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

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 49 56
Rank change year-on-year +3 +7 -8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,784 1,081 1,265
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.25% 4.49% 3.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.00% 4.91% 4.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,156 759 843
10th Percentile £350 £320 £363
25th Percentile £402 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £616 £638
90th Percentile £663 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 99 22 48
10th Percentile £35.63 £41.08 £52.13
25th Percentile £57.63 £45.63 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% -8.33% -14.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.50 £73.00
90th Percentile £74.20 £77.02 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +22.73% -8.33% -10.95%

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 35,679 21,999 31,507
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.05% 91.35% 85.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,608 14,249 20,517
10th Percentile £325 £304 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,238 979 2,317
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.83
25th Percentile £20.76 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £28.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +66.67% -24.00% +1.35%
75th Percentile £68.00 £59.60 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.93 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.53 £36.50
% change year-on-year +59.68% -24.58% +1.39%

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 5 June 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 5 June 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 5 June 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 +3 826 £500 -2.20% 286
North of England +11 360 £463 +2.78% 158
Midlands +18 221 £450 +7.46% 81
West Midlands +31 197 £459 -4.97% 55
South East -29 187 £495 -1.10% 132
Yorkshire +1 153 £496 +4.47% 37
North West +8 152 £475 +8.94% 94
South West +21 101 £463 -2.63% 61
East of England +14 76 £495 +10.00% 67
North East +2 63 £425 +6.25% 28
East Midlands -37 24 £400 +45.45% 26
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
1 145 (8.13%) Confluence
2 40 (2.24%) SAS
3 39 (2.19%) Apache Airflow
4 34 (1.91%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.73%) Apache
6 12 (0.67%) CMS
6 12 (0.67%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.50%) Appian
8 8 (0.45%) Camunda
9 5 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.28%) nginx
9 5 (0.28%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.17%) Kentico
10 3 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.17%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.11%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.11%) Jupyter
12 1 (0.056%) Ethereum
12 1 (0.056%) Mendix
Applications
1 26 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.73%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.56%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.17%) Simulink
7 1 (0.056%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.056%) Mingle
7 1 (0.056%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 19 (1.07%) Aladdin
2 17 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.50%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.45%) Findur
5 7 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
6 6 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.34%) Shopify
7 5 (0.28%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.28%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.28%) SAP ERP
8 3 (0.17%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.17%) Maximo
8 3 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
9 2 (0.11%) iTrent
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.11%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.11%) Summit
9 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
10 1 (0.056%) Infor CloudSuite
10 1 (0.056%) Infor LN
Cloud Services
1 497 (27.86%) AWS
2 478 (26.79%) Azure
3 288 (16.14%) GitHub
4 210 (11.77%) Azure DevOps
5 171 (9.59%) GitHub Actions
6 132 (7.40%) GCP
7 124 (6.95%) Serverless
8 85 (4.76%) AWS Lambda
9 74 (4.15%) Amazon S3
10 66 (3.70%) Power Platform
11 54 (3.03%) OpenShift
12 52 (2.91%) Amazon ECS
13 48 (2.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 42 (2.35%) Azure Data Factory
15 37 (2.07%) Snowflake
16 33 (1.85%) Amazon EKS
17 32 (1.79%) Amazon EC2
17 32 (1.79%) dbt
18 30 (1.68%) AWS CloudFormation
19 27 (1.51%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.23%) Firewall
2 15 (0.84%) SAN
3 14 (0.78%) HTTP
4 10 (0.56%) TCP/IP
4 10 (0.56%) VPN
5 9 (0.50%) MPLS
5 9 (0.50%) Network Security
5 9 (0.50%) WAN
6 6 (0.34%) Ethernet
6 6 (0.34%) VLAN
6 6 (0.34%) Wi-Fi
6 6 (0.34%) Wireshark
7 5 (0.28%) Multicast
7 5 (0.28%) SSL
8 4 (0.22%) 5G
8 4 (0.22%) BGP
8 4 (0.22%) FTP
8 4 (0.22%) LAN
8 4 (0.22%) NAS
8 4 (0.22%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 97 (5.44%) PostgreSQL
2 85 (4.76%) Data Warehouse
3 82 (4.60%) SQL Server
4 79 (4.43%) MongoDB
5 75 (4.20%) NoSQL
6 54 (3.03%) Relational Database
7 48 (2.69%) Power BI
8 46 (2.58%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.96%) Oracle Reports
10 33 (1.85%) Pentaho
11 26 (1.46%) Tableau
12 25 (1.40%) Amazon Athena
13 24 (1.35%) Big Data
13 24 (1.35%) Data Lake
14 23 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
15 22 (1.23%) Metadata
15 22 (1.23%) Redis
16 20 (1.12%) Amazon Redshift
17 18 (1.01%) MySQL
17 18 (1.01%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 336 (18.83%) JIRA
2 307 (17.21%) Git
3 293 (16.42%) Jenkins
4 254 (14.24%) GitLab
5 243 (13.62%) Selenium
6 143 (8.02%) Postman
7 131 (7.34%) Cucumber
8 95 (5.33%) REST Assured
9 93 (5.21%) JUnit
10 83 (4.65%) Cypress.io
11 80 (4.48%) JMeter
12 53 (2.97%) Zephyr
13 51 (2.86%) WebDriver
14 44 (2.47%) SonarQube
15 38 (2.13%) Gradle
16 34 (1.91%) Gatling
17 32 (1.79%) Bitbucket
18 30 (1.68%) Maven
18 30 (1.68%) Mockito
19 28 (1.57%) SpecFlow
General
1 491 (27.52%) Social Skills
2 320 (17.94%) Finance
3 231 (12.95%) Public Sector
4 221 (12.39%) Analytical Skills
5 154 (8.63%) Banking
6 42 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 41 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
8 32 (1.79%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.51%) Front Office
10 23 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
11 20 (1.12%) Telecoms
12 17 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
12 17 (0.95%) Retail
13 16 (0.90%) Financial Institution
13 16 (0.90%) Legal
13 16 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
14 15 (0.84%) Aerospace
15 13 (0.73%) Military
16 12 (0.67%) Marketing
17 11 (0.62%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 350 (19.62%) Developer
2 271 (15.19%) Senior
3 197 (11.04%) Test Engineer
4 195 (10.93%) Lead
5 194 (10.87%) Tester
6 109 (6.11%) Data Engineer
7 95 (5.33%) Java Developer
7 95 (5.33%) Software Engineer
8 92 (5.16%) Analyst
9 87 (4.88%) Test Automation Engineer
10 82 (4.60%) Architect
11 74 (4.15%) DevOps Engineer
12 72 (4.04%) Automation Tester
12 72 (4.04%) QA Engineer
13 70 (3.92%) Test Leader
14 69 (3.87%) Senior Developer
15 53 (2.97%) Full-Stack Developer
16 52 (2.91%) Automation Engineer
17 50 (2.80%) Test Analyst
18 49 (2.75%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 198 (11.10%) REST
2 193 (10.82%) Playwright
3 161 (9.02%) React
4 133 (7.46%) Kafka
5 129 (7.23%) RESTful
6 128 (7.17%) Spring
7 116 (6.50%) .NET
8 104 (5.83%) Spring Boot
9 96 (5.38%) Node.js
10 68 (3.81%) AngularJS
11 60 (3.36%) HTML
12 54 (3.03%) CSS
13 52 (2.91%) pytest
14 45 (2.52%) Jest
15 44 (2.47%) OAuth
16 37 (2.07%) Swagger
17 34 (1.91%) OpenID
18 32 (1.79%) GraphQL
19 31 (1.74%) Gherkin
20 30 (1.68%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 202 (11.32%) Cloud Native
2 122 (6.84%) Product Ownership
3 100 (5.61%) Distributed Systems
4 52 (2.91%) Data Protection Act
5 43 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
6 40 (2.24%) Mobile App
7 37 (2.07%) Enterprise Software
7 37 (2.07%) Self-Motivation
8 33 (1.85%) Virtual Team
9 28 (1.57%) Distributed Architecture
10 27 (1.51%) Onboarding
11 23 (1.29%) Algorithms
12 21 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
12 21 (1.18%) Management Information System
13 20 (1.12%) Embedded Systems
13 20 (1.12%) NHS
14 19 (1.07%) Data Centre
14 19 (1.07%) Fixed Income
15 17 (0.95%) Data Structures
16 16 (0.90%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 118 (6.61%) Linux
2 77 (4.32%) Windows
3 53 (2.97%) Unix
4 40 (2.24%) Android
5 35 (1.96%) Apple iOS
6 18 (1.01%) Windows Server
7 17 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.67%) Mac OS X
9 7 (0.39%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.39%) Solaris
10 5 (0.28%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.22%) Embedded Linux
11 4 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.17%) AIX
12 3 (0.17%) CentOS
12 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.11%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.056%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 938 (52.58%) CI/CD
2 816 (45.74%) Agile
3 623 (34.92%) DevOps
4 338 (18.95%) Problem-Solving
5 296 (16.59%) Microservices
6 295 (16.54%) Continuous Improvement
7 280 (15.70%) Test Strategy
8 258 (14.46%) Scrum
9 257 (14.41%) Software Engineering
10 245 (13.73%) Validation
11 228 (12.78%) Infrastructure as Code
12 218 (12.22%) Observability
13 212 (11.88%) Containerisation
14 209 (11.72%) TDD
15 207 (11.60%) AI
16 192 (10.76%) ETL
17 181 (10.15%) Software Testing
18 179 (10.03%) Test Scripting
19 171 (9.59%) User Acceptance Testing
20 167 (9.36%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 452 (25.34%) Python
2 444 (24.89%) Java
3 430 (24.10%) SQL
4 231 (12.95%) JavaScript
5 199 (11.15%) TypeScript
6 171 (9.59%) C#
7 72 (4.04%) PowerShell
8 54 (3.03%) Bash
9 44 (2.47%) C++
10 41 (2.30%) Kotlin
11 32 (1.79%) PL/SQL
12 31 (1.74%) C
13 30 (1.68%) Scala
14 29 (1.63%) Apex Code
15 27 (1.51%) Go
16 22 (1.23%) Bicep
17 20 (1.12%) Swift
18 16 (0.90%) Groovy
19 15 (0.84%) Ruby
20 12 (0.67%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 558 (31.28%) Security Cleared
2 439 (24.61%) SC Cleared
3 87 (4.88%) ISTQB
4 74 (4.15%) DV Cleared
5 73 (4.09%) Degree
6 66 (3.70%) BPSS Clearance
7 36 (2.02%) Computer Science Degree
8 20 (1.12%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 13 (0.73%) Cisco Certification
9 13 (0.73%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 13 (0.73%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.67%) CCNP
11 11 (0.62%) AWS Certification
11 11 (0.62%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 11 (0.62%) SAFe Agilist
12 9 (0.50%) DBS Check
13 8 (0.45%) Azure Certification
14 6 (0.34%) CISSP
15 5 (0.28%) CCIE
16 4 (0.22%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 388 (21.75%) QA
2 123 (6.89%) Accessibility
3 111 (6.22%) Data Quality
4 54 (3.03%) WCAG
5 29 (1.63%) GDPR
6 11 (0.62%) ISO 20022
7 10 (0.56%) Def Stans
7 10 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 10 (0.56%) SLA
8 9 (0.50%) NCSC
8 9 (0.50%) NIST
9 6 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 5 (0.28%) FATCA
10 5 (0.28%) Software Quality Assurance
11 4 (0.22%) HL7
11 4 (0.22%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.22%) SEPA
12 3 (0.17%) HIPAA
12 3 (0.17%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.17%) MiFID
System Software
1 298 (16.70%) Docker
2 25 (1.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (1.01%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.78%) Firmware
5 12 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.39%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 6 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.11%) SRDF
10 1 (0.056%) Hyper-V
10 1 (0.056%) ISA Server
10 1 (0.056%) KVM
10 1 (0.056%) Squid
10 1 (0.056%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.056%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 298 (16.70%) Kubernetes
2 210 (11.77%) Terraform
3 95 (5.33%) Grafana
4 86 (4.82%) Ansible
5 83 (4.65%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.46%) Argo
7 14 (0.78%) Puppet
8 13 (0.73%) HP ALM
9 11 (0.62%) Kibana
10 10 (0.56%) Dell DRAC
10 10 (0.56%) HP Quality Center
11 9 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 9 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 9 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.45%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.34%) NetBackup
13 6 (0.34%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.22%) Nmap
14 4 (0.22%) Oracle RMAN
14 4 (0.22%) WMI
Vendors
1 149 (8.35%) Oracle
2 147 (8.24%) Microsoft
3 73 (4.09%) Salesforce
4 60 (3.36%) Databricks
5 55 (3.08%) ServiceNow
6 54 (3.03%) Talend
7 51 (2.86%) Splunk
8 47 (2.63%) Red Hat
9 46 (2.58%) Google
10 38 (2.13%) Denodo
11 30 (1.68%) VMware
12 27 (1.51%) SAP
13 24 (1.35%) Informatica
14 23 (1.29%) Dynatrace
14 23 (1.29%) UiPath
15 21 (1.18%) Cisco
16 19 (1.07%) IBM
17 16 (0.90%) HP
18 15 (0.84%) MuleSoft
19 14 (0.78%) Blue Prism