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

6 months to
4 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 45 56
Rank change year-on-year -3 +11 -11
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,639 1,138 1,317
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.56% 4.52% 3.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.24% 5.00% 4.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,114 768 914
10th Percentile £331 £329 £375
25th Percentile £400 £400 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.25% -4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £636
90th Percentile £680 £725 £719
UK median daily rate £477 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -4.70% -2.44% -6.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 45 5 56
10th Percentile £38.57 - £46.50
25th Percentile £51.25 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £74.00 £65.75
Median % change year-on-year -12.16% +12.55% +9.58%
75th Percentile £68.75 £77.19 £90.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £83.38 -
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £60.90 £65.75
% change year-on-year +6.73% -7.37% +12.39%

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 31,295 22,746 32,794
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.03% 90.36% 87.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,032 14,434 21,722
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £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 1,939 776 2,084
10th Percentile £15.24 £15.50 £13.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.00 £33.78
Median % change year-on-year -17.14% +3.63% -6.18%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £59.44
90th Percentile £73.46 £75.38 £71.90
UK median hourly rate £27.94 £32.50 £32.85
% change year-on-year -14.03% -1.05% -6.16%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 -1 795 £500 -4.76% 196
North of England +5 322 £494 +12.86% 184
Midlands +6 190 £477 +3.03% 105
South East -15 165 £500 -12.66% 251
West Midlands +9 157 £490 +1.45% 54
North West +4 140 £450 +0.56% 88
Yorkshire -15 138 £500 +10.50% 63
South West -1 80 £515 -6.36% 123
East of England +3 59 £570 +21.93% 137
North East +11 48 £488 +28.09% 33
East Midlands -22 33 £400 +7.38% 49
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
1 111 (6.77%) Confluence
2 62 (3.78%) SAS
3 28 (1.71%) Apache Spark
4 12 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
5 11 (0.67%) SharePoint
6 9 (0.55%) Apache
7 8 (0.49%) Appian
8 6 (0.37%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.31%) CMS
9 5 (0.31%) 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
11 3 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.12%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 27 (1.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.73%) Microsoft Office
4 11 (0.67%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.061%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 19 (1.16%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.37%) Loan IQ
3 5 (0.31%) Maximo
3 5 (0.31%) Workday HCM
4 4 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.24%) SAP HR
4 4 (0.24%) Shopify
5 3 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.12%) iTrent
6 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.12%) Summit
7 1 (0.061%) Cloudability
7 1 (0.061%) CODA-Financials
7 1 (0.061%) Infor CloudSuite
7 1 (0.061%) Infor LN
7 1 (0.061%) PORTIA
7 1 (0.061%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 448 (27.33%) Azure
2 395 (24.10%) AWS
3 267 (16.29%) GitHub
4 189 (11.53%) Azure DevOps
5 158 (9.64%) GCP
6 142 (8.66%) GitHub Actions
7 110 (6.71%) Serverless
8 69 (4.21%) OpenShift
9 55 (3.36%) Power Platform
10 47 (2.87%) AWS Lambda
11 44 (2.68%) Amazon S3
11 44 (2.68%) Azure AKS
12 34 (2.07%) Azure Data Factory
13 32 (1.95%) Azure Functions
14 31 (1.89%) SaaS
15 30 (1.83%) Snowflake
16 29 (1.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 29 (1.77%) AWS CloudFormation
16 29 (1.77%) Entra ID
17 26 (1.59%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 33 (2.01%) Firewall
2 20 (1.22%) Wireshark
3 19 (1.16%) VPN
4 18 (1.10%) TCP/IP
5 15 (0.92%) HTTP
6 13 (0.79%) SD-WAN
6 13 (0.79%) SSL
7 12 (0.73%) HTTPS
7 12 (0.73%) WAN
8 10 (0.61%) Network Security
9 9 (0.55%) DNS
9 9 (0.55%) Ethernet
9 9 (0.55%) MPLS
10 8 (0.49%) Multicast
10 8 (0.49%) VLAN
11 7 (0.43%) AMQP
11 7 (0.43%) FTP
12 6 (0.37%) SAN
13 5 (0.31%) Cisco IPT
14 4 (0.24%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 98 (5.98%) PostgreSQL
2 71 (4.33%) NoSQL
3 67 (4.09%) SQL Server
4 64 (3.90%) MongoDB
5 53 (3.23%) Relational Database
6 45 (2.75%) Data Warehouse
7 34 (2.07%) Pentaho
8 29 (1.77%) Power BI
9 26 (1.59%) Oracle Database
10 22 (1.34%) DynamoDB
10 22 (1.34%) MySQL
11 21 (1.28%) BigQuery
12 19 (1.16%) Tableau
13 18 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
13 18 (1.10%) Redis
14 17 (1.04%) Azure SQL Database
15 15 (0.92%) Data Lake
16 13 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
16 13 (0.79%) Big Data
16 13 (0.79%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 316 (19.28%) JIRA
2 311 (18.97%) Git
3 305 (18.61%) Jenkins
4 249 (15.19%) GitLab
5 242 (14.77%) Selenium
6 142 (8.66%) Cucumber
7 141 (8.60%) Postman
8 104 (6.35%) JUnit
9 101 (6.16%) Cypress.io
10 86 (5.25%) REST Assured
11 76 (4.64%) JMeter
12 37 (2.26%) SonarQube
13 36 (2.20%) Maven
13 36 (2.20%) WebDriver
14 35 (2.14%) SpecFlow
15 31 (1.89%) Gatling
16 30 (1.83%) Gradle
17 29 (1.77%) TestRail
17 29 (1.77%) Zephyr
18 25 (1.53%) Bitbucket
General
1 438 (26.72%) Social Skills
2 268 (16.35%) Finance
3 223 (13.61%) Public Sector
4 185 (11.29%) Analytical Skills
5 133 (8.11%) Banking
6 27 (1.65%) Documentation Skills
7 25 (1.53%) Investment Banking
8 24 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 22 (1.34%) Front Office
10 21 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
11 20 (1.22%) Pharmaceutical
12 18 (1.10%) Telecoms
13 17 (1.04%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.98%) Military
15 13 (0.79%) Financial Institution
15 13 (0.79%) Influencing Skills
16 12 (0.73%) Aerospace
17 9 (0.55%) Electronics
18 8 (0.49%) Legal
19 7 (0.43%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 344 (20.99%) Developer
2 267 (16.29%) Senior
3 196 (11.96%) Lead
4 193 (11.78%) Tester
5 173 (10.56%) Test Engineer
6 92 (5.61%) Java Developer
7 87 (5.31%) Data Engineer
8 84 (5.13%) Automation Tester
9 81 (4.94%) Analyst
10 79 (4.82%) Software Engineer
11 71 (4.33%) Test Automation Engineer
12 65 (3.97%) Test Leader
13 61 (3.72%) QA Engineer
13 61 (3.72%) Senior Developer
14 56 (3.42%) DevOps Engineer
15 54 (3.29%) Architect
16 53 (3.23%) Test Manager
17 51 (3.11%) Test Analyst
18 48 (2.93%) Automation Engineer
19 39 (2.38%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 203 (12.39%) REST
2 199 (12.14%) Playwright
3 143 (8.72%) React
4 131 (7.99%) Spring
5 126 (7.69%) .NET
6 119 (7.26%) RESTful
7 115 (7.02%) Node.js
8 114 (6.96%) Kafka
9 106 (6.47%) Spring Boot
10 84 (5.13%) pytest
11 54 (3.29%) HTML
12 53 (3.23%) AngularJS
13 52 (3.17%) CSS
14 49 (2.99%) Jest
15 48 (2.93%) OAuth
16 43 (2.62%) Web Services
17 38 (2.32%) GraphQL
17 38 (2.32%) JSON
18 35 (2.14%) SOAP
18 35 (2.14%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 181 (11.04%) Cloud Native
2 96 (5.86%) Product Ownership
3 70 (4.27%) Distributed Systems
4 45 (2.75%) Mobile App
5 41 (2.50%) Algorithms
6 38 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
7 35 (2.14%) Security Posture
8 33 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
9 26 (1.59%) Data Structures
10 25 (1.53%) Onboarding
11 24 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
12 23 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
12 23 (1.40%) Virtual Team
13 22 (1.34%) Management Information System
14 20 (1.22%) Equities
14 20 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
15 18 (1.10%) Distributed Architecture
15 18 (1.10%) Public Cloud
16 15 (0.92%) Derivative
17 14 (0.85%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 135 (8.24%) Linux
2 81 (4.94%) Windows
3 43 (2.62%) Android
4 38 (2.32%) Apple iOS
4 38 (2.32%) Unix
5 19 (1.16%) Windows Server
6 17 (1.04%) Mac OS X
7 12 (0.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (0.67%) Kali Linux
9 7 (0.43%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.37%) CentOS
11 2 (0.12%) Solaris
11 2 (0.12%) VMS
11 2 (0.12%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.061%) FreeRTOS
12 1 (0.061%) Robot Operating System
12 1 (0.061%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 851 (51.92%) CI/CD
2 794 (48.44%) Agile
3 608 (37.10%) DevOps
4 423 (25.81%) Problem-Solving
5 270 (16.47%) Microservices
6 265 (16.17%) Continuous Improvement
7 256 (15.62%) Test Strategy
8 238 (14.52%) Containerisation
9 235 (14.34%) Scrum
10 224 (13.67%) AI
11 217 (13.24%) Test Scripting
12 203 (12.39%) Infrastructure as Code
12 203 (12.39%) Software Engineering
13 202 (12.32%) Validation
14 194 (11.84%) TDD
15 184 (11.23%) Analytics
16 181 (11.04%) Software Testing
17 173 (10.56%) Observability
18 155 (9.46%) API Testing
18 155 (9.46%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 506 (30.87%) Python
2 400 (24.41%) Java
3 351 (21.42%) SQL
4 248 (15.13%) JavaScript
5 238 (14.52%) TypeScript
6 157 (9.58%) C#
7 66 (4.03%) Bash
8 65 (3.97%) PowerShell
9 42 (2.56%) C++
10 31 (1.89%) Go
11 24 (1.46%) Bicep
11 24 (1.46%) Kotlin
12 23 (1.40%) PL/SQL
13 19 (1.16%) C
14 17 (1.04%) Apex Code
15 16 (0.98%) Swift
16 15 (0.92%) Scala
17 12 (0.73%) Ruby
17 12 (0.73%) T-SQL
18 11 (0.67%) PHP
Qualifications
1 478 (29.16%) Security Cleared
2 366 (22.33%) SC Cleared
3 94 (5.74%) Degree
4 78 (4.76%) ISTQB
5 56 (3.42%) DV Cleared
6 55 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
7 53 (3.23%) Computer Science Degree
8 28 (1.71%) Master's Degree
9 25 (1.53%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 18 (1.10%) OSCP
11 15 (0.92%) Cisco Certification
12 14 (0.85%) Azure Certification
12 14 (0.85%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 13 (0.79%) GPEN
13 13 (0.79%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 12 (0.73%) AWS Certification
14 12 (0.73%) CEH
15 11 (0.67%) CISSP
15 11 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
16 10 (0.61%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 370 (22.57%) QA
2 119 (7.26%) Accessibility
3 91 (5.55%) Data Quality
4 38 (2.32%) WCAG
5 30 (1.83%) NIST
6 27 (1.65%) GDPR
7 18 (1.10%) EU AI Act
8 16 (0.98%) NCSC
9 12 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 11 (0.67%) ISO 20022
11 9 (0.55%) PSD2
11 9 (0.55%) SLA
12 8 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.43%) Def Stans
13 7 (0.43%) SEPA
14 6 (0.37%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.31%) MiFID
15 5 (0.31%) NIST 800
15 5 (0.31%) PCI DSS
15 5 (0.31%) PERC
System Software
1 347 (21.17%) Docker
2 32 (1.95%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.43%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
3 7 (0.43%) Firmware
3 7 (0.43%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
5 5 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
7 2 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.12%) SRDF
7 2 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.061%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.061%) KVM
8 1 (0.061%) QEMU
8 1 (0.061%) Squid
8 1 (0.061%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.061%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 330 (20.13%) Kubernetes
2 186 (11.35%) Terraform
3 99 (6.04%) Ansible
4 96 (5.86%) Grafana
5 69 (4.21%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.10%) Nmap
7 17 (1.04%) HP ALM
7 17 (1.04%) Puppet
8 16 (0.98%) Argo
9 15 (0.92%) Progress Chef
10 11 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.61%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.61%) NetBackup
12 7 (0.43%) Forefront Identity Manager
12 7 (0.43%) Kibana
12 7 (0.43%) Nessus
12 7 (0.43%) NetIQ Identity Manager
13 5 (0.31%) Podman
14 4 (0.24%) CSIRT
14 4 (0.24%) Rancher
Vendors
1 147 (8.97%) Microsoft
2 146 (8.91%) Oracle
3 63 (3.84%) Databricks
4 62 (3.78%) Splunk
5 61 (3.72%) ServiceNow
6 54 (3.29%) Google
7 52 (3.17%) Salesforce
8 38 (2.32%) Talend
9 36 (2.20%) SAP
10 31 (1.89%) Red Hat
11 30 (1.83%) Denodo
12 23 (1.40%) VMware
13 21 (1.28%) Cisco
14 20 (1.22%) IBM
15 19 (1.16%) HP
16 15 (0.92%) OpenAI
16 15 (0.92%) Workday
17 14 (0.85%) Atlassian
17 14 (0.85%) Foundry
17 14 (0.85%) MuleSoft