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 16 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 54 47
Rank change year-on-year +7 -7 +2
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 871 626 776
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.41% 4.62% 4.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.95% 5.01% 5.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 583 418 532
10th Percentile £343 £338 £363
25th Percentile £425 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £619 £674 £675
90th Percentile £709 £775 £774
England median daily rate £475 £484 £525
% change year-on-year -1.86% -7.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 4 9
10th Percentile - £37.25 £52.00
25th Percentile £92.50 £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 £65.00
90th Percentile - £70.25 £71.88
England median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +35.00% -9.09% -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 17,581 12,493 15,383
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.98% 92.12% 88.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,664 8,343 10,937
10th Percentile £360 £331 £350
25th Percentile £446 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.82% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £770 £788 £800
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 274 239 281
10th Percentile £17.60 £16.50 £16.24
25th Percentile £22.00 £24.66 £20.22
Median hourly rate £36.25 £32.00 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +13.28% +6.10% -27.33%
75th Percentile £58.44 £50.25 £50.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £63.35 £69.50
England median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +88.87% -34.02% -8.14%

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 16 July 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 16 July 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 +15 117 £550 +15.79% 26
South London -7 15 £535 +7.00% 4
West London -12 11 £523 +30.63% 5
East London +6 8 £545 +18.48% 13
North London -2 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 60 (6.89%) Confluence
2 32 (3.67%) Apache Airflow
3 24 (2.76%) Apache Spark
4 13 (1.49%) CMS
5 12 (1.38%) Apache
6 5 (0.57%) Appian
6 5 (0.57%) Camunda
7 4 (0.46%) nginx
7 4 (0.46%) Tomcat
7 4 (0.46%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.34%) Kentico
8 3 (0.34%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.23%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.23%) Mule
9 2 (0.23%) SAS
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.11%) Ethereum
10 1 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 20 (2.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (1.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.69%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.11%) Mingle
7 1 (0.11%) Trello
Business Applications
1 16 (1.84%) Aladdin
2 13 (1.49%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.92%) Findur
3 8 (0.92%) Oracle EBS
4 6 (0.69%) Shopify
5 5 (0.57%) BambooHR
6 4 (0.46%) Loan IQ
6 4 (0.46%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.34%) Distributed Ledger
8 2 (0.23%) Infor CloudSuite
8 2 (0.23%) Infor LN
8 2 (0.23%) Infor M3
8 2 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
8 2 (0.23%) Summit
9 1 (0.11%) IntelliMatch
9 1 (0.11%) Misys Equation
9 1 (0.11%) Misys Midas
9 1 (0.11%) Oracle EBS R12
9 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 283 (32.49%) Azure
2 260 (29.85%) AWS
3 173 (19.86%) GitHub
4 139 (15.96%) Azure DevOps
5 110 (12.63%) GitHub Actions
6 75 (8.61%) Serverless
7 61 (7.00%) Power Platform
8 59 (6.77%) GCP
9 57 (6.54%) AWS Lambda
10 55 (6.31%) Amazon S3
11 39 (4.48%) dbt
12 31 (3.56%) Snowflake
13 30 (3.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 30 (3.44%) Amazon ECS
14 25 (2.87%) Amazon EC2
15 22 (2.53%) Azure AKS
15 22 (2.53%) Azure Data Factory
16 20 (2.30%) Dynamics 365
16 20 (2.30%) GitHub Copilot
17 19 (2.18%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.92%) HTTP
2 3 (0.34%) FTP
2 3 (0.34%) Network Security
2 3 (0.34%) OpenLDAP
2 3 (0.34%) SMS
2 3 (0.34%) WAN
3 2 (0.23%) Ethernet
3 2 (0.23%) Firewall
3 2 (0.23%) Multicast
3 2 (0.23%) NaaS
4 1 (0.11%) Bluetooth
4 1 (0.11%) Cisco IOS
4 1 (0.11%) DSL
4 1 (0.11%) MPLS
4 1 (0.11%) NFC
4 1 (0.11%) NGFW
4 1 (0.11%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.11%) SNMP
4 1 (0.11%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.11%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (6.20%) PostgreSQL
2 49 (5.63%) Power BI
3 48 (5.51%) SQL Server
4 47 (5.40%) NoSQL
5 46 (5.28%) Data Warehouse
6 37 (4.25%) MongoDB
7 31 (3.56%) DynamoDB
8 29 (3.33%) Relational Database
9 24 (2.76%) Amazon Athena
10 22 (2.53%) Amazon Redshift
11 20 (2.30%) Amazon RDS
11 20 (2.30%) Big Data
12 18 (2.07%) Data Lake
13 17 (1.95%) Tableau
14 15 (1.72%) BigQuery
14 15 (1.72%) Metadata
15 11 (1.26%) Redis
16 10 (1.15%) Oracle Database
17 9 (1.03%) Elasticsearch
17 9 (1.03%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 141 (16.19%) Git
2 133 (15.27%) JIRA
3 124 (14.24%) Jenkins
4 104 (11.94%) Selenium
5 96 (11.02%) GitLab
6 57 (6.54%) Cypress.io
7 52 (5.97%) Cucumber
8 48 (5.51%) REST Assured
9 44 (5.05%) Postman
10 38 (4.36%) JMeter
10 38 (4.36%) JUnit
11 17 (1.95%) Gatling
11 17 (1.95%) Gradle
11 17 (1.95%) Maven
12 16 (1.84%) Appium
12 16 (1.84%) Mockito
12 16 (1.84%) SpecFlow
13 15 (1.72%) Bitbucket
14 14 (1.61%) Zephyr
15 13 (1.49%) WebDriver
General
1 258 (29.62%) Finance
2 233 (26.75%) Social Skills
3 121 (13.89%) Analytical Skills
4 118 (13.55%) Banking
5 92 (10.56%) Public Sector
6 26 (2.99%) Front Office
7 24 (2.76%) Investment Banking
8 22 (2.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 20 (2.30%) Financial Institution
10 17 (1.95%) Influencing Skills
11 15 (1.72%) Legal
12 13 (1.49%) Documentation Skills
13 12 (1.38%) Back Office
14 9 (1.03%) Retail
14 9 (1.03%) Telecoms
15 8 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
16 7 (0.80%) Marketing
17 6 (0.69%) Local Government
17 6 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
18 5 (0.57%) Games
Job Titles
1 188 (21.58%) Developer
2 147 (16.88%) Senior
3 96 (11.02%) Lead
4 79 (9.07%) Tester
5 58 (6.66%) Test Engineer
6 53 (6.08%) Analyst
6 53 (6.08%) Data Engineer
7 52 (5.97%) QA Engineer
8 49 (5.63%) DevOps Engineer
9 48 (5.51%) Architect
10 47 (5.40%) Java Developer
11 38 (4.36%) Automation Engineer
12 37 (4.25%) Software Engineer
13 35 (4.02%) Senior Developer
14 34 (3.90%) Automation Tester
14 34 (3.90%) Full-Stack Developer
15 32 (3.67%) Test Leader
16 31 (3.56%) Test Automation Engineer
17 26 (2.99%) Test Manager
18 24 (2.76%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (12.86%) Playwright
2 108 (12.40%) REST
3 102 (11.71%) React
4 82 (9.41%) RESTful
5 73 (8.38%) Kafka
6 68 (7.81%) .NET
7 63 (7.23%) Spring
8 56 (6.43%) Node.js
8 56 (6.43%) Spring Boot
9 46 (5.28%) CSS
10 43 (4.94%) HTML
11 26 (2.99%) OAuth
12 25 (2.87%) PySpark
13 24 (2.76%) HTML5
14 23 (2.64%) Redux
15 22 (2.53%) AngularJS
16 20 (2.30%) CSS3
16 20 (2.30%) Next.js
17 19 (2.18%) GraphQL
17 19 (2.18%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 131 (15.04%) Cloud Native
2 78 (8.96%) Distributed Systems
3 54 (6.20%) Product Ownership
4 32 (3.67%) Legacy Systems
5 28 (3.21%) Data Protection Act
6 25 (2.87%) Onboarding
7 21 (2.41%) Self-Motivation
8 20 (2.30%) Virtual Team
9 19 (2.18%) AI Agents
9 19 (2.18%) Fixed Income
10 18 (2.07%) Greenfield Project
11 17 (1.95%) Algorithms
11 17 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
12 15 (1.72%) Management Information System
12 15 (1.72%) Mobile App
13 13 (1.49%) Data Structures
14 12 (1.38%) Equities
15 10 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 10 (1.15%) NHS
15 10 (1.15%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 33 (3.79%) Linux
2 23 (2.64%) Windows
3 19 (2.18%) Android
4 17 (1.95%) Apple iOS
5 15 (1.72%) Unix
6 6 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 4 (0.46%) Solaris
7 4 (0.46%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.46%) Windows Server 2008
8 3 (0.34%) Mac OS
8 3 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
8 3 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (0.23%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 542 (62.23%) CI/CD
2 365 (41.91%) Agile
3 329 (37.77%) DevOps
4 171 (19.63%) AI
5 158 (18.14%) Infrastructure as Code
6 149 (17.11%) Problem-Solving
7 146 (16.76%) Microservices
8 138 (15.84%) Test Strategy
9 137 (15.73%) Continuous Improvement
10 136 (15.61%) Validation
11 128 (14.70%) Containerisation
11 128 (14.70%) Software Engineering
12 123 (14.12%) Observability
13 116 (13.32%) Regression Testing
14 111 (12.74%) User Acceptance Testing
15 102 (11.71%) Scrum
16 96 (11.02%) TDD
17 95 (10.91%) Full-Stack Development
18 89 (10.22%) Stakeholder Management
19 86 (9.87%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 262 (30.08%) Python
2 219 (25.14%) SQL
3 203 (23.31%) Java
4 133 (15.27%) TypeScript
5 124 (14.24%) JavaScript
6 93 (10.68%) C#
7 34 (3.90%) PowerShell
8 25 (2.87%) Bash
9 23 (2.64%) Kotlin
10 18 (2.07%) Ruby
11 17 (1.95%) Bicep
12 16 (1.84%) Apex Code
13 15 (1.72%) Scala
14 14 (1.61%) Go
15 13 (1.49%) PL/SQL
16 8 (0.92%) Swift
17 7 (0.80%) T-SQL
18 6 (0.69%) C++
18 6 (0.69%) Groovy
18 6 (0.69%) VBA
Qualifications
1 202 (23.19%) Security Cleared
2 180 (20.67%) SC Cleared
3 55 (6.31%) Degree
4 34 (3.90%) Computer Science Degree
5 22 (2.53%) BPSS Clearance
6 21 (2.41%) ISTQB
7 16 (1.84%) AWS Certification
7 16 (1.84%) DV Cleared
8 11 (1.26%) Master's Degree
9 8 (0.92%) Azure Certification
10 7 (0.80%) DBS Check
11 6 (0.69%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 5 (0.57%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 4 (0.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 4 (0.46%) CISSP
14 3 (0.34%) TOGAF Certification
15 2 (0.23%) Cisco Certification
15 2 (0.23%) CompTIA Security+
15 2 (0.23%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 2 (0.23%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 224 (25.72%) QA
2 69 (7.92%) Data Quality
3 54 (6.20%) Accessibility
4 24 (2.76%) GDPR
5 21 (2.41%) WCAG
6 9 (1.03%) NIST
7 6 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.46%) HL7
8 4 (0.46%) ISO 20022
9 3 (0.34%) EU AI Act
9 3 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.34%) MiFID
9 3 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
10 2 (0.23%) GRC
10 2 (0.23%) NCSC
10 2 (0.23%) SLA
11 1 (0.11%) GMP
11 1 (0.11%) GxP
11 1 (0.11%) ISO 8583
11 1 (0.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 146 (16.76%) Docker
2 8 (0.92%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.57%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.46%) Active Directory
4 4 (0.46%) Oracle RAC
4 4 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.11%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 149 (17.11%) Kubernetes
2 124 (14.24%) Terraform
3 44 (5.05%) Grafana
4 38 (4.36%) Prometheus
5 32 (3.67%) Ansible
6 9 (1.03%) Kibana
7 8 (0.92%) HP ALM
7 8 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
8 5 (0.57%) Progress Chef
8 5 (0.57%) Puppet
9 4 (0.46%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.34%) Control-M
10 3 (0.34%) Kustomize
10 3 (0.34%) Packer
11 2 (0.23%) Amdocs OSS
12 1 (0.11%) HP Quality Center
12 1 (0.11%) Istio
12 1 (0.11%) linkerd
12 1 (0.11%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 93 (10.68%) Microsoft
2 56 (6.43%) Salesforce
3 51 (5.86%) Oracle
4 30 (3.44%) Databricks
5 20 (2.30%) ServiceNow
6 19 (2.18%) Google
6 19 (2.18%) UiPath
7 16 (1.84%) Splunk
8 14 (1.61%) Informatica
9 13 (1.49%) IBM
10 9 (1.03%) Dynatrace
10 9 (1.03%) OpenAI
11 8 (0.92%) HP
11 8 (0.92%) OpenLink
11 8 (0.92%) SAP
12 7 (0.80%) Guidewire
12 7 (0.80%) MuleSoft
13 6 (0.69%) Charles River
13 6 (0.69%) Foundry
13 6 (0.69%) Workday