Test Automation Contracts in England

Automated Testing
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England requiring Test Automation skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Test Automation over the 6 months leading up to 4 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 50 53 51
Rank change year-on-year +3 -2 -4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,164 1,362 2,028
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 4.42% 3.65% 4.26%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.86% 4.26% 4.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 811 910 1,458
10th Percentile £313 £363 £375
25th Percentile £390 £425 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £675
90th Percentile £715 £738 £775
UK median daily rate £485 £513 £545
% change year-on-year -5.37% -5.96% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 47 54
10th Percentile £42.17 £50.75 £47.50
25th Percentile £46.25 £52.50 £51.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £68.25
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -15.75% +13.75%
75th Percentile £67.00 £71.87 £90.00
90th Percentile £77.25 £85.00 -
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £57.50 £66.00
% change year-on-year -8.70% -12.88% +15.10%

All Process and 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 23,975 31,937 42,799
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 90.99% 85.52% 89.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,423 20,731 29,966
10th Percentile £300 £306 £325
25th Percentile £406 £413 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £750 £750 £775
UK median daily rate £505 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% +1.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,196 2,302 1,555
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.79 £12.00
25th Percentile £17.85 £16.06 £16.62
Median hourly rate £25.15 £38.12 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -34.02% +1.65% +45.12%
75th Percentile £55.00 £61.60 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £73.75 £75.94
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £37.42
% change year-on-year -32.93% +0.21% +43.92%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing Test Automation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Test Automation in England

Test Automation
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Test Automation in England.

Daily rate trend for Test Automation in England

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation in England over the 6 months to 4 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in England

Test Automation
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Test Automation in England.

Hourly rate trend for Test Automation in England

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Automation in England over the 6 months to 4 July 2025.

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 July 2025. 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 -8 598 £500 -4.76% 2,072
South East +14 184 £500 -9.09% 746
North of England -11 156 £450 -10.00% 682
Midlands +51 97 £416 +4.06% 345
North West -3 80 £422 -17.25% 402
Yorkshire -6 61 £500 +2.72% 225
South West +23 54 £450 -17.05% 350
West Midlands +38 50 £492 +15.65% 203
East Midlands +28 47 £275 -29.49% 140
East of England +24 31 £459 -7.32% 312
North East +5 16 £400 -5.88% 57
Test Automation
UK

Test Automation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 61 (5.24%) Confluence
2 16 (1.37%) Apache Spark
3 13 (1.12%) Apache
4 9 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (0.52%) CICS
5 6 (0.52%) CMS
6 5 (0.43%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.34%) Anypoint
7 4 (0.34%) JBoss
8 3 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.26%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.17%) Camunda
9 2 (0.17%) Headless CMS
9 2 (0.17%) IIS
9 2 (0.17%) Mule
9 2 (0.17%) nginx
9 2 (0.17%) Oracle Application Server
9 2 (0.17%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.17%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.086%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 18 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.43%) Chatbot
3 4 (0.34%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.26%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.17%) Simulink
5 2 (0.17%) Windchill
6 1 (0.086%) CATIA
6 1 (0.086%) MadCap Flare
6 1 (0.086%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.086%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.43%) Aladdin
3 3 (0.26%) Infor CloudSuite
3 3 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.26%) Shopify
3 3 (0.26%) Temenos T24
4 2 (0.17%) Finacle
4 2 (0.17%) Maximo
4 2 (0.17%) NEC Housing
4 2 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
4 2 (0.17%) SAP CRM
4 2 (0.17%) SAP Hybris
4 2 (0.17%) SAP PLM
4 2 (0.17%) SimCorp Dimension
5 1 (0.086%) MoSes
5 1 (0.086%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.086%) SAP CO
5 1 (0.086%) SAP FI
5 1 (0.086%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.086%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 276 (23.71%) Azure
2 264 (22.68%) AWS
3 123 (10.57%) Azure DevOps
4 90 (7.73%) GitHub
5 74 (6.36%) GCP
6 63 (5.41%) Serverless
7 40 (3.44%) GitHub Actions
8 39 (3.35%) AWS Lambda
9 31 (2.66%) Power Platform
10 26 (2.23%) Amazon S3
11 25 (2.15%) SaaS
12 22 (1.89%) AWS CloudFormation
13 20 (1.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 18 (1.55%) Amazon SQS
14 18 (1.55%) Azure AKS
15 17 (1.46%) Datadog
15 17 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
16 15 (1.29%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 15 (1.29%) Entra ID
16 15 (1.29%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 27 (2.32%) HTTP
2 17 (1.46%) Firewall
3 11 (0.95%) DNS
4 8 (0.69%) SSL
5 7 (0.60%) Network Security
6 6 (0.52%) Multicast
6 6 (0.52%) Wireless
7 5 (0.43%) SNMP
7 5 (0.43%) SSH
7 5 (0.43%) TCP/IP
8 4 (0.34%) LAN
8 4 (0.34%) SMTP
9 3 (0.26%) 5G
9 3 (0.26%) Bluetooth
9 3 (0.26%) FTP
9 3 (0.26%) HTTPS
9 3 (0.26%) Software-Defined Radio
9 3 (0.26%) VPN
9 3 (0.26%) WAN
9 3 (0.26%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (6.44%) SQL Server
2 65 (5.58%) NoSQL
3 59 (5.07%) PostgreSQL
4 34 (2.92%) MongoDB
5 31 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
6 27 (2.32%) Relational Database
7 20 (1.72%) DynamoDB
8 17 (1.46%) Data Lake
9 16 (1.37%) Power BI
10 14 (1.20%) Oracle Database
11 13 (1.12%) Elasticsearch
12 12 (1.03%) Big Data
12 12 (1.03%) Hadoop
13 11 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
13 11 (0.95%) MySQL
14 8 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
14 8 (0.69%) DB2
14 8 (0.69%) Delta Lake
15 7 (0.60%) MS Access
15 7 (0.60%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 223 (19.16%) Selenium
2 208 (17.87%) JIRA
3 200 (17.18%) Jenkins
4 181 (15.55%) Git
5 111 (9.54%) Cucumber
6 105 (9.02%) GitLab
7 87 (7.47%) Postman
8 85 (7.30%) Cypress.io
9 65 (5.58%) REST Assured
10 57 (4.90%) JUnit
11 53 (4.55%) JMeter
12 43 (3.69%) Maven
13 42 (3.61%) SonarQube
14 30 (2.58%) SoapUI
15 29 (2.49%) Bitbucket
16 25 (2.15%) Appium
16 25 (2.15%) SpecFlow
17 22 (1.89%) IntelliJ
18 20 (1.72%) WebDriver
19 19 (1.63%) TestNG
General
1 360 (30.93%) Social Skills
2 241 (20.70%) Finance
3 169 (14.52%) Analytical Skills
4 130 (11.17%) Banking
5 103 (8.85%) Public Sector
6 46 (3.95%) Front Office
7 42 (3.61%) Telecoms
8 40 (3.44%) Manufacturing
9 35 (3.01%) Electronics
10 34 (2.92%) Marketing
11 27 (2.32%) Investment Banking
12 19 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 19 (1.63%) Retail
13 18 (1.55%) Law
14 16 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
15 14 (1.20%) Documentation Skills
15 14 (1.20%) Financial Institution
16 10 (0.86%) Billing
17 9 (0.77%) Publishing
17 9 (0.77%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 239 (20.53%) Developer
2 151 (12.97%) Senior
3 137 (11.77%) Tester
4 112 (9.62%) Test Engineer
5 107 (9.19%) Analyst
6 84 (7.22%) Lead
7 79 (6.79%) Test Analyst
8 74 (6.36%) Software Engineer
9 65 (5.58%) Architect
9 65 (5.58%) Automation Tester
10 56 (4.81%) Test Manager
11 52 (4.47%) QA Engineer
12 45 (3.87%) DevOps Engineer
13 44 (3.78%) Java Developer
14 38 (3.26%) Test Automation Engineer
15 36 (3.09%) Full-Stack Developer
16 34 (2.92%) Automation Engineer
17 32 (2.75%) Test Leader
18 31 (2.66%) Senior Developer
19 30 (2.58%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 118 (10.14%) REST
2 102 (8.76%) .NET
3 82 (7.04%) React
4 76 (6.53%) HTML
4 76 (6.53%) RESTful
5 72 (6.19%) Playwright
6 68 (5.84%) CSS
7 66 (5.67%) Node.js
8 63 (5.41%) Kafka
9 44 (3.78%) Web Services
10 39 (3.35%) Spring
11 38 (3.26%) Spring Boot
12 37 (3.18%) Jest
12 37 (3.18%) JSON
12 37 (3.18%) XML
13 35 (3.01%) pytest
14 34 (2.92%) SOAP
15 33 (2.84%) AngularJS
16 26 (2.23%) .NET Framework
17 23 (1.98%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 60 (5.15%) Product Ownership
2 42 (3.61%) Cloud Native
3 29 (2.49%) Mobile App
4 26 (2.23%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 26 (2.23%) Self-Motivation
5 25 (2.15%) Distributed Systems
6 24 (2.06%) Algorithms
7 22 (1.89%) Onboarding
8 21 (1.80%) Fixed Income
9 20 (1.72%) Data Structures
10 19 (1.63%) Public Cloud
11 18 (1.55%) Greenfield Project
12 16 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
13 14 (1.20%) Management Information System
13 14 (1.20%) PKI
14 13 (1.12%) Mainframe
15 12 (1.03%) Equities
15 12 (1.03%) Linux Command Line
16 11 (0.95%) Legacy Systems
17 10 (0.86%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 93 (7.99%) Linux
2 85 (7.30%) Windows
3 40 (3.44%) Android
4 26 (2.23%) Unix
5 24 (2.06%) Apple iOS
6 16 (1.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (0.60%) Windows Server
8 5 (0.43%) CentOS
9 4 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
11 2 (0.17%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.17%) Windows 7
11 2 (0.17%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 532 (45.70%) Agile
2 470 (40.38%) CI/CD
3 371 (31.87%) DevOps
4 256 (21.99%) Problem-Solving
5 162 (13.92%) Test Strategy
6 161 (13.83%) Software Engineering
7 147 (12.63%) Microservices
8 145 (12.46%) Software Testing
9 140 (12.03%) TDD
9 140 (12.03%) Test Scripting
10 137 (11.77%) Scrum
11 126 (10.82%) Continuous Integration
12 120 (10.31%) User Acceptance Testing
13 114 (9.79%) Containerisation
14 108 (9.28%) Manual Testing
14 108 (9.28%) Validation
15 103 (8.85%) API Testing
16 102 (8.76%) Infrastructure as Code
17 98 (8.42%) Integration Testing
17 98 (8.42%) Performance Testing
Programming Languages
1 330 (28.35%) Java
2 292 (25.09%) Python
3 200 (17.18%) SQL
4 185 (15.89%) JavaScript
5 151 (12.97%) C#
6 98 (8.42%) TypeScript
7 70 (6.01%) PowerShell
8 50 (4.30%) Bash
9 29 (2.49%) Go
10 27 (2.32%) C++
11 21 (1.80%) Kotlin
12 16 (1.37%) Scala
13 13 (1.12%) VB
14 12 (1.03%) Ruby
14 12 (1.03%) Shell Script
15 10 (0.86%) PHP
16 8 (0.69%) Bicep
16 8 (0.69%) JCL
17 6 (0.52%) Groovy
17 6 (0.52%) Rust
Qualifications
1 248 (21.31%) Security Cleared
2 169 (14.52%) SC Cleared
3 100 (8.59%) Degree
4 74 (6.36%) DV Cleared
5 47 (4.04%) Computer Science Degree
6 43 (3.69%) ISTQB
7 22 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
8 16 (1.37%) Azure Certification
9 11 (0.95%) AWS Certification
10 10 (0.86%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 10 (0.86%) Master's Degree
11 9 (0.77%) CISSP
12 7 (0.60%) CISA
13 6 (0.52%) CCNP
13 6 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
14 5 (0.43%) CCNA
14 5 (0.43%) CISM
14 5 (0.43%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
15 4 (0.34%) CEH
15 4 (0.34%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 279 (23.97%) QA
2 51 (4.38%) Accessibility
3 18 (1.55%) Data Quality
4 13 (1.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 11 (0.95%) WCAG
6 10 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 9 (0.77%) GDPR
8 8 (0.69%) SEPA
9 6 (0.52%) NIST
9 6 (0.52%) SLA
9 6 (0.52%) Software Quality Assurance
10 5 (0.43%) COBIT
10 5 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
10 5 (0.43%) NIST 800
11 4 (0.34%) HIPAA
11 4 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 3 (0.26%) ITGC
12 3 (0.26%) PCI DSS
13 2 (0.17%) GRC
13 2 (0.17%) NCSC
System Software
1 129 (11.08%) Docker
2 36 (3.09%) Active Directory
3 6 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (0.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.34%) Firmware
4 4 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.17%) FreeRADIUS
5 2 (0.17%) iptables
5 2 (0.17%) zsh
6 1 (0.086%) Time Sharing Option
6 1 (0.086%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
6 1 (0.086%) VirtualBox
6 1 (0.086%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.086%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 144 (12.37%) Kubernetes
2 109 (9.36%) Terraform
3 89 (7.65%) Ansible
4 26 (2.23%) Grafana
5 19 (1.63%) HP ALM
6 15 (1.29%) Puppet
7 11 (0.95%) Progress Chef
8 10 (0.86%) Argo
8 10 (0.86%) Docker Swarm
8 10 (0.86%) Podman
8 10 (0.86%) Prometheus
9 7 (0.60%) WMI
10 5 (0.43%) HP Quality Center
11 4 (0.34%) CloudHub
11 4 (0.34%) Kibana
11 4 (0.34%) Proxmox
11 4 (0.34%) RSA Archer
12 3 (0.26%) Kustomize
12 3 (0.26%) Packer
12 3 (0.26%) vRealize
Vendors
1 116 (9.97%) Microsoft
2 71 (6.10%) Oracle
3 58 (4.98%) SAP
4 42 (3.61%) Google
5 35 (3.01%) ServiceNow
6 28 (2.41%) Salesforce
7 24 (2.06%) Databricks
7 24 (2.06%) Splunk
8 23 (1.98%) HP
9 14 (1.20%) UiPath
10 12 (1.03%) Cisco
10 12 (1.03%) VMware
11 10 (0.86%) Citrix
12 9 (0.77%) CA Agile Central
12 9 (0.77%) ION Trading
13 8 (0.69%) Atlassian
13 8 (0.69%) Veracode
14 7 (0.60%) IBM
14 7 (0.60%) MuleSoft
15 6 (0.52%) Informatica