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 21 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 55 46
Rank change year-on-year +5 -9 +4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 907 599 756
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.52% 4.47% 4.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.07% 4.83% 5.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 616 401 508
10th Percentile £350 £350 £354
25th Percentile £425 £404 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -6.67%
75th Percentile £619 £673 £650
90th Percentile £712 £775 £775
England median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 4 5
10th Percentile £52.35 £37.25 £51.00
25th Percentile £67.41 £40.63 £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 £55.63 £71.88
90th Percentile - £70.25 -
England median hourly rate £69.75 £52.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +32.86% -4.55% -15.38%

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 17,903 12,394 14,446
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 89.17% 92.46% 88.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,741 8,241 10,033
10th Percentile £361 £325 £350
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.85% -1.82% -4.35%
75th Percentile £663 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 287 256 196
10th Percentile £17.16 £16.50 £17.08
25th Percentile £19.50 £24.74 £22.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £29.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.34% -15.71% -12.50%
75th Percentile £57.25 £47.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £81.25 £63.75 £71.56
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% +3.61%

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 21 August 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Automation in London over the 6 months to 21 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in London

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 21 August 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 +21 124 £550 +22.22% 28
South London -3 15 £535 +7.00% 2
East London +4 9 £545 +18.48% 18
West London -20 7 £600 +50.94% 11
North London -3 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 65 (7.17%) Confluence
2 40 (4.41%) Apache Airflow
3 28 (3.09%) Apache Spark
4 22 (2.43%) SharePoint
5 14 (1.54%) Apache
6 13 (1.43%) CMS
7 6 (0.66%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 5 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.44%) Camunda
10 3 (0.33%) Kentico
10 3 (0.33%) nginx
10 3 (0.33%) SAS
10 3 (0.33%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.22%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.22%) Mule
12 1 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.11%) Appian
12 1 (0.11%) Ethereum
12 1 (0.11%) Solana
Applications
1 21 (2.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.43%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.55%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.44%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.33%) Trello
7 1 (0.11%) Mingle
7 1 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 14 (1.54%) Aladdin
2 12 (1.32%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.88%) Findur
4 6 (0.66%) Oracle EBS
5 5 (0.55%) BambooHR
6 4 (0.44%) Salesforce CRM
6 4 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
6 4 (0.44%) Shopify
7 3 (0.33%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
7 3 (0.33%) SAP GRC
8 2 (0.22%) Infor CloudSuite
8 2 (0.22%) Infor LN
8 2 (0.22%) Infor M3
8 2 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
9 1 (0.11%) IntelliMatch
9 1 (0.11%) Loan IQ
9 1 (0.11%) Misys Equation
9 1 (0.11%) Misys Midas
9 1 (0.11%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 320 (35.28%) Azure
2 280 (30.87%) AWS
3 198 (21.83%) GitHub
4 162 (17.86%) Azure DevOps
5 121 (13.34%) GitHub Actions
6 80 (8.82%) Serverless
7 70 (7.72%) GCP
8 68 (7.50%) Power Platform
9 61 (6.73%) AWS Lambda
10 53 (5.84%) Amazon S3
11 50 (5.51%) dbt
12 41 (4.52%) Snowflake
13 33 (3.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 31 (3.42%) Amazon ECS
15 30 (3.31%) GitHub Copilot
16 27 (2.98%) Amazon EC2
17 25 (2.76%) Azure AKS
17 25 (2.76%) Azure Monitor
18 23 (2.54%) AWS CloudFormation
18 23 (2.54%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.88%) WAN
2 7 (0.77%) Firewall
2 7 (0.77%) HTTP
2 7 (0.77%) Network Security
2 7 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
3 6 (0.66%) LAN
3 6 (0.66%) TCP/IP
4 5 (0.55%) BGP
5 4 (0.44%) DHCP
5 4 (0.44%) DNS
5 4 (0.44%) Ethernet VPN
5 4 (0.44%) NX-OS
5 4 (0.44%) TACACS
5 4 (0.44%) VXLAN
6 3 (0.33%) FTP
6 3 (0.33%) OpenLDAP
6 3 (0.33%) SMS
7 2 (0.22%) Bluetooth
7 2 (0.22%) Multicast
7 2 (0.22%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (6.50%) PostgreSQL
1 59 (6.50%) Power BI
2 58 (6.39%) Data Warehouse
3 51 (5.62%) NoSQL
3 51 (5.62%) SQL Server
4 41 (4.52%) MongoDB
5 35 (3.86%) Relational Database
6 27 (2.98%) Amazon Redshift
6 27 (2.98%) DynamoDB
7 25 (2.76%) Amazon Athena
8 23 (2.54%) Data Lake
9 21 (2.32%) Amazon RDS
9 21 (2.32%) Tableau
10 20 (2.21%) Big Data
11 18 (1.98%) BigQuery
12 16 (1.76%) Metadata
13 12 (1.32%) Oracle Database
14 11 (1.21%) Elasticsearch
14 11 (1.21%) MySQL
14 11 (1.21%) Redis
Development Applications
1 168 (18.52%) Git
2 147 (16.21%) Jenkins
3 129 (14.22%) JIRA
4 114 (12.57%) Selenium
5 108 (11.91%) GitLab
6 59 (6.50%) Cypress.io
7 48 (5.29%) JMeter
8 45 (4.96%) JUnit
9 43 (4.74%) Cucumber
10 42 (4.63%) Postman
11 40 (4.41%) REST Assured
12 20 (2.21%) Gatling
13 19 (2.09%) Appium
13 19 (2.09%) Gradle
14 18 (1.98%) LoadRunner
14 18 (1.98%) Maven
15 17 (1.87%) Bitbucket
16 16 (1.76%) Mockito
16 16 (1.76%) Zephyr
17 15 (1.65%) WebDriver
General
1 275 (30.32%) Finance
2 243 (26.79%) Social Skills
3 136 (14.99%) Analytical Skills
4 129 (14.22%) Banking
5 88 (9.70%) Public Sector
6 29 (3.20%) Front Office
7 23 (2.54%) Investment Banking
8 20 (2.21%) Financial Institution
8 20 (2.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 17 (1.87%) Telecoms
10 15 (1.65%) Back Office
10 15 (1.65%) Legal
11 14 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
12 13 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
13 9 (0.99%) Marketing
13 9 (0.99%) Retail
14 7 (0.77%) Law
14 7 (0.77%) Local Government
15 5 (0.55%) Games
15 5 (0.55%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 197 (21.72%) Developer
2 155 (17.09%) Senior
3 93 (10.25%) Lead
4 72 (7.94%) Tester
5 59 (6.50%) Test Engineer
6 58 (6.39%) Data Engineer
7 55 (6.06%) DevOps Engineer
8 53 (5.84%) Java Developer
9 48 (5.29%) QA Engineer
10 47 (5.18%) Analyst
11 46 (5.07%) Architect
12 43 (4.74%) Automation Engineer
13 42 (4.63%) Software Engineer
14 39 (4.30%) Full-Stack Developer
14 39 (4.30%) Senior Developer
15 34 (3.75%) Test Automation Engineer
16 33 (3.64%) Test Manager
17 32 (3.53%) Test Leader
18 31 (3.42%) Automation Tester
19 25 (2.76%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 146 (16.10%) Terraform
2 134 (14.77%) REST
3 111 (12.24%) Playwright
4 103 (11.36%) Kafka
5 97 (10.69%) RESTful
6 94 (10.36%) React
7 77 (8.49%) Spring
8 72 (7.94%) .NET
9 66 (7.28%) Spring Boot
10 54 (5.95%) HTML
11 49 (5.40%) Node.js
12 47 (5.18%) CSS
13 32 (3.53%) PySpark
14 28 (3.09%) AngularJS
14 28 (3.09%) JSON
15 27 (2.98%) Middleware
15 27 (2.98%) XML
16 24 (2.65%) SOAP
17 23 (2.54%) HTML5
18 22 (2.43%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 144 (15.88%) Cloud Native
2 84 (9.26%) Distributed Systems
3 68 (7.50%) Product Ownership
4 32 (3.53%) Onboarding
5 25 (2.76%) Data Protection Act
6 24 (2.65%) AI Agents
7 23 (2.54%) Enterprise Software
8 20 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
8 20 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
9 17 (1.87%) Fixed Income
9 17 (1.87%) Virtual Team
10 15 (1.65%) Mobile App
11 14 (1.54%) Data Structures
12 12 (1.32%) Algorithms
13 11 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
14 10 (1.10%) Equities
14 10 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 10 (1.10%) Management Information System
15 9 (0.99%) Security Posture
15 9 (0.99%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 60 (6.62%) Linux
2 44 (4.85%) Unix
3 38 (4.19%) Windows
4 18 (1.98%) Android
5 17 (1.87%) Apple iOS
6 12 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (0.77%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.44%) VMS
9 3 (0.33%) Solaris
9 3 (0.33%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.22%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 573 (63.18%) CI/CD
2 385 (42.45%) Agile
3 370 (40.79%) DevOps
4 183 (20.18%) AI
5 177 (19.51%) Infrastructure as Code
6 172 (18.96%) Problem-Solving
7 162 (17.86%) Microservices
8 161 (17.75%) Continuous Improvement
9 157 (17.31%) Validation
10 150 (16.54%) Software Engineering
11 143 (15.77%) Test Strategy
12 141 (15.55%) Containerisation
13 137 (15.10%) Observability
14 112 (12.35%) Regression Testing
14 112 (12.35%) Scrum
15 107 (11.80%) Stakeholder Management
16 106 (11.69%) TDD
16 106 (11.69%) User Acceptance Testing
17 97 (10.69%) Full-Stack Development
18 96 (10.58%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 297 (32.75%) Python
2 253 (27.89%) SQL
3 240 (26.46%) Java
4 136 (14.99%) JavaScript
5 122 (13.45%) TypeScript
6 89 (9.81%) C#
7 50 (5.51%) PowerShell
8 33 (3.64%) Bash
9 26 (2.87%) Bicep
10 22 (2.43%) Kotlin
11 17 (1.87%) Ruby
12 16 (1.76%) Scala
13 14 (1.54%) Apex Code
13 14 (1.54%) PL/SQL
14 11 (1.21%) C++
14 11 (1.21%) Go
15 9 (0.99%) VB.NET
16 8 (0.88%) Shell Script
16 8 (0.88%) T-SQL
17 6 (0.66%) Perl
Qualifications
1 238 (26.24%) Security Cleared
2 210 (23.15%) SC Cleared
3 59 (6.50%) Degree
4 35 (3.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 32 (3.53%) ISTQB
6 22 (2.43%) DV Cleared
7 19 (2.09%) AWS Certification
8 16 (1.76%) BPSS Clearance
9 11 (1.21%) Azure Certification
10 9 (0.99%) ISEB
11 7 (0.77%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 7 (0.77%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 7 (0.77%) Master's Degree
12 6 (0.66%) DBS Check
13 5 (0.55%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 4 (0.44%) CISSP
15 3 (0.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 3 (0.33%) Cisco Certification
15 3 (0.33%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 3 (0.33%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 247 (27.23%) QA
2 75 (8.27%) Data Quality
3 46 (5.07%) Accessibility
4 22 (2.43%) GDPR
5 20 (2.21%) WCAG
6 12 (1.32%) ISO 20022
7 11 (1.21%) SLA
8 8 (0.88%) NIST
9 7 (0.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 6 (0.66%) GRC
11 3 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.33%) EU AI Act
11 3 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 3 (0.33%) MiFID
11 3 (0.33%) Software Quality Assurance
12 2 (0.22%) ISO 9001
12 2 (0.22%) NCSC
12 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.11%) GxP
13 1 (0.11%) PMO
System Software
1 161 (17.75%) Docker
2 12 (1.32%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.66%) Active Directory
5 3 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.33%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.11%) Firmware
6 1 (0.11%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 161 (17.75%) Kubernetes
2 52 (5.73%) Grafana
3 44 (4.85%) Ansible
4 43 (4.74%) Prometheus
5 14 (1.54%) Puppet
6 13 (1.43%) Progress Chef
7 9 (0.99%) Control-M
7 9 (0.99%) Kibana
8 7 (0.77%) HP ALM
9 5 (0.55%) HP Fortify
9 5 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
10 4 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (0.44%) Packer
11 3 (0.33%) Istio
11 3 (0.33%) Kustomize
11 3 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
12 2 (0.22%) Amdocs OSS
12 2 (0.22%) Argo
13 1 (0.11%) linkerd
13 1 (0.11%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 103 (11.36%) Microsoft
2 61 (6.73%) Oracle
3 49 (5.40%) Salesforce
4 42 (4.63%) Databricks
5 29 (3.20%) Google
5 29 (3.20%) ServiceNow
6 24 (2.65%) IBM
7 18 (1.98%) Informatica
7 18 (1.98%) Splunk
8 17 (1.87%) SAP
8 17 (1.87%) UiPath
9 14 (1.54%) Red Hat
10 13 (1.43%) Cisco
11 12 (1.32%) VMware
12 11 (1.21%) HP
13 10 (1.10%) Dynatrace
14 9 (0.99%) OpenAI
15 8 (0.88%) OpenLink
15 8 (0.88%) SaltStack
16 7 (0.77%) Charles River