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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 50 51
Rank change year-on-year +3 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,923 1,231 1,309
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.23% 4.46% 3.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.97% 4.91% 4.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,225 850 892
10th Percentile £327 £313 £363
25th Percentile £406 £380 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% -6.67% -2.78%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £626
90th Percentile £663 £716 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £488 £513
% change year-on-year -2.56% -4.88% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 31 26
10th Percentile £38.90 £40.84 £45.00
25th Percentile £60.17 £44.76 £51.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -13.04% -11.88%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £74.00 £75.00 £81.25
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +35.00% -13.04% -12.55%

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 38,695 25,047 28,792
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.19% 90.72% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,133 16,039 18,801
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £758
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,478 1,391 1,685
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £20.69 £17.87 £18.16
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.90% -4.71%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 +3 857 £500 -1.96% 618
North of England +13 384 £465 +3.33% 190
Midlands +9 268 £450 +9.76% 106
West Midlands +32 250 £450 -10.00% 64
South East -34 211 £459 -8.20% 202
Yorkshire -2 155 £496 +4.47% 60
North West -6 140 £490 +16.11% 104
South West +1 110 £469 +17.19% 113
North East +14 97 £425 +6.25% 26
East of England +19 80 £463 +2.78% 66
East Midlands -36 18 £425 +25.00% 42
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
1 173 (9.00%) Confluence
2 47 (2.44%) Apache Airflow
3 43 (2.24%) Apache Spark
3 43 (2.24%) SAS
4 27 (1.40%) SharePoint
5 21 (1.09%) Apache
6 13 (0.68%) CMS
7 11 (0.57%) WebLogic
8 6 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
9 5 (0.26%) Camunda
9 5 (0.26%) nginx
9 5 (0.26%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.21%) Jupyter
10 4 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.16%) Kentico
11 3 (0.16%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.10%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.10%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.10%) Appian
12 2 (0.10%) Mule
Applications
1 19 (0.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.68%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.36%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.26%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.21%) Simulink
7 3 (0.16%) Trello
8 2 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.052%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 26 (1.35%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (0.83%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.62%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
5 8 (0.42%) Findur
6 7 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.31%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.31%) Shopify
8 5 (0.26%) BambooHR
9 3 (0.16%) Distributed Ledger
10 2 (0.10%) Infor CloudSuite
10 2 (0.10%) Infor LN
10 2 (0.10%) Infor M3
10 2 (0.10%) Loan IQ
10 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
10 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
11 1 (0.052%) Maximo
11 1 (0.052%) Summit
11 1 (0.052%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 567 (29.49%) AWS
1 567 (29.49%) Azure
2 342 (17.78%) GitHub
3 258 (13.42%) Azure DevOps
4 216 (11.23%) GitHub Actions
5 152 (7.90%) Serverless
6 144 (7.49%) GCP
7 105 (5.46%) AWS Lambda
8 88 (4.58%) Power Platform
9 87 (4.52%) Amazon S3
10 66 (3.43%) Amazon ECS
11 65 (3.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 61 (3.17%) OpenShift
13 51 (2.65%) dbt
14 46 (2.39%) Amazon EKS
15 45 (2.34%) Amazon EC2
16 44 (2.29%) GitHub Copilot
16 44 (2.29%) Snowflake
17 41 (2.13%) Azure Data Factory
18 37 (1.92%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.09%) Firewall
2 18 (0.94%) HTTP
3 16 (0.83%) Network Security
4 15 (0.78%) 4G
5 14 (0.73%) 5G
6 13 (0.68%) 2G
6 13 (0.68%) 3G
6 13 (0.68%) Diameter Protocol
6 13 (0.68%) SIGTRAN
6 13 (0.68%) SS7
6 13 (0.68%) WAN
7 12 (0.62%) SAN
8 10 (0.52%) LAN
8 10 (0.52%) TCP/IP
9 9 (0.47%) DNS
10 8 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
11 6 (0.31%) BGP
11 6 (0.31%) Broadband
11 6 (0.31%) HTTPS
12 5 (0.26%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 117 (6.08%) PostgreSQL
2 114 (5.93%) Data Warehouse
3 100 (5.20%) NoSQL
4 94 (4.89%) MongoDB
5 79 (4.11%) SQL Server
6 74 (3.85%) Power BI
7 56 (2.91%) Relational Database
8 49 (2.55%) DynamoDB
9 38 (1.98%) Pentaho
10 37 (1.92%) Oracle Reports
11 33 (1.72%) Data Lake
12 31 (1.61%) Metadata
13 30 (1.56%) Amazon Athena
14 28 (1.46%) Big Data
15 26 (1.35%) MySQL
16 25 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
16 25 (1.30%) Redis
17 24 (1.25%) Amazon Redshift
18 17 (0.88%) BigQuery
18 17 (0.88%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 379 (19.71%) Git
2 358 (18.62%) JIRA
3 316 (16.43%) Jenkins
4 254 (13.21%) GitLab
5 232 (12.06%) Selenium
6 134 (6.97%) Cucumber
7 127 (6.60%) Postman
8 101 (5.25%) JUnit
9 94 (4.89%) Cypress.io
10 88 (4.58%) REST Assured
11 75 (3.90%) JMeter
12 63 (3.28%) Zephyr
13 60 (3.12%) SonarQube
14 53 (2.76%) WebDriver
15 48 (2.50%) Gatling
16 43 (2.24%) Gradle
17 41 (2.13%) Bitbucket
18 36 (1.87%) Mockito
19 34 (1.77%) Maven
20 25 (1.30%) SpecFlow
General
1 521 (27.09%) Social Skills
2 365 (18.98%) Finance
3 259 (13.47%) Analytical Skills
4 248 (12.90%) Public Sector
5 158 (8.22%) Banking
6 59 (3.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 37 (1.92%) Documentation Skills
8 33 (1.72%) Influencing Skills
8 33 (1.72%) Telecoms
9 32 (1.66%) Retail
10 27 (1.40%) Investment Banking
11 25 (1.30%) Front Office
12 22 (1.14%) Financial Institution
13 21 (1.09%) Military
14 18 (0.94%) Aerospace
15 15 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
16 14 (0.73%) Back Office
16 14 (0.73%) Legal
17 13 (0.68%) Automotive
18 12 (0.62%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 392 (20.38%) Developer
2 318 (16.54%) Senior
3 206 (10.71%) Lead
4 188 (9.78%) Test Engineer
5 169 (8.79%) Tester
6 138 (7.18%) Data Engineer
7 125 (6.50%) Java Developer
8 113 (5.88%) Software Engineer
9 100 (5.20%) Analyst
10 91 (4.73%) Senior Developer
11 87 (4.52%) Architect
11 87 (4.52%) DevOps Engineer
12 83 (4.32%) QA Engineer
12 83 (4.32%) Test Automation Engineer
13 69 (3.59%) Test Leader
14 67 (3.48%) Full-Stack Developer
15 62 (3.22%) Test Analyst
16 61 (3.17%) Automation Tester
17 57 (2.96%) Automation Engineer
18 51 (2.65%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 253 (13.16%) REST
2 215 (11.18%) Playwright
3 176 (9.15%) RESTful
4 173 (9.00%) React
5 163 (8.48%) Kafka
6 156 (8.11%) Spring
7 139 (7.23%) .NET
8 121 (6.29%) Spring Boot
9 106 (5.51%) Node.js
10 89 (4.63%) AngularJS
11 79 (4.11%) HTML
12 77 (4.00%) CSS
13 56 (2.91%) OAuth
14 47 (2.44%) Jest
15 46 (2.39%) .NET Framework
16 45 (2.34%) JSON
16 45 (2.34%) Quarkus
17 43 (2.24%) Gherkin
17 43 (2.24%) pytest
18 42 (2.18%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 282 (14.66%) Cloud Native
2 142 (7.38%) Distributed Systems
3 138 (7.18%) Product Ownership
4 65 (3.38%) Enterprise Software
5 53 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
6 52 (2.70%) Data Protection Act
7 48 (2.50%) Onboarding
8 46 (2.39%) Self-Motivation
9 38 (1.98%) Mobile App
10 33 (1.72%) AI Agents
11 32 (1.66%) Virtual Team
12 30 (1.56%) Distributed Architecture
13 27 (1.40%) Embedded Systems
14 26 (1.35%) Security Posture
15 21 (1.09%) Management Information System
16 19 (0.99%) Fixed Income
17 18 (0.94%) Data Structures
18 17 (0.88%) Algorithms
18 17 (0.88%) NHS
19 16 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 126 (6.55%) Linux
2 80 (4.16%) Windows
3 65 (3.38%) Unix
4 39 (2.03%) Apple iOS
5 37 (1.92%) Android
6 26 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 18 (0.94%) Windows Server
8 13 (0.68%) Mac OS X
9 7 (0.36%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.36%) Solaris
10 6 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
11 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
12 4 (0.21%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.16%) AIX
13 3 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.10%) CentOS
15 1 (0.052%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,127 (58.61%) CI/CD
2 915 (47.58%) Agile
3 732 (38.07%) DevOps
4 373 (19.40%) Microservices
5 372 (19.34%) Problem-Solving
6 369 (19.19%) Continuous Improvement
7 333 (17.32%) Software Engineering
8 321 (16.69%) Scrum
9 310 (16.12%) Infrastructure as Code
10 292 (15.18%) Validation
11 288 (14.98%) Test Strategy
12 282 (14.66%) AI
13 259 (13.47%) Containerisation
14 255 (13.26%) TDD
15 250 (13.00%) Observability
16 220 (11.44%) ETL
17 214 (11.13%) SDLC
18 209 (10.87%) Data Pipeline
19 206 (10.71%) Software Testing
20 192 (9.98%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 486 (25.27%) Python
2 478 (24.86%) Java
3 458 (23.82%) SQL
4 236 (12.27%) JavaScript
5 206 (10.71%) TypeScript
6 179 (9.31%) C#
7 77 (4.00%) PowerShell
8 65 (3.38%) Bash
9 51 (2.65%) Kotlin
10 45 (2.34%) Bicep
11 40 (2.08%) C++
12 29 (1.51%) C
13 26 (1.35%) PL/SQL
13 26 (1.35%) Scala
14 25 (1.30%) Go
15 23 (1.20%) Apex Code
16 22 (1.14%) Swift
17 18 (0.94%) Ruby
18 16 (0.83%) Groovy
19 15 (0.78%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 605 (31.46%) Security Cleared
2 502 (26.11%) SC Cleared
3 86 (4.47%) Degree
4 84 (4.37%) ISTQB
5 58 (3.02%) BPSS Clearance
5 58 (3.02%) DV Cleared
6 43 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
7 30 (1.56%) AWS Certification
8 22 (1.14%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 16 (0.83%) Azure Certification
10 15 (0.78%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 12 (0.62%) Cisco Certification
12 11 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.57%) SAFe Agilist
13 10 (0.52%) CISSP
14 9 (0.47%) CCNP
14 9 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
15 8 (0.42%) Master's Degree
16 7 (0.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 7 (0.36%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 487 (25.33%) QA
2 147 (7.64%) Accessibility
3 138 (7.18%) Data Quality
4 78 (4.06%) WCAG
5 38 (1.98%) GDPR
6 14 (0.73%) NCSC
7 10 (0.52%) ISO 20022
7 10 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 10 (0.52%) NIST
7 10 (0.52%) SLA
8 6 (0.31%) Software Quality Assurance
9 5 (0.26%) Def Stans
9 5 (0.26%) FATCA
9 5 (0.26%) PCI DSS
10 4 (0.21%) GRC
11 3 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.16%) EU AI Act
11 3 (0.16%) HL7
11 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 3 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 366 (19.03%) Docker
2 27 (1.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (1.25%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (0.68%) Firmware
6 5 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.10%) SRDF
8 2 (0.10%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.052%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.052%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 374 (19.45%) Kubernetes
2 270 (14.04%) Terraform
3 104 (5.41%) Ansible
4 97 (5.04%) Grafana
5 84 (4.37%) Prometheus
6 42 (2.18%) Argo
7 21 (1.09%) Puppet
8 15 (0.78%) Progress Chef
9 11 (0.57%) HP ALM
10 10 (0.52%) Dell DRAC
10 10 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (0.42%) Kibana
12 7 (0.36%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.31%) NetBackup
14 5 (0.26%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 5 (0.26%) Istio
14 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
14 5 (0.26%) NetIQ Identity Manager
15 4 (0.21%) Packer
15 4 (0.21%) Rancher
Vendors
1 190 (9.88%) Microsoft
2 151 (7.85%) Oracle
3 74 (3.85%) Salesforce
4 72 (3.74%) Databricks
5 62 (3.22%) Red Hat
6 56 (2.91%) Google
6 56 (2.91%) Talend
7 49 (2.55%) Splunk
8 41 (2.13%) Denodo
9 38 (1.98%) ServiceNow
10 33 (1.72%) Informatica
10 33 (1.72%) VMware
11 31 (1.61%) IBM
12 30 (1.56%) Dynatrace
13 27 (1.40%) SAP
14 25 (1.30%) UiPath
15 24 (1.25%) Cisco
16 18 (0.94%) HP
17 12 (0.62%) Fortinet
18 11 (0.57%) OpenAI