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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 50 54
Rank change year-on-year +3 +4 -4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,939 1,197 1,381
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.34% 4.44% 3.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.07% 4.89% 4.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,246 830 919
10th Percentile £330 £313 £363
25th Percentile £406 £390 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £484 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.86% -7.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £625
90th Percentile £663 £707 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £483 £513
% change year-on-year -1.66% -5.76% -4.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 29 46
10th Percentile £36.22 £42.17 £50.63
25th Percentile £60.00 £46.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% -2.22% -22.95%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £71.87
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.25 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £56.25
% change year-on-year +28.57% -6.67% -18.18%

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 38,237 24,502 31,943
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.52% 90.81% 85.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,096 15,746 20,754
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £733 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,381 1,253 2,276
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.98 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -6.07%
75th Percentile £68.75 £54.01 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.37 £70.16 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -6.25%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +2 873 £500 - 258
North of England +15 395 £460 +2.91% 129
Midlands +4 248 £450 +9.09% 60
West Midlands +28 231 £450 -6.83% 27
South East -34 201 £462 -7.60% 150
Yorkshire +12 164 £500 - 40
North West +7 154 £475 +18.16% 68
South West +9 115 £450 +4.35% 69
East of England +20 87 £475 +3.54% 45
North East +11 87 £425 +6.25% 21
East Midlands -40 17 £425 +54.55% 33
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 (8.72%) Confluence
2 43 (2.22%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (2.11%) SAS
4 39 (2.01%) Apache Spark
5 17 (0.88%) Apache
6 16 (0.83%) 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
12 3 (0.15%) Kentico
12 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.10%) Anypoint
13 2 (0.10%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.10%) Mule
14 1 (0.052%) Solana
Applications
1 28 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (0.41%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.21%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.21%) Simulink
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.052%) Mingle
6 1 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.13%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.93%) Aladdin
3 12 (0.62%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
5 8 (0.41%) Findur
5 8 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.36%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.31%) Shopify
8 5 (0.26%) BambooHR
8 5 (0.26%) Loan IQ
9 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
9 3 (0.15%) Maximo
10 2 (0.10%) Infor CloudSuite
10 2 (0.10%) Infor LN
10 2 (0.10%) Infor M3
10 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
10 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
10 2 (0.10%) Summit
10 2 (0.10%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 542 (27.95%) AWS
2 539 (27.80%) Azure
3 316 (16.30%) GitHub
4 237 (12.22%) Azure DevOps
5 192 (9.90%) GitHub Actions
6 138 (7.12%) Serverless
7 133 (6.86%) GCP
8 96 (4.95%) AWS Lambda
9 84 (4.33%) Amazon S3
10 76 (3.92%) Power Platform
11 62 (3.20%) OpenShift
12 55 (2.84%) Amazon ECS
13 52 (2.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 44 (2.27%) dbt
15 41 (2.11%) Amazon EC2
15 41 (2.11%) Azure Data Factory
16 38 (1.96%) Snowflake
17 32 (1.65%) Amazon EKS
18 30 (1.55%) AWS CloudFormation
18 30 (1.55%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 19 (0.98%) Firewall
2 15 (0.77%) HTTP
2 15 (0.77%) SAN
3 11 (0.57%) Network Security
3 11 (0.57%) WAN
4 9 (0.46%) MPLS
5 8 (0.41%) 4G
5 8 (0.41%) 5G
5 8 (0.41%) VPN
6 7 (0.36%) 2G
6 7 (0.36%) 3G
6 7 (0.36%) Diameter Protocol
6 7 (0.36%) SIGTRAN
6 7 (0.36%) SS7
7 6 (0.31%) BGP
7 6 (0.31%) Ethernet
7 6 (0.31%) LAN
7 6 (0.31%) SD-WAN
7 6 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.31%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 103 (5.31%) PostgreSQL
2 98 (5.05%) Data Warehouse
3 89 (4.59%) MongoDB
4 84 (4.33%) NoSQL
5 76 (3.92%) SQL Server
6 62 (3.20%) Relational Database
7 60 (3.09%) Power BI
8 45 (2.32%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.81%) Oracle Reports
10 34 (1.75%) Pentaho
11 31 (1.60%) Amazon Athena
12 28 (1.44%) Amazon RDS
13 27 (1.39%) Metadata
14 26 (1.34%) Big Data
15 25 (1.29%) Data Lake
16 24 (1.24%) Amazon Redshift
17 22 (1.13%) Redis
18 21 (1.08%) Oracle Database
18 21 (1.08%) Tableau
19 18 (0.93%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 372 (19.19%) JIRA
2 340 (17.53%) Git
3 313 (16.14%) Jenkins
4 264 (13.62%) GitLab
5 248 (12.79%) Selenium
6 147 (7.58%) Postman
7 138 (7.12%) Cucumber
8 104 (5.36%) REST Assured
9 100 (5.16%) JUnit
10 93 (4.80%) Cypress.io
11 84 (4.33%) JMeter
12 59 (3.04%) Zephyr
13 55 (2.84%) WebDriver
14 52 (2.68%) SonarQube
15 46 (2.37%) Gatling
16 43 (2.22%) Gradle
17 37 (1.91%) Bitbucket
18 35 (1.81%) Mockito
19 32 (1.65%) Maven
20 29 (1.50%) SpecFlow
General
1 531 (27.39%) Social Skills
2 371 (19.13%) Finance
3 255 (13.15%) Analytical Skills
4 235 (12.12%) Public Sector
5 164 (8.46%) Banking
6 52 (2.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 42 (2.17%) Documentation Skills
8 31 (1.60%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.39%) Front Office
9 27 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
10 26 (1.34%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.13%) Financial Institution
11 22 (1.13%) Retail
12 20 (1.03%) Military
13 18 (0.93%) Aerospace
14 17 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
15 15 (0.77%) Legal
16 13 (0.67%) Automotive
16 13 (0.67%) Back Office
16 13 (0.67%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 386 (19.91%) Developer
2 306 (15.78%) Senior
3 211 (10.88%) Lead
4 200 (10.31%) Test Engineer
5 197 (10.16%) Tester
6 136 (7.01%) Data Engineer
7 123 (6.34%) Java Developer
8 108 (5.57%) Software Engineer
9 100 (5.16%) Analyst
10 90 (4.64%) Architect
11 86 (4.44%) Test Automation Engineer
12 84 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
13 82 (4.23%) QA Engineer
14 81 (4.18%) Senior Developer
15 75 (3.87%) Test Leader
16 66 (3.40%) Automation Tester
17 59 (3.04%) Test Analyst
18 57 (2.94%) Automation Engineer
19 55 (2.84%) Full-Stack Developer
20 47 (2.42%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 217 (11.19%) Playwright
1 217 (11.19%) REST
2 178 (9.18%) React
3 156 (8.05%) Spring
4 146 (7.53%) RESTful
5 144 (7.43%) Kafka
6 125 (6.45%) Spring Boot
7 124 (6.40%) .NET
8 98 (5.05%) Node.js
9 82 (4.23%) AngularJS
10 74 (3.82%) HTML
11 69 (3.56%) CSS
12 49 (2.53%) OAuth
13 46 (2.37%) pytest
14 45 (2.32%) Jest
15 40 (2.06%) Quarkus
16 39 (2.01%) .NET Framework
17 37 (1.91%) Gherkin
17 37 (1.91%) GraphQL
18 36 (1.86%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 250 (12.89%) Cloud Native
2 133 (6.86%) Product Ownership
3 122 (6.29%) Distributed Systems
4 59 (3.04%) Enterprise Software
5 56 (2.89%) Legacy Systems
6 48 (2.48%) Data Protection Act
7 42 (2.17%) Mobile App
7 42 (2.17%) Self-Motivation
8 41 (2.11%) Onboarding
9 38 (1.96%) Virtual Team
10 31 (1.60%) Distributed Architecture
11 28 (1.44%) Security Posture
12 26 (1.34%) Embedded Systems
12 26 (1.34%) Management Information System
13 24 (1.24%) AI Agents
14 21 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
15 20 (1.03%) Fixed Income
16 18 (0.93%) Algorithms
17 16 (0.83%) Data Structures
18 15 (0.77%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 116 (5.98%) Linux
2 73 (3.76%) Windows
3 56 (2.89%) Unix
4 38 (1.96%) Android
5 37 (1.91%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.72%) Mac OS X
7 14 (0.72%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.36%) Mac OS
8 7 (0.36%) Solaris
9 6 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
10 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.21%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.15%) AIX
12 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.10%) CentOS
13 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,073 (55.34%) CI/CD
2 892 (46.00%) Agile
3 692 (35.69%) DevOps
4 362 (18.67%) Problem-Solving
5 335 (17.28%) Microservices
6 334 (17.23%) Continuous Improvement
7 304 (15.68%) Scrum
8 302 (15.58%) Software Engineering
9 299 (15.42%) Test Strategy
10 295 (15.21%) Validation
11 271 (13.98%) Infrastructure as Code
12 255 (13.15%) AI
13 240 (12.38%) Containerisation
14 239 (12.33%) TDD
15 232 (11.96%) Observability
16 205 (10.57%) ETL
17 201 (10.37%) Software Testing
18 200 (10.31%) End-to-End Testing
19 191 (9.85%) Data Pipeline
20 188 (9.70%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 488 (25.17%) Python
2 484 (24.96%) Java
3 457 (23.57%) SQL
4 245 (12.64%) JavaScript
5 222 (11.45%) TypeScript
6 179 (9.23%) C#
7 69 (3.56%) PowerShell
8 61 (3.15%) Bash
9 46 (2.37%) Kotlin
10 43 (2.22%) C++
11 33 (1.70%) C
11 33 (1.70%) Scala
12 32 (1.65%) Bicep
13 31 (1.60%) Go
14 29 (1.50%) Apex Code
15 28 (1.44%) PL/SQL
16 23 (1.19%) Swift
17 17 (0.88%) Ruby
18 16 (0.83%) Groovy
19 13 (0.67%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 601 (31.00%) Security Cleared
2 489 (25.22%) SC Cleared
3 90 (4.64%) Degree
4 87 (4.49%) ISTQB
5 67 (3.46%) BPSS Clearance
5 67 (3.46%) DV Cleared
6 46 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
7 20 (1.03%) AWS Certification
7 20 (1.03%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 15 (0.77%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
8 15 (0.77%) Master's Degree
9 12 (0.62%) Cisco Certification
10 11 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 11 (0.57%) SAFe Agilist
11 10 (0.52%) CCNP
12 8 (0.41%) Azure Certification
12 8 (0.41%) CISSP
13 7 (0.36%) DBS Check
14 5 (0.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 447 (23.05%) QA
2 140 (7.22%) Accessibility
3 130 (6.70%) Data Quality
4 66 (3.40%) WCAG
5 35 (1.81%) GDPR
6 12 (0.62%) ISO 20022
6 12 (0.62%) NCSC
7 11 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 10 (0.52%) Def Stans
9 9 (0.46%) NIST
9 9 (0.46%) SLA
10 5 (0.26%) FATCA
10 5 (0.26%) SEPA
10 5 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
11 4 (0.21%) GRC
11 4 (0.21%) HL7
11 4 (0.21%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 3 (0.15%) PSD2
12 3 (0.15%) SOC 2
System Software
1 325 (16.76%) Docker
2 26 (1.34%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (0.83%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.72%) Firmware
5 13 (0.67%) 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 (0.10%) SRDF
9 1 (0.052%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.052%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.052%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 339 (17.48%) Kubernetes
2 239 (12.33%) Terraform
3 101 (5.21%) Ansible
4 99 (5.11%) Grafana
5 84 (4.33%) Prometheus
6 36 (1.86%) Argo
7 15 (0.77%) HP ALM
8 12 (0.62%) HP Quality Center
8 12 (0.62%) Puppet
9 11 (0.57%) Kibana
10 10 (0.52%) Dell DRAC
10 10 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (0.41%) Kustomize
12 6 (0.31%) Forefront Identity Manager
12 6 (0.31%) NetBackup
12 6 (0.31%) 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
1 172 (8.87%) Microsoft
2 146 (7.53%) Oracle
3 85 (4.38%) Salesforce
4 64 (3.30%) Databricks
5 55 (2.84%) Talend
6 54 (2.78%) Red Hat
7 51 (2.63%) Splunk
8 50 (2.58%) Google
9 49 (2.53%) ServiceNow
10 37 (1.91%) Denodo
11 34 (1.75%) Informatica
12 29 (1.50%) SAP
13 28 (1.44%) UiPath
13 28 (1.44%) VMware
14 26 (1.34%) Dynatrace
14 26 (1.34%) IBM
15 21 (1.08%) Cisco
16 18 (0.93%) HP
17 14 (0.72%) Blue Prism
18 13 (0.67%) Fortinet