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 14 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
14 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 55 49 46
Rank change year-on-year -6 -3 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,516 2,628 4,471
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.55% 4.56% 5.07%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.12% 5.08% 5.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 991 1,926 3,214
10th Percentile £363 £400 £388
25th Percentile £425 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £540
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% +1.85% +13.68%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £644
90th Percentile £719 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £520 £495
% change year-on-year -3.85% +5.05% +14.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 40 56
10th Percentile £51.50 £47.25 £17.25
25th Percentile £52.50 £55.31 £40.32
Median hourly rate £62.50 £70.50 £56.09
Median % change year-on-year -11.35% +25.69% +24.64%
75th Percentile £77.50 £83.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £90.00 £83.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £68.75 £48.75
% change year-on-year -9.09% +41.03% +15.38%

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 36,783 51,773 79,870
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.20% 89.81% 90.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,675 35,887 56,073
10th Percentile £300 £325 £343
25th Percentile £413 £438 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +8.16%
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% +8.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,434 1,710 1,920
10th Percentile £12.75 £10.99 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.22 £15.52
Median hourly rate £36.50 £36.40 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year +0.29% +41.73% +4.82%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.50
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.00 £35.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +8.57% +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 14 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 14 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 14 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 -7 1,257 £525 -4.55% 701
London -7 735 £548 -6.41% 229
Work from Home +3 603 £500 -4.76% 383
UK excluding London -19 581 £500 -3.85% 519
South East -2 192 £550 -4.35% 113
North of England -12 152 £475 -13.64% 116
North West +11 84 £500 +5.26% 79
Scotland -31 74 £475 - 48
Yorkshire -7 63 £475 -13.64% 33
South West -50 57 £550 +4.76% 79
Midlands -28 45 £425 -10.53% 80
East of England -29 35 £498 +4.74% 65
West Midlands -24 27 £425 -16.05% 50
Wales +35 22 £509 -11.18% 16
East Midlands +1 18 £390 +3.31% 30
North East -22 5 £405 -28.32% 4
Northern Ireland +5 2 - - 13
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 71 (4.68%) Confluence
2 30 (1.98%) Apache Airflow
2 30 (1.98%) Apache Spark
3 29 (1.91%) nginx
4 27 (1.78%) Apache
5 17 (1.12%) Microsoft Exchange
6 15 (0.99%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.53%) Alfresco
7 8 (0.53%) CMS
7 8 (0.53%) SAS
8 6 (0.40%) Appian
8 6 (0.40%) Camunda
9 4 (0.26%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 3 (0.20%) IIS
10 3 (0.20%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.20%) WebLogic
10 3 (0.20%) WebSphere
11 2 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
11 2 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 21 (1.39%) Simulink
2 20 (1.32%) Stateflow
3 12 (0.79%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.59%) Microsoft Excel
5 8 (0.53%) Trello
6 4 (0.26%) CPLEX
6 4 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 3 (0.20%) CANalyzer
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 (0.59%) ION MarketView
2 7 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (0.46%) Loan IQ
3 6 (0.40%) Endur
4 5 (0.33%) SimCorp Dimension
5 4 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
5 4 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
5 4 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.26%) 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
1 351 (23.15%) Azure
2 330 (21.77%) AWS
3 181 (11.94%) Azure DevOps
4 130 (8.58%) GitHub
5 88 (5.80%) Serverless
6 68 (4.49%) GCP
7 50 (3.30%) PaaS
8 47 (3.10%) Amazon S3
8 47 (3.10%) AWS Lambda
9 43 (2.84%) GitHub Actions
10 37 (2.44%) Azure Service Bus
11 36 (2.37%) SaaS
12 33 (2.18%) Azure Monitor
13 32 (2.11%) Power Platform
14 31 (2.04%) Amazon EC2
15 30 (1.98%) Azure Functions
16 27 (1.78%) Amazon EKS
16 27 (1.78%) Amazon SQS
17 26 (1.72%) Dynamics 365
18 25 (1.65%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.58%) Firewall
2 20 (1.32%) VPN
3 18 (1.19%) DNS
4 17 (1.12%) HTTP
5 14 (0.92%) Internet
6 13 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
7 12 (0.79%) BGP
7 12 (0.79%) Ethernet VPN
7 12 (0.79%) MPLS
8 11 (0.73%) Radio Access Network
8 11 (0.73%) SSL
9 10 (0.66%) 5G
10 9 (0.59%) TCP/IP
11 8 (0.53%) Kerberos
12 7 (0.46%) DHCP
12 7 (0.46%) Wireless
13 6 (0.40%) FTP
14 4 (0.26%) IPv4
14 4 (0.26%) VLAN
15 3 (0.20%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 91 (6.00%) NoSQL
2 86 (5.67%) SQL Server
3 69 (4.55%) Relational Database
4 64 (4.22%) PostgreSQL
5 57 (3.76%) MongoDB
6 38 (2.51%) MySQL
7 34 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
8 30 (1.98%) Elasticsearch
9 28 (1.85%) KDB
10 26 (1.72%) Big Data
11 23 (1.52%) Azure SQL Database
12 19 (1.25%) Data Lake
12 19 (1.25%) Power BI
13 17 (1.12%) Amazon Redshift
14 16 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
15 15 (0.99%) DynamoDB
16 10 (0.66%) Amazon Aurora
16 10 (0.66%) Apache Cassandra
17 9 (0.59%) Kdb+
18 8 (0.53%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 278 (18.34%) Selenium
2 243 (16.03%) Git
3 223 (14.71%) JIRA
4 214 (14.12%) Jenkins
5 157 (10.36%) Cucumber
6 130 (8.58%) Postman
7 111 (7.32%) Cypress.io
7 111 (7.32%) GitLab
8 82 (5.41%) JMeter
9 66 (4.35%) WebDriver
10 65 (4.29%) REST Assured
11 59 (3.89%) SpecFlow
12 56 (3.69%) SonarQube
13 55 (3.63%) TestRail
14 51 (3.36%) Bitbucket
14 51 (3.36%) JUnit
15 50 (3.30%) Appium
16 49 (3.23%) TeamCity
16 49 (3.23%) Visual Studio
17 38 (2.51%) Robot Framework
General
1 338 (22.30%) Social Skills
2 231 (15.24%) Finance
3 142 (9.37%) Banking
4 131 (8.64%) Analytical Skills
5 113 (7.45%) Public Sector
6 53 (3.50%) Front Office
7 49 (3.23%) Investment Banking
8 45 (2.97%) Back Office
9 34 (2.24%) Automotive
9 34 (2.24%) Legal
10 32 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 32 (2.11%) Law
11 28 (1.85%) Telecoms
12 20 (1.32%) Manufacturing
13 17 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
13 17 (1.12%) Retail
14 13 (0.86%) Electronics
14 13 (0.86%) Marketing
14 13 (0.86%) Police
15 11 (0.73%) Prime Brokerage
Job Titles
1 358 (23.61%) Developer
2 210 (13.85%) Senior
3 169 (11.15%) Tester
4 146 (9.63%) Test Engineer
5 143 (9.43%) Analyst
6 125 (8.25%) Lead
7 111 (7.32%) Test Analyst
8 98 (6.46%) Automation Tester
9 86 (5.67%) Java Developer
9 86 (5.67%) Software Engineer
10 71 (4.68%) DevOps Engineer
10 71 (4.68%) Test Manager
11 67 (4.42%) Full Stack Developer
12 65 (4.29%) Test Automation Engineer
13 61 (4.02%) Architect
14 59 (3.89%) Senior Developer
15 57 (3.76%) QA Engineer
16 49 (3.23%) Test Leader
17 41 (2.70%) C# Developer
17 41 (2.70%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 156 (10.29%) .NET
2 155 (10.22%) REST
3 122 (8.05%) React
4 90 (5.94%) CSS
5 88 (5.80%) HTML
6 87 (5.74%) Kafka
7 86 (5.67%) Node.js
8 71 (4.68%) RESTful
9 69 (4.55%) XML
10 67 (4.42%) AngularJS
11 65 (4.29%) Web Services
12 64 (4.22%) Spring
13 61 (4.02%) JSON
14 59 (3.89%) Playwright
15 58 (3.83%) .NET Framework
16 52 (3.43%) Spring Boot
17 51 (3.36%) SOAP
18 43 (2.84%) .NET Core
19 40 (2.64%) Laravel
20 36 (2.37%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 107 (7.06%) Product Ownership
2 49 (3.23%) Algorithms
3 45 (2.97%) Mobile App
4 38 (2.51%) Distributed Systems
5 36 (2.37%) Greenfield Project
6 34 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
7 33 (2.18%) Derivative
8 32 (2.11%) Equities
9 24 (1.58%) Data Structures
10 23 (1.52%) Cloud Native
10 23 (1.52%) Onboarding
10 23 (1.52%) Public Cloud
11 22 (1.45%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 22 (1.45%) PKI
12 20 (1.32%) Fixed Income
13 19 (1.25%) Management Information System
14 18 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
15 17 (1.12%) Data Centre
16 15 (0.99%) Hedge funds
16 15 (0.99%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 164 (10.82%) Linux
2 100 (6.60%) Windows
3 85 (5.61%) Unix
4 44 (2.90%) Android
5 32 (2.11%) Windows Server
6 22 (1.45%) Apple iOS
6 22 (1.45%) Mac OS X
7 14 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.92%) Windows Server 2019
8 7 (0.46%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.33%) VMS
10 4 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
11 3 (0.20%) Windows 2000
11 3 (0.20%) Windows XP
12 2 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.13%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.066%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.066%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 687 (45.32%) Agile
2 482 (31.79%) CI/CD
3 469 (30.94%) DevOps
4 282 (18.60%) Continuous Integration
5 217 (14.31%) Software Engineering
6 215 (14.18%) Scrum
7 212 (13.98%) Software Testing
8 211 (13.92%) TDD
9 194 (12.80%) Problem-Solving
10 193 (12.73%) Microservices
11 182 (12.01%) Test Strategy
12 168 (11.08%) BDD
13 151 (9.96%) Performance Testing
14 145 (9.56%) Test Scripting
15 138 (9.10%) Containerisation
16 123 (8.11%) Unit Testing
17 120 (7.92%) Full Stack Development
18 115 (7.59%) SDLC
19 110 (7.26%) User Acceptance Testing
20 107 (7.06%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 435 (28.69%) Java
2 339 (22.36%) Python
3 253 (16.69%) SQL
4 236 (15.57%) C#
5 233 (15.37%) JavaScript
6 126 (8.31%) TypeScript
7 107 (7.06%) PowerShell
8 66 (4.35%) C++
9 56 (3.69%) Bash
10 54 (3.56%) PHP
11 46 (3.03%) Kotlin
12 45 (2.97%) C
13 33 (2.18%) Shell Script
14 32 (2.11%) Scala
15 30 (1.98%) Go
16 21 (1.39%) MATLAB
17 19 (1.25%) Perl
18 17 (1.12%) Groovy
19 14 (0.92%) Ruby
19 14 (0.92%) Rust
Qualifications
1 273 (18.01%) Security Cleared
2 198 (13.06%) SC Cleared
3 126 (8.31%) Degree
4 66 (4.35%) ISTQB
5 47 (3.10%) DV Cleared
6 40 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
7 34 (2.24%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 23 (1.52%) ISEB
9 22 (1.45%) BPSS Clearance
10 15 (0.99%) Master's Degree
11 6 (0.40%) AAT
12 4 (0.26%) CISSP
12 4 (0.26%) CTC Cleared
13 3 (0.20%) AWS Certification
13 3 (0.20%) Azure Certification
13 3 (0.20%) HNC
13 3 (0.20%) ITIL Certification
13 3 (0.20%) PhD
13 3 (0.20%) PMI Certification
13 3 (0.20%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 287 (18.93%) QA
2 88 (5.80%) Accessibility
3 30 (1.98%) Data Quality
4 12 (0.79%) HL7
5 11 (0.73%) NCSC
6 10 (0.66%) WCAG
7 8 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
8 7 (0.46%) RMADS
9 6 (0.40%) SLA
10 5 (0.33%) PMO
11 4 (0.26%) 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%) IEC 61508
14 1 (0.066%) MISRA
14 1 (0.066%) MISRA C
14 1 (0.066%) NIST
System Software
1 171 (11.28%) Docker
2 55 (3.63%) Active Directory
3 31 (2.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.26%) VirtualBox
5 4 (0.26%) vSphere
5 4 (0.26%) zsh
6 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 2 (0.13%) KVM
6 2 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.13%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
7 1 (0.066%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 1 (0.066%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.066%) Firmware
7 1 (0.066%) HDFS
7 1 (0.066%) iptables
7 1 (0.066%) Terminal Services
7 1 (0.066%) vCloud
7 1 (0.066%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 179 (11.81%) Kubernetes
2 152 (10.03%) Terraform
3 119 (7.85%) Ansible
4 39 (2.57%) Grafana
5 29 (1.91%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.72%) Puppet
7 18 (1.19%) Progress Chef
8 13 (0.86%) Docker Swarm
8 13 (0.86%) Kibana
9 12 (0.79%) Podman
10 11 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.59%) Packer
12 8 (0.53%) HP ALM
12 8 (0.53%) Zipkin
13 6 (0.40%) Nagios
13 6 (0.40%) Rancher
14 5 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 5 (0.33%) HP Quality Center
15 4 (0.26%) Consul
15 4 (0.26%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 178 (11.74%) Microsoft
2 87 (5.74%) Oracle
3 39 (2.57%) VMware
4 32 (2.11%) SAP
5 29 (1.91%) Google
6 27 (1.78%) Salesforce
7 24 (1.58%) Splunk
8 22 (1.45%) ION Trading
9 18 (1.19%) ServiceNow
10 17 (1.12%) Databricks
11 15 (0.99%) Dynatrace
12 14 (0.92%) HP
13 13 (0.86%) IBM
13 13 (0.86%) TIBCO
14 12 (0.79%) Atlassian
15 9 (0.59%) Cadence
15 9 (0.59%) Checkmarx
16 8 (0.53%) Informatica
16 8 (0.53%) Red Hat
17 7 (0.46%) Ericsson