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 23 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 49 46
Rank change year-on-year +6 -3 +5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,456 1,509 1,546
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.48% 4.62% 4.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.30% 5.10% 4.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,576 1,031 1,045
10th Percentile £322 £313 £345
25th Percentile £404 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £664 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 113 39 18
10th Percentile £40.00 £31.71 £40.88
25th Percentile £56.25 £45.63 £43.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -4.35% -22.03%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £73.84
90th Percentile £77.50 £69.80 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.22 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +18.63% - -16.36%

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 46,309 29,588 32,312
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.42% 90.49% 85.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,063 18,372 19,750
10th Percentile £325 £300 £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 £627 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,189 1,818 1,403
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.25 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.25% -48.10% +1.18%

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 23 September 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 23 September 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 23 September 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 2,065 £475 -5.00% 2,765
UK excluding London -4 1,191 £450 -5.26% 1,792
London +6 939 £500 - 1,241
Work from Home 0 659 £478 +0.63% 1,161
North of England -5 414 £450 -5.26% 451
Midlands +12 257 £450 -2.70% 210
West Midlands +25 242 £458 -11.76% 145
South East -10 229 £450 -10.00% 397
Yorkshire -8 175 £460 -8.00% 133
North West -14 138 £492 +15.76% 245
South West -5 113 £456 -15.31% 265
North East +5 108 £425 -10.53% 73
Scotland -12 95 £475 -5.00% 208
East of England +15 91 £375 +9.49% 168
Wales -5 26 £475 +15.15% 46
East Midlands -48 15 £418 +15.97% 64
Northern Ireland +4 7 £513 +345.65% 59
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 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
1 192 (7.82%) Confluence
2 65 (2.65%) Apache Airflow
3 46 (1.87%) Apache Spark
3 46 (1.87%) SharePoint
4 39 (1.59%) SAS
5 32 (1.30%) Apache
6 17 (0.69%) CMS
7 14 (0.57%) Camunda
8 12 (0.49%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.29%) Jupyter
9 7 (0.29%) nginx
9 7 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.24%) Tomcat
11 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.16%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.16%) ColdFusion
12 4 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 3 (0.12%) Kentico
Applications
1 23 (0.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.73%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.29%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.16%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 2 (0.081%) Mingle
7 2 (0.081%) Simulink
7 2 (0.081%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.041%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.041%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 30 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 28 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.41%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.41%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.29%) SAP GRC
6 6 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.24%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.16%) FLEXCUBE
7 4 (0.16%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.12%) Finacle
9 2 (0.081%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.081%) Distributed Ledger
9 2 (0.081%) Findur
9 2 (0.081%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.081%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.081%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.081%) Shopify
10 1 (0.041%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 771 (31.39%) AWS
2 736 (29.97%) Azure
3 427 (17.39%) GitHub
4 337 (13.72%) Azure DevOps
5 255 (10.38%) GitHub Actions
6 188 (7.65%) GCP
7 173 (7.04%) Serverless
8 129 (5.25%) AWS Lambda
9 115 (4.68%) Power Platform
10 99 (4.03%) Amazon S3
11 84 (3.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 81 (3.30%) GitHub Copilot
12 81 (3.30%) OpenShift
13 71 (2.89%) AWS CloudFormation
14 67 (2.73%) Amazon EKS
15 66 (2.69%) Amazon ECS
16 61 (2.48%) dbt
17 60 (2.44%) Snowflake
18 48 (1.95%) Anthropic Claude
19 47 (1.91%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.06%) HTTP
2 25 (1.02%) DNS
2 25 (1.02%) Firewall
3 24 (0.98%) 4G
4 23 (0.94%) 5G
5 20 (0.81%) TCP/IP
5 20 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
6 16 (0.65%) Broadband
6 16 (0.65%) Network Security
7 15 (0.61%) 2G
7 15 (0.61%) 3G
7 15 (0.61%) Diameter Protocol
7 15 (0.61%) SIGTRAN
7 15 (0.61%) SS7
8 14 (0.57%) WAN
9 13 (0.53%) LAN
10 12 (0.49%) BGP
11 11 (0.45%) DHCP
11 11 (0.45%) Ethernet VPN
11 11 (0.45%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 148 (6.03%) PostgreSQL
2 127 (5.17%) MongoDB
3 124 (5.05%) Data Warehouse
4 115 (4.68%) Relational Database
5 107 (4.36%) NoSQL
6 97 (3.95%) SQL Server
7 84 (3.42%) Power BI
8 52 (2.12%) Metadata
9 42 (1.71%) DynamoDB
10 40 (1.63%) Data Lake
11 39 (1.59%) Oracle Reports
12 38 (1.55%) MySQL
13 35 (1.43%) Big Data
14 34 (1.38%) Pentaho
15 32 (1.30%) Redis
16 31 (1.26%) Amazon Redshift
17 30 (1.22%) Amazon Athena
18 28 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
18 28 (1.14%) Elasticsearch
18 28 (1.14%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 551 (22.43%) Git
2 405 (16.49%) Jenkins
3 402 (16.37%) JIRA
4 333 (13.56%) GitLab
5 311 (12.66%) Selenium
6 175 (7.13%) Postman
7 164 (6.68%) Cucumber
8 144 (5.86%) JUnit
9 124 (5.05%) Cypress.io
10 108 (4.40%) REST Assured
11 98 (3.99%) JMeter
12 90 (3.66%) SonarQube
13 68 (2.77%) Gatling
14 67 (2.73%) Maven
15 65 (2.65%) Zephyr
16 59 (2.40%) Gradle
16 59 (2.40%) Mockito
17 52 (2.12%) WebDriver
18 38 (1.55%) Bitbucket
19 30 (1.22%) TestNG
General
1 675 (27.48%) Social Skills
2 451 (18.36%) Finance
3 340 (13.84%) Public Sector
4 335 (13.64%) Analytical Skills
5 225 (9.16%) Banking
6 79 (3.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 55 (2.24%) Telecoms
8 42 (1.71%) Front Office
9 36 (1.47%) Investment Banking
10 35 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
11 33 (1.34%) Retail
12 32 (1.30%) Documentation Skills
12 32 (1.30%) Military
13 22 (0.90%) Financial Institution
14 21 (0.86%) Law
15 20 (0.81%) Manufacturing
15 20 (0.81%) Marketing
16 19 (0.77%) Aerospace
17 14 (0.57%) Automotive
17 14 (0.57%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 562 (22.88%) Developer
2 407 (16.57%) Senior
3 247 (10.06%) Lead
4 238 (9.69%) Test Engineer
5 196 (7.98%) Tester
6 184 (7.49%) Java Developer
7 152 (6.19%) Data Engineer
8 127 (5.17%) Software Engineer
9 122 (4.97%) Analyst
10 120 (4.89%) Senior Developer
11 118 (4.80%) DevOps Engineer
12 109 (4.44%) Architect
13 103 (4.19%) Test Automation Engineer
14 98 (3.99%) QA Engineer
15 86 (3.50%) Automation Tester
16 80 (3.26%) Test Analyst
17 79 (3.22%) Full-Stack Developer
18 76 (3.09%) Test Leader
19 74 (3.01%) Automation Engineer
19 74 (3.01%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 429 (17.47%) REST
2 361 (14.70%) Terraform
3 288 (11.73%) Playwright
4 255 (10.38%) RESTful
5 250 (10.18%) Kafka
6 248 (10.10%) Spring
7 227 (9.24%) React
8 215 (8.75%) Spring Boot
9 178 (7.25%) .NET
10 149 (6.07%) HTML
11 141 (5.74%) Node.js
12 128 (5.21%) CSS
13 107 (4.36%) AngularJS
14 96 (3.91%) OAuth
15 81 (3.30%) JSON
16 72 (2.93%) Middleware
17 68 (2.77%) pytest
18 63 (2.57%) OAuth2
19 62 (2.52%) SOAP
20 61 (2.48%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 387 (15.76%) Cloud Native
2 209 (8.51%) Product Ownership
3 179 (7.29%) Distributed Systems
4 103 (4.19%) Enterprise Software
5 78 (3.18%) Onboarding
6 65 (2.65%) AI Agents
7 61 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
8 58 (2.36%) Self-Motivation
9 56 (2.28%) Data Protection Act
10 47 (1.91%) Mobile App
11 37 (1.51%) Virtual Team
12 30 (1.22%) Security Posture
13 28 (1.14%) Data Structures
14 27 (1.10%) Management Information System
15 26 (1.06%) Private Cloud
16 25 (1.02%) Data Centre
16 25 (1.02%) Legacy Applications
17 22 (0.90%) Life Science
18 21 (0.86%) Embedded Systems
19 19 (0.77%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 180 (7.33%) Linux
2 104 (4.23%) Windows
3 101 (4.11%) Unix
4 44 (1.79%) Apple iOS
5 42 (1.71%) Android
6 31 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (1.02%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.29%) VMS
9 6 (0.24%) Mac OS X
9 6 (0.24%) Solaris
10 5 (0.20%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.20%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.16%) AIX
11 4 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
11 4 (0.16%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.16%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,506 (61.32%) CI/CD
2 1,195 (48.66%) Agile
3 907 (36.93%) DevOps
4 483 (19.67%) Microservices
5 477 (19.42%) Problem-Solving
6 474 (19.30%) Continuous Improvement
7 460 (18.73%) Software Engineering
8 438 (17.83%) Infrastructure as Code
9 420 (17.10%) Scrum
10 412 (16.78%) Validation
11 402 (16.37%) AI
12 368 (14.98%) Containerisation
13 365 (14.86%) Test Strategy
14 326 (13.27%) Observability
15 317 (12.91%) TDD
16 303 (12.34%) SDLC
17 293 (11.93%) Software Testing
18 281 (11.44%) Stakeholder Management
19 257 (10.46%) End-to-End Testing
20 244 (9.93%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 689 (28.05%) Java
2 688 (28.01%) Python
3 611 (24.88%) SQL
4 375 (15.27%) JavaScript
5 277 (11.28%) TypeScript
6 208 (8.47%) C#
7 99 (4.03%) PowerShell
8 89 (3.62%) Bash
9 51 (2.08%) Bicep
10 46 (1.87%) C++
10 46 (1.87%) Kotlin
10 46 (1.87%) Scala
11 42 (1.71%) Go
12 33 (1.34%) PL/SQL
13 32 (1.30%) Shell Script
14 26 (1.06%) Apex Code
14 26 (1.06%) Perl
15 23 (0.94%) C
16 19 (0.77%) Ruby
17 17 (0.69%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 796 (32.41%) Security Cleared
2 675 (27.48%) SC Cleared
3 138 (5.62%) Degree
4 132 (5.37%) BPSS Clearance
5 104 (4.23%) ISTQB
6 94 (3.83%) DV Cleared
7 79 (3.22%) Computer Science Degree
8 44 (1.79%) AWS Certification
9 35 (1.43%) Azure Certification
10 27 (1.10%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.65%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 14 (0.57%) CISSP
12 14 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 14 (0.57%) Master's Degree
13 13 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
14 12 (0.49%) ISEB
14 12 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
15 9 (0.37%) DBS Check
16 8 (0.33%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 8 (0.33%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 634 (25.81%) QA
2 218 (8.88%) Accessibility
3 171 (6.96%) Data Quality
4 96 (3.91%) WCAG
5 43 (1.75%) GDPR
6 23 (0.94%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.61%) GRC
8 15 (0.61%) NIST
9 13 (0.53%) NCSC
9 13 (0.53%) SLA
10 8 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.24%) SEPA
11 6 (0.24%) SOC 2
11 6 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.20%) FATCA
12 5 (0.20%) HL7
13 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
13 4 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 503 (20.48%) Docker
2 42 (1.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 36 (1.47%) Active Directory
4 20 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (0.53%) Firmware
6 12 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.29%) VMware NSX
8 6 (0.24%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
10 2 (0.081%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.041%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.041%) KVM
11 1 (0.041%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.041%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 490 (19.95%) Kubernetes
2 138 (5.62%) Ansible
3 132 (5.37%) Grafana
4 89 (3.62%) Prometheus
5 41 (1.67%) Argo
6 28 (1.14%) Kibana
7 24 (0.98%) Progress Chef
8 23 (0.94%) Puppet
9 15 (0.61%) HP ALM
10 14 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 13 (0.53%) Control-M
12 8 (0.33%) Microsoft Intune
13 7 (0.29%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.24%) Dell DRAC
14 6 (0.24%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.24%) Istio
14 6 (0.24%) SCCM
15 5 (0.20%) Packer
15 5 (0.20%) WMI
16 4 (0.16%) Rancher
Vendors
1 235 (9.57%) Microsoft
2 198 (8.06%) Oracle
3 97 (3.95%) Databricks
4 80 (3.26%) Salesforce
5 79 (3.22%) Google
6 69 (2.81%) IBM
7 66 (2.69%) ServiceNow
8 59 (2.40%) Red Hat
8 59 (2.40%) Talend
9 58 (2.36%) Splunk
10 57 (2.32%) SAP
11 51 (2.08%) VMware
12 45 (1.83%) Denodo
13 44 (1.79%) Informatica
14 42 (1.71%) Dynatrace
15 34 (1.38%) Cisco
15 34 (1.38%) MuleSoft
16 31 (1.26%) UiPath
17 23 (0.94%) OpenAI
18 22 (0.90%) Foundry