Test Automation Contracts in the North West

Automated Testing
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North West 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 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 52 56 60
Rank change year-on-year +4 +4 -18
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 70 85 113
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 3.56% 3.09% 3.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.94% 3.58% 3.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 55 50 75
10th Percentile £334 £406 £365
25th Percentile £400 £431 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £500 £573 £581
90th Percentile £580 £694 £626
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% +0.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 10 4
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £52.50 £39.68
Median hourly rate - £61.25 £42.37
Median % change year-on-year - +44.58% -34.82%
75th Percentile - £71.87 £50.22
90th Percentile - £73.50 £59.54
England median hourly rate £55.00 £60.00 £61.25
% change year-on-year -8.33% -2.04% +2.08%

All Process and Methodology Skills
North West

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 West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,776 2,377 2,894
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 90.24% 86.28% 90.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,147 1,519 2,058
10th Percentile £300 £306 £313
25th Percentile £393 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £593 £588
90th Percentile £661 £688 £675
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 244 144
10th Percentile £15.97 £10.95 £16.85
25th Percentile £22.66 £13.30 £21.25
Median hourly rate £31.88 £21.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +51.81% -40.00% +70.82%
75th Percentile £60.00 £45.22 £48.91
90th Percentile £83.96 £57.50 £65.00
England median hourly rate £29.07 £36.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year -19.25% -4.00% +53.06%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

Job vacancy trend for Test Automation in the North West

Test Automation
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North West

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

Daily rate trend for Test Automation in the North West

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation in the North West over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in the North West

Test Automation
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

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

Hourly rate trend for Test Automation in the North West

Test Automation
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 Test Automation within the North West region over the 6 months to 1 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
Manchester -3 47 £429 -14.25% 111
Cheshire +9 16 £466 -8.63% 21
Merseyside +4 4 £465 -8.82% 13
Lancashire +2 1 £425 +13.33% 55
Cumbria +1 1 £500 -
Test Automation
England

Test Automation
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 6 (8.57%) Confluence
2 2 (2.86%) Apache
2 2 (2.86%) CICS
2 2 (2.86%) WebSphere
Business Applications
1 2 (2.86%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.43%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 10 (14.29%) AWS
2 7 (10.00%) Azure
3 4 (5.71%) Apigee
3 4 (5.71%) GCP
3 4 (5.71%) GitHub
4 3 (4.29%) AWS Lambda
4 3 (4.29%) Dynamics 365
4 3 (4.29%) Serverless
5 2 (2.86%) Azure DevOps
5 2 (2.86%) Cloud Computing
5 2 (2.86%) GitHub Actions
5 2 (2.86%) Slack
6 1 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 1 (1.43%) Azure Cosmos DB
6 1 (1.43%) Azure Monitor
6 1 (1.43%) Entra ID
6 1 (1.43%) IaaS
6 1 (1.43%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 4 (5.71%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (11.43%) NoSQL
1 8 (11.43%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (10.00%) MongoDB
3 6 (8.57%) MySQL
4 4 (5.71%) ObjectStore
5 2 (2.86%) Apache Cassandra
5 2 (2.86%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (2.86%) DB2
5 2 (2.86%) Geospatial Data
5 2 (2.86%) GIS
5 2 (2.86%) Hadoop
6 1 (1.43%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (1.43%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (1.43%) DynamoDB
6 1 (1.43%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 19 (27.14%) Selenium
2 16 (22.86%) GitLab
3 15 (21.43%) Git
3 15 (21.43%) Jenkins
3 15 (21.43%) JIRA
4 10 (14.29%) Cucumber
5 6 (8.57%) Jasmine
6 5 (7.14%) Cypress.io
6 5 (7.14%) JMeter
7 4 (5.71%) CircleCI
7 4 (5.71%) Grunt
7 4 (5.71%) gulp
7 4 (5.71%) LoadRunner
7 4 (5.71%) Maven
7 4 (5.71%) Mocha
7 4 (5.71%) Postman
7 4 (5.71%) REST Assured
7 4 (5.71%) Subversion
8 3 (4.29%) JUnit
8 3 (4.29%) WebDriver
General
1 19 (27.14%) Social Skills
2 15 (21.43%) Analytical Skills
3 12 (17.14%) Public Sector
4 9 (12.86%) Banking
5 8 (11.43%) Finance
6 2 (2.86%) Financial Institution
6 2 (2.86%) General Ledger
6 2 (2.86%) Investment Banking
6 2 (2.86%) Retail Banking
7 1 (1.43%) Aviation
7 1 (1.43%) Games
Job Titles
1 19 (27.14%) Developer
2 17 (24.29%) Tester
3 16 (22.86%) Senior
4 7 (10.00%) Senior Developer
5 6 (8.57%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
5 6 (8.57%) Full-Stack Developer
5 6 (8.57%) Test Manager
6 5 (7.14%) Automation Tester
6 5 (7.14%) QA Engineer
6 5 (7.14%) Software Tester
6 5 (7.14%) Test Engineer
7 3 (4.29%) Java Developer
7 3 (4.29%) JavaScript Developer
8 2 (2.86%) GIS Developer
8 2 (2.86%) Senior Java Developer
8 2 (2.86%) Senior Software Developer
8 2 (2.86%) Senior Software Engineer
8 2 (2.86%) Senior Tester
8 2 (2.86%) Software Engineer
8 2 (2.86%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (20.00%) Node.js
2 13 (18.57%) RESTful
3 8 (11.43%) Playwright
3 8 (11.43%) React
4 7 (10.00%) AngularJS
4 7 (10.00%) HTML
5 6 (8.57%) CSS
5 6 (8.57%) HTML5
5 6 (8.57%) jQuery
6 5 (7.14%) OpenAPI
6 5 (7.14%) Spring
6 5 (7.14%) Swagger
7 4 (5.71%) Kafka
7 4 (5.71%) Mustache
7 4 (5.71%) Sass
7 4 (5.71%) Spring Boot
7 4 (5.71%) Web Services
8 3 (4.29%) OAuth
8 3 (4.29%) RabbitMQ
8 3 (4.29%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 9 (12.86%) Onboarding
2 5 (7.14%) Cloud Native
3 3 (4.29%) Mainframe
4 2 (2.86%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
4 2 (2.86%) Mobile Payment
4 2 (2.86%) Video\Live Streaming
4 2 (2.86%) Virtual Team
4 2 (2.86%) VSAM
5 1 (1.43%) CMDB
5 1 (1.43%) Data Structures
5 1 (1.43%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (1.43%) Mobile App
5 1 (1.43%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 5 (7.14%) Linux
2 4 (5.71%) Unix
3 2 (2.86%) Android
3 2 (2.86%) Mac OS X
3 2 (2.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (1.43%) Mac OS
4 1 (1.43%) Windows
4 1 (1.43%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 32 (45.71%) Agile
1 32 (45.71%) CI/CD
2 18 (25.71%) Problem-Solving
3 15 (21.43%) DevOps
4 12 (17.14%) Containerisation
4 12 (17.14%) Performance Testing
4 12 (17.14%) Test Strategy
4 12 (17.14%) User Acceptance Testing
4 12 (17.14%) Validation
5 10 (14.29%) Continuous Integration
5 10 (14.29%) End-to-End Testing
5 10 (14.29%) Front End Development
5 10 (14.29%) Full-Stack Development
5 10 (14.29%) Integration Testing
5 10 (14.29%) Microservices
6 9 (12.86%) Manual Testing
6 9 (12.86%) System Integration Testing
6 9 (12.86%) Test Scripting
7 8 (11.43%) System Testing
7 8 (11.43%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 23 (32.86%) Java
2 19 (27.14%) JavaScript
3 15 (21.43%) Python
3 15 (21.43%) SQL
4 11 (15.71%) TypeScript
5 9 (12.86%) Bash
6 3 (4.29%) C#
7 2 (2.86%) COBOL
7 2 (2.86%) JCL
7 2 (2.86%) Kotlin
7 2 (2.86%) REXX
8 1 (1.43%) PowerShell
8 1 (1.43%) Ruby
8 1 (1.43%) Scala
Qualifications
1 10 (14.29%) Security Cleared
2 7 (10.00%) ISTQB
3 4 (5.71%) SC Cleared
4 2 (2.86%) CCNA
4 2 (2.86%) CCNP
4 2 (2.86%) Cisco Certification
4 2 (2.86%) Computer Science Degree
4 2 (2.86%) Degree
5 1 (1.43%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.43%) DBS Check
5 1 (1.43%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
5 1 (1.43%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (17.14%) QA
2 5 (7.14%) Accessibility
3 4 (5.71%) WCAG
4 3 (4.29%) Data Quality
5 2 (2.86%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 10 (14.29%) Docker
Systems Management
1 14 (20.00%) Kubernetes
2 4 (5.71%) Ansible
2 4 (5.71%) Terraform
3 2 (2.86%) Grafana
3 2 (2.86%) HP ALM
3 2 (2.86%) Progress Chef
3 2 (2.86%) Prometheus
4 1 (1.43%) Docker Swarm
4 1 (1.43%) Puppet
4 1 (1.43%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 12 (17.14%) ServiceNow
2 8 (11.43%) Oracle
3 6 (8.57%) Google
4 5 (7.14%) Informatica
5 4 (5.71%) Databricks
5 4 (5.71%) Fortinet
5 4 (5.71%) Infoblox
6 3 (4.29%) Talend
6 3 (4.29%) Virgin Media
7 2 (2.86%) Ab Initio
7 2 (2.86%) HP
7 2 (2.86%) Mapbox
7 2 (2.86%) Microsoft
7 2 (2.86%) PagerDuty
7 2 (2.86%) Parasoft
8 1 (1.43%) Ariba
8 1 (1.43%) Atlassian
8 1 (1.43%) CA Agile Central
8 1 (1.43%) MuleSoft
8 1 (1.43%) SAP