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 15 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 44 52
Rank change year-on-year -5 +8 -13
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,694 1,408 1,639
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.57% 4.42% 3.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.20% 4.98% 4.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,163 947 1,188
10th Percentile £346 £325 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -7.08%
75th Percentile £588 £606 £630
90th Percentile £695 £725 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +4.49% -4.30% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 6 46
10th Percentile £41.94 £41.88 £37.50
25th Percentile £50.63 £43.75 £55.94
Median hourly rate £63.50 £62.00 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -20.00% +32.64%
75th Percentile £67.00 £76.77 £90.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £82.35 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £74.00 £77.50
% change year-on-year -15.54% -4.52% +32.64%

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 32,585 28,260 37,041
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.84% 88.76% 87.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,582 17,185 24,531
10th Percentile £304 £306 £304
25th Percentile £406 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £742 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,992 898 1,578
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £14.17
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.56 £18.04
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +15.71%
75th Percentile £55.89 £62.24 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £75.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.45 £43.33
% change year-on-year -21.76% -29.73% +46.88%

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 15 January 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 15 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 17 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 15 January 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 1,477 £500 - 1,178
UK excluding London -6 788 £500 +4.49% 1,106
London -1 706 £500 -3.15% 212
Work from Home 0 496 £500 - 506
North of England +9 315 £500 +14.29% 224
Yorkshire -6 158 £513 +13.89% 97
Midlands +17 156 £500 +2.04% 127
South East -21 146 £500 -3.61% 334
West Midlands +18 120 £523 +3.73% 42
North West +4 112 £428 +5.69% 90
South West -10 70 £550 -3.51% 161
North East +19 47 £488 +34.48% 37
East of England -4 47 £570 +42.50% 165
Scotland -23 46 £500 +8.70% 47
East Midlands -5 36 £397 -14.27% 84
Wales -1 23 £513 -1.30% 50
Northern Ireland +5 12 £295 -43.13% 22

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 95 (5.61%) Confluence
2 57 (3.36%) SAS
3 21 (1.24%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.77%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.65%) Apache
7 6 (0.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 6 (0.35%) OpenStack
7 6 (0.35%) Oracle Application Server
8 5 (0.30%) CMS
9 4 (0.24%) Appian
9 4 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.18%) nginx
10 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.12%) Camunda
11 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 15 (0.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (0.53%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.35%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.18%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.12%) Trello
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
7 1 (0.059%) Simulink
7 1 (0.059%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.059%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 18 (1.06%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.30%) Workday HCM
4 4 (0.24%) SAP HR
5 3 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
5 3 (0.18%) SAP BRIM
6 2 (0.12%) Eagle PACE
6 2 (0.12%) Markit EDM
6 2 (0.12%) Maximo
6 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.12%) Shopify
7 1 (0.059%) Adobe Campaign
7 1 (0.059%) Algo Collateral
7 1 (0.059%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.059%) CODA-Financials
7 1 (0.059%) Loan IQ
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle General Ledger
7 1 (0.059%) PORTIA
Cloud Services
1 478 (28.22%) Azure
2 422 (24.91%) AWS
3 263 (15.53%) GitHub
4 196 (11.57%) Azure DevOps
5 167 (9.86%) GCP
6 139 (8.21%) GitHub Actions
7 121 (7.14%) Serverless
8 59 (3.48%) OpenShift
9 57 (3.36%) Power Platform
10 55 (3.25%) AWS Lambda
11 46 (2.72%) Amazon S3
11 46 (2.72%) Azure AKS
12 43 (2.54%) AWS CloudFormation
13 40 (2.36%) Amazon EKS
14 39 (2.30%) SaaS
15 35 (2.07%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 35 (2.07%) Snowflake
16 33 (1.95%) Tricentis Tosca
17 32 (1.89%) Entra ID
18 30 (1.77%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 43 (2.54%) Firewall
2 35 (2.07%) Wireshark
3 30 (1.77%) HTTP
4 26 (1.53%) HTTPS
5 25 (1.48%) SSL
6 22 (1.30%) TCP/IP
7 19 (1.12%) VPN
8 17 (1.00%) Network Security
9 15 (0.89%) SD-WAN
10 12 (0.71%) Ethernet
11 10 (0.59%) FTP
11 10 (0.59%) WAN
12 9 (0.53%) DNS
13 8 (0.47%) VLAN
14 7 (0.41%) AMQP
14 7 (0.41%) Multicast
15 5 (0.30%) Cisco IPT
15 5 (0.30%) MPLS
16 4 (0.24%) DHCP
16 4 (0.24%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 104 (6.14%) PostgreSQL
2 86 (5.08%) NoSQL
3 81 (4.78%) MongoDB
4 68 (4.01%) Relational Database
5 62 (3.66%) SQL Server
6 34 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
7 30 (1.77%) Pentaho
8 27 (1.59%) Power BI
9 26 (1.53%) BigQuery
10 24 (1.42%) DynamoDB
11 20 (1.18%) MySQL
11 20 (1.18%) Oracle Database
12 19 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
12 19 (1.12%) Big Data
13 18 (1.06%) Redis
14 15 (0.89%) Apache Cassandra
14 15 (0.89%) Data Lake
14 15 (0.89%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 13 (0.77%) Azure SQL Database
15 13 (0.77%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 317 (18.71%) Jenkins
2 306 (18.06%) Git
3 301 (17.77%) JIRA
4 266 (15.70%) Selenium
5 251 (14.82%) GitLab
6 152 (8.97%) Cucumber
7 144 (8.50%) Postman
8 108 (6.38%) Cypress.io
9 86 (5.08%) JUnit
10 82 (4.84%) JMeter
11 79 (4.66%) REST Assured
12 42 (2.48%) SonarQube
13 41 (2.42%) Bitbucket
14 36 (2.13%) Gatling
15 35 (2.07%) SpecFlow
16 33 (1.95%) Mockito
17 32 (1.89%) TestRail
18 31 (1.83%) Maven
19 29 (1.71%) WebDriver
20 28 (1.65%) Gradle
General
1 449 (26.51%) Social Skills
2 283 (16.71%) Finance
3 243 (14.34%) Public Sector
4 179 (10.57%) Analytical Skills
5 121 (7.14%) Banking
6 33 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
7 30 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 25 (1.48%) Telecoms
9 24 (1.42%) Investment Banking
10 23 (1.36%) Pharmaceutical
11 19 (1.12%) Front Office
11 19 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
12 16 (0.94%) Financial Institution
12 16 (0.94%) Manufacturing
13 14 (0.83%) Military
14 13 (0.77%) Marketing
15 11 (0.65%) Electronics
16 10 (0.59%) Aerospace
16 10 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
16 10 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 384 (22.67%) Developer
2 287 (16.94%) Senior
3 198 (11.69%) Tester
4 184 (10.86%) Test Engineer
5 154 (9.09%) Lead
6 113 (6.67%) Automation Tester
7 108 (6.38%) Java Developer
8 83 (4.90%) Software Engineer
9 81 (4.78%) Test Automation Engineer
10 71 (4.19%) Data Engineer
11 70 (4.13%) DevOps Engineer
11 70 (4.13%) Senior Developer
12 68 (4.01%) Analyst
12 68 (4.01%) QA Engineer
13 52 (3.07%) Automation Engineer
13 52 (3.07%) Test Leader
13 52 (3.07%) Test Manager
14 48 (2.83%) Test Analyst
15 44 (2.60%) Full-Stack Developer
16 43 (2.54%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 235 (13.87%) REST
2 182 (10.74%) Playwright
3 142 (8.38%) React
4 139 (8.21%) .NET
5 132 (7.79%) Node.js
6 131 (7.73%) RESTful
7 120 (7.08%) Kafka
8 117 (6.91%) Spring
9 110 (6.49%) Spring Boot
10 74 (4.37%) pytest
11 68 (4.01%) JSON
12 63 (3.72%) HTML
13 60 (3.54%) AngularJS
14 58 (3.42%) XML
15 57 (3.36%) CSS
16 56 (3.31%) SOAP
17 51 (3.01%) Web Services
18 47 (2.77%) Jest
18 47 (2.77%) OAuth
19 38 (2.24%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 173 (10.21%) Cloud Native
2 126 (7.44%) Product Ownership
3 56 (3.31%) Distributed Systems
4 44 (2.60%) Mobile App
5 41 (2.42%) Security Posture
6 33 (1.95%) Algorithms
7 31 (1.83%) Data Protection Act
8 29 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
9 28 (1.65%) Onboarding
10 23 (1.36%) Public Cloud
11 22 (1.30%) Data Structures
11 22 (1.30%) Enterprise Software
11 22 (1.30%) Management Information System
12 20 (1.18%) Virtual Team
13 19 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
13 19 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
14 17 (1.00%) NHS
15 16 (0.94%) Derivative
15 16 (0.94%) Genomics
15 16 (0.94%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 158 (9.33%) Linux
2 80 (4.72%) Windows
3 52 (3.07%) Unix
4 38 (2.24%) Android
5 34 (2.01%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.18%) Mac OS X
6 20 (1.18%) Windows Server
7 11 (0.65%) Kali Linux
8 6 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.24%) CentOS
10 3 (0.18%) Mac OS
10 3 (0.18%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.12%) VMS
12 1 (0.059%) FreeRTOS
12 1 (0.059%) Robot Operating System
12 1 (0.059%) Solaris
12 1 (0.059%) Windows Embedded Compact
12 1 (0.059%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 858 (50.65%) CI/CD
2 834 (49.23%) Agile
3 652 (38.49%) DevOps
4 425 (25.09%) Problem-Solving
5 268 (15.82%) Microservices
6 259 (15.29%) Containerisation
7 255 (15.05%) Continuous Improvement
8 245 (14.46%) Test Strategy
9 234 (13.81%) Scrum
10 219 (12.93%) Infrastructure as Code
11 207 (12.22%) Test Scripting
12 203 (11.98%) TDD
13 198 (11.69%) Software Engineering
14 182 (10.74%) AI
15 181 (10.68%) Validation
16 163 (9.62%) SDLC
17 162 (9.56%) Software Testing
18 161 (9.50%) BDD
19 155 (9.15%) API Testing
20 152 (8.97%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 510 (30.11%) Python
2 410 (24.20%) Java
3 326 (19.24%) SQL
4 244 (14.40%) JavaScript
5 217 (12.81%) TypeScript
6 169 (9.98%) C#
7 89 (5.25%) Bash
8 70 (4.13%) PowerShell
9 38 (2.24%) C++
10 35 (2.07%) Go
11 24 (1.42%) Bicep
12 22 (1.30%) PL/SQL
13 21 (1.24%) Kotlin
14 20 (1.18%) Scala
15 18 (1.06%) Ruby
16 14 (0.83%) PHP
17 13 (0.77%) Groovy
18 12 (0.71%) Rust
18 12 (0.71%) Shell Script
18 12 (0.71%) Swift
Qualifications
1 457 (26.98%) Security Cleared
2 350 (20.66%) SC Cleared
3 99 (5.84%) Degree
4 71 (4.19%) ISTQB
5 58 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 53 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
7 50 (2.95%) DV Cleared
8 25 (1.48%) Master's Degree
9 24 (1.42%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 20 (1.18%) AWS Certification
11 19 (1.12%) OSCP
12 16 (0.94%) CISSP
12 16 (0.94%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 15 (0.89%) Cisco Certification
14 14 (0.83%) Azure Certification
14 14 (0.83%) CEH
14 14 (0.83%) MCP
15 13 (0.77%) GPEN
16 12 (0.71%) Oracle Certification
17 11 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 371 (21.90%) QA
2 129 (7.62%) Accessibility
3 76 (4.49%) Data Quality
4 44 (2.60%) WCAG
5 40 (2.36%) GDPR
6 39 (2.30%) NIST
7 27 (1.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 19 (1.12%) NCSC
9 18 (1.06%) EU AI Act
10 15 (0.89%) PCI DSS
11 14 (0.83%) PSD2
12 13 (0.77%) ISO 20022
13 10 (0.59%) NIST 800
14 9 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 9 (0.53%) SEPA
15 8 (0.47%) SLA
16 7 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 6 (0.35%) SOC 2
18 5 (0.30%) PERC
18 5 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 372 (21.96%) Docker
2 32 (1.89%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.41%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 5 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
5 4 (0.24%) Firmware
5 4 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
6 3 (0.18%) QEMU
6 3 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.12%) vSphere
7 2 (0.12%) zsh
8 1 (0.059%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.059%) HDFS
8 1 (0.059%) KVM
8 1 (0.059%) Squid
8 1 (0.059%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.059%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 325 (19.19%) Kubernetes
2 209 (12.34%) Terraform
3 117 (6.91%) Ansible
4 83 (4.90%) Grafana
5 53 (3.13%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.06%) Progress Chef
7 17 (1.00%) Nmap
8 16 (0.94%) CSIRT
9 15 (0.89%) Argo
10 14 (0.83%) HP ALM
10 14 (0.83%) Puppet
10 14 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
11 13 (0.77%) NetBackup
12 7 (0.41%) Nessus
12 7 (0.41%) Podman
13 6 (0.35%) Kibana
14 5 (0.30%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 5 (0.30%) NetIQ Identity Manager
15 4 (0.24%) SCCM
15 4 (0.24%) vRealize
Vendors
1 158 (9.33%) Microsoft
2 151 (8.91%) Oracle
3 67 (3.96%) Splunk
4 62 (3.66%) ServiceNow
5 59 (3.48%) SAP
6 58 (3.42%) Databricks
7 52 (3.07%) Salesforce
8 46 (2.72%) Google
9 30 (1.77%) Denodo
9 30 (1.77%) Talend
10 27 (1.59%) VMware
11 26 (1.53%) Cisco
12 25 (1.48%) Red Hat
13 24 (1.42%) F5
14 21 (1.24%) webMethods
15 19 (1.12%) IBM
16 17 (1.00%) Atlassian
16 17 (1.00%) MuleSoft
16 17 (1.00%) Workday
17 16 (0.94%) Dynatrace