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 6 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 51 44
Rank change year-on-year +6 -7 +9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,098 1,302 1,346
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.53% 4.69% 4.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.35% 5.16% 4.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,337 892 911
10th Percentile £320 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -7.27%
75th Percentile £582 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 96 35 15
10th Percentile £40.00 £41.28 £44.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £48.13 £50.63
Median hourly rate £69.25 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.43% -4.17% -20.00%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £79.75
90th Percentile £77.00 £71.80 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £56.25 £57.50
% change year-on-year +24.44% -2.17% -23.33%

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 39,251 25,237 27,768
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.73% 90.91% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,728 16,010 16,947
10th Percentile £325 £297 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £642
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,965 1,563 1,177
10th Percentile £13.82 £14.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.57 £17.87 £20.30
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.47 £45.75 £66.61
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.25 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £38.50 £25.15 £41.08
% change year-on-year +53.08% -38.77% -3.91%

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 +5 947 £500 -1.72% 1,593
North of England -4 422 £453 -4.63% 545
Midlands +12 266 £450 -2.70% 261
West Midlands +23 251 £450 -13.21% 171
South East -11 227 £450 -5.26% 501
Yorkshire -6 174 £463 -7.50% 177
North West -9 154 £492 +23.06% 277
South West -5 113 £450 -17.43% 281
North East +4 101 £425 -11.69% 91
East of England +11 97 £367 -8.25% 247
East Midlands -37 15 £418 +19.29% 90
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
1 179 (8.53%) Confluence
2 58 (2.76%) Apache Airflow
3 43 (2.05%) Apache Spark
4 40 (1.91%) SharePoint
5 34 (1.62%) Apache
6 23 (1.10%) SAS
7 16 (0.76%) CMS
8 13 (0.62%) Camunda
9 10 (0.48%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.29%) Jupyter
12 5 (0.24%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
14 3 (0.14%) Kentico
14 3 (0.14%) nginx
15 2 (0.095%) Apache Pulsar
15 2 (0.095%) Mule
15 2 (0.095%) Oracle Workflow
15 2 (0.095%) Tomcat
Applications
1 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.81%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.29%) Chatbot
3 6 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.19%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.14%) Mingle
5 3 (0.14%) Trello
6 2 (0.095%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.048%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.048%) Simulink
7 1 (0.048%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 29 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.57%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.48%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.29%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.24%) SAP GRC
8 4 (0.19%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
10 1 (0.048%) FLEXCUBE
10 1 (0.048%) Maximo
10 1 (0.048%) Misys Equation
10 1 (0.048%) Misys Midas
10 1 (0.048%) SAP HCM
10 1 (0.048%) SAP LE
10 1 (0.048%) SAP QM
10 1 (0.048%) Summit
10 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
10 1 (0.048%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 659 (31.41%) AWS
2 633 (30.17%) Azure
3 357 (17.02%) GitHub
4 293 (13.97%) Azure DevOps
5 213 (10.15%) GitHub Actions
6 174 (8.29%) GCP
7 167 (7.96%) Serverless
8 123 (5.86%) AWS Lambda
9 107 (5.10%) Power Platform
10 103 (4.91%) Amazon S3
11 83 (3.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 71 (3.38%) OpenShift
13 68 (3.24%) Amazon ECS
14 67 (3.19%) Amazon EKS
15 66 (3.15%) GitHub Copilot
16 54 (2.57%) dbt
17 52 (2.48%) Snowflake
18 51 (2.43%) AWS CloudFormation
19 48 (2.29%) Amazon EC2
20 43 (2.05%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.29%) DNS
2 25 (1.19%) 4G
3 24 (1.14%) Firewall
3 24 (1.14%) TCP/IP
4 23 (1.10%) Broadband
4 23 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
5 22 (1.05%) 5G
5 22 (1.05%) HTTP
6 19 (0.91%) Network Security
7 14 (0.67%) 2G
7 14 (0.67%) 3G
7 14 (0.67%) BGP
7 14 (0.67%) Diameter Protocol
7 14 (0.67%) SIGTRAN
7 14 (0.67%) SS7
7 14 (0.67%) WAN
8 12 (0.57%) IPv4
8 12 (0.57%) IPv6
8 12 (0.57%) LAN
8 12 (0.57%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (6.05%) PostgreSQL
2 108 (5.15%) Data Warehouse
3 93 (4.43%) MongoDB
3 93 (4.43%) NoSQL
3 93 (4.43%) Relational Database
4 88 (4.19%) SQL Server
5 84 (4.00%) Power BI
6 42 (2.00%) Metadata
7 41 (1.95%) Data Lake
8 36 (1.72%) DynamoDB
9 34 (1.62%) MySQL
10 32 (1.53%) Big Data
10 32 (1.53%) Oracle Reports
10 32 (1.53%) Pentaho
11 30 (1.43%) Amazon RDS
11 30 (1.43%) Redis
12 29 (1.38%) Oracle Database
13 28 (1.33%) Amazon Athena
13 28 (1.33%) Amazon Redshift
14 20 (0.95%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 470 (22.40%) Git
2 349 (16.63%) JIRA
3 335 (15.97%) Jenkins
4 302 (14.39%) GitLab
5 276 (13.16%) Selenium
6 169 (8.06%) Cucumber
7 140 (6.67%) Postman
8 132 (6.29%) JUnit
9 98 (4.67%) Cypress.io
10 97 (4.62%) REST Assured
11 85 (4.05%) JMeter
11 85 (4.05%) SonarQube
12 67 (3.19%) Gatling
13 61 (2.91%) Zephyr
14 54 (2.57%) Maven
15 49 (2.34%) Gradle
16 46 (2.19%) Mockito
17 42 (2.00%) WebDriver
18 37 (1.76%) Bitbucket
19 28 (1.33%) LoadRunner
General
1 595 (28.36%) Social Skills
2 408 (19.45%) Finance
3 320 (15.25%) Analytical Skills
4 262 (12.49%) Public Sector
5 202 (9.63%) Banking
6 68 (3.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 58 (2.76%) Telecoms
8 34 (1.62%) Front Office
8 34 (1.62%) Retail
9 33 (1.57%) Investment Banking
10 31 (1.48%) Military
11 28 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
12 25 (1.19%) Documentation Skills
13 21 (1.00%) Financial Institution
14 20 (0.95%) Manufacturing
14 20 (0.95%) Marketing
15 19 (0.91%) Law
16 18 (0.86%) Aerospace
17 16 (0.76%) Back Office
18 14 (0.67%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 446 (21.26%) Developer
2 333 (15.87%) Senior
3 208 (9.91%) Lead
4 206 (9.82%) Test Engineer
5 143 (6.82%) Tester
6 140 (6.67%) Data Engineer
7 132 (6.29%) Java Developer
8 122 (5.82%) Software Engineer
9 106 (5.05%) Analyst
10 104 (4.96%) Architect
11 95 (4.53%) QA Engineer
12 90 (4.29%) DevOps Engineer
13 88 (4.19%) Test Automation Engineer
14 86 (4.10%) Senior Developer
15 74 (3.53%) Automation Engineer
15 74 (3.53%) Full-Stack Developer
16 68 (3.24%) Java Engineer
16 68 (3.24%) Test Analyst
16 68 (3.24%) Test Leader
17 60 (2.86%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 334 (15.92%) REST
2 324 (15.44%) Terraform
3 236 (11.25%) Playwright
4 228 (10.87%) Kafka
5 222 (10.58%) RESTful
6 207 (9.87%) Spring
7 192 (9.15%) React
8 172 (8.20%) Spring Boot
9 151 (7.20%) .NET
10 140 (6.67%) HTML
11 117 (5.58%) CSS
12 111 (5.29%) Node.js
13 96 (4.58%) AngularJS
14 86 (4.10%) OAuth
15 65 (3.10%) JSON
16 62 (2.96%) Middleware
17 57 (2.72%) SOAP
18 56 (2.67%) Web Services
18 56 (2.67%) XML
19 54 (2.57%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 339 (16.16%) Cloud Native
2 175 (8.34%) Product Ownership
3 156 (7.44%) Distributed Systems
4 92 (4.39%) Enterprise Software
5 76 (3.62%) Onboarding
6 70 (3.34%) AI Agents
7 49 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
8 47 (2.24%) Self-Motivation
9 44 (2.10%) Data Protection Act
10 42 (2.00%) Mobile App
11 34 (1.62%) Data Structures
12 31 (1.48%) Security Posture
13 26 (1.24%) Virtual Team
14 25 (1.19%) Management Information System
15 21 (1.00%) Embedded Systems
16 20 (0.95%) Data Centre
17 18 (0.86%) Distributed Architecture
17 18 (0.86%) Private Cloud
18 17 (0.81%) Algorithms
19 16 (0.76%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 150 (7.15%) Linux
2 99 (4.72%) Windows
3 78 (3.72%) Unix
4 42 (2.00%) Apple iOS
5 38 (1.81%) Android
6 30 (1.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 22 (1.05%) Windows Server
8 9 (0.43%) VMS
9 6 (0.29%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.29%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.24%) Mac OS X
10 5 (0.24%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.24%) Windows Server 2003
11 3 (0.14%) AIX
11 3 (0.14%) CentOS
11 3 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
11 3 (0.14%) Solaris
11 3 (0.14%) zOS
12 2 (0.095%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,299 (61.92%) CI/CD
2 1,022 (48.71%) Agile
3 790 (37.65%) DevOps
4 430 (20.50%) Continuous Improvement
5 425 (20.26%) Microservices
5 425 (20.26%) Problem-Solving
6 420 (20.02%) Software Engineering
7 370 (17.64%) AI
7 370 (17.64%) Infrastructure as Code
8 367 (17.49%) Scrum
9 363 (17.30%) Validation
10 317 (15.11%) Test Strategy
11 316 (15.06%) Containerisation
12 277 (13.20%) Observability
13 272 (12.96%) Software Testing
14 270 (12.87%) SDLC
15 269 (12.82%) TDD
16 258 (12.30%) Stakeholder Management
17 229 (10.92%) End-to-End Testing
18 211 (10.06%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 595 (28.36%) Python
2 588 (28.03%) Java
3 538 (25.64%) SQL
4 328 (15.63%) JavaScript
5 246 (11.73%) TypeScript
6 176 (8.39%) C#
7 88 (4.19%) PowerShell
8 77 (3.67%) Bash
9 52 (2.48%) Bicep
10 48 (2.29%) Kotlin
11 38 (1.81%) Go
12 37 (1.76%) C++
13 36 (1.72%) Scala
14 24 (1.14%) Shell Script
15 23 (1.10%) PL/SQL
16 18 (0.86%) Apex Code
17 17 (0.81%) Swift
18 16 (0.76%) C
18 16 (0.76%) Groovy
19 11 (0.52%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 670 (31.94%) Security Cleared
2 560 (26.69%) SC Cleared
3 122 (5.82%) Degree
4 91 (4.34%) BPSS Clearance
5 90 (4.29%) ISTQB
6 84 (4.00%) DV Cleared
7 68 (3.24%) Computer Science Degree
8 47 (2.24%) AWS Certification
9 27 (1.29%) Azure Certification
10 25 (1.19%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 14 (0.67%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 14 (0.67%) CISSP
11 14 (0.67%) ISEB
11 14 (0.67%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 14 (0.67%) Master's Degree
12 12 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
13 11 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
14 9 (0.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 8 (0.38%) SAFe Agilist
16 7 (0.33%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 581 (27.69%) QA
2 183 (8.72%) Accessibility
3 143 (6.82%) Data Quality
4 95 (4.53%) WCAG
5 34 (1.62%) GDPR
6 17 (0.81%) ISO 20022
6 17 (0.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.76%) NIST
8 13 (0.62%) SLA
9 12 (0.57%) GRC
9 12 (0.57%) NCSC
10 8 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.29%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.24%) FATCA
13 5 (0.24%) HL7
13 5 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
14 4 (0.19%) HIPAA
15 3 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.14%) SEPA
System Software
1 430 (20.50%) Docker
2 39 (1.86%) Active Directory
3 33 (1.57%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.52%) Firmware
6 7 (0.33%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.14%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.095%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.048%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.048%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.048%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 426 (20.31%) Kubernetes
2 123 (5.86%) Ansible
3 119 (5.67%) Grafana
4 84 (4.00%) Prometheus
5 35 (1.67%) Argo
6 26 (1.24%) Kibana
7 23 (1.10%) Puppet
8 22 (1.05%) Progress Chef
9 12 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.52%) Control-M
11 10 (0.48%) HP ALM
12 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
13 7 (0.33%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.29%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.29%) SCCM
15 5 (0.24%) Dell DRAC
15 5 (0.24%) Istio
15 5 (0.24%) Packer
16 4 (0.19%) Podman
16 4 (0.19%) Rancher
Vendors
1 218 (10.39%) Microsoft
2 148 (7.05%) Oracle
3 92 (4.39%) Databricks
4 80 (3.81%) Google
5 59 (2.81%) Salesforce
6 58 (2.76%) IBM
7 53 (2.53%) ServiceNow
8 50 (2.38%) Red Hat
9 49 (2.34%) Splunk
10 47 (2.24%) Talend
11 44 (2.10%) SAP
12 42 (2.00%) Dynatrace
12 42 (2.00%) VMware
13 40 (1.91%) Informatica
14 32 (1.53%) Cisco
14 32 (1.53%) Denodo
15 31 (1.48%) UiPath
16 19 (0.91%) Foundry
17 18 (0.86%) OpenAI
18 16 (0.76%) HP