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

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 48 56
Rank change year-on-year -1 +8 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,690 1,120 1,260
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.16% 4.57% 3.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.90% 5.01% 3.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,107 771 832
10th Percentile £331 £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 £663 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 20 50
10th Percentile £36.69 £40.26 £52.38
25th Percentile £54.55 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £52.50 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year +23.81% -14.29% -17.23%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £81.25
90th Percentile - £75.67 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £50.00 £61.25
% change year-on-year +30.00% -18.37% -11.71%

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 34,470 22,336 31,802
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.75% 91.22% 86.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,971 14,617 20,828
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £511 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £501 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.75% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,149 942 2,251
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.50 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £29.07 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.68% -20.36% -2.67%
75th Percentile £67.84 £63.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.13 £28.75 £36.50
% change year-on-year +46.52% -21.23% +0.69%

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 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 11 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 11 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 -1 819 £496 -2.27% 203
North of England +10 339 £468 +4.00% 126
Midlands +2 195 £450 - 60
West Midlands +23 170 £461 -6.92% 38
South East -46 164 £509 +1.70% 118
North West +8 146 £465 +3.39% 59
Yorkshire -8 145 £493 -2.48% 34
South West +4 90 £469 -8.54% 68
East of England +10 62 £522 +6.58% 59
North East +9 53 £425 +7.59% 33
East Midlands -40 25 £400 +13.15% 22
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
1 132 (7.81%) Confluence
2 40 (2.37%) SAS
3 32 (1.89%) Apache Spark
4 29 (1.72%) Apache Airflow
5 12 (0.71%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.65%) Apache
7 8 (0.47%) 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%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.12%) Anypoint
12 1 (0.059%) Ethereum
12 1 (0.059%) Jupyter
12 1 (0.059%) Mendix
12 1 (0.059%) Solana
Applications
1 25 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.65%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.18%) Simulink
7 1 (0.059%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.059%) Mingle
7 1 (0.059%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (1.18%) Aladdin
2 11 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (0.41%) Findur
3 7 (0.41%) Shopify
4 6 (0.36%) Loan IQ
5 5 (0.30%) BambooHR
5 5 (0.30%) Maximo
5 5 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
5 5 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
6 3 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
6 3 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
6 3 (0.18%) SAP ERP
7 2 (0.12%) iTrent
7 2 (0.12%) SAP MDG
7 2 (0.12%) Summit
7 2 (0.12%) Workday HCM
8 1 (0.059%) Cloudability
8 1 (0.059%) Infor CloudSuite
8 1 (0.059%) Infor LN
8 1 (0.059%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 459 (27.16%) Azure
2 452 (26.75%) AWS
3 269 (15.92%) GitHub
4 207 (12.25%) Azure DevOps
5 156 (9.23%) GitHub Actions
6 116 (6.86%) GCP
7 114 (6.75%) Serverless
8 72 (4.26%) AWS Lambda
9 69 (4.08%) Amazon S3
10 54 (3.20%) OpenShift
11 53 (3.14%) Power Platform
12 51 (3.02%) Amazon ECS
13 43 (2.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 38 (2.25%) AWS CloudFormation
15 37 (2.19%) Azure AKS
16 35 (2.07%) Amazon EKS
16 35 (2.07%) Snowflake
17 34 (2.01%) Azure Data Factory
18 27 (1.60%) Dynamics 365
19 26 (1.54%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.18%) Firewall
2 13 (0.77%) HTTP
2 13 (0.77%) SAN
3 11 (0.65%) TCP/IP
4 9 (0.53%) Ethernet
4 9 (0.53%) VPN
5 8 (0.47%) FTP
5 8 (0.47%) WAN
6 7 (0.41%) MPLS
6 7 (0.41%) SD-WAN
6 7 (0.41%) SSL
6 7 (0.41%) Wireshark
7 6 (0.36%) Multicast
7 6 (0.36%) VLAN
7 6 (0.36%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (0.30%) Network Security
9 4 (0.24%) Cisco IOS
9 4 (0.24%) Modbus
9 4 (0.24%) NAS
9 4 (0.24%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 95 (5.62%) PostgreSQL
2 81 (4.79%) SQL Server
3 79 (4.67%) NoSQL
4 70 (4.14%) MongoDB
5 68 (4.02%) Data Warehouse
6 52 (3.08%) Relational Database
7 41 (2.43%) DynamoDB
8 37 (2.19%) Power BI
9 34 (2.01%) Pentaho
10 26 (1.54%) Oracle Reports
11 24 (1.42%) Tableau
12 23 (1.36%) Redis
13 22 (1.30%) Big Data
13 22 (1.30%) MySQL
14 20 (1.18%) Amazon Athena
15 19 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
15 19 (1.12%) BigQuery
15 19 (1.12%) Data Lake
16 18 (1.07%) Metadata
17 17 (1.01%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 327 (19.35%) JIRA
2 306 (18.11%) Git
3 281 (16.63%) Jenkins
4 238 (14.08%) GitLab
5 225 (13.31%) Selenium
6 130 (7.69%) Postman
7 118 (6.98%) Cucumber
8 89 (5.27%) JUnit
9 78 (4.62%) Cypress.io
10 71 (4.20%) JMeter
10 71 (4.20%) REST Assured
11 45 (2.66%) WebDriver
12 43 (2.54%) SonarQube
13 42 (2.49%) Zephyr
14 33 (1.95%) Gradle
15 30 (1.78%) Maven
15 30 (1.78%) SpecFlow
16 29 (1.72%) Bitbucket
17 27 (1.60%) Mockito
18 26 (1.54%) Gatling
General
1 448 (26.51%) Social Skills
2 309 (18.28%) Finance
3 231 (13.67%) Public Sector
4 206 (12.19%) Analytical Skills
5 148 (8.76%) Banking
6 38 (2.25%) Documentation Skills
7 34 (2.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 30 (1.78%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.60%) Front Office
10 23 (1.36%) Telecoms
11 19 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
11 19 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
12 17 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
13 15 (0.89%) Aerospace
13 15 (0.89%) Legal
14 14 (0.83%) Retail
15 13 (0.77%) Financial Institution
16 10 (0.59%) Back Office
16 10 (0.59%) Military
17 8 (0.47%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 352 (20.83%) Developer
2 256 (15.15%) Senior
3 186 (11.01%) Tester
4 174 (10.30%) Lead
5 173 (10.24%) Test Engineer
6 102 (6.04%) Data Engineer
7 99 (5.86%) Java Developer
8 90 (5.33%) Analyst
9 87 (5.15%) Test Automation Engineer
10 84 (4.97%) Software Engineer
11 82 (4.85%) Automation Tester
12 74 (4.38%) Architect
13 72 (4.26%) QA Engineer
14 67 (3.96%) Senior Developer
15 66 (3.91%) Test Leader
16 65 (3.85%) DevOps Engineer
17 54 (3.20%) Full-Stack Developer
18 51 (3.02%) Test Analyst
19 49 (2.90%) Automation Engineer
20 48 (2.84%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 189 (11.18%) Playwright
2 186 (11.01%) REST
3 150 (8.88%) React
4 135 (7.99%) Spring
5 123 (7.28%) RESTful
6 122 (7.22%) Kafka
7 119 (7.04%) .NET
8 111 (6.57%) Spring Boot
9 110 (6.51%) Node.js
10 76 (4.50%) AngularJS
11 62 (3.67%) HTML
12 55 (3.25%) CSS
13 53 (3.14%) pytest
14 48 (2.84%) OAuth
15 47 (2.78%) Jest
16 32 (1.89%) Gherkin
16 32 (1.89%) OpenID
16 32 (1.89%) Swagger
17 31 (1.83%) OAuth2
17 31 (1.83%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 187 (11.07%) Cloud Native
2 119 (7.04%) Product Ownership
3 91 (5.38%) Distributed Systems
4 45 (2.66%) Data Protection Act
4 45 (2.66%) Mobile App
5 42 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
6 32 (1.89%) Virtual Team
7 29 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
8 27 (1.60%) Onboarding
9 25 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
10 24 (1.42%) Algorithms
11 23 (1.36%) Management Information System
12 21 (1.24%) Distributed Architecture
13 19 (1.12%) Fixed Income
13 19 (1.12%) Security Posture
14 18 (1.07%) Data Centre
14 18 (1.07%) Data Structures
14 18 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
14 18 (1.07%) NHS
15 16 (0.95%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 112 (6.63%) Linux
2 77 (4.56%) Windows
3 44 (2.60%) Unix
4 40 (2.37%) Android
5 35 (2.07%) Apple iOS
6 18 (1.07%) Windows Server
7 16 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.77%) Mac OS X
9 8 (0.47%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.30%) Solaris
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%) CentOS
12 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.12%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.059%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.059%) VMS
14 1 (0.059%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 883 (52.25%) CI/CD
2 785 (46.45%) Agile
3 605 (35.80%) DevOps
4 358 (21.18%) Problem-Solving
5 282 (16.69%) Microservices
6 272 (16.09%) Continuous Improvement
7 249 (14.73%) Scrum
8 240 (14.20%) Test Strategy
9 225 (13.31%) Infrastructure as Code
10 224 (13.25%) Containerisation
10 224 (13.25%) Software Engineering
11 220 (13.02%) Validation
12 199 (11.78%) Observability
13 194 (11.48%) AI
14 193 (11.42%) TDD
15 180 (10.65%) Test Scripting
16 168 (9.94%) ETL
16 168 (9.94%) Software Testing
17 166 (9.82%) Regression Testing
18 164 (9.70%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 448 (26.51%) Python
2 423 (25.03%) Java
3 400 (23.67%) SQL
4 234 (13.85%) JavaScript
5 225 (13.31%) TypeScript
6 176 (10.41%) C#
7 70 (4.14%) PowerShell
8 55 (3.25%) Bash
9 43 (2.54%) C++
10 37 (2.19%) Kotlin
11 32 (1.89%) C
12 30 (1.78%) PL/SQL
13 26 (1.54%) Scala
14 24 (1.42%) Apex Code
15 23 (1.36%) Bicep
15 23 (1.36%) Go
16 18 (1.07%) Ruby
17 16 (0.95%) Swift
18 13 (0.77%) Groovy
19 11 (0.65%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 526 (31.12%) Security Cleared
2 409 (24.20%) SC Cleared
3 75 (4.44%) ISTQB
4 71 (4.20%) Degree
5 63 (3.73%) DV Cleared
6 59 (3.49%) BPSS Clearance
7 41 (2.43%) Computer Science Degree
8 14 (0.83%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 13 (0.77%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
11 10 (0.59%) Azure Certification
11 10 (0.59%) CCNP
11 10 (0.59%) SAFe Agilist
12 9 (0.53%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 8 (0.47%) AWS Certification
13 8 (0.47%) DBS Check
13 8 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
14 7 (0.41%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 6 (0.36%) CISSP
16 5 (0.30%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 369 (21.83%) QA
2 115 (6.80%) Accessibility
3 98 (5.80%) Data Quality
4 50 (2.96%) WCAG
5 30 (1.78%) GDPR
6 14 (0.83%) ISO 20022
7 10 (0.59%) Def Stans
7 10 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 10 (0.59%) NCSC
8 8 (0.47%) SLA
9 7 (0.41%) NIST
9 7 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 7 (0.41%) SEPA
10 6 (0.36%) PSD2
11 5 (0.30%) FATCA
12 4 (0.24%) HL7
12 4 (0.24%) MiFID
12 4 (0.24%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
13 3 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 297 (17.57%) Docker
2 21 (1.24%) Active Directory
3 18 (1.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.83%) Firmware
5 11 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.41%) 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 (0.059%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.059%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.059%) KVM
12 1 (0.059%) Squid
12 1 (0.059%) Time Sharing Option
12 1 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.059%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 302 (17.87%) Kubernetes
2 206 (12.19%) Terraform
3 97 (5.74%) Grafana
4 80 (4.73%) Prometheus
5 78 (4.62%) Ansible
6 27 (1.60%) Argo
7 16 (0.95%) HP ALM
8 15 (0.89%) Puppet
9 12 (0.71%) Kibana
9 12 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (0.59%) Forefront Identity Manager
10 10 (0.59%) HP Quality Center
10 10 (0.59%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 8 (0.47%) Dell DRAC
12 7 (0.41%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.36%) NetBackup
14 5 (0.30%) Nmap
14 5 (0.30%) Rancher
15 4 (0.24%) Oracle RMAN
16 3 (0.18%) Nagios
Vendors
1 150 (8.88%) Oracle
2 145 (8.58%) Microsoft
3 57 (3.37%) Databricks
3 57 (3.37%) Salesforce
4 55 (3.25%) ServiceNow
5 54 (3.20%) Splunk
6 49 (2.90%) Talend
7 46 (2.72%) Red Hat
8 43 (2.54%) Google
9 33 (1.95%) Denodo
10 26 (1.54%) SAP
11 24 (1.42%) VMware
12 20 (1.18%) Cisco
12 20 (1.18%) Dynatrace
12 20 (1.18%) IBM
12 20 (1.18%) Informatica
13 19 (1.12%) HP
14 17 (1.01%) UiPath
15 15 (0.89%) MuleSoft
15 15 (0.89%) OpenAI