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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 50 56
Rank change year-on-year +4 +6 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,846 1,110 1,335
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.25% 4.43% 3.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.98% 4.85% 4.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,185 775 884
10th Percentile £340 £313 £363
25th Percentile £405 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £485 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.06% -7.62% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £671 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £490 £513
% change year-on-year -3.06% -4.39% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 109 27 48
10th Percentile £36.26 £41.84 £50.88
25th Percentile £60.00 £45.38 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% -4.35% -19.01%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.75 £71.88
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.31 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +28.57% -8.70% -12.88%

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 37,051 22,887 31,886
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.28% 91.38% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,430 14,787 20,644
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £415 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £730 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £502 £525
% change year-on-year +2.09% -4.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,322 1,108 2,367
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.78
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £26.50 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year +77.36% -30.26% +8.14%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%

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 24 June 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 24 June 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 24 June 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 +2 839 £500 - 148
North of England +8 368 £455 +1.11% 102
Midlands +11 236 £450 +6.51% 54
West Midlands +31 217 £450 -10.00% 28
South East -34 194 £475 -5.00% 132
North West -3 149 £475 +6.26% 46
Yorkshire +3 147 £500 +2.56% 29
South West +17 106 £450 - 43
East of England +17 84 £495 +5.88% 48
North East +8 80 £425 +6.25% 28
East Midlands -42 19 £418 +51.82% 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
1 156 (8.45%) Confluence
2 43 (2.33%) Apache Airflow
3 42 (2.28%) SAS
4 36 (1.95%) Apache Spark
5 16 (0.87%) Apache
6 15 (0.81%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.65%) CMS
8 8 (0.43%) Appian
8 8 (0.43%) Camunda
9 5 (0.27%) nginx
9 5 (0.27%) Tomcat
9 5 (0.27%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.22%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.16%) Kentico
11 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.11%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.11%) Mule
13 1 (0.054%) Mendix
Applications
1 29 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.87%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (0.43%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.16%) Simulink
7 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.054%) Mingle
8 1 (0.054%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 21 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.92%) Aladdin
3 11 (0.60%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.43%) Findur
4 8 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
5 7 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.33%) SAP ERP
6 6 (0.33%) Shopify
7 5 (0.27%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.27%) Loan IQ
8 3 (0.16%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.16%) Maximo
8 3 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
9 2 (0.11%) Infor LN
9 2 (0.11%) Infor M3
9 2 (0.11%) IntelliMatch
9 2 (0.11%) iTrent
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.11%) Summit
9 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 516 (27.95%) AWS
2 503 (27.25%) Azure
3 291 (15.76%) GitHub
4 221 (11.97%) Azure DevOps
5 180 (9.75%) GitHub Actions
6 135 (7.31%) Serverless
7 124 (6.72%) GCP
8 92 (4.98%) AWS Lambda
9 80 (4.33%) Amazon S3
10 68 (3.68%) Power Platform
11 63 (3.41%) OpenShift
12 54 (2.93%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 53 (2.87%) Amazon ECS
14 44 (2.38%) Azure Data Factory
15 42 (2.28%) dbt
16 40 (2.17%) Amazon EC2
17 36 (1.95%) Snowflake
18 32 (1.73%) Amazon EKS
19 30 (1.63%) Azure AKS
20 28 (1.52%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.14%) Firewall
2 15 (0.81%) HTTP
2 15 (0.81%) SAN
3 11 (0.60%) WAN
4 9 (0.49%) MPLS
4 9 (0.49%) Network Security
5 8 (0.43%) VPN
6 7 (0.38%) TCP/IP
7 6 (0.33%) 4G
7 6 (0.33%) 5G
7 6 (0.33%) BGP
7 6 (0.33%) Ethernet
7 6 (0.33%) LAN
7 6 (0.33%) SD-WAN
7 6 (0.33%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.33%) Wireshark
8 5 (0.27%) Diameter Protocol
8 5 (0.27%) Multicast
8 5 (0.27%) SIGTRAN
8 5 (0.27%) SS7
Database & Business Intelligence
1 103 (5.58%) PostgreSQL
2 94 (5.09%) Data Warehouse
3 84 (4.55%) MongoDB
4 80 (4.33%) NoSQL
5 70 (3.79%) SQL Server
6 62 (3.36%) Relational Database
7 52 (2.82%) Power BI
8 46 (2.49%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.90%) Oracle Reports
10 34 (1.84%) Pentaho
11 31 (1.68%) Amazon Athena
12 26 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
12 26 (1.41%) Data Lake
12 26 (1.41%) Redis
13 25 (1.35%) Amazon Redshift
13 25 (1.35%) Big Data
14 22 (1.19%) Metadata
14 22 (1.19%) Tableau
15 20 (1.08%) Oracle Database
16 18 (0.98%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 348 (18.85%) JIRA
2 324 (17.55%) Git
3 297 (16.09%) Jenkins
4 263 (14.25%) GitLab
5 232 (12.57%) Selenium
6 144 (7.80%) Postman
7 133 (7.20%) Cucumber
8 95 (5.15%) JUnit
8 95 (5.15%) REST Assured
9 84 (4.55%) Cypress.io
10 83 (4.50%) JMeter
11 54 (2.93%) SonarQube
11 54 (2.93%) Zephyr
12 52 (2.82%) WebDriver
13 42 (2.28%) Gradle
14 41 (2.22%) Gatling
15 36 (1.95%) Bitbucket
16 33 (1.79%) Mockito
17 30 (1.63%) Maven
18 26 (1.41%) SpecFlow
General
1 506 (27.41%) Social Skills
2 352 (19.07%) Finance
3 242 (13.11%) Analytical Skills
4 234 (12.68%) Public Sector
5 162 (8.78%) Banking
6 52 (2.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 38 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
8 32 (1.73%) Investment Banking
9 26 (1.41%) Front Office
9 26 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
10 24 (1.30%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.19%) Financial Institution
12 20 (1.08%) Retail
13 18 (0.98%) Military
14 17 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
15 16 (0.87%) Aerospace
16 15 (0.81%) Legal
17 13 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
18 12 (0.65%) Law
18 12 (0.65%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 358 (19.39%) Developer
2 289 (15.66%) Senior
3 197 (10.67%) Lead
4 195 (10.56%) Tester
5 192 (10.40%) Test Engineer
6 124 (6.72%) Data Engineer
7 106 (5.74%) Java Developer
8 103 (5.58%) Software Engineer
9 96 (5.20%) Analyst
10 88 (4.77%) Architect
11 80 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
11 80 (4.33%) Test Automation Engineer
12 74 (4.01%) QA Engineer
13 73 (3.95%) Senior Developer
14 68 (3.68%) Automation Tester
15 67 (3.63%) Test Leader
16 54 (2.93%) Automation Engineer
16 54 (2.93%) Test Analyst
17 51 (2.76%) Full-Stack Developer
18 45 (2.44%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 202 (10.94%) REST
2 192 (10.40%) Playwright
3 173 (9.37%) React
4 141 (7.64%) Spring
5 139 (7.53%) Kafka
6 137 (7.42%) RESTful
7 115 (6.23%) Spring Boot
8 105 (5.69%) .NET
9 92 (4.98%) Node.js
10 78 (4.23%) AngularJS
11 64 (3.47%) HTML
12 59 (3.20%) CSS
13 48 (2.60%) OAuth
13 48 (2.60%) pytest
14 40 (2.17%) Jest
15 39 (2.11%) Quarkus
16 36 (1.95%) Gherkin
16 36 (1.95%) Swagger
17 33 (1.79%) .NET Framework
17 33 (1.79%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 226 (12.24%) Cloud Native
2 131 (7.10%) Product Ownership
3 116 (6.28%) Distributed Systems
4 54 (2.93%) Legacy Systems
5 49 (2.65%) Data Protection Act
6 48 (2.60%) Enterprise Software
7 41 (2.22%) Mobile App
8 40 (2.17%) Self-Motivation
9 37 (2.00%) Virtual Team
10 32 (1.73%) Onboarding
11 31 (1.68%) Distributed Architecture
12 28 (1.52%) Management Information System
13 26 (1.41%) Security Posture
14 23 (1.25%) Embedded Systems
15 22 (1.19%) Greenfield Project
16 21 (1.14%) AI Agents
17 20 (1.08%) Algorithms
18 19 (1.03%) Fixed Income
19 17 (0.92%) Data Structures
20 15 (0.81%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 114 (6.18%) Linux
2 72 (3.90%) Windows
3 52 (2.82%) Unix
4 40 (2.17%) Android
5 39 (2.11%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (0.81%) Windows Server
8 12 (0.65%) Mac OS X
9 7 (0.38%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.38%) Solaris
10 5 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.22%) Embedded Linux
11 4 (0.22%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.16%) AIX
12 3 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.11%) CentOS
13 2 (0.11%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 998 (54.06%) CI/CD
2 854 (46.26%) Agile
3 643 (34.83%) DevOps
4 345 (18.69%) Problem-Solving
5 311 (16.85%) Microservices
6 307 (16.63%) Continuous Improvement
7 287 (15.55%) Scrum
8 286 (15.49%) Software Engineering
9 277 (15.01%) Test Strategy
10 275 (14.90%) Validation
11 252 (13.65%) Infrastructure as Code
12 237 (12.84%) AI
13 231 (12.51%) Observability
14 220 (11.92%) Containerisation
15 214 (11.59%) TDD
16 193 (10.46%) ETL
17 183 (9.91%) Software Testing
18 180 (9.75%) End-to-End Testing
19 179 (9.70%) User Acceptance Testing
20 177 (9.59%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 462 (25.03%) Python
2 455 (24.65%) Java
3 441 (23.89%) SQL
4 232 (12.57%) JavaScript
5 206 (11.16%) TypeScript
6 168 (9.10%) C#
7 62 (3.36%) PowerShell
8 56 (3.03%) Bash
9 45 (2.44%) Kotlin
10 41 (2.22%) C++
11 31 (1.68%) Go
12 30 (1.63%) C
12 30 (1.63%) Scala
13 28 (1.52%) Apex Code
13 28 (1.52%) Bicep
13 28 (1.52%) PL/SQL
14 22 (1.19%) Swift
15 16 (0.87%) Groovy
15 16 (0.87%) Ruby
16 13 (0.70%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 577 (31.26%) Security Cleared
2 468 (25.35%) SC Cleared
3 87 (4.71%) ISTQB
4 82 (4.44%) Degree
5 64 (3.47%) BPSS Clearance
5 64 (3.47%) DV Cleared
6 41 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
7 20 (1.08%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 18 (0.98%) AWS Certification
9 15 (0.81%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 14 (0.76%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 14 (0.76%) Master's Degree
11 12 (0.65%) Cisco Certification
12 11 (0.60%) SAFe Agilist
13 10 (0.54%) CCNP
14 8 (0.43%) CISSP
15 7 (0.38%) Azure Certification
15 7 (0.38%) DBS Check
16 5 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 5 (0.27%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 411 (22.26%) QA
2 131 (7.10%) Accessibility
3 122 (6.61%) Data Quality
4 61 (3.30%) WCAG
5 33 (1.79%) GDPR
6 13 (0.70%) ISO 20022
7 12 (0.65%) NCSC
8 11 (0.60%) NIST
9 10 (0.54%) Def Stans
9 10 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 9 (0.49%) SLA
11 5 (0.27%) FATCA
11 5 (0.27%) SEPA
12 4 (0.22%) HL7
12 4 (0.22%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 4 (0.22%) Software Quality Assurance
13 3 (0.16%) GRC
13 3 (0.16%) HIPAA
13 3 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 301 (16.31%) Docker
2 26 (1.41%) VMware Infrastructure
3 14 (0.76%) Active Directory
3 14 (0.76%) Firmware
4 12 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.22%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 4 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
6 4 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.11%) SRDF
8 1 (0.054%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.054%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.054%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 315 (17.06%) Kubernetes
2 225 (12.19%) Terraform
3 93 (5.04%) Ansible
4 92 (4.98%) Grafana
5 84 (4.55%) Prometheus
6 36 (1.95%) Argo
7 13 (0.70%) HP ALM
8 12 (0.65%) Puppet
9 11 (0.60%) Kibana
10 10 (0.54%) Dell DRAC
10 10 (0.54%) HP Quality Center
11 8 (0.43%) Kustomize
11 8 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (0.33%) Forefront Identity Manager
12 6 (0.33%) NetBackup
12 6 (0.33%) NetIQ Identity Manager
13 5 (0.27%) Istio
13 5 (0.27%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.22%) Oracle RMAN
14 4 (0.22%) Rancher
Vendors
1 156 (8.45%) Microsoft
2 143 (7.75%) Oracle
3 78 (4.23%) Salesforce
4 60 (3.25%) Databricks
5 56 (3.03%) Red Hat
6 55 (2.98%) Talend
7 52 (2.82%) ServiceNow
8 50 (2.71%) Google
8 50 (2.71%) Splunk
9 38 (2.06%) Denodo
10 32 (1.73%) Informatica
11 28 (1.52%) VMware
12 27 (1.46%) Dynatrace
12 27 (1.46%) UiPath
13 26 (1.41%) IBM
13 26 (1.41%) SAP
14 21 (1.14%) Cisco
15 16 (0.87%) HP
16 15 (0.81%) OpenAI
17 14 (0.76%) Blue Prism