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

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 56
Rank change year-on-year -1 +9 -8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,990 1,335 1,514
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.18% 4.55% 3.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.95% 5.01% 4.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,320 918 992
10th Percentile £331 £330 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -7.27%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £625
90th Percentile £663 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.17% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 19 56
10th Percentile £36.32 £34.05 £50.63
25th Percentile £54.55 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -10.20% -6.84%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £78.75
90th Percentile - £75.84 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -12.00% -

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 40,206 26,654 37,276
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.43% 90.92% 86.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,270 17,186 24,018
10th Percentile £320 £307 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £482 £500
% change year-on-year +1.09% -3.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,411 1,084 2,441
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.64 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.88 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.95
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -19.33% +0.42%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.69 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.50 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.70 £37.50
% change year-on-year +58.84% -26.13% +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 6 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 6 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 6 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 1,693 £475 -5.00% 636
UK excluding London -5 922 £469 -1.17% 511
London +2 823 £496 -3.45% 206
Work from Home 0 577 £475 -5.00% 295
North of England +12 334 £469 +4.11% 152
Midlands +4 191 £450 -2.70% 71
South East -34 173 £505 -0.39% 128
West Midlands +20 166 £463 -6.57% 48
North West +11 147 £463 +2.78% 69
Yorkshire -9 142 £493 +1.03% 35
South West +3 91 £475 -5.00% 62
East of England +6 58 £522 +6.58% 62
North East +8 50 £413 +4.43% 48
Scotland -22 49 £425 -5.29% 27
Wales -3 30 £475 +18.75% 17
East Midlands -31 25 £400 -0.56% 23
Northern Ireland +17 18 £475 +16.28% 5
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
1 157 (7.89%) Confluence
2 43 (2.16%) SAS
3 42 (2.11%) Apache Spark
4 32 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
5 14 (0.70%) Apache
6 13 (0.65%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.40%) Appian
8 7 (0.35%) nginx
8 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.30%) Camunda
10 5 (0.25%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.15%) CMS
12 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.10%) Mendix
14 1 (0.050%) CICS
14 1 (0.050%) OpenStack
14 1 (0.050%) Solana
Applications
1 26 (1.31%) 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 19 (0.95%) Aladdin
2 15 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
4 8 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
5 7 (0.35%) Findur
5 7 (0.35%) Shopify
6 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.25%) Maximo
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%) SAP BRIM
8 3 (0.15%) SAP ERP
8 3 (0.15%) Workday HCM
9 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 576 (28.94%) Azure
2 550 (27.64%) AWS
3 344 (17.29%) GitHub
4 263 (13.22%) Azure DevOps
5 197 (9.90%) GitHub Actions
6 150 (7.54%) GCP
7 138 (6.93%) Serverless
8 88 (4.42%) AWS Lambda
9 84 (4.22%) Amazon S3
10 71 (3.57%) Power Platform
11 60 (3.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 60 (3.02%) OpenShift
12 59 (2.96%) AWS CloudFormation
13 57 (2.86%) Amazon ECS
14 41 (2.06%) Amazon EKS
15 39 (1.96%) Azure AKS
15 39 (1.96%) Snowflake
16 36 (1.81%) Amazon EC2
17 34 (1.71%) Azure Data Factory
18 31 (1.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.31%) HTTP
2 21 (1.06%) Firewall
3 14 (0.70%) SAN
4 12 (0.60%) TCP/IP
5 11 (0.55%) FTP
5 11 (0.55%) SSL
5 11 (0.55%) VPN
6 9 (0.45%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.40%) WAN
7 8 (0.40%) Wireshark
8 7 (0.35%) MPLS
8 7 (0.35%) Network Security
8 7 (0.35%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.30%) 5G
9 6 (0.30%) Multicast
9 6 (0.30%) VLAN
10 5 (0.25%) AMQP
10 5 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
11 4 (0.20%) Modbus
11 4 (0.20%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (5.63%) PostgreSQL
2 101 (5.08%) NoSQL
3 97 (4.87%) MongoDB
4 90 (4.52%) SQL Server
5 71 (3.57%) Data Warehouse
6 70 (3.52%) Relational Database
7 51 (2.56%) Power BI
8 48 (2.41%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.76%) Metadata
9 35 (1.76%) MySQL
10 34 (1.71%) Pentaho
11 33 (1.66%) Big Data
12 27 (1.36%) Oracle Reports
13 25 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
13 25 (1.26%) Redis
13 25 (1.26%) Tableau
14 24 (1.21%) Amazon Athena
14 24 (1.21%) BigQuery
15 23 (1.16%) Amazon Aurora
16 21 (1.06%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 395 (19.85%) JIRA
2 372 (18.69%) Git
3 324 (16.28%) Jenkins
4 277 (13.92%) GitLab
5 271 (13.62%) Selenium
6 163 (8.19%) Postman
7 147 (7.39%) Cucumber
8 101 (5.08%) JUnit
9 97 (4.87%) Cypress.io
10 94 (4.72%) JMeter
11 84 (4.22%) REST Assured
12 59 (2.96%) WebDriver
13 49 (2.46%) SonarQube
14 48 (2.41%) Zephyr
15 35 (1.76%) Gatling
16 34 (1.71%) Mockito
17 33 (1.66%) Gradle
17 33 (1.66%) Maven
18 31 (1.56%) SpecFlow
19 30 (1.51%) Bitbucket
General
1 519 (26.08%) Social Skills
2 345 (17.34%) Finance
3 291 (14.62%) Public Sector
4 229 (11.51%) Analytical Skills
5 161 (8.09%) Banking
6 41 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (1.76%) Investment Banking
8 34 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 33 (1.66%) Front Office
10 27 (1.36%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
12 19 (0.95%) Legal
13 17 (0.85%) Aerospace
13 17 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.80%) Military
15 13 (0.65%) Financial Institution
15 13 (0.65%) Retail
16 12 (0.60%) Back Office
16 12 (0.60%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 424 (21.31%) Developer
2 303 (15.23%) Senior
3 214 (10.75%) Tester
4 211 (10.60%) Test Engineer
5 206 (10.35%) Lead
6 116 (5.83%) Data Engineer
7 112 (5.63%) Java Developer
8 105 (5.28%) Analyst
9 101 (5.08%) Automation Tester
10 100 (5.03%) Test Automation Engineer
11 92 (4.62%) Architect
12 84 (4.22%) QA Engineer
12 84 (4.22%) Software Engineer
12 84 (4.22%) Test Leader
13 80 (4.02%) DevOps Engineer
14 78 (3.92%) Senior Developer
15 66 (3.32%) Test Analyst
15 66 (3.32%) Test Manager
16 63 (3.17%) Full-Stack Developer
17 51 (2.56%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 239 (12.01%) Playwright
2 238 (11.96%) REST
3 173 (8.69%) React
4 154 (7.74%) RESTful
5 150 (7.54%) Spring
6 138 (6.93%) .NET
7 137 (6.88%) Node.js
8 134 (6.73%) Kafka
9 123 (6.18%) Spring Boot
10 86 (4.32%) AngularJS
11 76 (3.82%) HTML
12 68 (3.42%) pytest
13 65 (3.27%) OAuth
14 61 (3.07%) CSS
15 55 (2.76%) Jest
16 47 (2.36%) JSON
17 43 (2.16%) Gherkin
18 42 (2.11%) OpenID
19 40 (2.01%) Swagger
20 39 (1.96%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 218 (10.95%) Cloud Native
2 152 (7.64%) Product Ownership
3 101 (5.08%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (2.41%) Data Protection Act
4 48 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
5 47 (2.36%) Mobile App
6 38 (1.91%) Onboarding
7 35 (1.76%) Virtual Team
8 32 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
9 31 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
10 30 (1.51%) NHS
11 27 (1.36%) Algorithms
12 25 (1.26%) Data Centre
13 24 (1.21%) Management Information System
14 21 (1.06%) Distributed Architecture
15 20 (1.01%) Security Posture
16 19 (0.95%) Derivative
16 19 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
17 18 (0.90%) Data Structures
18 17 (0.85%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 127 (6.38%) Linux
2 80 (4.02%) Windows
3 47 (2.36%) Unix
4 43 (2.16%) Android
5 36 (1.81%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.01%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.65%) Mac OS X
9 11 (0.55%) 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%) CentOS
13 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.15%) AIX
15 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.050%) FreeRTOS
16 1 (0.050%) Robot Operating System
16 1 (0.050%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,065 (53.52%) CI/CD
2 922 (46.33%) Agile
3 719 (36.13%) DevOps
4 395 (19.85%) Problem-Solving
5 321 (16.13%) Continuous Improvement
6 316 (15.88%) Microservices
7 291 (14.62%) Scrum
8 289 (14.52%) Test Strategy
9 271 (13.62%) Infrastructure as Code
10 266 (13.37%) Containerisation
11 265 (13.32%) Validation
12 236 (11.86%) Software Engineering
13 229 (11.51%) Observability
14 219 (11.01%) AI
15 212 (10.65%) TDD
16 200 (10.05%) Regression Testing
16 200 (10.05%) Test Scripting
17 196 (9.85%) Analytics
18 195 (9.80%) SDLC
18 195 (9.80%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 541 (27.19%) Python
2 492 (24.72%) Java
3 441 (22.16%) SQL
4 286 (14.37%) JavaScript
5 263 (13.22%) TypeScript
6 198 (9.95%) C#
7 73 (3.67%) PowerShell
8 70 (3.52%) Bash
9 51 (2.56%) C++
10 36 (1.81%) Kotlin
10 36 (1.81%) PL/SQL
11 33 (1.66%) C
12 32 (1.61%) Scala
13 28 (1.41%) Ruby
14 26 (1.31%) Apex Code
14 26 (1.31%) Bicep
15 23 (1.16%) Go
16 15 (0.75%) Swift
17 14 (0.70%) Groovy
18 13 (0.65%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 620 (31.16%) Security Cleared
2 491 (24.67%) SC Cleared
3 88 (4.42%) ISTQB
4 85 (4.27%) Degree
5 79 (3.97%) BPSS Clearance
6 67 (3.37%) DV Cleared
7 48 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
8 21 (1.06%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 16 (0.80%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.60%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.55%) AWS Certification
11 11 (0.55%) Azure Certification
11 11 (0.55%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 10 (0.50%) CCNP
13 9 (0.45%) DBS Check
13 9 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
13 9 (0.45%) SAFe Agilist
14 7 (0.35%) CISSP
15 6 (0.30%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 6 (0.30%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 448 (22.51%) QA
2 143 (7.19%) Accessibility
3 118 (5.93%) Data Quality
4 60 (3.02%) WCAG
5 40 (2.01%) GDPR
6 19 (0.95%) 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 9 (0.45%) PCI DSS
11 8 (0.40%) NIST
12 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 7 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.35%) SEPA
13 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
13 6 (0.30%) PSD2
14 5 (0.25%) FATCA
15 4 (0.20%) PMO
15 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 355 (17.84%) Docker
2 23 (1.16%) Active Directory
3 20 (1.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.70%) 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%) Time Sharing Option
12 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 344 (17.29%) Kubernetes
2 241 (12.11%) Terraform
3 111 (5.58%) Grafana
4 86 (4.32%) Prometheus
5 82 (4.12%) Ansible
6 29 (1.46%) Argo
7 22 (1.11%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.85%) Puppet
9 15 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (0.70%) 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
12 8 (0.40%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
14 5 (0.25%) Nmap
14 5 (0.25%) Rancher
15 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 170 (8.54%) Microsoft
2 169 (8.49%) Oracle
3 81 (4.07%) Salesforce
4 69 (3.47%) ServiceNow
5 66 (3.32%) Databricks
6 58 (2.91%) Splunk
7 56 (2.81%) Google
8 53 (2.66%) Talend
9 49 (2.46%) Red Hat
10 44 (2.21%) SAP
11 37 (1.86%) Denodo
12 29 (1.46%) IBM
13 28 (1.41%) VMware
14 25 (1.26%) HP
15 23 (1.16%) Cisco
16 21 (1.06%) MuleSoft
17 20 (1.01%) Dynatrace
18 19 (0.95%) UiPath
19 18 (0.90%) Informatica
20 16 (0.80%) Blue Prism