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 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 49 56 81
Rank change year-on-year +7 +25 -41
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 80 81 75
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 4.08% 2.98% 2.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.53% 3.50% 2.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 63 44 55
10th Percentile £327 £408 £347
25th Percentile £387 £425 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -10.60% - -3.57%
75th Percentile £500 £575 £575
90th Percentile £571 £694 £625
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 11 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £73.50 £52.50 £65.25
Median hourly rate £79.00 £62.50 £65.50
Median % change year-on-year +26.40% -4.58% +0.77%
75th Percentile £84.50 £72.19 £65.75
90th Percentile - £74.50 -
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 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 1,766 2,317 2,735
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 89.96% 85.25% 89.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,156 1,457 1,921
10th Percentile £300 £306 £315
25th Percentile £391 £401 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £553 £588 £588
90th Percentile £661 £680 £675
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 97 262 140
10th Percentile £13.88 £11.00 £16.24
25th Percentile £22.72 £14.00 £22.34
Median hourly rate £30.40 £26.39 £35.02
Median % change year-on-year +15.20% -24.63% +53.91%
75th Percentile £63.40 £46.18 £48.91
90th Percentile £84.80 £66.61 £66.00
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 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 31 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 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
Manchester +2 48 £445 -11.00% 130
Cheshire +17 26 £447 -12.35% 31
Merseyside -2 3 £465 -8.82% 17
Cumbria +6 1 £500 - 1
Lancashire -2 1 £425 +9.68% 68
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 4 (5.00%) Confluence
2 3 (3.75%) CICS
3 2 (2.50%) WebSphere
Applications
1 1 (1.25%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (2.50%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (2.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (1.25%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 17 (21.25%) AWS
2 9 (11.25%) Azure
3 5 (6.25%) Apigee
3 5 (6.25%) GCP
4 4 (5.00%) GitHub
5 3 (3.75%) AWS Lambda
5 3 (3.75%) Azure DevOps
5 3 (3.75%) Serverless
6 2 (2.50%) Dynamics 365
6 2 (2.50%) GitHub Actions
6 2 (2.50%) SuccessFactors
7 1 (1.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 1 (1.25%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 1 (1.25%) Azure Monitor
7 1 (1.25%) Entra ID
7 1 (1.25%) IaaS
7 1 (1.25%) Power Automate
7 1 (1.25%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (5.00%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (11.25%) NoSQL
2 6 (7.50%) MongoDB
3 5 (6.25%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (5.00%) MySQL
4 4 (5.00%) ObjectStore
5 3 (3.75%) DB2
6 2 (2.50%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (2.50%) Geospatial Data
6 2 (2.50%) GIS
6 2 (2.50%) Hadoop
6 2 (2.50%) SQL Server
7 1 (1.25%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (1.25%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (1.25%) DynamoDB
7 1 (1.25%) Oracle Database
7 1 (1.25%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 19 (23.75%) Selenium
2 16 (20.00%) GitLab
2 16 (20.00%) Jenkins
3 14 (17.50%) JIRA
4 12 (15.00%) Git
5 7 (8.75%) Cucumber
6 6 (7.50%) JMeter
7 5 (6.25%) CircleCI
7 5 (6.25%) Cypress.io
7 5 (6.25%) REST Assured
8 4 (5.00%) LoadRunner
8 4 (5.00%) Postman
8 4 (5.00%) Subversion
9 3 (3.75%) Grunt
9 3 (3.75%) gulp
9 3 (3.75%) Jasmine
9 3 (3.75%) Maven
9 3 (3.75%) Mocha
9 3 (3.75%) WebDriver
10 2 (2.50%) Appium
General
1 26 (32.50%) Social Skills
2 20 (25.00%) Analytical Skills
3 10 (12.50%) Finance
4 9 (11.25%) Banking
4 9 (11.25%) Public Sector
5 3 (3.75%) Financial Institution
5 3 (3.75%) Retail Banking
6 2 (2.50%) General Ledger
7 1 (1.25%) Aviation
7 1 (1.25%) Corporate Banking
7 1 (1.25%) Games
7 1 (1.25%) Health Technology
7 1 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (1.25%) Investment Banking
7 1 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (1.25%) Retail
Job Titles
1 17 (21.25%) Tester
2 16 (20.00%) Developer
2 16 (20.00%) Senior
3 8 (10.00%) Test Engineer
3 8 (10.00%) Test Manager
4 7 (8.75%) Full-Stack Developer
5 6 (7.50%) Architect
5 6 (7.50%) Test Architect
6 5 (6.25%) Automation Tester
6 5 (6.25%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
6 5 (6.25%) QA Engineer
6 5 (6.25%) Software Engineer
6 5 (6.25%) Software Tester
7 4 (5.00%) Senior Developer
7 4 (5.00%) Senior Software Engineer
8 3 (3.75%) Analyst
8 3 (3.75%) JavaScript Developer
8 3 (3.75%) Test Analyst
9 2 (2.50%) SAP Manager
9 2 (2.50%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (17.50%) Node.js
1 14 (17.50%) Playwright
2 11 (13.75%) RESTful
3 8 (10.00%) React
4 6 (7.50%) AngularJS
4 6 (7.50%) HTML
5 5 (6.25%) CSS
5 5 (6.25%) HTML5
5 5 (6.25%) jQuery
6 4 (5.00%) .NET
6 4 (5.00%) GraphQL
6 4 (5.00%) JSON
6 4 (5.00%) Kafka
6 4 (5.00%) OAuth
7 3 (3.75%) J2EE
7 3 (3.75%) Mustache
7 3 (3.75%) Puppeteer
7 3 (3.75%) RabbitMQ
7 3 (3.75%) Sass
7 3 (3.75%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 7 (8.75%) Cloud Native
1 7 (8.75%) Onboarding
2 4 (5.00%) Mainframe
3 3 (3.75%) VSAM
4 2 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
4 2 (2.50%) Mobile Payment
4 2 (2.50%) Video\Live Streaming
4 2 (2.50%) Virtual Team
5 1 (1.25%) CMDB
5 1 (1.25%) Data Structures
5 1 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (1.25%) Mobile App
5 1 (1.25%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 6 (7.50%) Android
2 4 (5.00%) Apple iOS
2 4 (5.00%) Unix
3 3 (3.75%) Linux
4 2 (2.50%) Mac OS X
5 1 (1.25%) Mac OS
5 1 (1.25%) Windows
5 1 (1.25%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 37 (46.25%) CI/CD
2 31 (38.75%) Agile
3 24 (30.00%) Problem-Solving
4 19 (23.75%) DevOps
5 16 (20.00%) End-to-End Testing
6 15 (18.75%) Full-Stack Development
6 15 (18.75%) Test Strategy
7 14 (17.50%) User Acceptance Testing
8 13 (16.25%) Performance Testing
8 13 (16.25%) Validation
9 12 (15.00%) Containerisation
10 11 (13.75%) System Integration Testing
11 10 (12.50%) Integration Testing
11 10 (12.50%) Test Scripting
12 9 (11.25%) API Testing
12 9 (11.25%) Data Modelling
12 9 (11.25%) Front End Development
12 9 (11.25%) Scenario Testing
12 9 (11.25%) Software Engineering
12 9 (11.25%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 26 (32.50%) Java
2 18 (22.50%) JavaScript
3 16 (20.00%) Python
4 15 (18.75%) SQL
5 11 (13.75%) TypeScript
6 8 (10.00%) Bash
7 5 (6.25%) C#
8 3 (3.75%) COBOL
8 3 (3.75%) JCL
9 2 (2.50%) Kotlin
9 2 (2.50%) REXX
10 1 (1.25%) PowerShell
10 1 (1.25%) Ruby
10 1 (1.25%) Scala
Qualifications
1 8 (10.00%) ISTQB
1 8 (10.00%) Security Cleared
2 2 (2.50%) CCNA
2 2 (2.50%) CCNP
2 2 (2.50%) Cisco Certification
2 2 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
2 2 (2.50%) Degree
2 2 (2.50%) SC Cleared
3 1 (1.25%) BPSS Clearance
3 1 (1.25%) DBS Check
3 1 (1.25%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
3 1 (1.25%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (17.50%) QA
2 6 (7.50%) SEPA
3 4 (5.00%) Accessibility
4 3 (3.75%) Data Quality
4 3 (3.75%) WCAG
5 2 (2.50%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 8 (10.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 14 (17.50%) Kubernetes
2 6 (7.50%) Grafana
3 5 (6.25%) Terraform
4 4 (5.00%) Ansible
4 4 (5.00%) HP ALM
5 3 (3.75%) Prometheus
6 2 (2.50%) Progress Chef
7 1 (1.25%) Docker Swarm
7 1 (1.25%) Puppet
Vendors
1 11 (13.75%) ServiceNow
2 9 (11.25%) Oracle
3 7 (8.75%) Google
4 5 (6.25%) Informatica
5 4 (5.00%) Databricks
5 4 (5.00%) Fortinet
5 4 (5.00%) HP
5 4 (5.00%) Infoblox
6 3 (3.75%) PagerDuty
6 3 (3.75%) SAP
6 3 (3.75%) Talend
7 2 (2.50%) Ab Initio
7 2 (2.50%) Mapbox
7 2 (2.50%) Microsoft
7 2 (2.50%) Parasoft
7 2 (2.50%) Virgin Media
8 1 (1.25%) Ariba
8 1 (1.25%) Atlassian
8 1 (1.25%) CA Agile Central
8 1 (1.25%) MuleSoft