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 31 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 50 49
Rank change year-on-year +4 -1 +4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,969 1,252 1,356
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.30% 4.51% 4.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.07% 4.97% 4.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,254 865 916
10th Percentile £327 £313 £353
25th Percentile £409 £393 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -3.85% -5.45%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £612
90th Percentile £671 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £478 £500 £501
% change year-on-year -4.40% -0.10% -4.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 35 21
10th Percentile £38.08 £37.34 £42.50
25th Percentile £59.19 £47.62 £51.25
Median hourly rate £69.25 £55.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.91% - -24.66%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £74.00 £72.40 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +27.27% - -21.29%

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 38,818 25,195 28,384
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.84% 90.79% 85.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,932 16,050 18,115
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £753
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,599 1,473 1,445
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.87 £18.75
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +2.63%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +3.56%

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 31 August 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 31 August 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 31 August 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 +6 908 £500 - 688
North of England +4 400 £463 +0.54% 202
Midlands +8 240 £450 -2.44% 100
West Midlands +26 225 £450 -12.62% 64
South East -23 218 £459 -8.20% 212
Yorkshire -11 158 £473 -5.59% 52
North West -11 146 £492 +16.17% 111
South West -3 114 £475 -2.56% 170
North East +13 103 £450 +1.12% 40
East of England +19 78 £450 +10.77% 84
East Midlands -39 15 £418 +19.29% 35
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
1 167 (8.48%) Confluence
2 49 (2.49%) Apache Airflow
3 39 (1.98%) SharePoint
4 36 (1.83%) Apache Spark
5 30 (1.52%) SAS
6 20 (1.02%) Apache
7 13 (0.66%) CMS
8 11 (0.56%) Camunda
9 10 (0.51%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 5 (0.25%) 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 (0.10%) Anypoint
14 2 (0.10%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.10%) Mule
Applications
1 23 (1.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.76%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.25%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.20%) Simulink
6 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.15%) Trello
7 2 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.051%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 26 (1.32%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.86%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.71%) Aladdin
4 13 (0.66%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.41%) Findur
6 7 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.30%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
8 5 (0.25%) SAP GRC
9 4 (0.20%) Shopify
10 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
11 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
11 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
12 1 (0.051%) FLEXCUBE
12 1 (0.051%) Misys Equation
12 1 (0.051%) Misys Midas
12 1 (0.051%) SAP QM
12 1 (0.051%) Summit
12 1 (0.051%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 593 (30.12%) AWS
2 592 (30.07%) Azure
3 349 (17.72%) GitHub
4 276 (14.02%) Azure DevOps
5 218 (11.07%) GitHub Actions
6 157 (7.97%) Serverless
7 151 (7.67%) GCP
8 114 (5.79%) AWS Lambda
9 96 (4.88%) Power Platform
10 87 (4.42%) Amazon S3
11 74 (3.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 67 (3.40%) OpenShift
13 65 (3.30%) Amazon ECS
14 56 (2.84%) dbt
15 53 (2.69%) Amazon EKS
16 52 (2.64%) GitHub Copilot
17 51 (2.59%) Snowflake
18 45 (2.29%) Amazon EC2
19 44 (2.23%) AWS CloudFormation
20 40 (2.03%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.17%) HTTP
2 20 (1.02%) Firewall
3 19 (0.96%) 4G
3 19 (0.96%) DNS
4 17 (0.86%) 5G
5 16 (0.81%) 2G
5 16 (0.81%) 3G
5 16 (0.81%) Diameter Protocol
5 16 (0.81%) Network Security
5 16 (0.81%) SIGTRAN
5 16 (0.81%) SS7
5 16 (0.81%) TCP/IP
6 14 (0.71%) WAN
7 12 (0.61%) LAN
7 12 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
8 11 (0.56%) SAN
9 10 (0.51%) BGP
10 9 (0.46%) DHCP
11 8 (0.41%) Ethernet VPN
11 8 (0.41%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (5.69%) Data Warehouse
2 108 (5.49%) PostgreSQL
3 99 (5.03%) NoSQL
4 91 (4.62%) MongoDB
5 85 (4.32%) SQL Server
6 81 (4.11%) Power BI
7 70 (3.56%) Relational Database
8 43 (2.18%) DynamoDB
9 34 (1.73%) Oracle Reports
10 33 (1.68%) Data Lake
10 33 (1.68%) Metadata
11 31 (1.57%) Amazon Athena
12 30 (1.52%) Big Data
13 29 (1.47%) Amazon Redshift
13 29 (1.47%) Pentaho
14 27 (1.37%) Amazon RDS
15 26 (1.32%) MySQL
15 26 (1.32%) Redis
16 23 (1.17%) Oracle Database
17 22 (1.12%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 398 (20.21%) Git
2 333 (16.91%) JIRA
3 314 (15.95%) Jenkins
4 270 (13.71%) GitLab
5 248 (12.60%) Selenium
6 137 (6.96%) Postman
7 126 (6.40%) Cucumber
8 103 (5.23%) JUnit
9 100 (5.08%) Cypress.io
10 87 (4.42%) REST Assured
11 79 (4.01%) JMeter
12 73 (3.71%) SonarQube
13 60 (3.05%) Zephyr
14 53 (2.69%) Gatling
15 49 (2.49%) Gradle
16 47 (2.39%) WebDriver
17 40 (2.03%) Bitbucket
18 39 (1.98%) Maven
19 35 (1.78%) Mockito
20 24 (1.22%) LoadRunner
General
1 555 (28.19%) Social Skills
2 388 (19.71%) Finance
3 282 (14.32%) Analytical Skills
4 253 (12.85%) Public Sector
5 181 (9.19%) Banking
6 64 (3.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 40 (2.03%) Telecoms
8 38 (1.93%) Documentation Skills
9 32 (1.63%) Retail
10 30 (1.52%) Front Office
11 29 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (1.42%) Investment Banking
13 22 (1.12%) Financial Institution
14 21 (1.07%) Military
15 18 (0.91%) Aerospace
16 17 (0.86%) Back Office
16 17 (0.86%) Law
17 15 (0.76%) Legal
17 15 (0.76%) Marketing
18 14 (0.71%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 409 (20.77%) Developer
2 315 (16.00%) Senior
3 195 (9.90%) Lead
4 191 (9.70%) Test Engineer
5 156 (7.92%) Tester
6 126 (6.40%) Java Developer
7 119 (6.04%) Data Engineer
7 119 (6.04%) Software Engineer
8 107 (5.43%) Analyst
9 98 (4.98%) DevOps Engineer
10 88 (4.47%) Test Automation Engineer
11 87 (4.42%) Senior Developer
12 86 (4.37%) QA Engineer
13 82 (4.16%) Architect
14 70 (3.56%) Test Leader
15 69 (3.50%) Full-Stack Developer
16 67 (3.40%) Automation Engineer
16 67 (3.40%) Test Analyst
17 64 (3.25%) Java Engineer
18 59 (3.00%) Automation Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 292 (14.83%) Terraform
2 283 (14.37%) REST
3 216 (10.97%) Playwright
4 195 (9.90%) Kafka
5 189 (9.60%) RESTful
6 180 (9.14%) React
7 175 (8.89%) Spring
8 146 (7.41%) Spring Boot
9 140 (7.11%) .NET
10 112 (5.69%) HTML
11 99 (5.03%) Node.js
12 95 (4.82%) CSS
13 91 (4.62%) AngularJS
14 57 (2.89%) OAuth
15 54 (2.74%) JSON
16 50 (2.54%) XML
17 48 (2.44%) pytest
18 45 (2.29%) Gherkin
19 44 (2.23%) Jest
19 44 (2.23%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 299 (15.19%) Cloud Native
2 156 (7.92%) Product Ownership
3 142 (7.21%) Distributed Systems
4 79 (4.01%) Enterprise Software
5 56 (2.84%) Onboarding
6 48 (2.44%) Data Protection Act
7 47 (2.39%) Legacy Systems
8 45 (2.29%) AI Agents
9 44 (2.23%) Self-Motivation
10 41 (2.08%) Mobile App
11 33 (1.68%) Virtual Team
12 25 (1.27%) Embedded Systems
13 22 (1.12%) Security Posture
14 20 (1.02%) Data Structures
15 19 (0.96%) Distributed Architecture
16 18 (0.91%) Data Centre
16 18 (0.91%) Management Information System
17 17 (0.86%) Fixed Income
18 16 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
19 15 (0.76%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 139 (7.06%) Linux
2 87 (4.42%) Windows
3 81 (4.11%) Unix
4 37 (1.88%) Apple iOS
5 35 (1.78%) Android
6 27 (1.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 20 (1.02%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.30%) Embedded Linux
8 6 (0.30%) Solaris
9 5 (0.25%) Mac OS X
9 5 (0.25%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.25%) Windows 7
9 5 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.20%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.20%) VMS
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 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,157 (58.76%) CI/CD
2 926 (47.03%) Agile
3 747 (37.94%) DevOps
4 385 (19.55%) Problem-Solving
5 377 (19.15%) Continuous Improvement
6 376 (19.10%) Microservices
7 369 (18.74%) Software Engineering
8 334 (16.96%) Infrastructure as Code
9 327 (16.61%) Validation
10 325 (16.51%) Scrum
11 305 (15.49%) Test Strategy
12 299 (15.19%) AI
13 268 (13.61%) Containerisation
14 258 (13.10%) Observability
15 240 (12.19%) TDD
16 236 (11.99%) SDLC
17 226 (11.48%) Software Testing
18 215 (10.92%) Stakeholder Management
19 209 (10.61%) End-to-End Testing
20 197 (10.01%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 537 (27.27%) Python
2 522 (26.51%) Java
3 488 (24.78%) SQL
4 275 (13.97%) JavaScript
5 208 (10.56%) TypeScript
6 167 (8.48%) C#
7 100 (5.08%) PowerShell
8 77 (3.91%) Bash
9 47 (2.39%) Bicep
10 46 (2.34%) Kotlin
11 38 (1.93%) C++
12 29 (1.47%) C
13 27 (1.37%) Scala
14 25 (1.27%) Go
14 25 (1.27%) PL/SQL
15 22 (1.12%) Apex Code
16 19 (0.96%) Shell Script
17 18 (0.91%) Ruby
18 17 (0.86%) Swift
19 16 (0.81%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 636 (32.30%) Security Cleared
2 532 (27.02%) SC Cleared
3 108 (5.49%) Degree
4 91 (4.62%) ISTQB
5 65 (3.30%) DV Cleared
6 64 (3.25%) BPSS Clearance
7 58 (2.95%) Computer Science Degree
8 36 (1.83%) AWS Certification
9 26 (1.32%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 21 (1.07%) Azure Certification
11 17 (0.86%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 12 (0.61%) ISEB
12 12 (0.61%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 12 (0.61%) Master's Degree
13 11 (0.56%) SAFe Agilist
14 10 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
15 9 (0.46%) Cisco Certification
15 9 (0.46%) CISSP
16 8 (0.41%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 6 (0.30%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 521 (26.46%) QA
2 149 (7.57%) Accessibility
3 134 (6.81%) Data Quality
4 81 (4.11%) WCAG
5 39 (1.98%) GDPR
6 16 (0.81%) ISO 20022
7 14 (0.71%) NCSC
8 13 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 13 (0.66%) SLA
9 11 (0.56%) NIST
10 10 (0.51%) GRC
11 7 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.25%) Def Stans
13 5 (0.25%) FATCA
13 5 (0.25%) HL7
13 5 (0.25%) PCI DSS
14 4 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.15%) EU AI Act
15 3 (0.15%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 381 (19.35%) Docker
2 31 (1.57%) Active Directory
3 28 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.61%) Firmware
6 5 (0.25%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.10%) Hyper-V
10 1 (0.051%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 384 (19.50%) Kubernetes
2 112 (5.69%) Ansible
3 99 (5.03%) Grafana
4 79 (4.01%) Prometheus
5 40 (2.03%) Argo
6 21 (1.07%) Puppet
7 20 (1.02%) Progress Chef
8 11 (0.56%) HP ALM
8 11 (0.56%) Kibana
9 10 (0.51%) Control-M
9 10 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.41%) Dell DRAC
11 7 (0.36%) Kustomize
11 7 (0.36%) Microsoft Intune
12 6 (0.30%) Istio
12 6 (0.30%) Packer
13 5 (0.25%) HP Fortify
13 5 (0.25%) SCCM
14 4 (0.20%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 4 (0.20%) WMI
Vendors
1 202 (10.26%) Microsoft
2 153 (7.77%) Oracle
3 80 (4.06%) Databricks
4 68 (3.45%) Salesforce
5 62 (3.15%) Google
5 62 (3.15%) Red Hat
6 48 (2.44%) Talend
7 47 (2.39%) IBM
8 45 (2.29%) Splunk
9 42 (2.13%) ServiceNow
10 40 (2.03%) SAP
11 35 (1.78%) Denodo
11 35 (1.78%) Dynatrace
12 34 (1.73%) VMware
13 33 (1.68%) Informatica
14 30 (1.52%) Cisco
15 27 (1.37%) UiPath
16 16 (0.81%) HP
17 11 (0.56%) MuleSoft
17 11 (0.56%) OpenAI