Test Automation Contracts in the North of England

Automated Testing
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North of England requiring Test Automation skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Test Automation over the 6 months leading up to 31 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 43 49 48
Rank change year-on-year +6 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 160 161 230
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North of England 4.78% 3.42% 4.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.33% 4.04% 4.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 123 95 170
10th Percentile £317 £400 £370
25th Percentile £379 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £490 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.16% -10.91% +10.00%
75th Percentile £515 £575 £619
90th Percentile £575 £615 £700
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 11 2
10th Percentile - - £66.73
25th Percentile £73.50 £52.50 £68.94
Median hourly rate £79.00 £62.50 £72.75
Median % change year-on-year +26.40% -14.09% +11.92%
75th Percentile £84.50 £72.19 £76.44
90th Percentile - £74.50 £78.58
England median hourly rate £55.00 £60.00 £71.00
% change year-on-year -8.33% -15.49% +18.33%

All Process and Methodology Skills
North of England

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 of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 3,004 3,989 4,996
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 89.83% 84.76% 90.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,936 2,423 3,432
10th Percentile £267 £300 £302
25th Percentile £381 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £550 £588 £600
90th Percentile £645 £675 £688
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 151 379 203
10th Percentile £12.82 £11.07 £10.63
25th Percentile £17.99 £12.53 £15.74
Median hourly rate £25.15 £19.50 £27.70
Median % change year-on-year +28.97% -29.60% +45.79%
75th Percentile £51.00 £46.18 £43.75
90th Percentile £76.25 £62.50 £63.75
England median hourly rate £28.53 £37.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year -23.93% - +50.00%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Job postings citing Test Automation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

Job vacancy trend for Test Automation in the North of England

Test Automation
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Test Automation in the North of England.

Daily rate trend for Test Automation in the North of England

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation in the North of England over the 6 months to 31 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in the North of England

Test Automation
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Test Automation in the North of England.

Hourly rate trend for Test Automation in the North of England

Test Automation
Contract Job Locations in the North of England

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 of England region over the 6 months to 31 May 2025. 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
North West +7 80 £447 -10.60% 183
Yorkshire +3 62 £475 - 100
North East +15 19 £400 -1.23% 43
Test Automation
England

Test Automation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North of England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 11 (6.88%) Confluence
2 3 (1.88%) CICS
3 2 (1.25%) WebSphere
4 1 (0.63%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.63%) CMS
Applications
1 1 (0.63%) MadCap Flare
1 1 (0.63%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (1.88%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (1.88%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.63%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 38 (23.75%) AWS
2 24 (15.00%) Azure
3 12 (7.50%) GitHub
4 8 (5.00%) Azure DevOps
4 8 (5.00%) GCP
5 7 (4.38%) Serverless
6 6 (3.75%) AWS Lambda
7 5 (3.13%) Apigee
7 5 (3.13%) GitHub Actions
8 3 (1.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 3 (1.88%) Dynamics 365
8 3 (1.88%) npm
9 2 (1.25%) AWS CodePipeline
9 2 (1.25%) SuccessFactors
10 1 (0.63%) Amazon Kinesis
10 1 (0.63%) Amazon S3
10 1 (0.63%) Cloud Computing
10 1 (0.63%) IaaS
10 1 (0.63%) SaaS
10 1 (0.63%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 5 (3.13%) HTTP
2 4 (2.50%) Firewall
3 2 (1.25%) SAN
4 1 (0.63%) BGP
4 1 (0.63%) DNS
4 1 (0.63%) EIGRP
4 1 (0.63%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 1 (0.63%) Network Security
4 1 (0.63%) OSPF
4 1 (0.63%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (8.75%) PostgreSQL
2 13 (8.13%) MongoDB
3 12 (7.50%) NoSQL
4 9 (5.63%) MySQL
5 5 (3.13%) SQL Server
6 4 (2.50%) ObjectStore
7 3 (1.88%) DB2
8 2 (1.25%) Amazon Redshift
8 2 (1.25%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (1.25%) DynamoDB
8 2 (1.25%) Geospatial Data
8 2 (1.25%) GIS
8 2 (1.25%) Hadoop
8 2 (1.25%) InfluxDB
9 1 (0.63%) Amazon Athena
9 1 (0.63%) Apache Cassandra
9 1 (0.63%) Delta Lake
9 1 (0.63%) Flink
9 1 (0.63%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 54 (33.75%) Selenium
2 39 (24.38%) JIRA
3 37 (23.13%) Git
4 34 (21.25%) Jenkins
5 30 (18.75%) GitLab
6 26 (16.25%) Cucumber
6 26 (16.25%) Postman
7 18 (11.25%) Maven
8 15 (9.38%) Cypress.io
8 15 (9.38%) REST Assured
9 14 (8.75%) JMeter
10 13 (8.13%) JUnit
11 11 (6.88%) IntelliJ
12 8 (5.00%) TestNG
13 5 (3.13%) CircleCI
13 5 (3.13%) Gradle
13 5 (3.13%) HP UFT
13 5 (3.13%) SonarQube
14 4 (2.50%) LoadRunner
14 4 (2.50%) SoapUI
General
1 41 (25.63%) Social Skills
2 31 (19.38%) Analytical Skills
3 22 (13.75%) Public Sector
4 16 (10.00%) Banking
5 14 (8.75%) Finance
6 3 (1.88%) Financial Institution
6 3 (1.88%) Health Technology
6 3 (1.88%) Retail Banking
7 2 (1.25%) General Ledger
7 2 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (0.63%) Aviation
8 1 (0.63%) Corporate Banking
8 1 (0.63%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.63%) Games
8 1 (0.63%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.63%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.63%) Retail
Job Titles
1 36 (22.50%) Tester
2 29 (18.13%) Developer
3 25 (15.63%) Test Engineer
4 21 (13.13%) Senior
5 14 (8.75%) Test Manager
6 12 (7.50%) Architect
6 12 (7.50%) Automation Tester
7 11 (6.88%) QA Tester
8 9 (5.63%) Full-Stack Developer
9 8 (5.00%) Automation Engineer
9 8 (5.00%) QA Engineer
10 7 (4.38%) Data Engineer
10 7 (4.38%) Test Automation Engineer
11 6 (3.75%) Senior Developer
11 6 (3.75%) Software Developer
11 6 (3.75%) Software Tester
11 6 (3.75%) Test Architect
12 5 (3.13%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
12 5 (3.13%) Java Developer
12 5 (3.13%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (14.38%) Playwright
2 20 (12.50%) RESTful
3 19 (11.88%) Node.js
4 13 (8.13%) REST
5 10 (6.25%) AngularJS
5 10 (6.25%) HTML
6 9 (5.63%) React
7 8 (5.00%) CSS
7 8 (5.00%) pytest
7 8 (5.00%) Web Services
8 6 (3.75%) JSON
8 6 (3.75%) Kafka
9 5 (3.13%) HTML5
9 5 (3.13%) jQuery
9 5 (3.13%) Spring Boot
10 4 (2.50%) GraphQL
10 4 (2.50%) OpenAPI
10 4 (2.50%) Spring
10 4 (2.50%) Swagger
10 4 (2.50%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 12 (7.50%) Onboarding
2 7 (4.38%) Cloud Native
3 6 (3.75%) Mainframe
4 4 (2.50%) Data Protection Act
4 4 (2.50%) Product Ownership
5 3 (1.88%) Data Centre
5 3 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
5 3 (1.88%) NHS
5 3 (1.88%) VSAM
6 2 (1.25%) EMC VMAX
6 2 (1.25%) Mobile Payment
6 2 (1.25%) Replication
6 2 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
6 2 (1.25%) Video\Live Streaming
6 2 (1.25%) Virtual Team
7 1 (0.63%) CMDB
7 1 (0.63%) Enterprise Storage
7 1 (0.63%) IBM Mainframe
7 1 (0.63%) iSeries
7 1 (0.63%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 8 (5.00%) Linux
2 7 (4.38%) Android
3 5 (3.13%) Apple iOS
4 4 (2.50%) Unix
5 2 (1.25%) Mac OS X
6 1 (0.63%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.63%) Windows
6 1 (0.63%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.63%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (48.75%) CI/CD
2 63 (39.38%) Agile
3 44 (27.50%) DevOps
4 39 (24.38%) Problem-Solving
5 34 (21.25%) API Testing
5 34 (21.25%) Test Strategy
6 23 (14.38%) BDD
6 23 (14.38%) Test Scripting
7 22 (13.75%) Microservices
8 21 (13.13%) TDD
9 20 (12.50%) End-to-End Testing
10 18 (11.25%) Non-Functional Testing
10 18 (11.25%) Validation
11 17 (10.63%) Containerisation
11 17 (10.63%) Full-Stack Development
11 17 (10.63%) Manual Testing
12 16 (10.00%) Continuous Integration
12 16 (10.00%) Performance Testing
13 15 (9.38%) SDLC
13 15 (9.38%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 60 (37.50%) Java
2 33 (20.63%) JavaScript
3 32 (20.00%) Python
4 26 (16.25%) SQL
5 15 (9.38%) Bash
6 14 (8.75%) TypeScript
7 5 (3.13%) C#
7 5 (3.13%) JCL
8 4 (2.50%) PowerShell
8 4 (2.50%) REXX
9 3 (1.88%) COBOL
10 2 (1.25%) Go
10 2 (1.25%) Kotlin
10 2 (1.25%) Ruby
11 1 (0.63%) Scala
11 1 (0.63%) XPath
Qualifications
1 32 (20.00%) Security Cleared
2 24 (15.00%) SC Cleared
3 10 (6.25%) ISTQB
4 4 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 3 (1.88%) CCNP
5 3 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
5 3 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (1.88%) Degree
6 2 (1.25%) CCNA
6 2 (1.25%) CTC Cleared
7 1 (0.63%) DBS Check
7 1 (0.63%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
7 1 (0.63%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 1 (0.63%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (30.00%) QA
2 17 (10.63%) Accessibility
3 9 (5.63%) WCAG
4 6 (3.75%) SEPA
5 4 (2.50%) Data Quality
6 2 (1.25%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 21 (13.13%) Docker
2 1 (0.63%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 19 (11.88%) Kubernetes
2 10 (6.25%) Ansible
3 9 (5.63%) Terraform
4 8 (5.00%) Grafana
5 4 (2.50%) HP ALM
5 4 (2.50%) Progress Chef
5 4 (2.50%) Puppet
6 3 (1.88%) Prometheus
7 2 (1.25%) Control-M
7 2 (1.25%) vRealize
8 1 (0.63%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 12 (7.50%) ServiceNow
2 11 (6.88%) Oracle
3 9 (5.63%) Microsoft
4 7 (4.38%) Databricks
4 7 (4.38%) Google
5 6 (3.75%) HP
6 5 (3.13%) Informatica
6 5 (3.13%) Virgin Media
7 4 (2.50%) Fortinet
7 4 (2.50%) Infoblox
7 4 (2.50%) SAP
8 3 (1.88%) Cisco
8 3 (1.88%) PagerDuty
8 3 (1.88%) Talend
9 2 (1.25%) 3PAR
9 2 (1.25%) EMC
9 2 (1.25%) IBM
9 2 (1.25%) Mapbox
9 2 (1.25%) Parasoft
9 2 (1.25%) Splunk