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 27 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 56 38 54
Rank change year-on-year -18 +16 -22
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 153 204 195
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.70% 4.97% 3.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.24% 5.79% 4.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 118 142 135
10th Percentile £325 £351 £380
25th Percentile £363 £416 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £506 £520
Median % change year-on-year -4.49% -2.64% +1.46%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £600
90th Percentile £641 £688 £638
England median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% -6.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 1 4
10th Percentile £37.57 - £20.93
25th Percentile £49.06 £47.50 £27.56
Median hourly rate £50.00 £50.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year - +17.65% -34.62%
75th Percentile £60.00 £52.50 £55.00
90th Percentile £75.75 - £57.25
England median hourly rate £65.00 £53.75 £75.00
% change year-on-year +20.93% -28.33% +25.00%

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 3,607 3,525 4,702
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 87.23% 85.91% 89.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,285 2,159 3,050
10th Percentile £221 £253 £214
25th Percentile £400 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £524
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.24% +2.29%
75th Percentile £591 £625 £619
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
England median daily rate £501 £525 £548
% change year-on-year -4.67% -4.11% -0.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 399 162 246
10th Percentile £14.71 £16.48 £16.45
25th Percentile £16.83 £27.00 £25.00
Median hourly rate £22.00 £56.75 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year -61.23% +7.07% +21.84%
75th Percentile £41.00 £70.00 £66.19
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.43 £45.00
% change year-on-year -29.01% -21.27% +23.29%

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 27 November 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 27 November 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 27 November 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 -13 69 £438 -25.21% 46
Berkshire -28 52 £500 -18.03% 22
Hampshire +5 47 £506 - 22
Surrey -19 16 £450 -10.00% 8
Buckinghamshire +11 15 £325 -36.59% 9
Kent - 8 £500 - 1
East Sussex +2 6 £565 +22.83% 4
West Sussex -14 6 £360 -40.00% 11
Oxfordshire -11 2 - - 16
Middlesex - 1 £594 - 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 10 (6.54%) Confluence
2 6 (3.92%) Apache
3 2 (1.31%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.65%) Anypoint
4 1 (0.65%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.65%) IIS
4 1 (0.65%) JBoss
4 1 (0.65%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.65%) WebLogic
Applications
1 2 (1.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.65%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (1.31%) SAP FI
2 1 (0.65%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 36 (23.53%) Azure
2 24 (15.69%) AWS
3 19 (12.42%) GitHub
4 17 (11.11%) Azure DevOps
5 15 (9.80%) GitHub Actions
6 12 (7.84%) Entra ID
7 10 (6.54%) Tricentis Tosca
8 8 (5.23%) GCP
9 7 (4.58%) OpenShift
10 6 (3.92%) Serverless
11 4 (2.61%) Azure Functions
12 3 (1.96%) AWS Lambda
12 3 (1.96%) Azure Monitor
13 2 (1.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 2 (1.31%) Amazon S3
13 2 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
13 2 (1.31%) Cloud Computing
13 2 (1.31%) Datadog
13 2 (1.31%) PaaS
13 2 (1.31%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 10 (6.54%) Wireshark
2 8 (5.23%) Firewall
3 6 (3.92%) VPN
4 5 (3.27%) Broadband
4 5 (3.27%) MPLS
5 3 (1.96%) 5G
5 3 (1.96%) BGP
5 3 (1.96%) Cisco ASA
5 3 (1.96%) Multicast
5 3 (1.96%) Network Security
5 3 (1.96%) OSPF
5 3 (1.96%) TCP/IP
5 3 (1.96%) VLAN
5 3 (1.96%) WAN
6 2 (1.31%) Bluetooth
6 2 (1.31%) Intranet
6 2 (1.31%) LTE
6 2 (1.31%) NaaS
6 2 (1.31%) SSL
6 2 (1.31%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (11.76%) NoSQL
2 13 (8.50%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (5.88%) SQL Server
4 5 (3.27%) Apache Cassandra
4 5 (3.27%) Couchbase
5 3 (1.96%) Azure SQL Database
5 3 (1.96%) Relational Database
6 2 (1.31%) DynamoDB
6 2 (1.31%) Power BI
6 2 (1.31%) Tableau
7 1 (0.65%) Amazon Aurora
7 1 (0.65%) Big Data
7 1 (0.65%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.65%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.65%) Data Vault
7 1 (0.65%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.65%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.65%) MySQL
7 1 (0.65%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.65%) Redis
Development Applications
1 46 (30.07%) JIRA
2 31 (20.26%) Jenkins
3 23 (15.03%) Selenium
4 20 (13.07%) Cucumber
4 20 (13.07%) Git
5 16 (10.46%) GitLab
6 9 (5.88%) Sonatype Nexus
7 8 (5.23%) Burp Suite
7 8 (5.23%) JMeter
7 8 (5.23%) JUnit
8 7 (4.58%) Gradle
8 7 (4.58%) Metasploit
9 6 (3.92%) Bitbucket
9 6 (3.92%) Postman
9 6 (3.92%) WebDriver
10 5 (3.27%) Cypress.io
10 5 (3.27%) REST Assured
10 5 (3.27%) SoapUI
11 4 (2.61%) Android Studio
11 4 (2.61%) Toad
General
1 56 (36.60%) Social Skills
2 33 (21.57%) Analytical Skills
3 16 (10.46%) Finance
4 11 (7.19%) Public Sector
4 11 (7.19%) Telecoms
5 5 (3.27%) Automotive
5 5 (3.27%) Documentation Skills
5 5 (3.27%) Influencing Skills
6 4 (2.61%) Presentation Skills
7 3 (1.96%) Retail
8 2 (1.31%) Aerospace
8 2 (1.31%) Billing
8 2 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.65%) Banking
9 1 (0.65%) Legal
Job Titles
1 30 (19.61%) Tester
2 28 (18.30%) Senior
3 24 (15.69%) Developer
4 14 (9.15%) Analyst
4 14 (9.15%) Test Manager
5 13 (8.50%) Test Analyst
6 11 (7.19%) Automation Tester
6 11 (7.19%) Lead
6 11 (7.19%) Test Engineer
7 9 (5.88%) DevOps Engineer
7 9 (5.88%) Penetration Tester
8 7 (4.58%) Java Developer
8 7 (4.58%) QA Engineer
8 7 (4.58%) Senior Developer
9 6 (3.92%) Cloud Engineer
9 6 (3.92%) Senior Tester
10 5 (3.27%) AWS Engineer
11 4 (2.61%) Java Engineer
11 4 (2.61%) Selenium Tester
11 4 (2.61%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (13.07%) REST
2 12 (7.84%) Kafka
3 11 (7.19%) .NET
4 10 (6.54%) Spring
5 9 (5.88%) SOAP
5 9 (5.88%) XML
6 8 (5.23%) RESTful
7 6 (3.92%) Oracle Fusion
7 6 (3.92%) Playwright
7 6 (3.92%) RabbitMQ
7 6 (3.92%) WebdriverIO
8 5 (3.27%) Hibernate
8 5 (3.27%) OAuth
8 5 (3.27%) React
8 5 (3.27%) SAML
9 4 (2.61%) Flask
9 4 (2.61%) GraphQL
10 3 (1.96%) CSS
10 3 (1.96%) Spring Boot
10 3 (1.96%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 8 (5.23%) Cloud Native
1 8 (5.23%) Enterprise Software
2 7 (4.58%) Self-Motivation
3 6 (3.92%) Distributed Systems
3 6 (3.92%) Synthetic Data
4 5 (3.27%) Product Ownership
5 4 (2.61%) Algorithms
5 4 (2.61%) Hybrid Cloud
5 4 (2.61%) PKI
5 4 (2.61%) Security Posture
6 3 (1.96%) Cloud Security Posture
6 3 (1.96%) IoT
6 3 (1.96%) Public Cloud
7 2 (1.31%) Data Centre
7 2 (1.31%) Linux Command Line
8 1 (0.65%) Client/Server
8 1 (0.65%) Mobile App
8 1 (0.65%) Onboarding
8 1 (0.65%) TM Forum
8 1 (0.65%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 21 (13.73%) Linux
2 17 (11.11%) Windows
3 8 (5.23%) Kali Linux
4 5 (3.27%) Windows Server
5 4 (2.61%) Android
5 4 (2.61%) Unix
6 3 (1.96%) CentOS
6 3 (1.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (1.96%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 66 (43.14%) Agile
2 57 (37.25%) CI/CD
3 47 (30.72%) DevOps
3 47 (30.72%) Problem-Solving
4 41 (26.80%) Software Testing
5 32 (20.92%) Scenario Testing
6 29 (18.95%) Test Strategy
7 28 (18.30%) Validation
8 25 (16.34%) Test Scripting
9 23 (15.03%) Continuous Improvement
10 22 (14.38%) Test Management
10 22 (14.38%) Test Planning
11 21 (13.73%) SDLC
12 19 (12.42%) End-to-End Testing
12 19 (12.42%) TDD
13 17 (11.11%) Regression Testing
13 17 (11.11%) Stakeholder Management
13 17 (11.11%) Waterfall
14 16 (10.46%) Microservices
15 15 (9.80%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 44 (28.76%) Python
2 36 (23.53%) Java
3 29 (18.95%) SQL
4 19 (12.42%) PowerShell
5 18 (11.76%) Bash
6 17 (11.11%) C#
7 12 (7.84%) JavaScript
8 7 (4.58%) Go
9 6 (3.92%) PL/SQL
10 5 (3.27%) PHP
11 4 (2.61%) VB
12 3 (1.96%) TypeScript
13 2 (1.31%) Ada
13 2 (1.31%) C++
13 2 (1.31%) R
Qualifications
1 47 (30.72%) Security Cleared
2 27 (17.65%) SC Cleared
3 14 (9.15%) DV Cleared
4 10 (6.54%) Degree
4 10 (6.54%) ISTQB
5 9 (5.88%) AWS Certification
6 8 (5.23%) Cisco Certification
6 8 (5.23%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (5.23%) OSCP
7 7 (4.58%) CEH
7 7 (4.58%) GPEN
7 7 (4.58%) Oracle Certification
8 6 (3.92%) OCA
9 5 (3.27%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (3.27%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 5 (3.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 4 (2.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 4 (2.61%) CCSP
10 4 (2.61%) CISSP
11 3 (1.96%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (26.80%) QA
2 10 (6.54%) GDPR
3 5 (3.27%) Data Quality
4 4 (2.61%) PCI DSS
5 3 (1.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 3 (1.96%) NIST
5 3 (1.96%) PSD2
5 3 (1.96%) SLA
6 1 (0.65%) HIPAA
System Software
1 15 (9.80%) Docker
2 8 (5.23%) Active Directory
3 6 (3.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.65%) Firmware
4 1 (0.65%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
4 1 (0.65%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 18 (11.76%) Kubernetes
2 16 (10.46%) Ansible
3 11 (7.19%) Nmap
4 9 (5.88%) Terraform
5 6 (3.92%) Progress Chef
6 4 (2.61%) HP ALM
6 4 (2.61%) HP Quality Center
7 3 (1.96%) Iperf
7 3 (1.96%) WMI
8 2 (1.31%) Grafana
8 2 (1.31%) Nessus
8 2 (1.31%) Prometheus
9 1 (0.65%) Argo
9 1 (0.65%) CloudHub
9 1 (0.65%) Proxmox
9 1 (0.65%) Puppet
9 1 (0.65%) Rundeck
9 1 (0.65%) Salt
9 1 (0.65%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.65%) VxRail
Vendors
1 12 (7.84%) Microsoft
1 12 (7.84%) Oracle
2 11 (7.19%) VMware
3 6 (3.92%) CheckPoint
3 6 (3.92%) Cisco
3 6 (3.92%) Salesforce
3 6 (3.92%) SAP
3 6 (3.92%) ServiceNow
4 5 (3.27%) Atlassian
4 5 (3.27%) Fortinet
4 5 (3.27%) HP
4 5 (3.27%) Workday
5 3 (1.96%) Palo Alto
5 3 (1.96%) SolarWinds
5 3 (1.96%) webMethods
6 2 (1.31%) Ariba
6 2 (1.31%) Juniper
6 2 (1.31%) Red Hat
6 2 (1.31%) Splunk
7 1 (0.65%) Ericsson