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 25 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 52
Rank change year-on-year -1 +5 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,955 1,337 1,567
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.45% 4.60% 3.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.19% 5.08% 4.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,314 928 1,057
10th Percentile £336 £326 £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 £629 £638
90th Percentile £675 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £476 £484
% change year-on-year -0.21% -1.65% -7.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 7 60
10th Percentile £28.84 £38.81 £44.25
25th Percentile £53.01 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -7.35% +2.08%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.01 £81.56
90th Percentile - £76.18 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +6.84%

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 37,704 26,329 38,303
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.90% 90.53% 86.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,901 17,073 24,878
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.13% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,218 942 2,338
10th Percentile £14.94 £15.20 £12.85
25th Percentile £18.50 £20.75 £16.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.31 £57.75
90th Percentile £75.12 £77.10 £71.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £31.76 £31.50
% change year-on-year -5.54% +0.83% -12.50%

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 25 March 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 25 March 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 25 March 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 -2 1,675 £486 -2.90% 652
UK excluding London -2 894 £475 -0.21% 554
London +1 832 £500 - 172
Work from Home -4 565 £475 -5.00% 330
North of England +5 325 £483 +8.46% 161
Midlands +8 191 £472 -1.67% 77
South East -26 169 £500 -10.71% 145
West Midlands +22 162 £477 -5.41% 52
North West +9 149 £456 +1.39% 81
Yorkshire -10 137 £500 +5.26% 42
South West -1 80 £500 -4.76% 71
East of England -2 59 £585 +22.19% 63
North East +6 42 £425 +11.67% 38
Scotland -15 41 £425 -5.56% 26
Wales +2 33 £505 +26.13% 25
East Midlands -25 29 £400 +8.55% 25
Northern Ireland +16 22 £475 -2.56% 4

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
1 136 (6.96%) Confluence
2 60 (3.07%) SAS
3 33 (1.69%) Apache Spark
4 18 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.66%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.56%) Apache
7 8 (0.41%) Appian
8 6 (0.31%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.31%) nginx
8 6 (0.31%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.26%) CMS
9 5 (0.26%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.20%) Camunda
10 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
11 3 (0.15%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.10%) Mendix
12 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 27 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.61%) MS Visio
4 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.15%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.10%) Simulink
8 1 (0.051%) Mingle
8 1 (0.051%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 24 (1.23%) Aladdin
2 9 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
3 8 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
4 6 (0.31%) Findur
4 6 (0.31%) Loan IQ
5 5 (0.26%) Maximo
5 5 (0.26%) Shopify
5 5 (0.26%) Workday HCM
6 4 (0.20%) SAP HR
7 3 (0.15%) BambooHR
7 3 (0.15%) Infor CloudSuite
7 3 (0.15%) Infor LN
7 3 (0.15%) Infor M3
7 3 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
7 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
8 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
8 2 (0.10%) iTrent
8 2 (0.10%) NetSuite
8 2 (0.10%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 572 (29.26%) Azure
2 506 (25.88%) AWS
3 352 (18.01%) GitHub
4 268 (13.71%) Azure DevOps
5 192 (9.82%) GitHub Actions
6 182 (9.31%) GCP
7 139 (7.11%) Serverless
8 80 (4.09%) Power Platform
9 74 (3.79%) OpenShift
10 72 (3.68%) AWS Lambda
11 70 (3.58%) Amazon S3
12 50 (2.56%) AWS CloudFormation
13 47 (2.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 43 (2.20%) Snowflake
15 42 (2.15%) Azure AKS
16 40 (2.05%) Amazon ECS
17 35 (1.79%) SaaS
18 34 (1.74%) Amazon EKS
18 34 (1.74%) Dynamics 365
19 33 (1.69%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.38%) Firewall
2 25 (1.28%) HTTP
3 17 (0.87%) TCP/IP
3 17 (0.87%) VPN
4 14 (0.72%) SSL
5 13 (0.66%) Network Security
5 13 (0.66%) SD-WAN
5 13 (0.66%) WAN
5 13 (0.66%) Wireshark
6 10 (0.51%) DNS
6 10 (0.51%) FTP
7 9 (0.46%) Ethernet
7 9 (0.46%) HTTPS
7 9 (0.46%) SAN
8 8 (0.41%) MPLS
8 8 (0.41%) Multicast
9 6 (0.31%) 5G
10 5 (0.26%) AMQP
10 5 (0.26%) Cisco IPT
10 5 (0.26%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (5.73%) PostgreSQL
2 89 (4.55%) NoSQL
3 76 (3.89%) SQL Server
4 75 (3.84%) MongoDB
5 60 (3.07%) Relational Database
6 52 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
7 47 (2.40%) Power BI
8 39 (1.99%) DynamoDB
9 31 (1.59%) MySQL
10 30 (1.53%) BigQuery
11 29 (1.48%) Pentaho
12 25 (1.28%) Oracle Database
13 23 (1.18%) Tableau
14 22 (1.13%) Amazon RDS
15 21 (1.07%) Redis
16 20 (1.02%) Big Data
16 20 (1.02%) Metadata
17 19 (0.97%) Amazon Athena
18 18 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
19 17 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 373 (19.08%) JIRA
2 370 (18.93%) Git
3 357 (18.26%) Jenkins
4 288 (14.73%) Selenium
5 284 (14.53%) GitLab
6 169 (8.64%) Cucumber
7 156 (7.98%) Postman
8 115 (5.88%) JUnit
9 109 (5.58%) Cypress.io
10 104 (5.32%) JMeter
11 98 (5.01%) REST Assured
12 52 (2.66%) WebDriver
13 41 (2.10%) SpecFlow
14 39 (1.99%) SonarQube
14 39 (1.99%) Zephyr
15 37 (1.89%) Gatling
16 35 (1.79%) TestRail
17 34 (1.74%) Maven
18 32 (1.64%) Bitbucket
18 32 (1.64%) Mockito
General
1 526 (26.91%) Social Skills
2 333 (17.03%) Finance
3 289 (14.78%) Public Sector
4 208 (10.64%) Analytical Skills
5 155 (7.93%) Banking
6 35 (1.79%) Documentation Skills
7 32 (1.64%) Investment Banking
8 29 (1.48%) Front Office
8 29 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 24 (1.23%) Telecoms
10 21 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
11 19 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
11 19 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
12 18 (0.92%) Military
13 17 (0.87%) Legal
13 17 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
14 15 (0.77%) Aerospace
15 14 (0.72%) Financial Institution
16 10 (0.51%) Electronics
17 9 (0.46%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 414 (21.18%) Developer
2 326 (16.68%) Senior
3 220 (11.25%) Tester
4 217 (11.10%) Test Engineer
5 214 (10.95%) Lead
6 117 (5.98%) Automation Tester
7 99 (5.06%) Java Developer
8 98 (5.01%) Analyst
9 96 (4.91%) Data Engineer
10 94 (4.81%) Test Automation Engineer
11 84 (4.30%) Test Leader
12 82 (4.19%) QA Engineer
13 80 (4.09%) Software Engineer
14 76 (3.89%) DevOps Engineer
14 76 (3.89%) Senior Developer
15 72 (3.68%) Architect
16 65 (3.32%) Test Manager
17 64 (3.27%) Test Analyst
18 59 (3.02%) Automation Engineer
19 49 (2.51%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 251 (12.84%) REST
2 236 (12.07%) Playwright
3 168 (8.59%) React
4 155 (7.93%) RESTful
5 148 (7.57%) Node.js
6 143 (7.31%) Spring
7 139 (7.11%) .NET
8 129 (6.60%) Kafka
9 114 (5.83%) Spring Boot
10 88 (4.50%) pytest
11 77 (3.94%) AngularJS
12 66 (3.38%) HTML
13 62 (3.17%) OAuth
14 57 (2.92%) Jest
15 55 (2.81%) CSS
16 52 (2.66%) Web Services
17 44 (2.25%) JSON
18 43 (2.20%) GraphQL
19 41 (2.10%) Gherkin
19 41 (2.10%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 206 (10.54%) Cloud Native
2 141 (7.21%) Product Ownership
3 99 (5.06%) Distributed Systems
4 49 (2.51%) Mobile App
5 47 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
6 45 (2.30%) Data Protection Act
7 42 (2.15%) Algorithms
8 36 (1.84%) Onboarding
9 35 (1.79%) Virtual Team
10 30 (1.53%) Enterprise Software
11 28 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
12 27 (1.38%) Security Posture
13 26 (1.33%) NHS
14 24 (1.23%) Equities
15 23 (1.18%) Data Structures
15 23 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
16 21 (1.07%) Derivative
16 21 (1.07%) Management Information System
17 20 (1.02%) Distributed Architecture
17 20 (1.02%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 139 (7.11%) Linux
2 88 (4.50%) Windows
3 48 (2.46%) Android
4 39 (1.99%) Apple iOS
5 33 (1.69%) Unix
6 21 (1.07%) Windows Server
7 17 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (0.56%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.46%) Kali Linux
10 8 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.31%) Solaris
12 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
12 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.20%) CentOS
14 3 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
15 2 (0.10%) Windows 10
16 1 (0.051%) FreeRTOS
16 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
16 1 (0.051%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,036 (52.99%) CI/CD
2 917 (46.91%) Agile
3 735 (37.60%) DevOps
4 434 (22.20%) Problem-Solving
5 318 (16.27%) Continuous Improvement
6 306 (15.65%) Test Strategy
7 298 (15.24%) Microservices
8 278 (14.22%) Scrum
9 272 (13.91%) Containerisation
10 253 (12.94%) Validation
11 247 (12.63%) Infrastructure as Code
12 234 (11.97%) AI
13 230 (11.76%) Software Engineering
14 220 (11.25%) Test Scripting
15 218 (11.15%) Analytics
16 216 (11.05%) TDD
17 215 (11.00%) Observability
18 208 (10.64%) Regression Testing
19 200 (10.23%) SDLC
20 193 (9.87%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 607 (31.05%) Python
2 468 (23.94%) Java
3 408 (20.87%) SQL
4 294 (15.04%) JavaScript
5 272 (13.91%) TypeScript
6 207 (10.59%) C#
7 83 (4.25%) PowerShell
8 80 (4.09%) Bash
9 50 (2.56%) C++
10 31 (1.59%) Kotlin
11 30 (1.53%) C
12 29 (1.48%) Go
12 29 (1.48%) Ruby
13 26 (1.33%) Bicep
13 26 (1.33%) PL/SQL
14 24 (1.23%) Apex Code
14 24 (1.23%) Scala
15 18 (0.92%) Swift
16 17 (0.87%) Groovy
17 15 (0.77%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 568 (29.05%) Security Cleared
2 438 (22.40%) SC Cleared
3 101 (5.17%) Degree
4 95 (4.86%) ISTQB
5 77 (3.94%) BPSS Clearance
6 58 (2.97%) Computer Science Degree
6 58 (2.97%) DV Cleared
7 35 (1.79%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 24 (1.23%) Master's Degree
9 14 (0.72%) AWS Certification
9 14 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
10 13 (0.66%) Azure Certification
11 12 (0.61%) OSCP
12 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
13 10 (0.51%) CEH
13 10 (0.51%) CISSP
13 10 (0.51%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 9 (0.46%) CCNP
14 9 (0.46%) ISEB
15 8 (0.41%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 443 (22.66%) QA
2 149 (7.62%) Accessibility
3 110 (5.63%) Data Quality
4 54 (2.76%) WCAG
5 40 (2.05%) GDPR
6 29 (1.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 23 (1.18%) NIST
8 16 (0.82%) NCSC
8 16 (0.82%) SLA
9 14 (0.72%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 11 (0.56%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.51%) Def Stans
11 10 (0.51%) EU AI Act
11 10 (0.51%) ISO 20022
11 10 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.41%) PSD2
13 6 (0.31%) HIPAA
13 6 (0.31%) SEPA
13 6 (0.31%) SOC 2
14 5 (0.26%) MiFID
System Software
1 381 (19.49%) Docker
2 30 (1.53%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.51%) Firmware
5 8 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.36%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 5 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.10%) SRDF
11 1 (0.051%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.051%) HDFS
11 1 (0.051%) KVM
11 1 (0.051%) Squid
11 1 (0.051%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.051%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 360 (18.41%) Kubernetes
2 223 (11.41%) Terraform
3 115 (5.88%) Grafana
4 101 (5.17%) Ansible
5 87 (4.45%) Prometheus
6 25 (1.28%) Argo
6 25 (1.28%) HP ALM
7 22 (1.13%) Puppet
8 16 (0.82%) Progress Chef
9 15 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.66%) NetBackup
11 12 (0.61%) Nmap
12 10 (0.51%) HP Quality Center
13 9 (0.46%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 9 (0.46%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 7 (0.36%) Kibana
14 7 (0.36%) Podman
15 6 (0.31%) Rancher
16 5 (0.26%) Dell DRAC
17 4 (0.20%) Istio
Vendors
1 170 (8.70%) Microsoft
2 149 (7.62%) Oracle
3 74 (3.79%) Databricks
4 72 (3.68%) Salesforce
5 65 (3.32%) Google
6 61 (3.12%) ServiceNow
7 59 (3.02%) Splunk
8 50 (2.56%) SAP
9 46 (2.35%) Red Hat
10 33 (1.69%) Talend
11 28 (1.43%) HP
12 27 (1.38%) VMware
13 25 (1.28%) Denodo
13 25 (1.28%) IBM
14 23 (1.18%) Cisco
15 20 (1.02%) Dynatrace
16 16 (0.82%) MuleSoft
16 16 (0.82%) Workday
17 15 (0.77%) UiPath
18 14 (0.72%) OpenAI