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

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 45 54
Rank change year-on-year -4 +9 -10
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,572 1,162 1,385
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.55% 4.50% 3.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.20% 5.01% 4.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,066 771 976
10th Percentile £333 £337 £375
25th Percentile £401 £400 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £586 £623 £631
90th Percentile £688 £725 £717
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -2.50% -4.76% -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 45 3 59
10th Percentile £31.48 £73.44 £51.00
25th Percentile £50.00 £74.85 £52.50
Median hourly rate £63.50 £77.19 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.74% +10.27% +19.66%
75th Percentile £67.50 £82.35 £90.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £85.44 -
UK median hourly rate £63.00 £75.60 £70.00
% change year-on-year -16.66% +7.99% +22.81%

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 30,243 23,214 32,931
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.45% 89.92% 87.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,352 14,394 21,863
10th Percentile £311 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £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 1,888 728 2,002
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £13.32
25th Percentile £18.24 £21.20 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.89 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.04% - -
75th Percentile £60.61 £65.00 £61.04
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.33 £72.90
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% -

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 18 February 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 18 February 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 18 February 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 -2 781 £500 -4.76% 178
North of England +4 322 £496 +16.71% 126
South East -20 158 £500 - 165
Midlands +2 143 £493 +5.35% 71
Yorkshire -8 138 £525 +18.31% 33
North West +6 136 £447 +11.12% 77
West Midlands 0 113 £515 +6.63% 49
South West 0 79 £525 -11.02% 66
East of England +5 56 £585 +33.71% 62
North East +15 52 £488 +28.09% 16
East Midlands -10 30 £400 -4.48% 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 93 (5.92%) Confluence
2 46 (2.93%) SAS
3 17 (1.08%) Apache Spark
4 13 (0.83%) SharePoint
5 9 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.51%) Appian
7 7 (0.45%) Apache
8 6 (0.38%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.32%) CMS
9 5 (0.32%) Oracle Application Server
10 4 (0.25%) Camunda
10 4 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.25%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.25%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.19%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.19%) nginx
12 2 (0.13%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.13%) WordPress
13 1 (0.064%) CICS
Applications
1 25 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.76%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.064%) SOLIDWORKS
8 1 (0.064%) Trello
Business Applications
1 19 (1.21%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.32%) Workday HCM
3 4 (0.25%) Loan IQ
3 4 (0.25%) Maximo
3 4 (0.25%) SAP HR
4 3 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.19%) Shopify
5 2 (0.13%) iTrent
5 2 (0.13%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.13%) Summit
6 1 (0.064%) Algo Collateral
6 1 (0.064%) CODA-Financials
6 1 (0.064%) Eagle PACE
6 1 (0.064%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.064%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.064%) PORTIA
6 1 (0.064%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 427 (27.16%) Azure
2 372 (23.66%) AWS
3 250 (15.90%) GitHub
4 174 (11.07%) Azure DevOps
5 154 (9.80%) GCP
6 128 (8.14%) GitHub Actions
7 105 (6.68%) Serverless
8 63 (4.01%) OpenShift
9 54 (3.44%) Power Platform
10 43 (2.74%) AWS Lambda
11 41 (2.61%) Amazon S3
12 40 (2.54%) Azure AKS
13 37 (2.35%) SaaS
14 32 (2.04%) Snowflake
15 29 (1.84%) Azure Data Factory
16 28 (1.78%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (1.78%) Azure Functions
16 28 (1.78%) Entra ID
17 27 (1.72%) Amazon EKS
17 27 (1.72%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 32 (2.04%) Firewall
2 23 (1.46%) Wireshark
3 22 (1.40%) HTTPS
4 20 (1.27%) VPN
5 19 (1.21%) TCP/IP
6 17 (1.08%) SSL
7 14 (0.89%) HTTP
7 14 (0.89%) Network Security
8 13 (0.83%) SD-WAN
9 11 (0.70%) WAN
10 10 (0.64%) Ethernet
10 10 (0.64%) MPLS
11 9 (0.57%) DNS
11 9 (0.57%) Multicast
11 9 (0.57%) VLAN
12 7 (0.45%) AMQP
12 7 (0.45%) FTP
13 5 (0.32%) BGP
13 5 (0.32%) Cisco IPT
13 5 (0.32%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 86 (5.47%) PostgreSQL
2 69 (4.39%) MongoDB
3 65 (4.13%) NoSQL
4 62 (3.94%) SQL Server
5 53 (3.37%) Relational Database
6 30 (1.91%) Data Warehouse
7 29 (1.84%) Power BI
8 24 (1.53%) Oracle Database
9 22 (1.40%) BigQuery
9 22 (1.40%) MySQL
9 22 (1.40%) Pentaho
10 18 (1.15%) DynamoDB
11 17 (1.08%) Redis
11 17 (1.08%) Tableau
12 13 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
12 13 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
12 13 (0.83%) Big Data
13 12 (0.76%) Data Lake
13 12 (0.76%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 12 (0.76%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 280 (17.81%) Jenkins
1 280 (17.81%) JIRA
2 271 (17.24%) Git
3 234 (14.89%) Selenium
4 231 (14.69%) GitLab
5 133 (8.46%) Postman
6 130 (8.27%) Cucumber
7 103 (6.55%) Cypress.io
8 89 (5.66%) JUnit
9 88 (5.60%) REST Assured
10 69 (4.39%) JMeter
11 41 (2.61%) SonarQube
12 35 (2.23%) Maven
13 32 (2.04%) TestRail
14 31 (1.97%) Gatling
14 31 (1.97%) Mockito
14 31 (1.97%) SpecFlow
15 30 (1.91%) Gradle
16 29 (1.84%) WebDriver
17 26 (1.65%) Bitbucket
General
1 401 (25.51%) Social Skills
2 256 (16.28%) Finance
3 217 (13.80%) Public Sector
4 178 (11.32%) Analytical Skills
5 125 (7.95%) Banking
6 28 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (1.65%) Investment Banking
8 24 (1.53%) Documentation Skills
9 22 (1.40%) Front Office
9 22 (1.40%) Pharmaceutical
10 20 (1.27%) Telecoms
11 18 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
12 16 (1.02%) Military
13 14 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
14 13 (0.83%) Financial Institution
15 12 (0.76%) Aerospace
16 10 (0.64%) Electronics
16 10 (0.64%) Organisational Skills
17 9 (0.57%) Legal
18 8 (0.51%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 366 (23.28%) Developer
2 271 (17.24%) Senior
3 178 (11.32%) Tester
4 173 (11.01%) Test Engineer
5 171 (10.88%) Lead
6 107 (6.81%) Java Developer
7 83 (5.28%) Automation Tester
8 82 (5.22%) Software Engineer
9 79 (5.03%) Analyst
10 73 (4.64%) Test Automation Engineer
11 70 (4.45%) Senior Developer
12 61 (3.88%) QA Engineer
13 59 (3.75%) Test Leader
14 58 (3.69%) Data Engineer
15 55 (3.50%) DevOps Engineer
16 51 (3.24%) Test Analyst
16 51 (3.24%) Test Manager
17 48 (3.05%) Automation Engineer
18 46 (2.93%) Architect
19 41 (2.61%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 209 (13.30%) REST
2 189 (12.02%) Playwright
3 138 (8.78%) React
4 122 (7.76%) Spring
5 118 (7.51%) .NET
6 115 (7.32%) Node.js
7 112 (7.12%) Kafka
7 112 (7.12%) RESTful
8 108 (6.87%) Spring Boot
9 78 (4.96%) pytest
10 54 (3.44%) HTML
11 53 (3.37%) AngularJS
12 52 (3.31%) OAuth
13 50 (3.18%) CSS
14 48 (3.05%) Jest
15 47 (2.99%) JSON
15 47 (2.99%) SOAP
16 45 (2.86%) Web Services
17 42 (2.67%) XML
18 36 (2.29%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 170 (10.81%) Cloud Native
2 95 (6.04%) Product Ownership
3 62 (3.94%) Distributed Systems
4 45 (2.86%) Mobile App
5 40 (2.54%) Algorithms
6 35 (2.23%) Legacy Systems
6 35 (2.23%) Security Posture
7 33 (2.10%) Data Protection Act
8 26 (1.65%) Onboarding
9 23 (1.46%) Data Structures
9 23 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
10 21 (1.34%) Virtual Team
11 20 (1.27%) Management Information System
11 20 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
12 19 (1.21%) Equities
12 19 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
13 18 (1.15%) Public Cloud
14 14 (0.89%) Derivative
14 14 (0.89%) Life Science
14 14 (0.89%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 149 (9.48%) Linux
2 77 (4.90%) Windows
3 49 (3.12%) Unix
4 42 (2.67%) Android
5 37 (2.35%) Apple iOS
6 24 (1.53%) Mac OS X
7 20 (1.27%) Windows Server
8 11 (0.70%) Kali Linux
9 7 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 6 (0.38%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.25%) CentOS
12 2 (0.13%) VMS
12 2 (0.13%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.064%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.064%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.064%) Solaris
13 1 (0.064%) Windows Embedded Compact
13 1 (0.064%) Windows Server 2008
13 1 (0.064%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.064%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 790 (50.25%) CI/CD
2 770 (48.98%) Agile
3 575 (36.58%) DevOps
4 405 (25.76%) Problem-Solving
5 267 (16.98%) Microservices
6 238 (15.14%) Test Strategy
7 232 (14.76%) Continuous Improvement
8 227 (14.44%) Containerisation
9 206 (13.10%) Scrum
10 204 (12.98%) AI
11 202 (12.85%) TDD
12 201 (12.79%) Software Engineering
13 200 (12.72%) Test Scripting
14 195 (12.40%) Infrastructure as Code
15 186 (11.83%) Validation
16 180 (11.45%) Software Testing
17 156 (9.92%) Observability
18 155 (9.86%) API Testing
19 153 (9.73%) BDD
20 149 (9.48%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 474 (30.15%) Python
2 408 (25.95%) Java
3 305 (19.40%) SQL
4 245 (15.59%) JavaScript
5 230 (14.63%) TypeScript
6 146 (9.29%) C#
7 65 (4.13%) Bash
8 57 (3.63%) PowerShell
9 40 (2.54%) C++
10 35 (2.23%) Go
11 24 (1.53%) Bicep
12 23 (1.46%) Kotlin
13 21 (1.34%) PL/SQL
14 17 (1.08%) C
15 16 (1.02%) Apex Code
15 16 (1.02%) Scala
16 15 (0.95%) Swift
17 11 (0.70%) Groovy
17 11 (0.70%) Ruby
17 11 (0.70%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 443 (28.18%) Security Cleared
2 338 (21.50%) SC Cleared
3 96 (6.11%) Degree
4 67 (4.26%) ISTQB
5 59 (3.75%) BPSS Clearance
6 55 (3.50%) DV Cleared
7 54 (3.44%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (1.91%) Master's Degree
9 21 (1.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 18 (1.15%) OSCP
11 15 (0.95%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 13 (0.83%) Cisco Certification
12 13 (0.83%) GPEN
12 13 (0.83%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 12 (0.76%) CEH
14 11 (0.70%) AWS Certification
14 11 (0.70%) Azure Certification
15 10 (0.64%) CISSP
15 10 (0.64%) Microsoft Certification
15 10 (0.64%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 343 (21.82%) QA
2 119 (7.57%) Accessibility
3 75 (4.77%) Data Quality
4 39 (2.48%) WCAG
5 30 (1.91%) GDPR
5 30 (1.91%) NIST
6 19 (1.21%) NCSC
7 18 (1.15%) EU AI Act
8 14 (0.89%) ISO 20022
9 13 (0.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 12 (0.76%) PSD2
11 10 (0.64%) SEPA
12 9 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 9 (0.57%) SLA
13 6 (0.38%) SOC 2
14 5 (0.32%) Def Stans
14 5 (0.32%) NIST 800
14 5 (0.32%) PCI DSS
14 5 (0.32%) PERC
15 4 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 327 (20.80%) Docker
2 30 (1.91%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.45%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 5 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
5 4 (0.25%) Firmware
5 4 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
6 3 (0.19%) ISA Server
7 2 (0.13%) QEMU
7 2 (0.13%) VMware Infrastructure
8 1 (0.064%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.064%) KVM
8 1 (0.064%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.064%) Squid
8 1 (0.064%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.064%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.064%) zsh
Systems Management
1 298 (18.96%) Kubernetes
2 181 (11.51%) Terraform
3 92 (5.85%) Ansible
4 84 (5.34%) Grafana
5 57 (3.63%) Prometheus
6 19 (1.21%) Nmap
7 17 (1.08%) HP ALM
8 15 (0.95%) Puppet
9 14 (0.89%) Argo
9 14 (0.89%) Progress Chef
10 12 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.57%) HP Quality Center
11 9 (0.57%) NetBackup
12 7 (0.45%) CSIRT
12 7 (0.45%) Kibana
12 7 (0.45%) Nessus
13 6 (0.38%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 6 (0.38%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 5 (0.32%) Podman
15 4 (0.25%) Iperf
Vendors
1 140 (8.91%) Microsoft
2 125 (7.95%) Oracle
3 57 (3.63%) Databricks
4 56 (3.56%) ServiceNow
5 54 (3.44%) Splunk
6 51 (3.24%) Salesforce
7 49 (3.12%) Google
8 42 (2.67%) SAP
9 26 (1.65%) Red Hat
10 23 (1.46%) Talend
11 22 (1.40%) Denodo
12 20 (1.27%) Cisco
13 18 (1.15%) VMware
14 17 (1.08%) HP
14 17 (1.08%) IBM
14 17 (1.08%) MuleSoft
14 17 (1.08%) webMethods
15 16 (1.02%) OpenAI
16 15 (0.95%) Workday
17 14 (0.89%) Foundry