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 1 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 59
Rank change year-on-year -1 +12 -13
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,688 1,116 1,293
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.42% 4.60% 3.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.14% 5.07% 3.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,127 770 870
10th Percentile £330 £335 £375
25th Percentile £400 £400 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -4.76% -6.25%
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 70 9 54
10th Percentile £33.54 £41.66 £39.75
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.50 £56.75 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.42% -1.30% -8.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.50 £81.25
90th Percentile - £75.84 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.50 £56.75 £57.50
% change year-on-year +15.42% -1.30% -8.00%

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 32,858 22,016 32,689
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.08% 90.81% 86.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,074 14,505 21,608
10th Percentile £313 £313 £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 2,007 857 2,166
10th Percentile £15.34 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.27 £20.00 £16.00
Median hourly rate £37.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.85% - -13.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.36
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.63 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £35.50 £32.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +10.94% -1.54% -11.33%

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 1 April 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 1 April 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 1 April 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 -1 825 £500 - 183
North of England +6 338 £475 +5.56% 162
Midlands +9 193 £474 - 83
South East -23 178 £500 -7.41% 145
West Midlands +15 165 £477 -4.22% 57
North West +8 148 £456 +1.39% 82
Yorkshire -8 146 £500 +5.26% 41
South West -3 78 £475 -9.52% 72
East of England 0 56 £620 +26.53% 65
North East +7 47 £425 +8.97% 39
East Midlands -24 28 £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
1 115 (6.81%) Confluence
2 65 (3.85%) SAS
3 25 (1.48%) Apache Spark
4 18 (1.07%) Apache Airflow
5 14 (0.83%) SharePoint
6 9 (0.53%) Apache
7 8 (0.47%) Appian
8 6 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.36%) Camunda
8 6 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.30%) CMS
9 5 (0.30%) nginx
10 4 (0.24%) Tomcat
11 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
12 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
12 2 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 27 (1.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.65%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.18%) Simulink
7 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.059%) Mingle
8 1 (0.059%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.30%) 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
4 4 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.24%) SAP HR
4 4 (0.24%) Workday HCM
5 3 (0.18%) BambooHR
5 3 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
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 (0.059%) CODA-Financials
7 1 (0.059%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.059%) PORTIA
7 1 (0.059%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 459 (27.19%) Azure
2 414 (24.53%) AWS
3 281 (16.65%) GitHub
4 212 (12.56%) Azure DevOps
5 152 (9.00%) GitHub Actions
6 146 (8.65%) GCP
7 111 (6.58%) Serverless
8 77 (4.56%) OpenShift
9 59 (3.50%) AWS Lambda
10 54 (3.20%) Power Platform
11 53 (3.14%) Amazon S3
12 39 (2.31%) Azure AKS
13 34 (2.01%) Snowflake
14 33 (1.95%) Amazon ECS
14 33 (1.95%) Azure Data Factory
15 31 (1.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 31 (1.84%) AWS CloudFormation
16 29 (1.72%) SaaS
17 25 (1.48%) Dynamics 365
17 25 (1.48%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.60%) Firewall
2 16 (0.95%) VPN
3 15 (0.89%) HTTP
3 15 (0.89%) TCP/IP
4 13 (0.77%) SD-WAN
4 13 (0.77%) WAN
5 11 (0.65%) Network Security
6 10 (0.59%) SSL
6 10 (0.59%) Wireshark
7 9 (0.53%) Ethernet
7 9 (0.53%) SAN
8 8 (0.47%) DNS
8 8 (0.47%) HTTPS
8 8 (0.47%) MPLS
8 8 (0.47%) Multicast
9 7 (0.41%) FTP
10 6 (0.36%) 5G
11 5 (0.30%) AMQP
11 5 (0.30%) Cisco IPT
11 5 (0.30%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (5.51%) PostgreSQL
2 73 (4.32%) SQL Server
3 66 (3.91%) NoSQL
4 58 (3.44%) MongoDB
5 51 (3.02%) Relational Database
6 46 (2.73%) Data Warehouse
7 33 (1.95%) DynamoDB
8 32 (1.90%) Pentaho
9 29 (1.72%) Power BI
10 25 (1.48%) BigQuery
11 24 (1.42%) Oracle Database
12 23 (1.36%) MySQL
12 23 (1.36%) Tableau
13 21 (1.24%) Redis
14 17 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
15 16 (0.95%) Oracle Reports
16 15 (0.89%) Metadata
17 13 (0.77%) Amazon Athena
17 13 (0.77%) Azure SQL Database
17 13 (0.77%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 326 (19.31%) Git
2 322 (19.08%) JIRA
3 310 (18.36%) Jenkins
4 248 (14.69%) Selenium
5 240 (14.22%) GitLab
6 140 (8.29%) Cucumber
7 132 (7.82%) Postman
8 107 (6.34%) JUnit
9 93 (5.51%) Cypress.io
10 84 (4.98%) REST Assured
11 75 (4.44%) JMeter
12 42 (2.49%) SonarQube
12 42 (2.49%) WebDriver
13 36 (2.13%) SpecFlow
14 33 (1.95%) Maven
15 32 (1.90%) Zephyr
16 30 (1.78%) TestRail
17 28 (1.66%) Bitbucket
17 28 (1.66%) Gatling
17 28 (1.66%) Gradle
General
1 467 (27.67%) Social Skills
2 296 (17.54%) Finance
3 242 (14.34%) Public Sector
4 181 (10.72%) Analytical Skills
5 146 (8.65%) Banking
6 35 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
7 30 (1.78%) Investment Banking
8 28 (1.66%) Front Office
9 26 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 23 (1.36%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
12 19 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
13 16 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
14 15 (0.89%) Aerospace
14 15 (0.89%) Pharmaceutical
15 14 (0.83%) Financial Institution
15 14 (0.83%) Legal
16 12 (0.71%) Military
17 10 (0.59%) Back Office
17 10 (0.59%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 349 (20.68%) Developer
2 271 (16.05%) Senior
3 188 (11.14%) Lead
4 187 (11.08%) Tester
5 183 (10.84%) Test Engineer
6 89 (5.27%) Analyst
6 89 (5.27%) Java Developer
7 88 (5.21%) Automation Tester
8 84 (4.98%) Data Engineer
9 82 (4.86%) Test Automation Engineer
10 79 (4.68%) Software Engineer
11 71 (4.21%) QA Engineer
12 70 (4.15%) Test Leader
13 63 (3.73%) DevOps Engineer
13 63 (3.73%) Senior Developer
14 60 (3.55%) Architect
15 55 (3.26%) Automation Engineer
16 54 (3.20%) Test Analyst
17 50 (2.96%) Test Manager
18 44 (2.61%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 214 (12.68%) REST
2 194 (11.49%) Playwright
3 144 (8.53%) React
4 133 (7.88%) Spring
5 125 (7.41%) RESTful
6 118 (6.99%) Node.js
7 116 (6.87%) .NET
8 113 (6.69%) Kafka
9 104 (6.16%) Spring Boot
10 82 (4.86%) pytest
11 71 (4.21%) AngularJS
12 51 (3.02%) HTML
12 51 (3.02%) Jest
13 50 (2.96%) OAuth
14 47 (2.78%) CSS
15 38 (2.25%) Web Services
16 36 (2.13%) GraphQL
17 34 (2.01%) JSON
17 34 (2.01%) WireMock
18 32 (1.90%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 174 (10.31%) Cloud Native
2 111 (6.58%) Product Ownership
3 87 (5.15%) Distributed Systems
4 45 (2.67%) Mobile App
5 38 (2.25%) Legacy Systems
6 37 (2.19%) Algorithms
6 37 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
7 30 (1.78%) Self-Motivation
8 29 (1.72%) Virtual Team
9 28 (1.66%) Onboarding
10 26 (1.54%) Security Posture
11 25 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
12 22 (1.30%) Data Structures
12 22 (1.30%) Management Information System
13 21 (1.24%) Equities
14 19 (1.13%) Distributed Architecture
14 19 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
14 19 (1.13%) NHS
15 18 (1.07%) Public Cloud
16 15 (0.89%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 125 (7.41%) Linux
2 82 (4.86%) Windows
3 45 (2.67%) Android
4 36 (2.13%) Apple iOS
5 31 (1.84%) Unix
6 19 (1.13%) Windows Server
7 15 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (0.65%) Mac OS X
9 7 (0.41%) Kali Linux
9 7 (0.41%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.30%) Solaris
11 4 (0.24%) CentOS
11 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.18%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.059%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.059%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.059%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.059%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 875 (51.84%) CI/CD
2 798 (47.27%) Agile
3 627 (37.14%) DevOps
4 404 (23.93%) Problem-Solving
5 276 (16.35%) Continuous Improvement
6 263 (15.58%) Microservices
7 257 (15.23%) Test Strategy
8 242 (14.34%) Scrum
9 234 (13.86%) Containerisation
10 214 (12.68%) Validation
11 211 (12.50%) AI
12 210 (12.44%) Infrastructure as Code
13 206 (12.20%) Software Engineering
14 205 (12.14%) Test Scripting
15 192 (11.37%) Analytics
16 190 (11.26%) TDD
17 189 (11.20%) Observability
18 179 (10.60%) Software Testing
19 172 (10.19%) Regression Testing
19 172 (10.19%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 509 (30.15%) Python
2 414 (24.53%) Java
3 369 (21.86%) SQL
4 238 (14.10%) JavaScript
5 234 (13.86%) TypeScript
6 171 (10.13%) C#
7 72 (4.27%) PowerShell
8 58 (3.44%) Bash
9 45 (2.67%) C++
10 30 (1.78%) C
11 28 (1.66%) Kotlin
12 25 (1.48%) Apex Code
13 24 (1.42%) Bicep
14 23 (1.36%) Go
14 23 (1.36%) PL/SQL
15 19 (1.13%) Ruby
16 17 (1.01%) Scala
16 17 (1.01%) Swift
17 14 (0.83%) Groovy
18 12 (0.71%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 518 (30.69%) Security Cleared
2 397 (23.52%) SC Cleared
3 85 (5.04%) Degree
4 81 (4.80%) ISTQB
5 61 (3.61%) BPSS Clearance
6 60 (3.55%) DV Cleared
7 49 (2.90%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (1.48%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 22 (1.30%) Master's Degree
10 14 (0.83%) Cisco Certification
11 12 (0.71%) Azure Certification
12 10 (0.59%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 10 (0.59%) OSCP
13 9 (0.53%) AWS Certification
13 9 (0.53%) CCNP
13 9 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.47%) CEH
14 8 (0.47%) CISSP
14 8 (0.47%) ISEB
15 7 (0.41%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 380 (22.51%) QA
2 111 (6.58%) Accessibility
3 98 (5.81%) Data Quality
4 43 (2.55%) WCAG
5 30 (1.78%) GDPR
6 17 (1.01%) NIST
7 15 (0.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 14 (0.83%) NCSC
9 10 (0.59%) Def Stans
9 10 (0.59%) ISO 20022
9 10 (0.59%) SLA
10 9 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 8 (0.47%) PSD2
12 6 (0.36%) EU AI Act
12 6 (0.36%) SEPA
12 6 (0.36%) SOC 2
13 5 (0.30%) HL7
13 5 (0.30%) MiFID
13 5 (0.30%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.30%) PERC
System Software
1 333 (19.73%) Docker
2 25 (1.48%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.65%) Firmware
4 9 (0.53%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (0.41%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 7 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
6 5 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
7 4 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
9 2 (0.12%) SRDF
10 1 (0.059%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.059%) KVM
10 1 (0.059%) Squid
10 1 (0.059%) Time Sharing Option
10 1 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 330 (19.55%) Kubernetes
2 199 (11.79%) Terraform
3 101 (5.98%) Grafana
4 86 (5.09%) Ansible
5 78 (4.62%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.54%) Argo
7 19 (1.13%) HP ALM
7 19 (1.13%) Puppet
8 13 (0.77%) Progress Chef
9 11 (0.65%) NetBackup
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
10 10 (0.59%) Nmap
11 6 (0.36%) Kibana
11 6 (0.36%) Rancher
12 5 (0.30%) Dell DRAC
12 5 (0.30%) Podman
13 4 (0.24%) Istio
Vendors
1 145 (8.59%) Oracle
2 144 (8.53%) Microsoft
3 62 (3.67%) Databricks
3 62 (3.67%) Salesforce
4 56 (3.32%) Splunk
5 52 (3.08%) Google
5 52 (3.08%) ServiceNow
6 48 (2.84%) Red Hat
7 40 (2.37%) SAP
8 37 (2.19%) Talend
9 28 (1.66%) Denodo
10 24 (1.42%) IBM
11 22 (1.30%) HP
11 22 (1.30%) VMware
12 20 (1.18%) Cisco
13 18 (1.07%) Dynatrace
14 16 (0.95%) MuleSoft
15 14 (0.83%) OpenAI
15 14 (0.83%) Workday
16 13 (0.77%) UiPath