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

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 49 55
Rank change year-on-year +2 +6 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,820 1,087 1,312
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.27% 4.43% 3.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.01% 4.85% 4.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,172 764 876
10th Percentile £350 £318 £363
25th Percentile £403 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £491 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.26% -6.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £613 £626
90th Percentile £662 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £495 £513
% change year-on-year -4.04% -3.41% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 24 48
10th Percentile £36.22 £41.55 £52.13
25th Percentile £59.19 £47.87 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% -8.33% -14.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.13 £73.00
90th Percentile £74.30 £77.41 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +22.73% -8.33% -10.95%

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 36,315 22,393 32,018
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.15% 91.34% 85.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,987 14,479 20,805
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £414 £407 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,273 1,020 2,369
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.80
25th Percentile £20.82 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £28.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +69.64% -25.33% +5.63%
75th Percentile £68.00 £58.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.21 £36.50
% change year-on-year +61.56% -25.45% +4.20%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +2 837 £500 -1.23% 132
North of England +13 366 £463 +2.78% 104
Midlands +11 223 £450 +7.46% 56
West Midlands +31 203 £455 -7.53% 38
South East -34 191 £481 -3.75% 116
Yorkshire +1 152 £500 +5.26% 26
North West +11 148 £475 +11.76% 59
South West +26 103 £463 -2.63% 43
East of England +21 84 £495 +7.90% 55
North East +1 74 £425 +6.25% 20
East Midlands -43 20 £418 +51.82% 18
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
1 150 (8.24%) Confluence
2 42 (2.31%) SAS
3 40 (2.20%) Apache Airflow
4 35 (1.92%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.77%) Apache
6 13 (0.71%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.66%) CMS
8 9 (0.49%) Appian
9 8 (0.44%) Camunda
10 5 (0.27%) nginx
10 5 (0.27%) Tomcat
10 5 (0.27%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 3 (0.16%) Jupyter
12 3 (0.16%) Kentico
12 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 2 (0.11%) Mule
14 1 (0.055%) Ethereum
Applications
1 27 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.16%) Simulink
8 1 (0.055%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.055%) Mingle
8 1 (0.055%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 18 (0.99%) Aladdin
2 17 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.49%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.44%) Findur
4 8 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
5 6 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
5 6 (0.33%) SAP ERP
5 6 (0.33%) Shopify
6 5 (0.27%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.27%) Loan IQ
7 3 (0.16%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.16%) Maximo
7 3 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
8 2 (0.11%) Infor CloudSuite
8 2 (0.11%) Infor LN
8 2 (0.11%) Infor M3
8 2 (0.11%) iTrent
8 2 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 503 (27.64%) AWS
2 490 (26.92%) Azure
3 288 (15.82%) GitHub
4 215 (11.81%) Azure DevOps
5 173 (9.51%) GitHub Actions
6 131 (7.20%) Serverless
7 128 (7.03%) GCP
8 90 (4.95%) AWS Lambda
9 78 (4.29%) Amazon S3
10 70 (3.85%) Power Platform
11 61 (3.35%) OpenShift
12 53 (2.91%) Amazon ECS
13 51 (2.80%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 42 (2.31%) Azure Data Factory
15 36 (1.98%) Amazon EC2
16 34 (1.87%) dbt
16 34 (1.87%) Snowflake
17 33 (1.81%) Amazon EKS
18 30 (1.65%) AWS CloudFormation
19 27 (1.48%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.15%) Firewall
2 15 (0.82%) SAN
3 14 (0.77%) HTTP
4 11 (0.60%) WAN
5 9 (0.49%) MPLS
5 9 (0.49%) Network Security
5 9 (0.49%) TCP/IP
5 9 (0.49%) VPN
6 6 (0.33%) Ethernet
6 6 (0.33%) LAN
6 6 (0.33%) SD-WAN
6 6 (0.33%) VLAN
6 6 (0.33%) Wi-Fi
6 6 (0.33%) Wireshark
7 5 (0.27%) BGP
7 5 (0.27%) Multicast
7 5 (0.27%) SSL
8 4 (0.22%) 4G
8 4 (0.22%) NAS
8 4 (0.22%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 105 (5.77%) PostgreSQL
2 88 (4.84%) Data Warehouse
3 81 (4.45%) MongoDB
4 79 (4.34%) SQL Server
5 76 (4.18%) NoSQL
6 54 (2.97%) Relational Database
7 51 (2.80%) Power BI
8 45 (2.47%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.92%) Oracle Reports
10 33 (1.81%) Pentaho
11 29 (1.59%) Amazon Athena
12 25 (1.37%) Big Data
12 25 (1.37%) Tableau
13 24 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
13 24 (1.32%) Data Lake
13 24 (1.32%) Redis
14 23 (1.26%) Amazon Redshift
15 22 (1.21%) Metadata
16 19 (1.04%) Oracle Database
17 18 (0.99%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 345 (18.96%) JIRA
2 318 (17.47%) Git
3 295 (16.21%) Jenkins
4 260 (14.29%) GitLab
5 238 (13.08%) Selenium
6 140 (7.69%) Postman
7 129 (7.09%) Cucumber
8 99 (5.44%) REST Assured
9 93 (5.11%) JUnit
10 81 (4.45%) Cypress.io
11 80 (4.40%) JMeter
12 53 (2.91%) WebDriver
12 53 (2.91%) Zephyr
13 52 (2.86%) SonarQube
14 41 (2.25%) Gradle
15 38 (2.09%) Gatling
16 34 (1.87%) Bitbucket
17 32 (1.76%) Maven
18 30 (1.65%) Mockito
19 27 (1.48%) SpecFlow
General
1 489 (26.87%) Social Skills
2 325 (17.86%) Finance
3 232 (12.75%) Public Sector
4 228 (12.53%) Analytical Skills
5 151 (8.30%) Banking
6 46 (2.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 41 (2.25%) Documentation Skills
8 31 (1.70%) Investment Banking
9 26 (1.43%) Front Office
10 25 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
11 21 (1.15%) Telecoms
12 19 (1.04%) Retail
13 17 (0.93%) Financial Institution
13 17 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
14 15 (0.82%) Aerospace
14 15 (0.82%) Legal
14 15 (0.82%) Military
15 13 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
16 12 (0.66%) Law
16 12 (0.66%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 361 (19.84%) Developer
2 280 (15.38%) Senior
3 199 (10.93%) Lead
3 199 (10.93%) Test Engineer
4 192 (10.55%) Tester
5 114 (6.26%) Data Engineer
6 105 (5.77%) Java Developer
7 98 (5.38%) Software Engineer
8 93 (5.11%) Analyst
9 83 (4.56%) Architect
9 83 (4.56%) Test Automation Engineer
10 78 (4.29%) DevOps Engineer
11 76 (4.18%) QA Engineer
12 71 (3.90%) Senior Developer
13 69 (3.79%) Automation Tester
14 68 (3.74%) Test Leader
15 53 (2.91%) Automation Engineer
16 52 (2.86%) Full-Stack Developer
17 50 (2.75%) Test Analyst
18 48 (2.64%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 204 (11.21%) REST
2 193 (10.60%) Playwright
3 165 (9.07%) React
4 133 (7.31%) Kafka
4 133 (7.31%) Spring
5 131 (7.20%) RESTful
6 115 (6.32%) .NET
7 108 (5.93%) Spring Boot
8 96 (5.27%) Node.js
9 75 (4.12%) AngularJS
10 64 (3.52%) HTML
11 57 (3.13%) CSS
12 52 (2.86%) pytest
13 46 (2.53%) OAuth
14 42 (2.31%) Jest
15 37 (2.03%) Swagger
16 36 (1.98%) Quarkus
17 33 (1.81%) Gherkin
17 33 (1.81%) OpenID
18 32 (1.76%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 208 (11.43%) Cloud Native
2 126 (6.92%) Product Ownership
3 105 (5.77%) Distributed Systems
4 52 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
5 50 (2.75%) Data Protection Act
6 41 (2.25%) Mobile App
7 40 (2.20%) Enterprise Software
8 38 (2.09%) Self-Motivation
9 35 (1.92%) Virtual Team
10 32 (1.76%) Distributed Architecture
11 31 (1.70%) Onboarding
12 23 (1.26%) Algorithms
13 21 (1.15%) Embedded Systems
13 21 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
13 21 (1.15%) Management Information System
13 21 (1.15%) Security Posture
14 20 (1.10%) Fixed Income
14 20 (1.10%) NHS
15 17 (0.93%) Data Centre
16 16 (0.88%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 119 (6.54%) Linux
2 75 (4.12%) Windows
3 52 (2.86%) Unix
4 41 (2.25%) Android
5 37 (2.03%) Apple iOS
6 18 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 17 (0.93%) Windows Server
8 12 (0.66%) 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%) 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
13 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.055%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 961 (52.80%) CI/CD
2 835 (45.88%) Agile
3 625 (34.34%) DevOps
4 336 (18.46%) Problem-Solving
5 298 (16.37%) Microservices
6 295 (16.21%) Continuous Improvement
7 281 (15.44%) Scrum
8 280 (15.38%) Test Strategy
9 269 (14.78%) Software Engineering
10 265 (14.56%) Validation
11 239 (13.13%) Infrastructure as Code
12 222 (12.20%) AI
13 221 (12.14%) Observability
14 213 (11.70%) Containerisation
15 211 (11.59%) TDD
16 194 (10.66%) ETL
17 185 (10.16%) Software Testing
18 178 (9.78%) Test Scripting
18 178 (9.78%) User Acceptance Testing
19 175 (9.62%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 459 (25.22%) Python
2 454 (24.95%) Java
3 439 (24.12%) SQL
4 227 (12.47%) JavaScript
5 204 (11.21%) TypeScript
6 173 (9.51%) C#
7 70 (3.85%) PowerShell
8 55 (3.02%) Bash
9 45 (2.47%) Kotlin
10 42 (2.31%) C++
11 31 (1.70%) PL/SQL
12 30 (1.65%) C
12 30 (1.65%) Scala
13 28 (1.54%) Go
14 26 (1.43%) Apex Code
15 25 (1.37%) Bicep
16 21 (1.15%) Swift
17 16 (0.88%) Groovy
18 15 (0.82%) Ruby
19 13 (0.71%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 569 (31.26%) Security Cleared
2 455 (25.00%) SC Cleared
3 84 (4.62%) ISTQB
4 72 (3.96%) Degree
5 69 (3.79%) BPSS Clearance
6 68 (3.74%) DV Cleared
7 36 (1.98%) Computer Science Degree
8 18 (0.99%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 15 (0.82%) AWS Certification
10 14 (0.77%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 14 (0.77%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 13 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
11 13 (0.71%) Master's Degree
12 11 (0.60%) CCNP
12 11 (0.60%) SAFe Agilist
13 8 (0.44%) Azure Certification
14 7 (0.38%) CISSP
14 7 (0.38%) DBS Check
15 5 (0.27%) CCIE
15 5 (0.27%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 401 (22.03%) QA
2 126 (6.92%) Accessibility
3 117 (6.43%) Data Quality
4 55 (3.02%) WCAG
5 29 (1.59%) GDPR
6 12 (0.66%) ISO 20022
7 11 (0.60%) NCSC
8 10 (0.55%) Def Stans
8 10 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 10 (0.55%) NIST
9 9 (0.49%) SLA
10 6 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 5 (0.27%) FATCA
11 5 (0.27%) Software Quality Assurance
12 4 (0.22%) HL7
12 4 (0.22%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.22%) SEPA
13 3 (0.16%) HIPAA
13 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (0.16%) PSD2
System Software
1 296 (16.26%) Docker
2 26 (1.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (0.99%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.77%) Firmware
5 13 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.38%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 6 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.11%) SRDF
10 1 (0.055%) Hyper-V
10 1 (0.055%) KVM
10 1 (0.055%) Squid
10 1 (0.055%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.055%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 308 (16.92%) Kubernetes
2 217 (11.92%) Terraform
3 93 (5.11%) Grafana
4 91 (5.00%) Ansible
5 83 (4.56%) Prometheus
6 35 (1.92%) Argo
7 13 (0.71%) HP ALM
8 12 (0.66%) Puppet
9 11 (0.60%) Kibana
10 10 (0.55%) Dell DRAC
10 10 (0.55%) HP Quality Center
11 9 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.44%) Kustomize
13 7 (0.38%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 7 (0.38%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 6 (0.33%) NetBackup
15 5 (0.27%) Progress Chef
16 4 (0.22%) Nmap
16 4 (0.22%) Oracle RMAN
16 4 (0.22%) WMI
Vendors
1 152 (8.35%) Microsoft
2 150 (8.24%) Oracle
3 72 (3.96%) Salesforce
4 60 (3.30%) Databricks
5 56 (3.08%) Red Hat
6 55 (3.02%) ServiceNow
7 54 (2.97%) Talend
8 50 (2.75%) Splunk
9 47 (2.58%) Google
10 38 (2.09%) Denodo
11 30 (1.65%) VMware
12 27 (1.48%) Informatica
12 27 (1.48%) SAP
12 27 (1.48%) UiPath
13 25 (1.37%) Dynatrace
14 23 (1.26%) IBM
15 22 (1.21%) Cisco
16 16 (0.88%) HP
17 14 (0.77%) Blue Prism
18 13 (0.71%) OpenAI