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

6 months to
19 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 46 62
Rank change year-on-year -1 +16 -14
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,700 1,152 1,211
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.31% 4.70% 3.25%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.05% 5.17% 3.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,121 787 798
10th Percentile £330 £337 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £430
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 £675 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 16 51
10th Percentile £34.57 £37.92 £48.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -8.33% -2.04%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £83.75
90th Percentile - £72.00 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -8.33% -4.00%

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 33,684 22,303 32,266
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.31% 91.07% 86.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,561 14,661 21,238
10th Percentile £314 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,090 892 2,221
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.84 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.27 £18.51 £15.85
Median hourly rate £41.86 £31.64 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.29% -9.60% -6.17%
75th Percentile £67.25 £63.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.23 £71.90
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +25.00% -14.29% -2.78%

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 19 April 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 19 April 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 19 April 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 -2 840 £500 - 169
North of England +6 324 £475 +5.56% 114
Midlands +3 195 £461 -1.44% 75
South East -34 175 £500 -2.44% 138
West Midlands +15 168 £467 -7.97% 49
North West +15 142 £463 +2.78% 48
Yorkshire -13 136 £500 +2.56% 34
South West +6 88 £475 -8.21% 65
East of England +1 54 £600 +24.35% 62
North East +11 51 £419 +7.37% 32
East Midlands -30 27 £400 -0.93% 26
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
1 114 (6.71%) Confluence
2 60 (3.53%) SAS
3 30 (1.76%) Apache Spark
4 26 (1.53%) Apache Airflow
5 11 (0.65%) SharePoint
6 9 (0.53%) Apache
7 8 (0.47%) Appian
8 6 (0.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.35%) Camunda
8 6 (0.35%) CMS
8 6 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 4 (0.24%) nginx
9 4 (0.24%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.12%) WordPress
12 1 (0.059%) OpenStack
Applications
1 26 (1.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
4 11 (0.65%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.18%) Simulink
8 1 (0.059%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.059%) Mingle
8 1 (0.059%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 24 (1.41%) Aladdin
2 9 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (0.41%) Findur
3 7 (0.41%) Shopify
4 6 (0.35%) Loan IQ
4 6 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 5 (0.29%) BambooHR
5 5 (0.29%) Maximo
6 3 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
6 3 (0.18%) Workday HCM
7 2 (0.12%) iTrent
7 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.12%) SAP HR
7 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
7 2 (0.12%) Summit
8 1 (0.059%) Infor CloudSuite
8 1 (0.059%) Infor LN
8 1 (0.059%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 457 (26.88%) Azure
2 430 (25.29%) AWS
3 270 (15.88%) GitHub
4 204 (12.00%) Azure DevOps
5 154 (9.06%) GitHub Actions
6 127 (7.47%) GCP
7 112 (6.59%) Serverless
8 68 (4.00%) AWS Lambda
8 68 (4.00%) OpenShift
9 64 (3.76%) Amazon S3
10 47 (2.76%) Power Platform
11 42 (2.47%) Amazon ECS
12 37 (2.18%) Azure AKS
12 37 (2.18%) Snowflake
13 36 (2.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 34 (2.00%) AWS CloudFormation
15 33 (1.94%) Azure Data Factory
16 28 (1.65%) Amazon EKS
17 27 (1.59%) Azure Monitor
18 26 (1.53%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.41%) Firewall
2 14 (0.82%) HTTP
3 11 (0.65%) SAN
3 11 (0.65%) TCP/IP
3 11 (0.65%) VPN
4 9 (0.53%) Ethernet
4 9 (0.53%) FTP
4 9 (0.53%) Network Security
4 9 (0.53%) SSL
5 8 (0.47%) MPLS
5 8 (0.47%) SD-WAN
5 8 (0.47%) WAN
6 6 (0.35%) Multicast
6 6 (0.35%) Wireshark
7 5 (0.29%) 5G
7 5 (0.29%) AMQP
7 5 (0.29%) Cisco IPT
7 5 (0.29%) DNS
7 5 (0.29%) HTTPS
7 5 (0.29%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (5.47%) PostgreSQL
2 81 (4.76%) NoSQL
3 75 (4.41%) SQL Server
4 66 (3.88%) MongoDB
5 61 (3.59%) Data Warehouse
6 51 (3.00%) Relational Database
7 37 (2.18%) DynamoDB
8 36 (2.12%) Pentaho
9 30 (1.76%) Power BI
10 26 (1.53%) Tableau
11 25 (1.47%) BigQuery
11 25 (1.47%) Oracle Reports
12 24 (1.41%) Redis
13 23 (1.35%) MySQL
13 23 (1.35%) Oracle Database
14 20 (1.18%) Amazon RDS
15 18 (1.06%) Amazon Athena
15 18 (1.06%) Metadata
16 17 (1.00%) Amazon Aurora
17 16 (0.94%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 332 (19.53%) JIRA
2 330 (19.41%) Git
3 288 (16.94%) Jenkins
4 251 (14.76%) Selenium
5 228 (13.41%) GitLab
6 138 (8.12%) Postman
7 127 (7.47%) Cucumber
8 100 (5.88%) JUnit
9 87 (5.12%) Cypress.io
10 78 (4.59%) REST Assured
11 68 (4.00%) JMeter
12 44 (2.59%) Zephyr
13 43 (2.53%) WebDriver
14 41 (2.41%) SonarQube
15 36 (2.12%) SpecFlow
16 34 (2.00%) Maven
17 32 (1.88%) Gradle
18 30 (1.76%) TestRail
19 28 (1.65%) Mockito
20 25 (1.47%) Bitbucket
General
1 470 (27.65%) Social Skills
2 307 (18.06%) Finance
3 243 (14.29%) Public Sector
4 188 (11.06%) Analytical Skills
5 143 (8.41%) Banking
6 41 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
7 31 (1.82%) Investment Banking
8 30 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 27 (1.59%) Front Office
10 24 (1.41%) Telecoms
11 20 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
12 19 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
13 18 (1.06%) Legal
14 17 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
15 15 (0.88%) Aerospace
16 12 (0.71%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
17 11 (0.65%) Back Office
17 11 (0.65%) Electronics
17 11 (0.65%) Military
Job Titles
1 359 (21.12%) Developer
2 256 (15.06%) Senior
3 188 (11.06%) Tester
4 181 (10.65%) Lead
5 175 (10.29%) Test Engineer
6 98 (5.76%) Analyst
7 96 (5.65%) Java Developer
8 93 (5.47%) Data Engineer
9 88 (5.18%) Automation Tester
10 85 (5.00%) Test Automation Engineer
11 74 (4.35%) QA Engineer
12 73 (4.29%) Software Engineer
13 70 (4.12%) Architect
14 67 (3.94%) Test Leader
15 64 (3.76%) Senior Developer
16 63 (3.71%) DevOps Engineer
17 62 (3.65%) Test Analyst
18 52 (3.06%) Full-Stack Developer
19 51 (3.00%) Test Manager
20 49 (2.88%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 199 (11.71%) REST
2 189 (11.12%) Playwright
3 156 (9.18%) React
4 130 (7.65%) Spring
5 120 (7.06%) RESTful
6 119 (7.00%) .NET
7 117 (6.88%) Node.js
8 116 (6.82%) Kafka
9 106 (6.24%) Spring Boot
10 73 (4.29%) AngularJS
11 69 (4.06%) pytest
12 57 (3.35%) HTML
13 52 (3.06%) CSS
14 51 (3.00%) Jest
15 48 (2.82%) OAuth
16 35 (2.06%) GraphQL
17 33 (1.94%) Gherkin
17 33 (1.94%) Web Services
18 32 (1.88%) OpenID
19 31 (1.82%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 177 (10.41%) Cloud Native
2 114 (6.71%) Product Ownership
3 84 (4.94%) Distributed Systems
4 46 (2.71%) Mobile App
5 41 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
6 40 (2.35%) Data Protection Act
7 30 (1.76%) Algorithms
8 29 (1.71%) Virtual Team
9 28 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
9 28 (1.65%) Security Posture
10 27 (1.59%) Onboarding
10 27 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
11 23 (1.35%) Management Information System
12 21 (1.24%) Data Structures
13 20 (1.18%) Equities
13 20 (1.18%) NHS
14 19 (1.12%) Distributed Architecture
15 18 (1.06%) Fixed Income
15 18 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
16 17 (1.00%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 116 (6.82%) Linux
2 84 (4.94%) Windows
3 46 (2.71%) Android
4 38 (2.24%) Apple iOS
4 38 (2.24%) Unix
5 18 (1.06%) Windows Server
6 17 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (0.76%) Mac OS X
8 7 (0.41%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.29%) Solaris
10 4 (0.24%) CentOS
10 4 (0.24%) Embedded Linux
10 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.18%) Kali Linux
11 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.059%) FreeRTOS
12 1 (0.059%) Robot Operating System
12 1 (0.059%) VMS
12 1 (0.059%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 873 (51.35%) CI/CD
2 796 (46.82%) Agile
3 601 (35.35%) DevOps
4 384 (22.59%) Problem-Solving
5 275 (16.18%) Continuous Improvement
6 263 (15.47%) Microservices
7 247 (14.53%) Test Strategy
8 240 (14.12%) Scrum
9 220 (12.94%) Containerisation
9 220 (12.94%) Infrastructure as Code
9 220 (12.94%) Validation
10 208 (12.24%) Test Scripting
11 204 (12.00%) AI
12 202 (11.88%) Software Engineering
13 199 (11.71%) TDD
14 192 (11.29%) Observability
15 191 (11.24%) Analytics
16 179 (10.53%) Regression Testing
17 174 (10.24%) SDLC
17 174 (10.24%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 482 (28.35%) Python
2 425 (25.00%) Java
3 386 (22.71%) SQL
4 245 (14.41%) JavaScript
5 237 (13.94%) TypeScript
6 179 (10.53%) C#
7 69 (4.06%) PowerShell
8 53 (3.12%) Bash
9 45 (2.65%) C++
10 32 (1.88%) C
11 30 (1.76%) Kotlin
12 26 (1.53%) Apex Code
13 24 (1.41%) Bicep
14 23 (1.35%) PL/SQL
14 23 (1.35%) Scala
15 20 (1.18%) Ruby
16 19 (1.12%) Go
17 17 (1.00%) Swift
18 12 (0.71%) Groovy
19 10 (0.59%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 528 (31.06%) Security Cleared
2 411 (24.18%) SC Cleared
3 85 (5.00%) ISTQB
4 77 (4.53%) Degree
5 63 (3.71%) BPSS Clearance
6 59 (3.47%) DV Cleared
7 45 (2.65%) Computer Science Degree
8 23 (1.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 17 (1.00%) Master's Degree
10 15 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
11 12 (0.71%) Azure Certification
12 9 (0.53%) AWS Certification
12 9 (0.53%) CCNP
12 9 (0.53%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 8 (0.47%) CISSP
13 8 (0.47%) ISEB
13 8 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
14 7 (0.41%) DBS Check
14 7 (0.41%) Oracle Certification
15 6 (0.35%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 377 (22.18%) QA
2 107 (6.29%) Accessibility
3 99 (5.82%) Data Quality
4 46 (2.71%) WCAG
5 35 (2.06%) GDPR
6 14 (0.82%) ISO 20022
7 13 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 12 (0.71%) NCSC
9 11 (0.65%) NIST
10 10 (0.59%) Def Stans
10 10 (0.59%) SLA
11 9 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.47%) PSD2
13 7 (0.41%) SEPA
14 5 (0.29%) HL7
14 5 (0.29%) PCI DSS
14 5 (0.29%) PERC
14 5 (0.29%) SOC 2
14 5 (0.29%) Software Quality Assurance
15 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
System Software
1 317 (18.65%) Docker
2 25 (1.47%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.76%) Firmware
4 11 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (0.41%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 7 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
6 6 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
8 4 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
9 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.12%) SRDF
11 1 (0.059%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.059%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.059%) KVM
11 1 (0.059%) Squid
11 1 (0.059%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.059%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 312 (18.35%) Kubernetes
2 204 (12.00%) Terraform
3 97 (5.71%) Grafana
4 74 (4.35%) Prometheus
5 65 (3.82%) Ansible
6 25 (1.47%) Argo
7 19 (1.12%) HP ALM
8 15 (0.88%) Puppet
9 13 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.71%) Kibana
11 10 (0.59%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.59%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.59%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 10 (0.59%) Progress Chef
12 7 (0.41%) Dell DRAC
13 6 (0.35%) NetBackup
13 6 (0.35%) Nmap
13 6 (0.35%) Rancher
14 4 (0.24%) Nessus
14 4 (0.24%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 160 (9.41%) Oracle
2 148 (8.71%) Microsoft
3 64 (3.76%) Databricks
4 61 (3.59%) Salesforce
5 57 (3.35%) ServiceNow
6 53 (3.12%) Splunk
7 47 (2.76%) Google
8 45 (2.65%) Talend
9 43 (2.53%) Red Hat
10 39 (2.29%) SAP
11 33 (1.94%) Denodo
12 22 (1.29%) HP
12 22 (1.29%) IBM
13 21 (1.24%) VMware
14 18 (1.06%) Dynatrace
15 17 (1.00%) Cisco
16 16 (0.94%) Informatica
17 15 (0.88%) MuleSoft
17 15 (0.88%) OpenAI
18 14 (0.82%) Blue Prism