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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 55 43
Rank change year-on-year +4 -12 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 904 585 789
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.51% 4.43% 4.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.05% 4.79% 5.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 615 396 526
10th Percentile £350 £350 £360
25th Percentile £425 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £601 £650 £645
90th Percentile £712 £775 £765
England median daily rate £475 £500 £520
% change year-on-year -5.00% -3.85% -5.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 4 4
10th Percentile £44.32 £37.25 £50.75
25th Percentile £47.33 £40.63 £51.88
Median hourly rate £72.00 £45.00 £61.88
Median % change year-on-year +60.00% -27.27% -31.25%
75th Percentile £97.50 £55.63 £71.88
90th Percentile - £70.25 -
England median hourly rate £68.61 £55.88 £57.50
% change year-on-year +22.79% -2.83% -21.23%

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 17,884 12,219 14,282
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 89.13% 92.48% 89.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,701 8,101 9,738
10th Percentile £359 £325 £350
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £660 £675 £682
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
England median daily rate £525 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 288 254 186
10th Percentile £17.18 £17.00 £17.25
25th Percentile £19.98 £25.00 £22.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £32.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.94% -8.57% -12.50%
75th Percentile £57.50 £49.69 £54.69
90th Percentile £85.53 £63.75 £71.88
England median hourly rate £43.56 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +73.20% -41.51% +1.18%

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 4 September 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 4 September 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 4 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
Central London +13 118 £550 +22.22% 63
South London -5 14 £593 +18.50% 9
East London +6 10 £590 +13.46% 15
West London -18 6 £600 +50.00% 43
North London +1 1 £400 -
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 69 (7.63%) Confluence
2 37 (4.09%) Apache Airflow
3 26 (2.88%) Apache Spark
4 22 (2.43%) SharePoint
5 14 (1.55%) Apache
5 14 (1.55%) CMS
6 7 (0.77%) Camunda
7 6 (0.66%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.33%) Kentico
9 3 (0.33%) nginx
9 3 (0.33%) SAS
9 3 (0.33%) Tomcat
9 3 (0.33%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.22%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.22%) Mule
11 1 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.11%) Appian
11 1 (0.11%) Ethereum
11 1 (0.11%) Solana
Applications
1 18 (1.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.44%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.44%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.33%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.33%) Trello
6 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.22%) Mingle
7 1 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 13 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 10 (1.11%) Aladdin
3 8 (0.88%) Findur
4 7 (0.77%) SAP S/4HANA
5 6 (0.66%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.55%) SAP GRC
7 4 (0.44%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.44%) Shopify
8 3 (0.33%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.22%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
10 1 (0.11%) FLEXCUBE
10 1 (0.11%) Infor CloudSuite
10 1 (0.11%) Infor LN
10 1 (0.11%) Infor M3
10 1 (0.11%) IntelliMatch
10 1 (0.11%) Misys Equation
10 1 (0.11%) Misys Midas
10 1 (0.11%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 312 (34.51%) Azure
2 275 (30.42%) AWS
3 195 (21.57%) GitHub
4 160 (17.70%) Azure DevOps
5 122 (13.50%) GitHub Actions
6 81 (8.96%) Serverless
7 75 (8.30%) GCP
8 66 (7.30%) Power Platform
9 65 (7.19%) AWS Lambda
10 54 (5.97%) Amazon S3
11 49 (5.42%) dbt
12 39 (4.31%) Snowflake
13 35 (3.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 33 (3.65%) Amazon ECS
15 30 (3.32%) GitHub Copilot
16 26 (2.88%) AWS CloudFormation
17 24 (2.65%) Amazon EC2
18 23 (2.54%) Azure Monitor
19 22 (2.43%) Amazon SQS
19 22 (2.43%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.00%) HTTP
2 7 (0.77%) DNS
2 7 (0.77%) Network Security
2 7 (0.77%) TCP/IP
2 7 (0.77%) WAN
2 7 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
3 6 (0.66%) BGP
3 6 (0.66%) DHCP
3 6 (0.66%) Firewall
3 6 (0.66%) LAN
4 4 (0.44%) Ethernet VPN
4 4 (0.44%) NX-OS
4 4 (0.44%) TACACS
4 4 (0.44%) VXLAN
5 3 (0.33%) FTP
5 3 (0.33%) OpenLDAP
5 3 (0.33%) SMS
6 2 (0.22%) Bluetooth
6 2 (0.22%) SSH
6 2 (0.22%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (6.53%) PostgreSQL
2 56 (6.19%) Data Warehouse
3 55 (6.08%) Power BI
4 51 (5.64%) NoSQL
5 48 (5.31%) SQL Server
6 39 (4.31%) MongoDB
7 35 (3.87%) Relational Database
8 27 (2.99%) DynamoDB
9 24 (2.65%) Amazon Athena
9 24 (2.65%) Amazon Redshift
10 22 (2.43%) Data Lake
11 20 (2.21%) Amazon RDS
12 19 (2.10%) Big Data
13 16 (1.77%) BigQuery
14 15 (1.66%) Tableau
15 14 (1.55%) Metadata
16 12 (1.33%) MySQL
16 12 (1.33%) Oracle Database
16 12 (1.33%) Redis
17 11 (1.22%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 174 (19.25%) Git
2 157 (17.37%) Jenkins
3 131 (14.49%) JIRA
4 117 (12.94%) Selenium
5 109 (12.06%) GitLab
6 62 (6.86%) Cypress.io
7 54 (5.97%) JMeter
8 49 (5.42%) JUnit
9 46 (5.09%) Postman
10 41 (4.54%) Cucumber
10 41 (4.54%) REST Assured
11 22 (2.43%) Gatling
12 21 (2.32%) Gradle
13 20 (2.21%) LoadRunner
13 20 (2.21%) Maven
13 20 (2.21%) Mockito
13 20 (2.21%) SonarQube
14 18 (1.99%) Appium
15 17 (1.88%) Bitbucket
16 15 (1.66%) WebDriver
General
1 272 (30.09%) Finance
2 246 (27.21%) Social Skills
3 143 (15.82%) Analytical Skills
4 131 (14.49%) Banking
5 89 (9.85%) Public Sector
6 30 (3.32%) Front Office
7 23 (2.54%) Investment Banking
8 20 (2.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 19 (2.10%) Financial Institution
10 15 (1.66%) Back Office
10 15 (1.66%) Telecoms
11 13 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
12 12 (1.33%) Legal
12 12 (1.33%) Marketing
13 11 (1.22%) Documentation Skills
14 10 (1.11%) Law
14 10 (1.11%) Retail
15 8 (0.88%) Local Government
16 6 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
17 5 (0.55%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 204 (22.57%) Developer
2 160 (17.70%) Senior
3 90 (9.96%) Lead
4 66 (7.30%) Tester
5 59 (6.53%) Test Engineer
6 56 (6.19%) Data Engineer
6 56 (6.19%) Java Developer
7 55 (6.08%) DevOps Engineer
8 54 (5.97%) QA Engineer
9 47 (5.20%) Automation Engineer
9 47 (5.20%) Software Engineer
10 46 (5.09%) Analyst
11 43 (4.76%) Architect
11 43 (4.76%) Full-Stack Developer
12 41 (4.54%) Senior Developer
13 35 (3.87%) Test Automation Engineer
13 35 (3.87%) Test Manager
14 33 (3.65%) Test Leader
15 27 (2.99%) Automation Tester
16 25 (2.77%) QA Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 144 (15.93%) Terraform
2 139 (15.38%) REST
3 111 (12.28%) Playwright
4 107 (11.84%) Kafka
5 100 (11.06%) RESTful
6 96 (10.62%) React
7 80 (8.85%) Spring
8 69 (7.63%) .NET
8 69 (7.63%) Spring Boot
9 59 (6.53%) HTML
10 51 (5.64%) CSS
11 48 (5.31%) Node.js
12 34 (3.76%) PySpark
13 30 (3.32%) AngularJS
13 30 (3.32%) Middleware
14 28 (3.10%) JSON
14 28 (3.10%) XML
15 27 (2.99%) SOAP
16 23 (2.54%) HTML5
16 23 (2.54%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 147 (16.26%) Cloud Native
2 88 (9.73%) Distributed Systems
3 73 (8.08%) Product Ownership
4 34 (3.76%) Onboarding
5 29 (3.21%) AI Agents
6 27 (2.99%) Enterprise Software
7 25 (2.77%) Data Protection Act
8 18 (1.99%) Data Structures
8 18 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
8 18 (1.99%) Self-Motivation
9 17 (1.88%) Virtual Team
10 15 (1.66%) Mobile App
11 14 (1.55%) Fixed Income
12 12 (1.33%) Algorithms
13 11 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
14 10 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 10 (1.11%) Security Posture
15 9 (1.00%) SWIFT Messaging Network
16 8 (0.88%) Management Information System
16 8 (0.88%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 61 (6.75%) Linux
2 44 (4.87%) Unix
3 33 (3.65%) Windows
4 18 (1.99%) Android
5 17 (1.88%) Apple iOS
6 14 (1.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (0.77%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.44%) VMS
9 3 (0.33%) Solaris
9 3 (0.33%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.22%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.11%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 570 (63.05%) CI/CD
2 396 (43.81%) Agile
3 365 (40.38%) DevOps
4 192 (21.24%) AI
5 177 (19.58%) Infrastructure as Code
6 173 (19.14%) Problem-Solving
7 167 (18.47%) Microservices
8 163 (18.03%) Validation
9 162 (17.92%) Software Engineering
10 156 (17.26%) Continuous Improvement
11 144 (15.93%) Containerisation
11 144 (15.93%) Test Strategy
12 140 (15.49%) Observability
13 124 (13.72%) Scrum
14 115 (12.72%) TDD
15 111 (12.28%) Regression Testing
15 111 (12.28%) Stakeholder Management
16 106 (11.73%) User Acceptance Testing
17 102 (11.28%) Event-Driven
18 97 (10.73%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 310 (34.29%) Python
2 245 (27.10%) Java
2 245 (27.10%) SQL
3 140 (15.49%) JavaScript
4 122 (13.50%) TypeScript
5 82 (9.07%) C#
6 43 (4.76%) PowerShell
7 37 (4.09%) Bash
8 24 (2.65%) Bicep
9 22 (2.43%) Kotlin
10 16 (1.77%) Ruby
10 16 (1.77%) Scala
11 12 (1.33%) C++
11 12 (1.33%) PL/SQL
12 11 (1.22%) Apex Code
12 11 (1.22%) Go
13 9 (1.00%) Shell Script
13 9 (1.00%) VB.NET
14 7 (0.77%) Perl
14 7 (0.77%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 244 (26.99%) Security Cleared
2 217 (24.00%) SC Cleared
3 62 (6.86%) Degree
4 37 (4.09%) Computer Science Degree
5 32 (3.54%) ISTQB
6 26 (2.88%) DV Cleared
7 21 (2.32%) AWS Certification
8 20 (2.21%) BPSS Clearance
9 12 (1.33%) Azure Certification
10 9 (1.00%) ISEB
11 8 (0.88%) Master's Degree
12 7 (0.77%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 7 (0.77%) DBS Check
12 7 (0.77%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 6 (0.66%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 4 (0.44%) CISSP
15 3 (0.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 3 (0.33%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 3 (0.33%) PhD
16 2 (0.22%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 253 (27.99%) QA
2 72 (7.96%) Data Quality
3 44 (4.87%) Accessibility
4 20 (2.21%) GDPR
5 18 (1.99%) WCAG
6 12 (1.33%) ISO 20022
7 11 (1.22%) SLA
8 9 (1.00%) GRC
8 9 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 9 (1.00%) NIST
9 3 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.33%) EU AI Act
9 3 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.33%) Software Quality Assurance
10 2 (0.22%) ISO 9001
10 2 (0.22%) MiFID
10 2 (0.22%) NCSC
10 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.11%) GxP
11 1 (0.11%) HL7
System Software
1 170 (18.81%) Docker
2 11 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.66%) Active Directory
5 3 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.33%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.11%) Firmware
6 1 (0.11%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.11%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 166 (18.36%) Kubernetes
2 52 (5.75%) Grafana
3 43 (4.76%) Ansible
3 43 (4.76%) Prometheus
4 16 (1.77%) Puppet
5 14 (1.55%) Progress Chef
6 10 (1.11%) Kibana
7 9 (1.00%) Control-M
8 7 (0.77%) HP ALM
9 5 (0.55%) HP Fortify
10 4 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
11 3 (0.33%) Argo
11 3 (0.33%) Kustomize
11 3 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
11 3 (0.33%) Packer
12 2 (0.22%) Istio
13 1 (0.11%) Amdocs OSS
13 1 (0.11%) Rancher
13 1 (0.11%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 104 (11.50%) Microsoft
2 58 (6.42%) Oracle
3 41 (4.54%) Salesforce
4 39 (4.31%) Databricks
5 34 (3.76%) Google
6 29 (3.21%) ServiceNow
7 28 (3.10%) IBM
8 21 (2.32%) SAP
9 20 (2.21%) Splunk
10 18 (1.99%) UiPath
11 17 (1.88%) Informatica
12 15 (1.66%) Red Hat
13 14 (1.55%) Cisco
14 12 (1.33%) VMware
15 11 (1.22%) Dynatrace
15 11 (1.22%) HP
16 10 (1.11%) OpenAI
17 9 (1.00%) Foundry
17 9 (1.00%) SaltStack
18 8 (0.88%) OpenLink