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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 47 52
Rank change year-on-year +2 +5 -4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 806 615 695
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.98% 4.76% 3.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.54% 5.23% 4.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 527 425 504
10th Percentile £325 £341 £375
25th Percentile £400 £408 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £675
90th Percentile £700 £770 £750
England median daily rate £481 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -3.75% -4.76% -7.49%
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% +9.65%

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 14,548 11,757 16,125
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 89.83% 91.07% 88.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,771 7,824 11,523
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% - -6.78%
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 221 159 352
10th Percentile £18.07 £20.36 £16.00
25th Percentile £21.46 £24.66 £19.54
Median hourly rate £35.50 £35.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year - +18.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £56.96 £53.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £77.68 £69.95
England median hourly rate £30.00 £34.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -13.04% +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 12 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 12 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 -2 104 £525 +1.45% 79
South London -5 20 £513 +6.22% 4
West London -14 20 £450 +26.05% 8
East London +4 7 £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 (6.82%) Confluence
2 16 (1.99%) Apache Spark
3 14 (1.74%) Apache Airflow
4 8 (0.99%) Appian
5 5 (0.62%) Apache
5 5 (0.62%) SharePoint
6 4 (0.50%) Camunda
6 4 (0.50%) 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 (2.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
3 6 (0.74%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.12%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 22 (2.73%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.74%) Loan IQ
3 5 (0.62%) Shopify
4 4 (0.50%) Oracle EBS
4 4 (0.50%) 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%) Infor CloudSuite
7 1 (0.12%) Infor LN
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
1 254 (31.51%) Azure
2 194 (24.07%) AWS
3 132 (16.38%) GitHub
4 118 (14.64%) Azure DevOps
5 78 (9.68%) GCP
6 60 (7.44%) GitHub Actions
7 56 (6.95%) Serverless
8 35 (4.34%) Power Platform
9 33 (4.09%) Snowflake
10 30 (3.72%) Azure Data Factory
11 29 (3.60%) AWS Lambda
12 28 (3.47%) Amazon S3
13 27 (3.35%) Azure AKS
14 21 (2.61%) Dynamics 365
15 20 (2.48%) SaaS
16 18 (2.23%) Power Automate
17 17 (2.11%) Apigee
17 17 (2.11%) Azure Cosmos DB
18 16 (1.99%) Amazon ECS
18 16 (1.99%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (1.36%) Firewall
2 9 (1.12%) HTTP
3 8 (0.99%) SSL
3 8 (0.99%) WAN
4 7 (0.87%) DNS
4 7 (0.87%) SD-WAN
4 7 (0.87%) TCP/IP
5 6 (0.74%) VPN
6 5 (0.62%) Cisco IPT
6 5 (0.62%) HTTPS
7 4 (0.50%) FTP
7 4 (0.50%) Multicast
7 4 (0.50%) 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%) SNMP
9 2 (0.25%) Wireshark
10 1 (0.12%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (5.96%) PostgreSQL
2 46 (5.71%) SQL Server
3 31 (3.85%) NoSQL
4 26 (3.23%) Relational Database
5 25 (3.10%) Data Warehouse
6 23 (2.85%) BigQuery
7 21 (2.61%) MongoDB
7 21 (2.61%) Power BI
8 18 (2.23%) Tableau
9 13 (1.61%) Data Lake
10 11 (1.36%) DynamoDB
10 11 (1.36%) Oracle Database
10 11 (1.36%) Redis
11 10 (1.24%) Big Data
11 10 (1.24%) Metadata
12 9 (1.12%) Amazon Athena
12 9 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
12 9 (1.12%) Azure SQL Database
12 9 (1.12%) Pinecone
13 8 (0.99%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 138 (17.12%) JIRA
2 134 (16.63%) Git
3 110 (13.65%) Selenium
4 106 (13.15%) Jenkins
5 88 (10.92%) GitLab
6 63 (7.82%) Cucumber
7 51 (6.33%) Postman
8 50 (6.20%) Cypress.io
9 34 (4.22%) REST Assured
10 33 (4.09%) JMeter
10 33 (4.09%) SpecFlow
11 30 (3.72%) JUnit
12 19 (2.36%) MLflow
13 17 (2.11%) Bitbucket
14 14 (1.74%) WebDriver
15 13 (1.61%) Appium
15 13 (1.61%) TestRail
16 12 (1.49%) Maven
17 10 (1.24%) Gatling
17 10 (1.24%) Zephyr
General
1 214 (26.55%) Social Skills
2 189 (23.45%) Finance
3 104 (12.90%) Banking
4 91 (11.29%) Public Sector
5 78 (9.68%) Analytical Skills
6 29 (3.60%) Investment Banking
7 23 (2.85%) Front Office
8 16 (1.99%) Pharmaceutical
9 13 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 11 (1.36%) Legal
11 10 (1.24%) Documentation Skills
12 9 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
13 8 (0.99%) Financial Institution
13 8 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
13 8 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
14 7 (0.87%) Telecoms
15 6 (0.74%) Billing
16 5 (0.62%) Retail
17 4 (0.50%) Military
17 4 (0.50%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 171 (21.22%) Developer
2 159 (19.73%) Senior
3 92 (11.41%) Tester
4 89 (11.04%) Lead
5 65 (8.06%) Test Engineer
6 58 (7.20%) Automation Tester
7 53 (6.58%) Analyst
8 46 (5.71%) QA Engineer
9 40 (4.96%) Architect
10 38 (4.71%) Senior Developer
11 36 (4.47%) Automation Engineer
12 35 (4.34%) Data Engineer
13 33 (4.09%) Test Automation Engineer
14 30 (3.72%) Java Developer
15 29 (3.60%) Software Engineer
16 28 (3.47%) DevOps Engineer
16 28 (3.47%) Test Analyst
17 24 (2.98%) Test Manager
18 23 (2.85%) Python Developer
18 23 (2.85%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (15.01%) Playwright
2 88 (10.92%) React
3 85 (10.55%) REST
4 75 (9.31%) .NET
5 71 (8.81%) Node.js
6 70 (8.68%) RESTful
7 62 (7.69%) Kafka
8 39 (4.84%) Spring
9 38 (4.71%) pytest
10 36 (4.47%) Web Services
11 34 (4.22%) HTML
11 34 (4.22%) Spring Boot
12 33 (4.09%) CSS
13 29 (3.60%) OAuth
14 25 (3.10%) FastAPI
15 23 (2.85%) GraphQL
16 22 (2.73%) Middleware
17 20 (2.48%) AngularJS
18 19 (2.36%) Jest
18 19 (2.36%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 97 (12.03%) Cloud Native
2 50 (6.20%) Product Ownership
3 34 (4.22%) Legacy Systems
4 33 (4.09%) Distributed Systems
5 26 (3.23%) Algorithms
6 22 (2.73%) Data Structures
6 22 (2.73%) Equities
7 20 (2.48%) Data Protection Act
8 19 (2.36%) Mobile App
8 19 (2.36%) Virtual Team
9 18 (2.23%) Greenfield Project
10 16 (1.99%) Fixed Income
10 16 (1.99%) Onboarding
11 15 (1.86%) Management Information System
12 14 (1.74%) Derivative
12 14 (1.74%) Genomics
12 14 (1.74%) Life Science
13 10 (1.24%) Public Cloud
14 9 (1.12%) Low-Code
14 9 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 49 (6.08%) Linux
2 34 (4.22%) Windows
3 20 (2.48%) Android
4 19 (2.36%) Apple iOS
5 9 (1.12%) Unix
6 5 (0.62%) Mac OS
6 5 (0.62%) 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
1 442 (54.84%) CI/CD
2 352 (43.67%) Agile
3 307 (38.09%) DevOps
4 166 (20.60%) Problem-Solving
5 136 (16.87%) AI
6 118 (14.64%) Containerisation
7 114 (14.14%) Continuous Improvement
8 108 (13.40%) Test Strategy
9 107 (13.28%) Observability
9 107 (13.28%) Test Scripting
10 104 (12.90%) Microservices
11 103 (12.78%) Infrastructure as Code
12 101 (12.53%) Software Engineering
13 99 (12.28%) Validation
14 94 (11.66%) Software Testing
15 86 (10.67%) Regression Testing
16 83 (10.30%) Analytics
17 81 (10.05%) Data Modelling
17 81 (10.05%) Scrum
18 80 (9.93%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 290 (35.98%) Python
2 202 (25.06%) SQL
3 159 (19.73%) Java
4 156 (19.35%) TypeScript
5 142 (17.62%) JavaScript
6 116 (14.39%) C#
7 25 (3.10%) PowerShell
8 20 (2.48%) C++
9 16 (1.99%) Bash
10 14 (1.74%) Apex Code
10 14 (1.74%) Bicep
11 13 (1.61%) Kotlin
12 12 (1.49%) PL/SQL
13 11 (1.36%) Ruby
14 10 (1.24%) Go
15 8 (0.99%) Rust
16 7 (0.87%) Swift
16 7 (0.87%) T-SQL
17 6 (0.74%) Shell Script
18 4 (0.50%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 158 (19.60%) Security Cleared
2 134 (16.63%) SC Cleared
3 55 (6.82%) Degree
4 36 (4.47%) ISTQB
5 26 (3.23%) Computer Science Degree
6 23 (2.85%) BPSS Clearance
7 14 (1.74%) Master's Degree
8 10 (1.24%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 7 (0.87%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (0.74%) Azure Certification
11 5 (0.62%) DBS Check
11 5 (0.62%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 5 (0.62%) OSCP
12 4 (0.50%) CEH
12 4 (0.50%) DV Cleared
12 4 (0.50%) ISEB
12 4 (0.50%) SANS
13 3 (0.37%) CREST Certified
14 2 (0.25%) AWS Certification
14 2 (0.25%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 197 (24.44%) QA
2 46 (5.71%) Data Quality
3 45 (5.58%) Accessibility
4 19 (2.36%) GDPR
5 14 (1.74%) WCAG
6 12 (1.49%) NIST
7 8 (0.99%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 7 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 6 (0.74%) NCSC
10 5 (0.62%) MiFID
10 5 (0.62%) PERC
11 4 (0.50%) HL7
11 4 (0.50%) ISO 20022
11 4 (0.50%) SLA
12 3 (0.37%) EU AI Act
12 3 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.37%) NIST 800
12 3 (0.37%) PCI DSS
12 3 (0.37%) Software Quality Assurance
13 2 (0.25%) GMP
System Software
1 166 (20.60%) Docker
2 7 (0.87%) Active Directory
3 4 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
3 4 (0.50%) 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
1 138 (17.12%) Kubernetes
2 92 (11.41%) Terraform
3 29 (3.60%) Grafana
4 25 (3.10%) Ansible
4 25 (3.10%) Prometheus
5 9 (1.12%) HP ALM
6 6 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.37%) Kibana
7 3 (0.37%) Progress Chef
7 3 (0.37%) Puppet
7 3 (0.37%) Rancher
8 2 (0.25%) HP Quality Center
8 2 (0.25%) Istio
8 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (0.25%) Nmap
8 2 (0.25%) Oracle RMAN
8 2 (0.25%) SCCM
9 1 (0.12%) Argo
9 1 (0.12%) CloudHub
9 1 (0.12%) Nessus
Vendors
1 78 (9.68%) Microsoft
2 51 (6.33%) Oracle
3 49 (6.08%) Databricks
4 42 (5.21%) Salesforce
5 36 (4.47%) Google
6 22 (2.73%) ServiceNow
7 16 (1.99%) SAP
8 14 (1.74%) OpenAI
9 12 (1.49%) MuleSoft
9 12 (1.49%) Splunk
10 11 (1.36%) Guidewire
10 11 (1.36%) UiPath
11 10 (1.24%) Apple
11 10 (1.24%) Dynatrace
12 9 (1.12%) Charles River
12 9 (1.12%) HP
12 9 (1.12%) Workday
13 8 (0.99%) Citrix
13 8 (0.99%) IBM
13 8 (0.99%) VMware