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 28 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 55 39 57
Rank change year-on-year -16 +18 -30
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 140 205 193
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.78% 4.88% 3.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.28% 5.78% 3.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 107 146 134
10th Percentile £325 £350 £379
25th Percentile £361 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £513 £501
Median % change year-on-year -7.32% +2.30% +5.47%
75th Percentile £550 £629 £600
90th Percentile £625 £673 £638
England median daily rate £500 £504 £540
% change year-on-year -0.74% -6.71% -6.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 2 6
10th Percentile £40.46 £48.50 £33.88
25th Percentile - £50.00 £51.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £55.00 £53.75
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +2.33% -17.31%
75th Percentile - £60.00 £57.81
90th Percentile £75.50 £61.50 £58.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -23.33% +22.45%

All Process and 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 3,270 3,546 4,915
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 88.33% 84.49% 89.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,063 2,149 3,260
10th Percentile £213 £260 £225
25th Percentile £387 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £520
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -1.92% +1.96%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £623
90th Percentile £650 £688 £700
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 351 177 256
10th Percentile £13.75 £16.25 £15.50
25th Percentile £16.17 £30.00 £22.69
Median hourly rate £20.71 £58.05 £51.76
Median % change year-on-year -64.32% +12.14% +39.40%
75th Percentile £33.05 £70.00 £65.40
90th Percentile £65.00 £75.00 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -37.13% -10.11% +27.14%

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 28 October 2025.

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 28 October 2025.

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 28 October 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
Thames Valley -12 67 £438 -25.21% 146
Berkshire -16 51 £500 -16.67% 110
Hampshire +3 45 £500 -9.09% 33
Buckinghamshire +11 14 £325 -31.58% 15
Surrey -26 10 £425 -7.61% 10
Kent - 8 £500 - 6
West Sussex -8 6 £340 -24.44% 7
East Sussex 0 4 £565 +22.83% 3
Oxfordshire -13 2 - - 22
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 11 (7.86%) Confluence
2 6 (4.29%) Apache
3 2 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (1.43%) JBoss
4 1 (0.71%) Anypoint
4 1 (0.71%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.71%) IIS
4 1 (0.71%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.71%) WebLogic
Applications
1 2 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.71%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.71%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.71%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 32 (22.86%) Azure
2 22 (15.71%) AWS
3 17 (12.14%) Azure DevOps
4 14 (10.00%) GitHub
5 10 (7.14%) GitHub Actions
6 8 (5.71%) Entra ID
7 5 (3.57%) GCP
7 5 (3.57%) Tricentis Tosca
8 4 (2.86%) Serverless
9 3 (2.14%) OpenShift
10 2 (1.43%) Amazon S3
10 2 (1.43%) AWS Lambda
10 2 (1.43%) Cloud Computing
10 2 (1.43%) Datadog
10 2 (1.43%) dbt
10 2 (1.43%) Fivetran
10 2 (1.43%) PaaS
10 2 (1.43%) Snowflake
11 1 (0.71%) Azure Pipelines
11 1 (0.71%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 10 (7.14%) Wireshark
2 9 (6.43%) Firewall
3 4 (2.86%) VPN
4 3 (2.14%) BGP
4 3 (2.14%) Broadband
4 3 (2.14%) Cisco ASA
4 3 (2.14%) MPLS
4 3 (2.14%) Multicast
4 3 (2.14%) Network Security
4 3 (2.14%) OSPF
4 3 (2.14%) TCP/IP
4 3 (2.14%) VLAN
5 2 (1.43%) 5G
5 2 (1.43%) Internet
5 2 (1.43%) Intranet
5 2 (1.43%) LAN
5 2 (1.43%) WAN
5 2 (1.43%) Wireless
6 1 (0.71%) 3GPP
6 1 (0.71%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (12.86%) NoSQL
2 10 (7.14%) PostgreSQL
3 8 (5.71%) SQL Server
4 5 (3.57%) Apache Cassandra
4 5 (3.57%) Couchbase
5 2 (1.43%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (1.43%) DynamoDB
5 2 (1.43%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.71%) Big Data
6 1 (0.71%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.71%) Data Vault
6 1 (0.71%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.71%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.71%) MySQL
6 1 (0.71%) Power BI
6 1 (0.71%) Redis
6 1 (0.71%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 49 (35.00%) JIRA
2 23 (16.43%) Jenkins
2 23 (16.43%) Selenium
3 20 (14.29%) Git
4 17 (12.14%) Cucumber
5 9 (6.43%) GitLab
6 8 (5.71%) Burp Suite
6 8 (5.71%) SoapUI
7 7 (5.00%) Metasploit
7 7 (5.00%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (4.29%) Bitbucket
8 6 (4.29%) WebDriver
9 5 (3.57%) JUnit
9 5 (3.57%) Postman
10 4 (2.86%) MSI
10 4 (2.86%) REST Assured
10 4 (2.86%) Robot Framework
10 4 (2.86%) SpecFlow
11 3 (2.14%) JMeter
11 3 (2.14%) Katalon Studio
General
1 51 (36.43%) Social Skills
2 31 (22.14%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (10.00%) Finance
4 7 (5.00%) Telecoms
5 5 (3.57%) Public Sector
6 4 (2.86%) Automotive
7 3 (2.14%) Billing
7 3 (2.14%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (2.14%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (2.14%) Retail
8 2 (1.43%) Aerospace
8 2 (1.43%) Legal
9 1 (0.71%) Banking
9 1 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 32 (22.86%) Tester
2 28 (20.00%) Senior
3 16 (11.43%) Developer
4 15 (10.71%) Analyst
5 13 (9.29%) Test Analyst
5 13 (9.29%) Test Engineer
6 10 (7.14%) Lead
6 10 (7.14%) Senior Tester
7 9 (6.43%) Automation Tester
7 9 (6.43%) Cloud Engineer
7 9 (6.43%) DevOps Engineer
7 9 (6.43%) Penetration Tester
8 8 (5.71%) AWS Engineer
8 8 (5.71%) Test Manager
9 6 (4.29%) Senior Developer
10 5 (3.57%) Software Test Engineer
11 4 (2.86%) Integration Analyst
11 4 (2.86%) Integration Engineer
11 4 (2.86%) Integration Test Analyst
11 4 (2.86%) QA Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (13.57%) REST
2 12 (8.57%) SOAP
3 10 (7.14%) Kafka
3 10 (7.14%) XML
4 9 (6.43%) RESTful
5 8 (5.71%) .NET
5 8 (5.71%) Playwright
5 8 (5.71%) Spring
6 6 (4.29%) RabbitMQ
7 5 (3.57%) CSS
7 5 (3.57%) HTML
7 5 (3.57%) React
8 4 (2.86%) Hibernate
8 4 (2.86%) WebdriverIO
9 3 (2.14%) Oracle Fusion
9 3 (2.14%) Spring Boot
9 3 (2.14%) Swagger
10 2 (1.43%) ADO
10 2 (1.43%) Node.js
10 2 (1.43%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 12 (8.57%) Self-Motivation
2 6 (4.29%) Enterprise Software
3 5 (3.57%) Cloud Native
3 5 (3.57%) Distributed Systems
3 5 (3.57%) Hybrid Cloud
3 5 (3.57%) PKI
4 4 (2.86%) Security Posture
5 3 (2.14%) Algorithms
5 3 (2.14%) Cloud Security Posture
5 3 (2.14%) Data Centre
5 3 (2.14%) Public Cloud
6 2 (1.43%) Fibre Optics
6 2 (1.43%) Product Ownership
7 1 (0.71%) Client/Server
7 1 (0.71%) IoT
7 1 (0.71%) Onboarding
7 1 (0.71%) Team-Oriented Environment
7 1 (0.71%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 18 (12.86%) Linux
2 15 (10.71%) Windows
3 8 (5.71%) Kali Linux
4 6 (4.29%) Windows Server
5 4 (2.86%) CentOS
5 4 (2.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (2.86%) Unix
5 4 (2.86%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 64 (45.71%) Agile
2 52 (37.14%) CI/CD
3 49 (35.00%) DevOps
4 42 (30.00%) Software Testing
5 40 (28.57%) Problem-Solving
6 31 (22.14%) Test Scripting
7 29 (20.71%) Scenario Testing
8 27 (19.29%) Test Strategy
9 24 (17.14%) End-to-End Testing
10 23 (16.43%) Validation
11 19 (13.57%) SDLC
11 19 (13.57%) TDD
12 18 (12.86%) Waterfall
13 17 (12.14%) Manual Testing
13 17 (12.14%) Test Management
14 16 (11.43%) Microservices
14 16 (11.43%) Test Planning
15 15 (10.71%) Continuous Improvement
16 14 (10.00%) Defect Management
16 14 (10.00%) Performance Testing
Programming Languages
1 40 (28.57%) Python
2 27 (19.29%) SQL
3 23 (16.43%) Java
4 17 (12.14%) C#
5 16 (11.43%) PowerShell
6 14 (10.00%) Bash
7 8 (5.71%) JavaScript
8 7 (5.00%) Go
9 4 (2.86%) PHP
9 4 (2.86%) TypeScript
9 4 (2.86%) VB
10 3 (2.14%) PL/SQL
11 2 (1.43%) Ada
12 1 (0.71%) Bicep
12 1 (0.71%) R
Qualifications
1 46 (32.86%) Security Cleared
2 23 (16.43%) SC Cleared
3 18 (12.86%) DV Cleared
4 12 (8.57%) AWS Certification
5 10 (7.14%) Degree
6 8 (5.71%) Cisco Certification
6 8 (5.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (5.71%) OSCP
7 7 (5.00%) CEH
7 7 (5.00%) GPEN
7 7 (5.00%) ISTQB
8 4 (2.86%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 4 (2.86%) CCNP
8 4 (2.86%) CCSP
8 4 (2.86%) CISSP
8 4 (2.86%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 3 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (2.14%) ISEB
9 3 (2.14%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 3 (2.14%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (24.29%) QA
2 7 (5.00%) GDPR
3 4 (2.86%) PCI DSS
4 3 (2.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (2.14%) NIST
4 3 (2.14%) PSD2
5 2 (1.43%) Data Quality
5 2 (1.43%) SLA
6 1 (0.71%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.71%) HL7
System Software
1 12 (8.57%) Docker
2 8 (5.71%) Active Directory
3 7 (5.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.71%) Firmware
4 1 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
4 1 (0.71%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 13 (9.29%) Ansible
1 13 (9.29%) Kubernetes
2 11 (7.86%) Nmap
3 7 (5.00%) Terraform
4 4 (2.86%) HP ALM
4 4 (2.86%) HP Quality Center
4 4 (2.86%) WMI
5 3 (2.14%) Iperf
5 3 (2.14%) Progress Chef
6 2 (1.43%) Nessus
7 1 (0.71%) CloudHub
7 1 (0.71%) Proxmox
7 1 (0.71%) Rundeck
7 1 (0.71%) Salt
7 1 (0.71%) vCenter Server
7 1 (0.71%) VxRail
Vendors
1 10 (7.14%) Microsoft
1 10 (7.14%) VMware
2 7 (5.00%) Oracle
2 7 (5.00%) Salesforce
3 5 (3.57%) Atlassian
3 5 (3.57%) CheckPoint
3 5 (3.57%) Cisco
3 5 (3.57%) HP
4 3 (2.14%) Fortinet
4 3 (2.14%) Palo Alto
4 3 (2.14%) ServiceNow
4 3 (2.14%) SolarWinds
4 3 (2.14%) webMethods
4 3 (2.14%) Workday
5 2 (1.43%) Red Hat
5 2 (1.43%) SAP
5 2 (1.43%) Splunk
6 1 (0.71%) Compaq
6 1 (0.71%) EMC
6 1 (0.71%) Ericsson