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 19 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 45 56
Rank change year-on-year -3 +11 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,664 1,146 1,319
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.50% 4.68% 3.49%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.20% 5.16% 4.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,124 790 903
10th Percentile £330 £337 £375
25th Percentile £400 £400 £433
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.58% -4.76% -7.08%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £638
90th Percentile £680 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £522
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.26% -5.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 8 55
10th Percentile £29.86 £40.23 £46.20
25th Percentile £52.50 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +4.17%
75th Percentile £70.00 £75.92 £86.25
90th Percentile - £80.28 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +4.17%

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 31,979 22,196 32,870
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.42% 90.71% 86.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,491 14,461 21,766
10th Percentile £313 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.05% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,970 819 2,143
10th Percentile £15.34 £15.08 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £31.45 £33.40 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -5.84% +2.77% -10.41%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.63
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.12
% change year-on-year -7.69% +1.20% -8.24%

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 19 March 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 19 March 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 19 March 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 +3 814 £500 - 195
North of England +2 328 £488 +8.33% 174
Midlands +6 193 £472 +0.43% 75
South East -34 167 £500 -14.53% 164
West Midlands +16 161 £480 -3.52% 46
North West +8 150 £463 +2.78% 84
Yorkshire -10 136 £500 +5.26% 49
South West -1 79 £500 -4.76% 87
East of England +4 59 £570 +19.06% 61
North East +10 46 £481 +26.45% 41
East Midlands -24 32 £400 +8.11% 29
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
1 116 (6.97%) Confluence
2 57 (3.43%) SAS
3 28 (1.68%) Apache Spark
4 16 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
5 12 (0.72%) SharePoint
6 9 (0.54%) Apache
7 8 (0.48%) Appian
8 6 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.30%) CMS
9 5 (0.30%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.24%) Camunda
10 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.24%) Oracle Application Server
11 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.18%) nginx
12 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.12%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.12%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
4 11 (0.66%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.12%) Simulink
8 1 (0.060%) Mingle
8 1 (0.060%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 24 (1.44%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.36%) Loan IQ
2 6 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.30%) Maximo
3 5 (0.30%) Shopify
3 5 (0.30%) Workday HCM
4 4 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.24%) Findur
4 4 (0.24%) SAP HR
5 3 (0.18%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.12%) iTrent
6 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.12%) Summit
7 1 (0.060%) CODA-Financials
7 1 (0.060%) Infor M3
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 454 (27.28%) Azure
2 413 (24.82%) AWS
3 284 (17.07%) GitHub
4 203 (12.20%) Azure DevOps
5 153 (9.19%) GitHub Actions
6 151 (9.07%) GCP
7 119 (7.15%) Serverless
8 69 (4.15%) OpenShift
9 58 (3.49%) AWS Lambda
10 57 (3.43%) Power Platform
11 54 (3.25%) Amazon S3
12 41 (2.46%) Azure AKS
13 36 (2.16%) Snowflake
14 33 (1.98%) Amazon ECS
15 32 (1.92%) AWS CloudFormation
15 32 (1.92%) Azure Data Factory
16 31 (1.86%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 29 (1.74%) Amazon EKS
17 29 (1.74%) Azure Functions
17 29 (1.74%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 29 (1.74%) Firewall
2 17 (1.02%) Wireshark
3 16 (0.96%) VPN
4 15 (0.90%) TCP/IP
5 13 (0.78%) SD-WAN
5 13 (0.78%) WAN
6 11 (0.66%) HTTP
6 11 (0.66%) Network Security
6 11 (0.66%) SSL
7 10 (0.60%) HTTPS
8 8 (0.48%) DNS
8 8 (0.48%) Ethernet
8 8 (0.48%) MPLS
9 7 (0.42%) FTP
9 7 (0.42%) Multicast
9 7 (0.42%) SAN
10 6 (0.36%) AMQP
11 5 (0.30%) Cisco IPT
11 5 (0.30%) VLAN
12 4 (0.24%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 99 (5.95%) PostgreSQL
2 71 (4.27%) NoSQL
3 65 (3.91%) SQL Server
4 58 (3.49%) MongoDB
5 50 (3.00%) Relational Database
6 49 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
7 32 (1.92%) Power BI
8 29 (1.74%) Pentaho
9 28 (1.68%) DynamoDB
10 25 (1.50%) BigQuery
11 24 (1.44%) Oracle Database
12 23 (1.38%) Tableau
13 21 (1.26%) MySQL
14 20 (1.20%) Redis
15 18 (1.08%) Oracle Reports
16 17 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
17 15 (0.90%) Azure SQL Database
18 14 (0.84%) Data Lake
19 11 (0.66%) Amazon Athena
19 11 (0.66%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 317 (19.05%) JIRA
2 308 (18.51%) Git
3 305 (18.33%) Jenkins
4 250 (15.02%) GitLab
5 248 (14.90%) Selenium
6 146 (8.77%) Cucumber
7 129 (7.75%) Postman
8 105 (6.31%) JUnit
9 95 (5.71%) Cypress.io
10 85 (5.11%) REST Assured
11 81 (4.87%) JMeter
12 41 (2.46%) WebDriver
13 36 (2.16%) SpecFlow
14 33 (1.98%) Maven
14 33 (1.98%) SonarQube
15 31 (1.86%) Zephyr
16 29 (1.74%) Bitbucket
16 29 (1.74%) Gatling
16 29 (1.74%) Gradle
16 29 (1.74%) TestRail
General
1 468 (28.13%) Social Skills
2 293 (17.61%) Finance
3 236 (14.18%) Public Sector
4 188 (11.30%) Analytical Skills
5 142 (8.53%) Banking
6 31 (1.86%) Documentation Skills
7 29 (1.74%) Investment Banking
8 26 (1.56%) Front Office
9 23 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 21 (1.26%) Presentation Skills
10 21 (1.26%) Telecoms
11 18 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
12 17 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
13 15 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
14 14 (0.84%) Financial Institution
14 14 (0.84%) Military
15 12 (0.72%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.72%) Legal
16 10 (0.60%) Electronics
17 9 (0.54%) Retail
Job Titles
1 344 (20.67%) Developer
2 268 (16.11%) Senior
3 200 (12.02%) Lead
4 185 (11.12%) Tester
5 182 (10.94%) Test Engineer
6 88 (5.29%) Data Engineer
7 85 (5.11%) Java Developer
8 84 (5.05%) Analyst
8 84 (5.05%) Automation Tester
9 79 (4.75%) Test Automation Engineer
10 72 (4.33%) Test Leader
11 71 (4.27%) QA Engineer
11 71 (4.27%) Software Engineer
12 60 (3.61%) Senior Developer
13 59 (3.55%) Architect
14 57 (3.43%) DevOps Engineer
15 53 (3.19%) Test Manager
16 52 (3.13%) Automation Engineer
16 52 (3.13%) Test Analyst
17 40 (2.40%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 208 (12.50%) REST
2 193 (11.60%) Playwright
3 139 (8.35%) React
4 136 (8.17%) Spring
5 121 (7.27%) .NET
6 118 (7.09%) Kafka
7 117 (7.03%) RESTful
8 113 (6.79%) Node.js
9 107 (6.43%) Spring Boot
10 79 (4.75%) pytest
11 58 (3.49%) AngularJS
12 53 (3.19%) OAuth
13 52 (3.13%) HTML
14 50 (3.00%) CSS
15 49 (2.94%) Jest
16 41 (2.46%) Web Services
17 37 (2.22%) WireMock
18 36 (2.16%) GraphQL
19 35 (2.10%) JSON
20 34 (2.04%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 175 (10.52%) Cloud Native
2 103 (6.19%) Product Ownership
3 80 (4.81%) Distributed Systems
4 44 (2.64%) Mobile App
5 41 (2.46%) Algorithms
6 37 (2.22%) Data Protection Act
6 37 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
7 28 (1.68%) Security Posture
8 26 (1.56%) Onboarding
9 25 (1.50%) Data Structures
10 24 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
11 23 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
11 23 (1.38%) Virtual Team
12 22 (1.32%) Distributed Architecture
12 22 (1.32%) Equities
12 22 (1.32%) Management Information System
13 21 (1.26%) Greenfield Project
14 18 (1.08%) Public Cloud
15 16 (0.96%) Derivative
15 16 (0.96%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 131 (7.87%) Linux
2 79 (4.75%) Windows
3 42 (2.52%) Android
4 35 (2.10%) Apple iOS
5 34 (2.04%) Unix
6 18 (1.08%) Windows Server
7 14 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.78%) Mac OS X
9 11 (0.66%) Kali Linux
10 7 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.30%) CentOS
12 3 (0.18%) Solaris
13 2 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
13 2 (0.12%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.060%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.060%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.060%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 864 (51.92%) CI/CD
2 785 (47.18%) Agile
3 617 (37.08%) DevOps
4 410 (24.64%) Problem-Solving
5 272 (16.35%) Continuous Improvement
6 271 (16.29%) Microservices
7 259 (15.56%) Test Strategy
8 232 (13.94%) Containerisation
9 230 (13.82%) Scrum
10 219 (13.16%) AI
11 207 (12.44%) Test Scripting
12 206 (12.38%) Validation
13 201 (12.08%) Software Engineering
14 199 (11.96%) TDD
15 198 (11.90%) Infrastructure as Code
16 187 (11.24%) Observability
17 183 (11.00%) Analytics
18 181 (10.88%) Software Testing
19 173 (10.40%) Regression Testing
20 162 (9.74%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 513 (30.83%) Python
2 410 (24.64%) Java
3 365 (21.94%) SQL
4 241 (14.48%) JavaScript
5 234 (14.06%) TypeScript
6 165 (9.92%) C#
7 72 (4.33%) PowerShell
8 63 (3.79%) Bash
9 47 (2.82%) C++
10 28 (1.68%) C
11 27 (1.62%) Go
11 27 (1.62%) Kotlin
12 23 (1.38%) Bicep
13 22 (1.32%) PL/SQL
14 21 (1.26%) Apex Code
15 17 (1.02%) Scala
16 16 (0.96%) Ruby
16 16 (0.96%) Swift
17 13 (0.78%) Groovy
18 12 (0.72%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 489 (29.39%) Security Cleared
2 371 (22.30%) SC Cleared
3 88 (5.29%) Degree
4 77 (4.63%) ISTQB
5 60 (3.61%) BPSS Clearance
6 55 (3.31%) DV Cleared
7 54 (3.25%) Computer Science Degree
8 23 (1.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 23 (1.38%) Master's Degree
9 14 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
9 14 (0.84%) OSCP
10 12 (0.72%) CEH
11 11 (0.66%) AWS Certification
11 11 (0.66%) Azure Certification
12 10 (0.60%) CISSP
12 10 (0.60%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 10 (0.60%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 9 (0.54%) CCNP
13 9 (0.54%) GPEN
13 9 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 380 (22.84%) QA
2 113 (6.79%) Accessibility
3 94 (5.65%) Data Quality
4 38 (2.28%) WCAG
5 28 (1.68%) GDPR
6 27 (1.62%) NIST
7 16 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.90%) EU AI Act
8 15 (0.90%) NCSC
9 10 (0.60%) ISO 20022
9 10 (0.60%) SLA
10 9 (0.54%) Def Stans
10 9 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 8 (0.48%) PSD2
12 6 (0.36%) SEPA
12 6 (0.36%) SOC 2
13 5 (0.30%) HL7
13 5 (0.30%) MiFID
13 5 (0.30%) NIST 800
13 5 (0.30%) PERC
System Software
1 332 (19.95%) Docker
2 26 (1.56%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.48%) Firmware
4 7 (0.42%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 7 (0.42%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.12%) SRDF
9 1 (0.060%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.060%) KVM
9 1 (0.060%) Squid
9 1 (0.060%) Time Sharing Option
9 1 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 323 (19.41%) Kubernetes
2 188 (11.30%) Terraform
3 102 (6.13%) Grafana
4 93 (5.59%) Ansible
5 76 (4.57%) Prometheus
6 19 (1.14%) Puppet
7 18 (1.08%) Argo
7 18 (1.08%) HP ALM
8 14 (0.84%) Nmap
8 14 (0.84%) Progress Chef
9 11 (0.66%) HP Quality Center
9 11 (0.66%) NetBackup
9 11 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.48%) Forefront Identity Manager
10 8 (0.48%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 7 (0.42%) Kibana
12 5 (0.30%) Podman
12 5 (0.30%) Rancher
13 4 (0.24%) Dell DRAC
13 4 (0.24%) Istio
Vendors
1 146 (8.77%) Microsoft
2 136 (8.17%) Oracle
3 65 (3.91%) Databricks
4 56 (3.37%) Splunk
5 54 (3.25%) Salesforce
6 51 (3.06%) ServiceNow
7 50 (3.00%) Google
8 39 (2.34%) SAP
9 38 (2.28%) Red Hat
10 33 (1.98%) Talend
11 25 (1.50%) Denodo
12 21 (1.26%) HP
12 21 (1.26%) IBM
12 21 (1.26%) VMware
13 20 (1.20%) Cisco
14 16 (0.96%) MuleSoft
15 15 (0.90%) Dynatrace
15 15 (0.90%) Workday
16 14 (0.84%) Atlassian
16 14 (0.84%) OpenAI