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

6 months to
18 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 52 52
Rank change year-on-year +6 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,931 1,208 1,376
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.29% 4.44% 3.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.02% 4.90% 4.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,231 835 917
10th Percentile £320 £313 £363
25th Percentile £406 £381 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £483 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.66% -8.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £704 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £480 £520
% change year-on-year -1.04% -7.69% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 30 41
10th Percentile £36.75 £40.26 £50.00
25th Percentile £60.17 £44.63 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -9.09% -26.67%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.88 £66.25
90th Percentile £74.40 £75.25 £74.50
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +35.00% -9.09% -21.29%

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 38,446 24,678 30,937
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.44% 90.65% 85.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,172 15,843 20,140
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £735 £746 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,378 1,309 2,090
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.28 £13.18
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.88 £16.83
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -8.14%
75th Percentile £68.75 £53.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £71.50 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -5.88%

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 18 July 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 18 July 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 18 July 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 +6 881 £500 - 177
North of England +13 387 £463 +3.12% 104
Midlands +8 245 £450 +9.09% 48
West Midlands +26 228 £450 -6.83% 24
South East -29 198 £459 -8.20% 136
North West -3 155 £481 +19.65% 53
Yorkshire +2 154 £496 +1.79% 33
South West +5 116 £463 +5.71% 46
North East +11 88 £425 +7.59% 19
East of England +20 86 £450 -1.91% 44
East Midlands -40 17 £425 +40.26% 24
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
1 168 (8.70%) Confluence
2 43 (2.23%) Apache Airflow
2 43 (2.23%) Apache Spark
3 37 (1.92%) SAS
4 20 (1.04%) SharePoint
5 19 (0.98%) Apache
6 13 (0.67%) CMS
7 7 (0.36%) Camunda
7 7 (0.36%) WebLogic
8 5 (0.26%) Appian
8 5 (0.26%) nginx
8 5 (0.26%) Tomcat
9 4 (0.21%) Jupyter
9 4 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.16%) Kentico
11 2 (0.10%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.10%) Apache Pulsar
11 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.10%) Mule
12 1 (0.052%) Mendix
Applications
1 27 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.78%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.41%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.21%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.21%) Simulink
6 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.10%) Trello
8 1 (0.052%) Mingle
8 1 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 24 (1.24%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.88%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.62%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
5 9 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.41%) Findur
7 6 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.31%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.31%) Shopify
8 5 (0.26%) BambooHR
9 4 (0.21%) Loan IQ
10 3 (0.16%) Distributed Ledger
10 3 (0.16%) Maximo
11 2 (0.10%) Infor CloudSuite
11 2 (0.10%) Infor LN
11 2 (0.10%) Infor M3
11 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS R12
11 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
11 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
11 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 546 (28.28%) AWS
2 540 (27.96%) Azure
3 335 (17.35%) GitHub
4 245 (12.69%) Azure DevOps
5 210 (10.88%) GitHub Actions
6 140 (7.25%) Serverless
7 132 (6.84%) GCP
8 98 (5.08%) AWS Lambda
9 86 (4.45%) Amazon S3
10 77 (3.99%) Power Platform
11 62 (3.21%) OpenShift
12 57 (2.95%) Amazon ECS
13 55 (2.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 45 (2.33%) dbt
15 44 (2.28%) Amazon EC2
16 42 (2.18%) Azure Data Factory
17 39 (2.02%) Snowflake
18 34 (1.76%) Amazon EKS
18 34 (1.76%) GitHub Copilot
19 32 (1.66%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 18 (0.93%) Firewall
2 16 (0.83%) HTTP
3 15 (0.78%) SAN
4 11 (0.57%) Network Security
4 11 (0.57%) WAN
5 10 (0.52%) 2G
5 10 (0.52%) 3G
5 10 (0.52%) 4G
5 10 (0.52%) 5G
5 10 (0.52%) Diameter Protocol
5 10 (0.52%) SIGTRAN
5 10 (0.52%) SS7
6 9 (0.47%) MPLS
7 7 (0.36%) VPN
8 6 (0.31%) BGP
8 6 (0.31%) LAN
8 6 (0.31%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (0.31%) Wireshark
9 5 (0.26%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 107 (5.54%) PostgreSQL
2 103 (5.33%) Data Warehouse
3 92 (4.76%) MongoDB
4 85 (4.40%) NoSQL
5 77 (3.99%) SQL Server
6 62 (3.21%) Power BI
7 60 (3.11%) Relational Database
8 46 (2.38%) DynamoDB
9 36 (1.86%) Oracle Reports
10 31 (1.61%) Pentaho
11 30 (1.55%) Amazon Athena
12 28 (1.45%) Amazon RDS
12 28 (1.45%) Big Data
13 26 (1.35%) Metadata
14 25 (1.29%) Data Lake
15 24 (1.24%) Redis
16 23 (1.19%) Amazon Redshift
17 21 (1.09%) Oracle Database
18 20 (1.04%) MySQL
19 18 (0.93%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 357 (18.49%) JIRA
2 349 (18.07%) Git
3 305 (15.79%) Jenkins
4 258 (13.36%) GitLab
5 242 (12.53%) Selenium
6 136 (7.04%) Postman
7 133 (6.89%) Cucumber
8 98 (5.08%) JUnit
8 98 (5.08%) REST Assured
9 96 (4.97%) Cypress.io
10 79 (4.09%) JMeter
11 62 (3.21%) Zephyr
12 55 (2.85%) WebDriver
13 52 (2.69%) SonarQube
14 44 (2.28%) Gatling
15 43 (2.23%) Gradle
16 39 (2.02%) Bitbucket
17 35 (1.81%) Mockito
18 31 (1.61%) Maven
19 27 (1.40%) SpecFlow
General
1 527 (27.29%) Social Skills
2 368 (19.06%) Finance
3 258 (13.36%) Analytical Skills
4 236 (12.22%) Public Sector
5 165 (8.54%) Banking
6 55 (2.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 41 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
8 30 (1.55%) Investment Banking
9 29 (1.50%) Front Office
9 29 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
9 29 (1.50%) Retail
10 26 (1.35%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.14%) Financial Institution
12 20 (1.04%) Military
13 19 (0.98%) Aerospace
14 16 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
15 15 (0.78%) Legal
16 14 (0.73%) Automotive
16 14 (0.73%) Back Office
17 13 (0.67%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 386 (19.99%) Developer
2 310 (16.05%) Senior
3 212 (10.98%) Lead
4 194 (10.05%) Test Engineer
5 190 (9.84%) Tester
6 133 (6.89%) Data Engineer
7 124 (6.42%) Java Developer
8 112 (5.80%) Software Engineer
9 104 (5.39%) Analyst
10 86 (4.45%) Architect
10 86 (4.45%) DevOps Engineer
10 86 (4.45%) Senior Developer
11 82 (4.25%) QA Engineer
11 82 (4.25%) Test Automation Engineer
12 75 (3.88%) Test Leader
13 67 (3.47%) Automation Tester
14 63 (3.26%) Test Analyst
15 61 (3.16%) Full-Stack Developer
16 54 (2.80%) Automation Engineer
17 48 (2.49%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 224 (11.60%) REST
2 211 (10.93%) Playwright
3 179 (9.27%) React
4 159 (8.23%) RESTful
4 159 (8.23%) Spring
5 150 (7.77%) Kafka
6 129 (6.68%) .NET
7 128 (6.63%) Spring Boot
8 99 (5.13%) Node.js
9 81 (4.19%) AngularJS
10 75 (3.88%) HTML
11 72 (3.73%) CSS
12 48 (2.49%) OAuth
13 43 (2.23%) Jest
13 43 (2.23%) pytest
14 40 (2.07%) HTML5
14 40 (2.07%) Quarkus
15 39 (2.02%) .NET Framework
15 39 (2.02%) Gherkin
16 38 (1.97%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 258 (13.36%) Cloud Native
2 135 (6.99%) Product Ownership
3 132 (6.84%) Distributed Systems
4 62 (3.21%) Enterprise Software
5 56 (2.90%) Legacy Systems
6 49 (2.54%) Data Protection Act
7 44 (2.28%) Self-Motivation
8 41 (2.12%) Onboarding
9 39 (2.02%) Mobile App
10 38 (1.97%) Virtual Team
11 30 (1.55%) Distributed Architecture
12 28 (1.45%) AI Agents
12 28 (1.45%) Security Posture
13 27 (1.40%) Embedded Systems
14 24 (1.24%) Management Information System
15 22 (1.14%) Fixed Income
16 21 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
17 19 (0.98%) Algorithms
18 18 (0.93%) Data Structures
19 15 (0.78%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 117 (6.06%) Linux
2 70 (3.63%) Windows
3 59 (3.06%) Unix
4 38 (1.97%) Android
4 38 (1.97%) Apple iOS
5 22 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.73%) Mac OS X
7 13 (0.67%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.36%) Mac OS
8 7 (0.36%) Solaris
9 6 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
10 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.21%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.16%) AIX
12 3 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.10%) CentOS
14 1 (0.052%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,093 (56.60%) CI/CD
2 903 (46.76%) Agile
3 696 (36.04%) DevOps
4 368 (19.06%) Problem-Solving
5 355 (18.38%) Microservices
6 345 (17.87%) Continuous Improvement
7 322 (16.68%) Software Engineering
8 309 (16.00%) Scrum
9 296 (15.33%) Test Strategy
10 291 (15.07%) Validation
11 280 (14.50%) Infrastructure as Code
12 266 (13.78%) AI
13 246 (12.74%) TDD
14 243 (12.58%) Containerisation
15 239 (12.38%) Observability
16 207 (10.72%) ETL
17 203 (10.51%) Software Testing
18 201 (10.41%) End-to-End Testing
19 195 (10.10%) Data Pipeline
20 192 (9.94%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 477 (24.70%) Java
1 477 (24.70%) Python
2 451 (23.36%) SQL
3 239 (12.38%) JavaScript
4 216 (11.19%) TypeScript
5 175 (9.06%) C#
6 69 (3.57%) PowerShell
7 64 (3.31%) Bash
8 50 (2.59%) Kotlin
9 43 (2.23%) C++
10 34 (1.76%) Bicep
11 33 (1.71%) C
12 32 (1.66%) Go
13 29 (1.50%) Apex Code
14 27 (1.40%) PL/SQL
15 25 (1.29%) Scala
16 23 (1.19%) Swift
17 18 (0.93%) Ruby
18 15 (0.78%) Groovy
19 12 (0.62%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 590 (30.55%) Security Cleared
2 486 (25.17%) SC Cleared
3 90 (4.66%) Degree
4 87 (4.51%) ISTQB
5 64 (3.31%) BPSS Clearance
6 61 (3.16%) DV Cleared
7 45 (2.33%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (1.29%) AWS Certification
9 21 (1.09%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 15 (0.78%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 13 (0.67%) Master's Degree
12 12 (0.62%) Azure Certification
12 12 (0.62%) Cisco Certification
13 11 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 11 (0.57%) SAFe Agilist
14 10 (0.52%) CCNP
15 8 (0.41%) CISSP
16 7 (0.36%) DBS Check
17 6 (0.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 6 (0.31%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 467 (24.18%) QA
2 148 (7.66%) Accessibility
3 130 (6.73%) Data Quality
4 72 (3.73%) WCAG
5 36 (1.86%) GDPR
6 12 (0.62%) NCSC
7 10 (0.52%) Def Stans
8 9 (0.47%) ISO 20022
8 9 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 9 (0.47%) NIST
9 7 (0.36%) SLA
10 5 (0.26%) FATCA
10 5 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
11 4 (0.21%) GRC
11 4 (0.21%) PCI DSS
12 3 (0.16%) EU AI Act
12 3 (0.16%) HL7
12 3 (0.16%) MiFID
12 3 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 3 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 342 (17.71%) Docker
2 26 (1.35%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
4 14 (0.73%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.73%) Firmware
5 5 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
6 4 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.10%) SRDF
8 1 (0.052%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.052%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.052%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 348 (18.02%) Kubernetes
2 245 (12.69%) Terraform
3 103 (5.33%) Ansible
4 102 (5.28%) Grafana
5 88 (4.56%) Prometheus
6 36 (1.86%) Argo
7 15 (0.78%) HP ALM
8 14 (0.73%) Puppet
9 12 (0.62%) Kibana
10 10 (0.52%) Dell DRAC
10 10 (0.52%) HP Quality Center
10 10 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (0.41%) Progress Chef
12 7 (0.36%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.31%) NetBackup
14 5 (0.26%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 5 (0.26%) Istio
14 5 (0.26%) NetIQ Identity Manager
15 4 (0.21%) Packer
15 4 (0.21%) Rancher
Vendors
1 180 (9.32%) Microsoft
2 149 (7.72%) Oracle
3 84 (4.35%) Salesforce
4 68 (3.52%) Databricks
5 55 (2.85%) Red Hat
6 53 (2.74%) Talend
7 51 (2.64%) Splunk
8 50 (2.59%) Google
9 40 (2.07%) ServiceNow
10 34 (1.76%) Denodo
11 31 (1.61%) Informatica
12 29 (1.50%) IBM
13 28 (1.45%) UiPath
14 27 (1.40%) VMware
15 26 (1.35%) Dynatrace
15 26 (1.35%) SAP
16 21 (1.09%) Cisco
17 18 (0.93%) HP
18 13 (0.67%) Fortinet
19 11 (0.57%) MuleSoft