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

6 months to
8 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 45 57
Rank change year-on-year -4 +12 -15
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,458 1,200 1,346
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.62% 4.39% 3.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.23% 4.93% 4.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,000 807 965
10th Percentile £337 £325 £390
25th Percentile £401 £400 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -7.41% -6.09%
75th Percentile £588 £618 £638
90th Percentile £700 £700 £719
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -5.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 2 46
10th Percentile £41.94 £51.00 £37.50
25th Percentile £46.25 £56.25 £52.19
Median hourly rate £61.75 £67.50 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.52% -12.90% +29.17%
75th Percentile £66.88 £78.75 £90.00
90th Percentile £67.30 £84.00 -
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £47.50 £77.50
% change year-on-year +26.32% -38.71% +29.17%

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 27,872 24,320 31,532
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.34% 88.88% 87.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,782 14,954 21,308
10th Percentile £304 £310 £306
25th Percentile £409 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £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 1,755 794 1,429
10th Percentile £15.20 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.96 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +27.14%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -23.53% +21.43%

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 8 January 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 8 January 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 8 January 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 -4 710 £500 -3.85% 225
North of England +3 304 £488 +11.43% 281
Midlands +14 152 £495 -0.50% 185
Yorkshire -8 146 £507 +12.61% 140
South East -29 134 £500 -3.61% 390
North West +5 115 £425 +5.07% 97
West Midlands +6 114 £519 -5.73% 56
South West 0 72 £550 -3.51% 207
North East +19 45 £488 +41.82% 44
East of England -4 45 £570 +42.50% 206
East Midlands -2 38 £400 -13.51% 123
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 80 (5.49%) Confluence
2 54 (3.70%) SAS
3 22 (1.51%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.89%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.75%) Apache
7 6 (0.41%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 6 (0.41%) CMS
7 6 (0.41%) OpenStack
7 6 (0.41%) Oracle Application Server
8 4 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
9 3 (0.21%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.21%) Appian
9 3 (0.21%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.14%) Camunda
10 2 (0.14%) Magnolia
10 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.14%) nginx
10 2 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
10 2 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 16 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.55%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.55%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.14%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.14%) Simulink
4 2 (0.14%) Trello
4 2 (0.14%) Windchill
5 1 (0.069%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 18 (1.23%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.27%) SAP HR
3 3 (0.21%) Workday HCM
4 2 (0.14%) Eagle PACE
4 2 (0.14%) Markit EDM
4 2 (0.14%) Maximo
4 2 (0.14%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.14%) SAP FI
4 2 (0.14%) SAP PLM
4 2 (0.14%) Shopify
5 1 (0.069%) Algo Collateral
5 1 (0.069%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.069%) CODA-Financials
5 1 (0.069%) Loan IQ
5 1 (0.069%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.069%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.069%) PORTIA
5 1 (0.069%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 396 (27.16%) Azure
2 344 (23.59%) AWS
3 209 (14.33%) GitHub
4 158 (10.84%) Azure DevOps
5 142 (9.74%) GCP
6 107 (7.34%) GitHub Actions
7 102 (7.00%) Serverless
8 53 (3.64%) OpenShift
9 45 (3.09%) Power Platform
10 41 (2.81%) Azure AKS
11 40 (2.74%) AWS Lambda
12 38 (2.61%) Amazon S3
13 35 (2.40%) SaaS
14 33 (2.26%) Snowflake
15 30 (2.06%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (1.92%) Amazon EKS
16 28 (1.92%) Azure Functions
17 26 (1.78%) Entra ID
17 26 (1.78%) Tricentis Tosca
18 25 (1.71%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 39 (2.67%) Firewall
2 32 (2.19%) Wireshark
3 22 (1.51%) HTTP
4 21 (1.44%) HTTPS
5 20 (1.37%) TCP/IP
6 19 (1.30%) SSL
7 16 (1.10%) VPN
8 15 (1.03%) Network Security
8 15 (1.03%) SD-WAN
9 12 (0.82%) Ethernet
10 10 (0.69%) WAN
11 8 (0.55%) AMQP
11 8 (0.55%) DNS
11 8 (0.55%) Multicast
12 7 (0.48%) FTP
12 7 (0.48%) VLAN
13 5 (0.34%) Cisco IPT
13 5 (0.34%) MPLS
14 4 (0.27%) DHCP
14 4 (0.27%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 96 (6.58%) PostgreSQL
2 70 (4.80%) NoSQL
3 61 (4.18%) MongoDB
4 59 (4.05%) Relational Database
5 58 (3.98%) SQL Server
6 29 (1.99%) Data Warehouse
6 29 (1.99%) Pentaho
7 24 (1.65%) BigQuery
8 23 (1.58%) Power BI
9 20 (1.37%) Redis
10 18 (1.23%) MySQL
10 18 (1.23%) Oracle Database
11 17 (1.17%) Big Data
12 15 (1.03%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 14 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
13 14 (0.96%) Data Lake
14 13 (0.89%) DynamoDB
15 12 (0.82%) Star Schema
16 11 (0.75%) Apache Cassandra
17 10 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 270 (18.52%) Git
2 264 (18.11%) Jenkins
3 253 (17.35%) JIRA
4 222 (15.23%) Selenium
5 198 (13.58%) GitLab
6 119 (8.16%) Cucumber
7 108 (7.41%) Postman
8 96 (6.58%) Cypress.io
9 76 (5.21%) JUnit
10 66 (4.53%) REST Assured
11 54 (3.70%) JMeter
12 40 (2.74%) Bitbucket
13 37 (2.54%) SonarQube
14 29 (1.99%) Maven
15 28 (1.92%) TestRail
16 25 (1.71%) Gradle
16 25 (1.71%) SpecFlow
17 23 (1.58%) Gatling
18 22 (1.51%) Mockito
19 20 (1.37%) WebDriver
General
1 392 (26.89%) Social Skills
2 243 (16.67%) Finance
3 197 (13.51%) Public Sector
4 163 (11.18%) Analytical Skills
5 110 (7.54%) Banking
6 30 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
7 27 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 23 (1.58%) Pharmaceutical
9 22 (1.51%) Investment Banking
10 20 (1.37%) Front Office
10 20 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
11 19 (1.30%) Telecoms
12 16 (1.10%) Financial Institution
13 13 (0.89%) Military
14 11 (0.75%) Manufacturing
14 11 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
15 10 (0.69%) Aerospace
16 9 (0.62%) Influencing Skills
17 8 (0.55%) Marketing
18 7 (0.48%) Retail
Job Titles
1 324 (22.22%) Developer
2 246 (16.87%) Senior
3 162 (11.11%) Tester
4 159 (10.91%) Test Engineer
5 130 (8.92%) Lead
6 91 (6.24%) Java Developer
7 84 (5.76%) Automation Tester
8 78 (5.35%) Software Engineer
9 69 (4.73%) Test Automation Engineer
10 64 (4.39%) Analyst
11 62 (4.25%) QA Engineer
11 62 (4.25%) Senior Developer
12 60 (4.12%) Data Engineer
13 51 (3.50%) DevOps Engineer
14 47 (3.22%) Automation Engineer
14 47 (3.22%) Test Leader
15 45 (3.09%) Test Analyst
16 41 (2.81%) Test Manager
17 36 (2.47%) Full-Stack Developer
18 35 (2.40%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 191 (13.10%) REST
2 149 (10.22%) Playwright
3 124 (8.50%) .NET
4 121 (8.30%) React
5 108 (7.41%) RESTful
6 104 (7.13%) Node.js
7 102 (7.00%) Kafka
8 95 (6.52%) Spring
9 89 (6.10%) Spring Boot
10 69 (4.73%) pytest
11 55 (3.77%) HTML
12 53 (3.64%) CSS
13 52 (3.57%) AngularJS
13 52 (3.57%) JSON
14 48 (3.29%) SOAP
15 47 (3.22%) XML
16 40 (2.74%) Jest
17 38 (2.61%) OAuth
17 38 (2.61%) Web Services
18 34 (2.33%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 153 (10.49%) Cloud Native
2 97 (6.65%) Product Ownership
3 49 (3.36%) Distributed Systems
4 44 (3.02%) Mobile App
5 39 (2.67%) Security Posture
6 31 (2.13%) Algorithms
7 23 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
7 23 (1.58%) Enterprise Software
8 21 (1.44%) Management Information System
9 20 (1.37%) Data Structures
9 20 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
9 20 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
10 19 (1.30%) Onboarding
11 18 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
11 18 (1.23%) Public Cloud
12 16 (1.10%) Genomics
12 16 (1.10%) Life Science
13 15 (1.03%) Derivative
13 15 (1.03%) Equities
13 15 (1.03%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 150 (10.29%) Linux
2 72 (4.94%) Windows
3 46 (3.16%) Unix
4 39 (2.67%) Android
5 31 (2.13%) Apple iOS
6 19 (1.30%) Mac OS X
6 19 (1.30%) Windows Server
7 10 (0.69%) Kali Linux
8 7 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.34%) CentOS
10 3 (0.21%) Mac OS
10 3 (0.21%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.14%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.14%) VMS
12 1 (0.069%) FreeRTOS
12 1 (0.069%) Windows Embedded Compact
12 1 (0.069%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 724 (49.66%) CI/CD
2 715 (49.04%) Agile
3 552 (37.86%) DevOps
4 392 (26.89%) Problem-Solving
5 230 (15.78%) Microservices
6 217 (14.88%) Containerisation
7 211 (14.47%) Continuous Improvement
8 207 (14.20%) Test Strategy
9 202 (13.85%) Scrum
10 188 (12.89%) Test Scripting
11 186 (12.76%) TDD
12 185 (12.69%) Infrastructure as Code
13 181 (12.41%) Software Engineering
14 159 (10.91%) AI
15 155 (10.63%) Validation
16 149 (10.22%) Software Testing
17 144 (9.88%) SDLC
18 139 (9.53%) BDD
19 137 (9.40%) Analytics
20 129 (8.85%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 447 (30.66%) Python
2 338 (23.18%) Java
3 290 (19.89%) SQL
4 208 (14.27%) JavaScript
5 176 (12.07%) TypeScript
6 146 (10.01%) C#
7 81 (5.56%) Bash
8 61 (4.18%) PowerShell
9 35 (2.40%) C++
10 31 (2.13%) Go
11 24 (1.65%) Kotlin
12 23 (1.58%) Bicep
13 18 (1.23%) PL/SQL
14 14 (0.96%) PHP
15 11 (0.75%) Apex Code
15 11 (0.75%) Groovy
15 11 (0.75%) Perl
15 11 (0.75%) Swift
16 10 (0.69%) Ruby
17 8 (0.55%) C
Qualifications
1 387 (26.54%) Security Cleared
2 297 (20.37%) SC Cleared
3 88 (6.04%) Degree
4 58 (3.98%) ISTQB
5 50 (3.43%) Computer Science Degree
6 46 (3.16%) DV Cleared
7 44 (3.02%) BPSS Clearance
8 22 (1.51%) Master's Degree
9 18 (1.23%) OSCP
10 17 (1.17%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (1.10%) AWS Certification
11 16 (1.10%) CISSP
11 16 (1.10%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 14 (0.96%) Azure Certification
12 14 (0.96%) Cisco Certification
12 14 (0.96%) MCP
13 13 (0.89%) CEH
14 12 (0.82%) GPEN
15 11 (0.75%) Oracle Certification
16 10 (0.69%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 323 (22.15%) QA
2 107 (7.34%) Accessibility
3 66 (4.53%) Data Quality
4 34 (2.33%) NIST
4 34 (2.33%) WCAG
5 33 (2.26%) GDPR
6 19 (1.30%) NCSC
7 18 (1.23%) EU AI Act
8 17 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 14 (0.96%) PSD2
10 12 (0.82%) ISO 20022
11 10 (0.69%) PCI DSS
12 9 (0.62%) SEPA
13 8 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 6 (0.41%) NIST 800
15 5 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
15 5 (0.34%) MiFID
15 5 (0.34%) PERC
15 5 (0.34%) SLA
15 5 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 313 (21.47%) Docker
2 30 (2.06%) Active Directory
3 5 (0.34%) Firmware
3 5 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
4 3 (0.21%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 3 (0.21%) ISA Server
4 3 (0.21%) QEMU
4 3 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
4 3 (0.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.21%) zsh
5 1 (0.069%) Embedded Firmware
5 1 (0.069%) KVM
5 1 (0.069%) Squid
5 1 (0.069%) Time Sharing Option
5 1 (0.069%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.069%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 278 (19.07%) Kubernetes
2 176 (12.07%) Terraform
3 109 (7.48%) Ansible
4 74 (5.08%) Grafana
5 46 (3.16%) Prometheus
6 16 (1.10%) Nmap
7 15 (1.03%) Progress Chef
8 14 (0.96%) CSIRT
9 13 (0.89%) NetBackup
10 12 (0.82%) HP ALM
10 12 (0.82%) Puppet
11 11 (0.75%) Argo
12 10 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
13 7 (0.48%) Nessus
14 6 (0.41%) Kibana
14 6 (0.41%) Podman
15 4 (0.27%) Forefront Identity Manager
15 4 (0.27%) NetIQ Identity Manager
15 4 (0.27%) Rancher
15 4 (0.27%) SCCM
Vendors
1 147 (10.08%) Oracle
2 142 (9.74%) Microsoft
3 64 (4.39%) Splunk
4 56 (3.84%) Databricks
5 50 (3.43%) ServiceNow
6 46 (3.16%) Salesforce
7 41 (2.81%) SAP
8 40 (2.74%) Google
9 29 (1.99%) Denodo
9 29 (1.99%) Talend
10 23 (1.58%) Red Hat
10 23 (1.58%) VMware
11 22 (1.51%) Cisco
12 21 (1.44%) F5
13 18 (1.23%) webMethods
14 17 (1.17%) IBM
14 17 (1.17%) MuleSoft
15 15 (1.03%) Atlassian
15 15 (1.03%) Dynatrace
16 14 (0.96%) Workday