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 2 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
2 Jul 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 67 30 52
Rank change year-on-year -37 +22 +3
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 199 182 211
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.15% 5.73% 3.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.87% 6.30% 4.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 124 121 136
10th Percentile £306 £325 £356
25th Percentile £381 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £462 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.60% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £596 £600 £638
90th Percentile £659 £700 £688
England median daily rate £475 £483 £525
% change year-on-year -1.66% -8.00% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 19 3
10th Percentile £57.75 £44.51 £40.90
25th Percentile £62.50 £48.99 £47.13
Median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -8.33% +9.09%
75th Percentile - £64.52 £70.00
90th Percentile - £75.84 £74.50
England median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -4.35% -15.75%

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 5,140 2,891 4,706
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 81.35% 91.00% 82.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,236 1,801 2,730
10th Percentile £280 £250 £255
25th Percentile £413 £394 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.44% -0.49%
75th Percentile £610 £600 £634
90th Percentile £700 £663 £700
England median daily rate £520 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 506 236 458
10th Percentile £15.49 £13.38 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.76 £15.12 £18.23
Median hourly rate £53.95 £24.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +124.79% -49.47% -5.00%
75th Percentile £82.25 £54.06 £66.77
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £77.88
England median hourly rate £46.62 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +85.35% -34.02% +1.65%

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 2 July 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 2 July 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 2 July 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 -51 67 £428 -14.59% 42
Surrey +10 50 £550 +15.79% 18
Hampshire -42 40 £580 +13.17% 40
Berkshire -54 38 £405 -33.88% 23
West Sussex -2 28 £364 -5.70% 2
Buckinghamshire -25 25 £461 +41.92% 9
East Sussex +3 6 £459 -3.37% 4
Oxfordshire -28 4 £800 +68.42% 11
Kent +1 3 £500 -20.00% 1
Middlesex -6 2 - - 1
Sussex - 1 £600 - 1
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 12 (6.03%) Confluence
2 2 (1.01%) SAS
2 2 (1.01%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.50%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 5 (2.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.01%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.50%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.50%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.50%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (0.50%) SAP MDG
1 1 (0.50%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 47 (23.62%) Azure
2 32 (16.08%) AWS
3 26 (13.07%) Azure DevOps
4 20 (10.05%) OpenShift
5 16 (8.04%) GitHub
6 9 (4.52%) GitHub Actions
7 5 (2.51%) Azure Data Factory
7 5 (2.51%) GCP
8 4 (2.01%) Azure AKS
8 4 (2.01%) Serverless
9 3 (1.51%) Amazon ECS
9 3 (1.51%) Amazon S3
9 3 (1.51%) AWS CodePipeline
9 3 (1.51%) AWS Lambda
9 3 (1.51%) Azure Monitor
10 2 (1.01%) Entra ID
10 2 (1.01%) Firebase
10 2 (1.01%) Microsoft 365
10 2 (1.01%) Power Automate
10 2 (1.01%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 8 (4.02%) MPLS
2 7 (3.52%) VPN
3 6 (3.02%) BGP
3 6 (3.02%) Wireshark
4 5 (2.51%) 2G
4 5 (2.51%) 3G
4 5 (2.51%) 4G
4 5 (2.51%) 5G
4 5 (2.51%) Diameter Protocol
4 5 (2.51%) SIGTRAN
4 5 (2.51%) SS7
4 5 (2.51%) WAN
5 4 (2.01%) Broadband
5 4 (2.01%) Ethernet VPN
5 4 (2.01%) Firewall
6 3 (1.51%) GPRS
6 3 (1.51%) GSM
6 3 (1.51%) LAN
6 3 (1.51%) OSPF
6 3 (1.51%) UMTS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (2.51%) Data Warehouse
1 5 (2.51%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (1.51%) DynamoDB
2 3 (1.51%) Metadata
2 3 (1.51%) NoSQL
2 3 (1.51%) Oracle Reports
3 2 (1.01%) MongoDB
3 2 (1.01%) Redis
4 1 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
4 1 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (0.50%) Big Data
4 1 (0.50%) BigQuery
4 1 (0.50%) Data Lake
4 1 (0.50%) Oracle Database
4 1 (0.50%) Parquet
4 1 (0.50%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 32 (16.08%) JIRA
2 23 (11.56%) Git
3 19 (9.55%) SonarQube
4 18 (9.05%) Jenkins
4 18 (9.05%) Selenium
5 10 (5.03%) Postman
6 9 (4.52%) GitLab
6 9 (4.52%) JUnit
7 8 (4.02%) SpecFlow
8 6 (3.02%) Cucumber
8 6 (3.02%) Gradle
8 6 (3.02%) NUnit
9 5 (2.51%) HP UFT
9 5 (2.51%) Maven
9 5 (2.51%) WebDriver
9 5 (2.51%) Zephyr
10 4 (2.01%) Artifactory
10 4 (2.01%) Bitbucket
10 4 (2.01%) Robot Framework
11 3 (1.51%) TeamCity
General
1 43 (21.61%) Social Skills
2 25 (12.56%) Analytical Skills
3 23 (11.56%) Finance
4 15 (7.54%) Telecoms
5 10 (5.03%) Public Sector
6 5 (2.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 4 (2.01%) Aerospace
8 2 (1.01%) Aviation
8 2 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.50%) Advertising
9 1 (0.50%) Automotive
9 1 (0.50%) Banking
9 1 (0.50%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.50%) Games
9 1 (0.50%) Law
9 1 (0.50%) Marketing
9 1 (0.50%) Retail
Job Titles
1 32 (16.08%) Developer
2 29 (14.57%) Senior
3 27 (13.57%) Tester
4 25 (12.56%) Test Engineer
5 16 (8.04%) Java Developer
6 15 (7.54%) Java Engineer
6 15 (7.54%) Lead
7 12 (6.03%) Test Automation Engineer
8 11 (5.53%) Analyst
8 11 (5.53%) Test Manager
9 10 (5.03%) Software Engineer
10 8 (4.02%) Consultant
11 7 (3.52%) Pensions Analyst
12 6 (3.02%) SC Cleared Java Developer
12 6 (3.02%) Senior Developer
12 6 (3.02%) Senior Test Engineer
12 6 (3.02%) Test Analyst
13 5 (2.51%) Integration Engineer
13 5 (2.51%) Java Software Engineer
13 5 (2.51%) Software Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (10.55%) AngularJS
2 19 (9.55%) Quarkus
3 16 (8.04%) RESTful
4 15 (7.54%) REST
5 13 (6.53%) React
6 11 (5.53%) Playwright
7 10 (5.03%) Spring
8 7 (3.52%) CSS
8 7 (3.52%) GraphQL
9 6 (3.02%) .NET
9 6 (3.02%) HTML
9 6 (3.02%) OAuth
9 6 (3.02%) SailPoint
9 6 (3.02%) SOAP
9 6 (3.02%) Spring Boot
10 5 (2.51%) OAuth2
10 5 (2.51%) Swagger
10 5 (2.51%) Vert.x
11 4 (2.01%) JWT
12 3 (1.51%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 18 (9.05%) Product Ownership
2 15 (7.54%) Cloud Native
2 15 (7.54%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (5.03%) Self-Motivation
3 10 (5.03%) Virtual Team
4 7 (3.52%) Enterprise Software
4 7 (3.52%) PKI
5 5 (2.51%) Linux Command Line
6 3 (1.51%) Analytical Mindset
6 3 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
6 3 (1.51%) FPGA
6 3 (1.51%) Mobile App
6 3 (1.51%) Security Posture
6 3 (1.51%) Verilog
6 3 (1.51%) VHDL
7 2 (1.01%) AI Agents
7 2 (1.01%) Algorithms
7 2 (1.01%) Data Centre
7 2 (1.01%) Management Information System
8 1 (0.50%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 13 (6.53%) Windows
2 9 (4.52%) Unix
3 8 (4.02%) Linux
4 7 (3.52%) Windows Server
5 3 (1.51%) Embedded Linux
6 2 (1.01%) CentOS
6 2 (1.01%) Kali Linux
6 2 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.50%) Android
7 1 (0.50%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 101 (50.75%) Agile
2 77 (38.69%) CI/CD
3 57 (28.64%) DevOps
4 40 (20.10%) SDLC
5 39 (19.60%) Scrum
6 36 (18.09%) Software Engineering
7 31 (15.58%) Test Strategy
8 30 (15.08%) Unit Testing
9 29 (14.57%) Problem-Solving
9 29 (14.57%) Sprint Planning
10 26 (13.07%) Continuous Improvement
11 24 (12.06%) DevSecOps
12 23 (11.56%) Microservices
12 23 (11.56%) Validation
13 22 (11.06%) AI
13 22 (11.06%) Front End Development
14 20 (10.05%) Sprint Review
15 19 (9.55%) Performance Testing
15 19 (9.55%) Scenario Testing
15 19 (9.55%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 50 (25.13%) Java
2 47 (23.62%) SQL
3 40 (20.10%) Python
4 23 (11.56%) C#
5 21 (10.55%) JavaScript
6 18 (9.05%) PowerShell
7 9 (4.52%) TypeScript
8 6 (3.02%) VBScript
9 4 (2.01%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.51%) Bash
10 3 (1.51%) C
10 3 (1.51%) C++
10 3 (1.51%) Embedded C
10 3 (1.51%) Embedded C++
10 3 (1.51%) T-SQL
11 2 (1.01%) Apex Code
11 2 (1.01%) Go
11 2 (1.01%) Groovy
11 2 (1.01%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.50%) Swift
Qualifications
1 83 (41.71%) Security Cleared
2 57 (28.64%) SC Cleared
3 25 (12.56%) DV Cleared
4 16 (8.04%) ISTQB
5 8 (4.02%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
6 7 (3.52%) CCNP
6 7 (3.52%) Cisco Certification
7 6 (3.02%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (2.51%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (2.51%) Degree
9 3 (1.51%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 2 (1.01%) BC Cleared
10 2 (1.01%) CCIE
11 1 (0.50%) CCIP
11 1 (0.50%) CCNA
11 1 (0.50%) CEH
11 1 (0.50%) GPEN
11 1 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.50%) JNCIS
11 1 (0.50%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (31.16%) QA
2 7 (3.52%) Accessibility
3 4 (2.01%) Data Quality
4 2 (1.01%) NCSC
4 2 (1.01%) WCAG
5 1 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.50%) GMP
5 1 (0.50%) GRC
5 1 (0.50%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 13 (6.53%) VMware Infrastructure
2 9 (4.52%) Docker
3 8 (4.02%) Active Directory
4 5 (2.51%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 25 (12.56%) Kubernetes
2 19 (9.55%) Argo
3 16 (8.04%) Terraform
4 15 (7.54%) Ansible
5 6 (3.02%) Forefront Identity Manager
5 6 (3.02%) NetIQ Identity Manager
6 4 (2.01%) HP Quality Center
6 4 (2.01%) Nmap
6 4 (2.01%) WMI
7 2 (1.01%) Cisco Prime
7 2 (1.01%) Iperf
8 1 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.50%) Nagios
8 1 (0.50%) Nessus
8 1 (0.50%) Rancher
Vendors
1 18 (9.05%) Red Hat
2 16 (8.04%) Microsoft
3 15 (7.54%) VMware
4 14 (7.04%) Cisco
5 8 (4.02%) Oracle
5 8 (4.02%) Splunk
6 7 (3.52%) Blue Prism
7 6 (3.02%) Arista
7 6 (3.02%) Fortinet
7 6 (3.02%) NetIQ
7 6 (3.02%) Tagetik
8 5 (2.51%) CheckPoint
8 5 (2.51%) Databricks
8 5 (2.51%) Juniper
8 5 (2.51%) Salesforce
9 4 (2.01%) Denodo
9 4 (2.01%) F5
9 4 (2.01%) SAP
9 4 (2.01%) Talend
10 3 (1.51%) ServiceNow
174 Test Automation jobs in the South East