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

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 54 65
Rank change year-on-year 0 +11 -23
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 56 27 45
As % of all contract jobs in the East of England 2.77% 2.83% 2.36%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.55% 3.23% 2.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 24 20 21
10th Percentile £300 £312 £435
25th Percentile £388 £430 £465
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £490 £498
Median % change year-on-year +26.53% -1.51% -0.50%
75th Percentile £706 £541 £535
90th Percentile £750 £650 £600
England median daily rate £481 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -3.75% -4.76% -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 1 22
10th Percentile £62.50 - £52.50
25th Percentile £66.25 - £58.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £90.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.00% -44.44% +68.22%
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £65.50 £56.75 £57.50
% change year-on-year +15.42% -1.30% -8.00%

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 1,578 835 1,644
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the East of England 78.16% 87.53% 86.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 744 441 788
10th Percentile £200 £250 £235
25th Percentile £361 £400 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.90% +5.16% -0.52%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £563
90th Percentile £675 £688 £675
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 424 169 534
10th Percentile £14.04 £15.26 £14.16
25th Percentile £16.74 £20.64 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.00 £55.00 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year -60.00% +44.28% +43.85%
75th Percentile £65.00 £73.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £85.00 £75.25
England median hourly rate £37.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +13.85% - -13.33%

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 April 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
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 1 April 2026.

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 1 April 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 +5 17 £400 -21.95% 21
Hertfordshire -17 16 £626 +33.90% 17
Suffolk - 8 £700 - 4
Essex -3 6 £300 +9.09% 10
Bedfordshire -2 5 £261 -59.85% 6
Norfolk -23 4 £700 - 4
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 3 (5.36%) Confluence
2 1 (1.79%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 1 (1.79%) Microsoft Project
Cloud Services
1 15 (26.79%) Azure
2 9 (16.07%) AWS
3 8 (14.29%) GitHub
4 6 (10.71%) Azure DevOps
5 5 (8.93%) GCP
6 4 (7.14%) Azure AKS
6 4 (7.14%) GitHub Copilot
6 4 (7.14%) PaaS
6 4 (7.14%) Serverless
7 3 (5.36%) Azure Functions
8 2 (3.57%) Sauce Labs
8 2 (3.57%) TestFlight
9 1 (1.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 1 (1.79%) Amazon Kinesis
9 1 (1.79%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 1 (1.79%) BlazeMeter
9 1 (1.79%) dbt
9 1 (1.79%) Google Ads
9 1 (1.79%) SaaS
9 1 (1.79%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 4 (7.14%) Ethernet
2 3 (5.36%) Modbus
2 3 (5.36%) RS-232
2 3 (5.36%) RS-422
2 3 (5.36%) RS-485
2 3 (5.36%) Wi-Fi
3 2 (3.57%) Bluetooth
4 1 (1.79%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.79%) Electronic Patient Records
1 1 (1.79%) Metadata
1 1 (1.79%) NoSQL
1 1 (1.79%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 13 (23.21%) JIRA
2 10 (17.86%) Rational DOORS
3 9 (16.07%) Rational Rhapsody
4 7 (12.50%) Jenkins
5 5 (8.93%) Selenium
6 3 (5.36%) Git
6 3 (5.36%) JMeter
7 2 (3.57%) Android Studio
7 2 (3.57%) Appium
7 2 (3.57%) Cypress.io
7 2 (3.57%) MSTest
7 2 (3.57%) Postman
7 2 (3.57%) Robot Framework
7 2 (3.57%) Sourcetree
7 2 (3.57%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (3.57%) Xcode
8 1 (1.79%) Bitbucket Server
8 1 (1.79%) Gatling
8 1 (1.79%) Locust
8 1 (1.79%) Serenity BDD
General
1 17 (30.36%) Social Skills
2 9 (16.07%) Documentation Skills
3 8 (14.29%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (8.93%) Electronics
5 4 (7.14%) Aerospace
6 3 (5.36%) Automotive
6 3 (5.36%) Public Sector
7 2 (3.57%) Banking
8 1 (1.79%) Law
8 1 (1.79%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 10 (17.86%) Test Engineer
2 8 (14.29%) Developer
2 8 (14.29%) Embedded Engineer
3 6 (10.71%) Senior
3 6 (10.71%) Software Engineer
4 4 (7.14%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 4 (7.14%) Software Test Engineer
5 3 (5.36%) Principal Engineer
5 3 (5.36%) Software Developer
5 3 (5.36%) Systems Engineer
6 2 (3.57%) Hardware Engineer
6 2 (3.57%) Performance Engineer
6 2 (3.57%) Principal Software Engineer
6 2 (3.57%) Programme Manager
6 2 (3.57%) QA Engineer
6 2 (3.57%) Senior Developer
6 2 (3.57%) Test Leader
6 2 (3.57%) Test Manager
6 2 (3.57%) Test Programme Manager
6 2 (3.57%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (12.50%) PyTorch
1 7 (12.50%) React
1 7 (12.50%) TensorFlow
2 6 (10.71%) .NET
3 5 (8.93%) pytest
3 5 (8.93%) RESTful
4 4 (7.14%) A2A Protocol
4 4 (7.14%) Model Context Protocol
4 4 (7.14%) Semantic Kernel
5 3 (5.36%) scikit-learn
6 1 (1.79%) AngularJS
6 1 (1.79%) Blazor
6 1 (1.79%) Entity Framework
6 1 (1.79%) FHIR
6 1 (1.79%) Kafka
6 1 (1.79%) Node.js
6 1 (1.79%) REST
6 1 (1.79%) Taurus
6 1 (1.79%) Web Services
6 1 (1.79%) WinForms
Miscellaneous
1 6 (10.71%) Cloud Native
2 5 (8.93%) Algorithms
3 4 (7.14%) Product Ownership
4 3 (5.36%) Acoustics
4 3 (5.36%) Embedded Systems
5 2 (3.57%) Linux Command Line
5 2 (3.57%) Team-Oriented Environment
6 1 (1.79%) CPLD
6 1 (1.79%) Data Centre
6 1 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (1.79%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 1 (1.79%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (1.79%) FPGA
6 1 (1.79%) N-Tier
6 1 (1.79%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.79%) PCIe
6 1 (1.79%) Raspberry Pi
6 1 (1.79%) Robotics
6 1 (1.79%) Verilog
6 1 (1.79%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 8 (14.29%) Windows
2 6 (10.71%) Linux
3 5 (8.93%) Android
4 1 (1.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (1.79%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (1.79%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 30 (53.57%) Problem-Solving
2 28 (50.00%) Agile
3 24 (42.86%) Software Engineering
4 18 (32.14%) Validation
5 14 (25.00%) CI/CD
5 14 (25.00%) DevOps
6 12 (21.43%) AI
7 10 (17.86%) Regression Testing
7 10 (17.86%) Software Testing
7 10 (17.86%) Verification and Validation
8 9 (16.07%) Data Acquisition
8 9 (16.07%) Embedded Software Development
8 9 (16.07%) Workflow
8 9 (16.07%) Workflow Management
9 8 (14.29%) Machine Learning
9 8 (14.29%) Performance Testing
10 7 (12.50%) Continuous Integration
10 7 (12.50%) Data Pipeline
10 7 (12.50%) Test Scripting
11 6 (10.71%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 22 (39.29%) Python
2 14 (25.00%) C
3 12 (21.43%) C++
4 9 (16.07%) Ada
5 7 (12.50%) C#
6 5 (8.93%) SQL
6 5 (8.93%) TypeScript
7 4 (7.14%) JavaScript
8 3 (5.36%) Java
9 2 (3.57%) SystemVerilog
10 1 (1.79%) Perl
10 1 (1.79%) Shell Script
10 1 (1.79%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 15 (26.79%) Security Cleared
2 10 (17.86%) SC Cleared
3 6 (10.71%) ISTQB
4 4 (7.14%) Degree
4 4 (7.14%) Microsoft Certified Professional
5 3 (5.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 1 (1.79%) AWS Certification
6 1 (1.79%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.79%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
6 1 (1.79%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (21.43%) QA
2 9 (16.07%) Def Stans
3 6 (10.71%) EU AI Act
3 6 (10.71%) NIST
4 1 (1.79%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (1.79%) Data Quality
4 1 (1.79%) HL7
4 1 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.79%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 5 (8.93%) Firmware
2 2 (3.57%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (7.14%) Grafana
2 3 (5.36%) HP ALM
2 3 (5.36%) HP Quality Center
3 2 (3.57%) Kibana
3 2 (3.57%) Prometheus
3 2 (3.57%) Rundeck
4 1 (1.79%) Ansible
4 1 (1.79%) Consul
4 1 (1.79%) Kubernetes
4 1 (1.79%) Terraform
Vendors
1 8 (14.29%) Microsoft
2 4 (7.14%) Foundry
2 4 (7.14%) HP
2 4 (7.14%) Lauterbach
3 2 (3.57%) Atlassian
3 2 (3.57%) Oracle
3 2 (3.57%) Siemens
4 1 (1.79%) Cerner
4 1 (1.79%) Fiserv
4 1 (1.79%) Informatica
4 1 (1.79%) Ingenico
4 1 (1.79%) MEDITECH
4 1 (1.79%) New Relic
4 1 (1.79%) Red Hat
4 1 (1.79%) Talend