Test Automation Contract Job Trends in the South East

Automated Testing
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South East requiring Test Automation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 8 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 53 40
Rank change year-on-year -11 -13 +16
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 229 143 203
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.52% 4.01% 4.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.35% 4.52% 5.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 134 104 147
10th Percentile £270 £325 £350
25th Percentile £355 £372 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £515
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -7.77% -1.90%
75th Percentile £588 £550 £638
90th Percentile £801 £618 £672
England median daily rate £475 £500 £507
% change year-on-year -5.00% -1.38% -7.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 13 2
10th Percentile £55.00 £47.00 £48.50
25th Percentile £66.50 - £50.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile - £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile - £58.75 £61.50
England median hourly rate £69.50 £57.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +20.87% -4.17% -20.00%

All Process & Methodology Skills
South East

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 South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 5,266 3,165 3,597
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.93% 88.73% 83.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,063 1,990 2,156
10th Percentile £275 £213 £255
25th Percentile £422 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £619 £588 £625
90th Percentile £713 £650 £688
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 668 321 193
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £16.19 £16.17 £30.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £22.19 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +114.06% -63.02% +12.15%
75th Percentile £70.00 £50.00 £70.43
90th Percentile £88.00 £69.65 £76.86
England median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.69
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.09% -4.07%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Test Automation relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Test Automation job vacancy trend in the South East

Test Automation
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Test Automation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation in the South East over the 6 months to 8 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in the South East

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Test Automation.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Automation in the South East over the 6 months to 8 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the South East

Test Automation
Contract Job Locations in the South East

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 South East region over the 6 months to 8 October 2026. 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
Thames Valley -20 89 £475 +11.76% 153
Berkshire -9 58 £448 -10.50% 64
Hampshire -28 51 £575 +15.00% 113
West Sussex +11 43 £313 -0.79% 30
Surrey +8 34 £463 +17.83% 41
Buckinghamshire -26 23 £461 +41.92% 18
Oxfordshire -21 8 £868 - 72
Middlesex - 6 - - 2
Kent -10 2 £475 -5.00% 13
Sussex - 2 £438 - 3
East Sussex -2 1 £459 -18.76% 34
Test Automation
England

Test Automation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 15 (6.55%) Confluence
2 4 (1.75%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.75%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.87%) SAS
4 1 (0.44%) IIS
4 1 (0.44%) WebLogic
4 1 (0.44%) WebSphere
Applications
1 1 (0.44%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.44%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 2 (0.87%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.44%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.44%) Oracle EBS R12
2 1 (0.44%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.44%) SAP MDG
2 1 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 69 (30.13%) AWS
2 63 (27.51%) Azure
3 29 (12.66%) Azure DevOps
4 25 (10.92%) GitHub
5 22 (9.61%) OpenShift
6 18 (7.86%) GCP
7 12 (5.24%) GitHub Actions
8 11 (4.80%) Serverless
9 10 (4.37%) Azure AKS
9 10 (4.37%) Entra ID
10 9 (3.93%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (3.49%) Azure App Service
11 8 (3.49%) Azure Key Vault
11 8 (3.49%) Azure Monitor
12 7 (3.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 7 (3.06%) Azure API Management
12 7 (3.06%) Azure Data Factory
12 7 (3.06%) Azure Storage
13 6 (2.62%) IaaS
13 6 (2.62%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 11 (4.80%) 2G
1 11 (4.80%) 3G
1 11 (4.80%) 4G
1 11 (4.80%) 5G
1 11 (4.80%) Diameter Protocol
1 11 (4.80%) SIGTRAN
1 11 (4.80%) SS7
2 6 (2.62%) Broadband
3 5 (2.18%) HTTPS
4 3 (1.31%) BGP
4 3 (1.31%) Ethernet VPN
4 3 (1.31%) GPRS
4 3 (1.31%) GSM
4 3 (1.31%) LAN
4 3 (1.31%) MPLS
4 3 (1.31%) UMTS
4 3 (1.31%) VPN
4 3 (1.31%) VXLAN
4 3 (1.31%) WAN
4 3 (1.31%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (9.17%) Relational Database
2 14 (6.11%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (5.24%) NoSQL
4 10 (4.37%) Azure SQL Database
5 9 (3.93%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (2.62%) Oracle Reports
7 5 (2.18%) Metadata
8 4 (1.75%) Big Data
8 4 (1.75%) Data Lake
8 4 (1.75%) SQL Server
9 3 (1.31%) Parquet
9 3 (1.31%) Spark SQL
10 2 (0.87%) DynamoDB
10 2 (0.87%) Redis
11 1 (0.44%) Amazon Redshift
11 1 (0.44%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.44%) Couchbase
11 1 (0.44%) MongoDB
11 1 (0.44%) Oracle BI Publisher
11 1 (0.44%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 54 (23.58%) Git
2 31 (13.54%) JIRA
3 24 (10.48%) Selenium
4 19 (8.30%) SonarQube
5 16 (6.99%) Jenkins
6 12 (5.24%) GitLab
7 7 (3.06%) Cucumber
7 7 (3.06%) SpecFlow
8 6 (2.62%) JUnit
9 5 (2.18%) Postman
9 5 (2.18%) REST Assured
10 4 (1.75%) Artifactory
10 4 (1.75%) Bitbucket
10 4 (1.75%) Gradle
10 4 (1.75%) HP UFT
10 4 (1.75%) Maven
10 4 (1.75%) Visual Studio Code
11 3 (1.31%) WebDriver
11 3 (1.31%) Zephyr
12 2 (0.87%) tSQLt
General
1 65 (28.38%) Social Skills
2 37 (16.16%) Analytical Skills
3 35 (15.28%) Finance
4 16 (6.99%) Telecoms
5 9 (3.93%) Aerospace
6 8 (3.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 8 (3.49%) Public Sector
7 5 (2.18%) Banking
8 4 (1.75%) Electronics
9 2 (0.87%) Billing
9 2 (0.87%) General Ledger
9 2 (0.87%) Manufacturing
9 2 (0.87%) Retail
10 1 (0.44%) Automotive
10 1 (0.44%) Games
10 1 (0.44%) German Language
10 1 (0.44%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.44%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 41 (17.90%) Developer
2 23 (10.04%) Lead
2 23 (10.04%) Tester
3 22 (9.61%) Senior
4 18 (7.86%) Test Engineer
5 16 (6.99%) Java Developer
6 12 (5.24%) Architect
7 11 (4.80%) Java Engineer
8 10 (4.37%) Consultant
8 10 (4.37%) Software Engineer
8 10 (4.37%) Test Manager
9 9 (3.93%) DevSecOps Engineer
9 9 (3.93%) Full-Stack Developer
9 9 (3.93%) Technical Leader
10 8 (3.49%) Automation Tester
10 8 (3.49%) Designer
10 8 (3.49%) Mobile Designer
10 8 (3.49%) Test Automation Engineer
11 7 (3.06%) QA Engineer
12 6 (2.62%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (12.66%) Terraform
2 28 (12.23%) RESTful
3 24 (10.48%) REST
4 21 (9.17%) React
5 19 (8.30%) AngularJS
6 18 (7.86%) OAuth
6 18 (7.86%) Quarkus
7 17 (7.42%) CSS
7 17 (7.42%) HTML
8 14 (6.11%) .NET
8 14 (6.11%) OpenID
9 11 (4.80%) Spring
10 10 (4.37%) .NET Core
10 10 (4.37%) .NET Framework
10 10 (4.37%) Entity Framework
10 10 (4.37%) JSON
10 10 (4.37%) OAuth2
11 9 (3.93%) Kafka
11 9 (3.93%) Playwright
11 9 (3.93%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 23 (10.04%) Cloud Native
2 21 (9.17%) Product Ownership
3 15 (6.55%) Distributed Systems
4 11 (4.80%) AI Agents
5 9 (3.93%) Data Protection Act
5 9 (3.93%) Enterprise Software
5 9 (3.93%) Self-Motivation
6 6 (2.62%) Data Fabric
7 5 (2.18%) Security Posture
8 4 (1.75%) Life Science
8 4 (1.75%) Low-Code
8 4 (1.75%) PKI
8 4 (1.75%) Social Media
9 3 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (1.31%) Wiki
10 2 (0.87%) AS400
10 2 (0.87%) Mobile App
10 2 (0.87%) Onboarding
10 2 (0.87%) SCADA
11 1 (0.44%) IVR
Operating Systems
1 11 (4.80%) Windows
2 9 (3.93%) Linux
3 5 (2.18%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.75%) Unix
5 2 (0.87%) Embedded Linux
6 1 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (60.26%) CI/CD
2 124 (54.15%) Agile
3 68 (29.69%) DevOps
4 56 (24.45%) Software Engineering
5 55 (24.02%) SDLC
6 49 (21.40%) Continuous Improvement
7 48 (20.96%) Validation
8 44 (19.21%) Problem-Solving
9 41 (17.90%) Scrum
10 38 (16.59%) Software Testing
11 35 (15.28%) Containerisation
11 35 (15.28%) Stakeholder Management
12 34 (14.85%) DevSecOps
12 34 (14.85%) Regression Testing
13 33 (14.41%) AI
13 33 (14.41%) Infrastructure as Code
14 32 (13.97%) Technical Leadership
15 31 (13.54%) Unit Testing
16 30 (13.10%) Data Protection
16 30 (13.10%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 73 (31.88%) SQL
2 67 (29.26%) Python
3 54 (23.58%) Java
4 26 (11.35%) JavaScript
5 23 (10.04%) C#
6 15 (6.55%) PowerShell
6 15 (6.55%) TypeScript
7 6 (2.62%) Bicep
8 5 (2.18%) Bash
8 5 (2.18%) Go
9 4 (1.75%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.31%) Kotlin
10 3 (1.31%) VBScript
11 2 (0.87%) Apex Code
11 2 (0.87%) C++
11 2 (0.87%) Groovy
11 2 (0.87%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.44%) C
12 1 (0.44%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.44%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 91 (39.74%) Security Cleared
2 58 (25.33%) SC Cleared
3 30 (13.10%) DV Cleared
4 14 (6.11%) ISTQB
5 8 (3.49%) Degree
5 8 (3.49%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
6 7 (3.06%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (2.18%) Azure Certification
7 5 (2.18%) Cisco Certification
7 5 (2.18%) Master's Degree
8 4 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
8 4 (1.75%) CCNP
9 2 (0.87%) CISSP
9 2 (0.87%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 1 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 1 (0.44%) CCNA
10 1 (0.44%) CEH
10 1 (0.44%) CISA
10 1 (0.44%) ISEB
10 1 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (38.86%) QA
2 10 (4.37%) Accessibility
3 8 (3.49%) Data Quality
4 2 (0.87%) GDPR
4 2 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.87%) NIST
4 2 (0.87%) Software Quality Assurance
5 1 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 1 (0.44%) GRC
5 1 (0.44%) NCSC
5 1 (0.44%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.44%) PMO
System Software
1 24 (10.48%) Docker
2 16 (6.99%) VMware Infrastructure
3 11 (4.80%) Active Directory
4 5 (2.18%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.44%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 51 (22.27%) Kubernetes
2 19 (8.30%) Argo
3 17 (7.42%) Ansible
4 4 (1.75%) WMI
5 1 (0.44%) Podman
5 1 (0.44%) QRadar
Vendors
1 26 (11.35%) Microsoft
2 18 (7.86%) Red Hat
2 18 (7.86%) VMware
3 12 (5.24%) Oracle
4 11 (4.80%) Cisco
5 9 (3.93%) Databricks
6 6 (2.62%) Arista
6 6 (2.62%) Splunk
6 6 (2.62%) Tagetik
7 5 (2.18%) Salesforce
8 4 (1.75%) Denodo
8 4 (1.75%) Talend
9 3 (1.31%) F5
9 3 (1.31%) Fortinet
9 3 (1.31%) Juniper
9 3 (1.31%) ServiceNow
10 2 (0.87%) Atlassian
10 2 (0.87%) Google
10 2 (0.87%) MuleSoft
10 2 (0.87%) SAP