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 14 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 25 33
Rank change year-on-year +9 +8 -20
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 52 16 5
As % of all contract jobs in the North East 8.83% 5.06% 1.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.92% 6.27% 1.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 26 14 5
10th Percentile £313 £319 £331
25th Percentile £381 £357 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £395 £405
Median % change year-on-year +7.59% -2.47% -28.32%
75th Percentile £475 £429 £475
90th Percentile £565 £514 £490
England median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 0 0
10th Percentile £60.00 - -
25th Percentile £62.50 - -
Median hourly rate £70.00 - -
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £66.00 £52.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +25.71% -16.00% -15.54%

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 476 255 263
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North East 80.81% 80.70% 79.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 309 175 119
10th Percentile £324 £225 £260
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £465 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.23% -7.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £565 £573 £597
90th Percentile £638 £633 £680
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 12 46
10th Percentile £17.00 - £11.44
25th Percentile £35.31 £11.60 £11.66
Median hourly rate £66.25 £14.07 £16.48
Median % change year-on-year +370.86% -14.62% -59.56%
75th Percentile £70.00 £46.82 £48.75
90th Percentile £72.50 £51.68 £50.00
England median hourly rate £47.00 £29.02 £36.50
% change year-on-year +61.96% -20.49% -2.25%

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 14 May 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 14 May 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 14 May 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 52 £425 +7.59% 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 3 (5.77%) Confluence
2 1 (1.92%) Apache
2 1 (1.92%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.92%) Jupyter
Business Applications
1 2 (3.85%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 16 (30.77%) OpenShift
2 15 (28.85%) AWS
3 9 (17.31%) Azure
4 7 (13.46%) GitHub
5 6 (11.54%) GitHub Actions
6 5 (9.62%) AWS Lambda
6 5 (9.62%) Serverless
7 3 (5.77%) Amazon EKS
7 3 (5.77%) Amazon ElastiCache
7 3 (5.77%) Amazon S3
7 3 (5.77%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (5.77%) Firebase
8 2 (3.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 2 (3.85%) Amazon EC2
8 2 (3.85%) Amazon ECS
8 2 (3.85%) BrowserStack
9 1 (1.92%) Amazon ECR
9 1 (1.92%) Amazon SQS
9 1 (1.92%) Bitrise
9 1 (1.92%) Google Play
Communications & Networking
1 2 (3.85%) HTTP
2 1 (1.92%) DNS
2 1 (1.92%) SSL
2 1 (1.92%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (7.69%) Amazon RDS
1 4 (7.69%) Redis
2 3 (5.77%) Amazon Aurora
2 3 (5.77%) MongoDB
2 3 (5.77%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (1.92%) Amazon Athena
3 1 (1.92%) Big Data
3 1 (1.92%) DynamoDB
3 1 (1.92%) Electronic Patient Records
3 1 (1.92%) NoSQL
3 1 (1.92%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 16 (30.77%) SonarQube
2 12 (23.08%) Jenkins
3 11 (21.15%) Postman
4 9 (17.31%) Cucumber
4 9 (17.31%) Git
5 8 (15.38%) REST Assured
5 8 (15.38%) Selenium
6 6 (11.54%) JIRA
7 5 (9.62%) GitLab
8 3 (5.77%) SoapUI
9 2 (3.85%) fastlane
9 2 (3.85%) Gatling
9 2 (3.85%) JMeter
10 1 (1.92%) Android Studio
10 1 (1.92%) Crashlytics
10 1 (1.92%) Gradle
10 1 (1.92%) JUnit
10 1 (1.92%) Serenity BDD
10 1 (1.92%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (1.92%) Xcode
General
1 13 (25.00%) Public Sector
2 8 (15.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 2 (3.85%) Aerospace
4 1 (1.92%) Military
4 1 (1.92%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 22 (42.31%) Test Engineer
2 10 (19.23%) Developer
2 10 (19.23%) Java Engineer
3 9 (17.31%) Test Automation Engineer
4 7 (13.46%) Java Developer
5 6 (11.54%) DevOps Engineer
5 6 (11.54%) Software Engineer
6 5 (9.62%) AWS DevOps
6 5 (9.62%) AWS DevOps Engineer
6 5 (9.62%) AWS Engineer
6 5 (9.62%) Java Software Engineer
6 5 (9.62%) Software Test Engineer
7 4 (7.69%) SC Cleared Java Developer
7 4 (7.69%) Senior
8 2 (3.85%) Agile Delivery Manager
8 2 (3.85%) Quality Engineer
8 2 (3.85%) Senior Agile Delivery Manager
8 2 (3.85%) Senior Delivery Manager
8 2 (3.85%) Senior Manager
8 2 (3.85%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (32.69%) AngularJS
2 16 (30.77%) Quarkus
3 8 (15.38%) Playwright
3 8 (15.38%) REST
4 7 (13.46%) RESTful
5 5 (9.62%) Kafka
6 3 (5.77%) Elastic Stack
6 3 (5.77%) HTML
6 3 (5.77%) Keycloak
6 3 (5.77%) SOAP
6 3 (5.77%) Spring Boot
7 2 (3.85%) OpenID
7 2 (3.85%) SwiftUI
7 2 (3.85%) WireMock
8 1 (1.92%) Core Data
8 1 (1.92%) iOS SDK
8 1 (1.92%) Jest
8 1 (1.92%) Node.js
8 1 (1.92%) Spring Cloud
8 1 (1.92%) UIKit
Miscellaneous
1 9 (17.31%) Product Ownership
2 5 (9.62%) Self-Motivation
3 4 (7.69%) Cloud Native
4 3 (5.77%) Mobile App
4 3 (5.77%) Replication
5 1 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 2 (3.85%) Android
1 2 (3.85%) Apple iOS
1 2 (3.85%) Linux
1 2 (3.85%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 38 (73.08%) Agile
2 27 (51.92%) Scrum
3 24 (46.15%) Sprint Planning
4 23 (44.23%) CI/CD
5 20 (38.46%) SDLC
6 19 (36.54%) Software Engineering
7 17 (32.69%) DevSecOps
8 16 (30.77%) DevOps
8 16 (30.77%) Front End Development
8 16 (30.77%) Unit Testing
9 15 (28.85%) Sprint Review
10 12 (23.08%) Software Testing
11 9 (17.31%) Infrastructure as Code
12 8 (15.38%) Microservices
13 7 (13.46%) Observability
13 7 (13.46%) TDD
14 6 (11.54%) Configuration Management
14 6 (11.54%) Containerisation
14 6 (11.54%) Non-Functional Testing
14 6 (11.54%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
Programming Languages
1 31 (59.62%) Java
2 6 (11.54%) Bash
2 6 (11.54%) Python
3 5 (9.62%) Groovy
3 5 (9.62%) JavaScript
4 3 (5.77%) SQL
5 2 (3.85%) Kotlin
5 2 (3.85%) Ruby
5 2 (3.85%) Swift
5 2 (3.85%) TypeScript
6 1 (1.92%) Bicep
6 1 (1.92%) Go
6 1 (1.92%) Scala
6 1 (1.92%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 34 (65.38%) Security Cleared
2 31 (59.62%) SC Cleared
3 2 (3.85%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (38.46%) QA
2 10 (19.23%) Accessibility
3 5 (9.62%) WCAG
System Software
1 10 (19.23%) Docker
Systems Management
1 22 (42.31%) Kubernetes
2 16 (30.77%) Argo
3 9 (17.31%) Terraform
4 5 (9.62%) Grafana
4 5 (9.62%) Prometheus
5 3 (5.77%) Rancher
6 1 (1.92%) Ansible
6 1 (1.92%) Consul
6 1 (1.92%) Packer
6 1 (1.92%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (1.92%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 15 (28.85%) Red Hat
2 6 (11.54%) Dynatrace
3 5 (9.62%) ServiceNow
4 2 (3.85%) Microsoft
4 2 (3.85%) Splunk
5 1 (1.92%) Apple
5 1 (1.92%) Checkmarx
5 1 (1.92%) Google