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

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 46 53
Rank change year-on-year 0 +7 -5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 835 624 690
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.77% 4.90% 3.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.37% 5.33% 4.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 539 424 484
10th Percentile £325 £341 £366
25th Percentile £409 £406 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% -6.38%
75th Percentile £588 £663 £688
90th Percentile £700 £784 £775
England median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 7
10th Percentile £55.99 - -
25th Percentile £58.15 - £52.50
Median hourly rate £63.50 £35.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +81.43% -36.36% -35.29%
75th Percentile £65.88 - £61.25
90th Percentile £66.25 - £65.40
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -8.33% -

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 15,550 11,711 15,802
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.85% 91.99% 88.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,406 7,955 11,321
10th Percentile £355 £350 £338
25th Percentile £430 £438 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -6.78%
75th Percentile £650 £685 £675
90th Percentile £756 £806 £800
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 168 333
10th Percentile £18.66 £16.48 £15.96
25th Percentile £25.15 £23.57 £19.92
Median hourly rate £35.50 £34.58 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.68% +15.25% -23.08%
75th Percentile £57.50 £50.75 £47.75
90th Percentile £73.15 £63.75 £66.70
England median hourly rate £42.50 £31.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.10% -11.43% -6.67%

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 23 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 23 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 +6 111 £525 +5.00% 38
West London -19 22 £450 +14.80% 15
South London -6 19 £513 +24.24% 17
East London +4 11 £445 +11.25% 18
North London - 1 £400 - 2
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 52 (6.23%) Confluence
2 22 (2.63%) Apache Airflow
3 19 (2.28%) Apache Spark
4 8 (0.96%) Appian
5 6 (0.72%) Apache
6 5 (0.60%) Camunda
7 4 (0.48%) nginx
7 4 (0.48%) Tomcat
7 4 (0.48%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 3 (0.36%) CMS
8 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.24%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.24%) Sitecore CMS
10 1 (0.12%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.12%) Ethereum
10 1 (0.12%) SAS
10 1 (0.12%) Solana
Applications
1 16 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.60%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.48%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.12%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 22 (2.63%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.84%) Findur
2 7 (0.84%) Shopify
3 6 (0.72%) Loan IQ
3 6 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
4 5 (0.60%) BambooHR
5 4 (0.48%) Dynamics CRM
6 3 (0.36%) Distributed Ledger
7 2 (0.24%) iTrent
7 2 (0.24%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.24%) SAP HR
7 2 (0.24%) Summit
8 1 (0.12%) Algo Collateral
8 1 (0.12%) Bloomberg TOMS
8 1 (0.12%) Infor CloudSuite
8 1 (0.12%) Infor M3
8 1 (0.12%) IntelliMatch
8 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
8 1 (0.12%) PORTIA
8 1 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 247 (29.58%) Azure
2 203 (24.31%) AWS
3 134 (16.05%) GitHub
4 120 (14.37%) Azure DevOps
5 64 (7.66%) GitHub Actions
6 60 (7.19%) Serverless
7 58 (6.95%) GCP
8 38 (4.55%) Amazon S3
8 38 (4.55%) AWS Lambda
9 34 (4.07%) Power Platform
9 34 (4.07%) Snowflake
10 29 (3.47%) Azure AKS
11 28 (3.35%) Azure Data Factory
12 26 (3.11%) Amazon ECS
13 20 (2.40%) Azure Monitor
13 20 (2.40%) dbt
14 19 (2.28%) Apigee
14 19 (2.28%) Dynamics 365
15 18 (2.16%) AWS CloudFormation
15 18 (2.16%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 10 (1.20%) HTTP
2 6 (0.72%) Firewall
2 6 (0.72%) FTP
3 5 (0.60%) Cisco IPT
4 4 (0.48%) Ethernet
4 4 (0.48%) SSL
4 4 (0.48%) WAN
4 4 (0.48%) WebEx
5 3 (0.36%) DNS
5 3 (0.36%) Multicast
6 2 (0.24%) Cisco IOS
6 2 (0.24%) DSL
6 2 (0.24%) HTTPS
6 2 (0.24%) NaaS
6 2 (0.24%) SD-WAN
6 2 (0.24%) SNMP
6 2 (0.24%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.12%) 5G
7 1 (0.12%) NGFW
7 1 (0.12%) Spanning Tree
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (6.23%) SQL Server
2 48 (5.75%) PostgreSQL
3 43 (5.15%) NoSQL
4 32 (3.83%) MongoDB
5 28 (3.35%) Data Warehouse
6 25 (2.99%) Relational Database
7 23 (2.75%) Power BI
8 22 (2.63%) Tableau
9 21 (2.51%) DynamoDB
10 20 (2.40%) BigQuery
11 17 (2.04%) Amazon Athena
11 17 (2.04%) Big Data
12 13 (1.56%) Amazon Redshift
12 13 (1.56%) Metadata
13 12 (1.44%) Amazon Aurora
13 12 (1.44%) Amazon RDS
13 12 (1.44%) Data Lake
14 11 (1.32%) Oracle Database
14 11 (1.32%) Redis
15 10 (1.20%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 146 (17.49%) JIRA
2 138 (16.53%) Git
3 115 (13.77%) Selenium
4 101 (12.10%) Jenkins
5 76 (9.10%) GitLab
6 57 (6.83%) Cucumber
7 53 (6.35%) Cypress.io
8 48 (5.75%) Postman
9 35 (4.19%) REST Assured
10 29 (3.47%) SpecFlow
11 27 (3.23%) JMeter
11 27 (3.23%) JUnit
12 20 (2.40%) MLflow
13 16 (1.92%) Bitbucket
14 15 (1.80%) Appium
14 15 (1.80%) TestRail
14 15 (1.80%) WebDriver
15 13 (1.56%) Maven
15 13 (1.56%) Zephyr
16 11 (1.32%) Mockito
General
1 218 (26.11%) Finance
1 218 (26.11%) Social Skills
2 109 (13.05%) Banking
3 106 (12.69%) Public Sector
4 100 (11.98%) Analytical Skills
5 27 (3.23%) Front Office
5 27 (3.23%) Investment Banking
6 18 (2.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 18 (2.16%) Legal
7 14 (1.68%) Documentation Skills
8 12 (1.44%) Telecoms
9 11 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
10 10 (1.20%) Financial Institution
10 10 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (1.08%) Back Office
11 9 (1.08%) Pharmaceutical
11 9 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (0.84%) Billing
12 7 (0.84%) Publishing
13 6 (0.72%) Retail
Job Titles
1 185 (22.16%) Developer
2 153 (18.32%) Senior
3 96 (11.50%) Tester
4 88 (10.54%) Lead
5 59 (7.07%) Test Engineer
6 56 (6.71%) Automation Tester
7 55 (6.59%) QA Engineer
8 51 (6.11%) Analyst
9 45 (5.39%) Architect
10 41 (4.91%) Senior Developer
11 39 (4.67%) Data Engineer
12 38 (4.55%) Automation Engineer
13 35 (4.19%) DevOps Engineer
13 35 (4.19%) Java Developer
14 30 (3.59%) Test Automation Engineer
15 28 (3.35%) Test Manager
16 26 (3.11%) QA Automation Engineer
17 25 (2.99%) Test Analyst
18 24 (2.87%) Test Leader
19 22 (2.63%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (13.29%) Playwright
2 91 (10.90%) React
3 90 (10.78%) REST
4 72 (8.62%) Node.js
4 72 (8.62%) RESTful
5 66 (7.90%) .NET
6 60 (7.19%) Kafka
7 46 (5.51%) Spring
8 44 (5.27%) Spring Boot
9 38 (4.55%) HTML
10 36 (4.31%) CSS
11 29 (3.47%) pytest
12 27 (3.23%) OAuth
12 27 (3.23%) Web Services
13 24 (2.87%) AngularJS
14 21 (2.51%) Gherkin
15 20 (2.40%) GraphQL
16 19 (2.28%) FastAPI
17 18 (2.16%) JSON
17 18 (2.16%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 94 (11.26%) Cloud Native
2 59 (7.07%) Product Ownership
3 47 (5.63%) Distributed Systems
4 35 (4.19%) Legacy Systems
5 26 (3.11%) Data Protection Act
6 24 (2.87%) Algorithms
7 19 (2.28%) Onboarding
8 18 (2.16%) Data Structures
8 18 (2.16%) Equities
8 18 (2.16%) Greenfield Project
8 18 (2.16%) Management Information System
9 17 (2.04%) Fixed Income
9 17 (2.04%) Virtual Team
10 15 (1.80%) Mobile App
10 15 (1.80%) Self-Motivation
11 11 (1.32%) Derivative
12 10 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
12 10 (1.20%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 9 (1.08%) Low-Code
13 9 (1.08%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 41 (4.91%) Linux
2 32 (3.83%) Windows
3 18 (2.16%) Android
4 16 (1.92%) Apple iOS
5 9 (1.08%) Unix
6 5 (0.60%) Mac OS
6 5 (0.60%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.48%) Solaris
7 4 (0.48%) Windows Server 2008
8 3 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
8 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
9 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 450 (53.89%) CI/CD
2 338 (40.48%) Agile
3 295 (35.33%) DevOps
4 161 (19.28%) Problem-Solving
5 136 (16.29%) AI
6 125 (14.97%) Infrastructure as Code
7 120 (14.37%) Containerisation
8 116 (13.89%) Continuous Improvement
8 116 (13.89%) Observability
9 113 (13.53%) Validation
10 111 (13.29%) Regression Testing
11 110 (13.17%) Microservices
12 108 (12.93%) Test Strategy
13 101 (12.10%) Test Scripting
14 98 (11.74%) User Acceptance Testing
15 97 (11.62%) Software Testing
16 90 (10.78%) Software Engineering
17 89 (10.66%) Analytics
18 86 (10.30%) Stakeholder Management
19 83 (9.94%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 276 (33.05%) Python
2 212 (25.39%) SQL
3 171 (20.48%) Java
4 150 (17.96%) TypeScript
5 133 (15.93%) JavaScript
6 116 (13.89%) C#
7 29 (3.47%) PowerShell
8 20 (2.40%) Apex Code
8 20 (2.40%) Bash
9 17 (2.04%) Ruby
10 15 (1.80%) C++
11 14 (1.68%) Bicep
12 13 (1.56%) PL/SQL
13 12 (1.44%) Kotlin
14 9 (1.08%) Go
14 9 (1.08%) Scala
15 6 (0.72%) Rust
15 6 (0.72%) T-SQL
16 5 (0.60%) Swift
17 4 (0.48%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 178 (21.32%) Security Cleared
2 153 (18.32%) SC Cleared
3 49 (5.87%) Degree
4 37 (4.43%) ISTQB
5 29 (3.47%) BPSS Clearance
6 26 (3.11%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (1.32%) Master's Degree
8 7 (0.84%) DBS Check
8 7 (0.84%) DV Cleared
8 7 (0.84%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 5 (0.60%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 4 (0.48%) Azure Certification
10 4 (0.48%) ISEB
11 3 (0.36%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.24%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.24%) Cisco Certification
12 2 (0.24%) OSCP
12 2 (0.24%) PhD
12 2 (0.24%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 205 (24.55%) QA
2 55 (6.59%) Data Quality
3 43 (5.15%) Accessibility
4 24 (2.87%) GDPR
5 18 (2.16%) WCAG
6 7 (0.84%) NIST
6 7 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 6 (0.72%) ISO 20022
7 6 (0.72%) NCSC
8 5 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.60%) PERC
8 5 (0.60%) SLA
9 4 (0.48%) HL7
10 3 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 3 (0.36%) MiFID
10 3 (0.36%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.36%) Software Quality Assurance
11 2 (0.24%) GRC
12 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 1 (0.12%) NIST 800
System Software
1 146 (17.49%) Docker
2 5 (0.60%) Active Directory
2 5 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
2 5 (0.60%) VMware ESXi
2 5 (0.60%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (0.48%) Oracle RAC
3 4 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (0.12%) Embedded Firmware
4 1 (0.12%) Firmware
4 1 (0.12%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.12%) Squid
4 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 131 (15.69%) Kubernetes
2 102 (12.22%) Terraform
3 37 (4.43%) Grafana
4 33 (3.95%) Prometheus
5 16 (1.92%) Ansible
6 13 (1.56%) HP ALM
7 8 (0.96%) Kibana
7 8 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
8 4 (0.48%) Puppet
9 2 (0.24%) Amdocs OSS
9 2 (0.24%) Istio
9 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.24%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.24%) Rancher
9 2 (0.24%) SCCM
10 1 (0.12%) CloudHub
10 1 (0.12%) HP Quality Center
10 1 (0.12%) linkerd
10 1 (0.12%) Packer
Vendors
1 79 (9.46%) Microsoft
2 57 (6.83%) Oracle
3 51 (6.11%) Salesforce
4 45 (5.39%) Databricks
5 25 (2.99%) Google
6 22 (2.63%) ServiceNow
7 17 (2.04%) Splunk
8 16 (1.92%) SAP
9 13 (1.56%) HP
9 13 (1.56%) OpenAI
9 13 (1.56%) UiPath
10 12 (1.44%) MuleSoft
11 11 (1.32%) Dynatrace
11 11 (1.32%) IBM
12 10 (1.20%) Workday
13 9 (1.08%) Guidewire
14 8 (0.96%) Apple
14 8 (0.96%) Automation Anywhere
14 8 (0.96%) Citrix
15 7 (0.84%) Confluent