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

6 months to
28 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 58
Rank change year-on-year -1 +11 -12
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,697 1,124 1,297
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.47% 4.63% 3.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.18% 5.10% 3.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,130 776 877
10th Percentile £331 £334 £375
25th Percentile £400 £400 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.55% -4.76% -6.67%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £640
90th Percentile £675 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 9 55
10th Percentile £33.54 £41.66 £40.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.50 £56.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.42% -5.42% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.50 £80.63
90th Percentile - £75.84 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.50 £56.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +15.42% -5.42% -4.00%

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 32,731 22,028 32,675
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.21% 90.81% 86.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,968 14,519 21,584
10th Percentile £313 £313 £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 1,997 852 2,159
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.00 £20.30 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.00 £32.66 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.24% -1.05% -12.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.10 £71.75
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +7.69% - -9.72%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 +2 832 £500 - 183
North of England +5 337 £481 +7.49% 162
Midlands +9 192 £475 +0.32% 83
South East -25 177 £500 -9.09% 145
West Midlands +14 163 £480 -3.52% 57
North West +7 151 £450 - 82
Yorkshire -7 142 £500 +5.26% 41
South West -2 79 £488 -7.14% 72
East of England +1 61 £570 +16.33% 65
North East +10 47 £425 +8.97% 39
East Midlands -24 29 £400 +8.55% 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
1 116 (6.84%) Confluence
2 62 (3.65%) SAS
3 26 (1.53%) Apache Spark
4 17 (1.00%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.77%) SharePoint
6 9 (0.53%) Apache
7 8 (0.47%) Appian
8 6 (0.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.29%) Camunda
9 5 (0.29%) CMS
10 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.24%) nginx
11 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.18%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.12%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
12 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.65%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.41%) 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 (1.30%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.35%) Findur
2 6 (0.35%) Loan IQ
2 6 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.29%) Maximo
3 5 (0.29%) Shopify
3 5 (0.29%) Workday HCM
4 4 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.24%) SAP HR
5 3 (0.18%) BambooHR
5 3 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.12%) iTrent
6 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.12%) Summit
7 1 (0.059%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle EBS R12
7 1 (0.059%) PORTIA
7 1 (0.059%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 469 (27.64%) Azure
2 414 (24.40%) AWS
3 286 (16.85%) GitHub
4 211 (12.43%) Azure DevOps
5 155 (9.13%) GitHub Actions
6 150 (8.84%) GCP
7 116 (6.84%) Serverless
8 75 (4.42%) OpenShift
9 59 (3.48%) AWS Lambda
10 54 (3.18%) Power Platform
11 53 (3.12%) Amazon S3
12 42 (2.47%) Azure AKS
13 33 (1.94%) Amazon ECS
13 33 (1.94%) Azure Data Factory
13 33 (1.94%) Snowflake
14 32 (1.89%) AWS CloudFormation
15 30 (1.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 29 (1.71%) SaaS
17 26 (1.53%) Azure Functions
18 25 (1.47%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.59%) Firewall
2 16 (0.94%) VPN
3 15 (0.88%) TCP/IP
4 14 (0.82%) HTTP
5 13 (0.77%) SD-WAN
5 13 (0.77%) WAN
6 11 (0.65%) Network Security
6 11 (0.65%) Wireshark
7 10 (0.59%) SSL
8 9 (0.53%) Ethernet
9 8 (0.47%) DNS
9 8 (0.47%) HTTPS
9 8 (0.47%) MPLS
9 8 (0.47%) Multicast
9 8 (0.47%) SAN
10 7 (0.41%) FTP
11 6 (0.35%) 5G
12 5 (0.29%) AMQP
12 5 (0.29%) Cisco IPT
12 5 (0.29%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 95 (5.60%) PostgreSQL
2 72 (4.24%) SQL Server
3 68 (4.01%) NoSQL
4 59 (3.48%) MongoDB
5 53 (3.12%) Relational Database
6 46 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
7 33 (1.94%) DynamoDB
8 31 (1.83%) Pentaho
9 29 (1.71%) Power BI
10 25 (1.47%) BigQuery
11 24 (1.41%) Oracle Database
12 23 (1.36%) MySQL
12 23 (1.36%) Tableau
13 21 (1.24%) Redis
14 17 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
15 16 (0.94%) Oracle Reports
16 14 (0.82%) Metadata
17 13 (0.77%) Amazon Athena
17 13 (0.77%) Azure SQL Database
18 12 (0.71%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 324 (19.09%) Git
1 324 (19.09%) JIRA
2 316 (18.62%) Jenkins
3 246 (14.50%) GitLab
3 246 (14.50%) Selenium
4 140 (8.25%) Cucumber
5 130 (7.66%) Postman
6 107 (6.31%) JUnit
7 93 (5.48%) Cypress.io
8 83 (4.89%) REST Assured
9 76 (4.48%) JMeter
10 43 (2.53%) SonarQube
11 41 (2.42%) WebDriver
12 37 (2.18%) SpecFlow
13 34 (2.00%) Maven
14 31 (1.83%) Zephyr
15 30 (1.77%) Bitbucket
15 30 (1.77%) Gatling
15 30 (1.77%) Gradle
15 30 (1.77%) TestRail
General
1 471 (27.75%) Social Skills
2 302 (17.80%) Finance
3 242 (14.26%) Public Sector
4 184 (10.84%) Analytical Skills
5 146 (8.60%) Banking
6 34 (2.00%) Documentation Skills
7 30 (1.77%) Investment Banking
8 28 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 27 (1.59%) Front Office
10 23 (1.36%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
12 19 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
13 16 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
14 15 (0.88%) Aerospace
14 15 (0.88%) Pharmaceutical
15 14 (0.82%) Financial Institution
15 14 (0.82%) Legal
16 13 (0.77%) Military
17 10 (0.59%) Electronics
17 10 (0.59%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 356 (20.98%) Developer
2 279 (16.44%) Senior
3 191 (11.26%) Lead
4 185 (10.90%) Test Engineer
5 183 (10.78%) Tester
6 91 (5.36%) Java Developer
7 89 (5.24%) Analyst
8 87 (5.13%) Automation Tester
9 85 (5.01%) Data Engineer
10 83 (4.89%) Test Automation Engineer
11 80 (4.71%) Software Engineer
12 72 (4.24%) Test Leader
13 71 (4.18%) QA Engineer
14 67 (3.95%) Senior Developer
15 63 (3.71%) DevOps Engineer
16 61 (3.59%) Architect
17 55 (3.24%) Test Analyst
18 53 (3.12%) Automation Engineer
19 51 (3.01%) Test Manager
20 43 (2.53%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 215 (12.67%) REST
2 194 (11.43%) Playwright
3 142 (8.37%) React
4 136 (8.01%) Spring
5 131 (7.72%) RESTful
6 119 (7.01%) .NET
7 118 (6.95%) Kafka
8 117 (6.89%) Node.js
9 107 (6.31%) Spring Boot
10 78 (4.60%) pytest
11 71 (4.18%) AngularJS
12 53 (3.12%) HTML
13 51 (3.01%) OAuth
14 50 (2.95%) Jest
15 49 (2.89%) CSS
16 38 (2.24%) Web Services
17 36 (2.12%) GraphQL
18 35 (2.06%) WireMock
19 33 (1.94%) JSON
19 33 (1.94%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 175 (10.31%) Cloud Native
2 110 (6.48%) Product Ownership
3 89 (5.24%) Distributed Systems
4 45 (2.65%) Mobile App
5 41 (2.42%) Algorithms
6 40 (2.36%) Data Protection Act
7 38 (2.24%) Legacy Systems
8 30 (1.77%) Self-Motivation
9 28 (1.65%) Onboarding
9 28 (1.65%) Virtual Team
10 26 (1.53%) Security Posture
11 25 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
12 23 (1.36%) Data Structures
13 22 (1.30%) Equities
14 21 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
14 21 (1.24%) Management Information System
15 20 (1.18%) Distributed Architecture
16 19 (1.12%) NHS
17 18 (1.06%) Public Cloud
18 15 (0.88%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 129 (7.60%) Linux
2 82 (4.83%) Windows
3 46 (2.71%) Android
4 36 (2.12%) Apple iOS
5 31 (1.83%) Unix
6 19 (1.12%) Windows Server
7 15 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (0.65%) Mac OS X
9 8 (0.47%) Kali Linux
10 7 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.24%) CentOS
11 4 (0.24%) Solaris
12 3 (0.18%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.12%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.059%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.059%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.059%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 879 (51.80%) CI/CD
2 803 (47.32%) Agile
3 628 (37.01%) DevOps
4 412 (24.28%) Problem-Solving
5 275 (16.21%) Continuous Improvement
6 271 (15.97%) Microservices
7 259 (15.26%) Test Strategy
8 243 (14.32%) Scrum
9 235 (13.85%) Containerisation
10 215 (12.67%) AI
10 215 (12.67%) Software Engineering
11 209 (12.32%) Validation
12 207 (12.20%) Infrastructure as Code
13 206 (12.14%) Test Scripting
14 195 (11.49%) TDD
15 191 (11.26%) Analytics
16 189 (11.14%) Observability
17 183 (10.78%) Software Testing
18 175 (10.31%) Regression Testing
19 172 (10.14%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 515 (30.35%) Python
2 416 (24.51%) Java
3 365 (21.51%) SQL
4 241 (14.20%) JavaScript
5 236 (13.91%) TypeScript
6 173 (10.19%) C#
7 72 (4.24%) PowerShell
8 61 (3.59%) Bash
9 48 (2.83%) C++
10 31 (1.83%) C
11 29 (1.71%) Kotlin
12 26 (1.53%) Go
13 24 (1.41%) Apex Code
13 24 (1.41%) Bicep
14 22 (1.30%) PL/SQL
15 19 (1.12%) Ruby
16 18 (1.06%) Scala
17 17 (1.00%) Swift
18 15 (0.88%) Groovy
19 12 (0.71%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 508 (29.94%) Security Cleared
2 388 (22.86%) SC Cleared
3 87 (5.13%) Degree
4 80 (4.71%) ISTQB
5 61 (3.59%) BPSS Clearance
6 57 (3.36%) DV Cleared
7 51 (3.01%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (1.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 22 (1.30%) Master's Degree
10 14 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
11 12 (0.71%) Azure Certification
12 11 (0.65%) OSCP
13 10 (0.59%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 9 (0.53%) AWS Certification
14 9 (0.53%) CCNP
14 9 (0.53%) CEH
14 9 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
15 8 (0.47%) CISSP
15 8 (0.47%) ISEB
16 7 (0.41%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 384 (22.63%) QA
2 114 (6.72%) Accessibility
3 96 (5.66%) Data Quality
4 43 (2.53%) WCAG
5 30 (1.77%) GDPR
6 20 (1.18%) NIST
7 15 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 15 (0.88%) NCSC
8 10 (0.59%) Def Stans
8 10 (0.59%) EU AI Act
8 10 (0.59%) ISO 20022
8 10 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 10 (0.59%) SLA
9 8 (0.47%) PSD2
10 6 (0.35%) SEPA
10 6 (0.35%) SOC 2
11 5 (0.29%) HL7
11 5 (0.29%) MiFID
11 5 (0.29%) PCI DSS
11 5 (0.29%) PERC
System Software
1 330 (19.45%) Docker
2 26 (1.53%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.65%) Firmware
4 8 (0.47%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (0.41%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 6 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
7 4 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
9 2 (0.12%) SRDF
10 1 (0.059%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.059%) KVM
10 1 (0.059%) Squid
10 1 (0.059%) Time Sharing Option
10 1 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 332 (19.56%) Kubernetes
2 193 (11.37%) Terraform
3 104 (6.13%) Grafana
4 90 (5.30%) Ansible
5 81 (4.77%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.53%) Argo
7 20 (1.18%) Puppet
8 18 (1.06%) HP ALM
9 14 (0.82%) Progress Chef
10 11 (0.65%) NetBackup
10 11 (0.65%) Nmap
10 11 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.59%) HP Quality Center
12 9 (0.53%) Forefront Identity Manager
12 9 (0.53%) NetIQ Identity Manager
13 7 (0.41%) Kibana
14 6 (0.35%) Rancher
15 5 (0.29%) Dell DRAC
15 5 (0.29%) Podman
16 4 (0.24%) Istio
Vendors
1 144 (8.49%) Microsoft
2 142 (8.37%) Oracle
3 63 (3.71%) Databricks
4 60 (3.54%) Salesforce
5 57 (3.36%) Splunk
6 52 (3.06%) Google
6 52 (3.06%) ServiceNow
7 46 (2.71%) Red Hat
8 40 (2.36%) SAP
9 36 (2.12%) Talend
10 27 (1.59%) Denodo
11 21 (1.24%) HP
11 21 (1.24%) IBM
11 21 (1.24%) VMware
12 20 (1.18%) Cisco
13 19 (1.12%) Dynatrace
14 16 (0.94%) MuleSoft
15 15 (0.88%) Workday
16 14 (0.82%) OpenAI
17 13 (0.77%) UiPath