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

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 48 57
Rank change year-on-year -1 +9 -8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,722 1,076 1,255
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.15% 4.52% 3.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.89% 4.95% 4.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,111 754 837
10th Percentile £338 £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 £618 £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 93 21 49
10th Percentile £36.06 £40.84 -
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £66.00 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.00% -8.33% -22.08%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £77.50
90th Percentile £74.00 £75.50 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £66.00 £52.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +25.71% -12.50% -14.29%

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 35,196 21,756 31,344
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.75% 91.30% 86.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,391 14,220 20,552
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £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 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,171 917 2,255
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.41 £12.89
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.20 £15.97
Median hourly rate £45.59 £28.55 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.67% -21.78% -2.67%
75th Percentile £67.84 £60.00 £60.13
90th Percentile £80.20 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £27.97 £36.05
% change year-on-year +51.98% -22.42% -2.58%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 0 816 £496 -1.29% 215
North of England +5 349 £465 +4.08% 129
Midlands +5 196 £450 +5.88% 56
West Midlands +28 175 £461 -4.61% 39
South East -42 175 £500 - 116
North West +13 155 £469 +4.81% 71
Yorkshire -11 147 £487 +2.53% 27
South West +18 100 £475 -9.52% 56
East of England +14 73 £501 +6.31% 44
North East +4 55 £425 +6.25% 31
East Midlands -43 21 £400 +45.45% 17
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
1 134 (7.78%) Confluence
2 37 (2.15%) SAS
3 33 (1.92%) 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%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.35%) Camunda
9 6 (0.35%) CMS
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%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.058%) Jupyter
13 1 (0.058%) Mendix
13 1 (0.058%) Solana
Applications
1 24 (1.39%) 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 13 (0.75%) 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
1 463 (26.89%) AWS
2 455 (26.42%) Azure
3 281 (16.32%) GitHub
4 206 (11.96%) Azure DevOps
5 165 (9.58%) GitHub Actions
6 119 (6.91%) GCP
7 118 (6.85%) Serverless
8 76 (4.41%) AWS Lambda
9 68 (3.95%) Amazon S3
10 55 (3.19%) Power Platform
11 52 (3.02%) OpenShift
12 48 (2.79%) Amazon ECS
13 43 (2.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 39 (2.26%) Azure Data Factory
15 34 (1.97%) Snowflake
16 33 (1.92%) Amazon EKS
17 31 (1.80%) AWS CloudFormation
18 29 (1.68%) Amazon EC2
18 29 (1.68%) Azure AKS
19 26 (1.51%) 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%) SSL
7 7 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (0.35%) Ethernet
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 (5.40%) PostgreSQL
2 80 (4.65%) NoSQL
3 79 (4.59%) SQL Server
4 78 (4.53%) MongoDB
5 73 (4.24%) Data Warehouse
6 54 (3.14%) Relational Database
7 44 (2.56%) DynamoDB
8 39 (2.26%) Power BI
9 31 (1.80%) Pentaho
10 27 (1.57%) Oracle Reports
11 25 (1.45%) Tableau
12 22 (1.28%) Big Data
12 22 (1.28%) Metadata
13 21 (1.22%) Amazon Athena
13 21 (1.22%) Amazon RDS
13 21 (1.22%) Data Lake
13 21 (1.22%) Redis
14 20 (1.16%) MySQL
15 18 (1.05%) Oracle Database
16 17 (0.99%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 322 (18.70%) JIRA
2 299 (17.36%) Git
3 291 (16.90%) Jenkins
4 242 (14.05%) Selenium
5 235 (13.65%) GitLab
6 141 (8.19%) Postman
7 129 (7.49%) Cucumber
8 93 (5.40%) REST Assured
9 91 (5.28%) JUnit
10 84 (4.88%) Cypress.io
11 76 (4.41%) JMeter
12 46 (2.67%) WebDriver
13 44 (2.56%) Zephyr
14 43 (2.50%) SonarQube
15 36 (2.09%) Gradle
16 32 (1.86%) Gatling
16 32 (1.86%) SpecFlow
17 30 (1.74%) Maven
18 29 (1.68%) Bitbucket
19 28 (1.63%) Mockito
General
1 464 (26.95%) Social Skills
2 310 (18.00%) Finance
3 229 (13.30%) Public Sector
4 213 (12.37%) Analytical Skills
5 155 (9.00%) Banking
6 41 (2.38%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (2.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 31 (1.80%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.57%) Front Office
10 23 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
11 19 (1.10%) Telecoms
12 16 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
12 16 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
12 16 (0.93%) Retail
13 15 (0.87%) Legal
14 14 (0.81%) Aerospace
15 13 (0.75%) Financial Institution
15 13 (0.75%) Military
16 11 (0.64%) Back Office
17 9 (0.52%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 347 (20.15%) Developer
2 262 (15.21%) Senior
3 189 (10.98%) Test Engineer
4 184 (10.69%) Tester
5 182 (10.57%) Lead
6 101 (5.87%) Data Engineer
7 97 (5.63%) Java Developer
8 93 (5.40%) Analyst
9 92 (5.34%) Software Engineer
10 88 (5.11%) Test Automation Engineer
11 79 (4.59%) Automation Tester
12 76 (4.41%) Architect
13 72 (4.18%) DevOps Engineer
14 71 (4.12%) QA Engineer
15 69 (4.01%) Test Leader
16 68 (3.95%) Senior Developer
17 55 (3.19%) Full-Stack Developer
18 54 (3.14%) Automation Engineer
19 52 (3.02%) Test Analyst
20 47 (2.73%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 196 (11.38%) Playwright
2 194 (11.27%) REST
3 154 (8.94%) React
4 129 (7.49%) Kafka
4 129 (7.49%) Spring
5 128 (7.43%) RESTful
6 119 (6.91%) .NET
7 106 (6.16%) Spring Boot
8 104 (6.04%) Node.js
9 67 (3.89%) AngularJS
10 61 (3.54%) HTML
11 53 (3.08%) CSS
12 50 (2.90%) pytest
13 48 (2.79%) OAuth
14 44 (2.56%) Jest
15 35 (2.03%) Swagger
16 34 (1.97%) Gherkin
16 34 (1.97%) GraphQL
16 34 (1.97%) OpenID
17 33 (1.92%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 191 (11.09%) Cloud Native
2 123 (7.14%) Product Ownership
3 93 (5.40%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (2.79%) Data Protection Act
5 43 (2.50%) Mobile App
6 42 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
7 34 (1.97%) Self-Motivation
8 33 (1.92%) Virtual Team
9 32 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
10 27 (1.57%) Onboarding
11 24 (1.39%) Algorithms
11 24 (1.39%) Distributed Architecture
12 22 (1.28%) Management Information System
13 21 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
14 20 (1.16%) NHS
15 18 (1.05%) Data Centre
15 18 (1.05%) Embedded Systems
15 18 (1.05%) Fixed Income
16 16 (0.93%) Data Structures
16 16 (0.93%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 114 (6.62%) Linux
2 73 (4.24%) Windows
3 47 (2.73%) Unix
4 40 (2.32%) Android
5 34 (1.97%) Apple iOS
6 18 (1.05%) 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
1 904 (52.50%) CI/CD
2 791 (45.93%) Agile
3 615 (35.71%) DevOps
4 340 (19.74%) Problem-Solving
5 290 (16.84%) Continuous Improvement
6 288 (16.72%) Microservices
7 266 (15.45%) Test Strategy
8 247 (14.34%) Scrum
9 244 (14.17%) Software Engineering
10 229 (13.30%) Validation
11 219 (12.72%) Infrastructure as Code
12 211 (12.25%) Observability
13 209 (12.14%) Containerisation
14 205 (11.90%) TDD
15 189 (10.98%) AI
16 182 (10.57%) Test Scripting
17 177 (10.28%) Software Testing
18 175 (10.16%) ETL
19 168 (9.76%) User Acceptance Testing
20 165 (9.58%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 440 (25.55%) Python
2 438 (25.44%) Java
3 409 (23.75%) SQL
4 235 (13.65%) JavaScript
5 205 (11.90%) TypeScript
6 178 (10.34%) C#
7 71 (4.12%) PowerShell
8 51 (2.96%) Bash
9 43 (2.50%) C++
9 43 (2.50%) Kotlin
10 31 (1.80%) C
11 30 (1.74%) PL/SQL
12 29 (1.68%) Apex Code
13 28 (1.63%) Scala
14 24 (1.39%) Bicep
15 23 (1.34%) Go
16 18 (1.05%) Swift
17 16 (0.93%) Ruby
18 13 (0.75%) Groovy
19 11 (0.64%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 531 (30.84%) Security Cleared
2 410 (23.81%) SC Cleared
3 81 (4.70%) ISTQB
4 73 (4.24%) Degree
5 69 (4.01%) DV Cleared
6 60 (3.48%) BPSS Clearance
7 35 (2.03%) 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 8 (0.46%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 8 (0.46%) DBS Check
13 7 (0.41%) AWS Certification
13 7 (0.41%) Azure Certification
14 6 (0.35%) CISSP
15 5 (0.29%) CCIE
15 5 (0.29%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 372 (21.60%) QA
2 120 (6.97%) Accessibility
3 99 (5.75%) Data Quality
4 53 (3.08%) WCAG
5 28 (1.63%) 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
10 7 (0.41%) NIST
11 6 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.29%) FATCA
12 5 (0.29%) SEPA
13 4 (0.23%) HL7
13 4 (0.23%) MiFID
13 4 (0.23%) PCI DSS
13 4 (0.23%) PSD2
13 4 (0.23%) Software Quality Assurance
14 3 (0.17%) HIPAA
System Software
1 287 (16.67%) Docker
2 21 (1.22%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (1.05%) 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 3 (0.17%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.12%) SRDF
11 1 (0.058%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.058%) KVM
11 1 (0.058%) Squid
11 1 (0.058%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.058%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 291 (16.90%) Kubernetes
2 199 (11.56%) Terraform
3 96 (5.57%) Grafana
4 83 (4.82%) Ansible
4 83 (4.82%) Prometheus
5 26 (1.51%) Argo
6 15 (0.87%) HP ALM
6 15 (0.87%) Puppet
7 11 (0.64%) Kibana
7 11 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
8 10 (0.58%) Forefront Identity Manager
8 10 (0.58%) HP Quality Center
8 10 (0.58%) NetIQ Identity Manager
9 9 (0.52%) Dell DRAC
10 7 (0.41%) Kustomize
10 7 (0.41%) Progress Chef
11 6 (0.35%) NetBackup
12 4 (0.23%) Istio
12 4 (0.23%) Nmap
12 4 (0.23%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 143 (8.30%) Oracle
2 138 (8.01%) Microsoft
3 67 (3.89%) Salesforce
4 59 (3.43%) Databricks
5 55 (3.19%) Splunk
6 54 (3.14%) ServiceNow
7 48 (2.79%) Talend
8 46 (2.67%) Red Hat
9 41 (2.38%) Google
10 31 (1.80%) 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%) IBM
14 19 (1.10%) UiPath
15 18 (1.05%) HP
16 15 (0.87%) MuleSoft
17 14 (0.81%) Blue Prism