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

6 months to
16 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 1,999 1,324 1,512
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.16% 4.54% 3.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.93% 5.00% 4.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,312 926 988
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 £610 £625
90th Percentile £663 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.26% -5.00% -4.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 22 53
10th Percentile £36.79 £35.58 £51.50
25th Percentile £56.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £66.75 £52.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.14% -16.00% -11.97%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £77.50
90th Percentile - £75.45 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -12.00% -14.24%

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 40,526 26,506 36,695
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.38% 90.99% 86.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,448 17,044 23,613
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,394 1,081 2,430
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.30 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.20 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.41 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +49.60% -21.13% +0.06%
75th Percentile £67.49 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.43 £37.50
% change year-on-year +76.96% -32.19% +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 16 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 16 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 16 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 1,709 £475 -5.00% 620
UK excluding London -6 933 £469 -1.26% 484
London -1 828 £492 -1.60% 220
Work from Home -5 580 £469 -3.45% 606
North of England +10 345 £464 +3.75% 129
Midlands +4 196 £450 - 65
West Midlands +22 171 £463 -7.73% 43
South East -45 163 £505 +0.80% 127
North West +14 154 £466 +4.14% 69
Yorkshire -4 142 £487 +2.53% 25
South West +5 96 £469 -8.54% 66
East of England +9 63 £522 +9.95% 57
North East +7 55 £425 +7.59% 35
Scotland -31 43 £440 -2.22% 23
Wales +3 33 £475 +16.92% 17
East Midlands -35 25 £400 +22.70% 22
Northern Ireland +18 18 £475 +16.28% 9
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
1 162 (8.10%) Confluence
2 43 (2.15%) SAS
3 41 (2.05%) Apache Spark
4 33 (1.65%) Apache Airflow
5 15 (0.75%) 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%) OpenStack
13 1 (0.050%) Solana
Applications
1 28 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.60%) 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 21 (1.05%) Aladdin
2 13 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
4 9 (0.45%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.35%) Findur
6 7 (0.35%) Shopify
7 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
8 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
8 5 (0.25%) Maximo
8 5 (0.25%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.25%) SAP MDG
9 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
9 3 (0.15%) Infor CloudSuite
9 3 (0.15%) Infor LN
9 3 (0.15%) Infor M3
9 3 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
9 3 (0.15%) Workday HCM
10 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
10 2 (0.10%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 570 (28.51%) Azure
2 548 (27.41%) AWS
3 351 (17.56%) GitHub
4 260 (13.01%) Azure DevOps
5 201 (10.06%) GitHub Actions
6 146 (7.30%) GCP
7 129 (6.45%) Serverless
8 82 (4.10%) Amazon S3
8 82 (4.10%) AWS Lambda
9 75 (3.75%) Power Platform
10 56 (2.80%) OpenShift
11 55 (2.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 55 (2.75%) Amazon ECS
12 52 (2.60%) AWS CloudFormation
13 44 (2.20%) Amazon EKS
14 39 (1.95%) Snowflake
15 38 (1.90%) Amazon EC2
16 37 (1.85%) Azure Data Factory
17 35 (1.75%) Azure AKS
18 29 (1.45%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.20%) HTTP
2 20 (1.00%) Firewall
3 14 (0.70%) SAN
4 12 (0.60%) TCP/IP
5 11 (0.55%) FTP
5 11 (0.55%) SSL
6 10 (0.50%) VPN
7 9 (0.45%) Ethernet
8 8 (0.40%) WAN
8 8 (0.40%) Wireshark
9 7 (0.35%) MPLS
9 7 (0.35%) Network Security
9 7 (0.35%) SD-WAN
10 6 (0.30%) VLAN
10 6 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
11 5 (0.25%) 5G
11 5 (0.25%) Multicast
12 4 (0.20%) Modbus
12 4 (0.20%) NAS
12 4 (0.20%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (5.55%) PostgreSQL
2 104 (5.20%) MongoDB
3 98 (4.90%) NoSQL
4 89 (4.45%) SQL Server
5 74 (3.70%) Data Warehouse
5 74 (3.70%) Relational Database
6 53 (2.65%) Power BI
7 42 (2.10%) DynamoDB
8 36 (1.80%) Metadata
8 36 (1.80%) Pentaho
9 34 (1.70%) MySQL
10 33 (1.65%) Big Data
11 26 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
11 26 (1.30%) Oracle Reports
12 25 (1.25%) Redis
12 25 (1.25%) Tableau
13 22 (1.10%) Amazon Aurora
13 22 (1.10%) BigQuery
13 22 (1.10%) Data Lake
14 20 (1.00%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 396 (19.81%) JIRA
2 367 (18.36%) Git
3 339 (16.96%) Jenkins
4 282 (14.11%) GitLab
5 276 (13.81%) Selenium
6 171 (8.55%) Postman
7 153 (7.65%) Cucumber
8 102 (5.10%) JUnit
9 100 (5.00%) REST Assured
10 95 (4.75%) Cypress.io
10 95 (4.75%) JMeter
11 57 (2.85%) WebDriver
12 49 (2.45%) SonarQube
13 48 (2.40%) Zephyr
14 40 (2.00%) Gatling
15 35 (1.75%) Mockito
16 34 (1.70%) Gradle
17 32 (1.60%) Bitbucket
18 31 (1.55%) SpecFlow
19 30 (1.50%) Maven
General
1 517 (25.86%) Social Skills
2 338 (16.91%) Finance
3 287 (14.36%) Public Sector
4 238 (11.91%) Analytical Skills
5 165 (8.25%) Banking
6 41 (2.05%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.85%) Investment Banking
8 36 (1.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 34 (1.70%) Front Office
10 25 (1.25%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
12 19 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
13 18 (0.90%) Legal
13 18 (0.90%) Military
14 17 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
15 16 (0.80%) Aerospace
15 16 (0.80%) Retail
16 13 (0.65%) Financial Institution
17 12 (0.60%) Back Office
17 12 (0.60%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 419 (20.96%) Developer
2 313 (15.66%) Senior
3 231 (11.56%) Test Engineer
4 211 (10.56%) Tester
5 201 (10.06%) Lead
6 117 (5.85%) Data Engineer
7 114 (5.70%) Java Developer
8 110 (5.50%) Analyst
9 106 (5.30%) Test Automation Engineer
10 99 (4.95%) Automation Tester
11 95 (4.75%) Software Engineer
12 84 (4.20%) Architect
13 82 (4.10%) QA Engineer
14 81 (4.05%) DevOps Engineer
15 79 (3.95%) Senior Developer
15 79 (3.95%) Test Leader
16 68 (3.40%) Test Analyst
17 64 (3.20%) Full-Stack Developer
18 58 (2.90%) Test Manager
19 52 (2.60%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 256 (12.81%) Playwright
2 240 (12.01%) REST
3 183 (9.15%) React
4 161 (8.05%) RESTful
5 152 (7.60%) Spring
6 146 (7.30%) Kafka
7 142 (7.10%) .NET
8 130 (6.50%) Node.js
9 128 (6.40%) Spring Boot
10 83 (4.15%) AngularJS
11 76 (3.80%) HTML
12 67 (3.35%) pytest
13 61 (3.05%) CSS
13 61 (3.05%) OAuth
14 53 (2.65%) Jest
15 44 (2.20%) OpenID
15 44 (2.20%) Swagger
16 42 (2.10%) JSON
17 41 (2.05%) Gherkin
18 40 (2.00%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 215 (10.76%) Cloud Native
2 156 (7.80%) Product Ownership
3 103 (5.15%) Distributed Systems
4 51 (2.55%) Data Protection Act
5 50 (2.50%) Mobile App
6 47 (2.35%) Legacy Systems
7 39 (1.95%) Virtual Team
8 37 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
9 35 (1.75%) Onboarding
9 35 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
10 30 (1.50%) NHS
11 26 (1.30%) Algorithms
12 24 (1.20%) Management Information System
13 23 (1.15%) Data Centre
14 21 (1.05%) Derivative
14 21 (1.05%) Distributed Architecture
15 20 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
16 19 (0.95%) Fixed Income
17 17 (0.85%) Data Structures
17 17 (0.85%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 126 (6.30%) Linux
2 79 (3.95%) Windows
3 49 (2.45%) Unix
4 44 (2.20%) Android
5 38 (1.90%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.05%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.65%) 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%) FreeRTOS
16 1 (0.050%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,087 (54.38%) CI/CD
2 927 (46.37%) Agile
3 718 (35.92%) DevOps
4 397 (19.86%) Problem-Solving
5 327 (16.36%) Continuous Improvement
6 323 (16.16%) Microservices
7 297 (14.86%) Scrum
8 295 (14.76%) Test Strategy
9 267 (13.36%) Validation
10 265 (13.26%) Infrastructure as Code
11 260 (13.01%) Containerisation
12 249 (12.46%) Software Engineering
13 241 (12.06%) Observability
14 227 (11.36%) TDD
15 216 (10.81%) AI
16 205 (10.26%) Test Scripting
17 197 (9.85%) Regression Testing
17 197 (9.85%) User Acceptance Testing
18 192 (9.60%) ETL
19 191 (9.55%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 523 (26.16%) Python
2 505 (25.26%) Java
3 443 (22.16%) SQL
4 286 (14.31%) JavaScript
5 257 (12.86%) TypeScript
6 200 (10.01%) C#
7 72 (3.60%) PowerShell
8 68 (3.40%) Bash
9 53 (2.65%) C++
10 42 (2.10%) Kotlin
11 35 (1.75%) PL/SQL
12 33 (1.65%) C
13 32 (1.60%) Scala
14 31 (1.55%) Apex Code
15 29 (1.45%) Ruby
16 26 (1.30%) Bicep
17 24 (1.20%) Go
18 18 (0.90%) Swift
19 14 (0.70%) Groovy
19 14 (0.70%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 622 (31.12%) Security Cleared
2 490 (24.51%) SC Cleared
3 91 (4.55%) ISTQB
4 89 (4.45%) Degree
5 80 (4.00%) BPSS Clearance
6 69 (3.45%) DV Cleared
7 47 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (1.25%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 15 (0.75%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.60%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.55%) SAFe Agilist
12 10 (0.50%) CCNP
12 10 (0.50%) DBS Check
12 10 (0.50%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 9 (0.45%) AWS Certification
13 9 (0.45%) Azure Certification
14 8 (0.40%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 8 (0.40%) CISSP
15 7 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
16 5 (0.25%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 436 (21.81%) QA
2 155 (7.75%) Accessibility
3 121 (6.05%) Data Quality
4 68 (3.40%) WCAG
5 35 (1.75%) GDPR
6 15 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 14 (0.70%) ISO 20022
7 14 (0.70%) 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%) SEPA
12 6 (0.30%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.30%) PSD2
12 6 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 5 (0.25%) FATCA
14 4 (0.20%) HL7
14 4 (0.20%) MiFID
14 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 355 (17.76%) Docker
2 22 (1.10%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (1.05%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.65%) 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%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 336 (16.81%) Kubernetes
2 232 (11.61%) Terraform
3 115 (5.75%) Grafana
4 94 (4.70%) Prometheus
5 83 (4.15%) Ansible
6 28 (1.40%) Argo
7 22 (1.10%) 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 8 (0.40%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.40%) NetBackup
13 7 (0.35%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.25%) Rancher
16 4 (0.20%) Nmap
16 4 (0.20%) Podman
Vendors
1 166 (8.30%) Oracle
2 163 (8.15%) Microsoft
3 83 (4.15%) Salesforce
4 68 (3.40%) Databricks
5 63 (3.15%) Splunk
6 62 (3.10%) ServiceNow
7 56 (2.80%) Talend
8 55 (2.75%) Google
9 49 (2.45%) Red Hat
10 37 (1.85%) Denodo
10 37 (1.85%) SAP
11 29 (1.45%) VMware
12 27 (1.35%) IBM
13 25 (1.25%) HP
14 23 (1.15%) Dynatrace
15 21 (1.05%) Cisco
16 20 (1.00%) Informatica
16 20 (1.00%) MuleSoft
16 20 (1.00%) UiPath
17 16 (0.80%) Blue Prism