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 13 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 48 43
Rank change year-on-year +6 -5 +8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,578 1,526 1,581
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.69% 4.63% 4.22%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.54% 5.12% 4.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,676 1,056 1,063
10th Percentile £325 £320 £338
25th Percentile £405 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £669 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £483 £494
% change year-on-year -6.83% -2.23% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 34 15
10th Percentile £40.00 £36.75 £41.75
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.63 £45.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £52.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% -8.70% -23.33%
75th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £77.65 £72.60 £80.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.25 £60.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +15.42% +4.35% -20.69%

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 46,512 29,792 32,258
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.69% 90.47% 86.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,938 18,529 19,417
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £737 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,382 1,881 1,250
10th Percentile £13.63 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.03
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -10.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £42.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.54 £65.14 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £40.33
% change year-on-year +68.43% -44.79% -7.83%

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 13 October 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 13 October 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 13 October 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 +8 2,166 £475 -5.00% 2,385
UK excluding London 0 1,260 £450 -6.83% 1,371
London +9 982 £500 -2.20% 1,219
Work from Home 0 703 £480 -2.44% 1,053
North of England -5 435 £450 -5.26% 363
Midlands +15 283 £450 -2.96% 145
West Midlands +19 268 £450 -13.46% 103
South East -7 237 £450 -5.26% 299
Yorkshire -6 182 £463 -9.76% 121
North West -13 160 £492 +23.00% 183
South West -6 111 £450 -16.67% 149
Scotland -11 110 £473 -5.50% 187
North East +1 98 £425 -11.69% 59
East of England +10 93 £367 -22.74% 128
Wales -9 24 £413 -13.16% 33
East Midlands -39 15 £418 +15.97% 42
Northern Ireland +2 7 £513 +345.65% 73
Channel Islands - 1 £450 -

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
1 205 (7.95%) Confluence
2 65 (2.52%) Apache Airflow
3 53 (2.06%) Apache Spark
4 49 (1.90%) SharePoint
5 39 (1.51%) SAS
6 38 (1.47%) Apache
7 17 (0.66%) CMS
8 14 (0.54%) Camunda
8 14 (0.54%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.27%) Jupyter
9 7 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
9 7 (0.27%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.23%) nginx
11 5 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.16%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.16%) ColdFusion
12 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
12 4 (0.16%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.12%) Kentico
14 2 (0.078%) Mule
Applications
1 23 (0.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.27%) Chatbot
5 6 (0.23%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.12%) Mingle
6 3 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 2 (0.078%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.039%) Simulink
8 1 (0.039%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 31 (1.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (1.16%) Dynamics CRM
3 12 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.39%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.39%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.27%) FLEXCUBE
5 7 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.27%) SAP GRC
6 6 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.23%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.16%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.12%) Finacle
9 2 (0.078%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.078%) SAP FI
9 2 (0.078%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.078%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.078%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 1 (0.039%) Infor CloudSuite
10 1 (0.039%) Infor LN
10 1 (0.039%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 817 (31.69%) AWS
2 774 (30.02%) Azure
3 475 (18.43%) GitHub
4 364 (14.12%) Azure DevOps
5 283 (10.98%) GitHub Actions
6 209 (8.11%) GCP
7 187 (7.25%) Serverless
8 142 (5.51%) AWS Lambda
9 126 (4.89%) Power Platform
10 118 (4.58%) Amazon S3
11 90 (3.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 90 (3.49%) GitHub Copilot
12 80 (3.10%) OpenShift
13 77 (2.99%) Amazon EKS
14 75 (2.91%) Amazon ECS
14 75 (2.91%) AWS CloudFormation
15 59 (2.29%) Snowflake
16 58 (2.25%) dbt
17 55 (2.13%) Dynamics 365
18 53 (2.06%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 35 (1.36%) DNS
2 30 (1.16%) Firewall
3 29 (1.12%) TCP/IP
4 27 (1.05%) HTTP
5 25 (0.97%) 4G
5 25 (0.97%) Broadband
6 24 (0.93%) Wi-Fi
7 22 (0.85%) 5G
8 21 (0.81%) Network Security
9 18 (0.70%) BGP
10 17 (0.66%) WAN
11 14 (0.54%) 2G
11 14 (0.54%) 3G
11 14 (0.54%) Diameter Protocol
11 14 (0.54%) SIGTRAN
11 14 (0.54%) SS7
12 13 (0.50%) DHCP
12 13 (0.50%) LAN
13 12 (0.47%) IPv4
13 12 (0.47%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 167 (6.48%) PostgreSQL
2 131 (5.08%) MongoDB
3 125 (4.85%) Relational Database
4 124 (4.81%) Data Warehouse
5 111 (4.31%) SQL Server
6 107 (4.15%) NoSQL
7 88 (3.41%) Power BI
8 62 (2.40%) Metadata
9 45 (1.75%) Data Lake
10 44 (1.71%) MySQL
11 43 (1.67%) DynamoDB
12 37 (1.44%) Oracle Reports
13 36 (1.40%) Big Data
13 36 (1.40%) Pentaho
14 34 (1.32%) Oracle Database
15 33 (1.28%) Amazon Athena
15 33 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
15 33 (1.28%) Amazon Redshift
16 32 (1.24%) Redis
17 27 (1.05%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 605 (23.47%) Git
2 428 (16.60%) Jenkins
3 415 (16.10%) JIRA
4 356 (13.81%) GitLab
5 325 (12.61%) Selenium
6 193 (7.49%) Cucumber
7 179 (6.94%) Postman
8 168 (6.52%) JUnit
9 132 (5.12%) Cypress.io
10 116 (4.50%) REST Assured
11 105 (4.07%) JMeter
12 90 (3.49%) SonarQube
13 76 (2.95%) Gatling
14 73 (2.83%) Maven
15 68 (2.64%) Mockito
15 68 (2.64%) Zephyr
16 66 (2.56%) Gradle
17 50 (1.94%) WebDriver
18 45 (1.75%) Bitbucket
19 34 (1.32%) TestNG
General
1 729 (28.28%) Social Skills
2 490 (19.01%) Finance
3 380 (14.74%) Analytical Skills
4 350 (13.58%) Public Sector
5 251 (9.74%) Banking
6 80 (3.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 62 (2.40%) Telecoms
8 43 (1.67%) Front Office
8 43 (1.67%) Investment Banking
9 37 (1.44%) Military
10 36 (1.40%) Retail
11 35 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
12 29 (1.12%) Documentation Skills
13 22 (0.85%) Financial Institution
13 22 (0.85%) Marketing
14 21 (0.81%) Law
14 21 (0.81%) Manufacturing
15 20 (0.78%) Back Office
16 19 (0.74%) Aerospace
17 17 (0.66%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 589 (22.85%) Developer
2 431 (16.72%) Senior
3 274 (10.63%) Lead
4 245 (9.50%) Test Engineer
5 188 (7.29%) Tester
6 187 (7.25%) Java Developer
7 170 (6.59%) Data Engineer
8 129 (5.00%) Analyst
8 129 (5.00%) Software Engineer
9 128 (4.97%) Senior Developer
10 123 (4.77%) Architect
11 109 (4.23%) DevOps Engineer
12 108 (4.19%) QA Engineer
13 101 (3.92%) Test Automation Engineer
14 91 (3.53%) Test Analyst
15 86 (3.34%) Automation Tester
16 82 (3.18%) Automation Engineer
16 82 (3.18%) Full-Stack Developer
17 81 (3.14%) Test Leader
18 76 (2.95%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 471 (18.27%) REST
2 377 (14.62%) Terraform
3 310 (12.02%) Playwright
4 287 (11.13%) RESTful
5 271 (10.51%) Kafka
6 270 (10.47%) Spring
7 240 (9.31%) React
8 230 (8.92%) Spring Boot
9 192 (7.45%) .NET
10 162 (6.28%) HTML
11 144 (5.59%) Node.js
12 135 (5.24%) CSS
13 113 (4.38%) AngularJS
14 112 (4.34%) OAuth
15 95 (3.69%) JSON
16 80 (3.10%) Middleware
17 70 (2.72%) OAuth2
18 69 (2.68%) XML
19 66 (2.56%) SOAP
19 66 (2.56%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 405 (15.71%) Cloud Native
2 234 (9.08%) Product Ownership
3 193 (7.49%) Distributed Systems
4 122 (4.73%) Enterprise Software
5 89 (3.45%) Onboarding
6 79 (3.06%) AI Agents
7 67 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
8 58 (2.25%) Mobile App
8 58 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
9 57 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
10 38 (1.47%) Data Structures
11 36 (1.40%) Security Posture
12 34 (1.32%) Private Cloud
13 29 (1.12%) Management Information System
13 29 (1.12%) Virtual Team
14 27 (1.05%) Data Centre
15 25 (0.97%) Life Science
16 24 (0.93%) Legacy Applications
17 22 (0.85%) Distributed Architecture
18 20 (0.78%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 185 (7.18%) Linux
2 113 (4.38%) Windows
3 97 (3.76%) Unix
4 53 (2.06%) Apple iOS
5 47 (1.82%) Android
6 30 (1.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (0.97%) Windows Server
8 9 (0.35%) macOS
8 9 (0.35%) VMS
9 7 (0.27%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.23%) AIX
10 6 (0.23%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.19%) Windows 7
11 5 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
11 5 (0.19%) zOS
12 4 (0.16%) Solaris
13 3 (0.12%) CentOS
14 2 (0.078%) Embedded Linux
14 2 (0.078%) Windows Server 2008
14 2 (0.078%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,629 (63.19%) CI/CD
2 1,257 (48.76%) Agile
3 963 (37.35%) DevOps
4 526 (20.40%) Microservices
5 514 (19.94%) Continuous Improvement
6 501 (19.43%) Problem-Solving
7 496 (19.24%) Software Engineering
8 452 (17.53%) Validation
9 451 (17.49%) Infrastructure as Code
10 441 (17.11%) AI
11 434 (16.83%) Scrum
12 387 (15.01%) Containerisation
13 370 (14.35%) Test Strategy
14 346 (13.42%) Observability
15 335 (12.99%) TDD
16 332 (12.88%) Stakeholder Management
17 313 (12.14%) SDLC
18 311 (12.06%) Software Testing
19 271 (10.51%) Deployment Automation
19 271 (10.51%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 745 (28.90%) Python
2 733 (28.43%) Java
3 675 (26.18%) SQL
4 403 (15.63%) JavaScript
5 304 (11.79%) TypeScript
6 225 (8.73%) C#
7 103 (4.00%) PowerShell
8 93 (3.61%) Bash
9 60 (2.33%) Bicep
10 56 (2.17%) Kotlin
11 51 (1.98%) Scala
12 47 (1.82%) C++
13 45 (1.75%) Go
14 34 (1.32%) Shell Script
15 31 (1.20%) Perl
15 31 (1.20%) PL/SQL
16 22 (0.85%) Apex Code
17 20 (0.78%) Swift
18 19 (0.74%) Ruby
19 18 (0.70%) C
Qualifications
1 818 (31.73%) Security Cleared
2 692 (26.84%) SC Cleared
3 159 (6.17%) BPSS Clearance
4 148 (5.74%) Degree
5 118 (4.58%) ISTQB
6 96 (3.72%) DV Cleared
7 84 (3.26%) Computer Science Degree
8 51 (1.98%) AWS Certification
9 40 (1.55%) Azure Certification
10 37 (1.44%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.62%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 16 (0.62%) ISEB
12 14 (0.54%) CISSP
12 14 (0.54%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 14 (0.54%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.47%) Cisco Certification
13 12 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
14 10 (0.39%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 8 (0.31%) SAFe Agilist
16 7 (0.27%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 672 (26.07%) QA
2 242 (9.39%) Accessibility
3 184 (7.14%) Data Quality
4 102 (3.96%) WCAG
5 47 (1.82%) GDPR
6 25 (0.97%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 16 (0.62%) NIST
9 14 (0.54%) GRC
9 14 (0.54%) SLA
10 12 (0.47%) NCSC
11 8 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.27%) HL7
12 7 (0.27%) SEPA
12 7 (0.27%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.23%) PCI DSS
14 5 (0.19%) FATCA
14 5 (0.19%) Software Quality Assurance
15 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
15 4 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 530 (20.56%) Docker
2 47 (1.82%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (1.55%) Active Directory
4 19 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.43%) Firmware
7 7 (0.27%) VMware NSX
8 6 (0.23%) Hyper-V
9 4 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.078%) Microsoft App-V
11 1 (0.039%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.039%) KVM
11 1 (0.039%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.039%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 521 (20.21%) Kubernetes
2 153 (5.93%) Ansible
3 139 (5.39%) Grafana
4 90 (3.49%) Prometheus
5 36 (1.40%) Argo
6 32 (1.24%) Kibana
7 27 (1.05%) Puppet
8 26 (1.01%) Progress Chef
9 13 (0.50%) Control-M
9 13 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.47%) HP ALM
11 9 (0.35%) Microsoft Intune
12 8 (0.31%) SCCM
13 7 (0.27%) HP Fortify
13 7 (0.27%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.23%) Istio
15 5 (0.19%) Packer
15 5 (0.19%) Podman
15 5 (0.19%) WMI
16 4 (0.16%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 256 (9.93%) Microsoft
2 211 (8.18%) Oracle
3 108 (4.19%) Databricks
4 93 (3.61%) Google
5 69 (2.68%) Salesforce
6 68 (2.64%) IBM
7 63 (2.44%) SAP
8 62 (2.40%) ServiceNow
8 62 (2.40%) Splunk
9 58 (2.25%) VMware
10 57 (2.21%) Talend
11 53 (2.06%) Informatica
11 53 (2.06%) Red Hat
12 46 (1.78%) Dynatrace
13 38 (1.47%) Denodo
14 37 (1.44%) MuleSoft
15 36 (1.40%) Cisco
16 34 (1.32%) UiPath
17 29 (1.12%) Foundry
18 28 (1.09%) OpenAI