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 20 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 38 40
Rank change year-on-year -28 +2 +11
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 215 176 210
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.21% 4.99% 4.36%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.99% 5.56% 5.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 127 123 136
10th Percentile £270 £325 £350
25th Percentile £369 £389 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.20% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £638
90th Percentile £655 £700 £675
England median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 18 3
10th Percentile £56.13 £40.23 £38.90
25th Percentile £66.53 £48.99 £42.13
Median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.00% - -11.11%
75th Percentile - £58.75 £57.50
90th Percentile - £65.71 £60.50
England median hourly rate £69.50 £52.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +32.38% -4.55% -15.38%

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 5,393 3,163 3,977
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.59% 89.65% 82.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,326 1,977 2,417
10th Percentile £280 £250 £255
25th Percentile £420 £400 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% +1.35%
75th Percentile £613 £600 £638
90th Percentile £711 £671 £700
England median daily rate £525 £510 £530
% change year-on-year +2.94% -3.77% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 589 302 315
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £15.41 £26.25
Median hourly rate £53.90 £23.50 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +129.36% -59.02% +14.70%
75th Percentile £73.25 £52.90 £70.09
90th Percentile £88.00 £71.14 £76.86
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +4.83%

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 20 August 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 20 August 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 20 August 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 -41 82 £475 -5.00% 72
Surrey +22 53 £513 +13.89% 15
Berkshire -40 50 £440 -21.78% 29
West Sussex +5 34 £358 -23.50% 13
Hampshire -56 33 £575 +15.00% 39
Buckinghamshire -31 25 £475 +46.15% 14
Oxfordshire -24 7 £825 +73.68% 29
Middlesex -14 6 - - 2
East Sussex - 3 £391 - 15
Sussex - 2 £438 - 2
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 (6.98%) Confluence
2 4 (1.86%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.93%) SAS
3 2 (0.93%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.47%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.47%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 2 (0.93%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.47%) Oracle EBS R12
2 1 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.47%) SAP MDG
2 1 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 64 (29.77%) Azure
2 51 (23.72%) AWS
3 30 (13.95%) Azure DevOps
4 24 (11.16%) OpenShift
5 21 (9.77%) GitHub
6 18 (8.37%) GCP
7 15 (6.98%) GitHub Actions
8 9 (4.19%) Azure AKS
8 9 (4.19%) Entra ID
9 8 (3.72%) Azure Monitor
10 7 (3.26%) Azure Key Vault
11 6 (2.79%) AWS Lambda
11 6 (2.79%) Azure App Service
11 6 (2.79%) Serverless
12 5 (2.33%) Azure Data Factory
12 5 (2.33%) IaaS
13 4 (1.86%) Azure Storage
13 4 (1.86%) PaaS
13 4 (1.86%) Snowflake
14 3 (1.40%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 13 (6.05%) 2G
1 13 (6.05%) 3G
1 13 (6.05%) 4G
1 13 (6.05%) 5G
1 13 (6.05%) Diameter Protocol
1 13 (6.05%) SIGTRAN
1 13 (6.05%) SS7
2 6 (2.79%) Broadband
3 4 (1.86%) HTTPS
4 3 (1.40%) BGP
4 3 (1.40%) GPRS
4 3 (1.40%) GSM
4 3 (1.40%) LAN
4 3 (1.40%) LTE
4 3 (1.40%) MPLS
4 3 (1.40%) UMTS
4 3 (1.40%) VPN
4 3 (1.40%) VXLAN
4 3 (1.40%) WAN
4 3 (1.40%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (5.12%) NoSQL
1 11 (5.12%) PostgreSQL
2 9 (4.19%) Data Warehouse
3 7 (3.26%) Relational Database
4 6 (2.79%) Azure SQL Database
4 6 (2.79%) Oracle Reports
5 4 (1.86%) Big Data
5 4 (1.86%) Metadata
6 3 (1.40%) DynamoDB
6 3 (1.40%) Spark SQL
6 3 (1.40%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.93%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.93%) MongoDB
7 2 (0.93%) Parquet
7 2 (0.93%) Redis
8 1 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.47%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.47%) Couchbase
8 1 (0.47%) Oracle BI Publisher
Development Applications
1 35 (16.28%) Git
2 32 (14.88%) JIRA
3 21 (9.77%) SonarQube
4 20 (9.30%) Jenkins
5 15 (6.98%) Selenium
6 13 (6.05%) GitLab
7 10 (4.65%) Postman
8 8 (3.72%) JUnit
8 8 (3.72%) SpecFlow
9 7 (3.26%) Cucumber
10 6 (2.79%) NUnit
11 5 (2.33%) Bitbucket
11 5 (2.33%) Gradle
11 5 (2.33%) REST Assured
12 4 (1.86%) Artifactory
12 4 (1.86%) Maven
12 4 (1.86%) WebDriver
13 3 (1.40%) Robot Framework
13 3 (1.40%) TeamCity
13 3 (1.40%) Zephyr
General
1 53 (24.65%) Social Skills
2 34 (15.81%) Analytical Skills
3 24 (11.16%) Finance
4 18 (8.37%) Telecoms
5 14 (6.51%) Public Sector
6 11 (5.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (3.72%) Aerospace
8 3 (1.40%) Banking
9 1 (0.47%) Advertising
9 1 (0.47%) Automotive
9 1 (0.47%) Electronics
9 1 (0.47%) Games
9 1 (0.47%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 37 (17.21%) Developer
2 31 (14.42%) Senior
3 23 (10.70%) Lead
3 23 (10.70%) Test Engineer
4 21 (9.77%) Tester
5 16 (7.44%) Java Developer
6 14 (6.51%) Java Engineer
7 13 (6.05%) Test Automation Engineer
8 11 (5.12%) Consultant
8 11 (5.12%) Software Engineer
9 10 (4.65%) Designer
10 9 (4.19%) Mobile Designer
10 9 (4.19%) Technical Leader
11 8 (3.72%) Analyst
11 8 (3.72%) QA Engineer
11 8 (3.72%) Test Manager
12 7 (3.26%) Full-Stack Developer
13 6 (2.79%) Architect
13 6 (2.79%) Automation Tester
13 6 (2.79%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (13.95%) RESTful
2 27 (12.56%) Terraform
3 26 (12.09%) REST
4 22 (10.23%) AngularJS
5 21 (9.77%) Quarkus
6 18 (8.37%) OAuth
7 16 (7.44%) React
8 13 (6.05%) OpenID
8 13 (6.05%) Playwright
9 11 (5.12%) .NET
9 11 (5.12%) OAuth2
9 11 (5.12%) Spring
10 10 (4.65%) CSS
10 10 (4.65%) HTML
11 9 (4.19%) Spring Boot
12 8 (3.72%) .NET Core
12 8 (3.72%) .NET Framework
12 8 (3.72%) Entity Framework
12 8 (3.72%) SOAP
13 7 (3.26%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 26 (12.09%) Cloud Native
2 20 (9.30%) Product Ownership
3 16 (7.44%) Distributed Systems
4 15 (6.98%) Self-Motivation
5 9 (4.19%) Enterprise Software
6 7 (3.26%) Virtual Team
7 6 (2.79%) PKI
8 5 (2.33%) AI Agents
8 5 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (2.33%) Security Posture
9 4 (1.86%) Mobile App
9 4 (1.86%) Social Media
10 3 (1.40%) Analytical Mindset
10 3 (1.40%) FPGA
10 3 (1.40%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (1.40%) Verilog
10 3 (1.40%) VHDL
11 2 (0.93%) Life Science
12 1 (0.47%) SCADA
12 1 (0.47%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 11 (5.12%) Windows
2 10 (4.65%) Linux
3 7 (3.26%) Unix
4 6 (2.79%) Windows Server
5 5 (2.33%) Embedded Linux
6 2 (0.93%) CentOS
6 2 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.47%) Android
7 1 (0.47%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 114 (53.02%) Agile
2 108 (50.23%) CI/CD
3 71 (33.02%) DevOps
4 49 (22.79%) SDLC
5 47 (21.86%) Software Engineering
6 44 (20.47%) Problem-Solving
6 44 (20.47%) Scrum
7 35 (16.28%) Continuous Improvement
7 35 (16.28%) Sprint Planning
8 33 (15.35%) DevSecOps
8 33 (15.35%) Stakeholder Management
8 33 (15.35%) Unit Testing
9 32 (14.88%) Validation
10 30 (13.95%) Microservices
11 28 (13.02%) Technical Leadership
12 26 (12.09%) Sprint Review
12 26 (12.09%) Test Strategy
13 25 (11.63%) Mentoring
14 23 (10.70%) Roadmaps
15 22 (10.23%) Front End Development
Programming Languages
1 57 (26.51%) Python
2 56 (26.05%) SQL
3 55 (25.58%) Java
4 27 (12.56%) C#
5 22 (10.23%) PowerShell
6 17 (7.91%) JavaScript
7 8 (3.72%) TypeScript
8 5 (2.33%) Bash
8 5 (2.33%) Bicep
8 5 (2.33%) C++
9 4 (1.86%) C
9 4 (1.86%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.40%) Embedded C
10 3 (1.40%) Embedded C++
10 3 (1.40%) Go
10 3 (1.40%) Kotlin
10 3 (1.40%) T-SQL
11 2 (0.93%) Apex Code
11 2 (0.93%) Groovy
11 2 (0.93%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 81 (37.67%) Security Cleared
2 56 (26.05%) SC Cleared
3 23 (10.70%) DV Cleared
4 13 (6.05%) ISTQB
5 8 (3.72%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (3.72%) Degree
5 8 (3.72%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
6 5 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
6 5 (2.33%) Cisco Certification
6 5 (2.33%) Master's Degree
7 4 (1.86%) Azure Certification
7 4 (1.86%) CCNP
8 2 (0.93%) CISSP
8 2 (0.93%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 1 (0.47%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.47%) CCNA
9 1 (0.47%) CISA
9 1 (0.47%) CompTIA Security+
9 1 (0.47%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (36.74%) QA
2 11 (5.12%) Accessibility
3 7 (3.26%) Data Quality
4 3 (1.40%) Software Quality Assurance
5 2 (0.93%) GDPR
5 2 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.93%) NIST
5 2 (0.93%) WCAG
6 1 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (0.47%) GRC
6 1 (0.47%) NCSC
6 1 (0.47%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 23 (10.70%) Docker
2 13 (6.05%) VMware Infrastructure
3 12 (5.58%) Active Directory
4 5 (2.33%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 43 (20.00%) Kubernetes
2 21 (9.77%) Argo
3 16 (7.44%) Ansible
4 4 (1.86%) Forefront Identity Manager
4 4 (1.86%) NetIQ Identity Manager
4 4 (1.86%) WMI
5 1 (0.47%) HP Quality Center
5 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (0.47%) QRadar
5 1 (0.47%) Rancher
Vendors
1 24 (11.16%) Microsoft
2 20 (9.30%) Red Hat
3 14 (6.51%) VMware
4 12 (5.58%) Oracle
5 11 (5.12%) Cisco
6 8 (3.72%) Databricks
6 8 (3.72%) Splunk
7 6 (2.79%) Arista
7 6 (2.79%) Tagetik
8 5 (2.33%) Salesforce
8 5 (2.33%) SAP
9 4 (1.86%) Denodo
9 4 (1.86%) NetIQ
9 4 (1.86%) ServiceNow
9 4 (1.86%) Talend
10 3 (1.40%) Blue Prism
10 3 (1.40%) Dynatrace
10 3 (1.40%) F5
10 3 (1.40%) Intel
10 3 (1.40%) Juniper