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 18 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 57
Rank change year-on-year -1 +10 -8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,694 1,113 1,250
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.13% 4.55% 3.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.89% 4.99% 3.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,103 776 830
10th Percentile £333 £325 £363
25th Percentile £402 £400 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £638
90th Percentile £663 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 21 49
10th Percentile £36.79 £40.84 -
25th Percentile £56.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £66.75 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.36% -8.33% -22.08%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £77.50
90th Percentile - £75.50 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £66.75 £52.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +27.14% -12.50% -14.89%

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 34,677 22,323 31,499
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.63% 91.22% 86.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,105 14,603 20,624
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £505 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,142 946 2,251
10th Percentile £15.31 £14.41 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £15.97
Median hourly rate £47.00 £29.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.07% -20.55% +0.69%
75th Percentile £67.96 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.18 £36.02
% change year-on-year +50.82% -21.77% +1.04%

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 18 May 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 18 May 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 18 May 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 0 818 £500 - 216
North of England +8 342 £464 +3.75% 128
Midlands +6 195 £450 - 64
West Midlands +27 171 £463 -7.73% 45
South East -45 162 £500 -0.10% 129
North West +12 151 £466 +4.25% 71
Yorkshire -7 144 £490 +3.11% 23
South West +14 95 £469 -8.54% 71
East of England +12 64 £507 +5.08% 58
North East +6 54 £425 +8.97% 34
East Midlands -38 24 £400 +22.70% 19
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
1 134 (7.91%) Confluence
2 39 (2.30%) SAS
3 31 (1.83%) Apache Spark
4 30 (1.77%) Apache Airflow
5 11 (0.65%) Apache
5 11 (0.65%) SharePoint
6 8 (0.47%) Appian
7 7 (0.41%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.35%) Camunda
8 6 (0.35%) CMS
9 4 (0.24%) nginx
9 4 (0.24%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.12%) Anypoint
12 1 (0.059%) Ethereum
12 1 (0.059%) Jupyter
12 1 (0.059%) Mendix
12 1 (0.059%) Solana
Applications
1 25 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.59%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.18%) Simulink
8 1 (0.059%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.059%) Mingle
8 1 (0.059%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (1.18%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
4 7 (0.41%) Findur
4 7 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
5 6 (0.35%) Loan IQ
5 6 (0.35%) Shopify
6 5 (0.30%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.30%) Maximo
6 5 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.30%) SAP ERP
7 3 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
8 2 (0.12%) iTrent
8 2 (0.12%) SAP MDG
8 2 (0.12%) Summit
8 2 (0.12%) Workday HCM
9 1 (0.059%) Infor CloudSuite
9 1 (0.059%) Infor LN
9 1 (0.059%) Oracle ERP
9 1 (0.059%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 455 (26.86%) AWS
2 450 (26.56%) Azure
3 271 (16.00%) GitHub
4 199 (11.75%) Azure DevOps
5 156 (9.21%) GitHub Actions
6 115 (6.79%) GCP
7 109 (6.43%) Serverless
8 71 (4.19%) AWS Lambda
9 68 (4.01%) Amazon S3
10 54 (3.19%) Power Platform
11 52 (3.07%) OpenShift
12 48 (2.83%) Amazon ECS
13 41 (2.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 35 (2.07%) Amazon EKS
14 35 (2.07%) Azure Data Factory
15 34 (2.01%) AWS CloudFormation
16 33 (1.95%) Azure AKS
17 32 (1.89%) Snowflake
18 28 (1.65%) Amazon EC2
19 26 (1.53%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.18%) Firewall
2 13 (0.77%) HTTP
2 13 (0.77%) SAN
3 11 (0.65%) TCP/IP
4 9 (0.53%) Ethernet
4 9 (0.53%) VPN
5 8 (0.47%) FTP
5 8 (0.47%) WAN
6 7 (0.41%) MPLS
6 7 (0.41%) SD-WAN
6 7 (0.41%) SSL
6 7 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
6 7 (0.41%) Wireshark
7 6 (0.35%) VLAN
8 5 (0.30%) Multicast
8 5 (0.30%) Network Security
9 4 (0.24%) Modbus
9 4 (0.24%) RS-232
9 4 (0.24%) RS-485
9 4 (0.24%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (5.49%) PostgreSQL
2 81 (4.78%) SQL Server
3 78 (4.60%) NoSQL
4 77 (4.55%) MongoDB
5 69 (4.07%) Data Warehouse
6 56 (3.31%) Relational Database
7 40 (2.36%) DynamoDB
8 38 (2.24%) Power BI
9 33 (1.95%) Pentaho
10 25 (1.48%) Oracle Reports
10 25 (1.48%) Tableau
11 23 (1.36%) Redis
12 21 (1.24%) Amazon RDS
12 21 (1.24%) Big Data
13 20 (1.18%) Amazon Athena
13 20 (1.18%) Data Lake
13 20 (1.18%) MySQL
14 19 (1.12%) Metadata
15 18 (1.06%) BigQuery
16 17 (1.00%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 325 (19.19%) JIRA
2 302 (17.83%) Git
3 288 (17.00%) Jenkins
4 235 (13.87%) Selenium
5 232 (13.70%) GitLab
6 137 (8.09%) Postman
7 124 (7.32%) Cucumber
8 90 (5.31%) JUnit
9 85 (5.02%) REST Assured
10 78 (4.60%) Cypress.io
11 73 (4.31%) JMeter
12 44 (2.60%) WebDriver
13 42 (2.48%) SonarQube
13 42 (2.48%) Zephyr
14 34 (2.01%) Gradle
15 31 (1.83%) Gatling
16 30 (1.77%) Bitbucket
16 30 (1.77%) Maven
17 29 (1.71%) SpecFlow
18 27 (1.59%) Mockito
General
1 454 (26.80%) Social Skills
2 303 (17.89%) Finance
3 235 (13.87%) Public Sector
4 208 (12.28%) Analytical Skills
5 148 (8.74%) Banking
6 39 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
7 34 (2.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 30 (1.77%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.59%) Front Office
10 21 (1.24%) Telecoms
11 19 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
12 17 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
12 17 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
13 16 (0.94%) Retail
14 15 (0.89%) Legal
15 14 (0.83%) Aerospace
16 13 (0.77%) Financial Institution
17 12 (0.71%) Military
18 10 (0.59%) Back Office
19 8 (0.47%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 348 (20.54%) Developer
2 261 (15.41%) Senior
3 187 (11.04%) Test Engineer
4 184 (10.86%) Tester
5 175 (10.33%) Lead
6 101 (5.96%) Data Engineer
7 99 (5.84%) Java Developer
8 93 (5.49%) Analyst
9 89 (5.25%) Software Engineer
10 86 (5.08%) Test Automation Engineer
11 81 (4.78%) Automation Tester
12 72 (4.25%) Architect
13 68 (4.01%) QA Engineer
13 68 (4.01%) Senior Developer
14 66 (3.90%) DevOps Engineer
15 64 (3.78%) Test Leader
16 55 (3.25%) Full-Stack Developer
17 52 (3.07%) Test Analyst
18 49 (2.89%) Automation Engineer
19 47 (2.77%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 195 (11.51%) Playwright
2 188 (11.10%) REST
3 154 (9.09%) React
4 131 (7.73%) Spring
5 128 (7.56%) Kafka
6 126 (7.44%) RESTful
7 119 (7.02%) .NET
8 110 (6.49%) Spring Boot
9 106 (6.26%) Node.js
10 72 (4.25%) AngularJS
11 61 (3.60%) HTML
12 54 (3.19%) CSS
13 52 (3.07%) pytest
14 46 (2.72%) OAuth
15 45 (2.66%) Jest
16 34 (2.01%) OpenID
16 34 (2.01%) Swagger
17 31 (1.83%) Gherkin
17 31 (1.83%) OAuth2
17 31 (1.83%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 183 (10.80%) Cloud Native
2 117 (6.91%) Product Ownership
3 92 (5.43%) Distributed Systems
4 46 (2.72%) Data Protection Act
5 43 (2.54%) Mobile App
6 42 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
7 33 (1.95%) Virtual Team
8 31 (1.83%) Self-Motivation
9 29 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
10 26 (1.53%) Onboarding
11 25 (1.48%) Algorithms
12 23 (1.36%) Management Information System
13 21 (1.24%) Distributed Architecture
13 21 (1.24%) NHS
14 19 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
15 18 (1.06%) Data Centre
15 18 (1.06%) Fixed Income
16 17 (1.00%) Data Structures
17 15 (0.89%) Embedded Systems
17 15 (0.89%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 112 (6.61%) Linux
2 74 (4.37%) Windows
3 46 (2.72%) Unix
4 38 (2.24%) Android
5 32 (1.89%) Apple iOS
6 18 (1.06%) Windows Server
7 16 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.77%) Mac OS X
9 7 (0.41%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.30%) Solaris
11 4 (0.24%) Embedded Linux
11 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.18%) AIX
12 3 (0.18%) CentOS
12 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.12%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.059%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.059%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 889 (52.48%) CI/CD
2 778 (45.93%) Agile
3 600 (35.42%) DevOps
4 351 (20.72%) Problem-Solving
5 284 (16.77%) Continuous Improvement
6 283 (16.71%) Microservices
7 249 (14.70%) Scrum
7 249 (14.70%) Test Strategy
8 229 (13.52%) Software Engineering
9 222 (13.11%) Validation
10 219 (12.93%) Infrastructure as Code
11 214 (12.63%) Containerisation
12 205 (12.10%) Observability
13 199 (11.75%) TDD
14 187 (11.04%) AI
15 184 (10.86%) Test Scripting
16 172 (10.15%) Software Testing
17 171 (10.09%) ETL
17 171 (10.09%) User Acceptance Testing
18 162 (9.56%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 435 (25.68%) Python
2 429 (25.32%) Java
3 398 (23.49%) SQL
4 230 (13.58%) JavaScript
5 211 (12.46%) TypeScript
6 172 (10.15%) C#
7 69 (4.07%) PowerShell
8 54 (3.19%) Bash
9 43 (2.54%) C++
10 40 (2.36%) Kotlin
11 32 (1.89%) C
12 29 (1.71%) Apex Code
12 29 (1.71%) PL/SQL
13 26 (1.53%) Scala
14 23 (1.36%) Bicep
15 22 (1.30%) Go
16 17 (1.00%) Swift
17 16 (0.94%) Ruby
18 13 (0.77%) Groovy
19 11 (0.65%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 529 (31.23%) Security Cleared
2 408 (24.09%) SC Cleared
3 80 (4.72%) ISTQB
4 72 (4.25%) Degree
5 64 (3.78%) DV Cleared
6 59 (3.48%) BPSS Clearance
7 37 (2.18%) Computer Science Degree
8 19 (1.12%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 11 (0.65%) Cisco Certification
9 11 (0.65%) Master's Degree
9 11 (0.65%) SAFe Agilist
10 10 (0.59%) CCNP
10 10 (0.59%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 8 (0.47%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 8 (0.47%) Azure Certification
12 7 (0.41%) AWS Certification
12 7 (0.41%) DBS Check
13 6 (0.35%) CISSP
13 6 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
14 5 (0.30%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 360 (21.25%) QA
2 120 (7.08%) Accessibility
3 99 (5.84%) Data Quality
4 53 (3.13%) WCAG
5 28 (1.65%) GDPR
6 14 (0.83%) ISO 20022
7 10 (0.59%) Def Stans
8 9 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 8 (0.47%) NCSC
9 8 (0.47%) SLA
10 7 (0.41%) NIST
10 7 (0.41%) SEPA
11 6 (0.35%) PSD2
11 6 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.30%) FATCA
13 4 (0.24%) HL7
13 4 (0.24%) MiFID
13 4 (0.24%) PCI DSS
13 4 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
14 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
System Software
1 291 (17.18%) Docker
2 19 (1.12%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (1.06%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.77%) Firmware
5 11 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.41%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 6 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
9 4 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
10 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.12%) SRDF
12 1 (0.059%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.059%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.059%) KVM
12 1 (0.059%) Squid
12 1 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.059%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 288 (17.00%) Kubernetes
2 196 (11.57%) Terraform
3 101 (5.96%) Grafana
4 86 (5.08%) Prometheus
5 78 (4.60%) Ansible
6 26 (1.53%) Argo
7 16 (0.94%) HP ALM
8 15 (0.89%) Puppet
9 11 (0.65%) Kibana
9 11 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (0.59%) Forefront Identity Manager
10 10 (0.59%) HP Quality Center
10 10 (0.59%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 8 (0.47%) Dell DRAC
12 7 (0.41%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.35%) NetBackup
14 5 (0.30%) Rancher
15 4 (0.24%) Istio
15 4 (0.24%) Nmap
15 4 (0.24%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 145 (8.56%) Oracle
2 137 (8.09%) Microsoft
3 66 (3.90%) Salesforce
4 57 (3.36%) Databricks
5 56 (3.31%) Splunk
6 54 (3.19%) ServiceNow
7 49 (2.89%) Talend
8 45 (2.66%) Red Hat
9 41 (2.42%) Google
10 32 (1.89%) Denodo
11 27 (1.59%) SAP
12 25 (1.48%) VMware
13 21 (1.24%) Cisco
14 20 (1.18%) Dynatrace
14 20 (1.18%) Informatica
15 19 (1.12%) HP
15 19 (1.12%) IBM
16 18 (1.06%) UiPath
17 15 (0.89%) MuleSoft
18 14 (0.83%) Blue Prism