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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 51 46
Rank change year-on-year +6 -5 +7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,091 1,292 1,347
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.49% 4.62% 4.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.30% 5.08% 4.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,327 879 916
10th Percentile £320 £313 £350
25th Percentile £407 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -7.27%
75th Percentile £582 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 95 35 15
10th Percentile £40.00 £41.28 £44.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £48.13 £50.63
Median hourly rate £68.22 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.63% -4.17% -20.00%
75th Percentile £73.33 £67.00 £79.75
90th Percentile £77.00 £71.80 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +27.27% -4.35% -23.33%

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 39,431 25,424 27,856
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.70% 90.99% 86.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,955 16,149 17,033
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.64% -2.57% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,897 1,546 1,199
10th Percentile £13.87 £14.42 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.60 £17.87 £20.30
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £46.55 £67.01
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.25 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £39.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +55.07% -40.82% -

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 1 October 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 1 October 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 1 October 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 +8 951 £500 - 1,591
North of England -2 422 £453 -4.63% 503
Midlands +9 261 £450 -2.70% 252
West Midlands +27 246 £450 -13.34% 166
South East -13 223 £449 -5.53% 445
Yorkshire -2 178 £463 -7.50% 152
North West -13 149 £492 +16.23% 276
South West -6 116 £475 -12.84% 315
North East +6 102 £425 -11.69% 75
East of England +16 94 £375 +17.19% 212
East Midlands -44 15 £418 +15.97% 86
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
1 178 (8.51%) Confluence
2 61 (2.92%) Apache Airflow
3 43 (2.06%) Apache Spark
4 40 (1.91%) SharePoint
5 34 (1.63%) Apache
6 24 (1.15%) SAS
7 16 (0.77%) CMS
8 13 (0.62%) Camunda
9 9 (0.43%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.29%) Jupyter
11 6 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
12 5 (0.24%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
14 3 (0.14%) Kentico
14 3 (0.14%) nginx
15 2 (0.096%) Anypoint
15 2 (0.096%) Mule
15 2 (0.096%) Oracle Workflow
15 2 (0.096%) Tomcat
Applications
1 20 (0.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.81%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.29%) Chatbot
3 6 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.19%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.14%) Mingle
5 3 (0.14%) Trello
6 2 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.048%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.048%) Simulink
7 1 (0.048%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 28 (1.34%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.62%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.48%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.29%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.24%) SAP GRC
8 4 (0.19%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.096%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.096%) Findur
9 2 (0.096%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.096%) Shopify
10 1 (0.048%) FLEXCUBE
10 1 (0.048%) Maximo
10 1 (0.048%) SAP MM
10 1 (0.048%) SAP QM
10 1 (0.048%) SAP SD
10 1 (0.048%) Summit
10 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 662 (31.66%) AWS
2 629 (30.08%) Azure
3 359 (17.17%) GitHub
4 290 (13.87%) Azure DevOps
5 214 (10.23%) GitHub Actions
6 170 (8.13%) GCP
7 165 (7.89%) Serverless
8 121 (5.79%) AWS Lambda
9 104 (4.97%) Power Platform
10 101 (4.83%) Amazon S3
11 84 (4.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 72 (3.44%) OpenShift
13 68 (3.25%) GitHub Copilot
14 65 (3.11%) Amazon ECS
14 65 (3.11%) Amazon EKS
15 57 (2.73%) dbt
16 53 (2.53%) Snowflake
17 50 (2.39%) AWS CloudFormation
18 48 (2.30%) Amazon EC2
19 41 (1.96%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.20%) DNS
2 24 (1.15%) 4G
3 23 (1.10%) Firewall
4 22 (1.05%) HTTP
4 22 (1.05%) TCP/IP
5 21 (1.00%) 5G
5 21 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
6 20 (0.96%) Broadband
7 17 (0.81%) Network Security
8 14 (0.67%) 2G
8 14 (0.67%) 3G
8 14 (0.67%) Diameter Protocol
8 14 (0.67%) SIGTRAN
8 14 (0.67%) SS7
9 13 (0.62%) BGP
9 13 (0.62%) WAN
10 12 (0.57%) Ethernet VPN
10 12 (0.57%) LAN
10 12 (0.57%) VXLAN
11 11 (0.53%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 122 (5.83%) PostgreSQL
2 109 (5.21%) Data Warehouse
3 96 (4.59%) MongoDB
3 96 (4.59%) NoSQL
4 87 (4.16%) Relational Database
5 85 (4.07%) SQL Server
6 83 (3.97%) Power BI
7 42 (2.01%) Metadata
8 41 (1.96%) Data Lake
9 38 (1.82%) DynamoDB
10 34 (1.63%) Oracle Reports
11 33 (1.58%) Big Data
12 31 (1.48%) MySQL
13 29 (1.39%) Amazon Redshift
14 28 (1.34%) Amazon Athena
14 28 (1.34%) Amazon RDS
14 28 (1.34%) Redis
15 27 (1.29%) Pentaho
16 26 (1.24%) Oracle Database
17 20 (0.96%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 469 (22.43%) Git
2 342 (16.36%) JIRA
3 332 (15.88%) Jenkins
4 298 (14.25%) GitLab
5 275 (13.15%) Selenium
6 163 (7.80%) Cucumber
7 140 (6.70%) Postman
8 130 (6.22%) JUnit
9 100 (4.78%) Cypress.io
10 96 (4.59%) REST Assured
11 84 (4.02%) JMeter
11 84 (4.02%) SonarQube
12 67 (3.20%) Gatling
13 61 (2.92%) Zephyr
14 56 (2.68%) Maven
15 51 (2.44%) Gradle
16 48 (2.30%) Mockito
17 41 (1.96%) WebDriver
18 36 (1.72%) Bitbucket
19 27 (1.29%) SoapUI
General
1 588 (28.12%) Social Skills
2 411 (19.66%) Finance
3 314 (15.02%) Analytical Skills
4 252 (12.05%) Public Sector
5 201 (9.61%) Banking
6 68 (3.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 56 (2.68%) Telecoms
8 35 (1.67%) Retail
9 33 (1.58%) Front Office
10 30 (1.43%) Investment Banking
10 30 (1.43%) Military
11 27 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
12 24 (1.15%) Documentation Skills
13 22 (1.05%) Financial Institution
14 20 (0.96%) Manufacturing
15 19 (0.91%) Aerospace
15 19 (0.91%) Marketing
16 18 (0.86%) Law
17 14 (0.67%) Automotive
17 14 (0.67%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 442 (21.14%) Developer
2 331 (15.83%) Senior
3 207 (9.90%) Lead
4 203 (9.71%) Test Engineer
5 145 (6.93%) Tester
6 139 (6.65%) Data Engineer
7 132 (6.31%) Java Developer
8 115 (5.50%) Software Engineer
9 106 (5.07%) Analyst
10 97 (4.64%) Architect
11 94 (4.50%) QA Engineer
12 90 (4.30%) DevOps Engineer
12 90 (4.30%) Test Automation Engineer
13 89 (4.26%) Senior Developer
14 75 (3.59%) Automation Engineer
15 73 (3.49%) Full-Stack Developer
16 68 (3.25%) Java Engineer
17 67 (3.20%) Test Analyst
17 67 (3.20%) Test Leader
18 63 (3.01%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 334 (15.97%) REST
2 321 (15.35%) Terraform
3 236 (11.29%) Playwright
4 230 (11.00%) Kafka
5 216 (10.33%) RESTful
6 205 (9.80%) Spring
7 192 (9.18%) React
8 170 (8.13%) Spring Boot
9 150 (7.17%) .NET
10 137 (6.55%) HTML
11 114 (5.45%) CSS
12 109 (5.21%) Node.js
13 92 (4.40%) AngularJS
14 85 (4.07%) OAuth
15 66 (3.16%) JSON
16 59 (2.82%) Middleware
17 58 (2.77%) SOAP
18 54 (2.58%) Web Services
19 53 (2.53%) Gherkin
19 53 (2.53%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 338 (16.16%) Cloud Native
2 173 (8.27%) Product Ownership
3 153 (7.32%) Distributed Systems
4 91 (4.35%) Enterprise Software
5 74 (3.54%) Onboarding
6 67 (3.20%) AI Agents
7 50 (2.39%) Legacy Systems
8 45 (2.15%) Data Protection Act
8 45 (2.15%) Self-Motivation
9 43 (2.06%) Mobile App
10 32 (1.53%) Security Posture
11 30 (1.43%) Data Structures
12 27 (1.29%) Virtual Team
13 24 (1.15%) Management Information System
14 21 (1.00%) Embedded Systems
15 20 (0.96%) Data Centre
16 18 (0.86%) Private Cloud
17 17 (0.81%) Distributed Architecture
18 16 (0.77%) Greenfield Project
18 16 (0.77%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 148 (7.08%) Linux
2 98 (4.69%) Windows
3 80 (3.83%) Unix
4 43 (2.06%) Apple iOS
5 38 (1.82%) Android
6 30 (1.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 22 (1.05%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.38%) VMS
9 6 (0.29%) Mac OS X
9 6 (0.29%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.29%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.24%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.24%) Windows Server 2003
11 3 (0.14%) AIX
11 3 (0.14%) CentOS
11 3 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
11 3 (0.14%) Solaris
11 3 (0.14%) zOS
12 2 (0.096%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.096%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,290 (61.69%) CI/CD
2 1,014 (48.49%) Agile
3 785 (37.54%) DevOps
4 426 (20.37%) Continuous Improvement
5 423 (20.23%) Microservices
6 422 (20.18%) Problem-Solving
7 410 (19.61%) Software Engineering
8 370 (17.69%) Infrastructure as Code
9 369 (17.65%) Validation
10 367 (17.55%) AI
11 360 (17.22%) Scrum
12 322 (15.40%) Test Strategy
13 312 (14.92%) Containerisation
14 283 (13.53%) Observability
15 269 (12.86%) Software Testing
16 268 (12.82%) SDLC
16 268 (12.82%) TDD
17 253 (12.10%) Stakeholder Management
18 227 (10.86%) End-to-End Testing
19 211 (10.09%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 591 (28.26%) Python
2 578 (27.64%) Java
3 528 (25.25%) SQL
4 320 (15.30%) JavaScript
5 241 (11.53%) TypeScript
6 174 (8.32%) C#
7 90 (4.30%) PowerShell
8 78 (3.73%) Bash
9 49 (2.34%) Bicep
10 47 (2.25%) Kotlin
11 38 (1.82%) Go
12 37 (1.77%) C++
12 37 (1.77%) Scala
13 24 (1.15%) Shell Script
14 23 (1.10%) PL/SQL
15 18 (0.86%) Apex Code
15 18 (0.86%) C
16 16 (0.77%) Groovy
16 16 (0.77%) Swift
17 11 (0.53%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 661 (31.61%) Security Cleared
2 549 (26.26%) SC Cleared
3 122 (5.83%) Degree
4 92 (4.40%) ISTQB
5 84 (4.02%) BPSS Clearance
5 84 (4.02%) DV Cleared
6 68 (3.25%) Computer Science Degree
7 44 (2.10%) AWS Certification
8 24 (1.15%) Azure Certification
8 24 (1.15%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 14 (0.67%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 14 (0.67%) CISSP
9 14 (0.67%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 14 (0.67%) Master's Degree
10 13 (0.62%) ISEB
11 12 (0.57%) Cisco Certification
11 12 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
12 9 (0.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 8 (0.38%) SAFe Agilist
14 7 (0.33%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 578 (27.64%) QA
2 175 (8.37%) Accessibility
3 142 (6.79%) Data Quality
4 94 (4.50%) WCAG
5 38 (1.82%) GDPR
6 19 (0.91%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 16 (0.77%) NIST
9 13 (0.62%) SLA
10 12 (0.57%) GRC
10 12 (0.57%) NCSC
11 8 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.29%) PCI DSS
13 6 (0.29%) Software Quality Assurance
14 5 (0.24%) FATCA
14 5 (0.24%) HL7
15 4 (0.19%) HIPAA
15 4 (0.19%) SEPA
16 3 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 429 (20.52%) Docker
2 38 (1.82%) Active Directory
3 29 (1.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (0.48%) Firmware
6 8 (0.38%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.14%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.096%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.048%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.048%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.048%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.048%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 422 (20.18%) Kubernetes
2 124 (5.93%) Ansible
3 119 (5.69%) Grafana
4 86 (4.11%) Prometheus
5 35 (1.67%) Argo
6 26 (1.24%) Kibana
7 23 (1.10%) Puppet
8 22 (1.05%) Progress Chef
9 14 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.53%) Control-M
10 11 (0.53%) HP ALM
11 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
12 7 (0.33%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.29%) HP Fortify
13 6 (0.29%) SCCM
14 5 (0.24%) Dell DRAC
14 5 (0.24%) Istio
14 5 (0.24%) Packer
15 4 (0.19%) Rancher
15 4 (0.19%) WMI
Vendors
1 217 (10.38%) Microsoft
2 145 (6.93%) Oracle
3 91 (4.35%) Databricks
4 76 (3.63%) Google
5 59 (2.82%) IBM
5 59 (2.82%) Salesforce
6 54 (2.58%) ServiceNow
7 51 (2.44%) Red Hat
7 51 (2.44%) Splunk
8 43 (2.06%) SAP
8 43 (2.06%) Talend
9 40 (1.91%) Dynatrace
10 37 (1.77%) VMware
11 36 (1.72%) Denodo
12 35 (1.67%) Informatica
13 33 (1.58%) Cisco
14 30 (1.43%) UiPath
15 18 (0.86%) Foundry
15 18 (0.86%) OpenAI
16 17 (0.81%) HP