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 10 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 51 48
Rank change year-on-year +3 -3 +4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,024 1,244 1,342
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.37% 4.48% 4.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.15% 4.93% 4.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,278 844 908
10th Percentile £326 £313 £350
25th Percentile £410 £385 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £516
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -3.10% -5.54%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £603
90th Percentile £671 £700 £716
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 103 36 16
10th Percentile £40.00 £41.67 £41.25
25th Percentile £57.63 £49.75 £49.38
Median hourly rate £67.50 £57.13 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.16% -0.65% -23.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £72.53
90th Percentile £74.00 £71.75 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £69.75 £55.88 £57.50
% change year-on-year +24.83% -2.83% -19.01%

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 39,304 25,245 28,138
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.88% 90.83% 85.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,151 16,024 17,695
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.95% -2.87% -4.55%
75th Percentile £636 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,693 1,483 1,349
10th Percentile £14.01 £14.31 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.87 £20.22
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £66.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +2.87%

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 10 September 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 10 September 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 10 September 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 +5 928 £500 - 696
North of England +3 405 £460 +0.11% 201
Midlands +9 250 £450 -2.70% 101
West Midlands +23 234 £454 -11.89% 63
South East -18 229 £450 -10.00% 217
Yorkshire -9 163 £470 -6.00% 60
North West -16 144 £492 +16.59% 108
South West 0 116 £475 -5.00% 164
North East +14 105 £425 -4.49% 33
East of England +12 83 £450 +17.65% 87
East Midlands -44 16 £418 +17.61% 38
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
1 177 (8.75%) Confluence
2 50 (2.47%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (2.03%) SharePoint
4 38 (1.88%) Apache Spark
5 29 (1.43%) SAS
6 22 (1.09%) Apache
7 14 (0.69%) CMS
8 12 (0.59%) Camunda
9 10 (0.49%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.35%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
12 4 (0.20%) Jupyter
12 4 (0.20%) nginx
12 4 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.20%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.15%) Kentico
14 2 (0.099%) Anypoint
14 2 (0.099%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.099%) Mule
Applications
1 23 (1.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.74%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.30%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.20%) Simulink
6 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.15%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.15%) Trello
7 2 (0.099%) Mingle
7 2 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 26 (1.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.84%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.64%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.54%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.40%) Findur
6 7 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.35%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.30%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.25%) SAP GRC
9 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
9 3 (0.15%) Shopify
10 2 (0.099%) BambooHR
10 2 (0.099%) Oracle ERP
10 2 (0.099%) SAP MDG
11 1 (0.049%) FLEXCUBE
11 1 (0.049%) SAP MM
11 1 (0.049%) SAP QM
11 1 (0.049%) SAP SD
11 1 (0.049%) Summit
11 1 (0.049%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 621 (30.68%) AWS
2 595 (29.40%) Azure
3 352 (17.39%) GitHub
4 277 (13.69%) Azure DevOps
5 220 (10.87%) GitHub Actions
6 162 (8.00%) Serverless
7 154 (7.61%) GCP
8 121 (5.98%) AWS Lambda
9 93 (4.59%) Amazon S3
9 93 (4.59%) Power Platform
10 78 (3.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 70 (3.46%) Amazon ECS
12 67 (3.31%) OpenShift
13 57 (2.82%) Amazon EKS
14 55 (2.72%) dbt
14 55 (2.72%) GitHub Copilot
15 49 (2.42%) Snowflake
16 46 (2.27%) Amazon EC2
17 45 (2.22%) AWS CloudFormation
18 41 (2.03%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.14%) HTTP
2 20 (0.99%) DNS
2 20 (0.99%) Firewall
3 19 (0.94%) 4G
4 17 (0.84%) 5G
4 17 (0.84%) TCP/IP
5 16 (0.79%) 2G
5 16 (0.79%) 3G
5 16 (0.79%) Diameter Protocol
5 16 (0.79%) Network Security
5 16 (0.79%) SIGTRAN
5 16 (0.79%) SS7
6 14 (0.69%) WAN
7 12 (0.59%) LAN
7 12 (0.59%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (0.49%) BGP
8 10 (0.49%) DHCP
9 9 (0.44%) SAN
10 8 (0.40%) Ethernet VPN
10 8 (0.40%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 117 (5.78%) PostgreSQL
2 111 (5.48%) Data Warehouse
3 99 (4.89%) NoSQL
4 90 (4.45%) MongoDB
5 87 (4.30%) Relational Database
6 84 (4.15%) SQL Server
7 78 (3.85%) Power BI
8 43 (2.12%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.73%) Data Lake
10 34 (1.68%) Metadata
10 34 (1.68%) Oracle Reports
11 31 (1.53%) Big Data
12 30 (1.48%) Amazon Athena
13 28 (1.38%) Pentaho
14 27 (1.33%) Amazon Redshift
14 27 (1.33%) MySQL
15 26 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
15 26 (1.28%) Redis
16 24 (1.19%) Oracle Database
17 19 (0.94%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 432 (21.34%) Git
2 348 (17.19%) JIRA
3 326 (16.11%) Jenkins
4 277 (13.69%) GitLab
5 257 (12.70%) Selenium
6 137 (6.77%) Postman
7 130 (6.42%) Cucumber
8 115 (5.68%) JUnit
9 101 (4.99%) Cypress.io
10 93 (4.59%) REST Assured
11 83 (4.10%) JMeter
11 83 (4.10%) SonarQube
12 60 (2.96%) Zephyr
13 56 (2.77%) Gatling
14 49 (2.42%) Gradle
14 49 (2.42%) Maven
15 46 (2.27%) WebDriver
16 44 (2.17%) Mockito
17 40 (1.98%) Bitbucket
18 24 (1.19%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 568 (28.06%) Social Skills
2 391 (19.32%) Finance
3 299 (14.77%) Analytical Skills
4 259 (12.80%) Public Sector
5 184 (9.09%) Banking
6 66 (3.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 39 (1.93%) Telecoms
8 35 (1.73%) Front Office
9 34 (1.68%) Retail
10 33 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
11 29 (1.43%) Investment Banking
12 28 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
13 24 (1.19%) Military
14 22 (1.09%) Financial Institution
15 19 (0.94%) Aerospace
16 18 (0.89%) Law
17 17 (0.84%) Back Office
18 16 (0.79%) Manufacturing
18 16 (0.79%) Marketing
19 14 (0.69%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 433 (21.39%) Developer
2 330 (16.30%) Senior
3 199 (9.83%) Lead
4 197 (9.73%) Test Engineer
5 154 (7.61%) Tester
6 136 (6.72%) Java Developer
7 123 (6.08%) Data Engineer
8 121 (5.98%) Software Engineer
9 110 (5.43%) Analyst
10 97 (4.79%) DevOps Engineer
10 97 (4.79%) Senior Developer
11 91 (4.50%) QA Engineer
12 90 (4.45%) Test Automation Engineer
13 86 (4.25%) Architect
14 72 (3.56%) Full-Stack Developer
15 68 (3.36%) Test Analyst
16 67 (3.31%) Automation Engineer
17 66 (3.26%) Java Engineer
18 65 (3.21%) Test Leader
19 60 (2.96%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 307 (15.17%) REST
2 291 (14.38%) Terraform
3 225 (11.12%) Playwright
4 206 (10.18%) Kafka
4 206 (10.18%) RESTful
5 195 (9.63%) Spring
6 188 (9.29%) React
7 166 (8.20%) Spring Boot
8 142 (7.02%) .NET
9 120 (5.93%) HTML
10 104 (5.14%) Node.js
11 103 (5.09%) AngularJS
12 102 (5.04%) CSS
13 62 (3.06%) OAuth
14 56 (2.77%) JSON
15 52 (2.57%) SOAP
16 51 (2.52%) XML
17 48 (2.37%) pytest
18 47 (2.32%) PySpark
19 46 (2.27%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 318 (15.71%) Cloud Native
2 168 (8.30%) Product Ownership
3 146 (7.21%) Distributed Systems
4 81 (4.00%) Enterprise Software
5 58 (2.87%) Onboarding
6 51 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
7 50 (2.47%) AI Agents
8 49 (2.42%) Data Protection Act
8 49 (2.42%) Self-Motivation
9 45 (2.22%) Mobile App
10 35 (1.73%) Virtual Team
11 26 (1.28%) Security Posture
12 23 (1.14%) Data Structures
13 21 (1.04%) Embedded Systems
14 19 (0.94%) Management Information System
15 18 (0.89%) Distributed Architecture
16 17 (0.84%) Data Centre
17 16 (0.79%) Greenfield Project
18 15 (0.74%) Fixed Income
18 15 (0.74%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 136 (6.72%) Linux
2 86 (4.25%) Windows
3 80 (3.95%) Unix
4 40 (1.98%) Apple iOS
5 38 (1.88%) Android
6 30 (1.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 21 (1.04%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.30%) Solaris
9 5 (0.25%) Embedded Linux
9 5 (0.25%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.25%) Windows 7
9 5 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.20%) Mac OS X
10 4 (0.20%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.20%) VMS
10 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.15%) AIX
11 3 (0.15%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.099%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,208 (59.68%) CI/CD
2 966 (47.73%) Agile
3 753 (37.20%) DevOps
4 404 (19.96%) Continuous Improvement
5 401 (19.81%) Problem-Solving
6 398 (19.66%) Microservices
7 394 (19.47%) Software Engineering
8 347 (17.14%) Scrum
9 343 (16.95%) Infrastructure as Code
10 340 (16.80%) Validation
11 319 (15.76%) AI
12 309 (15.27%) Test Strategy
13 292 (14.43%) Containerisation
14 267 (13.19%) Observability
15 266 (13.14%) SDLC
16 252 (12.45%) TDD
17 244 (12.06%) Software Testing
18 227 (11.22%) Stakeholder Management
19 215 (10.62%) End-to-End Testing
20 197 (9.73%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 558 (27.57%) Python
2 547 (27.03%) Java
3 502 (24.80%) SQL
4 291 (14.38%) JavaScript
5 231 (11.41%) TypeScript
6 165 (8.15%) C#
7 94 (4.64%) PowerShell
8 76 (3.75%) Bash
9 49 (2.42%) Kotlin
10 46 (2.27%) Bicep
11 34 (1.68%) C++
12 28 (1.38%) Scala
13 26 (1.28%) Go
14 25 (1.24%) PL/SQL
15 23 (1.14%) Apex Code
15 23 (1.14%) C
16 18 (0.89%) Shell Script
17 17 (0.84%) Ruby
17 17 (0.84%) Swift
18 16 (0.79%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 656 (32.41%) Security Cleared
2 546 (26.98%) SC Cleared
3 111 (5.48%) Degree
4 94 (4.64%) ISTQB
5 77 (3.80%) DV Cleared
6 67 (3.31%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (2.92%) Computer Science Degree
8 38 (1.88%) AWS Certification
9 27 (1.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 22 (1.09%) Azure Certification
11 17 (0.84%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 14 (0.69%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 13 (0.64%) Master's Degree
14 12 (0.59%) ISEB
15 11 (0.54%) SAFe Agilist
16 10 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
17 9 (0.44%) Cisco Certification
17 9 (0.44%) CISSP
18 8 (0.40%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 7 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 546 (26.98%) QA
2 160 (7.91%) Accessibility
3 135 (6.67%) Data Quality
4 88 (4.35%) WCAG
5 38 (1.88%) GDPR
6 16 (0.79%) ISO 20022
7 14 (0.69%) NCSC
8 13 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 13 (0.64%) SLA
9 11 (0.54%) GRC
9 11 (0.54%) NIST
10 7 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.25%) FATCA
12 5 (0.25%) HL7
12 5 (0.25%) PCI DSS
13 4 (0.20%) Def Stans
13 4 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 3 (0.15%) EU AI Act
14 3 (0.15%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 399 (19.71%) Docker
2 34 (1.68%) Active Directory
3 28 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.89%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (0.49%) Firmware
6 5 (0.25%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.15%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
9 2 (0.099%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.049%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 394 (19.47%) Kubernetes
2 109 (5.39%) Ansible
3 105 (5.19%) Grafana
4 84 (4.15%) Prometheus
5 40 (1.98%) Argo
6 20 (0.99%) Progress Chef
6 20 (0.99%) Puppet
7 12 (0.59%) HP ALM
7 12 (0.59%) Kibana
8 11 (0.54%) Control-M
8 11 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.35%) Kustomize
9 7 (0.35%) Microsoft Intune
10 6 (0.30%) Dell DRAC
11 5 (0.25%) HP Fortify
11 5 (0.25%) HP Quality Center
11 5 (0.25%) Istio
11 5 (0.25%) Packer
11 5 (0.25%) SCCM
12 4 (0.20%) WMI
Vendors
1 204 (10.08%) Microsoft
2 155 (7.66%) Oracle
3 82 (4.05%) Databricks
4 70 (3.46%) Salesforce
5 65 (3.21%) Google
6 62 (3.06%) Red Hat
7 51 (2.52%) IBM
8 47 (2.32%) Talend
9 46 (2.27%) Splunk
10 44 (2.17%) ServiceNow
11 41 (2.03%) SAP
12 37 (1.83%) Dynatrace
13 34 (1.68%) Denodo
13 34 (1.68%) VMware
14 33 (1.63%) Informatica
15 30 (1.48%) Cisco
16 28 (1.38%) UiPath
17 17 (0.84%) HP
18 13 (0.64%) OpenAI
19 12 (0.59%) MuleSoft