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 11 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 45 56
Rank change year-on-year -4 +11 -13
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,564 1,158 1,371
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.62% 4.47% 3.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.27% 4.98% 4.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,063 767 977
10th Percentile £331 £339 £375
25th Percentile £400 £401 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £588 £618 £630
90th Percentile £688 £725 £711
UK median daily rate £490 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -2.00% -4.76% -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 3 58
10th Percentile £30.67 £73.44 £50.25
25th Percentile £48.63 £74.85 £52.50
Median hourly rate £64.25 £77.19 £70.19
Median % change year-on-year -16.76% +9.98% +19.97%
75th Percentile £67.50 £82.35 £90.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £85.44 -
UK median hourly rate £63.50 £74.00 £69.25
% change year-on-year -14.19% +6.86% +21.49%

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 29,666 23,261 33,042
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.57% 89.75% 87.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,990 14,365 22,049
10th Percentile £306 £310 £300
25th Percentile £411 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £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 1,857 734 1,965
10th Percentile £15.14 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.05 £21.01 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.77 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.37% - -
75th Percentile £60.25 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £72.84
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £33.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -2.99% +2.48%

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 11 February 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 11 February 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 11 February 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 -4 764 £500 -4.76% 176
North of England +5 327 £500 +17.65% 124
South East -21 161 £496 -0.80% 161
Yorkshire -16 145 £525 +16.02% 30
Midlands +3 144 £492 +3.91% 49
North West +6 134 £447 +10.51% 78
West Midlands +1 113 £515 +5.97% 31
South West +3 79 £518 -7.59% 68
East of England +4 53 £570 +42.50% 52
North East +15 52 £488 +31.33% 16
East Midlands -8 31 £400 -13.51% 18
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 91 (5.82%) Confluence
2 44 (2.81%) SAS
3 18 (1.15%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.90%) SharePoint
5 9 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.51%) Apache
6 8 (0.51%) Appian
7 6 (0.38%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 6 (0.38%) Oracle Application Server
8 5 (0.32%) CMS
8 5 (0.32%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.26%) Camunda
9 4 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.19%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.19%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.13%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.13%) nginx
11 2 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.13%) WordPress
12 1 (0.064%) Apache Synapse
Applications
1 23 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.70%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.064%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.064%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.064%) Trello
Business Applications
1 19 (1.21%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.32%) Workday HCM
3 4 (0.26%) Loan IQ
3 4 (0.26%) Maximo
3 4 (0.26%) SAP HR
4 3 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.13%) Eagle PACE
5 2 (0.13%) iTrent
5 2 (0.13%) Markit EDM
5 2 (0.13%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.13%) Shopify
5 2 (0.13%) Summit
6 1 (0.064%) Algo Collateral
6 1 (0.064%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.064%) CODA-Financials
6 1 (0.064%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.064%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 417 (26.66%) Azure
2 366 (23.40%) AWS
3 232 (14.83%) GitHub
4 172 (11.00%) Azure DevOps
5 152 (9.72%) GCP
6 122 (7.80%) GitHub Actions
7 106 (6.78%) Serverless
8 62 (3.96%) OpenShift
9 51 (3.26%) Power Platform
10 44 (2.81%) AWS Lambda
11 41 (2.62%) Azure AKS
12 39 (2.49%) Amazon S3
13 37 (2.37%) SaaS
14 33 (2.11%) Snowflake
15 31 (1.98%) Azure Functions
16 29 (1.85%) Azure Data Factory
17 28 (1.79%) Amazon EKS
17 28 (1.79%) Entra ID
18 27 (1.73%) AWS CloudFormation
18 27 (1.73%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 36 (2.30%) Firewall
2 30 (1.92%) Wireshark
3 21 (1.34%) HTTPS
4 20 (1.28%) VPN
5 19 (1.21%) TCP/IP
6 17 (1.09%) SSL
7 15 (0.96%) HTTP
8 14 (0.90%) Network Security
9 13 (0.83%) SD-WAN
10 11 (0.70%) WAN
11 10 (0.64%) Ethernet
11 10 (0.64%) MPLS
12 9 (0.58%) DNS
12 9 (0.58%) Multicast
12 9 (0.58%) VLAN
13 7 (0.45%) AMQP
13 7 (0.45%) FTP
14 5 (0.32%) BGP
14 5 (0.32%) Cisco IPT
14 5 (0.32%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 86 (5.50%) PostgreSQL
2 72 (4.60%) MongoDB
3 70 (4.48%) NoSQL
4 63 (4.03%) SQL Server
5 53 (3.39%) Relational Database
6 29 (1.85%) Data Warehouse
7 27 (1.73%) Power BI
8 23 (1.47%) Oracle Database
9 22 (1.41%) BigQuery
9 22 (1.41%) MySQL
10 21 (1.34%) Pentaho
11 17 (1.09%) DynamoDB
11 17 (1.09%) Redis
11 17 (1.09%) Tableau
12 15 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
13 13 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
13 13 (0.83%) Big Data
13 13 (0.83%) Star Schema
14 12 (0.77%) Data Lake
14 12 (0.77%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 275 (17.58%) JIRA
2 273 (17.46%) Jenkins
3 261 (16.69%) Git
4 229 (14.64%) GitLab
4 229 (14.64%) Selenium
5 132 (8.44%) Postman
6 128 (8.18%) Cucumber
7 99 (6.33%) Cypress.io
8 86 (5.50%) REST Assured
9 84 (5.37%) JUnit
10 65 (4.16%) JMeter
11 39 (2.49%) SonarQube
12 34 (2.17%) Maven
13 33 (2.11%) TestRail
14 32 (2.05%) Mockito
15 31 (1.98%) Gradle
16 30 (1.92%) Bitbucket
17 29 (1.85%) Gatling
18 26 (1.66%) SpecFlow
18 26 (1.66%) WebDriver
General
1 401 (25.64%) Social Skills
2 259 (16.56%) Finance
3 212 (13.55%) Public Sector
4 183 (11.70%) Analytical Skills
5 127 (8.12%) Banking
6 27 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 25 (1.60%) Investment Banking
8 24 (1.53%) Documentation Skills
9 23 (1.47%) Front Office
10 22 (1.41%) Pharmaceutical
10 22 (1.41%) Telecoms
11 18 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
12 15 (0.96%) Military
13 13 (0.83%) Financial Institution
14 12 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
15 11 (0.70%) Aerospace
16 10 (0.64%) Manufacturing
17 9 (0.58%) Electronics
17 9 (0.58%) Legal
17 9 (0.58%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 371 (23.72%) Developer
2 263 (16.82%) Senior
3 178 (11.38%) Tester
4 171 (10.93%) Test Engineer
5 166 (10.61%) Lead
6 110 (7.03%) Java Developer
7 84 (5.37%) Automation Tester
8 78 (4.99%) Software Engineer
9 76 (4.86%) Analyst
10 71 (4.54%) Senior Developer
10 71 (4.54%) Test Automation Engineer
11 60 (3.84%) Test Leader
12 58 (3.71%) QA Engineer
13 55 (3.52%) DevOps Engineer
14 54 (3.45%) Data Engineer
15 50 (3.20%) Automation Engineer
15 50 (3.20%) Test Analyst
15 50 (3.20%) Test Manager
16 42 (2.69%) Architect
16 42 (2.69%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 212 (13.55%) REST
2 181 (11.57%) Playwright
3 137 (8.76%) React
4 119 (7.61%) .NET
5 117 (7.48%) Node.js
6 116 (7.42%) RESTful
6 116 (7.42%) Spring
7 115 (7.35%) Kafka
8 107 (6.84%) Spring Boot
9 76 (4.86%) pytest
10 52 (3.32%) AngularJS
10 52 (3.32%) HTML
11 50 (3.20%) OAuth
11 50 (3.20%) SOAP
12 49 (3.13%) JSON
13 47 (3.01%) CSS
14 46 (2.94%) Jest
15 45 (2.88%) XML
16 44 (2.81%) Web Services
17 36 (2.30%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 166 (10.61%) Cloud Native
2 98 (6.27%) Product Ownership
3 59 (3.77%) Distributed Systems
4 45 (2.88%) Mobile App
5 41 (2.62%) Security Posture
6 39 (2.49%) Algorithms
7 32 (2.05%) Legacy Systems
8 29 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
9 23 (1.47%) Data Structures
10 22 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
10 22 (1.41%) Onboarding
11 21 (1.34%) Virtual Team
12 20 (1.28%) Greenfield Project
12 20 (1.28%) Management Information System
13 18 (1.15%) Equities
13 18 (1.15%) Public Cloud
13 18 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
14 14 (0.90%) Genomics
14 14 (0.90%) Life Science
14 14 (0.90%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 152 (9.72%) Linux
2 77 (4.92%) Windows
3 50 (3.20%) Unix
4 41 (2.62%) Android
5 35 (2.24%) Apple iOS
6 26 (1.66%) Mac OS X
7 19 (1.21%) Windows Server
8 11 (0.70%) Kali Linux
9 6 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 5 (0.32%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.26%) CentOS
12 2 (0.13%) VMS
12 2 (0.13%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.064%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.064%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.064%) Windows Embedded Compact
13 1 (0.064%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 773 (49.42%) CI/CD
2 759 (48.53%) Agile
3 565 (36.13%) DevOps
4 405 (25.90%) Problem-Solving
5 257 (16.43%) Microservices
6 233 (14.90%) Test Strategy
7 224 (14.32%) Continuous Improvement
8 222 (14.19%) Containerisation
9 202 (12.92%) Scrum
10 201 (12.85%) Test Scripting
11 194 (12.40%) Software Engineering
12 193 (12.34%) TDD
13 192 (12.28%) AI
14 184 (11.76%) Infrastructure as Code
15 180 (11.51%) Validation
16 175 (11.19%) Software Testing
17 152 (9.72%) API Testing
18 151 (9.65%) BDD
19 145 (9.27%) Observability
20 142 (9.08%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 470 (30.05%) Python
2 403 (25.77%) Java
3 309 (19.76%) SQL
4 241 (15.41%) JavaScript
5 225 (14.39%) TypeScript
6 145 (9.27%) C#
7 71 (4.54%) Bash
8 60 (3.84%) PowerShell
9 38 (2.43%) Go
10 37 (2.37%) C++
11 23 (1.47%) Bicep
12 22 (1.41%) Kotlin
13 21 (1.34%) PL/SQL
14 16 (1.02%) Apex Code
14 16 (1.02%) Scala
15 14 (0.90%) C
16 13 (0.83%) Swift
17 11 (0.70%) Groovy
17 11 (0.70%) PHP
17 11 (0.70%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 437 (27.94%) Security Cleared
2 334 (21.36%) SC Cleared
3 93 (5.95%) Degree
4 69 (4.41%) ISTQB
5 58 (3.71%) DV Cleared
6 57 (3.64%) BPSS Clearance
7 52 (3.32%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (1.92%) Master's Degree
9 21 (1.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 18 (1.15%) OSCP
11 15 (0.96%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 14 (0.90%) Cisco Certification
13 13 (0.83%) CEH
13 13 (0.83%) GPEN
13 13 (0.83%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 11 (0.70%) AWS Certification
14 11 (0.70%) CISSP
14 11 (0.70%) Oracle Certification
15 10 (0.64%) ISEB
15 10 (0.64%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 336 (21.48%) QA
2 113 (7.23%) Accessibility
3 69 (4.41%) Data Quality
4 36 (2.30%) WCAG
5 32 (2.05%) NIST
6 30 (1.92%) GDPR
7 20 (1.28%) NCSC
8 18 (1.15%) EU AI Act
9 15 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 14 (0.90%) ISO 20022
11 12 (0.77%) PSD2
12 10 (0.64%) SEPA
12 10 (0.64%) SLA
13 9 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 6 (0.38%) NIST 800
14 6 (0.38%) PCI DSS
14 6 (0.38%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.32%) Def Stans
15 5 (0.32%) PERC
16 4 (0.26%) MiFID
System Software
1 320 (20.46%) Docker
2 30 (1.92%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.45%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 5 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.26%) Firmware
5 4 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.19%) ISA Server
6 3 (0.19%) QEMU
6 3 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.13%) VMware Infrastructure
8 1 (0.064%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.064%) KVM
8 1 (0.064%) Squid
8 1 (0.064%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.064%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.064%) zsh
Systems Management
1 294 (18.80%) Kubernetes
2 175 (11.19%) Terraform
3 93 (5.95%) Ansible
4 82 (5.24%) Grafana
5 55 (3.52%) Prometheus
6 19 (1.21%) Nmap
7 18 (1.15%) HP ALM
8 14 (0.90%) Progress Chef
9 13 (0.83%) Argo
9 13 (0.83%) CSIRT
10 12 (0.77%) Puppet
11 11 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
12 9 (0.58%) HP Quality Center
12 9 (0.58%) NetBackup
13 8 (0.51%) Kibana
14 7 (0.45%) Nessus
15 6 (0.38%) Forefront Identity Manager
15 6 (0.38%) NetIQ Identity Manager
16 5 (0.32%) Podman
17 4 (0.26%) Iperf
Vendors
1 141 (9.02%) Microsoft
2 129 (8.25%) Oracle
3 63 (4.03%) Splunk
4 56 (3.58%) ServiceNow
5 55 (3.52%) Databricks
6 49 (3.13%) Google
6 49 (3.13%) Salesforce
7 44 (2.81%) SAP
8 24 (1.53%) Red Hat
9 22 (1.41%) Talend
10 21 (1.34%) Cisco
10 21 (1.34%) Denodo
11 19 (1.21%) VMware
12 18 (1.15%) HP
12 18 (1.15%) webMethods
13 17 (1.09%) F5
13 17 (1.09%) IBM
13 17 (1.09%) MuleSoft
13 17 (1.09%) OpenAI
14 15 (0.96%) Workday