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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 53 47
Rank change year-on-year +5 -6 +5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,022 1,250 1,344
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.38% 4.49% 4.08%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.17% 4.94% 4.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,280 846 905
10th Percentile £320 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £393 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -5.56%
75th Percentile £575 £593 £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 102 37 16
10th Percentile £40.00 £41.50 £41.25
25th Percentile £55.31 £50.00 £49.38
Median hourly rate £68.61 £57.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.32% - -23.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £72.53
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 39,123 25,281 28,365
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.74% 90.90% 86.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,918 16,062 17,635
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
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 2,776 1,509 1,303
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £17.79 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £66.55
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% -1.91%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 +6 911 £500 -1.72% 1,396
North of England +4 409 £453 -1.52% 411
Midlands +13 254 £450 -2.70% 182
West Midlands +20 239 £459 -11.48% 119
South East -12 230 £449 -10.25% 401
Yorkshire -6 171 £470 -6.09% 123
North West -16 137 £492 +15.76% 227
South West 0 113 £456 -15.08% 226
North East +7 108 £425 -5.03% 61
East of England +13 87 £425 +24.09% 180
East Midlands -43 15 £418 +17.61% 63
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
1 172 (8.51%) Confluence
2 56 (2.77%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (2.03%) SharePoint
4 39 (1.93%) Apache Spark
5 31 (1.53%) SAS
6 23 (1.14%) Apache
7 15 (0.74%) CMS
8 12 (0.59%) Camunda
9 10 (0.49%) 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%) Palantir Foundry
13 4 (0.20%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.15%) Kentico
15 2 (0.099%) Anypoint
15 2 (0.099%) Mule
Applications
1 23 (1.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.74%) 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%) Trello
6 2 (0.099%) Mingle
6 2 (0.099%) Simulink
6 2 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 27 (1.34%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.64%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.49%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.35%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.30%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.25%) SAP GRC
8 4 (0.20%) Findur
8 4 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 4 (0.20%) SAP MDG
9 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
10 2 (0.099%) BambooHR
10 2 (0.099%) Oracle ERP
10 2 (0.099%) Shopify
11 1 (0.049%) Infor M3
11 1 (0.049%) Misys Equation
11 1 (0.049%) Oracle EBS R12
11 1 (0.049%) Sage 50
11 1 (0.049%) SAP EWM
11 1 (0.049%) SAP LE
Cloud Services
1 620 (30.66%) AWS
2 596 (29.48%) Azure
3 340 (16.82%) GitHub
4 274 (13.55%) Azure DevOps
5 209 (10.34%) GitHub Actions
6 156 (7.72%) Serverless
7 151 (7.47%) GCP
8 116 (5.74%) AWS Lambda
9 98 (4.85%) Power Platform
10 87 (4.30%) Amazon S3
11 78 (3.86%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 70 (3.46%) OpenShift
13 63 (3.12%) Amazon ECS
14 61 (3.02%) GitHub Copilot
15 57 (2.82%) Amazon EKS
15 57 (2.82%) dbt
16 52 (2.57%) Snowflake
17 44 (2.18%) AWS CloudFormation
18 40 (1.98%) Amazon EC2
18 40 (1.98%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.19%) HTTP
2 22 (1.09%) 4G
2 22 (1.09%) DNS
3 21 (1.04%) Firewall
4 20 (0.99%) 5G
4 20 (0.99%) TCP/IP
5 17 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
6 15 (0.74%) 2G
6 15 (0.74%) 3G
6 15 (0.74%) Diameter Protocol
6 15 (0.74%) Network Security
6 15 (0.74%) SIGTRAN
6 15 (0.74%) SS7
7 13 (0.64%) Broadband
7 13 (0.64%) WAN
8 12 (0.59%) BGP
8 12 (0.59%) LAN
9 11 (0.54%) DHCP
9 11 (0.54%) Ethernet VPN
9 11 (0.54%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 116 (5.74%) PostgreSQL
2 110 (5.44%) Data Warehouse
3 99 (4.90%) NoSQL
4 91 (4.50%) MongoDB
5 89 (4.40%) Relational Database
6 87 (4.30%) SQL Server
7 80 (3.96%) Power BI
8 39 (1.93%) DynamoDB
9 37 (1.83%) Data Lake
10 36 (1.78%) Metadata
11 34 (1.68%) Oracle Reports
12 31 (1.53%) Big Data
13 30 (1.48%) Pentaho
14 28 (1.38%) Amazon Athena
15 27 (1.34%) Amazon Redshift
15 27 (1.34%) MySQL
15 27 (1.34%) Redis
16 25 (1.24%) Amazon RDS
17 24 (1.19%) Oracle Database
18 19 (0.94%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 450 (22.26%) Git
2 340 (16.82%) JIRA
3 324 (16.02%) Jenkins
4 279 (13.80%) GitLab
5 254 (12.56%) Selenium
6 137 (6.78%) Cucumber
7 136 (6.73%) Postman
8 113 (5.59%) JUnit
9 99 (4.90%) Cypress.io
10 91 (4.50%) REST Assured
11 84 (4.15%) SonarQube
12 75 (3.71%) JMeter
13 59 (2.92%) Gatling
14 58 (2.87%) Zephyr
15 52 (2.57%) Maven
16 51 (2.52%) Gradle
17 43 (2.13%) Mockito
18 42 (2.08%) WebDriver
19 34 (1.68%) Bitbucket
20 23 (1.14%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 560 (27.70%) Social Skills
2 389 (19.24%) Finance
3 296 (14.64%) Analytical Skills
4 250 (12.36%) Public Sector
5 186 (9.20%) Banking
6 69 (3.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 46 (2.27%) Telecoms
8 34 (1.68%) Front Office
9 33 (1.63%) Retail
10 28 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
10 28 (1.38%) Investment Banking
11 27 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
12 26 (1.29%) Military
13 20 (0.99%) Financial Institution
14 19 (0.94%) Aerospace
14 19 (0.94%) Law
15 18 (0.89%) Manufacturing
15 18 (0.89%) Marketing
16 14 (0.69%) Automotive
17 13 (0.64%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 440 (21.76%) Developer
2 323 (15.97%) Senior
3 194 (9.59%) Lead
4 193 (9.55%) Test Engineer
5 150 (7.42%) Tester
6 135 (6.68%) Java Developer
7 128 (6.33%) Data Engineer
8 123 (6.08%) Software Engineer
9 110 (5.44%) Analyst
10 97 (4.80%) DevOps Engineer
11 95 (4.70%) Senior Developer
12 89 (4.40%) Architect
12 89 (4.40%) QA Engineer
13 86 (4.25%) Test Automation Engineer
14 73 (3.61%) Full-Stack Developer
15 68 (3.36%) Test Analyst
16 67 (3.31%) Automation Engineer
17 65 (3.21%) Java Engineer
18 63 (3.12%) Test Leader
18 63 (3.12%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 321 (15.88%) REST
2 294 (14.54%) Terraform
3 232 (11.47%) Playwright
4 211 (10.44%) RESTful
5 205 (10.14%) Kafka
6 194 (9.59%) Spring
7 192 (9.50%) React
8 165 (8.16%) Spring Boot
9 147 (7.27%) .NET
10 128 (6.33%) HTML
11 114 (5.64%) Node.js
12 110 (5.44%) CSS
13 98 (4.85%) AngularJS
14 67 (3.31%) OAuth
15 58 (2.87%) JSON
16 50 (2.47%) pytest
16 50 (2.47%) SOAP
17 49 (2.42%) Next.js
17 49 (2.42%) PySpark
17 49 (2.42%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 324 (16.02%) Cloud Native
2 169 (8.36%) Product Ownership
3 149 (7.37%) Distributed Systems
4 82 (4.06%) Enterprise Software
5 64 (3.17%) Onboarding
6 58 (2.87%) AI Agents
7 51 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
8 50 (2.47%) Self-Motivation
9 47 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
10 40 (1.98%) Mobile App
11 33 (1.63%) Virtual Team
12 27 (1.34%) Security Posture
13 26 (1.29%) Data Structures
14 21 (1.04%) Embedded Systems
14 21 (1.04%) Management Information System
15 20 (0.99%) Data Centre
16 16 (0.79%) Fixed Income
16 16 (0.79%) Legacy Applications
17 15 (0.74%) Distributed Architecture
17 15 (0.74%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 142 (7.02%) Linux
2 91 (4.50%) Windows
3 81 (4.01%) Unix
4 39 (1.93%) Apple iOS
5 37 (1.83%) Android
6 28 (1.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 22 (1.09%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.35%) 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 1,225 (60.58%) CI/CD
2 984 (48.66%) Agile
3 751 (37.14%) DevOps
4 408 (20.18%) Continuous Improvement
5 406 (20.08%) Problem-Solving
6 401 (19.83%) Software Engineering
7 399 (19.73%) Microservices
8 352 (17.41%) Scrum
9 350 (17.31%) Infrastructure as Code
10 348 (17.21%) Validation
11 339 (16.77%) AI
12 309 (15.28%) Test Strategy
13 302 (14.94%) Containerisation
14 270 (13.35%) Observability
15 265 (13.11%) SDLC
16 256 (12.66%) TDD
17 250 (12.36%) Software Testing
18 230 (11.37%) Stakeholder Management
19 221 (10.93%) End-to-End Testing
20 198 (9.79%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 558 (27.60%) Python
2 552 (27.30%) Java
3 503 (24.88%) SQL
4 297 (14.69%) JavaScript
5 233 (11.52%) TypeScript
6 167 (8.26%) C#
7 88 (4.35%) PowerShell
8 75 (3.71%) Bash
9 46 (2.27%) Bicep
9 46 (2.27%) Kotlin
10 34 (1.68%) Scala
11 33 (1.63%) C++
12 30 (1.48%) Go
13 25 (1.24%) PL/SQL
14 21 (1.04%) Apex Code
14 21 (1.04%) C
14 21 (1.04%) Shell Script
15 16 (0.79%) Groovy
15 16 (0.79%) Swift
16 14 (0.69%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 648 (32.05%) Security Cleared
2 541 (26.76%) SC Cleared
3 115 (5.69%) Degree
4 93 (4.60%) ISTQB
5 79 (3.91%) DV Cleared
6 70 (3.46%) BPSS Clearance
7 63 (3.12%) Computer Science Degree
8 36 (1.78%) AWS Certification
9 27 (1.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 24 (1.19%) Azure Certification
11 14 (0.69%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 14 (0.69%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 13 (0.64%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.59%) ISEB
14 11 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
15 9 (0.45%) Cisco Certification
15 9 (0.45%) CISSP
16 8 (0.40%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 8 (0.40%) SAFe Agilist
17 6 (0.30%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 553 (27.35%) QA
2 167 (8.26%) Accessibility
3 138 (6.82%) Data Quality
4 92 (4.55%) WCAG
5 38 (1.88%) GDPR
6 18 (0.89%) ISO 20022
7 13 (0.64%) NCSC
8 12 (0.59%) SLA
9 11 (0.54%) GRC
9 11 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 11 (0.54%) NIST
10 7 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.25%) FATCA
12 5 (0.25%) PCI DSS
13 4 (0.20%) HL7
13 4 (0.20%) SEPA
13 4 (0.20%) SOC 2
14 3 (0.15%) Def Stans
14 3 (0.15%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 407 (20.13%) Docker
2 35 (1.73%) Active Directory
3 30 (1.48%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.89%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.59%) Firmware
6 7 (0.35%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.15%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.049%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.049%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 397 (19.63%) Kubernetes
2 114 (5.64%) Ansible
3 111 (5.49%) Grafana
4 83 (4.10%) Prometheus
5 38 (1.88%) Argo
6 21 (1.04%) Progress Chef
7 20 (0.99%) Puppet
8 18 (0.89%) Kibana
9 13 (0.64%) HP ALM
9 13 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.54%) Control-M
11 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Intune
12 7 (0.35%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.30%) Dell DRAC
14 5 (0.25%) HP Fortify
14 5 (0.25%) Istio
14 5 (0.25%) Packer
14 5 (0.25%) SCCM
15 4 (0.20%) HP Quality Center
15 4 (0.20%) WMI
Vendors
1 207 (10.24%) Microsoft
2 152 (7.52%) Oracle
3 87 (4.30%) Databricks
4 66 (3.26%) Google
5 64 (3.17%) Salesforce
6 57 (2.82%) Red Hat
7 51 (2.52%) IBM
7 51 (2.52%) ServiceNow
8 50 (2.47%) Splunk
9 47 (2.32%) Talend
10 42 (2.08%) SAP
11 40 (1.98%) Dynatrace
12 38 (1.88%) VMware
13 37 (1.83%) Denodo
14 34 (1.68%) Informatica
15 33 (1.63%) Cisco
16 28 (1.38%) UiPath
17 18 (0.89%) HP
18 15 (0.74%) Foundry
19 14 (0.69%) OpenAI