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

6 months to
14 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 46 51
Rank change year-on-year +1 +5 -3
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 816 612 693
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.99% 4.73% 3.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.56% 5.20% 4.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 531 425 502
10th Percentile £325 £341 £380
25th Percentile £402 £408 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -7.27% -8.33%
75th Percentile £600 £656 £688
90th Percentile £700 £775 £773
England median daily rate £483 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -3.48% -4.76% -7.08%
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 £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +4.17%

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 14,689 11,780 16,107
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 89.80% 91.03% 88.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,858 7,852 11,511
10th Percentile £350 £350 £338
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -7.56%
75th Percentile £650 £680 £675
90th Percentile £750 £800 £788
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 228 159 347
10th Percentile £18.07 £20.36 £16.00
25th Percentile £21.87 £24.66 £19.42
Median hourly rate £35.50 £35.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year - +18.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £57.13 £53.75 £49.48
90th Percentile £70.75 £77.68 £69.05
England median hourly rate £30.32 £34.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -12.12% +6.15% -9.72%

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 14 March 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 14 March 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 +1 106 £525 +1.45% 77
West London -14 21 £450 +23.63% 8
South London -7 20 £513 +6.22% 8
East London +4 7 £445 +11.25% 9
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 (6.86%) Confluence
2 17 (2.08%) Apache Spark
3 14 (1.72%) Apache Airflow
4 8 (0.98%) Appian
5 5 (0.61%) Apache
5 5 (0.61%) SharePoint
6 4 (0.49%) Camunda
6 4 (0.49%) CMS
7 3 (0.37%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.37%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.25%) Magnolia
8 2 (0.25%) nginx
8 2 (0.25%) Sitecore CMS
8 2 (0.25%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.25%) WordPress
9 1 (0.12%) Anypoint
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 20 (2.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
3 6 (0.74%) 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 24 (2.94%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.74%) Loan IQ
3 5 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.61%) Shopify
4 4 (0.49%) SAP HR
5 3 (0.37%) BambooHR
5 3 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
6 2 (0.25%) iTrent
6 2 (0.25%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.25%) Summit
7 1 (0.12%) Algo Collateral
7 1 (0.12%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.12%) CODA-Financials
7 1 (0.12%) Findur
7 1 (0.12%) Infor CloudSuite
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
1 259 (31.74%) Azure
2 198 (24.26%) AWS
3 135 (16.54%) GitHub
4 121 (14.83%) Azure DevOps
5 81 (9.93%) GCP
6 60 (7.35%) GitHub Actions
7 58 (7.11%) Serverless
8 35 (4.29%) Power Platform
9 33 (4.04%) Snowflake
10 31 (3.80%) AWS Lambda
11 30 (3.68%) Amazon S3
11 30 (3.68%) Azure Data Factory
12 27 (3.31%) Azure AKS
13 21 (2.57%) Dynamics 365
13 21 (2.57%) SaaS
14 18 (2.21%) Power Automate
15 17 (2.08%) Amazon ECS
15 17 (2.08%) Amazon EKS
15 17 (2.08%) Apigee
15 17 (2.08%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 11 (1.35%) Firewall
2 9 (1.10%) HTTP
2 9 (1.10%) WAN
3 8 (0.98%) SSL
4 7 (0.86%) DNS
4 7 (0.86%) SD-WAN
4 7 (0.86%) TCP/IP
5 6 (0.74%) VPN
6 5 (0.61%) Cisco IPT
6 5 (0.61%) HTTPS
7 4 (0.49%) FTP
7 4 (0.49%) Multicast
7 4 (0.49%) WebEx
8 3 (0.37%) DHCP
8 3 (0.37%) Ethernet
9 2 (0.25%) Cisco IOS
9 2 (0.25%) DSL
9 2 (0.25%) Network Security
9 2 (0.25%) SNMP
9 2 (0.25%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (5.88%) PostgreSQL
2 46 (5.64%) SQL Server
3 32 (3.92%) NoSQL
4 26 (3.19%) Relational Database
5 25 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
6 23 (2.82%) BigQuery
7 22 (2.70%) MongoDB
8 21 (2.57%) Power BI
9 18 (2.21%) Tableau
10 13 (1.59%) Data Lake
11 12 (1.47%) DynamoDB
12 11 (1.35%) Amazon RDS
12 11 (1.35%) Oracle Database
12 11 (1.35%) Redis
13 10 (1.23%) Amazon Athena
13 10 (1.23%) Big Data
13 10 (1.23%) Metadata
14 9 (1.10%) Azure SQL Database
14 9 (1.10%) Pinecone
15 8 (0.98%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 142 (17.40%) JIRA
2 136 (16.67%) Git
3 112 (13.73%) Selenium
4 107 (13.11%) Jenkins
5 90 (11.03%) GitLab
6 63 (7.72%) Cucumber
7 54 (6.62%) Postman
8 52 (6.37%) Cypress.io
9 36 (4.41%) REST Assured
10 34 (4.17%) JMeter
11 33 (4.04%) SpecFlow
12 30 (3.68%) JUnit
13 19 (2.33%) MLflow
14 18 (2.21%) Bitbucket
15 15 (1.84%) Appium
16 14 (1.72%) WebDriver
17 13 (1.59%) TestRail
18 12 (1.47%) Maven
19 11 (1.35%) Zephyr
20 10 (1.23%) Gradle
General
1 217 (26.59%) Social Skills
2 192 (23.53%) Finance
3 106 (12.99%) Banking
4 95 (11.64%) Public Sector
5 82 (10.05%) Analytical Skills
6 29 (3.55%) Investment Banking
7 26 (3.19%) Front Office
8 16 (1.96%) Pharmaceutical
9 13 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 12 (1.47%) Legal
11 10 (1.23%) Documentation Skills
12 9 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
12 9 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
13 8 (0.98%) Financial Institution
13 8 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
13 8 (0.98%) Telecoms
14 7 (0.86%) Billing
15 5 (0.61%) Back Office
15 5 (0.61%) Retail
16 4 (0.49%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 173 (21.20%) Developer
2 158 (19.36%) Senior
3 91 (11.15%) Tester
4 89 (10.91%) Lead
5 66 (8.09%) Test Engineer
6 58 (7.11%) Automation Tester
7 54 (6.62%) Analyst
8 46 (5.64%) QA Engineer
9 43 (5.27%) Architect
10 37 (4.53%) Automation Engineer
10 37 (4.53%) Senior Developer
11 35 (4.29%) Data Engineer
12 34 (4.17%) Test Automation Engineer
13 29 (3.55%) DevOps Engineer
13 29 (3.55%) Java Developer
13 29 (3.55%) Software Engineer
13 29 (3.55%) Test Analyst
14 25 (3.06%) Test Manager
15 24 (2.94%) Python Developer
16 23 (2.82%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 122 (14.95%) Playwright
2 89 (10.91%) React
3 88 (10.78%) REST
4 75 (9.19%) .NET
5 71 (8.70%) RESTful
6 70 (8.58%) Node.js
7 63 (7.72%) Kafka
8 38 (4.66%) pytest
8 38 (4.66%) Spring
9 36 (4.41%) Web Services
10 35 (4.29%) HTML
10 35 (4.29%) Spring Boot
11 34 (4.17%) CSS
12 29 (3.55%) OAuth
13 26 (3.19%) FastAPI
14 24 (2.94%) GraphQL
15 22 (2.70%) Middleware
16 21 (2.57%) AngularJS
17 20 (2.45%) JSON
17 20 (2.45%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 102 (12.50%) Cloud Native
2 51 (6.25%) Product Ownership
3 36 (4.41%) Distributed Systems
4 35 (4.29%) Legacy Systems
5 26 (3.19%) Algorithms
6 22 (2.70%) Data Protection Act
6 22 (2.70%) Data Structures
6 22 (2.70%) Equities
7 20 (2.45%) Virtual Team
8 18 (2.21%) Greenfield Project
8 18 (2.21%) Mobile App
9 16 (1.96%) Fixed Income
9 16 (1.96%) Management Information System
9 16 (1.96%) Onboarding
10 14 (1.72%) Derivative
10 14 (1.72%) Genomics
10 14 (1.72%) Life Science
11 10 (1.23%) Public Cloud
12 9 (1.10%) Low-Code
12 9 (1.10%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 48 (5.88%) Linux
2 34 (4.17%) Windows
3 20 (2.45%) Android
4 19 (2.33%) Apple iOS
5 9 (1.10%) Unix
6 5 (0.61%) Mac OS
6 5 (0.61%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.25%) Solaris
7 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
7 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
7 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
8 1 (0.12%) Kali Linux
8 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 445 (54.53%) CI/CD
2 357 (43.75%) Agile
3 312 (38.24%) DevOps
4 169 (20.71%) Problem-Solving
5 140 (17.16%) AI
6 119 (14.58%) Containerisation
7 115 (14.09%) Continuous Improvement
8 111 (13.60%) Observability
9 109 (13.36%) Test Strategy
10 107 (13.11%) Test Scripting
11 105 (12.87%) Infrastructure as Code
12 104 (12.75%) Microservices
13 102 (12.50%) Software Engineering
14 101 (12.38%) Validation
15 97 (11.89%) Software Testing
16 88 (10.78%) Regression Testing
17 85 (10.42%) Analytics
18 82 (10.05%) Scrum
18 82 (10.05%) Stakeholder Management
19 81 (9.93%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 294 (36.03%) Python
2 203 (24.88%) SQL
3 162 (19.85%) Java
4 157 (19.24%) TypeScript
5 142 (17.40%) JavaScript
6 117 (14.34%) C#
7 26 (3.19%) PowerShell
8 21 (2.57%) C++
9 17 (2.08%) Bash
10 15 (1.84%) Bicep
11 14 (1.72%) Apex Code
12 13 (1.59%) Kotlin
13 12 (1.47%) PL/SQL
13 12 (1.47%) Ruby
14 10 (1.23%) Go
15 8 (0.98%) Rust
16 7 (0.86%) Swift
16 7 (0.86%) T-SQL
17 6 (0.74%) Shell Script
18 4 (0.49%) C
Qualifications
1 161 (19.73%) Security Cleared
2 136 (16.67%) SC Cleared
3 56 (6.86%) Degree
4 38 (4.66%) ISTQB
5 26 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
6 23 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
7 14 (1.72%) Master's Degree
8 10 (1.23%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 7 (0.86%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (0.74%) Azure Certification
11 5 (0.61%) DBS Check
11 5 (0.61%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 5 (0.61%) OSCP
12 4 (0.49%) CEH
12 4 (0.49%) DV Cleared
12 4 (0.49%) ISEB
12 4 (0.49%) SANS
13 3 (0.37%) AWS Certification
13 3 (0.37%) CREST Certified
14 2 (0.25%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 199 (24.39%) QA
2 46 (5.64%) Accessibility
2 46 (5.64%) Data Quality
3 19 (2.33%) GDPR
4 15 (1.84%) WCAG
5 12 (1.47%) NIST
6 8 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 7 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.74%) NCSC
9 5 (0.61%) MiFID
9 5 (0.61%) PERC
9 5 (0.61%) SLA
10 4 (0.49%) HL7
10 4 (0.49%) ISO 20022
11 3 (0.37%) EU AI Act
11 3 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 3 (0.37%) NIST 800
11 3 (0.37%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.37%) Software Quality Assurance
12 2 (0.25%) GMP
System Software
1 168 (20.59%) Docker
2 7 (0.86%) Active Directory
3 4 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
3 4 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
4 3 (0.37%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
5 2 (0.25%) 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
1 141 (17.28%) Kubernetes
2 94 (11.52%) Terraform
3 30 (3.68%) Grafana
4 26 (3.19%) Prometheus
5 24 (2.94%) Ansible
6 10 (1.23%) HP ALM
7 6 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
8 3 (0.37%) Kibana
8 3 (0.37%) Puppet
8 3 (0.37%) Rancher
9 2 (0.25%) Amdocs OSS
9 2 (0.25%) HP Quality Center
9 2 (0.25%) Istio
9 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.25%) Nmap
9 2 (0.25%) Oracle RMAN
9 2 (0.25%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.25%) SCCM
10 1 (0.12%) Argo
10 1 (0.12%) linkerd
Vendors
1 78 (9.56%) Microsoft
2 53 (6.50%) Oracle
3 48 (5.88%) Databricks
4 41 (5.02%) Salesforce
5 36 (4.41%) Google
6 23 (2.82%) ServiceNow
7 16 (1.96%) SAP
8 14 (1.72%) OpenAI
9 12 (1.47%) MuleSoft
9 12 (1.47%) Splunk
10 11 (1.35%) Dynatrace
10 11 (1.35%) UiPath
11 10 (1.23%) Apple
11 10 (1.23%) Guidewire
11 10 (1.23%) HP
12 9 (1.10%) Charles River
12 9 (1.10%) Workday
13 8 (0.98%) Automation Anywhere
13 8 (0.98%) Citrix
13 8 (0.98%) IBM