Test Automation Contract Job Trends in Berkshire

Automated Testing
South East > Berkshire

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Berkshire requiring Test Automation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 20 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 80 35 39
Rank change year-on-year -45 +4 +9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 41 70 83
As % of all contract jobs in Berkshire 2.10% 5.73% 4.36%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.51% 6.21% 5.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 23 46 48
10th Percentile £353 £352 £505
25th Percentile £371 £475 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £410 £563 £625
Median % change year-on-year -27.11% -10.00% +13.64%
75th Percentile £439 £700 £650
90th Percentile £475 - £688
South East median daily rate £459 £500 £550
% change year-on-year -8.20% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 0
Median hourly rate - £24.40 -
South East median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +40.00% -16.67% +6.67%

All Process & Methodology Skills
Berkshire

Test Automation falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in Berkshire.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,632 1,128 1,646
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Berkshire 83.44% 92.31% 86.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,021 684 836
10th Percentile £325 £325 £303
25th Percentile £413 £413 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.81% -
75th Percentile £608 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £675 £688
South East median daily rate £525 £500 £514
% change year-on-year +5.00% -2.72% -0.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 169 45 96
10th Percentile £31.25 £14.75 £16.50
25th Percentile £76.69 £18.87 £41.19
Median hourly rate £84.00 £37.28 £60.53
Median % change year-on-year +125.32% -38.41% +0.88%
75th Percentile £88.00 £68.75 £71.89
90th Percentile £106.20 £87.40 £87.46
South East median hourly rate £56.00 £21.99 £54.62
% change year-on-year +154.72% -59.75% +9.24%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in Berkshire

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Test Automation relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Berkshire.

Test Automation job vacancy trend in Berkshire

Test Automation
Daily Rate Trend in Berkshire

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Berkshire citing Test Automation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Berkshire citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram in Berkshire

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation in Berkshire over the 6 months to 20 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in Berkshire

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Trend in Berkshire

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Berkshire citing Test Automation.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Berkshire citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Contract Job Locations in Berkshire

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 Berkshire region over the 6 months to 20 July 2026. 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
Reading -46 26 £425 -34.62% 8
Wokingham -19 6 £328 -18.13% 2
Slough - 4 £410 -
Windsor +3 3 £475 -7.32% 3
Bracknell +3 1 - - 1
Test Automation
South East

Test Automation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Berkshire by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 4 (9.76%) Apache Spark
2 1 (2.44%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 1 (2.44%) Oracle EBS
1 1 (2.44%) Oracle EBS R12
1 1 (2.44%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 11 (26.83%) Azure
2 9 (21.95%) AWS
3 6 (14.63%) GCP
4 4 (9.76%) Azure DevOps
5 3 (7.32%) Entra ID
5 3 (7.32%) GitHub
6 2 (4.88%) Azure Key Vault
6 2 (4.88%) Azure Monitor
6 2 (4.88%) GitHub Actions
7 1 (2.44%) Azure AKS
7 1 (2.44%) Azure App Service
7 1 (2.44%) Azure Data Factory
7 1 (2.44%) Azure Sentinel
7 1 (2.44%) Azure Storage
7 1 (2.44%) IaaS
7 1 (2.44%) Microsoft Purview
7 1 (2.44%) PaaS
7 1 (2.44%) Salesforce Service Cloud
7 1 (2.44%) Serverless
7 1 (2.44%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 9 (21.95%) 2G
1 9 (21.95%) 3G
1 9 (21.95%) 4G
1 9 (21.95%) 5G
1 9 (21.95%) Diameter Protocol
1 9 (21.95%) SIGTRAN
1 9 (21.95%) SS7
2 4 (9.76%) BGP
2 4 (9.76%) Ethernet VPN
2 4 (9.76%) MPLS
2 4 (9.76%) VPN
3 3 (7.32%) GPRS
3 3 (7.32%) GSM
3 3 (7.32%) LAN
3 3 (7.32%) LTE
3 3 (7.32%) UMTS
3 3 (7.32%) VXLAN
3 3 (7.32%) WAN
3 3 (7.32%) Wireshark
4 2 (4.88%) NGN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (12.20%) Data Warehouse
2 4 (9.76%) Big Data
3 3 (7.32%) Spark SQL
4 2 (4.88%) Data Lake
5 1 (2.44%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (2.44%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (2.44%) BigQuery
5 1 (2.44%) NoSQL
5 1 (2.44%) Oracle Reports
5 1 (2.44%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 6 (14.63%) Git
2 5 (12.20%) JIRA
3 3 (7.32%) HP UFT
4 2 (4.88%) Jenkins
5 1 (2.44%) Cucumber
5 1 (2.44%) GitLab
5 1 (2.44%) JMeter
5 1 (2.44%) Katalon Studio
5 1 (2.44%) LoadRunner
5 1 (2.44%) NeoLoad
5 1 (2.44%) Postman
5 1 (2.44%) REST Assured
5 1 (2.44%) Selenium
5 1 (2.44%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 16 (39.02%) Social Skills
2 15 (36.59%) Analytical Skills
2 15 (36.59%) Telecoms
3 3 (7.32%) Finance
4 2 (4.88%) Aerospace
5 1 (2.44%) Influencing Skills
5 1 (2.44%) Law
Job Titles
1 10 (24.39%) Senior
2 7 (17.07%) Tester
3 6 (14.63%) Designer
3 6 (14.63%) Test Engineer
4 5 (12.20%) Mobile Designer
5 3 (7.32%) Automation Consultant
5 3 (7.32%) Consultant
5 3 (7.32%) Design Engineer
5 3 (7.32%) Mobile Engineer
5 3 (7.32%) Network Consultant
5 3 (7.32%) Principal Engineer
5 3 (7.32%) Senior Consultant
5 3 (7.32%) Senior Network Consultant
6 2 (4.88%) Developer
6 2 (4.88%) IP Engineer
6 2 (4.88%) Lead
6 2 (4.88%) QA Engineer
6 2 (4.88%) Salesforce Engineer
6 2 (4.88%) Senior QA Engineer
6 2 (4.88%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (7.32%) PySpark
1 3 (7.32%) React
2 2 (4.88%) .NET
2 2 (4.88%) JSON
2 2 (4.88%) REST
2 2 (4.88%) RESTful
3 1 (2.44%) .NET Core
3 1 (2.44%) .NET Framework
3 1 (2.44%) ARM Templates
3 1 (2.44%) Entity Framework
3 1 (2.44%) Lightning Web Components
3 1 (2.44%) OAuth
3 1 (2.44%) OpenID
3 1 (2.44%) Playwright
3 1 (2.44%) SAML
3 1 (2.44%) WireMock
3 1 (2.44%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 6 (14.63%) Cloud Native
2 4 (9.76%) Self-Motivation
3 3 (7.32%) Distributed Systems
4 2 (4.88%) AI Agents
4 2 (4.88%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (4.88%) Enterprise Software
4 2 (4.88%) Product Ownership
5 1 (2.44%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (2.44%) Distributed Architecture
5 1 (2.44%) IVR
5 1 (2.44%) Mobile App
Processes & Methodologies
1 22 (53.66%) CI/CD
2 13 (31.71%) Agile
3 12 (29.27%) DevOps
4 11 (26.83%) Roadmaps
4 11 (26.83%) Technical Leadership
5 10 (24.39%) Problem-Solving
5 10 (24.39%) Stakeholder Management
6 9 (21.95%) Continuous Improvement
6 9 (21.95%) Test Strategy
6 9 (21.95%) Validation
7 8 (19.51%) AI
8 7 (17.07%) Capacity Planning
9 6 (14.63%) Project Delivery
9 6 (14.63%) Scrum
9 6 (14.63%) Technology Roadmap
10 5 (12.20%) Containerisation
10 5 (12.20%) Mentoring
10 5 (12.20%) Network Design
10 5 (12.20%) Observability
10 5 (12.20%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 10 (24.39%) Python
2 6 (14.63%) JavaScript
3 5 (12.20%) Java
3 5 (12.20%) SQL
4 3 (7.32%) VBScript
5 2 (4.88%) Apex Code
5 2 (4.88%) C#
5 2 (4.88%) Groovy
5 2 (4.88%) TypeScript
6 1 (2.44%) Bicep
6 1 (2.44%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 5 (12.20%) CCNP
1 5 (12.20%) Cisco Certification
1 5 (12.20%) Security Cleared
2 3 (7.32%) SC Cleared
3 1 (2.44%) Azure Certification
3 1 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
3 1 (2.44%) CCIP
3 1 (2.44%) CCNA
3 1 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
3 1 (2.44%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (19.51%) QA
2 4 (9.76%) Data Quality
3 1 (2.44%) Accessibility
3 1 (2.44%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (2.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 1 (2.44%) GDPR
3 1 (2.44%) GRC
3 1 (2.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (2.44%) NIST
3 1 (2.44%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 4 (9.76%) Docker
2 1 (2.44%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 6 (14.63%) Ansible
2 5 (12.20%) Kubernetes
2 5 (12.20%) Terraform
3 1 (2.44%) QRadar
Vendors
1 6 (14.63%) Arista
2 5 (12.20%) Cisco
3 4 (9.76%) Databricks
3 4 (9.76%) Fortinet
3 4 (9.76%) Juniper
3 4 (9.76%) Microsoft
4 3 (7.32%) F5
5 2 (4.88%) Salesforce
5 2 (4.88%) Splunk
6 1 (2.44%) BT
6 1 (2.44%) CheckPoint
6 1 (2.44%) Conga
6 1 (2.44%) Dynatrace
6 1 (2.44%) Ericsson
6 1 (2.44%) GoCardless
6 1 (2.44%) Nokia
6 1 (2.44%) Oracle
6 1 (2.44%) Parasoft
6 1 (2.44%) ServiceNow