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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 50 45
Rank change year-on-year +6 -5 +8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,129 1,323 1,352
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.60% 4.73% 4.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.43% 5.20% 4.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,363 907 917
10th Percentile £320 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £507
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -1.38% -7.82%
75th Percentile £581 £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 95 35 15
10th Percentile £40.00 £41.28 £44.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £48.13 £50.63
Median hourly rate £69.50 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.87% -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 39,226 25,436 27,906
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.80% 90.90% 86.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,709 16,124 17,045
10th Percentile £325 £294 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £641
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 2,969 1,568 1,160
10th Percentile £13.70 £14.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.43 £17.87 £20.28
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.69
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.09% -4.07%
75th Percentile £67.25 £45.80 £67.14
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.33
% change year-on-year +49.11% -37.63% -7.56%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 +5 966 £500 -2.44% 1,531
North of England -3 434 £453 -4.63% 445
Midlands +10 268 £450 -2.70% 213
West Midlands +22 253 £450 -13.88% 144
South East -11 229 £450 -5.26% 411
Yorkshire -7 182 £463 -9.76% 140
North West -12 157 £492 +23.06% 230
South West -10 113 £463 -15.91% 226
North East +2 102 £425 -11.69% 75
East of England +3 92 £367 -9.66% 209
East Midlands -42 15 £418 +19.29% 69
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 (8.41%) Confluence
2 60 (2.82%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (2.11%) Apache Spark
4 40 (1.88%) SharePoint
5 35 (1.64%) Apache
6 23 (1.08%) SAS
7 17 (0.80%) CMS
8 14 (0.66%) Camunda
9 10 (0.47%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.28%) Jupyter
12 5 (0.23%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
14 3 (0.14%) Kentico
14 3 (0.14%) nginx
15 2 (0.094%) Apache Pulsar
15 2 (0.094%) Mule
15 2 (0.094%) Oracle Workflow
15 2 (0.094%) Tomcat
Applications
1 20 (0.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.28%) Chatbot
3 6 (0.28%) 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 (0.094%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.047%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.047%) Simulink
7 1 (0.047%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 29 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.89%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.47%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.28%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.23%) SAP GRC
8 4 (0.19%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
10 1 (0.047%) FLEXCUBE
10 1 (0.047%) Maximo
10 1 (0.047%) SAP FI
10 1 (0.047%) SAP HCM
10 1 (0.047%) SAP LE
10 1 (0.047%) SAP MM
10 1 (0.047%) SAP QM
10 1 (0.047%) SAP SD
10 1 (0.047%) Summit
10 1 (0.047%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 675 (31.71%) AWS
2 645 (30.30%) Azure
3 368 (17.29%) GitHub
4 298 (14.00%) Azure DevOps
5 224 (10.52%) GitHub Actions
6 180 (8.45%) GCP
7 168 (7.89%) Serverless
8 124 (5.82%) AWS Lambda
9 109 (5.12%) Power Platform
10 105 (4.93%) Amazon S3
11 84 (3.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 72 (3.38%) OpenShift
13 69 (3.24%) Amazon ECS
14 67 (3.15%) Amazon EKS
15 65 (3.05%) GitHub Copilot
16 56 (2.63%) dbt
17 54 (2.54%) AWS CloudFormation
18 53 (2.49%) Snowflake
19 49 (2.30%) Amazon EC2
20 44 (2.07%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.27%) DNS
2 25 (1.17%) 4G
2 25 (1.17%) TCP/IP
3 24 (1.13%) Firewall
4 23 (1.08%) Broadband
4 23 (1.08%) HTTP
4 23 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
5 22 (1.03%) 5G
6 19 (0.89%) Network Security
7 14 (0.66%) 2G
7 14 (0.66%) 3G
7 14 (0.66%) BGP
7 14 (0.66%) Diameter Protocol
7 14 (0.66%) SIGTRAN
7 14 (0.66%) SS7
7 14 (0.66%) WAN
8 12 (0.56%) Ethernet VPN
8 12 (0.56%) IPv4
8 12 (0.56%) IPv6
8 12 (0.56%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (6.01%) PostgreSQL
2 108 (5.07%) Data Warehouse
3 96 (4.51%) NoSQL
4 95 (4.46%) Relational Database
5 93 (4.37%) MongoDB
5 93 (4.37%) SQL Server
6 85 (3.99%) Power BI
7 47 (2.21%) Metadata
8 43 (2.02%) Data Lake
9 36 (1.69%) DynamoDB
10 34 (1.60%) MySQL
10 34 (1.60%) Pentaho
11 32 (1.50%) Big Data
11 32 (1.50%) Oracle Reports
12 31 (1.46%) Amazon RDS
12 31 (1.46%) Redis
13 29 (1.36%) Amazon Redshift
13 29 (1.36%) Oracle Database
14 28 (1.32%) Amazon Athena
15 24 (1.13%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 486 (22.83%) Git
2 348 (16.35%) JIRA
3 344 (16.16%) Jenkins
4 305 (14.33%) GitLab
5 279 (13.10%) Selenium
6 171 (8.03%) Cucumber
7 142 (6.67%) Postman
8 135 (6.34%) JUnit
9 102 (4.79%) Cypress.io
10 98 (4.60%) REST Assured
11 86 (4.04%) JMeter
12 85 (3.99%) SonarQube
13 67 (3.15%) Gatling
14 61 (2.87%) Zephyr
15 55 (2.58%) Maven
16 49 (2.30%) Gradle
17 48 (2.25%) Mockito
18 42 (1.97%) WebDriver
19 37 (1.74%) Bitbucket
20 28 (1.32%) TestNG
General
1 603 (28.32%) Social Skills
2 416 (19.54%) Finance
3 323 (15.17%) Analytical Skills
4 262 (12.31%) Public Sector
5 203 (9.53%) Banking
6 70 (3.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 58 (2.72%) Telecoms
8 35 (1.64%) Retail
9 34 (1.60%) Front Office
9 34 (1.60%) Investment Banking
10 32 (1.50%) Military
11 29 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
12 24 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
13 20 (0.94%) Financial Institution
13 20 (0.94%) Marketing
14 19 (0.89%) Law
14 19 (0.89%) Manufacturing
15 18 (0.85%) Aerospace
16 16 (0.75%) Back Office
17 14 (0.66%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 456 (21.42%) Developer
2 342 (16.06%) Senior
3 216 (10.15%) Lead
4 207 (9.72%) Test Engineer
5 146 (6.86%) Data Engineer
6 142 (6.67%) Tester
7 135 (6.34%) Java Developer
8 122 (5.73%) Software Engineer
9 105 (4.93%) Analyst
10 103 (4.84%) Architect
11 97 (4.56%) QA Engineer
12 92 (4.32%) DevOps Engineer
13 90 (4.23%) Senior Developer
14 89 (4.18%) Test Automation Engineer
15 76 (3.57%) Full-Stack Developer
16 75 (3.52%) Automation Engineer
17 71 (3.33%) Java Engineer
18 70 (3.29%) Test Leader
19 68 (3.19%) Test Analyst
20 60 (2.82%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 349 (16.39%) REST
2 327 (15.36%) Terraform
3 248 (11.65%) Playwright
4 234 (10.99%) Kafka
5 229 (10.76%) RESTful
6 211 (9.91%) Spring
7 200 (9.39%) React
8 176 (8.27%) Spring Boot
9 152 (7.14%) .NET
10 142 (6.67%) HTML
11 118 (5.54%) CSS
12 117 (5.50%) Node.js
13 104 (4.88%) AngularJS
14 88 (4.13%) OAuth
15 65 (3.05%) JSON
16 61 (2.87%) Middleware
17 57 (2.68%) SOAP
18 56 (2.63%) OpenID
18 56 (2.63%) Web Services
18 56 (2.63%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 344 (16.16%) Cloud Native
2 181 (8.50%) Product Ownership
3 156 (7.33%) Distributed Systems
4 98 (4.60%) Enterprise Software
5 76 (3.57%) Onboarding
6 71 (3.33%) AI Agents
7 49 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
8 48 (2.25%) Legacy Systems
9 47 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
10 42 (1.97%) Mobile App
11 35 (1.64%) Data Structures
12 31 (1.46%) Security Posture
13 25 (1.17%) Management Information System
13 25 (1.17%) Virtual Team
14 20 (0.94%) Data Centre
14 20 (0.94%) Embedded Systems
15 19 (0.89%) Algorithms
15 19 (0.89%) Distributed Architecture
15 19 (0.89%) Private Cloud
16 17 (0.80%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 148 (6.95%) Linux
2 98 (4.60%) Windows
3 79 (3.71%) Unix
4 42 (1.97%) Apple iOS
5 38 (1.78%) Android
6 28 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 22 (1.03%) Windows Server
8 9 (0.42%) VMS
9 6 (0.28%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.28%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.23%) Mac OS X
10 5 (0.23%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.19%) zOS
12 3 (0.14%) AIX
12 3 (0.14%) CentOS
12 3 (0.14%) Solaris
13 2 (0.094%) Embedded Linux
13 2 (0.094%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,329 (62.42%) CI/CD
2 1,047 (49.18%) Agile
3 804 (37.76%) DevOps
4 442 (20.76%) Continuous Improvement
5 439 (20.62%) Microservices
6 433 (20.34%) Problem-Solving
7 429 (20.15%) Software Engineering
8 375 (17.61%) AI
9 372 (17.47%) Infrastructure as Code
10 370 (17.38%) Scrum
11 369 (17.33%) Validation
12 320 (15.03%) Containerisation
12 320 (15.03%) Test Strategy
13 284 (13.34%) Observability
14 277 (13.01%) SDLC
15 274 (12.87%) Software Testing
16 272 (12.78%) TDD
17 265 (12.45%) Stakeholder Management
18 232 (10.90%) End-to-End Testing
19 216 (10.15%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 606 (28.46%) Python
2 594 (27.90%) Java
3 551 (25.88%) SQL
4 333 (15.64%) JavaScript
5 259 (12.17%) TypeScript
6 180 (8.45%) C#
7 91 (4.27%) PowerShell
8 79 (3.71%) Bash
9 51 (2.40%) Bicep
10 48 (2.25%) Kotlin
11 39 (1.83%) Go
12 36 (1.69%) C++
12 36 (1.69%) Scala
13 24 (1.13%) Shell Script
14 23 (1.08%) PL/SQL
15 18 (0.85%) Apex Code
16 17 (0.80%) Swift
17 16 (0.75%) Groovy
18 15 (0.70%) C
19 12 (0.56%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 676 (31.75%) Security Cleared
2 565 (26.54%) SC Cleared
3 124 (5.82%) Degree
4 94 (4.42%) BPSS Clearance
5 92 (4.32%) ISTQB
6 84 (3.95%) DV Cleared
7 67 (3.15%) Computer Science Degree
8 48 (2.25%) AWS Certification
9 27 (1.27%) Azure Certification
10 26 (1.22%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 14 (0.66%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 14 (0.66%) CISSP
11 14 (0.66%) ISEB
11 14 (0.66%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 13 (0.61%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
14 11 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
15 10 (0.47%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 8 (0.38%) SAFe Agilist
17 7 (0.33%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 590 (27.71%) QA
2 184 (8.64%) Accessibility
3 149 (7.00%) Data Quality
4 94 (4.42%) WCAG
5 34 (1.60%) GDPR
6 17 (0.80%) ISO 20022
6 17 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.75%) NIST
8 13 (0.61%) SLA
9 12 (0.56%) GRC
9 12 (0.56%) NCSC
10 8 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.28%) HL7
12 6 (0.28%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.23%) FATCA
13 5 (0.23%) Software Quality Assurance
14 4 (0.19%) HIPAA
15 3 (0.14%) EU AI Act
15 3 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 438 (20.57%) Docker
2 39 (1.83%) Active Directory
3 33 (1.55%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (0.47%) Firmware
6 7 (0.33%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.19%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.094%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.047%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.047%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.047%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 433 (20.34%) Kubernetes
2 125 (5.87%) Ansible
3 119 (5.59%) Grafana
4 84 (3.95%) Prometheus
5 35 (1.64%) Argo
6 26 (1.22%) Kibana
7 24 (1.13%) Puppet
8 23 (1.08%) Progress Chef
9 12 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.52%) Control-M
11 9 (0.42%) HP ALM
12 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
13 7 (0.33%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.28%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.28%) SCCM
15 5 (0.23%) Istio
15 5 (0.23%) Packer
16 4 (0.19%) Dell DRAC
16 4 (0.19%) Podman
16 4 (0.19%) Rancher
Vendors
1 220 (10.33%) Microsoft
2 154 (7.23%) Oracle
3 97 (4.56%) Databricks
4 84 (3.95%) Google
5 59 (2.77%) IBM
5 59 (2.77%) Salesforce
6 53 (2.49%) ServiceNow
7 50 (2.35%) Red Hat
8 49 (2.30%) Splunk
8 49 (2.30%) Talend
9 44 (2.07%) SAP
10 43 (2.02%) Dynatrace
11 42 (1.97%) Informatica
11 42 (1.97%) VMware
12 33 (1.55%) Denodo
13 32 (1.50%) Cisco
14 31 (1.46%) UiPath
15 21 (0.99%) Foundry
16 19 (0.89%) OpenAI
17 16 (0.75%) MuleSoft