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 25 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 46 56
Rank change year-on-year -2 +10 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,675 1,125 1,313
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.47% 4.63% 3.48%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.17% 5.10% 4.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,118 781 889
10th Percentile £334 £335 £375
25th Percentile £400 £400 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.90% -4.76% -7.08%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £640
90th Percentile £675 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 7 56
10th Percentile £28.84 £38.81 £46.50
25th Percentile £53.01 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -7.35% +2.08%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.01 £84.38
90th Percentile - £76.18 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £61.25
% change year-on-year +14.54% -7.35% +2.08%

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 32,391 22,052 32,754
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.35% 90.83% 86.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,759 14,493 21,652
10th Percentile £313 £312 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,980 839 2,155
10th Percentile £15.31 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.56 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.25 £32.81 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.44% -0.58% -12.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.70
90th Percentile £75.44 £77.25 £71.89
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year - - -9.72%

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 25 March 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 25 March 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 25 March 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 +1 832 £500 - 177
North of England +5 325 £483 +8.46% 163
Midlands +8 191 £472 -1.67% 81
South East -26 169 £500 -10.71% 145
West Midlands +22 162 £477 -5.41% 55
North West +9 149 £456 +1.39% 83
Yorkshire -10 137 £500 +5.26% 41
South West -1 80 £500 -4.76% 69
East of England -2 59 £585 +22.19% 64
North East +6 42 £425 +11.67% 39
East Midlands -25 29 £400 +8.55% 26
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
1 116 (6.93%) Confluence
2 59 (3.52%) SAS
3 27 (1.61%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.78%) SharePoint
6 9 (0.54%) Apache
7 8 (0.48%) Appian
8 6 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.30%) CMS
9 5 (0.30%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.24%) Camunda
10 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.24%) Oracle Application Server
11 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.18%) nginx
12 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.12%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.12%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 25 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.66%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.12%) Simulink
7 1 (0.060%) Mingle
7 1 (0.060%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 24 (1.43%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.36%) Findur
2 6 (0.36%) Loan IQ
2 6 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.30%) Maximo
3 5 (0.30%) Shopify
3 5 (0.30%) Workday HCM
4 4 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.24%) SAP HR
5 3 (0.18%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.12%) iTrent
6 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.12%) Summit
7 1 (0.060%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle EBS R12
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle General Ledger
7 1 (0.060%) PORTIA
7 1 (0.060%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 460 (27.46%) Azure
2 414 (24.72%) AWS
3 282 (16.84%) GitHub
4 209 (12.48%) Azure DevOps
5 154 (9.19%) GitHub Actions
6 150 (8.96%) GCP
7 116 (6.93%) Serverless
8 70 (4.18%) OpenShift
9 58 (3.46%) AWS Lambda
10 56 (3.34%) Power Platform
11 55 (3.28%) Amazon S3
12 40 (2.39%) Azure AKS
13 36 (2.15%) Snowflake
14 34 (2.03%) Amazon ECS
15 32 (1.91%) AWS CloudFormation
15 32 (1.91%) Azure Data Factory
16 30 (1.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 29 (1.73%) SaaS
18 27 (1.61%) Amazon EKS
19 26 (1.55%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.61%) Firewall
2 16 (0.96%) VPN
3 15 (0.90%) TCP/IP
4 13 (0.78%) HTTP
4 13 (0.78%) SD-WAN
4 13 (0.78%) WAN
5 12 (0.72%) Wireshark
6 11 (0.66%) Network Security
7 10 (0.60%) SSL
8 9 (0.54%) Ethernet
9 8 (0.48%) DNS
9 8 (0.48%) HTTPS
9 8 (0.48%) MPLS
9 8 (0.48%) Multicast
9 8 (0.48%) SAN
10 7 (0.42%) FTP
11 5 (0.30%) 5G
11 5 (0.30%) AMQP
11 5 (0.30%) Cisco IPT
11 5 (0.30%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 97 (5.79%) PostgreSQL
2 69 (4.12%) NoSQL
3 68 (4.06%) SQL Server
4 57 (3.40%) MongoDB
5 50 (2.99%) Relational Database
6 48 (2.87%) Data Warehouse
7 31 (1.85%) DynamoDB
7 31 (1.85%) Power BI
8 29 (1.73%) Pentaho
9 25 (1.49%) BigQuery
10 24 (1.43%) Oracle Database
11 23 (1.37%) Tableau
12 22 (1.31%) MySQL
13 20 (1.19%) Redis
14 18 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
14 18 (1.07%) Oracle Reports
15 13 (0.78%) Amazon Athena
15 13 (0.78%) Azure SQL Database
16 12 (0.72%) Data Lake
16 12 (0.72%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 320 (19.10%) JIRA
2 316 (18.87%) Git
3 311 (18.57%) Jenkins
4 244 (14.57%) Selenium
5 243 (14.51%) GitLab
6 141 (8.42%) Cucumber
7 128 (7.64%) Postman
8 105 (6.27%) JUnit
9 95 (5.67%) Cypress.io
10 83 (4.96%) REST Assured
11 76 (4.54%) JMeter
12 40 (2.39%) WebDriver
13 36 (2.15%) SonarQube
13 36 (2.15%) SpecFlow
14 34 (2.03%) Maven
15 31 (1.85%) Zephyr
16 30 (1.79%) Gatling
16 30 (1.79%) Gradle
16 30 (1.79%) TestRail
17 29 (1.73%) Bitbucket
General
1 474 (28.30%) Social Skills
2 303 (18.09%) Finance
3 240 (14.33%) Public Sector
4 187 (11.16%) Analytical Skills
5 145 (8.66%) Banking
6 33 (1.97%) Documentation Skills
7 30 (1.79%) Investment Banking
8 28 (1.67%) Front Office
9 27 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 22 (1.31%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
12 19 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
13 17 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
14 15 (0.90%) Pharmaceutical
15 14 (0.84%) Financial Institution
15 14 (0.84%) Legal
15 14 (0.84%) Military
16 13 (0.78%) Aerospace
17 10 (0.60%) Electronics
18 9 (0.54%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 349 (20.84%) Developer
2 276 (16.48%) Senior
3 193 (11.52%) Lead
4 183 (10.93%) Tester
5 182 (10.87%) Test Engineer
6 88 (5.25%) Java Developer
7 87 (5.19%) Analyst
8 86 (5.13%) Automation Tester
9 85 (5.07%) Data Engineer
10 82 (4.90%) Test Automation Engineer
11 75 (4.48%) Software Engineer
12 72 (4.30%) Test Leader
13 71 (4.24%) QA Engineer
14 66 (3.94%) Senior Developer
15 62 (3.70%) DevOps Engineer
16 61 (3.64%) Architect
17 54 (3.22%) Test Analyst
18 53 (3.16%) Automation Engineer
18 53 (3.16%) Test Manager
19 40 (2.39%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 209 (12.48%) REST
2 192 (11.46%) Playwright
3 140 (8.36%) React
4 130 (7.76%) Spring
5 124 (7.40%) RESTful
6 116 (6.93%) .NET
6 116 (6.93%) Node.js
7 115 (6.87%) Kafka
8 102 (6.09%) Spring Boot
9 77 (4.60%) pytest
10 65 (3.88%) AngularJS
11 52 (3.10%) HTML
12 51 (3.04%) OAuth
13 49 (2.93%) CSS
13 49 (2.93%) Jest
14 39 (2.33%) Web Services
15 36 (2.15%) GraphQL
16 35 (2.09%) WireMock
17 33 (1.97%) Gherkin
17 33 (1.97%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 174 (10.39%) Cloud Native
2 109 (6.51%) Product Ownership
3 90 (5.37%) Distributed Systems
4 45 (2.69%) Mobile App
5 41 (2.45%) Algorithms
6 38 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
6 38 (2.27%) Legacy Systems
7 27 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
7 27 (1.61%) Virtual Team
8 26 (1.55%) Onboarding
8 26 (1.55%) Security Posture
9 25 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
10 24 (1.43%) Equities
11 23 (1.37%) Data Structures
12 21 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
12 21 (1.25%) Management Information System
13 20 (1.19%) Distributed Architecture
14 19 (1.13%) Public Cloud
15 17 (1.01%) Fixed Income
16 16 (0.96%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 127 (7.58%) Linux
2 81 (4.84%) Windows
3 45 (2.69%) Android
4 36 (2.15%) Apple iOS
5 29 (1.73%) Unix
6 18 (1.07%) Windows Server
7 14 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (0.66%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.54%) Kali Linux
10 6 (0.36%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.24%) CentOS
12 3 (0.18%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.18%) Solaris
13 2 (0.12%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.060%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.060%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.060%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 869 (51.88%) CI/CD
2 789 (47.10%) Agile
3 622 (37.13%) DevOps
4 408 (24.36%) Problem-Solving
5 271 (16.18%) Continuous Improvement
6 266 (15.88%) Microservices
7 258 (15.40%) Test Strategy
8 240 (14.33%) Scrum
9 230 (13.73%) Containerisation
10 214 (12.78%) AI
11 208 (12.42%) Software Engineering
12 206 (12.30%) Validation
13 205 (12.24%) Infrastructure as Code
13 205 (12.24%) Test Scripting
14 195 (11.64%) TDD
15 188 (11.22%) Observability
16 187 (11.16%) Analytics
17 178 (10.63%) Software Testing
18 176 (10.51%) Regression Testing
19 170 (10.15%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 516 (30.81%) Python
2 408 (24.36%) Java
3 364 (21.73%) SQL
4 242 (14.45%) JavaScript
5 234 (13.97%) TypeScript
6 169 (10.09%) C#
7 73 (4.36%) PowerShell
8 62 (3.70%) Bash
9 47 (2.81%) C++
10 30 (1.79%) C
11 29 (1.73%) Kotlin
12 26 (1.55%) Go
13 24 (1.43%) Bicep
14 23 (1.37%) Apex Code
15 21 (1.25%) PL/SQL
16 19 (1.13%) Ruby
17 18 (1.07%) Scala
18 17 (1.01%) Swift
19 15 (0.90%) Groovy
20 12 (0.72%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 494 (29.49%) Security Cleared
2 377 (22.51%) SC Cleared
3 86 (5.13%) Degree
4 78 (4.66%) ISTQB
5 59 (3.52%) BPSS Clearance
6 56 (3.34%) DV Cleared
7 52 (3.10%) Computer Science Degree
8 23 (1.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 23 (1.37%) Master's Degree
9 14 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
10 12 (0.72%) Azure Certification
10 12 (0.72%) OSCP
11 10 (0.60%) AWS Certification
11 10 (0.60%) CEH
11 10 (0.60%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 9 (0.54%) CCNP
12 9 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
13 8 (0.48%) CISSP
13 8 (0.48%) ISEB
14 7 (0.42%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 382 (22.81%) QA
2 115 (6.87%) Accessibility
3 96 (5.73%) Data Quality
4 42 (2.51%) WCAG
5 30 (1.79%) GDPR
6 20 (1.19%) NIST
7 15 (0.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 15 (0.90%) NCSC
8 10 (0.60%) Def Stans
8 10 (0.60%) EU AI Act
8 10 (0.60%) ISO 20022
8 10 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 10 (0.60%) SLA
9 8 (0.48%) PSD2
10 6 (0.36%) SEPA
10 6 (0.36%) SOC 2
11 5 (0.30%) HL7
11 5 (0.30%) MiFID
11 5 (0.30%) PCI DSS
11 5 (0.30%) PERC
System Software
1 322 (19.22%) Docker
2 26 (1.55%) Active Directory
3 10 (0.60%) Firmware
4 7 (0.42%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 7 (0.42%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.12%) SRDF
9 1 (0.060%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.060%) KVM
9 1 (0.060%) Squid
9 1 (0.060%) Time Sharing Option
9 1 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 321 (19.16%) Kubernetes
2 189 (11.28%) Terraform
3 103 (6.15%) Grafana
4 91 (5.43%) Ansible
5 79 (4.72%) Prometheus
6 22 (1.31%) Argo
7 20 (1.19%) Puppet
8 18 (1.07%) HP ALM
9 14 (0.84%) Progress Chef
10 12 (0.72%) Nmap
11 11 (0.66%) NetBackup
11 11 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
12 10 (0.60%) HP Quality Center
13 9 (0.54%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 9 (0.54%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 7 (0.42%) Kibana
15 6 (0.36%) Rancher
16 5 (0.30%) Dell DRAC
16 5 (0.30%) Podman
17 4 (0.24%) Istio
Vendors
1 144 (8.60%) Microsoft
2 136 (8.12%) Oracle
3 64 (3.82%) Databricks
4 60 (3.58%) Salesforce
5 56 (3.34%) Splunk
6 52 (3.10%) Google
6 52 (3.10%) ServiceNow
7 42 (2.51%) Red Hat
8 40 (2.39%) SAP
9 33 (1.97%) Talend
10 25 (1.49%) Denodo
11 21 (1.25%) HP
12 20 (1.19%) Cisco
12 20 (1.19%) IBM
12 20 (1.19%) VMware
13 18 (1.07%) Dynatrace
14 16 (0.96%) MuleSoft
15 15 (0.90%) Workday
16 14 (0.84%) OpenAI
17 13 (0.78%) UiPath