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

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 55
Rank change year-on-year -1 +8 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,017 1,296 1,505
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.15% 4.53% 3.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.92% 4.98% 4.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,312 911 993
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 £720
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £470 £500
% change year-on-year -0.21% -6.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 22 53
10th Percentile £36.06 £35.58 £51.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £66.00 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.71% -12.50% -14.29%
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% -4.58%

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 41,015 26,042 36,506
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.42% 91.03% 86.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,698 16,721 23,544
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 £497 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.59% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,419 1,056 2,449
10th Percentile £14.79 £14.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £27.97 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +51.98% -22.42% -2.58%
75th Percentile £67.50 £58.70 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +76.94% -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 23 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 23 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 23 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 1,722 £475 -5.00% 661
UK excluding London -8 960 £469 -0.21% 517
London 0 816 £496 -1.29% 239
Work from Home -2 579 £475 - 336
North of England +5 349 £465 +4.08% 146
Midlands +5 196 £450 +5.88% 58
West Midlands +28 175 £461 -4.61% 42
South East -42 175 £500 - 129
North West +13 155 £469 +4.81% 81
Yorkshire -11 147 £487 +2.53% 32
South West +18 100 £475 -9.52% 69
East of England +14 73 £501 +6.31% 52
North East +4 55 £425 +6.25% 33
Scotland -32 44 £440 -3.30% 30
Wales +1 31 £475 +16.92% 19
East Midlands -43 21 £400 +45.45% 16
Northern Ireland +18 19 £475 +16.28% 24
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 (7.98%) Confluence
2 42 (2.08%) SAS
3 39 (1.93%) Apache Spark
4 36 (1.78%) Apache Airflow
5 14 (0.69%) Apache
6 12 (0.59%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.40%) Appian
8 7 (0.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 7 (0.35%) nginx
8 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.30%) Camunda
9 6 (0.30%) CMS
10 4 (0.20%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.099%) Mendix
13 1 (0.050%) Kentico
13 1 (0.050%) OpenStack
13 1 (0.050%) Solana
Applications
1 26 (1.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.69%) 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 (0.099%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.050%) Mingle
7 1 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 21 (1.04%) Aladdin
2 14 (0.69%) 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 (0.099%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.099%) iTrent
9 2 (0.099%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 572 (28.36%) Azure
2 558 (27.66%) AWS
3 352 (17.45%) GitHub
4 265 (13.14%) Azure DevOps
5 202 (10.01%) GitHub Actions
6 149 (7.39%) GCP
7 135 (6.69%) Serverless
8 85 (4.21%) AWS Lambda
9 81 (4.02%) Amazon S3
10 77 (3.82%) Power Platform
11 56 (2.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 55 (2.73%) OpenShift
13 53 (2.63%) Amazon ECS
14 48 (2.38%) AWS CloudFormation
15 42 (2.08%) Amazon EKS
16 40 (1.98%) Azure Data Factory
17 39 (1.93%) Snowflake
18 38 (1.88%) Amazon EC2
19 30 (1.49%) Azure AKS
20 29 (1.44%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.19%) HTTP
2 22 (1.09%) Firewall
3 15 (0.74%) 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
1 109 (5.40%) PostgreSQL
2 108 (5.35%) MongoDB
3 100 (4.96%) NoSQL
4 87 (4.31%) SQL Server
5 78 (3.87%) Data Warehouse
6 72 (3.57%) Relational Database
7 54 (2.68%) Power BI
8 46 (2.28%) DynamoDB
9 41 (2.03%) Metadata
10 33 (1.64%) Big Data
10 33 (1.64%) Pentaho
11 32 (1.59%) MySQL
12 29 (1.44%) Oracle Reports
13 26 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
14 25 (1.24%) Tableau
15 23 (1.14%) Data Lake
15 23 (1.14%) Redis
16 21 (1.04%) Amazon Athena
16 21 (1.04%) Amazon Aurora
16 21 (1.04%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 389 (19.29%) JIRA
2 357 (17.70%) Git
3 340 (16.86%) Jenkins
4 283 (14.03%) Selenium
5 281 (13.93%) GitLab
6 168 (8.33%) Postman
7 149 (7.39%) Cucumber
8 109 (5.40%) REST Assured
9 102 (5.06%) JUnit
10 101 (5.01%) Cypress.io
11 99 (4.91%) JMeter
12 59 (2.93%) WebDriver
13 51 (2.53%) Zephyr
14 48 (2.38%) SonarQube
15 41 (2.03%) Gatling
16 37 (1.83%) Gradle
17 36 (1.78%) Mockito
18 33 (1.64%) SpecFlow
19 30 (1.49%) Bitbucket
19 30 (1.49%) Maven
General
1 528 (26.18%) Social Skills
2 341 (16.91%) Finance
3 282 (13.98%) Public Sector
4 241 (11.95%) Analytical Skills
5 172 (8.53%) Banking
6 43 (2.13%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.93%) Investment Banking
8 37 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 36 (1.78%) Front Office
10 25 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.09%) Telecoms
12 19 (0.94%) Military
13 17 (0.84%) Legal
13 17 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
14 16 (0.79%) Aerospace
14 16 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.79%) Retail
15 14 (0.69%) Manufacturing
16 13 (0.64%) Back Office
16 13 (0.64%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 414 (20.53%) Developer
2 311 (15.42%) Senior
3 227 (11.25%) Test Engineer
4 212 (10.51%) Lead
5 211 (10.46%) Tester
6 116 (5.75%) Data Engineer
7 112 (5.55%) Java Developer
8 110 (5.45%) Analyst
9 101 (5.01%) Test Automation Engineer
10 99 (4.91%) Software Engineer
11 96 (4.76%) Automation Tester
12 90 (4.46%) Architect
13 89 (4.41%) DevOps Engineer
14 84 (4.16%) Test Leader
15 82 (4.07%) QA Engineer
16 78 (3.87%) Senior Developer
17 68 (3.37%) Test Analyst
18 64 (3.17%) Full-Stack Developer
19 59 (2.93%) Test Manager
20 57 (2.83%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (12.39%) Playwright
2 241 (11.95%) REST
3 181 (8.97%) React
4 160 (7.93%) RESTful
5 147 (7.29%) Spring
6 144 (7.14%) Kafka
7 142 (7.04%) .NET
8 125 (6.20%) Node.js
9 123 (6.10%) Spring Boot
10 77 (3.82%) AngularJS
11 75 (3.72%) HTML
12 64 (3.17%) pytest
13 62 (3.07%) OAuth
14 59 (2.93%) CSS
15 51 (2.53%) Jest
16 46 (2.28%) Swagger
17 44 (2.18%) Gherkin
17 44 (2.18%) OpenID
18 43 (2.13%) JSON
19 41 (2.03%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 223 (11.06%) Cloud Native
2 155 (7.68%) Product Ownership
3 103 (5.11%) Distributed Systems
4 52 (2.58%) Data Protection Act
5 48 (2.38%) Mobile App
6 47 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
7 41 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
8 39 (1.93%) Virtual Team
9 38 (1.88%) Self-Motivation
10 36 (1.78%) 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 18 (0.89%) Embedded Systems
16 18 (0.89%) Fixed Income
17 17 (0.84%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 127 (6.30%) Linux
2 78 (3.87%) Windows
3 52 (2.58%) Unix
4 44 (2.18%) Android
5 37 (1.83%) Apple iOS
6 22 (1.09%) Windows Server
7 20 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.59%) 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 (0.099%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.050%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,093 (54.19%) CI/CD
2 926 (45.91%) Agile
3 732 (36.29%) DevOps
4 382 (18.94%) Problem-Solving
5 333 (16.51%) Continuous Improvement
6 326 (16.16%) Microservices
7 309 (15.32%) Test Strategy
8 286 (14.18%) Scrum
9 274 (13.58%) Validation
10 265 (13.14%) Infrastructure as Code
11 264 (13.09%) Software Engineering
12 254 (12.59%) Containerisation
13 248 (12.30%) Observability
14 232 (11.50%) TDD
15 214 (10.61%) AI
16 202 (10.01%) API Testing
17 201 (9.97%) Test Scripting
18 195 (9.67%) ETL
18 195 (9.67%) User Acceptance Testing
19 193 (9.57%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 525 (26.03%) Python
2 509 (25.24%) Java
3 455 (22.56%) SQL
4 288 (14.28%) JavaScript
5 245 (12.15%) TypeScript
6 205 (10.16%) C#
7 76 (3.77%) PowerShell
8 66 (3.27%) Bash
9 54 (2.68%) C++
10 45 (2.23%) Kotlin
11 38 (1.88%) PL/SQL
12 34 (1.69%) Scala
13 32 (1.59%) C
14 31 (1.54%) Apex Code
15 27 (1.34%) Bicep
16 24 (1.19%) Go
17 21 (1.04%) Ruby
18 18 (0.89%) Swift
19 14 (0.69%) Groovy
19 14 (0.69%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 624 (30.94%) Security Cleared
2 494 (24.49%) SC Cleared
3 93 (4.61%) ISTQB
4 86 (4.26%) Degree
5 83 (4.12%) BPSS Clearance
6 72 (3.57%) DV Cleared
7 41 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
8 26 (1.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 13 (0.64%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.59%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.55%) CCNP
12 10 (0.50%) 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
1 437 (21.67%) QA
2 156 (7.73%) Accessibility
3 120 (5.95%) Data Quality
4 68 (3.37%) WCAG
5 34 (1.69%) GDPR
6 15 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.74%) SLA
7 12 (0.59%) 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
1 347 (17.20%) Docker
2 25 (1.24%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (1.04%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.64%) 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 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.099%) Hyper-V
11 2 (0.099%) SRDF
12 1 (0.050%) HDFS
12 1 (0.050%) KVM
12 1 (0.050%) Squid
12 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 336 (16.66%) Kubernetes
2 234 (11.60%) Terraform
3 111 (5.50%) Grafana
4 92 (4.56%) Prometheus
5 90 (4.46%) Ansible
6 28 (1.39%) Argo
7 21 (1.04%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.84%) Puppet
9 14 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.64%) 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
14 7 (0.35%) Progress Chef
15 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
16 4 (0.20%) Istio
16 4 (0.20%) Nmap
Vendors
1 165 (8.18%) Oracle
2 160 (7.93%) Microsoft
3 84 (4.16%) Salesforce
4 66 (3.27%) Databricks
5 62 (3.07%) ServiceNow
6 61 (3.02%) Splunk
7 56 (2.78%) Talend
8 54 (2.68%) Google
9 50 (2.48%) Red Hat
10 37 (1.83%) Denodo
11 35 (1.74%) SAP
12 31 (1.54%) VMware
13 29 (1.44%) IBM
14 24 (1.19%) HP
15 21 (1.04%) Dynatrace
15 21 (1.04%) UiPath
16 20 (0.99%) Informatica
16 20 (0.99%) MuleSoft
17 19 (0.94%) Cisco
18 16 (0.79%) Blue Prism