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 13 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 52 50
Rank change year-on-year +6 -2 +2
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,308 1,494 1,539
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.33% 4.54% 3.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.10% 5.01% 4.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,499 1,034 1,027
10th Percentile £325 £313 £353
25th Percentile £405 £388 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £494 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -3.71% -2.38%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £606
90th Percentile £663 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £475 £502
% change year-on-year -3.37% -5.33% +0.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 33 24
10th Percentile £38.63 £36.17 £44.00
25th Percentile £60.08 £44.51 £50.94
Median hourly rate £67.86 £50.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +35.72% -11.11% -14.45%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £74.00 £73.70 £81.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +35.00% -13.04% -8.00%

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 45,250 29,801 33,299
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.81% 90.48% 85.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,843 18,616 21,279
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £423 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,819 1,703 1,838
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.75 £17.31 £18.50
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -39.40% -1.55%
75th Percentile £68.00 £47.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.38 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.74 £42.50
% change year-on-year +93.36% -46.51% +13.33%

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 13 August 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 13 August 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 13 August 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 1,974 £475 -5.00% 1,339
UK excluding London -3 1,156 £459 -3.37% 753
London +5 884 £500 - 690
Work from Home -4 632 £475 - 526
North of England +13 394 £466 +1.31% 165
Midlands +7 274 £450 +2.86% 103
West Midlands +30 258 £450 -11.11% 64
South East -29 213 £459 -8.20% 203
Yorkshire -5 161 £475 -5.00% 43
North West -6 141 £492 +16.20% 88
South West +1 114 £475 +10.14% 122
North East +15 100 £438 +0.57% 34
East of England +15 83 £463 +0.82% 76
Scotland -31 69 £440 -12.00% 62
Wales -4 31 £475 +16.92% 19
Northern Ireland +22 17 £488 -0.91% 19
East Midlands -45 16 £425 +25.00% 39
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
1 191 (8.28%) Confluence
2 53 (2.30%) SAS
3 51 (2.21%) Apache Airflow
4 50 (2.17%) Apache Spark
5 36 (1.56%) SharePoint
6 26 (1.13%) Apache
7 14 (0.61%) CMS
8 13 (0.56%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.30%) nginx
9 7 (0.30%) Tomcat
10 5 (0.22%) Camunda
10 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
11 4 (0.17%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.17%) Jupyter
11 4 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.13%) Kentico
12 3 (0.13%) OpenStack
13 2 (0.087%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.087%) Mendix
Applications
1 18 (0.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.52%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.30%) Chatbot
3 7 (0.30%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.17%) Simulink
6 3 (0.13%) Trello
7 1 (0.043%) Mingle
7 1 (0.043%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 26 (1.13%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.78%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.69%) Aladdin
4 12 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.35%) Findur
7 6 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.26%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.26%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.22%) BambooHR
8 5 (0.22%) Shopify
9 4 (0.17%) Infor CloudSuite
9 4 (0.17%) Infor LN
9 4 (0.17%) Infor M3
10 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
11 2 (0.087%) Advent Geneva
11 2 (0.087%) Loan IQ
11 2 (0.087%) Oracle ERP
11 2 (0.087%) SAP GRC
12 1 (0.043%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 695 (30.11%) Azure
2 683 (29.59%) AWS
3 425 (18.41%) GitHub
4 321 (13.91%) Azure DevOps
5 258 (11.18%) GitHub Actions
6 165 (7.15%) Serverless
7 163 (7.06%) GCP
8 117 (5.07%) AWS Lambda
9 100 (4.33%) Power Platform
10 96 (4.16%) Amazon S3
11 76 (3.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 70 (3.03%) Amazon ECS
13 65 (2.82%) OpenShift
14 62 (2.69%) GitHub Copilot
15 59 (2.56%) AWS CloudFormation
16 58 (2.51%) Amazon EKS
17 55 (2.38%) dbt
18 54 (2.34%) Snowflake
19 51 (2.21%) Amazon EC2
20 45 (1.95%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.13%) Firewall
2 21 (0.91%) HTTP
3 17 (0.74%) 4G
3 17 (0.74%) 5G
4 16 (0.69%) DNS
4 16 (0.69%) Network Security
5 15 (0.65%) 2G
5 15 (0.65%) 3G
5 15 (0.65%) Diameter Protocol
5 15 (0.65%) SIGTRAN
5 15 (0.65%) SS7
6 13 (0.56%) TCP/IP
6 13 (0.56%) WAN
7 12 (0.52%) SAN
8 10 (0.43%) LAN
9 9 (0.39%) Wi-Fi
10 8 (0.35%) BGP
11 7 (0.30%) DHCP
11 7 (0.30%) Ethernet VPN
11 7 (0.30%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 141 (6.11%) PostgreSQL
2 131 (5.68%) Data Warehouse
3 117 (5.07%) MongoDB
4 108 (4.68%) NoSQL
5 89 (3.86%) SQL Server
6 83 (3.60%) Relational Database
7 80 (3.47%) Power BI
8 48 (2.08%) DynamoDB
9 47 (2.04%) Metadata
10 46 (1.99%) Oracle Reports
11 43 (1.86%) Pentaho
12 36 (1.56%) Data Lake
13 34 (1.47%) Big Data
13 34 (1.47%) MySQL
14 32 (1.39%) Amazon Athena
15 28 (1.21%) Redis
16 27 (1.17%) Amazon RDS
16 27 (1.17%) Amazon Redshift
17 24 (1.04%) Tableau
18 22 (0.95%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 467 (20.23%) Git
2 420 (18.20%) JIRA
3 388 (16.81%) Jenkins
4 307 (13.30%) GitLab
5 293 (12.69%) Selenium
6 174 (7.54%) Postman
7 156 (6.76%) Cucumber
8 122 (5.29%) JUnit
9 116 (5.03%) Cypress.io
10 103 (4.46%) JMeter
11 101 (4.38%) REST Assured
12 77 (3.34%) Zephyr
13 65 (2.82%) SonarQube
14 64 (2.77%) WebDriver
15 53 (2.30%) Gatling
16 51 (2.21%) Gradle
17 48 (2.08%) Maven
18 42 (1.82%) Bitbucket
19 41 (1.78%) Mockito
20 32 (1.39%) SpecFlow
General
1 628 (27.21%) Social Skills
2 414 (17.94%) Finance
3 320 (13.86%) Public Sector
4 307 (13.30%) Analytical Skills
5 191 (8.28%) Banking
6 66 (2.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 45 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
8 41 (1.78%) Telecoms
9 36 (1.56%) Investment Banking
10 35 (1.52%) Front Office
11 33 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
12 32 (1.39%) Retail
13 27 (1.17%) Military
14 25 (1.08%) Financial Institution
15 20 (0.87%) Aerospace
16 19 (0.82%) Back Office
17 16 (0.69%) Manufacturing
17 16 (0.69%) Organisational Skills
18 15 (0.65%) Legal
18 15 (0.65%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 482 (20.88%) Developer
2 375 (16.25%) Senior
3 252 (10.92%) Lead
4 226 (9.79%) Test Engineer
5 217 (9.40%) Tester
6 159 (6.89%) Data Engineer
6 159 (6.89%) Java Developer
7 119 (5.16%) Analyst
8 115 (4.98%) Software Engineer
9 111 (4.81%) DevOps Engineer
10 106 (4.59%) Architect
11 103 (4.46%) Senior Developer
11 103 (4.46%) Test Automation Engineer
12 94 (4.07%) QA Engineer
13 90 (3.90%) Automation Tester
14 88 (3.81%) Test Leader
15 79 (3.42%) Test Analyst
16 73 (3.16%) Full-Stack Developer
17 66 (2.86%) Automation Engineer
18 63 (2.73%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 345 (14.95%) REST
2 272 (11.79%) Playwright
3 209 (9.06%) RESTful
4 203 (8.80%) Kafka
5 199 (8.62%) React
5 199 (8.62%) Spring
6 159 (6.89%) Spring Boot
7 155 (6.72%) .NET
8 121 (5.24%) Node.js
9 103 (4.46%) HTML
10 96 (4.16%) AngularJS
11 91 (3.94%) CSS
12 72 (3.12%) OAuth
13 66 (2.86%) JSON
14 58 (2.51%) pytest
15 56 (2.43%) Jest
16 53 (2.30%) OAuth2
17 50 (2.17%) HTML5
18 49 (2.12%) Gherkin
18 49 (2.12%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 337 (14.60%) Cloud Native
2 177 (7.67%) Product Ownership
3 154 (6.67%) Distributed Systems
4 89 (3.86%) Enterprise Software
5 58 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
6 57 (2.47%) Onboarding
7 55 (2.38%) Data Protection Act
8 51 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
9 45 (1.95%) Mobile App
10 40 (1.73%) AI Agents
11 38 (1.65%) Virtual Team
12 29 (1.26%) Distributed Architecture
13 28 (1.21%) Embedded Systems
14 26 (1.13%) Security Posture
15 25 (1.08%) NHS
16 23 (1.00%) Management Information System
17 20 (0.87%) Data Centre
18 19 (0.82%) Derivative
19 18 (0.78%) Fixed Income
20 17 (0.74%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 159 (6.89%) Linux
2 94 (4.07%) Windows
3 93 (4.03%) Unix
4 44 (1.91%) Apple iOS
5 42 (1.82%) Android
6 31 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 21 (0.91%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.35%) Solaris
9 7 (0.30%) Mac OS X
10 6 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
11 5 (0.22%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.22%) Windows 10
11 5 (0.22%) Windows 7
11 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
11 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
12 4 (0.17%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.13%) AIX
13 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.087%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,349 (58.45%) CI/CD
2 1,073 (46.49%) Agile
3 877 (38.00%) DevOps
4 436 (18.89%) Problem-Solving
5 435 (18.85%) Continuous Improvement
6 422 (18.28%) Microservices
7 377 (16.33%) Software Engineering
8 374 (16.20%) Scrum
9 368 (15.94%) Infrastructure as Code
10 357 (15.47%) Validation
11 352 (15.25%) Test Strategy
12 327 (14.17%) AI
13 309 (13.39%) Containerisation
14 298 (12.91%) TDD
15 294 (12.74%) Observability
16 249 (10.79%) ETL
17 248 (10.75%) End-to-End Testing
17 248 (10.75%) SDLC
18 237 (10.27%) Data Pipeline
19 232 (10.05%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 609 (26.39%) Python
2 591 (25.61%) Java
3 559 (24.22%) SQL
4 313 (13.56%) JavaScript
5 241 (10.44%) TypeScript
6 204 (8.84%) C#
7 99 (4.29%) PowerShell
8 84 (3.64%) Bash
9 55 (2.38%) C++
10 52 (2.25%) Kotlin
11 49 (2.12%) Bicep
12 36 (1.56%) C
13 35 (1.52%) PL/SQL
14 31 (1.34%) Scala
15 28 (1.21%) Apex Code
16 27 (1.17%) Go
17 24 (1.04%) Shell Script
18 23 (1.00%) Ruby
19 20 (0.87%) Swift
20 18 (0.78%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 757 (32.80%) Security Cleared
2 644 (27.90%) SC Cleared
3 113 (4.90%) ISTQB
4 106 (4.59%) Degree
5 102 (4.42%) BPSS Clearance
6 67 (2.90%) DV Cleared
7 57 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
8 33 (1.43%) AWS Certification
9 32 (1.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 24 (1.04%) Azure Certification
11 17 (0.74%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 11 (0.48%) Cisco Certification
12 11 (0.48%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
12 11 (0.48%) SAFe Agilist
13 10 (0.43%) CISSP
13 10 (0.43%) ISEB
14 9 (0.39%) DBS Check
14 9 (0.39%) Master's Degree
15 8 (0.35%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 575 (24.91%) QA
2 188 (8.15%) Accessibility
3 169 (7.32%) Data Quality
4 84 (3.64%) WCAG
5 43 (1.86%) GDPR
6 15 (0.65%) ISO 20022
6 15 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.65%) NCSC
6 15 (0.65%) SLA
7 9 (0.39%) NIST
8 7 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
8 7 (0.30%) Def Stans
8 7 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 7 (0.30%) PCI DSS
9 6 (0.26%) GRC
9 6 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
10 5 (0.22%) FATCA
10 5 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 4 (0.17%) MiFID
12 3 (0.13%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 448 (19.41%) Docker
2 34 (1.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (1.30%) Active Directory
4 17 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.61%) Firmware
6 5 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
7 4 (0.17%) VMware NSX
8 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.087%) SRDF
10 1 (0.043%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.043%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.043%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 446 (19.32%) Kubernetes
2 320 (13.86%) Terraform
3 125 (5.42%) Grafana
4 123 (5.33%) Ansible
5 100 (4.33%) Prometheus
6 40 (1.73%) Argo
7 26 (1.13%) Puppet
8 22 (0.95%) Progress Chef
9 18 (0.78%) HP ALM
10 14 (0.61%) Kibana
11 11 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
12 10 (0.43%) Dell DRAC
13 9 (0.39%) Control-M
14 7 (0.30%) Kustomize
15 6 (0.26%) Istio
15 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
15 6 (0.26%) Packer
16 5 (0.22%) HP Fortify
16 5 (0.22%) HP Quality Center
16 5 (0.22%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 213 (9.23%) Microsoft
2 205 (8.88%) Oracle
3 94 (4.07%) Salesforce
4 86 (3.73%) Databricks
5 70 (3.03%) Talend
6 67 (2.90%) Red Hat
7 63 (2.73%) Google
8 60 (2.60%) Splunk
9 56 (2.43%) IBM
10 55 (2.38%) ServiceNow
11 50 (2.17%) Denodo
12 44 (1.91%) SAP
13 41 (1.78%) Informatica
13 41 (1.78%) VMware
14 37 (1.60%) Dynatrace
15 29 (1.26%) MuleSoft
16 28 (1.21%) Cisco
17 25 (1.08%) HP
17 25 (1.08%) UiPath
18 14 (0.61%) OpenAI