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 26 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 48 56
Rank change year-on-year -1 +8 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,724 1,084 1,257
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.15% 4.55% 3.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.90% 4.99% 4.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,110 760 842
10th Percentile £350 £325 £363
25th Percentile £402 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £619 £638
90th Percentile £664 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 94 21 48
10th Percentile £36.10 £40.84 -
25th Percentile £56.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% -8.33% -18.92%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £75.25
90th Percentile £74.00 £75.50 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +28.57% -12.50% -13.51%

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 35,194 21,730 31,440
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.78% 91.29% 86.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,373 14,199 20,591
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £510 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,179 923 2,284
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.22 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £15.99
Median hourly rate £45.59 £28.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.80% -23.29% -2.67%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.11
90th Percentile £81.01 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.28 £27.45 £36.00
% change year-on-year +54.01% -23.75% -3.49%

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 26 May 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 26 May 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 26 May 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 -1 812 £500 -2.20% 264
North of England +8 349 £466 +4.25% 129
Midlands +10 201 £459 +8.00% 64
West Midlands +27 180 £459 -4.97% 46
South East -39 176 £500 - 111
North West +12 154 £472 +5.54% 76
Yorkshire -7 149 £493 +3.68% 25
South West +13 100 £475 -5.00% 58
East of England +9 74 £501 +7.17% 48
North East +3 54 £425 +6.25% 28
East Midlands -43 21 £400 +48.15% 18
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
1 136 (7.89%) Confluence
2 39 (2.26%) SAS
3 34 (1.97%) Apache Airflow
4 30 (1.74%) Apache Spark
5 12 (0.70%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.64%) Apache
7 8 (0.46%) Appian
8 7 (0.41%) CMS
9 6 (0.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.35%) Camunda
10 4 (0.23%) nginx
10 4 (0.23%) Tomcat
11 3 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.17%) WebLogic
12 2 (0.12%) Anypoint
13 1 (0.058%) Apache Pulsar
13 1 (0.058%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.058%) Jupyter
13 1 (0.058%) Mendix
Applications
1 25 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.58%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.17%) Simulink
7 1 (0.058%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.058%) Mingle
7 1 (0.058%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 21 (1.22%) Aladdin
2 14 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.46%) Findur
5 7 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
6 6 (0.35%) Shopify
7 5 (0.29%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.29%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.29%) SAP ERP
8 3 (0.17%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.17%) Maximo
9 2 (0.12%) iTrent
9 2 (0.12%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.12%) Summit
9 2 (0.12%) Workday HCM
10 1 (0.058%) Cloudability
10 1 (0.058%) Infor CloudSuite
10 1 (0.058%) Infor LN
10 1 (0.058%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 467 (27.09%) AWS
2 457 (26.51%) Azure
3 278 (16.13%) GitHub
4 206 (11.95%) Azure DevOps
5 162 (9.40%) GitHub Actions
6 120 (6.96%) GCP
7 116 (6.73%) Serverless
8 75 (4.35%) AWS Lambda
9 67 (3.89%) Amazon S3
10 56 (3.25%) Power Platform
11 52 (3.02%) OpenShift
12 47 (2.73%) Amazon ECS
13 42 (2.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 41 (2.38%) Azure Data Factory
15 34 (1.97%) Snowflake
16 30 (1.74%) Amazon EKS
17 29 (1.68%) Amazon EC2
17 29 (1.68%) AWS CloudFormation
18 28 (1.62%) Azure AKS
19 27 (1.57%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.28%) Firewall
2 14 (0.81%) SAN
3 13 (0.75%) HTTP
4 10 (0.58%) TCP/IP
4 10 (0.58%) VPN
5 9 (0.52%) Network Security
6 8 (0.46%) MPLS
6 8 (0.46%) WAN
7 7 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (0.35%) Ethernet
8 6 (0.35%) SSL
8 6 (0.35%) VLAN
9 5 (0.29%) Multicast
9 5 (0.29%) Wireshark
10 4 (0.23%) 5G
10 4 (0.23%) FTP
10 4 (0.23%) NAS
10 4 (0.23%) Reverse Proxy
10 4 (0.23%) SD-WAN
11 3 (0.17%) RS-232
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (5.39%) PostgreSQL
2 79 (4.58%) NoSQL
2 79 (4.58%) SQL Server
3 77 (4.47%) MongoDB
4 74 (4.29%) Data Warehouse
5 54 (3.13%) Relational Database
6 44 (2.55%) DynamoDB
7 39 (2.26%) Power BI
8 31 (1.80%) Pentaho
9 28 (1.62%) Oracle Reports
10 25 (1.45%) Tableau
11 22 (1.28%) Data Lake
11 22 (1.28%) Metadata
11 22 (1.28%) Redis
12 21 (1.22%) Amazon Athena
12 21 (1.22%) Amazon RDS
12 21 (1.22%) Big Data
13 20 (1.16%) MySQL
14 18 (1.04%) Oracle Database
15 17 (0.99%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 322 (18.68%) JIRA
2 299 (17.34%) Git
3 288 (16.71%) Jenkins
4 239 (13.86%) Selenium
5 234 (13.57%) GitLab
6 141 (8.18%) Postman
7 129 (7.48%) Cucumber
8 94 (5.45%) REST Assured
9 90 (5.22%) JUnit
10 84 (4.87%) Cypress.io
11 75 (4.35%) JMeter
12 46 (2.67%) WebDriver
13 45 (2.61%) Zephyr
14 43 (2.49%) SonarQube
15 35 (2.03%) Gradle
16 33 (1.91%) Gatling
17 30 (1.74%) Maven
17 30 (1.74%) SpecFlow
18 29 (1.68%) Bitbucket
19 28 (1.62%) Mockito
General
1 465 (26.97%) Social Skills
2 313 (18.16%) Finance
3 224 (12.99%) Public Sector
4 211 (12.24%) Analytical Skills
5 152 (8.82%) Banking
6 41 (2.38%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (2.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 31 (1.80%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.57%) Front Office
10 23 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
11 18 (1.04%) Telecoms
12 16 (0.93%) Legal
12 16 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
12 16 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
12 16 (0.93%) Retail
13 14 (0.81%) Aerospace
14 13 (0.75%) Financial Institution
14 13 (0.75%) Military
15 11 (0.64%) Back Office
16 9 (0.52%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 347 (20.13%) Developer
2 261 (15.14%) Senior
3 188 (10.90%) Test Engineer
4 183 (10.61%) Lead
5 181 (10.50%) Tester
6 105 (6.09%) Data Engineer
7 97 (5.63%) Java Developer
8 92 (5.34%) Software Engineer
9 91 (5.28%) Analyst
10 87 (5.05%) Test Automation Engineer
11 77 (4.47%) Architect
12 76 (4.41%) Automation Tester
13 72 (4.18%) DevOps Engineer
14 69 (4.00%) QA Engineer
14 69 (4.00%) Senior Developer
14 69 (4.00%) Test Leader
15 54 (3.13%) Automation Engineer
16 52 (3.02%) Full-Stack Developer
17 49 (2.84%) Test Analyst
18 48 (2.78%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 193 (11.19%) Playwright
1 193 (11.19%) REST
2 155 (8.99%) React
3 128 (7.42%) Kafka
4 126 (7.31%) RESTful
4 126 (7.31%) Spring
5 120 (6.96%) .NET
6 103 (5.97%) Spring Boot
7 100 (5.80%) Node.js
8 66 (3.83%) AngularJS
9 59 (3.42%) HTML
10 53 (3.07%) CSS
11 50 (2.90%) pytest
12 48 (2.78%) OAuth
13 44 (2.55%) Jest
14 35 (2.03%) Swagger
15 34 (1.97%) Gherkin
15 34 (1.97%) OpenID
16 33 (1.91%) GraphQL
16 33 (1.91%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 188 (10.90%) Cloud Native
2 118 (6.84%) Product Ownership
3 94 (5.45%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (2.78%) Data Protection Act
5 42 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
6 40 (2.32%) Mobile App
7 34 (1.97%) Self-Motivation
8 33 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
8 33 (1.91%) Virtual Team
9 27 (1.57%) Onboarding
10 24 (1.39%) Algorithms
10 24 (1.39%) Distributed Architecture
11 22 (1.28%) Management Information System
12 21 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
13 20 (1.16%) NHS
14 19 (1.10%) Fixed Income
15 18 (1.04%) Data Centre
15 18 (1.04%) Embedded Systems
16 16 (0.93%) Data Structures
17 15 (0.87%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 114 (6.61%) Linux
2 74 (4.29%) Windows
3 51 (2.96%) Unix
4 37 (2.15%) Android
5 32 (1.86%) Apple iOS
6 18 (1.04%) Windows Server
7 17 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.70%) Mac OS X
9 7 (0.41%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.29%) Solaris
11 4 (0.23%) Embedded Linux
11 4 (0.23%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.17%) AIX
12 3 (0.17%) CentOS
12 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.12%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.058%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 901 (52.26%) CI/CD
2 787 (45.65%) Agile
3 610 (35.38%) DevOps
4 331 (19.20%) Problem-Solving
5 288 (16.71%) Continuous Improvement
6 286 (16.59%) Microservices
7 267 (15.49%) Test Strategy
8 244 (14.15%) Software Engineering
9 242 (14.04%) Scrum
10 230 (13.34%) Validation
11 217 (12.59%) Infrastructure as Code
12 209 (12.12%) Observability
13 204 (11.83%) Containerisation
13 204 (11.83%) TDD
14 194 (11.25%) AI
15 177 (10.27%) ETL
16 176 (10.21%) Software Testing
16 176 (10.21%) Test Scripting
17 166 (9.63%) User Acceptance Testing
18 162 (9.40%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 444 (25.75%) Python
2 437 (25.35%) Java
3 411 (23.84%) SQL
4 230 (13.34%) JavaScript
5 200 (11.60%) TypeScript
6 176 (10.21%) C#
7 69 (4.00%) PowerShell
8 50 (2.90%) Bash
9 44 (2.55%) C++
10 42 (2.44%) Kotlin
11 32 (1.86%) PL/SQL
12 31 (1.80%) C
13 29 (1.68%) Apex Code
13 29 (1.68%) Scala
14 26 (1.51%) Go
15 23 (1.33%) Bicep
16 19 (1.10%) Swift
17 16 (0.93%) Ruby
18 14 (0.81%) Groovy
19 11 (0.64%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 531 (30.80%) Security Cleared
2 411 (23.84%) SC Cleared
3 80 (4.64%) ISTQB
4 71 (4.12%) Degree
5 68 (3.94%) DV Cleared
6 59 (3.42%) BPSS Clearance
7 34 (1.97%) Computer Science Degree
8 20 (1.16%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 12 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
10 11 (0.64%) CCNP
10 11 (0.64%) Master's Degree
11 10 (0.58%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 10 (0.58%) SAFe Agilist
12 9 (0.52%) DBS Check
13 8 (0.46%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 7 (0.41%) AWS Certification
14 7 (0.41%) Azure Certification
15 6 (0.35%) CISSP
16 5 (0.29%) CCIE
16 5 (0.29%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 367 (21.29%) QA
2 119 (6.90%) Accessibility
3 100 (5.80%) Data Quality
4 54 (3.13%) WCAG
5 28 (1.62%) GDPR
6 12 (0.70%) ISO 20022
7 10 (0.58%) Def Stans
7 10 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 9 (0.52%) SLA
9 8 (0.46%) NCSC
9 8 (0.46%) NIST
10 6 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 5 (0.29%) FATCA
11 5 (0.29%) SEPA
12 4 (0.23%) HL7
12 4 (0.23%) MiFID
12 4 (0.23%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.23%) PSD2
12 4 (0.23%) Software Quality Assurance
13 3 (0.17%) HIPAA
System Software
1 285 (16.53%) Docker
2 21 (1.22%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (1.04%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.75%) Firmware
5 11 (0.64%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.41%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 5 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.12%) ISA Server
9 2 (0.12%) SRDF
10 1 (0.058%) Hyper-V
10 1 (0.058%) KVM
10 1 (0.058%) Squid
10 1 (0.058%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.058%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 289 (16.76%) Kubernetes
2 197 (11.43%) Terraform
3 95 (5.51%) Grafana
4 82 (4.76%) Ansible
4 82 (4.76%) Prometheus
5 26 (1.51%) Argo
6 14 (0.81%) Puppet
7 13 (0.75%) HP ALM
8 11 (0.64%) Kibana
8 11 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
9 10 (0.58%) Forefront Identity Manager
9 10 (0.58%) HP Quality Center
9 10 (0.58%) NetIQ Identity Manager
10 9 (0.52%) Dell DRAC
11 8 (0.46%) Kustomize
12 6 (0.35%) NetBackup
12 6 (0.35%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.23%) Istio
13 4 (0.23%) Nmap
13 4 (0.23%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 147 (8.53%) Oracle
2 138 (8.00%) Microsoft
3 67 (3.89%) Salesforce
4 61 (3.54%) Databricks
5 54 (3.13%) Splunk
6 53 (3.07%) ServiceNow
7 52 (3.02%) Talend
8 46 (2.67%) Red Hat
9 42 (2.44%) Google
10 35 (2.03%) Denodo
11 27 (1.57%) SAP
12 26 (1.51%) VMware
13 20 (1.16%) Informatica
14 19 (1.10%) Cisco
14 19 (1.10%) Dynatrace
14 19 (1.10%) UiPath
15 17 (0.99%) IBM
16 16 (0.93%) HP
17 15 (0.87%) MuleSoft
18 14 (0.81%) Blue Prism