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

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 46 57
Rank change year-on-year -1 +11 -15
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,526 1,167 1,370
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.73% 4.38% 3.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.36% 4.90% 4.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,058 782 980
10th Percentile £340 £333 £387
25th Percentile £402 £400 £427
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £700 £700 £719
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 4 54
10th Percentile £41.94 £55.00 £37.51
25th Percentile £50.00 £66.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £60.00 £75.60 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.63% +0.79% +25.00%
75th Percentile £66.75 £79.77 £90.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £84.41 -
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £62.00 £75.00
% change year-on-year -3.23% -17.33% +25.00%

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 28,450 23,808 32,355
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.12% 89.33% 87.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,222 14,593 21,730
10th Percentile £305 £310 £300
25th Percentile £409 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,765 770 1,701
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.00 £17.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £38.16
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -8.27% +9.67%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.01 £63.29
90th Percentile £69.65 £75.00 £75.16
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -13.33% +17.19%

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 21 January 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 21 January 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 21 January 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 -4 729 £500 -2.44% 199
North of England +6 316 £496 +13.37% 176
South East -16 161 £500 -2.44% 293
Midlands +12 158 £509 +5.43% 111
Yorkshire -11 155 £518 +15.00% 74
West Midlands +16 125 £525 +5.53% 47
North West -5 115 £430 +6.30% 76
South West +5 75 £540 -1.82% 128
North East +14 48 £488 +34.48% 26
East of England -3 48 £593 +48.13% 149
East Midlands -9 33 £393 -14.33% 63
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 88 (5.77%) Confluence
2 58 (3.80%) SAS
3 19 (1.25%) Apache Spark
4 13 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
4 13 (0.85%) SharePoint
5 9 (0.59%) Apache
6 6 (0.39%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 6 (0.39%) OpenStack
6 6 (0.39%) Oracle Application Server
7 5 (0.33%) Appian
7 5 (0.33%) CMS
8 4 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
9 3 (0.20%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.20%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.20%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.13%) Camunda
10 2 (0.13%) Magnolia
10 2 (0.13%) nginx
10 2 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
10 2 (0.13%) WordPress
Applications
1 19 (1.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (0.59%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.46%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.13%) Trello
7 1 (0.066%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 18 (1.18%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.33%) Workday HCM
3 4 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.26%) Maximo
3 4 (0.26%) SAP HR
4 2 (0.13%) Eagle PACE
4 2 (0.13%) iTrent
4 2 (0.13%) Loan IQ
4 2 (0.13%) Markit EDM
4 2 (0.13%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
4 2 (0.13%) Shopify
5 1 (0.066%) Algo Collateral
5 1 (0.066%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.066%) ION Anvil
5 1 (0.066%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.066%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.066%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.066%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 425 (27.85%) Azure
2 367 (24.05%) AWS
3 221 (14.48%) GitHub
4 168 (11.01%) Azure DevOps
5 157 (10.29%) GCP
6 117 (7.67%) GitHub Actions
7 107 (7.01%) Serverless
8 54 (3.54%) OpenShift
9 50 (3.28%) Power Platform
10 44 (2.88%) AWS Lambda
11 42 (2.75%) Azure AKS
12 39 (2.56%) Amazon S3
13 37 (2.42%) SaaS
14 33 (2.16%) Snowflake
15 32 (2.10%) AWS CloudFormation
15 32 (2.10%) Entra ID
16 30 (1.97%) Amazon EKS
16 30 (1.97%) Azure Functions
17 29 (1.90%) Tricentis Tosca
18 27 (1.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 38 (2.49%) Firewall
2 31 (2.03%) Wireshark
3 21 (1.38%) HTTP
3 21 (1.38%) HTTPS
4 20 (1.31%) TCP/IP
5 19 (1.25%) SSL
6 17 (1.11%) Network Security
6 17 (1.11%) VPN
7 14 (0.92%) SD-WAN
8 11 (0.72%) WAN
9 10 (0.66%) Ethernet
10 8 (0.52%) DNS
10 8 (0.52%) MPLS
10 8 (0.52%) VLAN
11 7 (0.46%) AMQP
11 7 (0.46%) FTP
11 7 (0.46%) Multicast
12 5 (0.33%) Cisco IPT
13 4 (0.26%) DHCP
13 4 (0.26%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 89 (5.83%) PostgreSQL
2 68 (4.46%) NoSQL
3 62 (4.06%) MongoDB
4 57 (3.74%) SQL Server
5 53 (3.47%) Relational Database
6 32 (2.10%) Pentaho
7 27 (1.77%) Data Warehouse
7 27 (1.77%) Power BI
8 22 (1.44%) BigQuery
9 18 (1.18%) Big Data
9 18 (1.18%) MySQL
9 18 (1.18%) Oracle Database
9 18 (1.18%) Redis
10 15 (0.98%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 14 (0.92%) DynamoDB
11 14 (0.92%) Tableau
12 13 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
12 13 (0.85%) Data Lake
12 13 (0.85%) Star Schema
13 12 (0.79%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 287 (18.81%) Jenkins
2 283 (18.55%) JIRA
3 275 (18.02%) Git
4 234 (15.33%) Selenium
5 216 (14.15%) GitLab
6 126 (8.26%) Postman
7 124 (8.13%) Cucumber
8 98 (6.42%) Cypress.io
9 84 (5.50%) JUnit
10 76 (4.98%) REST Assured
11 59 (3.87%) JMeter
12 38 (2.49%) SonarQube
13 35 (2.29%) Bitbucket
14 33 (2.16%) Maven
15 30 (1.97%) TestRail
16 29 (1.90%) Gradle
17 27 (1.77%) Gatling
17 27 (1.77%) SpecFlow
18 26 (1.70%) WebDriver
19 25 (1.64%) Mockito
General
1 408 (26.74%) Social Skills
2 259 (16.97%) Finance
3 208 (13.63%) Public Sector
4 181 (11.86%) Analytical Skills
5 119 (7.80%) Banking
6 30 (1.97%) Documentation Skills
7 27 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 23 (1.51%) Pharmaceutical
9 22 (1.44%) Investment Banking
10 19 (1.25%) Front Office
10 19 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
11 18 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 15 (0.98%) Financial Institution
13 13 (0.85%) Military
14 10 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
14 10 (0.66%) Manufacturing
14 10 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
15 9 (0.59%) Aerospace
15 9 (0.59%) Marketing
16 8 (0.52%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 343 (22.48%) Developer
2 248 (16.25%) Senior
3 170 (11.14%) Tester
4 163 (10.68%) Test Engineer
5 145 (9.50%) Lead
6 97 (6.36%) Java Developer
7 83 (5.44%) Automation Tester
8 77 (5.05%) Software Engineer
9 72 (4.72%) Test Automation Engineer
10 71 (4.65%) Analyst
11 63 (4.13%) Data Engineer
11 63 (4.13%) Senior Developer
12 62 (4.06%) QA Engineer
13 55 (3.60%) DevOps Engineer
14 52 (3.41%) Test Leader
15 51 (3.34%) Automation Engineer
16 50 (3.28%) Test Manager
17 46 (3.01%) Test Analyst
18 39 (2.56%) Architect
19 36 (2.36%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 209 (13.70%) REST
2 168 (11.01%) Playwright
3 130 (8.52%) React
4 118 (7.73%) .NET
5 112 (7.34%) Node.js
5 112 (7.34%) RESTful
6 106 (6.95%) Spring
7 103 (6.75%) Kafka
8 96 (6.29%) Spring Boot
9 71 (4.65%) pytest
10 52 (3.41%) HTML
10 52 (3.41%) JSON
11 50 (3.28%) AngularJS
11 50 (3.28%) SOAP
12 48 (3.15%) CSS
13 47 (3.08%) XML
14 45 (2.95%) Jest
14 45 (2.95%) OAuth
15 42 (2.75%) Web Services
16 36 (2.36%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 168 (11.01%) Cloud Native
2 107 (7.01%) Product Ownership
3 54 (3.54%) Distributed Systems
4 46 (3.01%) Mobile App
5 40 (2.62%) Security Posture
6 31 (2.03%) Algorithms
7 26 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
8 24 (1.57%) Enterprise Software
8 24 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
9 23 (1.51%) Virtual Team
10 21 (1.38%) Data Structures
11 20 (1.31%) Management Information System
11 20 (1.31%) Onboarding
11 20 (1.31%) Public Cloud
12 19 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
13 16 (1.05%) Genomics
13 16 (1.05%) Life Science
14 15 (0.98%) Equities
14 15 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
14 15 (0.98%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 150 (9.83%) Linux
2 75 (4.91%) Windows
3 47 (3.08%) Unix
4 38 (2.49%) Android
5 33 (2.16%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.31%) Windows Server
7 19 (1.25%) Mac OS X
8 12 (0.79%) Kali Linux
9 5 (0.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 4 (0.26%) CentOS
11 3 (0.20%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.13%) VMS
12 2 (0.13%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.066%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.066%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.066%) Windows Embedded Compact
13 1 (0.066%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 769 (50.39%) CI/CD
2 745 (48.82%) Agile
3 588 (38.53%) DevOps
4 402 (26.34%) Problem-Solving
5 239 (15.66%) Microservices
6 233 (15.27%) Containerisation
7 232 (15.20%) Continuous Improvement
8 221 (14.48%) Test Strategy
9 207 (13.56%) Scrum
10 197 (12.91%) Test Scripting
11 191 (12.52%) Infrastructure as Code
12 184 (12.06%) Software Engineering
13 183 (11.99%) TDD
14 170 (11.14%) AI
15 168 (11.01%) Software Testing
16 164 (10.75%) Validation
17 145 (9.50%) SDLC
18 144 (9.44%) Analytics
18 144 (9.44%) API Testing
19 141 (9.24%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 464 (30.41%) Python
2 368 (24.12%) Java
3 308 (20.18%) SQL
4 225 (14.74%) JavaScript
5 200 (13.11%) TypeScript
6 149 (9.76%) C#
7 78 (5.11%) Bash
8 63 (4.13%) PowerShell
9 34 (2.23%) Go
10 33 (2.16%) C++
11 23 (1.51%) Bicep
12 20 (1.31%) Kotlin
13 19 (1.25%) PL/SQL
14 16 (1.05%) Scala
15 13 (0.85%) PHP
16 12 (0.79%) Apex Code
16 12 (0.79%) Groovy
17 11 (0.72%) Swift
18 10 (0.66%) Perl
18 10 (0.66%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 418 (27.39%) Security Cleared
2 318 (20.84%) SC Cleared
3 91 (5.96%) Degree
4 65 (4.26%) ISTQB
5 54 (3.54%) Computer Science Degree
6 53 (3.47%) DV Cleared
7 50 (3.28%) BPSS Clearance
8 26 (1.70%) Master's Degree
9 20 (1.31%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 19 (1.25%) OSCP
11 16 (1.05%) AWS Certification
11 16 (1.05%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 15 (0.98%) CISSP
13 14 (0.92%) Azure Certification
13 14 (0.92%) CEH
13 14 (0.92%) Cisco Certification
13 14 (0.92%) MCP
14 13 (0.85%) GPEN
15 11 (0.72%) Oracle Certification
16 10 (0.66%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 330 (21.63%) QA
2 106 (6.95%) Accessibility
3 75 (4.91%) Data Quality
4 35 (2.29%) GDPR
5 34 (2.23%) NIST
5 34 (2.23%) WCAG
6 19 (1.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 19 (1.25%) NCSC
7 18 (1.18%) EU AI Act
8 16 (1.05%) PSD2
9 15 (0.98%) ISO 20022
10 11 (0.72%) SEPA
11 10 (0.66%) PCI DSS
12 9 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 9 (0.59%) SLA
13 6 (0.39%) NIST 800
13 6 (0.39%) SOC 2
14 5 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
14 5 (0.33%) PERC
15 4 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 334 (21.89%) Docker
2 32 (2.10%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.46%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 5 (0.33%) Firmware
4 5 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.20%) ISA Server
5 3 (0.20%) QEMU
5 3 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
5 3 (0.20%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.13%) zsh
7 1 (0.066%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.066%) KVM
7 1 (0.066%) Squid
7 1 (0.066%) Time Sharing Option
7 1 (0.066%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.066%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 297 (19.46%) Kubernetes
2 182 (11.93%) Terraform
3 103 (6.75%) Ansible
4 74 (4.85%) Grafana
5 48 (3.15%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.18%) Nmap
7 16 (1.05%) HP ALM
7 16 (1.05%) Progress Chef
8 14 (0.92%) CSIRT
8 14 (0.92%) Puppet
9 13 (0.85%) NetBackup
10 11 (0.72%) Argo
11 10 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.52%) Nessus
13 6 (0.39%) HP Quality Center
13 6 (0.39%) Kibana
13 6 (0.39%) Podman
14 5 (0.33%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 5 (0.33%) NetIQ Identity Manager
15 4 (0.26%) Rancher
Vendors
1 149 (9.76%) Microsoft
2 143 (9.37%) Oracle
3 67 (4.39%) Splunk
4 57 (3.74%) ServiceNow
5 54 (3.54%) Databricks
6 48 (3.15%) Google
6 48 (3.15%) Salesforce
7 44 (2.88%) SAP
8 32 (2.10%) Denodo
8 32 (2.10%) Talend
9 24 (1.57%) Red Hat
10 22 (1.44%) VMware
11 21 (1.38%) F5
12 19 (1.25%) Cisco
13 18 (1.18%) MuleSoft
13 18 (1.18%) webMethods
14 17 (1.11%) IBM
14 17 (1.11%) OpenAI
15 16 (1.05%) HP
15 16 (1.05%) Workday