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 31 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 22 33
Rank change year-on-year +7 +11 -21
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 47 20 3
As % of all contract jobs in the North East 9.20% 6.33% 0.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.08% 7.66% 1.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 23 16 2
10th Percentile £350 £305 £369
25th Percentile £400 £341 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £390 £413
Median % change year-on-year +8.97% -5.45% -26.99%
75th Percentile £565 £434 £453
90th Percentile £595 £575 £466
England median daily rate £488 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -2.50% -4.76% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 0 0
10th Percentile £54.63 - -
25th Percentile £60.00 - -
Median hourly rate £68.75 - -
75th Percentile £70.00 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £65.50 £56.75 £57.50
% change year-on-year +15.42% -1.30% -8.00%

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 424 261 259
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North East 82.97% 82.59% 80.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 285 183 127
10th Percentile £225 £278 £187
25th Percentile £375 £357 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £495
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% -10.00%
75th Percentile £538 £550 £588
90th Percentile £588 £625 £650
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 9 47
10th Percentile £17.26 - £11.50
25th Percentile £51.25 £11.60 £12.13
Median hourly rate £68.47 £11.64 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +488.23% -33.49% -57.06%
75th Percentile £70.00 £18.25 £47.47
90th Percentile £72.50 £46.69 £50.00
England median hourly rate £37.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +13.85% - -13.33%

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 31 March 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 31 March 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 31 March 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 0 45 £425 +8.97% 37
Durham - 1 £500 - 1
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 2 (4.26%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 17 (36.17%) OpenShift
2 12 (25.53%) AWS
3 8 (17.02%) GitHub
4 7 (14.89%) Azure
5 6 (12.77%) GitHub Actions
6 5 (10.64%) Azure DevOps
7 4 (8.51%) AWS Lambda
7 4 (8.51%) Serverless
8 2 (4.26%) Amazon EC2
8 2 (4.26%) Amazon EKS
8 2 (4.26%) Amazon ElastiCache
8 2 (4.26%) Amazon S3
8 2 (4.26%) BrowserStack
9 1 (2.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 1 (2.13%) Amazon ECS
9 1 (2.13%) AWS CloudFormation
9 1 (2.13%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (2.13%) Firebase
9 1 (2.13%) Pulumi
9 1 (2.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (6.38%) Amazon RDS
2 2 (4.26%) Amazon Aurora
2 2 (4.26%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (4.26%) Redis
3 1 (2.13%) Delta Lake
3 1 (2.13%) MongoDB
3 1 (2.13%) Relational Database
3 1 (2.13%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 15 (31.91%) SonarQube
2 11 (23.40%) Cucumber
2 11 (23.40%) Postman
2 11 (23.40%) REST Assured
3 10 (21.28%) Jenkins
4 8 (17.02%) Git
4 8 (17.02%) GitLab
5 6 (12.77%) Selenium
6 4 (8.51%) JIRA
7 3 (6.38%) Gatling
7 3 (6.38%) JMeter
8 2 (4.26%) SoapUI
9 1 (2.13%) Artifactory
9 1 (2.13%) Cypress.io
9 1 (2.13%) JUnit
9 1 (2.13%) Serenity BDD
9 1 (2.13%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (2.13%) TestRail
General
1 13 (27.66%) Public Sector
2 3 (6.38%) Aerospace
2 3 (6.38%) Social Skills
3 2 (4.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 1 (2.13%) Analytical Skills
4 1 (2.13%) Finance
4 1 (2.13%) Military
Job Titles
1 23 (48.94%) Test Engineer
2 8 (17.02%) Test Automation Engineer
3 7 (14.89%) Developer
3 7 (14.89%) DevOps Engineer
3 7 (14.89%) Java Developer
3 7 (14.89%) Java Engineer
3 7 (14.89%) Software Engineer
4 5 (10.64%) Java Software Engineer
4 5 (10.64%) Software Test Engineer
5 4 (8.51%) AWS DevOps
5 4 (8.51%) AWS DevOps Engineer
5 4 (8.51%) AWS Engineer
6 3 (6.38%) DevOps Automation Engineer
6 3 (6.38%) Senior
7 2 (4.26%) Automation Engineer
7 2 (4.26%) Lead
7 2 (4.26%) QA Automation Engineer
7 2 (4.26%) QA Test Engineer
7 2 (4.26%) Quality Engineer
7 2 (4.26%) SC Cleared Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (31.91%) AngularJS
1 15 (31.91%) Quarkus
2 12 (25.53%) REST
3 6 (12.77%) Playwright
4 5 (10.64%) RESTful
4 5 (10.64%) WireMock
5 4 (8.51%) Elastic Stack
6 3 (6.38%) Kafka
6 3 (6.38%) Spring Boot
7 2 (4.26%) HTML
7 2 (4.26%) Keycloak
7 2 (4.26%) SOAP
7 2 (4.26%) Spring
8 1 (2.13%) Gherkin
8 1 (2.13%) JWT
8 1 (2.13%) OAuth
8 1 (2.13%) OpenID
8 1 (2.13%) PySpark
8 1 (2.13%) Spring Cloud
8 1 (2.13%) SwiftUI
Miscellaneous
1 8 (17.02%) Product Ownership
2 5 (10.64%) Self-Motivation
3 2 (4.26%) Cloud Native
3 2 (4.26%) Replication
4 1 (2.13%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (2.13%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1 (2.13%) Android
1 1 (2.13%) Apple iOS
1 1 (2.13%) Linux
1 1 (2.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (70.21%) Agile
2 23 (48.94%) Scrum
3 22 (46.81%) CI/CD
4 21 (44.68%) Sprint Planning
5 19 (40.43%) SDLC
6 17 (36.17%) DevSecOps
6 17 (36.17%) Software Engineering
7 16 (34.04%) DevOps
8 15 (31.91%) Front End Development
8 15 (31.91%) Unit Testing
9 14 (29.79%) Sprint Review
10 10 (21.28%) Containerisation
10 10 (21.28%) Infrastructure as Code
11 9 (19.15%) Non-Functional Testing
12 8 (17.02%) BDD
12 8 (17.02%) Functional Testing
12 8 (17.02%) Test Management
13 7 (14.89%) Acceptance Criteria
13 7 (14.89%) Code Quality
13 7 (14.89%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 29 (61.70%) Java
2 8 (17.02%) JavaScript
3 6 (12.77%) Python
4 5 (10.64%) Bash
5 4 (8.51%) Groovy
6 2 (4.26%) Bicep
6 2 (4.26%) PowerShell
6 2 (4.26%) Ruby
6 2 (4.26%) TypeScript
7 1 (2.13%) Kotlin
7 1 (2.13%) Scala
7 1 (2.13%) SQL
7 1 (2.13%) Swift
Qualifications
1 28 (59.57%) Security Cleared
2 25 (53.19%) SC Cleared
3 2 (4.26%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (2.13%) AWS Certification
4 1 (2.13%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
4 1 (2.13%) ISTQB
4 1 (2.13%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (40.43%) QA
2 4 (8.51%) Accessibility
3 1 (2.13%) Data Quality
System Software
1 12 (25.53%) Docker
Systems Management
1 20 (42.55%) Kubernetes
2 17 (36.17%) Argo
3 11 (23.40%) Terraform
4 6 (12.77%) Grafana
4 6 (12.77%) Prometheus
5 2 (4.26%) Ansible
5 2 (4.26%) Rancher
6 1 (2.13%) Istio
6 1 (2.13%) Podman
Vendors
1 15 (31.91%) Red Hat
2 3 (6.38%) Microsoft
3 2 (4.26%) Dynatrace
3 2 (4.26%) ServiceNow
3 2 (4.26%) Splunk
4 1 (2.13%) Checkmarx
4 1 (2.13%) Databricks