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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 49 52
Rank change year-on-year +3 +3 +2
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,894 1,221 1,318
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.22% 4.44% 3.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.96% 4.89% 4.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,209 837 892
10th Percentile £325 £313 £363
25th Percentile £406 £375 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -9.52% -2.78%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £626
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 103 31 27
10th Percentile £37.80 £40.84 £45.50
25th Percentile £60.17 £44.76 £51.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -13.04% -11.88%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £74.00 £75.00 £80.50
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +35.00% -13.04% -12.21%

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 38,210 24,959 29,249
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.22% 90.75% 85.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,914 15,999 19,151
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -2.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,406 1,365 1,791
10th Percentile £15.05 £14.22 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.88 £17.75
Median hourly rate £46.62 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +85.35% -39.40% -2.35%
75th Percentile £69.49 £51.65 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.10 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +5 855 £500 - 330
North of England +11 375 £465 +3.39% 148
Midlands +11 258 £450 +9.76% 65
West Midlands +31 240 £450 -2.17% 41
South East -31 201 £459 -8.20% 157
Yorkshire +4 150 £500 +5.26% 40
North West -10 137 £489 +15.82% 79
South West +3 112 £463 +7.25% 78
North East +8 96 £425 +6.25% 30
East of England +13 78 £450 - 56
East Midlands -38 18 £425 +30.37% 24
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 (9.13%) Confluence
2 43 (2.27%) Apache Airflow
2 43 (2.27%) Apache Spark
3 41 (2.16%) SAS
4 27 (1.43%) SharePoint
5 20 (1.06%) Apache
6 13 (0.69%) CMS
7 11 (0.58%) WebLogic
8 6 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
9 5 (0.26%) Camunda
9 5 (0.26%) nginx
9 5 (0.26%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.21%) Jupyter
10 4 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.16%) Appian
11 3 (0.16%) Kentico
12 2 (0.11%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.11%) Mule
13 1 (0.053%) Apache Solr
Applications
1 21 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.79%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.42%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.21%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.21%) Simulink
6 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.16%) Trello
8 1 (0.053%) Mingle
8 1 (0.053%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 25 (1.32%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (0.84%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.63%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
5 9 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.42%) Findur
7 6 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.32%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.32%) Shopify
8 5 (0.26%) BambooHR
9 3 (0.16%) Distributed Ledger
10 2 (0.11%) Infor CloudSuite
10 2 (0.11%) Infor LN
10 2 (0.11%) Infor M3
10 2 (0.11%) Loan IQ
10 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS R12
10 2 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
10 2 (0.11%) SAP MDG
11 1 (0.053%) Maximo
11 1 (0.053%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 550 (29.04%) AWS
1 550 (29.04%) Azure
2 327 (17.27%) GitHub
3 248 (13.09%) Azure DevOps
4 208 (10.98%) GitHub Actions
5 143 (7.55%) Serverless
6 138 (7.29%) GCP
7 98 (5.17%) AWS Lambda
8 83 (4.38%) Amazon S3
9 82 (4.33%) Power Platform
10 64 (3.38%) OpenShift
11 61 (3.22%) Amazon ECS
12 58 (3.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 46 (2.43%) dbt
14 42 (2.22%) Amazon EC2
14 42 (2.22%) Amazon EKS
15 41 (2.16%) Azure Data Factory
16 38 (2.01%) GitHub Copilot
16 38 (2.01%) Snowflake
17 36 (1.90%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.16%) Firewall
2 16 (0.84%) Network Security
3 15 (0.79%) HTTP
4 13 (0.69%) SAN
4 13 (0.69%) WAN
5 12 (0.63%) 2G
5 12 (0.63%) 3G
5 12 (0.63%) 4G
5 12 (0.63%) Diameter Protocol
5 12 (0.63%) SIGTRAN
5 12 (0.63%) SS7
6 11 (0.58%) 5G
7 10 (0.53%) LAN
8 9 (0.48%) TCP/IP
9 8 (0.42%) DNS
9 8 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
10 7 (0.37%) VPN
11 6 (0.32%) BGP
11 6 (0.32%) HTTPS
11 6 (0.32%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 113 (5.97%) PostgreSQL
2 108 (5.70%) Data Warehouse
3 93 (4.91%) NoSQL
4 88 (4.65%) MongoDB
5 80 (4.22%) SQL Server
6 67 (3.54%) Power BI
7 57 (3.01%) Relational Database
8 47 (2.48%) DynamoDB
9 37 (1.95%) Oracle Reports
10 35 (1.85%) Pentaho
11 29 (1.53%) Amazon Athena
12 28 (1.48%) Big Data
12 28 (1.48%) Data Lake
13 27 (1.43%) Metadata
14 25 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
15 23 (1.21%) Amazon Redshift
15 23 (1.21%) MySQL
15 23 (1.21%) Redis
16 19 (1.00%) Oracle Database
17 16 (0.84%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 355 (18.74%) Git
1 355 (18.74%) JIRA
2 307 (16.21%) Jenkins
3 247 (13.04%) GitLab
4 230 (12.14%) Selenium
5 130 (6.86%) Postman
6 129 (6.81%) Cucumber
7 95 (5.02%) JUnit
8 93 (4.91%) Cypress.io
9 90 (4.75%) REST Assured
10 78 (4.12%) JMeter
11 64 (3.38%) Zephyr
12 56 (2.96%) SonarQube
13 51 (2.69%) WebDriver
14 43 (2.27%) Gatling
15 42 (2.22%) Bitbucket
16 41 (2.16%) Gradle
17 34 (1.80%) Mockito
18 32 (1.69%) Maven
19 26 (1.37%) SpecFlow
General
1 517 (27.30%) Social Skills
2 366 (19.32%) Finance
3 254 (13.41%) Analytical Skills
4 242 (12.78%) Public Sector
5 161 (8.50%) Banking
6 56 (2.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 38 (2.01%) Documentation Skills
8 31 (1.64%) Influencing Skills
9 30 (1.58%) Telecoms
10 29 (1.53%) Retail
11 28 (1.48%) Investment Banking
12 27 (1.43%) Front Office
13 22 (1.16%) Military
14 21 (1.11%) Financial Institution
15 17 (0.90%) Aerospace
16 15 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
17 14 (0.74%) Back Office
17 14 (0.74%) Legal
18 13 (0.69%) Automotive
19 12 (0.63%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 389 (20.54%) Developer
2 311 (16.42%) Senior
3 198 (10.45%) Lead
4 185 (9.77%) Test Engineer
5 175 (9.24%) Tester
6 135 (7.13%) Data Engineer
7 124 (6.55%) Java Developer
8 110 (5.81%) Software Engineer
9 99 (5.23%) Analyst
10 90 (4.75%) DevOps Engineer
11 89 (4.70%) Senior Developer
12 86 (4.54%) Architect
13 82 (4.33%) QA Engineer
14 80 (4.22%) Test Automation Engineer
15 68 (3.59%) Test Leader
16 66 (3.48%) Full-Stack Developer
17 63 (3.33%) Automation Tester
18 62 (3.27%) Test Analyst
19 56 (2.96%) Automation Engineer
20 49 (2.59%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 236 (12.46%) REST
2 204 (10.77%) Playwright
3 171 (9.03%) React
4 163 (8.61%) RESTful
5 154 (8.13%) Kafka
6 150 (7.92%) Spring
7 134 (7.07%) .NET
8 119 (6.28%) Spring Boot
9 102 (5.39%) Node.js
10 87 (4.59%) AngularJS
11 77 (4.07%) HTML
12 74 (3.91%) CSS
13 55 (2.90%) OAuth
14 45 (2.38%) .NET Framework
15 44 (2.32%) pytest
15 44 (2.32%) Quarkus
16 42 (2.22%) Jest
17 41 (2.16%) HTML5
18 40 (2.11%) Gherkin
18 40 (2.11%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 272 (14.36%) Cloud Native
2 139 (7.34%) Distributed Systems
3 137 (7.23%) Product Ownership
4 63 (3.33%) Enterprise Software
5 54 (2.85%) Legacy Systems
6 50 (2.64%) Data Protection Act
7 45 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
8 44 (2.32%) Onboarding
9 37 (1.95%) Mobile App
10 31 (1.64%) AI Agents
10 31 (1.64%) Virtual Team
11 30 (1.58%) Distributed Architecture
12 27 (1.43%) Embedded Systems
13 26 (1.37%) Security Posture
14 21 (1.11%) Management Information System
15 20 (1.06%) Fixed Income
16 18 (0.95%) Algorithms
16 18 (0.95%) Data Structures
16 18 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
17 16 (0.84%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 118 (6.23%) Linux
2 78 (4.12%) Windows
3 62 (3.27%) Unix
4 39 (2.06%) Android
4 39 (2.06%) Apple iOS
5 24 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 18 (0.95%) Windows Server
7 13 (0.69%) Mac OS X
8 7 (0.37%) Mac OS
8 7 (0.37%) Solaris
9 6 (0.32%) 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 (0.11%) CentOS
14 1 (0.053%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,096 (57.87%) CI/CD
2 899 (47.47%) Agile
3 706 (37.28%) DevOps
4 365 (19.27%) Problem-Solving
5 361 (19.06%) Microservices
6 355 (18.74%) Continuous Improvement
7 322 (17.00%) Software Engineering
8 314 (16.58%) Scrum
9 295 (15.58%) Infrastructure as Code
10 289 (15.26%) Validation
11 285 (15.05%) Test Strategy
12 272 (14.36%) AI
13 251 (13.25%) Containerisation
14 245 (12.94%) TDD
15 244 (12.88%) Observability
16 211 (11.14%) ETL
17 203 (10.72%) SDLC
18 199 (10.51%) Data Pipeline
19 197 (10.40%) Software Testing
20 189 (9.98%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 482 (25.45%) Python
2 470 (24.82%) Java
3 455 (24.02%) SQL
4 231 (12.20%) JavaScript
5 201 (10.61%) TypeScript
6 175 (9.24%) C#
7 74 (3.91%) PowerShell
8 65 (3.43%) Bash
9 50 (2.64%) Kotlin
10 41 (2.16%) Bicep
11 39 (2.06%) C++
12 28 (1.48%) C
13 27 (1.43%) PL/SQL
14 26 (1.37%) Go
15 25 (1.32%) Scala
16 23 (1.21%) Apex Code
17 22 (1.16%) Swift
18 18 (0.95%) Ruby
19 15 (0.79%) Groovy
20 12 (0.63%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 591 (31.20%) Security Cleared
2 490 (25.87%) SC Cleared
3 89 (4.70%) Degree
4 84 (4.44%) ISTQB
5 57 (3.01%) DV Cleared
6 55 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
7 42 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
8 27 (1.43%) AWS Certification
9 22 (1.16%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 16 (0.84%) Azure Certification
11 15 (0.79%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 13 (0.69%) Cisco Certification
13 11 (0.58%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 11 (0.58%) SAFe Agilist
14 10 (0.53%) CCNP
14 10 (0.53%) Master's Degree
15 9 (0.48%) CISSP
16 8 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
17 7 (0.37%) DBS Check
18 6 (0.32%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 476 (25.13%) QA
2 141 (7.44%) Accessibility
3 131 (6.92%) Data Quality
4 71 (3.75%) WCAG
5 37 (1.95%) GDPR
6 13 (0.69%) NCSC
7 11 (0.58%) NIST
8 10 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 10 (0.53%) SLA
9 8 (0.42%) ISO 20022
10 6 (0.32%) Software Quality Assurance
11 5 (0.26%) Def Stans
11 5 (0.26%) FATCA
11 5 (0.26%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.21%) GRC
13 3 (0.16%) EU AI Act
13 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (0.16%) MiFID
13 3 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 2 (0.11%) HL7
System Software
1 345 (18.22%) Docker
2 27 (1.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 23 (1.21%) Active Directory
4 15 (0.79%) 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 (0.11%) SRDF
8 2 (0.11%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.053%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.053%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 358 (18.90%) Kubernetes
2 258 (13.62%) Terraform
3 102 (5.39%) Ansible
4 97 (5.12%) Grafana
5 85 (4.49%) Prometheus
6 41 (2.16%) Argo
7 19 (1.00%) Puppet
8 13 (0.69%) HP ALM
8 13 (0.69%) Progress Chef
9 12 (0.63%) Kibana
10 10 (0.53%) Dell DRAC
10 10 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.37%) Kustomize
12 6 (0.32%) Istio
12 6 (0.32%) NetBackup
13 5 (0.26%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 5 (0.26%) HP Quality Center
13 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
13 5 (0.26%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 4 (0.21%) Control-M
Vendors
1 186 (9.82%) Microsoft
2 151 (7.97%) Oracle
3 76 (4.01%) Salesforce
4 68 (3.59%) Databricks
5 59 (3.12%) Red Hat
6 56 (2.96%) Talend
7 54 (2.85%) Google
8 49 (2.59%) Splunk
9 38 (2.01%) Denodo
9 38 (2.01%) ServiceNow
10 33 (1.74%) VMware
11 32 (1.69%) Informatica
12 31 (1.64%) IBM
13 30 (1.58%) Dynatrace
14 28 (1.48%) SAP
15 26 (1.37%) UiPath
16 25 (1.32%) Cisco
17 20 (1.06%) HP
18 13 (0.69%) Fortinet
19 11 (0.58%) OpenAI