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

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 47 58
Rank change year-on-year -2 +11 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,677 1,120 1,252
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.16% 4.59% 3.40%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.91% 5.04% 3.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,099 770 825
10th Percentile £330 £338 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £638
90th Percentile £666 £738 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £510
% change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 17 52
10th Percentile £36.32 £38.50 £51.38
25th Percentile £54.55 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -10.20% -9.59%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £83.13
90th Percentile - £71.30 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £52.50 £61.25
% change year-on-year +23.81% -14.29% -6.84%

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 34,177 22,233 31,934
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.83% 91.20% 86.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,833 14,556 20,949
10th Percentile £318 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,126 928 2,245
10th Percentile £15.36 £14.65 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £45.46 £30.00 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +51.53% -16.77% -2.97%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.83
% change year-on-year +43.29% -19.06% -0.47%

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 4 May 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 4 May 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 4 May 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 0 817 £496 -3.45% 191
North of England +12 332 £469 +4.11% 136
Midlands +1 183 £447 -3.35% 77
South East -38 169 £509 -0.68% 121
West Midlands +17 158 £463 -6.57% 52
North West +12 145 £463 +2.78% 63
Yorkshire -4 141 £490 +3.11% 35
South West +8 92 £475 -5.00% 61
East of England +3 58 £522 +6.58% 67
North East +7 51 £419 +6.01% 38
East Midlands -35 25 £400 -9.86% 25
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
1 122 (7.27%) Confluence
2 40 (2.39%) SAS
3 32 (1.91%) Apache Spark
4 28 (1.67%) Apache Airflow
5 12 (0.72%) SharePoint
6 10 (0.60%) Apache
7 8 (0.48%) Appian
8 6 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.36%) Camunda
9 4 (0.24%) CMS
9 4 (0.24%) nginx
9 4 (0.24%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
12 1 (0.060%) CICS
12 1 (0.060%) Ethereum
12 1 (0.060%) OpenStack
Applications
1 23 (1.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.60%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.18%) Simulink
7 1 (0.060%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.060%) Mingle
7 1 (0.060%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 19 (1.13%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.48%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (0.42%) Findur
3 7 (0.42%) Shopify
4 6 (0.36%) Loan IQ
5 5 (0.30%) BambooHR
5 5 (0.30%) Maximo
5 5 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
6 3 (0.18%) SAP ERP
6 3 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
7 2 (0.12%) iTrent
7 2 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 2 (0.12%) Summit
7 2 (0.12%) Workday HCM
8 1 (0.060%) Cloudability
8 1 (0.060%) Infor CloudSuite
8 1 (0.060%) Infor LN
8 1 (0.060%) Oracle ERP
8 1 (0.060%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 457 (27.25%) Azure
2 444 (26.48%) AWS
3 267 (15.92%) GitHub
4 204 (12.16%) Azure DevOps
5 152 (9.06%) GitHub Actions
6 119 (7.10%) GCP
7 114 (6.80%) Serverless
8 72 (4.29%) AWS Lambda
9 68 (4.05%) Amazon S3
10 57 (3.40%) OpenShift
11 50 (2.98%) Power Platform
12 48 (2.86%) Amazon ECS
13 43 (2.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 37 (2.21%) AWS CloudFormation
14 37 (2.21%) Azure AKS
15 34 (2.03%) Snowflake
16 33 (1.97%) Azure Data Factory
17 32 (1.91%) Amazon EKS
18 26 (1.55%) Amazon EC2
19 25 (1.49%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.25%) Firewall
2 14 (0.83%) HTTP
3 13 (0.78%) SAN
4 11 (0.66%) TCP/IP
5 10 (0.60%) VPN
6 9 (0.54%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.48%) FTP
7 8 (0.48%) WAN
8 7 (0.42%) MPLS
8 7 (0.42%) SD-WAN
8 7 (0.42%) SSL
8 7 (0.42%) Wireshark
9 6 (0.36%) Multicast
9 6 (0.36%) VLAN
10 5 (0.30%) 5G
10 5 (0.30%) AMQP
10 5 (0.30%) Network Security
10 5 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
11 4 (0.24%) RS-232
11 4 (0.24%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 92 (5.49%) PostgreSQL
2 79 (4.71%) NoSQL
2 79 (4.71%) SQL Server
3 68 (4.05%) MongoDB
4 65 (3.88%) Data Warehouse
5 53 (3.16%) Relational Database
6 40 (2.39%) DynamoDB
7 36 (2.15%) Power BI
8 32 (1.91%) Pentaho
9 25 (1.49%) Oracle Reports
9 25 (1.49%) Tableau
10 23 (1.37%) MySQL
10 23 (1.37%) Redis
11 21 (1.25%) Big Data
12 20 (1.19%) BigQuery
13 19 (1.13%) Amazon Athena
13 19 (1.13%) Amazon RDS
14 18 (1.07%) Data Lake
14 18 (1.07%) Metadata
15 16 (0.95%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 321 (19.14%) JIRA
2 311 (18.55%) Git
3 275 (16.40%) Jenkins
4 232 (13.83%) Selenium
5 225 (13.42%) GitLab
6 132 (7.87%) Postman
7 123 (7.33%) Cucumber
8 90 (5.37%) JUnit
9 81 (4.83%) Cypress.io
10 72 (4.29%) REST Assured
11 69 (4.11%) JMeter
12 47 (2.80%) WebDriver
13 44 (2.62%) SonarQube
14 41 (2.44%) Zephyr
15 34 (2.03%) Gradle
15 34 (2.03%) Maven
16 31 (1.85%) SpecFlow
17 28 (1.67%) Bitbucket
18 27 (1.61%) Mockito
19 26 (1.55%) Gatling
General
1 449 (26.77%) Social Skills
2 306 (18.25%) Finance
3 230 (13.71%) Public Sector
4 199 (11.87%) Analytical Skills
5 146 (8.71%) Banking
6 40 (2.39%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 30 (1.79%) Investment Banking
9 25 (1.49%) Front Office
10 24 (1.43%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
12 20 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
13 17 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.95%) Legal
15 15 (0.89%) Aerospace
16 13 (0.78%) Financial Institution
16 13 (0.78%) Retail
17 10 (0.60%) Back Office
17 10 (0.60%) Military
18 8 (0.48%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 357 (21.29%) Developer
2 252 (15.03%) Senior
3 186 (11.09%) Tester
4 176 (10.49%) Lead
5 175 (10.44%) Test Engineer
6 99 (5.90%) Java Developer
7 97 (5.78%) Data Engineer
8 90 (5.37%) Analyst
9 87 (5.19%) Test Automation Engineer
10 85 (5.07%) Automation Tester
11 77 (4.59%) Software Engineer
12 72 (4.29%) QA Engineer
13 68 (4.05%) Architect
14 67 (4.00%) Senior Developer
14 67 (4.00%) Test Leader
15 63 (3.76%) DevOps Engineer
16 55 (3.28%) Full-Stack Developer
17 52 (3.10%) Test Analyst
17 52 (3.10%) Test Manager
18 49 (2.92%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 188 (11.21%) Playwright
2 185 (11.03%) REST
3 146 (8.71%) React
4 132 (7.87%) Spring
5 119 (7.10%) RESTful
6 118 (7.04%) Kafka
7 114 (6.80%) .NET
7 114 (6.80%) Node.js
8 107 (6.38%) Spring Boot
9 74 (4.41%) AngularJS
10 61 (3.64%) HTML
11 54 (3.22%) pytest
12 53 (3.16%) CSS
13 48 (2.86%) OAuth
14 46 (2.74%) Jest
15 34 (2.03%) Gherkin
16 32 (1.91%) GraphQL
16 32 (1.91%) OpenID
17 30 (1.79%) OAuth2
17 30 (1.79%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 182 (10.85%) Cloud Native
2 114 (6.80%) Product Ownership
3 90 (5.37%) Distributed Systems
4 43 (2.56%) Data Protection Act
4 43 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
5 42 (2.50%) Mobile App
6 30 (1.79%) Virtual Team
7 27 (1.61%) Onboarding
7 27 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
8 26 (1.55%) Algorithms
9 23 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
9 23 (1.37%) Management Information System
10 21 (1.25%) Distributed Architecture
11 20 (1.19%) Data Centre
12 19 (1.13%) Security Posture
13 18 (1.07%) Data Structures
13 18 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
13 18 (1.07%) NHS
14 17 (1.01%) Fixed Income
15 16 (0.95%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 114 (6.80%) Linux
2 78 (4.65%) Windows
3 40 (2.39%) Android
4 38 (2.27%) Unix
5 32 (1.91%) Apple iOS
6 18 (1.07%) Windows Server
7 16 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.78%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.54%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.30%) Solaris
11 4 (0.24%) CentOS
11 4 (0.24%) Embedded Linux
11 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.18%) AIX
12 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.12%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.060%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.060%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.060%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 867 (51.70%) CI/CD
2 773 (46.09%) Agile
3 599 (35.72%) DevOps
4 357 (21.29%) Problem-Solving
5 278 (16.58%) Microservices
6 270 (16.10%) Continuous Improvement
7 240 (14.31%) Scrum
8 238 (14.19%) Test Strategy
9 219 (13.06%) Infrastructure as Code
9 219 (13.06%) Validation
10 217 (12.94%) Containerisation
11 215 (12.82%) Software Engineering
12 196 (11.69%) AI
13 193 (11.51%) Observability
14 188 (11.21%) TDD
15 185 (11.03%) Test Scripting
16 169 (10.08%) Software Testing
17 168 (10.02%) Regression Testing
18 167 (9.96%) User Acceptance Testing
19 165 (9.84%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 450 (26.83%) Python
2 425 (25.34%) Java
3 385 (22.96%) SQL
4 237 (14.13%) JavaScript
5 226 (13.48%) TypeScript
6 174 (10.38%) C#
7 68 (4.05%) PowerShell
8 52 (3.10%) Bash
9 43 (2.56%) C++
10 34 (2.03%) Kotlin
11 32 (1.91%) C
12 25 (1.49%) Apex Code
12 25 (1.49%) Scala
13 23 (1.37%) PL/SQL
14 22 (1.31%) Bicep
14 22 (1.31%) Go
15 18 (1.07%) Ruby
16 14 (0.83%) Swift
17 13 (0.78%) Groovy
18 10 (0.60%) Ada
Qualifications
1 521 (31.07%) Security Cleared
2 404 (24.09%) SC Cleared
3 76 (4.53%) ISTQB
4 74 (4.41%) Degree
5 62 (3.70%) DV Cleared
6 56 (3.34%) BPSS Clearance
7 43 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (0.89%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 14 (0.83%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.66%) Azure Certification
12 10 (0.60%) CCNP
13 9 (0.54%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 8 (0.48%) AWS Certification
14 8 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.48%) SAFe Agilist
15 7 (0.42%) DBS Check
16 6 (0.36%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
17 5 (0.30%) CISSP
17 5 (0.30%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (22.42%) QA
2 106 (6.32%) Accessibility
3 97 (5.78%) Data Quality
4 46 (2.74%) WCAG
5 29 (1.73%) GDPR
6 14 (0.83%) ISO 20022
7 10 (0.60%) Def Stans
7 10 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 10 (0.60%) NCSC
8 8 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 7 (0.42%) NIST
9 7 (0.42%) SEPA
9 7 (0.42%) SLA
10 6 (0.36%) PSD2
11 5 (0.30%) FATCA
12 4 (0.24%) HL7
12 4 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
13 3 (0.18%) GRC
13 3 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 297 (17.71%) Docker
2 20 (1.19%) Active Directory
3 15 (0.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.83%) Firmware
5 10 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.42%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 6 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
9 4 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
10 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.12%) SRDF
12 1 (0.060%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.060%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.060%) KVM
12 1 (0.060%) Squid
12 1 (0.060%) Time Sharing Option
12 1 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.060%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 300 (17.89%) Kubernetes
2 204 (12.16%) Terraform
3 95 (5.66%) Grafana
4 76 (4.53%) Prometheus
5 73 (4.35%) Ansible
6 27 (1.61%) Argo
7 16 (0.95%) HP ALM
8 15 (0.89%) Puppet
9 12 (0.72%) Kibana
9 12 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (0.60%) Forefront Identity Manager
10 10 (0.60%) HP Quality Center
10 10 (0.60%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 8 (0.48%) Dell DRAC
11 8 (0.48%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.36%) NetBackup
13 5 (0.30%) Nmap
13 5 (0.30%) Rancher
14 4 (0.24%) Oracle RMAN
15 3 (0.18%) Nagios
Vendors
1 143 (8.53%) Microsoft
1 143 (8.53%) Oracle
2 60 (3.58%) Salesforce
3 57 (3.40%) Databricks
4 55 (3.28%) ServiceNow
5 51 (3.04%) Splunk
6 45 (2.68%) Red Hat
7 43 (2.56%) Google
8 41 (2.44%) Talend
9 31 (1.85%) SAP
10 27 (1.61%) Denodo
11 22 (1.31%) IBM
11 22 (1.31%) VMware
12 19 (1.13%) HP
13 18 (1.07%) Cisco
13 18 (1.07%) Dynatrace
13 18 (1.07%) Informatica
14 16 (0.95%) UiPath
15 15 (0.89%) OpenAI
16 14 (0.83%) Blue Prism