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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 48 45
Rank change year-on-year +5 -3 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,552 1,547 1,600
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.68% 4.67% 4.22%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.52% 5.16% 4.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,657 1,069 1,077
10th Percentile £325 £318 £334
25th Percentile £406 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £669 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £495
% change year-on-year -5.26% -3.94% -1.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 34 17
10th Percentile £40.00 £36.75 £42.00
25th Percentile £56.25 £45.31 £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 £77.80 £72.60 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.50 £61.25 £57.50
% change year-on-year +13.47% +6.52% -22.03%

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 46,195 29,974 32,629
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.63% 90.49% 86.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,749 18,609 19,667
10th Percentile £325 £294 £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 3,350 1,884 1,294
10th Percentile £13.54 £14.35 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.03
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.16
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.38% -8.38%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £73.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £41.50
% change year-on-year +68.43% -46.35% -2.35%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +5 2,141 £475 -5.00% 3,556
UK excluding London -1 1,247 £450 -5.26% 2,186
London +7 972 £500 -2.44% 1,707
Work from Home +6 691 £485 -1.42% 1,527
North of England -4 433 £452 -4.95% 519
Midlands +12 274 £450 -2.70% 238
West Midlands +26 259 £450 -13.46% 154
South East -9 233 £450 -5.26% 461
Yorkshire -2 181 £463 -9.76% 161
North West -15 159 £492 +23.00% 267
Scotland -7 112 £475 -5.00% 330
South West -9 111 £450 -18.18% 268
North East +1 98 £425 -10.53% 94
East of England +3 93 £367 -11.03% 235
Wales -4 24 £419 -6.94% 43
East Midlands -43 15 £418 +19.29% 83
Northern Ireland +4 7 £513 +345.65% 101
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
1 199 (7.80%) Confluence
2 65 (2.55%) Apache Airflow
3 52 (2.04%) Apache Spark
4 48 (1.88%) SharePoint
5 38 (1.49%) Apache
6 32 (1.25%) SAS
7 17 (0.67%) CMS
8 14 (0.55%) Camunda
9 12 (0.47%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.27%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.24%) nginx
12 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.16%) Anypoint
13 4 (0.16%) ColdFusion
13 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 4 (0.16%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.12%) Kentico
15 2 (0.078%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 22 (0.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.27%) Chatbot
3 7 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.20%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.12%) Mingle
5 3 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.12%) Trello
6 2 (0.078%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.039%) Simulink
7 1 (0.039%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 31 (1.21%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 12 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.39%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.39%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.27%) FLEXCUBE
5 7 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.27%) SAP GRC
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 (0.078%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.078%) SAP FI
9 2 (0.078%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.078%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.078%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 1 (0.039%) SAP MM
10 1 (0.039%) SAP PP
10 1 (0.039%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 806 (31.58%) AWS
2 772 (30.25%) Azure
3 471 (18.46%) GitHub
4 360 (14.11%) Azure DevOps
5 278 (10.89%) GitHub Actions
6 208 (8.15%) GCP
7 184 (7.21%) Serverless
8 139 (5.45%) AWS Lambda
9 124 (4.86%) Power Platform
10 117 (4.58%) Amazon S3
11 90 (3.53%) GitHub Copilot
12 89 (3.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 80 (3.13%) OpenShift
14 77 (3.02%) Amazon EKS
15 75 (2.94%) Amazon ECS
15 75 (2.94%) AWS CloudFormation
16 59 (2.31%) Snowflake
17 58 (2.27%) dbt
18 53 (2.08%) Anthropic Claude
18 53 (2.08%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.29%) DNS
2 29 (1.14%) Firewall
3 28 (1.10%) TCP/IP
4 26 (1.02%) HTTP
5 25 (0.98%) 4G
6 24 (0.94%) Broadband
6 24 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
7 22 (0.86%) 5G
8 20 (0.78%) Network Security
9 17 (0.67%) BGP
10 16 (0.63%) WAN
11 14 (0.55%) 2G
11 14 (0.55%) 3G
11 14 (0.55%) Diameter Protocol
11 14 (0.55%) SIGTRAN
11 14 (0.55%) SS7
12 13 (0.51%) DHCP
12 13 (0.51%) LAN
13 12 (0.47%) IPv4
13 12 (0.47%) IPv6
Database & Business Intelligence
1 167 (6.54%) PostgreSQL
2 131 (5.13%) MongoDB
3 125 (4.90%) Relational Database
4 124 (4.86%) Data Warehouse
5 110 (4.31%) SQL Server
6 107 (4.19%) NoSQL
7 88 (3.45%) Power BI
8 63 (2.47%) Metadata
9 45 (1.76%) Data Lake
10 44 (1.72%) MySQL
11 42 (1.65%) DynamoDB
12 37 (1.45%) Oracle Reports
13 36 (1.41%) Big Data
13 36 (1.41%) Pentaho
14 33 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
14 33 (1.29%) Oracle Database
15 32 (1.25%) Amazon Athena
15 32 (1.25%) Amazon Redshift
15 32 (1.25%) Redis
16 27 (1.06%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 599 (23.47%) Git
2 425 (16.65%) Jenkins
3 405 (15.87%) JIRA
4 353 (13.83%) GitLab
5 324 (12.70%) Selenium
6 190 (7.45%) Cucumber
7 178 (6.97%) Postman
8 164 (6.43%) JUnit
9 132 (5.17%) Cypress.io
10 114 (4.47%) REST Assured
11 104 (4.08%) JMeter
12 90 (3.53%) SonarQube
13 75 (2.94%) Gatling
14 71 (2.78%) Maven
15 68 (2.66%) Zephyr
16 66 (2.59%) Mockito
17 62 (2.43%) Gradle
18 50 (1.96%) WebDriver
19 44 (1.72%) Bitbucket
20 33 (1.29%) TestNG
General
1 724 (28.37%) Social Skills
2 485 (19.00%) Finance
3 372 (14.58%) Analytical Skills
4 345 (13.52%) Public Sector
5 251 (9.84%) Banking
6 78 (3.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 61 (2.39%) Telecoms
8 43 (1.68%) Investment Banking
9 42 (1.65%) Front Office
10 37 (1.45%) Military
11 36 (1.41%) Retail
12 35 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
13 29 (1.14%) Documentation Skills
14 22 (0.86%) Marketing
15 21 (0.82%) Financial Institution
15 21 (0.82%) Law
16 20 (0.78%) Manufacturing
17 19 (0.74%) Back Office
18 18 (0.71%) Aerospace
19 17 (0.67%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 583 (22.84%) Developer
2 428 (16.77%) Senior
3 271 (10.62%) Lead
4 246 (9.64%) Test Engineer
5 188 (7.37%) Java Developer
6 187 (7.33%) Tester
7 170 (6.66%) Data Engineer
8 128 (5.02%) Software Engineer
9 125 (4.90%) Senior Developer
10 121 (4.74%) Architect
11 120 (4.70%) Analyst
12 110 (4.31%) DevOps Engineer
13 108 (4.23%) QA Engineer
14 102 (4.00%) Test Automation Engineer
15 86 (3.37%) Automation Tester
16 83 (3.25%) Automation Engineer
16 83 (3.25%) Full-Stack Developer
17 82 (3.21%) Test Analyst
18 81 (3.17%) Test Leader
19 76 (2.98%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 465 (18.22%) REST
2 376 (14.73%) Terraform
3 309 (12.11%) Playwright
4 285 (11.17%) RESTful
5 271 (10.62%) Kafka
6 265 (10.38%) Spring
7 237 (9.29%) React
8 227 (8.89%) Spring Boot
9 187 (7.33%) .NET
10 162 (6.35%) HTML
11 145 (5.68%) Node.js
12 135 (5.29%) CSS
13 113 (4.43%) AngularJS
14 110 (4.31%) OAuth
15 93 (3.64%) JSON
16 78 (3.06%) Middleware
17 70 (2.74%) OAuth2
18 66 (2.59%) XML
19 65 (2.55%) SOAP
19 65 (2.55%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 402 (15.75%) Cloud Native
2 232 (9.09%) Product Ownership
3 193 (7.56%) Distributed Systems
4 116 (4.55%) Enterprise Software
5 88 (3.45%) Onboarding
6 79 (3.10%) AI Agents
7 66 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
8 58 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
9 56 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
9 56 (2.19%) Mobile App
10 37 (1.45%) Data Structures
11 36 (1.41%) Security Posture
12 34 (1.33%) Private Cloud
13 29 (1.14%) Management Information System
13 29 (1.14%) Virtual Team
14 26 (1.02%) Data Centre
15 25 (0.98%) Life Science
16 24 (0.94%) Legacy Applications
17 22 (0.86%) Distributed Architecture
18 20 (0.78%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 182 (7.13%) Linux
2 110 (4.31%) Windows
3 97 (3.80%) Unix
4 51 (2.00%) Apple iOS
5 45 (1.76%) Android
6 30 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (0.98%) Windows Server
8 9 (0.35%) VMS
9 7 (0.27%) 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
11 5 (0.20%) zOS
12 4 (0.16%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.16%) Solaris
13 3 (0.12%) CentOS
14 2 (0.078%) Embedded Linux
14 2 (0.078%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,607 (62.97%) CI/CD
2 1,236 (48.43%) Agile
3 954 (37.38%) DevOps
4 522 (20.45%) Microservices
5 508 (19.91%) Continuous Improvement
6 500 (19.59%) Problem-Solving
7 484 (18.97%) Software Engineering
8 449 (17.59%) Infrastructure as Code
9 440 (17.24%) Validation
10 439 (17.20%) AI
11 430 (16.85%) Scrum
12 381 (14.93%) Containerisation
13 367 (14.38%) Test Strategy
14 339 (13.28%) Observability
15 333 (13.05%) TDD
16 328 (12.85%) Stakeholder Management
17 311 (12.19%) SDLC
18 309 (12.11%) Software Testing
19 268 (10.50%) End-to-End Testing
20 267 (10.46%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 733 (28.72%) Python
2 723 (28.33%) Java
3 665 (26.06%) SQL
4 400 (15.67%) JavaScript
5 302 (11.83%) TypeScript
6 221 (8.66%) C#
7 103 (4.04%) PowerShell
8 92 (3.61%) Bash
9 59 (2.31%) Bicep
10 53 (2.08%) Kotlin
11 51 (2.00%) Scala
12 46 (1.80%) C++
13 44 (1.72%) Go
14 33 (1.29%) Shell Script
15 31 (1.21%) Perl
15 31 (1.21%) PL/SQL
16 21 (0.82%) Apex Code
17 20 (0.78%) Swift
18 18 (0.71%) C
18 18 (0.71%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 804 (31.50%) Security Cleared
2 679 (26.61%) SC Cleared
3 156 (6.11%) BPSS Clearance
4 146 (5.72%) Degree
5 110 (4.31%) ISTQB
6 96 (3.76%) DV Cleared
7 83 (3.25%) Computer Science Degree
8 51 (2.00%) AWS Certification
9 40 (1.57%) Azure Certification
10 30 (1.18%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.63%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 14 (0.55%) CISSP
12 14 (0.55%) ISEB
12 14 (0.55%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 14 (0.55%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.47%) Cisco Certification
13 12 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
14 10 (0.39%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 8 (0.31%) SAFe Agilist
16 7 (0.27%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 668 (26.18%) QA
2 239 (9.37%) Accessibility
3 185 (7.25%) Data Quality
4 100 (3.92%) WCAG
5 42 (1.65%) GDPR
6 25 (0.98%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 16 (0.63%) NIST
9 14 (0.55%) GRC
9 14 (0.55%) SLA
10 12 (0.47%) NCSC
11 8 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.27%) HL7
12 7 (0.27%) SEPA
12 7 (0.27%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
14 5 (0.20%) FATCA
14 5 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
15 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
15 4 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 527 (20.65%) Docker
2 47 (1.84%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (1.57%) Active Directory
4 19 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.43%) Firmware
7 7 (0.27%) VMware NSX
8 6 (0.24%) Hyper-V
9 4 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.078%) Microsoft App-V
11 1 (0.039%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.039%) KVM
11 1 (0.039%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.039%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 521 (20.42%) Kubernetes
2 153 (6.00%) Ansible
3 138 (5.41%) Grafana
4 90 (3.53%) Prometheus
5 36 (1.41%) Argo
6 32 (1.25%) Kibana
7 27 (1.06%) Puppet
8 26 (1.02%) Progress Chef
9 13 (0.51%) Control-M
10 12 (0.47%) HP ALM
10 12 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.35%) Microsoft Intune
12 8 (0.31%) SCCM
13 7 (0.27%) HP Fortify
13 7 (0.27%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.24%) Istio
15 5 (0.20%) Packer
15 5 (0.20%) WMI
16 4 (0.16%) HP Quality Center
16 4 (0.16%) Rancher
Vendors
1 254 (9.95%) Microsoft
2 204 (7.99%) Oracle
3 107 (4.19%) Databricks
4 92 (3.61%) Google
5 69 (2.70%) IBM
6 68 (2.66%) Salesforce
7 62 (2.43%) ServiceNow
7 62 (2.43%) Splunk
8 61 (2.39%) SAP
9 58 (2.27%) VMware
10 57 (2.23%) Talend
11 53 (2.08%) Informatica
12 52 (2.04%) Red Hat
13 46 (1.80%) Dynatrace
14 38 (1.49%) Denodo
15 37 (1.45%) MuleSoft
16 36 (1.41%) Cisco
17 34 (1.33%) UiPath
18 28 (1.10%) Foundry
19 27 (1.06%) OpenAI