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 2 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 16 26
Rank change year-on-year +6 +10 0
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 102 28 11
As % of all contract jobs in the North East 12.04% 9.40% 3.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.21% 11.16% 4.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 59 22 10
10th Percentile £313 £412 £324
25th Percentile £365 £429 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £481 £425
Median % change year-on-year -11.69% +13.24% -7.86%
75th Percentile £475 £569 £469
90th Percentile £516 £575 £514
England median daily rate £475 £500 £510
% change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 0 0
10th Percentile £61.25 - -
25th Percentile £62.50 - -
Median hourly rate £70.00 - -
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £69.25 £57.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +20.43% -4.17% -20.00%

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 718 251 260
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North East 84.77% 84.23% 90.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 398 150 101
10th Percentile £313 £225 £315
25th Percentile £363 £402 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £481 £475
Median % change year-on-year -6.49% +1.32% +5.56%
75th Percentile £576 £575 £610
90th Percentile £652 £643 £738
England median daily rate £525 £512 £525
% change year-on-year +2.64% -2.57% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 103 15 35
10th Percentile £13.34 £13.52 £13.75
25th Percentile £24.75 £15.75 £15.50
Median hourly rate £43.96 £18.87 £29.77
Median % change year-on-year +132.96% -36.61% +48.85%
75th Percentile £69.75 £20.63 £46.18
90th Percentile £70.00 £45.60 £70.00
England median hourly rate £40.08 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.36% -41.51% -3.37%

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 2 October 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 2 October 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 2 October 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 +4 101 £425 -11.69% 65
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 (3.92%) Apache
1 4 (3.92%) Apache Airflow
1 4 (3.92%) Jupyter
1 4 (3.92%) WebLogic
2 3 (2.94%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.98%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 2 (1.96%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.98%) Sage 50
Cloud Services
1 39 (38.24%) AWS
2 25 (24.51%) OpenShift
3 19 (18.63%) Azure
4 15 (14.71%) GitHub
5 12 (11.76%) Amazon EKS
6 11 (10.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 10 (9.80%) Azure DevOps
7 10 (9.80%) GitHub Actions
8 8 (7.84%) Amazon S3
8 8 (7.84%) Amazon SQS
8 8 (7.84%) AWS Lambda
8 8 (7.84%) Firebase
8 8 (7.84%) Serverless
9 7 (6.86%) Amazon ECS
9 7 (6.86%) Kong
10 6 (5.88%) Amazon ECR
11 5 (4.90%) AWS Fargate
11 5 (4.90%) AWS KMS
12 4 (3.92%) Amazon EMR
12 4 (3.92%) Google Play
Communications & Networking
1 5 (4.90%) DNS
2 3 (2.94%) Firewall
2 3 (2.94%) HTTP
3 2 (1.96%) SSL
3 2 (1.96%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (18.63%) MongoDB
2 5 (4.90%) DocumentDB
3 4 (3.92%) Amazon Athena
3 4 (3.92%) Big Data
4 3 (2.94%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (1.96%) DynamoDB
5 2 (1.96%) NoSQL
5 2 (1.96%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (1.96%) Redis
6 1 (0.98%) Amazon Aurora
6 1 (0.98%) Electronic Patient Records
6 1 (0.98%) MySQL
6 1 (0.98%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 26 (25.49%) GitLab
2 25 (24.51%) SonarQube
3 19 (18.63%) Selenium
4 18 (17.65%) Jenkins
5 14 (13.73%) Cucumber
6 13 (12.75%) REST Assured
7 11 (10.78%) Git
8 8 (7.84%) fastlane
9 7 (6.86%) JIRA
10 4 (3.92%) Android Studio
10 4 (3.92%) Crashlytics
10 4 (3.92%) Gradle
10 4 (3.92%) Xcode
11 3 (2.94%) Bugzilla
11 3 (2.94%) Cypress.io
11 3 (2.94%) Postman
11 3 (2.94%) ScalaTest
11 3 (2.94%) Serenity BDD
11 3 (2.94%) WebDriver
12 2 (1.96%) Mockito
General
1 37 (36.27%) Public Sector
2 24 (23.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 13 (12.75%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (11.76%) Social Skills
5 3 (2.94%) Finance
6 1 (0.98%) Aerospace
6 1 (0.98%) French Language
6 1 (0.98%) Manufacturing
6 1 (0.98%) Military
Job Titles
1 43 (42.16%) Developer
2 21 (20.59%) Java Developer
3 20 (19.61%) Test Engineer
4 15 (14.71%) Senior
5 10 (9.80%) SC Cleared Java Developer
5 10 (9.80%) Software Developer
6 9 (8.82%) Analyst
6 9 (8.82%) DevOps Engineer
7 8 (7.84%) Java Engineer
8 6 (5.88%) AWS DevOps
8 6 (5.88%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 6 (5.88%) AWS Engineer
8 6 (5.88%) Node.js Developer
8 6 (5.88%) Senior Developer
8 6 (5.88%) Test Automation Engineer
9 5 (4.90%) Angular Developer
9 5 (4.90%) Automation Tester
9 5 (4.90%) Tester
10 4 (3.92%) Android Developer
10 4 (3.92%) QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (30.39%) AngularJS
2 25 (24.51%) Quarkus
3 23 (22.55%) Terraform
4 18 (17.65%) Node.js
5 15 (14.71%) RESTful
6 14 (13.73%) Kafka
7 13 (12.75%) REST
8 11 (10.78%) Playwright
8 11 (10.78%) Spring Boot
9 9 (8.82%) Spring
10 7 (6.86%) Express.js
10 7 (6.86%) Jest
10 7 (6.86%) WireMock
11 5 (4.90%) HTML
11 5 (4.90%) MEAN Stack
11 5 (4.90%) Nunjucks
12 4 (3.92%) Android SDK
12 4 (3.92%) CSS
12 4 (3.92%) Middleware
12 4 (3.92%) UIKit
Miscellaneous
1 19 (18.63%) Product Ownership
2 13 (12.75%) Cloud Native
3 8 (7.84%) Mobile App
4 5 (4.90%) Distributed Systems
4 5 (4.90%) Enterprise Software
5 3 (2.94%) Blog
6 1 (0.98%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (0.98%) Distributed Architecture
6 1 (0.98%) Driving Licence
6 1 (0.98%) Onboarding
6 1 (0.98%) Public Cloud
6 1 (0.98%) Replication
6 1 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 6 (5.88%) Linux
1 6 (5.88%) Unix
2 4 (3.92%) Android
2 4 (3.92%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.98%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 75 (73.53%) Agile
2 62 (60.78%) CI/CD
3 46 (45.10%) Scrum
4 40 (39.22%) DevOps
5 38 (37.25%) SDLC
6 32 (31.37%) Sprint Planning
7 30 (29.41%) Software Engineering
8 28 (27.45%) TDD
9 27 (26.47%) Front End Development
10 26 (25.49%) DevSecOps
10 26 (25.49%) Sprint Review
10 26 (25.49%) Unit Testing
11 21 (20.59%) Continuous Improvement
11 21 (20.59%) Microservices
12 20 (19.61%) Containerisation
12 20 (19.61%) Problem-Solving
13 18 (17.65%) Infrastructure as Code
14 15 (14.71%) BDD
15 14 (13.73%) Deployment Automation
15 14 (13.73%) Kanban
Programming Languages
1 57 (55.88%) Java
2 16 (15.69%) Python
3 15 (14.71%) Bash
4 12 (11.76%) JavaScript
5 10 (9.80%) TypeScript
6 7 (6.86%) SQL
7 6 (5.88%) PowerShell
8 4 (3.92%) Groovy
8 4 (3.92%) Kotlin
8 4 (3.92%) Swift
9 3 (2.94%) Go
9 3 (2.94%) Scala
10 2 (1.96%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.98%) C#
Qualifications
1 54 (52.94%) Security Cleared
2 49 (48.04%) SC Cleared
3 7 (6.86%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (2.94%) AWS Certification
4 3 (2.94%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (49.02%) QA
2 27 (26.47%) Accessibility
3 15 (14.71%) WCAG
System Software
1 27 (26.47%) Docker
Systems Management
1 47 (46.08%) Kubernetes
2 25 (24.51%) Argo
3 10 (9.80%) Grafana
4 7 (6.86%) Prometheus
5 5 (4.90%) Ansible
5 5 (4.90%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (2.94%) HP ALM
6 3 (2.94%) Progress Chef
7 2 (1.96%) Consul
7 2 (1.96%) Packer
7 2 (1.96%) ZABBIX
8 1 (0.98%) Rancher
Vendors
1 25 (24.51%) Red Hat
2 16 (15.69%) Dynatrace
3 6 (5.88%) Splunk
4 5 (4.90%) Confluent
5 4 (3.92%) Apple
5 4 (3.92%) Google
6 3 (2.94%) HP
6 3 (2.94%) ServiceNow
7 1 (0.98%) Microsoft
7 1 (0.98%) Sage