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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 54 47
Rank change year-on-year +7 -7 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,014 1,215 1,341
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.36% 4.44% 4.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.14% 4.89% 4.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,277 819 905
10th Percentile £320 £311 £350
25th Percentile £407 £382 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £598 £600
90th Percentile £671 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 99 36 16
10th Percentile £40.00 £41.67 £41.25
25th Percentile £57.63 £50.00 £49.38
Median hourly rate £67.50 £57.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +17.39% - -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% -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 39,157 24,863 28,050
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.69% 90.87% 86.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,010 15,784 17,561
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £648
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 2,714 1,478 1,320
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.29 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.79 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -1.81%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.74 £66.53
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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +7 915 £500 - 1,693
North of England +1 404 £455 -1.09% 457
Midlands +8 249 £450 -2.70% 185
West Midlands +17 234 £459 -11.48% 119
South East -12 232 £450 -10.00% 402
Yorkshire -7 165 £473 -5.59% 128
North West -10 140 £492 +16.17% 270
South West -8 113 £463 -7.50% 256
North East +12 106 £425 -4.49% 60
East of England +10 83 £450 +31.39% 214
East Midlands -38 15 £418 +19.29% 65
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
1 175 (8.69%) Confluence
2 52 (2.58%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (2.04%) SharePoint
4 38 (1.89%) Apache Spark
5 31 (1.54%) SAS
6 23 (1.14%) Apache
7 15 (0.74%) 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 4 (0.20%) Jupyter
12 4 (0.20%) nginx
12 4 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.20%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.15%) Kentico
14 2 (0.099%) Anypoint
14 2 (0.099%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.099%) Mule
Applications
1 24 (1.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.79%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.30%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.15%) Simulink
6 3 (0.15%) Trello
7 2 (0.099%) Mingle
7 2 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 27 (1.34%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.84%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.65%) Payment Gateway
4 9 (0.45%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.35%) Findur
5 7 (0.35%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.30%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.25%) SAP GRC
8 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.15%) Shopify
9 2 (0.099%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.099%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.099%) SAP MDG
10 1 (0.050%) FLEXCUBE
10 1 (0.050%) SAP MM
10 1 (0.050%) SAP QM
10 1 (0.050%) SAP SD
10 1 (0.050%) Summit
10 1 (0.050%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 610 (30.29%) AWS
2 593 (29.44%) Azure
3 342 (16.98%) GitHub
4 275 (13.65%) Azure DevOps
5 214 (10.63%) GitHub Actions
6 161 (7.99%) Serverless
7 150 (7.45%) GCP
8 119 (5.91%) AWS Lambda
9 97 (4.82%) Power Platform
10 89 (4.42%) Amazon S3
11 80 (3.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 69 (3.43%) OpenShift
13 66 (3.28%) Amazon ECS
14 60 (2.98%) GitHub Copilot
15 59 (2.93%) Amazon EKS
16 55 (2.73%) dbt
17 50 (2.48%) Snowflake
18 47 (2.33%) AWS CloudFormation
19 43 (2.14%) Amazon EC2
20 41 (2.04%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.14%) HTTP
2 21 (1.04%) 4G
3 20 (0.99%) DNS
3 20 (0.99%) Firewall
4 19 (0.94%) 5G
5 18 (0.89%) TCP/IP
6 16 (0.79%) 2G
6 16 (0.79%) 3G
6 16 (0.79%) Diameter Protocol
6 16 (0.79%) SIGTRAN
6 16 (0.79%) SS7
7 15 (0.74%) Network Security
7 15 (0.74%) 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
1 116 (5.76%) PostgreSQL
2 112 (5.56%) Data Warehouse
3 98 (4.87%) NoSQL
4 91 (4.52%) MongoDB
4 91 (4.52%) Relational Database
5 88 (4.37%) SQL Server
6 79 (3.92%) Power BI
7 40 (1.99%) DynamoDB
8 37 (1.84%) Data Lake
9 36 (1.79%) Metadata
10 34 (1.69%) Oracle Reports
11 31 (1.54%) Big Data
12 30 (1.49%) Pentaho
13 28 (1.39%) Amazon Athena
14 27 (1.34%) Amazon Redshift
15 26 (1.29%) MySQL
15 26 (1.29%) Redis
16 25 (1.24%) Amazon RDS
17 23 (1.14%) Oracle Database
18 19 (0.94%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 434 (21.55%) Git
2 342 (16.98%) JIRA
3 321 (15.94%) Jenkins
4 275 (13.65%) GitLab
5 250 (12.41%) Selenium
6 133 (6.60%) Postman
7 131 (6.50%) Cucumber
8 111 (5.51%) JUnit
9 99 (4.92%) Cypress.io
10 91 (4.52%) REST Assured
11 81 (4.02%) SonarQube
12 75 (3.72%) JMeter
13 60 (2.98%) Zephyr
14 56 (2.78%) Gatling
15 51 (2.53%) Gradle
15 51 (2.53%) Maven
16 43 (2.14%) Mockito
16 43 (2.14%) WebDriver
17 38 (1.89%) Bitbucket
18 24 (1.19%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 565 (28.05%) Social Skills
2 386 (19.17%) Finance
3 300 (14.90%) Analytical Skills
4 254 (12.61%) Public Sector
5 182 (9.04%) Banking
6 70 (3.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 42 (2.09%) Telecoms
8 33 (1.64%) Front Office
8 33 (1.64%) Retail
9 28 (1.39%) Documentation Skills
9 28 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
10 27 (1.34%) Investment Banking
11 26 (1.29%) Military
12 20 (0.99%) Financial Institution
13 18 (0.89%) Aerospace
13 18 (0.89%) Law
13 18 (0.89%) Marketing
14 17 (0.84%) Manufacturing
15 14 (0.70%) Automotive
15 14 (0.70%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 433 (21.50%) Developer
2 325 (16.14%) Senior
3 197 (9.78%) Test Engineer
4 195 (9.68%) Lead
5 149 (7.40%) Tester
6 136 (6.75%) Java Developer
7 124 (6.16%) Data Engineer
8 121 (6.01%) Software Engineer
9 111 (5.51%) Analyst
10 98 (4.87%) Senior Developer
11 97 (4.82%) DevOps Engineer
12 93 (4.62%) QA Engineer
13 89 (4.42%) Test Automation Engineer
14 83 (4.12%) Architect
15 74 (3.67%) Full-Stack Developer
16 68 (3.38%) Test Analyst
17 67 (3.33%) Automation Engineer
18 65 (3.23%) Java Engineer
18 65 (3.23%) Test Leader
19 62 (3.08%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 312 (15.49%) REST
2 293 (14.55%) Terraform
3 227 (11.27%) Playwright
4 210 (10.43%) RESTful
5 203 (10.08%) Kafka
6 190 (9.43%) React
6 190 (9.43%) Spring
7 163 (8.09%) Spring Boot
8 146 (7.25%) .NET
9 124 (6.16%) HTML
10 109 (5.41%) Node.js
11 106 (5.26%) CSS
12 101 (5.01%) AngularJS
13 61 (3.03%) OAuth
14 56 (2.78%) JSON
15 52 (2.58%) SOAP
16 51 (2.53%) XML
17 49 (2.43%) Next.js
17 49 (2.43%) PySpark
18 47 (2.33%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 319 (15.84%) Cloud Native
2 167 (8.29%) Product Ownership
3 146 (7.25%) Distributed Systems
4 82 (4.07%) Enterprise Software
5 58 (2.88%) Onboarding
6 55 (2.73%) AI Agents
7 50 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
8 49 (2.43%) Data Protection Act
8 49 (2.43%) Self-Motivation
9 40 (1.99%) Mobile App
10 35 (1.74%) Virtual Team
11 26 (1.29%) Security Posture
12 24 (1.19%) Data Structures
13 21 (1.04%) Embedded Systems
13 21 (1.04%) Management Information System
14 17 (0.84%) Data Centre
15 16 (0.79%) Distributed Architecture
15 16 (0.79%) Fixed Income
16 15 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
16 15 (0.74%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 141 (7.00%) Linux
2 85 (4.22%) Windows
3 81 (4.02%) Unix
4 38 (1.89%) Apple iOS
5 36 (1.79%) Android
6 29 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 21 (1.04%) 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 (0.099%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,212 (60.18%) CI/CD
2 970 (48.16%) Agile
3 753 (37.39%) DevOps
4 403 (20.01%) Continuous Improvement
4 403 (20.01%) Problem-Solving
5 398 (19.76%) Software Engineering
6 392 (19.46%) Microservices
7 347 (17.23%) Infrastructure as Code
7 347 (17.23%) Scrum
8 338 (16.78%) Validation
9 332 (16.48%) AI
10 312 (15.49%) Test Strategy
11 298 (14.80%) Containerisation
12 267 (13.26%) Observability
13 265 (13.16%) SDLC
14 255 (12.66%) TDD
15 245 (12.16%) Software Testing
16 226 (11.22%) Stakeholder Management
17 220 (10.92%) End-to-End Testing
18 200 (9.93%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 554 (27.51%) Python
2 546 (27.11%) Java
3 498 (24.73%) SQL
4 295 (14.65%) JavaScript
5 233 (11.57%) TypeScript
6 168 (8.34%) C#
7 90 (4.47%) PowerShell
8 77 (3.82%) Bash
9 46 (2.28%) Bicep
10 45 (2.23%) Kotlin
11 31 (1.54%) C++
12 27 (1.34%) Go
12 27 (1.34%) Scala
13 25 (1.24%) PL/SQL
14 22 (1.09%) Apex Code
15 21 (1.04%) C
16 18 (0.89%) Shell Script
17 16 (0.79%) Groovy
18 15 (0.74%) Ruby
18 15 (0.74%) Swift
Qualifications
1 651 (32.32%) Security Cleared
2 545 (27.06%) SC Cleared
3 113 (5.61%) Degree
4 91 (4.52%) ISTQB
5 80 (3.97%) DV Cleared
6 66 (3.28%) BPSS Clearance
7 61 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
8 36 (1.79%) AWS Certification
9 27 (1.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 23 (1.14%) Azure Certification
11 17 (0.84%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 14 (0.70%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 13 (0.65%) Master's Degree
14 12 (0.60%) ISEB
15 11 (0.55%) SAFe Agilist
16 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
17 9 (0.45%) Cisco Certification
17 9 (0.45%) CISSP
18 8 (0.40%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 7 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 547 (27.16%) QA
2 162 (8.04%) Accessibility
3 136 (6.75%) Data Quality
4 89 (4.42%) WCAG
5 39 (1.94%) GDPR
6 17 (0.84%) ISO 20022
7 13 (0.65%) NCSC
8 12 (0.60%) SLA
9 11 (0.55%) GRC
9 11 (0.55%) NIST
10 10 (0.50%) 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
14 3 (0.15%) Def Stans
14 3 (0.15%) EU AI Act
14 3 (0.15%) SEPA
System Software
1 399 (19.81%) Docker
2 34 (1.69%) Active Directory
3 28 (1.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.89%) 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
1 392 (19.46%) Kubernetes
2 111 (5.51%) Ansible
3 105 (5.21%) Grafana
4 82 (4.07%) Prometheus
5 39 (1.94%) Argo
6 21 (1.04%) Progress Chef
6 21 (1.04%) Puppet
7 13 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
8 12 (0.60%) HP ALM
8 12 (0.60%) Kibana
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
1 207 (10.28%) Microsoft
2 152 (7.55%) Oracle
3 84 (4.17%) Databricks
4 68 (3.38%) Salesforce
5 65 (3.23%) Google
6 57 (2.83%) Red Hat
7 51 (2.53%) IBM
8 47 (2.33%) Splunk
8 47 (2.33%) Talend
9 44 (2.18%) 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 28 (1.39%) UiPath
16 16 (0.79%) HP
17 13 (0.65%) OpenAI
18 12 (0.60%) Foundry