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

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 51 53
Rank change year-on-year +5 +2 -2
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,953 1,207 1,368
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.34% 4.45% 3.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.07% 4.91% 4.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,253 835 908
10th Percentile £330 £313 £363
25th Percentile £406 £389 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £485 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.06% -7.62% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £483 £513
% change year-on-year -1.66% -5.76% -3.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 30 46
10th Percentile £36.22 £40.26 £50.63
25th Percentile £60.00 £44.95 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +28.57% -6.67% -22.95%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.50 £71.87
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.22 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £56.25
% change year-on-year +35.00% -11.11% -18.18%

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 38,535 24,596 31,653
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.57% 90.73% 85.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,284 15,811 20,551
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.14% -2.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £733 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +3.40% -4.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,389 1,270 2,240
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.20 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.98 £16.25
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -6.09%
75th Percentile £68.75 £54.94 £62.50
90th Percentile £82.60 £72.50 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -4.70%

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 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 11 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 11 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 +5 880 £500 - 205
North of England +16 398 £460 +2.56% 105
Midlands +5 250 £450 +9.42% 52
West Midlands +26 233 £450 -6.83% 22
South East -33 203 £459 -8.20% 154
Yorkshire +8 163 £493 -1.50% 37
North West +6 156 £475 +18.16% 51
South West +8 116 £450 +2.86% 51
North East +12 89 £425 +6.25% 17
East of England +19 87 £475 +3.54% 40
East Midlands -46 17 £425 +54.55% 30
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
1 170 (8.70%) Confluence
2 43 (2.20%) Apache Airflow
3 42 (2.15%) Apache Spark
4 41 (2.10%) SAS
5 17 (0.87%) Apache
6 16 (0.82%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.61%) CMS
8 7 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.31%) Camunda
10 5 (0.26%) Appian
10 5 (0.26%) nginx
10 5 (0.26%) Tomcat
11 4 (0.20%) Jupyter
12 3 (0.15%) Kentico
12 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.10%) Anypoint
13 2 (0.10%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.10%) Mule
14 1 (0.051%) Mendix
Applications
1 28 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
5 7 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.20%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.20%) Simulink
6 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.051%) Mingle
7 1 (0.051%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.051%) Trello
Business Applications
1 22 (1.13%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.92%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.61%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
5 8 (0.41%) Findur
5 8 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.36%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.31%) Shopify
8 5 (0.26%) BambooHR
8 5 (0.26%) Loan IQ
9 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
9 3 (0.15%) Maximo
10 2 (0.10%) Infor CloudSuite
10 2 (0.10%) Infor LN
10 2 (0.10%) Infor M3
10 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
10 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
10 2 (0.10%) Summit
10 2 (0.10%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 552 (28.26%) AWS
2 542 (27.75%) Azure
3 320 (16.39%) GitHub
4 238 (12.19%) Azure DevOps
5 196 (10.04%) GitHub Actions
6 139 (7.12%) Serverless
7 136 (6.96%) GCP
8 97 (4.97%) AWS Lambda
9 85 (4.35%) Amazon S3
10 76 (3.89%) Power Platform
11 62 (3.17%) OpenShift
12 57 (2.92%) Amazon ECS
13 54 (2.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 44 (2.25%) dbt
15 42 (2.15%) Amazon EC2
16 41 (2.10%) Azure Data Factory
17 38 (1.95%) Snowflake
18 34 (1.74%) Amazon EKS
19 30 (1.54%) AWS CloudFormation
19 30 (1.54%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 18 (0.92%) Firewall
2 16 (0.82%) HTTP
3 15 (0.77%) SAN
4 11 (0.56%) WAN
5 10 (0.51%) Network Security
6 9 (0.46%) MPLS
7 8 (0.41%) 4G
7 8 (0.41%) 5G
8 7 (0.36%) 2G
8 7 (0.36%) 3G
8 7 (0.36%) Diameter Protocol
8 7 (0.36%) SIGTRAN
8 7 (0.36%) SS7
8 7 (0.36%) VPN
9 6 (0.31%) BGP
9 6 (0.31%) Ethernet
9 6 (0.31%) LAN
9 6 (0.31%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
9 6 (0.31%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 106 (5.43%) PostgreSQL
2 101 (5.17%) Data Warehouse
3 91 (4.66%) MongoDB
4 84 (4.30%) NoSQL
5 76 (3.89%) SQL Server
6 63 (3.23%) Relational Database
7 60 (3.07%) Power BI
8 45 (2.30%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.79%) Oracle Reports
10 34 (1.74%) Pentaho
11 31 (1.59%) Amazon Athena
12 29 (1.48%) Big Data
13 28 (1.43%) Amazon RDS
14 27 (1.38%) Metadata
15 25 (1.28%) Data Lake
16 24 (1.23%) Amazon Redshift
17 23 (1.18%) Redis
18 21 (1.08%) Oracle Database
18 21 (1.08%) Tableau
19 18 (0.92%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 371 (19.00%) JIRA
2 349 (17.87%) Git
3 312 (15.98%) Jenkins
4 264 (13.52%) GitLab
5 248 (12.70%) Selenium
6 148 (7.58%) Postman
7 139 (7.12%) Cucumber
8 103 (5.27%) REST Assured
9 100 (5.12%) JUnit
10 93 (4.76%) Cypress.io
11 84 (4.30%) JMeter
12 59 (3.02%) Zephyr
13 55 (2.82%) WebDriver
14 52 (2.66%) SonarQube
15 47 (2.41%) Gatling
16 43 (2.20%) Gradle
17 38 (1.95%) Bitbucket
18 35 (1.79%) Mockito
19 32 (1.64%) Maven
20 29 (1.48%) SpecFlow
General
1 535 (27.39%) Social Skills
2 373 (19.10%) Finance
3 258 (13.21%) Analytical Skills
4 236 (12.08%) Public Sector
5 167 (8.55%) Banking
6 53 (2.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 42 (2.15%) Documentation Skills
8 31 (1.59%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.38%) Front Office
9 27 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
10 26 (1.33%) Telecoms
11 25 (1.28%) Retail
12 22 (1.13%) Financial Institution
13 20 (1.02%) Military
14 18 (0.92%) Aerospace
15 17 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
16 15 (0.77%) Legal
17 13 (0.67%) Automotive
17 13 (0.67%) Back Office
17 13 (0.67%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 388 (19.87%) Developer
2 310 (15.87%) Senior
3 212 (10.86%) Lead
4 201 (10.29%) Tester
5 200 (10.24%) Test Engineer
6 136 (6.96%) Data Engineer
7 124 (6.35%) Java Developer
8 109 (5.58%) Software Engineer
9 101 (5.17%) Analyst
10 89 (4.56%) Architect
11 85 (4.35%) DevOps Engineer
11 85 (4.35%) Test Automation Engineer
12 83 (4.25%) QA Engineer
13 82 (4.20%) Senior Developer
14 75 (3.84%) Test Leader
15 68 (3.48%) Automation Tester
16 59 (3.02%) Test Analyst
17 58 (2.97%) Automation Engineer
18 55 (2.82%) Full-Stack Developer
19 48 (2.46%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 221 (11.32%) REST
2 220 (11.26%) Playwright
3 181 (9.27%) React
4 157 (8.04%) Spring
5 152 (7.78%) RESTful
6 145 (7.42%) Kafka
7 127 (6.50%) .NET
8 125 (6.40%) Spring Boot
9 101 (5.17%) Node.js
10 82 (4.20%) AngularJS
11 76 (3.89%) HTML
12 71 (3.64%) CSS
13 50 (2.56%) OAuth
14 46 (2.36%) pytest
15 44 (2.25%) Jest
16 40 (2.05%) Quarkus
17 39 (2.00%) .NET Framework
18 37 (1.89%) Gherkin
18 37 (1.89%) GraphQL
19 36 (1.84%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 260 (13.31%) Cloud Native
2 135 (6.91%) Product Ownership
3 123 (6.30%) Distributed Systems
4 59 (3.02%) Enterprise Software
5 57 (2.92%) Legacy Systems
6 48 (2.46%) Data Protection Act
7 43 (2.20%) Onboarding
8 42 (2.15%) Mobile App
8 42 (2.15%) Self-Motivation
9 38 (1.95%) Virtual Team
10 31 (1.59%) Distributed Architecture
11 28 (1.43%) Security Posture
12 26 (1.33%) Embedded Systems
12 26 (1.33%) Management Information System
13 25 (1.28%) AI Agents
14 22 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
15 20 (1.02%) Fixed Income
16 18 (0.92%) Algorithms
17 17 (0.87%) Data Structures
18 15 (0.77%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 117 (5.99%) Linux
2 72 (3.69%) Windows
3 57 (2.92%) Unix
4 39 (2.00%) Android
5 38 (1.95%) Apple iOS
6 22 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.72%) Mac OS X
8 13 (0.67%) Windows Server
9 7 (0.36%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.36%) Solaris
10 6 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
11 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
12 4 (0.20%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.15%) AIX
13 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.10%) CentOS
14 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,090 (55.81%) CI/CD
2 902 (46.19%) Agile
3 700 (35.84%) DevOps
4 365 (18.69%) Problem-Solving
5 344 (17.61%) Microservices
6 341 (17.46%) Continuous Improvement
7 309 (15.82%) Software Engineering
8 308 (15.77%) Scrum
9 301 (15.41%) Validation
10 300 (15.36%) Test Strategy
11 279 (14.29%) Infrastructure as Code
12 261 (13.36%) AI
13 248 (12.70%) Containerisation
14 241 (12.34%) TDD
15 239 (12.24%) Observability
16 210 (10.75%) ETL
17 205 (10.50%) Software Testing
18 199 (10.19%) End-to-End Testing
19 196 (10.04%) Data Pipeline
20 189 (9.68%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 492 (25.19%) Python
2 486 (24.88%) Java
3 460 (23.55%) SQL
4 248 (12.70%) JavaScript
5 227 (11.62%) TypeScript
6 179 (9.17%) C#
7 68 (3.48%) PowerShell
8 62 (3.17%) Bash
9 48 (2.46%) Kotlin
10 43 (2.20%) C++
11 33 (1.69%) Bicep
11 33 (1.69%) C
11 33 (1.69%) Scala
12 31 (1.59%) Go
13 29 (1.48%) Apex Code
14 28 (1.43%) PL/SQL
15 23 (1.18%) Swift
16 18 (0.92%) Ruby
17 16 (0.82%) Groovy
18 13 (0.67%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 600 (30.72%) Security Cleared
2 491 (25.14%) SC Cleared
3 91 (4.66%) Degree
4 88 (4.51%) ISTQB
5 70 (3.58%) BPSS Clearance
6 63 (3.23%) DV Cleared
7 47 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
8 21 (1.08%) AWS Certification
8 21 (1.08%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 16 (0.82%) Master's Degree
10 15 (0.77%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 12 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
12 11 (0.56%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.56%) SAFe Agilist
13 10 (0.51%) CCNP
14 8 (0.41%) Azure Certification
14 8 (0.41%) CISSP
15 7 (0.36%) DBS Check
16 5 (0.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 460 (23.55%) QA
2 145 (7.42%) Accessibility
3 133 (6.81%) Data Quality
4 68 (3.48%) WCAG
5 35 (1.79%) GDPR
6 13 (0.67%) NCSC
7 12 (0.61%) ISO 20022
8 11 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 10 (0.51%) Def Stans
10 9 (0.46%) NIST
10 9 (0.46%) SLA
11 5 (0.26%) FATCA
11 5 (0.26%) SEPA
11 5 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
12 4 (0.20%) GRC
12 4 (0.20%) HL7
12 4 (0.20%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 3 (0.15%) HIPAA
13 3 (0.15%) MiFID
System Software
1 338 (17.31%) Docker
2 26 (1.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (0.77%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.72%) Firmware
5 13 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.20%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 4 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.10%) SRDF
9 1 (0.051%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.051%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 351 (17.97%) Kubernetes
2 245 (12.54%) Terraform
3 102 (5.22%) Ansible
4 99 (5.07%) Grafana
5 85 (4.35%) Prometheus
6 36 (1.84%) Argo
7 16 (0.82%) HP ALM
8 13 (0.67%) Puppet
9 12 (0.61%) HP Quality Center
10 11 (0.56%) Kibana
11 10 (0.51%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.41%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.31%) NetBackup
13 6 (0.31%) Progress Chef
14 5 (0.26%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 5 (0.26%) Istio
14 5 (0.26%) NetIQ Identity Manager
15 4 (0.20%) Packer
15 4 (0.20%) Rancher
Vendors
1 173 (8.86%) Microsoft
2 147 (7.53%) Oracle
3 85 (4.35%) Salesforce
4 67 (3.43%) Databricks
5 56 (2.87%) Talend
6 55 (2.82%) Red Hat
7 51 (2.61%) Splunk
8 50 (2.56%) Google
9 46 (2.36%) ServiceNow
10 37 (1.89%) Denodo
11 34 (1.74%) Informatica
12 29 (1.48%) SAP
13 28 (1.43%) UiPath
14 27 (1.38%) VMware
15 26 (1.33%) Dynatrace
15 26 (1.33%) IBM
16 21 (1.08%) Cisco
17 19 (0.97%) HP
18 14 (0.72%) Blue Prism
19 13 (0.67%) Fortinet