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

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 45 52
Rank change year-on-year -1 +7 -4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 822 609 701
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.84% 4.84% 3.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.42% 5.29% 4.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 530 420 491
10th Percentile £325 £341 £363
25th Percentile £409 £406 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% -6.38%
75th Percentile £600 £656 £688
90th Percentile £713 £775 £775
England median daily rate £488 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -2.50% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 7
10th Percentile £55.99 - -
25th Percentile £58.15 - £52.50
Median hourly rate £63.50 - £55.00
75th Percentile £65.88 - £61.25
90th Percentile £66.25 - £65.40
England median hourly rate £65.50 £56.75 £57.50
% change year-on-year +15.42% -1.30% -8.00%

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 15,175 11,511 15,917
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 89.43% 91.41% 88.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,190 7,798 11,384
10th Percentile £353 £350 £338
25th Percentile £425 £440 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -6.78%
75th Percentile £650 £681 £675
90th Percentile £751 £800 £788
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 236 167 333
10th Percentile £18.07 £18.65 £16.00
25th Percentile £22.16 £24.66 £19.57
Median hourly rate £35.50 £35.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% +16.67% -23.08%
75th Percentile £57.10 £50.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £64.25 £67.80
England median hourly rate £37.50 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +15.38% - -13.33%

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 3 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 3 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 +3 109 £525 +2.94% 65
West London -18 22 £450 +19.05% 5
South London -5 21 £513 +4.59% 7
East London +7 11 £445 +11.25% 8
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 55 (6.69%) Confluence
2 16 (1.95%) Apache Airflow
3 13 (1.58%) Apache Spark
4 8 (0.97%) Appian
5 5 (0.61%) Apache
5 5 (0.61%) Camunda
6 4 (0.49%) CMS
6 4 (0.49%) nginx
6 4 (0.49%) SharePoint
6 4 (0.49%) Tomcat
6 4 (0.49%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
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 (2.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
3 6 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.12%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 22 (2.68%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.73%) Findur
2 6 (0.73%) Loan IQ
2 6 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.61%) Shopify
4 4 (0.49%) SAP HR
5 3 (0.36%) BambooHR
5 3 (0.36%) Distributed Ledger
5 3 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
6 2 (0.24%) iTrent
6 2 (0.24%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.24%) Summit
7 1 (0.12%) Algo Collateral
7 1 (0.12%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.12%) CODA-Financials
7 1 (0.12%) Infor M3
7 1 (0.12%) IntelliMatch
7 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
7 1 (0.12%) PORTIA
7 1 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 251 (30.54%) Azure
2 193 (23.48%) AWS
3 133 (16.18%) GitHub
4 120 (14.60%) Azure DevOps
5 69 (8.39%) GCP
6 59 (7.18%) GitHub Actions
7 53 (6.45%) Serverless
8 31 (3.77%) Power Platform
8 31 (3.77%) Snowflake
9 30 (3.65%) AWS Lambda
10 29 (3.53%) Amazon S3
11 28 (3.41%) Azure AKS
12 27 (3.28%) Azure Data Factory
13 19 (2.31%) Dynamics 365
14 18 (2.19%) Amazon ECS
14 18 (2.19%) Azure Monitor
14 18 (2.19%) SaaS
15 17 (2.07%) Apigee
15 17 (2.07%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 17 (2.07%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 12 (1.46%) HTTP
2 6 (0.73%) Firewall
2 6 (0.73%) SSL
3 5 (0.61%) Cisco IPT
3 5 (0.61%) DNS
3 5 (0.61%) Multicast
3 5 (0.61%) TCP/IP
4 4 (0.49%) Ethernet
4 4 (0.49%) FTP
4 4 (0.49%) WAN
4 4 (0.49%) WebEx
5 3 (0.36%) DHCP
5 3 (0.36%) HTTPS
6 2 (0.24%) Cisco IOS
6 2 (0.24%) DSL
6 2 (0.24%) NaaS
6 2 (0.24%) SD-WAN
6 2 (0.24%) SNMP
6 2 (0.24%) Wireshark
7 1 (0.12%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (5.84%) SQL Server
2 42 (5.11%) PostgreSQL
3 35 (4.26%) NoSQL
4 27 (3.28%) MongoDB
5 26 (3.16%) Relational Database
6 24 (2.92%) Data Warehouse
7 23 (2.80%) BigQuery
8 18 (2.19%) DynamoDB
8 18 (2.19%) Tableau
9 17 (2.07%) Power BI
10 13 (1.58%) Metadata
11 12 (1.46%) Amazon Athena
11 12 (1.46%) Redis
12 11 (1.34%) Big Data
12 11 (1.34%) Oracle Database
13 10 (1.22%) Amazon RDS
13 10 (1.22%) Data Lake
14 9 (1.09%) Pinecone
15 8 (0.97%) Amazon Redshift
16 7 (0.85%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 147 (17.88%) JIRA
2 139 (16.91%) Git
3 113 (13.75%) Selenium
4 94 (11.44%) Jenkins
5 75 (9.12%) GitLab
6 59 (7.18%) Cucumber
7 52 (6.33%) Cypress.io
8 51 (6.20%) Postman
9 38 (4.62%) REST Assured
10 30 (3.65%) JMeter
10 30 (3.65%) SpecFlow
11 29 (3.53%) JUnit
12 20 (2.43%) MLflow
13 18 (2.19%) Bitbucket
14 16 (1.95%) Appium
15 15 (1.82%) Maven
16 14 (1.70%) TestRail
16 14 (1.70%) Zephyr
17 13 (1.58%) WebDriver
18 12 (1.46%) Mockito
General
1 220 (26.76%) Social Skills
2 202 (24.57%) Finance
3 110 (13.38%) Banking
4 106 (12.90%) Public Sector
5 89 (10.83%) Analytical Skills
6 30 (3.65%) Front Office
7 29 (3.53%) Investment Banking
8 14 (1.70%) Legal
9 13 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 11 (1.34%) Documentation Skills
10 11 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
10 11 (1.34%) Pharmaceutical
11 10 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
12 9 (1.09%) Financial Institution
12 9 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
12 9 (1.09%) Telecoms
13 7 (0.85%) Back Office
13 7 (0.85%) Billing
13 7 (0.85%) Publishing
14 6 (0.73%) Retail
Job Titles
1 186 (22.63%) Developer
2 160 (19.46%) Senior
3 92 (11.19%) Tester
4 87 (10.58%) Lead
5 67 (8.15%) Test Engineer
6 59 (7.18%) Automation Tester
7 56 (6.81%) Analyst
8 49 (5.96%) QA Engineer
9 43 (5.23%) Senior Developer
10 41 (4.99%) Architect
11 36 (4.38%) Java Developer
12 35 (4.26%) Automation Engineer
13 34 (4.14%) Test Automation Engineer
14 33 (4.01%) DevOps Engineer
15 31 (3.77%) Data Engineer
16 29 (3.53%) Test Analyst
17 26 (3.16%) Test Manager
18 24 (2.92%) Python Developer
18 24 (2.92%) Software Engineer
19 23 (2.80%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 114 (13.87%) Playwright
2 89 (10.83%) React
2 89 (10.83%) REST
3 72 (8.76%) Node.js
4 71 (8.64%) RESTful
5 63 (7.66%) .NET
6 59 (7.18%) Kafka
7 46 (5.60%) Spring
8 43 (5.23%) Spring Boot
9 33 (4.01%) HTML
9 33 (4.01%) Web Services
10 32 (3.89%) pytest
11 31 (3.77%) CSS
12 28 (3.41%) OAuth
13 25 (3.04%) AngularJS
14 22 (2.68%) FastAPI
15 21 (2.55%) GraphQL
16 20 (2.43%) Gherkin
17 19 (2.31%) JSON
17 19 (2.31%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 92 (11.19%) Cloud Native
2 52 (6.33%) Product Ownership
3 44 (5.35%) Distributed Systems
4 33 (4.01%) Legacy Systems
5 27 (3.28%) Algorithms
6 24 (2.92%) Data Protection Act
7 21 (2.55%) Equities
8 20 (2.43%) Data Structures
9 19 (2.31%) Onboarding
9 19 (2.31%) Virtual Team
10 17 (2.07%) Fixed Income
10 17 (2.07%) Greenfield Project
10 17 (2.07%) Management Information System
11 16 (1.95%) Mobile App
12 13 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
13 12 (1.46%) Derivative
14 11 (1.34%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 10 (1.22%) Life Science
16 9 (1.09%) Enterprise Software
16 9 (1.09%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 45 (5.47%) Linux
2 35 (4.26%) Windows
3 20 (2.43%) Android
4 18 (2.19%) Apple iOS
5 8 (0.97%) Unix
6 6 (0.73%) Windows Server
7 5 (0.61%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.49%) Solaris
8 4 (0.49%) 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%) Kali Linux
10 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 438 (53.28%) CI/CD
2 344 (41.85%) Agile
3 297 (36.13%) DevOps
4 167 (20.32%) Problem-Solving
5 135 (16.42%) AI
6 119 (14.48%) Containerisation
7 115 (13.99%) Observability
8 112 (13.63%) Microservices
9 111 (13.50%) Continuous Improvement
10 110 (13.38%) Infrastructure as Code
11 105 (12.77%) Test Strategy
12 104 (12.65%) Test Scripting
12 104 (12.65%) Validation
13 98 (11.92%) Regression Testing
13 98 (11.92%) Software Testing
14 92 (11.19%) Software Engineering
15 88 (10.71%) User Acceptance Testing
16 84 (10.22%) Analytics
17 81 (9.85%) Stakeholder Management
18 79 (9.61%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 271 (32.97%) Python
2 205 (24.94%) SQL
3 169 (20.56%) Java
4 147 (17.88%) TypeScript
5 132 (16.06%) JavaScript
6 113 (13.75%) C#
7 25 (3.04%) PowerShell
8 19 (2.31%) Apex Code
9 18 (2.19%) Bash
9 18 (2.19%) C++
10 16 (1.95%) Ruby
11 13 (1.58%) Bicep
11 13 (1.58%) PL/SQL
12 12 (1.46%) Kotlin
13 9 (1.09%) Go
14 8 (0.97%) T-SQL
15 7 (0.85%) Swift
16 6 (0.73%) Rust
16 6 (0.73%) Shell Script
17 4 (0.49%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 177 (21.53%) Security Cleared
2 151 (18.37%) SC Cleared
3 53 (6.45%) Degree
4 39 (4.74%) ISTQB
5 27 (3.28%) Computer Science Degree
6 26 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
7 11 (1.34%) Master's Degree
8 9 (1.09%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 6 (0.73%) DBS Check
9 6 (0.73%) DV Cleared
10 5 (0.61%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 5 (0.61%) OSCP
11 4 (0.49%) Azure Certification
11 4 (0.49%) CEH
11 4 (0.49%) ISEB
11 4 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
11 4 (0.49%) SANS
12 3 (0.36%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.36%) CREST Certified
13 2 (0.24%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 202 (24.57%) QA
2 48 (5.84%) Data Quality
3 44 (5.35%) Accessibility
4 20 (2.43%) GDPR
5 18 (2.19%) WCAG
6 9 (1.09%) NIST
7 8 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 7 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 6 (0.73%) NCSC
10 5 (0.61%) MiFID
10 5 (0.61%) PERC
10 5 (0.61%) SLA
11 4 (0.49%) HL7
11 4 (0.49%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 4 (0.49%) ISO 20022
11 4 (0.49%) Software Quality Assurance
12 3 (0.36%) NIST 800
12 3 (0.36%) PCI DSS
13 1 (0.12%) HIPAA
13 1 (0.12%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 153 (18.61%) Docker
2 6 (0.73%) Active Directory
2 6 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
3 5 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.49%) Oracle RAC
4 4 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.12%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.12%) Firmware
6 1 (0.12%) Squid
6 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 133 (16.18%) Kubernetes
2 91 (11.07%) Terraform
3 32 (3.89%) Grafana
4 29 (3.53%) Prometheus
5 15 (1.82%) Ansible
6 12 (1.46%) HP ALM
7 6 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.49%) Oracle RMAN
8 4 (0.49%) Puppet
9 3 (0.36%) Kibana
9 3 (0.36%) Rancher
10 2 (0.24%) Amdocs OSS
10 2 (0.24%) Istio
10 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (0.24%) Nmap
10 2 (0.24%) Progress Chef
10 2 (0.24%) SCCM
11 1 (0.12%) CloudHub
11 1 (0.12%) HP Quality Center
11 1 (0.12%) Nessus
Vendors
1 76 (9.25%) Microsoft
2 57 (6.93%) Oracle
3 50 (6.08%) Salesforce
4 42 (5.11%) Databricks
5 31 (3.77%) Google
6 22 (2.68%) ServiceNow
7 17 (2.07%) SAP
8 13 (1.58%) OpenAI
9 12 (1.46%) Dynatrace
9 12 (1.46%) HP
9 12 (1.46%) MuleSoft
9 12 (1.46%) Splunk
10 11 (1.34%) IBM
11 10 (1.22%) UiPath
11 10 (1.22%) Workday
12 9 (1.09%) Apple
12 9 (1.09%) Guidewire
13 8 (0.97%) Automation Anywhere
13 8 (0.97%) Citrix
13 8 (0.97%) VMware