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 9 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 52 47
Rank change year-on-year +4 -5 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,021 1,231 1,342
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.36% 4.46% 4.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.14% 4.91% 4.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,280 837 908
10th Percentile £325 £313 £350
25th Percentile £410 £385 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £516
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -3.10% -6.18%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £603
90th Percentile £671 £700 £716
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 102 35 16
10th Percentile £40.00 £41.50 £41.25
25th Percentile £56.94 £49.49 £49.38
Median hourly rate £67.86 £56.75 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.57% -1.30% -21.23%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £72.53
90th Percentile £74.00 £72.40 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +27.27% -4.35% -17.71%

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 39,321 25,058 28,015
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.90% 90.80% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,195 15,905 17,612
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £636 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £752
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,661 1,475 1,343
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.27 £14.84
25th Percentile £18.00 £17.83 £20.24
Median hourly rate £43.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.96% -41.51% +0.58%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £66.61
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.03 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.17% -41.51% +1.96%

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 9 September 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 9 September 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 9 September 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 +6 924 £500 - 1,186
North of England +3 409 £460 +0.05% 264
Midlands +10 252 £450 -2.70% 138
West Midlands +24 236 £450 -12.62% 86
South East -18 228 £450 -10.00% 275
Yorkshire -9 163 £470 -6.00% 71
North West -10 147 £492 +16.17% 157
South West -1 115 £475 -5.00% 215
North East +13 106 £425 -4.49% 36
East of England +16 82 £450 +17.65% 142
East Midlands -41 16 £418 +17.61% 52
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
1 175 (8.66%) Confluence
2 50 (2.47%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (2.03%) SharePoint
4 38 (1.88%) Apache Spark
5 29 (1.43%) SAS
6 22 (1.09%) Apache
7 14 (0.69%) CMS
8 12 (0.59%) Camunda
9 10 (0.49%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.35%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
12 4 (0.20%) Jupyter
12 4 (0.20%) nginx
12 4 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.20%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.15%) Kentico
14 2 (0.099%) Anypoint
14 2 (0.099%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.099%) Mule
Applications
1 23 (1.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.74%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.30%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.20%) Simulink
6 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.15%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.15%) Trello
7 2 (0.099%) Mingle
7 2 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 26 (1.29%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.84%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.64%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.54%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.40%) Findur
6 7 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.35%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.30%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.25%) SAP GRC
9 4 (0.20%) Shopify
10 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
11 2 (0.099%) BambooHR
11 2 (0.099%) Oracle ERP
11 2 (0.099%) SAP MDG
12 1 (0.049%) FLEXCUBE
12 1 (0.049%) Misys Equation
12 1 (0.049%) Misys Midas
12 1 (0.049%) SAP QM
12 1 (0.049%) Summit
12 1 (0.049%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 619 (30.63%) AWS
2 597 (29.54%) Azure
3 351 (17.37%) GitHub
4 281 (13.90%) Azure DevOps
5 220 (10.89%) GitHub Actions
6 164 (8.11%) Serverless
7 155 (7.67%) GCP
8 123 (6.09%) AWS Lambda
9 94 (4.65%) Amazon S3
10 93 (4.60%) Power Platform
11 78 (3.86%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 71 (3.51%) Amazon ECS
13 66 (3.27%) OpenShift
14 58 (2.87%) Amazon EKS
15 55 (2.72%) dbt
16 53 (2.62%) GitHub Copilot
17 49 (2.42%) Snowflake
18 46 (2.28%) Amazon EC2
19 45 (2.23%) AWS CloudFormation
20 42 (2.08%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.14%) HTTP
2 20 (0.99%) DNS
2 20 (0.99%) Firewall
3 19 (0.94%) 4G
4 17 (0.84%) 5G
4 17 (0.84%) TCP/IP
5 16 (0.79%) 2G
5 16 (0.79%) 3G
5 16 (0.79%) Diameter Protocol
5 16 (0.79%) Network Security
5 16 (0.79%) SIGTRAN
5 16 (0.79%) SS7
6 14 (0.69%) WAN
7 12 (0.59%) LAN
7 12 (0.59%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (0.49%) BGP
8 10 (0.49%) DHCP
9 9 (0.45%) SAN
10 8 (0.40%) Ethernet VPN
10 8 (0.40%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 117 (5.79%) PostgreSQL
2 111 (5.49%) Data Warehouse
3 98 (4.85%) NoSQL
4 90 (4.45%) MongoDB
5 85 (4.21%) Relational Database
6 82 (4.06%) SQL Server
7 78 (3.86%) Power BI
8 44 (2.18%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.73%) Data Lake
10 34 (1.68%) Metadata
10 34 (1.68%) Oracle Reports
11 31 (1.53%) Amazon Athena
11 31 (1.53%) Big Data
12 28 (1.39%) Pentaho
13 27 (1.34%) Amazon RDS
13 27 (1.34%) Amazon Redshift
13 27 (1.34%) MySQL
13 27 (1.34%) Redis
14 23 (1.14%) Oracle Database
15 19 (0.94%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 429 (21.23%) Git
2 345 (17.07%) JIRA
3 325 (16.08%) Jenkins
4 275 (13.61%) GitLab
5 260 (12.86%) Selenium
6 138 (6.83%) Postman
7 133 (6.58%) Cucumber
8 114 (5.64%) JUnit
9 103 (5.10%) Cypress.io
10 91 (4.50%) REST Assured
11 83 (4.11%) JMeter
12 81 (4.01%) SonarQube
13 60 (2.97%) Zephyr
14 55 (2.72%) Gatling
15 49 (2.42%) Gradle
16 47 (2.33%) Maven
16 47 (2.33%) WebDriver
17 42 (2.08%) Mockito
18 40 (1.98%) Bitbucket
19 24 (1.19%) LoadRunner
General
1 566 (28.01%) Social Skills
2 391 (19.35%) Finance
3 296 (14.65%) Analytical Skills
4 255 (12.62%) Public Sector
5 182 (9.01%) Banking
6 67 (3.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 39 (1.93%) Telecoms
8 34 (1.68%) Documentation Skills
8 34 (1.68%) Front Office
8 34 (1.68%) Retail
9 29 (1.43%) Investment Banking
10 28 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.09%) Financial Institution
11 22 (1.09%) Military
12 18 (0.89%) Aerospace
12 18 (0.89%) Law
13 17 (0.84%) Back Office
14 16 (0.79%) Manufacturing
14 16 (0.79%) Marketing
15 14 (0.69%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 426 (21.08%) Developer
2 330 (16.33%) Senior
3 199 (9.85%) Lead
4 196 (9.70%) Test Engineer
5 156 (7.72%) Tester
6 133 (6.58%) Java Developer
7 123 (6.09%) Data Engineer
8 121 (5.99%) Software Engineer
9 112 (5.54%) Analyst
10 98 (4.85%) DevOps Engineer
11 95 (4.70%) Senior Developer
12 92 (4.55%) QA Engineer
13 90 (4.45%) Test Automation Engineer
14 86 (4.26%) Architect
15 71 (3.51%) Full-Stack Developer
16 70 (3.46%) Test Analyst
17 68 (3.36%) Automation Engineer
18 67 (3.32%) Test Leader
19 66 (3.27%) Java Engineer
20 60 (2.97%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 305 (15.09%) REST
2 293 (14.50%) Terraform
3 225 (11.13%) Playwright
4 206 (10.19%) Kafka
5 203 (10.04%) RESTful
6 191 (9.45%) Spring
7 189 (9.35%) React
8 161 (7.97%) Spring Boot
9 140 (6.93%) .NET
10 120 (5.94%) HTML
11 103 (5.10%) Node.js
12 102 (5.05%) CSS
13 101 (5.00%) AngularJS
14 63 (3.12%) OAuth
15 56 (2.77%) JSON
16 51 (2.52%) XML
17 50 (2.47%) pytest
17 50 (2.47%) SOAP
18 47 (2.33%) PySpark
19 46 (2.28%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 314 (15.54%) Cloud Native
2 168 (8.31%) Product Ownership
3 146 (7.22%) Distributed Systems
4 82 (4.06%) Enterprise Software
5 57 (2.82%) Onboarding
6 50 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
7 49 (2.42%) AI Agents
7 49 (2.42%) Data Protection Act
8 46 (2.28%) Self-Motivation
9 44 (2.18%) Mobile App
10 35 (1.73%) Virtual Team
11 25 (1.24%) Security Posture
12 23 (1.14%) Data Structures
13 21 (1.04%) Embedded Systems
14 19 (0.94%) Distributed Architecture
14 19 (0.94%) Management Information System
15 17 (0.84%) Data Centre
16 16 (0.79%) Greenfield Project
17 15 (0.74%) Fixed Income
17 15 (0.74%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 135 (6.68%) Linux
2 86 (4.26%) Windows
3 80 (3.96%) Unix
4 39 (1.93%) Apple iOS
5 37 (1.83%) Android
6 30 (1.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 21 (1.04%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.30%) Solaris
9 5 (0.25%) Embedded Linux
9 5 (0.25%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.25%) Windows 7
9 5 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.20%) Mac OS X
10 4 (0.20%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.20%) VMS
10 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.15%) AIX
11 3 (0.15%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.099%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,203 (59.52%) CI/CD
2 964 (47.70%) Agile
3 755 (37.36%) DevOps
4 404 (19.99%) Continuous Improvement
5 398 (19.69%) Problem-Solving
6 393 (19.45%) Microservices
7 392 (19.40%) Software Engineering
8 346 (17.12%) Infrastructure as Code
9 344 (17.02%) Validation
10 343 (16.97%) Scrum
11 315 (15.59%) AI
12 311 (15.39%) Test Strategy
13 290 (14.35%) Containerisation
14 268 (13.26%) Observability
15 261 (12.91%) SDLC
16 250 (12.37%) TDD
17 244 (12.07%) Software Testing
18 227 (11.23%) Stakeholder Management
19 217 (10.74%) End-to-End Testing
20 197 (9.75%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 558 (27.61%) Python
2 544 (26.92%) Java
3 502 (24.84%) SQL
4 291 (14.40%) JavaScript
5 228 (11.28%) TypeScript
6 165 (8.16%) C#
7 94 (4.65%) PowerShell
8 77 (3.81%) Bash
9 49 (2.42%) Kotlin
10 46 (2.28%) Bicep
11 34 (1.68%) C++
12 28 (1.39%) Scala
13 26 (1.29%) Go
14 25 (1.24%) PL/SQL
15 23 (1.14%) Apex Code
16 22 (1.09%) C
17 18 (0.89%) Shell Script
18 17 (0.84%) Groovy
18 17 (0.84%) Ruby
18 17 (0.84%) Swift
Qualifications
1 655 (32.41%) Security Cleared
2 546 (27.02%) SC Cleared
3 111 (5.49%) Degree
4 96 (4.75%) ISTQB
5 77 (3.81%) DV Cleared
6 68 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (2.92%) Computer Science Degree
8 38 (1.88%) AWS Certification
9 27 (1.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 22 (1.09%) Azure Certification
11 17 (0.84%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 14 (0.69%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 13 (0.64%) Master's Degree
14 12 (0.59%) ISEB
15 11 (0.54%) SAFe Agilist
16 10 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
17 9 (0.45%) Cisco Certification
17 9 (0.45%) CISSP
18 8 (0.40%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 7 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 544 (26.92%) QA
2 158 (7.82%) Accessibility
3 135 (6.68%) Data Quality
4 87 (4.30%) WCAG
5 38 (1.88%) GDPR
6 16 (0.79%) ISO 20022
7 14 (0.69%) NCSC
8 13 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 13 (0.64%) SLA
9 11 (0.54%) GRC
9 11 (0.54%) NIST
10 7 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.25%) FATCA
12 5 (0.25%) HL7
12 5 (0.25%) PCI DSS
13 4 (0.20%) Def Stans
13 4 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 3 (0.15%) EU AI Act
14 3 (0.15%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 397 (19.64%) Docker
2 34 (1.68%) Active Directory
3 28 (1.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.89%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (0.49%) Firmware
6 5 (0.25%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.15%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
9 2 (0.099%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.049%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 393 (19.45%) Kubernetes
2 109 (5.39%) Ansible
3 105 (5.20%) Grafana
4 84 (4.16%) Prometheus
5 40 (1.98%) Argo
6 20 (0.99%) Progress Chef
6 20 (0.99%) Puppet
7 12 (0.59%) HP ALM
7 12 (0.59%) Kibana
8 11 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
9 10 (0.49%) Control-M
10 7 (0.35%) Kustomize
10 7 (0.35%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (0.30%) Dell DRAC
12 5 (0.25%) HP Fortify
12 5 (0.25%) HP Quality Center
12 5 (0.25%) Istio
12 5 (0.25%) Packer
12 5 (0.25%) SCCM
13 4 (0.20%) WMI
Vendors
1 206 (10.19%) Microsoft
2 154 (7.62%) Oracle
3 82 (4.06%) Databricks
4 70 (3.46%) Salesforce
5 65 (3.22%) Google
6 62 (3.07%) Red Hat
7 50 (2.47%) IBM
8 47 (2.33%) Splunk
8 47 (2.33%) Talend
9 45 (2.23%) ServiceNow
10 41 (2.03%) SAP
11 37 (1.83%) Dynatrace
12 34 (1.68%) Denodo
12 34 (1.68%) VMware
13 33 (1.63%) Informatica
14 30 (1.48%) Cisco
15 27 (1.34%) UiPath
16 17 (0.84%) HP
17 12 (0.59%) MuleSoft
17 12 (0.59%) OpenAI