Automation Tester Contract Job Trends in the North West

Automation Tester
England > North West

The median Automation Tester daily rate in the North West is £340, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 130 113 135
Rank change year-on-year -17 +22 +25
Contract jobs requiring an Automation Tester 5 7 5
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 0.23% 0.30% 0.18%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.25% 0.32% 0.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 5 4 2
10th Percentile £297 - £419
25th Percentile - - £434
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £340 £400 £459
Median % change year-on-year -15.00% -12.90% -0.70%
75th Percentile - - £487
90th Percentile £372 - £502
England median daily rate £375 £475 £478
% change year-on-year -21.05% -0.52% +3.24%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
North West

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the North West. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the North West with a recognized job title 2,028 2,221 2,603
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 93.71% 92.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,331 1,260 1,771
10th Percentile £268 £275 £276
25th Percentile £368 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -8.16% -2.00% +2.62%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £675 £675
England median daily rate £508 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 162 161
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.49 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.30 £18.00 £18.00
Median hourly rate £24.88 £37.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.75% +5.71% +46.17%
75th Percentile £47.84 £54.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £71.63 £71.44 £67.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £44.75
% change year-on-year -45.54% +3.20% +71.00%

Automation Tester
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Job postings that featured Automation Tester in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Job vacancy trend for Automation Tester in the North West

Automation Tester
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Automation Tester job vacancies in the North West.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Automation Tester job vacancies in the North West

Automation Tester
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Automation Tester within the North West region over the 6 months to 17 September 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
Cheshire - 3 £340 - 2
Manchester -5 2 £364 -9.06%
Automation Tester
England

Automation Tester Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West

For the 6 months to 17 September 2025, Automation Tester contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the North West region featuring Automation Tester in the job title.

1 5 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 4 (80.00%) Selenium
2 4 (80.00%) Java
2 4 (80.00%) Cucumber
3 3 (60.00%) Continuous Improvement
3 3 (60.00%) Test Strategy
3 3 (60.00%) Jenkins
3 3 (60.00%) User Experience
3 3 (60.00%) Scenario Testing
3 3 (60.00%) REST Assured
3 3 (60.00%) CI/CD
3 3 (60.00%) AWS
4 2 (40.00%) Test Scripting
4 2 (40.00%) Git
4 2 (40.00%) VSAM
4 2 (40.00%) Maven
4 2 (40.00%) Software Testing
4 2 (40.00%) COBOL
4 2 (40.00%) SQL
4 2 (40.00%) Oracle
4 2 (40.00%) SQL Server
4 2 (40.00%) DB2
4 2 (40.00%) Eclipse
4 2 (40.00%) IntelliJ
4 2 (40.00%) CICS
4 2 (40.00%) JCL
4 2 (40.00%) Mainframe
4 2 (40.00%) Code Quality
4 2 (40.00%) Acceptance Criteria
4 2 (40.00%) Playwright

Automation Tester Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West 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 2 (40.00%) CICS
Cloud Services
1 3 (60.00%) AWS
2 1 (20.00%) Azure
2 1 (20.00%) SaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (40.00%) DB2
1 2 (40.00%) Oracle Database
1 2 (40.00%) Relational Database
1 2 (40.00%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 4 (80.00%) Cucumber
1 4 (80.00%) Selenium
2 3 (60.00%) Jenkins
2 3 (60.00%) REST Assured
3 2 (40.00%) Eclipse
3 2 (40.00%) Git
3 2 (40.00%) IntelliJ
3 2 (40.00%) Maven
4 1 (20.00%) Cypress.io
4 1 (20.00%) Gatling
4 1 (20.00%) Postman
General
1 1 (20.00%) Health Technology
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (40.00%) Playwright
2 1 (20.00%) .NET
2 1 (20.00%) .NET Framework
2 1 (20.00%) Gherkin
2 1 (20.00%) jQuery
2 1 (20.00%) Node.js
2 1 (20.00%) Puppeteer
2 1 (20.00%) REST
2 1 (20.00%) RESTful
2 1 (20.00%) WebdriverIO
Miscellaneous
1 2 (40.00%) Mainframe
1 2 (40.00%) VSAM
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 3 (60.00%) CI/CD
2 3 (60.00%) Continuous Improvement
2 3 (60.00%) Scenario Testing
2 3 (60.00%) Test Strategy
2 3 (60.00%) User Experience
3 2 (40.00%) Acceptance Criteria
3 2 (40.00%) Code Quality
3 2 (40.00%) DevOps
3 2 (40.00%) Root Cause Analysis
3 2 (40.00%) Software Testing
3 2 (40.00%) Test Scripting
4 1 (20.00%) Agile
4 1 (20.00%) API Testing
4 1 (20.00%) Load Testing
4 1 (20.00%) Performance Testing
Programming Languages
1 4 (80.00%) Java
2 2 (40.00%) COBOL
2 2 (40.00%) JCL
2 2 (40.00%) SQL
3 1 (20.00%) C#
3 1 (20.00%) JavaScript
3 1 (20.00%) Scala
Vendors
1 2 (40.00%) Oracle