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

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 58 80
Rank change year-on-year +13 +22 -47
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 77 36 17
As % of all contract jobs in the East of England 3.48% 2.80% 1.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.44% 3.14% 1.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 27 18 8
10th Percentile £74 £204 £341
25th Percentile £150 £301 £361
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £406 £388
Median % change year-on-year +10.77% +4.84% -16.22%
75th Percentile £550 £500 £448
90th Percentile £744 £526 £515
England median daily rate £477 £500 £523
% change year-on-year -4.65% -4.31% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 8 4
10th Percentile £36.00 £34.89 £43.38
25th Percentile £51.25 £48.30 £48.44
Median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.48% +16.52% -36.11%
75th Percentile £74.00 - £63.75
90th Percentile - £69.40 -
England median hourly rate £69.25 £55.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +25.91% - -24.66%

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 1,733 1,147 1,266
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the East of England 78.24% 89.12% 82.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 832 504 475
10th Percentile £190 £200 £195
25th Percentile £384 £374 £306
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £425
Median % change year-on-year - +17.65% -15.00%
75th Percentile £591 £580 £550
90th Percentile £675 £675 £638
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 401 297 421
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.82 £14.56
25th Percentile £16.01 £16.55 £15.62
Median hourly rate £42.50 £30.00 £39.50
Median % change year-on-year +41.67% -24.05% +99.39%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £77.50 £70.00
England median hourly rate £43.56 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +73.20% -41.51% +1.18%

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 29 August 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 29 August 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 29 August 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
Hertfordshire -6 26 £550 +12.24% 29
Bedfordshire +19 19 £74 -85.20% 18
Suffolk -6 13 £495 +65.00% 15
Cambridgeshire +8 9 £375 +17.19% 55
Essex -10 7 £450 +12.50% 11
Norfolk - 3 £700 - 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 (5.19%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (2.60%) OpenStack
3 1 (1.30%) Apache
Applications
1 1 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (2.60%) SAP ERP
1 2 (2.60%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (1.30%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 11 (14.29%) Azure
2 9 (11.69%) GitHub
3 7 (9.09%) GitHub Actions
4 6 (7.79%) AWS
5 5 (6.49%) Azure DevOps
6 4 (5.19%) Apple Pay
7 3 (3.90%) GitHub Copilot
7 3 (3.90%) Google Ads
8 2 (2.60%) Anthropic Claude
8 2 (2.60%) Azure AKS
8 2 (2.60%) Azure Data Factory
8 2 (2.60%) Google Gemini
9 1 (1.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 1 (1.30%) Amazon Kinesis
9 1 (1.30%) dbt
9 1 (1.30%) GCP
9 1 (1.30%) Power Platform
9 1 (1.30%) SaaS
9 1 (1.30%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 4 (5.19%) Wi-Fi
2 2 (2.60%) 4G
2 2 (2.60%) 5G
2 2 (2.60%) DNS
2 2 (2.60%) HTTP
2 2 (2.60%) SSH
2 2 (2.60%) TCP/IP
3 1 (1.30%) SpaceWire
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (6.49%) MySQL
1 5 (6.49%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (5.19%) Redis
3 2 (2.60%) MongoDB
3 2 (2.60%) NoSQL
3 2 (2.60%) Relational Database
4 1 (1.30%) InfluxDB
4 1 (1.30%) Metadata
4 1 (1.30%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 16 (20.78%) GitLab
2 15 (19.48%) Git
3 9 (11.69%) Gradle
4 6 (7.79%) JIRA
5 5 (6.49%) Jenkins
5 5 (6.49%) Rational DOORS
6 4 (5.19%) Newman
6 4 (5.19%) Postman
7 3 (3.90%) Rational Rhapsody
7 3 (3.90%) Selenium
7 3 (3.90%) Visual Studio
8 2 (2.60%) Claude Code
8 2 (2.60%) LabVIEW
8 2 (2.60%) Ranorex
9 1 (1.30%) Artifactory
9 1 (1.30%) Bitbucket Server
9 1 (1.30%) eggPlant
9 1 (1.30%) JMeter
9 1 (1.30%) Serenity BDD
9 1 (1.30%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 15 (19.48%) Analytical Skills
2 11 (14.29%) Social Skills
3 7 (9.09%) Aerospace
4 6 (7.79%) Manufacturing
5 5 (6.49%) Electronics
6 4 (5.19%) Documentation Skills
6 4 (5.19%) Telecoms
7 3 (3.90%) Finance
7 3 (3.90%) Retail
8 2 (2.60%) Banking
8 2 (2.60%) Financial Institution
8 2 (2.60%) Public Sector
9 1 (1.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (1.30%) Law
Job Titles
1 17 (22.08%) Software Engineer
2 16 (20.78%) Test Engineer
3 14 (18.18%) Developer
3 14 (18.18%) Principal Engineer
4 13 (16.88%) Principal Software Engineer
5 9 (11.69%) Java Developer
6 6 (7.79%) Software Developer
6 6 (7.79%) Test Automation Engineer
7 5 (6.49%) Data Engineer
7 5 (6.49%) Java Software Developer
7 5 (6.49%) Python Engineer
7 5 (6.49%) Software Test Engineer
8 4 (5.19%) Analyst
8 4 (5.19%) Embedded Engineer
8 4 (5.19%) Hardware Engineer
8 4 (5.19%) Hardware Test Engineer
8 4 (5.19%) Lead
8 4 (5.19%) Senior
8 4 (5.19%) Systems Engineer
9 3 (3.90%) Lead Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (11.69%) REST
1 9 (11.69%) Spring Boot
2 8 (10.39%) pytest
3 6 (7.79%) Pandas
3 6 (7.79%) Spring
4 5 (6.49%) Kafka
5 4 (5.19%) FastAPI
5 4 (5.19%) Playwright
5 4 (5.19%) RabbitMQ
5 4 (5.19%) React
5 4 (5.19%) Terraform
5 4 (5.19%) XML
5 4 (5.19%) XML Schema
6 3 (3.90%) .NET
6 3 (3.90%) Great Expectations
7 2 (2.60%) JWT
7 2 (2.60%) Next.js
7 2 (2.60%) Node.js
7 2 (2.60%) WinForms
7 2 (2.60%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 14 (18.18%) Embedded Systems
2 4 (5.19%) Cloud Native
3 3 (3.90%) Acoustics
3 3 (3.90%) Greenfield Project
4 2 (2.60%) Analogue Electronics
4 2 (2.60%) Distributed Systems
4 2 (2.60%) Enterprise Software
4 2 (2.60%) Life Science
4 2 (2.60%) Linux Command Line
4 2 (2.60%) Security Posture
5 1 (1.30%) AI Agents
5 1 (1.30%) Augmented Reality
5 1 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (1.30%) Device Driver
5 1 (1.30%) IoT
5 1 (1.30%) Management Information System
5 1 (1.30%) N-Tier
5 1 (1.30%) Video\Live Streaming
5 1 (1.30%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 16 (20.78%) Linux
2 5 (6.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 4 (5.19%) Windows
4 3 (3.90%) Android
5 2 (2.60%) Ubuntu
6 1 (1.30%) Embedded Linux
6 1 (1.30%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 34 (44.16%) CI/CD
1 34 (44.16%) Software Engineering
2 31 (40.26%) Agile
3 26 (33.77%) Software Testing
4 22 (28.57%) DevOps
4 22 (28.57%) Validation
5 18 (23.38%) Problem-Solving
5 18 (23.38%) Test Scripting
6 15 (19.48%) Microservices
7 13 (16.88%) Scrum
8 12 (15.58%) Containerisation
9 11 (14.29%) AI
10 9 (11.69%) Continuous Improvement
11 8 (10.39%) End-to-End Testing
11 8 (10.39%) TDD
11 8 (10.39%) Test Strategy
11 8 (10.39%) User Stories
12 7 (9.09%) Event-Driven
12 7 (9.09%) Integration Testing
12 7 (9.09%) Performance Testing
Programming Languages
1 19 (24.68%) Python
2 15 (19.48%) SQL
3 12 (15.58%) Java
4 7 (9.09%) C
5 6 (7.79%) C++
6 5 (6.49%) C#
6 5 (6.49%) Shell Script
7 3 (3.90%) Ada
7 3 (3.90%) Bash
7 3 (3.90%) TypeScript
8 2 (2.60%) PowerShell
9 1 (1.30%) JavaScript
Qualifications
1 24 (31.17%) Security Cleared
2 17 (22.08%) SC Cleared
3 9 (11.69%) Degree
4 3 (3.90%) Computer Science Degree
4 3 (3.90%) ISTQB
5 2 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
5 2 (2.60%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 1 (1.30%) AWS Certification
6 1 (1.30%) DV Cleared
6 1 (1.30%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (16.88%) QA
2 6 (7.79%) Data Quality
3 4 (5.19%) PCI DSS
4 3 (3.90%) Def Stans
5 1 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (1.30%) MIL-STD-1553
System Software
1 10 (12.99%) Docker
2 3 (3.90%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 11 (14.29%) Ansible
2 8 (10.39%) Kubernetes
3 3 (3.90%) Grafana
3 3 (3.90%) Prometheus
4 2 (2.60%) HP Quality Center
5 1 (1.30%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 4 (5.19%) Databricks
1 4 (5.19%) IBM
2 3 (3.90%) Lauterbach
2 3 (3.90%) SAP
3 2 (2.60%) HP
3 2 (2.60%) Microsoft
4 1 (1.30%) EMC
4 1 (1.30%) Fiserv
4 1 (1.30%) Informatica
4 1 (1.30%) Ingenico
4 1 (1.30%) NVIDIA
4 1 (1.30%) Red Hat
4 1 (1.30%) Siemens
4 1 (1.30%) Talend