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 11 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 44 53
Rank change year-on-year -5 +9 -11
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,815 1,379 1,649
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.57% 4.48% 3.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.25% 5.01% 4.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,235 921 1,178
10th Percentile £338 £333 £363
25th Percentile £400 £403 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -4.76% -6.25%
75th Percentile £575 £618 £625
90th Percentile £688 £734 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 45 5 62
10th Percentile £22.90 £41.75 £45.63
25th Percentile £44.50 £42.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £63.50 £74.00 £69.25
Median % change year-on-year -14.19% +6.86% +21.49%
75th Percentile £67.50 £77.19 £90.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £83.38 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.75 £75.60 £72.50
% change year-on-year -15.67% +4.27% +27.19%

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 34,545 27,534 38,814
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.04% 89.45% 87.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,908 16,837 25,471
10th Percentile £306 £306 £300
25th Percentile £408 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £717 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.50% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,083 848 2,117
10th Percentile £14.51 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.78 £21.03 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £33.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -2.99% +2.48%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.38 £60.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.08 £35.00
% change year-on-year -19.08% -11.20% +8.53%

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 11 February 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 11 February 2026.

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 11 February 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 1,564 £500 - 573
UK excluding London -1 821 £492 +3.63% 491
London -4 764 £500 -4.76% 180
Work from Home +1 543 £500 - 326
North of England +5 327 £500 +17.65% 121
South East -21 161 £496 -0.80% 162
Yorkshire -16 145 £525 +16.02% 31
Midlands +3 144 £492 +3.91% 49
North West +6 134 £447 +10.51% 75
West Midlands +1 113 £515 +5.97% 31
South West +3 79 £518 -7.59% 71
East of England +4 53 £570 +42.50% 55
North East +15 52 £488 +31.33% 15
Scotland -18 41 £465 -0.91% 36
East Midlands -8 31 £400 -13.51% 18
Wales +6 27 £509 +1.80% 11
Northern Ireland +12 18 £475 -2.56%

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
1 108 (5.95%) Confluence
2 45 (2.48%) SAS
3 24 (1.32%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.77%) SharePoint
5 11 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
6 10 (0.55%) Apache
7 8 (0.44%) Appian
8 6 (0.33%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.33%) Oracle Application Server
9 5 (0.28%) CMS
9 5 (0.28%) nginx
9 5 (0.28%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.22%) Camunda
10 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.22%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.17%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.17%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.11%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 24 (1.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
4 10 (0.55%) MS Visio
5 9 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.055%) Oracle Smart View
8 1 (0.055%) SOLIDWORKS
8 1 (0.055%) Trello
Business Applications
1 19 (1.05%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.28%) Workday HCM
4 4 (0.22%) Loan IQ
4 4 (0.22%) Maximo
4 4 (0.22%) SAP HR
5 3 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
5 3 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
6 2 (0.11%) Eagle PACE
6 2 (0.11%) iTrent
6 2 (0.11%) Markit EDM
6 2 (0.11%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.11%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.11%) Shopify
6 2 (0.11%) Summit
7 1 (0.055%) Algo Collateral
7 1 (0.055%) CODA-Financials
7 1 (0.055%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 514 (28.32%) Azure
2 450 (24.79%) AWS
3 292 (16.09%) GitHub
4 224 (12.34%) Azure DevOps
5 183 (10.08%) GCP
6 157 (8.65%) GitHub Actions
7 127 (7.00%) Serverless
8 74 (4.08%) Power Platform
9 66 (3.64%) OpenShift
10 58 (3.20%) AWS Lambda
11 51 (2.81%) Amazon S3
12 42 (2.31%) Azure AKS
13 41 (2.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 41 (2.26%) AWS CloudFormation
13 41 (2.26%) SaaS
14 37 (2.04%) Amazon EKS
14 37 (2.04%) Snowflake
15 33 (1.82%) Dynamics 365
16 32 (1.76%) Azure Functions
17 31 (1.71%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 39 (2.15%) Firewall
2 32 (1.76%) Wireshark
3 26 (1.43%) HTTP
3 26 (1.43%) HTTPS
4 23 (1.27%) SSL
5 21 (1.16%) VPN
6 20 (1.10%) TCP/IP
7 15 (0.83%) Network Security
8 13 (0.72%) SD-WAN
9 11 (0.61%) WAN
10 10 (0.55%) DNS
10 10 (0.55%) Ethernet
10 10 (0.55%) FTP
10 10 (0.55%) MPLS
11 9 (0.50%) Multicast
11 9 (0.50%) VLAN
12 7 (0.39%) AMQP
13 5 (0.28%) BGP
13 5 (0.28%) Cisco IPT
13 5 (0.28%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 101 (5.56%) PostgreSQL
2 92 (5.07%) MongoDB
3 90 (4.96%) NoSQL
4 71 (3.91%) SQL Server
5 63 (3.47%) Relational Database
6 42 (2.31%) Power BI
7 35 (1.93%) Data Warehouse
8 29 (1.60%) BigQuery
9 28 (1.54%) MySQL
10 25 (1.38%) DynamoDB
11 24 (1.32%) Oracle Database
12 21 (1.16%) Amazon RDS
12 21 (1.16%) Pentaho
13 20 (1.10%) Big Data
14 18 (0.99%) Star Schema
15 17 (0.94%) Redis
15 17 (0.94%) Tableau
16 16 (0.88%) Apache Cassandra
16 16 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
17 14 (0.77%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 324 (17.85%) Jenkins
2 321 (17.69%) JIRA
3 306 (16.86%) Git
4 275 (15.15%) GitLab
5 268 (14.77%) Selenium
6 163 (8.98%) Cucumber
7 159 (8.76%) Postman
8 114 (6.28%) Cypress.io
9 100 (5.51%) REST Assured
10 90 (4.96%) JMeter
10 90 (4.96%) JUnit
11 41 (2.26%) Mockito
11 41 (2.26%) SonarQube
12 38 (2.09%) Gatling
13 37 (2.04%) TestRail
13 37 (2.04%) WebDriver
14 35 (1.93%) Maven
15 34 (1.87%) SpecFlow
16 33 (1.82%) Bitbucket
16 33 (1.82%) Gradle
General
1 458 (25.23%) Social Skills
2 295 (16.25%) Finance
3 259 (14.27%) Public Sector
4 200 (11.02%) Analytical Skills
5 138 (7.60%) Banking
6 32 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 28 (1.54%) Documentation Skills
7 28 (1.54%) Investment Banking
8 27 (1.49%) Telecoms
9 23 (1.27%) Front Office
10 22 (1.21%) Pharmaceutical
11 18 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
12 17 (0.94%) Military
13 16 (0.88%) Manufacturing
14 13 (0.72%) Financial Institution
15 12 (0.66%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.66%) Electronics
15 12 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
15 12 (0.66%) Legal
15 12 (0.66%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 433 (23.86%) Developer
2 309 (17.02%) Senior
3 214 (11.79%) Tester
4 201 (11.07%) Test Engineer
5 184 (10.14%) Lead
6 121 (6.67%) Java Developer
7 116 (6.39%) Automation Tester
8 84 (4.63%) Software Engineer
9 83 (4.57%) Analyst
10 81 (4.46%) Test Automation Engineer
11 80 (4.41%) Senior Developer
12 70 (3.86%) DevOps Engineer
13 68 (3.75%) QA Engineer
14 67 (3.69%) Test Leader
15 65 (3.58%) Data Engineer
16 59 (3.25%) Test Manager
17 56 (3.09%) Automation Engineer
17 56 (3.09%) Test Analyst
18 52 (2.87%) Full-Stack Developer
19 47 (2.59%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 253 (13.94%) REST
2 218 (12.01%) Playwright
3 165 (9.09%) React
4 152 (8.37%) Node.js
5 148 (8.15%) RESTful
6 143 (7.88%) .NET
7 131 (7.22%) Kafka
7 131 (7.22%) Spring
8 121 (6.67%) Spring Boot
9 84 (4.63%) pytest
10 64 (3.53%) AngularJS
11 63 (3.47%) HTML
11 63 (3.47%) JSON
12 60 (3.31%) OAuth
13 56 (3.09%) SOAP
14 54 (2.98%) XML
15 53 (2.92%) Web Services
16 52 (2.87%) CSS
17 51 (2.81%) Jest
18 44 (2.42%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 188 (10.36%) Cloud Native
2 128 (7.05%) Product Ownership
3 66 (3.64%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (2.64%) Mobile App
5 44 (2.42%) Security Posture
6 40 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
7 39 (2.15%) Algorithms
8 38 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
9 32 (1.76%) Onboarding
10 28 (1.54%) Virtual Team
11 25 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
12 24 (1.32%) Data Structures
13 21 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
14 20 (1.10%) Management Information System
14 20 (1.10%) NHS
14 20 (1.10%) Public Cloud
15 18 (0.99%) Equities
15 18 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
16 16 (0.88%) Derivative
17 15 (0.83%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 165 (9.09%) Linux
2 83 (4.57%) Windows
3 55 (3.03%) Unix
4 42 (2.31%) Android
5 37 (2.04%) Apple iOS
6 27 (1.49%) Mac OS X
7 22 (1.21%) Windows Server
8 11 (0.61%) Kali Linux
9 9 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 6 (0.33%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.22%) CentOS
12 3 (0.17%) Solaris
12 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.11%) VMS
13 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.055%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.055%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.055%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 924 (50.91%) CI/CD
2 876 (48.26%) Agile
3 667 (36.75%) DevOps
4 444 (24.46%) Problem-Solving
5 291 (16.03%) Microservices
6 270 (14.88%) Test Strategy
7 265 (14.60%) Continuous Improvement
8 261 (14.38%) Containerisation
9 238 (13.11%) Scrum
10 220 (12.12%) Infrastructure as Code
11 217 (11.96%) Test Scripting
12 213 (11.74%) Software Engineering
13 212 (11.68%) TDD
13 212 (11.68%) Validation
14 209 (11.52%) AI
15 182 (10.03%) Software Testing
16 179 (9.86%) API Testing
17 175 (9.64%) BDD
18 167 (9.20%) Analytics
18 167 (9.20%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 544 (29.97%) Python
2 462 (25.45%) Java
3 340 (18.73%) SQL
4 285 (15.70%) JavaScript
5 263 (14.49%) TypeScript
6 177 (9.75%) C#
7 84 (4.63%) Bash
8 68 (3.75%) PowerShell
9 41 (2.26%) Go
10 39 (2.15%) C++
11 25 (1.38%) PL/SQL
12 24 (1.32%) Bicep
13 23 (1.27%) Scala
14 22 (1.21%) Kotlin
15 18 (0.99%) Ruby
16 16 (0.88%) Apex Code
17 14 (0.77%) C
17 14 (0.77%) Swift
18 12 (0.66%) Groovy
18 12 (0.66%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 502 (27.66%) Security Cleared
2 387 (21.32%) SC Cleared
3 105 (5.79%) Degree
4 81 (4.46%) ISTQB
5 70 (3.86%) BPSS Clearance
6 60 (3.31%) DV Cleared
7 56 (3.09%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (1.65%) Master's Degree
9 28 (1.54%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 18 (0.99%) OSCP
11 15 (0.83%) AWS Certification
11 15 (0.83%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 14 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
13 13 (0.72%) CEH
13 13 (0.72%) GPEN
13 13 (0.72%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 12 (0.66%) CISSP
14 12 (0.66%) Oracle Certification
15 11 (0.61%) CISM
15 11 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 386 (21.27%) QA
2 144 (7.93%) Accessibility
3 81 (4.46%) Data Quality
4 47 (2.59%) WCAG
5 40 (2.20%) GDPR
6 37 (2.04%) NIST
7 24 (1.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 20 (1.10%) NCSC
9 18 (0.99%) EU AI Act
10 14 (0.77%) ISO 20022
11 13 (0.72%) SLA
12 12 (0.66%) PSD2
13 11 (0.61%) PCI DSS
14 10 (0.55%) NIST 800
14 10 (0.55%) SEPA
15 9 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 7 (0.39%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 7 (0.39%) SOC 2
17 6 (0.33%) HIPAA
18 5 (0.28%) Def Stans
System Software
1 378 (20.83%) Docker
2 33 (1.82%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.39%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
3 7 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
4 5 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.28%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.22%) Firmware
6 3 (0.17%) ISA Server
6 3 (0.17%) QEMU
6 3 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.055%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.055%) HDFS
8 1 (0.055%) KVM
8 1 (0.055%) Squid
8 1 (0.055%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.055%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.055%) vSphere
8 1 (0.055%) zsh
Systems Management
1 334 (18.40%) Kubernetes
2 209 (11.52%) Terraform
3 104 (5.73%) Ansible
4 92 (5.07%) Grafana
5 62 (3.42%) Prometheus
6 21 (1.16%) HP ALM
7 19 (1.05%) Nmap
8 18 (0.99%) Argo
9 16 (0.88%) Progress Chef
9 16 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
10 15 (0.83%) CSIRT
11 14 (0.77%) Puppet
12 11 (0.61%) NetBackup
13 9 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
14 8 (0.44%) Kibana
15 7 (0.39%) Nessus
15 7 (0.39%) Podman
16 6 (0.33%) Forefront Identity Manager
16 6 (0.33%) NetIQ Identity Manager
17 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 162 (8.93%) Microsoft
2 140 (7.71%) Oracle
3 67 (3.69%) Splunk
4 62 (3.42%) ServiceNow
5 61 (3.36%) Databricks
6 58 (3.20%) Google
6 58 (3.20%) Salesforce
6 58 (3.20%) SAP
7 28 (1.54%) Red Hat
8 25 (1.38%) VMware
9 24 (1.32%) Cisco
10 22 (1.21%) Talend
11 21 (1.16%) Denodo
11 21 (1.16%) HP
11 21 (1.16%) IBM
11 21 (1.16%) webMethods
12 19 (1.05%) F5
13 17 (0.94%) MuleSoft
13 17 (0.94%) OpenAI
14 16 (0.88%) Workday