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

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 46 55
Rank change year-on-year -1 +9 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,991 1,310 1,509
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.12% 4.55% 3.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.88% 4.99% 4.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,298 919 994
10th Percentile £331 £325 £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 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £728 £720
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £473 £500
% change year-on-year -0.85% -5.40% -4.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 22 53
10th Percentile £36.32 £35.58 £51.50
25th Percentile £57.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.57% -12.50% -13.51%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £74.50
90th Percentile £74.00 £75.45 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -12.00% -4.58%

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 40,767 26,234 36,547
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.37% 91.05% 86.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,562 16,839 23,562
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £497 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.66% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,395 1,067 2,440
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.36 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.96 £18.30 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.18 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +50.82% -21.82% +0.13%
75th Percentile £67.50 £59.95 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -33.82% +8.57%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 0 1,698 £475 -5.00% 655
UK excluding London -7 943 £469 -0.85% 533
London +1 808 £500 -2.20% 233
Work from Home -2 572 £475 -3.46% 358
North of England +8 344 £465 +3.33% 135
Midlands +5 192 £459 +8.00% 59
West Midlands +33 171 £463 -4.24% 45
South East -38 171 £500 - 143
North West +11 151 £468 +3.89% 76
Yorkshire -6 146 £487 +2.53% 26
South West +19 99 £475 -5.00% 71
East of England +13 69 £522 +10.82% 66
North East +2 55 £425 +6.25% 33
Scotland -34 43 £440 -3.30% 28
Wales -1 31 £475 +16.92% 20
East Midlands -39 21 £400 +45.45% 14
Northern Ireland +17 19 £475 +16.28% 22
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
1 160 (8.04%) Confluence
2 41 (2.06%) SAS
3 38 (1.91%) Apache Spark
4 35 (1.76%) Apache Airflow
5 14 (0.70%) Apache
6 11 (0.55%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.40%) Appian
8 7 (0.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 7 (0.35%) nginx
8 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.30%) Camunda
9 6 (0.30%) CMS
10 4 (0.20%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.10%) Mendix
13 1 (0.050%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.050%) Jupyter
13 1 (0.050%) Solana
Applications
1 26 (1.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.55%) MS Visio
4 10 (0.50%) 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 21 (1.05%) Aladdin
2 14 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
4 9 (0.45%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.40%) Findur
5 8 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.30%) Shopify
7 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.25%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.25%) SAP ERP
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%) Maximo
8 3 (0.15%) Workday HCM
9 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.10%) iTrent
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 566 (28.43%) Azure
2 549 (27.57%) AWS
3 347 (17.43%) GitHub
4 261 (13.11%) Azure DevOps
5 197 (9.89%) GitHub Actions
6 146 (7.33%) GCP
7 134 (6.73%) Serverless
8 84 (4.22%) AWS Lambda
9 80 (4.02%) Amazon S3
10 77 (3.87%) Power Platform
11 56 (2.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 55 (2.76%) OpenShift
13 52 (2.61%) Amazon ECS
14 48 (2.41%) AWS CloudFormation
15 42 (2.11%) Amazon EKS
16 39 (1.96%) Azure Data Factory
17 38 (1.91%) Amazon EC2
17 38 (1.91%) Snowflake
18 30 (1.51%) Azure AKS
19 29 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.21%) HTTP
2 22 (1.10%) Firewall
3 15 (0.75%) SAN
4 11 (0.55%) Network Security
4 11 (0.55%) SSL
4 11 (0.55%) TCP/IP
4 11 (0.55%) VPN
5 8 (0.40%) MPLS
5 8 (0.40%) WAN
6 7 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.30%) Ethernet
7 6 (0.30%) VLAN
7 6 (0.30%) Wireshark
8 5 (0.25%) 5G
8 5 (0.25%) FTP
8 5 (0.25%) Multicast
9 4 (0.20%) BGP
9 4 (0.20%) NAS
9 4 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
9 4 (0.20%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 107 (5.37%) PostgreSQL
2 105 (5.27%) MongoDB
3 99 (4.97%) NoSQL
4 87 (4.37%) SQL Server
5 74 (3.72%) Data Warehouse
6 71 (3.57%) Relational Database
7 54 (2.71%) Power BI
8 45 (2.26%) DynamoDB
9 39 (1.96%) Metadata
10 33 (1.66%) Pentaho
11 32 (1.61%) Big Data
11 32 (1.61%) MySQL
12 27 (1.36%) Oracle Reports
13 26 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
14 25 (1.26%) Tableau
15 23 (1.16%) Redis
16 22 (1.10%) Data Lake
17 21 (1.05%) Amazon Athena
17 21 (1.05%) Amazon Aurora
18 20 (1.00%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 386 (19.39%) JIRA
2 353 (17.73%) Git
3 335 (16.83%) Jenkins
4 281 (14.11%) Selenium
5 274 (13.76%) GitLab
6 166 (8.34%) Postman
7 146 (7.33%) Cucumber
8 108 (5.42%) REST Assured
9 101 (5.07%) JUnit
10 99 (4.97%) Cypress.io
10 99 (4.97%) JMeter
11 57 (2.86%) WebDriver
12 49 (2.46%) Zephyr
13 48 (2.41%) SonarQube
14 41 (2.06%) Gatling
15 35 (1.76%) Gradle
15 35 (1.76%) Mockito
16 33 (1.66%) SpecFlow
17 30 (1.51%) Bitbucket
17 30 (1.51%) Maven
General
1 520 (26.12%) Social Skills
2 336 (16.88%) Finance
3 278 (13.96%) Public Sector
4 238 (11.95%) Analytical Skills
5 167 (8.39%) Banking
6 43 (2.16%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.86%) Investment Banking
8 36 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 35 (1.76%) Front Office
10 25 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.10%) Telecoms
12 17 (0.85%) Legal
12 17 (0.85%) Military
12 17 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
13 16 (0.80%) Aerospace
13 16 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
13 16 (0.80%) Retail
14 13 (0.65%) Back Office
14 13 (0.65%) Financial Institution
14 13 (0.65%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 407 (20.44%) Developer
2 305 (15.32%) Senior
3 221 (11.10%) Test Engineer
4 210 (10.55%) Lead
5 208 (10.45%) Tester
6 113 (5.68%) Data Engineer
7 110 (5.52%) Analyst
8 107 (5.37%) Java Developer
9 100 (5.02%) Test Automation Engineer
10 98 (4.92%) Software Engineer
11 96 (4.82%) Automation Tester
12 89 (4.47%) Architect
12 89 (4.47%) DevOps Engineer
13 84 (4.22%) Test Leader
14 81 (4.07%) QA Engineer
15 77 (3.87%) Senior Developer
16 68 (3.42%) Test Analyst
17 64 (3.21%) Full-Stack Developer
18 59 (2.96%) Test Manager
19 56 (2.81%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (12.56%) Playwright
2 235 (11.80%) REST
3 180 (9.04%) React
4 158 (7.94%) RESTful
5 143 (7.18%) Spring
6 140 (7.03%) .NET
6 140 (7.03%) Kafka
7 123 (6.18%) Node.js
8 120 (6.03%) Spring Boot
9 77 (3.87%) AngularJS
10 75 (3.77%) HTML
11 62 (3.11%) pytest
12 61 (3.06%) OAuth
13 59 (2.96%) CSS
14 51 (2.56%) Jest
15 45 (2.26%) Swagger
16 44 (2.21%) Gherkin
16 44 (2.21%) OpenID
17 42 (2.11%) JSON
18 40 (2.01%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 217 (10.90%) Cloud Native
2 154 (7.73%) Product Ownership
3 100 (5.02%) Distributed Systems
4 52 (2.61%) Data Protection Act
5 48 (2.41%) Mobile App
6 47 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
7 39 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
7 39 (1.96%) Virtual Team
8 38 (1.91%) Self-Motivation
9 36 (1.81%) Onboarding
10 30 (1.51%) NHS
11 25 (1.26%) Algorithms
12 24 (1.21%) Management Information System
13 23 (1.16%) Data Centre
13 23 (1.16%) Distributed Architecture
14 22 (1.10%) Derivative
15 21 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
16 18 (0.90%) Embedded Systems
16 18 (0.90%) Fixed Income
17 17 (0.85%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 126 (6.33%) Linux
2 77 (3.87%) Windows
3 51 (2.56%) Unix
4 43 (2.16%) Android
5 37 (1.86%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.05%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.60%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.45%) 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%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,077 (54.09%) CI/CD
2 911 (45.76%) Agile
3 722 (36.26%) DevOps
4 380 (19.09%) Problem-Solving
5 328 (16.47%) Continuous Improvement
6 319 (16.02%) Microservices
7 303 (15.22%) Test Strategy
8 285 (14.31%) Scrum
9 269 (13.51%) Validation
10 261 (13.11%) Infrastructure as Code
11 256 (12.86%) Software Engineering
12 251 (12.61%) Containerisation
13 245 (12.31%) Observability
14 226 (11.35%) TDD
15 212 (10.65%) AI
16 199 (9.99%) Test Scripting
17 196 (9.84%) API Testing
18 195 (9.79%) User Acceptance Testing
19 193 (9.69%) Regression Testing
20 192 (9.64%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 516 (25.92%) Python
2 497 (24.96%) Java
3 445 (22.35%) SQL
4 285 (14.31%) JavaScript
5 243 (12.20%) TypeScript
6 204 (10.25%) C#
7 74 (3.72%) PowerShell
8 66 (3.31%) Bash
9 53 (2.66%) C++
10 44 (2.21%) Kotlin
11 37 (1.86%) PL/SQL
12 34 (1.71%) Scala
13 32 (1.61%) C
14 31 (1.56%) Apex Code
15 26 (1.31%) Bicep
16 24 (1.21%) Go
17 21 (1.05%) Ruby
18 19 (0.95%) Swift
19 14 (0.70%) Shell Script
20 13 (0.65%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 615 (30.89%) Security Cleared
2 488 (24.51%) SC Cleared
3 91 (4.57%) ISTQB
4 86 (4.32%) Degree
5 82 (4.12%) BPSS Clearance
6 70 (3.52%) DV Cleared
7 41 (2.06%) Computer Science Degree
8 26 (1.31%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 13 (0.65%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.60%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.55%) CCNP
12 10 (0.50%) DBS Check
12 10 (0.50%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 10 (0.50%) SAFe Agilist
13 9 (0.45%) AWS Certification
14 8 (0.40%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 8 (0.40%) Azure Certification
15 7 (0.35%) CISSP
16 6 (0.30%) Microsoft Certification
17 5 (0.25%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 428 (21.50%) QA
2 152 (7.63%) Accessibility
3 115 (5.78%) Data Quality
4 68 (3.42%) WCAG
5 34 (1.71%) GDPR
6 15 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.75%) SLA
7 12 (0.60%) ISO 20022
8 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
9 9 (0.45%) NCSC
10 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 7 (0.35%) NIST
11 6 (0.30%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.25%) FATCA
12 5 (0.25%) SEPA
13 4 (0.20%) HL7
13 4 (0.20%) MiFID
13 4 (0.20%) PSD2
13 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 344 (17.28%) Docker
2 25 (1.26%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (1.00%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.65%) Firmware
5 11 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
9 4 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.10%) Hyper-V
11 2 (0.10%) SRDF
12 1 (0.050%) HDFS
12 1 (0.050%) KVM
12 1 (0.050%) Squid
12 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 331 (16.62%) Kubernetes
2 229 (11.50%) Terraform
3 111 (5.58%) Grafana
4 92 (4.62%) Prometheus
5 89 (4.47%) Ansible
6 28 (1.41%) Argo
7 21 (1.05%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.85%) Puppet
9 14 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.65%) Kibana
11 10 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 9 (0.45%) Dell DRAC
13 8 (0.40%) NetBackup
14 7 (0.35%) Kustomize
14 7 (0.35%) Progress Chef
15 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
16 4 (0.20%) Nmap
16 4 (0.20%) Rancher
Vendors
1 161 (8.09%) Oracle
2 158 (7.94%) Microsoft
3 84 (4.22%) Salesforce
4 63 (3.16%) Databricks
5 62 (3.11%) ServiceNow
6 61 (3.06%) Splunk
7 55 (2.76%) Talend
8 52 (2.61%) Google
9 49 (2.46%) Red Hat
10 36 (1.81%) Denodo
11 34 (1.71%) SAP
12 31 (1.56%) VMware
13 28 (1.41%) IBM
14 24 (1.21%) HP
15 21 (1.05%) Dynatrace
15 21 (1.05%) UiPath
16 20 (1.00%) Informatica
16 20 (1.00%) MuleSoft
17 19 (0.95%) Cisco
18 16 (0.80%) Blue Prism