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 27 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 56
Rank change year-on-year -1 +9 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,737 1,082 1,256
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.17% 4.55% 3.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.92% 4.99% 4.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,119 755 841
10th Percentile £350 £325 £363
25th Percentile £402 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £638
90th Percentile £664 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 98 21 48
10th Percentile £35.44 £40.84 -
25th Percentile £55.31 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £66.25 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.45% -8.33% -15.49%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £75.25
90th Percentile £74.00 £75.50 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £66.25 £52.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +26.19% -12.50% -12.73%

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 35,337 21,704 31,436
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.82% 91.29% 85.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,449 14,185 20,585
10th Percentile £325 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £512 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.14% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,203 923 2,285
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £15.95
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.71% -23.29% -2.67%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £27.45 £36.02
% change year-on-year +52.79% -23.80% -2.64%

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 27 May 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 27 May 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 27 May 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 +1 815 £500 -2.44% 267
North of England +7 353 £467 +4.18% 128
Midlands +5 203 £459 +9.61% 64
West Midlands +27 182 £459 -4.97% 45
South East -31 180 £500 - 110
North West +12 157 £475 +6.26% 77
Yorkshire -4 149 £493 +3.68% 25
South West +15 99 £469 -8.54% 59
East of England +15 75 £495 +5.88% 44
North East +2 55 £425 +6.25% 26
East Midlands -43 21 £400 +45.45% 19
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
1 138 (7.94%) Confluence
2 39 (2.25%) SAS
3 35 (2.01%) Apache Airflow
4 31 (1.78%) Apache Spark
5 12 (0.69%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.63%) Apache
7 8 (0.46%) Appian
7 8 (0.46%) Camunda
7 8 (0.46%) CMS
8 6 (0.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 4 (0.23%) nginx
9 4 (0.23%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.17%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.12%) Anypoint
12 1 (0.058%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.058%) Ethereum
12 1 (0.058%) Jupyter
12 1 (0.058%) Mendix
Applications
1 25 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.58%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.17%) Simulink
7 1 (0.058%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.058%) Mingle
7 1 (0.058%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 21 (1.21%) Aladdin
2 14 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.46%) Findur
5 7 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
6 6 (0.35%) Shopify
7 5 (0.29%) BambooHR
7 5 (0.29%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.29%) SAP ERP
8 3 (0.17%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.17%) Maximo
9 2 (0.12%) iTrent
9 2 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
9 2 (0.12%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.12%) Summit
9 2 (0.12%) Workday HCM
10 1 (0.058%) Cloudability
10 1 (0.058%) Infor CloudSuite
10 1 (0.058%) Infor LN
Cloud Services
1 473 (27.23%) AWS
2 463 (26.66%) Azure
3 280 (16.12%) GitHub
4 207 (11.92%) Azure DevOps
5 164 (9.44%) GitHub Actions
6 125 (7.20%) GCP
7 115 (6.62%) Serverless
8 75 (4.32%) AWS Lambda
9 67 (3.86%) Amazon S3
10 57 (3.28%) Power Platform
11 55 (3.17%) OpenShift
12 47 (2.71%) Amazon ECS
13 42 (2.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 42 (2.42%) Azure Data Factory
14 36 (2.07%) Snowflake
15 30 (1.73%) Amazon EKS
16 29 (1.67%) Amazon EC2
16 29 (1.67%) AWS CloudFormation
17 27 (1.55%) dbt
17 27 (1.55%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.27%) Firewall
2 14 (0.81%) HTTP
2 14 (0.81%) SAN
3 10 (0.58%) TCP/IP
3 10 (0.58%) VPN
4 9 (0.52%) Network Security
5 8 (0.46%) MPLS
5 8 (0.46%) WAN
6 7 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.35%) Ethernet
7 6 (0.35%) SSL
7 6 (0.35%) VLAN
8 5 (0.29%) Multicast
8 5 (0.29%) Wireshark
9 4 (0.23%) 5G
9 4 (0.23%) FTP
9 4 (0.23%) NAS
9 4 (0.23%) Reverse Proxy
9 4 (0.23%) SD-WAN
10 3 (0.17%) RS-232
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (5.35%) PostgreSQL
2 80 (4.61%) SQL Server
3 79 (4.55%) NoSQL
4 77 (4.43%) MongoDB
5 76 (4.38%) Data Warehouse
6 55 (3.17%) Relational Database
7 44 (2.53%) DynamoDB
8 40 (2.30%) Power BI
9 31 (1.78%) Pentaho
10 28 (1.61%) Oracle Reports
11 25 (1.44%) Tableau
12 23 (1.32%) Data Lake
13 22 (1.27%) Big Data
13 22 (1.27%) Metadata
13 22 (1.27%) Redis
14 21 (1.21%) Amazon Athena
14 21 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
15 20 (1.15%) MySQL
16 18 (1.04%) BigQuery
16 18 (1.04%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 324 (18.65%) JIRA
2 299 (17.21%) Git
3 289 (16.64%) Jenkins
4 240 (13.82%) Selenium
5 239 (13.76%) GitLab
6 144 (8.29%) Postman
7 130 (7.48%) Cucumber
8 96 (5.53%) REST Assured
9 91 (5.24%) JUnit
10 84 (4.84%) Cypress.io
11 76 (4.38%) JMeter
12 45 (2.59%) WebDriver
12 45 (2.59%) Zephyr
13 44 (2.53%) SonarQube
14 36 (2.07%) Gradle
15 34 (1.96%) Gatling
16 31 (1.78%) Maven
17 30 (1.73%) Bitbucket
17 30 (1.73%) SpecFlow
18 29 (1.67%) Mockito
General
1 467 (26.89%) Social Skills
2 316 (18.19%) Finance
3 225 (12.95%) Public Sector
4 212 (12.20%) Analytical Skills
5 152 (8.75%) Banking
6 40 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (2.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 31 (1.78%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.55%) Front Office
10 23 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
11 18 (1.04%) Telecoms
12 17 (0.98%) Retail
13 16 (0.92%) Legal
13 16 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
13 16 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
14 15 (0.86%) Aerospace
15 13 (0.75%) Financial Institution
15 13 (0.75%) Military
16 11 (0.63%) Back Office
17 9 (0.52%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 348 (20.03%) Developer
2 264 (15.20%) Senior
3 192 (11.05%) Test Engineer
4 186 (10.71%) Lead
5 183 (10.54%) Tester
6 105 (6.04%) Data Engineer
7 96 (5.53%) Java Developer
8 93 (5.35%) Software Engineer
9 90 (5.18%) Analyst
10 86 (4.95%) Test Automation Engineer
11 79 (4.55%) Architect
12 77 (4.43%) Automation Tester
13 73 (4.20%) DevOps Engineer
14 71 (4.09%) QA Engineer
15 70 (4.03%) Senior Developer
16 69 (3.97%) Test Leader
17 54 (3.11%) Automation Engineer
18 52 (2.99%) Full-Stack Developer
19 48 (2.76%) Test Analyst
20 47 (2.71%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 196 (11.28%) Playwright
2 195 (11.23%) REST
3 159 (9.15%) React
4 130 (7.48%) Kafka
5 129 (7.43%) RESTful
6 126 (7.25%) Spring
7 119 (6.85%) .NET
8 104 (5.99%) Spring Boot
9 101 (5.81%) Node.js
10 66 (3.80%) AngularJS
11 61 (3.51%) HTML
12 55 (3.17%) CSS
13 50 (2.88%) pytest
14 47 (2.71%) OAuth
15 45 (2.59%) Jest
16 35 (2.01%) Swagger
17 34 (1.96%) Gherkin
17 34 (1.96%) OpenID
18 33 (1.90%) GraphQL
18 33 (1.90%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 190 (10.94%) Cloud Native
2 120 (6.91%) Product Ownership
3 95 (5.47%) Distributed Systems
4 49 (2.82%) Data Protection Act
5 42 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
6 41 (2.36%) Mobile App
7 36 (2.07%) Self-Motivation
8 33 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
8 33 (1.90%) Virtual Team
9 27 (1.55%) Onboarding
10 25 (1.44%) Distributed Architecture
11 24 (1.38%) Algorithms
12 22 (1.27%) Management Information System
13 21 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
14 20 (1.15%) NHS
15 19 (1.09%) Fixed Income
16 18 (1.04%) Data Centre
16 18 (1.04%) Data Structures
16 18 (1.04%) Embedded Systems
17 15 (0.86%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 114 (6.56%) Linux
2 74 (4.26%) Windows
3 51 (2.94%) Unix
4 37 (2.13%) Android
5 32 (1.84%) Apple iOS
6 18 (1.04%) Windows Server
7 17 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.69%) Mac OS X
9 7 (0.40%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.29%) Solaris
11 4 (0.23%) Embedded Linux
11 4 (0.23%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.17%) AIX
12 3 (0.17%) CentOS
12 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.12%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.058%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 910 (52.39%) CI/CD
2 795 (45.77%) Agile
3 615 (35.41%) DevOps
4 337 (19.40%) Problem-Solving
5 290 (16.70%) Continuous Improvement
5 290 (16.70%) Microservices
6 269 (15.49%) Test Strategy
7 249 (14.34%) Software Engineering
8 248 (14.28%) Scrum
9 230 (13.24%) Validation
10 221 (12.72%) Infrastructure as Code
11 211 (12.15%) Observability
12 207 (11.92%) TDD
13 206 (11.86%) Containerisation
14 197 (11.34%) AI
15 178 (10.25%) ETL
15 178 (10.25%) Software Testing
16 176 (10.13%) Test Scripting
17 165 (9.50%) User Acceptance Testing
18 164 (9.44%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 447 (25.73%) Python
2 440 (25.33%) Java
3 412 (23.72%) SQL
4 233 (13.41%) JavaScript
5 202 (11.63%) TypeScript
6 175 (10.07%) C#
7 70 (4.03%) PowerShell
8 51 (2.94%) Bash
9 44 (2.53%) C++
10 43 (2.48%) Kotlin
11 32 (1.84%) PL/SQL
12 31 (1.78%) C
13 29 (1.67%) Apex Code
13 29 (1.67%) Scala
14 27 (1.55%) Go
15 23 (1.32%) Bicep
16 19 (1.09%) Swift
17 16 (0.92%) Ruby
18 15 (0.86%) Groovy
19 11 (0.63%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 537 (30.92%) Security Cleared
2 415 (23.89%) SC Cleared
3 80 (4.61%) ISTQB
4 73 (4.20%) Degree
5 70 (4.03%) DV Cleared
6 59 (3.40%) BPSS Clearance
7 36 (2.07%) Computer Science Degree
8 20 (1.15%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 12 (0.69%) Cisco Certification
10 11 (0.63%) CCNP
10 11 (0.63%) Master's Degree
11 10 (0.58%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 10 (0.58%) SAFe Agilist
12 9 (0.52%) DBS Check
13 8 (0.46%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 7 (0.40%) AWS Certification
14 7 (0.40%) Azure Certification
15 6 (0.35%) CISSP
16 5 (0.29%) CCIE
16 5 (0.29%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 370 (21.30%) QA
2 119 (6.85%) Accessibility
3 103 (5.93%) Data Quality
4 54 (3.11%) WCAG
5 29 (1.67%) GDPR
6 11 (0.63%) ISO 20022
7 10 (0.58%) Def Stans
7 10 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 9 (0.52%) NIST
8 9 (0.52%) SLA
9 8 (0.46%) NCSC
10 6 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 5 (0.29%) FATCA
12 4 (0.23%) HL7
12 4 (0.23%) MiFID
12 4 (0.23%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.23%) SEPA
12 4 (0.23%) Software Quality Assurance
13 3 (0.17%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (0.17%) PSD2
System Software
1 288 (16.58%) Docker
2 21 (1.21%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (1.04%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.75%) Firmware
5 11 (0.63%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.40%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 5 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.12%) ISA Server
9 2 (0.12%) SRDF
10 1 (0.058%) Hyper-V
10 1 (0.058%) KVM
10 1 (0.058%) Squid
10 1 (0.058%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.058%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 292 (16.81%) Kubernetes
2 201 (11.57%) Terraform
3 96 (5.53%) Grafana
4 84 (4.84%) Ansible
5 83 (4.78%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.50%) Argo
7 14 (0.81%) Puppet
8 13 (0.75%) HP ALM
9 11 (0.63%) Kibana
10 10 (0.58%) Forefront Identity Manager
10 10 (0.58%) HP Quality Center
10 10 (0.58%) NetIQ Identity Manager
10 10 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.52%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.46%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.35%) NetBackup
13 6 (0.35%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.23%) Istio
14 4 (0.23%) Nmap
14 4 (0.23%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 145 (8.35%) Oracle
2 140 (8.06%) Microsoft
3 68 (3.91%) Salesforce
4 60 (3.45%) Databricks
5 54 (3.11%) Splunk
6 53 (3.05%) ServiceNow
7 52 (2.99%) Talend
8 46 (2.65%) Red Hat
9 44 (2.53%) Google
10 35 (2.01%) Denodo
11 27 (1.55%) SAP
12 26 (1.50%) VMware
13 20 (1.15%) Dynatrace
13 20 (1.15%) Informatica
14 19 (1.09%) Cisco
14 19 (1.09%) UiPath
15 18 (1.04%) IBM
16 16 (0.92%) HP
17 15 (0.86%) MuleSoft
18 14 (0.81%) Blue Prism