Test Automation Contracts in Reading

Automated Testing
Berkshire > Reading

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in Reading 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 13 30 46
Rank change year-on-year +17 +16 +4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 59 67 41
As % of all contract jobs advertised in Reading 9.88% 5.62% 3.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.63% 6.23% 4.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 33 33 31
10th Percentile £590 £440 £363
25th Percentile £600 £525 £441
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £600 £563
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% +6.67% +7.14%
75th Percentile £700 £675 £613
90th Percentile - £688 £619
Berkshire median daily rate £638 £600 £550
% change year-on-year +6.25% +9.09% +8.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
Median hourly rate £77.19 - -
Berkshire median hourly rate £74.00 - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
Reading

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 Reading.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 555 1,075 936
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Reading 92.96% 90.18% 89.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 329 581 620
10th Percentile £313 £213 £363
25th Percentile £450 £413 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% +10.00%
75th Percentile £638 £619 £660
90th Percentile £700 £688 £721
Berkshire median daily rate £500 £511 £525
% change year-on-year -2.10% -2.71% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 46 23
10th Percentile £33.82 £27.58 £45.50
25th Percentile £41.05 £53.74 £53.00
Median hourly rate £53.10 £62.07 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.46% -4.50% +132.14%
75th Percentile £65.14 £82.55 £74.40
90th Percentile £72.37 £87.50 £79.19
Berkshire median hourly rate £61.50 £61.60 £57.82
% change year-on-year -0.17% +6.54% +174.67%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in Reading

Job postings citing Test Automation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in Reading.

Job vacancy trend for Test Automation in Reading

Test Automation
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in Reading

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Test Automation in Reading.

Daily rate trend for Test Automation in Reading

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram in Reading

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

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in Reading

Test Automation
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in Reading

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Test Automation in Reading.

Hourly rate trend for Test Automation in Reading

Test Automation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in Reading 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:

Business Applications
1 1 (1.69%) Infor CloudSuite
Cloud Services
1 34 (57.63%) Azure
2 16 (27.12%) AWS
3 11 (18.64%) Azure DevOps
4 10 (16.95%) Azure Data Factory
5 8 (13.56%) Azure Cosmos DB
6 6 (10.17%) Azure API Management
6 6 (10.17%) Azure Service Bus
7 5 (8.47%) GCP
8 4 (6.78%) Tricentis Tosca
9 3 (5.08%) SaaS
10 2 (3.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 1 (1.69%) Azure Functions
11 1 (1.69%) Azure Monitor
11 1 (1.69%) Entra ID
11 1 (1.69%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 6 (10.17%) BGP
1 6 (10.17%) MPLS
2 5 (8.47%) TCP/IP
2 5 (8.47%) VLAN
3 1 (1.69%) Ethernet VPN
3 1 (1.69%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (5.08%) NoSQL
2 2 (3.39%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (1.69%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 22 (37.29%) Selenium
2 12 (20.34%) Cucumber
2 12 (20.34%) JIRA
3 11 (18.64%) GitLab
3 11 (18.64%) Jenkins
4 10 (16.95%) REST Assured
5 7 (11.86%) Git
6 6 (10.17%) SonarQube
7 5 (8.47%) Robot Framework
8 4 (6.78%) SpecFlow
9 1 (1.69%) WebDriver
General
1 29 (49.15%) Telecoms
2 25 (42.37%) Finance
3 24 (40.68%) Electronics
3 24 (40.68%) Manufacturing
3 24 (40.68%) Marketing
3 24 (40.68%) Public Sector
4 15 (25.42%) Analytical Skills
4 15 (25.42%) Social Skills
5 5 (8.47%) Law
6 4 (6.78%) Police
7 1 (1.69%) Billing
Job Titles
1 22 (37.29%) Architect
2 21 (35.59%) Active Directory Architect
3 11 (18.64%) Developer
4 9 (15.25%) Java Engineer
4 9 (15.25%) Java Software Engineer
4 9 (15.25%) Software Engineer
5 8 (13.56%) Automation Tester
5 8 (13.56%) Tester
6 7 (11.86%) Azure Developer
6 7 (11.86%) Full-Stack Developer
7 6 (10.17%) Senior
8 5 (8.47%) Telecoms Tester
9 4 (6.78%) DevOps Engineer
9 4 (6.78%) SC Cleared Software Engineer
10 3 (5.08%) Azure Engineer
10 3 (5.08%) Senior Developer
10 3 (5.08%) Test Automation Engineer
10 3 (5.08%) Test Engineer
11 2 (3.39%) Senior Test Engineer
11 2 (3.39%) Senior Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (18.64%) REST
2 10 (16.95%) Java EE
3 6 (10.17%) ADO
3 6 (10.17%) ARM Templates
4 3 (5.08%) .NET
5 2 (3.39%) CSS
5 2 (3.39%) Gherkin
5 2 (3.39%) HTML
5 2 (3.39%) Playwright
5 2 (3.39%) PySpark
6 1 (1.69%) JSON
6 1 (1.69%) NETCONF
6 1 (1.69%) React
6 1 (1.69%) RESTCONF
6 1 (1.69%) SOAP
6 1 (1.69%) XML
6 1 (1.69%) YAML
6 1 (1.69%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 6 (10.17%) Renewable Energy
2 5 (8.47%) Cloud Native
2 5 (8.47%) Self-Motivation
3 1 (1.69%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 24 (40.68%) Windows
2 1 (1.69%) CentOS
2 1 (1.69%) Linux
2 1 (1.69%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 35 (59.32%) Agile
2 26 (44.07%) DevOps
3 24 (40.68%) Business Intelligence
3 24 (40.68%) Digital Marketing
3 24 (40.68%) Programme Management
4 21 (35.59%) Identity Access Management
5 12 (20.34%) Containerisation
6 11 (18.64%) Continuous Integration
6 11 (18.64%) Problem-Solving
7 10 (16.95%) Configuration Management
7 10 (16.95%) Software Architecture
7 10 (16.95%) Software Engineering
7 10 (16.95%) Technical Leadership
8 8 (13.56%) CI/CD
9 7 (11.86%) Full-Stack Development
10 6 (10.17%) Decision-Making
10 6 (10.17%) Infrastructure as Code
10 6 (10.17%) Test Strategy
11 4 (6.78%) Test Scripting
12 3 (5.08%) Load Testing
Programming Languages
1 24 (40.68%) PowerShell
2 18 (30.51%) Java
3 17 (28.81%) Python
4 9 (15.25%) SQL
5 3 (5.08%) Bash
5 3 (5.08%) C#
6 2 (3.39%) JavaScript
7 1 (1.69%) ActionScript
Qualifications
1 38 (64.41%) Security Cleared
2 21 (35.59%) DV Cleared
3 17 (28.81%) SC Cleared
4 1 (1.69%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (6.78%) QA
2 2 (3.39%) Cyber Essentials
2 2 (3.39%) Data Quality
System Software
1 22 (37.29%) Active Directory
2 12 (20.34%) Docker
Systems Management
1 12 (20.34%) Kubernetes
2 11 (18.64%) Ansible
3 6 (10.17%) Docker Swarm
3 6 (10.17%) Podman
3 6 (10.17%) Terraform
Vendors
1 24 (40.68%) SAP
2 2 (3.39%) Databricks
3 1 (1.69%) Cisco
3 1 (1.69%) Infor