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 25 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 52 48
Rank change year-on-year 0 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 841 568 764
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.40% 4.50% 4.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.95% 4.87% 4.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 559 383 529
10th Percentile £356 £341 £363
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £600 £688 £675
90th Percentile £709 £800 £766
England median daily rate £475 £486 £525
% change year-on-year -2.31% -7.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 3 10
10th Percentile - £36.50 £52.25
25th Percentile £92.50 £38.75 £52.50
Median hourly rate £95.00 £45.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +111.11% -18.18% -38.89%
75th Percentile £97.50 £63.75 £65.75
90th Percentile - £73.50 £71.88
England median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -4.35% -19.01%

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 17,000 11,667 15,595
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.91% 92.40% 88.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,345 7,819 11,135
10th Percentile £360 £338 £343
25th Percentile £438 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.18% - -6.38%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £763 £800 £800
England median daily rate £520 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 263 214 309
10th Percentile £18.01 £16.50 £15.50
25th Percentile £25.25 £24.66 £20.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £33.45 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.12% +17.35% -28.75%
75th Percentile £59.99 £49.94 £48.75
90th Percentile £81.25 £63.60 £68.15
England median hourly rate £47.00 £26.45 £37.50
% change year-on-year +77.69% -29.47% +6.72%

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 25 June 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 25 June 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 +13 109 £550 +10.00% 19
South London -12 12 £513 +13.57% 4
East London +8 10 £450 +18.42% 11
West London -26 10 £450 +12.50% 6
North London - 1 £400 - 1
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 60 (7.13%) Confluence
2 32 (3.80%) Apache Airflow
3 22 (2.62%) Apache Spark
4 12 (1.43%) CMS
5 11 (1.31%) Apache
6 8 (0.95%) Appian
7 6 (0.71%) Camunda
8 4 (0.48%) nginx
8 4 (0.48%) Tomcat
8 4 (0.48%) WebLogic
9 3 (0.36%) Kentico
9 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.24%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.24%) Mule
10 2 (0.24%) SAS
10 2 (0.24%) SharePoint
11 1 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.12%) Ethereum
11 1 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
11 1 (0.12%) Solana
Applications
1 22 (2.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.83%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.59%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.12%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 17 (2.02%) Aladdin
2 13 (1.55%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.95%) Findur
4 7 (0.83%) Oracle EBS
5 6 (0.71%) Shopify
6 5 (0.59%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.59%) Loan IQ
7 3 (0.36%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
8 2 (0.24%) Infor CloudSuite
8 2 (0.24%) Infor LN
8 2 (0.24%) Infor M3
8 2 (0.24%) IntelliMatch
8 2 (0.24%) iTrent
8 2 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.24%) Summit
9 1 (0.12%) Bloomberg TOMS
9 1 (0.12%) Misys Equation
9 1 (0.12%) Misys Midas
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 257 (30.56%) Azure
2 248 (29.49%) AWS
3 149 (17.72%) GitHub
4 120 (14.27%) Azure DevOps
5 92 (10.94%) GitHub Actions
6 74 (8.80%) Serverless
7 56 (6.66%) AWS Lambda
8 54 (6.42%) Power Platform
9 53 (6.30%) Amazon S3
10 50 (5.95%) GCP
11 38 (4.52%) dbt
12 31 (3.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 31 (3.69%) Snowflake
13 29 (3.45%) Amazon ECS
14 27 (3.21%) Azure Data Factory
15 23 (2.73%) Amazon EC2
15 23 (2.73%) Azure AKS
16 21 (2.50%) Azure AI
17 17 (2.02%) Amazon SQS
18 15 (1.78%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.95%) HTTP
2 3 (0.36%) FTP
2 3 (0.36%) Network Security
2 3 (0.36%) OpenLDAP
2 3 (0.36%) SMS
2 3 (0.36%) WAN
3 2 (0.24%) Ethernet
3 2 (0.24%) Firewall
3 2 (0.24%) Multicast
3 2 (0.24%) NaaS
4 1 (0.12%) 5G
4 1 (0.12%) Cisco IOS
4 1 (0.12%) DSL
4 1 (0.12%) MPLS
4 1 (0.12%) NGFW
4 1 (0.12%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.12%) SNMP
4 1 (0.12%) SSL
4 1 (0.12%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.12%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (6.54%) PostgreSQL
2 51 (6.06%) SQL Server
3 45 (5.35%) NoSQL
4 43 (5.11%) Data Warehouse
5 42 (4.99%) Power BI
6 37 (4.40%) MongoDB
7 32 (3.80%) Relational Database
8 30 (3.57%) DynamoDB
9 26 (3.09%) Amazon Athena
10 24 (2.85%) Amazon Redshift
11 19 (2.26%) Amazon RDS
11 19 (2.26%) Big Data
11 19 (2.26%) Data Lake
11 19 (2.26%) Tableau
12 15 (1.78%) BigQuery
13 14 (1.66%) Metadata
14 12 (1.43%) Redis
15 11 (1.31%) Star Schema
16 10 (1.19%) Amazon Aurora
16 10 (1.19%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 134 (15.93%) JIRA
2 133 (15.81%) Git
3 111 (13.20%) Jenkins
4 98 (11.65%) Selenium
5 95 (11.30%) GitLab
6 53 (6.30%) Cucumber
7 49 (5.83%) Cypress.io
8 46 (5.47%) REST Assured
9 45 (5.35%) Postman
10 39 (4.64%) JMeter
11 35 (4.16%) JUnit
12 19 (2.26%) Mockito
13 17 (2.02%) Gradle
13 17 (2.02%) Maven
13 17 (2.02%) SpecFlow
14 14 (1.66%) Bitbucket
14 14 (1.66%) MLflow
15 13 (1.55%) Appium
15 13 (1.55%) Gatling
15 13 (1.55%) WebDriver
General
1 248 (29.49%) Finance
2 226 (26.87%) Social Skills
3 120 (14.27%) Banking
4 112 (13.32%) Analytical Skills
5 97 (11.53%) Public Sector
6 28 (3.33%) Investment Banking
7 26 (3.09%) Front Office
8 23 (2.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 20 (2.38%) Financial Institution
10 15 (1.78%) Legal
11 13 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
12 11 (1.31%) Documentation Skills
13 10 (1.19%) Back Office
14 9 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (1.07%) Retail
14 9 (1.07%) Telecoms
15 8 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
16 7 (0.83%) Billing
16 7 (0.83%) Marketing
16 7 (0.83%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 174 (20.69%) Developer
2 149 (17.72%) Senior
3 87 (10.34%) Lead
4 82 (9.75%) Tester
5 53 (6.30%) Test Engineer
6 52 (6.18%) Analyst
7 49 (5.83%) Data Engineer
8 48 (5.71%) QA Engineer
9 45 (5.35%) DevOps Engineer
10 44 (5.23%) Architect
11 40 (4.76%) Automation Engineer
12 39 (4.64%) Java Developer
13 38 (4.52%) Automation Tester
14 35 (4.16%) Senior Developer
15 34 (4.04%) Software Engineer
16 31 (3.69%) Test Automation Engineer
17 27 (3.21%) Full-Stack Developer
18 26 (3.09%) Test Leader
19 25 (2.97%) QA Automation Engineer
20 23 (2.73%) React Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 102 (12.13%) React
1 102 (12.13%) REST
2 97 (11.53%) Playwright
3 78 (9.27%) RESTful
4 71 (8.44%) Kafka
5 58 (6.90%) .NET
5 58 (6.90%) Spring
6 53 (6.30%) Spring Boot
7 51 (6.06%) Node.js
8 39 (4.64%) CSS
9 38 (4.52%) HTML
10 31 (3.69%) OAuth
11 24 (2.85%) PySpark
12 23 (2.73%) pytest
13 21 (2.50%) AngularJS
13 21 (2.50%) Redux
14 19 (2.26%) Gherkin
14 19 (2.26%) OAuth2
14 19 (2.26%) SOAP
14 19 (2.26%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 114 (13.56%) Cloud Native
2 65 (7.73%) Distributed Systems
3 53 (6.30%) Product Ownership
4 40 (4.76%) Legacy Systems
5 27 (3.21%) Data Protection Act
6 21 (2.50%) Self-Motivation
7 20 (2.38%) Greenfield Project
7 20 (2.38%) Onboarding
7 20 (2.38%) Virtual Team
8 19 (2.26%) Fixed Income
9 18 (2.14%) Management Information System
10 17 (2.02%) Algorithms
11 14 (1.66%) AI Agents
11 14 (1.66%) Mobile App
12 13 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
13 12 (1.43%) Data Structures
13 12 (1.43%) Equities
14 10 (1.19%) Distributed Architecture
14 10 (1.19%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 10 (1.19%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 32 (3.80%) Linux
2 25 (2.97%) Windows
3 19 (2.26%) Android
4 17 (2.02%) Apple iOS
5 13 (1.55%) Unix
6 5 (0.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 4 (0.48%) Solaris
7 4 (0.48%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.48%) Windows Server 2008
8 3 (0.36%) Mac OS
8 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
8 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (0.24%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 492 (58.50%) CI/CD
2 340 (40.43%) Agile
3 293 (34.84%) DevOps
4 153 (18.19%) AI
5 146 (17.36%) Infrastructure as Code
6 137 (16.29%) Problem-Solving
7 132 (15.70%) Validation
8 131 (15.58%) Continuous Improvement
9 129 (15.34%) Observability
10 125 (14.86%) Microservices
11 121 (14.39%) Test Strategy
12 116 (13.79%) Containerisation
12 116 (13.79%) Software Engineering
13 110 (13.08%) Regression Testing
14 108 (12.84%) User Acceptance Testing
15 95 (11.30%) Data Modelling
16 90 (10.70%) Scrum
17 89 (10.58%) Analytics
18 86 (10.23%) Stakeholder Management
19 85 (10.11%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 256 (30.44%) Python
2 218 (25.92%) SQL
3 185 (22.00%) Java
4 127 (15.10%) TypeScript
5 120 (14.27%) JavaScript
6 98 (11.65%) C#
7 31 (3.69%) PowerShell
8 21 (2.50%) Kotlin
9 20 (2.38%) Bash
10 16 (1.90%) Bicep
10 16 (1.90%) Ruby
11 15 (1.78%) Apex Code
12 14 (1.66%) Go
12 14 (1.66%) PL/SQL
13 13 (1.55%) Scala
14 8 (0.95%) T-SQL
15 7 (0.83%) C++
15 7 (0.83%) Swift
16 6 (0.71%) Groovy
16 6 (0.71%) VBA
Qualifications
1 185 (22.00%) Security Cleared
2 162 (19.26%) SC Cleared
3 47 (5.59%) Degree
4 27 (3.21%) Computer Science Degree
5 26 (3.09%) ISTQB
6 20 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
7 16 (1.90%) DV Cleared
8 13 (1.55%) AWS Certification
9 10 (1.19%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.83%) DBS Check
11 6 (0.71%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 6 (0.71%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 5 (0.59%) Azure Certification
13 4 (0.48%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 3 (0.36%) CISSP
14 3 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
15 2 (0.24%) Cisco Certification
15 2 (0.24%) PhD
15 2 (0.24%) PMI Certification
15 2 (0.24%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 205 (24.38%) QA
2 73 (8.68%) Data Quality
3 49 (5.83%) Accessibility
4 25 (2.97%) GDPR
5 18 (2.14%) WCAG
6 11 (1.31%) NIST
7 6 (0.71%) ISO 20022
8 5 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.59%) SLA
9 4 (0.48%) HL7
9 4 (0.48%) NCSC
10 3 (0.36%) EU AI Act
10 3 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 3 (0.36%) MiFID
10 3 (0.36%) Software Quality Assurance
11 2 (0.24%) GRC
11 2 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.12%) GMP
12 1 (0.12%) GxP
12 1 (0.12%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 134 (15.93%) Docker
2 7 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.48%) Oracle RAC
4 4 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.36%) Active Directory
5 3 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.12%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 140 (16.65%) Kubernetes
2 116 (13.79%) Terraform
3 38 (4.52%) Grafana
4 35 (4.16%) Prometheus
5 28 (3.33%) Ansible
6 8 (0.95%) HP ALM
6 8 (0.95%) Kibana
6 8 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
7 4 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
8 3 (0.36%) Control-M
8 3 (0.36%) Kustomize
8 3 (0.36%) Puppet
9 2 (0.24%) Amdocs OSS
9 2 (0.24%) Packer
9 2 (0.24%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.12%) HP Quality Center
10 1 (0.12%) Istio
10 1 (0.12%) linkerd
10 1 (0.12%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 78 (9.27%) Microsoft
2 53 (6.30%) Salesforce
3 48 (5.71%) Oracle
4 31 (3.69%) Databricks
5 26 (3.09%) ServiceNow
6 18 (2.14%) UiPath
7 16 (1.90%) Google
8 15 (1.78%) Splunk
9 14 (1.66%) Informatica
10 13 (1.55%) OpenAI
11 12 (1.43%) IBM
12 10 (1.19%) Dynatrace
13 8 (0.95%) Apple
13 8 (0.95%) Guidewire
13 8 (0.95%) HP
13 8 (0.95%) OpenLink
13 8 (0.95%) SAP
14 7 (0.83%) Automation Anywhere
14 7 (0.83%) MuleSoft
15 6 (0.71%) Workday