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

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 49 48
Rank change year-on-year +1 -1 +4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,976 1,237 1,345
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.33% 4.52% 4.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.10% 4.98% 4.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,261 850 911
10th Percentile £325 £313 £350
25th Percentile £409 £393 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -3.85% -5.45%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £612
90th Percentile £671 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% -0.05% -4.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 100 35 21
10th Percentile £39.73 £37.34 £42.50
25th Percentile £59.19 £47.62 £51.25
Median hourly rate £68.61 £55.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.74% - -24.66%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £74.10 £72.40 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £69.75 £55.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +26.82% - -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 38,735 24,846 28,143
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.90% 90.77% 85.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,900 15,805 17,939
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £634 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £751
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,596 1,469 1,428
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.38 £17.87 £18.50
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.01
90th Percentile £80.00 £69.65 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +2.41%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +7 903 £500 - 1,218
North of England +6 401 £463 +0.60% 286
Midlands +9 248 £450 -2.70% 134
West Midlands +21 233 £450 -12.62% 79
South East -19 223 £450 -10.00% 300
Yorkshire -10 158 £473 -5.50% 71
North West -15 146 £492 +16.17% 166
South West -1 111 £475 -2.56% 238
North East +13 104 £438 -1.69% 50
East of England +19 80 £450 +17.65% 158
East Midlands -45 15 £418 +17.61% 55
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
1 174 (8.81%) Confluence
2 48 (2.43%) Apache Airflow
3 39 (1.97%) SharePoint
4 37 (1.87%) Apache Spark
5 29 (1.47%) SAS
6 22 (1.11%) Apache
7 13 (0.66%) CMS
8 12 (0.61%) Camunda
9 10 (0.51%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 5 (0.25%) 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 (0.10%) Anypoint
14 2 (0.10%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.10%) Mule
Applications
1 22 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.76%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.25%) 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 (0.10%) Mingle
7 2 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 26 (1.32%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.86%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.71%) Aladdin
4 13 (0.66%) Payment Gateway
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 (0.10%) BambooHR
11 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
11 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
12 1 (0.051%) FLEXCUBE
12 1 (0.051%) Misys Equation
12 1 (0.051%) Misys Midas
12 1 (0.051%) SAP QM
12 1 (0.051%) Summit
12 1 (0.051%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 607 (30.72%) AWS
2 586 (29.66%) Azure
3 344 (17.41%) GitHub
4 276 (13.97%) Azure DevOps
5 215 (10.88%) GitHub Actions
6 160 (8.10%) Serverless
7 152 (7.69%) GCP
8 120 (6.07%) AWS Lambda
9 91 (4.61%) Amazon S3
9 91 (4.61%) Power Platform
10 75 (3.80%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 67 (3.39%) Amazon ECS
12 66 (3.34%) OpenShift
13 55 (2.78%) Amazon EKS
14 54 (2.73%) dbt
15 52 (2.63%) GitHub Copilot
16 51 (2.58%) Snowflake
17 45 (2.28%) AWS CloudFormation
18 44 (2.23%) Amazon EC2
19 41 (2.07%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.16%) HTTP
2 20 (1.01%) DNS
2 20 (1.01%) Firewall
3 19 (0.96%) 4G
4 17 (0.86%) 5G
5 16 (0.81%) 2G
5 16 (0.81%) 3G
5 16 (0.81%) Diameter Protocol
5 16 (0.81%) Network Security
5 16 (0.81%) SIGTRAN
5 16 (0.81%) SS7
5 16 (0.81%) TCP/IP
6 14 (0.71%) WAN
7 12 (0.61%) LAN
7 12 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (0.51%) BGP
8 10 (0.51%) DHCP
8 10 (0.51%) SAN
9 8 (0.40%) Ethernet VPN
9 8 (0.40%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (5.82%) PostgreSQL
2 110 (5.57%) Data Warehouse
3 97 (4.91%) NoSQL
4 89 (4.50%) MongoDB
5 81 (4.10%) SQL Server
6 79 (4.00%) Relational Database
7 77 (3.90%) Power BI
8 44 (2.23%) DynamoDB
9 34 (1.72%) Data Lake
9 34 (1.72%) Metadata
9 34 (1.72%) Oracle Reports
10 31 (1.57%) Amazon Athena
11 30 (1.52%) Big Data
12 28 (1.42%) Amazon RDS
12 28 (1.42%) Pentaho
13 27 (1.37%) MySQL
14 26 (1.32%) Amazon Redshift
14 26 (1.32%) Redis
15 23 (1.16%) Oracle Database
16 19 (0.96%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 412 (20.85%) Git
2 343 (17.36%) JIRA
3 317 (16.04%) Jenkins
4 272 (13.77%) GitLab
5 249 (12.60%) Selenium
6 136 (6.88%) Postman
7 128 (6.48%) Cucumber
8 110 (5.57%) JUnit
9 101 (5.11%) Cypress.io
10 89 (4.50%) REST Assured
11 81 (4.10%) JMeter
12 80 (4.05%) SonarQube
13 60 (3.04%) Zephyr
14 54 (2.73%) Gatling
15 49 (2.48%) Gradle
16 47 (2.38%) WebDriver
17 46 (2.33%) Maven
18 42 (2.13%) Mockito
19 40 (2.02%) Bitbucket
20 24 (1.21%) LoadRunner
General
1 558 (28.24%) Social Skills
2 387 (19.59%) Finance
3 289 (14.63%) Analytical Skills
4 253 (12.80%) Public Sector
5 181 (9.16%) Banking
6 65 (3.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 39 (1.97%) Telecoms
8 34 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
9 33 (1.67%) Front Office
10 31 (1.57%) Investment Banking
10 31 (1.57%) Retail
11 30 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
12 22 (1.11%) Financial Institution
12 22 (1.11%) Military
13 18 (0.91%) Law
14 17 (0.86%) Aerospace
14 17 (0.86%) Back Office
15 16 (0.81%) Marketing
16 14 (0.71%) Manufacturing
17 13 (0.66%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 419 (21.20%) Developer
2 322 (16.30%) Senior
3 195 (9.87%) Lead
4 191 (9.67%) Test Engineer
5 153 (7.74%) Tester
6 131 (6.63%) Java Developer
7 121 (6.12%) Data Engineer
7 121 (6.12%) Software Engineer
8 110 (5.57%) Analyst
9 97 (4.91%) DevOps Engineer
10 93 (4.71%) Senior Developer
11 89 (4.50%) Test Automation Engineer
12 88 (4.45%) QA Engineer
13 82 (4.15%) Architect
14 71 (3.59%) Full-Stack Developer
15 69 (3.49%) Test Analyst
16 68 (3.44%) Automation Engineer
17 67 (3.39%) Test Leader
18 65 (3.29%) Java Engineer
19 59 (2.99%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 293 (14.83%) REST
2 289 (14.63%) Terraform
3 220 (11.13%) Playwright
4 203 (10.27%) Kafka
5 197 (9.97%) RESTful
6 188 (9.51%) React
7 185 (9.36%) Spring
8 156 (7.89%) Spring Boot
9 137 (6.93%) .NET
10 117 (5.92%) HTML
11 100 (5.06%) Node.js
12 99 (5.01%) CSS
13 97 (4.91%) AngularJS
14 63 (3.19%) OAuth
15 56 (2.83%) JSON
16 51 (2.58%) XML
17 49 (2.48%) pytest
18 48 (2.43%) SOAP
19 46 (2.33%) Gherkin
20 45 (2.28%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 307 (15.54%) Cloud Native
2 164 (8.30%) Product Ownership
3 144 (7.29%) Distributed Systems
4 80 (4.05%) Enterprise Software
5 57 (2.88%) Onboarding
6 48 (2.43%) Data Protection Act
6 48 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
7 46 (2.33%) AI Agents
7 46 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
8 42 (2.13%) Mobile App
9 33 (1.67%) Virtual Team
10 24 (1.21%) Security Posture
11 22 (1.11%) Data Structures
12 21 (1.06%) Embedded Systems
13 19 (0.96%) Distributed Architecture
13 19 (0.96%) Management Information System
14 18 (0.91%) Fixed Income
15 17 (0.86%) Data Centre
16 16 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
17 15 (0.76%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 133 (6.73%) Linux
2 82 (4.15%) Windows
3 79 (4.00%) Unix
4 38 (1.92%) Apple iOS
5 36 (1.82%) Android
6 28 (1.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 18 (0.91%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.30%) Embedded Linux
8 6 (0.30%) Solaris
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 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,170 (59.21%) CI/CD
2 945 (47.82%) Agile
3 745 (37.70%) DevOps
4 392 (19.84%) Continuous Improvement
5 390 (19.74%) Problem-Solving
6 386 (19.53%) Microservices
7 379 (19.18%) Software Engineering
8 337 (17.05%) Scrum
9 335 (16.95%) Infrastructure as Code
10 332 (16.80%) Validation
11 304 (15.38%) AI
12 303 (15.33%) Test Strategy
13 277 (14.02%) Containerisation
14 260 (13.16%) Observability
15 248 (12.55%) SDLC
16 246 (12.45%) TDD
17 232 (11.74%) Software Testing
18 222 (11.23%) Stakeholder Management
19 214 (10.83%) End-to-End Testing
20 196 (9.92%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 541 (27.38%) Python
2 531 (26.87%) Java
3 484 (24.49%) SQL
4 282 (14.27%) JavaScript
5 219 (11.08%) TypeScript
6 164 (8.30%) C#
7 91 (4.61%) PowerShell
8 76 (3.85%) Bash
9 48 (2.43%) Kotlin
10 45 (2.28%) Bicep
11 34 (1.72%) C++
12 28 (1.42%) Scala
13 26 (1.32%) Go
14 25 (1.27%) PL/SQL
15 23 (1.16%) C
16 21 (1.06%) Apex Code
17 18 (0.91%) Shell Script
18 17 (0.86%) Groovy
18 17 (0.86%) Ruby
18 17 (0.86%) Swift
Qualifications
1 636 (32.19%) Security Cleared
2 531 (26.87%) SC Cleared
3 112 (5.67%) Degree
4 94 (4.76%) ISTQB
5 69 (3.49%) DV Cleared
6 67 (3.39%) BPSS Clearance
7 62 (3.14%) Computer Science Degree
8 36 (1.82%) AWS Certification
9 27 (1.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 21 (1.06%) Azure Certification
11 17 (0.86%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 13 (0.66%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 13 (0.66%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.61%) ISEB
14 11 (0.56%) SAFe Agilist
15 10 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.46%) Cisco Certification
16 9 (0.46%) CISSP
17 8 (0.40%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 6 (0.30%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 525 (26.57%) QA
2 154 (7.79%) Accessibility
3 132 (6.68%) Data Quality
4 87 (4.40%) WCAG
5 36 (1.82%) GDPR
6 16 (0.81%) ISO 20022
7 14 (0.71%) NCSC
8 13 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 13 (0.66%) SLA
9 11 (0.56%) GRC
9 11 (0.56%) 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
1 387 (19.59%) Docker
2 31 (1.57%) Active Directory
3 27 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.56%) Firmware
6 5 (0.25%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
9 2 (0.10%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.10%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.051%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 386 (19.53%) Kubernetes
2 107 (5.41%) Ansible
3 105 (5.31%) Grafana
4 84 (4.25%) Prometheus
5 40 (2.02%) Argo
6 20 (1.01%) Progress Chef
6 20 (1.01%) Puppet
7 12 (0.61%) HP ALM
7 12 (0.61%) Kibana
8 10 (0.51%) Control-M
8 10 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.35%) Dell DRAC
9 7 (0.35%) Kustomize
9 7 (0.35%) Microsoft Intune
10 5 (0.25%) HP Fortify
10 5 (0.25%) HP Quality Center
10 5 (0.25%) Istio
10 5 (0.25%) Packer
10 5 (0.25%) SCCM
11 4 (0.20%) WMI
Vendors
1 201 (10.17%) Microsoft
2 153 (7.74%) Oracle
3 78 (3.95%) Databricks
4 67 (3.39%) Salesforce
5 64 (3.24%) Google
6 60 (3.04%) Red Hat
7 48 (2.43%) IBM
8 47 (2.38%) Talend
9 46 (2.33%) Splunk
10 44 (2.23%) ServiceNow
11 41 (2.07%) SAP
12 36 (1.82%) Dynatrace
13 34 (1.72%) Denodo
14 33 (1.67%) Informatica
14 33 (1.67%) VMware
15 30 (1.52%) Cisco
16 27 (1.37%) UiPath
17 17 (0.86%) HP
18 11 (0.56%) OpenAI
18 11 (0.56%) Veracode