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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 50 51
Rank change year-on-year +3 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,906 1,231 1,309
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.22% 4.46% 3.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.96% 4.91% 4.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,213 850 892
10th Percentile £325 £313 £363
25th Percentile £406 £380 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% -6.67% -2.78%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £626
90th Percentile £663 £716 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £488 £513
% change year-on-year -2.56% -4.88% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 31 26
10th Percentile £40.00 £40.84 £45.00
25th Percentile £60.37 £44.76 £51.25
Median hourly rate £67.86 £50.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +35.72% -13.04% -11.88%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £74.00 £75.00 £81.25
UK median hourly rate £67.86 £50.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +35.72% -13.04% -12.55%

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 38,456 25,047 28,792
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.21% 90.72% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,987 16,039 18,801
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £758
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,460 1,391 1,685
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £20.69 £17.87 £18.16
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +2 852 £500 -1.96% 642
North of England +13 381 £465 +3.33% 187
Midlands +9 264 £450 +9.76% 109
West Midlands +31 246 £450 -10.00% 66
South East -35 208 £459 -8.20% 203
Yorkshire -2 153 £496 +4.47% 58
North West -6 139 £490 +16.11% 101
South West -1 110 £469 +17.19% 117
North East +13 97 £425 +6.25% 29
East of England +16 77 £475 +5.56% 66
East Midlands -35 18 £425 +25.00% 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
1 172 (9.02%) Confluence
2 47 (2.47%) Apache Airflow
3 43 (2.26%) Apache Spark
4 41 (2.15%) SAS
5 27 (1.42%) SharePoint
6 21 (1.10%) Apache
7 13 (0.68%) CMS
8 11 (0.58%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.26%) Camunda
10 5 (0.26%) nginx
10 5 (0.26%) Tomcat
11 4 (0.21%) Jupyter
11 4 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.16%) Kentico
13 2 (0.10%) Anypoint
13 2 (0.10%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.10%) Appian
13 2 (0.10%) Mule
13 2 (0.10%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 19 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.68%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.37%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.26%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.21%) Simulink
7 3 (0.16%) Trello
8 2 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.052%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 26 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (0.84%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.63%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
5 8 (0.42%) Findur
6 7 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.31%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.31%) Shopify
8 5 (0.26%) BambooHR
9 3 (0.16%) Distributed Ledger
10 2 (0.10%) Infor CloudSuite
10 2 (0.10%) Infor LN
10 2 (0.10%) Infor M3
10 2 (0.10%) Loan IQ
10 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
10 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
11 1 (0.052%) Maximo
11 1 (0.052%) Summit
11 1 (0.052%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 564 (29.59%) Azure
2 562 (29.49%) AWS
3 339 (17.79%) GitHub
4 256 (13.43%) Azure DevOps
5 214 (11.23%) GitHub Actions
6 148 (7.76%) Serverless
7 144 (7.56%) GCP
8 101 (5.30%) AWS Lambda
9 85 (4.46%) Amazon S3
9 85 (4.46%) Power Platform
10 64 (3.36%) Amazon ECS
11 61 (3.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 61 (3.20%) OpenShift
12 50 (2.62%) dbt
13 45 (2.36%) Amazon EKS
14 44 (2.31%) GitHub Copilot
15 43 (2.26%) Amazon EC2
16 41 (2.15%) Azure Data Factory
16 41 (2.15%) Snowflake
17 37 (1.94%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.10%) Firewall
2 16 (0.84%) HTTP
2 16 (0.84%) Network Security
3 13 (0.68%) 2G
3 13 (0.68%) 3G
3 13 (0.68%) 4G
3 13 (0.68%) Diameter Protocol
3 13 (0.68%) SIGTRAN
3 13 (0.68%) SS7
3 13 (0.68%) WAN
4 12 (0.63%) 5G
4 12 (0.63%) SAN
5 10 (0.52%) LAN
6 8 (0.42%) TCP/IP
6 8 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (0.37%) DNS
8 6 (0.31%) BGP
8 6 (0.31%) Broadband
8 6 (0.31%) HTTPS
9 5 (0.26%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (6.03%) PostgreSQL
2 110 (5.77%) Data Warehouse
3 95 (4.98%) NoSQL
4 92 (4.83%) MongoDB
5 78 (4.09%) SQL Server
6 71 (3.73%) Power BI
7 56 (2.94%) Relational Database
8 48 (2.52%) DynamoDB
9 37 (1.94%) Oracle Reports
10 36 (1.89%) Pentaho
11 30 (1.57%) Amazon Athena
11 30 (1.57%) Data Lake
12 28 (1.47%) Big Data
12 28 (1.47%) Metadata
13 25 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
14 24 (1.26%) Amazon Redshift
14 24 (1.26%) MySQL
15 23 (1.21%) Redis
16 17 (0.89%) BigQuery
16 17 (0.89%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 375 (19.67%) Git
2 356 (18.68%) JIRA
3 311 (16.32%) Jenkins
4 252 (13.22%) GitLab
5 229 (12.01%) Selenium
6 134 (7.03%) Cucumber
7 127 (6.66%) Postman
8 101 (5.30%) JUnit
9 94 (4.93%) Cypress.io
10 88 (4.62%) REST Assured
11 75 (3.93%) JMeter
12 63 (3.31%) Zephyr
13 60 (3.15%) SonarQube
14 52 (2.73%) WebDriver
15 48 (2.52%) Gatling
16 42 (2.20%) Gradle
17 41 (2.15%) Bitbucket
18 36 (1.89%) Mockito
19 33 (1.73%) Maven
20 25 (1.31%) SpecFlow
General
1 516 (27.07%) Social Skills
2 363 (19.05%) Finance
3 257 (13.48%) Analytical Skills
4 245 (12.85%) Public Sector
5 156 (8.18%) Banking
6 59 (3.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 37 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
8 32 (1.68%) Retail
9 31 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
9 31 (1.63%) Telecoms
10 27 (1.42%) Investment Banking
11 25 (1.31%) Front Office
12 22 (1.15%) Financial Institution
13 21 (1.10%) Military
14 18 (0.94%) Aerospace
15 15 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
16 14 (0.73%) Back Office
16 14 (0.73%) Legal
17 13 (0.68%) Automotive
18 12 (0.63%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 390 (20.46%) Developer
2 313 (16.42%) Senior
3 204 (10.70%) Lead
4 187 (9.81%) Test Engineer
5 169 (8.87%) Tester
6 137 (7.19%) Data Engineer
7 125 (6.56%) Java Developer
8 111 (5.82%) Software Engineer
9 99 (5.19%) Analyst
10 91 (4.77%) Senior Developer
11 87 (4.56%) DevOps Engineer
12 84 (4.41%) Architect
13 83 (4.35%) QA Engineer
13 83 (4.35%) Test Automation Engineer
14 68 (3.57%) Test Leader
15 67 (3.52%) Full-Stack Developer
16 61 (3.20%) Automation Tester
16 61 (3.20%) Test Analyst
17 57 (2.99%) Automation Engineer
18 51 (2.68%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 248 (13.01%) REST
2 213 (11.18%) Playwright
3 173 (9.08%) React
3 173 (9.08%) RESTful
4 160 (8.39%) Kafka
5 155 (8.13%) Spring
6 138 (7.24%) .NET
7 120 (6.30%) Spring Boot
8 106 (5.56%) Node.js
9 88 (4.62%) AngularJS
10 76 (3.99%) HTML
11 74 (3.88%) CSS
12 56 (2.94%) OAuth
13 47 (2.47%) Jest
14 46 (2.41%) .NET Framework
15 45 (2.36%) JSON
15 45 (2.36%) Quarkus
16 43 (2.26%) Gherkin
17 42 (2.20%) HTML5
18 41 (2.15%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 278 (14.59%) Cloud Native
2 142 (7.45%) Distributed Systems
3 137 (7.19%) Product Ownership
4 64 (3.36%) Enterprise Software
5 53 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
6 51 (2.68%) Data Protection Act
7 48 (2.52%) Onboarding
8 46 (2.41%) Self-Motivation
9 38 (1.99%) Mobile App
10 32 (1.68%) Virtual Team
11 31 (1.63%) AI Agents
12 30 (1.57%) Distributed Architecture
13 27 (1.42%) Embedded Systems
14 26 (1.36%) Security Posture
15 21 (1.10%) Management Information System
16 19 (1.00%) Fixed Income
17 18 (0.94%) Data Structures
18 17 (0.89%) Algorithms
19 16 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
19 16 (0.84%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 123 (6.45%) Linux
2 80 (4.20%) Windows
3 65 (3.41%) Unix
4 39 (2.05%) Apple iOS
5 37 (1.94%) Android
6 26 (1.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 18 (0.94%) Windows Server
8 13 (0.68%) Mac OS X
9 7 (0.37%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.37%) Solaris
10 6 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
11 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
12 4 (0.21%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.16%) AIX
13 3 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.10%) CentOS
15 1 (0.052%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,117 (58.60%) CI/CD
2 907 (47.59%) Agile
3 723 (37.93%) DevOps
4 371 (19.46%) Microservices
5 369 (19.36%) Problem-Solving
6 367 (19.25%) Continuous Improvement
7 330 (17.31%) Software Engineering
8 318 (16.68%) Scrum
9 304 (15.95%) Infrastructure as Code
10 288 (15.11%) Validation
11 285 (14.95%) Test Strategy
12 275 (14.43%) AI
13 258 (13.54%) Containerisation
14 255 (13.38%) TDD
15 246 (12.91%) Observability
16 216 (11.33%) ETL
17 213 (11.18%) SDLC
18 207 (10.86%) Data Pipeline
19 203 (10.65%) Software Testing
20 191 (10.02%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 480 (25.18%) Python
2 474 (24.87%) Java
3 453 (23.77%) SQL
4 234 (12.28%) JavaScript
5 206 (10.81%) TypeScript
6 178 (9.34%) C#
7 77 (4.04%) PowerShell
8 62 (3.25%) Bash
9 51 (2.68%) Kotlin
10 45 (2.36%) Bicep
11 40 (2.10%) C++
12 29 (1.52%) C
13 26 (1.36%) PL/SQL
13 26 (1.36%) Scala
14 25 (1.31%) Go
15 23 (1.21%) Apex Code
16 22 (1.15%) Swift
17 18 (0.94%) Ruby
18 16 (0.84%) Groovy
19 13 (0.68%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 598 (31.37%) Security Cleared
2 496 (26.02%) SC Cleared
3 83 (4.35%) Degree
3 83 (4.35%) ISTQB
4 58 (3.04%) BPSS Clearance
4 58 (3.04%) DV Cleared
5 41 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
6 29 (1.52%) AWS Certification
7 22 (1.15%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 16 (0.84%) Azure Certification
9 15 (0.79%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 12 (0.63%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.58%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 11 (0.58%) SAFe Agilist
12 10 (0.52%) CISSP
13 9 (0.47%) CCNP
13 9 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.42%) Master's Degree
15 7 (0.37%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 7 (0.37%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 482 (25.29%) QA
2 146 (7.66%) Accessibility
3 135 (7.08%) Data Quality
4 78 (4.09%) WCAG
5 38 (1.99%) GDPR
6 14 (0.73%) NCSC
7 10 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 10 (0.52%) NIST
8 9 (0.47%) ISO 20022
8 9 (0.47%) SLA
9 6 (0.31%) Software Quality Assurance
10 5 (0.26%) Def Stans
10 5 (0.26%) FATCA
10 5 (0.26%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.21%) GRC
12 3 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.16%) EU AI Act
12 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.16%) MiFID
12 3 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 361 (18.94%) Docker
2 27 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 23 (1.21%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.63%) Firmware
6 5 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.10%) SRDF
8 2 (0.10%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.052%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.052%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 372 (19.52%) Kubernetes
2 267 (14.01%) Terraform
3 103 (5.40%) Ansible
4 94 (4.93%) Grafana
5 82 (4.30%) Prometheus
6 42 (2.20%) Argo
7 21 (1.10%) Puppet
8 15 (0.79%) Progress Chef
9 11 (0.58%) HP ALM
10 10 (0.52%) Dell DRAC
10 10 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (0.42%) Kibana
12 7 (0.37%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.31%) NetBackup
14 5 (0.26%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 5 (0.26%) Istio
14 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
14 5 (0.26%) NetIQ Identity Manager
15 4 (0.21%) Packer
15 4 (0.21%) Rancher
Vendors
1 189 (9.92%) Microsoft
2 149 (7.82%) Oracle
3 74 (3.88%) Salesforce
4 72 (3.78%) Databricks
5 62 (3.25%) Red Hat
6 56 (2.94%) Google
6 56 (2.94%) Talend
7 49 (2.57%) Splunk
8 39 (2.05%) Denodo
9 37 (1.94%) ServiceNow
10 33 (1.73%) Informatica
10 33 (1.73%) VMware
11 31 (1.63%) IBM
12 29 (1.52%) Dynatrace
13 27 (1.42%) SAP
14 25 (1.31%) UiPath
15 24 (1.26%) Cisco
16 18 (0.94%) HP
17 12 (0.63%) Fortinet
18 10 (0.52%) OpenAI