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 7 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 26 20
Rank change year-on-year +16 -6 -3
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 99 11 13
As % of all contract jobs in the North East 12.91% 3.90% 5.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.33% 4.91% 6.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 49 9 12
10th Percentile £313 £291 £329
25th Percentile £355 £375 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £420 £425
Median % change year-on-year +1.19% -1.18% -24.78%
75th Percentile £475 £460 £476
90th Percentile £503 £483 £499
England median daily rate £475 £498 £525
% change year-on-year -4.52% -5.24% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 0 0
10th Percentile £62.50 - -
25th Percentile £66.25 - -
Median hourly rate £70.00 - -
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £56.25
% change year-on-year +35.00% -11.11% -13.79%

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 646 224 205
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North East 84.22% 79.43% 84.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 363 136 108
10th Percentile £313 £200 £263
25th Percentile £365 £409 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £553
90th Percentile £650 £638 £658
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 18 23
10th Percentile £17.00 - £14.55
25th Percentile £41.23 £11.60 £18.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £17.15 £38.27
Median % change year-on-year +279.01% -55.19% +47.19%
75th Percentile £70.00 £20.46 £50.00
90th Percentile - £47.93 £70.00
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% -

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 7 August 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 7 August 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 7 August 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 +10 98 £425 +1.19% 29
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 (4.04%) Apache
1 4 (4.04%) Apache Airflow
1 4 (4.04%) Jupyter
1 4 (4.04%) WebLogic
2 3 (3.03%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.01%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 2 (2.02%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 34 (34.34%) AWS
2 28 (28.28%) OpenShift
3 18 (18.18%) Azure
4 11 (11.11%) Azure DevOps
4 11 (11.11%) GitHub
5 9 (9.09%) AWS Lambda
5 9 (9.09%) Firebase
5 9 (9.09%) Serverless
6 8 (8.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 8 (8.08%) Amazon EKS
6 8 (8.08%) GitHub Actions
7 7 (7.07%) Amazon S3
8 6 (6.06%) Amazon ECS
8 6 (6.06%) Amazon SQS
9 4 (4.04%) Amazon ECR
9 4 (4.04%) Amazon EMR
9 4 (4.04%) Google Play
10 3 (3.03%) Amazon ElastiCache
10 3 (3.03%) AWS KMS
10 3 (3.03%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.04%) DNS
2 3 (3.03%) HTTP
3 2 (2.02%) Firewall
3 2 (2.02%) SSL
3 2 (2.02%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (14.14%) MongoDB
2 5 (5.05%) Amazon RDS
3 4 (4.04%) Amazon Athena
3 4 (4.04%) Big Data
3 4 (4.04%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (4.04%) Redis
4 3 (3.03%) Amazon Aurora
4 3 (3.03%) DocumentDB
5 2 (2.02%) DynamoDB
5 2 (2.02%) NoSQL
6 1 (1.01%) Electronic Patient Records
6 1 (1.01%) MySQL
6 1 (1.01%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 28 (28.28%) SonarQube
2 23 (23.23%) GitLab
3 21 (21.21%) Jenkins
4 18 (18.18%) Selenium
5 13 (13.13%) Cucumber
5 13 (13.13%) REST Assured
6 12 (12.12%) Git
7 9 (9.09%) Postman
8 8 (8.08%) fastlane
8 8 (8.08%) JIRA
9 4 (4.04%) Android Studio
9 4 (4.04%) Crashlytics
9 4 (4.04%) Gradle
9 4 (4.04%) Xcode
10 3 (3.03%) Bugzilla
10 3 (3.03%) Cypress.io
10 3 (3.03%) Serenity BDD
10 3 (3.03%) WebDriver
11 2 (2.02%) Mockito
11 2 (2.02%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 27 (27.27%) Public Sector
2 18 (18.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 10 (10.10%) Analytical Skills
3 10 (10.10%) Social Skills
4 3 (3.03%) Aerospace
5 1 (1.01%) Military
Job Titles
1 35 (35.35%) Developer
2 26 (26.26%) Test Engineer
3 19 (19.19%) Java Developer
4 12 (12.12%) Java Engineer
5 11 (11.11%) Senior
6 9 (9.09%) DevOps Engineer
6 9 (9.09%) SC Cleared Java Developer
7 6 (6.06%) AWS DevOps
7 6 (6.06%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 6 (6.06%) AWS Engineer
7 6 (6.06%) Software Engineer
7 6 (6.06%) Software Test Engineer
7 6 (6.06%) Test Automation Engineer
8 5 (5.05%) Analyst
8 5 (5.05%) Automation Tester
8 5 (5.05%) Software Developer
8 5 (5.05%) Tester
9 4 (4.04%) Android Developer
9 4 (4.04%) Java Software Engineer
9 4 (4.04%) QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (32.32%) AngularJS
2 28 (28.28%) Quarkus
3 15 (15.15%) REST
3 15 (15.15%) RESTful
4 14 (14.14%) Kafka
5 13 (13.13%) Node.js
6 12 (12.12%) Playwright
7 10 (10.10%) Spring Boot
8 9 (9.09%) Spring
9 6 (6.06%) WireMock
10 5 (5.05%) Express.js
10 5 (5.05%) Jest
10 5 (5.05%) SwiftUI
11 4 (4.04%) Android Jetpack
11 4 (4.04%) Android SDK
11 4 (4.04%) Core Data
11 4 (4.04%) Jetpack Compose
11 4 (4.04%) JWT
11 4 (4.04%) Retrofit
11 4 (4.04%) UIKit
Miscellaneous
1 19 (19.19%) Product Ownership
2 11 (11.11%) Cloud Native
3 9 (9.09%) Mobile App
4 6 (6.06%) Self-Motivation
5 4 (4.04%) Distributed Systems
5 4 (4.04%) Enterprise Software
6 3 (3.03%) Replication
7 1 (1.01%) Distributed Architecture
7 1 (1.01%) Onboarding
7 1 (1.01%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 5 (5.05%) Android
1 5 (5.05%) Apple iOS
1 5 (5.05%) Linux
1 5 (5.05%) Unix
2 1 (1.01%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 74 (74.75%) Agile
2 51 (51.52%) CI/CD
2 51 (51.52%) Scrum
3 39 (39.39%) DevOps
4 38 (38.38%) Sprint Planning
5 37 (37.37%) SDLC
6 31 (31.31%) Software Engineering
7 30 (30.30%) Front End Development
8 29 (29.29%) Unit Testing
9 28 (28.28%) DevSecOps
9 28 (28.28%) Sprint Review
10 24 (24.24%) TDD
11 18 (18.18%) Microservices
12 17 (17.17%) Containerisation
13 16 (16.16%) Infrastructure as Code
14 15 (15.15%) BDD
14 15 (15.15%) Non-Functional Testing
14 15 (15.15%) Problem-Solving
15 14 (14.14%) Continuous Improvement
15 14 (14.14%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 60 (60.61%) Java
2 16 (16.16%) Bash
2 16 (16.16%) Python
3 9 (9.09%) TypeScript
4 8 (8.08%) JavaScript
5 7 (7.07%) SQL
6 6 (6.06%) Groovy
7 5 (5.05%) Kotlin
7 5 (5.05%) PowerShell
7 5 (5.05%) Swift
8 2 (2.02%) Go
8 2 (2.02%) Shell Script
9 1 (1.01%) Scala
Qualifications
1 53 (53.54%) Security Cleared
2 47 (47.47%) SC Cleared
3 7 (7.07%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (2.02%) AWS Certification
4 2 (2.02%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 46 (46.46%) QA
2 23 (23.23%) Accessibility
3 11 (11.11%) WCAG
System Software
1 24 (24.24%) Docker
Systems Management
1 44 (44.44%) Kubernetes
2 28 (28.28%) Argo
3 17 (17.17%) Terraform
4 8 (8.08%) Grafana
4 8 (8.08%) Prometheus
5 4 (4.04%) Ansible
5 4 (4.04%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (3.03%) HP ALM
6 3 (3.03%) Rancher
7 2 (2.02%) Consul
7 2 (2.02%) Packer
7 2 (2.02%) Progress Chef
7 2 (2.02%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 27 (27.27%) Red Hat
2 16 (16.16%) Dynatrace
3 5 (5.05%) ServiceNow
4 4 (4.04%) Apple
4 4 (4.04%) Google
5 3 (3.03%) Confluent
5 3 (3.03%) HP
5 3 (3.03%) Splunk