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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 54 45
Rank change year-on-year +5 -9 +4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 938 602 757
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.61% 4.47% 4.64%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.20% 4.83% 5.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 644 404 497
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £412 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £509 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.72% -3.10% -7.49%
75th Percentile £620 £641 £625
90th Percentile £725 £773 £755
England median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 4 3
10th Percentile £36.78 £37.25 £53.13
25th Percentile £43.61 £40.63 £57.81
Median hourly rate £49.50 £45.00 £68.75
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -34.55% -23.61%
75th Percentile £86.25 £55.63 £71.88
90th Percentile £97.50 £70.25 -
England median hourly rate £68.22 £56.25 £58.75
% change year-on-year +21.27% -4.26% -21.67%

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 18,051 12,472 14,541
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.78% 92.51% 89.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,836 8,235 9,567
10th Percentile £358 £331 £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 £671 £675
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 318 247 185
10th Percentile £16.21 £17.62 £17.35
25th Percentile £19.27 £25.02 £24.15
Median hourly rate £33.30 £30.50 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +9.18% -14.08% -5.33%
75th Percentile £57.50 £47.25 £56.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £63.75 £75.00
England median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +65.23% -41.51% -1.94%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 +7 121 £550 +22.22% 107
South London -1 15 £593 +18.50% 8
East London +2 7 £658 +26.44% 12
West London -25 4 £600 +50.94% 57
North London +1 2 £463 - 3
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 70 (7.46%) Confluence
2 44 (4.69%) Apache Airflow
3 26 (2.77%) Apache Spark
4 23 (2.45%) SharePoint
5 18 (1.92%) Apache
6 16 (1.71%) CMS
7 9 (0.96%) Camunda
8 7 (0.75%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 4 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.43%) nginx
10 3 (0.32%) Kentico
10 3 (0.32%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.21%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.21%) Mule
11 2 (0.21%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.21%) SAS
12 1 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.11%) Appian
12 1 (0.11%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 18 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.49%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.53%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.32%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.32%) Trello
6 2 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.21%) Mingle
7 1 (0.11%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.11%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 13 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (0.96%) Aladdin
2 9 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.53%) SAP GRC
4 4 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 4 (0.43%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.21%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.21%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.21%) Findur
6 2 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.21%) SAP MDG
6 2 (0.21%) Shopify
7 1 (0.11%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.11%) Infor CloudSuite
7 1 (0.11%) Infor LN
7 1 (0.11%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.11%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 1 (0.11%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 329 (35.07%) Azure
2 295 (31.45%) AWS
3 194 (20.68%) GitHub
4 157 (16.74%) Azure DevOps
5 122 (13.01%) GitHub Actions
6 86 (9.17%) GCP
6 86 (9.17%) Serverless
7 70 (7.46%) Power Platform
8 66 (7.04%) AWS Lambda
9 57 (6.08%) Amazon S3
10 51 (5.44%) dbt
11 41 (4.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 41 (4.37%) Snowflake
12 37 (3.94%) GitHub Copilot
13 32 (3.41%) AWS CloudFormation
14 30 (3.20%) Amazon ECS
15 27 (2.88%) Amazon EC2
15 27 (2.88%) Amazon EKS
16 25 (2.67%) Microsoft Copilot
17 24 (2.56%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 10 (1.07%) DNS
2 8 (0.85%) HTTP
2 8 (0.85%) TCP/IP
3 7 (0.75%) DHCP
3 7 (0.75%) Firewall
3 7 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
4 6 (0.64%) BGP
4 6 (0.64%) LAN
4 6 (0.64%) Network Security
4 6 (0.64%) WAN
5 4 (0.43%) Ethernet VPN
5 4 (0.43%) Internet
5 4 (0.43%) NX-OS
5 4 (0.43%) TACACS
5 4 (0.43%) VXLAN
6 3 (0.32%) FTP
6 3 (0.32%) OpenLDAP
6 3 (0.32%) SMS
6 3 (0.32%) SSH
6 3 (0.32%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 67 (7.14%) PostgreSQL
2 55 (5.86%) Power BI
3 53 (5.65%) Data Warehouse
4 51 (5.44%) NoSQL
4 51 (5.44%) SQL Server
5 39 (4.16%) MongoDB
5 39 (4.16%) Relational Database
6 25 (2.67%) Amazon Redshift
7 22 (2.35%) Data Lake
8 21 (2.24%) Amazon Athena
8 21 (2.24%) DynamoDB
9 20 (2.13%) Amazon RDS
10 17 (1.81%) Redis
11 16 (1.71%) Big Data
11 16 (1.71%) MySQL
11 16 (1.71%) Tableau
12 15 (1.60%) BigQuery
13 14 (1.49%) Amazon Aurora
13 14 (1.49%) Metadata
13 14 (1.49%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 191 (20.36%) Git
2 177 (18.87%) Jenkins
3 128 (13.65%) JIRA
4 121 (12.90%) Selenium
5 111 (11.83%) GitLab
6 61 (6.50%) Cypress.io
7 56 (5.97%) JUnit
8 55 (5.86%) JMeter
9 54 (5.76%) Postman
10 53 (5.65%) Cucumber
11 45 (4.80%) REST Assured
12 23 (2.45%) Gatling
12 23 (2.45%) Gradle
12 23 (2.45%) Maven
13 21 (2.24%) LoadRunner
13 21 (2.24%) SonarQube
14 20 (2.13%) Mockito
15 16 (1.71%) Appium
15 16 (1.71%) Bitbucket
16 15 (1.60%) SoapUI
General
1 283 (30.17%) Finance
2 249 (26.55%) Social Skills
3 146 (15.57%) Banking
4 142 (15.14%) Analytical Skills
5 79 (8.42%) Public Sector
6 31 (3.30%) Front Office
7 23 (2.45%) Investment Banking
8 20 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 19 (2.03%) Financial Institution
10 14 (1.49%) Telecoms
11 13 (1.39%) Marketing
12 12 (1.28%) Back Office
13 11 (1.17%) Retail
14 10 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
14 10 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
14 10 (1.07%) Law
14 10 (1.07%) Local Government
15 9 (0.96%) Legal
16 6 (0.64%) Games
16 6 (0.64%) Military
Job Titles
1 202 (21.54%) Developer
2 166 (17.70%) Senior
3 97 (10.34%) Lead
4 67 (7.14%) Tester
5 65 (6.93%) Data Engineer
6 56 (5.97%) Test Engineer
7 55 (5.86%) Java Developer
8 52 (5.54%) QA Engineer
9 51 (5.44%) Automation Engineer
9 51 (5.44%) DevOps Engineer
10 49 (5.22%) Software Engineer
11 46 (4.90%) Architect
12 43 (4.58%) Analyst
13 40 (4.26%) Full-Stack Developer
13 40 (4.26%) Senior Developer
14 35 (3.73%) Test Manager
15 32 (3.41%) Test Leader
16 30 (3.20%) Test Automation Engineer
17 29 (3.09%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 27 (2.88%) Automation Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 159 (16.95%) Terraform
2 156 (16.63%) REST
3 124 (13.22%) Kafka
4 114 (12.15%) Playwright
5 106 (11.30%) RESTful
6 92 (9.81%) React
7 88 (9.38%) Spring
8 77 (8.21%) .NET
8 77 (8.21%) Spring Boot
9 65 (6.93%) HTML
10 55 (5.86%) CSS
11 46 (4.90%) Node.js
12 36 (3.84%) Middleware
13 35 (3.73%) SOAP
14 34 (3.62%) PySpark
15 31 (3.30%) OAuth
16 29 (3.09%) AngularJS
17 28 (2.99%) XML
18 27 (2.88%) JSON
18 27 (2.88%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 163 (17.38%) Cloud Native
2 88 (9.38%) Distributed Systems
3 84 (8.96%) Product Ownership
4 40 (4.26%) Onboarding
5 37 (3.94%) AI Agents
6 29 (3.09%) Enterprise Software
7 21 (2.24%) Legacy Systems
7 21 (2.24%) Self-Motivation
8 20 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
9 19 (2.03%) Data Structures
10 16 (1.71%) Mobile App
11 15 (1.60%) Fixed Income
11 15 (1.60%) Virtual Team
12 12 (1.28%) Private Cloud
13 11 (1.17%) Legacy Applications
13 11 (1.17%) Security Posture
14 10 (1.07%) Market Risk
15 9 (0.96%) Distributed Architecture
15 9 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
15 9 (0.96%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 70 (7.46%) Linux
2 48 (5.12%) Unix
3 35 (3.73%) Windows
4 19 (2.03%) Android
5 18 (1.92%) Apple iOS
6 15 (1.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 8 (0.85%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.43%) VMS
9 3 (0.32%) Solaris
9 3 (0.32%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.21%) Mac OS X
10 2 (0.21%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.11%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 611 (65.14%) CI/CD
2 417 (44.46%) Agile
3 387 (41.26%) DevOps
4 218 (23.24%) AI
5 184 (19.62%) Infrastructure as Code
6 182 (19.40%) Problem-Solving
7 179 (19.08%) Microservices
8 176 (18.76%) Software Engineering
9 171 (18.23%) Validation
10 169 (18.02%) Continuous Improvement
11 157 (16.74%) Containerisation
12 152 (16.20%) Test Strategy
13 151 (16.10%) Observability
14 135 (14.39%) Scrum
15 128 (13.65%) Stakeholder Management
16 120 (12.79%) TDD
17 111 (11.83%) Event-Driven
18 102 (10.87%) Data Pipeline
18 102 (10.87%) Regression Testing
19 101 (10.77%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 328 (34.97%) Python
2 265 (28.25%) Java
3 263 (28.04%) SQL
4 153 (16.31%) JavaScript
5 126 (13.43%) TypeScript
6 87 (9.28%) C#
7 41 (4.37%) PowerShell
8 39 (4.16%) Bash
9 27 (2.88%) Bicep
10 23 (2.45%) Kotlin
10 23 (2.45%) Scala
11 16 (1.71%) Go
12 13 (1.39%) C++
13 12 (1.28%) PL/SQL
13 12 (1.28%) Shell Script
14 10 (1.07%) C
14 10 (1.07%) Groovy
14 10 (1.07%) Ruby
15 9 (0.96%) VB.NET
16 8 (0.85%) Perl
Qualifications
1 252 (26.87%) Security Cleared
2 224 (23.88%) SC Cleared
3 67 (7.14%) Degree
4 40 (4.26%) Computer Science Degree
5 33 (3.52%) DV Cleared
6 32 (3.41%) ISTQB
7 29 (3.09%) AWS Certification
8 22 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
9 14 (1.49%) Azure Certification
10 10 (1.07%) ISEB
11 9 (0.96%) CISSP
11 9 (0.96%) Master's Degree
12 7 (0.75%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 7 (0.75%) DBS Check
12 7 (0.75%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 6 (0.64%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 5 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
15 4 (0.43%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 4 (0.43%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 4 (0.43%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 265 (28.25%) QA
2 77 (8.21%) Data Quality
3 46 (4.90%) Accessibility
4 23 (2.45%) GDPR
5 14 (1.49%) WCAG
6 13 (1.39%) ISO 20022
7 12 (1.28%) NIST
8 11 (1.17%) SLA
9 9 (0.96%) GRC
9 9 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 3 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.32%) EU AI Act
11 2 (0.21%) ISO 9001
11 2 (0.21%) MiFID
11 2 (0.21%) NCSC
11 2 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
11 2 (0.21%) Software Quality Assurance
12 1 (0.11%) COBIT
12 1 (0.11%) SEPA
System Software
1 197 (21.00%) Docker
2 11 (1.17%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.75%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
4 3 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
4 3 (0.32%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
5 1 (0.11%) Firmware
5 1 (0.11%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 187 (19.94%) Kubernetes
2 64 (6.82%) Grafana
3 50 (5.33%) Ansible
4 48 (5.12%) Prometheus
5 18 (1.92%) Puppet
6 16 (1.71%) Kibana
6 16 (1.71%) Progress Chef
7 10 (1.07%) Control-M
8 6 (0.64%) HP ALM
8 6 (0.64%) HP Fortify
8 6 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
9 5 (0.53%) Argo
9 5 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
10 3 (0.32%) Kustomize
10 3 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.32%) Packer
10 3 (0.32%) Rancher
11 2 (0.21%) Istio
11 2 (0.21%) systemd
12 1 (0.11%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 113 (12.05%) Microsoft
2 55 (5.86%) Oracle
3 45 (4.80%) Databricks
4 43 (4.58%) Google
5 34 (3.62%) IBM
6 31 (3.30%) Salesforce
6 31 (3.30%) ServiceNow
7 26 (2.77%) SAP
8 24 (2.56%) Splunk
9 22 (2.35%) UiPath
10 17 (1.81%) Informatica
11 16 (1.71%) Dynatrace
11 16 (1.71%) OpenAI
12 15 (1.60%) Red Hat
13 14 (1.49%) Cisco
13 14 (1.49%) Foundry
13 14 (1.49%) VMware
14 12 (1.28%) HP
15 11 (1.17%) SaltStack
16 7 (0.75%) MuleSoft