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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 45 57
Rank change year-on-year -1 +12 -10
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,648 1,155 1,319
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.52% 4.69% 3.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.23% 5.17% 3.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,118 797 904
10th Percentile £331 £335 £375
25th Percentile £400 £400 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -4.76% -7.49%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £638
90th Percentile £680 £725 £719
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 7 58
10th Percentile £35.51 £38.81 £47.10
25th Percentile £51.56 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +9.65%
75th Percentile £70.00 £76.35 £88.13
90th Percentile - £81.31 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +9.78%

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 31,521 22,327 33,048
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.53% 90.61% 86.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,160 14,432 21,853
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 1,961 797 2,159
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.00 £34.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +6.15% -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.63 £70.53
UK median hourly rate £29.61 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -8.89% - -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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +2 806 £500 - 219
North of England +3 322 £487 +8.28% 164
Midlands +6 191 £472 +2.05% 79
South East -27 165 £500 -10.71% 171
West Midlands +6 158 £480 -0.62% 50
North West +5 144 £456 +1.39% 78
Yorkshire -15 135 £500 +5.26% 54
South West +2 81 £511 -2.62% 78
East of England +1 60 £570 +19.06% 61
North East +9 47 £488 +28.09% 32
East Midlands -22 33 £400 +7.38% 29
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
1 113 (6.86%) Confluence
2 57 (3.46%) SAS
3 28 (1.70%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
5 12 (0.73%) SharePoint
6 9 (0.55%) Apache
7 8 (0.49%) 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 (1.58%) 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 (0.061%) Mingle
7 1 (0.061%) Simulink
7 1 (0.061%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.33%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.36%) Loan IQ
3 5 (0.30%) Maximo
3 5 (0.30%) Shopify
3 5 (0.30%) Workday HCM
4 4 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
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 (0.061%) IntelliMatch
7 1 (0.061%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.061%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.061%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.061%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 451 (27.37%) Azure
2 403 (24.45%) AWS
3 279 (16.93%) GitHub
4 195 (11.83%) Azure DevOps
5 154 (9.34%) GCP
6 148 (8.98%) GitHub Actions
7 111 (6.74%) Serverless
8 71 (4.31%) OpenShift
9 59 (3.58%) Power Platform
10 50 (3.03%) AWS Lambda
11 47 (2.85%) Amazon S3
12 45 (2.73%) Azure AKS
13 36 (2.18%) Snowflake
14 34 (2.06%) Azure Data Factory
15 30 (1.82%) Azure Functions
16 29 (1.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 29 (1.76%) AWS CloudFormation
16 29 (1.76%) SaaS
17 27 (1.64%) Amazon ECS
17 27 (1.64%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 31 (1.88%) 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
5 12 (0.73%) HTTPS
5 12 (0.73%) WAN
6 10 (0.61%) Network Security
7 8 (0.49%) DNS
7 8 (0.49%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.49%) 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%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 99 (6.01%) PostgreSQL
2 69 (4.19%) NoSQL
3 67 (4.07%) SQL Server
4 56 (3.40%) MongoDB
5 49 (2.97%) Relational Database
6 47 (2.85%) Data Warehouse
7 34 (2.06%) Power BI
8 29 (1.76%) Pentaho
9 25 (1.52%) BigQuery
9 25 (1.52%) DynamoDB
10 24 (1.46%) Oracle Database
11 23 (1.40%) Tableau
12 21 (1.27%) MySQL
13 20 (1.21%) Redis
14 18 (1.09%) Oracle Reports
15 16 (0.97%) Azure SQL Database
16 15 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
16 15 (0.91%) Data Lake
17 11 (0.67%) Delta Lake
17 11 (0.67%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 309 (18.75%) Git
1 309 (18.75%) JIRA
2 301 (18.26%) Jenkins
3 253 (15.35%) Selenium
4 251 (15.23%) GitLab
5 146 (8.86%) Cucumber
6 136 (8.25%) Postman
7 106 (6.43%) JUnit
8 98 (5.95%) Cypress.io
9 86 (5.22%) REST Assured
10 80 (4.85%) JMeter
11 39 (2.37%) WebDriver
12 36 (2.18%) SonarQube
12 36 (2.18%) SpecFlow
13 34 (2.06%) Maven
14 32 (1.94%) Gatling
15 30 (1.82%) Gradle
16 28 (1.70%) TestRail
16 28 (1.70%) Zephyr
17 26 (1.58%) Bitbucket
General
1 456 (27.67%) Social Skills
2 283 (17.17%) Finance
3 225 (13.65%) Public Sector
4 180 (10.92%) Analytical Skills
5 139 (8.43%) Banking
6 33 (2.00%) Documentation Skills
7 29 (1.76%) Investment Banking
8 23 (1.40%) Front Office
9 22 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 21 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
11 20 (1.21%) Pharmaceutical
12 19 (1.15%) Telecoms
13 17 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
15 15 (0.91%) Financial Institution
16 14 (0.85%) Military
17 11 (0.67%) Aerospace
17 11 (0.67%) Legal
18 10 (0.61%) Electronics
19 7 (0.42%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 340 (20.63%) Developer
2 269 (16.32%) Senior
3 203 (12.32%) Lead
4 189 (11.47%) Tester
5 177 (10.74%) Test Engineer
6 87 (5.28%) Data Engineer
6 87 (5.28%) Java Developer
7 86 (5.22%) Automation Tester
8 83 (5.04%) Analyst
9 75 (4.55%) Test Automation Engineer
10 74 (4.49%) Software Engineer
11 70 (4.25%) Test Leader
12 68 (4.13%) QA Engineer
13 58 (3.52%) Architect
14 57 (3.46%) DevOps Engineer
14 57 (3.46%) Senior Developer
15 53 (3.22%) Test Manager
16 51 (3.09%) Test Analyst
17 50 (3.03%) Automation Engineer
18 40 (2.43%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 208 (12.62%) REST
2 193 (11.71%) Playwright
3 142 (8.62%) React
4 133 (8.07%) Spring
5 127 (7.71%) .NET
6 120 (7.28%) RESTful
7 116 (7.04%) Node.js
8 114 (6.92%) Kafka
9 106 (6.43%) Spring Boot
10 81 (4.92%) pytest
11 54 (3.28%) AngularJS
11 54 (3.28%) HTML
12 52 (3.16%) CSS
12 52 (3.16%) OAuth
13 49 (2.97%) Jest
14 42 (2.55%) Web Services
15 38 (2.31%) WireMock
16 37 (2.25%) JSON
17 36 (2.18%) GraphQL
18 33 (2.00%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 179 (10.86%) Cloud Native
2 96 (5.83%) Product Ownership
3 75 (4.55%) Distributed Systems
4 45 (2.73%) Mobile App
5 41 (2.49%) Algorithms
6 37 (2.25%) Legacy Systems
7 33 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
8 30 (1.82%) Security Posture
9 25 (1.52%) Data Structures
9 25 (1.52%) Onboarding
10 24 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
10 24 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
11 23 (1.40%) Virtual Team
12 22 (1.33%) Equities
13 21 (1.27%) Distributed Architecture
13 21 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
13 21 (1.27%) Management Information System
14 18 (1.09%) Public Cloud
15 16 (0.97%) Derivative
15 16 (0.97%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 133 (8.07%) Linux
2 82 (4.98%) Windows
3 41 (2.49%) Android
4 35 (2.12%) Apple iOS
4 35 (2.12%) Unix
5 19 (1.15%) Windows Server
6 14 (0.85%) Mac OS X
7 11 (0.67%) Kali Linux
7 11 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 7 (0.42%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.30%) CentOS
10 3 (0.18%) Solaris
11 2 (0.12%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.061%) FreeRTOS
12 1 (0.061%) Robot Operating System
12 1 (0.061%) VMS
12 1 (0.061%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 860 (52.18%) CI/CD
2 785 (47.63%) Agile
3 606 (36.77%) DevOps
4 410 (24.88%) Problem-Solving
5 268 (16.26%) Continuous Improvement
6 267 (16.20%) Microservices
7 261 (15.84%) Test Strategy
8 236 (14.32%) Containerisation
9 228 (13.83%) Scrum
10 222 (13.47%) AI
11 212 (12.86%) Test Scripting
12 206 (12.50%) Validation
13 202 (12.26%) Software Engineering
14 199 (12.08%) TDD
15 195 (11.83%) Infrastructure as Code
16 183 (11.10%) Software Testing
17 182 (11.04%) Analytics
18 176 (10.68%) Observability
19 163 (9.89%) Regression Testing
20 158 (9.59%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 510 (30.95%) Python
2 401 (24.33%) Java
3 359 (21.78%) SQL
4 248 (15.05%) JavaScript
5 236 (14.32%) TypeScript
6 157 (9.53%) C#
7 69 (4.19%) PowerShell
8 60 (3.64%) Bash
9 45 (2.73%) C++
10 29 (1.76%) Go
11 25 (1.52%) C
11 25 (1.52%) Kotlin
12 24 (1.46%) Bicep
13 23 (1.40%) PL/SQL
14 20 (1.21%) Apex Code
15 15 (0.91%) Scala
15 15 (0.91%) Swift
16 14 (0.85%) Ruby
17 12 (0.73%) Groovy
17 12 (0.73%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 478 (29.00%) Security Cleared
2 366 (22.21%) SC Cleared
3 92 (5.58%) Degree
4 79 (4.79%) ISTQB
5 57 (3.46%) BPSS Clearance
6 55 (3.34%) Computer Science Degree
7 54 (3.28%) DV Cleared
8 25 (1.52%) Master's Degree
9 23 (1.40%) 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 (0.61%) AWS Certification
15 9 (0.55%) GPEN
15 9 (0.55%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 378 (22.94%) QA
2 111 (6.74%) Accessibility
3 91 (5.52%) Data Quality
4 35 (2.12%) WCAG
5 30 (1.82%) NIST
6 28 (1.70%) 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 9 (0.55%) PSD2
10 9 (0.55%) SLA
11 8 (0.49%) Def Stans
11 8 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.42%) SEPA
13 6 (0.36%) SOC 2
14 5 (0.30%) HL7
14 5 (0.30%) NIST 800
14 5 (0.30%) PCI DSS
14 5 (0.30%) PERC
System Software
1 339 (20.57%) Docker
2 28 (1.70%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.49%) 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 (0.061%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.061%) KVM
9 1 (0.061%) Squid
9 1 (0.061%) Time Sharing Option
9 1 (0.061%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 328 (19.90%) Kubernetes
2 188 (11.41%) Terraform
3 101 (6.13%) Grafana
4 95 (5.76%) Ansible
5 75 (4.55%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.09%) Argo
6 18 (1.09%) Puppet
7 17 (1.03%) HP ALM
8 15 (0.91%) Progress Chef
9 14 (0.85%) Nmap
10 11 (0.67%) HP Quality Center
10 11 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.61%) NetBackup
12 7 (0.42%) Forefront Identity Manager
12 7 (0.42%) Kibana
12 7 (0.42%) NetIQ Identity Manager
13 6 (0.36%) Podman
14 5 (0.30%) Rancher
15 4 (0.24%) CSIRT
15 4 (0.24%) Istio
Vendors
1 149 (9.04%) Microsoft
2 138 (8.37%) Oracle
3 67 (4.07%) Databricks
4 59 (3.58%) Splunk
5 55 (3.34%) Google
5 55 (3.34%) ServiceNow
6 52 (3.16%) Salesforce
7 38 (2.31%) SAP
8 34 (2.06%) Red Hat
9 33 (2.00%) Talend
10 25 (1.52%) Denodo
11 22 (1.33%) VMware
12 21 (1.27%) IBM
13 20 (1.21%) Cisco
13 20 (1.21%) HP
14 18 (1.09%) Workday
15 16 (0.97%) MuleSoft
16 15 (0.91%) OpenAI
17 14 (0.85%) Dynatrace
17 14 (0.85%) Foundry