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

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 50 55
Rank change year-on-year +3 +5 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,835 1,106 1,338
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.25% 4.44% 3.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.98% 4.86% 4.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,178 774 885
10th Percentile £338 £313 £363
25th Percentile £405 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £484 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.86% -7.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £665 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £490 £513
% change year-on-year -3.06% -4.39% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 109 25 49
10th Percentile £36.26 £41.78 £51.00
25th Percentile £60.00 £46.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% -4.35% -22.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.50 £71.88
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.38 £86.00
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +28.57% -8.70% -14.66%

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 36,836 22,759 32,181
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.26% 91.40% 85.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,282 14,723 20,802
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £730 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £502 £525
% change year-on-year +2.19% -4.48% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,303 1,078 2,398
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.10 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.50 £27.40 £37.63
Median % change year-on-year +73.36% -27.18% +4.81%
75th Percentile £68.75 £56.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year +72.39% -32.00% +7.05%

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 20 June 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 20 June 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 20 June 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 +4 832 £500 - 156
North of England +10 369 £460 +2.22% 97
Midlands +7 230 £450 +6.51% 55
West Midlands +28 211 £450 -10.00% 32
South East -36 196 £475 -5.00% 136
North West -3 149 £475 +8.94% 47
Yorkshire -1 148 £500 +2.56% 28
South West +16 106 £450 - 43
East of England +14 84 £495 +7.90% 49
North East +5 80 £425 +6.25% 23
East Midlands -42 19 £418 +51.82% 23
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
1 156 (8.50%) Confluence
2 43 (2.34%) Apache Airflow
3 42 (2.29%) SAS
4 37 (2.02%) Apache Spark
5 16 (0.87%) Apache
6 14 (0.76%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.65%) CMS
8 8 (0.44%) Appian
8 8 (0.44%) Camunda
9 5 (0.27%) nginx
9 5 (0.27%) Tomcat
9 5 (0.27%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.22%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.16%) Kentico
11 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.11%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.11%) Mule
13 1 (0.054%) Solana
Applications
1 29 (1.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.87%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.16%) Simulink
8 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.054%) Mingle
9 1 (0.054%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 19 (1.04%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.98%) Aladdin
3 11 (0.60%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.44%) Findur
4 8 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
5 6 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
5 6 (0.33%) SAP ERP
5 6 (0.33%) Shopify
6 5 (0.27%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.27%) Loan IQ
7 3 (0.16%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.16%) Maximo
7 3 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
8 2 (0.11%) Infor LN
8 2 (0.11%) Infor M3
8 2 (0.11%) IntelliMatch
8 2 (0.11%) iTrent
8 2 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.11%) Summit
8 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 508 (27.68%) AWS
2 491 (26.76%) Azure
3 286 (15.59%) GitHub
4 217 (11.83%) Azure DevOps
5 178 (9.70%) GitHub Actions
6 136 (7.41%) Serverless
7 123 (6.70%) GCP
8 94 (5.12%) AWS Lambda
9 81 (4.41%) Amazon S3
10 69 (3.76%) Power Platform
11 63 (3.43%) OpenShift
12 55 (3.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 54 (2.94%) Amazon ECS
14 44 (2.40%) Azure Data Factory
15 40 (2.18%) Amazon EC2
15 40 (2.18%) dbt
16 36 (1.96%) Snowflake
17 32 (1.74%) Amazon EKS
18 29 (1.58%) AWS CloudFormation
19 28 (1.53%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.20%) Firewall
2 15 (0.82%) HTTP
2 15 (0.82%) SAN
3 11 (0.60%) WAN
4 10 (0.54%) Network Security
5 9 (0.49%) MPLS
5 9 (0.49%) VPN
6 8 (0.44%) TCP/IP
7 6 (0.33%) 4G
7 6 (0.33%) 5G
7 6 (0.33%) BGP
7 6 (0.33%) Ethernet
7 6 (0.33%) LAN
7 6 (0.33%) SD-WAN
7 6 (0.33%) VLAN
7 6 (0.33%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.33%) Wireshark
8 5 (0.27%) Diameter Protocol
8 5 (0.27%) Multicast
8 5 (0.27%) SIGTRAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 102 (5.56%) PostgreSQL
2 93 (5.07%) Data Warehouse
3 83 (4.52%) MongoDB
4 80 (4.36%) NoSQL
5 68 (3.71%) SQL Server
6 59 (3.22%) Relational Database
7 52 (2.83%) Power BI
8 46 (2.51%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.91%) Oracle Reports
10 34 (1.85%) Pentaho
11 31 (1.69%) Amazon Athena
12 26 (1.42%) Amazon RDS
12 26 (1.42%) Data Lake
13 25 (1.36%) Amazon Redshift
13 25 (1.36%) Big Data
14 24 (1.31%) Redis
15 22 (1.20%) Metadata
15 22 (1.20%) Tableau
16 20 (1.09%) Oracle Database
17 17 (0.93%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 347 (18.91%) JIRA
2 324 (17.66%) Git
3 295 (16.08%) Jenkins
4 264 (14.39%) GitLab
5 229 (12.48%) Selenium
6 140 (7.63%) Postman
7 130 (7.08%) Cucumber
8 95 (5.18%) JUnit
9 94 (5.12%) REST Assured
10 83 (4.52%) Cypress.io
11 82 (4.47%) JMeter
12 54 (2.94%) SonarQube
13 52 (2.83%) Zephyr
14 50 (2.72%) WebDriver
15 42 (2.29%) Gradle
16 39 (2.13%) Gatling
17 35 (1.91%) Bitbucket
18 33 (1.80%) Mockito
19 30 (1.63%) Maven
20 27 (1.47%) SpecFlow
General
1 499 (27.19%) Social Skills
2 348 (18.96%) Finance
3 237 (12.92%) Analytical Skills
3 237 (12.92%) Public Sector
4 158 (8.61%) Banking
5 49 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 37 (2.02%) Documentation Skills
7 30 (1.63%) Investment Banking
8 26 (1.42%) Front Office
9 25 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
10 24 (1.31%) Telecoms
11 20 (1.09%) Financial Institution
12 19 (1.04%) Military
13 18 (0.98%) Retail
14 17 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
15 16 (0.87%) Aerospace
16 15 (0.82%) Legal
17 13 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
18 12 (0.65%) Law
18 12 (0.65%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 359 (19.56%) Developer
2 286 (15.59%) Senior
3 198 (10.79%) Lead
4 197 (10.74%) Tester
5 193 (10.52%) Test Engineer
6 122 (6.65%) Data Engineer
7 108 (5.89%) Java Developer
8 102 (5.56%) Software Engineer
9 93 (5.07%) Analyst
10 86 (4.69%) Architect
11 79 (4.31%) Test Automation Engineer
12 78 (4.25%) DevOps Engineer
13 74 (4.03%) QA Engineer
14 72 (3.92%) Senior Developer
15 70 (3.81%) Automation Tester
16 67 (3.65%) Test Leader
17 53 (2.89%) Automation Engineer
18 51 (2.78%) Full-Stack Developer
18 51 (2.78%) Test Analyst
19 45 (2.45%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 200 (10.90%) REST
2 190 (10.35%) Playwright
3 170 (9.26%) React
4 142 (7.74%) Spring
5 139 (7.57%) Kafka
6 136 (7.41%) RESTful
7 116 (6.32%) Spring Boot
8 104 (5.67%) .NET
9 93 (5.07%) Node.js
10 78 (4.25%) AngularJS
11 63 (3.43%) HTML
12 58 (3.16%) CSS
13 48 (2.62%) pytest
14 46 (2.51%) OAuth
15 41 (2.23%) Jest
16 39 (2.13%) Quarkus
17 36 (1.96%) Swagger
18 34 (1.85%) Gherkin
19 33 (1.80%) WireMock
20 32 (1.74%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 218 (11.88%) Cloud Native
2 130 (7.08%) Product Ownership
3 113 (6.16%) Distributed Systems
4 53 (2.89%) Legacy Systems
5 50 (2.72%) Data Protection Act
6 47 (2.56%) Enterprise Software
7 41 (2.23%) Mobile App
8 39 (2.13%) Self-Motivation
9 36 (1.96%) Virtual Team
10 32 (1.74%) Onboarding
11 31 (1.69%) Distributed Architecture
12 24 (1.31%) Management Information System
13 23 (1.25%) Embedded Systems
13 23 (1.25%) Security Posture
14 22 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
15 20 (1.09%) Algorithms
16 19 (1.04%) AI Agents
16 19 (1.04%) Fixed Income
17 16 (0.87%) Data Structures
17 16 (0.87%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 112 (6.10%) Linux
2 75 (4.09%) Windows
3 52 (2.83%) Unix
4 40 (2.18%) Android
5 39 (2.13%) Apple iOS
6 19 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (0.87%) Windows Server
8 12 (0.65%) Mac OS X
9 7 (0.38%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.38%) Solaris
10 5 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.22%) Embedded Linux
11 4 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.16%) AIX
12 3 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.11%) CentOS
13 2 (0.11%) Kali Linux
13 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 986 (53.73%) CI/CD
2 852 (46.43%) Agile
3 634 (34.55%) DevOps
4 344 (18.75%) Problem-Solving
5 307 (16.73%) Microservices
6 300 (16.35%) Continuous Improvement
7 282 (15.37%) Software Engineering
8 281 (15.31%) Scrum
9 276 (15.04%) Test Strategy
10 270 (14.71%) Validation
11 249 (13.57%) Infrastructure as Code
12 228 (12.43%) AI
13 227 (12.37%) Observability
14 215 (11.72%) Containerisation
15 208 (11.34%) TDD
16 190 (10.35%) ETL
17 182 (9.92%) Software Testing
18 178 (9.70%) End-to-End Testing
19 177 (9.65%) User Acceptance Testing
20 175 (9.54%) Test Scripting
Programming Languages
1 460 (25.07%) Python
2 453 (24.69%) Java
3 438 (23.87%) SQL
4 228 (12.43%) JavaScript
5 204 (11.12%) TypeScript
6 167 (9.10%) C#
7 64 (3.49%) PowerShell
8 56 (3.05%) Bash
9 45 (2.45%) Kotlin
10 41 (2.23%) C++
11 31 (1.69%) Go
11 31 (1.69%) Scala
12 30 (1.63%) C
13 28 (1.53%) Apex Code
13 28 (1.53%) Bicep
13 28 (1.53%) PL/SQL
14 22 (1.20%) Swift
15 16 (0.87%) Groovy
16 15 (0.82%) Ruby
17 13 (0.71%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 577 (31.44%) Security Cleared
2 463 (25.23%) SC Cleared
3 86 (4.69%) ISTQB
4 80 (4.36%) Degree
5 67 (3.65%) DV Cleared
6 63 (3.43%) BPSS Clearance
7 39 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
8 19 (1.04%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 18 (0.98%) AWS Certification
10 15 (0.82%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 14 (0.76%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 14 (0.76%) Master's Degree
12 13 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
13 11 (0.60%) CCNP
13 11 (0.60%) SAFe Agilist
14 8 (0.44%) CISSP
15 7 (0.38%) Azure Certification
15 7 (0.38%) DBS Check
16 5 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 5 (0.27%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 405 (22.07%) QA
2 131 (7.14%) Accessibility
3 122 (6.65%) Data Quality
4 59 (3.22%) WCAG
5 30 (1.63%) GDPR
6 13 (0.71%) ISO 20022
7 12 (0.65%) NCSC
8 11 (0.60%) NIST
9 10 (0.54%) Def Stans
9 10 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 9 (0.49%) SLA
11 5 (0.27%) FATCA
12 4 (0.22%) HL7
12 4 (0.22%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 4 (0.22%) SEPA
12 4 (0.22%) Software Quality Assurance
13 3 (0.16%) EU AI Act
13 3 (0.16%) GRC
13 3 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 299 (16.29%) Docker
2 26 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (0.82%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.76%) Firmware
5 12 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.22%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 4 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.11%) SRDF
9 1 (0.054%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.054%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.054%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 313 (17.06%) Kubernetes
2 225 (12.26%) Terraform
3 93 (5.07%) Ansible
3 93 (5.07%) Grafana
4 85 (4.63%) Prometheus
5 36 (1.96%) Argo
6 13 (0.71%) HP ALM
7 12 (0.65%) Puppet
8 11 (0.60%) Kibana
9 10 (0.54%) Dell DRAC
9 10 (0.54%) HP Quality Center
10 8 (0.44%) Kustomize
10 8 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.38%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 7 (0.38%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 6 (0.33%) NetBackup
13 5 (0.27%) Istio
13 5 (0.27%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.22%) Oracle RMAN
14 4 (0.22%) Rancher
Vendors
1 156 (8.50%) Microsoft
2 143 (7.79%) Oracle
3 76 (4.14%) Salesforce
4 61 (3.32%) Databricks
5 56 (3.05%) Red Hat
6 55 (3.00%) Talend
7 51 (2.78%) ServiceNow
8 50 (2.72%) Google
8 50 (2.72%) Splunk
9 38 (2.07%) Denodo
10 32 (1.74%) Informatica
11 29 (1.58%) VMware
12 27 (1.47%) Dynatrace
12 27 (1.47%) UiPath
13 26 (1.42%) SAP
14 25 (1.36%) IBM
15 22 (1.20%) Cisco
16 16 (0.87%) HP
17 14 (0.76%) Blue Prism
17 14 (0.76%) OpenAI