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 2 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 55 44
Rank change year-on-year +5 -11 +4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 905 586 793
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.52% 4.41% 4.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.07% 4.77% 5.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 615 399 526
10th Percentile £350 £350 £357
25th Percentile £425 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £601 £650 £650
90th Percentile £711 £775 £765
England median daily rate £475 £500 £520
% change year-on-year -5.00% -3.85% -5.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 4 5
10th Percentile £44.32 £37.25 £51.00
25th Percentile £47.33 £40.63 £52.50
Median hourly rate £72.00 £45.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +60.00% -18.18% -38.89%
75th Percentile £97.50 £55.63 £71.88
90th Percentile - £70.25 -
England median hourly rate £69.00 £55.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +25.45% - -24.66%

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 17,851 12,273 14,456
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 89.10% 92.44% 88.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,673 8,157 9,874
10th Percentile £360 £325 £350
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £660 £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 289 254 194
10th Percentile £17.53 £17.00 £17.33
25th Percentile £20.02 £24.83 £22.28
Median hourly rate £35.50 £31.75 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.81% -11.81% -10.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £49.75 £54.69
90th Percentile £85.43 £63.75 £71.69
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +1.18%

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 2 September 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 2 September 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 2 September 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 +13 119 £550 +15.79% 55
South London -9 14 £593 +18.50% 8
East London +7 10 £590 +28.26% 17
West London -15 6 £600 +50.94% 42
North London +1 1 £400 -
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 69 (7.62%) Confluence
2 36 (3.98%) Apache Airflow
3 26 (2.87%) Apache Spark
4 23 (2.54%) SharePoint
5 14 (1.55%) Apache
6 13 (1.44%) CMS
7 6 (0.66%) Camunda
7 6 (0.66%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.33%) Kentico
9 3 (0.33%) nginx
9 3 (0.33%) SAS
9 3 (0.33%) Tomcat
9 3 (0.33%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.22%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.22%) Mule
11 1 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.11%) Appian
11 1 (0.11%) Ethereum
11 1 (0.11%) Solana
Applications
1 18 (1.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.44%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.44%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.33%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.33%) Trello
6 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.22%) Mingle
7 1 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 13 (1.44%) Aladdin
1 13 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (0.88%) Findur
3 7 (0.77%) SAP S/4HANA
4 6 (0.66%) Oracle EBS
5 5 (0.55%) SAP GRC
6 4 (0.44%) Salesforce CRM
6 4 (0.44%) Shopify
7 3 (0.33%) BambooHR
7 3 (0.33%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
8 2 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
9 1 (0.11%) FLEXCUBE
9 1 (0.11%) Infor CloudSuite
9 1 (0.11%) Infor LN
9 1 (0.11%) Infor M3
9 1 (0.11%) IntelliMatch
9 1 (0.11%) Misys Equation
9 1 (0.11%) Misys Midas
9 1 (0.11%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 312 (34.48%) Azure
2 278 (30.72%) AWS
3 193 (21.33%) GitHub
4 160 (17.68%) Azure DevOps
5 121 (13.37%) GitHub Actions
6 81 (8.95%) Serverless
7 76 (8.40%) GCP
8 67 (7.40%) Power Platform
9 65 (7.18%) AWS Lambda
10 55 (6.08%) Amazon S3
11 49 (5.41%) dbt
12 42 (4.64%) Snowflake
13 35 (3.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 33 (3.65%) Amazon ECS
15 30 (3.31%) GitHub Copilot
16 26 (2.87%) AWS CloudFormation
17 24 (2.65%) Amazon EC2
18 23 (2.54%) Azure Monitor
19 22 (2.43%) Amazon SQS
20 21 (2.32%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 9 (0.99%) HTTP
2 7 (0.77%) Network Security
2 7 (0.77%) TCP/IP
2 7 (0.77%) WAN
2 7 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
3 6 (0.66%) BGP
3 6 (0.66%) DNS
3 6 (0.66%) Firewall
3 6 (0.66%) LAN
4 5 (0.55%) DHCP
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%) SSH
7 2 (0.22%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (6.52%) PostgreSQL
2 56 (6.19%) Data Warehouse
2 56 (6.19%) Power BI
3 51 (5.64%) NoSQL
4 48 (5.30%) SQL Server
5 39 (4.31%) MongoDB
6 35 (3.87%) Relational Database
7 27 (2.98%) DynamoDB
8 24 (2.65%) Amazon Athena
8 24 (2.65%) Amazon Redshift
9 21 (2.32%) Data Lake
10 20 (2.21%) Amazon RDS
11 19 (2.10%) Big Data
12 17 (1.88%) BigQuery
12 17 (1.88%) Tableau
13 14 (1.55%) Metadata
14 12 (1.33%) MySQL
14 12 (1.33%) Oracle Database
15 11 (1.22%) Redis
16 10 (1.10%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 172 (19.01%) Git
2 154 (17.02%) Jenkins
3 131 (14.48%) JIRA
4 118 (13.04%) Selenium
5 107 (11.82%) GitLab
6 62 (6.85%) Cypress.io
7 52 (5.75%) JMeter
8 48 (5.30%) JUnit
9 46 (5.08%) Postman
10 41 (4.53%) Cucumber
11 40 (4.42%) REST Assured
12 21 (2.32%) Gatling
13 20 (2.21%) Gradle
13 20 (2.21%) LoadRunner
14 19 (2.10%) Maven
14 19 (2.10%) Mockito
15 18 (1.99%) Appium
15 18 (1.99%) SonarQube
16 17 (1.88%) Bitbucket
17 15 (1.66%) WebDriver
General
1 275 (30.39%) Finance
2 250 (27.62%) Social Skills
3 142 (15.69%) Analytical Skills
4 134 (14.81%) Banking
5 90 (9.94%) Public Sector
6 31 (3.43%) Front Office
7 26 (2.87%) Investment Banking
8 20 (2.21%) Financial Institution
9 19 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 15 (1.66%) Back Office
10 15 (1.66%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (1.66%) Telecoms
11 13 (1.44%) Legal
12 12 (1.33%) Marketing
13 11 (1.22%) Documentation Skills
14 10 (1.10%) Law
15 9 (0.99%) Retail
16 8 (0.88%) Local Government
17 6 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
18 5 (0.55%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 203 (22.43%) Developer
2 158 (17.46%) Senior
3 90 (9.94%) Lead
4 65 (7.18%) Tester
5 59 (6.52%) Test Engineer
6 56 (6.19%) Java Developer
7 55 (6.08%) Data Engineer
8 54 (5.97%) DevOps Engineer
9 53 (5.86%) QA Engineer
10 47 (5.19%) Analyst
10 47 (5.19%) Software Engineer
11 46 (5.08%) Automation Engineer
12 44 (4.86%) Architect
13 42 (4.64%) Full-Stack Developer
14 40 (4.42%) Senior Developer
15 36 (3.98%) Test Manager
16 35 (3.87%) Test Automation Engineer
17 33 (3.65%) Test Leader
18 27 (2.98%) Automation Tester
19 24 (2.65%) QA Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 144 (15.91%) Terraform
2 139 (15.36%) REST
3 111 (12.27%) Playwright
4 103 (11.38%) Kafka
5 100 (11.05%) RESTful
6 94 (10.39%) React
7 79 (8.73%) Spring
8 70 (7.73%) .NET
9 68 (7.51%) Spring Boot
10 58 (6.41%) HTML
11 50 (5.52%) CSS
12 49 (5.41%) Node.js
13 33 (3.65%) PySpark
14 30 (3.31%) AngularJS
14 30 (3.31%) Middleware
15 28 (3.09%) JSON
15 28 (3.09%) XML
16 27 (2.98%) SOAP
17 23 (2.54%) HTML5
18 22 (2.43%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 147 (16.24%) Cloud Native
2 87 (9.61%) Distributed Systems
3 74 (8.18%) Product Ownership
4 34 (3.76%) Onboarding
5 29 (3.20%) AI Agents
6 27 (2.98%) Enterprise Software
7 26 (2.87%) Data Protection Act
8 18 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
8 18 (1.99%) Self-Motivation
9 16 (1.77%) Data Structures
9 16 (1.77%) Fixed Income
9 16 (1.77%) Virtual Team
10 13 (1.44%) Mobile App
11 12 (1.33%) Algorithms
12 11 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
13 9 (0.99%) Equities
13 9 (0.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 9 (0.99%) Security Posture
13 9 (0.99%) SWIFT Messaging Network
14 8 (0.88%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 61 (6.74%) Linux
2 45 (4.97%) Unix
3 34 (3.76%) Windows
4 17 (1.88%) Android
5 16 (1.77%) Apple iOS
6 13 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.66%) 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
1 570 (62.98%) CI/CD
2 397 (43.87%) Agile
3 367 (40.55%) DevOps
4 189 (20.88%) AI
5 175 (19.34%) Infrastructure as Code
6 174 (19.23%) Problem-Solving
7 167 (18.45%) Microservices
8 162 (17.90%) Software Engineering
8 162 (17.90%) Validation
9 157 (17.35%) Continuous Improvement
10 145 (16.02%) Test Strategy
11 143 (15.80%) Containerisation
12 137 (15.14%) Observability
13 125 (13.81%) Scrum
14 115 (12.71%) TDD
15 112 (12.38%) Stakeholder Management
16 110 (12.15%) Regression Testing
17 106 (11.71%) User Acceptance Testing
18 101 (11.16%) Event-Driven
19 97 (10.72%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 311 (34.36%) Python
2 247 (27.29%) Java
2 247 (27.29%) SQL
3 139 (15.36%) JavaScript
4 120 (13.26%) TypeScript
5 82 (9.06%) C#
6 45 (4.97%) PowerShell
7 35 (3.87%) Bash
8 25 (2.76%) Bicep
9 22 (2.43%) Kotlin
10 17 (1.88%) Ruby
11 16 (1.77%) Scala
12 12 (1.33%) C++
12 12 (1.33%) Go
12 12 (1.33%) PL/SQL
13 11 (1.22%) Apex Code
14 10 (1.10%) Shell Script
15 9 (0.99%) VB.NET
16 7 (0.77%) Perl
16 7 (0.77%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 243 (26.85%) Security Cleared
2 216 (23.87%) SC Cleared
3 64 (7.07%) Degree
4 39 (4.31%) Computer Science Degree
5 32 (3.54%) ISTQB
6 25 (2.76%) DV Cleared
7 21 (2.32%) AWS Certification
8 19 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
9 12 (1.33%) Azure Certification
10 9 (0.99%) ISEB
11 8 (0.88%) Master's Degree
12 7 (0.77%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 7 (0.77%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 6 (0.66%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 6 (0.66%) DBS Check
14 4 (0.44%) CISSP
15 3 (0.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 3 (0.33%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 3 (0.33%) PhD
16 2 (0.22%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 249 (27.51%) QA
2 72 (7.96%) Data Quality
3 43 (4.75%) Accessibility
4 21 (2.32%) GDPR
5 18 (1.99%) WCAG
6 12 (1.33%) ISO 20022
7 11 (1.22%) SLA
8 9 (0.99%) GRC
8 9 (0.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 9 (0.99%) NIST
9 3 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.33%) EU AI Act
9 3 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.33%) Software Quality Assurance
10 2 (0.22%) ISO 9001
10 2 (0.22%) MiFID
10 2 (0.22%) NCSC
10 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.11%) ITGC
11 1 (0.11%) SOC 2
System Software
1 167 (18.45%) Docker
2 11 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.66%) Active Directory
5 3 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.33%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.11%) Firmware
7 1 (0.11%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 163 (18.01%) Kubernetes
2 51 (5.64%) Grafana
3 44 (4.86%) Ansible
4 42 (4.64%) Prometheus
5 16 (1.77%) Puppet
6 14 (1.55%) Progress Chef
7 10 (1.10%) Kibana
8 9 (0.99%) Control-M
9 7 (0.77%) HP ALM
10 5 (0.55%) HP Fortify
11 4 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.44%) Packer
11 4 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.33%) Argo
12 3 (0.33%) Istio
12 3 (0.33%) Kustomize
12 3 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
13 1 (0.11%) HP Quality Center
13 1 (0.11%) linkerd
13 1 (0.11%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 103 (11.38%) Microsoft
2 59 (6.52%) Oracle
3 41 (4.53%) Salesforce
4 38 (4.20%) Databricks
5 34 (3.76%) Google
6 28 (3.09%) ServiceNow
7 27 (2.98%) IBM
8 21 (2.32%) SAP
9 19 (2.10%) Splunk
10 18 (1.99%) UiPath
11 17 (1.88%) Informatica
12 15 (1.66%) Red Hat
13 14 (1.55%) Cisco
14 12 (1.33%) VMware
15 11 (1.22%) HP
16 10 (1.10%) Dynatrace
16 10 (1.10%) OpenAI
17 9 (0.99%) Foundry
17 9 (0.99%) SaltStack
18 8 (0.88%) OpenLink