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 2 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 45 57
Rank change year-on-year -4 +12 -15
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,478 1,231 1,389
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.66% 4.42% 3.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.27% 4.98% 4.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,010 825 1,000
10th Percentile £335 £325 £400
25th Percentile £401 £400 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -6.52%
75th Percentile £588 £618 £638
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -5.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 2 46
10th Percentile £41.94 £51.00 £37.50
25th Percentile £45.00 £56.25 £52.19
Median hourly rate £63.50 £67.50 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year -5.93% -12.90% +29.17%
75th Percentile £67.00 £78.75 £90.00
90th Percentile £67.60 £84.00 -
UK median hourly rate £61.75 £47.50 £77.50
% change year-on-year +30.00% -38.71% +29.17%

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 28,067 24,730 32,211
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.57% 88.83% 88.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,937 15,201 21,830
10th Percentile £304 £310 £306
25th Percentile £408 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,762 813 1,440
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.96 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +25.35%
75th Percentile £57.44 £64.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.79
% change year-on-year -22.62% -25.79% +25.12%

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 2 January 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 2 January 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 2 January 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 -4 722 £500 -3.85% 249
North of England +5 305 £488 +11.43% 184
Midlands +15 152 £495 -1.00% 66
Yorkshire -5 147 £513 +13.89% 66
South East -30 133 £500 -2.44% 177
North West -4 116 £425 +5.66% 92
West Midlands +6 115 £519 -5.73% 41
South West +1 75 £550 -3.51% 77
East of England -2 48 £560 +40.00% 69
North East +22 44 £488 +41.82% 26
East Midlands +3 37 £400 -13.51% 24
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 80 (5.41%) Confluence
2 54 (3.65%) SAS
3 24 (1.62%) Apache Spark
4 15 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.88%) SharePoint
6 10 (0.68%) Apache
7 6 (0.41%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 6 (0.41%) CMS
7 6 (0.41%) OpenStack
7 6 (0.41%) Oracle Application Server
8 4 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
9 3 (0.20%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.20%) Appian
9 3 (0.20%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.14%) Camunda
10 2 (0.14%) JBoss
10 2 (0.14%) Magnolia
10 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
10 2 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 15 (1.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.54%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.20%) Simulink
5 3 (0.20%) Windchill
6 2 (0.14%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.14%) Trello
Business Applications
1 18 (1.22%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.27%) SAP HR
3 3 (0.20%) SAP PLM
3 3 (0.20%) Workday HCM
4 2 (0.14%) Eagle PACE
4 2 (0.14%) Markit EDM
4 2 (0.14%) Maximo
4 2 (0.14%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.14%) SAP FI
4 2 (0.14%) Shopify
5 1 (0.068%) Algo Collateral
5 1 (0.068%) CODA-Financials
5 1 (0.068%) Loan IQ
5 1 (0.068%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.068%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.068%) PORTIA
5 1 (0.068%) Summit
5 1 (0.068%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 407 (27.54%) Azure
2 347 (23.48%) AWS
3 208 (14.07%) GitHub
4 161 (10.89%) Azure DevOps
5 145 (9.81%) GCP
6 107 (7.24%) GitHub Actions
7 102 (6.90%) Serverless
8 52 (3.52%) OpenShift
9 45 (3.04%) Power Platform
10 41 (2.77%) Amazon S3
10 41 (2.77%) Azure AKS
11 40 (2.71%) AWS Lambda
12 35 (2.37%) SaaS
13 33 (2.23%) Snowflake
14 30 (2.03%) AWS CloudFormation
15 28 (1.89%) Amazon EKS
15 28 (1.89%) Azure Functions
15 28 (1.89%) Power Automate
16 27 (1.83%) Azure Data Factory
17 26 (1.76%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 40 (2.71%) Firewall
2 32 (2.17%) Wireshark
3 29 (1.96%) HTTP
4 21 (1.42%) HTTPS
4 21 (1.42%) TCP/IP
5 20 (1.35%) SSL
6 17 (1.15%) VPN
7 15 (1.01%) Network Security
7 15 (1.01%) SD-WAN
8 12 (0.81%) Ethernet
9 10 (0.68%) WAN
10 9 (0.61%) DNS
10 9 (0.61%) Multicast
11 8 (0.54%) AMQP
12 7 (0.47%) FTP
12 7 (0.47%) VLAN
13 5 (0.34%) Cisco IPT
13 5 (0.34%) Internet
13 5 (0.34%) MPLS
14 4 (0.27%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 100 (6.77%) PostgreSQL
2 73 (4.94%) NoSQL
3 66 (4.47%) Relational Database
4 63 (4.26%) MongoDB
5 62 (4.19%) SQL Server
6 33 (2.23%) Data Warehouse
7 29 (1.96%) Pentaho
8 24 (1.62%) BigQuery
9 23 (1.56%) Power BI
10 20 (1.35%) MySQL
11 19 (1.29%) Oracle Database
11 19 (1.29%) Redis
12 18 (1.22%) Big Data
13 17 (1.15%) Data Lake
14 15 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
14 15 (1.01%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 12 (0.81%) DynamoDB
16 11 (0.74%) Apache Cassandra
16 11 (0.74%) Azure SQL Database
16 11 (0.74%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 275 (18.61%) Git
2 266 (18.00%) Jenkins
3 259 (17.52%) JIRA
4 224 (15.16%) Selenium
5 197 (13.33%) GitLab
6 122 (8.25%) Cucumber
7 109 (7.37%) Postman
8 98 (6.63%) Cypress.io
9 76 (5.14%) JUnit
10 67 (4.53%) REST Assured
11 55 (3.72%) JMeter
12 40 (2.71%) Bitbucket
13 36 (2.44%) SonarQube
14 30 (2.03%) Maven
15 28 (1.89%) TestRail
16 26 (1.76%) Gradle
16 26 (1.76%) SpecFlow
17 23 (1.56%) Gatling
18 22 (1.49%) Mockito
19 20 (1.35%) WebDriver
General
1 406 (27.47%) Social Skills
2 246 (16.64%) Finance
3 196 (13.26%) Public Sector
4 162 (10.96%) Analytical Skills
5 111 (7.51%) Banking
6 31 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
7 27 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 23 (1.56%) Pharmaceutical
9 21 (1.42%) Investment Banking
9 21 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
9 21 (1.42%) Telecoms
10 20 (1.35%) Front Office
11 17 (1.15%) Financial Institution
12 13 (0.88%) Military
13 12 (0.81%) Manufacturing
13 12 (0.81%) Organisational Skills
14 10 (0.68%) Aerospace
15 9 (0.61%) Influencing Skills
15 9 (0.61%) Marketing
15 9 (0.61%) Retail
Job Titles
1 329 (22.26%) Developer
2 248 (16.78%) Senior
3 161 (10.89%) Tester
4 159 (10.76%) Test Engineer
5 130 (8.80%) Lead
6 91 (6.16%) Java Developer
7 84 (5.68%) Automation Tester
8 80 (5.41%) Software Engineer
9 68 (4.60%) Test Automation Engineer
10 65 (4.40%) Analyst
11 63 (4.26%) QA Engineer
11 63 (4.26%) Senior Developer
12 62 (4.19%) Data Engineer
13 50 (3.38%) Automation Engineer
13 50 (3.38%) DevOps Engineer
14 48 (3.25%) Test Leader
15 47 (3.18%) Test Analyst
16 44 (2.98%) Test Manager
17 36 (2.44%) Full-Stack Developer
17 36 (2.44%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 191 (12.92%) REST
2 149 (10.08%) Playwright
3 129 (8.73%) React
4 123 (8.32%) .NET
5 108 (7.31%) RESTful
6 104 (7.04%) Node.js
7 101 (6.83%) Kafka
8 96 (6.50%) Spring
9 90 (6.09%) Spring Boot
10 69 (4.67%) pytest
11 58 (3.92%) HTML
12 57 (3.86%) AngularJS
13 56 (3.79%) CSS
14 54 (3.65%) JSON
14 54 (3.65%) XML
15 52 (3.52%) SOAP
16 40 (2.71%) JMS
17 39 (2.64%) Jest
17 39 (2.64%) Web Services
18 38 (2.57%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 153 (10.35%) Cloud Native
2 96 (6.50%) Product Ownership
3 49 (3.32%) Distributed Systems
4 45 (3.04%) Mobile App
5 39 (2.64%) Security Posture
6 31 (2.10%) Algorithms
7 25 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
8 23 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
9 20 (1.35%) Data Structures
9 20 (1.35%) Management Information System
9 20 (1.35%) Onboarding
9 20 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
10 19 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
11 18 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
11 18 (1.22%) Public Cloud
12 16 (1.08%) Genomics
12 16 (1.08%) Life Science
12 16 (1.08%) Virtual Team
13 15 (1.01%) Equities
14 14 (0.95%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 153 (10.35%) Linux
2 72 (4.87%) Windows
3 48 (3.25%) Unix
4 39 (2.64%) Android
5 31 (2.10%) Apple iOS
6 19 (1.29%) Mac OS X
6 19 (1.29%) Windows Server
7 10 (0.68%) Kali Linux
8 8 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 6 (0.41%) CentOS
10 3 (0.20%) Mac OS
10 3 (0.20%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.14%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.14%) VMS
12 1 (0.068%) FreeRTOS
12 1 (0.068%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.068%) Windows Embedded Compact
12 1 (0.068%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 730 (49.39%) CI/CD
2 724 (48.99%) Agile
3 557 (37.69%) DevOps
4 392 (26.52%) Problem-Solving
5 230 (15.56%) Microservices
6 220 (14.88%) Containerisation
7 213 (14.41%) Continuous Improvement
8 210 (14.21%) Test Strategy
9 209 (14.14%) Scrum
10 190 (12.86%) TDD
10 190 (12.86%) Test Scripting
11 185 (12.52%) Infrastructure as Code
12 182 (12.31%) Software Engineering
13 158 (10.69%) AI
14 156 (10.55%) Validation
15 151 (10.22%) Software Testing
16 145 (9.81%) SDLC
17 142 (9.61%) BDD
18 139 (9.40%) Analytics
19 129 (8.73%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 451 (30.51%) Python
2 342 (23.14%) Java
3 300 (20.30%) SQL
4 210 (14.21%) JavaScript
5 177 (11.98%) TypeScript
6 145 (9.81%) C#
7 82 (5.55%) Bash
8 61 (4.13%) PowerShell
9 36 (2.44%) C++
10 32 (2.17%) Go
11 24 (1.62%) Kotlin
12 23 (1.56%) Bicep
13 20 (1.35%) PL/SQL
14 14 (0.95%) PHP
15 12 (0.81%) Perl
16 11 (0.74%) Apex Code
16 11 (0.74%) Groovy
16 11 (0.74%) Swift
17 9 (0.61%) Ruby
18 8 (0.54%) C
Qualifications
1 389 (26.32%) Security Cleared
2 301 (20.37%) SC Cleared
3 88 (5.95%) Degree
4 57 (3.86%) ISTQB
5 50 (3.38%) Computer Science Degree
6 45 (3.04%) DV Cleared
7 43 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
8 22 (1.49%) Master's Degree
9 18 (1.22%) AWS Certification
9 18 (1.22%) OSCP
10 17 (1.15%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (1.08%) CISSP
12 15 (1.01%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 14 (0.95%) Azure Certification
13 14 (0.95%) Cisco Certification
13 14 (0.95%) MCP
14 13 (0.88%) CEH
15 12 (0.81%) GPEN
16 11 (0.74%) Oracle Certification
17 10 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 331 (22.40%) QA
2 109 (7.37%) Accessibility
3 68 (4.60%) Data Quality
4 34 (2.30%) WCAG
5 33 (2.23%) GDPR
5 33 (2.23%) NIST
6 19 (1.29%) NCSC
7 18 (1.22%) EU AI Act
8 17 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 14 (0.95%) PSD2
10 12 (0.81%) ISO 20022
11 10 (0.68%) PCI DSS
12 9 (0.61%) SEPA
13 8 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 6 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 6 (0.41%) SLA
15 5 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
15 5 (0.34%) MiFID
15 5 (0.34%) PERC
15 5 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 315 (21.31%) Docker
2 30 (2.03%) Active Directory
3 6 (0.41%) Firmware
4 5 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.20%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 3 (0.20%) ISA Server
5 3 (0.20%) QEMU
5 3 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
5 3 (0.20%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.20%) zsh
6 1 (0.068%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.068%) KVM
6 1 (0.068%) Squid
6 1 (0.068%) Time Sharing Option
6 1 (0.068%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.068%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 281 (19.01%) Kubernetes
2 178 (12.04%) Terraform
3 111 (7.51%) Ansible
4 72 (4.87%) Grafana
5 45 (3.04%) Prometheus
6 16 (1.08%) Nmap
7 15 (1.01%) Progress Chef
8 14 (0.95%) CSIRT
9 13 (0.88%) NetBackup
10 12 (0.81%) HP ALM
10 12 (0.81%) Puppet
11 10 (0.68%) Argo
11 10 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
12 7 (0.47%) Kibana
12 7 (0.47%) Nessus
13 6 (0.41%) Podman
14 4 (0.27%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 4 (0.27%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 4 (0.27%) Rancher
14 4 (0.27%) SCCM
Vendors
1 152 (10.28%) Oracle
2 149 (10.08%) Microsoft
3 63 (4.26%) Splunk
4 58 (3.92%) Databricks
5 55 (3.72%) ServiceNow
6 47 (3.18%) Salesforce
7 43 (2.91%) SAP
8 40 (2.71%) Google
9 29 (1.96%) Denodo
9 29 (1.96%) Talend
10 23 (1.56%) VMware
11 22 (1.49%) Cisco
11 22 (1.49%) F5
11 22 (1.49%) Red Hat
12 18 (1.22%) webMethods
13 17 (1.15%) IBM
13 17 (1.15%) MuleSoft
14 15 (1.01%) Atlassian
15 14 (0.95%) Dynatrace
15 14 (0.95%) Workday