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

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 27 23
Rank change year-on-year +17 -4 0
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 102 10 12
As % of all contract jobs in the North East 12.86% 3.56% 4.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.25% 4.44% 5.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 52 8 11
10th Percentile £313 £277 £325
25th Percentile £370 £380 £383
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £435 £425
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% +2.35% -5.03%
75th Percentile £475 £460 £459
90th Percentile £514 £495 £501
England median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 0 0
10th Percentile £62.50 - -
25th Percentile £69.25 - -
Median hourly rate £70.00 - -
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £69.75 £52.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +32.86% -4.55% -15.38%

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 669 225 208
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North East 84.36% 80.07% 85.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 374 132 106
10th Percentile £313 £203 £293
25th Percentile £364 £417 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £478 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.76% +6.11% -4.76%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £578
90th Percentile £650 £625 £729
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 96 19 25
10th Percentile £17.00 £11.60 £14.25
25th Percentile £38.50 £12.49 £18.00
Median hourly rate £58.75 £17.30 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +239.60% -62.54% +77.62%
75th Percentile £70.00 £20.63 £50.00
90th Percentile - £47.34 £70.00
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% +3.61%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 +13 101 £450 +3.45% 23
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
Cloud Services
1 35 (34.31%) AWS
2 28 (27.45%) OpenShift
3 19 (18.63%) Azure
4 12 (11.76%) GitHub
5 11 (10.78%) Azure DevOps
6 9 (8.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 9 (8.82%) Amazon EKS
6 9 (8.82%) AWS Lambda
6 9 (8.82%) Firebase
6 9 (8.82%) Serverless
7 8 (7.84%) GitHub Actions
8 7 (6.86%) Amazon S3
9 6 (5.88%) Amazon ECS
9 6 (5.88%) Amazon SQS
10 4 (3.92%) Amazon ECR
10 4 (3.92%) Amazon EMR
10 4 (3.92%) Google Play
11 3 (2.94%) Amazon ElastiCache
11 3 (2.94%) Kong
11 3 (2.94%) SaaS
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 14 (13.73%) MongoDB
2 5 (4.90%) Amazon RDS
3 4 (3.92%) Amazon Athena
3 4 (3.92%) Big Data
3 4 (3.92%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (3.92%) Redis
4 3 (2.94%) Amazon Aurora
4 3 (2.94%) DocumentDB
5 2 (1.96%) DynamoDB
5 2 (1.96%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.98%) Electronic Patient Records
6 1 (0.98%) MySQL
6 1 (0.98%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 28 (27.45%) SonarQube
2 24 (23.53%) GitLab
3 21 (20.59%) Jenkins
4 18 (17.65%) Selenium
5 13 (12.75%) Cucumber
5 13 (12.75%) REST Assured
6 12 (11.76%) Git
7 9 (8.82%) Postman
8 8 (7.84%) fastlane
8 8 (7.84%) JIRA
9 4 (3.92%) Android Studio
9 4 (3.92%) Crashlytics
9 4 (3.92%) Gradle
9 4 (3.92%) Xcode
10 3 (2.94%) Bugzilla
10 3 (2.94%) Cypress.io
10 3 (2.94%) Serenity BDD
10 3 (2.94%) WebDriver
11 2 (1.96%) Mockito
11 2 (1.96%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 28 (27.45%) Public Sector
2 18 (17.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 11 (10.78%) Social Skills
4 10 (9.80%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (2.94%) Aerospace
6 1 (0.98%) Military
Job Titles
1 35 (34.31%) Developer
2 26 (25.49%) Test Engineer
3 19 (18.63%) Java Developer
4 12 (11.76%) Java Engineer
4 12 (11.76%) Senior
5 10 (9.80%) DevOps Engineer
6 8 (7.84%) SC Cleared Java Developer
7 6 (5.88%) Analyst
7 6 (5.88%) AWS DevOps
7 6 (5.88%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 6 (5.88%) AWS Engineer
7 6 (5.88%) Software Engineer
7 6 (5.88%) Software Test Engineer
7 6 (5.88%) Test Automation Engineer
8 5 (4.90%) Automation Tester
8 5 (4.90%) Software Developer
8 5 (4.90%) Tester
9 4 (3.92%) Android Developer
9 4 (3.92%) Java Software Engineer
9 4 (3.92%) QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (31.37%) AngularJS
2 28 (27.45%) Quarkus
3 18 (17.65%) Terraform
4 15 (14.71%) REST
4 15 (14.71%) RESTful
5 14 (13.73%) Kafka
6 13 (12.75%) Node.js
7 12 (11.76%) Playwright
8 10 (9.80%) Spring Boot
9 9 (8.82%) Spring
10 6 (5.88%) WireMock
11 5 (4.90%) Express.js
11 5 (4.90%) Jest
11 5 (4.90%) SwiftUI
12 4 (3.92%) Android Jetpack
12 4 (3.92%) iOS SDK
12 4 (3.92%) Jetpack Compose
12 4 (3.92%) JWT
12 4 (3.92%) Retrofit
12 4 (3.92%) UIKit
Miscellaneous
1 19 (18.63%) Product Ownership
2 12 (11.76%) Cloud Native
3 9 (8.82%) Mobile App
4 6 (5.88%) Self-Motivation
5 5 (4.90%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (3.92%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (2.94%) Replication
8 1 (0.98%) Distributed Architecture
8 1 (0.98%) Onboarding
8 1 (0.98%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 6 (5.88%) Linux
1 6 (5.88%) Unix
2 5 (4.90%) Android
2 5 (4.90%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.98%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 75 (73.53%) Agile
2 54 (52.94%) CI/CD
3 51 (50.00%) Scrum
4 40 (39.22%) DevOps
5 38 (37.25%) SDLC
5 38 (37.25%) Sprint Planning
6 32 (31.37%) Software Engineering
7 30 (29.41%) Front End Development
8 29 (28.43%) DevSecOps
8 29 (28.43%) Unit Testing
9 28 (27.45%) Sprint Review
10 24 (23.53%) TDD
11 18 (17.65%) Containerisation
11 18 (17.65%) Infrastructure as Code
11 18 (17.65%) Microservices
12 16 (15.69%) Continuous Improvement
12 16 (15.69%) Problem-Solving
13 15 (14.71%) BDD
13 15 (14.71%) Non-Functional Testing
13 15 (14.71%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 61 (59.80%) Java
2 18 (17.65%) Python
3 17 (16.67%) Bash
4 9 (8.82%) TypeScript
5 8 (7.84%) JavaScript
6 7 (6.86%) SQL
7 6 (5.88%) Groovy
7 6 (5.88%) PowerShell
8 5 (4.90%) Kotlin
8 5 (4.90%) Swift
9 3 (2.94%) Go
10 2 (1.96%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.98%) Scala
Qualifications
1 54 (52.94%) Security Cleared
2 48 (47.06%) SC Cleared
3 7 (6.86%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (2.94%) AWS Certification
4 3 (2.94%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (46.08%) QA
2 24 (23.53%) Accessibility
3 11 (10.78%) WCAG
System Software
1 25 (24.51%) Docker
Systems Management
1 45 (44.12%) Kubernetes
2 28 (27.45%) Argo
3 9 (8.82%) Grafana
3 9 (8.82%) Prometheus
4 5 (4.90%) Ansible
4 5 (4.90%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (2.94%) HP ALM
5 3 (2.94%) Progress Chef
5 3 (2.94%) Rancher
6 2 (1.96%) Consul
6 2 (1.96%) Packer
6 2 (1.96%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 27 (26.47%) Red Hat
2 16 (15.69%) Dynatrace
3 5 (4.90%) ServiceNow
4 4 (3.92%) Apple
4 4 (3.92%) Google
5 3 (2.94%) Confluent
5 3 (2.94%) HP
5 3 (2.94%) Splunk