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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 47 55
Rank change year-on-year -2 +8 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,691 1,102 1,252
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.11% 4.54% 3.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.86% 4.97% 3.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,098 765 832
10th Percentile £336 £325 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £638
90th Percentile £663 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 21 49
10th Percentile £36.10 £40.84 -
25th Percentile £56.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £66.75 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.36% -8.33% -18.92%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £77.50
90th Percentile £74.00 £75.50 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £66.75 £52.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +27.14% -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 34,792 22,163 31,446
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.62% 91.27% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,183 14,469 20,624
10th Percentile £325 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £510 £514 £525
% change year-on-year -0.88% -2.10% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,136 960 2,252
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.42 £12.93
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.20 £15.99
Median hourly rate £46.11 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.37% -21.23% -1.75%
75th Percentile £67.84 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.17 £36.05
% change year-on-year +50.90% -21.86% +0.13%

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 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 20 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 20 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 0 804 £500 -1.96% 252
North of England +9 346 £463 +3.47% 135
Midlands +7 192 £450 +4.35% 60
West Midlands +30 168 £461 -5.78% 47
South East -45 167 £500 -0.10% 146
North West +9 151 £466 +3.90% 84
Yorkshire -4 148 £487 +2.53% 22
South West +8 98 £469 -8.54% 71
East of England +13 67 £507 +6.74% 69
North East +5 54 £425 +8.97% 29
East Midlands -41 24 £400 +45.45% 13
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
1 133 (7.87%) Confluence
2 37 (2.19%) SAS
3 31 (1.83%) Apache Spark
4 30 (1.77%) Apache Airflow
5 11 (0.65%) Apache
5 11 (0.65%) SharePoint
6 8 (0.47%) Appian
7 7 (0.41%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.35%) Camunda
9 5 (0.30%) CMS
10 4 (0.24%) nginx
10 4 (0.24%) Tomcat
11 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
12 2 (0.12%) Anypoint
13 1 (0.059%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.059%) Mendix
13 1 (0.059%) OpenStack
13 1 (0.059%) Solana
Applications
1 25 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.59%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.18%) Simulink
8 1 (0.059%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.059%) Mingle
8 1 (0.059%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (1.18%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.47%) Findur
5 7 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
6 6 (0.35%) Loan IQ
6 6 (0.35%) Shopify
7 5 (0.30%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.30%) SAP ERP
8 3 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.18%) 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 (0.059%) Cloudability
10 1 (0.059%) Infor CloudSuite
10 1 (0.059%) Infor LN
10 1 (0.059%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 455 (26.91%) AWS
2 449 (26.55%) Azure
3 276 (16.32%) GitHub
4 200 (11.83%) Azure DevOps
5 161 (9.52%) GitHub Actions
6 118 (6.98%) GCP
7 114 (6.74%) Serverless
8 72 (4.26%) AWS Lambda
9 68 (4.02%) Amazon S3
10 54 (3.19%) Power Platform
11 52 (3.08%) OpenShift
12 47 (2.78%) Amazon ECS
13 40 (2.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 36 (2.13%) Azure Data Factory
15 33 (1.95%) Amazon EKS
16 32 (1.89%) Snowflake
17 31 (1.83%) AWS CloudFormation
18 29 (1.71%) Azure AKS
19 28 (1.66%) Amazon EC2
20 26 (1.54%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.30%) Firewall
2 14 (0.83%) SAN
3 13 (0.77%) HTTP
4 11 (0.65%) TCP/IP
5 10 (0.59%) VPN
6 9 (0.53%) Network Security
6 9 (0.53%) WAN
7 8 (0.47%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.47%) MPLS
7 8 (0.47%) Wireshark
8 7 (0.41%) FTP
8 7 (0.41%) SD-WAN
8 7 (0.41%) SSL
8 7 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
9 6 (0.35%) VLAN
10 5 (0.30%) Multicast
11 4 (0.24%) 5G
11 4 (0.24%) Cisco IOS
11 4 (0.24%) NAS
11 4 (0.24%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (5.50%) PostgreSQL
2 80 (4.73%) SQL Server
3 79 (4.67%) NoSQL
4 76 (4.49%) MongoDB
5 68 (4.02%) Data Warehouse
6 55 (3.25%) Relational Database
7 41 (2.42%) DynamoDB
8 38 (2.25%) Power BI
9 31 (1.83%) Pentaho
10 25 (1.48%) Oracle Reports
10 25 (1.48%) Tableau
11 22 (1.30%) Redis
12 21 (1.24%) Big Data
12 21 (1.24%) MySQL
13 20 (1.18%) Amazon Athena
13 20 (1.18%) Amazon RDS
13 20 (1.18%) Data Lake
14 19 (1.12%) Metadata
15 17 (1.01%) BigQuery
15 17 (1.01%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 320 (18.92%) JIRA
2 296 (17.50%) Git
3 287 (16.97%) Jenkins
4 237 (14.02%) Selenium
5 233 (13.78%) GitLab
6 137 (8.10%) Postman
7 124 (7.33%) Cucumber
8 91 (5.38%) JUnit
9 87 (5.14%) REST Assured
10 82 (4.85%) Cypress.io
11 74 (4.38%) JMeter
12 44 (2.60%) WebDriver
13 43 (2.54%) SonarQube
14 42 (2.48%) Zephyr
15 34 (2.01%) Gradle
16 31 (1.83%) Gatling
16 31 (1.83%) SpecFlow
17 30 (1.77%) Maven
18 29 (1.71%) Bitbucket
19 26 (1.54%) Mockito
General
1 454 (26.85%) Social Skills
2 304 (17.98%) Finance
3 228 (13.48%) Public Sector
4 211 (12.48%) Analytical Skills
5 149 (8.81%) Banking
6 41 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
7 34 (2.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 30 (1.77%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.60%) Front Office
10 23 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.30%) Telecoms
12 17 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
12 17 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
13 15 (0.89%) Legal
13 15 (0.89%) Retail
14 14 (0.83%) Aerospace
15 13 (0.77%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.71%) Military
17 11 (0.65%) Back Office
18 8 (0.47%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 343 (20.28%) Developer
2 261 (15.43%) Senior
3 190 (11.24%) Test Engineer
4 181 (10.70%) Tester
5 176 (10.41%) Lead
6 98 (5.80%) Data Engineer
7 96 (5.68%) Java Developer
8 93 (5.50%) Analyst
9 90 (5.32%) Software Engineer
10 88 (5.20%) Test Automation Engineer
11 80 (4.73%) Automation Tester
12 71 (4.20%) Architect
12 71 (4.20%) DevOps Engineer
13 69 (4.08%) QA Engineer
14 68 (4.02%) Senior Developer
15 65 (3.84%) Test Leader
16 55 (3.25%) Full-Stack Developer
17 51 (3.02%) Test Analyst
18 50 (2.96%) Automation Engineer
19 47 (2.78%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 195 (11.53%) Playwright
2 189 (11.18%) REST
3 154 (9.11%) React
4 128 (7.57%) Kafka
5 126 (7.45%) Spring
6 125 (7.39%) RESTful
7 118 (6.98%) .NET
8 104 (6.15%) Node.js
8 104 (6.15%) Spring Boot
9 68 (4.02%) AngularJS
10 61 (3.61%) HTML
11 53 (3.13%) CSS
12 52 (3.08%) pytest
13 47 (2.78%) OAuth
14 45 (2.66%) Jest
15 34 (2.01%) OpenID
15 34 (2.01%) Swagger
16 32 (1.89%) Gherkin
16 32 (1.89%) OAuth2
17 31 (1.83%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 187 (11.06%) Cloud Native
2 120 (7.10%) Product Ownership
3 92 (5.44%) Distributed Systems
4 46 (2.72%) Data Protection Act
5 43 (2.54%) Mobile App
6 42 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
7 36 (2.13%) Self-Motivation
8 33 (1.95%) Virtual Team
9 30 (1.77%) Enterprise Software
10 26 (1.54%) Onboarding
11 24 (1.42%) Algorithms
12 22 (1.30%) Management Information System
13 21 (1.24%) Distributed Architecture
14 20 (1.18%) NHS
15 19 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
16 18 (1.06%) Data Centre
16 18 (1.06%) Fixed Income
17 17 (1.01%) Embedded Systems
18 16 (0.95%) Security Posture
19 15 (0.89%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 112 (6.62%) Linux
2 72 (4.26%) Windows
3 46 (2.72%) Unix
4 38 (2.25%) Android
5 33 (1.95%) Apple iOS
6 17 (1.01%) Windows Server
7 16 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.71%) Mac OS X
9 7 (0.41%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.30%) Solaris
11 4 (0.24%) Embedded Linux
11 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.18%) AIX
12 3 (0.18%) CentOS
12 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.12%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.059%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 888 (52.51%) CI/CD
2 778 (46.01%) Agile
3 601 (35.54%) DevOps
4 345 (20.40%) Problem-Solving
5 283 (16.74%) Continuous Improvement
6 282 (16.68%) Microservices
7 253 (14.96%) Test Strategy
8 249 (14.73%) Scrum
9 233 (13.78%) Software Engineering
10 221 (13.07%) Validation
11 216 (12.77%) Infrastructure as Code
12 210 (12.42%) Containerisation
12 210 (12.42%) Observability
13 203 (12.00%) TDD
14 189 (11.18%) AI
15 181 (10.70%) Test Scripting
16 178 (10.53%) Software Testing
17 169 (9.99%) ETL
18 168 (9.93%) User Acceptance Testing
19 164 (9.70%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 432 (25.55%) Python
2 424 (25.07%) Java
3 395 (23.36%) SQL
4 230 (13.60%) JavaScript
5 206 (12.18%) TypeScript
6 175 (10.35%) C#
7 69 (4.08%) PowerShell
8 53 (3.13%) Bash
9 42 (2.48%) C++
10 41 (2.42%) Kotlin
11 31 (1.83%) C
12 29 (1.71%) Apex Code
12 29 (1.71%) PL/SQL
13 26 (1.54%) Scala
14 23 (1.36%) Bicep
15 22 (1.30%) Go
16 18 (1.06%) Swift
17 16 (0.95%) Ruby
18 12 (0.71%) Groovy
19 11 (0.65%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 522 (30.87%) Security Cleared
2 404 (23.89%) SC Cleared
3 80 (4.73%) ISTQB
4 74 (4.38%) Degree
5 66 (3.90%) DV Cleared
6 59 (3.49%) BPSS Clearance
7 36 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
8 20 (1.18%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 12 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
10 11 (0.65%) CCNP
10 11 (0.65%) Master's Degree
11 10 (0.59%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 10 (0.59%) SAFe Agilist
12 8 (0.47%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 7 (0.41%) AWS Certification
13 7 (0.41%) Azure Certification
13 7 (0.41%) DBS Check
14 6 (0.35%) CISSP
15 5 (0.30%) CCIE
15 5 (0.30%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 358 (21.17%) QA
2 119 (7.04%) Accessibility
3 95 (5.62%) Data Quality
4 53 (3.13%) WCAG
5 28 (1.66%) GDPR
6 12 (0.71%) ISO 20022
7 10 (0.59%) Def Stans
8 9 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 8 (0.47%) NCSC
9 8 (0.47%) SLA
10 7 (0.41%) NIST
11 6 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.30%) FATCA
12 5 (0.30%) SEPA
13 4 (0.24%) HL7
13 4 (0.24%) MiFID
13 4 (0.24%) PCI DSS
13 4 (0.24%) PSD2
13 4 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
14 3 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 287 (16.97%) Docker
2 20 (1.18%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (1.01%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.77%) Firmware
5 11 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.41%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 6 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.12%) SRDF
11 1 (0.059%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.059%) KVM
11 1 (0.059%) Squid
11 1 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.059%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 288 (17.03%) Kubernetes
2 195 (11.53%) Terraform
3 99 (5.85%) Grafana
4 85 (5.03%) Prometheus
5 80 (4.73%) Ansible
6 26 (1.54%) Argo
7 15 (0.89%) HP ALM
7 15 (0.89%) Puppet
8 11 (0.65%) Kibana
8 11 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
9 10 (0.59%) Forefront Identity Manager
9 10 (0.59%) HP Quality Center
9 10 (0.59%) NetIQ Identity Manager
10 9 (0.53%) Dell DRAC
11 7 (0.41%) Kustomize
11 7 (0.41%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.35%) NetBackup
13 4 (0.24%) Istio
13 4 (0.24%) Nmap
13 4 (0.24%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 139 (8.22%) Oracle
2 137 (8.10%) Microsoft
3 67 (3.96%) Salesforce
4 57 (3.37%) Databricks
5 56 (3.31%) Splunk
6 53 (3.13%) ServiceNow
7 47 (2.78%) Talend
8 45 (2.66%) Red Hat
9 41 (2.42%) Google
10 30 (1.77%) Denodo
11 26 (1.54%) SAP
11 26 (1.54%) VMware
12 22 (1.30%) Cisco
13 20 (1.18%) Informatica
14 19 (1.12%) Dynatrace
15 18 (1.06%) HP
15 18 (1.06%) UiPath
16 17 (1.01%) IBM
17 15 (0.89%) MuleSoft
18 14 (0.83%) Blue Prism