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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 33 48
Rank change year-on-year -37 +15 +5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 178 164 198
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 2.97% 5.61% 3.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.69% 6.15% 4.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 123 101 127
10th Percentile £352 £363 £389
25th Percentile £403 £438 £466
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £501 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -9.00% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £688
England median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 15 3
10th Percentile £55.88 £44.51 £40.90
25th Percentile £60.00 £48.99 £47.13
Median hourly rate £66.25 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.45% -8.33% +9.09%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £70.00
90th Percentile - £72.70 £74.50
England median hourly rate £66.25 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +20.45% -8.33% -15.49%

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 4,826 2,668 4,653
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.49% 91.34% 83.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,116 1,715 2,710
10th Percentile £280 £250 £255
25th Percentile £410 £395 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year +2.80% -1.96% +0.99%
75th Percentile £610 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £656 £700
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.25% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 450 177 442
10th Percentile £15.05 £13.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.35 £15.00 £18.20
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.30 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +107.51% -46.74% -5.00%
75th Percentile £82.25 £62.24 £62.50
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £76.86
England median hourly rate £46.43 £28.18 £36.50
% change year-on-year +64.76% -22.79% -2.46%

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 May 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 28 May 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 28 May 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 -53 61 £444 -26.04% 33
Surrey +7 43 £550 +12.82% 9
Hampshire -31 42 £600 +17.07% 22
Berkshire -58 34 £405 -35.20% 10
Buckinghamshire -19 23 £500 +33.33% 8
West Sussex -9 18 £382 -18.38% 2
East Sussex +4 7 £505 +6.21% 4
Oxfordshire -21 4 £800 +68.42% 15
Kent - 3 £500 -
Middlesex -4 1 £509 -
Sussex - 1 £600 - 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 11 (6.18%) Confluence
2 2 (1.12%) SAS
2 2 (1.12%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.56%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 5 (2.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (1.69%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.56%) SAP MDG
1 1 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 42 (23.60%) Azure
2 28 (15.73%) AWS
3 26 (14.61%) Azure DevOps
4 13 (7.30%) OpenShift
5 12 (6.74%) GitHub
6 7 (3.93%) GitHub Actions
7 6 (3.37%) Serverless
8 4 (2.25%) Azure Data Factory
8 4 (2.25%) GCP
9 3 (1.69%) Amazon ECS
9 3 (1.69%) Amazon S3
9 3 (1.69%) AWS CodePipeline
9 3 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
9 3 (1.69%) Azure Monitor
10 2 (1.12%) Azure AKS
10 2 (1.12%) Azure Key Vault
10 2 (1.12%) Azure Service Bus
10 2 (1.12%) Entra ID
10 2 (1.12%) Power Automate
10 2 (1.12%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 8 (4.49%) VPN
2 7 (3.93%) MPLS
3 6 (3.37%) Firewall
4 5 (2.81%) TCP/IP
4 5 (2.81%) VLAN
4 5 (2.81%) Wireshark
5 4 (2.25%) WAN
6 3 (1.69%) BGP
6 3 (1.69%) HTTPS
6 3 (1.69%) IPv4
6 3 (1.69%) IPv6
6 3 (1.69%) Multicast
6 3 (1.69%) Network Security
6 3 (1.69%) OSPF
7 2 (1.12%) 4G
7 2 (1.12%) 5G
7 2 (1.12%) Cisco ASA
7 2 (1.12%) Diameter Protocol
7 2 (1.12%) LTE
7 2 (1.12%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (2.81%) Data Warehouse
2 4 (2.25%) NoSQL
3 3 (1.69%) DynamoDB
3 3 (1.69%) Metadata
3 3 (1.69%) Oracle Reports
4 2 (1.12%) BigQuery
4 2 (1.12%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.56%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.56%) Big Data
5 1 (0.56%) Data Lake
5 1 (0.56%) Oracle Database
5 1 (0.56%) Parquet
5 1 (0.56%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 29 (16.29%) JIRA
2 21 (11.80%) Jenkins
3 19 (10.67%) Git
4 17 (9.55%) Selenium
5 13 (7.30%) SonarQube
6 10 (5.62%) GitLab
6 10 (5.62%) Postman
7 7 (3.93%) HP UFT
8 6 (3.37%) JUnit
8 6 (3.37%) NUnit
8 6 (3.37%) Robot Framework
8 6 (3.37%) WebDriver
9 5 (2.81%) Gradle
9 5 (2.81%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (2.81%) SpecFlow
9 5 (2.81%) Zephyr
10 4 (2.25%) Artifactory
10 4 (2.25%) Bitbucket
10 4 (2.25%) Maven
11 3 (1.69%) Cypress.io
General
1 40 (22.47%) Social Skills
2 25 (14.04%) Analytical Skills
3 15 (8.43%) Finance
4 11 (6.18%) Public Sector
5 8 (4.49%) Telecoms
6 3 (1.69%) Aerospace
6 3 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (1.12%) Aviation
7 2 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (1.12%) Law
8 1 (0.56%) Advertising
8 1 (0.56%) Banking
8 1 (0.56%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.56%) Marketing
8 1 (0.56%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.56%) Retail
Job Titles
1 30 (16.85%) Developer
2 29 (16.29%) Senior
3 24 (13.48%) Test Engineer
4 21 (11.80%) Tester
5 13 (7.30%) Java Developer
6 11 (6.18%) Analyst
6 11 (6.18%) Software Engineer
7 10 (5.62%) Java Engineer
8 9 (5.06%) Lead
8 9 (5.06%) Test Automation Engineer
8 9 (5.06%) Test Manager
9 7 (3.93%) Pensions Analyst
10 6 (3.37%) QA Engineer
10 6 (3.37%) Senior Developer
10 6 (3.37%) Senior Test Engineer
10 6 (3.37%) Test Analyst
11 5 (2.81%) Architect
11 5 (2.81%) Consultant
11 5 (2.81%) Designer
11 5 (2.81%) Software Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (8.43%) AngularJS
2 14 (7.87%) RESTful
3 13 (7.30%) Quarkus
3 13 (7.30%) REST
4 9 (5.06%) Playwright
4 9 (5.06%) SailPoint
5 8 (4.49%) React
6 7 (3.93%) GraphQL
6 7 (3.93%) Spring
7 6 (3.37%) OAuth
8 5 (2.81%) .NET
9 4 (2.25%) JWT
9 4 (2.25%) OAuth2
9 4 (2.25%) SOAP
9 4 (2.25%) Vert.x
10 3 (1.69%) CSS
10 3 (1.69%) JSON
10 3 (1.69%) Spring Boot
10 3 (1.69%) Swagger
11 2 (1.12%) jQuery
Miscellaneous
1 15 (8.43%) Distributed Systems
2 12 (6.74%) Cloud Native
2 12 (6.74%) Product Ownership
3 11 (6.18%) Self-Motivation
4 10 (5.62%) Virtual Team
5 8 (4.49%) PKI
6 5 (2.81%) Enterprise Software
6 5 (2.81%) Linux Command Line
7 4 (2.25%) Data Centre
8 3 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
8 3 (1.69%) FPGA
8 3 (1.69%) Mobile App
8 3 (1.69%) Verilog
8 3 (1.69%) VHDL
9 2 (1.12%) Algorithms
9 2 (1.12%) Analytical Mindset
9 2 (1.12%) Management Information System
9 2 (1.12%) Security Posture
9 2 (1.12%) Team-Oriented Environment
10 1 (0.56%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 17 (9.55%) Windows
2 9 (5.06%) Unix
3 8 (4.49%) Linux
3 8 (4.49%) Windows Server
4 3 (1.69%) Embedded Linux
5 2 (1.12%) CentOS
5 2 (1.12%) Kali Linux
5 2 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.56%) Android
6 1 (0.56%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 90 (50.56%) Agile
2 64 (35.96%) CI/CD
3 59 (33.15%) DevOps
4 33 (18.54%) SDLC
5 32 (17.98%) Scrum
6 30 (16.85%) Problem-Solving
6 30 (16.85%) Software Engineering
7 28 (15.73%) Test Strategy
8 24 (13.48%) Sprint Planning
9 23 (12.92%) Microservices
9 23 (12.92%) Unit Testing
10 22 (12.36%) AI
11 20 (11.24%) Software Testing
12 19 (10.67%) Continuous Improvement
13 18 (10.11%) Regression Testing
13 18 (10.11%) Validation
14 17 (9.55%) Code Quality
14 17 (9.55%) Scenario Testing
15 16 (8.99%) DevSecOps
15 16 (8.99%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 42 (23.60%) Java
2 37 (20.79%) SQL
3 35 (19.66%) Python
4 22 (12.36%) PowerShell
5 19 (10.67%) C#
6 18 (10.11%) JavaScript
7 8 (4.49%) VBScript
8 7 (3.93%) TypeScript
9 5 (2.81%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.69%) Bash
10 3 (1.69%) C
10 3 (1.69%) C++
10 3 (1.69%) Embedded C
10 3 (1.69%) Embedded C++
10 3 (1.69%) T-SQL
11 2 (1.12%) Go
11 2 (1.12%) Groovy
11 2 (1.12%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.56%) Bicep
12 1 (0.56%) Swift
Qualifications
1 80 (44.94%) Security Cleared
2 48 (26.97%) SC Cleared
3 30 (16.85%) DV Cleared
4 13 (7.30%) ISTQB
5 8 (4.49%) CCNP
5 8 (4.49%) Cisco Certification
6 6 (3.37%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (2.81%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (2.81%) Degree
7 5 (2.81%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 3 (1.69%) CCNA
8 3 (1.69%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 3 (1.69%) JNCIS
9 2 (1.12%) BC Cleared
9 2 (1.12%) CCIE
10 1 (0.56%) CCIP
10 1 (0.56%) GPEN
10 1 (0.56%) OCA
10 1 (0.56%) OSCP
10 1 (0.56%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (26.97%) QA
2 5 (2.81%) Accessibility
2 5 (2.81%) Data Quality
3 2 (1.12%) NCSC
3 2 (1.12%) WCAG
4 1 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.56%) GDPR
4 1 (0.56%) GMP
4 1 (0.56%) GRC
4 1 (0.56%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 10 (5.62%) VMware Infrastructure
2 9 (5.06%) Active Directory
3 6 (3.37%) Docker
4 3 (1.69%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 18 (10.11%) Kubernetes
2 16 (8.99%) Terraform
3 13 (7.30%) Argo
4 12 (6.74%) Ansible
5 9 (5.06%) Forefront Identity Manager
5 9 (5.06%) NetIQ Identity Manager
6 4 (2.25%) HP Quality Center
6 4 (2.25%) Nmap
7 3 (1.69%) Nagios
7 3 (1.69%) WMI
8 2 (1.12%) Cisco Prime
8 2 (1.12%) Iperf
9 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.56%) Nessus
9 1 (0.56%) Rancher
Vendors
1 14 (7.87%) Microsoft
2 13 (7.30%) Cisco
2 13 (7.30%) VMware
3 12 (6.74%) Red Hat
4 9 (5.06%) NetIQ
4 9 (5.06%) Oracle
5 7 (3.93%) Blue Prism
5 7 (3.93%) Splunk
6 6 (3.37%) CheckPoint
6 6 (3.37%) Juniper
7 5 (2.81%) F5
7 5 (2.81%) Fortinet
7 5 (2.81%) SAP
7 5 (2.81%) SolarWinds
8 4 (2.25%) Databricks
8 4 (2.25%) Denodo
8 4 (2.25%) Talend
9 3 (1.69%) Dynatrace
9 3 (1.69%) Intel
9 3 (1.69%) Xilinx