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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 52 48
Rank change year-on-year +4 -4 +5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,956 1,256 1,316
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.28% 4.56% 3.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.05% 5.02% 4.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,251 870 882
10th Percentile £331 £313 £351
25th Percentile £410 £393 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -3.23%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £613
90th Percentile £665 £701 £736
UK median daily rate £476 £500 £507
% change year-on-year -4.90% -1.38% -3.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 103 34 22
10th Percentile £37.80 £41.34 £43.00
25th Percentile £59.13 £46.93 £50.31
Median hourly rate £69.00 £55.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.45% - -21.15%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.50 £69.84
90th Percentile £74.00 £73.05 £83.95
UK median hourly rate £69.25 £52.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +31.90% -4.55% -19.85%

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 38,747 25,016 28,488
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.82% 90.80% 85.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,944 15,923 18,325
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £753
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,579 1,477 1,517
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.23 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.80 £17.87 £18.13
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £69.79 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.06 £25.15 £40.50
% change year-on-year +63.26% -37.90% -4.71%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 +3 903 £500 -1.48% 663
North of England +3 394 £463 +1.70% 194
Midlands +9 244 £450 -1.10% 107
West Midlands +18 229 £450 -12.20% 64
South East -32 213 £459 -8.20% 186
Yorkshire -5 157 £463 -6.33% 49
North West -16 141 £492 +15.09% 105
South West -5 114 £475 +5.56% 195
North East +14 104 £450 +2.86% 41
East of England +14 77 £450 +10.77% 101
East Midlands -42 15 £418 +19.29% 43
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
1 167 (8.54%) Confluence
2 50 (2.56%) Apache Airflow
3 40 (2.04%) Apache Spark
4 39 (1.99%) SharePoint
5 30 (1.53%) SAS
6 21 (1.07%) Apache
7 13 (0.66%) CMS
8 10 (0.51%) WebLogic
9 9 (0.46%) Camunda
10 6 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
12 4 (0.20%) Jupyter
12 4 (0.20%) nginx
12 4 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.20%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.15%) Kentico
14 2 (0.10%) Anypoint
14 2 (0.10%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.10%) Mule
Applications
1 24 (1.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.77%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.31%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.26%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.20%) Simulink
7 3 (0.15%) Trello
8 2 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.051%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 27 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 15 (0.77%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.72%) Aladdin
4 13 (0.66%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.41%) Findur
6 7 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.31%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.26%) BambooHR
9 4 (0.20%) SAP GRC
9 4 (0.20%) Shopify
10 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
11 2 (0.10%) Infor CloudSuite
11 2 (0.10%) Infor LN
11 2 (0.10%) Infor M3
11 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
11 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
12 1 (0.051%) SAP QM
12 1 (0.051%) Summit
12 1 (0.051%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 595 (30.42%) Azure
2 587 (30.01%) AWS
3 354 (18.10%) GitHub
4 280 (14.31%) Azure DevOps
5 220 (11.25%) GitHub Actions
6 156 (7.98%) Serverless
7 150 (7.67%) GCP
8 113 (5.78%) AWS Lambda
9 95 (4.86%) Power Platform
10 87 (4.45%) Amazon S3
11 72 (3.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 65 (3.32%) Amazon ECS
13 63 (3.22%) OpenShift
14 57 (2.91%) dbt
15 53 (2.71%) Amazon EKS
16 51 (2.61%) GitHub Copilot
17 50 (2.56%) Snowflake
18 44 (2.25%) Amazon EC2
18 44 (2.25%) AWS CloudFormation
19 40 (2.04%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.07%) Firewall
1 21 (1.07%) HTTP
2 18 (0.92%) 4G
2 18 (0.92%) DNS
3 17 (0.87%) 5G
4 16 (0.82%) Network Security
5 15 (0.77%) 2G
5 15 (0.77%) 3G
5 15 (0.77%) Diameter Protocol
5 15 (0.77%) SIGTRAN
5 15 (0.77%) SS7
5 15 (0.77%) TCP/IP
5 15 (0.77%) WAN
6 12 (0.61%) LAN
7 11 (0.56%) SAN
7 11 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (0.51%) BGP
9 8 (0.41%) DHCP
9 8 (0.41%) Ethernet VPN
9 8 (0.41%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 113 (5.78%) PostgreSQL
2 111 (5.67%) Data Warehouse
3 101 (5.16%) NoSQL
4 91 (4.65%) MongoDB
5 85 (4.35%) SQL Server
6 81 (4.14%) Power BI
7 67 (3.43%) Relational Database
8 45 (2.30%) DynamoDB
9 34 (1.74%) Data Lake
9 34 (1.74%) Metadata
10 32 (1.64%) Oracle Reports
11 31 (1.58%) Amazon Athena
11 31 (1.58%) Big Data
12 29 (1.48%) Amazon Redshift
13 28 (1.43%) Pentaho
14 27 (1.38%) Amazon RDS
14 27 (1.38%) MySQL
15 26 (1.33%) Redis
16 24 (1.23%) Tableau
17 22 (1.12%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 391 (19.99%) Git
2 336 (17.18%) JIRA
3 312 (15.95%) Jenkins
4 267 (13.65%) GitLab
5 245 (12.53%) Selenium
6 130 (6.65%) Cucumber
6 130 (6.65%) Postman
7 104 (5.32%) JUnit
8 98 (5.01%) Cypress.io
9 86 (4.40%) REST Assured
10 77 (3.94%) JMeter
11 70 (3.58%) SonarQube
12 59 (3.02%) Zephyr
13 52 (2.66%) Gatling
14 51 (2.61%) WebDriver
15 47 (2.40%) Gradle
16 41 (2.10%) Bitbucket
17 37 (1.89%) Maven
18 33 (1.69%) Mockito
19 23 (1.18%) Appium
General
1 551 (28.17%) Social Skills
2 385 (19.68%) Finance
3 282 (14.42%) Analytical Skills
4 249 (12.73%) Public Sector
5 175 (8.95%) Banking
6 64 (3.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 40 (2.04%) Telecoms
8 38 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
9 32 (1.64%) Retail
10 30 (1.53%) Front Office
11 29 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (1.43%) Investment Banking
13 22 (1.12%) Financial Institution
14 21 (1.07%) Military
15 18 (0.92%) Aerospace
16 17 (0.87%) Back Office
17 15 (0.77%) Law
17 15 (0.77%) Legal
17 15 (0.77%) Marketing
18 13 (0.66%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 402 (20.55%) Developer
2 317 (16.21%) Senior
3 203 (10.38%) Lead
4 192 (9.82%) Test Engineer
5 158 (8.08%) Tester
6 121 (6.19%) Data Engineer
7 120 (6.13%) Java Developer
8 112 (5.73%) Software Engineer
9 104 (5.32%) Analyst
10 98 (5.01%) DevOps Engineer
11 88 (4.50%) Test Automation Engineer
12 87 (4.45%) Architect
12 87 (4.45%) QA Engineer
13 86 (4.40%) Senior Developer
14 70 (3.58%) Test Leader
15 67 (3.43%) Full-Stack Developer
16 64 (3.27%) Automation Engineer
17 63 (3.22%) Test Analyst
18 62 (3.17%) Java Engineer
19 60 (3.07%) Automation Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 290 (14.83%) Terraform
2 278 (14.21%) REST
3 217 (11.09%) Playwright
4 189 (9.66%) Kafka
5 185 (9.46%) RESTful
6 178 (9.10%) React
7 170 (8.69%) Spring
8 140 (7.16%) .NET
9 138 (7.06%) Spring Boot
10 108 (5.52%) HTML
11 99 (5.06%) Node.js
12 91 (4.65%) CSS
13 90 (4.60%) AngularJS
14 59 (3.02%) OAuth
15 54 (2.76%) JSON
16 49 (2.51%) XML
17 45 (2.30%) Gherkin
17 45 (2.30%) pytest
18 44 (2.25%) Jest
18 44 (2.25%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 298 (15.24%) Cloud Native
2 155 (7.92%) Product Ownership
3 142 (7.26%) Distributed Systems
4 77 (3.94%) Enterprise Software
5 56 (2.86%) Onboarding
6 50 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
7 47 (2.40%) Data Protection Act
8 46 (2.35%) Self-Motivation
9 41 (2.10%) Mobile App
10 38 (1.94%) AI Agents
11 32 (1.64%) Virtual Team
12 25 (1.28%) Embedded Systems
13 22 (1.12%) Security Posture
14 21 (1.07%) Distributed Architecture
15 20 (1.02%) Management Information System
16 18 (0.92%) Data Centre
16 18 (0.92%) Data Structures
17 17 (0.87%) Fixed Income
18 16 (0.82%) NHS
19 15 (0.77%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 139 (7.11%) Linux
2 88 (4.50%) Windows
3 80 (4.09%) Unix
4 36 (1.84%) Apple iOS
5 35 (1.79%) Android
6 26 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 18 (0.92%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
8 6 (0.31%) Solaris
9 5 (0.26%) Mac OS X
9 5 (0.26%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.26%) Windows 7
9 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.20%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.20%) VMS
10 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.15%) AIX
11 3 (0.15%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,154 (59.00%) CI/CD
2 913 (46.68%) Agile
3 751 (38.39%) DevOps
4 387 (19.79%) Problem-Solving
5 383 (19.58%) Continuous Improvement
6 372 (19.02%) Microservices
7 356 (18.20%) Software Engineering
8 328 (16.77%) Infrastructure as Code
9 323 (16.51%) Validation
10 320 (16.36%) Scrum
11 305 (15.59%) Test Strategy
12 291 (14.88%) AI
13 265 (13.55%) Containerisation
14 255 (13.04%) Observability
15 237 (12.12%) TDD
16 227 (11.61%) SDLC
17 220 (11.25%) Software Testing
18 213 (10.89%) Stakeholder Management
19 209 (10.69%) End-to-End Testing
20 196 (10.02%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 524 (26.79%) Python
2 509 (26.02%) Java
3 484 (24.74%) SQL
4 265 (13.55%) JavaScript
5 208 (10.63%) TypeScript
6 168 (8.59%) C#
7 101 (5.16%) PowerShell
8 76 (3.89%) Bash
9 49 (2.51%) Bicep
10 46 (2.35%) Kotlin
11 38 (1.94%) C++
12 28 (1.43%) C
13 27 (1.38%) Scala
14 26 (1.33%) PL/SQL
15 25 (1.28%) Go
16 23 (1.18%) Apex Code
17 18 (0.92%) Ruby
17 18 (0.92%) Shell Script
18 16 (0.82%) Groovy
18 16 (0.82%) Swift
Qualifications
1 624 (31.90%) Security Cleared
2 523 (26.74%) SC Cleared
3 107 (5.47%) Degree
4 91 (4.65%) ISTQB
5 62 (3.17%) BPSS Clearance
6 60 (3.07%) DV Cleared
7 57 (2.91%) Computer Science Degree
8 34 (1.74%) AWS Certification
9 26 (1.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 20 (1.02%) Azure Certification
11 17 (0.87%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 12 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
12 12 (0.61%) ISEB
12 12 (0.61%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 12 (0.61%) Master's Degree
13 11 (0.56%) SAFe Agilist
14 10 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
15 9 (0.46%) CISSP
16 8 (0.41%) CCNP
17 7 (0.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 517 (26.43%) QA
2 148 (7.57%) Accessibility
3 134 (6.85%) Data Quality
4 81 (4.14%) WCAG
5 38 (1.94%) GDPR
6 16 (0.82%) ISO 20022
7 14 (0.72%) NCSC
8 13 (0.66%) SLA
9 11 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 10 (0.51%) NIST
11 9 (0.46%) GRC
12 7 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
13 6 (0.31%) Software Quality Assurance
14 5 (0.26%) Def Stans
14 5 (0.26%) FATCA
14 5 (0.26%) HL7
14 5 (0.26%) PCI DSS
15 4 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 3 (0.15%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 3 (0.15%) MiFID
System Software
1 381 (19.48%) Docker
2 29 (1.48%) Active Directory
3 27 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.92%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (0.66%) Firmware
6 5 (0.26%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
7 4 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.051%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.051%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 381 (19.48%) Kubernetes
2 114 (5.83%) Ansible
3 103 (5.27%) Grafana
4 84 (4.29%) Prometheus
5 40 (2.04%) Argo
6 20 (1.02%) Puppet
7 19 (0.97%) Progress Chef
8 12 (0.61%) HP ALM
9 11 (0.56%) Kibana
9 11 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (0.51%) Control-M
11 9 (0.46%) Dell DRAC
12 7 (0.36%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.31%) Istio
13 6 (0.31%) Microsoft Intune
13 6 (0.31%) Packer
14 5 (0.26%) HP Fortify
14 5 (0.26%) SCCM
15 4 (0.20%) Forefront Identity Manager
15 4 (0.20%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 204 (10.43%) Microsoft
2 152 (7.77%) Oracle
3 80 (4.09%) Databricks
4 70 (3.58%) Salesforce
5 61 (3.12%) Red Hat
6 57 (2.91%) Google
7 51 (2.61%) Splunk
8 45 (2.30%) Talend
9 44 (2.25%) IBM
10 43 (2.20%) ServiceNow
11 37 (1.89%) SAP
12 35 (1.79%) Denodo
12 35 (1.79%) Dynatrace
13 33 (1.69%) Informatica
13 33 (1.69%) VMware
14 30 (1.53%) Cisco
15 26 (1.33%) UiPath
16 17 (0.87%) HP
17 11 (0.56%) Fortinet
17 11 (0.56%) MuleSoft