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 17 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 49 39
Rank change year-on-year -12 -10 +15
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 235 141 203
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.53% 4.05% 4.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.38% 4.54% 5.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 136 96 143
10th Percentile £268 £325 £350
25th Percentile £358 £363 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £553 £550 £616
90th Percentile £650 £625 £668
England median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -5.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 14 3
10th Percentile £55.00 £47.38 £38.90
25th Percentile £66.25 - £42.13
Median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.00% - -11.11%
75th Percentile - £58.44 £57.50
90th Percentile - £65.58 £60.50
England median hourly rate £68.22 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +18.63% - -23.33%

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 5,371 3,105 3,793
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.62% 89.17% 82.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,234 1,936 2,272
10th Percentile £281 £220 £255
25th Percentile £425 £379 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.44% -1.14%
75th Percentile £619 £600 £625
90th Percentile £709 £650 £688
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 627 305 254
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.35 £16.08
25th Percentile £17.23 £15.50 £31.44
Median hourly rate £52.43 £21.25 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +146.71% -62.95% +9.24%
75th Percentile £70.00 £50.00 £71.86
90th Percentile £87.43 £69.65 £78.75
England median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -1.91%

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 17 September 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 17 September 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 17 September 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 -23 84 £475 +5.56% 162
Berkshire -26 52 £444 -11.25% 82
Surrey +22 48 £510 +24.39% 30
Hampshire -36 48 £494 -3.85% 79
West Sussex +11 41 £300 -11.76% 33
Buckinghamshire -26 25 £461 +41.92% 21
Oxfordshire -20 7 £868 - 59
Middlesex -12 6 - - 1
Kent -4 2 £475 -24.00% 11
East Sussex - 2 £459 - 15
Sussex - 2 £438 - 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 13 (5.53%) Confluence
2 4 (1.70%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.85%) SAS
3 2 (0.85%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.43%) WebLogic
4 1 (0.43%) WebSphere
Applications
1 4 (1.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.43%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 2 (0.85%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.43%) Oracle EBS R12
2 1 (0.43%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.43%) SAP MDG
2 1 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 69 (29.36%) AWS
2 63 (26.81%) Azure
3 28 (11.91%) Azure DevOps
4 24 (10.21%) GitHub
5 23 (9.79%) OpenShift
6 18 (7.66%) GCP
7 14 (5.96%) GitHub Actions
8 8 (3.40%) Entra ID
9 7 (2.98%) Azure AKS
9 7 (2.98%) Azure Monitor
10 6 (2.55%) AWS Lambda
10 6 (2.55%) Azure Key Vault
10 6 (2.55%) Serverless
11 5 (2.13%) Azure App Service
11 5 (2.13%) Azure Data Factory
11 5 (2.13%) Snowflake
12 4 (1.70%) Amazon Bedrock
12 4 (1.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 4 (1.70%) Amazon EventBridge
12 4 (1.70%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 13 (5.53%) 2G
1 13 (5.53%) 3G
1 13 (5.53%) 4G
1 13 (5.53%) 5G
1 13 (5.53%) Diameter Protocol
1 13 (5.53%) SIGTRAN
1 13 (5.53%) SS7
2 6 (2.55%) Broadband
3 5 (2.13%) HTTPS
4 3 (1.28%) BGP
4 3 (1.28%) Ethernet VPN
4 3 (1.28%) GPRS
4 3 (1.28%) GSM
4 3 (1.28%) LAN
4 3 (1.28%) MPLS
4 3 (1.28%) UMTS
4 3 (1.28%) VPN
4 3 (1.28%) VXLAN
4 3 (1.28%) WAN
4 3 (1.28%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (8.94%) Relational Database
2 13 (5.53%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (4.26%) NoSQL
4 9 (3.83%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (2.55%) Oracle Reports
6 5 (2.13%) Azure SQL Database
6 5 (2.13%) Metadata
7 4 (1.70%) Big Data
7 4 (1.70%) SQL Server
8 3 (1.28%) Spark SQL
9 2 (0.85%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.85%) DynamoDB
9 2 (0.85%) Redis
10 1 (0.43%) Amazon Redshift
10 1 (0.43%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.43%) Couchbase
10 1 (0.43%) MongoDB
10 1 (0.43%) Oracle BI Publisher
10 1 (0.43%) Parquet
10 1 (0.43%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 51 (21.70%) Git
2 30 (12.77%) JIRA
3 29 (12.34%) Selenium
4 19 (8.09%) Jenkins
4 19 (8.09%) SonarQube
5 14 (5.96%) GitLab
6 10 (4.26%) Postman
7 8 (3.40%) JUnit
7 8 (3.40%) SpecFlow
8 7 (2.98%) Cucumber
9 5 (2.13%) Bitbucket
9 5 (2.13%) Gradle
9 5 (2.13%) REST Assured
10 4 (1.70%) Artifactory
10 4 (1.70%) Maven
10 4 (1.70%) NUnit
10 4 (1.70%) WebDriver
11 3 (1.28%) TeamCity
11 3 (1.28%) Visual Studio Code
11 3 (1.28%) Zephyr
General
1 67 (28.51%) Social Skills
2 38 (16.17%) Analytical Skills
3 29 (12.34%) Finance
4 18 (7.66%) Telecoms
5 12 (5.11%) Public Sector
6 11 (4.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 9 (3.83%) Aerospace
8 4 (1.70%) Banking
9 3 (1.28%) Electronics
10 2 (0.85%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.43%) Advertising
11 1 (0.43%) Automotive
11 1 (0.43%) Games
11 1 (0.43%) German Language
11 1 (0.43%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 39 (16.60%) Developer
2 28 (11.91%) Senior
3 24 (10.21%) Tester
4 23 (9.79%) Lead
4 23 (9.79%) Test Engineer
5 16 (6.81%) Java Developer
6 12 (5.11%) Consultant
6 12 (5.11%) Java Engineer
7 11 (4.68%) Test Automation Engineer
8 10 (4.26%) Designer
8 10 (4.26%) Software Engineer
8 10 (4.26%) Test Manager
9 9 (3.83%) Analyst
9 9 (3.83%) Mobile Designer
9 9 (3.83%) Technical Leader
10 8 (3.40%) Automation Tester
10 8 (3.40%) QA Engineer
11 6 (2.55%) Senior Developer
11 6 (2.55%) Software Developer
11 6 (2.55%) Software Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (13.62%) RESTful
2 28 (11.91%) Terraform
3 25 (10.64%) REST
4 20 (8.51%) AngularJS
5 19 (8.09%) Quarkus
6 17 (7.23%) React
7 16 (6.81%) OAuth
8 15 (6.38%) CSS
8 15 (6.38%) HTML
9 12 (5.11%) OpenID
10 11 (4.68%) .NET
10 11 (4.68%) Playwright
10 11 (4.68%) Spring
11 10 (4.26%) OAuth2
12 9 (3.83%) Spring Boot
13 8 (3.40%) Kafka
14 7 (2.98%) .NET Core
14 7 (2.98%) .NET Framework
14 7 (2.98%) JSON
14 7 (2.98%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 24 (10.21%) Cloud Native
1 24 (10.21%) Product Ownership
2 15 (6.38%) Distributed Systems
2 15 (6.38%) Self-Motivation
3 9 (3.83%) AI Agents
3 9 (3.83%) Enterprise Software
4 8 (3.40%) Data Protection Act
5 7 (2.98%) Virtual Team
6 5 (2.13%) Security Posture
7 4 (1.70%) Low-Code
7 4 (1.70%) Mobile App
7 4 (1.70%) PKI
7 4 (1.70%) Social Media
8 3 (1.28%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (1.28%) Life Science
8 3 (1.28%) Linux Command Line
9 1 (0.43%) Algorithms
9 1 (0.43%) Hybrid Cloud
9 1 (0.43%) SCADA
9 1 (0.43%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 10 (4.26%) Windows
2 8 (3.40%) Linux
3 7 (2.98%) Unix
4 4 (1.70%) Windows Server
5 3 (1.28%) Embedded Linux
6 1 (0.43%) Android
6 1 (0.43%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.43%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 132 (56.17%) Agile
2 130 (55.32%) CI/CD
3 67 (28.51%) DevOps
4 65 (27.66%) SDLC
5 52 (22.13%) Software Engineering
6 50 (21.28%) Continuous Improvement
7 49 (20.85%) Validation
8 46 (19.57%) Problem-Solving
9 44 (18.72%) Scrum
10 39 (16.60%) Software Testing
11 36 (15.32%) Stakeholder Management
12 34 (14.47%) Infrastructure as Code
12 34 (14.47%) Sprint Planning
13 33 (14.04%) DevSecOps
14 32 (13.62%) Regression Testing
14 32 (13.62%) Technical Leadership
14 32 (13.62%) Test Strategy
15 31 (13.19%) Containerisation
15 31 (13.19%) Performance Testing
15 31 (13.19%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 73 (31.06%) SQL
2 69 (29.36%) Python
3 60 (25.53%) Java
4 24 (10.21%) C#
5 23 (9.79%) JavaScript
6 17 (7.23%) PowerShell
7 13 (5.53%) TypeScript
8 5 (2.13%) Bash
9 4 (1.70%) Bicep
9 4 (1.70%) Go
9 4 (1.70%) Kotlin
9 4 (1.70%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.28%) C++
11 2 (0.85%) Apex Code
11 2 (0.85%) C
11 2 (0.85%) Groovy
11 2 (0.85%) T-SQL
11 2 (0.85%) VBScript
12 1 (0.43%) Embedded C
12 1 (0.43%) Swift
Qualifications
1 92 (39.15%) Security Cleared
2 58 (24.68%) SC Cleared
3 33 (14.04%) DV Cleared
4 15 (6.38%) ISTQB
5 8 (3.40%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (3.40%) Degree
5 8 (3.40%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
6 5 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
6 5 (2.13%) Cisco Certification
6 5 (2.13%) Master's Degree
7 4 (1.70%) CCNP
8 3 (1.28%) Azure Certification
8 3 (1.28%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 2 (0.85%) CISSP
10 1 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 1 (0.43%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 1 (0.43%) CEH
10 1 (0.43%) CISA
10 1 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 86 (36.60%) QA
2 12 (5.11%) Accessibility
3 8 (3.40%) Data Quality
4 3 (1.28%) Software Quality Assurance
5 2 (0.85%) GDPR
5 2 (0.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.85%) NIST
5 2 (0.85%) WCAG
6 1 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (0.43%) GRC
6 1 (0.43%) NCSC
6 1 (0.43%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.43%) PMO
System Software
1 22 (9.36%) Docker
2 11 (4.68%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (3.83%) Active Directory
4 5 (2.13%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 41 (17.45%) Kubernetes
2 20 (8.51%) Argo
3 16 (6.81%) Ansible
4 4 (1.70%) WMI
5 2 (0.85%) Forefront Identity Manager
5 2 (0.85%) NetIQ Identity Manager
6 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.43%) Podman
6 1 (0.43%) QRadar
Vendors
1 23 (9.79%) Microsoft
2 18 (7.66%) Red Hat
3 12 (5.11%) Oracle
3 12 (5.11%) VMware
4 11 (4.68%) Cisco
5 8 (3.40%) Databricks
6 7 (2.98%) Splunk
7 6 (2.55%) Arista
7 6 (2.55%) Tagetik
8 5 (2.13%) Salesforce
9 4 (1.70%) Denodo
9 4 (1.70%) Talend
10 3 (1.28%) Dynatrace
10 3 (1.28%) F5
10 3 (1.28%) Fortinet
10 3 (1.28%) Google
10 3 (1.28%) Juniper
10 3 (1.28%) SAP
10 3 (1.28%) ServiceNow
11 2 (0.85%) NetIQ