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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 53 44
Rank change year-on-year +9 -9 +9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,197 1,301 1,362
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.69% 4.62% 4.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.52% 5.08% 4.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,414 902 924
10th Percentile £320 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £507
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -1.43% -7.77%
75th Percentile £575 £593 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 102 33 13
10th Percentile £40.00 £41.06 £43.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £45.00 £50.00
Median hourly rate £69.25 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +25.91% -4.35% -23.33%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £77.00 £73.40 £82.90
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £52.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +33.33% -8.70% -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 39,799 25,590 27,763
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.96% 90.90% 86.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,011 16,250 16,937
10th Percentile £325 £294 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,071 1,598 1,107
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.53 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.87 £20.50
Median hourly rate £38.72 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.96% -40.82% -5.56%
75th Percentile £67.25 £44.78 £66.61
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.50 £74.18
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -10.11%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +7 988 £500 -2.44% 1,212
North of England -3 451 £455 -4.16% 395
Midlands +14 281 £450 -5.26% 152
West Midlands +21 262 £450 -13.88% 107
South East -6 247 £449 -5.53% 312
Yorkshire -4 191 £475 -7.32% 125
North West -12 165 £492 +16.59% 205
South West -7 111 £450 -17.43% 151
North East +1 100 £425 -11.69% 65
East of England +9 95 £367 -17.30% 146
East Midlands -33 19 £418 +19.29% 45
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
1 183 (8.33%) Confluence
2 54 (2.46%) Apache Airflow
3 43 (1.96%) SharePoint
4 41 (1.87%) Apache Spark
5 35 (1.59%) Apache
6 29 (1.32%) SAS
7 16 (0.73%) CMS
8 14 (0.64%) Camunda
9 12 (0.55%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.27%) Jupyter
12 5 (0.23%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
14 3 (0.14%) Kentico
14 3 (0.14%) nginx
15 2 (0.091%) Anypoint
15 2 (0.091%) Apache Pulsar
15 2 (0.091%) Mule
15 2 (0.091%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 24 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.73%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.27%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.27%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.14%) Mingle
6 3 (0.14%) Trello
7 1 (0.046%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.046%) Simulink
7 1 (0.046%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 29 (1.32%) Dynamics CRM
2 21 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.50%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.46%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.27%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.23%) SAP GRC
8 4 (0.18%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.091%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.091%) SimCorp Dimension
10 1 (0.046%) FLEXCUBE
10 1 (0.046%) Maximo
10 1 (0.046%) Misys Equation
10 1 (0.046%) Misys Midas
10 1 (0.046%) SAP HCM
10 1 (0.046%) SAP LE
10 1 (0.046%) SAP QM
10 1 (0.046%) Summit
10 1 (0.046%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 683 (31.09%) AWS
2 663 (30.18%) Azure
3 388 (17.66%) GitHub
4 312 (14.20%) Azure DevOps
5 232 (10.56%) GitHub Actions
6 187 (8.51%) GCP
7 169 (7.69%) Serverless
8 121 (5.51%) AWS Lambda
9 112 (5.10%) Power Platform
10 101 (4.60%) Amazon S3
11 84 (3.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 74 (3.37%) GitHub Copilot
12 74 (3.37%) OpenShift
13 66 (3.00%) Amazon EKS
14 65 (2.96%) Amazon ECS
15 55 (2.50%) AWS CloudFormation
16 54 (2.46%) dbt
17 53 (2.41%) Snowflake
18 50 (2.28%) Amazon EC2
18 50 (2.28%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 34 (1.55%) DNS
2 30 (1.37%) TCP/IP
3 27 (1.23%) Firewall
4 26 (1.18%) 4G
4 26 (1.18%) Broadband
4 26 (1.18%) HTTP
5 25 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
6 23 (1.05%) 5G
7 20 (0.91%) Network Security
8 18 (0.82%) BGP
9 16 (0.73%) WAN
10 14 (0.64%) 2G
10 14 (0.64%) 3G
10 14 (0.64%) Diameter Protocol
10 14 (0.64%) IPv4
10 14 (0.64%) IPv6
10 14 (0.64%) SIGTRAN
10 14 (0.64%) SS7
11 13 (0.59%) DHCP
12 12 (0.55%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (5.92%) PostgreSQL
2 103 (4.69%) Data Warehouse
3 98 (4.46%) Relational Database
4 95 (4.32%) SQL Server
5 91 (4.14%) MongoDB
6 89 (4.05%) NoSQL
7 82 (3.73%) Power BI
8 45 (2.05%) Metadata
9 42 (1.91%) Data Lake
10 37 (1.68%) DynamoDB
11 35 (1.59%) MySQL
12 32 (1.46%) Oracle Database
12 32 (1.46%) Pentaho
13 29 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
14 28 (1.27%) Amazon Redshift
14 28 (1.27%) Big Data
14 28 (1.27%) Oracle Reports
14 28 (1.27%) Redis
15 27 (1.23%) Amazon Athena
16 26 (1.18%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 508 (23.12%) Git
2 362 (16.48%) JIRA
3 340 (15.48%) Jenkins
4 311 (14.16%) GitLab
5 289 (13.15%) Selenium
6 182 (8.28%) Cucumber
7 146 (6.65%) JUnit
8 145 (6.60%) Postman
9 109 (4.96%) Cypress.io
10 102 (4.64%) REST Assured
11 89 (4.05%) JMeter
11 89 (4.05%) SonarQube
12 71 (3.23%) Gatling
13 59 (2.69%) Maven
14 58 (2.64%) Gradle
15 57 (2.59%) Zephyr
16 51 (2.32%) Mockito
17 42 (1.91%) WebDriver
18 40 (1.82%) Bitbucket
19 29 (1.32%) TestNG
General
1 639 (29.09%) Social Skills
2 439 (19.98%) Finance
3 338 (15.38%) Analytical Skills
4 265 (12.06%) Public Sector
5 224 (10.20%) Banking
6 68 (3.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 60 (2.73%) Telecoms
8 38 (1.73%) Retail
9 36 (1.64%) Investment Banking
10 35 (1.59%) Front Office
11 32 (1.46%) Military
12 29 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
13 24 (1.09%) Documentation Skills
14 21 (0.96%) Manufacturing
14 21 (0.96%) Marketing
15 20 (0.91%) Financial Institution
16 19 (0.86%) Aerospace
16 19 (0.86%) Law
17 16 (0.73%) Back Office
18 14 (0.64%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 465 (21.17%) Developer
2 352 (16.02%) Senior
3 222 (10.10%) Lead
4 208 (9.47%) Test Engineer
5 145 (6.60%) Tester
6 138 (6.28%) Data Engineer
7 137 (6.24%) Java Developer
8 123 (5.60%) Software Engineer
9 115 (5.23%) Analyst
10 106 (4.82%) Architect
11 101 (4.60%) QA Engineer
12 97 (4.42%) Senior Developer
13 92 (4.19%) DevOps Engineer
14 88 (4.01%) Test Automation Engineer
15 82 (3.73%) Automation Engineer
16 77 (3.50%) Test Analyst
17 75 (3.41%) Java Engineer
18 71 (3.23%) Full-Stack Developer
18 71 (3.23%) Test Leader
19 59 (2.69%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 372 (16.93%) REST
2 325 (14.79%) Terraform
3 263 (11.97%) Playwright
4 244 (11.11%) RESTful
5 239 (10.88%) Kafka
6 223 (10.15%) Spring
7 204 (9.29%) React
8 186 (8.47%) Spring Boot
9 163 (7.42%) .NET
10 138 (6.28%) HTML
11 117 (5.33%) Node.js
12 113 (5.14%) CSS
13 103 (4.69%) AngularJS
14 96 (4.37%) OAuth
15 74 (3.37%) JSON
16 62 (2.82%) SOAP
16 62 (2.82%) Web Services
17 61 (2.78%) Middleware
18 60 (2.73%) OpenID
18 60 (2.73%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 344 (15.66%) Cloud Native
2 189 (8.60%) Product Ownership
3 168 (7.65%) Distributed Systems
4 106 (4.82%) Enterprise Software
5 79 (3.60%) Onboarding
6 74 (3.37%) AI Agents
7 54 (2.46%) Mobile App
8 53 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
9 51 (2.32%) Self-Motivation
10 49 (2.23%) Data Protection Act
11 36 (1.64%) Data Structures
12 32 (1.46%) Security Posture
13 26 (1.18%) Virtual Team
14 25 (1.14%) Management Information System
15 23 (1.05%) Distributed Architecture
16 22 (1.00%) Data Centre
17 21 (0.96%) Embedded Systems
18 20 (0.91%) Algorithms
18 20 (0.91%) Private Cloud
19 17 (0.77%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 151 (6.87%) Linux
2 101 (4.60%) Windows
3 73 (3.32%) Unix
4 51 (2.32%) Apple iOS
5 44 (2.00%) Android
6 29 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 22 (1.00%) Windows Server
8 10 (0.46%) VMS
9 8 (0.36%) macOS
10 6 (0.27%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.27%) Windows 10
11 5 (0.23%) Windows 7
11 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
11 5 (0.23%) zOS
12 3 (0.14%) AIX
12 3 (0.14%) CentOS
12 3 (0.14%) Solaris
13 2 (0.091%) Embedded Linux
13 2 (0.091%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.091%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,391 (63.31%) CI/CD
2 1,078 (49.07%) Agile
3 834 (37.96%) DevOps
4 466 (21.21%) Continuous Improvement
5 455 (20.71%) Microservices
6 448 (20.39%) Software Engineering
7 444 (20.21%) Problem-Solving
8 399 (18.16%) Validation
9 386 (17.57%) AI
10 382 (17.39%) Scrum
11 374 (17.02%) Infrastructure as Code
12 330 (15.02%) Containerisation
12 330 (15.02%) Test Strategy
13 304 (13.84%) Observability
14 292 (13.29%) SDLC
15 290 (13.20%) Stakeholder Management
16 284 (12.93%) Software Testing
16 284 (12.93%) TDD
17 237 (10.79%) End-to-End Testing
18 233 (10.61%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 632 (28.77%) Python
2 612 (27.86%) Java
3 569 (25.90%) SQL
4 341 (15.52%) JavaScript
5 266 (12.11%) TypeScript
6 193 (8.78%) C#
7 94 (4.28%) PowerShell
8 80 (3.64%) Bash
9 57 (2.59%) Bicep
10 55 (2.50%) Kotlin
11 42 (1.91%) Go
12 39 (1.78%) C++
13 33 (1.50%) Scala
14 27 (1.23%) Shell Script
15 23 (1.05%) PL/SQL
16 22 (1.00%) Swift
17 17 (0.77%) Apex Code
18 16 (0.73%) Groovy
19 15 (0.68%) C
20 12 (0.55%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 690 (31.41%) Security Cleared
2 576 (26.22%) SC Cleared
3 131 (5.96%) Degree
4 109 (4.96%) ISTQB
5 94 (4.28%) BPSS Clearance
6 86 (3.91%) DV Cleared
7 73 (3.32%) Computer Science Degree
8 49 (2.23%) AWS Certification
9 35 (1.59%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 31 (1.41%) Azure Certification
11 16 (0.73%) ISEB
12 15 (0.68%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 14 (0.64%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 14 (0.64%) CISSP
14 13 (0.59%) Master's Degree
15 12 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
16 11 (0.50%) Cisco Certification
17 10 (0.46%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 8 (0.36%) SAFe Agilist
19 6 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 613 (27.90%) QA
2 188 (8.56%) Accessibility
3 151 (6.87%) Data Quality
4 95 (4.32%) WCAG
5 39 (1.78%) GDPR
6 17 (0.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.73%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.73%) NIST
8 13 (0.59%) SLA
9 12 (0.55%) NCSC
10 11 (0.50%) GRC
11 9 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.32%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.27%) HL7
13 6 (0.27%) PCI DSS
14 5 (0.23%) Software Quality Assurance
15 4 (0.18%) FATCA
15 4 (0.18%) HIPAA
16 3 (0.14%) EU AI Act
16 3 (0.14%) SEPA
System Software
1 446 (20.30%) Docker
2 39 (1.78%) Active Directory
3 33 (1.50%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.50%) Firmware
6 7 (0.32%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.091%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.046%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.046%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.046%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 447 (20.35%) Kubernetes
2 127 (5.78%) Ansible
3 114 (5.19%) Grafana
4 82 (3.73%) Prometheus
5 37 (1.68%) Argo
6 24 (1.09%) Puppet
7 23 (1.05%) Progress Chef
8 21 (0.96%) Kibana
9 13 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.50%) Control-M
11 9 (0.41%) HP ALM
12 8 (0.36%) Microsoft Intune
13 7 (0.32%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.27%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.27%) Packer
14 6 (0.27%) SCCM
15 5 (0.23%) Istio
15 5 (0.23%) Podman
16 4 (0.18%) Dell DRAC
16 4 (0.18%) Rancher
Vendors
1 231 (10.51%) Microsoft
2 157 (7.15%) Oracle
3 101 (4.60%) Databricks
4 88 (4.01%) Google
5 60 (2.73%) IBM
5 60 (2.73%) Salesforce
6 53 (2.41%) Red Hat
7 49 (2.23%) ServiceNow
8 47 (2.14%) SAP
8 47 (2.14%) Splunk
9 44 (2.00%) Talend
10 43 (1.96%) Dynatrace
11 42 (1.91%) Informatica
11 42 (1.91%) VMware
12 35 (1.59%) Cisco
13 33 (1.50%) UiPath
14 31 (1.41%) Denodo
15 24 (1.09%) Foundry
16 20 (0.91%) OpenAI
17 15 (0.68%) MuleSoft