Test Automation Contract Job Trends in the North East

Automated Testing
England > North East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North East requiring Test Automation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 10 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 21 24
Rank change year-on-year +8 +3 -11
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 87 16 13
As % of all contract jobs in the North East 12.03% 4.94% 4.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.80% 6.18% 5.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 42 14 12
10th Percentile £313 £329 £329
25th Percentile £324 £364 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -24.78%
75th Percentile £475 £445 £476
90th Percentile - £460 £499
England median daily rate £475 £484 £525
% change year-on-year -1.86% -7.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 0 0
10th Percentile £62.00 - -
25th Percentile £62.50 - -
Median hourly rate £70.00 - -
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £56.25
% change year-on-year +28.57% -6.67% -25.00%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North East

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 the North East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 588 259 242
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North East 81.33% 79.94% 80.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 354 174 108
10th Percentile £313 £216 £263
25th Percentile £368 £361 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £455 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.10% -4.21% -9.52%
75th Percentile £575 £550 £588
90th Percentile £650 £638 £641
England median daily rate £525 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 17 45
10th Percentile £17.00 - £11.46
25th Percentile £43.96 £11.60 £12.13
Median hourly rate £69.44 £17.00 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year +308.47% -12.82% -25.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £19.97 £48.75
90th Percentile £72.50 £48.51 £62.00
England median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -6.09%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in the North East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Test Automation relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North East.

Test Automation job vacancy trend in the North East

Test Automation
Daily Rate Trend in the North East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North East citing Test Automation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North East citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram in the North East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation in the North East over the 6 months to 10 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in the North East

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Trend in the North East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North East citing Test Automation.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North East citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Automation in the North East over the 6 months to 10 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the North East

Test Automation
Contract Job Locations in the North East

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 North East region over the 6 months to 10 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
Tyne and Wear +7 86 £425 +6.25% 14
Test Automation
England

Test Automation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North East 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 4 (4.60%) Apache
1 4 (4.60%) Apache Airflow
1 4 (4.60%) Jupyter
2 3 (3.45%) Apache Spark
2 3 (3.45%) Confluence
2 3 (3.45%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 2 (2.30%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 30 (34.48%) AWS
2 24 (27.59%) OpenShift
3 18 (20.69%) Azure
4 11 (12.64%) Azure DevOps
5 10 (11.49%) GitHub
6 9 (10.34%) Firebase
7 6 (6.90%) AWS Lambda
7 6 (6.90%) GitHub Actions
7 6 (6.90%) Serverless
8 4 (4.60%) Amazon EKS
8 4 (4.60%) Amazon EMR
8 4 (4.60%) Amazon S3
8 4 (4.60%) Google Play
9 3 (3.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 3 (3.45%) Amazon ECS
9 3 (3.45%) Amazon ElastiCache
10 2 (2.30%) Amazon EC2
10 2 (2.30%) Amazon ECR
10 2 (2.30%) Amazon SQS
10 2 (2.30%) BrowserStack
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.30%) HTTP
2 1 (1.15%) DNS
2 1 (1.15%) SSL
2 1 (1.15%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (13.79%) MongoDB
2 4 (4.60%) Amazon Athena
2 4 (4.60%) Amazon RDS
2 4 (4.60%) Big Data
2 4 (4.60%) Redis
3 3 (3.45%) Amazon Aurora
3 3 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (2.30%) Relational Database
5 1 (1.15%) DocumentDB
5 1 (1.15%) DynamoDB
5 1 (1.15%) Electronic Patient Records
5 1 (1.15%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 24 (27.59%) SonarQube
2 22 (25.29%) Jenkins
3 19 (21.84%) Selenium
4 18 (20.69%) GitLab
5 14 (16.09%) REST Assured
6 13 (14.94%) Cucumber
7 12 (13.79%) Git
8 11 (12.64%) Postman
9 8 (9.20%) fastlane
9 8 (9.20%) JIRA
10 4 (4.60%) Android Studio
10 4 (4.60%) Crashlytics
10 4 (4.60%) Gradle
10 4 (4.60%) Serenity BDD
10 4 (4.60%) Xcode
11 3 (3.45%) Cypress.io
11 3 (3.45%) SoapUI
11 3 (3.45%) WebDriver
12 2 (2.30%) JMeter
12 2 (2.30%) Mockito
General
1 22 (25.29%) Public Sector
2 15 (17.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 9 (10.34%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (9.20%) Social Skills
5 3 (3.45%) Aerospace
6 2 (2.30%) Military
Job Titles
1 30 (34.48%) Test Engineer
2 26 (29.89%) Developer
3 16 (18.39%) Java Developer
4 13 (14.94%) Java Engineer
5 10 (11.49%) Senior
6 8 (9.20%) SC Cleared Java Developer
7 7 (8.05%) Software Engineer
8 6 (6.90%) DevOps Engineer
8 6 (6.90%) Software Test Engineer
8 6 (6.90%) Test Automation Engineer
9 5 (5.75%) AWS DevOps
9 5 (5.75%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 5 (5.75%) AWS Engineer
9 5 (5.75%) Java Software Engineer
10 4 (4.60%) Android Developer
10 4 (4.60%) iOS Developer
10 4 (4.60%) Lead
10 4 (4.60%) Lead Test Engineer
10 4 (4.60%) QA Engineer
11 3 (3.45%) Automation Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (29.89%) AngularJS
2 24 (27.59%) Quarkus
3 14 (16.09%) Playwright
3 14 (16.09%) RESTful
4 12 (13.79%) Kafka
4 12 (13.79%) REST
5 10 (11.49%) Spring Boot
6 9 (10.34%) Spring
7 7 (8.05%) Node.js
8 5 (5.75%) SwiftUI
9 4 (4.60%) Android Jetpack
9 4 (4.60%) Android SDK
9 4 (4.60%) Core Data
9 4 (4.60%) iOS SDK
9 4 (4.60%) Jetpack Compose
9 4 (4.60%) Retrofit
9 4 (4.60%) UIKit
9 4 (4.60%) WireMock
10 3 (3.45%) Elastic Stack
10 3 (3.45%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 17 (19.54%) Product Ownership
2 9 (10.34%) Mobile App
3 8 (9.20%) Cloud Native
4 6 (6.90%) Self-Motivation
5 4 (4.60%) Distributed Systems
6 3 (3.45%) Replication
7 2 (2.30%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (1.15%) Distributed Architecture
8 1 (1.15%) Onboarding
8 1 (1.15%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 5 (5.75%) Android
1 5 (5.75%) Apple iOS
2 4 (4.60%) Linux
2 4 (4.60%) Unix
3 1 (1.15%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 64 (73.56%) Agile
2 45 (51.72%) Scrum
3 44 (50.57%) CI/CD
4 34 (39.08%) DevOps
4 34 (39.08%) Sprint Planning
5 32 (36.78%) SDLC
6 25 (28.74%) Front End Development
6 25 (28.74%) Software Engineering
7 24 (27.59%) DevSecOps
7 24 (27.59%) Sprint Review
7 24 (27.59%) Unit Testing
8 21 (24.14%) TDD
9 18 (20.69%) Microservices
10 15 (17.24%) BDD
10 15 (17.24%) Non-Functional Testing
11 13 (14.94%) Software Testing
12 12 (13.79%) Analytics
12 12 (13.79%) Infrastructure as Code
12 12 (13.79%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
13 11 (12.64%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 59 (67.82%) Java
2 11 (12.64%) Bash
2 11 (12.64%) Python
3 7 (8.05%) JavaScript
3 7 (8.05%) SQL
4 5 (5.75%) Groovy
4 5 (5.75%) Kotlin
4 5 (5.75%) Swift
5 4 (4.60%) TypeScript
6 1 (1.15%) Go
6 1 (1.15%) PowerShell
6 1 (1.15%) Scala
6 1 (1.15%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 48 (55.17%) Security Cleared
2 41 (47.13%) SC Cleared
3 7 (8.05%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (41.38%) QA
2 22 (25.29%) Accessibility
3 11 (12.64%) WCAG
System Software
1 18 (20.69%) Docker
Systems Management
1 33 (37.93%) Kubernetes
2 24 (27.59%) Argo
3 12 (13.79%) Terraform
4 6 (6.90%) Grafana
4 6 (6.90%) Prometheus
5 3 (3.45%) Rancher
6 1 (1.15%) Ansible
6 1 (1.15%) Consul
6 1 (1.15%) HP ALM
6 1 (1.15%) Packer
6 1 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (1.15%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 23 (26.44%) Red Hat
2 13 (14.94%) Dynatrace
3 5 (5.75%) ServiceNow
4 4 (4.60%) Apple
4 4 (4.60%) Google
5 3 (3.45%) Splunk
6 1 (1.15%) Confluent
6 1 (1.15%) HP