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

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 49 46
Rank change year-on-year +4 -3 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,078 1,277 1,338
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.46% 4.60% 4.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.27% 5.06% 4.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,324 870 911
10th Percentile £320 £313 £350
25th Percentile £408 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £508
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -1.48% -7.73%
75th Percentile £576 £588 £600
90th Percentile £674 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 35 15
10th Percentile £40.00 £41.28 £44.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £48.13 £50.63
Median hourly rate £68.22 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.63% -4.17% -20.00%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £79.75
90th Percentile £77.00 £71.80 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +27.27% -4.35% -23.33%

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 39,415 25,251 27,687
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.67% 91.00% 86.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,982 16,042 16,911
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.71% -2.64% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,873 1,537 1,195
10th Percentile £13.88 £14.39 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.60 £17.87 £20.30
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.47 £47.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.35 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £38.86 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +54.51% -40.82% -

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 30 September 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 30 September 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 30 September 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 +4 946 £500 - 1,243
North of England +2 415 £453 -4.63% 454
Midlands +14 265 £450 -2.70% 208
West Midlands +26 250 £450 -13.21% 145
South East -16 220 £450 -5.26% 340
Yorkshire -7 177 £463 -7.50% 145
North West -14 145 £492 +15.12% 239
South West -10 112 £469 -13.19% 257
North East +4 100 £425 -11.69% 70
East of England +19 93 £375 +17.19% 169
East Midlands -45 15 £418 +15.97% 63
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
1 177 (8.52%) Confluence
2 61 (2.94%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (1.97%) SharePoint
4 39 (1.88%) Apache Spark
5 29 (1.40%) Apache
6 26 (1.25%) SAS
7 16 (0.77%) CMS
8 14 (0.67%) Camunda
9 9 (0.43%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.29%) Jupyter
11 6 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
12 5 (0.24%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.19%) nginx
13 4 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
14 3 (0.14%) Kentico
14 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
14 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
15 2 (0.096%) Anypoint
15 2 (0.096%) Mule
Applications
1 21 (1.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.29%) Chatbot
3 6 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.19%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.14%) Mingle
5 3 (0.14%) Trello
6 2 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.048%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.048%) Simulink
7 1 (0.048%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 28 (1.35%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.63%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.48%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.29%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.24%) SAP GRC
8 4 (0.19%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.096%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.096%) Findur
9 2 (0.096%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.096%) Shopify
10 1 (0.048%) Infor M3
10 1 (0.048%) Oracle EBS R12
10 1 (0.048%) Sage 50
10 1 (0.048%) SAP EWM
10 1 (0.048%) SAP HCM
10 1 (0.048%) SAP LE
10 1 (0.048%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 658 (31.67%) AWS
2 621 (29.88%) Azure
3 358 (17.23%) GitHub
4 290 (13.96%) Azure DevOps
5 212 (10.20%) GitHub Actions
6 169 (8.13%) GCP
7 162 (7.80%) Serverless
8 119 (5.73%) AWS Lambda
9 103 (4.96%) Power Platform
10 93 (4.48%) Amazon S3
11 83 (3.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 69 (3.32%) GitHub Copilot
13 66 (3.18%) OpenShift
14 63 (3.03%) Amazon ECS
15 61 (2.94%) Amazon EKS
16 56 (2.69%) dbt
17 52 (2.50%) Snowflake
18 49 (2.36%) AWS CloudFormation
19 44 (2.12%) Amazon EC2
20 41 (1.97%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.20%) DNS
2 24 (1.15%) 4G
3 23 (1.11%) Firewall
4 22 (1.06%) HTTP
4 22 (1.06%) TCP/IP
5 21 (1.01%) 5G
5 21 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
6 19 (0.91%) Broadband
7 16 (0.77%) Network Security
8 14 (0.67%) 2G
8 14 (0.67%) 3G
8 14 (0.67%) Diameter Protocol
8 14 (0.67%) SIGTRAN
8 14 (0.67%) SS7
9 13 (0.63%) BGP
9 13 (0.63%) WAN
10 12 (0.58%) Ethernet VPN
10 12 (0.58%) LAN
10 12 (0.58%) VXLAN
11 11 (0.53%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (5.77%) PostgreSQL
2 109 (5.25%) Data Warehouse
3 95 (4.57%) NoSQL
4 93 (4.48%) MongoDB
5 87 (4.19%) Relational Database
6 85 (4.09%) SQL Server
7 82 (3.95%) Power BI
8 41 (1.97%) Data Lake
9 36 (1.73%) DynamoDB
9 36 (1.73%) Metadata
10 34 (1.64%) Oracle Reports
11 29 (1.40%) Big Data
11 29 (1.40%) MySQL
12 28 (1.35%) Amazon Redshift
12 28 (1.35%) Pentaho
12 28 (1.35%) Redis
13 27 (1.30%) Amazon Athena
14 26 (1.25%) Oracle Database
15 25 (1.20%) Amazon RDS
16 20 (0.96%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 466 (22.43%) Git
2 343 (16.51%) JIRA
3 331 (15.93%) Jenkins
4 295 (14.20%) GitLab
5 271 (13.04%) Selenium
6 159 (7.65%) Cucumber
7 137 (6.59%) Postman
8 130 (6.26%) JUnit
9 100 (4.81%) Cypress.io
10 96 (4.62%) REST Assured
11 83 (3.99%) JMeter
11 83 (3.99%) SonarQube
12 67 (3.22%) Gatling
13 61 (2.94%) Zephyr
14 56 (2.69%) Maven
15 51 (2.45%) Gradle
16 48 (2.31%) Mockito
17 42 (2.02%) WebDriver
18 36 (1.73%) Bitbucket
19 27 (1.30%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 583 (28.06%) Social Skills
2 404 (19.44%) Finance
3 309 (14.87%) Analytical Skills
4 253 (12.18%) Public Sector
5 199 (9.58%) Banking
6 68 (3.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 54 (2.60%) Telecoms
8 35 (1.68%) Retail
9 34 (1.64%) Front Office
10 29 (1.40%) Investment Banking
10 29 (1.40%) Military
11 27 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 25 (1.20%) Documentation Skills
13 22 (1.06%) Financial Institution
14 20 (0.96%) Manufacturing
15 18 (0.87%) Law
15 18 (0.87%) Marketing
16 17 (0.82%) Aerospace
17 15 (0.72%) Back Office
18 14 (0.67%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 438 (21.08%) Developer
2 327 (15.74%) Senior
3 205 (9.87%) Lead
4 201 (9.67%) Test Engineer
5 147 (7.07%) Tester
6 134 (6.45%) Data Engineer
7 129 (6.21%) Java Developer
8 115 (5.53%) Software Engineer
9 108 (5.20%) Analyst
10 97 (4.67%) Architect
11 93 (4.48%) QA Engineer
12 91 (4.38%) DevOps Engineer
13 90 (4.33%) Senior Developer
13 90 (4.33%) Test Automation Engineer
14 74 (3.56%) Automation Engineer
15 72 (3.46%) Full-Stack Developer
16 68 (3.27%) Java Engineer
16 68 (3.27%) Test Analyst
17 66 (3.18%) Test Leader
18 63 (3.03%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 329 (15.83%) REST
2 315 (15.16%) Terraform
3 240 (11.55%) Playwright
4 223 (10.73%) Kafka
5 214 (10.30%) RESTful
6 205 (9.87%) Spring
7 193 (9.29%) React
8 171 (8.23%) Spring Boot
9 153 (7.36%) .NET
10 136 (6.54%) HTML
11 114 (5.49%) CSS
12 110 (5.29%) Node.js
13 90 (4.33%) AngularJS
14 82 (3.95%) OAuth
15 63 (3.03%) JSON
16 58 (2.79%) Middleware
16 58 (2.79%) SOAP
17 54 (2.60%) pytest
17 54 (2.60%) Web Services
18 53 (2.55%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 341 (16.41%) Cloud Native
2 172 (8.28%) Product Ownership
3 153 (7.36%) Distributed Systems
4 90 (4.33%) Enterprise Software
5 74 (3.56%) Onboarding
6 66 (3.18%) AI Agents
7 50 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
8 45 (2.17%) Self-Motivation
9 44 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
10 43 (2.07%) Mobile App
11 31 (1.49%) Security Posture
12 30 (1.44%) Virtual Team
13 29 (1.40%) Data Structures
14 23 (1.11%) Management Information System
15 21 (1.01%) Embedded Systems
16 20 (0.96%) Data Centre
17 18 (0.87%) Private Cloud
18 17 (0.82%) Distributed Architecture
19 16 (0.77%) Greenfield Project
19 16 (0.77%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 145 (6.98%) Linux
2 98 (4.72%) Windows
3 80 (3.85%) Unix
4 43 (2.07%) Apple iOS
5 38 (1.83%) Android
6 28 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 22 (1.06%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.38%) VMS
9 6 (0.29%) Mac OS X
10 5 (0.24%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.24%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.24%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.19%) Solaris
11 4 (0.19%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.14%) AIX
12 3 (0.14%) CentOS
12 3 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.14%) zOS
13 2 (0.096%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,282 (61.69%) CI/CD
2 1,007 (48.46%) Agile
3 779 (37.49%) DevOps
4 424 (20.40%) Continuous Improvement
5 419 (20.16%) Microservices
6 415 (19.97%) Problem-Solving
7 405 (19.49%) Software Engineering
8 366 (17.61%) Infrastructure as Code
8 366 (17.61%) Validation
9 361 (17.37%) AI
10 359 (17.28%) Scrum
11 322 (15.50%) Test Strategy
12 310 (14.92%) Containerisation
13 281 (13.52%) Observability
14 268 (12.90%) SDLC
15 267 (12.85%) Software Testing
16 266 (12.80%) TDD
17 252 (12.13%) Stakeholder Management
18 227 (10.92%) End-to-End Testing
19 213 (10.25%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 579 (27.86%) Python
2 575 (27.67%) Java
3 520 (25.02%) SQL
4 321 (15.45%) JavaScript
5 241 (11.60%) TypeScript
6 176 (8.47%) C#
7 89 (4.28%) PowerShell
8 75 (3.61%) Bash
9 47 (2.26%) Bicep
9 47 (2.26%) Kotlin
10 38 (1.83%) Go
11 37 (1.78%) Scala
12 36 (1.73%) C++
13 24 (1.15%) PL/SQL
13 24 (1.15%) Shell Script
14 18 (0.87%) Apex Code
14 18 (0.87%) C
15 16 (0.77%) Groovy
15 16 (0.77%) Swift
16 11 (0.53%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 652 (31.38%) Security Cleared
2 545 (26.23%) SC Cleared
3 118 (5.68%) Degree
4 92 (4.43%) ISTQB
5 83 (3.99%) BPSS Clearance
6 82 (3.95%) DV Cleared
7 68 (3.27%) Computer Science Degree
8 43 (2.07%) AWS Certification
9 24 (1.15%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 23 (1.11%) Azure Certification
11 14 (0.67%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 14 (0.67%) CISSP
11 14 (0.67%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 14 (0.67%) Master's Degree
12 13 (0.63%) ISEB
13 12 (0.58%) Cisco Certification
13 12 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.38%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 8 (0.38%) SAFe Agilist
15 7 (0.34%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 577 (27.77%) QA
2 174 (8.37%) Accessibility
3 140 (6.74%) Data Quality
4 94 (4.52%) WCAG
5 38 (1.83%) GDPR
6 19 (0.91%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.77%) NIST
8 13 (0.63%) SLA
9 12 (0.58%) GRC
9 12 (0.58%) NCSC
10 8 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.29%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.29%) SOC 2
11 6 (0.29%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.24%) FATCA
12 5 (0.24%) HL7
13 4 (0.19%) HIPAA
13 4 (0.19%) SEPA
14 3 (0.14%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 427 (20.55%) Docker
2 36 (1.73%) Active Directory
3 30 (1.44%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (0.48%) Firmware
6 8 (0.38%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.14%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.096%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.048%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.048%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 408 (19.63%) Kubernetes
2 120 (5.77%) Ansible
3 115 (5.53%) Grafana
4 82 (3.95%) Prometheus
5 33 (1.59%) Argo
6 25 (1.20%) Kibana
7 22 (1.06%) Progress Chef
8 21 (1.01%) Puppet
9 14 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.53%) Control-M
10 11 (0.53%) HP ALM
11 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
12 7 (0.34%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.29%) HP Fortify
14 5 (0.24%) Dell DRAC
14 5 (0.24%) Istio
14 5 (0.24%) Packer
14 5 (0.24%) SCCM
15 4 (0.19%) HP Quality Center
15 4 (0.19%) WMI
Vendors
1 216 (10.39%) Microsoft
2 146 (7.03%) Oracle
3 90 (4.33%) Databricks
4 76 (3.66%) Google
5 60 (2.89%) IBM
6 59 (2.84%) Salesforce
7 54 (2.60%) ServiceNow
8 51 (2.45%) Splunk
9 50 (2.41%) Red Hat
10 44 (2.12%) Talend
11 43 (2.07%) SAP
12 40 (1.92%) Dynatrace
13 38 (1.83%) VMware
14 36 (1.73%) Denodo
15 34 (1.64%) Cisco
16 32 (1.54%) Informatica
17 30 (1.44%) UiPath
18 17 (0.82%) Foundry
18 17 (0.82%) HP
18 17 (0.82%) OpenAI