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 22 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 51 47
Rank change year-on-year +5 -4 +3
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,040 1,257 1,324
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.41% 4.58% 4.08%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.21% 5.05% 4.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,291 854 901
10th Percentile £318 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £671 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 101 37 16
10th Percentile £40.00 £41.50 £41.25
25th Percentile £56.25 £50.00 £49.38
Median hourly rate £69.00 £57.50 £58.75
Median % change year-on-year +20.00% -2.13% -21.67%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £77.13
90th Percentile £75.00 £71.10 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +27.27% -4.35% -22.03%

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 39,170 24,908 27,982
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.62% 90.84% 86.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,910 15,798 17,347
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £424
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £626 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,803 1,504 1,266
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.74 £17.69 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -2.95%
75th Percentile £67.85 £47.50 £66.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.85 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.69
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.09% -1.10%

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 22 September 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 22 September 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 22 September 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 +8 923 £500 - 1,250
North of England -3 410 £450 -5.26% 449
Midlands +9 257 £450 -2.70% 209
West Midlands +20 242 £458 -11.76% 143
South East -12 227 £450 -10.00% 399
Yorkshire -6 173 £460 -8.00% 128
North West -20 136 £492 +15.76% 249
South West -2 113 £456 -15.31% 263
North East +6 108 £425 -10.53% 72
East of England +9 89 £400 +16.79% 170
East Midlands -43 15 £418 +15.97% 65
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 (8.48%) Confluence
2 59 (2.89%) Apache Airflow
3 40 (1.96%) SharePoint
4 39 (1.91%) Apache Spark
5 30 (1.47%) SAS
6 24 (1.18%) Apache
7 16 (0.78%) CMS
8 14 (0.69%) Camunda
9 10 (0.49%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.29%) Jupyter
11 6 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
12 5 (0.25%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.20%) nginx
13 4 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
13 4 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
13 4 (0.20%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.15%) Kentico
15 2 (0.098%) Anypoint
15 2 (0.098%) Mule
Applications
1 22 (1.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.29%) Chatbot
3 6 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.15%) Trello
6 2 (0.098%) Mingle
6 2 (0.098%) Simulink
6 2 (0.098%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.049%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 28 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.64%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.49%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.29%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.25%) SAP GRC
8 4 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 4 (0.20%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.098%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.098%) Distributed Ledger
9 2 (0.098%) Findur
9 2 (0.098%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.098%) Shopify
10 1 (0.049%) Infor M3
10 1 (0.049%) Misys Equation
10 1 (0.049%) Misys Midas
10 1 (0.049%) Oracle EBS R12
10 1 (0.049%) Sage 50
10 1 (0.049%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 635 (31.13%) AWS
2 606 (29.71%) Azure
3 339 (16.62%) GitHub
4 277 (13.58%) Azure DevOps
5 205 (10.05%) GitHub Actions
6 162 (7.94%) GCP
7 157 (7.70%) Serverless
8 115 (5.64%) AWS Lambda
9 100 (4.90%) Power Platform
10 87 (4.26%) Amazon S3
11 78 (3.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 73 (3.58%) OpenShift
13 61 (2.99%) Amazon ECS
13 61 (2.99%) GitHub Copilot
14 57 (2.79%) Amazon EKS
14 57 (2.79%) dbt
15 52 (2.55%) Snowflake
16 49 (2.40%) AWS CloudFormation
17 42 (2.06%) Amazon EC2
18 38 (1.86%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.13%) 4G
1 23 (1.13%) HTTP
2 22 (1.08%) DNS
3 21 (1.03%) 5G
3 21 (1.03%) Firewall
4 20 (0.98%) TCP/IP
5 18 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
6 15 (0.74%) 2G
6 15 (0.74%) 3G
6 15 (0.74%) Diameter Protocol
6 15 (0.74%) Network Security
6 15 (0.74%) SIGTRAN
6 15 (0.74%) SS7
7 14 (0.69%) Broadband
8 13 (0.64%) WAN
9 12 (0.59%) BGP
9 12 (0.59%) LAN
10 11 (0.54%) DHCP
10 11 (0.54%) Ethernet VPN
10 11 (0.54%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 116 (5.69%) PostgreSQL
2 109 (5.34%) Data Warehouse
3 97 (4.75%) NoSQL
4 92 (4.51%) MongoDB
5 90 (4.41%) Relational Database
6 85 (4.17%) SQL Server
7 80 (3.92%) Power BI
8 39 (1.91%) Data Lake
9 37 (1.81%) DynamoDB
10 35 (1.72%) Metadata
11 34 (1.67%) Oracle Reports
12 31 (1.52%) Big Data
13 30 (1.47%) Pentaho
14 28 (1.37%) MySQL
15 27 (1.32%) Amazon Redshift
15 27 (1.32%) Redis
16 26 (1.27%) Amazon Athena
17 25 (1.23%) Amazon RDS
17 25 (1.23%) Oracle Database
18 20 (0.98%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 455 (22.30%) Git
2 340 (16.67%) JIRA
3 330 (16.18%) Jenkins
4 281 (13.77%) GitLab
5 263 (12.89%) Selenium
6 145 (7.11%) Cucumber
7 140 (6.86%) Postman
8 122 (5.98%) JUnit
9 99 (4.85%) Cypress.io
10 91 (4.46%) REST Assured
11 86 (4.22%) SonarQube
12 79 (3.87%) JMeter
13 61 (2.99%) Gatling
14 60 (2.94%) Zephyr
15 53 (2.60%) Maven
16 50 (2.45%) Gradle
17 46 (2.25%) Mockito
18 43 (2.11%) WebDriver
19 35 (1.72%) Bitbucket
20 25 (1.23%) LoadRunner
General
1 567 (27.79%) Social Skills
2 388 (19.02%) Finance
3 295 (14.46%) Analytical Skills
4 249 (12.21%) Public Sector
5 187 (9.17%) Banking
6 69 (3.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 48 (2.35%) Telecoms
8 34 (1.67%) Front Office
9 33 (1.62%) Retail
10 29 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
11 28 (1.37%) Investment Banking
12 27 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
12 27 (1.32%) Military
13 20 (0.98%) Financial Institution
14 19 (0.93%) Aerospace
14 19 (0.93%) Law
14 19 (0.93%) Manufacturing
15 18 (0.88%) Marketing
16 14 (0.69%) Automotive
17 12 (0.59%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 437 (21.42%) Developer
2 325 (15.93%) Senior
3 198 (9.71%) Lead
4 197 (9.66%) Test Engineer
5 149 (7.30%) Tester
6 135 (6.62%) Java Developer
7 130 (6.37%) Data Engineer
8 120 (5.88%) Software Engineer
9 108 (5.29%) Analyst
10 94 (4.61%) DevOps Engineer
11 91 (4.46%) Architect
11 91 (4.46%) Senior Developer
12 88 (4.31%) QA Engineer
13 86 (4.22%) Test Automation Engineer
14 72 (3.53%) Full-Stack Developer
15 70 (3.43%) Automation Engineer
16 67 (3.28%) Test Analyst
17 66 (3.24%) Java Engineer
18 65 (3.19%) Test Leader
19 63 (3.09%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (16.08%) REST
2 302 (14.80%) Terraform
3 232 (11.37%) Playwright
4 211 (10.34%) RESTful
5 210 (10.29%) Kafka
6 197 (9.66%) Spring
7 194 (9.51%) React
8 167 (8.19%) Spring Boot
9 148 (7.25%) .NET
10 131 (6.42%) HTML
11 114 (5.59%) Node.js
12 112 (5.49%) CSS
13 100 (4.90%) AngularJS
14 73 (3.58%) OAuth
15 59 (2.89%) JSON
16 56 (2.75%) SOAP
17 55 (2.70%) pytest
18 54 (2.65%) Middleware
19 52 (2.55%) Web Services
20 51 (2.50%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 330 (16.18%) Cloud Native
2 167 (8.19%) Product Ownership
3 146 (7.16%) Distributed Systems
4 83 (4.07%) Enterprise Software
5 65 (3.19%) Onboarding
6 60 (2.94%) AI Agents
7 51 (2.50%) Self-Motivation
8 49 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
9 47 (2.30%) Data Protection Act
10 38 (1.86%) Mobile App
11 32 (1.57%) Virtual Team
12 27 (1.32%) Security Posture
13 26 (1.27%) Data Structures
14 23 (1.13%) Management Information System
15 21 (1.03%) Embedded Systems
16 20 (0.98%) Data Centre
17 17 (0.83%) Fixed Income
17 17 (0.83%) Legacy Applications
18 16 (0.78%) Greenfield Project
18 16 (0.78%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 147 (7.21%) Linux
2 93 (4.56%) Windows
3 82 (4.02%) Unix
4 38 (1.86%) Apple iOS
5 36 (1.76%) Android
6 29 (1.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 22 (1.08%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.34%) VMS
9 6 (0.29%) Mac OS X
10 5 (0.25%) Solaris
10 5 (0.25%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.25%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
11 4 (0.20%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.15%) AIX
12 3 (0.15%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.098%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,244 (60.98%) CI/CD
2 999 (48.97%) Agile
3 760 (37.25%) DevOps
4 411 (20.15%) Problem-Solving
5 410 (20.10%) Continuous Improvement
6 404 (19.80%) Microservices
7 403 (19.75%) Software Engineering
8 356 (17.45%) Validation
9 355 (17.40%) Infrastructure as Code
10 352 (17.25%) Scrum
11 345 (16.91%) AI
12 317 (15.54%) Test Strategy
13 309 (15.15%) Containerisation
14 273 (13.38%) Observability
15 271 (13.28%) SDLC
16 258 (12.65%) Software Testing
16 258 (12.65%) TDD
17 236 (11.57%) Stakeholder Management
18 219 (10.74%) End-to-End Testing
19 205 (10.05%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 572 (28.04%) Python
2 564 (27.65%) Java
3 511 (25.05%) SQL
4 306 (15.00%) JavaScript
5 238 (11.67%) TypeScript
6 172 (8.43%) C#
7 88 (4.31%) PowerShell
8 74 (3.63%) Bash
9 45 (2.21%) Bicep
10 44 (2.16%) Kotlin
11 38 (1.86%) Go
12 35 (1.72%) Scala
13 34 (1.67%) C++
14 25 (1.23%) PL/SQL
15 23 (1.13%) Shell Script
16 21 (1.03%) Apex Code
17 20 (0.98%) C
18 17 (0.83%) Groovy
19 15 (0.74%) Swift
20 13 (0.64%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 657 (32.21%) Security Cleared
2 550 (26.96%) SC Cleared
3 119 (5.83%) Degree
4 93 (4.56%) ISTQB
5 82 (4.02%) DV Cleared
6 74 (3.63%) BPSS Clearance
7 65 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
8 40 (1.96%) AWS Certification
9 26 (1.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 23 (1.13%) Azure Certification
11 14 (0.69%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 14 (0.69%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 13 (0.64%) CISSP
12 13 (0.64%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.59%) ISEB
13 12 (0.59%) Microsoft Certification
14 11 (0.54%) Cisco Certification
15 8 (0.39%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 8 (0.39%) SAFe Agilist
16 7 (0.34%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 560 (27.45%) QA
2 167 (8.19%) Accessibility
3 137 (6.72%) Data Quality
4 90 (4.41%) WCAG
5 37 (1.81%) GDPR
6 18 (0.88%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.74%) NIST
9 13 (0.64%) NCSC
10 12 (0.59%) GRC
10 12 (0.59%) SLA
11 8 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.29%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.29%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.29%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.25%) FATCA
13 5 (0.25%) HL7
14 4 (0.20%) HIPAA
14 4 (0.20%) SEPA
15 3 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 414 (20.29%) Docker
2 36 (1.76%) Active Directory
3 30 (1.47%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.88%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.59%) Firmware
6 7 (0.34%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.15%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.049%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.049%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 402 (19.71%) Kubernetes
2 116 (5.69%) Ansible
3 112 (5.49%) Grafana
4 81 (3.97%) Prometheus
5 39 (1.91%) Argo
6 22 (1.08%) Kibana
7 20 (0.98%) Progress Chef
8 19 (0.93%) Puppet
9 14 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.59%) HP ALM
11 11 (0.54%) Control-M
12 8 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
13 7 (0.34%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.29%) Dell DRAC
15 5 (0.25%) HP Fortify
15 5 (0.25%) Istio
15 5 (0.25%) Packer
15 5 (0.25%) SCCM
16 4 (0.20%) Rancher
16 4 (0.20%) WMI
Vendors
1 210 (10.29%) Microsoft
2 153 (7.50%) Oracle
3 89 (4.36%) Databricks
4 74 (3.63%) Google
5 62 (3.04%) Salesforce
6 57 (2.79%) Red Hat
7 56 (2.75%) IBM
8 53 (2.60%) ServiceNow
9 50 (2.45%) Splunk
10 47 (2.30%) Talend
11 41 (2.01%) SAP
12 40 (1.96%) Dynatrace
13 38 (1.86%) VMware
14 37 (1.81%) Denodo
15 33 (1.62%) Cisco
15 33 (1.62%) Informatica
16 30 (1.47%) UiPath
17 18 (0.88%) HP
18 17 (0.83%) Foundry
19 16 (0.78%) OpenAI