Test Automation Contract Job Trends in the East of England

Automated Testing
England > East of England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the East of England requiring Test Automation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 26 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 59 54 50
Rank change year-on-year -5 -4 -15
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 47 31 61
As % of all contract jobs in the East of England 2.92% 2.72% 3.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.45% 3.23% 4.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 19 19 29
10th Percentile £313 £298 £375
25th Percentile £406 £313 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £400 £500
Median % change year-on-year +37.50% -20.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £648 £513 £600
90th Percentile £690 £550 £640
England median daily rate £500 £500 £539
% change year-on-year - -7.19% -6.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 1 21
10th Percentile £41.25 - -
25th Percentile - £82.50 -
Median hourly rate £67.00 £85.00 £90.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.18% -5.56% +112.44%
75th Percentile - £87.50 -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £64.25 £67.50 £76.25
% change year-on-year -4.81% -11.48% +27.08%

All Process and Methodology Skills
East of England

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 the East of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,361 960 1,490
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the East of England 84.48% 84.36% 86.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 567 408 787
10th Percentile £198 £242 £225
25th Percentile £363 £340 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.50% -3.45% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £681 £688 £700
England median daily rate £500 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 441 190 355
10th Percentile £14.09 - £14.00
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.62 £14.50
Median hourly rate £20.75 £32.89 £21.46
Median % change year-on-year -36.91% +53.26% -2.45%
75th Percentile £64.00 £67.13 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £80.23 £77.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +23.09%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in the East of England

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

Test Automation job vacancy trend in the East of England

Test Automation
Daily Rate Trend in the East of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the East of England citing Test Automation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the East of England citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram in the East of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation in the East of England over the 6 months to 26 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in the East of England

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Trend in the East of England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the East of England citing Test Automation.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the East of England citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Histogram in the East of England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Automation in the East of England over the 6 months to 26 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the East of England

Test Automation
Contract Job Locations in the East of England

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 East of England region over the 6 months to 26 December 2025. 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
Cambridgeshire -3 23 £550 +15.30% 64
Hertfordshire -12 14 £675 +80.00% 74
Suffolk - 7 £563 - 36
Bedfordshire - 2 £475 - 54
Norfolk -17 1 - - 23
Test Automation
England

Test Automation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the East of England 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 2 (4.26%) Confluence
2 1 (2.13%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (6.38%) Microsoft Office
1 3 (6.38%) Simulink
1 3 (6.38%) Windchill
2 1 (2.13%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (6.38%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 24 (51.06%) Azure
2 12 (25.53%) GitHub
3 11 (23.40%) Serverless
4 10 (21.28%) Azure AKS
4 10 (21.28%) GitHub Copilot
5 9 (19.15%) Azure Functions
5 9 (19.15%) PaaS
6 8 (17.02%) AWS
7 7 (14.89%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (10.64%) GCP
9 2 (4.26%) Amazon S3
9 2 (4.26%) AWS Lambda
10 1 (2.13%) Amazon EC2
10 1 (2.13%) Amazon ECS
10 1 (2.13%) Azure API Management
10 1 (2.13%) BlazeMeter
10 1 (2.13%) Entra ID
10 1 (2.13%) GitHub Actions
10 1 (2.13%) Microsoft 365
10 1 (2.13%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 1 (2.13%) Internet
1 1 (2.13%) VoIP
1 1 (2.13%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (2.13%) Electronic Patient Records
1 1 (2.13%) NoSQL
1 1 (2.13%) Oracle Database
1 1 (2.13%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 9 (19.15%) JIRA
2 7 (14.89%) Git
3 6 (12.77%) Selenium
4 4 (8.51%) Jenkins
4 4 (8.51%) JMeter
5 3 (6.38%) Rational DOORS
5 3 (6.38%) Rational Rhapsody
6 2 (4.26%) Postman
6 2 (4.26%) Robot Framework
7 1 (2.13%) Cypress.io
7 1 (2.13%) Gatling
7 1 (2.13%) GitLab
7 1 (2.13%) LoadRunner
7 1 (2.13%) Locust
7 1 (2.13%) Newman
7 1 (2.13%) TestCafe
7 1 (2.13%) TestRail
7 1 (2.13%) webpack
General
1 7 (14.89%) Manufacturing
2 5 (10.64%) Aerospace
2 5 (10.64%) Social Skills
3 4 (8.51%) Public Sector
4 3 (6.38%) Law
5 2 (4.26%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (4.26%) Electronics
5 2 (4.26%) Finance
5 2 (4.26%) Marketing
5 2 (4.26%) Retail
5 2 (4.26%) Telecoms
6 1 (2.13%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 9 (19.15%) Senior
1 9 (19.15%) Software Engineer
2 7 (14.89%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 7 (14.89%) Developer
2 7 (14.89%) Test Engineer
3 5 (10.64%) C++ Software Engineer
4 3 (6.38%) Lead
4 3 (6.38%) RF Engineer
4 3 (6.38%) Senior Developer
4 3 (6.38%) Software Developer
4 3 (6.38%) Test Leader
5 2 (4.26%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
5 2 (4.26%) Data Engineer
5 2 (4.26%) Full-Stack Developer
5 2 (4.26%) Performance Engineer
5 2 (4.26%) Performance Test Engineer
5 2 (4.26%) Programme Manager
5 2 (4.26%) Programme Test Manager
5 2 (4.26%) Senior Software Developer
5 2 (4.26%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (29.79%) .NET
2 13 (27.66%) PyTorch
2 13 (27.66%) TensorFlow
3 11 (23.40%) RESTful
4 10 (21.28%) Semantic Kernel
5 6 (12.77%) React
6 4 (8.51%) scikit-learn
7 3 (6.38%) pytest
8 1 (2.13%) AngularJS
8 1 (2.13%) Celery
8 1 (2.13%) D3.js
8 1 (2.13%) Entity Framework
8 1 (2.13%) Node.js
8 1 (2.13%) Pandas
8 1 (2.13%) PySpark
8 1 (2.13%) Redux
8 1 (2.13%) REST
8 1 (2.13%) Sass
8 1 (2.13%) Taurus
8 1 (2.13%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 15 (31.91%) Cloud Native
2 11 (23.40%) Algorithms
3 6 (12.77%) FPGA
4 5 (10.64%) PCIe
4 5 (10.64%) State Machine
5 3 (6.38%) Synthetic Data
6 2 (4.26%) Product Ownership
7 1 (2.13%) CPLD
7 1 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (2.13%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 1 (2.13%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (2.13%) Onboarding
7 1 (2.13%) Raspberry Pi
7 1 (2.13%) Robotics
7 1 (2.13%) Verilog
Operating Systems
1 8 (17.02%) Windows
2 7 (14.89%) Linux
3 1 (2.13%) Robot Operating System
3 1 (2.13%) Windows 10
3 1 (2.13%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (44.68%) Agile
1 21 (44.68%) Problem-Solving
2 20 (42.55%) CI/CD
3 19 (40.43%) AI
4 17 (36.17%) Data Pipeline
4 17 (36.17%) Machine Learning
4 17 (36.17%) Software Engineering
4 17 (36.17%) Validation
5 16 (34.04%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
6 15 (31.91%) LLM
6 15 (31.91%) Prompt Engineering
7 10 (21.28%) API Management
7 10 (21.28%) Data Privacy
7 10 (21.28%) Data Science
8 9 (19.15%) API Design
8 9 (19.15%) Continuous Improvement
8 9 (19.15%) Deep Learning
8 9 (19.15%) DevOps
8 9 (19.15%) Scrum
9 7 (14.89%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 19 (40.43%) Python
2 6 (12.77%) C#
3 5 (10.64%) C++
3 5 (10.64%) SQL
4 4 (8.51%) JavaScript
5 3 (6.38%) MATLAB
5 3 (6.38%) TypeScript
6 1 (2.13%) Perl
6 1 (2.13%) PowerShell
6 1 (2.13%) SystemVerilog
6 1 (2.13%) Tcl
6 1 (2.13%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 10 (21.28%) MCP
2 4 (8.51%) Security Cleared
3 3 (6.38%) Degree
4 2 (4.26%) ISTQB
4 2 (4.26%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
5 1 (2.13%) Azure Certification
5 1 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (2.13%) DV Cleared
5 1 (2.13%) Master's Degree
5 1 (2.13%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (31.91%) EU AI Act
2 14 (29.79%) NIST
3 12 (25.53%) QA
4 1 (2.13%) Accessibility
4 1 (2.13%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (2.13%) Data Quality
4 1 (2.13%) HL7
4 1 (2.13%) SLA
4 1 (2.13%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 4 (8.51%) Docker
1 4 (8.51%) Firmware
2 2 (4.26%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 4 (8.51%) Kubernetes
2 2 (4.26%) Terraform
3 1 (2.13%) Ansible
3 1 (2.13%) Consul
3 1 (2.13%) Grafana
3 1 (2.13%) HP ALM
3 1 (2.13%) Microsoft Intune
3 1 (2.13%) Prometheus
3 1 (2.13%) SCCM
3 1 (2.13%) SCOM
Vendors
1 16 (34.04%) Microsoft
2 10 (21.28%) Foundry
3 5 (10.64%) SAP
4 2 (4.26%) Oracle
5 1 (2.13%) Cerner
5 1 (2.13%) Databricks
5 1 (2.13%) HP
5 1 (2.13%) MEDITECH
5 1 (2.13%) New Relic
5 1 (2.13%) Veeam
5 1 (2.13%) Zscaler