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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 55 46
Rank change year-on-year +5 -9 +4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 902 599 741
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.49% 4.45% 4.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.03% 4.82% 5.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 613 406 502
10th Percentile £350 £339 £358
25th Percentile £425 £400 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £509 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.72% -3.10% -6.67%
75th Percentile £613 £675 £650
90th Percentile £709 £775 £775
England median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 4 5
10th Percentile £52.35 £37.25 £51.00
25th Percentile £67.41 £40.63 £52.50
Median hourly rate £95.00 £45.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +111.11% -18.18% -38.89%
75th Percentile £97.50 £55.63 £71.88
90th Percentile - £70.25 -
England median hourly rate £69.00 £50.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +38.00% -9.09% -13.73%

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 17,916 12,432 14,370
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 89.17% 92.34% 88.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,760 8,272 10,048
10th Percentile £360 £325 £350
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.85% -1.82% -4.35%
75th Percentile £663 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 287 253 197
10th Percentile £16.99 £16.50 £16.99
25th Percentile £19.50 £24.66 £22.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £29.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.34% -15.71% -12.50%
75th Percentile £56.63 £48.75 £53.75
90th Percentile £81.25 £63.75 £71.50
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +5.94%

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 August 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Automation in London over the 6 months to 18 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in London

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 August 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 +22 124 £550 +22.22% 28
South London -3 17 £549 +9.75% 5
East London +2 9 £545 +18.48% 15
West London -20 7 £600 +51.90% 8
North London -2 1 £400 - 1
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 62 (6.87%) Confluence
2 38 (4.21%) Apache Airflow
3 28 (3.10%) Apache Spark
4 22 (2.44%) SharePoint
5 15 (1.66%) Apache
6 13 (1.44%) CMS
7 6 (0.67%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 5 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.44%) nginx
9 4 (0.44%) Tomcat
9 4 (0.44%) WebLogic
10 3 (0.33%) Camunda
10 3 (0.33%) Kentico
11 2 (0.22%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.22%) Mule
11 2 (0.22%) SAS
12 1 (0.11%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.11%) ColdFusion
12 1 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.11%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 21 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.44%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.55%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.44%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.33%) Trello
7 1 (0.11%) Mingle
7 1 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 14 (1.55%) Aladdin
2 12 (1.33%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.89%) Findur
4 6 (0.67%) Oracle EBS
5 5 (0.55%) BambooHR
5 5 (0.55%) Shopify
6 4 (0.44%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.33%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
7 3 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
8 2 (0.22%) Infor CloudSuite
8 2 (0.22%) Infor LN
8 2 (0.22%) Infor M3
8 2 (0.22%) Loan IQ
8 2 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.22%) SAP GRC
9 1 (0.11%) IntelliMatch
9 1 (0.11%) Misys Equation
9 1 (0.11%) Misys Midas
9 1 (0.11%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 312 (34.59%) Azure
2 275 (30.49%) AWS
3 194 (21.51%) GitHub
4 154 (17.07%) Azure DevOps
5 120 (13.30%) GitHub Actions
6 75 (8.31%) Serverless
7 68 (7.54%) GCP
8 67 (7.43%) Power Platform
9 58 (6.43%) AWS Lambda
10 51 (5.65%) Amazon S3
11 47 (5.21%) dbt
12 38 (4.21%) Snowflake
13 32 (3.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 32 (3.55%) Amazon ECS
14 30 (3.33%) GitHub Copilot
15 26 (2.88%) Amazon EC2
16 24 (2.66%) Azure Data Factory
17 22 (2.44%) Azure AKS
17 22 (2.44%) Azure Monitor
18 21 (2.33%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.89%) HTTP
1 8 (0.89%) WAN
2 7 (0.78%) Firewall
2 7 (0.78%) Network Security
2 7 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
3 6 (0.67%) LAN
3 6 (0.67%) TCP/IP
4 5 (0.55%) BGP
5 4 (0.44%) DHCP
5 4 (0.44%) DNS
5 4 (0.44%) Ethernet VPN
5 4 (0.44%) NX-OS
5 4 (0.44%) TACACS
5 4 (0.44%) VXLAN
6 3 (0.33%) FTP
6 3 (0.33%) OpenLDAP
6 3 (0.33%) SMS
7 2 (0.22%) Bluetooth
7 2 (0.22%) Multicast
7 2 (0.22%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (6.65%) PostgreSQL
2 58 (6.43%) Power BI
3 54 (5.99%) Data Warehouse
4 50 (5.54%) NoSQL
5 47 (5.21%) SQL Server
6 40 (4.43%) MongoDB
7 33 (3.66%) Relational Database
8 28 (3.10%) DynamoDB
9 24 (2.66%) Amazon Athena
9 24 (2.66%) Amazon Redshift
10 23 (2.55%) Data Lake
11 21 (2.33%) Tableau
12 19 (2.11%) Big Data
13 18 (2.00%) Amazon RDS
14 17 (1.88%) BigQuery
15 15 (1.66%) Metadata
16 11 (1.22%) Elasticsearch
16 11 (1.22%) MySQL
16 11 (1.22%) Oracle Database
16 11 (1.22%) Redis
Development Applications
1 160 (17.74%) Git
2 141 (15.63%) Jenkins
3 127 (14.08%) JIRA
4 112 (12.42%) Selenium
5 104 (11.53%) GitLab
6 58 (6.43%) Cypress.io
7 47 (5.21%) JMeter
7 47 (5.21%) JUnit
8 45 (4.99%) Cucumber
9 40 (4.43%) Postman
10 38 (4.21%) REST Assured
11 20 (2.22%) Gatling
12 19 (2.11%) Appium
12 19 (2.11%) Gradle
13 18 (2.00%) LoadRunner
13 18 (2.00%) Maven
14 16 (1.77%) Bitbucket
14 16 (1.77%) Mockito
14 16 (1.77%) Zephyr
15 15 (1.66%) WebDriver
General
1 266 (29.49%) Finance
2 235 (26.05%) Social Skills
3 133 (14.75%) Analytical Skills
4 127 (14.08%) Banking
5 89 (9.87%) Public Sector
6 27 (2.99%) Front Office
7 23 (2.55%) Investment Banking
8 20 (2.22%) Financial Institution
8 20 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 17 (1.88%) Telecoms
10 15 (1.66%) Back Office
10 15 (1.66%) Legal
11 14 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
12 13 (1.44%) Documentation Skills
13 9 (1.00%) Marketing
13 9 (1.00%) Retail
14 7 (0.78%) Law
14 7 (0.78%) Local Government
14 7 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
15 5 (0.55%) Games
Job Titles
1 196 (21.73%) Developer
2 155 (17.18%) Senior
3 97 (10.75%) Lead
4 71 (7.87%) Tester
5 60 (6.65%) Test Engineer
6 56 (6.21%) Data Engineer
7 52 (5.76%) Java Developer
8 50 (5.54%) DevOps Engineer
9 49 (5.43%) QA Engineer
10 47 (5.21%) Analyst
11 46 (5.10%) Architect
12 43 (4.77%) Automation Engineer
13 40 (4.43%) Software Engineer
14 38 (4.21%) Full-Stack Developer
15 37 (4.10%) Senior Developer
16 34 (3.77%) Test Leader
17 33 (3.66%) Test Automation Engineer
18 32 (3.55%) Test Manager
19 30 (3.33%) Automation Tester
20 24 (2.66%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 133 (14.75%) REST
2 111 (12.31%) Playwright
3 102 (11.31%) Kafka
4 97 (10.75%) RESTful
5 94 (10.42%) React
6 76 (8.43%) Spring
7 69 (7.65%) .NET
8 64 (7.10%) Spring Boot
9 53 (5.88%) HTML
10 51 (5.65%) Node.js
11 49 (5.43%) CSS
12 30 (3.33%) PySpark
13 28 (3.10%) AngularJS
14 26 (2.88%) JSON
14 26 (2.88%) XML
15 25 (2.77%) SOAP
16 24 (2.66%) HTML5
16 24 (2.66%) Middleware
17 23 (2.55%) OAuth
18 22 (2.44%) CSS3
Miscellaneous
1 142 (15.74%) Cloud Native
2 82 (9.09%) Distributed Systems
3 65 (7.21%) Product Ownership
4 31 (3.44%) Onboarding
5 25 (2.77%) Data Protection Act
6 24 (2.66%) AI Agents
7 23 (2.55%) Enterprise Software
8 22 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
9 21 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
10 18 (2.00%) Virtual Team
11 17 (1.88%) Fixed Income
12 15 (1.66%) Data Structures
13 13 (1.44%) Algorithms
13 13 (1.44%) Mobile App
14 12 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
14 12 (1.33%) Management Information System
15 11 (1.22%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 10 (1.11%) Equities
17 9 (1.00%) Distributed Architecture
17 9 (1.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 60 (6.65%) Linux
2 42 (4.66%) Unix
3 38 (4.21%) Windows
4 18 (2.00%) Android
5 17 (1.88%) Apple iOS
6 13 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 8 (0.89%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.44%) Solaris
8 4 (0.44%) Windows Server 2008
9 3 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.22%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.11%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.11%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 564 (62.53%) CI/CD
2 378 (41.91%) Agile
3 361 (40.02%) DevOps
4 182 (20.18%) AI
5 170 (18.85%) Infrastructure as Code
6 165 (18.29%) Problem-Solving
7 162 (17.96%) Continuous Improvement
8 161 (17.85%) Microservices
9 156 (17.29%) Validation
10 147 (16.30%) Test Strategy
11 144 (15.96%) Software Engineering
12 137 (15.19%) Containerisation
13 136 (15.08%) Observability
14 109 (12.08%) Regression Testing
15 107 (11.86%) Scrum
15 107 (11.86%) TDD
16 103 (11.42%) User Acceptance Testing
17 102 (11.31%) Stakeholder Management
18 96 (10.64%) Full-Stack Development
19 95 (10.53%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 291 (32.26%) Python
2 244 (27.05%) SQL
3 242 (26.83%) Java
4 135 (14.97%) JavaScript
5 122 (13.53%) TypeScript
6 89 (9.87%) C#
7 46 (5.10%) PowerShell
8 29 (3.22%) Bash
9 23 (2.55%) Kotlin
10 22 (2.44%) Bicep
11 17 (1.88%) Ruby
12 16 (1.77%) Scala
13 15 (1.66%) PL/SQL
14 14 (1.55%) Apex Code
15 11 (1.22%) C++
15 11 (1.22%) Go
16 9 (1.00%) VB.NET
17 7 (0.78%) T-SQL
18 6 (0.67%) C
18 6 (0.67%) Perl
Qualifications
1 233 (25.83%) Security Cleared
2 206 (22.84%) SC Cleared
3 55 (6.10%) Degree
4 33 (3.66%) Computer Science Degree
5 32 (3.55%) ISTQB
6 20 (2.22%) DV Cleared
7 17 (1.88%) AWS Certification
8 16 (1.77%) BPSS Clearance
9 9 (1.00%) Azure Certification
10 8 (0.89%) ISEB
11 7 (0.78%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 6 (0.67%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 6 (0.67%) DBS Check
13 5 (0.55%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 5 (0.55%) Master's Degree
14 4 (0.44%) CISSP
15 3 (0.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 3 (0.33%) Cisco Certification
15 3 (0.33%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 3 (0.33%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 245 (27.16%) QA
2 72 (7.98%) Data Quality
3 49 (5.43%) Accessibility
4 23 (2.55%) GDPR
5 21 (2.33%) WCAG
6 11 (1.22%) ISO 20022
6 11 (1.22%) SLA
7 8 (0.89%) NIST
8 7 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 4 (0.44%) GRC
10 3 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.33%) EU AI Act
10 3 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 3 (0.33%) MiFID
10 3 (0.33%) Software Quality Assurance
11 2 (0.22%) ISO 9001
11 2 (0.22%) NCSC
11 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.11%) ISO 8583
12 1 (0.11%) PMO
System Software
1 158 (17.52%) Docker
2 12 (1.33%) Virtual Machines
3 8 (0.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.67%) Active Directory
5 4 (0.44%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (0.33%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.11%) Firmware
7 1 (0.11%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 158 (17.52%) Kubernetes
2 138 (15.30%) Terraform
3 50 (5.54%) Grafana
4 44 (4.88%) Prometheus
5 42 (4.66%) Ansible
6 14 (1.55%) Puppet
7 13 (1.44%) Progress Chef
8 9 (1.00%) Control-M
8 9 (1.00%) Kibana
9 7 (0.78%) HP ALM
10 6 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
11 5 (0.55%) HP Fortify
12 4 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
12 4 (0.44%) Packer
13 3 (0.33%) Kustomize
14 2 (0.22%) Amdocs OSS
14 2 (0.22%) Argo
14 2 (0.22%) Istio
15 1 (0.11%) linkerd
Vendors
1 99 (10.98%) Microsoft
2 58 (6.43%) Oracle
3 50 (5.54%) Salesforce
4 40 (4.43%) Databricks
5 30 (3.33%) ServiceNow
6 28 (3.10%) Google
7 24 (2.66%) IBM
8 18 (2.00%) Splunk
9 16 (1.77%) Informatica
9 16 (1.77%) SAP
10 15 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 15 (1.66%) UiPath
11 13 (1.44%) Cisco
11 13 (1.44%) VMware
12 11 (1.22%) HP
13 10 (1.11%) Dynatrace
14 9 (1.00%) OpenAI
15 8 (0.89%) OpenLink
15 8 (0.89%) SaltStack
16 7 (0.78%) Charles River