21 (1.26%) webMethods
14 19 (1.14%) Red Hat
14 19 (1.14%) UiPath
15 17 (1.02%) Atlassian
15 17 (1.02%) IBM
16 14 (0.84%) Workday