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

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 44 51
Rank change year-on-year -5 +7 -11
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,683 1,393 1,653
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.55% 4.41% 3.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.18% 4.97% 4.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,152 934 1,201
10th Percentile £342 £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 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 6 46
10th Percentile £41.94 £41.88 £37.50
25th Percentile £50.31 £43.75 £55.94
Median hourly rate £61.75 £62.00 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.40% -20.00% +36.30%
75th Percentile £66.88 £76.77 £90.00
90th Percentile £67.30 £82.35 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 £74.00 £77.50
% change year-on-year -18.92% -4.52% +36.30%

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 32,475 28,042 37,290
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.84% 88.72% 87.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,506 17,042 24,746
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 £744 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,987 893 1,582
10th Percentile £14.52 £15.62 £14.18
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.50 £18.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +15.71%
75th Percentile £56.00 £62.24 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.39 £74.97 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.45 £43.83
% change year-on-year -21.76% -30.52% +51.12%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 -3 1,466 £500 - 1,138
UK excluding London 0 778 £500 +4.17% 1,067
London -3 704 £500 -3.15% 206
Work from Home -2 495 £500 - 498
North of England +5 314 £500 +14.29% 216
Yorkshire -9 156 £513 +13.89% 94
Midlands +15 152 £500 +2.04% 124
South East -22 142 £500 -3.61% 323
West Midlands +13 116 £523 +3.73% 45
North West +6 113 £428 +6.88% 86
South West -10 70 £550 -3.51% 157
North East +18 47 £488 +34.48% 36
East of England +1 46 £570 +42.50% 156
Scotland -27 46 £500 +7.82% 46
East Midlands -1 36 £397 -14.27% 78
Wales -1 23 £513 -1.30% 48
Northern Ireland +5 12 £295 -43.13% 21

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 (5.64%) Confluence
2 55 (3.27%) SAS
3 22 (1.31%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.77%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.65%) Apache
7 6 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 6 (0.36%) OpenStack
7 6 (0.36%) 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 (0.36%) 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 (1.07%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.24%) SAP HR
4 3 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
4 3 (0.18%) SAP BRIM
4 3 (0.18%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.12%) Eagle PACE
5 2 (0.12%) Markit EDM
5 2 (0.12%) Maximo
5 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.12%) Shopify
6 1 (0.059%) CODA-Financials
6 1 (0.059%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.059%) PORTIA
6 1 (0.059%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.059%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.059%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 474 (28.16%) Azure
2 423 (25.13%) AWS
3 263 (15.63%) GitHub
4 193 (11.47%) Azure DevOps
5 164 (9.74%) GCP
6 139 (8.26%) GitHub Actions
7 123 (7.31%) Serverless
8 59 (3.51%) OpenShift
9 56 (3.33%) AWS Lambda
9 56 (3.33%) Power Platform
10 48 (2.85%) Amazon S3
11 46 (2.73%) Azure AKS
12 44 (2.61%) AWS CloudFormation
13 41 (2.44%) Amazon EKS
14 38 (2.26%) SaaS
15 36 (2.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 35 (2.08%) Snowflake
17 31 (1.84%) Tricentis Tosca
18 30 (1.78%) Azure Functions
18 30 (1.78%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 44 (2.61%) Firewall
2 35 (2.08%) Wireshark
3 30 (1.78%) HTTP
4 26 (1.54%) HTTPS
5 25 (1.49%) SSL
6 22 (1.31%) TCP/IP
7 19 (1.13%) VPN
8 17 (1.01%) 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 (0.48%) VLAN
14 7 (0.42%) AMQP
14 7 (0.42%) 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
1 108 (6.42%) PostgreSQL
2 87 (5.17%) NoSQL
3 82 (4.87%) MongoDB
4 71 (4.22%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.86%) SQL Server
6 35 (2.08%) Data Warehouse
7 29 (1.72%) Pentaho
8 26 (1.54%) Power BI
9 25 (1.49%) BigQuery
10 24 (1.43%) DynamoDB
11 20 (1.19%) Amazon RDS
11 20 (1.19%) Big Data
11 20 (1.19%) MySQL
11 20 (1.19%) Oracle Database
12 19 (1.13%) Redis
13 16 (0.95%) Data Lake
14 15 (0.89%) Apache Cassandra
14 15 (0.89%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 13 (0.77%) Azure SQL Database
15 13 (0.77%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 313 (18.60%) Jenkins
2 307 (18.24%) Git
3 297 (17.65%) JIRA
4 262 (15.57%) Selenium
5 248 (14.74%) GitLab
6 151 (8.97%) Cucumber
7 140 (8.32%) Postman
8 108 (6.42%) Cypress.io
9 87 (5.17%) JUnit
10 79 (4.69%) JMeter
10 79 (4.69%) REST Assured
11 42 (2.50%) SonarQube
12 41 (2.44%) Bitbucket
13 35 (2.08%) SpecFlow
14 34 (2.02%) Gatling
15 33 (1.96%) Mockito
16 32 (1.90%) TestRail
17 30 (1.78%) Maven
18 29 (1.72%) WebDriver
19 28 (1.66%) Gradle
General
1 445 (26.44%) Social Skills
2 285 (16.93%) Finance
3 243 (14.44%) Public Sector
4 180 (10.70%) Analytical Skills
5 122 (7.25%) Banking
6 33 (1.96%) Documentation Skills
7 30 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 25 (1.49%) Telecoms
9 24 (1.43%) Investment Banking
10 23 (1.37%) Pharmaceutical
11 20 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
12 19 (1.13%) Front Office
13 16 (0.95%) Financial Institution
13 16 (0.95%) Manufacturing
14 14 (0.83%) Military
15 13 (0.77%) Marketing
16 11 (0.65%) Electronics
17 10 (0.59%) Aerospace
17 10 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
17 10 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 378 (22.46%) Developer
2 284 (16.87%) Senior
3 195 (11.59%) Tester
4 183 (10.87%) Test Engineer
5 151 (8.97%) Lead
6 114 (6.77%) Automation Tester
7 107 (6.36%) Java Developer
8 83 (4.93%) Software Engineer
9 80 (4.75%) Test Automation Engineer
10 70 (4.16%) Data Engineer
10 70 (4.16%) DevOps Engineer
10 70 (4.16%) Senior Developer
11 68 (4.04%) Analyst
12 67 (3.98%) QA Engineer
13 52 (3.09%) Test Manager
14 51 (3.03%) Automation Engineer
14 51 (3.03%) Test Leader
15 48 (2.85%) Test Analyst
16 44 (2.61%) Full-Stack Developer
17 43 (2.55%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 232 (13.78%) REST
2 177 (10.52%) Playwright
3 143 (8.50%) React
4 138 (8.20%) .NET
5 132 (7.84%) Node.js
6 131 (7.78%) RESTful
7 122 (7.25%) Kafka
8 117 (6.95%) Spring
9 110 (6.54%) Spring Boot
10 73 (4.34%) pytest
11 68 (4.04%) JSON
12 64 (3.80%) HTML
13 61 (3.62%) AngularJS
14 58 (3.45%) CSS
14 58 (3.45%) XML
15 56 (3.33%) SOAP
16 51 (3.03%) Web Services
17 47 (2.79%) Jest
17 47 (2.79%) OAuth
18 38 (2.26%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 171 (10.16%) Cloud Native
2 126 (7.49%) Product Ownership
3 56 (3.33%) Distributed Systems
4 44 (2.61%) Mobile App
5 41 (2.44%) Security Posture
6 33 (1.96%) Algorithms
7 31 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
8 29 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
9 28 (1.66%) Onboarding
10 23 (1.37%) Public Cloud
11 22 (1.31%) Data Structures
11 22 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
11 22 (1.31%) Management Information System
12 20 (1.19%) Greenfield Project
12 20 (1.19%) Virtual Team
13 19 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
14 17 (1.01%) NHS
15 16 (0.95%) Derivative
15 16 (0.95%) Genomics
15 16 (0.95%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 160 (9.51%) Linux
2 79 (4.69%) Windows
3 53 (3.15%) Unix
4 38 (2.26%) Android
5 34 (2.02%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.19%) Mac OS X
6 20 (1.19%) Windows Server
7 11 (0.65%) Kali Linux
8 7 (0.42%) 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
1 855 (50.80%) CI/CD
2 828 (49.20%) Agile
3 649 (38.56%) DevOps
4 423 (25.13%) Problem-Solving
5 268 (15.92%) Microservices
6 257 (15.27%) Containerisation
7 253 (15.03%) Continuous Improvement
8 239 (14.20%) Test Strategy
9 233 (13.84%) Scrum
10 222 (13.19%) Infrastructure as Code
11 206 (12.24%) Test Scripting
12 204 (12.12%) TDD
13 199 (11.82%) Software Engineering
14 180 (10.70%) AI
15 178 (10.58%) Validation
16 163 (9.69%) SDLC
17 159 (9.45%) BDD
17 159 (9.45%) Software Testing
18 154 (9.15%) API Testing
19 152 (9.03%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 510 (30.30%) Python
2 404 (24.00%) Java
3 328 (19.49%) SQL
4 244 (14.50%) JavaScript
5 215 (12.77%) TypeScript
6 167 (9.92%) C#
7 90 (5.35%) Bash
8 71 (4.22%) PowerShell
9 37 (2.20%) C++
10 35 (2.08%) Go
11 24 (1.43%) Bicep
12 22 (1.31%) PL/SQL
13 21 (1.25%) Kotlin
14 18 (1.07%) Ruby
14 18 (1.07%) Scala
15 14 (0.83%) PHP
16 13 (0.77%) Groovy
16 13 (0.77%) Shell Script
17 12 (0.71%) Rust
17 12 (0.71%) Swift
Qualifications
1 449 (26.68%) Security Cleared
2 342 (20.32%) SC Cleared
3 99 (5.88%) Degree
4 71 (4.22%) ISTQB
5 58 (3.45%) Computer Science Degree
6 52 (3.09%) BPSS Clearance
7 50 (2.97%) DV Cleared
8 25 (1.49%) Master's Degree
9 24 (1.43%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 20 (1.19%) AWS Certification
11 19 (1.13%) OSCP
12 16 (0.95%) CISSP
12 16 (0.95%) 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
1 369 (21.93%) QA
2 131 (7.78%) Accessibility
3 76 (4.52%) Data Quality
4 45 (2.67%) WCAG
5 40 (2.38%) GDPR
6 39 (2.32%) NIST
7 28 (1.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 20 (1.19%) NCSC
9 18 (1.07%) 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 7 (0.42%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 6 (0.36%) SLA
16 6 (0.36%) SOC 2
17 5 (0.30%) PERC
17 5 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 371 (22.04%) Docker
2 32 (1.90%) Active Directory
3 5 (0.30%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
3 5 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
4 4 (0.24%) Firmware
4 4 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
5 3 (0.18%) QEMU
5 3 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
5 3 (0.18%) zsh
6 2 (0.12%) vSphere
7 1 (0.059%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.059%) HDFS
7 1 (0.059%) KVM
7 1 (0.059%) Squid
7 1 (0.059%) Time Sharing Option
7 1 (0.059%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 325 (19.31%) Kubernetes
2 210 (12.48%) Terraform
3 118 (7.01%) Ansible
4 85 (5.05%) Grafana
5 54 (3.21%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.07%) Progress Chef
7 17 (1.01%) Nmap
8 16 (0.95%) Argo
8 16 (0.95%) CSIRT
9 14 (0.83%) Puppet
9 14 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.77%) HP ALM
10 13 (0.77%) NetBackup
11 7 (0.42%) Nessus
11 7 (0.42%) Podman
12 6 (0.36%) Kibana
13 5 (0.30%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 5 (0.30%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 4 (0.24%) Rancher
14 4 (0.24%) vRealize
Vendors
1 158 (9.39%) Microsoft
2 152 (9.03%) Oracle
3 67 (3.98%) Splunk
4 59 (3.51%) Databricks
4 59 (3.51%) ServiceNow
5 55 (3.27%) SAP
6 51 (3.03%) Salesforce
7 44 (2.61%) Google
8 29 (1.72%) Denodo
8 29 (1.72%) Talend
9 27 (1.60%) VMware
10 26 (1.54%) Cisco
11 25 (1.49%) Red Hat
12 24 (1.43%) F5
13 21 (1.25%) webMethods
14 19 (1.13%) IBM
15 17 (1.01%) Atlassian
15 17 (1.01%) Dynatrace
15 17 (1.01%) MuleSoft
16 15 (0.89%) Workday