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

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 47 59
Rank change year-on-year -2 +12 -10
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,693 1,121 1,254
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.18% 4.60% 3.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.93% 5.04% 3.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,109 771 823
10th Percentile £330 £338 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £638
90th Percentile £668 £738 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £510
% change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 17 53
10th Percentile £36.32 £38.50 £50.25
25th Percentile £54.55 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £82.50
90th Percentile - £71.30 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £52.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +23.81% -12.50% -6.80%

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 34,370 22,228 32,118
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.91% 91.19% 86.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,972 14,556 21,057
10th Percentile £316 £309 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,137 921 2,257
10th Percentile £15.34 £14.70 £12.97
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £30.00 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -16.67% -3.59%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.50
% change year-on-year +43.29% -18.31% -1.39%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 0 829 £500 -2.44% 188
North of England +12 333 £469 +4.28% 146
Midlands +1 184 £449 -3.03% 77
South East -41 171 £500 -2.44% 119
West Midlands +16 158 £463 -6.57% 53
North West +13 146 £464 +3.06% 67
Yorkshire -7 141 £490 +3.11% 40
South West +9 92 £475 -5.00% 60
East of England +2 58 £522 +6.58% 64
North East +7 51 £419 +6.01% 39
East Midlands -35 26 £400 -9.86% 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
1 122 (7.21%) Confluence
2 40 (2.36%) SAS
3 34 (2.01%) Apache Spark
4 29 (1.71%) Apache Airflow
5 12 (0.71%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.65%) Apache
7 8 (0.47%) Appian
8 6 (0.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.35%) Camunda
9 4 (0.24%) CMS
9 4 (0.24%) nginx
9 4 (0.24%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
12 1 (0.059%) CICS
12 1 (0.059%) Ethereum
12 1 (0.059%) OpenStack
Applications
1 23 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.59%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.18%) Simulink
7 1 (0.059%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.059%) Mingle
7 1 (0.059%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 19 (1.12%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.47%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (0.41%) Findur
3 7 (0.41%) Shopify
4 6 (0.35%) Loan IQ
5 5 (0.30%) BambooHR
5 5 (0.30%) Maximo
5 5 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
6 3 (0.18%) SAP ERP
6 3 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
7 2 (0.12%) iTrent
7 2 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 2 (0.12%) Summit
7 2 (0.12%) Workday HCM
8 1 (0.059%) Cloudability
8 1 (0.059%) Infor CloudSuite
8 1 (0.059%) Infor LN
8 1 (0.059%) Oracle ERP
8 1 (0.059%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 461 (27.23%) Azure
2 446 (26.34%) AWS
3 270 (15.95%) GitHub
4 208 (12.29%) Azure DevOps
5 153 (9.04%) GitHub Actions
6 120 (7.09%) GCP
7 114 (6.73%) Serverless
8 72 (4.25%) AWS Lambda
9 68 (4.02%) Amazon S3
10 58 (3.43%) OpenShift
11 50 (2.95%) Power Platform
12 48 (2.84%) Amazon ECS
13 43 (2.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 37 (2.19%) AWS CloudFormation
14 37 (2.19%) Azure AKS
15 34 (2.01%) Azure Data Factory
15 34 (2.01%) Snowflake
16 32 (1.89%) Amazon EKS
17 27 (1.59%) Azure Monitor
18 26 (1.54%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.36%) Firewall
2 14 (0.83%) HTTP
3 13 (0.77%) SAN
4 11 (0.65%) TCP/IP
4 11 (0.65%) VPN
5 9 (0.53%) Ethernet
5 9 (0.53%) WAN
6 8 (0.47%) FTP
6 8 (0.47%) MPLS
6 8 (0.47%) SD-WAN
7 7 (0.41%) SSL
7 7 (0.41%) Wireshark
8 6 (0.35%) Multicast
8 6 (0.35%) VLAN
9 5 (0.30%) AMQP
9 5 (0.30%) Cisco IPT
9 5 (0.30%) DNS
9 5 (0.30%) HTTPS
9 5 (0.30%) Network Security
9 5 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (5.49%) PostgreSQL
2 80 (4.73%) NoSQL
3 79 (4.67%) SQL Server
4 68 (4.02%) MongoDB
5 65 (3.84%) Data Warehouse
6 53 (3.13%) Relational Database
7 40 (2.36%) DynamoDB
8 36 (2.13%) Power BI
9 32 (1.89%) Pentaho
10 25 (1.48%) Oracle Reports
10 25 (1.48%) Tableau
11 23 (1.36%) MySQL
11 23 (1.36%) Redis
12 21 (1.24%) Big Data
12 21 (1.24%) BigQuery
13 19 (1.12%) Amazon Athena
13 19 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
13 19 (1.12%) Data Lake
14 18 (1.06%) Metadata
15 16 (0.95%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 321 (18.96%) JIRA
2 314 (18.55%) Git
3 277 (16.36%) Jenkins
4 233 (13.76%) Selenium
5 225 (13.29%) GitLab
6 133 (7.86%) Postman
7 126 (7.44%) Cucumber
8 91 (5.38%) JUnit
9 82 (4.84%) Cypress.io
10 73 (4.31%) REST Assured
11 70 (4.13%) JMeter
12 47 (2.78%) WebDriver
13 44 (2.60%) SonarQube
14 41 (2.42%) Zephyr
15 34 (2.01%) Gradle
15 34 (2.01%) Maven
16 31 (1.83%) SpecFlow
17 30 (1.77%) Bitbucket
18 27 (1.59%) Mockito
19 26 (1.54%) Gatling
General
1 453 (26.76%) Social Skills
2 309 (18.25%) Finance
3 231 (13.64%) Public Sector
4 199 (11.75%) Analytical Skills
5 149 (8.80%) Banking
6 40 (2.36%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 31 (1.83%) Investment Banking
9 26 (1.54%) Front Office
10 25 (1.48%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
12 20 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
13 19 (1.12%) Legal
14 17 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
15 15 (0.89%) Aerospace
16 13 (0.77%) Financial Institution
16 13 (0.77%) Retail
17 11 (0.65%) Back Office
17 11 (0.65%) Electronics
18 10 (0.59%) Military
Job Titles
1 362 (21.38%) Developer
2 258 (15.24%) Senior
3 187 (11.05%) Tester
4 178 (10.51%) Lead
5 176 (10.40%) Test Engineer
6 101 (5.97%) Java Developer
7 99 (5.85%) Data Engineer
8 90 (5.32%) Analyst
9 88 (5.20%) Test Automation Engineer
10 86 (5.08%) Automation Tester
11 77 (4.55%) Software Engineer
12 72 (4.25%) QA Engineer
13 68 (4.02%) Architect
13 68 (4.02%) Senior Developer
14 67 (3.96%) Test Leader
15 63 (3.72%) DevOps Engineer
16 56 (3.31%) Full-Stack Developer
17 52 (3.07%) Test Analyst
17 52 (3.07%) Test Manager
18 50 (2.95%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 190 (11.22%) Playwright
2 187 (11.05%) REST
3 147 (8.68%) React
4 133 (7.86%) Spring
5 119 (7.03%) Kafka
5 119 (7.03%) RESTful
6 115 (6.79%) .NET
6 115 (6.79%) Node.js
7 108 (6.38%) Spring Boot
8 75 (4.43%) AngularJS
9 61 (3.60%) HTML
10 55 (3.25%) pytest
11 53 (3.13%) CSS
12 48 (2.84%) OAuth
13 47 (2.78%) Jest
14 34 (2.01%) Gherkin
15 33 (1.95%) GraphQL
16 32 (1.89%) OpenID
17 30 (1.77%) OAuth2
17 30 (1.77%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 184 (10.87%) Cloud Native
2 118 (6.97%) Product Ownership
3 90 (5.32%) Distributed Systems
4 43 (2.54%) Data Protection Act
4 43 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
5 42 (2.48%) Mobile App
6 30 (1.77%) Virtual Team
7 27 (1.59%) Algorithms
7 27 (1.59%) Onboarding
7 27 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
8 23 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
8 23 (1.36%) Management Information System
9 21 (1.24%) Distributed Architecture
9 21 (1.24%) Security Posture
10 20 (1.18%) Data Centre
11 19 (1.12%) Data Structures
12 18 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
12 18 (1.06%) NHS
13 17 (1.00%) Equities
13 17 (1.00%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 116 (6.85%) Linux
2 78 (4.61%) Windows
3 40 (2.36%) Android
4 38 (2.24%) Unix
5 32 (1.89%) Apple iOS
6 18 (1.06%) Windows Server
7 16 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.77%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.53%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.30%) Solaris
11 4 (0.24%) CentOS
11 4 (0.24%) Embedded Linux
11 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.18%) AIX
12 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.12%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.059%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.059%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.059%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 876 (51.74%) CI/CD
2 780 (46.07%) Agile
3 606 (35.79%) DevOps
4 360 (21.26%) Problem-Solving
5 279 (16.48%) Microservices
6 274 (16.18%) Continuous Improvement
7 242 (14.29%) Scrum
8 239 (14.12%) Test Strategy
9 223 (13.17%) Infrastructure as Code
10 220 (12.99%) Containerisation
10 220 (12.99%) Validation
11 215 (12.70%) Software Engineering
12 198 (11.70%) AI
13 196 (11.58%) Observability
14 189 (11.16%) TDD
15 186 (10.99%) Test Scripting
16 170 (10.04%) Software Testing
17 168 (9.92%) Regression Testing
18 167 (9.86%) SDLC
18 167 (9.86%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 454 (26.82%) Python
2 429 (25.34%) Java
3 388 (22.92%) SQL
4 238 (14.06%) JavaScript
5 228 (13.47%) TypeScript
6 175 (10.34%) C#
7 68 (4.02%) PowerShell
8 52 (3.07%) Bash
9 44 (2.60%) C++
10 34 (2.01%) Kotlin
11 32 (1.89%) C
12 25 (1.48%) Apex Code
12 25 (1.48%) Scala
13 24 (1.42%) Bicep
14 23 (1.36%) PL/SQL
15 22 (1.30%) Go
16 18 (1.06%) Ruby
17 14 (0.83%) Swift
18 13 (0.77%) Groovy
19 10 (0.59%) Ada
Qualifications
1 523 (30.89%) Security Cleared
2 405 (23.92%) SC Cleared
3 77 (4.55%) ISTQB
4 76 (4.49%) Degree
5 62 (3.66%) DV Cleared
6 57 (3.37%) BPSS Clearance
7 44 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
8 16 (0.95%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 14 (0.83%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.65%) Azure Certification
12 10 (0.59%) CCNP
13 9 (0.53%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 8 (0.47%) AWS Certification
14 8 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.47%) SAFe Agilist
15 7 (0.41%) DBS Check
16 6 (0.35%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
17 5 (0.30%) CISSP
17 5 (0.30%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 380 (22.45%) QA
2 106 (6.26%) Accessibility
3 98 (5.79%) Data Quality
4 46 (2.72%) WCAG
5 32 (1.89%) GDPR
6 14 (0.83%) ISO 20022
7 12 (0.71%) NCSC
8 10 (0.59%) Def Stans
8 10 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 8 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 8 (0.47%) SLA
10 7 (0.41%) NIST
10 7 (0.41%) SEPA
11 6 (0.35%) PSD2
12 5 (0.30%) FATCA
12 5 (0.30%) PERC
13 4 (0.24%) HL7
13 4 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
14 3 (0.18%) GRC
14 3 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 300 (17.72%) Docker
2 20 (1.18%) Active Directory
3 15 (0.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.83%) Firmware
5 10 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.41%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 6 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
9 4 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
10 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.12%) SRDF
12 1 (0.059%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.059%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.059%) KVM
12 1 (0.059%) Squid
12 1 (0.059%) Time Sharing Option
12 1 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.059%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 303 (17.90%) Kubernetes
2 207 (12.23%) Terraform
3 95 (5.61%) Grafana
4 76 (4.49%) Prometheus
5 74 (4.37%) Ansible
6 27 (1.59%) Argo
7 16 (0.95%) HP ALM
8 15 (0.89%) Puppet
9 12 (0.71%) Kibana
9 12 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (0.59%) Forefront Identity Manager
10 10 (0.59%) HP Quality Center
10 10 (0.59%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 9 (0.53%) Progress Chef
12 8 (0.47%) Dell DRAC
13 6 (0.35%) NetBackup
14 5 (0.30%) Nmap
14 5 (0.30%) Rancher
15 4 (0.24%) Oracle RMAN
16 3 (0.18%) Nagios
Vendors
1 145 (8.56%) Microsoft
2 143 (8.45%) Oracle
3 60 (3.54%) Salesforce
4 58 (3.43%) Databricks
5 55 (3.25%) ServiceNow
6 51 (3.01%) Splunk
7 45 (2.66%) Red Hat
8 44 (2.60%) Google
9 41 (2.42%) Talend
10 32 (1.89%) SAP
11 27 (1.59%) Denodo
12 23 (1.36%) IBM
12 23 (1.36%) VMware
13 19 (1.12%) Cisco
13 19 (1.12%) HP
14 18 (1.06%) Dynatrace
14 18 (1.06%) Informatica
15 17 (1.00%) UiPath
16 15 (0.89%) OpenAI
17 14 (0.83%) Blue Prism