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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 16 23
Rank change year-on-year +7 +7 +5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 108 20 11
As % of all contract jobs in the North East 12.81% 6.90% 3.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.25% 8.23% 4.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 57 14 10
10th Percentile £313 £344 £324
25th Percentile £375 £414 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £448 £425
Median % change year-on-year -5.03% +5.29% -10.05%
75th Percentile £475 £485 £469
90th Percentile £517 £524 £514
England median daily rate £475 £500 £510
% change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 0 0
10th Percentile £62.50 - -
25th Percentile £63.44 - -
Median hourly rate £70.00 - -
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £68.61 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +19.32% - -23.33%

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 708 243 248
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North East 83.99% 83.79% 89.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 393 137 105
10th Percentile £313 £215 £289
25th Percentile £363 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.23% -2.11% +5.56%
75th Percentile £550 £569 £600
90th Percentile £650 £625 £731
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 17 35
10th Percentile £14.00 £11.60 £13.75
25th Percentile £31.89 £13.75 £15.50
Median hourly rate £43.96 £17.30 £29.77
Median % change year-on-year +154.10% -41.89% +48.85%
75th Percentile £70.00 £20.63 £46.18
90th Percentile - £42.40 £70.00
England median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -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 18 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 18 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 18 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 +9 107 £425 -5.03% 55
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 (3.70%) Apache
1 4 (3.70%) Apache Airflow
1 4 (3.70%) Jupyter
1 4 (3.70%) WebLogic
2 3 (2.78%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.93%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 2 (1.85%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.93%) Sage 50
Cloud Services
1 39 (36.11%) AWS
2 28 (25.93%) OpenShift
3 19 (17.59%) Azure
4 15 (13.89%) GitHub
5 12 (11.11%) Amazon EKS
6 10 (9.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 10 (9.26%) Azure DevOps
6 10 (9.26%) GitHub Actions
7 8 (7.41%) AWS Lambda
7 8 (7.41%) Firebase
7 8 (7.41%) Serverless
8 7 (6.48%) Amazon S3
8 7 (6.48%) Amazon SQS
9 6 (5.56%) Amazon ECS
9 6 (5.56%) Kong
10 5 (4.63%) Amazon ECR
11 4 (3.70%) Amazon EMR
11 4 (3.70%) AWS Fargate
11 4 (3.70%) AWS KMS
11 4 (3.70%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (4.63%) DNS
2 3 (2.78%) Firewall
2 3 (2.78%) HTTP
3 2 (1.85%) SSL
3 2 (1.85%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (16.67%) MongoDB
2 4 (3.70%) Amazon Athena
2 4 (3.70%) Amazon RDS
2 4 (3.70%) Big Data
2 4 (3.70%) DocumentDB
3 3 (2.78%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (2.78%) Redis
4 2 (1.85%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (1.85%) DynamoDB
4 2 (1.85%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.93%) Electronic Patient Records
5 1 (0.93%) MySQL
5 1 (0.93%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 28 (25.93%) SonarQube
2 25 (23.15%) GitLab
3 19 (17.59%) Jenkins
4 18 (16.67%) Selenium
5 13 (12.04%) Cucumber
6 12 (11.11%) REST Assured
7 11 (10.19%) Git
8 8 (7.41%) fastlane
8 8 (7.41%) Postman
9 7 (6.48%) JIRA
10 4 (3.70%) Android Studio
10 4 (3.70%) Crashlytics
10 4 (3.70%) Gradle
10 4 (3.70%) Xcode
11 3 (2.78%) Bugzilla
11 3 (2.78%) Cypress.io
11 3 (2.78%) ScalaTest
11 3 (2.78%) Serenity BDD
11 3 (2.78%) WebDriver
12 2 (1.85%) Mockito
General
1 34 (31.48%) Public Sector
2 23 (21.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 12 (11.11%) Analytical Skills
3 12 (11.11%) Social Skills
4 3 (2.78%) Aerospace
4 3 (2.78%) Finance
5 1 (0.93%) French Language
5 1 (0.93%) Manufacturing
5 1 (0.93%) Military
Job Titles
1 41 (37.96%) Developer
2 24 (22.22%) Test Engineer
3 20 (18.52%) Java Developer
4 15 (13.89%) Senior
5 11 (10.19%) DevOps Engineer
5 11 (10.19%) Java Engineer
6 9 (8.33%) SC Cleared Java Developer
6 9 (8.33%) Software Developer
7 8 (7.41%) Analyst
8 7 (6.48%) AWS DevOps
8 7 (6.48%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 7 (6.48%) AWS Engineer
9 6 (5.56%) Senior Developer
9 6 (5.56%) Software Test Engineer
10 5 (4.63%) Automation Tester
10 5 (4.63%) Node.js Developer
10 5 (4.63%) Software Engineer
10 5 (4.63%) Test Automation Engineer
10 5 (4.63%) Tester
11 4 (3.70%) Android Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (30.56%) AngularJS
2 28 (25.93%) Quarkus
3 23 (21.30%) Terraform
4 19 (17.59%) RESTful
5 16 (14.81%) Node.js
5 16 (14.81%) REST
6 14 (12.96%) Kafka
7 11 (10.19%) Playwright
8 10 (9.26%) Spring Boot
9 9 (8.33%) Spring
10 6 (5.56%) Express.js
10 6 (5.56%) Jest
10 6 (5.56%) WireMock
11 4 (3.70%) Android Jetpack
11 4 (3.70%) Core Data
11 4 (3.70%) Jetpack Compose
11 4 (3.70%) Nunjucks
11 4 (3.70%) Retrofit
11 4 (3.70%) SwiftUI
11 4 (3.70%) UIKit
Miscellaneous
1 23 (21.30%) Product Ownership
2 13 (12.04%) Cloud Native
3 8 (7.41%) Mobile App
4 6 (5.56%) Self-Motivation
5 5 (4.63%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (3.70%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (2.78%) Blog
8 2 (1.85%) Replication
9 1 (0.93%) Data Protection Act
9 1 (0.93%) Distributed Architecture
9 1 (0.93%) Driving Licence
9 1 (0.93%) Onboarding
9 1 (0.93%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 6 (5.56%) Linux
1 6 (5.56%) Unix
2 4 (3.70%) Android
2 4 (3.70%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.93%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (75.93%) Agile
2 60 (55.56%) CI/CD
3 53 (49.07%) Scrum
4 41 (37.96%) DevOps
4 41 (37.96%) SDLC
5 39 (36.11%) Sprint Planning
6 33 (30.56%) Software Engineering
7 30 (27.78%) Front End Development
8 29 (26.85%) DevSecOps
8 29 (26.85%) Unit Testing
9 28 (25.93%) Sprint Review
10 27 (25.00%) TDD
11 20 (18.52%) Continuous Improvement
11 20 (18.52%) Microservices
12 19 (17.59%) Containerisation
12 19 (17.59%) Infrastructure as Code
12 19 (17.59%) Problem-Solving
13 15 (13.89%) Software Testing
14 14 (12.96%) BDD
14 14 (12.96%) Kanban
Programming Languages
1 59 (54.63%) Java
2 17 (15.74%) Python
3 16 (14.81%) Bash
4 10 (9.26%) JavaScript
5 9 (8.33%) TypeScript
6 7 (6.48%) SQL
7 6 (5.56%) PowerShell
8 5 (4.63%) Groovy
9 4 (3.70%) Kotlin
9 4 (3.70%) Swift
10 3 (2.78%) Go
10 3 (2.78%) Scala
11 2 (1.85%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.93%) C#
Qualifications
1 57 (52.78%) Security Cleared
2 52 (48.15%) SC Cleared
3 7 (6.48%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (2.78%) AWS Certification
4 3 (2.78%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (46.30%) QA
2 26 (24.07%) Accessibility
3 14 (12.96%) WCAG
System Software
1 26 (24.07%) Docker
Systems Management
1 50 (46.30%) Kubernetes
2 28 (25.93%) Argo
3 11 (10.19%) Grafana
4 8 (7.41%) Prometheus
5 5 (4.63%) Ansible
5 5 (4.63%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (2.78%) HP ALM
6 3 (2.78%) Progress Chef
7 2 (1.85%) Consul
7 2 (1.85%) Packer
7 2 (1.85%) Rancher
7 2 (1.85%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 27 (25.00%) Red Hat
2 16 (14.81%) Dynatrace
3 6 (5.56%) Splunk
4 4 (3.70%) Apple
4 4 (3.70%) Confluent
4 4 (3.70%) Google
4 4 (3.70%) ServiceNow
5 3 (2.78%) HP
6 1 (0.93%) Microsoft
6 1 (0.93%) Sage