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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 53 47
Rank change year-on-year +6 -6 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,007 1,234 1,340
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.35% 4.44% 4.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.14% 4.89% 4.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,272 835 904
10th Percentile £320 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £385 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -5.09%
75th Percentile £575 £598 £600
90th Percentile £669 £700 £721
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 100 36 16
10th Percentile £40.00 £41.67 £41.25
25th Percentile £58.31 £50.00 £49.38
Median hourly rate £67.86 £57.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.01% - -23.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £72.53
90th Percentile £75.00 £71.75 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £56.25 £57.50
% change year-on-year +24.44% -2.17% -20.69%

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 39,062 25,238 28,145
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.72% 90.90% 86.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,917 16,041 17,545
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -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 2,725 1,497 1,306
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.38 £14.92
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.87 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -1.91%
75th Percentile £68.00 £49.75 £66.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +3 905 £500 - 1,759
North of England +5 403 £454 -1.30% 481
Midlands +12 249 £450 -2.70% 201
West Midlands +15 234 £458 -11.62% 130
South East -10 233 £450 -10.00% 427
Yorkshire -15 166 £473 -5.59% 143
North West -15 138 £492 +15.79% 279
South West -7 114 £456 -15.12% 266
North East +12 106 £425 -4.49% 60
East of England +19 84 £425 +24.09% 214
East Midlands -39 15 £418 +19.29% 70
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
1 173 (8.62%) Confluence
2 51 (2.54%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (2.04%) SharePoint
4 38 (1.89%) Apache Spark
5 31 (1.54%) SAS
6 23 (1.15%) Apache
7 15 (0.75%) CMS
8 12 (0.60%) Camunda
9 10 (0.50%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.35%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
12 5 (0.25%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 4 (0.20%) nginx
13 4 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
13 4 (0.20%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.15%) Kentico
15 2 (0.100%) Anypoint
15 2 (0.100%) Apache Pulsar
15 2 (0.100%) Mule
Applications
1 23 (1.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.30%) Chatbot
3 6 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 3 (0.15%) Trello
6 2 (0.100%) Mingle
6 2 (0.100%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 27 (1.35%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.85%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.65%) Payment Gateway
4 9 (0.45%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.35%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.30%) Findur
6 6 (0.30%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.25%) SAP GRC
8 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
9 2 (0.100%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.100%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.100%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.100%) Shopify
10 1 (0.050%) Infor M3
10 1 (0.050%) Misys Equation
10 1 (0.050%) Oracle EBS R12
10 1 (0.050%) Sage 50
10 1 (0.050%) SAP EWM
10 1 (0.050%) SAP LE
Cloud Services
1 610 (30.39%) AWS
2 590 (29.40%) Azure
3 339 (16.89%) GitHub
4 273 (13.60%) Azure DevOps
5 210 (10.46%) GitHub Actions
6 158 (7.87%) Serverless
7 150 (7.47%) GCP
8 117 (5.83%) AWS Lambda
9 97 (4.83%) Power Platform
10 87 (4.33%) Amazon S3
11 78 (3.89%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 69 (3.44%) OpenShift
13 64 (3.19%) Amazon ECS
14 59 (2.94%) GitHub Copilot
15 57 (2.84%) Amazon EKS
16 55 (2.74%) dbt
17 50 (2.49%) Snowflake
18 45 (2.24%) AWS CloudFormation
19 41 (2.04%) Amazon EC2
20 40 (1.99%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.20%) HTTP
2 22 (1.10%) 4G
3 21 (1.05%) DNS
3 21 (1.05%) Firewall
4 20 (1.00%) 5G
5 19 (0.95%) TCP/IP
6 16 (0.80%) 2G
6 16 (0.80%) 3G
6 16 (0.80%) Diameter Protocol
6 16 (0.80%) SIGTRAN
6 16 (0.80%) SS7
7 15 (0.75%) Network Security
7 15 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
8 13 (0.65%) WAN
9 12 (0.60%) LAN
10 11 (0.55%) Broadband
11 10 (0.50%) BGP
11 10 (0.50%) DHCP
12 9 (0.45%) SAN
13 8 (0.40%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 117 (5.83%) PostgreSQL
2 110 (5.48%) Data Warehouse
3 99 (4.93%) NoSQL
4 92 (4.58%) MongoDB
5 91 (4.53%) Relational Database
6 88 (4.38%) SQL Server
7 79 (3.94%) Power BI
8 40 (1.99%) DynamoDB
9 37 (1.84%) Data Lake
10 36 (1.79%) Metadata
11 34 (1.69%) Oracle Reports
12 31 (1.54%) Big Data
13 30 (1.49%) Pentaho
14 28 (1.40%) Amazon Athena
15 27 (1.35%) Amazon Redshift
15 27 (1.35%) MySQL
15 27 (1.35%) Redis
16 25 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
17 24 (1.20%) Oracle Database
18 19 (0.95%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 435 (21.67%) Git
2 341 (16.99%) JIRA
3 320 (15.94%) Jenkins
4 277 (13.80%) GitLab
5 253 (12.61%) Selenium
6 134 (6.68%) Cucumber
7 133 (6.63%) Postman
8 114 (5.68%) JUnit
9 98 (4.88%) Cypress.io
10 90 (4.48%) REST Assured
11 83 (4.14%) SonarQube
12 75 (3.74%) JMeter
13 60 (2.99%) Zephyr
14 58 (2.89%) Gatling
15 52 (2.59%) Maven
16 51 (2.54%) Gradle
17 44 (2.19%) Mockito
18 43 (2.14%) WebDriver
19 36 (1.79%) Bitbucket
20 24 (1.20%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 562 (28.00%) Social Skills
2 384 (19.13%) Finance
3 299 (14.90%) Analytical Skills
4 253 (12.61%) Public Sector
5 184 (9.17%) Banking
6 70 (3.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 43 (2.14%) Telecoms
8 33 (1.64%) Front Office
8 33 (1.64%) Retail
9 28 (1.40%) Documentation Skills
9 28 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
10 27 (1.35%) Investment Banking
11 26 (1.30%) Military
12 20 (1.00%) Financial Institution
13 18 (0.90%) Aerospace
13 18 (0.90%) Law
13 18 (0.90%) Marketing
14 17 (0.85%) Manufacturing
15 14 (0.70%) Automotive
15 14 (0.70%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 433 (21.57%) Developer
2 319 (15.89%) Senior
3 195 (9.72%) Lead
3 195 (9.72%) Test Engineer
4 148 (7.37%) Tester
5 136 (6.78%) Java Developer
6 124 (6.18%) Data Engineer
7 122 (6.08%) Software Engineer
8 111 (5.53%) Analyst
9 96 (4.78%) DevOps Engineer
10 95 (4.73%) Senior Developer
11 92 (4.58%) QA Engineer
12 88 (4.38%) Test Automation Engineer
13 83 (4.14%) Architect
14 74 (3.69%) Full-Stack Developer
15 68 (3.39%) Test Analyst
16 66 (3.29%) Automation Engineer
16 66 (3.29%) Java Engineer
17 65 (3.24%) Test Leader
18 61 (3.04%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 314 (15.65%) REST
2 290 (14.45%) Terraform
3 226 (11.26%) Playwright
4 209 (10.41%) RESTful
5 204 (10.16%) Kafka
6 193 (9.62%) Spring
7 188 (9.37%) React
8 164 (8.17%) Spring Boot
9 148 (7.37%) .NET
10 125 (6.23%) HTML
11 109 (5.43%) Node.js
12 107 (5.33%) CSS
13 99 (4.93%) AngularJS
14 61 (3.04%) OAuth
15 54 (2.69%) JSON
16 52 (2.59%) SOAP
17 50 (2.49%) XML
18 49 (2.44%) Next.js
19 48 (2.39%) PySpark
19 48 (2.39%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 319 (15.89%) Cloud Native
2 165 (8.22%) Product Ownership
3 146 (7.27%) Distributed Systems
4 83 (4.14%) Enterprise Software
5 60 (2.99%) Onboarding
6 55 (2.74%) AI Agents
7 50 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
8 49 (2.44%) Self-Motivation
9 48 (2.39%) Data Protection Act
10 40 (1.99%) Mobile App
11 34 (1.69%) Virtual Team
12 27 (1.35%) Security Posture
13 24 (1.20%) Data Structures
14 21 (1.05%) Embedded Systems
14 21 (1.05%) Management Information System
15 17 (0.85%) Data Centre
16 16 (0.80%) Distributed Architecture
16 16 (0.80%) Fixed Income
17 15 (0.75%) Legacy Applications
17 15 (0.75%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 141 (7.03%) Linux
2 87 (4.33%) Windows
3 81 (4.04%) Unix
4 38 (1.89%) Apple iOS
5 36 (1.79%) Android
6 29 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 21 (1.05%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.30%) VMS
9 5 (0.25%) Mac OS X
9 5 (0.25%) Solaris
9 5 (0.25%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.25%) Windows 7
9 5 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
10 4 (0.20%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.15%) AIX
11 3 (0.15%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.100%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,210 (60.29%) CI/CD
2 969 (48.28%) Agile
3 749 (37.32%) DevOps
4 405 (20.18%) Problem-Solving
5 401 (19.98%) Continuous Improvement
6 398 (19.83%) Software Engineering
7 394 (19.63%) Microservices
8 351 (17.49%) Scrum
9 345 (17.19%) Infrastructure as Code
10 341 (16.99%) Validation
11 332 (16.54%) AI
12 312 (15.55%) Test Strategy
13 295 (14.70%) Containerisation
14 266 (13.25%) SDLC
15 265 (13.20%) Observability
16 256 (12.76%) TDD
17 246 (12.26%) Software Testing
18 227 (11.31%) Stakeholder Management
19 217 (10.81%) End-to-End Testing
20 196 (9.77%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 552 (27.50%) Python
2 549 (27.35%) Java
3 496 (24.71%) SQL
4 295 (14.70%) JavaScript
5 230 (11.46%) TypeScript
6 167 (8.32%) C#
7 89 (4.43%) PowerShell
8 77 (3.84%) Bash
9 46 (2.29%) Bicep
10 45 (2.24%) Kotlin
11 33 (1.64%) C++
12 28 (1.40%) Go
13 27 (1.35%) Scala
14 25 (1.25%) PL/SQL
15 22 (1.10%) Apex Code
16 21 (1.05%) C
17 20 (1.00%) Shell Script
18 16 (0.80%) Groovy
19 15 (0.75%) Ruby
19 15 (0.75%) Swift
Qualifications
1 648 (32.29%) Security Cleared
2 542 (27.01%) SC Cleared
3 112 (5.58%) Degree
4 91 (4.53%) ISTQB
5 80 (3.99%) DV Cleared
6 68 (3.39%) BPSS Clearance
7 61 (3.04%) Computer Science Degree
8 36 (1.79%) AWS Certification
9 27 (1.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 23 (1.15%) Azure Certification
11 15 (0.75%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 14 (0.70%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 12 (0.60%) ISEB
13 12 (0.60%) Master's Degree
14 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
15 9 (0.45%) Cisco Certification
15 9 (0.45%) CISSP
15 9 (0.45%) SAFe Agilist
16 8 (0.40%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 7 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 550 (27.40%) QA
2 164 (8.17%) Accessibility
3 135 (6.73%) Data Quality
4 91 (4.53%) WCAG
5 39 (1.94%) GDPR
6 18 (0.90%) ISO 20022
7 13 (0.65%) NCSC
8 12 (0.60%) SLA
9 11 (0.55%) GRC
9 11 (0.55%) NIST
10 9 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 7 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.35%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.25%) FATCA
12 5 (0.25%) PCI DSS
13 4 (0.20%) HL7
13 4 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.20%) SEPA
14 3 (0.15%) Def Stans
14 3 (0.15%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 399 (19.88%) Docker
2 34 (1.69%) Active Directory
3 28 (1.40%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.90%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.55%) Firmware
6 5 (0.25%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.15%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.050%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.050%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 394 (19.63%) Kubernetes
2 111 (5.53%) Ansible
3 106 (5.28%) Grafana
4 83 (4.14%) Prometheus
5 39 (1.94%) Argo
6 21 (1.05%) Progress Chef
6 21 (1.05%) Puppet
7 13 (0.65%) Kibana
7 13 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
8 12 (0.60%) HP ALM
9 11 (0.55%) Control-M
10 7 (0.35%) Kustomize
10 7 (0.35%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (0.30%) Dell DRAC
12 5 (0.25%) HP Fortify
12 5 (0.25%) Istio
12 5 (0.25%) Packer
12 5 (0.25%) SCCM
13 4 (0.20%) HP Quality Center
13 4 (0.20%) WMI
Vendors
1 204 (10.16%) Microsoft
2 153 (7.62%) Oracle
3 83 (4.14%) Databricks
4 67 (3.34%) Salesforce
5 65 (3.24%) Google
6 57 (2.84%) Red Hat
7 51 (2.54%) IBM
8 47 (2.34%) Splunk
8 47 (2.34%) Talend
9 44 (2.19%) ServiceNow
10 39 (1.94%) Dynatrace
10 39 (1.94%) SAP
11 36 (1.79%) Denodo
12 35 (1.74%) VMware
13 33 (1.64%) Informatica
14 30 (1.49%) Cisco
15 29 (1.44%) UiPath
16 16 (0.80%) HP
17 13 (0.65%) OpenAI
18 12 (0.60%) Foundry