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

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 47 55
Rank change year-on-year 0 +8 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,010 1,311 1,505
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.15% 4.55% 3.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.92% 5.00% 4.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,305 922 994
10th Percentile £338 £325 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £738 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £470 £500
% change year-on-year -0.21% -6.00% -4.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 22 53
10th Percentile £36.03 £35.58 £51.50
25th Percentile £54.89 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £66.25 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.19% -12.50% -14.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £74.50
90th Percentile £74.00 £75.45 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -12.00% -6.89%

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 40,852 26,213 36,586
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.38% 91.03% 85.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,586 16,831 23,574
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.74% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,418 1,066 2,483
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.13 £27.59 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +52.71% -23.47% -0.22%
75th Percentile £67.50 £58.73 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.69 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +73.72% -33.82% +8.57%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 1,717 £475 -5.00% 566
UK excluding London -6 957 £469 -0.21% 449
London +1 814 £500 -1.48% 207
Work from Home -1 575 £475 - 289
North of England +8 348 £466 +4.14% 130
Midlands +10 196 £450 +5.88% 55
West Midlands +28 175 £461 -4.61% 41
South East -37 173 £500 - 117
North West +8 154 £472 +5.54% 69
Yorkshire -8 147 £487 +2.53% 27
South West +15 100 £475 -5.00% 55
East of England +12 73 £501 +7.17% 44
North East +3 55 £425 +6.25% 34
Scotland -31 44 £440 -4.35% 20
Wales +1 31 £475 +16.92% 17
East Midlands -38 21 £400 +45.45% 14
Northern Ireland +19 19 £475 +16.28% 22
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
1 161 (8.01%) Confluence
2 42 (2.09%) SAS
3 39 (1.94%) Apache Spark
4 37 (1.84%) Apache Airflow
5 14 (0.70%) Apache
6 12 (0.60%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.40%) Appian
8 7 (0.35%) CMS
8 7 (0.35%) nginx
8 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.30%) Camunda
10 4 (0.20%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.100%) Mendix
13 1 (0.050%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.050%) Jupyter
13 1 (0.050%) Solana
Applications
1 27 (1.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.70%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (0.55%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.15%) Simulink
6 2 (0.100%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.050%) Mingle
7 1 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.09%) Aladdin
2 15 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
4 9 (0.45%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.40%) Findur
5 8 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.30%) Shopify
7 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.25%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.25%) SAP ERP
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%) Maximo
8 3 (0.15%) Workday HCM
9 2 (0.100%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.100%) iTrent
9 2 (0.100%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 571 (28.41%) Azure
2 557 (27.71%) AWS
3 350 (17.41%) GitHub
4 264 (13.13%) Azure DevOps
5 200 (9.95%) GitHub Actions
6 149 (7.41%) GCP
7 134 (6.67%) Serverless
8 85 (4.23%) AWS Lambda
9 80 (3.98%) Amazon S3
10 78 (3.88%) Power Platform
11 56 (2.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 55 (2.74%) OpenShift
13 53 (2.64%) Amazon ECS
14 47 (2.34%) AWS CloudFormation
15 41 (2.04%) Amazon EKS
15 41 (2.04%) Azure Data Factory
16 40 (1.99%) Snowflake
17 38 (1.89%) Amazon EC2
18 30 (1.49%) Dynamics 365
19 29 (1.44%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.19%) HTTP
2 22 (1.09%) Firewall
3 15 (0.75%) SAN
4 11 (0.55%) Network Security
4 11 (0.55%) SSL
4 11 (0.55%) TCP/IP
4 11 (0.55%) VPN
5 8 (0.40%) MPLS
5 8 (0.40%) WAN
6 7 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.30%) Ethernet
7 6 (0.30%) VLAN
7 6 (0.30%) Wireshark
8 5 (0.25%) 5G
8 5 (0.25%) FTP
8 5 (0.25%) Multicast
9 4 (0.20%) BGP
9 4 (0.20%) NAS
9 4 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
9 4 (0.20%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (5.37%) MongoDB
1 108 (5.37%) PostgreSQL
2 100 (4.98%) NoSQL
3 87 (4.33%) SQL Server
4 78 (3.88%) Data Warehouse
5 72 (3.58%) Relational Database
6 54 (2.69%) Power BI
7 46 (2.29%) DynamoDB
8 41 (2.04%) Metadata
9 33 (1.64%) Pentaho
10 32 (1.59%) Big Data
10 32 (1.59%) MySQL
11 29 (1.44%) Oracle Reports
12 26 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
13 25 (1.24%) Tableau
14 23 (1.14%) Data Lake
14 23 (1.14%) Redis
15 21 (1.04%) Amazon Athena
15 21 (1.04%) Amazon Aurora
15 21 (1.04%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 387 (19.25%) JIRA
2 355 (17.66%) Git
3 336 (16.72%) Jenkins
4 280 (13.93%) Selenium
5 277 (13.78%) GitLab
6 167 (8.31%) Postman
7 149 (7.41%) Cucumber
8 109 (5.42%) REST Assured
9 101 (5.02%) JUnit
10 100 (4.98%) JMeter
11 99 (4.93%) Cypress.io
12 59 (2.94%) WebDriver
13 51 (2.54%) Zephyr
14 48 (2.39%) SonarQube
15 42 (2.09%) Gatling
16 36 (1.79%) Gradle
16 36 (1.79%) Mockito
17 32 (1.59%) SpecFlow
18 30 (1.49%) Bitbucket
18 30 (1.49%) Maven
General
1 526 (26.17%) Social Skills
2 341 (16.97%) Finance
3 279 (13.88%) Public Sector
4 241 (11.99%) Analytical Skills
5 171 (8.51%) Banking
6 43 (2.14%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.94%) Investment Banking
8 38 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 36 (1.79%) Front Office
10 25 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.09%) Telecoms
12 19 (0.95%) Military
13 17 (0.85%) Legal
13 17 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
14 16 (0.80%) Aerospace
14 16 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.80%) Retail
15 14 (0.70%) Manufacturing
16 13 (0.65%) Back Office
16 13 (0.65%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 412 (20.50%) Developer
2 306 (15.22%) Senior
3 227 (11.29%) Test Engineer
4 212 (10.55%) Lead
5 209 (10.40%) Tester
6 117 (5.82%) Data Engineer
7 112 (5.57%) Java Developer
8 110 (5.47%) Analyst
9 101 (5.02%) Test Automation Engineer
10 98 (4.88%) Software Engineer
11 95 (4.73%) Automation Tester
12 90 (4.48%) Architect
13 88 (4.38%) DevOps Engineer
14 84 (4.18%) Test Leader
15 80 (3.98%) QA Engineer
16 78 (3.88%) Senior Developer
17 68 (3.38%) Test Analyst
18 63 (3.13%) Full-Stack Developer
19 59 (2.94%) Test Manager
20 57 (2.84%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 247 (12.29%) Playwright
2 240 (11.94%) REST
3 180 (8.96%) React
4 158 (7.86%) RESTful
5 146 (7.26%) Spring
6 144 (7.16%) Kafka
7 142 (7.06%) .NET
8 125 (6.22%) Node.js
9 122 (6.07%) Spring Boot
10 76 (3.78%) AngularJS
11 74 (3.68%) HTML
12 64 (3.18%) pytest
13 62 (3.08%) OAuth
14 58 (2.89%) CSS
15 49 (2.44%) Jest
16 46 (2.29%) Swagger
17 44 (2.19%) Gherkin
17 44 (2.19%) OpenID
18 43 (2.14%) JSON
19 41 (2.04%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 222 (11.04%) Cloud Native
2 153 (7.61%) Product Ownership
3 103 (5.12%) Distributed Systems
4 52 (2.59%) Data Protection Act
5 48 (2.39%) Mobile App
6 47 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
7 41 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
8 39 (1.94%) Virtual Team
9 38 (1.89%) Self-Motivation
10 35 (1.74%) Onboarding
11 30 (1.49%) NHS
12 25 (1.24%) Algorithms
13 24 (1.19%) Distributed Architecture
13 24 (1.19%) Management Information System
14 23 (1.14%) Data Centre
14 23 (1.14%) Derivative
15 22 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
16 19 (0.95%) Fixed Income
17 18 (0.90%) Embedded Systems
18 17 (0.85%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 126 (6.27%) Linux
2 78 (3.88%) Windows
3 52 (2.59%) Unix
4 44 (2.19%) Android
5 37 (1.84%) Apple iOS
6 22 (1.09%) Windows Server
7 20 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.60%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.45%) 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%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.15%) AIX
14 3 (0.15%) CentOS
15 2 (0.100%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.050%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,087 (54.08%) CI/CD
2 920 (45.77%) Agile
3 728 (36.22%) DevOps
4 379 (18.86%) Problem-Solving
5 330 (16.42%) Continuous Improvement
6 324 (16.12%) Microservices
7 310 (15.42%) Test Strategy
8 284 (14.13%) Scrum
9 272 (13.53%) Validation
10 264 (13.13%) Infrastructure as Code
11 262 (13.03%) Software Engineering
12 253 (12.59%) Containerisation
13 247 (12.29%) Observability
14 231 (11.49%) TDD
15 214 (10.65%) AI
16 201 (10.00%) API Testing
17 199 (9.90%) Test Scripting
18 194 (9.65%) ETL
19 193 (9.60%) User Acceptance Testing
20 192 (9.55%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 525 (26.12%) Python
2 507 (25.22%) Java
3 453 (22.54%) SQL
4 287 (14.28%) JavaScript
5 243 (12.09%) TypeScript
6 203 (10.10%) C#
7 74 (3.68%) PowerShell
8 65 (3.23%) Bash
9 54 (2.69%) C++
10 44 (2.19%) Kotlin
11 35 (1.74%) PL/SQL
11 35 (1.74%) Scala
12 32 (1.59%) C
13 31 (1.54%) Apex Code
14 27 (1.34%) Bicep
15 24 (1.19%) Go
16 21 (1.04%) Ruby
17 18 (0.90%) Swift
18 14 (0.70%) Groovy
18 14 (0.70%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 618 (30.75%) Security Cleared
2 491 (24.43%) SC Cleared
3 93 (4.63%) ISTQB
4 84 (4.18%) Degree
5 83 (4.13%) BPSS Clearance
6 71 (3.53%) DV Cleared
7 40 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
8 26 (1.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 13 (0.65%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.60%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.55%) CCNP
11 11 (0.55%) DBS Check
12 10 (0.50%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 10 (0.50%) SAFe Agilist
13 9 (0.45%) AWS Certification
14 8 (0.40%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 8 (0.40%) Azure Certification
15 7 (0.35%) CISSP
16 6 (0.30%) Microsoft Certification
17 5 (0.25%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 433 (21.54%) QA
2 155 (7.71%) Accessibility
3 120 (5.97%) Data Quality
4 67 (3.33%) WCAG
5 34 (1.69%) GDPR
6 15 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.75%) SLA
7 12 (0.60%) ISO 20022
8 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
9 9 (0.45%) NCSC
10 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 7 (0.35%) NIST
11 6 (0.30%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.25%) FATCA
12 5 (0.25%) SEPA
13 4 (0.20%) HL7
13 4 (0.20%) MiFID
13 4 (0.20%) PSD2
13 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 346 (17.21%) Docker
2 25 (1.24%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (1.04%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.65%) Firmware
5 11 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
9 4 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.100%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.100%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.100%) SRDF
11 1 (0.050%) HDFS
11 1 (0.050%) KVM
11 1 (0.050%) Squid
11 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 335 (16.67%) Kubernetes
2 233 (11.59%) Terraform
3 110 (5.47%) Grafana
4 91 (4.53%) Prometheus
5 89 (4.43%) Ansible
6 28 (1.39%) Argo
7 20 (1.00%) HP ALM
8 16 (0.80%) Puppet
9 14 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.65%) Kibana
11 10 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 9 (0.45%) Dell DRAC
13 8 (0.40%) NetBackup
14 7 (0.35%) Kustomize
15 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
15 6 (0.30%) Progress Chef
16 4 (0.20%) Nmap
16 4 (0.20%) Rancher
Vendors
1 163 (8.11%) Oracle
2 159 (7.91%) Microsoft
3 84 (4.18%) Salesforce
4 67 (3.33%) Databricks
5 62 (3.08%) ServiceNow
6 59 (2.94%) Splunk
7 56 (2.79%) Talend
8 54 (2.69%) Google
9 50 (2.49%) Red Hat
10 37 (1.84%) Denodo
11 35 (1.74%) SAP
12 31 (1.54%) VMware
13 29 (1.44%) IBM
14 23 (1.14%) HP
15 21 (1.04%) Dynatrace
15 21 (1.04%) UiPath
16 20 (1.00%) Informatica
16 20 (1.00%) MuleSoft
17 19 (0.95%) Cisco
18 16 (0.80%) Blue Prism