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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 47 56
Rank change year-on-year -2 +9 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,745 1,081 1,258
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.18% 4.54% 3.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.92% 4.97% 3.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,125 756 845
10th Percentile £350 £325 £363
25th Percentile £401 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £638
90th Percentile £663 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -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 35,433 21,759 31,490
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.85% 91.31% 85.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,494 14,185 20,632
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.25% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £512 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.19% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,215 937 2,283
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.84
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £46.43 £28.18 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.76% -22.79% -2.46%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.28 £27.52 £36.00
% change year-on-year +53.64% -23.57% -1.09%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -1 821 £500 -2.44% 251
North of England +9 355 £466 +3.56% 122
Midlands +9 206 £459 +9.61% 61
West Midlands +31 184 £459 -4.97% 43
South East -37 178 £500 -0.10% 113
North West +14 156 £475 +6.26% 75
Yorkshire -8 149 £493 +3.68% 24
South West +18 98 £469 -3.85% 60
East of England +12 75 £495 +5.88% 42
North East +2 58 £425 +6.25% 23
East Midlands -39 22 £400 +45.45% 18
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
1 138 (7.91%) Confluence
2 39 (2.23%) SAS
3 36 (2.06%) Apache Airflow
4 32 (1.83%) Apache Spark
5 12 (0.69%) Apache
5 12 (0.69%) SharePoint
6 10 (0.57%) CMS
7 8 (0.46%) Appian
7 8 (0.46%) Camunda
8 6 (0.34%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 4 (0.23%) nginx
9 4 (0.23%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.17%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.11%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.11%) Kentico
12 1 (0.057%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.057%) Mendix
12 1 (0.057%) OpenStack
Applications
1 26 (1.49%) 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 21 (1.20%) Aladdin
2 16 (0.92%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.46%) Findur
5 7 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
6 6 (0.34%) 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 (0.11%) 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%) IntelliMatch
10 1 (0.057%) Oracle Payables
10 1 (0.057%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 479 (27.45%) AWS
2 467 (26.76%) Azure
3 280 (16.05%) GitHub
4 211 (12.09%) Azure DevOps
5 165 (9.46%) GitHub Actions
6 126 (7.22%) GCP
7 117 (6.70%) Serverless
8 77 (4.41%) AWS Lambda
9 67 (3.84%) Amazon S3
10 60 (3.44%) Power Platform
11 55 (3.15%) OpenShift
12 47 (2.69%) Amazon ECS
13 43 (2.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 42 (2.41%) Azure Data Factory
15 37 (2.12%) Snowflake
16 30 (1.72%) Amazon EKS
17 29 (1.66%) Amazon EC2
17 29 (1.66%) AWS CloudFormation
18 28 (1.60%) dbt
18 28 (1.60%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.26%) Firewall
2 14 (0.80%) HTTP
2 14 (0.80%) SAN
3 10 (0.57%) TCP/IP
3 10 (0.57%) VPN
4 9 (0.52%) Network Security
5 8 (0.46%) MPLS
5 8 (0.46%) WAN
6 7 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.34%) Ethernet
7 6 (0.34%) SSL
7 6 (0.34%) VLAN
8 5 (0.29%) Multicast
8 5 (0.29%) Wireshark
9 4 (0.23%) 5G
9 4 (0.23%) FTP
9 4 (0.23%) NAS
9 4 (0.23%) Reverse Proxy
9 4 (0.23%) SD-WAN
10 3 (0.17%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 91 (5.21%) PostgreSQL
2 80 (4.58%) SQL Server
3 79 (4.53%) NoSQL
4 78 (4.47%) Data Warehouse
5 77 (4.41%) MongoDB
6 53 (3.04%) Relational Database
7 45 (2.58%) DynamoDB
8 42 (2.41%) Power BI
9 31 (1.78%) Pentaho
10 29 (1.66%) Oracle Reports
11 26 (1.49%) Tableau
12 24 (1.38%) Data Lake
13 23 (1.32%) Big Data
14 22 (1.26%) Metadata
14 22 (1.26%) Redis
15 21 (1.20%) Amazon Athena
15 21 (1.20%) Amazon RDS
16 19 (1.09%) BigQuery
17 18 (1.03%) MySQL
17 18 (1.03%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 326 (18.68%) JIRA
2 300 (17.19%) Git
3 293 (16.79%) Jenkins
4 242 (13.87%) Selenium
5 241 (13.81%) GitLab
6 145 (8.31%) Postman
7 133 (7.62%) Cucumber
8 97 (5.56%) REST Assured
9 91 (5.21%) JUnit
10 84 (4.81%) Cypress.io
11 77 (4.41%) JMeter
12 47 (2.69%) WebDriver
12 47 (2.69%) Zephyr
13 44 (2.52%) SonarQube
14 36 (2.06%) Gradle
15 35 (2.01%) Gatling
16 31 (1.78%) Maven
17 30 (1.72%) Bitbucket
17 30 (1.72%) SpecFlow
18 29 (1.66%) Mockito
General
1 473 (27.11%) Social Skills
2 320 (18.34%) Finance
3 225 (12.89%) Public Sector
4 213 (12.21%) Analytical Skills
5 153 (8.77%) Banking
6 40 (2.29%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (2.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 31 (1.78%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.55%) Front Office
10 23 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
11 18 (1.03%) Telecoms
12 17 (0.97%) Retail
13 16 (0.92%) Legal
13 16 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
13 16 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
14 15 (0.86%) Aerospace
15 13 (0.74%) Financial Institution
15 13 (0.74%) Military
16 11 (0.63%) Back Office
17 9 (0.52%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 349 (20.00%) Developer
2 267 (15.30%) Senior
3 193 (11.06%) Test Engineer
4 186 (10.66%) Lead
4 186 (10.66%) Tester
5 106 (6.07%) Data Engineer
6 96 (5.50%) Java Developer
7 93 (5.33%) Software Engineer
8 91 (5.21%) Analyst
9 86 (4.93%) Test Automation Engineer
10 79 (4.53%) Architect
11 77 (4.41%) Automation Tester
12 74 (4.24%) QA Engineer
13 73 (4.18%) DevOps Engineer
14 70 (4.01%) Senior Developer
15 69 (3.95%) Test Leader
16 55 (3.15%) Automation Engineer
17 53 (3.04%) Full-Stack Developer
18 49 (2.81%) Test Analyst
19 47 (2.69%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 197 (11.29%) Playwright
2 195 (11.17%) REST
3 159 (9.11%) React
4 130 (7.45%) Kafka
4 130 (7.45%) RESTful
5 125 (7.16%) Spring
6 119 (6.82%) .NET
7 103 (5.90%) Node.js
7 103 (5.90%) Spring Boot
8 65 (3.72%) AngularJS
9 61 (3.50%) HTML
10 55 (3.15%) CSS
11 50 (2.87%) pytest
12 47 (2.69%) OAuth
13 46 (2.64%) Jest
14 35 (2.01%) Swagger
15 34 (1.95%) Gherkin
15 34 (1.95%) OpenID
16 33 (1.89%) GraphQL
16 33 (1.89%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 190 (10.89%) Cloud Native
2 122 (6.99%) Product Ownership
3 96 (5.50%) Distributed Systems
4 49 (2.81%) Data Protection Act
5 42 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
6 41 (2.35%) Mobile App
7 36 (2.06%) Self-Motivation
8 33 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
8 33 (1.89%) Virtual Team
9 27 (1.55%) Onboarding
10 26 (1.49%) Distributed Architecture
11 24 (1.38%) Algorithms
12 22 (1.26%) Management Information System
13 21 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
14 20 (1.15%) NHS
15 19 (1.09%) Fixed Income
16 18 (1.03%) Data Centre
16 18 (1.03%) Data Structures
16 18 (1.03%) Embedded Systems
17 15 (0.86%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 115 (6.59%) Linux
2 72 (4.13%) Windows
3 52 (2.98%) Unix
4 37 (2.12%) Android
5 32 (1.83%) Apple iOS
6 17 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 17 (0.97%) Windows Server
7 12 (0.69%) 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
1 915 (52.44%) CI/CD
2 797 (45.67%) Agile
3 618 (35.42%) DevOps
4 337 (19.31%) Problem-Solving
5 290 (16.62%) Continuous Improvement
6 289 (16.56%) Microservices
7 272 (15.59%) Test Strategy
8 252 (14.44%) Software Engineering
9 251 (14.38%) Scrum
10 234 (13.41%) Validation
11 222 (12.72%) Infrastructure as Code
12 211 (12.09%) Observability
13 207 (11.86%) TDD
14 206 (11.81%) Containerisation
15 199 (11.40%) AI
16 181 (10.37%) ETL
17 179 (10.26%) Software Testing
17 179 (10.26%) Test Scripting
18 167 (9.57%) User Acceptance Testing
19 165 (9.46%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 448 (25.67%) Python
2 444 (25.44%) Java
3 416 (23.84%) SQL
4 236 (13.52%) JavaScript
5 203 (11.63%) TypeScript
6 175 (10.03%) C#
7 68 (3.90%) PowerShell
8 52 (2.98%) Bash
9 44 (2.52%) C++
10 43 (2.46%) Kotlin
11 33 (1.89%) PL/SQL
12 31 (1.78%) C
13 30 (1.72%) Scala
14 29 (1.66%) Apex Code
15 27 (1.55%) Go
16 23 (1.32%) Bicep
17 19 (1.09%) Swift
18 16 (0.92%) Ruby
19 15 (0.86%) Groovy
20 11 (0.63%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 537 (30.77%) Security Cleared
2 417 (23.90%) SC Cleared
3 81 (4.64%) ISTQB
4 74 (4.24%) Degree
5 68 (3.90%) DV Cleared
6 61 (3.50%) BPSS Clearance
7 37 (2.12%) Computer Science Degree
8 20 (1.15%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 12 (0.69%) Cisco Certification
9 12 (0.69%) Master's Degree
10 11 (0.63%) CCNP
11 10 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 10 (0.57%) SAFe Agilist
12 9 (0.52%) 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
16 5 (0.29%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 375 (21.49%) QA
2 119 (6.82%) Accessibility
3 105 (6.02%) Data Quality
4 54 (3.09%) WCAG
5 30 (1.72%) GDPR
6 11 (0.63%) ISO 20022
7 10 (0.57%) Def Stans
7 10 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 9 (0.52%) NIST
8 9 (0.52%) SLA
9 8 (0.46%) 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%) GRC
13 3 (0.17%) SOC 2
System Software
1 288 (16.50%) 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
1 291 (16.68%) Kubernetes
2 201 (11.52%) Terraform
3 96 (5.50%) Grafana
4 83 (4.76%) Ansible
4 83 (4.76%) Prometheus
5 26 (1.49%) Argo
6 14 (0.80%) Puppet
7 13 (0.74%) HP ALM
8 11 (0.63%) Kibana
9 10 (0.57%) HP Quality Center
9 10 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
10 9 (0.52%) Dell DRAC
10 9 (0.52%) Forefront Identity Manager
10 9 (0.52%) NetIQ Identity Manager
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
1 144 (8.25%) Microsoft
1 144 (8.25%) Oracle
2 68 (3.90%) Salesforce
3 60 (3.44%) Databricks
4 54 (3.09%) Splunk
5 53 (3.04%) ServiceNow
6 52 (2.98%) Talend
7 46 (2.64%) Red Hat
8 45 (2.58%) Google
9 36 (2.06%) Denodo
10 27 (1.55%) SAP
11 25 (1.43%) VMware
12 20 (1.15%) Dynatrace
12 20 (1.15%) Informatica
12 20 (1.15%) UiPath
13 19 (1.09%) Cisco
14 18 (1.03%) IBM
15 16 (0.92%) HP
16 15 (0.86%) MuleSoft
17 14 (0.80%) Blue Prism