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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 51 49
Rank change year-on-year +4 -2 +4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,971 1,249 1,290
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.32% 4.53% 3.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.08% 4.98% 4.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,271 859 867
10th Percentile £329 £313 £354
25th Percentile £407 £380 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £575 £598 £625
90th Percentile £668 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £494 £513
% change year-on-year -3.85% -3.61% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 101 32 23
10th Percentile £37.25 £41.01 £43.50
25th Percentile £60.00 £45.94 £50.63
Median hourly rate £69.50 £52.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.38% -4.55% -15.38%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.50 £71.87
90th Percentile £74.00 £74.35 £82.90
UK median hourly rate £69.75 £50.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +39.50% -9.09% -16.67%

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 38,776 25,061 28,469
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.95% 90.80% 85.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,043 15,975 18,472
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £530
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -3.77% -3.64%
75th Percentile £630 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,543 1,444 1,583
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.22 £14.05
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.88 £18.12
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +4.83%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.21 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.63 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +65.54% -38.57% -0.24%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +6 904 £500 -1.48% 225
North of England +9 392 £464 +3.06% 134
Midlands +4 258 £447 -0.67% 80
West Midlands +20 241 £450 -10.00% 57
South East -28 215 £459 -8.20% 158
Yorkshire -7 161 £475 -5.00% 37
North West -6 137 £492 +15.76% 68
South West 0 113 £475 +8.57% 95
North East +17 102 £450 +3.45% 30
East of England +16 79 £450 -1.91% 62
East Midlands -45 17 £425 +23.19% 23
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
1 169 (8.57%) Confluence
2 51 (2.59%) Apache Airflow
3 46 (2.33%) Apache Spark
4 38 (1.93%) SharePoint
5 33 (1.67%) SAS
6 21 (1.07%) Apache
7 13 (0.66%) CMS
8 11 (0.56%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.30%) Camunda
9 6 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.25%) nginx
10 5 (0.25%) Tomcat
11 4 (0.20%) Jupyter
11 4 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.15%) Kentico
12 3 (0.15%) OpenStack
13 2 (0.10%) Anypoint
13 2 (0.10%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.10%) Mule
Applications
1 25 (1.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.81%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.36%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.25%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.20%) Simulink
7 3 (0.15%) Trello
8 1 (0.051%) Mingle
8 1 (0.051%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 25 (1.27%) Dynamics CRM
2 15 (0.76%) Aladdin
3 14 (0.71%) SAP S/4HANA
4 13 (0.66%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.41%) Findur
6 7 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.30%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
9 4 (0.20%) Shopify
10 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
11 2 (0.10%) Infor CloudSuite
11 2 (0.10%) Infor LN
11 2 (0.10%) Infor M3
11 2 (0.10%) Loan IQ
11 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
11 2 (0.10%) SAP GRC
11 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
12 1 (0.051%) Maximo
12 1 (0.051%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 597 (30.29%) Azure
2 589 (29.88%) AWS
3 352 (17.86%) GitHub
4 278 (14.10%) Azure DevOps
5 221 (11.21%) GitHub Actions
6 157 (7.97%) Serverless
7 147 (7.46%) GCP
8 112 (5.68%) AWS Lambda
9 91 (4.62%) Power Platform
10 86 (4.36%) Amazon S3
11 71 (3.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 66 (3.35%) Amazon ECS
13 59 (2.99%) OpenShift
14 53 (2.69%) dbt
15 52 (2.64%) Amazon EKS
16 49 (2.49%) Snowflake
17 48 (2.44%) GitHub Copilot
18 46 (2.33%) Amazon EC2
19 44 (2.23%) Azure Data Factory
20 42 (2.13%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.17%) Firewall
2 18 (0.91%) HTTP
3 17 (0.86%) 4G
4 16 (0.81%) 5G
4 16 (0.81%) DNS
4 16 (0.81%) Network Security
5 15 (0.76%) 2G
5 15 (0.76%) 3G
5 15 (0.76%) Diameter Protocol
5 15 (0.76%) SIGTRAN
5 15 (0.76%) SS7
5 15 (0.76%) WAN
6 13 (0.66%) TCP/IP
7 12 (0.61%) LAN
7 12 (0.61%) SAN
8 11 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
9 9 (0.46%) BGP
10 8 (0.41%) Ethernet VPN
10 8 (0.41%) VXLAN
11 7 (0.36%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (6.24%) Data Warehouse
2 116 (5.89%) PostgreSQL
3 104 (5.28%) NoSQL
4 88 (4.46%) MongoDB
5 84 (4.26%) SQL Server
6 78 (3.96%) Power BI
7 64 (3.25%) Relational Database
8 45 (2.28%) DynamoDB
9 43 (2.18%) Oracle Reports
10 36 (1.83%) Data Lake
11 34 (1.73%) Metadata
12 33 (1.67%) Pentaho
13 30 (1.52%) Amazon Athena
14 29 (1.47%) Big Data
15 27 (1.37%) Amazon RDS
16 26 (1.32%) Amazon Redshift
16 26 (1.32%) MySQL
16 26 (1.32%) Redis
17 24 (1.22%) Tableau
18 21 (1.07%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 392 (19.89%) Git
2 346 (17.55%) JIRA
3 314 (15.93%) Jenkins
4 259 (13.14%) GitLab
5 234 (11.87%) Selenium
6 143 (7.26%) Postman
7 126 (6.39%) Cucumber
8 97 (4.92%) Cypress.io
9 94 (4.77%) JUnit
10 83 (4.21%) REST Assured
11 77 (3.91%) JMeter
12 71 (3.60%) Zephyr
13 61 (3.09%) SonarQube
14 49 (2.49%) Gatling
14 49 (2.49%) WebDriver
15 44 (2.23%) Gradle
16 41 (2.08%) Bitbucket
17 34 (1.73%) Maven
18 32 (1.62%) Mockito
19 23 (1.17%) Appium
General
1 550 (27.90%) Social Skills
2 387 (19.63%) Finance
3 280 (14.21%) Analytical Skills
4 245 (12.43%) Public Sector
5 173 (8.78%) Banking
6 63 (3.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 40 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
8 39 (1.98%) Telecoms
9 32 (1.62%) Retail
10 29 (1.47%) Front Office
10 29 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
11 28 (1.42%) Investment Banking
12 23 (1.17%) Financial Institution
13 20 (1.01%) Military
14 19 (0.96%) Aerospace
15 17 (0.86%) Back Office
16 15 (0.76%) Legal
17 14 (0.71%) Automotive
17 14 (0.71%) Law
18 13 (0.66%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 398 (20.19%) Developer
2 317 (16.08%) Senior
3 210 (10.65%) Lead
4 192 (9.74%) Test Engineer
5 171 (8.68%) Tester
6 135 (6.85%) Data Engineer
7 121 (6.14%) Java Developer
8 106 (5.38%) Software Engineer
9 105 (5.33%) Analyst
10 95 (4.82%) DevOps Engineer
11 88 (4.46%) Test Automation Engineer
12 87 (4.41%) Senior Developer
13 86 (4.36%) Architect
14 83 (4.21%) QA Engineer
15 70 (3.55%) Test Leader
16 68 (3.45%) Full-Stack Developer
17 66 (3.35%) Test Analyst
18 65 (3.30%) Automation Engineer
19 60 (3.04%) Automation Tester
20 57 (2.89%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 290 (14.71%) Terraform
2 278 (14.10%) REST
3 216 (10.96%) Playwright
4 187 (9.49%) Kafka
5 185 (9.39%) RESTful
6 177 (8.98%) React
7 160 (8.12%) Spring
8 143 (7.26%) .NET
9 130 (6.60%) Spring Boot
10 98 (4.97%) HTML
10 98 (4.97%) Node.js
11 90 (4.57%) AngularJS
12 84 (4.26%) CSS
13 57 (2.89%) OAuth
14 53 (2.69%) JSON
15 47 (2.38%) XML
16 45 (2.28%) pytest
17 44 (2.23%) .NET Framework
18 43 (2.18%) Jest
19 42 (2.13%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 297 (15.07%) Cloud Native
2 147 (7.46%) Product Ownership
3 140 (7.10%) Distributed Systems
4 75 (3.81%) Enterprise Software
5 53 (2.69%) Onboarding
6 51 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
7 47 (2.38%) Data Protection Act
8 46 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
9 40 (2.03%) Mobile App
10 38 (1.93%) AI Agents
11 32 (1.62%) Virtual Team
12 25 (1.27%) Embedded Systems
13 22 (1.12%) Security Posture
14 21 (1.07%) Distributed Architecture
14 21 (1.07%) Management Information System
15 19 (0.96%) Data Centre
16 18 (0.91%) Fixed Income
17 16 (0.81%) Data Structures
17 16 (0.81%) NHS
18 14 (0.71%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 142 (7.20%) Linux
2 92 (4.67%) Windows
3 80 (4.06%) Unix
4 35 (1.78%) Apple iOS
5 34 (1.73%) Android
6 29 (1.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 19 (0.96%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.36%) Solaris
9 6 (0.30%) Embedded Linux
9 6 (0.30%) Mac OS X
10 5 (0.25%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.25%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
10 5 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.20%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.20%) VMS
11 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.15%) AIX
12 3 (0.15%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,151 (58.40%) CI/CD
2 916 (46.47%) Agile
3 754 (38.25%) DevOps
4 393 (19.94%) Problem-Solving
5 386 (19.58%) Continuous Improvement
6 360 (18.26%) Microservices
7 344 (17.45%) Software Engineering
8 327 (16.59%) Infrastructure as Code
9 317 (16.08%) Scrum
10 316 (16.03%) Validation
11 294 (14.92%) AI
11 294 (14.92%) Test Strategy
12 265 (13.44%) Containerisation
13 250 (12.68%) Observability
14 232 (11.77%) TDD
15 226 (11.47%) ETL
16 221 (11.21%) SDLC
17 211 (10.71%) End-to-End Testing
17 211 (10.71%) Software Testing
18 206 (10.45%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 535 (27.14%) Python
2 500 (25.37%) SQL
3 494 (25.06%) Java
4 260 (13.19%) JavaScript
5 208 (10.55%) TypeScript
6 176 (8.93%) C#
7 100 (5.07%) PowerShell
8 75 (3.81%) Bash
9 48 (2.44%) Bicep
10 47 (2.38%) Kotlin
11 38 (1.93%) C++
12 30 (1.52%) C
13 28 (1.42%) PL/SQL
14 26 (1.32%) Scala
15 25 (1.27%) Go
16 23 (1.17%) Apex Code
17 17 (0.86%) Ruby
17 17 (0.86%) Shell Script
18 16 (0.81%) Groovy
18 16 (0.81%) Swift
Qualifications
1 635 (32.22%) Security Cleared
2 534 (27.09%) SC Cleared
3 101 (5.12%) Degree
3 101 (5.12%) ISTQB
4 60 (3.04%) DV Cleared
5 54 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
6 52 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
7 33 (1.67%) AWS Certification
8 28 (1.42%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 20 (1.01%) Azure Certification
10 15 (0.76%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 12 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
11 12 (0.61%) ISEB
11 12 (0.61%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 12 (0.61%) Master's Degree
12 11 (0.56%) SAFe Agilist
13 10 (0.51%) CISSP
13 10 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.41%) CCNP
15 7 (0.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 519 (26.33%) QA
2 145 (7.36%) Accessibility
3 137 (6.95%) Data Quality
4 76 (3.86%) WCAG
5 39 (1.98%) GDPR
6 15 (0.76%) ISO 20022
7 14 (0.71%) NCSC
8 13 (0.66%) SLA
9 11 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 10 (0.51%) NIST
11 7 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.36%) Def Stans
12 6 (0.30%) GRC
12 6 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.25%) FATCA
13 5 (0.25%) PCI DSS
14 4 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.15%) EU AI Act
15 3 (0.15%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 3 (0.15%) MiFID
System Software
1 381 (19.33%) Docker
2 31 (1.57%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (1.52%) Active Directory
4 17 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.71%) Firmware
6 5 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
6 5 (0.25%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.10%) SRDF
9 1 (0.051%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.051%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 381 (19.33%) Kubernetes
2 117 (5.94%) Ansible
3 102 (5.18%) Grafana
4 84 (4.26%) Prometheus
5 40 (2.03%) Argo
6 22 (1.12%) Puppet
7 21 (1.07%) Progress Chef
8 11 (0.56%) HP ALM
8 11 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
9 10 (0.51%) Control-M
9 10 (0.51%) Dell DRAC
9 10 (0.51%) Kibana
10 7 (0.36%) Kustomize
11 6 (0.30%) Istio
11 6 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (0.30%) Packer
12 5 (0.25%) HP Fortify
12 5 (0.25%) HP Quality Center
12 5 (0.25%) SCCM
13 4 (0.20%) Forefront Identity Manager
Vendors
1 210 (10.65%) Microsoft
2 166 (8.42%) Oracle
3 83 (4.21%) Databricks
4 75 (3.81%) Salesforce
5 63 (3.20%) Red Hat
6 58 (2.94%) Google
7 54 (2.74%) Splunk
8 52 (2.64%) Talend
9 43 (2.18%) ServiceNow
10 42 (2.13%) IBM
11 38 (1.93%) Denodo
12 37 (1.88%) VMware
13 36 (1.83%) SAP
14 33 (1.67%) Dynatrace
15 32 (1.62%) Informatica
16 31 (1.57%) Cisco
17 26 (1.32%) UiPath
18 18 (0.91%) HP
19 11 (0.56%) Fortinet
19 11 (0.56%) MuleSoft