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

6 months to
13 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 44 58
Rank change year-on-year -1 +14 -12
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,654 1,153 1,313
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.53% 4.67% 3.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.23% 5.16% 3.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,121 796 901
10th Percentile £331 £338 £375
25th Percentile £400 £402 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.20% -4.76% -7.08%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £638
90th Percentile £680 £725 £719
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £515
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.91% -6.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 8 57
10th Percentile £28.25 £40.23 £46.80
25th Percentile £50.63 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +6.84%
75th Percentile £70.00 £75.92 £90.00
90th Percentile - £80.28 -
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +9.65%

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 31,603 22,356 32,991
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.51% 90.62% 86.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,213 14,443 21,819
10th Percentile £313 £308 £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 £615 £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 1,966 795 2,153
10th Percentile £15.28 £15.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.03 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% +7.69% -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 0 807 £500 -2.68% 220
North of England +5 325 £488 +9.55% 160
Midlands +7 192 £474 +1.01% 81
South East -31 165 £500 -13.04% 173
West Midlands +14 159 £480 -1.94% 47
North West +3 145 £456 +1.39% 79
Yorkshire -12 136 £500 +5.26% 47
South West +5 82 £511 -2.62% 83
East of England 0 60 £570 +19.06% 55
North East +8 48 £488 +28.09% 34
East Midlands -23 33 £400 +7.38% 34
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 (6.95%) Confluence
2 57 (3.45%) SAS
3 29 (1.75%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.79%) 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
11 3 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.12%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.060%) Mingle
7 1 (0.060%) Simulink
7 1 (0.060%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.33%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.36%) Loan IQ
3 5 (0.30%) Maximo
3 5 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
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%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.12%) Summit
7 1 (0.060%) CODA-Financials
7 1 (0.060%) Infor M3
7 1 (0.060%) IntelliMatch
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.060%) PORTIA
Cloud Services
1 453 (27.39%) Azure
2 406 (24.55%) AWS
3 281 (16.99%) GitHub
4 197 (11.91%) Azure DevOps
5 155 (9.37%) GCP
6 148 (8.95%) GitHub Actions
7 113 (6.83%) Serverless
8 70 (4.23%) OpenShift
9 59 (3.57%) Power Platform
10 52 (3.14%) AWS Lambda
11 49 (2.96%) Amazon S3
12 45 (2.72%) Azure AKS
13 36 (2.18%) Snowflake
14 34 (2.06%) Azure Data Factory
15 30 (1.81%) Azure Functions
15 30 (1.81%) SaaS
16 29 (1.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 29 (1.75%) Amazon ECS
16 29 (1.75%) AWS CloudFormation
17 27 (1.63%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 31 (1.87%) Firewall
2 18 (1.09%) Wireshark
3 16 (0.97%) TCP/IP
3 16 (0.97%) VPN
4 13 (0.79%) HTTP
4 13 (0.79%) SD-WAN
4 13 (0.79%) SSL
4 13 (0.79%) WAN
5 12 (0.73%) HTTPS
6 10 (0.60%) Network Security
7 8 (0.48%) DNS
7 8 (0.48%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.48%) MPLS
8 7 (0.42%) FTP
8 7 (0.42%) Multicast
8 7 (0.42%) SAN
9 6 (0.36%) AMQP
10 5 (0.30%) Cisco IPT
10 5 (0.30%) VLAN
11 4 (0.24%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 99 (5.99%) PostgreSQL
2 71 (4.29%) NoSQL
3 67 (4.05%) SQL Server
4 57 (3.45%) MongoDB
5 49 (2.96%) Relational Database
6 47 (2.84%) Data Warehouse
7 34 (2.06%) Power BI
8 29 (1.75%) Pentaho
9 26 (1.57%) DynamoDB
10 25 (1.51%) BigQuery
11 24 (1.45%) Oracle Database
12 23 (1.39%) Tableau
13 22 (1.33%) MySQL
14 20 (1.21%) Redis
15 18 (1.09%) Oracle Reports
16 16 (0.97%) Azure SQL Database
17 15 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
17 15 (0.91%) Data Lake
18 11 (0.67%) Big Data
18 11 (0.67%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 312 (18.86%) Git
2 311 (18.80%) JIRA
3 301 (18.20%) Jenkins
4 254 (15.36%) Selenium
5 251 (15.18%) GitLab
6 145 (8.77%) Cucumber
7 136 (8.22%) Postman
8 105 (6.35%) JUnit
9 99 (5.99%) Cypress.io
10 86 (5.20%) REST Assured
11 79 (4.78%) JMeter
12 40 (2.42%) WebDriver
13 36 (2.18%) SonarQube
13 36 (2.18%) SpecFlow
14 34 (2.06%) Maven
15 32 (1.93%) Gatling
16 30 (1.81%) Gradle
17 29 (1.75%) Zephyr
18 28 (1.69%) TestRail
19 27 (1.63%) Bitbucket
General
1 461 (27.87%) Social Skills
2 283 (17.11%) Finance
3 229 (13.85%) Public Sector
4 184 (11.12%) Analytical Skills
5 140 (8.46%) Banking
6 33 (2.00%) Documentation Skills
7 29 (1.75%) Investment Banking
8 24 (1.45%) Front Office
9 22 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 21 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
11 20 (1.21%) Pharmaceutical
11 20 (1.21%) Telecoms
12 17 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
12 17 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
13 15 (0.91%) Financial Institution
14 14 (0.85%) Military
15 12 (0.73%) Legal
16 11 (0.67%) Aerospace
17 10 (0.60%) Electronics
18 9 (0.54%) Retail
Job Titles
1 343 (20.74%) Developer
2 269 (16.26%) Senior
3 202 (12.21%) Lead
4 189 (11.43%) Tester
5 177 (10.70%) Test Engineer
6 87 (5.26%) Data Engineer
7 86 (5.20%) Automation Tester
7 86 (5.20%) Java Developer
8 83 (5.02%) Analyst
9 75 (4.53%) Test Automation Engineer
10 74 (4.47%) Software Engineer
11 70 (4.23%) Test Leader
12 68 (4.11%) QA Engineer
13 61 (3.69%) Architect
14 58 (3.51%) DevOps Engineer
15 57 (3.45%) Senior Developer
16 54 (3.26%) Test Manager
17 51 (3.08%) Automation Engineer
17 51 (3.08%) Test Analyst
18 40 (2.42%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 210 (12.70%) REST
2 192 (11.61%) Playwright
3 143 (8.65%) React
4 132 (7.98%) Spring
5 127 (7.68%) .NET
6 120 (7.26%) RESTful
7 115 (6.95%) Kafka
7 115 (6.95%) Node.js
8 106 (6.41%) Spring Boot
9 81 (4.90%) pytest
10 55 (3.33%) AngularJS
11 54 (3.26%) HTML
12 53 (3.20%) OAuth
13 52 (3.14%) CSS
14 49 (2.96%) Jest
15 42 (2.54%) Web Services
16 38 (2.30%) GraphQL
16 38 (2.30%) WireMock
17 37 (2.24%) JSON
18 34 (2.06%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 183 (11.06%) Cloud Native
2 97 (5.86%) Product Ownership
3 78 (4.72%) Distributed Systems
4 45 (2.72%) Mobile App
5 41 (2.48%) Algorithms
6 38 (2.30%) Legacy Systems
7 33 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
8 30 (1.81%) Security Posture
9 26 (1.57%) Onboarding
10 25 (1.51%) Data Structures
10 25 (1.51%) Enterprise Software
11 24 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
12 23 (1.39%) Virtual Team
13 22 (1.33%) Equities
13 22 (1.33%) Management Information System
14 21 (1.27%) Distributed Architecture
14 21 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
15 18 (1.09%) Public Cloud
16 16 (0.97%) Derivative
16 16 (0.97%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 132 (7.98%) Linux
2 82 (4.96%) Windows
3 42 (2.54%) Android
4 36 (2.18%) Apple iOS
5 35 (2.12%) Unix
6 19 (1.15%) Windows Server
7 14 (0.85%) Mac OS X
8 11 (0.67%) Kali Linux
8 11 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.30%) CentOS
11 3 (0.18%) Solaris
12 2 (0.12%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.060%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.060%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.060%) VMS
13 1 (0.060%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 860 (52.00%) CI/CD
2 791 (47.82%) Agile
3 609 (36.82%) DevOps
4 413 (24.97%) Problem-Solving
5 269 (16.26%) Continuous Improvement
5 269 (16.26%) Microservices
6 262 (15.84%) Test Strategy
7 238 (14.39%) Containerisation
8 229 (13.85%) Scrum
9 223 (13.48%) AI
10 213 (12.88%) Test Scripting
11 208 (12.58%) Validation
12 203 (12.27%) Software Engineering
13 200 (12.09%) TDD
14 197 (11.91%) Infrastructure as Code
15 184 (11.12%) Analytics
15 184 (11.12%) Software Testing
16 179 (10.82%) Observability
17 165 (9.98%) Regression Testing
18 158 (9.55%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 515 (31.14%) Python
2 403 (24.37%) Java
3 360 (21.77%) SQL
4 249 (15.05%) JavaScript
5 238 (14.39%) TypeScript
6 157 (9.49%) C#
7 70 (4.23%) PowerShell
8 61 (3.69%) Bash
9 46 (2.78%) C++
10 29 (1.75%) Go
11 26 (1.57%) Kotlin
12 25 (1.51%) Bicep
12 25 (1.51%) C
13 23 (1.39%) PL/SQL
14 20 (1.21%) Apex Code
15 17 (1.03%) Scala
16 16 (0.97%) Swift
17 15 (0.91%) Ruby
18 12 (0.73%) Groovy
18 12 (0.73%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 481 (29.08%) Security Cleared
2 368 (22.25%) SC Cleared
3 93 (5.62%) Degree
4 80 (4.84%) ISTQB
5 57 (3.45%) BPSS Clearance
6 55 (3.33%) Computer Science Degree
7 54 (3.26%) DV Cleared
8 25 (1.51%) Master's Degree
9 23 (1.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 14 (0.85%) Azure Certification
10 14 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
10 14 (0.85%) OSCP
11 13 (0.79%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 12 (0.73%) CEH
12 12 (0.73%) Microsoft Certification
12 12 (0.73%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 11 (0.67%) CISSP
14 10 (0.60%) AWS Certification
15 9 (0.54%) GPEN
15 9 (0.54%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 378 (22.85%) QA
2 111 (6.71%) Accessibility
3 91 (5.50%) Data Quality
4 35 (2.12%) WCAG
5 30 (1.81%) NIST
6 28 (1.69%) GDPR
7 18 (1.09%) EU AI Act
8 15 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.91%) NCSC
9 11 (0.67%) ISO 20022
10 10 (0.60%) SLA
11 9 (0.54%) PSD2
12 8 (0.48%) Def Stans
12 8 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.42%) SEPA
14 6 (0.36%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.30%) HL7
15 5 (0.30%) MiFID
15 5 (0.30%) NIST 800
15 5 (0.30%) PERC
System Software
1 341 (20.62%) Docker
2 28 (1.69%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.48%) 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
1 328 (19.83%) Kubernetes
2 190 (11.49%) Terraform
3 102 (6.17%) Grafana
4 94 (5.68%) Ansible
5 76 (4.59%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.09%) Argo
6 18 (1.09%) HP ALM
6 18 (1.09%) Puppet
7 14 (0.85%) Nmap
7 14 (0.85%) Progress Chef
8 11 (0.67%) HP Quality Center
8 11 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
9 10 (0.60%) NetBackup
10 7 (0.42%) Forefront Identity Manager
10 7 (0.42%) Kibana
10 7 (0.42%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 6 (0.36%) Podman
12 5 (0.30%) Rancher
13 4 (0.24%) CSIRT
13 4 (0.24%) Istio
Vendors
1 150 (9.07%) Microsoft
2 140 (8.46%) Oracle
3 66 (3.99%) Databricks
4 60 (3.63%) Splunk
5 56 (3.39%) ServiceNow
6 55 (3.33%) Google
7 51 (3.08%) Salesforce
8 38 (2.30%) SAP
9 34 (2.06%) Red Hat
10 33 (2.00%) Talend
11 25 (1.51%) Denodo
12 21 (1.27%) HP
12 21 (1.27%) IBM
12 21 (1.27%) VMware
13 20 (1.21%) Cisco
14 18 (1.09%) Workday
15 16 (0.97%) MuleSoft
16 15 (0.91%) Dynatrace
16 15 (0.91%) OpenAI
17 14 (0.85%) Atlassian