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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 49 58
Rank change year-on-year +2 +9 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,768 1,076 1,259
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.24% 4.49% 3.41%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.99% 4.92% 3.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,144 755 837
10th Percentile £350 £322 £363
25th Percentile £402 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £619 £638
90th Percentile £663 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £511
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.20% -7.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 98 22 49
10th Percentile £35.44 £41.08 £52.25
25th Percentile £56.94 £45.63 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% -8.33% -15.49%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.50 £74.50
90th Percentile £74.30 £77.02 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +22.73% -8.33% -12.73%

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 35,462 21,869 31,644
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.04% 91.35% 85.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,467 14,201 20,640
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £513 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,230 965 2,327
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.85
25th Percentile £20.69 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £28.60 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.34% -23.73% +0.54%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.91 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.69 £27.85 £36.50
% change year-on-year +53.27% -23.70% +1.39%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +4 823 £500 -3.66% 303
North of England +7 355 £464 +3.06% 159
Midlands +14 218 £450 +9.09% 83
West Midlands +28 196 £459 -2.91% 55
South East -33 184 £500 -0.10% 134
Yorkshire -3 151 £500 +5.26% 36
North West +6 150 £475 +5.91% 97
South West +17 101 £469 -1.32% 71
East of England +11 74 £501 +7.17% 63
North East +3 62 £425 +6.25% 27
East Midlands -42 22 £400 +48.15% 28
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
1 144 (8.14%) Confluence
2 40 (2.26%) SAS
3 39 (2.21%) Apache Airflow
4 34 (1.92%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.74%) Apache
6 12 (0.68%) SharePoint
7 10 (0.57%) CMS
8 9 (0.51%) Appian
9 8 (0.45%) Camunda
10 5 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.28%) nginx
10 5 (0.28%) Tomcat
11 3 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.17%) WebLogic
12 2 (0.11%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.11%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.11%) Kentico
13 1 (0.057%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.057%) Mendix
Applications
1 26 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.74%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.57%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.17%) Simulink
7 1 (0.057%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.057%) Mingle
7 1 (0.057%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 19 (1.07%) Aladdin
2 16 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.51%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.45%) Findur
5 7 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
6 6 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.34%) Shopify
7 5 (0.28%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.28%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.28%) SAP ERP
8 3 (0.17%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.17%) Maximo
9 2 (0.11%) iTrent
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
9 2 (0.11%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.11%) Summit
9 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
10 1 (0.057%) Infor CloudSuite
10 1 (0.057%) Infor LN
Cloud Services
1 488 (27.60%) AWS
2 477 (26.98%) Azure
3 287 (16.23%) GitHub
4 212 (11.99%) Azure DevOps
5 170 (9.62%) GitHub Actions
6 133 (7.52%) GCP
7 122 (6.90%) Serverless
8 82 (4.64%) AWS Lambda
9 71 (4.02%) Amazon S3
10 64 (3.62%) Power Platform
11 53 (3.00%) OpenShift
12 49 (2.77%) Amazon ECS
13 46 (2.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 43 (2.43%) Azure Data Factory
15 38 (2.15%) Snowflake
16 33 (1.87%) dbt
17 31 (1.75%) Amazon EC2
18 30 (1.70%) Amazon EKS
19 29 (1.64%) AWS CloudFormation
20 28 (1.58%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.19%) Firewall
2 14 (0.79%) HTTP
2 14 (0.79%) SAN
3 10 (0.57%) TCP/IP
4 9 (0.51%) Network Security
4 9 (0.51%) VPN
5 8 (0.45%) MPLS
5 8 (0.45%) WAN
6 6 (0.34%) Ethernet
6 6 (0.34%) VLAN
6 6 (0.34%) Wi-Fi
7 5 (0.28%) Multicast
7 5 (0.28%) SSL
7 5 (0.28%) Wireshark
8 4 (0.23%) 5G
8 4 (0.23%) BGP
8 4 (0.23%) FTP
8 4 (0.23%) NAS
8 4 (0.23%) Reverse Proxy
8 4 (0.23%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 96 (5.43%) PostgreSQL
2 86 (4.86%) Data Warehouse
3 80 (4.52%) SQL Server
4 77 (4.36%) MongoDB
5 76 (4.30%) NoSQL
6 54 (3.05%) Relational Database
7 46 (2.60%) Power BI
8 45 (2.55%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.98%) Oracle Reports
10 33 (1.87%) Pentaho
11 26 (1.47%) Tableau
12 25 (1.41%) Amazon Athena
13 24 (1.36%) Big Data
13 24 (1.36%) Data Lake
14 23 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
15 22 (1.24%) Metadata
16 21 (1.19%) Redis
17 20 (1.13%) Amazon Redshift
18 18 (1.02%) BigQuery
18 18 (1.02%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 336 (19.00%) JIRA
2 308 (17.42%) Git
3 291 (16.46%) Jenkins
4 251 (14.20%) GitLab
5 243 (13.74%) Selenium
6 145 (8.20%) Postman
7 133 (7.52%) Cucumber
8 96 (5.43%) REST Assured
9 94 (5.32%) JUnit
10 83 (4.69%) Cypress.io
11 79 (4.47%) JMeter
12 52 (2.94%) Zephyr
13 51 (2.88%) WebDriver
14 44 (2.49%) SonarQube
15 38 (2.15%) Gradle
16 34 (1.92%) Gatling
17 30 (1.70%) Bitbucket
17 30 (1.70%) Maven
17 30 (1.70%) Mockito
18 29 (1.64%) SpecFlow
General
1 481 (27.21%) Social Skills
2 321 (18.16%) Finance
3 229 (12.95%) Public Sector
4 218 (12.33%) Analytical Skills
5 155 (8.77%) Banking
6 42 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 41 (2.32%) Documentation Skills
8 32 (1.81%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.53%) Front Office
10 23 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
11 19 (1.07%) Telecoms
12 17 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
12 17 (0.96%) Retail
13 16 (0.90%) Financial Institution
13 16 (0.90%) Legal
13 16 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
14 15 (0.85%) Aerospace
15 13 (0.74%) Military
16 11 (0.62%) Back Office
16 11 (0.62%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 348 (19.68%) Developer
2 272 (15.38%) Senior
3 197 (11.14%) Test Engineer
4 194 (10.97%) Lead
5 190 (10.75%) Tester
6 110 (6.22%) Data Engineer
7 94 (5.32%) Java Developer
8 92 (5.20%) Software Engineer
9 91 (5.15%) Analyst
10 86 (4.86%) Test Automation Engineer
11 81 (4.58%) Architect
12 74 (4.19%) QA Engineer
13 73 (4.13%) DevOps Engineer
14 72 (4.07%) Automation Tester
15 70 (3.96%) Test Leader
16 69 (3.90%) Senior Developer
17 53 (3.00%) Automation Engineer
18 51 (2.88%) Full-Stack Developer
19 49 (2.77%) Test Analyst
20 48 (2.71%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 194 (10.97%) Playwright
2 193 (10.92%) REST
3 159 (8.99%) React
4 129 (7.30%) Kafka
5 128 (7.24%) RESTful
6 124 (7.01%) Spring
7 117 (6.62%) .NET
8 100 (5.66%) Spring Boot
9 97 (5.49%) Node.js
10 66 (3.73%) AngularJS
11 60 (3.39%) HTML
12 54 (3.05%) CSS
13 52 (2.94%) pytest
14 44 (2.49%) Jest
14 44 (2.49%) OAuth
15 37 (2.09%) Swagger
16 34 (1.92%) OpenID
17 32 (1.81%) GraphQL
18 31 (1.75%) Gherkin
19 30 (1.70%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 198 (11.20%) Cloud Native
2 120 (6.79%) Product Ownership
3 97 (5.49%) Distributed Systems
4 51 (2.88%) Data Protection Act
5 43 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
6 40 (2.26%) Mobile App
7 36 (2.04%) Self-Motivation
8 35 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
9 33 (1.87%) Virtual Team
10 28 (1.58%) Distributed Architecture
11 27 (1.53%) Onboarding
12 23 (1.30%) Algorithms
13 22 (1.24%) Management Information System
14 21 (1.19%) Greenfield Project
15 20 (1.13%) NHS
16 19 (1.07%) Fixed Income
17 18 (1.02%) Data Centre
17 18 (1.02%) Embedded Systems
18 17 (0.96%) Data Structures
19 16 (0.90%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 115 (6.50%) Linux
2 75 (4.24%) Windows
3 53 (3.00%) Unix
4 40 (2.26%) Android
5 35 (1.98%) Apple iOS
6 17 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 17 (0.96%) Windows Server
7 12 (0.68%) Mac OS X
8 7 (0.40%) Mac OS
8 7 (0.40%) Solaris
9 5 (0.28%) Windows Server 2008
10 4 (0.23%) Embedded Linux
10 4 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.17%) AIX
11 3 (0.17%) CentOS
11 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.11%) Kali Linux
13 1 (0.057%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 932 (52.71%) CI/CD
2 809 (45.76%) Agile
3 619 (35.01%) DevOps
4 333 (18.83%) Problem-Solving
5 292 (16.52%) Continuous Improvement
5 292 (16.52%) Microservices
6 279 (15.78%) Test Strategy
7 254 (14.37%) Scrum
8 250 (14.14%) Software Engineering
9 245 (13.86%) Validation
10 224 (12.67%) Infrastructure as Code
11 213 (12.05%) Observability
12 206 (11.65%) AI
12 206 (11.65%) Containerisation
12 206 (11.65%) TDD
13 192 (10.86%) ETL
14 179 (10.12%) Software Testing
15 178 (10.07%) Test Scripting
16 168 (9.50%) User Acceptance Testing
17 165 (9.33%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 450 (25.45%) Python
2 441 (24.94%) Java
3 432 (24.43%) SQL
4 230 (13.01%) JavaScript
5 197 (11.14%) TypeScript
6 174 (9.84%) C#
7 71 (4.02%) PowerShell
8 54 (3.05%) Bash
9 44 (2.49%) C++
10 40 (2.26%) Kotlin
11 33 (1.87%) PL/SQL
12 31 (1.75%) C
13 30 (1.70%) Scala
14 29 (1.64%) Apex Code
15 27 (1.53%) Go
16 22 (1.24%) Bicep
17 20 (1.13%) Swift
18 16 (0.90%) Groovy
19 15 (0.85%) Ruby
20 12 (0.68%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 548 (31.00%) Security Cleared
2 431 (24.38%) SC Cleared
3 85 (4.81%) ISTQB
4 73 (4.13%) Degree
5 70 (3.96%) DV Cleared
6 65 (3.68%) BPSS Clearance
7 36 (2.04%) Computer Science Degree
8 20 (1.13%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 13 (0.74%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.68%) Cisco Certification
10 12 (0.68%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 11 (0.62%) CCNP
12 10 (0.57%) AWS Certification
12 10 (0.57%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 10 (0.57%) SAFe Agilist
13 9 (0.51%) DBS Check
14 7 (0.40%) Azure Certification
15 6 (0.34%) CISSP
16 5 (0.28%) CCIE
17 4 (0.23%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 385 (21.78%) QA
2 120 (6.79%) Accessibility
3 111 (6.28%) Data Quality
4 54 (3.05%) WCAG
5 29 (1.64%) GDPR
6 11 (0.62%) ISO 20022
7 10 (0.57%) Def Stans
7 10 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 10 (0.57%) SLA
8 9 (0.51%) NCSC
8 9 (0.51%) NIST
9 6 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 5 (0.28%) FATCA
11 4 (0.23%) HL7
11 4 (0.23%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.23%) SEPA
11 4 (0.23%) Software Quality Assurance
12 3 (0.17%) GRC
12 3 (0.17%) MiFID
12 3 (0.17%) SOC 2
System Software
1 291 (16.46%) Docker
2 23 (1.30%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (0.96%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.74%) Firmware
5 12 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.40%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 6 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.11%) SRDF
10 1 (0.057%) Hyper-V
10 1 (0.057%) ISA Server
10 1 (0.057%) KVM
10 1 (0.057%) Squid
10 1 (0.057%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.057%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 291 (16.46%) Kubernetes
2 204 (11.54%) Terraform
3 95 (5.37%) Grafana
4 84 (4.75%) Ansible
5 83 (4.69%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.47%) Argo
7 14 (0.79%) Puppet
8 13 (0.74%) HP ALM
9 11 (0.62%) Kibana
10 10 (0.57%) HP Quality Center
11 9 (0.51%) Dell DRAC
11 9 (0.51%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 9 (0.51%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 9 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.45%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.34%) NetBackup
13 6 (0.34%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.23%) Istio
14 4 (0.23%) Nmap
14 4 (0.23%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 151 (8.54%) Oracle
2 146 (8.26%) Microsoft
3 71 (4.02%) Salesforce
4 61 (3.45%) Databricks
5 55 (3.11%) ServiceNow
6 54 (3.05%) Talend
7 52 (2.94%) Splunk
8 47 (2.66%) Red Hat
9 46 (2.60%) Google
10 38 (2.15%) Denodo
11 28 (1.58%) SAP
12 27 (1.53%) VMware
13 24 (1.36%) Informatica
14 23 (1.30%) UiPath
15 21 (1.19%) Dynatrace
16 20 (1.13%) Cisco
17 19 (1.07%) IBM
18 16 (0.90%) HP
19 15 (0.85%) MuleSoft
20 14 (0.79%) Blue Prism