Test Automation Contract Job Trends in London

Automated Testing
England > London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in London requiring Test Automation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 45 51
Rank change year-on-year -2 +6 -3
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 839 632 679
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.83% 4.98% 3.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.43% 5.41% 4.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 538 430 476
10th Percentile £325 £341 £363
25th Percentile £406 £406 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% -6.78%
75th Percentile £588 £663 £688
90th Percentile £700 £775 £775
England median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 7
10th Percentile £55.99 - -
25th Percentile £58.15 - £52.50
Median hourly rate £63.50 £35.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +81.43% -36.36% -35.29%
75th Percentile £65.88 - £61.25
90th Percentile £66.25 - £65.40
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.88 £60.00
% change year-on-year +16.33% -6.88% -2.04%

All Process & Methodology Skills
London

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 London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 15,459 11,674 15,822
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 89.02% 91.93% 88.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,346 7,928 11,348
10th Percentile £353 £350 £338
25th Percentile £428 £440 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -6.78%
75th Percentile £650 £684 £675
90th Percentile £756 £800 £799
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 258 166 336
10th Percentile £18.75 £16.30 £15.97
25th Percentile £25.15 £23.64 £19.98
Median hourly rate £35.50 £34.58 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.68% +15.25% -22.83%
75th Percentile £56.99 £50.69 £48.75
90th Percentile £72.65 £63.50 £66.88
England median hourly rate £41.86 £31.64 £34.21
% change year-on-year +32.29% -7.51% -6.66%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Test Automation relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in London.

Test Automation job vacancy trend in London

Test Automation
Daily Rate Trend in London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing Test Automation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation in London over the 6 months to 18 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in London

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Trend in London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing Test Automation.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Contract Job Locations in London

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 London region over the 6 months to 18 April 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
Central London +1 111 £525 +3.96% 53
West London -21 22 £450 +19.05% 4
South London -9 20 £519 +5.87% 1
East London +2 11 £445 +11.25% 13
North London - 1 £400 - 2
Test Automation
England

Test Automation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London 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 56 (6.67%) Confluence
2 21 (2.50%) Apache Airflow
3 17 (2.03%) Apache Spark
4 8 (0.95%) Appian
5 5 (0.60%) Apache
5 5 (0.60%) Camunda
5 5 (0.60%) CMS
6 4 (0.48%) nginx
6 4 (0.48%) Tomcat
6 4 (0.48%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.36%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.24%) Magnolia
8 2 (0.24%) Sitecore CMS
8 2 (0.24%) WordPress
9 1 (0.12%) Anypoint
9 1 (0.12%) Ethereum
9 1 (0.12%) SAS
9 1 (0.12%) Solana
Applications
1 18 (2.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
3 6 (0.72%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.48%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.12%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 24 (2.86%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.83%) Findur
2 7 (0.83%) Shopify
3 6 (0.72%) Loan IQ
3 6 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
4 5 (0.60%) BambooHR
5 4 (0.48%) Dynamics CRM
6 3 (0.36%) Distributed Ledger
7 2 (0.24%) iTrent
7 2 (0.24%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.24%) SAP HR
7 2 (0.24%) Summit
8 1 (0.12%) Algo Collateral
8 1 (0.12%) Bloomberg TOMS
8 1 (0.12%) Infor LN
8 1 (0.12%) Infor M3
8 1 (0.12%) IntelliMatch
8 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
8 1 (0.12%) PORTIA
8 1 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 249 (29.68%) Azure
2 203 (24.20%) AWS
3 134 (15.97%) GitHub
4 121 (14.42%) Azure DevOps
5 62 (7.39%) GCP
5 62 (7.39%) GitHub Actions
6 59 (7.03%) Serverless
7 38 (4.53%) Amazon S3
8 37 (4.41%) AWS Lambda
9 36 (4.29%) Snowflake
10 32 (3.81%) Power Platform
11 28 (3.34%) Azure AKS
11 28 (3.34%) Azure Data Factory
12 25 (2.98%) Amazon ECS
13 19 (2.26%) Apigee
13 19 (2.26%) dbt
13 19 (2.26%) Dynamics 365
14 18 (2.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 18 (2.15%) AWS CloudFormation
14 18 (2.15%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 10 (1.19%) HTTP
2 6 (0.72%) Firewall
2 6 (0.72%) FTP
3 5 (0.60%) Cisco IPT
3 5 (0.60%) SSL
4 4 (0.48%) DNS
4 4 (0.48%) Ethernet
4 4 (0.48%) WAN
4 4 (0.48%) WebEx
5 3 (0.36%) Multicast
5 3 (0.36%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.24%) Cisco IOS
6 2 (0.24%) DHCP
6 2 (0.24%) DSL
6 2 (0.24%) HTTPS
6 2 (0.24%) NaaS
6 2 (0.24%) SD-WAN
6 2 (0.24%) SNMP
7 1 (0.12%) 5G
7 1 (0.12%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (5.96%) SQL Server
2 48 (5.72%) PostgreSQL
3 43 (5.13%) NoSQL
4 31 (3.69%) MongoDB
5 27 (3.22%) Data Warehouse
6 25 (2.98%) Relational Database
7 23 (2.74%) BigQuery
8 22 (2.62%) Tableau
9 21 (2.50%) Power BI
10 20 (2.38%) DynamoDB
11 17 (2.03%) Amazon Athena
12 15 (1.79%) Big Data
13 14 (1.67%) Metadata
14 12 (1.43%) Amazon Aurora
14 12 (1.43%) Amazon RDS
14 12 (1.43%) Amazon Redshift
15 11 (1.31%) Oracle Database
15 11 (1.31%) Redis
16 10 (1.19%) Data Lake
16 10 (1.19%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 150 (17.88%) JIRA
2 140 (16.69%) Git
3 116 (13.83%) Selenium
4 101 (12.04%) Jenkins
5 76 (9.06%) GitLab
6 56 (6.67%) Cucumber
7 54 (6.44%) Cypress.io
8 50 (5.96%) Postman
9 37 (4.41%) REST Assured
10 32 (3.81%) SpecFlow
11 28 (3.34%) JUnit
12 26 (3.10%) JMeter
13 20 (2.38%) MLflow
14 17 (2.03%) Bitbucket
15 15 (1.79%) Appium
16 14 (1.67%) TestRail
16 14 (1.67%) WebDriver
16 14 (1.67%) Zephyr
17 13 (1.55%) Maven
18 12 (1.43%) Mockito
General
1 220 (26.22%) Social Skills
2 217 (25.86%) Finance
3 109 (12.99%) Banking
3 109 (12.99%) Public Sector
4 97 (11.56%) Analytical Skills
5 27 (3.22%) Front Office
5 27 (3.22%) Investment Banking
6 18 (2.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 18 (2.15%) Legal
7 14 (1.67%) Documentation Skills
8 11 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
8 11 (1.31%) Telecoms
9 10 (1.19%) Financial Institution
9 10 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
10 9 (1.07%) Back Office
10 9 (1.07%) Pharmaceutical
10 9 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
11 7 (0.83%) Billing
11 7 (0.83%) Publishing
12 6 (0.72%) Retail
Job Titles
1 190 (22.65%) Developer
2 154 (18.36%) Senior
3 97 (11.56%) Tester
4 88 (10.49%) Lead
5 61 (7.27%) Test Engineer
6 59 (7.03%) Automation Tester
7 56 (6.67%) Analyst
8 53 (6.32%) QA Engineer
9 45 (5.36%) Architect
10 41 (4.89%) Senior Developer
11 38 (4.53%) Data Engineer
12 37 (4.41%) Automation Engineer
13 35 (4.17%) Java Developer
14 34 (4.05%) DevOps Engineer
15 31 (3.69%) Test Automation Engineer
16 29 (3.46%) Test Analyst
17 27 (3.22%) Test Manager
18 25 (2.98%) QA Automation Engineer
19 24 (2.86%) Software Engineer
20 23 (2.74%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (13.47%) Playwright
2 97 (11.56%) React
3 89 (10.61%) REST
4 74 (8.82%) RESTful
5 72 (8.58%) Node.js
6 70 (8.34%) .NET
7 59 (7.03%) Kafka
8 45 (5.36%) Spring
9 43 (5.13%) Spring Boot
10 39 (4.65%) HTML
11 37 (4.41%) CSS
12 29 (3.46%) pytest
12 29 (3.46%) Web Services
13 26 (3.10%) OAuth
14 25 (2.98%) AngularJS
15 21 (2.50%) Gherkin
15 21 (2.50%) GraphQL
16 19 (2.26%) FastAPI
16 19 (2.26%) JSON
17 18 (2.15%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 91 (10.85%) Cloud Native
2 58 (6.91%) Product Ownership
3 44 (5.24%) Distributed Systems
4 35 (4.17%) Legacy Systems
5 27 (3.22%) Data Protection Act
6 25 (2.98%) Algorithms
7 20 (2.38%) Equities
8 19 (2.26%) Data Structures
8 19 (2.26%) Onboarding
9 18 (2.15%) Fixed Income
9 18 (2.15%) Greenfield Project
9 18 (2.15%) Management Information System
10 17 (2.03%) Virtual Team
11 16 (1.91%) Mobile App
12 14 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
13 11 (1.31%) Derivative
13 11 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
14 10 (1.19%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 9 (1.07%) Low-Code
15 9 (1.07%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 42 (5.01%) Linux
2 35 (4.17%) Windows
3 20 (2.38%) Android
4 18 (2.15%) Apple iOS
5 10 (1.19%) Unix
6 6 (0.72%) Windows Server
7 5 (0.60%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.48%) Solaris
8 4 (0.48%) Windows Server 2008
9 3 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
10 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 450 (53.64%) CI/CD
2 345 (41.12%) Agile
3 291 (34.68%) DevOps
4 162 (19.31%) Problem-Solving
5 135 (16.09%) AI
6 122 (14.54%) Infrastructure as Code
7 119 (14.18%) Containerisation
8 115 (13.71%) Observability
9 113 (13.47%) Continuous Improvement
10 111 (13.23%) Validation
11 110 (13.11%) Regression Testing
12 108 (12.87%) Microservices
12 108 (12.87%) Test Scripting
13 106 (12.63%) Test Strategy
14 99 (11.80%) Software Testing
15 98 (11.68%) User Acceptance Testing
16 93 (11.08%) Analytics
17 90 (10.73%) Software Engineering
18 84 (10.01%) Data Modelling
18 84 (10.01%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 279 (33.25%) Python
2 214 (25.51%) SQL
3 169 (20.14%) Java
4 155 (18.47%) TypeScript
5 139 (16.57%) JavaScript
6 120 (14.30%) C#
7 27 (3.22%) PowerShell
8 20 (2.38%) Apex Code
9 19 (2.26%) Bash
10 17 (2.03%) Ruby
11 16 (1.91%) C++
12 13 (1.55%) Bicep
12 13 (1.55%) Kotlin
12 13 (1.55%) PL/SQL
13 9 (1.07%) Go
13 9 (1.07%) Scala
14 7 (0.83%) T-SQL
15 6 (0.72%) Rust
15 6 (0.72%) Swift
16 4 (0.48%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 176 (20.98%) Security Cleared
2 151 (18.00%) SC Cleared
3 49 (5.84%) Degree
4 36 (4.29%) ISTQB
5 29 (3.46%) BPSS Clearance
6 26 (3.10%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (1.31%) Master's Degree
8 8 (0.95%) DV Cleared
9 7 (0.83%) DBS Check
9 7 (0.83%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 4 (0.48%) Azure Certification
10 4 (0.48%) ISEB
10 4 (0.48%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 3 (0.36%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.36%) OSCP
11 3 (0.36%) SANS
12 2 (0.24%) Cisco Certification
12 2 (0.24%) CREST Certified
12 2 (0.24%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 204 (24.31%) QA
2 52 (6.20%) Data Quality
3 47 (5.60%) Accessibility
4 24 (2.86%) GDPR
5 19 (2.26%) WCAG
6 8 (0.95%) NIST
7 7 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 6 (0.72%) ISO 20022
8 6 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.72%) NCSC
9 5 (0.60%) PERC
9 5 (0.60%) SLA
10 4 (0.48%) HL7
10 4 (0.48%) Software Quality Assurance
11 3 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 3 (0.36%) MiFID
11 3 (0.36%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.24%) GRC
12 2 (0.24%) NIST 800
13 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 147 (17.52%) Docker
2 6 (0.72%) Active Directory
2 6 (0.72%) VMware ESXi
3 5 (0.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.48%) Oracle RAC
4 4 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
4 4 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.12%) Embedded Firmware
5 1 (0.12%) Firmware
5 1 (0.12%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.12%) Squid
5 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 128 (15.26%) Kubernetes
2 100 (11.92%) Terraform
3 37 (4.41%) Grafana
4 32 (3.81%) Prometheus
5 15 (1.79%) Ansible
6 13 (1.55%) HP ALM
7 8 (0.95%) Kibana
7 8 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
8 4 (0.48%) Puppet
9 2 (0.24%) Amdocs OSS
9 2 (0.24%) Istio
9 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.24%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.24%) Rancher
9 2 (0.24%) SCCM
10 1 (0.12%) CloudHub
10 1 (0.12%) HP Quality Center
10 1 (0.12%) linkerd
10 1 (0.12%) Packer
Vendors
1 80 (9.54%) Microsoft
2 58 (6.91%) Oracle
3 51 (6.08%) Salesforce
4 47 (5.60%) Databricks
5 26 (3.10%) Google
6 22 (2.62%) ServiceNow
7 17 (2.03%) SAP
7 17 (2.03%) Splunk
8 13 (1.55%) HP
8 13 (1.55%) OpenAI
9 12 (1.43%) MuleSoft
10 11 (1.31%) Dynatrace
10 11 (1.31%) IBM
11 10 (1.19%) UiPath
11 10 (1.19%) Workday
12 9 (1.07%) Apple
12 9 (1.07%) Guidewire
13 8 (0.95%) Automation Anywhere
13 8 (0.95%) Citrix
14 7 (0.83%) Confluent