Test Automation Contract Job Trends in Tyne and Wear

Automated Testing
North East > Tyne and Wear

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Tyne and Wear requiring Test Automation skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 18 19 22
Rank change year-on-year +1 +3 +5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 16 10 5
As % of all contract jobs advertised in Tyne and Wear 6.99% 5.56% 3.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 8.21% 5.95% 3.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 11 10 5
10th Percentile £320 £324 £405
25th Percentile £405 £404 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £445 £425 £473
Median % change year-on-year +4.71% -10.05% -22.86%
75th Percentile £460 £469 £738
90th Percentile £525 £514 £805
North East median daily rate £445 £425 £473
% change year-on-year +4.71% -10.05% -19.57%

All Process and Methodology Skills
Tyne and Wear

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 Tyne and Wear.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 195 168 139
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Tyne and Wear 85.15% 93.33% 84.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 114 80 99
10th Percentile £200 £325 £350
25th Percentile £372 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £475 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.16% -13.64% +4.76%
75th Percentile £573 £590 £625
90th Percentile £625 £653 £720
North East median daily rate £463 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -2.63% +5.56% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 18 6
10th Percentile £13.75 £13.75 £17.50
25th Percentile £15.75 £15.50 £18.19
Median hourly rate £19.25 £18.50 £19.75
Median % change year-on-year +4.05% -6.33% +22.06%
75th Percentile £20.63 £50.00 £29.06
90th Percentile £36.00 £70.00 £32.88
North East median hourly rate £17.30 £29.77 £20.00
% change year-on-year -41.89% +48.85% +14.29%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in Tyne and Wear

Job postings citing Test Automation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in Tyne and Wear.

Job vacancy trend for Test Automation in Tyne and Wear

Test Automation
Daily Rate Trend in Tyne and Wear

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Tyne and Wear citing Test Automation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Tyne and Wear citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram in Tyne and Wear

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation in Tyne and Wear over the 6 months to 16 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in Tyne and Wear

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Trend in Tyne and Wear

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Tyne and Wear citing Test Automation.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Tyne and Wear citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Contract Job Locations in Tyne and Wear

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 Tyne and Wear region over the 6 months to 16 September 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
Newcastle upon Tyne -2 15 £438 +2.94% 17
Test Automation
North East

Test Automation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in Tyne and Wear by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 2 (12.50%) Confluence
2 1 (6.25%) Apache Spark
2 1 (6.25%) CMS
Applications
1 1 (6.25%) MadCap Flare
Cloud Services
1 5 (31.25%) AWS
2 2 (12.50%) AWS Lambda
2 2 (12.50%) Azure
2 2 (12.50%) GitHub
2 2 (12.50%) GitHub Actions
2 2 (12.50%) Serverless
3 1 (6.25%) Amazon Kinesis
3 1 (6.25%) Amazon OpenSearch
3 1 (6.25%) Amazon S3
3 1 (6.25%) Amazon SageMaker
3 1 (6.25%) AWS CodeBuild
3 1 (6.25%) AWS CodePipeline
3 1 (6.25%) Azure Cognitive Search
3 1 (6.25%) Azure Cognitive Services
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (18.75%) MongoDB
2 1 (6.25%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (6.25%) Amazon Redshift
2 1 (6.25%) Flink
2 1 (6.25%) NoSQL
2 1 (6.25%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 7 (43.75%) Cucumber
2 4 (25.00%) JIRA
2 4 (25.00%) Selenium
3 3 (18.75%) Mockito
3 3 (18.75%) Postman
3 3 (18.75%) REST Assured
4 2 (12.50%) Git
4 2 (12.50%) TestRail
5 1 (6.25%) Gatling
5 1 (6.25%) GitLab
5 1 (6.25%) Jenkins
5 1 (6.25%) JMeter
5 1 (6.25%) SoapUI
General
1 4 (25.00%) Public Sector
2 2 (12.50%) Social Skills
3 1 (6.25%) Analytical Skills
Job Titles
1 6 (37.50%) Test Engineer
2 4 (25.00%) Developer
2 4 (25.00%) Tester
3 3 (18.75%) Java Developer
3 3 (18.75%) QA Tester
3 3 (18.75%) Senior
3 3 (18.75%) Senior Developer
3 3 (18.75%) Senior Java Developer
3 3 (18.75%) Test Automation Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) QA Automation Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) QA Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) QA Test Engineer
5 1 (6.25%) Automation Engineer
5 1 (6.25%) Automation Tester
5 1 (6.25%) Data Engineer
5 1 (6.25%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (25.00%) Kafka
2 3 (18.75%) ActiveMQ
2 3 (18.75%) JAX-RS
2 3 (18.75%) REST
3 2 (12.50%) Next.js
3 2 (12.50%) OpenAPI
3 2 (12.50%) Spring Boot
3 2 (12.50%) Swagger
3 2 (12.50%) WireMock
4 1 (6.25%) GatsbyJS
4 1 (6.25%) Gherkin
4 1 (6.25%) HTML
4 1 (6.25%) JPA
4 1 (6.25%) JSON
4 1 (6.25%) Lambda Expressions
4 1 (6.25%) Node.js
4 1 (6.25%) Playwright
4 1 (6.25%) React
4 1 (6.25%) SOAP
4 1 (6.25%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 2 (12.50%) Data Protection Act
2 1 (6.25%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 3 (18.75%) Linux
1 3 (18.75%) Mac OS X
1 3 (18.75%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 11 (68.75%) CI/CD
2 10 (62.50%) Agile
3 8 (50.00%) BDD
4 6 (37.50%) Microservices
4 6 (37.50%) Problem-Solving
4 6 (37.50%) TDD
5 4 (25.00%) API Testing
5 4 (25.00%) Non-Functional Testing
6 3 (18.75%) Continuous Deployment
6 3 (18.75%) Defect Management
6 3 (18.75%) DevOps
6 3 (18.75%) Pair Programming
6 3 (18.75%) QA Automation
6 3 (18.75%) Responsive Web Design
6 3 (18.75%) Software Engineering
6 3 (18.75%) Test Scripting
6 3 (18.75%) Web Design
6 3 (18.75%) Web Development
7 2 (12.50%) Data Protection
7 2 (12.50%) Performance Testing
Programming Languages
1 9 (56.25%) Java
2 4 (25.00%) Python
3 3 (18.75%) TypeScript
4 2 (12.50%) JavaScript
4 2 (12.50%) SQL
5 1 (6.25%) Bash
5 1 (6.25%) Go
Qualifications
1 5 (31.25%) SC Cleared
1 5 (31.25%) Security Cleared
2 2 (12.50%) BPSS Clearance
3 1 (6.25%) ISTQB
3 1 (6.25%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (43.75%) QA
2 5 (31.25%) Accessibility
3 1 (6.25%) Data Quality
3 1 (6.25%) WCAG
System Software
1 2 (12.50%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (12.50%) Kubernetes
2 1 (6.25%) Grafana
2 1 (6.25%) Prometheus
2 1 (6.25%) Terraform