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

6 months to
8 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 51 54
Rank change year-on-year +5 +3 -5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,928 1,182 1,371
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.34% 4.43% 3.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.07% 4.87% 4.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,237 819 913
10th Percentile £331 £313 £363
25th Percentile £406 £387 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -9.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £708 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £480 £513
% change year-on-year -1.04% -6.34% -4.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 29 46
10th Percentile £36.19 £42.17 £50.63
25th Percentile £60.17 £46.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% -2.22% -20.77%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £71.87
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.25 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £56.25
% change year-on-year +28.57% -6.67% -16.51%

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 37,991 24,251 31,775
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.46% 90.90% 85.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,934 15,590 20,626
10th Percentile £325 £300 £305
25th Percentile £419 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £524 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.65% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £729 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £517 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +2.28% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,364 1,224 2,273
10th Percentile £15.32 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.88 £17.98 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -4.70%
75th Percentile £68.75 £54.81 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.20 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -6.25%

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 8 July 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 8 July 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 8 July 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 +3 870 £500 - 253
North of England +17 392 £460 +2.56% 112
Midlands +8 246 £450 +9.09% 63
West Midlands +31 229 £450 -6.83% 26
South East -41 201 £462 -7.60% 153
Yorkshire +12 164 £496 -0.75% 37
North West +1 152 £475 +15.29% 56
South West +8 112 £450 +4.35% 66
East of England +17 87 £475 +3.54% 43
North East +8 86 £425 +6.25% 19
East Midlands -40 17 £425 +54.55% 37
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 (8.66%) Confluence
2 43 (2.23%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (2.13%) SAS
4 39 (2.02%) Apache Spark
5 17 (0.88%) Apache
6 16 (0.83%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.62%) CMS
8 6 (0.31%) Appian
8 6 (0.31%) Camunda
8 6 (0.31%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.26%) nginx
9 5 (0.26%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.21%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.16%) Kentico
11 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.10%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.10%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.10%) Mule
13 1 (0.052%) Mendix
Applications
1 28 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (0.41%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.21%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.21%) Simulink
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.052%) Mingle
6 1 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 21 (1.09%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.93%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.62%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
5 8 (0.41%) Findur
6 7 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.31%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.31%) Shopify
8 5 (0.26%) BambooHR
8 5 (0.26%) Loan IQ
9 3 (0.16%) Distributed Ledger
9 3 (0.16%) Maximo
10 2 (0.10%) Infor CloudSuite
10 2 (0.10%) Infor LN
10 2 (0.10%) iTrent
10 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
10 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
10 2 (0.10%) Summit
10 2 (0.10%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 537 (27.85%) AWS
2 536 (27.80%) Azure
3 312 (16.18%) GitHub
4 234 (12.14%) Azure DevOps
5 189 (9.80%) GitHub Actions
6 136 (7.05%) Serverless
7 133 (6.90%) GCP
8 95 (4.93%) AWS Lambda
9 83 (4.30%) Amazon S3
10 77 (3.99%) Power Platform
11 62 (3.22%) OpenShift
12 54 (2.80%) Amazon ECS
13 51 (2.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 44 (2.28%) dbt
15 42 (2.18%) Azure Data Factory
16 40 (2.07%) Amazon EC2
17 38 (1.97%) Snowflake
18 31 (1.61%) Amazon EKS
19 30 (1.56%) AWS CloudFormation
19 30 (1.56%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 19 (0.99%) Firewall
2 15 (0.78%) HTTP
2 15 (0.78%) SAN
3 11 (0.57%) Network Security
3 11 (0.57%) WAN
4 9 (0.47%) MPLS
5 8 (0.41%) 4G
5 8 (0.41%) 5G
5 8 (0.41%) VPN
6 7 (0.36%) 2G
6 7 (0.36%) 3G
6 7 (0.36%) Diameter Protocol
6 7 (0.36%) SIGTRAN
6 7 (0.36%) SS7
7 6 (0.31%) BGP
7 6 (0.31%) Ethernet
7 6 (0.31%) LAN
7 6 (0.31%) SD-WAN
7 6 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.31%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 103 (5.34%) PostgreSQL
2 98 (5.08%) Data Warehouse
3 89 (4.62%) MongoDB
4 84 (4.36%) NoSQL
5 76 (3.94%) SQL Server
6 62 (3.22%) Relational Database
7 61 (3.16%) Power BI
8 45 (2.33%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.82%) Oracle Reports
10 34 (1.76%) Pentaho
11 31 (1.61%) Amazon Athena
12 28 (1.45%) Amazon RDS
13 27 (1.40%) Metadata
14 26 (1.35%) Big Data
15 25 (1.30%) Data Lake
16 24 (1.24%) Amazon Redshift
17 22 (1.14%) Redis
18 21 (1.09%) Oracle Database
18 21 (1.09%) Tableau
19 18 (0.93%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 368 (19.09%) JIRA
2 338 (17.53%) Git
3 311 (16.13%) Jenkins
4 263 (13.64%) GitLab
5 245 (12.71%) Selenium
6 146 (7.57%) Postman
7 137 (7.11%) Cucumber
8 103 (5.34%) REST Assured
9 99 (5.13%) JUnit
10 91 (4.72%) Cypress.io
11 83 (4.30%) JMeter
12 59 (3.06%) Zephyr
13 53 (2.75%) WebDriver
14 52 (2.70%) SonarQube
15 45 (2.33%) Gatling
16 43 (2.23%) Gradle
17 37 (1.92%) Bitbucket
18 35 (1.82%) Mockito
19 32 (1.66%) Maven
20 29 (1.50%) SpecFlow
General
1 525 (27.23%) Social Skills
2 372 (19.29%) Finance
3 250 (12.97%) Analytical Skills
4 233 (12.09%) Public Sector
5 164 (8.51%) Banking
6 51 (2.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 42 (2.18%) Documentation Skills
8 31 (1.61%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.40%) Front Office
10 26 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
10 26 (1.35%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.14%) Financial Institution
11 22 (1.14%) Retail
12 20 (1.04%) Military
13 18 (0.93%) Aerospace
14 17 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
15 15 (0.78%) Legal
16 13 (0.67%) Automotive
16 13 (0.67%) Back Office
16 13 (0.67%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 383 (19.87%) Developer
2 304 (15.77%) Senior
3 207 (10.74%) Lead
4 199 (10.32%) Test Engineer
5 196 (10.17%) Tester
6 136 (7.05%) Data Engineer
7 121 (6.28%) Java Developer
8 108 (5.60%) Software Engineer
9 98 (5.08%) Analyst
10 89 (4.62%) Architect
11 86 (4.46%) Test Automation Engineer
12 83 (4.30%) DevOps Engineer
13 81 (4.20%) Senior Developer
14 80 (4.15%) QA Engineer
15 74 (3.84%) Test Leader
16 66 (3.42%) Automation Tester
17 58 (3.01%) Automation Engineer
17 58 (3.01%) Test Analyst
18 54 (2.80%) Full-Stack Developer
19 47 (2.44%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 217 (11.26%) Playwright
1 217 (11.26%) REST
2 178 (9.23%) React
3 154 (7.99%) Spring
4 146 (7.57%) RESTful
5 144 (7.47%) Kafka
6 124 (6.43%) .NET
7 123 (6.38%) Spring Boot
8 98 (5.08%) Node.js
9 82 (4.25%) AngularJS
10 74 (3.84%) HTML
11 69 (3.58%) CSS
12 49 (2.54%) OAuth
13 47 (2.44%) pytest
14 45 (2.33%) Jest
15 40 (2.07%) Quarkus
16 39 (2.02%) .NET Framework
17 37 (1.92%) GraphQL
17 37 (1.92%) Swagger
18 36 (1.87%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 248 (12.86%) Cloud Native
2 132 (6.85%) Product Ownership
3 121 (6.28%) Distributed Systems
4 59 (3.06%) Enterprise Software
5 57 (2.96%) Legacy Systems
6 48 (2.49%) Data Protection Act
7 42 (2.18%) Mobile App
7 42 (2.18%) Self-Motivation
8 40 (2.07%) Onboarding
9 38 (1.97%) Virtual Team
10 31 (1.61%) Distributed Architecture
11 28 (1.45%) Security Posture
12 26 (1.35%) Embedded Systems
13 25 (1.30%) Management Information System
14 23 (1.19%) AI Agents
15 21 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
16 20 (1.04%) Fixed Income
17 18 (0.93%) Algorithms
18 16 (0.83%) Data Structures
19 15 (0.78%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 116 (6.02%) Linux
2 73 (3.79%) Windows
3 56 (2.90%) Unix
4 38 (1.97%) Android
5 37 (1.92%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.73%) Mac OS X
7 14 (0.73%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.36%) Mac OS
8 7 (0.36%) Solaris
9 6 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
10 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.21%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.16%) AIX
12 3 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.10%) CentOS
13 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,066 (55.29%) CI/CD
2 886 (45.95%) Agile
3 685 (35.53%) DevOps
4 355 (18.41%) Problem-Solving
5 332 (17.22%) Continuous Improvement
6 331 (17.17%) Microservices
7 301 (15.61%) Software Engineering
8 300 (15.56%) Scrum
9 296 (15.35%) Validation
10 294 (15.25%) Test Strategy
11 267 (13.85%) Infrastructure as Code
12 254 (13.17%) AI
13 238 (12.34%) Containerisation
14 237 (12.29%) TDD
15 229 (11.88%) Observability
16 206 (10.68%) ETL
17 199 (10.32%) Software Testing
18 197 (10.22%) End-to-End Testing
19 190 (9.85%) Data Pipeline
20 188 (9.75%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 484 (25.10%) Python
2 479 (24.84%) Java
3 459 (23.81%) SQL
4 242 (12.55%) JavaScript
5 223 (11.57%) TypeScript
6 177 (9.18%) C#
7 69 (3.58%) PowerShell
8 60 (3.11%) Bash
9 46 (2.39%) Kotlin
10 43 (2.23%) C++
11 34 (1.76%) Scala
12 33 (1.71%) C
13 32 (1.66%) Bicep
14 31 (1.61%) Go
15 29 (1.50%) Apex Code
16 28 (1.45%) PL/SQL
17 23 (1.19%) Swift
18 16 (0.83%) Groovy
18 16 (0.83%) Ruby
19 13 (0.67%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 596 (30.91%) Security Cleared
2 486 (25.21%) SC Cleared
3 90 (4.67%) Degree
4 85 (4.41%) ISTQB
5 65 (3.37%) BPSS Clearance
5 65 (3.37%) DV Cleared
6 46 (2.39%) Computer Science Degree
7 20 (1.04%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 19 (0.99%) AWS Certification
9 15 (0.78%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 15 (0.78%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.62%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 11 (0.57%) SAFe Agilist
12 10 (0.52%) CCNP
13 8 (0.41%) Azure Certification
13 8 (0.41%) CISSP
14 7 (0.36%) DBS Check
15 5 (0.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 5 (0.26%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 440 (22.82%) QA
2 138 (7.16%) Accessibility
3 130 (6.74%) Data Quality
4 65 (3.37%) WCAG
5 34 (1.76%) GDPR
6 12 (0.62%) ISO 20022
6 12 (0.62%) NCSC
7 11 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 10 (0.52%) Def Stans
9 9 (0.47%) NIST
9 9 (0.47%) SLA
10 5 (0.26%) FATCA
10 5 (0.26%) SEPA
10 5 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
11 4 (0.21%) GRC
11 4 (0.21%) HL7
11 4 (0.21%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 3 (0.16%) HIPAA
12 3 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 324 (16.80%) Docker
2 26 (1.35%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (0.83%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.73%) Firmware
5 13 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.21%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 4 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.10%) SRDF
9 1 (0.052%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.052%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.052%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 339 (17.58%) Kubernetes
2 238 (12.34%) Terraform
3 101 (5.24%) Ansible
4 99 (5.13%) Grafana
5 84 (4.36%) Prometheus
6 36 (1.87%) Argo
7 15 (0.78%) HP ALM
8 12 (0.62%) HP Quality Center
8 12 (0.62%) Puppet
9 11 (0.57%) Kibana
10 10 (0.52%) Dell DRAC
10 10 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (0.41%) Kustomize
12 6 (0.31%) Forefront Identity Manager
12 6 (0.31%) NetBackup
12 6 (0.31%) NetIQ Identity Manager
13 5 (0.26%) Istio
13 5 (0.26%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.21%) Packer
14 4 (0.21%) Rancher
Vendors
1 170 (8.82%) Microsoft
2 145 (7.52%) Oracle
3 84 (4.36%) Salesforce
4 64 (3.32%) Databricks
5 55 (2.85%) Talend
6 54 (2.80%) Red Hat
7 51 (2.65%) Splunk
8 50 (2.59%) Google
9 49 (2.54%) ServiceNow
10 37 (1.92%) Denodo
11 34 (1.76%) Informatica
12 29 (1.50%) UiPath
13 28 (1.45%) SAP
13 28 (1.45%) VMware
14 26 (1.35%) Dynatrace
14 26 (1.35%) IBM
15 21 (1.09%) Cisco
16 18 (0.93%) HP
17 14 (0.73%) Blue Prism
18 13 (0.67%) Fortinet