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 11 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 51 50
Rank change year-on-year +6 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,309 1,486 1,529
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.32% 4.51% 3.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.10% 4.99% 4.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,494 1,034 1,015
10th Percentile £325 £313 £352
25th Percentile £405 £385 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £491 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.26% -4.20% -2.38%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £606
90th Percentile £657 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £469 £503
% change year-on-year -2.03% -6.77% +0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 32 24
10th Percentile £38.63 £35.58 £44.00
25th Percentile £60.08 £44.51 £50.94
Median hourly rate £67.86 £50.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +35.72% -11.11% -14.45%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.50 £71.88
90th Percentile £74.00 £74.35 £81.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +28.57% -8.70% -8.00%

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 45,312 29,789 33,296
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.84% 90.47% 85.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,886 18,626 21,285
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £421 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,829 1,693 1,837
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -38.57% -1.35%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.13 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.74 £42.50
% change year-on-year +93.36% -46.51% +17.24%

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 11 August 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 11 August 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 11 August 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 1,971 £475 -5.00% 1,272
UK excluding London -3 1,150 £459 -2.03% 731
London +6 888 £500 -1.96% 636
Work from Home -4 631 £475 +2.26% 523
North of England +15 389 £465 +3.39% 178
Midlands +9 275 £450 +2.86% 98
West Midlands +30 259 £450 -11.11% 61
South East -29 212 £459 -8.20% 203
Yorkshire -4 157 £484 +0.57% 47
North West -3 140 £496 +17.54% 95
South West 0 113 £475 +10.14% 108
North East +14 100 £438 +4.17% 36
East of England +13 82 £450 -1.91% 70
Scotland -29 69 £440 -11.65% 56
Wales -1 32 £475 +16.92% 19
Northern Ireland +21 17 £488 -0.91% 14
East Midlands -42 16 £425 +25.00% 37
Channel Islands - 2 - - 1

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
1 194 (8.40%) Confluence
2 53 (2.30%) Apache Airflow
3 52 (2.25%) SAS
4 50 (2.17%) Apache Spark
5 32 (1.39%) SharePoint
6 26 (1.13%) Apache
7 14 (0.61%) CMS
8 13 (0.56%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.30%) nginx
9 7 (0.30%) Tomcat
10 5 (0.22%) Camunda
10 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
11 4 (0.17%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.17%) Jupyter
11 4 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.13%) Kentico
12 3 (0.13%) OpenStack
13 2 (0.087%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.087%) Mendix
13 2 (0.087%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 20 (0.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.30%) Chatbot
3 7 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.30%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.17%) Simulink
6 3 (0.13%) Trello
7 2 (0.087%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.043%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 26 (1.13%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.78%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.69%) Aladdin
4 12 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.35%) Findur
7 6 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.26%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.26%) SAP MDG
7 6 (0.26%) Shopify
8 5 (0.22%) BambooHR
9 4 (0.17%) Infor CloudSuite
9 4 (0.17%) Infor LN
9 4 (0.17%) Infor M3
10 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
11 2 (0.087%) Advent Geneva
11 2 (0.087%) Loan IQ
11 2 (0.087%) Oracle ERP
11 2 (0.087%) SAP GRC
12 1 (0.043%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 700 (30.32%) Azure
2 690 (29.88%) AWS
3 427 (18.49%) GitHub
4 321 (13.90%) Azure DevOps
5 257 (11.13%) GitHub Actions
6 169 (7.32%) GCP
7 167 (7.23%) Serverless
8 117 (5.07%) AWS Lambda
9 102 (4.42%) Power Platform
10 98 (4.24%) Amazon S3
11 77 (3.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 71 (3.07%) Amazon ECS
13 64 (2.77%) OpenShift
14 62 (2.69%) AWS CloudFormation
15 61 (2.64%) GitHub Copilot
16 58 (2.51%) Amazon EKS
17 56 (2.43%) dbt
18 55 (2.38%) Snowflake
19 52 (2.25%) Amazon EC2
20 45 (1.95%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.04%) Firewall
2 22 (0.95%) HTTP
3 17 (0.74%) Network Security
4 16 (0.69%) 4G
4 16 (0.69%) 5G
5 14 (0.61%) 2G
5 14 (0.61%) 3G
5 14 (0.61%) Diameter Protocol
5 14 (0.61%) DNS
5 14 (0.61%) SIGTRAN
5 14 (0.61%) SS7
5 14 (0.61%) TCP/IP
6 13 (0.56%) WAN
7 12 (0.52%) SAN
8 10 (0.43%) LAN
9 9 (0.39%) Wi-Fi
10 8 (0.35%) BGP
11 6 (0.26%) DHCP
11 6 (0.26%) HTTPS
11 6 (0.26%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 139 (6.02%) PostgreSQL
2 132 (5.72%) Data Warehouse
3 117 (5.07%) MongoDB
4 108 (4.68%) NoSQL
5 89 (3.85%) SQL Server
6 82 (3.55%) Power BI
6 82 (3.55%) Relational Database
7 48 (2.08%) DynamoDB
7 48 (2.08%) Metadata
8 46 (1.99%) Oracle Reports
9 42 (1.82%) Pentaho
10 37 (1.60%) Data Lake
11 34 (1.47%) Big Data
11 34 (1.47%) MySQL
12 32 (1.39%) Amazon Athena
13 29 (1.26%) Redis
14 27 (1.17%) Amazon RDS
14 27 (1.17%) Amazon Redshift
15 22 (0.95%) Elasticsearch
16 20 (0.87%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 471 (20.40%) Git
2 426 (18.45%) JIRA
3 387 (16.76%) Jenkins
4 312 (13.51%) GitLab
5 291 (12.60%) Selenium
6 169 (7.32%) Postman
7 155 (6.71%) Cucumber
8 120 (5.20%) JUnit
9 116 (5.02%) Cypress.io
10 102 (4.42%) REST Assured
11 98 (4.24%) JMeter
12 76 (3.29%) Zephyr
13 64 (2.77%) SonarQube
14 63 (2.73%) WebDriver
15 54 (2.34%) Gatling
16 51 (2.21%) Gradle
17 48 (2.08%) Maven
18 43 (1.86%) Bitbucket
19 41 (1.78%) Mockito
20 33 (1.43%) SpecFlow
General
1 625 (27.07%) Social Skills
2 413 (17.89%) Finance
3 325 (14.08%) Public Sector
4 300 (12.99%) Analytical Skills
5 189 (8.19%) Banking
6 68 (2.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 45 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
8 40 (1.73%) Telecoms
9 36 (1.56%) Investment Banking
10 35 (1.52%) Front Office
10 35 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
11 32 (1.39%) Retail
12 26 (1.13%) Military
13 25 (1.08%) Financial Institution
14 20 (0.87%) Aerospace
15 19 (0.82%) Back Office
16 16 (0.69%) Manufacturing
16 16 (0.69%) Organisational Skills
17 15 (0.65%) Legal
17 15 (0.65%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 485 (21.00%) Developer
2 374 (16.20%) Senior
3 249 (10.78%) Lead
4 225 (9.74%) Test Engineer
5 217 (9.40%) Tester
6 162 (7.02%) Data Engineer
7 156 (6.76%) Java Developer
8 120 (5.20%) Software Engineer
9 118 (5.11%) Analyst
10 113 (4.89%) DevOps Engineer
11 107 (4.63%) Architect
12 105 (4.55%) Senior Developer
13 101 (4.37%) Test Automation Engineer
14 96 (4.16%) QA Engineer
15 89 (3.85%) Automation Tester
16 87 (3.77%) Test Leader
17 79 (3.42%) Test Analyst
18 72 (3.12%) Full-Stack Developer
19 61 (2.64%) Automation Engineer
19 61 (2.64%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 334 (14.47%) REST
2 272 (11.78%) Playwright
3 206 (8.92%) RESTful
4 203 (8.79%) React
5 196 (8.49%) Spring
6 193 (8.36%) Kafka
7 160 (6.93%) .NET
8 156 (6.76%) Spring Boot
9 123 (5.33%) Node.js
10 103 (4.46%) HTML
11 94 (4.07%) AngularJS
12 93 (4.03%) CSS
13 73 (3.16%) OAuth
14 66 (2.86%) JSON
15 56 (2.43%) Jest
15 56 (2.43%) pytest
16 54 (2.34%) OAuth2
17 52 (2.25%) HTML5
18 50 (2.17%) Gherkin
19 47 (2.04%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 337 (14.60%) Cloud Native
2 176 (7.62%) Product Ownership
3 154 (6.67%) Distributed Systems
4 88 (3.81%) Enterprise Software
5 60 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
5 60 (2.60%) Onboarding
6 56 (2.43%) Data Protection Act
7 54 (2.34%) Self-Motivation
8 44 (1.91%) Mobile App
9 39 (1.69%) AI Agents
10 37 (1.60%) Virtual Team
11 29 (1.26%) Distributed Architecture
12 28 (1.21%) Embedded Systems
13 27 (1.17%) NHS
14 25 (1.08%) Security Posture
15 23 (1.00%) Management Information System
16 20 (0.87%) Data Centre
17 19 (0.82%) Derivative
17 19 (0.82%) Fixed Income
18 18 (0.78%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 154 (6.67%) Linux
2 90 (3.90%) Windows
3 86 (3.72%) Unix
4 43 (1.86%) Apple iOS
5 41 (1.78%) Android
6 30 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 20 (0.87%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.35%) Solaris
9 7 (0.30%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.30%) Mac OS X
10 6 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
11 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
12 4 (0.17%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.13%) AIX
13 3 (0.13%) Windows 10
13 3 (0.13%) Windows 7
13 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
13 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.087%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,363 (59.03%) CI/CD
2 1,082 (46.86%) Agile
3 884 (38.28%) DevOps
4 434 (18.80%) Problem-Solving
5 429 (18.58%) Continuous Improvement
6 428 (18.54%) Microservices
7 382 (16.54%) Software Engineering
8 379 (16.41%) Scrum
9 378 (16.37%) Infrastructure as Code
10 354 (15.33%) Validation
11 343 (14.85%) Test Strategy
12 326 (14.12%) AI
13 316 (13.69%) Containerisation
14 304 (13.17%) TDD
15 303 (13.12%) Observability
16 249 (10.78%) ETL
16 249 (10.78%) SDLC
17 242 (10.48%) End-to-End Testing
18 239 (10.35%) Data Pipeline
19 235 (10.18%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 614 (26.59%) Python
2 588 (25.47%) Java
3 551 (23.86%) SQL
4 310 (13.43%) JavaScript
5 238 (10.31%) TypeScript
6 209 (9.05%) C#
7 94 (4.07%) PowerShell
8 86 (3.72%) Bash
9 56 (2.43%) C++
10 53 (2.30%) Kotlin
11 49 (2.12%) Bicep
12 37 (1.60%) C
13 35 (1.52%) PL/SQL
14 31 (1.34%) Scala
15 28 (1.21%) Apex Code
16 27 (1.17%) Go
17 25 (1.08%) Shell Script
18 24 (1.04%) Ruby
19 21 (0.91%) Swift
20 18 (0.78%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 749 (32.44%) Security Cleared
2 636 (27.54%) SC Cleared
3 110 (4.76%) ISTQB
4 109 (4.72%) Degree
5 103 (4.46%) BPSS Clearance
6 67 (2.90%) DV Cleared
7 59 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
8 35 (1.52%) AWS Certification
9 30 (1.30%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 24 (1.04%) Azure Certification
11 17 (0.74%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 11 (0.48%) Cisco Certification
12 11 (0.48%) CISSP
12 11 (0.48%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.48%) Master's Degree
12 11 (0.48%) SAFe Agilist
13 10 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
14 9 (0.39%) DBS Check
15 8 (0.35%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 8 (0.35%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 572 (24.77%) QA
2 190 (8.23%) Accessibility
3 167 (7.23%) Data Quality
4 86 (3.72%) WCAG
5 43 (1.86%) GDPR
6 16 (0.69%) SLA
7 15 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 15 (0.65%) NCSC
8 14 (0.61%) ISO 20022
9 9 (0.39%) NIST
10 7 (0.30%) Def Stans
10 7 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 7 (0.30%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.26%) GRC
11 6 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
12 5 (0.22%) FATCA
12 5 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.17%) MiFID
14 3 (0.13%) HL7
System Software
1 449 (19.45%) Docker
2 33 (1.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 27 (1.17%) Active Directory
4 16 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.61%) Firmware
6 5 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 2 (0.087%) SRDF
10 1 (0.043%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.043%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.043%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 445 (19.27%) Kubernetes
2 327 (14.16%) Terraform
3 123 (5.33%) Ansible
3 123 (5.33%) Grafana
4 99 (4.29%) Prometheus
5 40 (1.73%) Argo
6 26 (1.13%) Puppet
7 21 (0.91%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.78%) HP ALM
9 13 (0.56%) Kibana
10 12 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.43%) Dell DRAC
12 7 (0.30%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.26%) Control-M
13 6 (0.26%) Istio
13 6 (0.26%) NetBackup
13 6 (0.26%) Packer
14 5 (0.22%) HP Quality Center
14 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
15 4 (0.17%) Forefront Identity Manager
Vendors
1 214 (9.27%) Microsoft
2 202 (8.75%) Oracle
3 95 (4.11%) Salesforce
4 86 (3.72%) Databricks
5 69 (2.99%) Talend
6 66 (2.86%) Red Hat
7 63 (2.73%) Google
8 59 (2.56%) Splunk
9 54 (2.34%) ServiceNow
10 50 (2.17%) IBM
11 49 (2.12%) Denodo
12 42 (1.82%) Informatica
12 42 (1.82%) SAP
13 40 (1.73%) VMware
14 36 (1.56%) Dynatrace
15 29 (1.26%) MuleSoft
16 26 (1.13%) Cisco
16 26 (1.13%) UiPath
17 25 (1.08%) HP
18 14 (0.61%) OpenAI