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 20 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 45 55
Rank change year-on-year -3 +10 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,656 1,140 1,322
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.46% 4.66% 3.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.16% 5.14% 4.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,118 789 903
10th Percentile £331 £336 £375
25th Percentile £400 £400 £433
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.90% -4.76% -7.08%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £638
90th Percentile £676 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £517
% change year-on-year -5.00% -3.29% -6.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 7 56
10th Percentile £29.86 £38.81 £46.50
25th Percentile £52.50 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -7.35% +2.08%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.01 £84.38
90th Percentile - £76.18 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £61.25
% change year-on-year +14.54% -7.35% +2.08%

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 32,109 22,180 32,789
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.44% 90.75% 86.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,603 14,473 21,697
10th Percentile £313 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.19% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,967 822 2,143
10th Percentile £15.45 £15.07 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £16.04
Median hourly rate £32.50 £33.26 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% +2.32% -12.87%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.47 £71.13
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%

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 20 March 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 20 March 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 20 March 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 -1 811 £500 - 189
North of England +3 326 £487 +8.22% 167
Midlands +10 190 £475 +1.06% 76
South East -32 170 £500 -13.04% 161
West Midlands +11 161 £480 -3.52% 47
North West +10 149 £463 +2.78% 84
Yorkshire -15 134 £500 +5.26% 45
South West -2 78 £500 -4.76% 80
East of England +10 59 £570 +19.06% 65
North East +5 46 £475 +24.80% 38
East Midlands -28 29 £400 +8.11% 29
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
1 114 (6.88%) Confluence
2 57 (3.44%) SAS
3 26 (1.57%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
5 12 (0.72%) SharePoint
6 9 (0.54%) Apache
7 8 (0.48%) Appian
8 6 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.30%) CMS
9 5 (0.30%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.24%) Camunda
10 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.24%) Oracle Application Server
11 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.18%) nginx
12 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.12%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.12%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 27 (1.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
4 11 (0.66%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.12%) Simulink
8 1 (0.060%) Mingle
8 1 (0.060%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 24 (1.45%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.36%) Findur
2 6 (0.36%) Loan IQ
2 6 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.30%) Maximo
3 5 (0.30%) Shopify
3 5 (0.30%) Workday HCM
4 4 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.24%) SAP HR
5 3 (0.18%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.12%) iTrent
6 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.12%) Summit
7 1 (0.060%) CODA-Financials
7 1 (0.060%) Infor M3
7 1 (0.060%) IntelliMatch
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle Payables
Cloud Services
1 454 (27.42%) Azure
2 413 (24.94%) AWS
3 282 (17.03%) GitHub
4 205 (12.38%) Azure DevOps
5 154 (9.30%) GitHub Actions
6 150 (9.06%) GCP
7 118 (7.13%) Serverless
8 66 (3.99%) OpenShift
9 59 (3.56%) AWS Lambda
10 57 (3.44%) Power Platform
11 54 (3.26%) Amazon S3
12 39 (2.36%) Azure AKS
13 36 (2.17%) Snowflake
14 33 (1.99%) Amazon ECS
15 32 (1.93%) AWS CloudFormation
15 32 (1.93%) Azure Data Factory
16 31 (1.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 30 (1.81%) Amazon EKS
18 29 (1.75%) SaaS
19 27 (1.63%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.69%) Firewall
2 16 (0.97%) VPN
2 16 (0.97%) Wireshark
3 15 (0.91%) TCP/IP
4 13 (0.79%) SD-WAN
4 13 (0.79%) WAN
5 11 (0.66%) HTTP
5 11 (0.66%) Network Security
5 11 (0.66%) SSL
6 10 (0.60%) HTTPS
7 8 (0.48%) DNS
7 8 (0.48%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.48%) MPLS
8 7 (0.42%) FTP
8 7 (0.42%) Multicast
8 7 (0.42%) SAN
9 5 (0.30%) AMQP
9 5 (0.30%) Cisco IPT
9 5 (0.30%) VLAN
10 4 (0.24%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 100 (6.04%) PostgreSQL
2 70 (4.23%) NoSQL
3 68 (4.11%) SQL Server
4 57 (3.44%) MongoDB
5 49 (2.96%) Relational Database
6 48 (2.90%) Data Warehouse
7 32 (1.93%) Power BI
8 29 (1.75%) Pentaho
9 28 (1.69%) DynamoDB
10 24 (1.45%) BigQuery
10 24 (1.45%) Oracle Database
11 23 (1.39%) Tableau
12 21 (1.27%) MySQL
12 21 (1.27%) Redis
13 18 (1.09%) Amazon RDS
13 18 (1.09%) Oracle Reports
14 14 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
15 13 (0.79%) Data Lake
16 12 (0.72%) Metadata
17 11 (0.66%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 314 (18.96%) JIRA
2 309 (18.66%) Git
3 307 (18.54%) Jenkins
4 250 (15.10%) GitLab
5 243 (14.67%) Selenium
6 143 (8.64%) Cucumber
7 127 (7.67%) Postman
8 104 (6.28%) JUnit
9 95 (5.74%) Cypress.io
10 85 (5.13%) REST Assured
11 78 (4.71%) JMeter
12 40 (2.42%) WebDriver
13 36 (2.17%) SpecFlow
14 33 (1.99%) Maven
14 33 (1.99%) SonarQube
15 31 (1.87%) Zephyr
16 30 (1.81%) Gatling
16 30 (1.81%) Gradle
17 29 (1.75%) Bitbucket
17 29 (1.75%) TestRail
General
1 465 (28.08%) Social Skills
2 294 (17.75%) Finance
3 237 (14.31%) Public Sector
4 186 (11.23%) Analytical Skills
5 142 (8.57%) Banking
6 31 (1.87%) Documentation Skills
7 29 (1.75%) Investment Banking
8 26 (1.57%) Front Office
8 26 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 21 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
9 21 (1.27%) Telecoms
10 19 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
11 16 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
12 15 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
13 14 (0.85%) Financial Institution
13 14 (0.85%) Military
14 12 (0.72%) Aerospace
14 12 (0.72%) Legal
15 10 (0.60%) Electronics
16 9 (0.54%) Retail
Job Titles
1 343 (20.71%) Developer
2 270 (16.30%) Senior
3 193 (11.65%) Lead
4 184 (11.11%) Tester
5 180 (10.87%) Test Engineer
6 86 (5.19%) Analyst
6 86 (5.19%) Data Engineer
7 85 (5.13%) Automation Tester
8 82 (4.95%) Java Developer
9 80 (4.83%) Test Automation Engineer
10 73 (4.41%) Software Engineer
11 71 (4.29%) QA Engineer
11 71 (4.29%) Test Leader
12 62 (3.74%) Senior Developer
13 59 (3.56%) Architect
13 59 (3.56%) DevOps Engineer
14 53 (3.20%) Test Manager
15 52 (3.14%) Automation Engineer
15 52 (3.14%) Test Analyst
16 40 (2.42%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 208 (12.56%) REST
2 193 (11.65%) Playwright
3 140 (8.45%) React
4 134 (8.09%) Spring
5 117 (7.07%) RESTful
6 116 (7.00%) .NET
6 116 (7.00%) Kafka
7 111 (6.70%) Node.js
8 107 (6.46%) Spring Boot
9 78 (4.71%) pytest
10 58 (3.50%) AngularJS
11 53 (3.20%) OAuth
12 52 (3.14%) HTML
13 50 (3.02%) CSS
14 49 (2.96%) Jest
15 39 (2.36%) Web Services
16 37 (2.23%) GraphQL
16 37 (2.23%) WireMock
17 34 (2.05%) JSON
17 34 (2.05%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 171 (10.33%) Cloud Native
2 104 (6.28%) Product Ownership
3 81 (4.89%) Distributed Systems
4 46 (2.78%) Mobile App
5 39 (2.36%) Algorithms
6 38 (2.29%) Legacy Systems
7 37 (2.23%) Data Protection Act
8 27 (1.63%) Security Posture
9 26 (1.57%) Onboarding
10 25 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
10 25 (1.51%) Virtual Team
11 24 (1.45%) Data Structures
12 23 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
13 22 (1.33%) Distributed Architecture
13 22 (1.33%) Equities
14 21 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
14 21 (1.27%) Management Information System
15 18 (1.09%) Public Cloud
16 16 (0.97%) Derivative
16 16 (0.97%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 124 (7.49%) Linux
2 79 (4.77%) Windows
3 43 (2.60%) Android
4 36 (2.17%) Apple iOS
5 31 (1.87%) Unix
6 18 (1.09%) Windows Server
7 13 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (0.66%) Kali Linux
8 11 (0.66%) Mac OS X
9 6 (0.36%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.24%) CentOS
11 3 (0.18%) Solaris
12 2 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
12 2 (0.12%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.060%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.060%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.060%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 862 (52.05%) CI/CD
2 779 (47.04%) Agile
3 619 (37.38%) DevOps
4 406 (24.52%) Problem-Solving
5 270 (16.30%) Continuous Improvement
6 266 (16.06%) Microservices
7 259 (15.64%) Test Strategy
8 231 (13.95%) Scrum
9 230 (13.89%) Containerisation
10 214 (12.92%) AI
11 206 (12.44%) Test Scripting
12 203 (12.26%) Validation
13 201 (12.14%) Software Engineering
14 200 (12.08%) Infrastructure as Code
15 199 (12.02%) TDD
16 186 (11.23%) Analytics
16 186 (11.23%) Observability
17 182 (10.99%) Software Testing
18 173 (10.45%) Regression Testing
19 161 (9.72%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 511 (30.86%) Python
2 403 (24.34%) Java
3 365 (22.04%) SQL
4 240 (14.49%) JavaScript
5 233 (14.07%) TypeScript
6 163 (9.84%) C#
7 72 (4.35%) PowerShell
8 63 (3.80%) Bash
9 47 (2.84%) C++
10 28 (1.69%) C
10 28 (1.69%) Kotlin
11 27 (1.63%) Go
12 23 (1.39%) Bicep
13 22 (1.33%) PL/SQL
14 21 (1.27%) Apex Code
15 18 (1.09%) Scala
16 17 (1.03%) Ruby
16 17 (1.03%) Swift
17 14 (0.85%) Groovy
18 12 (0.72%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 491 (29.65%) Security Cleared
2 375 (22.64%) SC Cleared
3 86 (5.19%) Degree
4 78 (4.71%) ISTQB
5 57 (3.44%) BPSS Clearance
6 54 (3.26%) DV Cleared
7 53 (3.20%) Computer Science Degree
8 23 (1.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 23 (1.39%) Master's Degree
9 14 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
9 14 (0.85%) OSCP
10 12 (0.72%) CEH
11 11 (0.66%) AWS Certification
11 11 (0.66%) Azure Certification
12 10 (0.60%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 9 (0.54%) CCNP
13 9 (0.54%) GPEN
13 9 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.48%) CISSP
14 8 (0.48%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 378 (22.83%) QA
2 117 (7.07%) Accessibility
3 94 (5.68%) Data Quality
4 42 (2.54%) WCAG
5 29 (1.75%) GDPR
6 22 (1.33%) NIST
7 15 (0.91%) NCSC
8 14 (0.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 12 (0.72%) EU AI Act
10 10 (0.60%) ISO 20022
10 10 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 10 (0.60%) SLA
11 9 (0.54%) Def Stans
12 8 (0.48%) PSD2
13 6 (0.36%) SEPA
13 6 (0.36%) SOC 2
14 5 (0.30%) HL7
14 5 (0.30%) MiFID
14 5 (0.30%) PCI DSS
14 5 (0.30%) PERC
System Software
1 331 (19.99%) Docker
2 26 (1.57%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.48%) Firmware
4 7 (0.42%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 7 (0.42%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.12%) SRDF
9 1 (0.060%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.060%) KVM
9 1 (0.060%) Squid
9 1 (0.060%) Time Sharing Option
9 1 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 323 (19.50%) Kubernetes
2 189 (11.41%) Terraform
3 102 (6.16%) Grafana
4 91 (5.50%) Ansible
5 77 (4.65%) Prometheus
6 19 (1.15%) Puppet
7 18 (1.09%) Argo
7 18 (1.09%) HP ALM
8 14 (0.85%) Nmap
9 13 (0.79%) Progress Chef
10 11 (0.66%) HP Quality Center
10 11 (0.66%) NetBackup
10 11 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (0.48%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 8 (0.48%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 7 (0.42%) Kibana
13 6 (0.36%) Rancher
14 5 (0.30%) Podman
15 4 (0.24%) Dell DRAC
15 4 (0.24%) Istio
Vendors
1 144 (8.70%) Microsoft
2 135 (8.15%) Oracle
3 63 (3.80%) Databricks
4 55 (3.32%) Splunk
5 54 (3.26%) Salesforce
6 51 (3.08%) Google
6 51 (3.08%) ServiceNow
7 40 (2.42%) SAP
8 38 (2.29%) Red Hat
9 33 (1.99%) Talend
10 25 (1.51%) Denodo
11 21 (1.27%) HP
11 21 (1.27%) IBM
12 20 (1.21%) Cisco
12 20 (1.21%) VMware
13 18 (1.09%) Dynatrace
14 16 (0.97%) MuleSoft
15 15 (0.91%) Workday
16 14 (0.85%) Atlassian
16 14 (0.85%) OpenAI