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 1 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 49 38
Rank change year-on-year -13 -11 +17
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 223 151 204
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.40% 4.25% 4.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.21% 4.77% 5.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 128 106 148
10th Percentile £269 £325 £350
25th Percentile £349 £366 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £449 £475 £514
Median % change year-on-year -5.53% -7.54% -2.14%
75th Percentile £553 £538 £638
90th Percentile £650 £613 £675
England median daily rate £475 £500 £510
% change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -7.27%
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% -2.22%
75th Percentile - £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile - £58.75 £61.50
England median hourly rate £68.22 £57.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +18.63% -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 5,301 3,165 3,662
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.71% 89.10% 82.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,128 1,975 2,184
10th Percentile £279 £215 £255
25th Percentile £420 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -1.96% -2.49%
75th Percentile £617 £588 £625
90th Percentile £713 £650 £688
England median daily rate £525 £512 £525
% change year-on-year +2.64% -2.57% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 650 316 211
10th Percentile £13.44 £13.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £16.34 £16.10 £30.21
Median hourly rate £47.77 £22.35 £58.38
Median % change year-on-year +113.78% -61.72% +7.37%
75th Percentile £69.69 £49.06 £70.84
90th Percentile £87.84 £69.20 £78.75
England median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +63.02% -41.51% -3.37%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -30 86 £475 +11.76% 153
Berkshire -20 55 £444 -11.25% 65
Hampshire -28 47 £494 -2.52% 102
West Sussex +10 42 £313 -8.09% 27
Surrey +9 34 £463 +17.83% 40
Buckinghamshire -17 23 £461 +41.92% 18
Oxfordshire -20 8 £868 - 70
Middlesex -14 6 - - 3
Kent -10 2 £475 -5.00% 13
Sussex - 2 £438 -
East Sussex -1 1 £459 -18.76% 31
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 14 (6.28%) Confluence
2 4 (1.79%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.35%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.90%) SAS
5 1 (0.45%) IIS
5 1 (0.45%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.45%) WebSphere
Applications
1 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.45%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 2 (0.90%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.45%) Oracle EBS R12
2 1 (0.45%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.45%) SAP MDG
2 1 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 71 (31.84%) AWS
2 63 (28.25%) Azure
3 29 (13.00%) Azure DevOps
4 24 (10.76%) GitHub
5 22 (9.87%) OpenShift
6 18 (8.07%) GCP
7 12 (5.38%) GitHub Actions
8 10 (4.48%) Serverless
9 9 (4.04%) AWS Lambda
9 9 (4.04%) Azure AKS
9 9 (4.04%) Entra ID
10 7 (3.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 7 (3.14%) Azure App Service
10 7 (3.14%) Azure Key Vault
10 7 (3.14%) Azure Monitor
11 6 (2.69%) Azure Data Factory
11 6 (2.69%) Snowflake
12 5 (2.24%) Amazon EventBridge
12 5 (2.24%) AWS Step Functions
12 5 (2.24%) Azure Storage
Communications & Networking
1 11 (4.93%) 2G
1 11 (4.93%) 3G
1 11 (4.93%) 4G
1 11 (4.93%) 5G
1 11 (4.93%) Diameter Protocol
1 11 (4.93%) SIGTRAN
1 11 (4.93%) SS7
2 6 (2.69%) Broadband
3 5 (2.24%) HTTPS
4 3 (1.35%) BGP
4 3 (1.35%) Ethernet VPN
4 3 (1.35%) GPRS
4 3 (1.35%) GSM
4 3 (1.35%) LAN
4 3 (1.35%) MPLS
4 3 (1.35%) UMTS
4 3 (1.35%) VPN
4 3 (1.35%) VXLAN
4 3 (1.35%) WAN
4 3 (1.35%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (9.42%) Relational Database
2 14 (6.28%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (4.93%) NoSQL
4 9 (4.04%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (3.59%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (2.69%) Oracle Reports
7 5 (2.24%) Metadata
8 4 (1.79%) Big Data
8 4 (1.79%) SQL Server
9 3 (1.35%) Data Lake
9 3 (1.35%) Spark SQL
10 2 (0.90%) DynamoDB
10 2 (0.90%) Parquet
10 2 (0.90%) Redis
11 1 (0.45%) Amazon Redshift
11 1 (0.45%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.45%) Couchbase
11 1 (0.45%) MongoDB
11 1 (0.45%) Oracle BI Publisher
11 1 (0.45%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 51 (22.87%) Git
2 30 (13.45%) JIRA
3 26 (11.66%) Selenium
4 19 (8.52%) SonarQube
5 16 (7.17%) Jenkins
6 13 (5.83%) GitLab
7 7 (3.14%) Cucumber
7 7 (3.14%) JUnit
7 7 (3.14%) SpecFlow
8 5 (2.24%) Postman
8 5 (2.24%) REST Assured
9 4 (1.79%) Artifactory
9 4 (1.79%) Bitbucket
9 4 (1.79%) Gradle
9 4 (1.79%) Maven
9 4 (1.79%) Visual Studio Code
10 3 (1.35%) HP UFT
10 3 (1.35%) WebDriver
10 3 (1.35%) Zephyr
11 2 (0.90%) tSQLt
General
1 65 (29.15%) Social Skills
2 37 (16.59%) Analytical Skills
3 33 (14.80%) Finance
4 16 (7.17%) Telecoms
5 9 (4.04%) Aerospace
6 8 (3.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 8 (3.59%) Public Sector
7 5 (2.24%) Banking
8 3 (1.35%) Electronics
9 2 (0.90%) Billing
9 2 (0.90%) General Ledger
9 2 (0.90%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.45%) Automotive
10 1 (0.45%) Games
10 1 (0.45%) German Language
10 1 (0.45%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.45%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.45%) Retail
Job Titles
1 40 (17.94%) Developer
2 23 (10.31%) Lead
2 23 (10.31%) Senior
2 23 (10.31%) Tester
3 18 (8.07%) Test Engineer
4 16 (7.17%) Java Developer
5 11 (4.93%) Java Engineer
6 10 (4.48%) Consultant
6 10 (4.48%) Test Manager
7 9 (4.04%) Software Engineer
7 9 (4.04%) Technical Leader
7 9 (4.04%) Test Automation Engineer
8 8 (3.59%) Automation Tester
8 8 (3.59%) Designer
8 8 (3.59%) DevSecOps Engineer
8 8 (3.59%) Full-Stack Developer
8 8 (3.59%) Mobile Designer
8 8 (3.59%) QA Engineer
9 6 (2.69%) Principal Engineer
9 6 (2.69%) React Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (13.90%) Terraform
2 27 (12.11%) RESTful
3 21 (9.42%) REST
4 20 (8.97%) React
5 19 (8.52%) AngularJS
6 18 (8.07%) Quarkus
7 17 (7.62%) CSS
7 17 (7.62%) HTML
7 17 (7.62%) OAuth
8 13 (5.83%) OpenID
9 12 (5.38%) .NET
10 11 (4.93%) Spring
11 10 (4.48%) OAuth2
11 10 (4.48%) Playwright
12 9 (4.04%) .NET Core
12 9 (4.04%) .NET Framework
12 9 (4.04%) Entity Framework
12 9 (4.04%) JSON
12 9 (4.04%) Spring Boot
13 8 (3.59%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 24 (10.76%) Cloud Native
2 19 (8.52%) Product Ownership
3 15 (6.73%) Distributed Systems
4 11 (4.93%) AI Agents
5 9 (4.04%) Enterprise Software
5 9 (4.04%) Self-Motivation
6 8 (3.59%) Data Protection Act
7 5 (2.24%) Security Posture
8 4 (1.79%) Life Science
8 4 (1.79%) Low-Code
8 4 (1.79%) PKI
8 4 (1.79%) Social Media
9 3 (1.35%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (0.90%) Mobile App
10 2 (0.90%) Onboarding
10 2 (0.90%) Virtual Team
10 2 (0.90%) Wiki
11 1 (0.45%) Cyber Threat
11 1 (0.45%) Data Centre
11 1 (0.45%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 11 (4.93%) Windows
2 8 (3.59%) Linux
3 5 (2.24%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.79%) Unix
5 2 (0.90%) Embedded Linux
6 1 (0.45%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 132 (59.19%) CI/CD
2 124 (55.61%) Agile
3 67 (30.04%) DevOps
4 57 (25.56%) SDLC
5 53 (23.77%) Software Engineering
6 50 (22.42%) Validation
7 49 (21.97%) Continuous Improvement
8 44 (19.73%) Problem-Solving
9 39 (17.49%) Scrum
10 37 (16.59%) Software Testing
11 36 (16.14%) Infrastructure as Code
12 34 (15.25%) DevSecOps
12 34 (15.25%) Regression Testing
12 34 (15.25%) Stakeholder Management
13 33 (14.80%) Containerisation
14 32 (14.35%) AI
14 32 (14.35%) Technical Leadership
15 31 (13.90%) Performance Testing
16 30 (13.45%) Test Strategy
16 30 (13.45%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 71 (31.84%) SQL
2 67 (30.04%) Python
3 55 (24.66%) Java
4 25 (11.21%) JavaScript
5 22 (9.87%) C#
6 16 (7.17%) PowerShell
7 15 (6.73%) TypeScript
8 5 (2.24%) Bash
8 5 (2.24%) Bicep
9 4 (1.79%) Go
9 4 (1.79%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.35%) Kotlin
11 2 (0.90%) Apex Code
11 2 (0.90%) C++
11 2 (0.90%) Groovy
11 2 (0.90%) T-SQL
11 2 (0.90%) VBScript
12 1 (0.45%) C
12 1 (0.45%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.45%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 86 (38.57%) Security Cleared
2 53 (23.77%) SC Cleared
3 31 (13.90%) DV Cleared
4 14 (6.28%) ISTQB
5 8 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (3.59%) Degree
5 8 (3.59%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
6 5 (2.24%) Cisco Certification
6 5 (2.24%) Master's Degree
7 4 (1.79%) Azure Certification
7 4 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.79%) CCNP
8 2 (0.90%) CISSP
8 2 (0.90%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 1 (0.45%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.45%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 1 (0.45%) CCNA
9 1 (0.45%) CompTIA Security+
9 1 (0.45%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 90 (40.36%) QA
2 10 (4.48%) Accessibility
3 8 (3.59%) Data Quality
4 3 (1.35%) Software Quality Assurance
5 2 (0.90%) GDPR
5 2 (0.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.90%) NIST
6 1 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (0.45%) GRC
6 1 (0.45%) NCSC
6 1 (0.45%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.45%) PMO
System Software
1 22 (9.87%) Docker
2 11 (4.93%) VMware Infrastructure
3 10 (4.48%) Active Directory
4 5 (2.24%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 44 (19.73%) Kubernetes
2 19 (8.52%) Argo
3 17 (7.62%) Ansible
4 4 (1.79%) WMI
5 1 (0.45%) Forefront Identity Manager
5 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (0.45%) NetIQ Identity Manager
5 1 (0.45%) Podman
5 1 (0.45%) QRadar
Vendors
1 26 (11.66%) Microsoft
2 18 (8.07%) Red Hat
3 12 (5.38%) Oracle
3 12 (5.38%) VMware
4 11 (4.93%) Cisco
5 8 (3.59%) Databricks
6 6 (2.69%) Arista
6 6 (2.69%) Splunk
6 6 (2.69%) Tagetik
7 5 (2.24%) Salesforce
8 4 (1.79%) Denodo
8 4 (1.79%) Talend
9 3 (1.35%) F5
9 3 (1.35%) Fortinet
9 3 (1.35%) Juniper
9 3 (1.35%) ServiceNow
10 2 (0.90%) Atlassian
10 2 (0.90%) Google
10 2 (0.90%) MuleSoft
10 2 (0.90%) SAP