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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 52 51
Rank change year-on-year +4 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 823 559 729
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.49% 4.63% 4.16%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.06% 5.02% 4.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 540 384 506
10th Percentile £350 £356 £361
25th Percentile £413 £407 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £519 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.66% -1.14% -8.70%
75th Percentile £588 £688 £688
90th Percentile £688 £800 £775
England median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 10
10th Percentile £67.90 - £52.25
25th Percentile £77.13 - £52.50
Median hourly rate £95.00 £35.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +171.43% -36.36% -38.89%
75th Percentile £97.50 - £65.75
90th Percentile - - £71.88
England median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +22.73% -8.33% -15.49%

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 16,273 11,140 15,474
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.73% 92.30% 88.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,862 7,463 11,094
10th Percentile £358 £350 £340
25th Percentile £435 £430 £449
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -6.78%
75th Percentile £650 £688 £675
90th Percentile £763 £800 £800
England median daily rate £515 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -1.90% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 240 193 320
10th Percentile £18.07 £16.50 £15.50
25th Percentile £25.15 £24.66 £20.00
Median hourly rate £36.75 £32.00 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.84% +14.29% -28.59%
75th Percentile £58.94 £49.75 £48.75
90th Percentile £78.88 £63.20 £68.08
England median hourly rate £47.00 £28.60 £37.50
% change year-on-year +64.34% -23.73% +0.54%

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 3 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Automation in London over the 6 months to 3 June 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 3 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 +9 109 £550 +10.00% 62
South London -2 17 £513 +13.57% 4
West London -20 13 £413 +3.13% 6
East London +5 12 £450 +18.42% 11
North London - 1 £400 - 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 54 (6.56%) Confluence
2 30 (3.65%) Apache Airflow
3 22 (2.67%) Apache Spark
4 10 (1.22%) Apache
4 10 (1.22%) CMS
5 9 (1.09%) Appian
6 6 (0.73%) Camunda
7 4 (0.49%) nginx
7 4 (0.49%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.24%) Kentico
9 2 (0.24%) SAS
10 1 (0.12%) Ethereum
10 1 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.12%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.12%) Solana
Applications
1 19 (2.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.61%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.12%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 19 (2.31%) Aladdin
2 12 (1.46%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.97%) Findur
4 6 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
4 6 (0.73%) Shopify
5 5 (0.61%) BambooHR
5 5 (0.61%) Loan IQ
6 3 (0.36%) Distributed Ledger
7 2 (0.24%) iTrent
7 2 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
7 2 (0.24%) Summit
8 1 (0.12%) Bloomberg TOMS
8 1 (0.12%) Infor CloudSuite
8 1 (0.12%) Infor LN
8 1 (0.12%) Infor M3
8 1 (0.12%) IntelliMatch
8 1 (0.12%) NetSuite
8 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
8 1 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 243 (29.53%) Azure
2 224 (27.22%) AWS
3 140 (17.01%) GitHub
4 124 (15.07%) Azure DevOps
5 79 (9.60%) GitHub Actions
6 69 (8.38%) Serverless
7 49 (5.95%) AWS Lambda
7 49 (5.95%) GCP
7 49 (5.95%) Power Platform
8 46 (5.59%) Amazon S3
9 34 (4.13%) Snowflake
10 32 (3.89%) dbt
11 31 (3.77%) Azure Data Factory
12 26 (3.16%) Amazon ECS
13 25 (3.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 23 (2.79%) Dynamics 365
15 21 (2.55%) Azure AKS
16 18 (2.19%) Power Automate
17 17 (2.07%) Amazon SQS
18 16 (1.94%) Apigee
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.97%) HTTP
2 4 (0.49%) FTP
3 3 (0.36%) OpenLDAP
3 3 (0.36%) SSL
3 3 (0.36%) WAN
4 2 (0.24%) Ethernet
4 2 (0.24%) Firewall
4 2 (0.24%) Multicast
4 2 (0.24%) NaaS
4 2 (0.24%) SMS
4 2 (0.24%) WebEx
5 1 (0.12%) 5G
5 1 (0.12%) Cisco IOS
5 1 (0.12%) Cisco Nexus
5 1 (0.12%) DSL
5 1 (0.12%) MPLS
5 1 (0.12%) Network Security
5 1 (0.12%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.12%) SNMP
5 1 (0.12%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 57 (6.93%) SQL Server
2 56 (6.80%) PostgreSQL
3 41 (4.98%) NoSQL
4 39 (4.74%) Data Warehouse
5 36 (4.37%) Power BI
6 34 (4.13%) MongoDB
7 28 (3.40%) DynamoDB
7 28 (3.40%) Relational Database
8 23 (2.79%) Tableau
9 22 (2.67%) Amazon Athena
10 20 (2.43%) Big Data
11 19 (2.31%) Amazon Redshift
12 18 (2.19%) Data Lake
13 17 (2.07%) BigQuery
14 16 (1.94%) Amazon RDS
15 14 (1.70%) Metadata
16 13 (1.58%) Star Schema
17 11 (1.34%) Amazon Aurora
18 9 (1.09%) Flink
18 9 (1.09%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 129 (15.67%) JIRA
2 122 (14.82%) Git
3 103 (12.52%) Selenium
4 101 (12.27%) Jenkins
5 85 (10.33%) GitLab
6 51 (6.20%) Cucumber
7 50 (6.08%) Cypress.io
8 48 (5.83%) Postman
9 39 (4.74%) REST Assured
10 36 (4.37%) JMeter
11 30 (3.65%) JUnit
12 20 (2.43%) SpecFlow
13 17 (2.07%) MLflow
14 16 (1.94%) Mockito
15 14 (1.70%) WebDriver
16 13 (1.58%) Appium
16 13 (1.58%) Gradle
16 13 (1.58%) Zephyr
17 12 (1.46%) Maven
18 11 (1.34%) TestRail
General
1 231 (28.07%) Finance
2 213 (25.88%) Social Skills
3 112 (13.61%) Banking
4 108 (13.12%) Public Sector
5 106 (12.88%) Analytical Skills
6 27 (3.28%) Front Office
6 27 (3.28%) Investment Banking
7 22 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 16 (1.94%) Legal
9 14 (1.70%) Financial Institution
10 13 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
11 11 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
12 9 (1.09%) Back Office
12 9 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
12 9 (1.09%) Telecoms
13 8 (0.97%) Retail
14 7 (0.85%) Billing
14 7 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
14 7 (0.85%) Publishing
15 6 (0.73%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 178 (21.63%) Developer
2 148 (17.98%) Senior
3 88 (10.69%) Lead
4 85 (10.33%) Tester
5 55 (6.68%) Test Engineer
6 50 (6.08%) Analyst
6 50 (6.08%) QA Engineer
7 44 (5.35%) Data Engineer
8 43 (5.22%) Automation Tester
9 42 (5.10%) Architect
10 40 (4.86%) DevOps Engineer
11 37 (4.50%) Automation Engineer
11 37 (4.50%) Senior Developer
12 31 (3.77%) Java Developer
13 29 (3.52%) Test Automation Engineer
14 28 (3.40%) Software Engineer
15 27 (3.28%) Test Leader
16 26 (3.16%) Test Manager
17 25 (3.04%) Full-Stack Developer
17 25 (3.04%) QA Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 99 (12.03%) Playwright
2 94 (11.42%) REST
3 89 (10.81%) React
4 78 (9.48%) RESTful
5 67 (8.14%) .NET
6 65 (7.90%) Kafka
7 54 (6.56%) Node.js
8 45 (5.47%) Spring
9 42 (5.10%) Spring Boot
10 38 (4.62%) CSS
10 38 (4.62%) HTML
11 29 (3.52%) OAuth
12 25 (3.04%) pytest
12 25 (3.04%) Web Services
13 20 (2.43%) Swagger
14 19 (2.31%) .NET Core
14 19 (2.31%) AngularJS
15 18 (2.19%) Gherkin
15 18 (2.19%) OAuth2
15 18 (2.19%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 105 (12.76%) Cloud Native
2 53 (6.44%) Distributed Systems
3 48 (5.83%) Product Ownership
4 38 (4.62%) Legacy Systems
5 29 (3.52%) Data Protection Act
6 21 (2.55%) Algorithms
7 19 (2.31%) Fixed Income
7 19 (2.31%) Greenfield Project
8 18 (2.19%) Onboarding
8 18 (2.19%) Virtual Team
9 17 (2.07%) Management Information System
9 17 (2.07%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (1.70%) Data Structures
10 14 (1.70%) Equities
10 14 (1.70%) Mobile App
11 13 (1.58%) NHS
12 10 (1.22%) AI Agents
12 10 (1.22%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 10 (1.22%) Low-Code
13 9 (1.09%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 39 (4.74%) Linux
2 25 (3.04%) Windows
3 21 (2.55%) Android
4 16 (1.94%) Apple iOS
5 14 (1.70%) Unix
6 4 (0.49%) Solaris
6 4 (0.49%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.49%) Windows Server 2008
7 3 (0.36%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
7 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 460 (55.89%) CI/CD
2 323 (39.25%) Agile
3 283 (34.39%) DevOps
4 139 (16.89%) AI
5 135 (16.40%) Problem-Solving
6 131 (15.92%) Infrastructure as Code
7 128 (15.55%) Validation
8 125 (15.19%) Test Strategy
9 122 (14.82%) Observability
10 119 (14.46%) Continuous Improvement
11 113 (13.73%) Containerisation
12 109 (13.24%) Microservices
13 105 (12.76%) Regression Testing
14 99 (12.03%) User Acceptance Testing
15 97 (11.79%) Software Engineering
16 96 (11.66%) Data Modelling
17 90 (10.94%) Analytics
18 89 (10.81%) Software Testing
19 83 (10.09%) Test Scripting
20 81 (9.84%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 259 (31.47%) Python
2 218 (26.49%) SQL
3 170 (20.66%) Java
4 120 (14.58%) TypeScript
5 119 (14.46%) JavaScript
6 103 (12.52%) C#
7 34 (4.13%) PowerShell
8 21 (2.55%) Bash
9 19 (2.31%) Apex Code
10 18 (2.19%) Kotlin
11 17 (2.07%) PL/SQL
12 15 (1.82%) Ruby
13 14 (1.70%) Bicep
14 13 (1.58%) Scala
15 10 (1.22%) C++
15 10 (1.22%) Go
16 7 (0.85%) T-SQL
17 6 (0.73%) Groovy
17 6 (0.73%) Rust
17 6 (0.73%) Swift
Qualifications
1 179 (21.75%) Security Cleared
2 155 (18.83%) SC Cleared
3 41 (4.98%) Degree
4 29 (3.52%) ISTQB
5 26 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
6 22 (2.67%) Computer Science Degree
7 14 (1.70%) DV Cleared
8 9 (1.09%) DBS Check
8 9 (1.09%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.85%) AWS Certification
10 6 (0.73%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 4 (0.49%) Azure Certification
12 3 (0.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
13 2 (0.24%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 2 (0.24%) CISSP
13 2 (0.24%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 2 (0.24%) PhD
14 1 (0.12%) Cisco Certification
14 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 197 (23.94%) QA
2 65 (7.90%) Data Quality
3 46 (5.59%) Accessibility
4 25 (3.04%) GDPR
5 19 (2.31%) WCAG
6 9 (1.09%) NIST
7 6 (0.73%) ISO 20022
7 6 (0.73%) SLA
8 5 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 4 (0.49%) HL7
9 4 (0.49%) NCSC
9 4 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 3 (0.36%) MiFID
10 3 (0.36%) Software Quality Assurance
11 2 (0.24%) EU AI Act
11 2 (0.24%) GRC
12 1 (0.12%) EMIR
12 1 (0.12%) HIPAA
12 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 136 (16.52%) Docker
2 6 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.49%) Oracle RAC
4 4 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.36%) Active Directory
5 3 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.12%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.12%) Squid
6 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 136 (16.52%) Kubernetes
2 102 (12.39%) Terraform
3 38 (4.62%) Grafana
4 35 (4.25%) Prometheus
5 23 (2.79%) Ansible
6 8 (0.97%) HP ALM
6 8 (0.97%) Kibana
6 8 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
7 4 (0.49%) Oracle RMAN
7 4 (0.49%) Puppet
8 3 (0.36%) Control-M
8 3 (0.36%) Kustomize
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
Vendors
1 81 (9.84%) Microsoft
2 55 (6.68%) Oracle
3 54 (6.56%) Salesforce
4 38 (4.62%) Databricks
5 21 (2.55%) ServiceNow
6 18 (2.19%) UiPath
7 16 (1.94%) Google
8 14 (1.70%) Splunk
9 13 (1.58%) OpenAI
10 11 (1.34%) IBM
11 10 (1.22%) MuleSoft
12 9 (1.09%) Guidewire
12 9 (1.09%) SAP
13 8 (0.97%) Apple
13 8 (0.97%) Automation Anywhere
13 8 (0.97%) Dynatrace
13 8 (0.97%) HP
13 8 (0.97%) OpenLink
14 7 (0.85%) Informatica
14 7 (0.85%) Workday