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 1 June 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
1 Jun 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 56 49 46
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,500 2,464 4,473
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.48% 4.40% 5.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.08% 4.90% 5.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 986 1,779 3,234
10th Percentile £363 £380 £393
25th Percentile £425 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £511 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.05% - +15.79%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £523 £500
% change year-on-year -4.31% +4.50% +17.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 51 47
10th Percentile £51.25 £47.50 £17.15
25th Percentile £52.50 £53.75 £33.75
Median hourly rate £60.00 £68.75 £57.18
Median % change year-on-year -12.73% +20.23% +27.07%
75th Percentile £72.50 £85.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £90.00 £80.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 £64.38 £48.25
% change year-on-year -6.80% +33.42% +16.97%

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 36,802 50,277 79,372
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.47% 89.69% 90.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,632 34,811 55,790
10th Percentile £300 £325 £345
25th Percentile £413 £438 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +2.33% +7.50%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £644
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £488
% change year-on-year - +2.56% +9.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,530 1,673 1,868
10th Percentile £12.75 £10.63 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.72 £15.63
Median hourly rate £36.50 £36.25 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year +0.69% +41.16% +9.74%
75th Percentile £60.75 £65.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.12 £35.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +8.91% +75.00% -4.76%

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 1 June 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 1 June 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 1 June 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 1,259 £525 -4.55% 616
London -5 729 £525 -9.48% 227
Work from Home +4 584 £500 -4.76% 307
UK excluding London -19 580 £500 -4.31% 432
South East -2 200 £550 -4.35% 101
North of England -7 160 £490 -10.91% 95
North West +23 80 £500 - 75
Yorkshire -3 75 £475 -13.64% 16
Scotland -23 67 £475 -0.84% 45
South West -46 57 £550 +4.76% 69
Midlands -37 37 £419 -11.79% 62
East of England -37 34 £498 +4.74% 49
Wales +32 21 £509 -11.57% 9
West Midlands -37 19 £425 -19.05% 46
East Midlands -4 18 £390 +2.63% 16
North East -19 5 £405 -28.32% 4
Northern Ireland 0 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 75 (5.00%) Confluence
2 31 (2.07%) Apache Spark
3 23 (1.53%) Apache Airflow
4 22 (1.47%) Apache
5 19 (1.27%) nginx
6 17 (1.13%) Microsoft Exchange
7 15 (1.00%) SharePoint
8 8 (0.53%) Alfresco
8 8 (0.53%) SAS
9 7 (0.47%) CMS
10 6 (0.40%) Appian
10 6 (0.40%) Camunda
11 5 (0.33%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 3 (0.20%) IIS
12 3 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.20%) WebSphere
13 2 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
13 2 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
14 1 (0.067%) Mule
Applications
1 21 (1.40%) Simulink
2 20 (1.33%) Stateflow
3 12 (0.80%) Microsoft Excel
4 9 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
5 8 (0.53%) Trello
6 5 (0.33%) CPLEX
7 4 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 3 (0.20%) CANalyzer
8 3 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
9 2 (0.13%) Gliffy
9 2 (0.13%) Mingle
10 1 (0.067%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 12 (0.80%) ION MarketView
2 6 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (0.40%) Endur
3 5 (0.33%) SimCorp Dimension
4 4 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 4 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
5 3 (0.20%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.20%) IntelliMatch
5 3 (0.20%) ION Anvil
5 3 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
5 3 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.20%) SAP EWM
5 3 (0.20%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.13%) NEC Housing
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle BPM
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Cash Management
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.067%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 353 (23.53%) Azure
2 316 (21.07%) AWS
3 177 (11.80%) Azure DevOps
4 124 (8.27%) GitHub
5 88 (5.87%) Serverless
6 66 (4.40%) GCP
7 50 (3.33%) PaaS
8 48 (3.20%) Amazon S3
9 46 (3.07%) AWS Lambda
10 41 (2.73%) GitHub Actions
11 35 (2.33%) SaaS
12 34 (2.27%) Azure Monitor
13 32 (2.13%) Azure Functions
13 32 (2.13%) Azure Service Bus
14 31 (2.07%) Amazon EC2
15 30 (2.00%) Power Platform
16 28 (1.87%) Azure Data Factory
16 28 (1.87%) Entra ID
16 28 (1.87%) OpenShift
17 27 (1.80%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.73%) Firewall
2 15 (1.00%) HTTP
2 15 (1.00%) VPN
3 13 (0.87%) DNS
4 12 (0.80%) Internet
4 12 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
5 11 (0.73%) 5G
6 10 (0.67%) TCP/IP
7 9 (0.60%) BGP
7 9 (0.60%) Ethernet VPN
7 9 (0.60%) MPLS
7 9 (0.60%) Radio Access Network
8 8 (0.53%) Kerberos
8 8 (0.53%) SSL
9 7 (0.47%) Wireless
10 6 (0.40%) FTP
11 5 (0.33%) DHCP
12 4 (0.27%) IPv4
12 4 (0.27%) VLAN
13 3 (0.20%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 95 (6.33%) NoSQL
2 83 (5.53%) SQL Server
3 72 (4.80%) Relational Database
4 66 (4.40%) PostgreSQL
5 56 (3.73%) MongoDB
6 41 (2.73%) MySQL
7 36 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
8 31 (2.07%) Elasticsearch
9 28 (1.87%) KDB
10 24 (1.60%) Big Data
11 23 (1.53%) Azure SQL Database
12 20 (1.33%) Power BI
13 19 (1.27%) Data Lake
14 14 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
14 14 (0.93%) Amazon Redshift
14 14 (0.93%) Apache Cassandra
15 13 (0.87%) DynamoDB
16 10 (0.67%) Amazon Aurora
17 8 (0.53%) BigQuery
17 8 (0.53%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 278 (18.53%) Selenium
2 245 (16.33%) Git
3 216 (14.40%) Jenkins
4 210 (14.00%) JIRA
5 147 (9.80%) Cucumber
6 133 (8.87%) Postman
7 115 (7.67%) Cypress.io
8 108 (7.20%) GitLab
9 86 (5.73%) JMeter
10 64 (4.27%) WebDriver
11 59 (3.93%) REST Assured
12 58 (3.87%) SpecFlow
13 55 (3.67%) SonarQube
14 53 (3.53%) JUnit
15 49 (3.27%) Appium
15 49 (3.27%) Bitbucket
16 48 (3.20%) Visual Studio
17 47 (3.13%) TeamCity
18 42 (2.80%) TestRail
19 37 (2.47%) Robot Framework
General
1 328 (21.87%) Social Skills
2 234 (15.60%) Finance
3 151 (10.07%) Banking
4 137 (9.13%) Analytical Skills
5 109 (7.27%) Public Sector
6 49 (3.27%) Front Office
7 45 (3.00%) Back Office
8 43 (2.87%) Investment Banking
9 35 (2.33%) Automotive
9 35 (2.33%) Legal
10 32 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 30 (2.00%) Law
12 25 (1.67%) Telecoms
13 21 (1.40%) Manufacturing
14 18 (1.20%) Retail
15 16 (1.07%) Marketing
15 16 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
16 15 (1.00%) Electronics
17 13 (0.87%) Police
18 11 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 371 (24.73%) Developer
2 217 (14.47%) Senior
3 171 (11.40%) Tester
4 141 (9.40%) Analyst
5 136 (9.07%) Test Engineer
6 118 (7.87%) Lead
7 105 (7.00%) Test Analyst
8 100 (6.67%) Automation Tester
9 97 (6.47%) Java Developer
10 87 (5.80%) Software Engineer
11 71 (4.73%) Full Stack Developer
12 70 (4.67%) Test Manager
13 68 (4.53%) DevOps Engineer
14 66 (4.40%) Architect
15 64 (4.27%) Senior Developer
16 62 (4.13%) Test Automation Engineer
17 51 (3.40%) QA Engineer
18 46 (3.07%) Senior Analyst
19 42 (2.80%) Test Leader
20 41 (2.73%) Senior Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 157 (10.47%) .NET
2 148 (9.87%) REST
3 133 (8.87%) React
4 94 (6.27%) Kafka
5 87 (5.80%) Node.js
6 85 (5.67%) CSS
6 85 (5.67%) HTML
7 78 (5.20%) RESTful
8 73 (4.87%) AngularJS
9 69 (4.60%) Spring
10 64 (4.27%) XML
11 63 (4.20%) Web Services
12 59 (3.93%) .NET Framework
13 56 (3.73%) JSON
14 55 (3.67%) Playwright
15 54 (3.60%) Spring Boot
16 45 (3.00%) SOAP
17 44 (2.93%) .NET Core
18 41 (2.73%) Gherkin
19 36 (2.40%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 116 (7.73%) Product Ownership
2 52 (3.47%) Algorithms
3 45 (3.00%) Mobile App
4 41 (2.73%) Distributed Systems
5 33 (2.20%) Greenfield Project
6 32 (2.13%) Derivative
7 30 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
8 26 (1.73%) Equities
9 25 (1.67%) Cloud Native
10 24 (1.60%) Data Structures
10 24 (1.60%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 23 (1.53%) PKI
11 23 (1.53%) Public Cloud
12 22 (1.47%) Onboarding
13 18 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
13 18 (1.20%) Fixed Income
13 18 (1.20%) Management Information System
14 17 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
15 14 (0.93%) Data Centre
15 14 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 154 (10.27%) Linux
2 98 (6.53%) Windows
3 77 (5.13%) Unix
4 42 (2.80%) Android
5 33 (2.20%) Windows Server
6 23 (1.53%) Mac OS X
7 20 (1.33%) Apple iOS
8 16 (1.07%) Windows Server 2019
9 14 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 6 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.33%) VMS
12 4 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.20%) Windows 2000
13 3 (0.20%) Windows XP
14 1 (0.067%) Mac OS
14 1 (0.067%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 698 (46.53%) Agile
2 485 (32.33%) CI/CD
3 479 (31.93%) DevOps
4 288 (19.20%) Continuous Integration
5 226 (15.07%) Software Engineering
6 225 (15.00%) Scrum
7 216 (14.40%) TDD
8 208 (13.87%) Software Testing
9 198 (13.20%) Microservices
10 194 (12.93%) Problem-Solving
11 168 (11.20%) Test Strategy
12 159 (10.60%) BDD
13 150 (10.00%) Performance Testing
14 147 (9.80%) Test Scripting
15 141 (9.40%) Containerisation
16 133 (8.87%) Unit Testing
17 125 (8.33%) Full Stack Development
18 115 (7.67%) Infrastructure as Code
19 114 (7.60%) Computer Science
20 111 (7.40%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 459 (30.60%) Java
2 344 (22.93%) Python
3 254 (16.93%) SQL
4 227 (15.13%) C#
5 226 (15.07%) JavaScript
6 123 (8.20%) TypeScript
7 115 (7.67%) PowerShell
8 64 (4.27%) C++
9 59 (3.93%) Bash
10 46 (3.07%) C
10 46 (3.07%) Kotlin
10 46 (3.07%) PHP
11 38 (2.53%) Shell Script
12 33 (2.20%) Go
13 31 (2.07%) Scala
14 21 (1.40%) MATLAB
15 19 (1.27%) Groovy
16 18 (1.20%) Perl
17 15 (1.00%) Ruby
17 15 (1.00%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 257 (17.13%) Security Cleared
2 182 (12.13%) SC Cleared
3 129 (8.60%) Degree
4 57 (3.80%) ISTQB
5 46 (3.07%) Computer Science Degree
6 44 (2.93%) DV Cleared
7 32 (2.13%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 23 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
9 21 (1.40%) ISEB
10 14 (0.93%) Master's Degree
11 7 (0.47%) AAT
12 4 (0.27%) HNC
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
14 2 (0.13%) Numerate Degree
14 2 (0.13%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 271 (18.07%) QA
2 77 (5.13%) Accessibility
3 26 (1.73%) Data Quality
4 12 (0.80%) HL7
5 11 (0.73%) NCSC
6 9 (0.60%) WCAG
7 7 (0.47%) Disclosure Scotland
7 7 (0.47%) RMADS
8 5 (0.33%) PMO
9 4 (0.27%) JTAG
9 4 (0.27%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.27%) SLA
10 3 (0.20%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
11 2 (0.13%) GDPR
11 2 (0.13%) ISO 8583
12 1 (0.067%) GRC
12 1 (0.067%) IEC 61508
12 1 (0.067%) MISRA
12 1 (0.067%) MISRA C
System Software
1 175 (11.67%) Docker
2 60 (4.00%) Active Directory
3 30 (2.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.27%) VirtualBox
5 4 (0.27%) vSphere
5 4 (0.27%) zsh
6 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 2 (0.13%) Embedded Firmware
6 2 (0.13%) Firmware
7 1 (0.067%) iptables
7 1 (0.067%) Terminal Services
7 1 (0.067%) vCloud
7 1 (0.067%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 188 (12.53%) Kubernetes
2 145 (9.67%) Terraform
3 129 (8.60%) Ansible
4 43 (2.87%) Grafana
5 33 (2.20%) Puppet
6 30 (2.00%) Prometheus
7 17 (1.13%) Progress Chef
8 13 (0.87%) Docker Swarm
8 13 (0.87%) Kibana
9 12 (0.80%) Podman
10 11 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (0.53%) Zipkin
12 7 (0.47%) Packer
12 7 (0.47%) Rancher
13 6 (0.40%) Nagios
14 5 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 5 (0.33%) HP Quality Center
15 4 (0.27%) HP ALM
15 4 (0.27%) Opsgenie
15 4 (0.27%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 183 (12.20%) Microsoft
2 83 (5.53%) Oracle
3 37 (2.47%) VMware
4 35 (2.33%) SAP
5 33 (2.20%) Google
6 27 (1.80%) Salesforce
7 26 (1.73%) ION Trading
8 24 (1.60%) Splunk
9 18 (1.20%) Databricks
9 18 (1.20%) ServiceNow
10 15 (1.00%) Dynatrace
11 13 (0.87%) TIBCO
12 12 (0.80%) Atlassian
13 11 (0.73%) Checkmarx
13 11 (0.73%) IBM
14 9 (0.60%) CyberArk
14 9 (0.60%) HP
15 8 (0.53%) Ericsson
15 8 (0.53%) Informatica
16 7 (0.47%) Micro Focus