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

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 45 55
Rank change year-on-year -2 +10 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,663 1,150 1,319
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.51% 4.68% 3.48%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.22% 5.16% 4.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,123 796 898
10th Percentile £331 £337 £375
25th Percentile £400 £400 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -4.76% -7.08%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £638
90th Percentile £680 £725 £719
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £514
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.68% -6.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 8 56
10th Percentile £28.25 £40.23 £46.50
25th Percentile £50.63 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +2.04%
75th Percentile £70.00 £75.92 £90.00
90th Percentile - £80.28 -
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +4.17%

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 31,848 22,266 32,932
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.46% 90.63% 86.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,386 14,474 21,796
10th Percentile £313 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £640 £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 1,978 815 2,152
10th Percentile £15.29 £15.18 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.79 £34.11 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -9.73% +4.95% -12.87%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.50
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%

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 17 March 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 17 March 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 17 March 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 +1 813 £500 -0.50% 206
North of England +4 329 £487 +8.88% 169
Midlands +10 193 £472 +0.96% 76
South East -30 165 £500 -14.53% 167
West Midlands +14 160 £480 -1.84% 47
North West +8 149 £450 - 81
Yorkshire -9 136 £500 +5.26% 47
South West -2 78 £500 -4.76% 88
East of England +1 62 £570 +19.06% 58
North East +9 48 £488 +28.09% 41
East Midlands -21 33 £400 +7.38% 29
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
1 113 (6.79%) Confluence
2 57 (3.43%) SAS
3 29 (1.74%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.78%) SharePoint
6 9 (0.54%) Apache
7 8 (0.48%) Appian
8 6 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.30%) CMS
9 5 (0.30%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.24%) Camunda
10 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.24%) Oracle Application Server
11 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.18%) nginx
11 3 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.12%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 27 (1.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
4 11 (0.66%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.060%) Mingle
8 1 (0.060%) Simulink
8 1 (0.060%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 24 (1.44%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.36%) Loan IQ
2 6 (0.36%) Shopify
3 5 (0.30%) Maximo
3 5 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.30%) Workday HCM
4 4 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.24%) SAP HR
5 3 (0.18%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.12%) Findur
6 2 (0.12%) iTrent
6 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.12%) Summit
7 1 (0.060%) CODA-Financials
7 1 (0.060%) IntelliMatch
7 1 (0.060%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.060%) PORTIA
Cloud Services
1 458 (27.54%) Azure
2 412 (24.77%) AWS
3 283 (17.02%) GitHub
4 200 (12.03%) Azure DevOps
5 153 (9.20%) GCP
6 151 (9.08%) GitHub Actions
7 118 (7.10%) Serverless
8 70 (4.21%) OpenShift
9 59 (3.55%) Power Platform
10 56 (3.37%) AWS Lambda
11 53 (3.19%) Amazon S3
12 44 (2.65%) Azure AKS
13 36 (2.16%) Snowflake
14 33 (1.98%) Azure Data Factory
15 32 (1.92%) Amazon ECS
16 31 (1.86%) AWS CloudFormation
17 30 (1.80%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 30 (1.80%) Amazon EKS
17 30 (1.80%) Azure Functions
18 29 (1.74%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 31 (1.86%) Firewall
2 18 (1.08%) Wireshark
3 16 (0.96%) TCP/IP
3 16 (0.96%) VPN
4 13 (0.78%) HTTP
4 13 (0.78%) SD-WAN
4 13 (0.78%) WAN
5 11 (0.66%) Network Security
5 11 (0.66%) SSL
6 10 (0.60%) HTTPS
7 8 (0.48%) DNS
7 8 (0.48%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.48%) MPLS
8 7 (0.42%) FTP
8 7 (0.42%) Multicast
8 7 (0.42%) SAN
9 6 (0.36%) AMQP
10 5 (0.30%) Cisco IPT
10 5 (0.30%) VLAN
11 4 (0.24%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 100 (6.01%) PostgreSQL
2 71 (4.27%) NoSQL
3 66 (3.97%) SQL Server
4 58 (3.49%) MongoDB
5 49 (2.95%) Data Warehouse
5 49 (2.95%) Relational Database
6 34 (2.04%) Power BI
7 29 (1.74%) Pentaho
8 27 (1.62%) DynamoDB
9 25 (1.50%) BigQuery
10 24 (1.44%) Oracle Database
11 23 (1.38%) Tableau
12 21 (1.26%) MySQL
13 20 (1.20%) Redis
14 18 (1.08%) Oracle Reports
15 17 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
16 16 (0.96%) Azure SQL Database
17 15 (0.90%) Data Lake
18 11 (0.66%) Amazon Athena
18 11 (0.66%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 314 (18.88%) Git
2 309 (18.58%) JIRA
3 302 (18.16%) Jenkins
4 251 (15.09%) Selenium
5 250 (15.03%) GitLab
6 146 (8.78%) Cucumber
7 132 (7.94%) Postman
8 105 (6.31%) JUnit
9 96 (5.77%) Cypress.io
10 85 (5.11%) REST Assured
11 81 (4.87%) JMeter
12 40 (2.41%) WebDriver
13 36 (2.16%) SpecFlow
14 34 (2.04%) Maven
14 34 (2.04%) SonarQube
15 30 (1.80%) Gatling
15 30 (1.80%) Gradle
16 29 (1.74%) Zephyr
17 28 (1.68%) Bitbucket
17 28 (1.68%) TestRail
General
1 465 (27.96%) Social Skills
2 291 (17.50%) Finance
3 233 (14.01%) Public Sector
4 187 (11.24%) Analytical Skills
5 142 (8.54%) Banking
6 34 (2.04%) Documentation Skills
7 29 (1.74%) Investment Banking
8 26 (1.56%) Front Office
9 22 (1.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 21 (1.26%) Presentation Skills
11 20 (1.20%) Telecoms
12 18 (1.08%) Pharmaceutical
13 17 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
13 17 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
14 15 (0.90%) Financial Institution
15 14 (0.84%) Military
16 12 (0.72%) Aerospace
16 12 (0.72%) Legal
17 10 (0.60%) Electronics
18 9 (0.54%) Retail
Job Titles
1 345 (20.75%) Developer
2 269 (16.18%) Senior
3 199 (11.97%) Lead
4 188 (11.30%) Tester
5 182 (10.94%) Test Engineer
6 87 (5.23%) Data Engineer
6 87 (5.23%) Java Developer
7 85 (5.11%) Automation Tester
8 84 (5.05%) Analyst
9 78 (4.69%) Test Automation Engineer
10 73 (4.39%) Software Engineer
11 70 (4.21%) Test Leader
12 68 (4.09%) QA Engineer
13 60 (3.61%) Senior Developer
14 59 (3.55%) Architect
15 58 (3.49%) DevOps Engineer
16 55 (3.31%) Test Manager
17 53 (3.19%) Automation Engineer
18 52 (3.13%) Test Analyst
19 39 (2.35%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 209 (12.57%) REST
2 195 (11.73%) Playwright
3 143 (8.60%) React
4 136 (8.18%) Spring
5 125 (7.52%) .NET
6 120 (7.22%) RESTful
7 118 (7.10%) Kafka
8 114 (6.86%) Node.js
9 110 (6.61%) Spring Boot
10 79 (4.75%) pytest
11 58 (3.49%) AngularJS
12 52 (3.13%) HTML
12 52 (3.13%) OAuth
13 50 (3.01%) CSS
14 49 (2.95%) Jest
15 42 (2.53%) Web Services
16 37 (2.22%) GraphQL
16 37 (2.22%) JSON
16 37 (2.22%) WireMock
17 34 (2.04%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 180 (10.82%) Cloud Native
2 101 (6.07%) Product Ownership
3 77 (4.63%) Distributed Systems
4 44 (2.65%) Mobile App
5 42 (2.53%) Algorithms
6 37 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
7 36 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
8 29 (1.74%) Security Posture
9 26 (1.56%) Onboarding
10 25 (1.50%) Data Structures
10 25 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
11 23 (1.38%) Virtual Team
12 22 (1.32%) Equities
12 22 (1.32%) Management Information System
13 21 (1.26%) Distributed Architecture
13 21 (1.26%) Greenfield Project
13 21 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
14 18 (1.08%) Public Cloud
15 16 (0.96%) Derivative
15 16 (0.96%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 131 (7.88%) Linux
2 81 (4.87%) Windows
3 42 (2.53%) Android
4 36 (2.16%) Apple iOS
5 34 (2.04%) Unix
6 19 (1.14%) Windows Server
7 13 (0.78%) Mac OS X
7 13 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (0.66%) Kali Linux
9 7 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.30%) CentOS
11 3 (0.18%) Solaris
12 2 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
12 2 (0.12%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.060%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.060%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.060%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 864 (51.95%) CI/CD
2 795 (47.81%) Agile
3 613 (36.86%) DevOps
4 412 (24.77%) Problem-Solving
5 275 (16.54%) Continuous Improvement
6 270 (16.24%) Microservices
7 258 (15.51%) Test Strategy
8 238 (14.31%) Containerisation
9 230 (13.83%) Scrum
10 224 (13.47%) AI
11 208 (12.51%) Test Scripting
11 208 (12.51%) Validation
12 205 (12.33%) Software Engineering
13 199 (11.97%) TDD
14 196 (11.79%) Infrastructure as Code
15 184 (11.06%) Software Testing
16 183 (11.00%) Analytics
16 183 (11.00%) Observability
17 169 (10.16%) Regression Testing
18 160 (9.62%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 516 (31.03%) Python
2 409 (24.59%) Java
3 364 (21.89%) SQL
4 246 (14.79%) JavaScript
5 237 (14.25%) TypeScript
6 162 (9.74%) C#
7 71 (4.27%) PowerShell
8 62 (3.73%) Bash
9 46 (2.77%) C++
10 28 (1.68%) Go
11 27 (1.62%) C
11 27 (1.62%) Kotlin
12 23 (1.38%) Bicep
13 22 (1.32%) PL/SQL
14 20 (1.20%) Apex Code
15 17 (1.02%) Scala
16 16 (0.96%) Swift
17 15 (0.90%) Ruby
18 13 (0.78%) Groovy
19 12 (0.72%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 483 (29.04%) Security Cleared
2 366 (22.01%) SC Cleared
3 91 (5.47%) Degree
4 81 (4.87%) ISTQB
5 58 (3.49%) BPSS Clearance
6 55 (3.31%) Computer Science Degree
6 55 (3.31%) DV Cleared
7 24 (1.44%) Master's Degree
8 23 (1.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 14 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
9 14 (0.84%) OSCP
10 13 (0.78%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 12 (0.72%) Azure Certification
11 12 (0.72%) CEH
11 12 (0.72%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 11 (0.66%) AWS Certification
12 11 (0.66%) CISSP
13 10 (0.60%) Microsoft Certification
14 9 (0.54%) CCNP
14 9 (0.54%) GPEN
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (22.61%) QA
2 113 (6.79%) Accessibility
3 92 (5.53%) Data Quality
4 37 (2.22%) WCAG
5 30 (1.80%) NIST
6 27 (1.62%) GDPR
7 18 (1.08%) EU AI Act
8 16 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 15 (0.90%) NCSC
10 11 (0.66%) ISO 20022
11 10 (0.60%) SLA
12 9 (0.54%) Def Stans
12 9 (0.54%) PSD2
13 8 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.42%) SEPA
15 6 (0.36%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.30%) HL7
16 5 (0.30%) MiFID
16 5 (0.30%) NIST 800
16 5 (0.30%) PERC
System Software
1 338 (20.32%) Docker
2 28 (1.68%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.48%) Firmware
4 7 (0.42%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 7 (0.42%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.12%) SRDF
9 1 (0.060%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.060%) KVM
9 1 (0.060%) Squid
9 1 (0.060%) Time Sharing Option
9 1 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 327 (19.66%) Kubernetes
2 189 (11.37%) Terraform
3 102 (6.13%) Grafana
4 94 (5.65%) Ansible
5 76 (4.57%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.08%) HP ALM
6 18 (1.08%) Puppet
7 17 (1.02%) Argo
8 14 (0.84%) Nmap
8 14 (0.84%) Progress Chef
9 11 (0.66%) HP Quality Center
9 11 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (0.60%) NetBackup
11 8 (0.48%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 8 (0.48%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 7 (0.42%) Kibana
13 6 (0.36%) Podman
14 5 (0.30%) Rancher
15 4 (0.24%) CSIRT
15 4 (0.24%) Istio
Vendors
1 150 (9.02%) Microsoft
2 140 (8.42%) Oracle
3 65 (3.91%) Databricks
4 58 (3.49%) Splunk
5 55 (3.31%) ServiceNow
6 52 (3.13%) Google
6 52 (3.13%) Salesforce
7 39 (2.35%) SAP
8 36 (2.16%) Red Hat
9 33 (1.98%) Talend
10 25 (1.50%) Denodo
11 21 (1.26%) HP
11 21 (1.26%) IBM
11 21 (1.26%) VMware
12 20 (1.20%) Cisco
13 18 (1.08%) Workday
14 16 (0.96%) MuleSoft
15 15 (0.90%) Dynatrace
15 15 (0.90%) OpenAI
16 14 (0.84%) Atlassian