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 6 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 48 45
Rank change year-on-year +5 -3 +7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,496 1,550 1,571
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.57% 4.72% 4.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.41% 5.22% 4.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,608 1,064 1,059
10th Percentile £325 £313 £341
25th Percentile £405 £400 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £669 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 36 17
10th Percentile £40.00 £37.92 £42.00
25th Percentile £56.25 £45.94 £47.50
Median hourly rate £70.00 £56.25 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +24.44% -2.17% -23.33%
75th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 £74.50
90th Percentile £77.75 £71.00 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.25 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +20.43% - -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 46,176 29,707 32,376
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.50% 90.53% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,774 18,450 19,527
10th Percentile £325 £297 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,315 1,863 1,324
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.14 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.50 £25.15 £41.08
Median % change year-on-year +53.08% -38.77% -3.91%
75th Percentile £65.41 £43.21 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.40 £65.00 £74.31
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £22.32 £42.50
% change year-on-year +73.52% -47.49% -

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 +6 2,098 £475 -5.00% 3,216
UK excluding London -2 1,214 £450 -5.26% 2,020
London +5 947 £500 -1.72% 1,512
Work from Home 0 675 £486 +1.25% 1,367
North of England -4 422 £453 -4.63% 487
Midlands +12 266 £450 -2.70% 231
West Midlands +23 251 £450 -13.21% 162
South East -11 227 £450 -5.26% 450
Yorkshire -6 174 £463 -7.50% 157
North West -9 154 £492 +23.06% 249
South West -5 113 £450 -17.43% 249
North East +4 101 £425 -11.69% 82
Scotland -15 100 £475 -5.00% 287
East of England +11 97 £367 -8.25% 211
Wales -9 24 £419 +1.52% 48
East Midlands -37 15 £418 +19.29% 69
Northern Ireland +4 7 £513 +345.65% 72
Channel Islands - 1 £450 -

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
1 195 (7.81%) Confluence
2 64 (2.56%) Apache Airflow
3 50 (2.00%) Apache Spark
4 47 (1.88%) SharePoint
5 37 (1.48%) Apache
6 30 (1.20%) SAS
7 17 (0.68%) CMS
8 13 (0.52%) Camunda
9 12 (0.48%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.28%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 5 (0.20%) nginx
11 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.16%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.16%) ColdFusion
12 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
12 4 (0.16%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.12%) Kentico
14 2 (0.080%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 21 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.72%) 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%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 1 (0.040%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.040%) Simulink
7 1 (0.040%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 31 (1.24%) Dynamics CRM
2 29 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.48%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.40%) 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 (0.080%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.080%) SAP FI
9 2 (0.080%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.080%) SAP Payroll
10 1 (0.040%) Findur
10 1 (0.040%) Maximo
10 1 (0.040%) SAP MM
10 1 (0.040%) SAP PP
Cloud Services
1 790 (31.65%) AWS
2 756 (30.29%) Azure
3 448 (17.95%) GitHub
4 351 (14.06%) Azure DevOps
5 263 (10.54%) GitHub Actions
6 197 (7.89%) GCP
7 183 (7.33%) Serverless
8 137 (5.49%) AWS Lambda
9 121 (4.85%) Power Platform
10 113 (4.53%) Amazon S3
11 87 (3.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 87 (3.49%) GitHub Copilot
12 79 (3.17%) OpenShift
13 76 (3.04%) Amazon EKS
14 73 (2.92%) Amazon ECS
15 72 (2.88%) AWS CloudFormation
16 60 (2.40%) Snowflake
17 58 (2.32%) dbt
18 53 (2.12%) Anthropic Claude
19 52 (2.08%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 29 (1.16%) DNS
2 27 (1.08%) Firewall
3 25 (1.00%) 4G
3 25 (1.00%) HTTP
4 24 (0.96%) TCP/IP
4 24 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
5 23 (0.92%) Broadband
6 22 (0.88%) 5G
7 20 (0.80%) Network Security
8 15 (0.60%) WAN
9 14 (0.56%) 2G
9 14 (0.56%) 3G
9 14 (0.56%) BGP
9 14 (0.56%) Diameter Protocol
9 14 (0.56%) SIGTRAN
9 14 (0.56%) SS7
10 13 (0.52%) LAN
11 12 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
11 12 (0.48%) IPv4
11 12 (0.48%) IPv6
Database & Business Intelligence
1 159 (6.37%) PostgreSQL
2 127 (5.09%) MongoDB
3 125 (5.01%) Data Warehouse
4 120 (4.81%) Relational Database
5 103 (4.13%) NoSQL
6 102 (4.09%) SQL Server
7 88 (3.53%) Power BI
8 58 (2.32%) Metadata
9 43 (1.72%) Data Lake
10 41 (1.64%) DynamoDB
10 41 (1.64%) MySQL
11 37 (1.48%) Oracle Reports
12 36 (1.44%) Big Data
13 34 (1.36%) Pentaho
13 34 (1.36%) Redis
14 32 (1.28%) Amazon Athena
14 32 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
14 32 (1.28%) Amazon Redshift
15 31 (1.24%) Oracle Database
16 26 (1.04%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 573 (22.96%) Git
2 412 (16.51%) Jenkins
3 401 (16.07%) JIRA
4 351 (14.06%) GitLab
5 317 (12.70%) Selenium
6 184 (7.37%) Cucumber
7 172 (6.89%) Postman
8 155 (6.21%) JUnit
9 124 (4.97%) Cypress.io
10 113 (4.53%) REST Assured
11 104 (4.17%) JMeter
12 88 (3.53%) SonarQube
13 73 (2.92%) Gatling
14 68 (2.72%) Maven
15 66 (2.64%) Zephyr
16 61 (2.44%) Mockito
17 58 (2.32%) Gradle
18 50 (2.00%) WebDriver
19 40 (1.60%) Bitbucket
20 32 (1.28%) TestNG
General
1 698 (27.96%) Social Skills
2 467 (18.71%) Finance
3 359 (14.38%) Analytical Skills
4 351 (14.06%) Public Sector
5 237 (9.50%) Banking
6 79 (3.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 62 (2.48%) Telecoms
8 41 (1.64%) Front Office
8 41 (1.64%) Investment Banking
9 36 (1.44%) Military
10 34 (1.36%) Retail
11 33 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
12 30 (1.20%) Documentation Skills
13 23 (0.92%) Financial Institution
14 21 (0.84%) Law
14 21 (0.84%) Marketing
15 20 (0.80%) Manufacturing
16 18 (0.72%) Aerospace
16 18 (0.72%) Back Office
17 14 (0.56%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 571 (22.88%) Developer
2 418 (16.75%) Senior
3 255 (10.22%) Lead
4 246 (9.86%) Test Engineer
5 188 (7.53%) Tester
6 181 (7.25%) Java Developer
7 163 (6.53%) Data Engineer
8 128 (5.13%) Software Engineer
9 119 (4.77%) Architect
10 118 (4.73%) Analyst
11 117 (4.69%) Senior Developer
12 109 (4.37%) DevOps Engineer
13 103 (4.13%) QA Engineer
14 102 (4.09%) Test Automation Engineer
15 86 (3.45%) Automation Tester
16 82 (3.29%) Full-Stack Developer
17 78 (3.13%) Test Analyst
18 77 (3.08%) Test Leader
19 75 (3.00%) Automation Engineer
20 72 (2.88%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 435 (17.43%) REST
2 375 (15.02%) Terraform
3 291 (11.66%) Playwright
4 269 (10.78%) RESTful
5 261 (10.46%) Kafka
6 257 (10.30%) Spring
7 227 (9.09%) React
8 218 (8.73%) Spring Boot
9 180 (7.21%) .NET
10 157 (6.29%) HTML
11 141 (5.65%) Node.js
12 132 (5.29%) CSS
13 106 (4.25%) AngularJS
14 104 (4.17%) OAuth
15 87 (3.49%) JSON
16 78 (3.13%) Middleware
17 65 (2.60%) OAuth2
17 65 (2.60%) pytest
17 65 (2.60%) XML
18 62 (2.48%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 395 (15.83%) Cloud Native
2 219 (8.77%) Product Ownership
3 185 (7.41%) Distributed Systems
4 106 (4.25%) Enterprise Software
5 87 (3.49%) Onboarding
6 76 (3.04%) AI Agents
7 63 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
8 54 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
9 52 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
9 52 (2.08%) Mobile App
10 37 (1.48%) Data Structures
11 35 (1.40%) Security Posture
12 30 (1.20%) Private Cloud
12 30 (1.20%) Virtual Team
13 29 (1.16%) Management Information System
14 25 (1.00%) Data Centre
15 24 (0.96%) Legacy Applications
15 24 (0.96%) Life Science
16 21 (0.84%) Embedded Systems
17 20 (0.80%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 183 (7.33%) Linux
2 110 (4.41%) Windows
3 97 (3.89%) Unix
4 48 (1.92%) Apple iOS
5 44 (1.76%) Android
6 32 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (1.00%) Windows Server
8 9 (0.36%) VMS
9 7 (0.28%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.24%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.20%) AIX
11 5 (0.20%) Mac OS X
11 5 (0.20%) Windows 7
11 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.16%) Solaris
12 4 (0.16%) zOS
13 3 (0.12%) CentOS
13 3 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.12%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.080%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,550 (62.10%) CI/CD
2 1,208 (48.40%) Agile
3 928 (37.18%) DevOps
4 501 (20.07%) Microservices
5 487 (19.51%) Continuous Improvement
6 485 (19.43%) Problem-Solving
7 474 (18.99%) Software Engineering
8 448 (17.95%) Infrastructure as Code
9 430 (17.23%) AI
10 428 (17.15%) Scrum
11 420 (16.83%) Validation
12 375 (15.02%) Containerisation
13 361 (14.46%) Test Strategy
14 327 (13.10%) Observability
14 327 (13.10%) TDD
15 304 (12.18%) Software Testing
16 303 (12.14%) Stakeholder Management
17 298 (11.94%) SDLC
18 264 (10.58%) End-to-End Testing
19 252 (10.10%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 707 (28.33%) Java
1 707 (28.33%) Python
2 640 (25.64%) SQL
3 392 (15.71%) JavaScript
4 289 (11.58%) TypeScript
5 210 (8.41%) C#
6 101 (4.05%) PowerShell
7 92 (3.69%) Bash
8 58 (2.32%) Bicep
9 50 (2.00%) Kotlin
10 49 (1.96%) Scala
11 47 (1.88%) C++
12 42 (1.68%) Go
13 33 (1.32%) Shell Script
14 31 (1.24%) PL/SQL
15 29 (1.16%) Perl
16 22 (0.88%) Apex Code
17 19 (0.76%) C
18 17 (0.68%) Ruby
18 17 (0.68%) Swift
Qualifications
1 796 (31.89%) Security Cleared
2 673 (26.96%) SC Cleared
3 150 (6.01%) BPSS Clearance
4 139 (5.57%) Degree
5 100 (4.01%) ISTQB
6 95 (3.81%) DV Cleared
7 80 (3.21%) Computer Science Degree
8 49 (1.96%) AWS Certification
9 39 (1.56%) Azure Certification
10 26 (1.04%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.64%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 15 (0.60%) Master's Degree
13 14 (0.56%) CISSP
13 14 (0.56%) ISEB
13 14 (0.56%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 12 (0.48%) Cisco Certification
14 12 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
15 9 (0.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 9 (0.36%) DBS Check
16 8 (0.32%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 651 (26.08%) QA
2 240 (9.62%) Accessibility
3 177 (7.09%) Data Quality
4 102 (4.09%) WCAG
5 41 (1.64%) GDPR
6 24 (0.96%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 16 (0.64%) NIST
9 15 (0.60%) GRC
10 14 (0.56%) SLA
11 12 (0.48%) NCSC
12 8 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
13 7 (0.28%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.24%) HL7
14 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
14 6 (0.24%) SEPA
15 5 (0.20%) FATCA
15 5 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
16 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
16 4 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 513 (20.55%) Docker
2 45 (1.80%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (1.60%) Active Directory
4 18 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.48%) Firmware
6 10 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.28%) VMware NSX
8 6 (0.24%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
9 2 (0.080%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.040%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.040%) KVM
10 1 (0.040%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.040%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 507 (20.31%) Kubernetes
2 146 (5.85%) Ansible
3 139 (5.57%) Grafana
4 91 (3.65%) Prometheus
5 36 (1.44%) Argo
6 33 (1.32%) Kibana
7 26 (1.04%) Puppet
8 25 (1.00%) Progress Chef
9 13 (0.52%) Control-M
9 13 (0.52%) HP ALM
10 12 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.36%) Microsoft Intune
12 8 (0.32%) SCCM
13 7 (0.28%) HP Fortify
13 7 (0.28%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.24%) Istio
15 5 (0.20%) Dell DRAC
15 5 (0.20%) Packer
15 5 (0.20%) WMI
16 4 (0.16%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 244 (9.78%) Microsoft
2 191 (7.65%) Oracle
3 101 (4.05%) Databricks
4 86 (3.45%) Google
5 69 (2.76%) Salesforce
6 68 (2.72%) IBM
7 65 (2.60%) ServiceNow
8 59 (2.36%) SAP
9 57 (2.28%) Splunk
10 56 (2.24%) Talend
10 56 (2.24%) VMware
11 52 (2.08%) Red Hat
12 51 (2.04%) Informatica
13 44 (1.76%) Dynatrace
14 37 (1.48%) Denodo
15 35 (1.40%) MuleSoft
16 33 (1.32%) Cisco
17 32 (1.28%) UiPath
18 26 (1.04%) OpenAI
19 24 (0.96%) Foundry