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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 52 47
Rank change year-on-year +6 -5 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,065 1,262 1,321
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.44% 4.57% 4.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.24% 5.03% 4.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,312 858 899
10th Percentile £318 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £671 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 103 37 16
10th Percentile £40.00 £41.50 £41.25
25th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £49.38
Median hourly rate £68.22 £57.50 £58.75
Median % change year-on-year +18.63% -2.13% -21.67%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £77.13
90th Percentile £75.00 £71.10 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +27.27% -4.35% -22.03%

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 39,416 25,077 27,731
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.69% 90.84% 86.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,046 15,915 17,172
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.68% -2.61% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £626 £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 2,836 1,513 1,250
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £20.14
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -2.27%
75th Percentile £67.84 £47.12 £66.58
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 +6 939 £500 - 1,475
North of England -5 414 £450 -5.26% 462
Midlands +12 257 £450 -2.70% 214
West Midlands +25 242 £458 -11.76% 146
South East -10 229 £450 -10.00% 427
Yorkshire -8 175 £460 -8.00% 139
North West -14 138 £492 +15.76% 250
South West -5 113 £456 -15.31% 281
North East +5 108 £425 -10.53% 73
East of England +15 91 £375 +9.49% 186
East Midlands -48 15 £418 +15.97% 67
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
1 174 (8.43%) Confluence
2 60 (2.91%) Apache Airflow
3 40 (1.94%) SharePoint
4 39 (1.89%) Apache Spark
5 30 (1.45%) SAS
6 29 (1.40%) Apache
7 16 (0.77%) CMS
8 14 (0.68%) Camunda
9 10 (0.48%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.29%) Jupyter
11 6 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
12 5 (0.24%) nginx
12 5 (0.24%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
13 4 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
13 4 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.15%) Kentico
15 2 (0.097%) Anypoint
15 2 (0.097%) Mule
Applications
1 22 (1.07%) 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 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.15%) Trello
6 2 (0.097%) Mingle
6 2 (0.097%) Simulink
6 2 (0.097%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.048%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.048%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 28 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.92%) 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%) SAP GRC
8 4 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 4 (0.19%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.097%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.097%) Distributed Ledger
9 2 (0.097%) Findur
9 2 (0.097%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.097%) Shopify
10 1 (0.048%) IntelliMatch
10 1 (0.048%) Oracle EBS R12
10 1 (0.048%) Sage 50
10 1 (0.048%) SAP EWM
10 1 (0.048%) SAP LE
10 1 (0.048%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 641 (31.04%) AWS
2 618 (29.93%) Azure
3 346 (16.76%) GitHub
4 281 (13.61%) Azure DevOps
5 207 (10.02%) GitHub Actions
6 166 (8.04%) GCP
7 157 (7.60%) Serverless
8 115 (5.57%) AWS Lambda
9 100 (4.84%) Power Platform
10 88 (4.26%) Amazon S3
11 79 (3.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 73 (3.54%) OpenShift
13 64 (3.10%) GitHub Copilot
14 61 (2.95%) Amazon ECS
15 58 (2.81%) Amazon EKS
16 57 (2.76%) dbt
17 52 (2.52%) Snowflake
18 49 (2.37%) AWS CloudFormation
19 42 (2.03%) Amazon EC2
20 39 (1.89%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.16%) 4G
2 23 (1.11%) DNS
2 23 (1.11%) HTTP
3 22 (1.07%) 5G
3 22 (1.07%) Firewall
4 20 (0.97%) TCP/IP
5 19 (0.92%) Wi-Fi
6 16 (0.77%) Broadband
7 15 (0.73%) 2G
7 15 (0.73%) 3G
7 15 (0.73%) Diameter Protocol
7 15 (0.73%) Network Security
7 15 (0.73%) SIGTRAN
7 15 (0.73%) SS7
8 13 (0.63%) WAN
9 12 (0.58%) BGP
9 12 (0.58%) LAN
10 11 (0.53%) DHCP
10 11 (0.53%) Ethernet VPN
10 11 (0.53%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (5.71%) PostgreSQL
2 109 (5.28%) Data Warehouse
3 97 (4.70%) NoSQL
4 92 (4.46%) MongoDB
5 90 (4.36%) Relational Database
6 86 (4.16%) SQL Server
7 80 (3.87%) Power BI
8 39 (1.89%) Data Lake
9 37 (1.79%) DynamoDB
10 36 (1.74%) Metadata
11 34 (1.65%) Oracle Reports
12 31 (1.50%) Big Data
13 30 (1.45%) Pentaho
14 29 (1.40%) MySQL
15 28 (1.36%) Redis
16 27 (1.31%) Amazon Redshift
17 26 (1.26%) Amazon Athena
17 26 (1.26%) Oracle Database
18 25 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
19 20 (0.97%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 460 (22.28%) Git
2 342 (16.56%) JIRA
3 333 (16.13%) Jenkins
4 283 (13.70%) GitLab
5 265 (12.83%) Selenium
6 147 (7.12%) Cucumber
7 143 (6.92%) Postman
8 123 (5.96%) JUnit
9 99 (4.79%) Cypress.io
10 92 (4.46%) REST Assured
11 87 (4.21%) SonarQube
12 80 (3.87%) JMeter
13 61 (2.95%) Gatling
14 60 (2.91%) Zephyr
15 53 (2.57%) Maven
16 50 (2.42%) Gradle
17 46 (2.23%) Mockito
18 43 (2.08%) WebDriver
19 36 (1.74%) Bitbucket
20 26 (1.26%) LoadRunner
General
1 571 (27.65%) Social Skills
2 396 (19.18%) Finance
3 297 (14.38%) Analytical Skills
4 253 (12.25%) Public Sector
5 195 (9.44%) Banking
6 69 (3.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 50 (2.42%) Telecoms
8 34 (1.65%) Front Office
9 33 (1.60%) Retail
10 29 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
10 29 (1.40%) Investment Banking
11 27 (1.31%) Documentation Skills
11 27 (1.31%) Military
12 20 (0.97%) Financial Institution
12 20 (0.97%) Manufacturing
13 19 (0.92%) Aerospace
13 19 (0.92%) Law
14 18 (0.87%) Marketing
15 14 (0.68%) Automotive
16 12 (0.58%) Legal
Job Titles
1 444 (21.50%) Developer
2 329 (15.93%) Senior
3 203 (9.83%) Lead
4 199 (9.64%) Test Engineer
5 149 (7.22%) Tester
6 137 (6.63%) Java Developer
7 131 (6.34%) Data Engineer
8 121 (5.86%) Software Engineer
9 108 (5.23%) Analyst
10 94 (4.55%) Architect
10 94 (4.55%) DevOps Engineer
11 93 (4.50%) Senior Developer
12 90 (4.36%) QA Engineer
13 87 (4.21%) Test Automation Engineer
14 73 (3.54%) Automation Engineer
15 72 (3.49%) Full-Stack Developer
16 68 (3.29%) Java Engineer
17 67 (3.24%) Test Analyst
18 65 (3.15%) Test Leader
19 63 (3.05%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 333 (16.13%) REST
2 310 (15.01%) Terraform
3 233 (11.28%) Playwright
4 218 (10.56%) Kafka
5 213 (10.31%) RESTful
6 201 (9.73%) Spring
7 196 (9.49%) React
8 171 (8.28%) Spring Boot
9 150 (7.26%) .NET
10 133 (6.44%) HTML
11 114 (5.52%) Node.js
12 113 (5.47%) CSS
13 100 (4.84%) AngularJS
14 78 (3.78%) OAuth
15 60 (2.91%) JSON
16 59 (2.86%) SOAP
17 56 (2.71%) Middleware
18 55 (2.66%) pytest
19 53 (2.57%) Web Services
20 52 (2.52%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 335 (16.22%) Cloud Native
2 170 (8.23%) Product Ownership
3 151 (7.31%) Distributed Systems
4 87 (4.21%) Enterprise Software
5 69 (3.34%) Onboarding
6 60 (2.91%) AI Agents
7 51 (2.47%) Self-Motivation
8 49 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
9 48 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
10 38 (1.84%) Mobile App
11 32 (1.55%) Virtual Team
12 27 (1.31%) Security Posture
13 26 (1.26%) Data Structures
14 23 (1.11%) Management Information System
15 21 (1.02%) Embedded Systems
16 20 (0.97%) Data Centre
17 17 (0.82%) Fixed Income
17 17 (0.82%) Legacy Applications
18 16 (0.77%) Greenfield Project
18 16 (0.77%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 149 (7.22%) Linux
2 94 (4.55%) Windows
3 82 (3.97%) Unix
4 38 (1.84%) Apple iOS
5 36 (1.74%) Android
6 29 (1.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 22 (1.07%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.34%) VMS
9 6 (0.29%) Mac OS X
10 5 (0.24%) Solaris
10 5 (0.24%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.24%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.24%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.19%) Embedded Linux
11 4 (0.19%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.15%) AIX
12 3 (0.15%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.097%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,261 (61.07%) CI/CD
2 1,011 (48.96%) Agile
3 769 (37.24%) DevOps
4 416 (20.15%) Continuous Improvement
5 414 (20.05%) Problem-Solving
6 410 (19.85%) Software Engineering
7 409 (19.81%) Microservices
8 359 (17.38%) Infrastructure as Code
8 359 (17.38%) Validation
9 358 (17.34%) Scrum
10 347 (16.80%) AI
11 319 (15.45%) Test Strategy
12 312 (15.11%) Containerisation
13 276 (13.37%) Observability
14 273 (13.22%) SDLC
15 260 (12.59%) Software Testing
15 260 (12.59%) TDD
16 240 (11.62%) Stakeholder Management
17 220 (10.65%) End-to-End Testing
18 206 (9.98%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 579 (28.04%) Python
2 572 (27.70%) Java
3 514 (24.89%) SQL
4 313 (15.16%) JavaScript
5 240 (11.62%) TypeScript
6 176 (8.52%) C#
7 88 (4.26%) PowerShell
8 74 (3.58%) Bash
9 45 (2.18%) Bicep
10 44 (2.13%) Kotlin
11 38 (1.84%) Go
12 35 (1.69%) C++
12 35 (1.69%) Scala
13 25 (1.21%) PL/SQL
14 23 (1.11%) Shell Script
15 21 (1.02%) Apex Code
16 20 (0.97%) C
17 17 (0.82%) Groovy
18 15 (0.73%) Swift
19 13 (0.63%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 666 (32.25%) Security Cleared
2 558 (27.02%) SC Cleared
3 120 (5.81%) Degree
4 93 (4.50%) ISTQB
5 83 (4.02%) DV Cleared
6 75 (3.63%) BPSS Clearance
7 66 (3.20%) Computer Science Degree
8 42 (2.03%) AWS Certification
9 26 (1.26%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 23 (1.11%) Azure Certification
11 14 (0.68%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 14 (0.68%) CISSP
11 14 (0.68%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 13 (0.63%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.58%) Cisco Certification
13 12 (0.58%) ISEB
13 12 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.39%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 8 (0.39%) SAFe Agilist
15 7 (0.34%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 564 (27.31%) QA
2 167 (8.09%) Accessibility
3 138 (6.68%) Data Quality
4 90 (4.36%) WCAG
5 37 (1.79%) GDPR
6 18 (0.87%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.73%) NIST
9 13 (0.63%) NCSC
10 12 (0.58%) GRC
10 12 (0.58%) SLA
11 8 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.29%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.29%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.29%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.24%) FATCA
13 5 (0.24%) HL7
14 4 (0.19%) HIPAA
14 4 (0.19%) SEPA
15 3 (0.15%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 421 (20.39%) Docker
2 36 (1.74%) Active Directory
3 30 (1.45%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (0.92%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.58%) Firmware
6 7 (0.34%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.15%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.048%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.048%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 410 (19.85%) Kubernetes
2 117 (5.67%) Ansible
3 113 (5.47%) Grafana
4 82 (3.97%) Prometheus
5 40 (1.94%) Argo
6 22 (1.07%) Kibana
7 21 (1.02%) Progress Chef
8 20 (0.97%) Puppet
9 14 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.58%) HP ALM
11 11 (0.53%) Control-M
12 8 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
13 7 (0.34%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.29%) Dell DRAC
14 6 (0.29%) HP Fortify
15 5 (0.24%) Istio
15 5 (0.24%) Packer
15 5 (0.24%) SCCM
16 4 (0.19%) HP Quality Center
16 4 (0.19%) WMI
Vendors
1 213 (10.31%) Microsoft
2 154 (7.46%) Oracle
3 89 (4.31%) Databricks
4 75 (3.63%) Google
5 64 (3.10%) Salesforce
6 58 (2.81%) IBM
7 57 (2.76%) Red Hat
8 53 (2.57%) ServiceNow
9 50 (2.42%) Splunk
10 47 (2.28%) Talend
11 41 (1.99%) SAP
12 40 (1.94%) Dynatrace
13 38 (1.84%) VMware
14 37 (1.79%) Denodo
15 33 (1.60%) Cisco
15 33 (1.60%) Informatica
16 30 (1.45%) UiPath
17 18 (0.87%) HP
18 17 (0.82%) Foundry
19 16 (0.77%) OpenAI