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 23 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 52 52
Rank change year-on-year +5 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,911 1,203 1,349
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.26% 4.40% 3.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.99% 4.85% 4.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,224 828 900
10th Percentile £322 £313 £363
25th Percentile £406 £380 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -9.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £706 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £475 £522
% change year-on-year - -9.00% -0.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 30 35
10th Percentile £38.08 £40.26 £47.70
25th Percentile £60.25 £44.63 £51.88
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -9.09% -26.67%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.88 £71.87
90th Percentile £74.70 £75.25 £76.30
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +35.00% -9.09% -21.29%

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 38,297 24,783 30,176
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.34% 90.63% 85.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,016 15,884 19,726
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £634 £645
90th Percentile £737 £738 £753
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,362 1,330 1,950
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.29 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.99 £17.25
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -37.13% -6.43%
75th Percentile £69.75 £53.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.23 £71.46 £74.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £39.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -36.33% -7.06%

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 23 July 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 23 July 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 23 July 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 +4 866 £500 - 345
North of England +15 390 £465 +3.73% 162
Midlands +8 247 £447 +8.69% 69
West Midlands +28 229 £450 -2.70% 41
South East -33 198 £459 -8.20% 160
North West -1 153 £488 +18.33% 98
Yorkshire +5 152 £500 +5.26% 44
South West +6 113 £463 +7.25% 98
North East +12 95 £425 +6.25% 23
East of England +14 81 £450 - 61
East Midlands -41 18 £425 +30.37% 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
1 174 (9.11%) Confluence
2 43 (2.25%) Apache Airflow
2 43 (2.25%) Apache Spark
3 37 (1.94%) SAS
4 25 (1.31%) SharePoint
5 20 (1.05%) Apache
6 13 (0.68%) CMS
7 11 (0.58%) WebLogic
8 5 (0.26%) Camunda
8 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
8 5 (0.26%) nginx
8 5 (0.26%) Tomcat
9 4 (0.21%) Appian
9 4 (0.21%) Jupyter
9 4 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.16%) Kentico
11 2 (0.10%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.10%) Apache Pulsar
11 2 (0.10%) Mule
12 1 (0.052%) Mendix
Applications
1 21 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.84%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.42%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.21%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.21%) Simulink
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.10%) Trello
7 1 (0.052%) Mingle
7 1 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 24 (1.26%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.89%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.63%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
5 9 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.42%) Findur
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
9 3 (0.16%) Loan IQ
10 2 (0.10%) Infor CloudSuite
10 2 (0.10%) Infor LN
10 2 (0.10%) Infor M3
10 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS R12
10 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
10 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
10 2 (0.10%) Summit
11 1 (0.052%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 547 (28.62%) AWS
2 544 (28.47%) Azure
3 332 (17.37%) GitHub
4 245 (12.82%) Azure DevOps
5 209 (10.94%) GitHub Actions
6 140 (7.33%) Serverless
7 136 (7.12%) GCP
8 99 (5.18%) AWS Lambda
9 84 (4.40%) Amazon S3
10 78 (4.08%) Power Platform
11 63 (3.30%) OpenShift
12 61 (3.19%) Amazon ECS
13 55 (2.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 45 (2.35%) dbt
15 42 (2.20%) Amazon EC2
15 42 (2.20%) Azure Data Factory
16 39 (2.04%) Amazon EKS
16 39 (2.04%) Snowflake
17 36 (1.88%) Azure AKS
17 36 (1.88%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.15%) Firewall
2 16 (0.84%) HTTP
3 15 (0.78%) Network Security
3 15 (0.78%) SAN
4 12 (0.63%) 2G
4 12 (0.63%) 3G
4 12 (0.63%) 4G
4 12 (0.63%) Diameter Protocol
4 12 (0.63%) SIGTRAN
4 12 (0.63%) SS7
4 12 (0.63%) WAN
5 11 (0.58%) 5G
6 9 (0.47%) LAN
6 9 (0.47%) TCP/IP
7 8 (0.42%) VPN
7 8 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
8 7 (0.37%) BGP
8 7 (0.37%) DNS
8 7 (0.37%) MPLS
9 6 (0.31%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (5.76%) PostgreSQL
2 104 (5.44%) Data Warehouse
3 93 (4.87%) MongoDB
3 93 (4.87%) NoSQL
4 78 (4.08%) SQL Server
5 63 (3.30%) Power BI
6 60 (3.14%) Relational Database
7 48 (2.51%) DynamoDB
8 36 (1.88%) Oracle Reports
9 31 (1.62%) Pentaho
10 29 (1.52%) Amazon Athena
11 28 (1.47%) Big Data
12 27 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
13 26 (1.36%) Data Lake
14 25 (1.31%) Metadata
15 24 (1.26%) MySQL
16 23 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
16 23 (1.20%) Redis
17 21 (1.10%) Oracle Database
18 18 (0.94%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 356 (18.63%) JIRA
2 354 (18.52%) Git
3 304 (15.91%) Jenkins
4 251 (13.13%) GitLab
5 237 (12.40%) Selenium
6 133 (6.96%) Cucumber
7 132 (6.91%) Postman
8 97 (5.08%) JUnit
9 95 (4.97%) REST Assured
10 94 (4.92%) Cypress.io
11 79 (4.13%) JMeter
12 64 (3.35%) Zephyr
13 55 (2.88%) SonarQube
14 51 (2.67%) WebDriver
15 45 (2.35%) Gatling
16 43 (2.25%) Gradle
17 40 (2.09%) Bitbucket
18 35 (1.83%) Mockito
19 34 (1.78%) Maven
20 27 (1.41%) SpecFlow
General
1 517 (27.05%) Social Skills
2 368 (19.26%) Finance
3 251 (13.13%) Analytical Skills
4 234 (12.24%) Public Sector
5 164 (8.58%) Banking
6 54 (2.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 39 (2.04%) Documentation Skills
8 31 (1.62%) Telecoms
9 29 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
10 28 (1.47%) Front Office
10 28 (1.47%) Investment Banking
10 28 (1.47%) Retail
11 21 (1.10%) Financial Institution
11 21 (1.10%) Military
12 18 (0.94%) Aerospace
13 15 (0.78%) Legal
13 15 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
14 14 (0.73%) Back Office
15 13 (0.68%) Automotive
16 12 (0.63%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 390 (20.41%) Developer
2 311 (16.27%) Senior
3 208 (10.88%) Lead
4 188 (9.84%) Test Engineer
5 185 (9.68%) Tester
6 133 (6.96%) Data Engineer
7 126 (6.59%) Java Developer
8 111 (5.81%) Software Engineer
9 103 (5.39%) Analyst
10 88 (4.60%) DevOps Engineer
11 87 (4.55%) Senior Developer
12 86 (4.50%) Architect
13 81 (4.24%) QA Engineer
14 80 (4.19%) Test Automation Engineer
15 73 (3.82%) Test Leader
16 66 (3.45%) Automation Tester
17 65 (3.40%) Test Analyst
18 63 (3.30%) Full-Stack Developer
19 55 (2.88%) Automation Engineer
20 50 (2.62%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 234 (12.24%) REST
2 209 (10.94%) Playwright
3 175 (9.16%) React
4 165 (8.63%) RESTful
5 159 (8.32%) Spring
6 156 (8.16%) Kafka
7 134 (7.01%) .NET
8 129 (6.75%) Spring Boot
9 98 (5.13%) Node.js
10 82 (4.29%) AngularJS
11 75 (3.92%) HTML
12 73 (3.82%) CSS
13 52 (2.72%) OAuth
14 45 (2.35%) .NET Framework
15 43 (2.25%) Jest
15 43 (2.25%) pytest
16 42 (2.20%) Quarkus
17 41 (2.15%) HTML5
18 40 (2.09%) .NET Core
19 39 (2.04%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 263 (13.76%) Cloud Native
2 136 (7.12%) Distributed Systems
3 133 (6.96%) Product Ownership
4 64 (3.35%) Enterprise Software
5 56 (2.93%) Legacy Systems
6 50 (2.62%) Data Protection Act
7 46 (2.41%) Self-Motivation
8 43 (2.25%) Onboarding
9 37 (1.94%) Mobile App
10 31 (1.62%) AI Agents
11 30 (1.57%) Distributed Architecture
11 30 (1.57%) Virtual Team
12 27 (1.41%) Embedded Systems
12 27 (1.41%) Security Posture
13 22 (1.15%) Management Information System
14 21 (1.10%) Fixed Income
15 20 (1.05%) Algorithms
16 19 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
17 18 (0.94%) Data Structures
18 15 (0.78%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 118 (6.17%) Linux
2 75 (3.92%) Windows
3 61 (3.19%) Unix
4 38 (1.99%) Android
4 38 (1.99%) Apple iOS
5 22 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 17 (0.89%) Windows Server
7 14 (0.73%) Mac OS X
8 7 (0.37%) Mac OS
8 7 (0.37%) Solaris
9 6 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
10 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.21%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.16%) AIX
12 3 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.10%) CentOS
14 1 (0.052%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,095 (57.30%) CI/CD
2 901 (47.15%) Agile
3 696 (36.42%) DevOps
4 362 (18.94%) Problem-Solving
5 361 (18.89%) Microservices
6 348 (18.21%) Continuous Improvement
7 320 (16.75%) Software Engineering
8 314 (16.43%) Scrum
9 290 (15.18%) Validation
10 289 (15.12%) Test Strategy
11 285 (14.91%) Infrastructure as Code
12 268 (14.02%) AI
13 248 (12.98%) TDD
14 246 (12.87%) Containerisation
15 245 (12.82%) Observability
16 208 (10.88%) ETL
17 197 (10.31%) SDLC
18 194 (10.15%) Data Pipeline
19 191 (9.99%) End-to-End Testing
19 191 (9.99%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 480 (25.12%) Java
2 478 (25.01%) Python
3 456 (23.86%) SQL
4 231 (12.09%) JavaScript
5 209 (10.94%) TypeScript
6 175 (9.16%) C#
7 73 (3.82%) PowerShell
8 65 (3.40%) Bash
9 49 (2.56%) Kotlin
10 39 (2.04%) Bicep
11 38 (1.99%) C++
12 30 (1.57%) Go
13 28 (1.47%) C
14 26 (1.36%) PL/SQL
15 25 (1.31%) Apex Code
15 25 (1.31%) Scala
16 22 (1.15%) Swift
17 18 (0.94%) Ruby
18 15 (0.78%) Groovy
19 13 (0.68%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 593 (31.03%) Security Cleared
2 492 (25.75%) SC Cleared
3 89 (4.66%) Degree
4 85 (4.45%) ISTQB
5 62 (3.24%) BPSS Clearance
6 60 (3.14%) DV Cleared
7 43 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (1.31%) AWS Certification
9 22 (1.15%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 16 (0.84%) Azure Certification
11 15 (0.78%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 13 (0.68%) Cisco Certification
13 11 (0.58%) CCNP
13 11 (0.58%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 11 (0.58%) Master's Degree
13 11 (0.58%) SAFe Agilist
14 8 (0.42%) CISSP
15 7 (0.37%) DBS Check
15 7 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
16 6 (0.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 468 (24.49%) QA
2 144 (7.54%) Accessibility
3 127 (6.65%) Data Quality
4 72 (3.77%) WCAG
5 36 (1.88%) GDPR
6 13 (0.68%) NCSC
7 10 (0.52%) NIST
8 9 (0.47%) ISO 20022
8 9 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 9 (0.47%) SLA
9 6 (0.31%) Def Stans
10 5 (0.26%) FATCA
10 5 (0.26%) GRC
10 5 (0.26%) PCI DSS
10 5 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
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
11 3 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 344 (18.00%) Docker
2 27 (1.41%) VMware Infrastructure
3 22 (1.15%) Active Directory
4 15 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.63%) 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
1 354 (18.52%) Kubernetes
2 253 (13.24%) Terraform
3 104 (5.44%) Ansible
4 103 (5.39%) Grafana
5 90 (4.71%) Prometheus
6 38 (1.99%) Argo
7 16 (0.84%) Puppet
8 13 (0.68%) HP ALM
9 12 (0.63%) Kibana
10 10 (0.52%) Dell DRAC
10 10 (0.52%) Progress Chef
10 10 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.37%) HP Quality Center
11 7 (0.37%) Kustomize
12 6 (0.31%) NetBackup
13 5 (0.26%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 5 (0.26%) Istio
13 5 (0.26%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 4 (0.21%) Packer
14 4 (0.21%) Rancher
Vendors
1 183 (9.58%) Microsoft
2 152 (7.95%) Oracle
3 77 (4.03%) Salesforce
4 69 (3.61%) Databricks
5 57 (2.98%) Red Hat
6 53 (2.77%) Google
6 53 (2.77%) Talend
7 52 (2.72%) Splunk
8 37 (1.94%) ServiceNow
9 34 (1.78%) Denodo
10 31 (1.62%) IBM
10 31 (1.62%) Informatica
10 31 (1.62%) VMware
11 28 (1.47%) Dynatrace
11 28 (1.47%) SAP
12 27 (1.41%) UiPath
13 25 (1.31%) Cisco
14 19 (0.99%) HP
15 13 (0.68%) Fortinet
16 12 (0.63%) OpenAI