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

6 months to
11 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 1,971 1,237 1,295
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.32% 4.48% 3.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.08% 4.93% 4.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,263 857 869
10th Percentile £330 £313 £357
25th Percentile £406 £378 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £719 £740
UK median daily rate £475 £491 £513
% change year-on-year -3.26% -4.20% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 31 24
10th Percentile £38.63 £40.84 £44.00
25th Percentile £60.08 £44.76 £50.94
Median hourly rate £67.86 £50.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +35.72% -11.11% -13.79%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £74.00 £75.00 £81.85
UK median hourly rate £67.86 £50.00 £56.25
% change year-on-year +35.72% -11.11% -14.45%

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 38,792 25,089 28,626
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.08% 90.79% 85.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,117 16,022 18,624
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £422
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 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,537 1,415 1,654
10th Percentile £14.56 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.87 £18.39
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +4.78%
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +68.99% -38.57% -1.35%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 +6 888 £500 -1.96% 636
North of England +15 389 £465 +3.39% 178
Midlands +9 275 £450 +2.86% 98
West Midlands +30 259 £450 -11.11% 61
South East -29 212 £459 -8.20% 203
Yorkshire -4 157 £484 +0.57% 47
North West -3 140 £496 +17.54% 95
South West 0 113 £475 +10.14% 108
North East +14 100 £438 +4.17% 36
East of England +13 82 £450 -1.91% 70
East Midlands -42 16 £425 +25.00% 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
1 172 (8.73%) Confluence
2 50 (2.54%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (2.28%) Apache Spark
4 43 (2.18%) SAS
5 29 (1.47%) SharePoint
6 23 (1.17%) Apache
7 13 (0.66%) CMS
8 11 (0.56%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.25%) Camunda
9 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
9 5 (0.25%) nginx
9 5 (0.25%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.20%) Jupyter
10 4 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.15%) Kentico
11 3 (0.15%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.10%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.10%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.10%) Mule
12 2 (0.10%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 19 (0.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.36%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.30%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.20%) Simulink
7 3 (0.15%) Trello
8 2 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.051%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 25 (1.27%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (0.81%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.61%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
5 8 (0.41%) Findur
6 7 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.30%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.30%) Shopify
8 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
9 3 (0.15%) 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 (0.051%) Maximo
11 1 (0.051%) Summit
11 1 (0.051%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 590 (29.93%) Azure
2 585 (29.68%) AWS
3 357 (18.11%) GitHub
4 267 (13.55%) Azure DevOps
5 222 (11.26%) GitHub Actions
6 153 (7.76%) Serverless
7 150 (7.61%) GCP
8 108 (5.48%) AWS Lambda
9 92 (4.67%) Power Platform
10 87 (4.41%) Amazon S3
11 69 (3.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 68 (3.45%) Amazon ECS
13 60 (3.04%) OpenShift
14 53 (2.69%) dbt
15 49 (2.49%) Amazon EKS
16 48 (2.44%) Snowflake
17 47 (2.38%) GitHub Copilot
18 45 (2.28%) Amazon EC2
18 45 (2.28%) Azure Data Factory
19 40 (2.03%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.17%) Firewall
2 18 (0.91%) HTTP
3 16 (0.81%) 4G
3 16 (0.81%) Network Security
4 15 (0.76%) 5G
5 14 (0.71%) 2G
5 14 (0.71%) 3G
5 14 (0.71%) Diameter Protocol
5 14 (0.71%) SIGTRAN
5 14 (0.71%) SS7
6 13 (0.66%) DNS
6 13 (0.66%) TCP/IP
6 13 (0.66%) WAN
7 12 (0.61%) SAN
8 10 (0.51%) LAN
9 9 (0.46%) Wi-Fi
10 7 (0.36%) BGP
11 6 (0.30%) DHCP
11 6 (0.30%) HTTPS
11 6 (0.30%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (6.14%) Data Warehouse
2 120 (6.09%) PostgreSQL
3 101 (5.12%) NoSQL
4 90 (4.57%) MongoDB
5 79 (4.01%) SQL Server
6 78 (3.96%) Power BI
7 60 (3.04%) Relational Database
8 47 (2.38%) DynamoDB
9 41 (2.08%) Oracle Reports
10 38 (1.93%) Pentaho
11 37 (1.88%) Data Lake
12 33 (1.67%) Metadata
13 29 (1.47%) Amazon Athena
13 29 (1.47%) Big Data
14 26 (1.32%) Redis
15 25 (1.27%) Amazon RDS
15 25 (1.27%) MySQL
16 24 (1.22%) Amazon Redshift
17 20 (1.01%) Tableau
18 19 (0.96%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 400 (20.29%) Git
2 362 (18.37%) JIRA
3 329 (16.69%) Jenkins
4 265 (13.44%) GitLab
5 239 (12.13%) Selenium
6 138 (7.00%) Postman
7 137 (6.95%) Cucumber
8 101 (5.12%) JUnit
9 96 (4.87%) Cypress.io
10 85 (4.31%) REST Assured
11 77 (3.91%) JMeter
12 70 (3.55%) Zephyr
13 60 (3.04%) SonarQube
14 54 (2.74%) WebDriver
15 49 (2.49%) Gatling
16 43 (2.18%) Gradle
17 41 (2.08%) Bitbucket
18 35 (1.78%) Maven
19 32 (1.62%) Mockito
20 25 (1.27%) SpecFlow
General
1 545 (27.65%) Social Skills
2 371 (18.82%) Finance
3 269 (13.65%) Analytical Skills
4 249 (12.63%) Public Sector
5 166 (8.42%) Banking
6 61 (3.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 40 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
8 36 (1.83%) Telecoms
9 32 (1.62%) Retail
10 31 (1.57%) Influencing Skills
11 29 (1.47%) Investment Banking
12 26 (1.32%) Front Office
13 23 (1.17%) Financial Institution
14 20 (1.01%) Military
15 19 (0.96%) Aerospace
16 17 (0.86%) Back Office
17 16 (0.81%) Organisational Skills
18 15 (0.76%) Legal
19 14 (0.71%) Automotive
20 13 (0.66%) Law
Job Titles
1 391 (19.84%) Developer
2 315 (15.98%) Senior
3 210 (10.65%) Lead
4 192 (9.74%) Test Engineer
5 174 (8.83%) Tester
6 143 (7.26%) Data Engineer
7 118 (5.99%) Java Developer
8 114 (5.78%) Software Engineer
9 102 (5.18%) Analyst
10 90 (4.57%) Architect
10 90 (4.57%) DevOps Engineer
11 87 (4.41%) QA Engineer
12 86 (4.36%) Senior Developer
13 84 (4.26%) Test Automation Engineer
14 71 (3.60%) Test Leader
15 66 (3.35%) Full-Stack Developer
16 64 (3.25%) Test Analyst
17 62 (3.15%) Automation Tester
18 59 (2.99%) Automation Engineer
19 54 (2.74%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 261 (13.24%) REST
2 214 (10.86%) Playwright
3 180 (9.13%) RESTful
4 177 (8.98%) React
5 174 (8.83%) Kafka
6 162 (8.22%) Spring
7 140 (7.10%) .NET
8 124 (6.29%) Spring Boot
9 104 (5.28%) Node.js
10 88 (4.46%) AngularJS
10 88 (4.46%) HTML
11 81 (4.11%) CSS
12 56 (2.84%) OAuth
13 51 (2.59%) JSON
14 47 (2.38%) Jest
15 46 (2.33%) .NET Framework
16 44 (2.23%) pytest
17 43 (2.18%) HTML5
17 43 (2.18%) Quarkus
18 42 (2.13%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 293 (14.87%) Cloud Native
2 146 (7.41%) Product Ownership
3 141 (7.15%) Distributed Systems
4 71 (3.60%) Enterprise Software
5 53 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
6 52 (2.64%) Onboarding
7 50 (2.54%) Data Protection Act
8 49 (2.49%) Self-Motivation
9 39 (1.98%) Mobile App
10 36 (1.83%) AI Agents
11 32 (1.62%) Virtual Team
12 28 (1.42%) Distributed Architecture
12 28 (1.42%) Embedded Systems
13 25 (1.27%) Security Posture
14 21 (1.07%) Management Information System
15 19 (0.96%) Fixed Income
16 17 (0.86%) NHS
17 16 (0.81%) Data Structures
17 16 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
18 15 (0.76%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 132 (6.70%) Linux
2 84 (4.26%) Windows
3 69 (3.50%) Unix
4 39 (1.98%) Apple iOS
5 36 (1.83%) Android
6 28 (1.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 18 (0.91%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.36%) Mac OS X
8 7 (0.36%) Solaris
9 6 (0.30%) Embedded Linux
10 5 (0.25%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.20%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.15%) AIX
12 3 (0.15%) Windows 10
12 3 (0.15%) Windows 7
12 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2003
12 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.10%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,159 (58.80%) CI/CD
2 926 (46.98%) Agile
3 754 (38.25%) DevOps
4 385 (19.53%) Problem-Solving
5 384 (19.48%) Continuous Improvement
6 371 (18.82%) Microservices
7 347 (17.61%) Software Engineering
8 328 (16.64%) Scrum
9 325 (16.49%) Infrastructure as Code
10 313 (15.88%) Validation
11 296 (15.02%) Test Strategy
12 290 (14.71%) AI
13 267 (13.55%) Containerisation
14 260 (13.19%) Observability
15 249 (12.63%) TDD
16 233 (11.82%) ETL
17 220 (11.16%) SDLC
18 214 (10.86%) Data Pipeline
19 212 (10.76%) Software Testing
20 208 (10.55%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 524 (26.59%) Python
2 486 (24.66%) Java
3 479 (24.30%) SQL
4 255 (12.94%) JavaScript
5 206 (10.45%) TypeScript
6 180 (9.13%) C#
7 87 (4.41%) PowerShell
8 72 (3.65%) Bash
9 49 (2.49%) Kotlin
10 45 (2.28%) Bicep
10 45 (2.28%) C++
11 34 (1.73%) C
12 27 (1.37%) PL/SQL
12 27 (1.37%) Scala
13 25 (1.27%) Go
14 23 (1.17%) Apex Code
15 21 (1.07%) Swift
16 18 (0.91%) Ruby
17 17 (0.86%) Groovy
18 16 (0.81%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 636 (32.27%) Security Cleared
2 531 (26.94%) SC Cleared
3 94 (4.77%) ISTQB
4 92 (4.67%) Degree
5 57 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
5 57 (2.89%) DV Cleared
6 48 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
7 32 (1.62%) AWS Certification
8 25 (1.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 18 (0.91%) Azure Certification
10 15 (0.76%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 11 (0.56%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.56%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 11 (0.56%) SAFe Agilist
12 10 (0.51%) CISSP
13 9 (0.46%) Master's Degree
13 9 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.41%) CCNP
15 7 (0.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 7 (0.36%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 502 (25.47%) QA
2 149 (7.56%) Accessibility
3 142 (7.20%) Data Quality
4 79 (4.01%) WCAG
5 40 (2.03%) GDPR
6 14 (0.71%) NCSC
7 12 (0.61%) ISO 20022
7 12 (0.61%) SLA
8 10 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 9 (0.46%) NIST
10 7 (0.36%) Def Stans
11 6 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
12 5 (0.25%) FATCA
12 5 (0.25%) PCI DSS
12 5 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.20%) GRC
14 3 (0.15%) EU AI Act
14 3 (0.15%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 3 (0.15%) MiFID
System Software
1 381 (19.33%) Docker
2 29 (1.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 26 (1.32%) Active Directory
4 16 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.71%) Firmware
6 5 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 2 (0.10%) SRDF
10 1 (0.051%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.051%) Hyper-V
10 1 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 386 (19.58%) Kubernetes
2 284 (14.41%) Terraform
3 111 (5.63%) Ansible
4 104 (5.28%) Grafana
5 89 (4.52%) Prometheus
6 40 (2.03%) Argo
7 24 (1.22%) Puppet
8 19 (0.96%) Progress Chef
9 12 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.56%) HP ALM
11 10 (0.51%) Dell DRAC
12 9 (0.46%) Kibana
13 7 (0.36%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.30%) Control-M
14 6 (0.30%) NetBackup
14 6 (0.30%) Packer
15 5 (0.25%) HP Quality Center
15 5 (0.25%) Istio
15 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
16 4 (0.20%) Rancher
Vendors
1 196 (9.94%) Microsoft
2 162 (8.22%) Oracle
3 80 (4.06%) Databricks
4 76 (3.86%) Salesforce
5 64 (3.25%) Red Hat
6 57 (2.89%) Google
6 57 (2.89%) Talend
7 52 (2.64%) Splunk
8 41 (2.08%) Denodo
8 41 (2.08%) ServiceNow
9 39 (1.98%) IBM
10 35 (1.78%) VMware
11 34 (1.73%) Informatica
12 33 (1.67%) Dynatrace
13 29 (1.47%) SAP
14 26 (1.32%) Cisco
15 25 (1.27%) UiPath
16 18 (0.91%) HP
17 11 (0.56%) Fortinet
18 10 (0.51%) Sage