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 29 April 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
29 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 56 47 46
Rank change year-on-year -9 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,506 2,822 4,493
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.45% 4.73% 5.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.00% 5.26% 5.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 980 2,056 3,225
10th Percentile £363 £385 £381
25th Percentile £425 £460 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £511 £550 £528
Median % change year-on-year -7.05% +4.17% +11.16%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £638
90th Percentile £719 £750 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £489
% change year-on-year -4.76% +7.36% +11.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 46 59
10th Percentile £49.00 £39.68 £18.93
25th Percentile £52.50 £51.25 £41.96
Median hourly rate £60.00 £62.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% +13.64% +22.22%
75th Percentile £78.75 £77.00 £67.65
90th Percentile £90.00 £90.00 £82.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £58.75 £48.75
% change year-on-year +6.38% +20.51% +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 37,621 53,662 80,392
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.30% 89.91% 90.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,254 37,244 56,449
10th Percentile £300 £325 £340
25th Percentile £413 £438 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% +7.69%
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% +9.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,437 1,746 1,925
10th Percentile £12.75 £11.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.25 £15.25
Median hourly rate £35.50 £37.30 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.83% +49.20% -
75th Percentile £59.95 £65.00 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £64.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.50 £36.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +1.39% +80.00% -7.24%

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 29 April 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 29 April 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 29 April 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 -10 1,248 £525 -4.55% 766
London -6 721 £550 -6.18% 258
Work from Home +5 609 £500 -4.76% 360
UK excluding London -24 597 £500 -4.76% 538
South East -5 194 £550 -2.44% 132
North of England -13 161 £475 -9.52% 128
North West +10 88 £500 +5.26% 89
Scotland -31 79 £478 -1.55% 39
Yorkshire -5 68 £450 -14.29% 34
South West -54 51 £550 - 68
Midlands -25 46 £425 -5.56% 77
East of England -29 38 £498 -0.50% 82
West Midlands -17 25 £425 -15.00% 44
Wales +27 22 £509 -2.68% 17
East Midlands +4 21 £419 +11.73% 33
North East -21 5 £405 -28.32% 5
Northern Ireland +11 4 £500 - 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 32 (2.12%) Apache Airflow
3 28 (1.86%) Apache
3 28 (1.86%) nginx
4 24 (1.59%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.93%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (0.80%) SharePoint
7 10 (0.66%) CMS
8 8 (0.53%) Alfresco
9 7 (0.46%) 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%) CICS
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
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%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.13%) Mingle
9 1 (0.066%) CPLEX
9 1 (0.066%) Gliffy
9 1 (0.066%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (0.53%) ION MarketView
2 7 (0.46%) Loan IQ
3 6 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.40%) Endur
4 4 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
4 4 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
4 4 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.27%) SimCorp Dimension
5 3 (0.20%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.20%) IntelliMatch
5 3 (0.20%) ION Anvil
5 3 (0.20%) Oracle BPM
5 3 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Cash Management
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
6 2 (0.13%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.066%) MIS ActiveH
Cloud Services
1 342 (22.71%) AWS
2 327 (21.71%) Azure
3 167 (11.09%) Azure DevOps
4 129 (8.57%) GitHub
5 93 (6.18%) Serverless
6 58 (3.85%) GCP
7 55 (3.65%) AWS Lambda
8 54 (3.59%) Amazon S3
9 46 (3.05%) PaaS
10 43 (2.86%) GitHub Actions
11 37 (2.46%) SaaS
12 35 (2.32%) Azure Service Bus
13 34 (2.26%) AWS CloudFormation
14 32 (2.12%) Azure Monitor
15 31 (2.06%) Amazon EC2
16 30 (1.99%) Power Platform
17 28 (1.86%) Dynamics 365
17 28 (1.86%) OpenShift
18 27 (1.79%) Amazon EKS
19 26 (1.73%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.73%) Firewall
2 21 (1.39%) VPN
3 20 (1.33%) DNS
4 17 (1.13%) HTTP
5 16 (1.06%) Internet
6 13 (0.86%) BGP
6 13 (0.86%) Ethernet VPN
6 13 (0.86%) MPLS
7 12 (0.80%) Radio Access Network
7 12 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (0.66%) SSL
9 8 (0.53%) 5G
9 8 (0.53%) DHCP
9 8 (0.53%) Kerberos
9 8 (0.53%) TCP/IP
10 5 (0.33%) FTP
10 5 (0.33%) Wireless
11 4 (0.27%) SNA
11 4 (0.27%) VLAN
12 3 (0.20%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 89 (5.91%) NoSQL
2 78 (5.18%) SQL Server
3 72 (4.78%) PostgreSQL
4 60 (3.98%) MongoDB
5 58 (3.85%) Relational Database
6 36 (2.39%) MySQL
7 31 (2.06%) Data Warehouse
8 29 (1.93%) Elasticsearch
9 26 (1.73%) Big Data
9 26 (1.73%) KDB
10 19 (1.26%) Azure SQL Database
11 18 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
11 18 (1.20%) Data Lake
12 17 (1.13%) Amazon Aurora
12 17 (1.13%) Power BI
13 16 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
13 16 (1.06%) DynamoDB
14 9 (0.60%) Hadoop
14 9 (0.60%) Kdb+
15 8 (0.53%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 272 (18.06%) Selenium
2 227 (15.07%) Git
3 220 (14.61%) Jenkins
4 218 (14.48%) JIRA
5 160 (10.62%) Cucumber
6 117 (7.77%) Postman
7 114 (7.57%) Cypress.io
8 111 (7.37%) GitLab
9 75 (4.98%) JMeter
10 67 (4.45%) REST Assured
11 64 (4.25%) WebDriver
12 59 (3.92%) SpecFlow
13 56 (3.72%) TestRail
14 54 (3.59%) SonarQube
15 51 (3.39%) JUnit
16 49 (3.25%) Bitbucket
16 49 (3.25%) TeamCity
17 43 (2.86%) Appium
18 39 (2.59%) Visual Studio
19 36 (2.39%) Robot Framework
General
1 324 (21.51%) Social Skills
2 217 (14.41%) Finance
3 134 (8.90%) Banking
4 130 (8.63%) Analytical Skills
5 116 (7.70%) Public Sector
6 51 (3.39%) Front Office
7 47 (3.12%) Investment Banking
8 37 (2.46%) Back Office
9 32 (2.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 31 (2.06%) Law
10 31 (2.06%) Legal
11 29 (1.93%) Telecoms
12 28 (1.86%) Automotive
13 21 (1.39%) Manufacturing
14 18 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
14 18 (1.20%) Retail
15 15 (1.00%) Marketing
16 14 (0.93%) Electronics
17 13 (0.86%) Police
18 11 (0.73%) Prime Brokerage
Job Titles
1 341 (22.64%) Developer
2 195 (12.95%) Senior
3 174 (11.55%) Tester
4 146 (9.69%) Test Engineer
5 138 (9.16%) Analyst
6 128 (8.50%) Lead
7 106 (7.04%) Test Analyst
8 101 (6.71%) Automation Tester
9 87 (5.78%) Software Engineer
10 79 (5.25%) Java Developer
11 72 (4.78%) DevOps Engineer
12 66 (4.38%) Test Manager
13 63 (4.18%) Full Stack Developer
13 63 (4.18%) Test Automation Engineer
14 62 (4.12%) Architect
15 61 (4.05%) Senior Developer
16 55 (3.65%) QA Engineer
17 47 (3.12%) Test Leader
18 40 (2.66%) C# Developer
19 38 (2.52%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 154 (10.23%) REST
2 139 (9.23%) .NET
3 126 (8.37%) React
4 96 (6.37%) CSS
5 94 (6.24%) HTML
6 87 (5.78%) Node.js
7 80 (5.31%) Kafka
8 69 (4.58%) XML
9 68 (4.52%) RESTful
10 66 (4.38%) AngularJS
10 66 (4.38%) JSON
11 58 (3.85%) .NET Framework
12 57 (3.78%) Web Services
13 56 (3.72%) Spring
14 50 (3.32%) Playwright
15 49 (3.25%) Spring Boot
16 44 (2.92%) SOAP
17 42 (2.79%) .NET Core
18 36 (2.39%) ARM Templates
19 35 (2.32%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 91 (6.04%) Product Ownership
2 49 (3.25%) Algorithms
3 39 (2.59%) Mobile App
4 34 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
4 34 (2.26%) Greenfield Project
5 31 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
5 31 (2.06%) Derivative
5 31 (2.06%) Equities
6 26 (1.73%) Data Structures
7 23 (1.53%) Management Information System
7 23 (1.53%) Onboarding
8 22 (1.46%) Cloud Native
8 22 (1.46%) PKI
8 22 (1.46%) Public Cloud
9 21 (1.39%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 19 (1.26%) Fixed Income
11 18 (1.20%) Data Centre
12 16 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
13 13 (0.86%) Legacy Systems
13 13 (0.86%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 163 (10.82%) Linux
2 95 (6.31%) Windows
3 78 (5.18%) Unix
4 41 (2.72%) Android
5 31 (2.06%) Windows Server
6 22 (1.46%) Mac OS X
7 21 (1.39%) 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
1 667 (44.29%) Agile
2 475 (31.54%) CI/CD
3 455 (30.21%) DevOps
4 274 (18.19%) Continuous Integration
5 216 (14.34%) Software Engineering
6 205 (13.61%) Scrum
7 200 (13.28%) TDD
8 199 (13.21%) Software Testing
9 186 (12.35%) Problem-Solving
10 185 (12.28%) Microservices
11 166 (11.02%) Test Strategy
12 163 (10.82%) BDD
13 140 (9.30%) Containerisation
14 139 (9.23%) Test Scripting
15 137 (9.10%) Performance Testing
16 118 (7.84%) Full Stack Development
17 116 (7.70%) Unit Testing
18 110 (7.30%) User Acceptance Testing
19 109 (7.24%) Infrastructure as Code
20 104 (6.91%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 424 (28.15%) Java
2 349 (23.17%) Python
3 247 (16.40%) JavaScript
4 244 (16.20%) SQL
5 230 (15.27%) C#
6 123 (8.17%) TypeScript
7 106 (7.04%) PowerShell
8 65 (4.32%) C++
9 53 (3.52%) PHP
10 52 (3.45%) Bash
11 46 (3.05%) C
12 39 (2.59%) Kotlin
13 33 (2.19%) Go
14 32 (2.12%) Shell Script
15 30 (1.99%) Scala
16 21 (1.39%) MATLAB
17 20 (1.33%) Perl
18 16 (1.06%) Ruby
19 15 (1.00%) Groovy
20 14 (0.93%) Rust
Qualifications
1 281 (18.66%) Security Cleared
2 203 (13.48%) SC Cleared
3 113 (7.50%) Degree
4 69 (4.58%) ISTQB
5 50 (3.32%) DV Cleared
6 36 (2.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 32 (2.12%) Computer Science Degree
8 23 (1.53%) ISEB
9 21 (1.39%) BPSS Clearance
10 15 (1.00%) Master's Degree
11 6 (0.40%) AAT
12 4 (0.27%) AWS Certification
12 4 (0.27%) CTC Cleared
12 4 (0.27%) PMI Certification
12 4 (0.27%) PMP
13 3 (0.20%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 3 (0.20%) ITIL Certification
13 3 (0.20%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 3 (0.20%) PhD
13 3 (0.20%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 274 (18.19%) QA
2 96 (6.37%) Accessibility
3 31 (2.06%) Data Quality
4 11 (0.73%) NCSC
4 11 (0.73%) WCAG
5 10 (0.66%) Disclosure Scotland
6 8 (0.53%) HL7
7 7 (0.46%) RMADS
7 7 (0.46%) SLA
8 5 (0.33%) ISO 9001
8 5 (0.33%) PMO
9 4 (0.27%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.20%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.20%) JTAG
10 3 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
11 2 (0.13%) GDPR
12 1 (0.066%) GRC
12 1 (0.066%) MiFID
12 1 (0.066%) MISRA
12 1 (0.066%) MISRA C
System Software
1 170 (11.29%) Docker
2 51 (3.39%) Active Directory
3 33 (2.19%) 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
9 1 (0.066%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.066%) 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
1 179 (11.89%) Kubernetes
2 154 (10.23%) Terraform
3 116 (7.70%) Ansible
4 43 (2.86%) Grafana
5 26 (1.73%) Prometheus
5 26 (1.73%) Puppet
6 20 (1.33%) Progress Chef
7 14 (0.93%) Kibana
8 13 (0.86%) Docker Swarm
9 12 (0.80%) Podman
10 10 (0.66%) HP ALM
11 9 (0.60%) Packer
12 8 (0.53%) Rancher
13 7 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
14 6 (0.40%) Nagios
14 6 (0.40%) Zipkin
15 5 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 5 (0.33%) vRealize
16 4 (0.27%) Iperf
16 4 (0.27%) VxRail
Vendors
1 169 (11.22%) Microsoft
2 81 (5.38%) Oracle
3 44 (2.92%) VMware
4 35 (2.32%) SAP
5 26 (1.73%) ServiceNow
6 25 (1.66%) Salesforce
7 23 (1.53%) Google
7 23 (1.53%) Splunk
8 20 (1.33%) ION Trading
9 18 (1.20%) IBM
10 16 (1.06%) Databricks
11 14 (0.93%) Dynatrace
11 14 (0.93%) HP
11 14 (0.93%) TIBCO
12 12 (0.80%) Atlassian
13 9 (0.60%) Pega
14 8 (0.53%) Cadence
14 8 (0.53%) Informatica
15 7 (0.46%) Red Hat
15 7 (0.46%) Wind River