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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 50 46
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 +7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,064 1,281 1,331
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.43% 4.60% 4.09%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.23% 5.07% 4.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,312 872 902
10th Percentile £318 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £672 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% -0.05% -4.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 37 16
10th Percentile £40.00 £41.50 £41.25
25th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £49.38
Median hourly rate £68.61 £57.50 £58.75
Median % change year-on-year +19.32% -2.13% -21.67%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £77.13
90th Percentile £75.70 £71.10 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +27.27% -4.35% -23.33%

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 39,443 25,283 28,060
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.68% 90.86% 86.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,053 16,051 17,283
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,841 1,529 1,252
10th Percentile £13.99 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £20.09
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -2.39%
75th Percentile £67.84 £47.12 £66.61
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -

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 24 September 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 24 September 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 24 September 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 +7 933 £500 - 1,434
North of England -1 416 £450 -5.26% 458
Midlands +11 263 £450 -2.70% 201
West Midlands +23 248 £458 -11.76% 140
South East -11 227 £448 -8.21% 405
Yorkshire -5 175 £460 -8.00% 143
North West -19 139 £492 +16.17% 245
South West -4 112 £463 -14.35% 261
North East +2 109 £425 -10.53% 70
East of England +13 93 £375 +17.19% 179
East Midlands -47 15 £418 +15.97% 60
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
1 172 (8.33%) Confluence
2 61 (2.96%) Apache Airflow
3 40 (1.94%) SharePoint
4 38 (1.84%) Apache Spark
5 30 (1.45%) SAS
6 29 (1.41%) Apache
7 16 (0.78%) CMS
8 14 (0.68%) Camunda
9 10 (0.48%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.29%) Jupyter
11 6 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
12 5 (0.24%) nginx
12 5 (0.24%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
13 4 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
13 4 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.15%) Kentico
15 2 (0.097%) Anypoint
15 2 (0.097%) Mule
Applications
1 22 (1.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.29%) Chatbot
3 6 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.19%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.15%) Trello
6 2 (0.097%) Mingle
6 2 (0.097%) Simulink
6 2 (0.097%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.048%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.048%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 28 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.63%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.48%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.29%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.24%) SAP GRC
8 4 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 4 (0.19%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.097%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.097%) Distributed Ledger
9 2 (0.097%) Findur
9 2 (0.097%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.097%) Shopify
10 1 (0.048%) Infor M3
10 1 (0.048%) Oracle EBS R12
10 1 (0.048%) Sage 50
10 1 (0.048%) SAP EWM
10 1 (0.048%) SAP LE
10 1 (0.048%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 647 (31.35%) AWS
2 617 (29.89%) Azure
3 349 (16.91%) GitHub
4 281 (13.61%) Azure DevOps
5 207 (10.03%) GitHub Actions
6 166 (8.04%) GCP
7 158 (7.66%) Serverless
8 116 (5.62%) AWS Lambda
9 100 (4.84%) Power Platform
10 90 (4.36%) Amazon S3
11 80 (3.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 74 (3.59%) OpenShift
13 65 (3.15%) GitHub Copilot
14 62 (3.00%) Amazon ECS
15 59 (2.86%) Amazon EKS
16 58 (2.81%) dbt
17 52 (2.52%) Snowflake
18 49 (2.37%) AWS CloudFormation
19 42 (2.03%) Amazon EC2
20 39 (1.89%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.16%) 4G
2 23 (1.11%) DNS
2 23 (1.11%) HTTP
3 22 (1.07%) 5G
3 22 (1.07%) Firewall
4 20 (0.97%) TCP/IP
5 19 (0.92%) Wi-Fi
6 17 (0.82%) Broadband
7 15 (0.73%) 2G
7 15 (0.73%) 3G
7 15 (0.73%) Diameter Protocol
7 15 (0.73%) Network Security
7 15 (0.73%) SIGTRAN
7 15 (0.73%) SS7
8 13 (0.63%) BGP
8 13 (0.63%) WAN
9 12 (0.58%) Ethernet VPN
9 12 (0.58%) LAN
9 12 (0.58%) VXLAN
10 11 (0.53%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (5.81%) PostgreSQL
2 109 (5.28%) Data Warehouse
3 97 (4.70%) NoSQL
4 95 (4.60%) MongoDB
5 89 (4.31%) Relational Database
6 86 (4.17%) SQL Server
7 80 (3.88%) Power BI
8 39 (1.89%) Data Lake
9 37 (1.79%) DynamoDB
10 36 (1.74%) Metadata
11 34 (1.65%) Oracle Reports
12 30 (1.45%) Big Data
12 30 (1.45%) Pentaho
13 29 (1.41%) MySQL
13 29 (1.41%) Redis
14 27 (1.31%) Amazon Redshift
15 26 (1.26%) Amazon Athena
15 26 (1.26%) Oracle Database
16 25 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
17 20 (0.97%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 463 (22.43%) Git
2 339 (16.42%) JIRA
3 330 (15.99%) Jenkins
4 290 (14.05%) GitLab
5 268 (12.98%) Selenium
6 150 (7.27%) Cucumber
7 143 (6.93%) Postman
8 127 (6.15%) JUnit
9 99 (4.80%) Cypress.io
10 92 (4.46%) REST Assured
11 89 (4.31%) SonarQube
12 80 (3.88%) JMeter
13 65 (3.15%) Gatling
14 60 (2.91%) Zephyr
15 54 (2.62%) Maven
16 50 (2.42%) Gradle
17 47 (2.28%) Mockito
18 43 (2.08%) WebDriver
19 36 (1.74%) Bitbucket
20 26 (1.26%) LoadRunner
General
1 571 (27.66%) Social Skills
2 397 (19.23%) Finance
3 298 (14.44%) Analytical Skills
4 253 (12.26%) Public Sector
5 196 (9.50%) Banking
6 69 (3.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 53 (2.57%) Telecoms
8 33 (1.60%) Front Office
8 33 (1.60%) Retail
9 28 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
9 28 (1.36%) Investment Banking
10 27 (1.31%) Military
11 26 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
12 21 (1.02%) Financial Institution
13 20 (0.97%) Manufacturing
14 19 (0.92%) Aerospace
14 19 (0.92%) Law
15 17 (0.82%) Marketing
16 14 (0.68%) Automotive
17 11 (0.53%) Legal
Job Titles
1 443 (21.46%) Developer
2 329 (15.94%) Senior
3 201 (9.74%) Lead
4 199 (9.64%) Test Engineer
5 149 (7.22%) Tester
6 136 (6.59%) Java Developer
7 132 (6.40%) Data Engineer
8 117 (5.67%) Software Engineer
9 108 (5.23%) Analyst
10 95 (4.60%) Architect
11 94 (4.55%) DevOps Engineer
12 93 (4.51%) Senior Developer
13 90 (4.36%) QA Engineer
14 87 (4.22%) Test Automation Engineer
15 73 (3.54%) Automation Engineer
16 72 (3.49%) Full-Stack Developer
17 69 (3.34%) Java Engineer
18 67 (3.25%) Test Analyst
19 64 (3.10%) Test Leader
20 63 (3.05%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 333 (16.13%) REST
2 312 (15.12%) Terraform
3 237 (11.48%) Playwright
4 221 (10.71%) Kafka
5 216 (10.47%) RESTful
6 204 (9.88%) Spring
7 196 (9.50%) React
8 171 (8.28%) Spring Boot
9 152 (7.36%) .NET
10 133 (6.44%) HTML
11 113 (5.47%) CSS
11 113 (5.47%) Node.js
12 98 (4.75%) AngularJS
13 80 (3.88%) OAuth
14 63 (3.05%) JSON
15 59 (2.86%) SOAP
16 56 (2.71%) Middleware
17 55 (2.66%) pytest
18 53 (2.57%) Web Services
19 52 (2.52%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 335 (16.23%) Cloud Native
2 172 (8.33%) Product Ownership
3 150 (7.27%) Distributed Systems
4 86 (4.17%) Enterprise Software
5 70 (3.39%) Onboarding
6 61 (2.96%) AI Agents
7 51 (2.47%) Self-Motivation
8 49 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
9 47 (2.28%) Data Protection Act
10 38 (1.84%) Mobile App
11 31 (1.50%) Virtual Team
12 27 (1.31%) Data Structures
12 27 (1.31%) Security Posture
13 23 (1.11%) Management Information System
14 21 (1.02%) Data Centre
14 21 (1.02%) Embedded Systems
15 17 (0.82%) Fixed Income
15 17 (0.82%) Legacy Applications
15 17 (0.82%) Private Cloud
16 16 (0.78%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 147 (7.12%) Linux
2 95 (4.60%) Windows
3 82 (3.97%) Unix
4 38 (1.84%) Apple iOS
5 36 (1.74%) Android
6 28 (1.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 22 (1.07%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.34%) VMS
9 6 (0.29%) Mac OS X
10 5 (0.24%) Solaris
10 5 (0.24%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.24%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.24%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.19%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.15%) AIX
12 3 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.15%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.097%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,263 (61.19%) CI/CD
2 1,010 (48.93%) Agile
3 769 (37.26%) DevOps
4 418 (20.25%) Continuous Improvement
5 414 (20.06%) Microservices
6 411 (19.91%) Problem-Solving
7 407 (19.72%) Software Engineering
8 362 (17.54%) Scrum
9 361 (17.49%) Validation
10 359 (17.39%) Infrastructure as Code
11 349 (16.91%) AI
12 319 (15.46%) Test Strategy
13 311 (15.07%) Containerisation
14 275 (13.32%) Observability
15 271 (13.13%) SDLC
16 263 (12.74%) Software Testing
17 262 (12.69%) TDD
18 244 (11.82%) Stakeholder Management
19 222 (10.76%) End-to-End Testing
20 208 (10.08%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 578 (28.00%) Python
2 573 (27.76%) Java
3 515 (24.95%) SQL
4 315 (15.26%) JavaScript
5 242 (11.72%) TypeScript
6 176 (8.53%) C#
7 87 (4.22%) PowerShell
8 74 (3.59%) Bash
9 45 (2.18%) Bicep
10 44 (2.13%) Kotlin
11 38 (1.84%) Go
12 35 (1.70%) C++
12 35 (1.70%) Scala
13 25 (1.21%) PL/SQL
14 24 (1.16%) Shell Script
15 20 (0.97%) Apex Code
16 19 (0.92%) C
17 16 (0.78%) Groovy
18 15 (0.73%) Swift
19 12 (0.58%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 661 (32.03%) Security Cleared
2 554 (26.84%) SC Cleared
3 120 (5.81%) Degree
4 93 (4.51%) ISTQB
5 81 (3.92%) DV Cleared
6 78 (3.78%) BPSS Clearance
7 66 (3.20%) Computer Science Degree
8 42 (2.03%) AWS Certification
9 26 (1.26%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 23 (1.11%) Azure Certification
11 14 (0.68%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 14 (0.68%) CISSP
11 14 (0.68%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 13 (0.63%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.58%) Cisco Certification
13 12 (0.58%) ISEB
13 12 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.39%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 8 (0.39%) SAFe Agilist
15 7 (0.34%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 568 (27.52%) QA
2 170 (8.24%) Accessibility
3 138 (6.69%) Data Quality
4 93 (4.51%) WCAG
5 37 (1.79%) GDPR
6 19 (0.92%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.73%) NIST
9 12 (0.58%) GRC
9 12 (0.58%) NCSC
9 12 (0.58%) SLA
10 8 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.29%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.29%) SOC 2
11 6 (0.29%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.24%) FATCA
12 5 (0.24%) HL7
13 4 (0.19%) HIPAA
13 4 (0.19%) SEPA
14 3 (0.15%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 427 (20.69%) Docker
2 36 (1.74%) Active Directory
3 31 (1.50%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (0.92%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.58%) Firmware
6 8 (0.39%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.15%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.048%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.048%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 417 (20.20%) Kubernetes
2 119 (5.77%) Ansible
3 114 (5.52%) Grafana
4 83 (4.02%) Prometheus
5 40 (1.94%) Argo
6 23 (1.11%) Kibana
7 21 (1.02%) Progress Chef
8 20 (0.97%) Puppet
9 14 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.58%) HP ALM
11 11 (0.53%) Control-M
12 8 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
13 7 (0.34%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.29%) Dell DRAC
14 6 (0.29%) HP Fortify
15 5 (0.24%) Istio
15 5 (0.24%) Packer
15 5 (0.24%) SCCM
16 4 (0.19%) HP Quality Center
16 4 (0.19%) WMI
Vendors
1 212 (10.27%) Microsoft
2 154 (7.46%) Oracle
3 88 (4.26%) Databricks
4 75 (3.63%) Google
5 62 (3.00%) Salesforce
6 58 (2.81%) IBM
7 57 (2.76%) Red Hat
8 54 (2.62%) ServiceNow
9 51 (2.47%) Splunk
10 47 (2.28%) Talend
11 41 (1.99%) Dynatrace
12 40 (1.94%) SAP
13 39 (1.89%) VMware
14 38 (1.84%) Denodo
15 34 (1.65%) Cisco
16 33 (1.60%) Informatica
17 30 (1.45%) UiPath
18 18 (0.87%) HP
19 17 (0.82%) Foundry
20 16 (0.78%) OpenAI