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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 49 49
Rank change year-on-year +4 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,315 1,500 1,553
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.32% 4.58% 4.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.10% 5.07% 4.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,495 1,041 1,029
10th Percentile £330 £313 £350
25th Percentile £407 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £500 £507
Median % change year-on-year -4.90% -1.38% -3.43%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £663 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -3.37% -5.05% +0.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 36 23
10th Percentile £38.08 £32.63 £42.50
25th Percentile £59.19 £44.88 £49.00
Median hourly rate £69.25 £52.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +31.90% -4.55% -19.85%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.50 £67.81
90th Percentile £74.00 £71.75 £82.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.61 £55.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +24.74% - -13.30%

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 45,367 29,590 33,147
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.58% 90.44% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,794 18,422 20,982
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £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 £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,879 1,766 1,695
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £13.86
25th Percentile £17.97 £17.30 £18.13
Median hourly rate £41.06 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.26% -37.90% -4.71%
75th Percentile £67.89 £47.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.63 £42.50
% change year-on-year +94.26% -46.75% +6.25%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 +4 1,956 £475 -5.00% 681
UK excluding London -9 1,125 £459 -3.37% 543
London +3 903 £500 -1.48% 254
Work from Home -4 626 £481 +1.26% 308
North of England +3 394 £463 +1.70% 113
Midlands +9 244 £450 -1.10% 75
West Midlands +18 229 £450 -12.20% 49
South East -32 213 £459 -8.20% 111
Yorkshire -5 157 £463 -6.33% 34
North West -16 141 £492 +15.09% 55
South West -5 114 £475 +5.56% 137
North East +14 104 £450 +2.86% 25
East of England +14 77 £450 +10.77% 51
Scotland -25 76 £460 -8.00% 55
Wales -6 30 £488 +21.88% 8
Northern Ireland +13 16 £488 +323.91% 12
East Midlands -42 15 £418 +19.29% 26
Channel Islands - 3 £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
1 187 (8.08%) Confluence
2 53 (2.29%) Apache Airflow
3 46 (1.99%) Apache Spark
4 44 (1.90%) SharePoint
5 39 (1.68%) SAS
6 24 (1.04%) Apache
7 14 (0.60%) CMS
8 12 (0.52%) WebLogic
9 9 (0.39%) Camunda
10 6 (0.26%) nginx
10 6 (0.26%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.26%) Tomcat
11 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
12 4 (0.17%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.17%) Jupyter
12 4 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 3 (0.13%) Kentico
14 2 (0.086%) ColdFusion
14 2 (0.086%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 25 (1.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.69%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.26%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.26%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.17%) Simulink
6 3 (0.13%) Trello
7 2 (0.086%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.043%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 29 (1.25%) Dynamics CRM
2 22 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.60%) Aladdin
4 13 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
5 10 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.35%) Findur
7 6 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.26%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.26%) SAP GRC
7 6 (0.26%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.22%) BambooHR
9 4 (0.17%) Infor CloudSuite
9 4 (0.17%) Infor LN
9 4 (0.17%) Infor M3
9 4 (0.17%) Shopify
10 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
11 2 (0.086%) Advent Geneva
11 2 (0.086%) Oracle ERP
12 1 (0.043%) Summit
12 1 (0.043%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 707 (30.54%) Azure
2 700 (30.24%) AWS
3 429 (18.53%) GitHub
4 337 (14.56%) Azure DevOps
5 259 (11.19%) GitHub Actions
6 173 (7.47%) Serverless
7 167 (7.21%) GCP
8 126 (5.44%) AWS Lambda
9 109 (4.71%) Power Platform
10 98 (4.23%) Amazon S3
11 80 (3.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 69 (2.98%) Amazon ECS
12 69 (2.98%) OpenShift
13 67 (2.89%) GitHub Copilot
14 66 (2.85%) AWS CloudFormation
15 62 (2.68%) Amazon EKS
16 61 (2.63%) dbt
17 59 (2.55%) Snowflake
18 51 (2.20%) Amazon EC2
19 46 (1.99%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.04%) Firewall
1 24 (1.04%) HTTP
2 19 (0.82%) DNS
3 18 (0.78%) 4G
3 18 (0.78%) 5G
4 16 (0.69%) Network Security
4 16 (0.69%) WAN
5 15 (0.65%) 2G
5 15 (0.65%) 3G
5 15 (0.65%) Diameter Protocol
5 15 (0.65%) SIGTRAN
5 15 (0.65%) SS7
5 15 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 13 (0.56%) LAN
7 12 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
8 11 (0.48%) SAN
9 10 (0.43%) BGP
10 8 (0.35%) DHCP
10 8 (0.35%) Ethernet VPN
10 8 (0.35%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 138 (5.96%) PostgreSQL
2 124 (5.36%) Data Warehouse
3 122 (5.27%) MongoDB
4 110 (4.75%) NoSQL
5 98 (4.23%) SQL Server
6 89 (3.84%) Relational Database
7 85 (3.67%) Power BI
8 49 (2.12%) DynamoDB
8 49 (2.12%) Metadata
9 37 (1.60%) Oracle Reports
10 36 (1.56%) MySQL
11 35 (1.51%) Amazon Athena
12 34 (1.47%) Big Data
12 34 (1.47%) Data Lake
13 33 (1.43%) Amazon Redshift
14 32 (1.38%) Pentaho
15 30 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
16 29 (1.25%) Elasticsearch
16 29 (1.25%) Redis
17 24 (1.04%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 467 (20.17%) Git
2 398 (17.19%) JIRA
3 373 (16.11%) Jenkins
4 315 (13.61%) GitLab
5 297 (12.83%) Selenium
6 159 (6.87%) Postman
7 149 (6.44%) Cucumber
8 122 (5.27%) Cypress.io
8 122 (5.27%) JUnit
9 103 (4.45%) REST Assured
10 98 (4.23%) JMeter
11 74 (3.20%) SonarQube
12 65 (2.81%) Zephyr
13 58 (2.51%) WebDriver
14 57 (2.46%) Gatling
15 55 (2.38%) Gradle
16 50 (2.16%) Maven
17 43 (1.86%) Bitbucket
18 42 (1.81%) Mockito
19 28 (1.21%) SpecFlow
General
1 638 (27.56%) Social Skills
2 429 (18.53%) Finance
3 334 (14.43%) Public Sector
4 316 (13.65%) Analytical Skills
5 198 (8.55%) Banking
6 73 (3.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 45 (1.94%) Telecoms
8 44 (1.90%) Documentation Skills
9 39 (1.68%) Front Office
10 35 (1.51%) Investment Banking
11 34 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
12 32 (1.38%) Retail
13 27 (1.17%) Military
14 24 (1.04%) Financial Institution
15 19 (0.82%) Aerospace
15 19 (0.82%) Back Office
16 17 (0.73%) Manufacturing
16 17 (0.73%) Marketing
17 16 (0.69%) Law
17 16 (0.69%) Legal
Job Titles
1 507 (21.90%) Developer
2 385 (16.63%) Senior
3 245 (10.58%) Lead
4 224 (9.68%) Test Engineer
5 203 (8.77%) Tester
6 157 (6.78%) Java Developer
7 139 (6.00%) Data Engineer
8 124 (5.36%) DevOps Engineer
9 121 (5.23%) Analyst
10 119 (5.14%) Software Engineer
11 109 (4.71%) Senior Developer
12 104 (4.49%) Architect
12 104 (4.49%) Test Automation Engineer
13 98 (4.23%) QA Engineer
14 89 (3.84%) Automation Tester
15 84 (3.63%) Test Leader
16 79 (3.41%) Test Analyst
17 74 (3.20%) Full-Stack Developer
18 67 (2.89%) Test Manager
19 66 (2.85%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 360 (15.55%) REST
2 337 (14.56%) Terraform
3 275 (11.88%) Playwright
4 219 (9.46%) RESTful
5 211 (9.11%) Kafka
6 210 (9.07%) React
7 209 (9.03%) Spring
8 175 (7.56%) Spring Boot
9 164 (7.08%) .NET
10 124 (5.36%) HTML
10 124 (5.36%) Node.js
11 105 (4.54%) CSS
12 98 (4.23%) AngularJS
13 79 (3.41%) OAuth
14 70 (3.02%) JSON
15 59 (2.55%) pytest
16 58 (2.51%) OAuth2
17 57 (2.46%) Middleware
18 55 (2.38%) Jest
18 55 (2.38%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 346 (14.95%) Cloud Native
2 188 (8.12%) Product Ownership
3 158 (6.83%) Distributed Systems
4 94 (4.06%) Enterprise Software
5 65 (2.81%) Onboarding
6 58 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
7 53 (2.29%) Data Protection Act
8 50 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
9 49 (2.12%) Mobile App
10 41 (1.77%) AI Agents
11 36 (1.56%) Virtual Team
12 25 (1.08%) Embedded Systems
13 24 (1.04%) NHS
14 23 (0.99%) Security Posture
15 22 (0.95%) Data Centre
15 22 (0.95%) Distributed Architecture
15 22 (0.95%) Management Information System
16 19 (0.82%) Data Structures
17 18 (0.78%) Derivative
18 17 (0.73%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 165 (7.13%) Linux
2 98 (4.23%) Unix
3 94 (4.06%) Windows
4 41 (1.77%) Android
4 41 (1.77%) Apple iOS
5 28 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 20 (0.86%) Windows Server
7 7 (0.30%) Solaris
8 6 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
9 5 (0.22%) Mac OS X
9 5 (0.22%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.22%) Windows 7
9 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.17%) AIX
10 4 (0.17%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.17%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.17%) VMS
10 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.086%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,371 (59.22%) CI/CD
2 1,073 (46.35%) Agile
3 886 (38.27%) DevOps
4 437 (18.88%) Problem-Solving
5 435 (18.79%) Microservices
6 433 (18.70%) Continuous Improvement
7 400 (17.28%) Software Engineering
8 392 (16.93%) Infrastructure as Code
9 371 (16.03%) Scrum
10 367 (15.85%) Validation
11 356 (15.38%) Test Strategy
12 332 (14.34%) AI
13 319 (13.78%) Containerisation
14 298 (12.87%) Observability
15 294 (12.70%) TDD
16 258 (11.14%) SDLC
17 246 (10.63%) Software Testing
18 244 (10.54%) End-to-End Testing
19 237 (10.24%) Stakeholder Management
20 220 (9.50%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 624 (26.95%) Python
2 616 (26.61%) Java
3 568 (24.54%) SQL
4 327 (14.13%) JavaScript
5 247 (10.67%) TypeScript
6 200 (8.64%) C#
7 111 (4.79%) PowerShell
8 92 (3.97%) Bash
9 56 (2.42%) Bicep
10 50 (2.16%) C++
10 50 (2.16%) Kotlin
11 35 (1.51%) PL/SQL
12 31 (1.34%) C
12 31 (1.34%) Scala
13 28 (1.21%) Apex Code
13 28 (1.21%) Go
14 27 (1.17%) Shell Script
15 25 (1.08%) Ruby
16 17 (0.73%) Groovy
17 16 (0.69%) Perl
Qualifications
1 747 (32.27%) Security Cleared
2 635 (27.43%) SC Cleared
3 124 (5.36%) Degree
4 113 (4.88%) BPSS Clearance
5 107 (4.62%) ISTQB
6 70 (3.02%) DV Cleared
7 69 (2.98%) Computer Science Degree
8 36 (1.56%) AWS Certification
9 31 (1.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 29 (1.25%) Azure Certification
11 19 (0.82%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 13 (0.56%) Cisco Certification
12 13 (0.56%) ISEB
12 13 (0.56%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.52%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 11 (0.48%) SAFe Agilist
15 10 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.39%) CCNP
16 9 (0.39%) CISSP
17 8 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 594 (25.66%) QA
2 192 (8.29%) Accessibility
3 164 (7.08%) Data Quality
4 89 (3.84%) WCAG
5 41 (1.77%) GDPR
6 18 (0.78%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.69%) SLA
8 14 (0.60%) NCSC
9 12 (0.52%) GRC
10 10 (0.43%) NIST
11 7 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 7 (0.30%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.22%) Def Stans
13 5 (0.22%) FATCA
13 5 (0.22%) HL7
13 5 (0.22%) MiFID
14 4 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 457 (19.74%) Docker
2 33 (1.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (1.30%) Active Directory
4 18 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (0.56%) Firmware
6 6 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
7 5 (0.22%) VMware NSX
8 4 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.043%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.043%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.043%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 442 (19.09%) Kubernetes
2 128 (5.53%) Ansible
3 124 (5.36%) Grafana
4 94 (4.06%) Prometheus
5 41 (1.77%) Argo
6 22 (0.95%) Puppet
7 21 (0.91%) Progress Chef
8 19 (0.82%) HP ALM
9 15 (0.65%) Kibana
10 11 (0.48%) Control-M
10 11 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.39%) Dell DRAC
12 7 (0.30%) Istio
12 7 (0.30%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
13 6 (0.26%) Packer
14 5 (0.22%) HP Fortify
14 5 (0.22%) SCCM
15 4 (0.17%) Consul
15 4 (0.17%) NetIQ Identity Manager
Vendors
1 223 (9.63%) Microsoft
2 194 (8.38%) Oracle
3 88 (3.80%) Databricks
3 88 (3.80%) Salesforce
4 63 (2.72%) Google
4 63 (2.72%) Red Hat
5 58 (2.51%) Splunk
6 57 (2.46%) Talend
7 55 (2.38%) IBM
7 55 (2.38%) ServiceNow
8 50 (2.16%) SAP
9 43 (1.86%) Denodo
9 43 (1.86%) Informatica
10 40 (1.73%) VMware
11 38 (1.64%) Dynatrace
12 31 (1.34%) Cisco
13 30 (1.30%) MuleSoft
14 26 (1.12%) UiPath
15 24 (1.04%) HP
16 14 (0.60%) OpenAI