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 9 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 46 54
Rank change year-on-year 0 +8 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,992 1,330 1,525
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.17% 4.56% 3.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.94% 5.01% 4.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,319 916 998
10th Percentile £331 £326 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £514
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -2.68% -6.59%
75th Percentile £575 £618 £630
90th Percentile £663 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.26% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 21 55
10th Percentile £36.60 £35.00 £51.25
25th Percentile £54.04 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.50 £50.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +31.00% -20.00% -7.24%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £76.00
90th Percentile - £75.50 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +28.57% -16.00% -2.91%

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 40,321 26,530 37,209
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.49% 90.95% 86.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,358 17,078 23,948
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% -1.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.30% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,401 1,077 2,439
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.47 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +46.09% -21.23% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.13 £37.50
% change year-on-year +62.21% -27.67% +7.14%

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 9 May 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 9 May 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 9 May 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 -1 1,700 £475 -5.00% 596
UK excluding London -2 923 £469 -1.26% 466
London -1 828 £500 -1.48% 211
Work from Home 0 583 £475 -5.00% 270
North of England +10 338 £468 +4.00% 134
Midlands +8 195 £450 - 56
West Midlands +24 170 £461 -6.92% 35
South East -45 165 £505 +0.80% 116
North West +9 146 £463 +2.78% 60
Yorkshire -6 144 £496 -1.73% 37
South West +7 91 £469 -6.25% 61
East of England +4 62 £507 +3.47% 65
North East +6 53 £425 +7.59% 37
Scotland -26 45 £433 -3.62% 24
Wales +1 31 £475 +18.75% 17
East Midlands -39 25 £400 +13.15% 21
Northern Ireland +20 18 £475 +16.28% 6
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
1 158 (7.93%) Confluence
2 43 (2.16%) SAS
3 42 (2.11%) Apache Spark
4 33 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
5 14 (0.70%) Apache
6 13 (0.65%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.40%) Appian
8 7 (0.35%) nginx
8 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.30%) Camunda
10 5 (0.25%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.20%) CMS
11 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.10%) Mendix
14 1 (0.050%) CICS
14 1 (0.050%) OpenStack
14 1 (0.050%) Solana
Applications
1 27 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.60%) MS Visio
4 11 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.15%) Simulink
7 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.050%) Mingle
8 1 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (1.00%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
4 8 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
5 7 (0.35%) Findur
5 7 (0.35%) Shopify
6 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.25%) Maximo
7 5 (0.25%) SAP MDG
8 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.15%) Infor CloudSuite
8 3 (0.15%) Infor LN
8 3 (0.15%) Infor M3
8 3 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
8 3 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
8 3 (0.15%) SAP ERP
8 3 (0.15%) Workday HCM
9 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.10%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 578 (29.02%) Azure
2 548 (27.51%) AWS
3 346 (17.37%) GitHub
4 268 (13.45%) Azure DevOps
5 200 (10.04%) GitHub Actions
6 148 (7.43%) GCP
7 135 (6.78%) Serverless
8 86 (4.32%) Amazon S3
9 85 (4.27%) AWS Lambda
10 73 (3.66%) Power Platform
11 59 (2.96%) Amazon ECS
12 58 (2.91%) OpenShift
13 57 (2.86%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 56 (2.81%) AWS CloudFormation
15 42 (2.11%) Amazon EKS
16 40 (2.01%) Snowflake
17 39 (1.96%) Azure AKS
18 36 (1.81%) Amazon EC2
19 35 (1.76%) Azure Data Factory
20 29 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.20%) HTTP
2 21 (1.05%) Firewall
3 14 (0.70%) SAN
4 12 (0.60%) TCP/IP
5 11 (0.55%) FTP
5 11 (0.55%) SSL
5 11 (0.55%) VPN
6 9 (0.45%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.40%) WAN
7 8 (0.40%) Wireshark
8 7 (0.35%) MPLS
8 7 (0.35%) Network Security
8 7 (0.35%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.30%) Multicast
9 6 (0.30%) VLAN
9 6 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
10 5 (0.25%) 5G
11 4 (0.20%) Modbus
11 4 (0.20%) RS-232
11 4 (0.20%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (5.72%) PostgreSQL
2 101 (5.07%) NoSQL
3 98 (4.92%) MongoDB
4 90 (4.52%) SQL Server
5 72 (3.61%) Data Warehouse
6 70 (3.51%) Relational Database
7 52 (2.61%) Power BI
8 45 (2.26%) DynamoDB
9 36 (1.81%) Pentaho
10 35 (1.76%) Metadata
10 35 (1.76%) MySQL
11 33 (1.66%) Big Data
12 27 (1.36%) Oracle Reports
13 25 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
13 25 (1.26%) Redis
14 24 (1.20%) BigQuery
14 24 (1.20%) Tableau
15 22 (1.10%) Amazon Athena
15 22 (1.10%) Amazon Aurora
16 21 (1.05%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 395 (19.83%) JIRA
2 367 (18.42%) Git
3 329 (16.52%) Jenkins
4 286 (14.36%) GitLab
5 267 (13.40%) Selenium
6 161 (8.08%) Postman
7 144 (7.23%) Cucumber
8 101 (5.07%) JUnit
9 96 (4.82%) Cypress.io
10 94 (4.72%) JMeter
11 85 (4.27%) REST Assured
12 58 (2.91%) WebDriver
13 48 (2.41%) SonarQube
13 48 (2.41%) Zephyr
14 35 (1.76%) Mockito
15 34 (1.71%) Gatling
16 33 (1.66%) Gradle
17 31 (1.56%) Bitbucket
17 31 (1.56%) Maven
17 31 (1.56%) SpecFlow
General
1 518 (26.00%) Social Skills
2 343 (17.22%) Finance
3 289 (14.51%) Public Sector
4 231 (11.60%) Analytical Skills
5 161 (8.08%) Banking
6 40 (2.01%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 35 (1.76%) Investment Banking
8 34 (1.71%) Front Office
9 26 (1.31%) Telecoms
10 21 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
11 20 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
12 18 (0.90%) Legal
13 17 (0.85%) Aerospace
13 17 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.80%) Military
15 14 (0.70%) Financial Institution
15 14 (0.70%) Retail
16 12 (0.60%) Back Office
16 12 (0.60%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 423 (21.23%) Developer
2 307 (15.41%) Senior
3 214 (10.74%) Tester
4 211 (10.59%) Test Engineer
5 203 (10.19%) Lead
6 119 (5.97%) Data Engineer
7 113 (5.67%) Java Developer
8 107 (5.37%) Analyst
9 100 (5.02%) Automation Tester
9 100 (5.02%) Test Automation Engineer
10 88 (4.42%) Software Engineer
11 87 (4.37%) Architect
12 86 (4.32%) QA Engineer
13 83 (4.17%) Test Leader
14 81 (4.07%) DevOps Engineer
15 79 (3.97%) Senior Developer
16 66 (3.31%) Test Analyst
17 64 (3.21%) Full-Stack Developer
18 62 (3.11%) Test Manager
19 53 (2.66%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 243 (12.20%) Playwright
2 234 (11.75%) REST
3 177 (8.89%) React
4 157 (7.88%) RESTful
5 151 (7.58%) Spring
6 141 (7.08%) .NET
7 138 (6.93%) Kafka
8 134 (6.73%) Node.js
9 127 (6.38%) Spring Boot
10 88 (4.42%) AngularJS
11 76 (3.82%) HTML
12 68 (3.41%) pytest
13 64 (3.21%) OAuth
14 61 (3.06%) CSS
15 55 (2.76%) Jest
16 45 (2.26%) JSON
17 43 (2.16%) Swagger
18 42 (2.11%) Gherkin
18 42 (2.11%) OpenID
19 39 (1.96%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 221 (11.09%) Cloud Native
2 154 (7.73%) Product Ownership
3 101 (5.07%) Distributed Systems
4 50 (2.51%) Mobile App
5 49 (2.46%) Data Protection Act
6 48 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
7 38 (1.91%) Onboarding
7 38 (1.91%) Virtual Team
8 33 (1.66%) Enterprise Software
9 32 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
10 27 (1.36%) NHS
11 26 (1.31%) Algorithms
12 24 (1.20%) Management Information System
13 23 (1.15%) Data Centre
14 21 (1.05%) Distributed Architecture
15 20 (1.00%) Security Posture
16 19 (0.95%) Derivative
16 19 (0.95%) Fixed Income
16 19 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
17 18 (0.90%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 127 (6.38%) Linux
2 81 (4.07%) Windows
3 47 (2.36%) Unix
4 44 (2.21%) Android
5 39 (1.96%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.05%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.65%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.50%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.40%) Solaris
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.15%) AIX
14 3 (0.15%) CentOS
15 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.050%) FreeRTOS
16 1 (0.050%) Robot Operating System
16 1 (0.050%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,074 (53.92%) CI/CD
2 928 (46.59%) Agile
3 723 (36.30%) DevOps
4 395 (19.83%) Problem-Solving
5 320 (16.06%) Continuous Improvement
6 319 (16.01%) Microservices
7 297 (14.91%) Scrum
8 289 (14.51%) Test Strategy
9 271 (13.60%) Containerisation
9 271 (13.60%) Infrastructure as Code
10 266 (13.35%) Validation
11 240 (12.05%) Software Engineering
12 233 (11.70%) Observability
13 220 (11.04%) AI
14 217 (10.89%) TDD
15 202 (10.14%) Regression Testing
15 202 (10.14%) Test Scripting
16 195 (9.79%) User Acceptance Testing
17 193 (9.69%) Analytics
17 193 (9.69%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 538 (27.01%) Python
2 491 (24.65%) Java
3 445 (22.34%) SQL
4 286 (14.36%) JavaScript
5 267 (13.40%) TypeScript
6 201 (10.09%) C#
7 74 (3.71%) PowerShell
8 71 (3.56%) Bash
9 52 (2.61%) C++
10 38 (1.91%) Kotlin
11 36 (1.81%) PL/SQL
12 33 (1.66%) C
13 32 (1.61%) Scala
14 28 (1.41%) Ruby
15 26 (1.31%) Bicep
16 25 (1.26%) Apex Code
17 24 (1.20%) Go
18 17 (0.85%) Swift
19 14 (0.70%) Groovy
19 14 (0.70%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 622 (31.22%) Security Cleared
2 494 (24.80%) SC Cleared
3 86 (4.32%) Degree
3 86 (4.32%) ISTQB
4 79 (3.97%) BPSS Clearance
5 66 (3.31%) DV Cleared
6 48 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
7 21 (1.05%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 16 (0.80%) Master's Degree
9 12 (0.60%) Cisco Certification
10 11 (0.55%) AWS Certification
10 11 (0.55%) Azure Certification
11 10 (0.50%) CCNP
11 10 (0.50%) DBS Check
11 10 (0.50%) SAFe Agilist
12 9 (0.45%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 9 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
13 7 (0.35%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 7 (0.35%) CISSP
14 5 (0.25%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 444 (22.29%) QA
2 150 (7.53%) Accessibility
3 118 (5.92%) Data Quality
4 65 (3.26%) WCAG
5 36 (1.81%) GDPR
6 16 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 14 (0.70%) ISO 20022
7 14 (0.70%) SLA
8 11 (0.55%) NCSC
9 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
10 8 (0.40%) NIST
11 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 7 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.35%) SEPA
12 6 (0.30%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.30%) PSD2
13 5 (0.25%) FATCA
14 4 (0.20%) HL7
14 4 (0.20%) MiFID
14 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 359 (18.02%) Docker
2 24 (1.20%) Active Directory
3 21 (1.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.70%) Firmware
5 11 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
9 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.10%) SRDF
12 1 (0.050%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.050%) HDFS
12 1 (0.050%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.050%) KVM
12 1 (0.050%) Squid
12 1 (0.050%) Time Sharing Option
12 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 348 (17.47%) Kubernetes
2 239 (12.00%) Terraform
3 111 (5.57%) Grafana
4 88 (4.42%) Prometheus
5 85 (4.27%) Ansible
6 29 (1.46%) Argo
7 22 (1.10%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.85%) Puppet
9 15 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (0.70%) Kibana
11 10 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 8 (0.40%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.40%) NetBackup
12 8 (0.40%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
14 5 (0.25%) Nmap
14 5 (0.25%) Rancher
15 4 (0.20%) Podman
Vendors
1 170 (8.53%) Oracle
2 169 (8.48%) Microsoft
3 74 (3.71%) Salesforce
4 66 (3.31%) Databricks
5 63 (3.16%) ServiceNow
6 60 (3.01%) Splunk
7 57 (2.86%) Google
8 55 (2.76%) Talend
9 50 (2.51%) Red Hat
10 38 (1.91%) SAP
11 37 (1.86%) Denodo
12 29 (1.46%) IBM
12 29 (1.46%) VMware
13 25 (1.26%) HP
14 22 (1.10%) Dynatrace
15 21 (1.05%) MuleSoft
16 20 (1.00%) Cisco
16 20 (1.00%) Informatica
17 19 (0.95%) UiPath
18 16 (0.80%) Blue Prism