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 17 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 46 46 54
Rank change year-on-year 0 +8 -12
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,492 1,274 1,431
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.75% 4.37% 3.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.34% 4.94% 4.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,014 865 1,030
10th Percentile £327 £328 £399
25th Percentile £400 £400 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £539
Median % change year-on-year - -7.19% -6.30%
75th Percentile £588 £604 £638
90th Percentile £688 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 2 50
10th Percentile £41.94 £51.00 £34.40
25th Percentile £50.00 £56.25 £45.88
Median hourly rate £65.00 £67.50 £76.25
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% -11.48% +27.08%
75th Percentile £67.00 £78.75 £90.00
90th Percentile £67.30 £84.00 -
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £47.50 £77.50
% change year-on-year +36.84% -38.71% +29.17%

All Process and 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 27,925 25,808 32,921
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.90% 88.45% 88.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,780 15,959 22,396
10th Percentile £300 £310 £313
25th Percentile £406 £418 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,812 863 1,395
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +19.30%
75th Percentile £53.75 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £74.97 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.84
% change year-on-year -22.62% -25.86% +25.25%

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 17 December 2025.

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 17 December 2025.

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 17 December 2025. 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 -2 718 £505 -2.98% 151
North of England +5 303 £488 +8.33% 103
Midlands +12 156 £495 - 49
Yorkshire -7 146 £513 +13.89% 34
South East -30 140 £500 - 155
West Midlands +5 120 £515 -2.60% 27
North West +1 116 £425 +5.07% 50
South West +11 79 £550 +1.38% 62
East of England +4 47 £550 +37.50% 56
North East +17 43 £488 +23.81% 19
East Midlands -1 36 £400 -13.51% 22
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 80 (5.36%) Confluence
2 53 (3.55%) SAS
3 24 (1.61%) Apache Spark
4 17 (1.14%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.87%) SharePoint
6 10 (0.67%) Apache
7 8 (0.54%) Oracle Application Server
8 6 (0.40%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.40%) CMS
8 6 (0.40%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.20%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.20%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.13%) JBoss
11 2 (0.13%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.13%) nginx
11 2 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.13%) WordPress
12 1 (0.067%) EPiServer
Applications
1 19 (1.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.74%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.54%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.27%) Simulink
5 4 (0.27%) Windchill
6 3 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.13%) Trello
Business Applications
1 17 (1.14%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.34%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.27%) SAP HR
3 4 (0.27%) SAP PLM
4 3 (0.20%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.13%) Eagle PACE
5 2 (0.13%) Markit EDM
5 2 (0.13%) Maximo
5 2 (0.13%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.13%) Shopify
6 1 (0.067%) Algo Collateral
6 1 (0.067%) CODA-Financials
6 1 (0.067%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.067%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.067%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.067%) PORTIA
6 1 (0.067%) Summit
6 1 (0.067%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 406 (27.21%) Azure
2 349 (23.39%) AWS
3 203 (13.61%) GitHub
4 163 (10.92%) Azure DevOps
5 148 (9.92%) GCP
6 102 (6.84%) GitHub Actions
7 99 (6.64%) Serverless
8 51 (3.42%) Power Platform
9 50 (3.35%) OpenShift
10 42 (2.82%) AWS Lambda
11 41 (2.75%) Amazon S3
11 41 (2.75%) SaaS
12 39 (2.61%) Azure AKS
13 37 (2.48%) Snowflake
14 33 (2.21%) AWS CloudFormation
15 27 (1.81%) Azure Data Factory
16 26 (1.74%) Amazon EKS
16 26 (1.74%) Azure Monitor
16 26 (1.74%) Entra ID
17 25 (1.68%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 38 (2.55%) Firewall
2 32 (2.14%) Wireshark
3 29 (1.94%) HTTP
4 22 (1.47%) HTTPS
5 21 (1.41%) SSL
6 18 (1.21%) TCP/IP
7 16 (1.07%) VPN
8 15 (1.01%) SD-WAN
9 14 (0.94%) Network Security
10 12 (0.80%) Ethernet
11 11 (0.74%) Multicast
12 10 (0.67%) DNS
12 10 (0.67%) WAN
13 9 (0.60%) AMQP
14 6 (0.40%) FTP
14 6 (0.40%) Internet
14 6 (0.40%) VLAN
15 5 (0.34%) Broadband
15 5 (0.34%) Cisco IPT
15 5 (0.34%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 97 (6.50%) PostgreSQL
2 76 (5.09%) NoSQL
3 66 (4.42%) Relational Database
4 65 (4.36%) MongoDB
5 57 (3.82%) SQL Server
6 39 (2.61%) Data Warehouse
7 29 (1.94%) Power BI
8 28 (1.88%) Pentaho
9 21 (1.41%) BigQuery
10 19 (1.27%) Big Data
10 19 (1.27%) Data Lake
10 19 (1.27%) Oracle Database
11 18 (1.21%) MySQL
12 16 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
12 16 (1.07%) Redis
13 15 (1.01%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 13 (0.87%) DynamoDB
15 12 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
16 11 (0.74%) Apache Cassandra
16 11 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 278 (18.63%) Git
2 271 (18.16%) Jenkins
3 269 (18.03%) JIRA
4 238 (15.95%) Selenium
5 196 (13.14%) GitLab
6 129 (8.65%) Cucumber
7 110 (7.37%) Postman
8 96 (6.43%) Cypress.io
9 75 (5.03%) JUnit
10 69 (4.62%) REST Assured
11 54 (3.62%) JMeter
12 44 (2.95%) Bitbucket
13 37 (2.48%) SonarQube
14 32 (2.14%) Maven
15 29 (1.94%) SpecFlow
16 28 (1.88%) TestRail
17 23 (1.54%) Gatling
17 23 (1.54%) Gradle
18 22 (1.47%) Mockito
18 22 (1.47%) WebDriver
General
1 418 (28.02%) Social Skills
2 259 (17.36%) Finance
3 171 (11.46%) Public Sector
4 163 (10.92%) Analytical Skills
5 119 (7.98%) Banking
6 27 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 25 (1.68%) Documentation Skills
7 25 (1.68%) Telecoms
8 24 (1.61%) Front Office
9 23 (1.54%) Pharmaceutical
9 23 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
10 22 (1.47%) Investment Banking
11 17 (1.14%) Financial Institution
12 16 (1.07%) Manufacturing
13 13 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
14 11 (0.74%) Aerospace
14 11 (0.74%) Marketing
14 11 (0.74%) Military
15 10 (0.67%) Electronics
15 10 (0.67%) Retail
Job Titles
1 321 (21.51%) Developer
2 245 (16.42%) Senior
3 171 (11.46%) Tester
4 153 (10.25%) Test Engineer
5 124 (8.31%) Lead
6 94 (6.30%) Java Developer
7 89 (5.97%) Automation Tester
8 78 (5.23%) Software Engineer
9 70 (4.69%) Analyst
10 66 (4.42%) Data Engineer
11 65 (4.36%) Test Automation Engineer
12 63 (4.22%) QA Engineer
13 59 (3.95%) Senior Developer
14 52 (3.49%) Test Analyst
15 50 (3.35%) Automation Engineer
16 47 (3.15%) DevOps Engineer
17 46 (3.08%) Test Manager
18 45 (3.02%) Test Leader
19 34 (2.28%) Full-Stack Developer
20 33 (2.21%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 181 (12.13%) REST
2 150 (10.05%) Playwright
3 125 (8.38%) React
4 121 (8.11%) .NET
5 107 (7.17%) RESTful
6 105 (7.04%) Node.js
7 100 (6.70%) Kafka
8 98 (6.57%) Spring
9 92 (6.17%) Spring Boot
10 65 (4.36%) pytest
11 63 (4.22%) HTML
12 60 (4.02%) CSS
13 59 (3.95%) JSON
13 59 (3.95%) XML
14 57 (3.82%) SOAP
15 52 (3.49%) AngularJS
16 42 (2.82%) Jest
17 40 (2.68%) JMS
18 33 (2.21%) Gherkin
19 32 (2.14%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 156 (10.46%) Cloud Native
2 100 (6.70%) Product Ownership
3 46 (3.08%) Mobile App
4 45 (3.02%) Distributed Systems
5 41 (2.75%) Security Posture
6 28 (1.88%) Algorithms
7 24 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
8 22 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
9 21 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
9 21 (1.41%) Public Cloud
10 20 (1.34%) Data Structures
10 20 (1.34%) Onboarding
11 19 (1.27%) Management Information System
12 16 (1.07%) Genomics
12 16 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
12 16 (1.07%) Legacy Systems
12 16 (1.07%) Life Science
13 15 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 15 (1.01%) Replication
14 14 (0.94%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 155 (10.39%) Linux
2 71 (4.76%) Windows
3 51 (3.42%) Unix
4 39 (2.61%) Android
5 31 (2.08%) Apple iOS
6 19 (1.27%) Mac OS X
7 17 (1.14%) Windows Server
8 11 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 10 (0.67%) Kali Linux
10 8 (0.54%) CentOS
11 3 (0.20%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.20%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.13%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.13%) VMS
13 1 (0.067%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.067%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.067%) Windows Embedded Compact
13 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.067%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 736 (49.33%) Agile
2 735 (49.26%) CI/CD
3 560 (37.53%) DevOps
4 395 (26.47%) Problem-Solving
5 234 (15.68%) Microservices
6 226 (15.15%) Scrum
7 221 (14.81%) Test Strategy
8 220 (14.75%) Containerisation
9 216 (14.48%) Continuous Improvement
10 204 (13.67%) TDD
11 187 (12.53%) Test Scripting
12 183 (12.27%) Software Engineering
13 178 (11.93%) Infrastructure as Code
14 155 (10.39%) Software Testing
15 154 (10.32%) AI
15 154 (10.32%) Validation
16 148 (9.92%) BDD
17 147 (9.85%) SDLC
18 145 (9.72%) Analytics
19 132 (8.85%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 447 (29.96%) Python
2 348 (23.32%) Java
3 302 (20.24%) SQL
4 205 (13.74%) JavaScript
5 168 (11.26%) TypeScript
6 146 (9.79%) C#
7 86 (5.76%) Bash
8 56 (3.75%) PowerShell
9 39 (2.61%) C++
10 35 (2.35%) Go
11 24 (1.61%) Kotlin
12 21 (1.41%) Bicep
13 18 (1.21%) PL/SQL
14 15 (1.01%) PHP
15 12 (0.80%) Perl
16 11 (0.74%) Groovy
16 11 (0.74%) Swift
17 10 (0.67%) C
17 10 (0.67%) Ruby
18 9 (0.60%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 372 (24.93%) Security Cleared
2 288 (19.30%) SC Cleared
3 95 (6.37%) Degree
4 59 (3.95%) ISTQB
5 50 (3.35%) Computer Science Degree
6 48 (3.22%) DV Cleared
7 43 (2.88%) BPSS Clearance
8 22 (1.47%) Master's Degree
9 20 (1.34%) AWS Certification
10 19 (1.27%) CISSP
11 18 (1.21%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 18 (1.21%) OSCP
12 14 (0.94%) Azure Certification
12 14 (0.94%) MCP
13 13 (0.87%) CEH
13 13 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
14 12 (0.80%) GPEN
14 12 (0.80%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 11 (0.74%) Oracle Certification
16 10 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 339 (22.72%) QA
2 109 (7.31%) Accessibility
3 66 (4.42%) Data Quality
4 36 (2.41%) NIST
5 33 (2.21%) GDPR
6 29 (1.94%) WCAG
7 23 (1.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 18 (1.21%) EU AI Act
9 17 (1.14%) NCSC
10 14 (0.94%) PSD2
11 11 (0.74%) NIST 800
11 11 (0.74%) PCI DSS
12 9 (0.60%) ISO 20022
12 9 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 9 (0.60%) SEPA
13 8 (0.54%) SLA
14 7 (0.47%) COBIT
15 6 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
15 6 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
16 5 (0.34%) PERC
System Software
1 314 (21.05%) Docker
2 28 (1.88%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.47%) Firmware
4 5 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
5 4 (0.27%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.20%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 3 (0.20%) ISA Server
6 3 (0.20%) QEMU
6 3 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
6 3 (0.20%) zsh
7 1 (0.067%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.067%) KVM
7 1 (0.067%) Time Sharing Option
7 1 (0.067%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.067%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 279 (18.70%) Kubernetes
2 181 (12.13%) Terraform
3 118 (7.91%) Ansible
4 72 (4.83%) Grafana
5 43 (2.88%) Prometheus
6 16 (1.07%) Nmap
7 15 (1.01%) Progress Chef
8 14 (0.94%) CSIRT
8 14 (0.94%) HP ALM
9 13 (0.87%) NetBackup
10 12 (0.80%) Puppet
11 11 (0.74%) Argo
12 10 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
13 7 (0.47%) Kibana
13 7 (0.47%) Nessus
14 6 (0.40%) Podman
15 5 (0.34%) RSA Archer
16 4 (0.27%) Rancher
16 4 (0.27%) SCCM
17 3 (0.20%) Forefront Identity Manager
Vendors
1 153 (10.25%) Microsoft
2 148 (9.92%) Oracle
3 64 (4.29%) Splunk
4 63 (4.22%) ServiceNow
5 60 (4.02%) Databricks
6 48 (3.22%) SAP
7 47 (3.15%) Salesforce
8 40 (2.68%) Google
9 30 (2.01%) Talend
10 28 (1.88%) Denodo
11 23 (1.54%) VMware
12 21 (1.41%) Cisco
12 21 (1.41%) F5
13 19 (1.27%) Red Hat
13 19 (1.27%) webMethods
14 17 (1.14%) IBM
15 15 (1.01%) Atlassian
15 15 (1.01%) HP
15 15 (1.01%) MuleSoft
16 14 (0.94%) Workday