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 26 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 51 55
Rank change year-on-year +6 +4 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,869 1,125 1,341
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.31% 4.46% 3.59%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.05% 4.88% 4.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,200 783 890
10th Percentile £337 £313 £363
25th Percentile £405 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £488 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -7.14% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £602 £625
90th Percentile £664 £723 £726
UK median daily rate £475 £490 £513
% change year-on-year -3.06% -4.39% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 28 48
10th Percentile £36.22 £42.00 £50.88
25th Percentile £60.00 £45.82 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% -4.35% -19.01%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.38 £71.88
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.28 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -4.35% -12.88%

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 37,044 23,037 31,936
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.35% 91.39% 85.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,386 14,872 20,693
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £417 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £729 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £502 £525
% change year-on-year +2.54% -4.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,321 1,118 2,341
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -34.02% +8.48%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £72.90
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +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 26 June 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 26 June 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 26 June 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 +5 849 £500 - 200
North of England +12 375 £453 +0.67% 112
Midlands +6 239 £450 +6.51% 60
West Midlands +32 220 £450 -10.00% 30
South East -28 195 £475 -5.00% 141
Yorkshire +5 153 £500 +2.56% 33
North West -1 148 £475 +6.26% 50
South West +13 107 £450 - 48
East of England +17 85 £495 +5.88% 53
North East +10 82 £425 +6.25% 30
East Midlands -36 19 £421 +50.45% 30
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
1 160 (8.56%) Confluence
2 43 (2.30%) Apache Airflow
3 42 (2.25%) SAS
4 37 (1.98%) Apache Spark
5 17 (0.91%) Apache
6 15 (0.80%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.64%) CMS
8 7 (0.37%) Appian
8 7 (0.37%) Camunda
9 5 (0.27%) nginx
9 5 (0.27%) Tomcat
9 5 (0.27%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.21%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.16%) Kentico
11 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.11%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.11%) Mule
13 1 (0.054%) Solana
Applications
1 29 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.86%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (0.43%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.16%) Simulink
8 1 (0.054%) Mingle
8 1 (0.054%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 21 (1.12%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.91%) Aladdin
3 11 (0.59%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.43%) Findur
4 8 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
5 7 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.32%) SAP ERP
6 6 (0.32%) Shopify
7 5 (0.27%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.27%) Loan IQ
8 3 (0.16%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.16%) Maximo
8 3 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
9 2 (0.11%) Infor CloudSuite
9 2 (0.11%) Infor LN
9 2 (0.11%) Infor M3
9 2 (0.11%) IntelliMatch
9 2 (0.11%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.11%) Summit
9 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 524 (28.04%) AWS
2 510 (27.29%) Azure
3 301 (16.10%) GitHub
4 222 (11.88%) Azure DevOps
5 183 (9.79%) GitHub Actions
6 134 (7.17%) Serverless
7 126 (6.74%) GCP
8 91 (4.87%) AWS Lambda
9 79 (4.23%) Amazon S3
10 69 (3.69%) Power Platform
11 63 (3.37%) OpenShift
12 53 (2.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 53 (2.84%) Amazon ECS
13 43 (2.30%) Azure Data Factory
13 43 (2.30%) dbt
14 39 (2.09%) Amazon EC2
15 36 (1.93%) Snowflake
16 32 (1.71%) Amazon EKS
17 31 (1.66%) Azure AKS
18 28 (1.50%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.07%) Firewall
2 15 (0.80%) HTTP
2 15 (0.80%) SAN
3 11 (0.59%) WAN
4 10 (0.54%) Network Security
5 9 (0.48%) MPLS
6 8 (0.43%) VPN
7 7 (0.37%) 4G
7 7 (0.37%) 5G
8 6 (0.32%) 2G
8 6 (0.32%) 3G
8 6 (0.32%) BGP
8 6 (0.32%) Diameter Protocol
8 6 (0.32%) Ethernet
8 6 (0.32%) LAN
8 6 (0.32%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.32%) SS7
8 6 (0.32%) TCP/IP
8 6 (0.32%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (0.32%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 105 (5.62%) PostgreSQL
2 95 (5.08%) Data Warehouse
3 85 (4.55%) MongoDB
4 82 (4.39%) NoSQL
5 73 (3.91%) SQL Server
6 61 (3.26%) Relational Database
7 53 (2.84%) Power BI
8 46 (2.46%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.87%) Oracle Reports
10 34 (1.82%) Pentaho
11 31 (1.66%) Amazon Athena
12 27 (1.44%) Redis
13 26 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
13 26 (1.39%) Data Lake
14 25 (1.34%) Amazon Redshift
14 25 (1.34%) Big Data
15 22 (1.18%) Metadata
15 22 (1.18%) Tableau
16 20 (1.07%) Oracle Database
17 18 (0.96%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 356 (19.05%) JIRA
2 332 (17.76%) Git
3 306 (16.37%) Jenkins
4 266 (14.23%) GitLab
5 239 (12.79%) Selenium
6 145 (7.76%) Postman
7 133 (7.12%) Cucumber
8 100 (5.35%) REST Assured
9 97 (5.19%) JUnit
10 87 (4.65%) Cypress.io
11 85 (4.55%) JMeter
12 56 (3.00%) Zephyr
13 53 (2.84%) SonarQube
14 52 (2.78%) WebDriver
15 43 (2.30%) Gatling
16 42 (2.25%) Gradle
17 36 (1.93%) Bitbucket
18 33 (1.77%) Mockito
19 30 (1.61%) Maven
20 26 (1.39%) SpecFlow
General
1 518 (27.72%) Social Skills
2 357 (19.10%) Finance
3 242 (12.95%) Analytical Skills
4 232 (12.41%) Public Sector
5 163 (8.72%) Banking
6 52 (2.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 39 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
8 33 (1.77%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
10 26 (1.39%) Front Office
11 25 (1.34%) Telecoms
12 22 (1.18%) Financial Institution
13 21 (1.12%) Retail
14 17 (0.91%) Military
14 17 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
15 16 (0.86%) Aerospace
16 15 (0.80%) Legal
17 13 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
18 12 (0.64%) Law
18 12 (0.64%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 367 (19.64%) Developer
2 289 (15.46%) Senior
3 201 (10.75%) Lead
4 195 (10.43%) Tester
5 191 (10.22%) Test Engineer
6 124 (6.63%) Data Engineer
7 112 (5.99%) Java Developer
8 103 (5.51%) Software Engineer
9 99 (5.30%) Analyst
10 88 (4.71%) Architect
11 81 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
12 80 (4.28%) Test Automation Engineer
13 77 (4.12%) QA Engineer
14 74 (3.96%) Senior Developer
15 71 (3.80%) Test Leader
16 68 (3.64%) Automation Tester
17 58 (3.10%) Test Analyst
18 55 (2.94%) Automation Engineer
19 51 (2.73%) Full-Stack Developer
20 46 (2.46%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 207 (11.08%) REST
2 201 (10.75%) Playwright
3 173 (9.26%) React
4 147 (7.87%) Spring
5 141 (7.54%) Kafka
6 138 (7.38%) RESTful
7 117 (6.26%) Spring Boot
8 112 (5.99%) .NET
9 95 (5.08%) Node.js
10 79 (4.23%) AngularJS
11 65 (3.48%) HTML
12 60 (3.21%) CSS
13 50 (2.68%) pytest
14 47 (2.51%) OAuth
15 40 (2.14%) Jest
16 39 (2.09%) Quarkus
17 37 (1.98%) Gherkin
18 35 (1.87%) Swagger
19 34 (1.82%) GraphQL
19 34 (1.82%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 231 (12.36%) Cloud Native
2 134 (7.17%) Product Ownership
3 117 (6.26%) Distributed Systems
4 54 (2.89%) Legacy Systems
5 53 (2.84%) Enterprise Software
6 48 (2.57%) Data Protection Act
7 42 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
8 40 (2.14%) Mobile App
9 38 (2.03%) Virtual Team
10 32 (1.71%) Onboarding
11 31 (1.66%) Distributed Architecture
12 28 (1.50%) Management Information System
13 26 (1.39%) Security Posture
14 23 (1.23%) Embedded Systems
15 21 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
16 20 (1.07%) AI Agents
17 19 (1.02%) Algorithms
17 19 (1.02%) Fixed Income
18 16 (0.86%) Data Structures
19 15 (0.80%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 112 (5.99%) Linux
2 72 (3.85%) Windows
3 52 (2.78%) Unix
4 39 (2.09%) Android
5 38 (2.03%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.75%) Windows Server
8 12 (0.64%) Mac OS X
9 7 (0.37%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.37%) Solaris
10 5 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.21%) Embedded Linux
11 4 (0.21%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.16%) AIX
12 3 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.11%) CentOS
13 2 (0.11%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,020 (54.57%) CI/CD
2 868 (46.44%) Agile
3 657 (35.15%) DevOps
4 351 (18.78%) Problem-Solving
5 317 (16.96%) Microservices
6 315 (16.85%) Continuous Improvement
7 290 (15.52%) Scrum
8 288 (15.41%) Software Engineering
9 283 (15.14%) Test Strategy
10 277 (14.82%) Validation
11 255 (13.64%) Infrastructure as Code
12 241 (12.89%) AI
13 232 (12.41%) Observability
14 222 (11.88%) Containerisation
15 220 (11.77%) TDD
16 195 (10.43%) ETL
17 186 (9.95%) Software Testing
18 183 (9.79%) End-to-End Testing
18 183 (9.79%) SDLC
19 181 (9.68%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 466 (24.93%) Python
2 464 (24.83%) Java
3 448 (23.97%) SQL
4 231 (12.36%) JavaScript
5 210 (11.24%) TypeScript
6 174 (9.31%) C#
7 65 (3.48%) PowerShell
8 57 (3.05%) Bash
9 46 (2.46%) Kotlin
10 41 (2.19%) C++
11 31 (1.66%) C
11 31 (1.66%) Scala
12 30 (1.61%) Go
13 28 (1.50%) Apex Code
13 28 (1.50%) Bicep
13 28 (1.50%) PL/SQL
14 22 (1.18%) Swift
15 16 (0.86%) Groovy
15 16 (0.86%) Ruby
16 13 (0.70%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 581 (31.09%) Security Cleared
2 472 (25.25%) SC Cleared
3 88 (4.71%) ISTQB
4 84 (4.49%) Degree
5 65 (3.48%) BPSS Clearance
6 64 (3.42%) DV Cleared
7 42 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
8 20 (1.07%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 18 (0.96%) AWS Certification
10 15 (0.80%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 14 (0.75%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 14 (0.75%) Master's Degree
12 12 (0.64%) Cisco Certification
13 11 (0.59%) SAFe Agilist
14 10 (0.54%) CCNP
15 7 (0.37%) Azure Certification
15 7 (0.37%) CISSP
15 7 (0.37%) DBS Check
16 5 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 5 (0.27%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 423 (22.63%) QA
2 134 (7.17%) Accessibility
3 123 (6.58%) Data Quality
4 60 (3.21%) WCAG
5 34 (1.82%) GDPR
6 13 (0.70%) ISO 20022
7 11 (0.59%) NCSC
7 11 (0.59%) NIST
8 10 (0.54%) Def Stans
8 10 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 9 (0.48%) SLA
10 5 (0.27%) FATCA
10 5 (0.27%) SEPA
11 4 (0.21%) HL7
11 4 (0.21%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 4 (0.21%) Software Quality Assurance
12 3 (0.16%) GRC
12 3 (0.16%) PSD2
12 3 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 310 (16.59%) Docker
2 26 (1.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (0.80%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.75%) Firmware
5 13 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.21%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 4 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.11%) SRDF
9 1 (0.054%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.054%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.054%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 323 (17.28%) Kubernetes
2 229 (12.25%) Terraform
3 96 (5.14%) Ansible
3 96 (5.14%) Grafana
4 84 (4.49%) Prometheus
5 36 (1.93%) Argo
6 14 (0.75%) HP ALM
7 12 (0.64%) Puppet
8 11 (0.59%) HP Quality Center
8 11 (0.59%) Kibana
9 10 (0.54%) Dell DRAC
9 10 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.43%) Kustomize
11 6 (0.32%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 6 (0.32%) NetBackup
11 6 (0.32%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 5 (0.27%) Istio
12 5 (0.27%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.21%) Oracle RMAN
13 4 (0.21%) Rancher
Vendors
1 162 (8.67%) Microsoft
2 143 (7.65%) Oracle
3 78 (4.17%) Salesforce
4 62 (3.32%) Databricks
5 55 (2.94%) Red Hat
5 55 (2.94%) Talend
6 52 (2.78%) ServiceNow
7 51 (2.73%) Splunk
8 50 (2.68%) Google
9 38 (2.03%) Denodo
10 32 (1.71%) Informatica
11 28 (1.50%) VMware
12 27 (1.44%) Dynatrace
12 27 (1.44%) UiPath
13 26 (1.39%) IBM
13 26 (1.39%) SAP
14 21 (1.12%) Cisco
15 17 (0.91%) HP
16 14 (0.75%) Blue Prism
17 13 (0.70%) OpenAI