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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 50 55
Rank change year-on-year +4 +5 -5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,898 1,152 1,354
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.32% 4.41% 3.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.06% 4.85% 4.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,220 801 905
10th Percentile £329 £313 £363
25th Percentile £405 £390 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -9.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £706 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £480 £513
% change year-on-year -1.04% -6.34% -5.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 29 47
10th Percentile £36.22 £42.17 £50.75
25th Percentile £60.00 £46.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% -4.35% -15.75%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £71.87
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.25 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +28.57% -8.70% -12.55%

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 37,490 23,760 31,971
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.37% 91.05% 85.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,605 15,276 20,748
10th Percentile £325 £300 £305
25th Percentile £419 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.46% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £730 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.98% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,362 1,184 2,308
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.23 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.79 £17.95 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% +1.65%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +3.45%

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 3 July 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 3 July 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 3 July 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 +3 858 £500 - 309
North of England +13 387 £455 +1.45% 136
Midlands +9 239 £450 +8.11% 79
West Midlands +27 222 £450 -8.44% 39
South East -29 199 £462 -7.60% 169
Yorkshire +6 160 £500 +2.56% 42
North West -1 152 £475 +12.56% 70
South West +17 111 £450 - 72
East of England +21 86 £475 +1.60% 57
North East +8 85 £425 +6.25% 24
East Midlands -40 17 £425 +54.55% 40
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
1 167 (8.80%) Confluence
2 43 (2.27%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (2.16%) SAS
4 37 (1.95%) Apache Spark
5 16 (0.84%) Apache
6 15 (0.79%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.63%) CMS
8 6 (0.32%) Appian
8 6 (0.32%) Camunda
9 5 (0.26%) nginx
9 5 (0.26%) Tomcat
9 5 (0.26%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.21%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.16%) Kentico
11 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.11%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.11%) Mule
13 1 (0.053%) Solana
Applications
1 29 (1.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.84%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (0.42%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.16%) Simulink
8 1 (0.053%) Mingle
8 1 (0.053%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 21 (1.11%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (0.84%) Aladdin
3 11 (0.58%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
5 8 (0.42%) Findur
6 7 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.32%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.32%) Shopify
8 5 (0.26%) BambooHR
8 5 (0.26%) Loan IQ
9 3 (0.16%) Distributed Ledger
9 3 (0.16%) Maximo
10 2 (0.11%) Infor CloudSuite
10 2 (0.11%) Infor LN
10 2 (0.11%) IntelliMatch
10 2 (0.11%) iTrent
10 2 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
10 2 (0.11%) SAP MDG
10 2 (0.11%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 527 (27.77%) AWS
2 519 (27.34%) Azure
3 310 (16.33%) GitHub
4 228 (12.01%) Azure DevOps
5 188 (9.91%) GitHub Actions
6 134 (7.06%) Serverless
7 129 (6.80%) GCP
8 93 (4.90%) AWS Lambda
9 81 (4.27%) Amazon S3
10 71 (3.74%) Power Platform
11 63 (3.32%) OpenShift
12 54 (2.85%) Amazon ECS
13 52 (2.74%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 44 (2.32%) dbt
15 42 (2.21%) Azure Data Factory
16 40 (2.11%) Amazon EC2
17 36 (1.90%) Snowflake
18 31 (1.63%) Amazon EKS
19 30 (1.58%) Azure AKS
20 29 (1.53%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 19 (1.00%) Firewall
2 15 (0.79%) HTTP
2 15 (0.79%) SAN
3 11 (0.58%) Network Security
3 11 (0.58%) WAN
4 9 (0.47%) MPLS
5 8 (0.42%) VPN
6 7 (0.37%) 4G
6 7 (0.37%) 5G
7 6 (0.32%) 2G
7 6 (0.32%) 3G
7 6 (0.32%) BGP
7 6 (0.32%) Diameter Protocol
7 6 (0.32%) Ethernet
7 6 (0.32%) LAN
7 6 (0.32%) SD-WAN
7 6 (0.32%) SIGTRAN
7 6 (0.32%) SS7
7 6 (0.32%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.32%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 103 (5.43%) PostgreSQL
2 97 (5.11%) Data Warehouse
3 89 (4.69%) MongoDB
4 83 (4.37%) NoSQL
5 76 (4.00%) SQL Server
6 61 (3.21%) Relational Database
7 55 (2.90%) Power BI
8 46 (2.42%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.84%) Oracle Reports
10 33 (1.74%) Pentaho
11 31 (1.63%) Amazon Athena
12 26 (1.37%) Amazon RDS
12 26 (1.37%) Data Lake
13 25 (1.32%) Big Data
14 24 (1.26%) Amazon Redshift
14 24 (1.26%) Metadata
14 24 (1.26%) Redis
15 21 (1.11%) Tableau
16 20 (1.05%) Oracle Database
17 18 (0.95%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 364 (19.18%) JIRA
2 334 (17.60%) Git
3 308 (16.23%) Jenkins
4 265 (13.96%) GitLab
5 244 (12.86%) Selenium
6 146 (7.69%) Postman
7 137 (7.22%) Cucumber
8 101 (5.32%) REST Assured
9 98 (5.16%) JUnit
10 87 (4.58%) Cypress.io
11 85 (4.48%) JMeter
12 59 (3.11%) Zephyr
13 53 (2.79%) SonarQube
13 53 (2.79%) WebDriver
14 45 (2.37%) Gatling
15 41 (2.16%) Gradle
16 36 (1.90%) Bitbucket
17 35 (1.84%) Mockito
18 31 (1.63%) Maven
19 29 (1.53%) SpecFlow
General
1 515 (27.13%) Social Skills
2 366 (19.28%) Finance
3 242 (12.75%) Analytical Skills
4 233 (12.28%) Public Sector
5 162 (8.54%) Banking
6 51 (2.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 41 (2.16%) Documentation Skills
8 32 (1.69%) Investment Banking
9 26 (1.37%) Front Office
9 26 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
10 25 (1.32%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.16%) Financial Institution
11 22 (1.16%) Retail
12 19 (1.00%) Military
13 17 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.84%) Aerospace
15 15 (0.79%) Legal
16 13 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
17 12 (0.63%) Automotive
17 12 (0.63%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 377 (19.86%) Developer
2 296 (15.60%) Senior
3 204 (10.75%) Lead
4 196 (10.33%) Test Engineer
4 196 (10.33%) Tester
5 128 (6.74%) Data Engineer
6 119 (6.27%) Java Developer
7 106 (5.58%) Software Engineer
8 98 (5.16%) Analyst
9 88 (4.64%) Architect
10 84 (4.43%) DevOps Engineer
10 84 (4.43%) Test Automation Engineer
11 79 (4.16%) Senior Developer
12 78 (4.11%) QA Engineer
13 74 (3.90%) Test Leader
14 66 (3.48%) Automation Tester
15 57 (3.00%) Test Analyst
16 56 (2.95%) Automation Engineer
17 52 (2.74%) Full-Stack Developer
18 47 (2.48%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 212 (11.17%) REST
2 211 (11.12%) Playwright
3 172 (9.06%) React
4 152 (8.01%) Spring
5 143 (7.53%) Kafka
6 141 (7.43%) RESTful
7 122 (6.43%) .NET
8 121 (6.38%) Spring Boot
9 95 (5.01%) Node.js
10 80 (4.21%) AngularJS
11 68 (3.58%) HTML
12 64 (3.37%) CSS
13 48 (2.53%) pytest
14 44 (2.32%) OAuth
15 41 (2.16%) Jest
15 41 (2.16%) Quarkus
16 39 (2.05%) .NET Framework
17 37 (1.95%) Gherkin
17 37 (1.95%) Swagger
18 36 (1.90%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 239 (12.59%) Cloud Native
2 131 (6.90%) Product Ownership
3 120 (6.32%) Distributed Systems
4 56 (2.95%) Enterprise Software
5 54 (2.85%) Legacy Systems
6 47 (2.48%) Data Protection Act
7 41 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
8 40 (2.11%) Mobile App
9 37 (1.95%) Onboarding
10 36 (1.90%) Virtual Team
11 31 (1.63%) Distributed Architecture
12 28 (1.48%) Security Posture
13 26 (1.37%) Management Information System
14 25 (1.32%) Embedded Systems
15 21 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
16 20 (1.05%) AI Agents
17 19 (1.00%) Fixed Income
18 18 (0.95%) Algorithms
19 15 (0.79%) Data Centre
19 15 (0.79%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 114 (6.01%) Linux
2 73 (3.85%) Windows
3 56 (2.95%) Unix
4 37 (1.95%) Android
5 36 (1.90%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.74%) Mac OS X
7 14 (0.74%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.37%) Mac OS
8 7 (0.37%) Solaris
9 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
10 4 (0.21%) Embedded Linux
10 4 (0.21%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.16%) AIX
11 3 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.11%) CentOS
12 2 (0.11%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,041 (54.85%) CI/CD
2 876 (46.15%) Agile
3 669 (35.25%) DevOps
4 348 (18.34%) Problem-Solving
5 327 (17.23%) Continuous Improvement
5 327 (17.23%) Microservices
6 295 (15.54%) Software Engineering
7 294 (15.49%) Scrum
8 292 (15.38%) Test Strategy
9 290 (15.28%) Validation
10 262 (13.80%) Infrastructure as Code
11 248 (13.07%) AI
12 232 (12.22%) TDD
13 229 (12.07%) Containerisation
14 228 (12.01%) Observability
15 200 (10.54%) ETL
16 195 (10.27%) End-to-End Testing
17 191 (10.06%) Software Testing
18 186 (9.80%) User Acceptance Testing
19 183 (9.64%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 475 (25.03%) Java
2 474 (24.97%) Python
3 452 (23.81%) SQL
4 237 (12.49%) JavaScript
5 216 (11.38%) TypeScript
6 177 (9.33%) C#
7 68 (3.58%) PowerShell
8 58 (3.06%) Bash
9 45 (2.37%) Kotlin
10 40 (2.11%) C++
11 32 (1.69%) Bicep
11 32 (1.69%) Scala
12 31 (1.63%) C
13 29 (1.53%) Apex Code
13 29 (1.53%) Go
14 28 (1.48%) PL/SQL
15 22 (1.16%) Swift
16 17 (0.90%) Ruby
17 16 (0.84%) Groovy
18 13 (0.68%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 587 (30.93%) Security Cleared
2 479 (25.24%) SC Cleared
3 87 (4.58%) Degree
4 86 (4.53%) ISTQB
5 64 (3.37%) DV Cleared
6 63 (3.32%) BPSS Clearance
7 43 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
8 20 (1.05%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 19 (1.00%) AWS Certification
10 15 (0.79%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 14 (0.74%) Master's Degree
12 12 (0.63%) Cisco Certification
12 12 (0.63%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 11 (0.58%) SAFe Agilist
14 10 (0.53%) CCNP
15 8 (0.42%) Azure Certification
15 8 (0.42%) CISSP
16 7 (0.37%) DBS Check
17 5 (0.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 5 (0.26%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 436 (22.97%) QA
2 138 (7.27%) Accessibility
3 126 (6.64%) Data Quality
4 64 (3.37%) WCAG
5 34 (1.79%) GDPR
6 12 (0.63%) ISO 20022
6 12 (0.63%) NCSC
7 11 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 10 (0.53%) Def Stans
8 10 (0.53%) NIST
9 9 (0.47%) SLA
10 5 (0.26%) FATCA
10 5 (0.26%) SEPA
11 4 (0.21%) GRC
11 4 (0.21%) HL7
11 4 (0.21%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 4 (0.21%) Software Quality Assurance
12 3 (0.16%) HIPAA
12 3 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 316 (16.65%) Docker
2 26 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (0.79%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.74%) Firmware
5 13 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.21%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 4 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.11%) SRDF
9 1 (0.053%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.053%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.053%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 332 (17.49%) Kubernetes
2 237 (12.49%) Terraform
3 100 (5.27%) Ansible
4 99 (5.22%) Grafana
5 84 (4.43%) Prometheus
6 37 (1.95%) Argo
7 14 (0.74%) HP ALM
8 12 (0.63%) Puppet
9 11 (0.58%) HP Quality Center
9 11 (0.58%) Kibana
10 10 (0.53%) Dell DRAC
10 10 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (0.42%) Kustomize
12 6 (0.32%) Forefront Identity Manager
12 6 (0.32%) NetBackup
12 6 (0.32%) NetIQ Identity Manager
13 5 (0.26%) Istio
13 5 (0.26%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.21%) Packer
14 4 (0.21%) Rancher
Vendors
1 167 (8.80%) Microsoft
2 141 (7.43%) Oracle
3 84 (4.43%) Salesforce
4 61 (3.21%) Databricks
5 55 (2.90%) Red Hat
6 54 (2.85%) Talend
7 52 (2.74%) Splunk
8 50 (2.63%) ServiceNow
9 49 (2.58%) Google
10 37 (1.95%) Denodo
11 33 (1.74%) Informatica
12 28 (1.48%) SAP
12 28 (1.48%) VMware
13 27 (1.42%) Dynatrace
13 27 (1.42%) UiPath
14 26 (1.37%) IBM
15 21 (1.11%) Cisco
16 17 (0.90%) HP
17 14 (0.74%) Blue Prism
18 13 (0.68%) Fortinet