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 14 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 48 42
Rank change year-on-year -16 -6 +14
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 52 50 83
As % of all contract jobs in Berkshire 2.89% 4.28% 4.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.53% 4.67% 5.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 26 29 52
10th Percentile £369 £344 £385
25th Percentile £409 £475 £491
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £444 £501 £600
Median % change year-on-year -11.34% -16.58% +6.43%
75th Percentile £500 £550 £650
90th Percentile £625 £700 £675
South East median daily rate £450 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -10.00% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 0
10th Percentile £66.30 - -
25th Percentile £66.38 - -
Median hourly rate £68.22 £17.30 -
Median % change year-on-year +294.31% - -
75th Percentile £70.66 - -
90th Percentile £71.16 - -
South East median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year +40.00% - -11.11%

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 1,474 1,070 1,482
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Berkshire 81.80% 91.53% 87.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 930 666 767
10th Percentile £350 £325 £325
25th Percentile £425 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £508 £550
Median % change year-on-year +8.37% -7.73% +4.76%
75th Percentile £625 £600 £638
90th Percentile £733 £650 £693
South East median daily rate £525 £500 £513
% change year-on-year +5.00% -2.44% -1.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 137 40 72
10th Percentile £16.38 £14.75 £19.51
25th Percentile £31.50 £16.66 £48.28
Median hourly rate £81.50 £32.18 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +153.26% -47.76% +2.67%
75th Percentile £91.31 £59.44 £71.89
90th Percentile £104.50 £87.28 £87.32
South East median hourly rate £52.43 £20.40 £57.35
% change year-on-year +156.99% -64.43% +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 14 September 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 14 September 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 -28 36 £440 -12.00% 32
Wokingham -6 7 £500 +42.86% 5
Windsor +3 3 £475 -7.32% 2
Slough - 3 £410 - 7
Bracknell 0 1 - - 12
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 5 (9.62%) Confluence
2 4 (7.69%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.92%) WebSphere
Applications
1 1 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (1.92%) Oracle EBS
1 1 (1.92%) Oracle EBS R12
1 1 (1.92%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 21 (40.38%) Azure
2 13 (25.00%) Azure DevOps
3 12 (23.08%) AWS
4 8 (15.38%) Entra ID
4 8 (15.38%) GCP
5 6 (11.54%) Azure Key Vault
5 6 (11.54%) Azure Monitor
5 6 (11.54%) GitHub
6 5 (9.62%) Azure AKS
6 5 (9.62%) Azure App Service
6 5 (9.62%) GitHub Actions
7 4 (7.69%) IaaS
8 3 (5.77%) AWS CloudFormation
8 3 (5.77%) Azure API Management
8 3 (5.77%) Azure Storage
8 3 (5.77%) OpenShift
8 3 (5.77%) PaaS
9 1 (1.92%) Azure Sentinel
9 1 (1.92%) Microsoft Purview
9 1 (1.92%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 13 (25.00%) 2G
1 13 (25.00%) 3G
1 13 (25.00%) 4G
1 13 (25.00%) 5G
1 13 (25.00%) Diameter Protocol
1 13 (25.00%) SIGTRAN
1 13 (25.00%) SS7
2 3 (5.77%) BGP
2 3 (5.77%) Ethernet VPN
2 3 (5.77%) GPRS
2 3 (5.77%) GSM
2 3 (5.77%) LAN
2 3 (5.77%) LTE
2 3 (5.77%) MPLS
2 3 (5.77%) UMTS
2 3 (5.77%) VPN
2 3 (5.77%) VXLAN
2 3 (5.77%) WAN
2 3 (5.77%) Wireshark
3 2 (3.85%) NGN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (9.62%) Azure SQL Database
1 5 (9.62%) Data Warehouse
1 5 (9.62%) NoSQL
2 4 (7.69%) Big Data
3 3 (5.77%) Spark SQL
4 2 (3.85%) Data Lake
4 2 (3.85%) Metadata
4 2 (3.85%) Oracle Reports
4 2 (3.85%) SQL Server
5 1 (1.92%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (1.92%) BigQuery
5 1 (1.92%) Parquet
5 1 (1.92%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 10 (19.23%) Git
2 7 (13.46%) Jenkins
3 6 (11.54%) GitLab
3 6 (11.54%) JIRA
4 2 (3.85%) JMeter
4 2 (3.85%) tSQLt
5 1 (1.92%) Burp Suite
5 1 (1.92%) Cucumber
5 1 (1.92%) HP UFT
5 1 (1.92%) LoadRunner
5 1 (1.92%) NeoLoad
5 1 (1.92%) Postman
5 1 (1.92%) REST Assured
5 1 (1.92%) Selenium
General
1 22 (42.31%) Social Skills
2 21 (40.38%) Analytical Skills
3 18 (34.62%) Telecoms
4 5 (9.62%) Finance
5 4 (7.69%) Aerospace
6 1 (1.92%) German Language
6 1 (1.92%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 16 (30.77%) Senior
2 10 (19.23%) Designer
3 9 (17.31%) Mobile Designer
4 6 (11.54%) Consultant
4 6 (11.54%) Developer
5 5 (9.62%) Full-Stack Developer
5 5 (9.62%) Senior Consultant
5 5 (9.62%) Tester
6 3 (5.77%) Automation Consultant
6 3 (5.77%) Design Engineer
6 3 (5.77%) DevSecOps Engineer
6 3 (5.77%) Lead
6 3 (5.77%) Network Consultant
6 3 (5.77%) QA Engineer
6 3 (5.77%) Senior Network Consultant
6 3 (5.77%) Senior QA Engineer
6 3 (5.77%) Test Engineer
7 2 (3.85%) Full-Stack .NET Developer
7 2 (3.85%) React Developer
7 2 (3.85%) Software Assurance Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (25.00%) Terraform
2 8 (15.38%) REST
3 6 (11.54%) .NET
3 6 (11.54%) OAuth
3 6 (11.54%) SAML
4 5 (9.62%) .NET Core
4 5 (9.62%) .NET Framework
4 5 (9.62%) Entity Framework
4 5 (9.62%) OpenID
4 5 (9.62%) RESTful
5 3 (5.77%) ARM Templates
5 3 (5.77%) PySpark
6 2 (3.85%) JSON
6 2 (3.85%) Middleware
6 2 (3.85%) React
7 1 (1.92%) Jakarta EE
7 1 (1.92%) JMS
7 1 (1.92%) JNDI
7 1 (1.92%) SOAP
7 1 (1.92%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 8 (15.38%) Cloud Native
1 8 (15.38%) Self-Motivation
2 4 (7.69%) Product Ownership
3 2 (3.85%) AI Agents
3 2 (3.85%) Data Protection Act
3 2 (3.85%) Distributed Systems
3 2 (3.85%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (1.92%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (1.92%) Distributed Architecture
4 1 (1.92%) Hybrid Cloud
4 1 (1.92%) IVR
4 1 (1.92%) Legacy Applications
4 1 (1.92%) Management Information System
4 1 (1.92%) Mobile App
4 1 (1.92%) SCADA
4 1 (1.92%) Security Posture
4 1 (1.92%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 2 (3.85%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 32 (61.54%) CI/CD
2 23 (44.23%) DevOps
3 17 (32.69%) Roadmaps
3 17 (32.69%) Technical Leadership
4 16 (30.77%) Agile
4 16 (30.77%) Stakeholder Management
5 14 (26.92%) Problem-Solving
5 14 (26.92%) Validation
6 12 (23.08%) Continuous Improvement
7 10 (19.23%) Analytics
7 10 (19.23%) Technology Roadmap
8 9 (17.31%) Deployment Automation
8 9 (17.31%) Infrastructure as Code
8 9 (17.31%) Software Engineering
8 9 (17.31%) Test Strategy
9 8 (15.38%) Containerisation
9 8 (15.38%) Identity Access Management
10 7 (13.46%) Customer Requirements
10 7 (13.46%) Observability
10 7 (13.46%) Software Delivery
Programming Languages
1 17 (32.69%) Python
2 11 (21.15%) SQL
3 8 (15.38%) PowerShell
4 6 (11.54%) C#
4 6 (11.54%) Java
5 4 (7.69%) Bash
5 4 (7.69%) Bicep
6 2 (3.85%) Apex Code
6 2 (3.85%) JavaScript
6 2 (3.85%) T-SQL
7 1 (1.92%) Groovy
7 1 (1.92%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 10 (19.23%) Security Cleared
2 7 (13.46%) SC Cleared
3 5 (9.62%) Cisco Certification
4 4 (7.69%) CCNP
5 3 (5.77%) Azure Certification
6 2 (3.85%) CISSP
6 2 (3.85%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (3.85%) Degree
7 1 (1.92%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 1 (1.92%) AWS Certification
7 1 (1.92%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
7 1 (1.92%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (1.92%) CCNA
7 1 (1.92%) CEH
7 1 (1.92%) CISA
7 1 (1.92%) CompTIA Security+
7 1 (1.92%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (19.23%) QA
2 6 (11.54%) Data Quality
3 2 (3.85%) GDPR
3 2 (3.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (3.85%) NIST
4 1 (1.92%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (1.92%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 1 (1.92%) GRC
4 1 (1.92%) NCSC
4 1 (1.92%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.92%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 8 (15.38%) Docker
2 5 (9.62%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 10 (19.23%) Kubernetes
2 9 (17.31%) Ansible
3 1 (1.92%) Argo
3 1 (1.92%) Podman
3 1 (1.92%) QRadar
Vendors
1 11 (21.15%) Microsoft
2 6 (11.54%) Arista
3 4 (7.69%) Cisco
3 4 (7.69%) Databricks
4 3 (5.77%) F5
4 3 (5.77%) Fortinet
4 3 (5.77%) Juniper
5 2 (3.85%) Google
5 2 (3.85%) Oracle
5 2 (3.85%) Salesforce
5 2 (3.85%) Splunk
6 1 (1.92%) Conga
6 1 (1.92%) CyberArk
6 1 (1.92%) Dynatrace
6 1 (1.92%) Ericsson
6 1 (1.92%) GoCardless
6 1 (1.92%) IBM
6 1 (1.92%) MuleSoft
6 1 (1.92%) Nokia
6 1 (1.92%) Parasoft