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

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 48 57
Rank change year-on-year +2 +9 -8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,826 1,099 1,322
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.26% 4.45% 3.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.01% 4.87% 4.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,177 773 874
10th Percentile £348 £318 £363
25th Percentile £404 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% -6.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £613 £625
90th Percentile £663 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £494 £513
% change year-on-year -3.75% -3.71% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 25 50
10th Percentile £36.22 £41.78 £51.13
25th Percentile £59.19 £46.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% -4.35% -22.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.50 £71.88
90th Percentile £74.30 £77.38 £85.50
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +28.57% -8.70% -14.66%

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 36,481 22,561 31,958
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.14% 91.35% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,067 14,578 20,676
10th Percentile £325 £302 £300
25th Percentile £415 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.46% -0.98% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £506 £525
% change year-on-year +1.28% -3.62% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,283 1,053 2,381
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.81 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £27.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +70.91% -26.67% +7.05%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £26.32 £37.18
% change year-on-year +67.02% -29.21% +6.23%

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 16 June 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 16 June 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 16 June 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 +2 837 £500 -1.23% 264
North of England +14 362 £458 +2.35% 143
Midlands +9 228 £450 +5.88% 71
West Midlands +26 209 £450 -10.00% 43
South East -31 191 £481 -3.75% 155
North West +4 150 £475 +15.29% 81
Yorkshire +1 143 £500 +5.26% 37
South West +16 105 £463 -2.63% 55
East of England +15 84 £495 +10.00% 65
North East +6 77 £425 +6.25% 26
East Midlands -44 19 £418 +51.82% 28
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
1 152 (8.32%) Confluence
2 42 (2.30%) SAS
3 40 (2.19%) Apache Airflow
4 35 (1.92%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.77%) Apache
5 14 (0.77%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.66%) CMS
7 9 (0.49%) Appian
8 8 (0.44%) Camunda
9 5 (0.27%) nginx
9 5 (0.27%) Tomcat
9 5 (0.27%) WebLogic
10 3 (0.16%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.16%) Kentico
10 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.11%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.11%) Mule
12 1 (0.055%) Ethereum
Applications
1 28 (1.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.77%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.16%) Simulink
8 1 (0.055%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.055%) Mingle
8 1 (0.055%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 19 (1.04%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.99%) Aladdin
3 9 (0.49%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.44%) Findur
4 8 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
5 6 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
5 6 (0.33%) SAP ERP
5 6 (0.33%) Shopify
6 5 (0.27%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.27%) Loan IQ
7 3 (0.16%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.16%) Maximo
7 3 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
8 2 (0.11%) Infor CloudSuite
8 2 (0.11%) Infor LN
8 2 (0.11%) Infor M3
8 2 (0.11%) iTrent
8 2 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 501 (27.44%) AWS
2 489 (26.78%) Azure
3 289 (15.83%) GitHub
4 220 (12.05%) Azure DevOps
5 175 (9.58%) GitHub Actions
6 135 (7.39%) Serverless
7 120 (6.57%) GCP
8 92 (5.04%) AWS Lambda
9 80 (4.38%) Amazon S3
10 70 (3.83%) Power Platform
11 61 (3.34%) OpenShift
12 54 (2.96%) Amazon ECS
13 53 (2.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 44 (2.41%) Azure Data Factory
15 38 (2.08%) Amazon EC2
16 36 (1.97%) dbt
17 35 (1.92%) Snowflake
18 34 (1.86%) Amazon EKS
19 29 (1.59%) AWS CloudFormation
20 28 (1.53%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.15%) Firewall
2 15 (0.82%) HTTP
2 15 (0.82%) SAN
3 11 (0.60%) WAN
4 10 (0.55%) Network Security
5 9 (0.49%) MPLS
5 9 (0.49%) TCP/IP
5 9 (0.49%) VPN
6 6 (0.33%) Ethernet
6 6 (0.33%) LAN
6 6 (0.33%) SD-WAN
6 6 (0.33%) VLAN
6 6 (0.33%) Wi-Fi
6 6 (0.33%) Wireshark
7 5 (0.27%) BGP
7 5 (0.27%) Multicast
7 5 (0.27%) SSL
8 4 (0.22%) 4G
8 4 (0.22%) FTP
8 4 (0.22%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 106 (5.81%) PostgreSQL
2 91 (4.98%) Data Warehouse
3 83 (4.55%) MongoDB
4 76 (4.16%) NoSQL
4 76 (4.16%) SQL Server
5 55 (3.01%) Relational Database
6 51 (2.79%) Power BI
7 45 (2.46%) DynamoDB
8 35 (1.92%) Oracle Reports
9 34 (1.86%) Pentaho
10 30 (1.64%) Amazon Athena
11 24 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
11 24 (1.31%) Amazon Redshift
11 24 (1.31%) Big Data
11 24 (1.31%) Data Lake
11 24 (1.31%) Redis
11 24 (1.31%) Tableau
12 22 (1.20%) Metadata
13 20 (1.10%) Oracle Database
14 17 (0.93%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 340 (18.62%) JIRA
2 320 (17.52%) Git
3 290 (15.88%) Jenkins
4 258 (14.13%) GitLab
5 229 (12.54%) Selenium
6 136 (7.45%) Postman
7 126 (6.90%) Cucumber
8 93 (5.09%) REST Assured
9 91 (4.98%) JUnit
10 84 (4.60%) Cypress.io
11 80 (4.38%) JMeter
12 53 (2.90%) SonarQube
13 52 (2.85%) Zephyr
14 51 (2.79%) WebDriver
15 41 (2.25%) Gradle
16 39 (2.14%) Gatling
17 34 (1.86%) Bitbucket
18 31 (1.70%) Mockito
19 29 (1.59%) Maven
20 27 (1.48%) SpecFlow
General
1 492 (26.94%) Social Skills
2 332 (18.18%) Finance
3 238 (13.03%) Public Sector
4 232 (12.71%) Analytical Skills
5 152 (8.32%) Banking
6 49 (2.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 41 (2.25%) Documentation Skills
8 31 (1.70%) Investment Banking
9 26 (1.42%) Front Office
10 25 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
11 21 (1.15%) Telecoms
12 19 (1.04%) Financial Institution
12 19 (1.04%) Retail
13 17 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.88%) Military
15 15 (0.82%) Aerospace
15 15 (0.82%) Legal
16 13 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
17 12 (0.66%) Law
17 12 (0.66%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 363 (19.88%) Developer
2 283 (15.50%) Senior
3 196 (10.73%) Test Engineer
4 195 (10.68%) Lead
5 193 (10.57%) Tester
6 118 (6.46%) Data Engineer
7 105 (5.75%) Java Developer
8 99 (5.42%) Software Engineer
9 95 (5.20%) Analyst
10 83 (4.55%) Architect
11 81 (4.44%) DevOps Engineer
12 79 (4.33%) Test Automation Engineer
13 74 (4.05%) QA Engineer
14 71 (3.89%) Senior Developer
15 69 (3.78%) Automation Tester
16 66 (3.61%) Test Leader
17 54 (2.96%) Automation Engineer
18 52 (2.85%) Test Analyst
19 51 (2.79%) Full-Stack Developer
20 48 (2.63%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 200 (10.95%) REST
2 195 (10.68%) Playwright
3 166 (9.09%) React
4 137 (7.50%) Kafka
5 134 (7.34%) Spring
6 131 (7.17%) RESTful
7 110 (6.02%) .NET
8 109 (5.97%) Spring Boot
9 97 (5.31%) Node.js
10 75 (4.11%) AngularJS
11 63 (3.45%) HTML
12 56 (3.07%) CSS
13 50 (2.74%) pytest
14 46 (2.52%) OAuth
15 43 (2.35%) Jest
16 37 (2.03%) Quarkus
16 37 (2.03%) Swagger
17 33 (1.81%) Gherkin
18 31 (1.70%) .NET Framework
18 31 (1.70%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 211 (11.56%) Cloud Native
2 126 (6.90%) Product Ownership
3 108 (5.91%) Distributed Systems
4 53 (2.90%) Legacy Systems
5 51 (2.79%) Data Protection Act
6 42 (2.30%) Mobile App
7 40 (2.19%) Enterprise Software
8 38 (2.08%) Self-Motivation
9 36 (1.97%) Virtual Team
10 32 (1.75%) Distributed Architecture
10 32 (1.75%) Onboarding
11 23 (1.26%) Algorithms
12 22 (1.20%) Management Information System
13 21 (1.15%) Embedded Systems
13 21 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
13 21 (1.15%) Security Posture
14 20 (1.10%) Fixed Income
14 20 (1.10%) NHS
15 17 (0.93%) AI Agents
15 17 (0.93%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 119 (6.52%) Linux
2 75 (4.11%) Windows
3 52 (2.85%) Unix
4 41 (2.25%) Android
5 38 (2.08%) Apple iOS
6 18 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 17 (0.93%) Windows Server
8 12 (0.66%) Mac OS X
9 7 (0.38%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.38%) Solaris
10 5 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.22%) Embedded Linux
11 4 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.16%) AIX
12 3 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.11%) CentOS
13 2 (0.11%) Kali Linux
13 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 967 (52.96%) CI/CD
2 842 (46.11%) Agile
3 632 (34.61%) DevOps
4 339 (18.57%) Problem-Solving
5 301 (16.48%) Microservices
6 299 (16.37%) Continuous Improvement
7 280 (15.33%) Scrum
8 278 (15.22%) Test Strategy
9 272 (14.90%) Software Engineering
10 267 (14.62%) Validation
11 243 (13.31%) Infrastructure as Code
12 228 (12.49%) AI
13 227 (12.43%) Observability
14 215 (11.77%) Containerisation
15 209 (11.45%) TDD
16 191 (10.46%) ETL
17 186 (10.19%) Software Testing
18 178 (9.75%) End-to-End Testing
19 176 (9.64%) User Acceptance Testing
20 174 (9.53%) Test Scripting
Programming Languages
1 459 (25.14%) Python
2 445 (24.37%) Java
3 436 (23.88%) SQL
4 225 (12.32%) JavaScript
5 205 (11.23%) TypeScript
6 172 (9.42%) C#
7 70 (3.83%) PowerShell
8 56 (3.07%) Bash
9 46 (2.52%) Kotlin
10 42 (2.30%) C++
11 30 (1.64%) C
11 30 (1.64%) PL/SQL
11 30 (1.64%) Scala
12 29 (1.59%) Go
13 28 (1.53%) Apex Code
14 26 (1.42%) Bicep
15 22 (1.20%) Swift
16 16 (0.88%) Groovy
17 15 (0.82%) Ruby
18 13 (0.71%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 576 (31.54%) Security Cleared
2 461 (25.25%) SC Cleared
3 85 (4.65%) ISTQB
4 74 (4.05%) Degree
5 70 (3.83%) BPSS Clearance
6 68 (3.72%) DV Cleared
7 37 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
8 19 (1.04%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 16 (0.88%) AWS Certification
10 15 (0.82%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 14 (0.77%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 14 (0.77%) Master's Degree
12 13 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
13 11 (0.60%) CCNP
13 11 (0.60%) SAFe Agilist
14 8 (0.44%) Azure Certification
15 7 (0.38%) CISSP
15 7 (0.38%) DBS Check
16 5 (0.27%) CCIE
16 5 (0.27%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 401 (21.96%) QA
2 132 (7.23%) Accessibility
3 120 (6.57%) Data Quality
4 59 (3.23%) WCAG
5 30 (1.64%) GDPR
6 12 (0.66%) ISO 20022
7 11 (0.60%) NCSC
8 10 (0.55%) Def Stans
8 10 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 10 (0.55%) NIST
9 9 (0.49%) SLA
10 5 (0.27%) FATCA
10 5 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 5 (0.27%) Software Quality Assurance
11 4 (0.22%) HL7
11 4 (0.22%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.22%) SEPA
12 3 (0.16%) HIPAA
12 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.16%) PSD2
System Software
1 300 (16.43%) Docker
2 26 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (0.99%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.77%) Firmware
5 13 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.22%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 4 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.11%) SRDF
9 1 (0.055%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.055%) KVM
9 1 (0.055%) Squid
9 1 (0.055%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.055%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 312 (17.09%) Kubernetes
2 219 (11.99%) Terraform
3 93 (5.09%) Grafana
4 92 (5.04%) Ansible
5 84 (4.60%) Prometheus
6 35 (1.92%) Argo
7 13 (0.71%) HP ALM
8 12 (0.66%) Puppet
9 11 (0.60%) Kibana
10 10 (0.55%) Dell DRAC
10 10 (0.55%) HP Quality Center
11 9 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.44%) Kustomize
13 7 (0.38%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 7 (0.38%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 6 (0.33%) NetBackup
15 5 (0.27%) Istio
15 5 (0.27%) Progress Chef
16 4 (0.22%) Oracle RMAN
16 4 (0.22%) Rancher
Vendors
1 153 (8.38%) Microsoft
2 150 (8.21%) Oracle
3 75 (4.11%) Salesforce
4 61 (3.34%) Databricks
5 56 (3.07%) Red Hat
6 55 (3.01%) Talend
7 50 (2.74%) Splunk
8 48 (2.63%) ServiceNow
9 47 (2.57%) Google
10 38 (2.08%) Denodo
11 30 (1.64%) VMware
12 29 (1.59%) Informatica
13 28 (1.53%) UiPath
14 27 (1.48%) SAP
15 26 (1.42%) Dynatrace
16 23 (1.26%) IBM
17 22 (1.20%) Cisco
18 16 (0.88%) HP
19 15 (0.82%) OpenAI
20 14 (0.77%) Blue Prism