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

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 44 55
Rank change year-on-year -2 +11 -8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,632 1,140 1,324
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.53% 4.58% 3.48%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.23% 5.06% 4.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,108 783 904
10th Percentile £331 £332 £375
25th Percentile £400 £400 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% -4.76% -7.08%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £638
90th Percentile £680 £725 £719
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 7 61
10th Percentile £33.90 £38.81 £48.00
25th Percentile £50.94 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +4.17%
75th Percentile £69.06 £76.35 £90.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £81.31 -
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +4.17%

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 31,205 22,550 33,099
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.68% 90.54% 86.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,990 14,548 21,873
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £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 1,928 809 2,164
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.26 £13.02
25th Percentile £18.80 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.00 £34.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +6.15% -7.22%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.53
90th Percentile £74.26 £76.44 £71.83
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -10.77% - -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 9 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 9 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 9 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 0 795 £500 -4.76% 239
North of England +3 316 £488 +9.55% 172
Midlands +4 189 £477 +3.03% 96
South East -23 165 £500 -9.09% 229
West Midlands +9 156 £486 +0.54% 57
North West +10 138 £450 +0.56% 86
Yorkshire -7 134 £500 +5.26% 54
South West -4 82 £515 -1.90% 103
East of England -4 58 £570 +21.93% 98
North East +11 48 £488 +28.09% 32
East Midlands -23 33 £400 +7.38% 39
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
1 110 (6.74%) Confluence
2 62 (3.80%) SAS
3 28 (1.72%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.80%) SharePoint
6 9 (0.55%) Apache
7 8 (0.49%) Appian
8 6 (0.37%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.31%) CMS
9 5 (0.31%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.25%) Camunda
10 4 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.25%) Oracle Application Server
11 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.18%) nginx
11 3 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.12%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.061%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.35%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.37%) Loan IQ
3 5 (0.31%) Maximo
3 5 (0.31%) Workday HCM
4 4 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.25%) SAP HR
4 4 (0.25%) Shopify
5 3 (0.18%) BambooHR
5 3 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.12%) iTrent
6 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.12%) Summit
7 1 (0.061%) CODA-Financials
7 1 (0.061%) Infor M3
7 1 (0.061%) IntelliMatch
7 1 (0.061%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.061%) PORTIA
Cloud Services
1 445 (27.27%) Azure
2 395 (24.20%) AWS
3 268 (16.42%) GitHub
4 188 (11.52%) Azure DevOps
5 155 (9.50%) GCP
6 142 (8.70%) GitHub Actions
7 109 (6.68%) Serverless
8 70 (4.29%) OpenShift
9 59 (3.62%) Power Platform
10 47 (2.88%) AWS Lambda
11 46 (2.82%) Azure AKS
12 45 (2.76%) Amazon S3
13 36 (2.21%) Snowflake
14 34 (2.08%) Azure Data Factory
15 30 (1.84%) Azure Functions
16 29 (1.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 29 (1.78%) SaaS
17 28 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
17 28 (1.72%) Entra ID
18 27 (1.65%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 31 (1.90%) Firewall
2 18 (1.10%) Wireshark
3 17 (1.04%) TCP/IP
3 17 (1.04%) VPN
4 14 (0.86%) HTTP
5 13 (0.80%) SD-WAN
5 13 (0.80%) SSL
6 12 (0.74%) HTTPS
6 12 (0.74%) WAN
7 10 (0.61%) Network Security
8 9 (0.55%) DNS
8 9 (0.55%) Ethernet
9 8 (0.49%) MPLS
10 7 (0.43%) AMQP
10 7 (0.43%) FTP
10 7 (0.43%) Multicast
10 7 (0.43%) SAN
11 6 (0.37%) VLAN
12 5 (0.31%) Cisco IPT
13 4 (0.25%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 98 (6.00%) PostgreSQL
2 69 (4.23%) NoSQL
3 68 (4.17%) SQL Server
4 59 (3.62%) MongoDB
5 51 (3.13%) Relational Database
6 47 (2.88%) Data Warehouse
7 34 (2.08%) Pentaho
8 33 (2.02%) Power BI
9 26 (1.59%) Oracle Database
10 24 (1.47%) BigQuery
11 23 (1.41%) Tableau
12 22 (1.35%) DynamoDB
13 21 (1.29%) MySQL
14 18 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
14 18 (1.10%) Redis
15 16 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
16 15 (0.92%) Data Lake
17 14 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
18 13 (0.80%) SAS Enterprise Guide
19 12 (0.74%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 311 (19.06%) JIRA
2 309 (18.93%) Git
3 303 (18.57%) Jenkins
4 246 (15.07%) GitLab
5 241 (14.77%) Selenium
6 141 (8.64%) Cucumber
7 136 (8.33%) Postman
8 101 (6.19%) JUnit
9 95 (5.82%) Cypress.io
10 86 (5.27%) REST Assured
11 74 (4.53%) JMeter
12 35 (2.14%) Maven
12 35 (2.14%) SonarQube
12 35 (2.14%) SpecFlow
12 35 (2.14%) WebDriver
13 31 (1.90%) Gatling
14 30 (1.84%) Gradle
15 29 (1.78%) Zephyr
16 27 (1.65%) TestRail
17 25 (1.53%) Bitbucket
General
1 441 (27.02%) Social Skills
2 276 (16.91%) Finance
3 223 (13.66%) Public Sector
4 180 (11.03%) Analytical Skills
5 136 (8.33%) Banking
6 28 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
7 26 (1.59%) Investment Banking
8 23 (1.41%) Front Office
9 21 (1.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 21 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
10 20 (1.23%) Pharmaceutical
11 19 (1.16%) Telecoms
12 16 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
13 15 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
14 14 (0.86%) Military
15 13 (0.80%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.74%) Aerospace
17 11 (0.67%) Legal
18 10 (0.61%) Electronics
19 7 (0.43%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 339 (20.77%) Developer
2 265 (16.24%) Senior
3 199 (12.19%) Lead
4 186 (11.40%) Tester
5 176 (10.78%) Test Engineer
6 88 (5.39%) Java Developer
7 86 (5.27%) Data Engineer
8 82 (5.02%) Automation Tester
9 80 (4.90%) Analyst
10 76 (4.66%) Software Engineer
11 73 (4.47%) Test Automation Engineer
12 68 (4.17%) Test Leader
13 62 (3.80%) QA Engineer
14 60 (3.68%) Senior Developer
15 56 (3.43%) DevOps Engineer
16 55 (3.37%) Architect
17 53 (3.25%) Test Manager
18 49 (3.00%) Test Analyst
19 46 (2.82%) Automation Engineer
20 39 (2.39%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 203 (12.44%) REST
2 195 (11.95%) Playwright
3 140 (8.58%) React
4 128 (7.84%) Spring
5 127 (7.78%) .NET
6 119 (7.29%) RESTful
7 116 (7.11%) Node.js
8 111 (6.80%) Kafka
9 104 (6.37%) Spring Boot
10 81 (4.96%) pytest
11 54 (3.31%) HTML
12 52 (3.19%) AngularJS
12 52 (3.19%) CSS
13 48 (2.94%) Jest
13 48 (2.94%) OAuth
14 42 (2.57%) Web Services
15 37 (2.27%) GraphQL
15 37 (2.27%) JSON
16 35 (2.14%) SOAP
16 35 (2.14%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 182 (11.15%) Cloud Native
2 94 (5.76%) Product Ownership
3 69 (4.23%) Distributed Systems
4 43 (2.63%) Mobile App
5 41 (2.51%) Algorithms
6 37 (2.27%) Legacy Systems
7 33 (2.02%) Data Protection Act
7 33 (2.02%) Security Posture
8 25 (1.53%) Data Structures
9 24 (1.47%) Onboarding
9 24 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
10 23 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
10 23 (1.41%) Virtual Team
11 22 (1.35%) Equities
12 21 (1.29%) Management Information System
13 19 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
14 18 (1.10%) Distributed Architecture
14 18 (1.10%) Public Cloud
15 16 (0.98%) Derivative
15 16 (0.98%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 139 (8.52%) Linux
2 83 (5.09%) Windows
3 41 (2.51%) Android
4 37 (2.27%) Unix
5 36 (2.21%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.23%) Windows Server
7 16 (0.98%) Mac OS X
8 12 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 11 (0.67%) Kali Linux
10 7 (0.43%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.37%) CentOS
12 2 (0.12%) Solaris
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 (0.061%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.061%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.061%) VMS
13 1 (0.061%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 851 (52.14%) CI/CD
2 778 (47.67%) Agile
3 608 (37.25%) DevOps
4 417 (25.55%) Problem-Solving
5 266 (16.30%) Continuous Improvement
6 264 (16.18%) Microservices
7 257 (15.75%) Test Strategy
8 236 (14.46%) Containerisation
9 232 (14.22%) Scrum
10 225 (13.79%) AI
11 212 (12.99%) Test Scripting
12 200 (12.25%) Software Engineering
13 199 (12.19%) Validation
14 196 (12.01%) Infrastructure as Code
15 193 (11.83%) TDD
16 186 (11.40%) Analytics
17 180 (11.03%) Software Testing
18 174 (10.66%) Observability
19 157 (9.62%) Regression Testing
20 155 (9.50%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 506 (31.00%) Python
2 396 (24.26%) Java
3 354 (21.69%) SQL
4 242 (14.83%) JavaScript
5 236 (14.46%) TypeScript
6 155 (9.50%) C#
7 68 (4.17%) PowerShell
8 64 (3.92%) Bash
9 45 (2.76%) C++
10 31 (1.90%) Go
11 25 (1.53%) C
12 24 (1.47%) Bicep
13 23 (1.41%) Kotlin
13 23 (1.41%) PL/SQL
14 19 (1.16%) Apex Code
15 15 (0.92%) Scala
15 15 (0.92%) Swift
16 13 (0.80%) Ruby
17 12 (0.74%) Shell Script
17 12 (0.74%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 478 (29.29%) Security Cleared
2 367 (22.49%) SC Cleared
3 94 (5.76%) Degree
4 74 (4.53%) ISTQB
5 57 (3.49%) DV Cleared
6 56 (3.43%) BPSS Clearance
7 55 (3.37%) Computer Science Degree
8 26 (1.59%) Master's Degree
9 23 (1.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 17 (1.04%) OSCP
11 14 (0.86%) Azure Certification
11 14 (0.86%) Cisco Certification
12 13 (0.80%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 13 (0.80%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 12 (0.74%) CEH
13 12 (0.74%) GPEN
14 11 (0.67%) CISSP
14 11 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
15 10 (0.61%) AWS Certification
16 9 (0.55%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 367 (22.49%) QA
2 113 (6.92%) Accessibility
3 95 (5.82%) Data Quality
4 36 (2.21%) WCAG
5 30 (1.84%) NIST
6 28 (1.72%) GDPR
7 18 (1.10%) EU AI Act
8 16 (0.98%) NCSC
9 12 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 11 (0.67%) ISO 20022
11 9 (0.55%) PSD2
11 9 (0.55%) SLA
12 8 (0.49%) Def Stans
12 8 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.43%) SEPA
14 6 (0.37%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.31%) MiFID
15 5 (0.31%) NIST 800
15 5 (0.31%) PCI DSS
15 5 (0.31%) PERC
System Software
1 344 (21.08%) Docker
2 30 (1.84%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.49%) Firmware
4 7 (0.43%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 7 (0.43%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
6 5 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
7 3 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.12%) SRDF
9 1 (0.061%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.061%) KVM
9 1 (0.061%) QEMU
9 1 (0.061%) Squid
9 1 (0.061%) Time Sharing Option
9 1 (0.061%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 331 (20.28%) Kubernetes
2 185 (11.34%) Terraform
3 98 (6.00%) Ansible
4 97 (5.94%) Grafana
5 70 (4.29%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.10%) Puppet
7 17 (1.04%) HP ALM
8 16 (0.98%) Argo
9 15 (0.92%) Nmap
9 15 (0.92%) Progress Chef
10 11 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.61%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.61%) NetBackup
12 7 (0.43%) Forefront Identity Manager
12 7 (0.43%) Kibana
12 7 (0.43%) NetIQ Identity Manager
13 5 (0.31%) Nessus
13 5 (0.31%) Podman
14 4 (0.25%) Dell DRAC
14 4 (0.25%) Istio
Vendors
1 147 (9.01%) Microsoft
2 142 (8.70%) Oracle
3 66 (4.04%) Databricks
4 59 (3.62%) Splunk
5 58 (3.55%) ServiceNow
6 54 (3.31%) Google
7 51 (3.13%) Salesforce
8 38 (2.33%) Talend
9 37 (2.27%) SAP
10 31 (1.90%) Red Hat
11 30 (1.84%) Denodo
12 23 (1.41%) VMware
13 20 (1.23%) Cisco
13 20 (1.23%) IBM
14 19 (1.16%) HP
15 18 (1.10%) Workday
16 15 (0.92%) MuleSoft
16 15 (0.92%) OpenAI
17 14 (0.86%) Atlassian
17 14 (0.86%) Foundry