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

6 months to
20 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 55 48 45
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 +2
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,505 2,609 4,473
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.54% 4.56% 5.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.11% 5.08% 5.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 990 1,905 3,224
10th Percentile £363 £400 £389
25th Percentile £425 £458 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £550 £543
Median % change year-on-year -7.27% +1.38% +14.21%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £721 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £520 £498
% change year-on-year -3.85% +4.52% +16.72%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 42 53
10th Percentile £51.50 £47.50 £17.25
25th Percentile £52.50 £53.44 £37.00
Median hourly rate £60.00 £69.38 £54.25
Median % change year-on-year -13.51% +27.88% +20.56%
75th Percentile £74.50 £81.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £90.00 £80.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.50 £48.75
% change year-on-year -4.58% +34.36% +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 36,622 51,397 80,021
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.09% 89.76% 90.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,613 35,611 56,174
10th Percentile £300 £325 £344
25th Percentile £413 £439 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +7.07%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £480
% change year-on-year - +4.17% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,439 1,690 1,913
10th Percentile £12.75 £10.63 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.77 £15.50
Median hourly rate £36.50 £36.00 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year +1.39% +40.19% +7.00%
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% -6.54%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -6 1,251 £525 -4.55% 770
London -9 732 £531 -9.57% 268
Work from Home +4 595 £500 -4.76% 402
UK excluding London -20 575 £500 -3.85% 590
South East -2 190 £550 -4.35% 158
North of England -10 156 £475 -13.64% 126
North West +11 83 £500 +3.15% 75
Scotland -28 72 £475 - 50
Yorkshire -8 68 £475 -13.64% 43
South West -41 58 £550 +4.76% 73
Midlands -37 41 £425 -8.80% 85
East of England -33 33 £498 +2.05% 80
West Midlands -20 24 £430 -16.10% 55
Wales +33 21 £509 -11.57% 15
East Midlands -1 17 £400 +5.26% 30
North East -20 5 £405 -28.32% 8
Northern Ireland +1 2 - - 12
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 73 (4.85%) Confluence
2 30 (1.99%) Apache Spark
3 29 (1.93%) nginx
4 28 (1.86%) Apache Airflow
5 25 (1.66%) Apache
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%) 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 (1.40%) 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%) CPLEX
6 4 (0.27%) 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 11 (0.73%) ION MarketView
2 7 (0.47%) 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
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
6 3 (0.20%) SAP S/4HANA
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
8 1 (0.066%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 349 (23.19%) Azure
2 328 (21.79%) AWS
3 178 (11.83%) Azure DevOps
4 129 (8.57%) GitHub
5 88 (5.85%) Serverless
6 69 (4.58%) GCP
7 50 (3.32%) PaaS
8 47 (3.12%) AWS Lambda
9 46 (3.06%) Amazon S3
10 42 (2.79%) GitHub Actions
11 37 (2.46%) Azure Service Bus
12 36 (2.39%) SaaS
13 33 (2.19%) Azure Monitor
14 31 (2.06%) Amazon EC2
14 31 (2.06%) Azure Functions
14 31 (2.06%) Power Platform
15 27 (1.79%) Amazon EKS
15 27 (1.79%) Amazon SQS
16 26 (1.73%) Azure Data Factory
16 26 (1.73%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.73%) Firewall
2 20 (1.33%) VPN
3 17 (1.13%) DNS
3 17 (1.13%) HTTP
4 14 (0.93%) Internet
5 12 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
6 11 (0.73%) 5G
6 11 (0.73%) BGP
6 11 (0.73%) Ethernet VPN
6 11 (0.73%) MPLS
6 11 (0.73%) Radio Access Network
6 11 (0.73%) SSL
7 10 (0.66%) TCP/IP
8 8 (0.53%) Kerberos
9 7 (0.47%) Wireless
10 6 (0.40%) DHCP
10 6 (0.40%) FTP
11 4 (0.27%) IPv4
11 4 (0.27%) VLAN
12 3 (0.20%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 91 (6.05%) NoSQL
2 86 (5.71%) SQL Server
3 70 (4.65%) Relational Database
4 63 (4.19%) PostgreSQL
5 57 (3.79%) MongoDB
6 39 (2.59%) MySQL
7 35 (2.33%) Data Warehouse
8 30 (1.99%) Elasticsearch
8 30 (1.99%) KDB
9 24 (1.59%) Azure SQL Database
9 24 (1.59%) Big Data
10 20 (1.33%) Power BI
11 18 (1.20%) Data Lake
12 16 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
12 16 (1.06%) Amazon Redshift
13 14 (0.93%) DynamoDB
14 10 (0.66%) Amazon Aurora
14 10 (0.66%) Apache Cassandra
15 9 (0.60%) Kdb+
16 8 (0.53%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 274 (18.21%) Selenium
2 247 (16.41%) Git
3 220 (14.62%) Jenkins
4 216 (14.35%) JIRA
5 153 (10.17%) Cucumber
6 134 (8.90%) Postman
7 116 (7.71%) Cypress.io
8 113 (7.51%) GitLab
9 83 (5.51%) JMeter
10 65 (4.32%) WebDriver
11 62 (4.12%) REST Assured
12 58 (3.85%) SpecFlow
13 56 (3.72%) SonarQube
14 55 (3.65%) JUnit
15 51 (3.39%) Appium
16 48 (3.19%) Bitbucket
16 48 (3.19%) Visual Studio
17 47 (3.12%) TeamCity
18 46 (3.06%) TestRail
19 37 (2.46%) Robot Framework
General
1 329 (21.86%) Social Skills
2 229 (15.22%) Finance
3 136 (9.04%) Analytical Skills
3 136 (9.04%) Banking
4 113 (7.51%) Public Sector
5 52 (3.46%) Front Office
6 46 (3.06%) Back Office
7 45 (2.99%) Investment Banking
8 34 (2.26%) Automotive
8 34 (2.26%) Legal
9 31 (2.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 31 (2.06%) Law
10 26 (1.73%) Telecoms
11 20 (1.33%) Manufacturing
12 17 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
13 16 (1.06%) Retail
14 14 (0.93%) Marketing
15 13 (0.86%) Electronics
15 13 (0.86%) Police
16 10 (0.66%) Prime Brokerage
Job Titles
1 363 (24.12%) Developer
2 210 (13.95%) Senior
3 172 (11.43%) Tester
4 143 (9.50%) Test Engineer
5 140 (9.30%) Analyst
6 117 (7.77%) Lead
7 107 (7.11%) Test Analyst
8 100 (6.64%) Automation Tester
9 92 (6.11%) Java Developer
10 86 (5.71%) Software Engineer
11 71 (4.72%) DevOps Engineer
12 70 (4.65%) Full Stack Developer
13 67 (4.45%) Test Manager
14 64 (4.25%) Test Automation Engineer
15 60 (3.99%) Architect
16 59 (3.92%) Senior Developer
17 58 (3.85%) QA Engineer
18 42 (2.79%) Senior Analyst
18 42 (2.79%) Test Leader
19 40 (2.66%) C# Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 156 (10.37%) .NET
2 152 (10.10%) REST
3 127 (8.44%) React
4 91 (6.05%) CSS
5 90 (5.98%) HTML
6 88 (5.85%) Kafka
7 86 (5.71%) Node.js
8 73 (4.85%) RESTful
9 70 (4.65%) AngularJS
10 68 (4.52%) XML
11 67 (4.45%) Spring
12 65 (4.32%) Web Services
13 60 (3.99%) JSON
14 58 (3.85%) .NET Framework
15 57 (3.79%) Playwright
16 54 (3.59%) Spring Boot
17 50 (3.32%) SOAP
18 42 (2.79%) .NET Core
19 41 (2.72%) Laravel
20 38 (2.52%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 111 (7.38%) Product Ownership
2 50 (3.32%) Algorithms
3 45 (2.99%) Mobile App
4 40 (2.66%) Distributed Systems
5 34 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
5 34 (2.26%) Greenfield Project
6 31 (2.06%) Derivative
7 30 (1.99%) Equities
8 24 (1.59%) Data Structures
8 24 (1.59%) Onboarding
9 23 (1.53%) Cloud Native
9 23 (1.53%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 23 (1.53%) Public Cloud
10 22 (1.46%) PKI
11 19 (1.26%) Management Information System
12 18 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
12 18 (1.20%) Fixed Income
13 15 (1.00%) Data Centre
13 15 (1.00%) Legacy Systems
14 14 (0.93%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 163 (10.83%) Linux
2 99 (6.58%) Windows
3 85 (5.65%) Unix
4 43 (2.86%) Android
5 32 (2.13%) Windows Server
6 22 (1.46%) Mac OS X
7 21 (1.40%) Apple iOS
8 14 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (0.93%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.40%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.33%) VMS
11 4 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.20%) Windows 2000
12 3 (0.20%) Windows XP
13 1 (0.066%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.066%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 691 (45.91%) Agile
2 489 (32.49%) CI/CD
3 471 (31.30%) DevOps
4 288 (19.14%) Continuous Integration
5 222 (14.75%) Software Engineering
6 220 (14.62%) Scrum
7 214 (14.22%) TDD
8 210 (13.95%) Software Testing
9 198 (13.16%) Problem-Solving
10 193 (12.82%) Microservices
11 169 (11.23%) Test Strategy
12 161 (10.70%) BDD
13 154 (10.23%) Performance Testing
14 147 (9.77%) Test Scripting
15 142 (9.44%) Containerisation
16 125 (8.31%) Unit Testing
17 123 (8.17%) Full Stack Development
18 110 (7.31%) SDLC
19 109 (7.24%) Computer Science
20 107 (7.11%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 442 (29.37%) Java
2 344 (22.86%) Python
3 255 (16.94%) SQL
4 236 (15.68%) C#
5 234 (15.55%) JavaScript
6 125 (8.31%) TypeScript
7 113 (7.51%) PowerShell
8 65 (4.32%) C++
9 56 (3.72%) Bash
10 55 (3.65%) PHP
11 46 (3.06%) C
11 46 (3.06%) Kotlin
12 37 (2.46%) Shell Script
13 31 (2.06%) Scala
14 30 (1.99%) Go
15 21 (1.40%) MATLAB
16 19 (1.26%) Perl
17 16 (1.06%) Groovy
18 14 (0.93%) Ruby
18 14 (0.93%) Rust
Qualifications
1 271 (18.01%) Security Cleared
2 198 (13.16%) SC Cleared
3 127 (8.44%) Degree
4 64 (4.25%) ISTQB
5 45 (2.99%) DV Cleared
6 42 (2.79%) Computer Science Degree
7 33 (2.19%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 23 (1.53%) ISEB
9 22 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
10 14 (0.93%) Master's Degree
11 6 (0.40%) AAT
12 4 (0.27%) CISSP
12 4 (0.27%) 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
1 286 (19.00%) QA
2 84 (5.58%) Accessibility
3 29 (1.93%) Data Quality
4 12 (0.80%) HL7
5 11 (0.73%) NCSC
6 9 (0.60%) WCAG
7 8 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
8 7 (0.47%) RMADS
9 6 (0.40%) SLA
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%) IEC 61508
14 1 (0.066%) MISRA
14 1 (0.066%) MISRA C
14 1 (0.066%) NIST
System Software
1 175 (11.63%) Docker
2 55 (3.65%) Active Directory
3 29 (1.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.66%) 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%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.066%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.066%) Firmware
7 1 (0.066%) iptables
7 1 (0.066%) Terminal Services
7 1 (0.066%) vCloud
7 1 (0.066%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 184 (12.23%) Kubernetes
2 150 (9.97%) Terraform
3 126 (8.37%) Ansible
4 39 (2.59%) Grafana
5 32 (2.13%) Puppet
6 29 (1.93%) Prometheus
7 18 (1.20%) Progress Chef
8 13 (0.86%) Docker Swarm
8 13 (0.86%) Kibana
9 12 (0.80%) Podman
10 11 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.60%) Packer
12 8 (0.53%) Zipkin
13 6 (0.40%) HP ALM
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 (0.27%) Opsgenie
15 4 (0.27%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 178 (11.83%) Microsoft
2 86 (5.71%) Oracle
3 37 (2.46%) VMware
4 33 (2.19%) SAP
5 30 (1.99%) Google
6 27 (1.79%) Salesforce
7 24 (1.59%) ION Trading
7 24 (1.59%) Splunk
8 18 (1.20%) Databricks
9 17 (1.13%) ServiceNow
10 15 (1.00%) Dynatrace
11 13 (0.86%) TIBCO
12 12 (0.80%) IBM
13 11 (0.73%) Atlassian
13 11 (0.73%) HP
14 9 (0.60%) Cadence
14 9 (0.60%) Checkmarx
15 8 (0.53%) CyberArk
15 8 (0.53%) Informatica
15 8 (0.53%) Red Hat