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 4 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 25 23
Rank change year-on-year +16 -2 +5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 106 14 11
As % of all contract jobs in the North East 12.99% 5.13% 4.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.52% 6.19% 5.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 56 11 10
10th Percentile £313 £320 £324
25th Percentile £370 £405 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £445 £425
Median % change year-on-year -4.49% +4.71% -10.05%
75th Percentile £475 £460 £469
90th Percentile £508 £525 £514
England median daily rate £475 £500 £520
% change year-on-year -5.00% -3.85% -5.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 0 0
10th Percentile £62.50 - -
25th Percentile £67.00 - -
Median hourly rate £70.00 - -
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £68.61 £55.88 £57.50
% change year-on-year +22.79% -2.83% -21.23%

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 683 226 218
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North East 83.70% 82.78% 87.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 380 129 99
10th Percentile £313 £220 £303
25th Percentile £363 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £465 £470
Median % change year-on-year -3.23% -1.06% -0.79%
75th Percentile £550 £569 £586
90th Percentile £650 £625 £684
England median daily rate £525 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 98 17 28
10th Percentile £17.00 £11.60 £14.41
25th Percentile £38.50 £13.37 £15.50
Median hourly rate £51.75 £17.30 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +199.13% -62.54% +130.90%
75th Percentile £70.00 £20.63 £47.14
90th Percentile - £42.40 £70.00
England median hourly rate £43.56 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +73.20% -41.51% +1.18%

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 4 September 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 4 September 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 4 September 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 +10 105 £425 -4.49% 39
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 (3.77%) Apache
1 4 (3.77%) Apache Airflow
1 4 (3.77%) Jupyter
1 4 (3.77%) WebLogic
2 3 (2.83%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.94%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 2 (1.89%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 38 (35.85%) AWS
2 29 (27.36%) OpenShift
3 19 (17.92%) Azure
4 14 (13.21%) GitHub
5 12 (11.32%) Amazon EKS
6 11 (10.38%) Azure DevOps
7 10 (9.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 10 (9.43%) AWS Lambda
7 10 (9.43%) GitHub Actions
7 10 (9.43%) Serverless
8 9 (8.49%) Firebase
9 8 (7.55%) Amazon S3
10 7 (6.60%) Amazon ECS
10 7 (6.60%) Amazon SQS
11 5 (4.72%) Amazon ECR
12 4 (3.77%) Amazon EMR
12 4 (3.77%) AWS Fargate
12 4 (3.77%) AWS KMS
12 4 (3.77%) Google Play
12 4 (3.77%) Kong
Communications & Networking
1 5 (4.72%) DNS
2 3 (2.83%) Firewall
2 3 (2.83%) HTTP
3 2 (1.89%) SSL
3 2 (1.89%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (16.04%) MongoDB
2 5 (4.72%) Amazon RDS
3 4 (3.77%) Amazon Athena
3 4 (3.77%) Big Data
3 4 (3.77%) DocumentDB
3 4 (3.77%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (3.77%) Redis
4 3 (2.83%) Amazon Aurora
5 2 (1.89%) DynamoDB
5 2 (1.89%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.94%) Electronic Patient Records
6 1 (0.94%) MySQL
6 1 (0.94%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 29 (27.36%) SonarQube
2 25 (23.58%) GitLab
3 21 (19.81%) Jenkins
4 18 (16.98%) Selenium
5 13 (12.26%) Cucumber
5 13 (12.26%) Git
5 13 (12.26%) REST Assured
6 9 (8.49%) Postman
7 8 (7.55%) fastlane
7 8 (7.55%) JIRA
8 4 (3.77%) Android Studio
8 4 (3.77%) Crashlytics
8 4 (3.77%) Gradle
8 4 (3.77%) Xcode
9 3 (2.83%) Bugzilla
9 3 (2.83%) Cypress.io
9 3 (2.83%) Serenity BDD
9 3 (2.83%) WebDriver
10 2 (1.89%) Mockito
10 2 (1.89%) ScalaTest
General
1 32 (30.19%) Public Sector
2 22 (20.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 11 (10.38%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (10.38%) Social Skills
4 3 (2.83%) Aerospace
5 2 (1.89%) Finance
6 1 (0.94%) Military
Job Titles
1 39 (36.79%) Developer
2 25 (23.58%) Test Engineer
3 20 (18.87%) Java Developer
4 13 (12.26%) Senior
5 12 (11.32%) Java Engineer
6 10 (9.43%) DevOps Engineer
7 9 (8.49%) SC Cleared Java Developer
8 8 (7.55%) Software Developer
9 7 (6.60%) Analyst
10 6 (5.66%) AWS DevOps
10 6 (5.66%) AWS DevOps Engineer
10 6 (5.66%) AWS Engineer
10 6 (5.66%) Software Engineer
10 6 (5.66%) Software Test Engineer
11 5 (4.72%) Automation Tester
11 5 (4.72%) Node.js Developer
11 5 (4.72%) Test Automation Engineer
11 5 (4.72%) Tester
12 4 (3.77%) QA Engineer
12 4 (3.77%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (32.08%) AngularJS
2 29 (27.36%) Quarkus
3 21 (19.81%) Terraform
4 18 (16.98%) RESTful
5 16 (15.09%) REST
6 15 (14.15%) Kafka
6 15 (14.15%) Node.js
7 12 (11.32%) Playwright
8 10 (9.43%) Spring Boot
9 9 (8.49%) Spring
10 6 (5.66%) Express.js
10 6 (5.66%) Jest
10 6 (5.66%) WireMock
11 5 (4.72%) SwiftUI
12 4 (3.77%) Android Jetpack
12 4 (3.77%) Jetpack Compose
12 4 (3.77%) JWT
12 4 (3.77%) Nunjucks
12 4 (3.77%) Retrofit
12 4 (3.77%) UIKit
Miscellaneous
1 22 (20.75%) Product Ownership
2 13 (12.26%) Cloud Native
3 9 (8.49%) Mobile App
4 6 (5.66%) Self-Motivation
5 5 (4.72%) Distributed Systems
5 5 (4.72%) Enterprise Software
6 3 (2.83%) Replication
7 2 (1.89%) Blog
8 1 (0.94%) Distributed Architecture
8 1 (0.94%) Onboarding
8 1 (0.94%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 6 (5.66%) Linux
1 6 (5.66%) Unix
2 5 (4.72%) Android
2 5 (4.72%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.94%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (75.47%) Agile
2 58 (54.72%) CI/CD
3 54 (50.94%) Scrum
4 41 (38.68%) DevOps
4 41 (38.68%) SDLC
5 40 (37.74%) Sprint Planning
6 33 (31.13%) Software Engineering
7 31 (29.25%) Front End Development
8 30 (28.30%) DevSecOps
8 30 (28.30%) Unit Testing
9 29 (27.36%) Sprint Review
10 26 (24.53%) TDD
11 20 (18.87%) Microservices
12 18 (16.98%) Containerisation
12 18 (16.98%) Infrastructure as Code
13 17 (16.04%) Continuous Improvement
13 17 (16.04%) Problem-Solving
14 15 (14.15%) BDD
14 15 (14.15%) Software Testing
15 14 (13.21%) Kanban
Programming Languages
1 62 (58.49%) Java
2 18 (16.98%) Python
3 17 (16.04%) Bash
4 10 (9.43%) JavaScript
5 9 (8.49%) TypeScript
6 7 (6.60%) SQL
7 6 (5.66%) Groovy
7 6 (5.66%) PowerShell
8 5 (4.72%) Kotlin
8 5 (4.72%) Swift
9 3 (2.83%) Go
9 3 (2.83%) Scala
10 2 (1.89%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 57 (53.77%) Security Cleared
2 51 (48.11%) SC Cleared
3 7 (6.60%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (2.83%) AWS Certification
4 3 (2.83%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (47.17%) QA
2 25 (23.58%) Accessibility
3 13 (12.26%) WCAG
System Software
1 26 (24.53%) Docker
Systems Management
1 49 (46.23%) Kubernetes
2 29 (27.36%) Argo
3 11 (10.38%) Grafana
4 9 (8.49%) Prometheus
5 5 (4.72%) Ansible
5 5 (4.72%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (2.83%) HP ALM
6 3 (2.83%) Progress Chef
6 3 (2.83%) Rancher
7 2 (1.89%) Consul
7 2 (1.89%) Packer
7 2 (1.89%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 28 (26.42%) Red Hat
2 17 (16.04%) Dynatrace
3 5 (4.72%) ServiceNow
3 5 (4.72%) Splunk
4 4 (3.77%) Apple
4 4 (3.77%) Confluent
4 4 (3.77%) Google
5 3 (2.83%) HP