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

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 45 61
Rank change year-on-year -2 +16 -16
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,701 1,137 1,247
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.34% 4.67% 3.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.06% 5.14% 3.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,129 777 834
10th Percentile £331 £340 £363
25th Percentile £400 £402 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.80% -4.76% -5.23%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £639
90th Percentile £675 £725 £735
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 11 51
10th Percentile £34.57 £44.51 £37.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £46.75 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% +3.18% -12.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.51 £80.00
90th Percentile - £75.50 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.88 £55.00
% change year-on-year +16.33% +1.59% -12.00%

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 33,625 22,142 32,435
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.72% 90.94% 86.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,563 14,591 21,374
10th Percentile £313 £313 £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 £614 £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 2,074 866 2,196
10th Percentile £15.41 £14.95 £12.96
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.92 £15.93
Median hourly rate £40.00 £32.03 £34.11
Median % change year-on-year +24.90% -6.10% -9.05%
75th Percentile £65.81 £64.52 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.85 £75.88 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £36.71 £31.04 £33.07
% change year-on-year +18.27% -6.12% -8.15%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 -2 833 £500 - 183
North of England +9 327 £475 +5.56% 162
Midlands +8 190 £469 -2.20% 83
South East -31 178 £500 -2.72% 145
West Midlands +7 162 £475 -6.81% 57
North West +21 144 £465 +3.33% 82
Yorkshire -9 137 £500 +5.26% 41
South West -2 87 £475 -9.52% 72
East of England -1 60 £608 +23.98% 65
North East +8 51 £425 +8.97% 39
East Midlands -27 28 £400 -0.93% 26
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
1 107 (6.29%) Confluence
2 66 (3.88%) SAS
3 23 (1.35%) Apache Spark
4 21 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
5 15 (0.88%) SharePoint
6 9 (0.53%) Apache
7 8 (0.47%) Appian
8 6 (0.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.35%) Camunda
8 6 (0.35%) CMS
8 6 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 4 (0.24%) nginx
9 4 (0.24%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
11 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
4 11 (0.65%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.18%) Simulink
8 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.059%) Mingle
9 1 (0.059%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.29%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.47%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (0.41%) Findur
4 6 (0.35%) Loan IQ
4 6 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
4 6 (0.35%) Shopify
5 5 (0.29%) BambooHR
5 5 (0.29%) Maximo
6 3 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
6 3 (0.18%) Workday HCM
7 2 (0.12%) iTrent
7 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.12%) SAP HR
7 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
7 2 (0.12%) Summit
8 1 (0.059%) Algo Collateral
8 1 (0.059%) Oracle General Ledger
8 1 (0.059%) PORTIA
8 1 (0.059%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 463 (27.22%) Azure
2 420 (24.69%) AWS
3 276 (16.23%) GitHub
4 210 (12.35%) Azure DevOps
5 155 (9.11%) GitHub Actions
6 130 (7.64%) GCP
7 108 (6.35%) Serverless
8 76 (4.47%) OpenShift
9 58 (3.41%) AWS Lambda
10 53 (3.12%) Amazon S3
11 52 (3.06%) Power Platform
12 38 (2.23%) Azure AKS
13 37 (2.18%) Snowflake
14 34 (2.00%) Azure Data Factory
15 33 (1.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 33 (1.94%) Amazon ECS
16 31 (1.82%) AWS CloudFormation
17 27 (1.59%) Azure Monitor
18 26 (1.53%) Amazon EKS
18 26 (1.53%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.35%) Firewall
2 15 (0.88%) HTTP
3 12 (0.71%) TCP/IP
4 11 (0.65%) VPN
5 10 (0.59%) Network Security
5 10 (0.59%) SAN
6 9 (0.53%) Ethernet
6 9 (0.53%) FTP
6 9 (0.53%) SSL
7 8 (0.47%) MPLS
7 8 (0.47%) SD-WAN
7 8 (0.47%) WAN
8 7 (0.41%) Multicast
8 7 (0.41%) Wireshark
9 6 (0.35%) 5G
9 6 (0.35%) DNS
9 6 (0.35%) HTTPS
10 5 (0.29%) AMQP
10 5 (0.29%) Cisco IPT
10 5 (0.29%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 90 (5.29%) PostgreSQL
2 74 (4.35%) SQL Server
3 71 (4.17%) NoSQL
4 60 (3.53%) MongoDB
5 52 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
5 52 (3.06%) Relational Database
6 35 (2.06%) DynamoDB
7 32 (1.88%) Pentaho
8 28 (1.65%) Power BI
9 26 (1.53%) BigQuery
10 25 (1.47%) Tableau
11 24 (1.41%) Redis
12 23 (1.35%) MySQL
12 23 (1.35%) Oracle Database
13 19 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
14 17 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
15 15 (0.88%) Metadata
16 14 (0.82%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 13 (0.76%) Amazon Athena
17 13 (0.76%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 333 (19.58%) Git
2 323 (18.99%) JIRA
3 295 (17.34%) Jenkins
4 251 (14.76%) Selenium
5 230 (13.52%) GitLab
6 133 (7.82%) Postman
7 130 (7.64%) Cucumber
8 108 (6.35%) JUnit
9 87 (5.11%) Cypress.io
10 84 (4.94%) REST Assured
11 73 (4.29%) JMeter
12 42 (2.47%) WebDriver
13 41 (2.41%) SonarQube
14 35 (2.06%) Maven
14 35 (2.06%) Zephyr
15 34 (2.00%) SpecFlow
16 32 (1.88%) Gradle
17 30 (1.76%) TestRail
18 28 (1.65%) Mockito
19 26 (1.53%) Gatling
General
1 466 (27.40%) Social Skills
2 305 (17.93%) Finance
3 242 (14.23%) Public Sector
4 178 (10.46%) Analytical Skills
5 142 (8.35%) Banking
6 36 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
7 29 (1.70%) Front Office
8 28 (1.65%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 25 (1.47%) Telecoms
11 20 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
12 18 (1.06%) Legal
13 17 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.94%) Aerospace
14 16 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
15 13 (0.76%) Financial Institution
16 11 (0.65%) Electronics
16 11 (0.65%) Military
16 11 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
17 10 (0.59%) Retail
Job Titles
1 361 (21.22%) Developer
2 268 (15.76%) Senior
3 187 (10.99%) Lead
4 185 (10.88%) Tester
5 174 (10.23%) Test Engineer
6 97 (5.70%) Java Developer
7 92 (5.41%) Analyst
8 86 (5.06%) Automation Tester
8 86 (5.06%) Data Engineer
9 80 (4.70%) Test Automation Engineer
10 73 (4.29%) QA Engineer
10 73 (4.29%) Software Engineer
11 66 (3.88%) Test Leader
12 65 (3.82%) Architect
12 65 (3.82%) Senior Developer
13 62 (3.64%) DevOps Engineer
14 55 (3.23%) Test Analyst
15 51 (3.00%) Automation Engineer
16 50 (2.94%) Full-Stack Developer
16 50 (2.94%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 209 (12.29%) REST
2 184 (10.82%) Playwright
3 150 (8.82%) React
4 135 (7.94%) Spring
5 121 (7.11%) RESTful
6 120 (7.05%) Node.js
7 117 (6.88%) .NET
8 116 (6.82%) Kafka
9 106 (6.23%) Spring Boot
10 77 (4.53%) pytest
11 73 (4.29%) AngularJS
12 51 (3.00%) Jest
13 50 (2.94%) HTML
14 48 (2.82%) OAuth
15 46 (2.70%) CSS
16 37 (2.18%) Web Services
17 35 (2.06%) GraphQL
18 32 (1.88%) JSON
18 32 (1.88%) OpenID
18 32 (1.88%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 179 (10.52%) Cloud Native
2 107 (6.29%) Product Ownership
3 83 (4.88%) Distributed Systems
4 47 (2.76%) Mobile App
5 39 (2.29%) Legacy Systems
6 38 (2.23%) Data Protection Act
7 34 (2.00%) Algorithms
8 31 (1.82%) Self-Motivation
9 30 (1.76%) Virtual Team
10 29 (1.70%) Onboarding
11 28 (1.65%) Security Posture
12 27 (1.59%) Enterprise Software
13 23 (1.35%) Management Information System
14 22 (1.29%) Data Structures
15 20 (1.18%) Equities
15 20 (1.18%) NHS
16 19 (1.12%) Distributed Architecture
17 18 (1.06%) Fixed Income
17 18 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
18 16 (0.94%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 121 (7.11%) Linux
2 86 (5.06%) Windows
3 47 (2.76%) Android
4 39 (2.29%) Apple iOS
5 35 (2.06%) Unix
6 19 (1.12%) Windows Server
7 17 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.76%) Mac OS X
9 7 (0.41%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.29%) Solaris
11 4 (0.24%) CentOS
11 4 (0.24%) Embedded Linux
11 4 (0.24%) Kali Linux
11 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.059%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.059%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.059%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.059%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 885 (52.03%) CI/CD
2 799 (46.97%) Agile
3 615 (36.16%) DevOps
4 397 (23.34%) Problem-Solving
5 275 (16.17%) Continuous Improvement
6 264 (15.52%) Microservices
7 257 (15.11%) Test Strategy
8 244 (14.34%) Scrum
9 230 (13.52%) Containerisation
10 224 (13.17%) Validation
11 213 (12.52%) AI
11 213 (12.52%) Infrastructure as Code
12 204 (11.99%) Test Scripting
13 202 (11.88%) Software Engineering
14 201 (11.82%) TDD
15 198 (11.64%) Analytics
16 197 (11.58%) Observability
17 179 (10.52%) Regression Testing
17 179 (10.52%) Software Testing
18 173 (10.17%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 490 (28.81%) Python
2 417 (24.51%) Java
3 380 (22.34%) SQL
4 236 (13.87%) JavaScript
5 230 (13.52%) TypeScript
6 173 (10.17%) C#
7 72 (4.23%) PowerShell
8 57 (3.35%) Bash
9 46 (2.70%) C++
10 33 (1.94%) C
11 30 (1.76%) Kotlin
12 26 (1.53%) Apex Code
13 25 (1.47%) Bicep
14 23 (1.35%) PL/SQL
15 20 (1.18%) Ruby
16 19 (1.12%) Go
17 18 (1.06%) Swift
18 17 (1.00%) Scala
19 13 (0.76%) Groovy
20 12 (0.71%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 525 (30.86%) Security Cleared
2 406 (23.87%) SC Cleared
3 84 (4.94%) ISTQB
4 80 (4.70%) Degree
5 62 (3.64%) BPSS Clearance
6 60 (3.53%) DV Cleared
7 46 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (1.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 18 (1.06%) Master's Degree
10 15 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
11 12 (0.71%) Azure Certification
12 9 (0.53%) AWS Certification
12 9 (0.53%) CCNP
12 9 (0.53%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 8 (0.47%) CISSP
13 8 (0.47%) ISEB
13 8 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
14 7 (0.41%) DBS Check
14 7 (0.41%) Oracle Certification
14 7 (0.41%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 379 (22.28%) QA
2 106 (6.23%) Accessibility
3 102 (6.00%) Data Quality
4 46 (2.70%) WCAG
5 35 (2.06%) GDPR
6 16 (0.94%) NIST
7 15 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 13 (0.76%) NCSC
9 12 (0.71%) ISO 20022
10 10 (0.59%) Def Stans
10 10 (0.59%) SLA
11 9 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.47%) PSD2
13 7 (0.41%) SEPA
14 6 (0.35%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.29%) EU AI Act
15 5 (0.29%) HL7
15 5 (0.29%) PCI DSS
15 5 (0.29%) PERC
15 5 (0.29%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 326 (19.17%) Docker
2 25 (1.47%) Active Directory
3 12 (0.71%) Firmware
4 11 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (0.41%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 7 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
6 6 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
8 4 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
9 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.12%) SRDF
11 1 (0.059%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.059%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.059%) KVM
11 1 (0.059%) Squid
11 1 (0.059%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.059%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 326 (19.17%) Kubernetes
2 198 (11.64%) Terraform
3 91 (5.35%) Grafana
4 72 (4.23%) Prometheus
5 71 (4.17%) Ansible
6 26 (1.53%) Argo
7 19 (1.12%) HP ALM
8 15 (0.88%) Puppet
9 13 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.71%) Progress Chef
11 10 (0.59%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.59%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.59%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 7 (0.41%) Kibana
12 7 (0.41%) NetBackup
12 7 (0.41%) Nmap
13 6 (0.35%) Dell DRAC
13 6 (0.35%) Rancher
14 4 (0.24%) Istio
14 4 (0.24%) Podman
Vendors
1 149 (8.76%) Microsoft
1 149 (8.76%) Oracle
2 64 (3.76%) Databricks
3 62 (3.64%) Salesforce
4 57 (3.35%) ServiceNow
5 48 (2.82%) Splunk
6 47 (2.76%) Google
7 44 (2.59%) Red Hat
8 38 (2.23%) SAP
8 38 (2.23%) Talend
9 32 (1.88%) Denodo
10 24 (1.41%) VMware
11 23 (1.35%) IBM
12 22 (1.29%) HP
13 18 (1.06%) Dynatrace
14 17 (1.00%) Cisco
15 15 (0.88%) MuleSoft
15 15 (0.88%) OpenAI
16 14 (0.82%) Blue Prism
16 14 (0.82%) Workday