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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 49 58
Rank change year-on-year +1 +9 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,753 1,080 1,277
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.19% 4.51% 3.48%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.94% 4.94% 4.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,131 758 856
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 £617 £638
90th Percentile £663 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £493 £513
% change year-on-year -3.65% -3.80% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 98 21 48
10th Percentile £35.44 £40.84 -
25th Percentile £55.31 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £66.25 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.45% -8.33% -15.49%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £75.25
90th Percentile £74.00 £75.50 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £66.25 £52.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +26.19% -12.50% -12.73%

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 35,508 21,848 31,547
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.90% 91.31% 85.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,529 14,223 20,659
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £622 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £512 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.10% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,216 949 2,294
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.84
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £28.18 £36.84
Median % change year-on-year +66.78% -23.51% -1.29%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.30 £27.59 £36.50
% change year-on-year +53.34% -24.42% +1.04%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 -2 827 £500 -1.23% 129
North of England +11 355 £465 +3.33% 84
Midlands +11 207 £455 +6.94% 50
West Midlands +32 185 £459 -4.97% 38
South East -37 179 £500 -0.10% 102
North West +12 153 £475 +6.26% 47
Yorkshire -3 150 £493 +3.68% 18
South West +17 98 £469 -1.32% 40
East of England +12 74 £501 +6.31% 38
North East +3 60 £425 +6.25% 19
East Midlands -40 22 £400 +42.86% 12
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
1 141 (8.04%) Confluence
2 39 (2.22%) Apache Airflow
2 39 (2.22%) SAS
3 33 (1.88%) Apache Spark
4 13 (0.74%) Apache
5 12 (0.68%) SharePoint
6 10 (0.57%) CMS
7 9 (0.51%) Appian
8 8 (0.46%) Camunda
9 6 (0.34%) Adobe Experience Manager
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 (0.11%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.11%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.11%) Kentico
13 1 (0.057%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.057%) Mendix
Applications
1 26 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.74%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.57%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.17%) Simulink
7 1 (0.057%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.057%) Mingle
7 1 (0.057%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 19 (1.08%) Aladdin
2 16 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.51%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.46%) Findur
5 7 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
6 6 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.34%) Shopify
7 5 (0.29%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.29%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.29%) SAP ERP
8 3 (0.17%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.17%) Maximo
9 2 (0.11%) iTrent
9 2 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
9 2 (0.11%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.11%) Summit
9 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
10 1 (0.057%) Cloudability
10 1 (0.057%) Infor CloudSuite
10 1 (0.057%) Infor LN
Cloud Services
1 480 (27.38%) AWS
2 471 (26.87%) Azure
3 283 (16.14%) GitHub
4 213 (12.15%) Azure DevOps
5 167 (9.53%) GitHub Actions
6 126 (7.19%) GCP
7 120 (6.85%) Serverless
8 79 (4.51%) AWS Lambda
9 69 (3.94%) Amazon S3
10 60 (3.42%) Power Platform
11 55 (3.14%) OpenShift
12 48 (2.74%) Amazon ECS
13 43 (2.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 42 (2.40%) Azure Data Factory
15 36 (2.05%) Snowflake
16 30 (1.71%) Amazon EKS
17 29 (1.65%) Amazon EC2
17 29 (1.65%) AWS CloudFormation
17 29 (1.65%) dbt
17 29 (1.65%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.25%) Firewall
2 14 (0.80%) HTTP
2 14 (0.80%) SAN
3 10 (0.57%) TCP/IP
3 10 (0.57%) VPN
4 9 (0.51%) Network Security
5 8 (0.46%) MPLS
5 8 (0.46%) WAN
6 6 (0.34%) Ethernet
6 6 (0.34%) SSL
6 6 (0.34%) VLAN
6 6 (0.34%) Wi-Fi
7 5 (0.29%) Multicast
7 5 (0.29%) Wireshark
8 4 (0.23%) 5G
8 4 (0.23%) FTP
8 4 (0.23%) NAS
8 4 (0.23%) Reverse Proxy
8 4 (0.23%) SD-WAN
9 3 (0.17%) RS-232
Database & Business Intelligence
1 92 (5.25%) PostgreSQL
2 80 (4.56%) SQL Server
3 78 (4.45%) Data Warehouse
4 77 (4.39%) MongoDB
4 77 (4.39%) NoSQL
5 53 (3.02%) Relational Database
6 46 (2.62%) DynamoDB
7 42 (2.40%) Power BI
8 31 (1.77%) Pentaho
9 29 (1.65%) Oracle Reports
10 26 (1.48%) Tableau
11 24 (1.37%) Big Data
11 24 (1.37%) Data Lake
12 23 (1.31%) Amazon Athena
13 22 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
13 22 (1.25%) Metadata
13 22 (1.25%) Redis
14 19 (1.08%) BigQuery
15 18 (1.03%) Amazon Redshift
15 18 (1.03%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 330 (18.82%) JIRA
2 301 (17.17%) Git
3 293 (16.71%) Jenkins
4 243 (13.86%) Selenium
5 242 (13.80%) GitLab
6 144 (8.21%) Postman
7 134 (7.64%) Cucumber
8 96 (5.48%) REST Assured
9 91 (5.19%) JUnit
10 84 (4.79%) Cypress.io
11 76 (4.34%) JMeter
12 49 (2.80%) Zephyr
13 47 (2.68%) WebDriver
14 44 (2.51%) SonarQube
15 37 (2.11%) Gradle
16 34 (1.94%) Gatling
17 31 (1.77%) Bitbucket
17 31 (1.77%) Maven
18 30 (1.71%) Mockito
18 30 (1.71%) SpecFlow
General
1 474 (27.04%) Social Skills
2 322 (18.37%) Finance
3 223 (12.72%) Public Sector
4 217 (12.38%) Analytical Skills
5 155 (8.84%) Banking
6 40 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 32 (1.83%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.54%) Front Office
10 23 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
11 18 (1.03%) Telecoms
12 17 (0.97%) Retail
13 16 (0.91%) Legal
13 16 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
13 16 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
14 15 (0.86%) Aerospace
15 14 (0.80%) Financial Institution
16 13 (0.74%) Military
17 11 (0.63%) Back Office
18 9 (0.51%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 349 (19.91%) Developer
2 268 (15.29%) Senior
3 194 (11.07%) Test Engineer
4 188 (10.72%) Lead
5 187 (10.67%) Tester
6 107 (6.10%) Data Engineer
7 94 (5.36%) Software Engineer
8 93 (5.31%) Java Developer
9 91 (5.19%) Analyst
10 85 (4.85%) Test Automation Engineer
11 79 (4.51%) Architect
12 77 (4.39%) Automation Tester
13 75 (4.28%) QA Engineer
14 73 (4.16%) DevOps Engineer
15 69 (3.94%) Test Leader
16 68 (3.88%) Senior Developer
17 55 (3.14%) Automation Engineer
18 53 (3.02%) Full-Stack Developer
19 49 (2.80%) Test Analyst
20 47 (2.68%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 197 (11.24%) Playwright
2 194 (11.07%) REST
3 160 (9.13%) React
4 131 (7.47%) Kafka
5 129 (7.36%) RESTful
6 123 (7.02%) Spring
7 118 (6.73%) .NET
8 102 (5.82%) Node.js
9 101 (5.76%) Spring Boot
10 66 (3.76%) AngularJS
11 61 (3.48%) HTML
12 54 (3.08%) CSS
13 50 (2.85%) pytest
14 45 (2.57%) Jest
14 45 (2.57%) OAuth
15 37 (2.11%) Swagger
16 34 (1.94%) Gherkin
17 33 (1.88%) GraphQL
17 33 (1.88%) OpenID
18 31 (1.77%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 193 (11.01%) Cloud Native
2 122 (6.96%) Product Ownership
3 98 (5.59%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (2.74%) Data Protection Act
5 43 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
6 40 (2.28%) Mobile App
7 36 (2.05%) Self-Motivation
8 34 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
9 33 (1.88%) Virtual Team
10 27 (1.54%) Onboarding
11 26 (1.48%) Distributed Architecture
12 24 (1.37%) Algorithms
13 22 (1.25%) Management Information System
14 21 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
15 20 (1.14%) NHS
16 18 (1.03%) Data Centre
16 18 (1.03%) Data Structures
16 18 (1.03%) Embedded Systems
16 18 (1.03%) Fixed Income
17 15 (0.86%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 115 (6.56%) Linux
2 72 (4.11%) Windows
3 52 (2.97%) Unix
4 38 (2.17%) Android
5 33 (1.88%) Apple iOS
6 17 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 17 (0.97%) Windows Server
7 12 (0.68%) Mac OS X
8 7 (0.40%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.29%) Solaris
10 4 (0.23%) Embedded Linux
10 4 (0.23%) Windows Server 2008
10 4 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.17%) AIX
11 3 (0.17%) CentOS
11 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.11%) Kali Linux
13 1 (0.057%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 920 (52.48%) CI/CD
2 800 (45.64%) Agile
3 619 (35.31%) DevOps
4 336 (19.17%) Problem-Solving
5 289 (16.49%) Continuous Improvement
5 289 (16.49%) Microservices
6 275 (15.69%) Test Strategy
7 252 (14.38%) Software Engineering
8 251 (14.32%) Scrum
9 236 (13.46%) Validation
10 226 (12.89%) Infrastructure as Code
11 213 (12.15%) Observability
12 208 (11.87%) TDD
13 207 (11.81%) Containerisation
14 201 (11.47%) AI
15 181 (10.33%) ETL
16 180 (10.27%) Software Testing
17 177 (10.10%) Test Scripting
18 169 (9.64%) User Acceptance Testing
19 164 (9.36%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 450 (25.67%) Python
2 443 (25.27%) Java
3 419 (23.90%) SQL
4 233 (13.29%) JavaScript
5 202 (11.52%) TypeScript
6 175 (9.98%) C#
7 68 (3.88%) PowerShell
8 53 (3.02%) Bash
9 44 (2.51%) C++
10 41 (2.34%) Kotlin
11 33 (1.88%) PL/SQL
12 31 (1.77%) C
13 30 (1.71%) Scala
14 29 (1.65%) Apex Code
15 27 (1.54%) Go
16 23 (1.31%) Bicep
17 19 (1.08%) Swift
18 17 (0.97%) Ruby
19 15 (0.86%) Groovy
20 11 (0.63%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 537 (30.63%) Security Cleared
2 418 (23.84%) SC Cleared
3 82 (4.68%) ISTQB
4 71 (4.05%) Degree
5 68 (3.88%) DV Cleared
6 62 (3.54%) BPSS Clearance
7 34 (1.94%) Computer Science Degree
8 20 (1.14%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 12 (0.68%) Cisco Certification
9 12 (0.68%) Master's Degree
10 11 (0.63%) CCNP
10 11 (0.63%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 10 (0.57%) SAFe Agilist
12 9 (0.51%) DBS Check
13 8 (0.46%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 7 (0.40%) AWS Certification
14 7 (0.40%) Azure Certification
15 6 (0.34%) CISSP
16 5 (0.29%) CCIE
17 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 379 (21.62%) QA
2 120 (6.85%) Accessibility
3 107 (6.10%) Data Quality
4 53 (3.02%) WCAG
5 30 (1.71%) GDPR
6 11 (0.63%) ISO 20022
7 10 (0.57%) Def Stans
7 10 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 10 (0.57%) SLA
8 9 (0.51%) NIST
9 7 (0.40%) NCSC
10 6 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 5 (0.29%) FATCA
12 4 (0.23%) HL7
12 4 (0.23%) MiFID
12 4 (0.23%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.23%) SEPA
12 4 (0.23%) Software Quality Assurance
13 3 (0.17%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (0.17%) PSD2
System Software
1 290 (16.54%) Docker
2 21 (1.20%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (0.97%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.74%) Firmware
5 11 (0.63%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.40%) 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 (0.11%) ISA Server
9 2 (0.11%) SRDF
10 1 (0.057%) Hyper-V
10 1 (0.057%) KVM
10 1 (0.057%) Squid
10 1 (0.057%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.057%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 292 (16.66%) Kubernetes
2 203 (11.58%) Terraform
3 96 (5.48%) Grafana
4 83 (4.73%) Ansible
4 83 (4.73%) Prometheus
5 26 (1.48%) Argo
6 14 (0.80%) Puppet
7 13 (0.74%) HP ALM
8 11 (0.63%) Kibana
9 10 (0.57%) HP Quality Center
10 9 (0.51%) Dell DRAC
10 9 (0.51%) Forefront Identity Manager
10 9 (0.51%) NetIQ Identity Manager
10 9 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (0.46%) Kustomize
12 6 (0.34%) NetBackup
12 6 (0.34%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.23%) Istio
13 4 (0.23%) Nmap
13 4 (0.23%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 146 (8.33%) Microsoft
2 145 (8.27%) Oracle
3 68 (3.88%) Salesforce
4 60 (3.42%) Databricks
5 54 (3.08%) ServiceNow
5 54 (3.08%) Splunk
6 52 (2.97%) Talend
7 46 (2.62%) Red Hat
8 44 (2.51%) Google
9 36 (2.05%) Denodo
10 27 (1.54%) SAP
11 25 (1.43%) VMware
12 22 (1.25%) UiPath
13 20 (1.14%) Dynatrace
13 20 (1.14%) Informatica
14 19 (1.08%) Cisco
15 18 (1.03%) IBM
16 16 (0.91%) HP
17 15 (0.86%) MuleSoft
18 14 (0.80%) Blue Prism