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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 49 45
Rank change year-on-year +5 -4 +10
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,141 1,305 1,369
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.63% 4.65% 4.23%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.45% 5.12% 4.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,378 903 926
10th Percentile £320 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £505
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -0.99% -8.18%
75th Percentile £575 £589 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £694
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 95 33 15
10th Percentile £40.00 £41.06 £44.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £46.25 £50.63
Median hourly rate £69.50 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.87% -4.17% -20.00%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £79.75
90th Percentile £77.00 £73.40 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £56.25 £57.50
% change year-on-year +24.44% -2.17% -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 39,257 25,497 27,959
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.86% 90.90% 86.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,690 16,157 17,059
10th Percentile £325 £293 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,996 1,590 1,150
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.54 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.33 £17.87 £20.30
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -4.49%
75th Percentile £67.47 £45.00 £67.38
90th Percentile £78.88 £67.28 £74.88
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.16
% change year-on-year +49.11% -37.38% -8.38%

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 10 October 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 10 October 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 10 October 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 +7 972 £500 -2.44% 1,602
North of England -4 433 £452 -4.95% 426
Midlands +12 274 £450 -2.70% 205
West Midlands +26 259 £450 -13.46% 136
South East -9 233 £450 -5.26% 404
Yorkshire -2 181 £463 -9.76% 143
North West -15 159 £492 +23.00% 212
South West -9 111 £450 -18.18% 202
North East +1 98 £425 -10.53% 71
East of England +3 93 £367 -11.03% 214
East Midlands -43 15 £418 +19.29% 69
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
1 184 (8.59%) Confluence
2 59 (2.76%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (2.10%) Apache Spark
4 41 (1.91%) SharePoint
5 35 (1.63%) Apache
6 25 (1.17%) SAS
7 16 (0.75%) CMS
8 14 (0.65%) Camunda
9 10 (0.47%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.28%) Jupyter
12 5 (0.23%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
14 3 (0.14%) Kentico
14 3 (0.14%) nginx
15 2 (0.093%) Anypoint
15 2 (0.093%) Mule
15 2 (0.093%) Oracle Workflow
15 2 (0.093%) Tomcat
Applications
1 21 (0.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.28%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.23%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.14%) Mingle
6 3 (0.14%) Trello
7 2 (0.093%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.047%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.047%) Simulink
8 1 (0.047%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 27 (1.26%) Dynamics CRM
2 21 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.47%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.28%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.23%) SAP GRC
8 4 (0.19%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.093%) Oracle ERP
10 1 (0.047%) Findur
10 1 (0.047%) FLEXCUBE
10 1 (0.047%) Maximo
10 1 (0.047%) Oracle EBS R12
10 1 (0.047%) SAP FI
10 1 (0.047%) SAP MM
10 1 (0.047%) SAP PP
10 1 (0.047%) SAP QM
10 1 (0.047%) SAP SD
10 1 (0.047%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 673 (31.43%) AWS
2 645 (30.13%) Azure
3 373 (17.42%) GitHub
4 301 (14.06%) Azure DevOps
5 226 (10.56%) GitHub Actions
6 182 (8.50%) GCP
7 168 (7.85%) Serverless
8 125 (5.84%) AWS Lambda
9 110 (5.14%) Power Platform
10 106 (4.95%) Amazon S3
11 84 (3.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 72 (3.36%) OpenShift
13 70 (3.27%) Amazon ECS
14 67 (3.13%) GitHub Copilot
15 66 (3.08%) Amazon EKS
16 54 (2.52%) AWS CloudFormation
16 54 (2.52%) dbt
17 51 (2.38%) Snowflake
18 49 (2.29%) Amazon EC2
19 47 (2.20%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 31 (1.45%) DNS
2 28 (1.31%) TCP/IP
3 26 (1.21%) Firewall
4 25 (1.17%) 4G
5 23 (1.07%) Broadband
5 23 (1.07%) HTTP
5 23 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
6 22 (1.03%) 5G
7 19 (0.89%) Network Security
8 17 (0.79%) BGP
9 15 (0.70%) WAN
10 14 (0.65%) 2G
10 14 (0.65%) 3G
10 14 (0.65%) Diameter Protocol
10 14 (0.65%) SIGTRAN
10 14 (0.65%) SS7
11 13 (0.61%) DHCP
12 12 (0.56%) IPv4
12 12 (0.56%) IPv6
12 12 (0.56%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (6.07%) PostgreSQL
2 108 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
3 97 (4.53%) Relational Database
4 95 (4.44%) MongoDB
4 95 (4.44%) NoSQL
4 95 (4.44%) SQL Server
5 84 (3.92%) Power BI
6 47 (2.20%) Metadata
7 43 (2.01%) Data Lake
8 37 (1.73%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.63%) MySQL
10 34 (1.59%) Pentaho
11 32 (1.49%) Big Data
11 32 (1.49%) Oracle Reports
12 31 (1.45%) Amazon RDS
12 31 (1.45%) Oracle Database
13 28 (1.31%) Amazon Athena
13 28 (1.31%) Amazon Redshift
13 28 (1.31%) Redis
14 24 (1.12%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 491 (22.93%) Git
2 353 (16.49%) JIRA
3 343 (16.02%) Jenkins
4 303 (14.15%) GitLab
5 285 (13.31%) Selenium
6 175 (8.17%) Cucumber
7 148 (6.91%) Postman
8 138 (6.45%) JUnit
9 106 (4.95%) Cypress.io
10 99 (4.62%) REST Assured
11 87 (4.06%) SonarQube
12 86 (4.02%) JMeter
13 69 (3.22%) Gatling
14 62 (2.90%) Zephyr
15 56 (2.62%) Maven
16 52 (2.43%) Gradle
17 49 (2.29%) Mockito
18 42 (1.96%) WebDriver
19 40 (1.87%) Bitbucket
20 28 (1.31%) TestNG
General
1 617 (28.82%) Social Skills
2 419 (19.57%) Finance
3 332 (15.51%) Analytical Skills
4 258 (12.05%) Public Sector
5 210 (9.81%) Banking
6 67 (3.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 57 (2.66%) Telecoms
8 36 (1.68%) Retail
9 34 (1.59%) Investment Banking
10 33 (1.54%) Front Office
11 31 (1.45%) Military
12 30 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
13 24 (1.12%) Documentation Skills
14 21 (0.98%) Marketing
15 20 (0.93%) Manufacturing
16 19 (0.89%) Financial Institution
16 19 (0.89%) Law
17 18 (0.84%) Aerospace
18 17 (0.79%) Back Office
19 14 (0.65%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 450 (21.02%) Developer
2 343 (16.02%) Senior
3 219 (10.23%) Lead
4 206 (9.62%) Test Engineer
5 145 (6.77%) Data Engineer
6 143 (6.68%) Tester
7 134 (6.26%) Java Developer
8 121 (5.65%) Software Engineer
9 108 (5.04%) Analyst
10 105 (4.90%) Architect
11 100 (4.67%) QA Engineer
12 93 (4.34%) Senior Developer
13 92 (4.30%) DevOps Engineer
14 88 (4.11%) Test Automation Engineer
15 82 (3.83%) Automation Engineer
16 73 (3.41%) Java Engineer
17 72 (3.36%) Full-Stack Developer
17 72 (3.36%) Test Analyst
18 71 (3.32%) Test Leader
19 58 (2.71%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 356 (16.63%) REST
2 323 (15.09%) Terraform
3 253 (11.82%) Playwright
4 236 (11.02%) RESTful
5 235 (10.98%) Kafka
6 211 (9.86%) Spring
7 198 (9.25%) React
8 177 (8.27%) Spring Boot
9 156 (7.29%) .NET
10 143 (6.68%) HTML
11 118 (5.51%) CSS
12 113 (5.28%) Node.js
13 101 (4.72%) AngularJS
14 90 (4.20%) OAuth
15 70 (3.27%) JSON
16 62 (2.90%) Middleware
17 61 (2.85%) SOAP
18 59 (2.76%) Web Services
19 57 (2.66%) OpenID
19 57 (2.66%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 340 (15.88%) Cloud Native
2 188 (8.78%) Product Ownership
3 159 (7.43%) Distributed Systems
4 99 (4.62%) Enterprise Software
5 77 (3.60%) Onboarding
6 72 (3.36%) AI Agents
7 52 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
8 51 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
9 47 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
10 46 (2.15%) Mobile App
11 34 (1.59%) Data Structures
12 31 (1.45%) Security Posture
13 25 (1.17%) Management Information System
13 25 (1.17%) Virtual Team
14 21 (0.98%) Data Centre
15 20 (0.93%) Distributed Architecture
15 20 (0.93%) Embedded Systems
16 19 (0.89%) Algorithms
16 19 (0.89%) Private Cloud
17 17 (0.79%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 147 (6.87%) Linux
2 98 (4.58%) Windows
3 78 (3.64%) Unix
4 45 (2.10%) Apple iOS
5 39 (1.82%) Android
6 28 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 22 (1.03%) Windows Server
8 9 (0.42%) VMS
9 6 (0.28%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.28%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.23%) Mac OS X
10 5 (0.23%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.19%) zOS
12 3 (0.14%) AIX
12 3 (0.14%) CentOS
12 3 (0.14%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.14%) Solaris
13 2 (0.093%) Embedded Linux
13 2 (0.093%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,344 (62.77%) CI/CD
2 1,048 (48.95%) Agile
3 812 (37.93%) DevOps
4 449 (20.97%) Continuous Improvement
5 441 (20.60%) Microservices
6 439 (20.50%) Problem-Solving
7 427 (19.94%) Software Engineering
8 377 (17.61%) AI
8 377 (17.61%) Validation
9 371 (17.33%) Scrum
10 369 (17.23%) Infrastructure as Code
11 322 (15.04%) Test Strategy
12 320 (14.95%) Containerisation
13 287 (13.40%) Observability
14 281 (13.12%) SDLC
14 281 (13.12%) Stakeholder Management
15 274 (12.80%) Software Testing
16 272 (12.70%) TDD
17 232 (10.84%) End-to-End Testing
18 224 (10.46%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 616 (28.77%) Python
2 596 (27.84%) Java
3 559 (26.11%) SQL
4 334 (15.60%) JavaScript
5 255 (11.91%) TypeScript
6 185 (8.64%) C#
7 90 (4.20%) PowerShell
8 77 (3.60%) Bash
9 53 (2.48%) Bicep
10 51 (2.38%) Kotlin
11 39 (1.82%) Go
12 38 (1.77%) Scala
13 36 (1.68%) C++
14 24 (1.12%) Shell Script
15 23 (1.07%) PL/SQL
16 20 (0.93%) Swift
17 17 (0.79%) Apex Code
18 16 (0.75%) Groovy
19 15 (0.70%) C
20 12 (0.56%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 679 (31.71%) Security Cleared
2 567 (26.48%) SC Cleared
3 129 (6.03%) Degree
4 100 (4.67%) ISTQB
5 95 (4.44%) BPSS Clearance
6 85 (3.97%) DV Cleared
7 71 (3.32%) Computer Science Degree
8 48 (2.24%) AWS Certification
9 29 (1.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 28 (1.31%) Azure Certification
11 14 (0.65%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 14 (0.65%) CISSP
11 14 (0.65%) ISEB
11 14 (0.65%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 13 (0.61%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
14 11 (0.51%) Cisco Certification
15 10 (0.47%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 8 (0.37%) SAFe Agilist
17 6 (0.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 597 (27.88%) QA
2 181 (8.45%) Accessibility
3 148 (6.91%) Data Quality
4 93 (4.34%) WCAG
5 35 (1.63%) GDPR
6 17 (0.79%) ISO 20022
6 17 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.75%) NIST
8 13 (0.61%) SLA
9 12 (0.56%) NCSC
10 11 (0.51%) GRC
11 8 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.28%) HL7
13 6 (0.28%) PCI DSS
14 5 (0.23%) FATCA
14 5 (0.23%) Software Quality Assurance
15 4 (0.19%) HIPAA
16 3 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 3 (0.14%) SEPA
System Software
1 439 (20.50%) Docker
2 39 (1.82%) Active Directory
3 33 (1.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (0.47%) Firmware
6 7 (0.33%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.14%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.093%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.047%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.047%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.047%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 435 (20.32%) Kubernetes
2 128 (5.98%) Ansible
3 118 (5.51%) Grafana
4 83 (3.88%) Prometheus
5 35 (1.63%) Argo
6 25 (1.17%) Kibana
7 24 (1.12%) Puppet
8 23 (1.07%) Progress Chef
9 12 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.51%) Control-M
11 9 (0.42%) HP ALM
12 8 (0.37%) Microsoft Intune
13 7 (0.33%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.28%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.28%) SCCM
15 5 (0.23%) Istio
15 5 (0.23%) Packer
16 4 (0.19%) Dell DRAC
16 4 (0.19%) Podman
16 4 (0.19%) Rancher
Vendors
1 225 (10.51%) Microsoft
2 160 (7.47%) Oracle
3 97 (4.53%) Databricks
4 86 (4.02%) Google
5 59 (2.76%) IBM
5 59 (2.76%) Salesforce
6 53 (2.48%) Splunk
7 51 (2.38%) ServiceNow
8 50 (2.34%) Red Hat
9 49 (2.29%) Talend
10 46 (2.15%) SAP
11 43 (2.01%) Dynatrace
12 42 (1.96%) Informatica
12 42 (1.96%) VMware
13 35 (1.63%) Cisco
14 33 (1.54%) Denodo
14 33 (1.54%) UiPath
15 23 (1.07%) Foundry
16 19 (0.89%) OpenAI
17 16 (0.75%) MuleSoft