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 6 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 46 59
Rank change year-on-year -2 +13 -12
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,682 1,128 1,259
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.35% 4.63% 3.37%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.07% 5.09% 3.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,124 777 842
10th Percentile £331 £337 £363
25th Percentile £402 £400 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.58% -4.76% -5.91%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £639
90th Percentile £676 £725 £737
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 72 9 52
10th Percentile £34.35 £41.66 £38.25
25th Percentile £54.89 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.50 £56.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.42% +3.18% -12.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.50 £78.75
90th Percentile - £75.84 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.50 £53.38 £55.00
% change year-on-year +22.72% -2.95% -12.00%

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 33,181 22,150 32,359
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.82% 90.86% 86.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,274 14,593 21,355
10th Percentile £313 £311 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £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 2,050 865 2,166
10th Percentile £15.49 £14.99 £12.89
25th Percentile £19.48 £19.00 £15.85
Median hourly rate £37.50 £32.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.38% -1.52% -13.95%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.95 £70.44
UK median hourly rate £35.91 £31.58 £32.50
% change year-on-year +13.71% -2.83% -13.33%

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 6 April 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 6 April 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 6 April 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 +1 823 £500 - 183
North of England +2 325 £475 +5.56% 162
Midlands +3 197 £471 -1.26% 83
South East -26 179 £505 -2.42% 145
West Midlands +18 169 £475 -6.40% 57
North West +6 141 £464 +3.06% 82
Yorkshire -7 139 £500 +3.90% 41
South West +2 83 £475 -9.52% 72
East of England +1 56 £620 +26.53% 65
North East +6 48 £425 +8.97% 39
East Midlands -27 28 £400 -0.93% 26
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
1 109 (6.48%) Confluence
2 66 (3.92%) SAS
3 23 (1.37%) Apache Spark
4 20 (1.19%) Apache Airflow
5 14 (0.83%) SharePoint
6 9 (0.54%) Apache
7 8 (0.48%) Appian
8 6 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.36%) Camunda
8 6 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.30%) CMS
9 5 (0.30%) nginx
10 4 (0.24%) Tomcat
11 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
12 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 27 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.65%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.18%) Simulink
7 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.059%) Mingle
8 1 (0.059%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.31%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.42%) Findur
3 6 (0.36%) Loan IQ
3 6 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
3 6 (0.36%) Shopify
4 5 (0.30%) Maximo
5 4 (0.24%) BambooHR
5 4 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (0.24%) Workday HCM
6 3 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
7 2 (0.12%) iTrent
7 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.12%) SAP HR
7 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
7 2 (0.12%) Summit
8 1 (0.059%) CODA-Financials
8 1 (0.059%) Oracle ERP
8 1 (0.059%) PORTIA
8 1 (0.059%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 455 (27.05%) Azure
2 407 (24.20%) AWS
3 275 (16.35%) GitHub
4 208 (12.37%) Azure DevOps
5 153 (9.10%) GitHub Actions
6 131 (7.79%) GCP
7 108 (6.42%) Serverless
8 76 (4.52%) OpenShift
9 58 (3.45%) AWS Lambda
10 53 (3.15%) Amazon S3
10 53 (3.15%) Power Platform
11 37 (2.20%) Azure AKS
12 35 (2.08%) Snowflake
13 33 (1.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 33 (1.96%) Amazon ECS
13 33 (1.96%) Azure Data Factory
14 31 (1.84%) AWS CloudFormation
15 27 (1.61%) Azure Monitor
15 27 (1.61%) SaaS
16 26 (1.55%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.37%) Firewall
2 15 (0.89%) HTTP
3 12 (0.71%) TCP/IP
4 11 (0.65%) VPN
5 10 (0.59%) Network Security
5 10 (0.59%) SSL
6 9 (0.54%) Ethernet
6 9 (0.54%) FTP
6 9 (0.54%) SAN
6 9 (0.54%) Wireshark
7 8 (0.48%) MPLS
7 8 (0.48%) SD-WAN
7 8 (0.48%) WAN
8 7 (0.42%) HTTPS
8 7 (0.42%) Multicast
9 6 (0.36%) 5G
9 6 (0.36%) DNS
10 5 (0.30%) AMQP
10 5 (0.30%) Cisco IPT
10 5 (0.30%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 91 (5.41%) PostgreSQL
2 73 (4.34%) SQL Server
3 67 (3.98%) NoSQL
4 59 (3.51%) MongoDB
5 52 (3.09%) Relational Database
6 50 (2.97%) Data Warehouse
7 35 (2.08%) DynamoDB
8 32 (1.90%) Pentaho
9 28 (1.66%) Power BI
10 25 (1.49%) BigQuery
11 24 (1.43%) Oracle Database
11 24 (1.43%) Tableau
12 23 (1.37%) MySQL
13 21 (1.25%) Redis
14 19 (1.13%) Oracle Reports
15 17 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
16 15 (0.89%) Metadata
17 14 (0.83%) SAS Enterprise Guide
18 13 (0.77%) Amazon Athena
18 13 (0.77%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 328 (19.50%) Git
2 320 (19.02%) JIRA
3 296 (17.60%) Jenkins
4 251 (14.92%) Selenium
5 228 (13.56%) GitLab
6 134 (7.97%) Cucumber
6 134 (7.97%) Postman
7 109 (6.48%) JUnit
8 87 (5.17%) Cypress.io
9 86 (5.11%) REST Assured
10 74 (4.40%) JMeter
11 42 (2.50%) WebDriver
12 41 (2.44%) SonarQube
13 35 (2.08%) Maven
13 35 (2.08%) Zephyr
14 34 (2.02%) SpecFlow
15 31 (1.84%) Gradle
16 30 (1.78%) TestRail
17 29 (1.72%) Mockito
18 26 (1.55%) Bitbucket
General
1 467 (27.76%) Social Skills
2 300 (17.84%) Finance
3 239 (14.21%) Public Sector
4 178 (10.58%) Analytical Skills
5 143 (8.50%) Banking
6 35 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
7 29 (1.72%) Front Office
7 29 (1.72%) Investment Banking
8 24 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 24 (1.43%) Telecoms
9 21 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
10 19 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
11 17 (1.01%) Legal
12 16 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
13 15 (0.89%) Aerospace
14 13 (0.77%) Financial Institution
15 11 (0.65%) Military
15 11 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
16 10 (0.59%) Publishing
16 10 (0.59%) Retail
Job Titles
1 352 (20.93%) Developer
2 264 (15.70%) Senior
3 187 (11.12%) Lead
4 185 (11.00%) Tester
5 175 (10.40%) Test Engineer
6 93 (5.53%) Java Developer
7 90 (5.35%) Analyst
8 85 (5.05%) Automation Tester
8 85 (5.05%) Data Engineer
9 80 (4.76%) Test Automation Engineer
10 72 (4.28%) QA Engineer
10 72 (4.28%) Software Engineer
11 67 (3.98%) Senior Developer
11 67 (3.98%) Test Leader
12 63 (3.75%) Architect
13 62 (3.69%) DevOps Engineer
14 55 (3.27%) Test Analyst
15 52 (3.09%) Automation Engineer
16 51 (3.03%) Test Manager
17 45 (2.68%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 214 (12.72%) REST
2 184 (10.94%) Playwright
3 144 (8.56%) React
4 135 (8.03%) Spring
5 125 (7.43%) RESTful
6 115 (6.84%) Kafka
7 114 (6.78%) .NET
8 113 (6.72%) Node.js
9 106 (6.30%) Spring Boot
10 77 (4.58%) pytest
11 70 (4.16%) AngularJS
12 51 (3.03%) OAuth
13 50 (2.97%) HTML
14 49 (2.91%) Jest
15 46 (2.73%) CSS
16 38 (2.26%) Web Services
17 34 (2.02%) GraphQL
17 34 (2.02%) JSON
17 34 (2.02%) WireMock
18 33 (1.96%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 170 (10.11%) Cloud Native
2 110 (6.54%) Product Ownership
3 85 (5.05%) Distributed Systems
4 47 (2.79%) Mobile App
5 38 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
5 38 (2.26%) Legacy Systems
6 35 (2.08%) Algorithms
7 31 (1.84%) Self-Motivation
8 30 (1.78%) Virtual Team
9 29 (1.72%) Onboarding
10 28 (1.66%) Security Posture
11 26 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
12 22 (1.31%) Data Structures
12 22 (1.31%) Management Information System
13 21 (1.25%) Equities
14 19 (1.13%) Distributed Architecture
14 19 (1.13%) NHS
15 18 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
16 17 (1.01%) Fixed Income
17 15 (0.89%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 124 (7.37%) Linux
2 83 (4.93%) Windows
3 47 (2.79%) Android
4 39 (2.32%) Apple iOS
5 34 (2.02%) Unix
6 19 (1.13%) Windows Server
7 15 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.77%) Mac OS X
9 7 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.36%) Kali Linux
11 5 (0.30%) Solaris
12 4 (0.24%) CentOS
12 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.18%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.059%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.059%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.059%) VMS
14 1 (0.059%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 871 (51.78%) CI/CD
2 788 (46.85%) Agile
3 613 (36.44%) DevOps
4 399 (23.72%) Problem-Solving
5 272 (16.17%) Continuous Improvement
6 263 (15.64%) Microservices
7 255 (15.16%) Test Strategy
8 239 (14.21%) Scrum
9 227 (13.50%) Containerisation
10 222 (13.20%) Validation
11 205 (12.19%) AI
11 205 (12.19%) Infrastructure as Code
11 205 (12.19%) Test Scripting
12 197 (11.71%) Software Engineering
13 195 (11.59%) TDD
14 194 (11.53%) Analytics
14 194 (11.53%) Observability
15 176 (10.46%) Regression Testing
16 175 (10.40%) Software Testing
17 174 (10.34%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 490 (29.13%) Python
2 416 (24.73%) Java
3 377 (22.41%) SQL
4 231 (13.73%) JavaScript
5 223 (13.26%) TypeScript
6 170 (10.11%) C#
7 72 (4.28%) PowerShell
8 59 (3.51%) Bash
9 46 (2.73%) C++
10 32 (1.90%) C
11 29 (1.72%) Kotlin
12 25 (1.49%) Apex Code
13 24 (1.43%) Bicep
14 23 (1.37%) PL/SQL
15 21 (1.25%) Go
16 19 (1.13%) Ruby
17 18 (1.07%) Scala
17 18 (1.07%) Swift
18 14 (0.83%) Groovy
19 12 (0.71%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 520 (30.92%) Security Cleared
2 400 (23.78%) SC Cleared
3 85 (5.05%) ISTQB
4 81 (4.82%) Degree
5 61 (3.63%) BPSS Clearance
6 59 (3.51%) DV Cleared
7 48 (2.85%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (1.49%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 19 (1.13%) Master's Degree
10 15 (0.89%) Cisco Certification
11 12 (0.71%) Azure Certification
12 10 (0.59%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 9 (0.54%) AWS Certification
13 9 (0.54%) CCNP
13 9 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
13 9 (0.54%) OSCP
14 8 (0.48%) CISSP
14 8 (0.48%) ISEB
15 7 (0.42%) CEH
15 7 (0.42%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 379 (22.53%) QA
2 101 (6.00%) Accessibility
3 100 (5.95%) Data Quality
4 43 (2.56%) WCAG
5 34 (2.02%) GDPR
6 16 (0.95%) NIST
7 15 (0.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 14 (0.83%) NCSC
9 12 (0.71%) ISO 20022
10 10 (0.59%) Def Stans
10 10 (0.59%) SLA
11 9 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.48%) PSD2
13 7 (0.42%) SEPA
14 6 (0.36%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.30%) EU AI Act
15 5 (0.30%) HL7
15 5 (0.30%) PCI DSS
15 5 (0.30%) PERC
15 5 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 324 (19.26%) Docker
2 25 (1.49%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.65%) Firmware
4 10 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (0.42%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 7 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
6 6 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
8 4 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
9 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.12%) SRDF
11 1 (0.059%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.059%) KVM
11 1 (0.059%) Squid
11 1 (0.059%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.059%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 325 (19.32%) Kubernetes
2 193 (11.47%) Terraform
3 94 (5.59%) Grafana
4 76 (4.52%) Ansible
5 74 (4.40%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.55%) Argo
7 19 (1.13%) HP ALM
8 17 (1.01%) Puppet
9 13 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.71%) Progress Chef
11 10 (0.59%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.59%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.59%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 9 (0.54%) NetBackup
12 9 (0.54%) Nmap
13 6 (0.36%) Kibana
13 6 (0.36%) Rancher
14 5 (0.30%) Dell DRAC
15 4 (0.24%) Istio
15 4 (0.24%) Podman
Vendors
1 151 (8.98%) Oracle
2 144 (8.56%) Microsoft
3 62 (3.69%) Databricks
4 61 (3.63%) Salesforce
5 52 (3.09%) ServiceNow
6 50 (2.97%) Splunk
7 47 (2.79%) Google
8 46 (2.73%) Red Hat
9 38 (2.26%) SAP
9 38 (2.26%) Talend
10 32 (1.90%) Denodo
11 23 (1.37%) IBM
11 23 (1.37%) VMware
12 22 (1.31%) HP
13 18 (1.07%) Dynatrace
14 17 (1.01%) Cisco
15 16 (0.95%) MuleSoft
16 14 (0.83%) OpenAI
16 14 (0.83%) Workday
17 13 (0.77%) Informatica