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

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 25 30
Rank change year-on-year +9 +5 -19
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 48 18 4
As % of all contract jobs in the North East 9.50% 5.59% 1.26%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.37% 6.67% 1.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 34 14 3
10th Percentile £365 £305 £375
25th Percentile £408 £322 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £381 £450
Median % change year-on-year +28.09% -15.42% -20.35%
75th Percentile £573 £420 £475
90th Percentile £600 £590 -
England median daily rate £481 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -3.75% -4.76% -7.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 0 0
10th Percentile £50.58 - -
25th Percentile £55.00 - -
Median hourly rate £60.00 - -
75th Percentile £65.63 - -
90th Percentile £70.00 - -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +2.04%

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 422 270 260
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North East 83.56% 83.85% 81.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 292 180 128
10th Percentile £186 £300 £187
25th Percentile £365 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £461 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.89% -11.63%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £578
90th Percentile £596 £650 £641
England median daily rate £503 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.29% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 9 49
10th Percentile £17.88 - £11.50
25th Percentile £51.25 £11.60 £12.13
Median hourly rate £61.16 £16.50 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +270.67% -5.71% -57.06%
75th Percentile £72.50 £46.18 £46.18
90th Percentile - £46.69 £50.00
England median hourly rate £30.79 £34.11 £32.50
% change year-on-year -9.73% +4.95% -12.87%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 +9 46 £481 +26.45% 36
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 (4.17%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (2.08%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 18 (37.50%) AWS
2 12 (25.00%) OpenShift
3 10 (20.83%) GitHub
4 8 (16.67%) Azure
4 8 (16.67%) GitHub Actions
5 5 (10.42%) AWS Lambda
5 5 (10.42%) Serverless
6 4 (8.33%) Amazon EKS
6 4 (8.33%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (6.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 2 (4.17%) Amazon EC2
8 2 (4.17%) Amazon S3
8 2 (4.17%) BrowserStack
8 2 (4.17%) GCP
9 1 (2.08%) Amazon ElastiCache
9 1 (2.08%) AWS CloudFormation
9 1 (2.08%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (2.08%) CloudFront
9 1 (2.08%) Route 53
9 1 (2.08%) Virtual Private Cloud
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (4.17%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (2.08%) Amazon Aurora
2 1 (2.08%) Delta Lake
2 1 (2.08%) MongoDB
2 1 (2.08%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (2.08%) Redis
2 1 (2.08%) Relational Database
2 1 (2.08%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 16 (33.33%) GitLab
2 15 (31.25%) Cucumber
3 14 (29.17%) REST Assured
4 10 (20.83%) SonarQube
5 9 (18.75%) Git
5 9 (18.75%) Jenkins
6 8 (16.67%) Selenium
7 6 (12.50%) Postman
8 4 (8.33%) JMeter
9 3 (6.25%) Gatling
9 3 (6.25%) JIRA
10 2 (4.17%) Cypress.io
10 2 (4.17%) Mocha
10 2 (4.17%) SoapUI
11 1 (2.08%) Artifactory
11 1 (2.08%) JUnit
11 1 (2.08%) Serenity BDD
11 1 (2.08%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (2.08%) TestRail
General
1 20 (41.67%) Public Sector
2 5 (10.42%) Social Skills
3 1 (2.08%) Aerospace
3 1 (2.08%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (2.08%) Finance
3 1 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 1 (2.08%) Military
Job Titles
1 22 (45.83%) Test Engineer
2 9 (18.75%) Developer
3 8 (16.67%) Software Engineer
3 8 (16.67%) Test Automation Engineer
4 7 (14.58%) Java Developer
4 7 (14.58%) Java Engineer
4 7 (14.58%) Java Software Engineer
5 5 (10.42%) DevOps Engineer
5 5 (10.42%) Lead
6 3 (6.25%) AWS DevOps
6 3 (6.25%) AWS DevOps Engineer
6 3 (6.25%) AWS Engineer
6 3 (6.25%) DevOps Automation Engineer
6 3 (6.25%) Lead Test Engineer
6 3 (6.25%) SC Cleared Software Engineer
6 3 (6.25%) Senior
7 2 (4.17%) Automation Engineer
7 2 (4.17%) Backend Developer
7 2 (4.17%) Node.js Developer
7 2 (4.17%) QA Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (27.08%) REST
2 10 (20.83%) AngularJS
2 10 (20.83%) Quarkus
2 10 (20.83%) Spring Boot
3 8 (16.67%) WireMock
4 6 (12.50%) Playwright
4 6 (12.50%) Spring
5 3 (6.25%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (6.25%) Gherkin
5 3 (6.25%) Kafka
6 2 (4.17%) GraphQL
6 2 (4.17%) HTML
6 2 (4.17%) Jest
6 2 (4.17%) Node.js
6 2 (4.17%) SOAP
7 1 (2.08%) Akka
7 1 (2.08%) OAuth
7 1 (2.08%) OAuth2
7 1 (2.08%) OpenID
7 1 (2.08%) Play Framework
Miscellaneous
1 3 (6.25%) Cloud Native
1 3 (6.25%) Product Ownership
2 1 (2.08%) Distributed Architecture
2 1 (2.08%) Enterprise Software
2 1 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
2 1 (2.08%) Mobile App
2 1 (2.08%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 2 (4.17%) Linux
2 1 (2.08%) Android
2 1 (2.08%) Apple iOS
2 1 (2.08%) Mac OS
2 1 (2.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 1 (2.08%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (68.75%) CI/CD
2 31 (64.58%) Agile
3 19 (39.58%) Containerisation
4 18 (37.50%) DevOps
5 17 (35.42%) Software Engineering
6 15 (31.25%) BDD
6 15 (31.25%) Microservices
6 15 (31.25%) SDLC
7 14 (29.17%) Functional Testing
7 14 (29.17%) Infrastructure as Code
7 14 (29.17%) Non-Functional Testing
7 14 (29.17%) Scrum
8 13 (27.08%) TDD
9 12 (25.00%) DevSecOps
10 10 (20.83%) Front End Development
10 10 (20.83%) Sprint Planning
10 10 (20.83%) Sprint Review
10 10 (20.83%) Unit Testing
11 8 (16.67%) Performance Testing
11 8 (16.67%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 31 (64.58%) Java
2 9 (18.75%) JavaScript
3 7 (14.58%) Python
4 6 (12.50%) Bash
5 3 (6.25%) Groovy
6 2 (4.17%) Bicep
6 2 (4.17%) PowerShell
6 2 (4.17%) Ruby
6 2 (4.17%) TypeScript
7 1 (2.08%) Kotlin
7 1 (2.08%) Scala
7 1 (2.08%) SQL
7 1 (2.08%) Swift
Qualifications
1 27 (56.25%) Security Cleared
2 24 (50.00%) SC Cleared
3 2 (4.17%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (2.08%) AWS Certification
4 1 (2.08%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
4 1 (2.08%) ISTQB
4 1 (2.08%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (35.42%) QA
2 6 (12.50%) Accessibility
3 2 (4.17%) WCAG
4 1 (2.08%) Data Quality
System Software
1 22 (45.83%) Docker
Systems Management
1 21 (43.75%) Kubernetes
2 15 (31.25%) Terraform
3 12 (25.00%) Argo
4 9 (18.75%) Grafana
5 7 (14.58%) Prometheus
6 4 (8.33%) Ansible
7 1 (2.08%) Istio
7 1 (2.08%) Podman
7 1 (2.08%) Rancher
Vendors
1 11 (22.92%) Red Hat
2 3 (6.25%) Microsoft
3 2 (4.17%) Splunk
4 1 (2.08%) Checkmarx
4 1 (2.08%) Databricks
4 1 (2.08%) Dynatrace
4 1 (2.08%) Google
4 1 (2.08%) ServiceNow