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 1 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 56 57
Rank change year-on-year +2 +1 -19
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 59 27 55
As % of all contract jobs in the East of England 3.22% 2.56% 2.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.01% 2.95% 3.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 27 19 26
10th Percentile £300 £298 £428
25th Percentile £406 £356 £467
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £570 £454 £499
Median % change year-on-year +25.55% -8.97% -0.25%
75th Percentile £681 £538 £550
90th Percentile £750 £650 £604
England median daily rate £488 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -2.50% -4.76% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 1 25
10th Percentile £65.50 - £52.50
25th Percentile £66.25 £82.50 £58.75
Median hourly rate £67.50 £85.00 £90.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.59% -5.56% +94.88%
75th Percentile £70.00 £87.50 -
90th Percentile £71.00 - -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £74.00 £65.75
% change year-on-year -12.16% +12.55% +12.39%

All Process & 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 1,470 915 1,665
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the East of England 80.15% 86.81% 86.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 646 463 826
10th Percentile £197 £243 £250
25th Percentile £350 £391 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £488
Median % change year-on-year -4.90% +2.46% -2.50%
75th Percentile £592 £600 £588
90th Percentile £675 £695 £707
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 445 151 507
10th Percentile £14.01 £15.62 £14.16
25th Percentile £16.45 £20.00 £15.00
Median hourly rate £21.00 £50.00 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year -58.00% +31.16% +15.69%
75th Percentile £64.00 £72.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £85.00 £75.25
England median hourly rate £28.55 £35.00 £34.21
% change year-on-year -18.43% +2.31% -2.92%

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 1 March 2026.

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
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 1 March 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
Cambridgeshire +14 24 £550 +21.15% 32
Hertfordshire -14 16 £626 +36.46% 24
Suffolk - 8 £700 - 13
Bedfordshire -5 6 £450 -30.77% 20
Essex -2 4 £300 +90.48% 23
Norfolk -27 1 - - 10
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 4 (6.78%) Confluence
2 1 (1.69%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (1.69%) Microsoft Project
Cloud Services
1 25 (42.37%) Azure
2 14 (23.73%) GitHub
3 10 (16.95%) Azure AKS
3 10 (16.95%) Azure DevOps
3 10 (16.95%) GitHub Copilot
3 10 (16.95%) Serverless
4 9 (15.25%) Azure Functions
4 9 (15.25%) PaaS
5 7 (11.86%) AWS
6 4 (6.78%) GCP
7 2 (3.39%) Sauce Labs
7 2 (3.39%) TestFlight
8 1 (1.69%) Amazon EC2
8 1 (1.69%) Amazon S3
8 1 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
8 1 (1.69%) BlazeMeter
8 1 (1.69%) Entra ID
8 1 (1.69%) Google Ads
8 1 (1.69%) Microsoft 365
8 1 (1.69%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 4 (6.78%) Ethernet
2 3 (5.08%) Modbus
2 3 (5.08%) RS-232
2 3 (5.08%) RS-422
2 3 (5.08%) RS-485
2 3 (5.08%) Wi-Fi
3 2 (3.39%) Bluetooth
4 1 (1.69%) Internet
4 1 (1.69%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.69%) Electronic Patient Records
1 1 (1.69%) NoSQL
1 1 (1.69%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 13 (22.03%) JIRA
2 7 (11.86%) Rational DOORS
2 7 (11.86%) Selenium
3 6 (10.17%) Jenkins
3 6 (10.17%) Rational Rhapsody
4 4 (6.78%) Git
4 4 (6.78%) JMeter
4 4 (6.78%) Postman
5 3 (5.08%) Cypress.io
6 2 (3.39%) Android Studio
6 2 (3.39%) Appium
6 2 (3.39%) MSTest
6 2 (3.39%) Robot Framework
6 2 (3.39%) Sourcetree
6 2 (3.39%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (3.39%) Xcode
7 1 (1.69%) GitLab
7 1 (1.69%) Locust
7 1 (1.69%) Newman
7 1 (1.69%) TestCafe
General
1 13 (22.03%) Social Skills
2 6 (10.17%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (8.47%) Documentation Skills
3 5 (8.47%) Electronics
4 3 (5.08%) Aerospace
4 3 (5.08%) Automotive
5 2 (3.39%) Banking
5 2 (3.39%) Manufacturing
5 2 (3.39%) Public Sector
6 1 (1.69%) Law
6 1 (1.69%) Pharmaceutical
6 1 (1.69%) Retail
Job Titles
1 11 (18.64%) Test Engineer
2 10 (16.95%) Senior
2 10 (16.95%) Software Engineer
3 8 (13.56%) Developer
4 7 (11.86%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 5 (8.47%) Embedded Engineer
6 4 (6.78%) Software Developer
6 4 (6.78%) Software Test Engineer
7 3 (5.08%) Lead
7 3 (5.08%) Principal Engineer
7 3 (5.08%) Senior Developer
7 3 (5.08%) Test Leader
8 2 (3.39%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
8 2 (3.39%) C++ Software Engineer
8 2 (3.39%) Performance Test Engineer
8 2 (3.39%) Platform Engineer
8 2 (3.39%) QA Engineer
8 2 (3.39%) QA Leader
8 2 (3.39%) Test Automation Engineer
8 2 (3.39%) Verification Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (25.42%) .NET
2 13 (22.03%) PyTorch
2 13 (22.03%) TensorFlow
3 11 (18.64%) RESTful
4 10 (16.95%) A2A Protocol
4 10 (16.95%) Model Context Protocol
4 10 (16.95%) Semantic Kernel
5 8 (13.56%) React
6 5 (8.47%) pytest
7 4 (6.78%) scikit-learn
8 1 (1.69%) AngularJS
8 1 (1.69%) Entity Framework
8 1 (1.69%) HTML
8 1 (1.69%) Node.js
8 1 (1.69%) Pandas
8 1 (1.69%) Redux
8 1 (1.69%) REST
8 1 (1.69%) Software Packaging
8 1 (1.69%) Taurus
8 1 (1.69%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 15 (25.42%) Cloud Native
2 11 (18.64%) Algorithms
3 4 (6.78%) Product Ownership
4 3 (5.08%) Embedded Systems
4 3 (5.08%) FPGA
4 3 (5.08%) PCIe
5 2 (3.39%) State Machine
5 2 (3.39%) Team-Oriented Environment
6 1 (1.69%) CPLD
6 1 (1.69%) Data Centre
6 1 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (1.69%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 1 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (1.69%) Hybrid Cloud
6 1 (1.69%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.69%) Raspberry Pi
6 1 (1.69%) Robotics
6 1 (1.69%) Verilog
Operating Systems
1 11 (18.64%) Windows
2 5 (8.47%) Linux
3 2 (3.39%) Android
4 1 (1.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (1.69%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (1.69%) Windows 10
4 1 (1.69%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 35 (59.32%) Agile
2 32 (54.24%) Problem-Solving
3 29 (49.15%) Software Engineering
4 21 (35.59%) AI
5 20 (33.90%) Validation
6 18 (30.51%) CI/CD
7 16 (27.12%) Machine Learning
7 16 (27.12%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
8 15 (25.42%) DevOps
8 15 (25.42%) LLM
8 15 (25.42%) Prompt Engineering
9 13 (22.03%) Data Pipeline
9 13 (22.03%) Software Testing
10 10 (16.95%) API Management
10 10 (16.95%) Data Privacy
10 10 (16.95%) Data Science
10 10 (16.95%) Regression Testing
10 10 (16.95%) Scrum
11 9 (15.25%) API Design
11 9 (15.25%) Deep Learning
Programming Languages
1 26 (44.07%) Python
2 14 (23.73%) C++
3 11 (18.64%) C
4 9 (15.25%) C#
5 6 (10.17%) Ada
5 6 (10.17%) TypeScript
6 5 (8.47%) JavaScript
7 3 (5.08%) SQL
8 2 (3.39%) Java
8 2 (3.39%) SystemVerilog
9 1 (1.69%) Perl
9 1 (1.69%) PowerShell
9 1 (1.69%) Shell Script
9 1 (1.69%) Tcl
9 1 (1.69%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 13 (22.03%) Security Cleared
2 10 (16.95%) Microsoft Certified Professional
3 9 (15.25%) SC Cleared
4 6 (10.17%) ISTQB
5 3 (5.08%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 2 (3.39%) Degree
7 1 (1.69%) Azure Certification
7 1 (1.69%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
7 1 (1.69%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (25.42%) EU AI Act
2 14 (23.73%) NIST
2 14 (23.73%) QA
3 6 (10.17%) Def Stans
4 1 (1.69%) Accessibility
4 1 (1.69%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (1.69%) HL7
4 1 (1.69%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 4 (6.78%) Docker
2 3 (5.08%) Firmware
3 1 (1.69%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 4 (6.78%) Kubernetes
2 3 (5.08%) Grafana
2 3 (5.08%) HP ALM
3 2 (3.39%) HP Quality Center
3 2 (3.39%) Kibana
3 2 (3.39%) Rundeck
4 1 (1.69%) Ansible
4 1 (1.69%) Consul
4 1 (1.69%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (1.69%) Prometheus
4 1 (1.69%) SCCM
4 1 (1.69%) Terraform
Vendors
1 18 (30.51%) Microsoft
2 10 (16.95%) Foundry
3 3 (5.08%) HP
4 2 (3.39%) Atlassian
4 2 (3.39%) Oracle
4 2 (3.39%) Siemens
5 1 (1.69%) Cerner
5 1 (1.69%) Lauterbach
5 1 (1.69%) MEDITECH
5 1 (1.69%) New Relic
5 1 (1.69%) Red Hat
5 1 (1.69%) Veeam
5 1 (1.69%) Zscaler