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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 55
Rank change year-on-year -1 +8 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,982 1,331 1,519
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.18% 4.57% 3.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.95% 5.03% 4.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,312 915 997
10th Percentile £331 £328 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £618 £625
90th Percentile £663 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.37% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 20 55
10th Percentile £36.60 £34.53 £51.25
25th Percentile £54.04 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.50 £52.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +24.76% -16.00% -5.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £76.00
90th Percentile - £75.67 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -12.00% -1.48%

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 40,077 26,470 37,223
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.45% 90.96% 86.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,204 17,026 23,967
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +1.77% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,387 1,075 2,431
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £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 £60.38 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.35 £37.50
% change year-on-year +60.88% -27.07% +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 8 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 8 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 8 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 1,690 £475 -5.00% 578
UK excluding London -4 916 £469 -1.37% 469
London +1 825 £500 -0.99% 193
Work from Home -2 580 £475 -5.00% 288
North of England +10 334 £468 +4.06% 134
Midlands +2 193 £450 -2.17% 61
West Midlands +22 168 £459 -7.27% 40
South East -45 166 £500 -1.28% 111
North West +5 146 £463 +2.78% 60
Yorkshire -2 142 £493 -2.48% 37
South West +1 90 £463 -7.50% 62
East of England +11 61 £522 +6.58% 64
North East +6 51 £419 +6.01% 37
Scotland -32 45 £433 -3.62% 26
Wales +2 31 £475 +18.75% 19
East Midlands -34 25 £400 +13.15% 21
Northern Ireland +20 18 £475 +16.28% 5
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
1 157 (7.92%) Confluence
2 43 (2.17%) SAS
3 42 (2.12%) Apache Spark
4 33 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
5 14 (0.71%) Apache
6 13 (0.66%) 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%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.15%) CMS
12 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.10%) Mendix
14 1 (0.050%) Ethereum
14 1 (0.050%) Jupyter
14 1 (0.050%) Solana
Applications
1 26 (1.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.61%) 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 (1.01%) Aladdin
2 11 (0.55%) 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%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 578 (29.16%) Azure
2 544 (27.45%) AWS
3 345 (17.41%) GitHub
4 267 (13.47%) Azure DevOps
5 199 (10.04%) GitHub Actions
6 148 (7.47%) GCP
7 134 (6.76%) Serverless
8 85 (4.29%) Amazon S3
9 84 (4.24%) AWS Lambda
10 72 (3.63%) Power Platform
11 58 (2.93%) Amazon ECS
11 58 (2.93%) OpenShift
12 56 (2.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 55 (2.77%) AWS CloudFormation
14 41 (2.07%) Amazon EKS
15 40 (2.02%) Snowflake
16 39 (1.97%) Azure AKS
17 35 (1.77%) Amazon EC2
17 35 (1.77%) Azure Data Factory
18 29 (1.46%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.26%) HTTP
2 21 (1.06%) Firewall
3 14 (0.71%) SAN
4 12 (0.61%) 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
10 5 (0.25%) 5G
10 5 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
11 4 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
11 4 (0.20%) NAS
11 4 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (5.75%) PostgreSQL
2 101 (5.10%) NoSQL
3 98 (4.94%) MongoDB
4 90 (4.54%) SQL Server
5 72 (3.63%) Data Warehouse
6 70 (3.53%) Relational Database
7 52 (2.62%) Power BI
8 45 (2.27%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.77%) Metadata
9 35 (1.77%) MySQL
9 35 (1.77%) Pentaho
10 33 (1.66%) Big Data
11 27 (1.36%) Oracle Reports
12 25 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
12 25 (1.26%) Redis
13 24 (1.21%) BigQuery
13 24 (1.21%) Tableau
14 22 (1.11%) Amazon Athena
14 22 (1.11%) Amazon Aurora
15 21 (1.06%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 394 (19.88%) JIRA
2 367 (18.52%) Git
3 325 (16.40%) Jenkins
4 282 (14.23%) GitLab
5 268 (13.52%) Selenium
6 161 (8.12%) Postman
7 145 (7.32%) Cucumber
8 101 (5.10%) JUnit
9 96 (4.84%) Cypress.io
10 93 (4.69%) JMeter
11 85 (4.29%) REST Assured
12 58 (2.93%) WebDriver
13 48 (2.42%) SonarQube
13 48 (2.42%) Zephyr
14 35 (1.77%) Mockito
15 34 (1.72%) Gatling
16 32 (1.61%) SpecFlow
17 31 (1.56%) Gradle
17 31 (1.56%) Maven
18 30 (1.51%) Bitbucket
General
1 515 (25.98%) Social Skills
2 343 (17.31%) Finance
3 285 (14.38%) Public Sector
4 231 (11.65%) Analytical Skills
5 161 (8.12%) Banking
6 41 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (1.77%) Investment Banking
8 34 (1.72%) Front Office
9 33 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 26 (1.31%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
12 20 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
13 18 (0.91%) Legal
14 17 (0.86%) Aerospace
14 17 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
15 16 (0.81%) Military
16 14 (0.71%) Financial Institution
17 13 (0.66%) Retail
18 12 (0.61%) Back Office
18 12 (0.61%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 420 (21.19%) Developer
2 307 (15.49%) Senior
3 214 (10.80%) Tester
4 211 (10.65%) Test Engineer
5 203 (10.24%) Lead
6 118 (5.95%) Data Engineer
7 112 (5.65%) Java Developer
8 107 (5.40%) Analyst
9 101 (5.10%) Automation Tester
10 100 (5.05%) Test Automation Engineer
11 88 (4.44%) Software Engineer
12 87 (4.39%) Architect
13 85 (4.29%) QA Engineer
14 83 (4.19%) Test Leader
15 80 (4.04%) DevOps Engineer
16 79 (3.99%) Senior Developer
17 66 (3.33%) Test Analyst
18 64 (3.23%) Full-Stack Developer
19 63 (3.18%) Test Manager
20 51 (2.57%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 243 (12.26%) Playwright
2 235 (11.86%) REST
3 176 (8.88%) React
4 154 (7.77%) RESTful
5 151 (7.62%) Spring
6 141 (7.11%) .NET
7 137 (6.91%) Kafka
8 133 (6.71%) Node.js
9 126 (6.36%) Spring Boot
10 88 (4.44%) AngularJS
11 76 (3.83%) HTML
12 68 (3.43%) pytest
13 64 (3.23%) OAuth
14 61 (3.08%) CSS
15 55 (2.77%) Jest
16 46 (2.32%) JSON
17 42 (2.12%) OpenID
17 42 (2.12%) Swagger
18 41 (2.07%) Gherkin
19 39 (1.97%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 219 (11.05%) Cloud Native
2 151 (7.62%) Product Ownership
3 101 (5.10%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (2.42%) Data Protection Act
4 48 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
5 46 (2.32%) Mobile App
6 38 (1.92%) Onboarding
7 36 (1.82%) Virtual Team
8 34 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
9 32 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
10 27 (1.36%) NHS
11 26 (1.31%) Algorithms
12 24 (1.21%) Management Information System
13 23 (1.16%) Data Centre
14 21 (1.06%) Distributed Architecture
15 20 (1.01%) Security Posture
16 19 (0.96%) Derivative
16 19 (0.96%) Fixed Income
16 19 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
17 18 (0.91%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 127 (6.41%) Linux
2 81 (4.09%) Windows
3 47 (2.37%) Unix
4 41 (2.07%) Android
5 36 (1.82%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.06%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.66%) 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%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,066 (53.78%) CI/CD
2 921 (46.47%) Agile
3 718 (36.23%) DevOps
4 394 (19.88%) Problem-Solving
5 319 (16.09%) Continuous Improvement
6 318 (16.04%) Microservices
7 292 (14.73%) Scrum
8 288 (14.53%) Test Strategy
9 269 (13.57%) Infrastructure as Code
10 268 (13.52%) Containerisation
11 266 (13.42%) Validation
12 239 (12.06%) Software Engineering
13 232 (11.71%) Observability
14 219 (11.05%) AI
15 214 (10.80%) TDD
16 202 (10.19%) Regression Testing
16 202 (10.19%) Test Scripting
17 195 (9.84%) User Acceptance Testing
18 194 (9.79%) SDLC
19 191 (9.64%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 537 (27.09%) Python
2 488 (24.62%) Java
3 442 (22.30%) SQL
4 284 (14.33%) JavaScript
5 265 (13.37%) TypeScript
6 202 (10.19%) C#
7 73 (3.68%) PowerShell
8 69 (3.48%) Bash
9 52 (2.62%) C++
10 36 (1.82%) Kotlin
10 36 (1.82%) PL/SQL
11 33 (1.66%) C
12 31 (1.56%) Scala
13 28 (1.41%) Ruby
14 26 (1.31%) Bicep
15 25 (1.26%) Apex Code
16 23 (1.16%) Go
17 15 (0.76%) Swift
18 14 (0.71%) Groovy
18 14 (0.71%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 620 (31.28%) Security Cleared
2 492 (24.82%) SC Cleared
3 87 (4.39%) ISTQB
4 86 (4.34%) Degree
5 79 (3.99%) BPSS Clearance
6 66 (3.33%) DV Cleared
7 48 (2.42%) Computer Science Degree
8 21 (1.06%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 16 (0.81%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.55%) AWS Certification
11 11 (0.55%) Azure Certification
12 10 (0.50%) CCNP
12 10 (0.50%) DBS Check
12 10 (0.50%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 9 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
13 9 (0.45%) SAFe Agilist
14 7 (0.35%) CISSP
15 6 (0.30%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
16 5 (0.25%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 443 (22.35%) QA
2 146 (7.37%) Accessibility
3 118 (5.95%) Data Quality
4 63 (3.18%) WCAG
5 35 (1.77%) GDPR
6 16 (0.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 14 (0.71%) ISO 20022
7 14 (0.71%) 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%) PSD2
13 5 (0.25%) FATCA
13 5 (0.25%) PCI DSS
14 4 (0.20%) HL7
14 4 (0.20%) MiFID
14 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 357 (18.01%) Docker
2 24 (1.21%) Active Directory
3 21 (1.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.71%) 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
1 346 (17.46%) Kubernetes
2 237 (11.96%) Terraform
3 110 (5.55%) Grafana
4 87 (4.39%) Prometheus
5 82 (4.14%) Ansible
6 29 (1.46%) Argo
7 22 (1.11%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.86%) Puppet
9 15 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (0.71%) 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
1 169 (8.53%) Microsoft
1 169 (8.53%) Oracle
2 74 (3.73%) Salesforce
3 66 (3.33%) Databricks
4 64 (3.23%) ServiceNow
5 59 (2.98%) Splunk
6 56 (2.83%) Google
7 54 (2.72%) Talend
8 50 (2.52%) Red Hat
9 38 (1.92%) SAP
10 37 (1.87%) Denodo
11 29 (1.46%) IBM
11 29 (1.46%) VMware
12 25 (1.26%) HP
13 21 (1.06%) MuleSoft
14 20 (1.01%) Cisco
14 20 (1.01%) Dynatrace
15 19 (0.96%) Informatica
15 19 (0.96%) UiPath
16 16 (0.81%) Blue Prism