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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 54 47
Rank change year-on-year +7 -7 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,999 1,220 1,352
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.35% 4.43% 4.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.13% 4.87% 4.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,263 823 910
10th Percentile £320 £312 £350
25th Percentile £407 £381 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -5.09%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £671 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 99 35 16
10th Percentile £40.00 £41.50 £41.25
25th Percentile £57.63 £50.00 £49.38
Median hourly rate £67.50 £57.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +17.39% - -23.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £72.53
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.40 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £69.75 £55.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +26.82% -4.35% -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 38,948 25,051 28,234
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.68% 90.90% 86.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,873 15,912 17,703
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £648
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 2,701 1,483 1,330
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.25 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.65 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -1.71%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.73 £66.58
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 +6 910 £500 - 1,447
North of England +5 399 £455 -1.09% 312
Midlands +10 247 £450 -2.70% 142
West Midlands +21 232 £459 -11.48% 88
South East -10 232 £450 -10.00% 338
Yorkshire -6 162 £466 -6.84% 85
North West -17 138 £492 +16.23% 187
South West -7 111 £475 -5.00% 218
North East +12 106 £425 -4.49% 41
East of England +11 82 £450 +31.39% 170
East Midlands -44 15 £418 +19.29% 53
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
1 175 (8.75%) Confluence
2 52 (2.60%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (2.05%) SharePoint
4 38 (1.90%) Apache Spark
5 30 (1.50%) SAS
6 23 (1.15%) Apache
7 14 (0.70%) CMS
8 12 (0.60%) Camunda
9 10 (0.50%) 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 (0.10%) Anypoint
14 2 (0.10%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.10%) Mule
Applications
1 24 (1.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.80%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.30%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.15%) Simulink
6 3 (0.15%) Trello
7 2 (0.10%) Mingle
7 2 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 27 (1.35%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.85%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.65%) Payment Gateway
4 9 (0.45%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.35%) Findur
5 7 (0.35%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.30%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.25%) SAP GRC
8 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.15%) Shopify
9 2 (0.10%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
10 1 (0.050%) FLEXCUBE
10 1 (0.050%) SAP MM
10 1 (0.050%) SAP QM
10 1 (0.050%) SAP SD
10 1 (0.050%) Summit
10 1 (0.050%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 606 (30.32%) AWS
2 589 (29.46%) Azure
3 339 (16.96%) GitHub
4 274 (13.71%) Azure DevOps
5 214 (10.71%) GitHub Actions
6 159 (7.95%) Serverless
7 150 (7.50%) GCP
8 118 (5.90%) AWS Lambda
9 96 (4.80%) Power Platform
10 88 (4.40%) Amazon S3
11 79 (3.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 69 (3.45%) OpenShift
13 66 (3.30%) Amazon ECS
14 59 (2.95%) Amazon EKS
15 58 (2.90%) GitHub Copilot
16 55 (2.75%) dbt
17 49 (2.45%) Snowflake
18 47 (2.35%) AWS CloudFormation
19 43 (2.15%) Amazon EC2
20 41 (2.05%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.15%) HTTP
2 21 (1.05%) 4G
3 20 (1.00%) DNS
3 20 (1.00%) Firewall
4 19 (0.95%) 5G
5 18 (0.90%) TCP/IP
6 16 (0.80%) 2G
6 16 (0.80%) 3G
6 16 (0.80%) Diameter Protocol
6 16 (0.80%) SIGTRAN
6 16 (0.80%) SS7
7 15 (0.75%) Network Security
7 15 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
8 13 (0.65%) WAN
9 12 (0.60%) LAN
10 10 (0.50%) BGP
10 10 (0.50%) Broadband
10 10 (0.50%) DHCP
11 9 (0.45%) SAN
12 8 (0.40%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 116 (5.80%) PostgreSQL
2 111 (5.55%) Data Warehouse
3 96 (4.80%) NoSQL
4 91 (4.55%) Relational Database
5 90 (4.50%) MongoDB
6 86 (4.30%) SQL Server
7 78 (3.90%) Power BI
8 39 (1.95%) DynamoDB
9 36 (1.80%) Data Lake
10 35 (1.75%) Metadata
11 34 (1.70%) Oracle Reports
12 31 (1.55%) Big Data
13 29 (1.45%) Pentaho
14 28 (1.40%) Amazon Athena
15 27 (1.35%) Amazon Redshift
16 26 (1.30%) MySQL
16 26 (1.30%) Redis
17 25 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
18 23 (1.15%) Oracle Database
19 19 (0.95%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 431 (21.56%) Git
2 342 (17.11%) JIRA
3 321 (16.06%) Jenkins
4 274 (13.71%) GitLab
5 247 (12.36%) Selenium
6 133 (6.65%) Postman
7 128 (6.40%) Cucumber
8 110 (5.50%) JUnit
9 99 (4.95%) Cypress.io
10 91 (4.55%) REST Assured
11 81 (4.05%) SonarQube
12 75 (3.75%) JMeter
13 60 (3.00%) Zephyr
14 55 (2.75%) Gatling
15 51 (2.55%) Gradle
15 51 (2.55%) Maven
16 43 (2.15%) Mockito
16 43 (2.15%) WebDriver
17 38 (1.90%) Bitbucket
18 24 (1.20%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 558 (27.91%) Social Skills
2 382 (19.11%) Finance
3 298 (14.91%) Analytical Skills
4 253 (12.66%) Public Sector
5 180 (9.00%) Banking
6 70 (3.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 41 (2.05%) Telecoms
8 33 (1.65%) Front Office
8 33 (1.65%) Retail
9 28 (1.40%) Documentation Skills
10 27 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
11 26 (1.30%) Investment Banking
11 26 (1.30%) Military
12 20 (1.00%) Financial Institution
13 18 (0.90%) Aerospace
13 18 (0.90%) Law
14 17 (0.85%) Marketing
15 16 (0.80%) Manufacturing
16 14 (0.70%) Automotive
16 14 (0.70%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 429 (21.46%) Developer
2 323 (16.16%) Senior
3 195 (9.75%) Lead
4 193 (9.65%) Test Engineer
5 149 (7.45%) Tester
6 135 (6.75%) Java Developer
7 123 (6.15%) Data Engineer
8 119 (5.95%) Software Engineer
9 111 (5.55%) Analyst
10 97 (4.85%) DevOps Engineer
10 97 (4.85%) Senior Developer
11 92 (4.60%) QA Engineer
12 86 (4.30%) Test Automation Engineer
13 82 (4.10%) Architect
14 72 (3.60%) Full-Stack Developer
15 68 (3.40%) Test Analyst
16 67 (3.35%) Automation Engineer
17 65 (3.25%) Test Leader
18 64 (3.20%) Java Engineer
19 62 (3.10%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 308 (15.41%) REST
2 292 (14.61%) Terraform
3 225 (11.26%) Playwright
4 208 (10.41%) RESTful
5 203 (10.16%) Kafka
6 188 (9.40%) Spring
7 186 (9.30%) React
8 162 (8.10%) Spring Boot
9 142 (7.10%) .NET
10 123 (6.15%) HTML
11 107 (5.35%) Node.js
12 105 (5.25%) CSS
13 101 (5.05%) AngularJS
14 61 (3.05%) OAuth
15 55 (2.75%) JSON
16 52 (2.60%) SOAP
17 51 (2.55%) XML
18 49 (2.45%) PySpark
19 47 (2.35%) Next.js
19 47 (2.35%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 315 (15.76%) Cloud Native
2 167 (8.35%) Product Ownership
3 145 (7.25%) Distributed Systems
4 81 (4.05%) Enterprise Software
5 57 (2.85%) Onboarding
6 54 (2.70%) AI Agents
7 50 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
8 49 (2.45%) Data Protection Act
8 49 (2.45%) Self-Motivation
9 40 (2.00%) Mobile App
10 35 (1.75%) Virtual Team
11 26 (1.30%) Security Posture
12 24 (1.20%) Data Structures
13 21 (1.05%) Embedded Systems
14 20 (1.00%) Management Information System
15 17 (0.85%) Data Centre
16 16 (0.80%) Distributed Architecture
16 16 (0.80%) Fixed Income
17 15 (0.75%) Life Science
18 14 (0.70%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 141 (7.05%) Linux
2 84 (4.20%) Windows
3 81 (4.05%) Unix
4 38 (1.90%) Apple iOS
5 36 (1.80%) Android
6 29 (1.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 21 (1.05%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.30%) VMS
9 5 (0.25%) Embedded Linux
9 5 (0.25%) Mac OS X
9 5 (0.25%) Solaris
9 5 (0.25%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.25%) Windows 7
9 5 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.20%) Ubuntu
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 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,202 (60.13%) CI/CD
2 962 (48.12%) Agile
3 746 (37.32%) DevOps
4 399 (19.96%) Continuous Improvement
5 396 (19.81%) Problem-Solving
6 393 (19.66%) Software Engineering
7 392 (19.61%) Microservices
8 345 (17.26%) Scrum
9 343 (17.16%) Infrastructure as Code
10 335 (16.76%) Validation
11 324 (16.21%) AI
12 308 (15.41%) Test Strategy
13 295 (14.76%) Containerisation
14 265 (13.26%) Observability
15 262 (13.11%) SDLC
16 251 (12.56%) TDD
17 241 (12.06%) Software Testing
18 224 (11.21%) Stakeholder Management
19 217 (10.86%) End-to-End Testing
20 198 (9.90%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 551 (27.56%) Python
2 541 (27.06%) Java
3 496 (24.81%) SQL
4 291 (14.56%) JavaScript
5 230 (11.51%) TypeScript
6 165 (8.25%) C#
7 90 (4.50%) PowerShell
8 77 (3.85%) Bash
9 46 (2.30%) Bicep
10 45 (2.25%) Kotlin
11 32 (1.60%) C++
12 27 (1.35%) Scala
13 26 (1.30%) Go
14 25 (1.25%) PL/SQL
15 22 (1.10%) Apex Code
15 22 (1.10%) C
16 18 (0.90%) Shell Script
17 16 (0.80%) Groovy
18 15 (0.75%) Ruby
18 15 (0.75%) Swift
Qualifications
1 649 (32.47%) Security Cleared
2 542 (27.11%) SC Cleared
3 112 (5.60%) Degree
4 91 (4.55%) ISTQB
5 81 (4.05%) DV Cleared
6 66 (3.30%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (3.00%) Computer Science Degree
8 36 (1.80%) AWS Certification
9 27 (1.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 23 (1.15%) Azure Certification
11 17 (0.85%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 14 (0.70%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 13 (0.65%) Master's Degree
14 12 (0.60%) ISEB
15 11 (0.55%) SAFe Agilist
16 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
17 9 (0.45%) Cisco Certification
17 9 (0.45%) CISSP
18 8 (0.40%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 7 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 544 (27.21%) QA
2 161 (8.05%) Accessibility
3 134 (6.70%) Data Quality
4 88 (4.40%) WCAG
5 39 (1.95%) GDPR
6 16 (0.80%) ISO 20022
7 13 (0.65%) NCSC
8 12 (0.60%) SLA
9 11 (0.55%) GRC
9 11 (0.55%) NIST
10 10 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 7 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.35%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.25%) FATCA
12 5 (0.25%) PCI DSS
13 4 (0.20%) HL7
13 4 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 3 (0.15%) Def Stans
14 3 (0.15%) EU AI Act
15 2 (0.10%) SOC 2
System Software
1 397 (19.86%) Docker
2 34 (1.70%) Active Directory
3 28 (1.40%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.90%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.55%) 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 1 (0.050%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.050%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 391 (19.56%) Kubernetes
2 111 (5.55%) Ansible
3 105 (5.25%) Grafana
4 82 (4.10%) Prometheus
5 39 (1.95%) Argo
6 21 (1.05%) Progress Chef
6 21 (1.05%) Puppet
7 13 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
8 12 (0.60%) HP ALM
8 12 (0.60%) Kibana
9 11 (0.55%) Control-M
10 7 (0.35%) Kustomize
10 7 (0.35%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (0.30%) Dell DRAC
12 5 (0.25%) HP Fortify
12 5 (0.25%) Istio
12 5 (0.25%) Packer
12 5 (0.25%) SCCM
13 4 (0.20%) HP Quality Center
13 4 (0.20%) WMI
Vendors
1 205 (10.26%) Microsoft
2 151 (7.55%) Oracle
3 83 (4.15%) Databricks
4 68 (3.40%) Salesforce
5 65 (3.25%) Google
6 57 (2.85%) Red Hat
7 51 (2.55%) IBM
8 47 (2.35%) Splunk
8 47 (2.35%) Talend
9 44 (2.20%) ServiceNow
10 40 (2.00%) SAP
11 39 (1.95%) Dynatrace
12 35 (1.75%) Denodo
12 35 (1.75%) VMware
13 33 (1.65%) Informatica
14 30 (1.50%) Cisco
15 28 (1.40%) UiPath
16 16 (0.80%) HP
17 13 (0.65%) OpenAI
18 12 (0.60%) Foundry