Test Automation Contracts

Automated Testing
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Test Automation skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Test Automation over the 6 months to 7 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
7 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 54 48 46
Rank change year-on-year -6 -2 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,507 2,688 4,456
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.52% 4.63% 5.07%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.08% 5.15% 5.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 986 1,962 3,197
10th Percentile £363 £388 £386
25th Percentile £425 £461 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year -6.36% +2.33% +13.16%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £638
90th Percentile £719 £750 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £495
% change year-on-year -4.76% +6.06% +12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 42 57
10th Percentile £51.25 £45.25 £17.25
25th Percentile £52.50 £52.56 £37.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £67.38 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.24% +22.50% +22.22%
75th Percentile £76.00 £79.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £90.00 £83.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £64.38 £48.75
% change year-on-year -2.91% +32.05% +16.07%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Test Automation is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 36,956 52,182 79,685
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.29% 89.83% 90.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,793 36,175 55,967
10th Percentile £300 £325 £341
25th Percentile £413 £438 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +8.72%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,422 1,727 1,890
10th Percentile £12.75 £11.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.25 £15.50
Median hourly rate £36.50 £36.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.39% +44.00% +2.04%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +7.14% +75.00% -6.98%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Test Automation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Test Automation.

Daily rate trend for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation over the 6 months to 7 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Test Automation.

Hourly rate trend for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Automation over the 6 months to 7 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 18 Contract 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 7 May 2024. 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 -9 1,252 £525 -4.55% 736
London -6 729 £550 -4.35% 254
Work from Home +6 606 £500 -4.76% 395
UK excluding London -19 581 £500 -4.76% 515
South East -4 192 £550 -2.65% 111
North of England -14 155 £475 -13.64% 120
North West +8 86 £500 +5.26% 70
Scotland -29 73 £475 -2.06% 45
Yorkshire -6 64 £475 -13.64% 46
South West -47 56 £550 +2.33% 71
Midlands -26 43 £419 -10.09% 82
East of England -30 37 £499 -0.25% 78
West Midlands -27 23 £425 -15.00% 52
Wales +33 21 £509 -11.18% 14
East Midlands +5 20 £410 +7.76% 30
North East -21 5 £405 -28.32% 4
Northern Ireland +6 2 - - 8
Isle of Man - 2 - -

Test Automation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 66 (4.38%) Confluence
2 31 (2.06%) Apache Airflow
3 29 (1.92%) nginx
4 27 (1.79%) Apache
5 26 (1.73%) Apache Spark
6 16 (1.06%) Microsoft Exchange
7 14 (0.93%) SharePoint
8 10 (0.66%) CMS
9 8 (0.53%) Alfresco
9 8 (0.53%) SAS
10 6 (0.40%) Appian
10 6 (0.40%) Camunda
11 4 (0.27%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 3 (0.20%) IIS
12 3 (0.20%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.20%) WebSphere
13 2 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
13 2 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 21 (1.39%) Simulink
2 20 (1.33%) Stateflow
3 12 (0.80%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.60%) Microsoft Excel
5 8 (0.53%) Trello
6 4 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 3 (0.20%) CPLEX
7 3 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.13%) Mingle
9 1 (0.066%) Gliffy
9 1 (0.066%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 9 (0.60%) ION MarketView
2 7 (0.46%) Loan IQ
3 6 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.40%) Endur
4 5 (0.33%) SimCorp Dimension
5 4 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
5 4 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
5 4 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
6 3 (0.20%) FLEXCUBE
6 3 (0.20%) IntelliMatch
6 3 (0.20%) ION Anvil
6 3 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
6 3 (0.20%) SAP EWM
7 2 (0.13%) NEC Housing
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle BPM
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle Cash Management
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 338 (22.43%) Azure
2 332 (22.03%) AWS
3 178 (11.81%) Azure DevOps
4 129 (8.56%) GitHub
5 86 (5.71%) Serverless
6 63 (4.18%) GCP
7 49 (3.25%) AWS Lambda
8 48 (3.19%) Amazon S3
8 48 (3.19%) PaaS
9 42 (2.79%) GitHub Actions
10 36 (2.39%) SaaS
11 35 (2.32%) Azure Service Bus
12 31 (2.06%) Amazon EC2
12 31 (2.06%) Power Platform
13 28 (1.86%) Amazon EKS
13 28 (1.86%) Azure Monitor
14 27 (1.79%) Amazon SQS
14 27 (1.79%) AWS CloudFormation
15 26 (1.73%) Azure Functions
16 25 (1.66%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.79%) Firewall
2 21 (1.39%) VPN
3 19 (1.26%) DNS
4 17 (1.13%) HTTP
5 14 (0.93%) Internet
5 14 (0.93%) Wi-Fi
6 13 (0.86%) BGP
6 13 (0.86%) Ethernet VPN
6 13 (0.86%) MPLS
7 12 (0.80%) Radio Access Network
8 11 (0.73%) SSL
9 10 (0.66%) 5G
10 8 (0.53%) DHCP
10 8 (0.53%) Kerberos
10 8 (0.53%) TCP/IP
11 6 (0.40%) Wireless
12 5 (0.33%) FTP
13 4 (0.27%) IPv4
13 4 (0.27%) SNA
13 4 (0.27%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 89 (5.91%) NoSQL
2 81 (5.37%) SQL Server
3 66 (4.38%) PostgreSQL
4 65 (4.31%) Relational Database
5 59 (3.92%) MongoDB
6 37 (2.46%) MySQL
7 32 (2.12%) Data Warehouse
8 29 (1.92%) Elasticsearch
9 28 (1.86%) KDB
10 25 (1.66%) Big Data
11 23 (1.53%) Azure SQL Database
12 19 (1.26%) Data Lake
13 18 (1.19%) Power BI
14 17 (1.13%) Amazon Redshift
15 16 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
16 14 (0.93%) DynamoDB
17 11 (0.73%) Amazon Aurora
18 9 (0.60%) Apache Cassandra
18 9 (0.60%) Kdb+
19 8 (0.53%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 269 (17.85%) Selenium
2 236 (15.66%) Git
3 219 (14.53%) JIRA
4 213 (14.13%) Jenkins
5 157 (10.42%) Cucumber
6 121 (8.03%) Postman
7 111 (7.37%) GitLab
8 110 (7.30%) Cypress.io
9 80 (5.31%) JMeter
10 65 (4.31%) REST Assured
11 64 (4.25%) WebDriver
12 59 (3.92%) SpecFlow
13 55 (3.65%) SonarQube
13 55 (3.65%) TestRail
14 51 (3.38%) JUnit
15 50 (3.32%) Bitbucket
16 46 (3.05%) TeamCity
17 44 (2.92%) Appium
17 44 (2.92%) Visual Studio
18 38 (2.52%) Robot Framework
General
1 336 (22.30%) Social Skills
2 222 (14.73%) Finance
3 140 (9.29%) Banking
4 127 (8.43%) Analytical Skills
5 108 (7.17%) Public Sector
6 53 (3.52%) Front Office
7 49 (3.25%) Investment Banking
8 39 (2.59%) Back Office
9 33 (2.19%) Legal
10 32 (2.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 31 (2.06%) Law
12 29 (1.92%) Automotive
13 28 (1.86%) Telecoms
14 19 (1.26%) Manufacturing
15 18 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
16 16 (1.06%) Retail
17 13 (0.86%) Marketing
17 13 (0.86%) Police
18 12 (0.80%) Electronics
19 11 (0.73%) Prime Brokerage
Job Titles
1 352 (23.36%) Developer
2 207 (13.74%) Senior
3 169 (11.21%) Tester
4 146 (9.69%) Test Engineer
5 136 (9.02%) Analyst
6 126 (8.36%) Lead
7 105 (6.97%) Test Analyst
8 97 (6.44%) Automation Tester
9 89 (5.91%) Software Engineer
10 84 (5.57%) Java Developer
11 72 (4.78%) Test Manager
12 67 (4.45%) DevOps Engineer
13 65 (4.31%) Full Stack Developer
14 62 (4.11%) Senior Developer
14 62 (4.11%) Test Automation Engineer
15 61 (4.05%) Architect
16 55 (3.65%) QA Engineer
17 45 (2.99%) Test Leader
18 40 (2.65%) C# Developer
19 39 (2.59%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 154 (10.22%) REST
2 149 (9.89%) .NET
3 125 (8.29%) React
4 92 (6.10%) CSS
5 89 (5.91%) HTML
6 85 (5.64%) Node.js
7 83 (5.51%) Kafka
8 70 (4.64%) XML
9 69 (4.58%) RESTful
10 67 (4.45%) AngularJS
11 66 (4.38%) Web Services
12 64 (4.25%) JSON
13 61 (4.05%) Spring
14 58 (3.85%) .NET Framework
15 55 (3.65%) Playwright
16 51 (3.38%) Spring Boot
17 48 (3.19%) SOAP
18 42 (2.79%) .NET Core
19 39 (2.59%) Laravel
20 36 (2.39%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 100 (6.64%) Product Ownership
2 48 (3.19%) Algorithms
3 42 (2.79%) Mobile App
4 36 (2.39%) Distributed Systems
4 36 (2.39%) Greenfield Project
5 33 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
5 33 (2.19%) Derivative
6 32 (2.12%) Equities
7 23 (1.53%) Onboarding
7 23 (1.53%) Public Cloud
8 22 (1.46%) Cloud Native
8 22 (1.46%) Data Structures
8 22 (1.46%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 22 (1.46%) PKI
9 20 (1.33%) Fixed Income
9 20 (1.33%) Management Information System
10 18 (1.19%) Data Centre
11 17 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
12 14 (0.93%) Hedge funds
12 14 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 163 (10.82%) Linux
2 97 (6.44%) Windows
3 83 (5.51%) Unix
4 42 (2.79%) Android
5 31 (2.06%) Windows Server
6 22 (1.46%) Mac OS X
7 20 (1.33%) Apple iOS
8 14 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (0.93%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.53%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.33%) Embedded Linux
10 5 (0.33%) VMS
11 3 (0.20%) Windows 10
11 3 (0.20%) Windows 2000
11 3 (0.20%) Windows 7
11 3 (0.20%) Windows XP
12 1 (0.066%) Mac OS
12 1 (0.066%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 672 (44.59%) Agile
2 469 (31.12%) CI/CD
3 457 (30.33%) DevOps
4 275 (18.25%) Continuous Integration
5 218 (14.47%) Software Engineering
6 210 (13.93%) Scrum
6 210 (13.93%) TDD
7 208 (13.80%) Software Testing
8 192 (12.74%) Problem-Solving
9 191 (12.67%) Microservices
10 175 (11.61%) Test Strategy
11 167 (11.08%) BDD
12 145 (9.62%) Performance Testing
13 139 (9.22%) Test Scripting
14 136 (9.02%) Containerisation
15 121 (8.03%) Unit Testing
16 118 (7.83%) Full Stack Development
17 112 (7.43%) Infrastructure as Code
18 110 (7.30%) User Acceptance Testing
19 108 (7.17%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 427 (28.33%) Java
2 336 (22.30%) Python
3 250 (16.59%) SQL
4 238 (15.79%) JavaScript
5 234 (15.53%) C#
6 126 (8.36%) TypeScript
7 107 (7.10%) PowerShell
8 66 (4.38%) C++
9 55 (3.65%) Bash
10 54 (3.58%) PHP
11 44 (2.92%) C
12 43 (2.85%) Kotlin
13 31 (2.06%) Shell Script
14 30 (1.99%) Scala
15 29 (1.92%) Go
16 21 (1.39%) MATLAB
17 19 (1.26%) Perl
18 16 (1.06%) Groovy
19 14 (0.93%) Ruby
19 14 (0.93%) Rust
Qualifications
1 274 (18.18%) Security Cleared
2 201 (13.34%) SC Cleared
3 121 (8.03%) Degree
4 66 (4.38%) ISTQB
5 46 (3.05%) DV Cleared
6 40 (2.65%) Computer Science Degree
7 34 (2.26%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 23 (1.53%) ISEB
9 22 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
10 15 (1.00%) Master's Degree
11 6 (0.40%) AAT
12 4 (0.27%) CTC Cleared
13 3 (0.20%) AWS Certification
13 3 (0.20%) Azure Certification
13 3 (0.20%) CISSP
13 3 (0.20%) ITIL Certification
13 3 (0.20%) PhD
13 3 (0.20%) PMI Certification
13 3 (0.20%) PMP
13 3 (0.20%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 279 (18.51%) QA
2 90 (5.97%) Accessibility
3 30 (1.99%) Data Quality
4 12 (0.80%) HL7
5 11 (0.73%) NCSC
6 10 (0.66%) WCAG
7 9 (0.60%) Disclosure Scotland
8 7 (0.46%) RMADS
9 6 (0.40%) SLA
10 5 (0.33%) ISO 9001
10 5 (0.33%) PMO
11 4 (0.27%) PCI DSS
12 3 (0.20%) ISO 20022
12 3 (0.20%) JTAG
12 3 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
13 2 (0.13%) GDPR
14 1 (0.066%) GRC
14 1 (0.066%) MISRA
14 1 (0.066%) MISRA C
14 1 (0.066%) NIST
System Software
1 167 (11.08%) Docker
2 52 (3.45%) Active Directory
3 32 (2.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.40%) VMware NSX
6 4 (0.27%) VirtualBox
6 4 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.27%) vSphere
6 4 (0.27%) zsh
7 3 (0.20%) KVM
7 3 (0.20%) VMware Workstation
8 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 2 (0.13%) Firmware
9 1 (0.066%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.066%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.066%) HDFS
9 1 (0.066%) iptables
9 1 (0.066%) Terminal Services
9 1 (0.066%) vCloud
9 1 (0.066%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 174 (11.55%) Kubernetes
2 155 (10.29%) Terraform
3 117 (7.76%) Ansible
4 40 (2.65%) Grafana
5 27 (1.79%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.73%) Puppet
7 20 (1.33%) Progress Chef
8 13 (0.86%) Docker Swarm
8 13 (0.86%) Kibana
9 12 (0.80%) Podman
10 10 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.60%) Packer
12 8 (0.53%) HP ALM
13 6 (0.40%) Nagios
13 6 (0.40%) Zipkin
14 5 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 5 (0.33%) vRealize
15 4 (0.27%) Consul
15 4 (0.27%) Rancher
15 4 (0.27%) VxRail
Vendors
1 170 (11.28%) Microsoft
2 85 (5.64%) Oracle
3 42 (2.79%) VMware
4 33 (2.19%) SAP
5 28 (1.86%) Google
6 27 (1.79%) Salesforce
7 24 (1.59%) Splunk
8 22 (1.46%) ION Trading
8 22 (1.46%) ServiceNow
9 17 (1.13%) Databricks
10 15 (1.00%) Dynatrace
11 13 (0.86%) Atlassian
11 13 (0.86%) TIBCO
12 12 (0.80%) HP
12 12 (0.80%) IBM
13 9 (0.60%) Cadence
13 9 (0.60%) Pega
14 8 (0.53%) Checkmarx
14 8 (0.53%) Informatica
14 8 (0.53%) Red Hat