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 7 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 48 57
Rank change year-on-year -1 +9 -8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,700 1,112 1,262
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.18% 4.56% 3.40%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.92% 5.00% 3.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,116 762 833
10th Percentile £331 £338 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £638
90th Percentile £663 £738 £735
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £511
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.20% -7.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 83 19 52
10th Percentile £36.51 £39.67 £51.38
25th Percentile £53.53 £46.75 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -10.20% -12.50%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £83.13
90th Percentile - £75.84 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £52.50 £61.25
% change year-on-year +23.81% -14.29% -7.20%

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 34,525 22,234 32,111
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.79% 91.21% 86.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,016 14,552 21,077
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,153 931 2,253
10th Percentile £15.35 £14.66 £12.94
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £30.00 £36.34
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -17.43% -2.19%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.96
% change year-on-year +43.29% -19.35% -0.11%

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 7 May 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 7 May 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 7 May 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 0 827 £500 -0.99% 202
North of England +10 336 £468 +4.06% 147
Midlands +3 191 £450 -2.70% 69
South East -35 173 £505 -1.56% 117
West Midlands +21 166 £463 -6.57% 45
North West +11 148 £463 +2.78% 65
Yorkshire -2 142 £493 +1.03% 41
South West +6 91 £475 -5.00% 68
East of England +7 60 £522 +6.58% 68
North East +10 51 £406 +2.85% 41
East Midlands -33 25 £400 -0.56% 24
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
1 131 (7.71%) Confluence
2 40 (2.35%) SAS
3 33 (1.94%) Apache Spark
4 30 (1.76%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.76%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.65%) Apache
7 8 (0.47%) Appian
8 6 (0.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.35%) Camunda
9 4 (0.24%) nginx
9 4 (0.24%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.18%) CMS
10 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.059%) Ethereum
11 1 (0.059%) Jupyter
11 1 (0.059%) Mendix
11 1 (0.059%) Solana
Applications
1 24 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.65%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.18%) Simulink
7 1 (0.059%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.059%) Mingle
7 1 (0.059%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (1.18%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (0.41%) Findur
3 7 (0.41%) Shopify
4 6 (0.35%) Loan IQ
5 5 (0.29%) BambooHR
5 5 (0.29%) Maximo
5 5 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
5 5 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
6 3 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
6 3 (0.18%) SAP ERP
7 2 (0.12%) iTrent
7 2 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 2 (0.12%) SAP MDG
7 2 (0.12%) Summit
7 2 (0.12%) Workday HCM
8 1 (0.059%) Cloudability
8 1 (0.059%) Infor CloudSuite
8 1 (0.059%) Infor LN
8 1 (0.059%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 467 (27.47%) Azure
2 453 (26.65%) AWS
3 272 (16.00%) GitHub
4 211 (12.41%) Azure DevOps
5 156 (9.18%) GitHub Actions
6 119 (7.00%) GCP
7 114 (6.71%) Serverless
8 72 (4.24%) AWS Lambda
9 69 (4.06%) Amazon S3
10 57 (3.35%) OpenShift
11 53 (3.12%) Power Platform
12 50 (2.94%) Amazon ECS
13 43 (2.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 37 (2.18%) AWS CloudFormation
14 37 (2.18%) Azure AKS
15 35 (2.06%) Snowflake
16 34 (2.00%) Amazon EKS
16 34 (2.00%) Azure Data Factory
17 26 (1.53%) Azure Monitor
17 26 (1.53%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.24%) Firewall
2 14 (0.82%) HTTP
3 13 (0.76%) SAN
4 11 (0.65%) TCP/IP
5 10 (0.59%) VPN
6 9 (0.53%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.47%) FTP
7 8 (0.47%) WAN
8 7 (0.41%) MPLS
8 7 (0.41%) SD-WAN
8 7 (0.41%) SSL
8 7 (0.41%) Wireshark
9 6 (0.35%) Multicast
9 6 (0.35%) VLAN
10 5 (0.29%) 5G
10 5 (0.29%) AMQP
10 5 (0.29%) Network Security
10 5 (0.29%) Wi-Fi
11 4 (0.24%) RS-232
11 4 (0.24%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 98 (5.76%) PostgreSQL
2 82 (4.82%) SQL Server
3 80 (4.71%) NoSQL
4 70 (4.12%) MongoDB
5 68 (4.00%) Data Warehouse
6 55 (3.24%) Relational Database
7 41 (2.41%) DynamoDB
8 37 (2.18%) Power BI
9 32 (1.88%) Pentaho
10 26 (1.53%) Oracle Reports
11 25 (1.47%) Tableau
12 23 (1.35%) MySQL
12 23 (1.35%) Redis
13 22 (1.29%) Big Data
14 20 (1.18%) Amazon Athena
14 20 (1.18%) BigQuery
15 19 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
15 19 (1.12%) Data Lake
16 18 (1.06%) Metadata
17 16 (0.94%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 329 (19.35%) JIRA
2 313 (18.41%) Git
3 279 (16.41%) Jenkins
4 233 (13.71%) GitLab
5 228 (13.41%) Selenium
6 131 (7.71%) Postman
7 119 (7.00%) Cucumber
8 90 (5.29%) JUnit
9 80 (4.71%) Cypress.io
10 72 (4.24%) JMeter
11 71 (4.18%) REST Assured
12 45 (2.65%) WebDriver
13 43 (2.53%) SonarQube
14 42 (2.47%) Zephyr
15 33 (1.94%) Gradle
15 33 (1.94%) Maven
16 31 (1.82%) SpecFlow
17 29 (1.71%) Bitbucket
18 27 (1.59%) Gatling
18 27 (1.59%) Mockito
General
1 454 (26.71%) Social Skills
2 312 (18.35%) Finance
3 232 (13.65%) Public Sector
4 206 (12.12%) Analytical Skills
5 146 (8.59%) Banking
6 39 (2.29%) Documentation Skills
7 34 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 29 (1.71%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.59%) Front Office
10 24 (1.41%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
12 20 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
13 17 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.94%) Legal
15 15 (0.88%) Aerospace
16 14 (0.82%) Financial Institution
17 13 (0.76%) Retail
18 10 (0.59%) Back Office
18 10 (0.59%) Military
19 8 (0.47%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 355 (20.88%) Developer
2 255 (15.00%) Senior
3 188 (11.06%) Tester
4 181 (10.65%) Lead
5 172 (10.12%) Test Engineer
6 101 (5.94%) Data Engineer
7 99 (5.82%) Java Developer
8 90 (5.29%) Analyst
9 85 (5.00%) Test Automation Engineer
10 84 (4.94%) Automation Tester
11 82 (4.82%) Software Engineer
12 76 (4.47%) Architect
13 72 (4.24%) QA Engineer
14 70 (4.12%) Test Leader
15 68 (4.00%) Senior Developer
16 64 (3.76%) DevOps Engineer
17 55 (3.24%) Full-Stack Developer
18 53 (3.12%) Test Manager
19 51 (3.00%) Test Analyst
20 48 (2.82%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 191 (11.24%) REST
2 189 (11.12%) Playwright
3 148 (8.71%) React
4 134 (7.88%) Spring
5 122 (7.18%) Kafka
6 120 (7.06%) .NET
6 120 (7.06%) RESTful
7 111 (6.53%) Node.js
8 108 (6.35%) Spring Boot
9 76 (4.47%) AngularJS
10 61 (3.59%) HTML
11 54 (3.18%) CSS
11 54 (3.18%) pytest
12 49 (2.88%) OAuth
13 47 (2.76%) Jest
14 32 (1.88%) OpenID
15 31 (1.82%) Gherkin
15 31 (1.82%) OAuth2
15 31 (1.82%) SailPoint
15 31 (1.82%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 186 (10.94%) Cloud Native
2 116 (6.82%) Product Ownership
3 91 (5.35%) Distributed Systems
4 44 (2.59%) Data Protection Act
5 43 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
6 42 (2.47%) Mobile App
7 30 (1.76%) Virtual Team
8 28 (1.65%) Onboarding
8 28 (1.65%) Self-Motivation
9 26 (1.53%) Algorithms
10 24 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
11 23 (1.35%) Management Information System
12 21 (1.24%) Distributed Architecture
13 20 (1.18%) Data Centre
14 19 (1.12%) Fixed Income
14 19 (1.12%) Security Posture
15 18 (1.06%) Data Structures
15 18 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
15 18 (1.06%) NHS
16 17 (1.00%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 114 (6.71%) Linux
2 78 (4.59%) Windows
3 44 (2.59%) Unix
4 39 (2.29%) Android
5 32 (1.88%) Apple iOS
6 18 (1.06%) Windows Server
7 16 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.76%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.53%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.29%) Solaris
11 4 (0.24%) CentOS
11 4 (0.24%) Embedded Linux
11 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.18%) AIX
12 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.12%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.059%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.059%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.059%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 883 (51.94%) CI/CD
2 789 (46.41%) Agile
3 609 (35.82%) DevOps
4 361 (21.24%) Problem-Solving
5 282 (16.59%) Microservices
6 274 (16.12%) Continuous Improvement
7 244 (14.35%) Scrum
7 244 (14.35%) Test Strategy
8 224 (13.18%) Infrastructure as Code
9 223 (13.12%) Validation
10 221 (13.00%) Containerisation
11 219 (12.88%) Software Engineering
12 198 (11.65%) Observability
13 197 (11.59%) AI
14 189 (11.12%) TDD
15 182 (10.71%) Test Scripting
16 170 (10.00%) Software Testing
17 168 (9.88%) Regression Testing
17 168 (9.88%) SDLC
18 167 (9.82%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 454 (26.71%) Python
2 422 (24.82%) Java
3 399 (23.47%) SQL
4 236 (13.88%) JavaScript
5 225 (13.24%) TypeScript
6 176 (10.35%) C#
7 69 (4.06%) PowerShell
8 54 (3.18%) Bash
9 43 (2.53%) C++
10 34 (2.00%) Kotlin
11 32 (1.88%) C
12 30 (1.76%) PL/SQL
13 25 (1.47%) Scala
14 23 (1.35%) Apex Code
14 23 (1.35%) Bicep
15 22 (1.29%) Go
16 18 (1.06%) Ruby
17 14 (0.82%) Swift
18 13 (0.76%) Groovy
19 10 (0.59%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 536 (31.53%) Security Cleared
2 416 (24.47%) SC Cleared
3 78 (4.59%) ISTQB
4 74 (4.35%) Degree
5 66 (3.88%) DV Cleared
6 59 (3.47%) BPSS Clearance
7 42 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (0.88%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 14 (0.82%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.65%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 10 (0.59%) Azure Certification
12 10 (0.59%) CCNP
13 9 (0.53%) SAFe Agilist
14 8 (0.47%) AWS Certification
14 8 (0.47%) DBS Check
14 8 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
15 6 (0.35%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 6 (0.35%) CISSP
16 5 (0.29%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 378 (22.24%) QA
2 109 (6.41%) Accessibility
3 98 (5.76%) Data Quality
4 46 (2.71%) WCAG
5 30 (1.76%) GDPR
6 14 (0.82%) ISO 20022
7 11 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 10 (0.59%) Def Stans
8 10 (0.59%) NCSC
9 8 (0.47%) NIST
9 8 (0.47%) SLA
10 7 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 7 (0.41%) SEPA
11 6 (0.35%) PSD2
12 5 (0.29%) FATCA
13 4 (0.24%) HL7
13 4 (0.24%) MiFID
13 4 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
14 3 (0.18%) GRC
14 3 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 298 (17.53%) Docker
2 21 (1.24%) Active Directory
3 18 (1.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.82%) Firmware
5 11 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.41%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 6 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
9 4 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
10 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.12%) SRDF
12 1 (0.059%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.059%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.059%) KVM
12 1 (0.059%) Squid
12 1 (0.059%) Time Sharing Option
12 1 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.059%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 302 (17.76%) Kubernetes
2 207 (12.18%) Terraform
3 98 (5.76%) Grafana
4 79 (4.65%) Prometheus
5 77 (4.53%) Ansible
6 27 (1.59%) Argo
7 16 (0.94%) HP ALM
8 15 (0.88%) Puppet
9 12 (0.71%) Kibana
9 12 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (0.59%) Forefront Identity Manager
10 10 (0.59%) HP Quality Center
10 10 (0.59%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 8 (0.47%) Dell DRAC
11 8 (0.47%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.35%) NetBackup
13 5 (0.29%) Nmap
13 5 (0.29%) Rancher
14 4 (0.24%) Oracle RMAN
15 3 (0.18%) Nagios
Vendors
1 151 (8.88%) Oracle
2 146 (8.59%) Microsoft
3 59 (3.47%) Salesforce
4 57 (3.35%) Databricks
4 57 (3.35%) ServiceNow
5 53 (3.12%) Splunk
6 47 (2.76%) Talend
7 45 (2.65%) Red Hat
8 43 (2.53%) Google
9 33 (1.94%) Denodo
10 32 (1.88%) SAP
11 25 (1.47%) VMware
12 21 (1.24%) IBM
13 20 (1.18%) Cisco
14 19 (1.12%) HP
15 18 (1.06%) Dynatrace
15 18 (1.06%) Informatica
16 17 (1.00%) UiPath
17 16 (0.94%) MuleSoft
18 15 (0.88%) OpenAI