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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 51 54
Rank change year-on-year +4 +3 -2
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,923 1,203 1,363
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.30% 4.43% 3.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.03% 4.89% 4.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,230 834 907
10th Percentile £325 £313 £363
25th Percentile £406 £385 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £486 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.31% -7.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £712 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £485 £514
% change year-on-year -2.06% -5.60% -2.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 29 44
10th Percentile £36.19 £39.67 £50.38
25th Percentile £60.17 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -9.09% -24.66%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £71.87
90th Percentile £74.40 £75.50 £82.75
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +35.00% -9.09% -20.00%

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 38,219 24,611 31,409
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.42% 90.71% 85.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,063 15,813 20,400
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £734 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,375 1,290 2,230
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.39 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -34.02% -6.09%
75th Percentile £68.75 £54.56 £62.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £71.60 £72.58
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -4.70%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +6 874 £500 - 264
North of England +19 386 £458 +2.35% 192
Midlands +11 246 £450 +8.11% 104
West Midlands +26 229 £450 -6.83% 51
South East -33 196 £459 -8.20% 211
North West -1 155 £478 +19.50% 96
Yorkshire +8 153 £484 -3.20% 67
South West +10 116 £450 +2.86% 84
North East +9 88 £425 +6.25% 30
East of England +19 86 £450 -1.91% 83
East Midlands -39 17 £425 +40.26% 53
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
1 169 (8.79%) Confluence
2 43 (2.24%) Apache Airflow
3 42 (2.18%) Apache Spark
4 39 (2.03%) SAS
5 18 (0.94%) Apache
6 17 (0.88%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.62%) CMS
8 7 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.31%) Camunda
10 5 (0.26%) Appian
10 5 (0.26%) nginx
10 5 (0.26%) Tomcat
11 4 (0.21%) Jupyter
11 4 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.16%) Kentico
13 2 (0.10%) Anypoint
13 2 (0.10%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
13 2 (0.10%) Mule
14 1 (0.052%) Solana
Applications
1 28 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
5 7 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.21%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.21%) Simulink
6 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.052%) Mingle
7 1 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.052%) Trello
Business Applications
1 23 (1.20%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.88%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.62%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
5 8 (0.42%) Findur
5 8 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.31%) SAP ERP
6 6 (0.31%) Shopify
7 5 (0.26%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.26%) Loan IQ
8 3 (0.16%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.16%) Maximo
9 2 (0.10%) Infor CloudSuite
9 2 (0.10%) Infor LN
9 2 (0.10%) Infor M3
9 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
10 1 (0.052%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 548 (28.50%) AWS
2 537 (27.93%) Azure
3 327 (17.00%) GitHub
4 240 (12.48%) Azure DevOps
5 201 (10.45%) GitHub Actions
6 140 (7.28%) Serverless
7 133 (6.92%) GCP
8 97 (5.04%) AWS Lambda
9 85 (4.42%) Amazon S3
10 77 (4.00%) Power Platform
11 62 (3.22%) OpenShift
12 56 (2.91%) Amazon ECS
13 54 (2.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 44 (2.29%) dbt
15 43 (2.24%) Amazon EC2
16 42 (2.18%) Azure Data Factory
17 37 (1.92%) Snowflake
18 34 (1.77%) Amazon EKS
19 33 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
20 30 (1.56%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 18 (0.94%) Firewall
2 16 (0.83%) HTTP
3 15 (0.78%) SAN
4 11 (0.57%) WAN
5 9 (0.47%) 4G
5 9 (0.47%) 5G
5 9 (0.47%) MPLS
5 9 (0.47%) Network Security
6 8 (0.42%) 2G
6 8 (0.42%) 3G
6 8 (0.42%) Diameter Protocol
6 8 (0.42%) SIGTRAN
6 8 (0.42%) SS7
7 7 (0.36%) VPN
8 6 (0.31%) BGP
8 6 (0.31%) Ethernet
8 6 (0.31%) LAN
8 6 (0.31%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (0.26%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 104 (5.41%) PostgreSQL
2 101 (5.25%) Data Warehouse
3 88 (4.58%) MongoDB
4 82 (4.26%) NoSQL
5 75 (3.90%) SQL Server
6 62 (3.22%) Power BI
7 59 (3.07%) Relational Database
8 45 (2.34%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.82%) Oracle Reports
10 33 (1.72%) Pentaho
11 30 (1.56%) Amazon Athena
12 29 (1.51%) Big Data
13 28 (1.46%) Amazon RDS
14 27 (1.40%) Metadata
15 25 (1.30%) Data Lake
16 23 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
16 23 (1.20%) Redis
17 21 (1.09%) Oracle Database
18 19 (0.99%) Tableau
19 18 (0.94%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 359 (18.67%) JIRA
2 349 (18.15%) Git
3 308 (16.02%) Jenkins
4 259 (13.47%) GitLab
5 245 (12.74%) Selenium
6 140 (7.28%) Postman
7 135 (7.02%) Cucumber
8 101 (5.25%) JUnit
8 101 (5.25%) REST Assured
9 94 (4.89%) Cypress.io
10 79 (4.11%) JMeter
11 59 (3.07%) Zephyr
12 55 (2.86%) WebDriver
13 51 (2.65%) SonarQube
14 44 (2.29%) Gatling
14 44 (2.29%) Gradle
15 38 (1.98%) Bitbucket
16 35 (1.82%) Mockito
17 32 (1.66%) Maven
18 28 (1.46%) SpecFlow
General
1 518 (26.94%) Social Skills
2 365 (18.98%) Finance
3 259 (13.47%) Analytical Skills
4 236 (12.27%) Public Sector
5 162 (8.42%) Banking
6 54 (2.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 42 (2.18%) Documentation Skills
8 30 (1.56%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
10 26 (1.35%) Front Office
10 26 (1.35%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.25%) Retail
12 22 (1.14%) Financial Institution
13 20 (1.04%) Military
14 18 (0.94%) Aerospace
15 17 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
16 15 (0.78%) Legal
17 14 (0.73%) Automotive
17 14 (0.73%) Back Office
18 13 (0.68%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 378 (19.66%) Developer
2 305 (15.86%) Senior
3 209 (10.87%) Lead
4 196 (10.19%) Test Engineer
5 194 (10.09%) Tester
6 135 (7.02%) Data Engineer
7 122 (6.34%) Java Developer
8 108 (5.62%) Software Engineer
9 102 (5.30%) Analyst
10 87 (4.52%) Architect
10 87 (4.52%) DevOps Engineer
11 83 (4.32%) Test Automation Engineer
12 82 (4.26%) QA Engineer
13 81 (4.21%) Senior Developer
14 74 (3.85%) Test Leader
15 66 (3.43%) Automation Tester
16 59 (3.07%) Test Analyst
17 56 (2.91%) Automation Engineer
17 56 (2.91%) Full-Stack Developer
18 48 (2.50%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 217 (11.28%) REST
2 212 (11.02%) Playwright
3 177 (9.20%) React
4 158 (8.22%) Spring
5 151 (7.85%) RESTful
6 145 (7.54%) Kafka
7 126 (6.55%) Spring Boot
8 124 (6.45%) .NET
9 99 (5.15%) Node.js
10 82 (4.26%) AngularJS
11 73 (3.80%) HTML
12 68 (3.54%) CSS
13 47 (2.44%) OAuth
14 45 (2.34%) pytest
15 42 (2.18%) Jest
16 40 (2.08%) Quarkus
17 38 (1.98%) .NET Framework
17 38 (1.98%) Gherkin
18 37 (1.92%) GraphQL
18 37 (1.92%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 258 (13.42%) Cloud Native
2 132 (6.86%) Product Ownership
3 125 (6.50%) Distributed Systems
4 60 (3.12%) Enterprise Software
5 55 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
6 48 (2.50%) Data Protection Act
7 43 (2.24%) Onboarding
7 43 (2.24%) Self-Motivation
8 41 (2.13%) Mobile App
9 39 (2.03%) Virtual Team
10 31 (1.61%) Distributed Architecture
11 28 (1.46%) Security Posture
12 27 (1.40%) Embedded Systems
13 26 (1.35%) AI Agents
14 24 (1.25%) Management Information System
15 20 (1.04%) Fixed Income
15 20 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
16 19 (0.99%) Algorithms
17 16 (0.83%) Data Structures
18 15 (0.78%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 115 (5.98%) Linux
2 70 (3.64%) Windows
3 56 (2.91%) Unix
4 39 (2.03%) Android
5 38 (1.98%) Apple iOS
6 22 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.73%) Mac OS X
8 13 (0.68%) Windows Server
9 7 (0.36%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.36%) Solaris
10 6 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
11 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
12 4 (0.21%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.16%) AIX
13 3 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.10%) CentOS
15 1 (0.052%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,084 (56.37%) CI/CD
2 890 (46.28%) Agile
3 694 (36.09%) DevOps
4 364 (18.93%) Problem-Solving
5 342 (17.78%) Microservices
6 335 (17.42%) Continuous Improvement
7 312 (16.22%) Software Engineering
8 307 (15.96%) Scrum
9 295 (15.34%) Test Strategy
10 293 (15.24%) Validation
11 277 (14.40%) Infrastructure as Code
12 260 (13.52%) AI
13 242 (12.58%) Containerisation
14 240 (12.48%) TDD
15 233 (12.12%) Observability
16 205 (10.66%) ETL
17 200 (10.40%) Software Testing
18 196 (10.19%) Data Pipeline
18 196 (10.19%) End-to-End Testing
19 189 (9.83%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 483 (25.12%) Python
2 480 (24.96%) Java
3 455 (23.66%) SQL
4 241 (12.53%) JavaScript
5 217 (11.28%) TypeScript
6 173 (9.00%) C#
7 69 (3.59%) PowerShell
8 63 (3.28%) Bash
9 48 (2.50%) Kotlin
10 42 (2.18%) C++
11 33 (1.72%) Bicep
11 33 (1.72%) C
12 30 (1.56%) Go
13 29 (1.51%) Apex Code
14 28 (1.46%) Scala
15 27 (1.40%) PL/SQL
16 23 (1.20%) Swift
17 18 (0.94%) Ruby
18 15 (0.78%) Groovy
19 12 (0.62%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 594 (30.89%) Security Cleared
2 486 (25.27%) SC Cleared
3 88 (4.58%) Degree
4 86 (4.47%) ISTQB
5 68 (3.54%) BPSS Clearance
6 63 (3.28%) DV Cleared
7 43 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
8 24 (1.25%) AWS Certification
9 21 (1.09%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 15 (0.78%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 13 (0.68%) Master's Degree
12 12 (0.62%) Cisco Certification
13 11 (0.57%) Azure Certification
13 11 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 11 (0.57%) SAFe Agilist
14 10 (0.52%) CCNP
15 8 (0.42%) CISSP
16 7 (0.36%) DBS Check
17 6 (0.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 5 (0.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 458 (23.82%) QA
2 147 (7.64%) Accessibility
3 132 (6.86%) Data Quality
4 70 (3.64%) WCAG
5 35 (1.82%) GDPR
6 13 (0.68%) NCSC
7 11 (0.57%) ISO 20022
8 10 (0.52%) Def Stans
8 10 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 9 (0.47%) NIST
10 6 (0.31%) SLA
11 5 (0.26%) FATCA
11 5 (0.26%) SEPA
11 5 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
12 4 (0.21%) GRC
12 4 (0.21%) HL7
12 4 (0.21%) PCI DSS
13 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (0.16%) MiFID
13 3 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 337 (17.52%) Docker
2 26 (1.35%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (0.78%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.73%) Firmware
5 13 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.10%) SRDF
9 1 (0.052%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.052%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.052%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 349 (18.15%) Kubernetes
2 244 (12.69%) Terraform
3 104 (5.41%) Ansible
4 101 (5.25%) Grafana
5 86 (4.47%) Prometheus
6 36 (1.87%) Argo
7 15 (0.78%) HP ALM
8 14 (0.73%) Puppet
9 12 (0.62%) HP Quality Center
10 11 (0.57%) Kibana
11 10 (0.52%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.42%) Kustomize
12 8 (0.42%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.31%) NetBackup
14 5 (0.26%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 5 (0.26%) Istio
14 5 (0.26%) NetIQ Identity Manager
15 4 (0.21%) Packer
15 4 (0.21%) Rancher
Vendors
1 177 (9.20%) Microsoft
2 148 (7.70%) Oracle
3 84 (4.37%) Salesforce
4 67 (3.48%) Databricks
5 55 (2.86%) Red Hat
5 55 (2.86%) Talend
6 53 (2.76%) Splunk
7 51 (2.65%) Google
8 40 (2.08%) ServiceNow
9 36 (1.87%) Denodo
10 33 (1.72%) Informatica
11 28 (1.46%) UiPath
12 27 (1.40%) VMware
13 26 (1.35%) Dynatrace
13 26 (1.35%) IBM
13 26 (1.35%) SAP
14 21 (1.09%) Cisco
15 18 (0.94%) HP
16 13 (0.68%) Fortinet
17 11 (0.57%) Blue Prism