Test Automation Contract Job Trends in England

Automated Testing
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Test Automation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 21 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 52 52
Rank change year-on-year +5 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,913 1,206 1,348
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.27% 4.43% 3.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.00% 4.88% 4.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,219 831 897
10th Percentile £321 £313 £363
25th Percentile £405 £381 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £483 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.66% -8.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £706 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £475 £520
% change year-on-year - -8.65% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 109 30 34
10th Percentile £37.00 £40.26 £48.60
25th Percentile £60.33 £44.63 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -11.11% -25.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.88 £71.87
90th Percentile £74.20 £75.25 £76.60
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £56.25
% change year-on-year +35.00% -11.11% -19.50%

All Process & Methodology Skills
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 England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 38,258 24,707 30,336
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.32% 90.66% 85.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,997 15,833 19,804
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £421 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £735 £745 £751
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,373 1,323 1,986
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.22 £13.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.88 £17.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -37.13% -6.43%
75th Percentile £69.50 £53.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £71.03 £74.22
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -10.31%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Test Automation job vacancy trend in England

Test Automation
Daily Rate Trend in England

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

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

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation in England over the 6 months to 21 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in England

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Trend in England

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

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

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Automation in England over the 6 months to 21 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in England

Test Automation
Contract Job Locations in 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 England region over the 6 months to 21 July 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
London +6 870 £500 - 318
North of England +19 394 £463 +2.78% 131
Midlands +10 245 £447 +8.36% 59
West Midlands +26 228 £450 -4.81% 29
South East -38 192 £450 -10.00% 155
Yorkshire +3 156 £500 +2.56% 39
North West -1 153 £481 +16.75% 74
South West +2 113 £463 +5.71% 69
North East +11 95 £425 +6.25% 19
East of England +18 84 £450 - 49
East Midlands -41 17 £425 +30.37% 30
Test Automation
UK

Test Automation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in 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
1 167 (8.73%) Confluence
2 43 (2.25%) Apache Airflow
2 43 (2.25%) Apache Spark
3 37 (1.93%) SAS
4 24 (1.25%) SharePoint
5 19 (0.99%) Apache
6 13 (0.68%) CMS
7 10 (0.52%) WebLogic
8 7 (0.37%) Camunda
9 5 (0.26%) nginx
9 5 (0.26%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.21%) Appian
10 4 (0.21%) Jupyter
10 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.16%) Kentico
12 2 (0.10%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.10%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.10%) Mule
13 1 (0.052%) Mendix
Applications
1 23 (1.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.84%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.42%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.21%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.21%) Simulink
6 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.10%) Trello
8 1 (0.052%) Mingle
8 1 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 24 (1.25%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.89%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.63%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
5 9 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.42%) Findur
7 6 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.31%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.31%) Shopify
8 5 (0.26%) BambooHR
9 4 (0.21%) Loan IQ
10 3 (0.16%) Distributed Ledger
11 2 (0.10%) Infor CloudSuite
11 2 (0.10%) Infor LN
11 2 (0.10%) Infor M3
11 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS R12
11 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
11 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
11 2 (0.10%) Summit
12 1 (0.052%) IntelliMatch
Cloud Services
1 542 (28.33%) AWS
2 533 (27.86%) Azure
3 331 (17.30%) GitHub
4 237 (12.39%) Azure DevOps
5 208 (10.87%) GitHub Actions
6 137 (7.16%) Serverless
7 133 (6.95%) GCP
8 96 (5.02%) AWS Lambda
9 84 (4.39%) Amazon S3
10 78 (4.08%) Power Platform
11 64 (3.35%) OpenShift
12 57 (2.98%) Amazon ECS
13 53 (2.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 45 (2.35%) dbt
15 42 (2.20%) Amazon EC2
16 41 (2.14%) Azure Data Factory
17 39 (2.04%) Snowflake
18 35 (1.83%) Amazon EKS
18 35 (1.83%) GitHub Copilot
19 31 (1.62%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.05%) Firewall
2 16 (0.84%) HTTP
3 15 (0.78%) SAN
4 13 (0.68%) Network Security
5 11 (0.58%) 2G
5 11 (0.58%) 3G
5 11 (0.58%) 4G
5 11 (0.58%) Diameter Protocol
5 11 (0.58%) SIGTRAN
5 11 (0.58%) SS7
6 10 (0.52%) 5G
6 10 (0.52%) WAN
7 8 (0.42%) LAN
7 8 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
8 7 (0.37%) TCP/IP
8 7 (0.37%) VPN
9 6 (0.31%) BGP
9 6 (0.31%) MPLS
9 6 (0.31%) Wireshark
10 5 (0.26%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 107 (5.59%) PostgreSQL
2 104 (5.44%) Data Warehouse
3 92 (4.81%) MongoDB
4 86 (4.50%) NoSQL
5 78 (4.08%) SQL Server
6 63 (3.29%) Power BI
7 59 (3.08%) Relational Database
8 46 (2.40%) DynamoDB
9 36 (1.88%) Oracle Reports
10 31 (1.62%) Pentaho
11 29 (1.52%) Amazon Athena
12 28 (1.46%) Big Data
13 27 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
14 26 (1.36%) Data Lake
14 26 (1.36%) Metadata
15 23 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
15 23 (1.20%) Redis
16 21 (1.10%) MySQL
16 21 (1.10%) Oracle Database
17 18 (0.94%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 351 (18.35%) JIRA
2 345 (18.03%) Git
3 303 (15.84%) Jenkins
4 253 (13.23%) GitLab
5 237 (12.39%) Selenium
6 134 (7.00%) Cucumber
7 130 (6.80%) Postman
8 95 (4.97%) JUnit
8 95 (4.97%) REST Assured
9 93 (4.86%) Cypress.io
10 78 (4.08%) JMeter
11 63 (3.29%) Zephyr
12 54 (2.82%) SonarQube
13 52 (2.72%) WebDriver
14 45 (2.35%) Gatling
15 42 (2.20%) Gradle
16 39 (2.04%) Bitbucket
17 34 (1.78%) Mockito
18 32 (1.67%) Maven
19 27 (1.41%) SpecFlow
General
1 520 (27.18%) Social Skills
2 367 (19.18%) Finance
3 253 (13.23%) Analytical Skills
4 234 (12.23%) Public Sector
5 165 (8.63%) Banking
6 54 (2.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 41 (2.14%) Documentation Skills
8 29 (1.52%) Front Office
8 29 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
8 29 (1.52%) Investment Banking
8 29 (1.52%) Retail
8 29 (1.52%) Telecoms
9 22 (1.15%) Financial Institution
10 21 (1.10%) Military
11 19 (0.99%) Aerospace
12 16 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
13 15 (0.78%) Legal
14 14 (0.73%) Automotive
14 14 (0.73%) Back Office
15 13 (0.68%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 386 (20.18%) Developer
2 310 (16.20%) Senior
3 210 (10.98%) Lead
4 189 (9.88%) Test Engineer
5 184 (9.62%) Tester
6 133 (6.95%) Data Engineer
7 124 (6.48%) Java Developer
8 111 (5.80%) Software Engineer
9 103 (5.38%) Analyst
10 88 (4.60%) Architect
11 87 (4.55%) DevOps Engineer
12 86 (4.50%) Senior Developer
13 81 (4.23%) QA Engineer
13 81 (4.23%) Test Automation Engineer
14 74 (3.87%) Test Leader
15 66 (3.45%) Automation Tester
16 64 (3.35%) Test Analyst
17 60 (3.14%) Full-Stack Developer
18 54 (2.82%) Automation Engineer
19 47 (2.46%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 220 (11.50%) REST
2 210 (10.98%) Playwright
3 174 (9.10%) React
4 157 (8.21%) RESTful
5 155 (8.10%) Spring
6 151 (7.89%) Kafka
7 129 (6.74%) .NET
8 125 (6.53%) Spring Boot
9 99 (5.18%) Node.js
10 83 (4.34%) AngularJS
11 77 (4.03%) HTML
12 74 (3.87%) CSS
13 47 (2.46%) OAuth
14 44 (2.30%) Jest
15 42 (2.20%) pytest
15 42 (2.20%) Quarkus
16 41 (2.14%) HTML5
17 39 (2.04%) .NET Framework
17 39 (2.04%) Gherkin
18 37 (1.93%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 259 (13.54%) Cloud Native
2 132 (6.90%) Product Ownership
3 130 (6.80%) Distributed Systems
4 64 (3.35%) Enterprise Software
5 55 (2.88%) Legacy Systems
6 49 (2.56%) Data Protection Act
7 44 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
8 42 (2.20%) Onboarding
9 36 (1.88%) Mobile App
10 30 (1.57%) AI Agents
10 30 (1.57%) Distributed Architecture
10 30 (1.57%) Virtual Team
11 28 (1.46%) Security Posture
12 27 (1.41%) Embedded Systems
13 23 (1.20%) Management Information System
14 22 (1.15%) Algorithms
14 22 (1.15%) Fixed Income
15 21 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
16 18 (0.94%) Data Structures
17 15 (0.78%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 114 (5.96%) Linux
2 72 (3.76%) Windows
3 57 (2.98%) Unix
4 38 (1.99%) Android
4 38 (1.99%) Apple iOS
5 22 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (0.78%) Windows Server
7 14 (0.73%) Mac OS X
8 7 (0.37%) Mac OS
8 7 (0.37%) Solaris
9 6 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
10 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.21%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.16%) AIX
12 3 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.10%) CentOS
14 1 (0.052%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,086 (56.77%) CI/CD
2 896 (46.84%) Agile
3 685 (35.81%) DevOps
4 367 (19.18%) Problem-Solving
5 356 (18.61%) Microservices
6 343 (17.93%) Continuous Improvement
7 321 (16.78%) Software Engineering
8 313 (16.36%) Scrum
9 292 (15.26%) Validation
10 290 (15.16%) Test Strategy
11 278 (14.53%) Infrastructure as Code
12 268 (14.01%) AI
13 248 (12.96%) TDD
14 245 (12.81%) Containerisation
15 244 (12.75%) Observability
16 208 (10.87%) ETL
17 194 (10.14%) SDLC
18 193 (10.09%) Data Pipeline
19 192 (10.04%) End-to-End Testing
20 191 (9.98%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 476 (24.88%) Java
2 473 (24.73%) Python
3 448 (23.42%) SQL
4 234 (12.23%) JavaScript
5 213 (11.13%) TypeScript
6 169 (8.83%) C#
7 69 (3.61%) PowerShell
8 64 (3.35%) Bash
9 50 (2.61%) Kotlin
10 43 (2.25%) C++
11 35 (1.83%) Bicep
12 33 (1.73%) C
13 30 (1.57%) Go
14 28 (1.46%) Apex Code
15 26 (1.36%) PL/SQL
16 25 (1.31%) Scala
17 23 (1.20%) Swift
18 18 (0.94%) Ruby
19 15 (0.78%) Groovy
20 12 (0.63%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 590 (30.84%) Security Cleared
2 489 (25.56%) SC Cleared
3 90 (4.70%) Degree
4 84 (4.39%) ISTQB
5 63 (3.29%) BPSS Clearance
6 59 (3.08%) DV Cleared
7 43 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (1.31%) AWS Certification
9 21 (1.10%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 15 (0.78%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 13 (0.68%) Azure Certification
12 12 (0.63%) Cisco Certification
12 12 (0.63%) Master's Degree
13 11 (0.58%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 11 (0.58%) SAFe Agilist
14 10 (0.52%) CCNP
15 8 (0.42%) CISSP
16 7 (0.37%) DBS Check
16 7 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
17 6 (0.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 466 (24.36%) QA
2 146 (7.63%) Accessibility
3 128 (6.69%) Data Quality
4 72 (3.76%) WCAG
5 36 (1.88%) GDPR
6 12 (0.63%) NCSC
7 10 (0.52%) Def Stans
7 10 (0.52%) NIST
8 9 (0.47%) ISO 20022
8 9 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 8 (0.42%) SLA
10 5 (0.26%) FATCA
10 5 (0.26%) GRC
10 5 (0.26%) PCI DSS
10 5 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
11 3 (0.16%) EU AI Act
11 3 (0.16%) HL7
11 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 3 (0.16%) MiFID
11 3 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 341 (17.83%) Docker
2 26 (1.36%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (0.84%) Active Directory
4 15 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.63%) Firmware
6 5 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.10%) SRDF
9 1 (0.052%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.052%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.052%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 351 (18.35%) Kubernetes
2 243 (12.70%) Terraform
3 102 (5.33%) Ansible
3 102 (5.33%) Grafana
4 89 (4.65%) Prometheus
5 38 (1.99%) Argo
6 14 (0.73%) Puppet
7 13 (0.68%) HP ALM
8 12 (0.63%) Kibana
9 10 (0.52%) Dell DRAC
9 10 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.42%) Progress Chef
11 7 (0.37%) HP Quality Center
11 7 (0.37%) Kustomize
12 6 (0.31%) NetBackup
13 5 (0.26%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 5 (0.26%) Istio
13 5 (0.26%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 4 (0.21%) Packer
14 4 (0.21%) Rancher
Vendors
1 177 (9.25%) Microsoft
2 150 (7.84%) Oracle
3 80 (4.18%) Salesforce
4 68 (3.55%) Databricks
5 57 (2.98%) Red Hat
6 53 (2.77%) Talend
7 52 (2.72%) Google
8 51 (2.67%) Splunk
9 39 (2.04%) ServiceNow
10 34 (1.78%) Denodo
11 31 (1.62%) IBM
11 31 (1.62%) Informatica
12 29 (1.52%) VMware
13 28 (1.46%) Dynatrace
14 27 (1.41%) SAP
14 27 (1.41%) UiPath
15 23 (1.20%) Cisco
16 18 (0.94%) HP
17 13 (0.68%) Fortinet
18 11 (0.58%) OpenAI