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

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 54 45
Rank change year-on-year +4 -9 +4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 901 596 775
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.47% 4.46% 4.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.02% 4.82% 5.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 609 405 519
10th Percentile £350 £350 £357
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -6.67%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £709 £775 £768
England median daily rate £476 £500 £523
% change year-on-year -4.90% -4.31% -4.35%
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 £69.25 £55.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +25.91% - -22.54%

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 17,945 12,360 14,445
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 89.05% 92.46% 88.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,728 8,229 9,956
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 290 253 193
10th Percentile £17.23 £16.60 £17.25
25th Percentile £19.85 £24.77 £22.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £31.49 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.73% -10.03% -12.50%
75th Percentile £56.25 £49.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £81.25 £63.75 £71.25
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% -

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 +11 120 £550 +22.22% 56
South London -8 13 £593 +18.50% 8
East London +7 10 £590 +28.26% 17
West London -20 7 £600 +50.94% 43
North London 0 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 67 (7.44%) Confluence
2 37 (4.11%) Apache Airflow
3 26 (2.89%) Apache Spark
4 22 (2.44%) SharePoint
5 13 (1.44%) Apache
5 13 (1.44%) CMS
6 6 (0.67%) Camunda
6 6 (0.67%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 4 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.33%) Kentico
8 3 (0.33%) nginx
8 3 (0.33%) SAS
8 3 (0.33%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.33%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.22%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.22%) Mule
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
10 1 (0.11%) Appian
10 1 (0.11%) Ethereum
10 1 (0.11%) Solana
Applications
1 20 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.44%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.44%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.33%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.33%) Trello
6 1 (0.11%) Mingle
6 1 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 13 (1.44%) Aladdin
2 12 (1.33%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.89%) Findur
4 6 (0.67%) Oracle EBS
4 6 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
5 5 (0.55%) BambooHR
6 4 (0.44%) Salesforce CRM
6 4 (0.44%) SAP GRC
6 4 (0.44%) Shopify
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 LN
9 1 (0.11%) Infor M3
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
1 311 (34.52%) Azure
2 272 (30.19%) AWS
3 193 (21.42%) GitHub
4 157 (17.43%) Azure DevOps
5 120 (13.32%) GitHub Actions
6 78 (8.66%) Serverless
7 71 (7.88%) GCP
8 70 (7.77%) Power Platform
9 60 (6.66%) AWS Lambda
10 51 (5.66%) Amazon S3
11 50 (5.55%) dbt
12 41 (4.55%) Snowflake
13 33 (3.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 30 (3.33%) Amazon ECS
14 30 (3.33%) GitHub Copilot
15 26 (2.89%) Azure Monitor
16 25 (2.77%) Amazon EC2
16 25 (2.77%) Azure AKS
17 24 (2.66%) AWS CloudFormation
18 21 (2.33%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.00%) HTTP
2 7 (0.78%) Firewall
2 7 (0.78%) Network Security
2 7 (0.78%) TCP/IP
2 7 (0.78%) WAN
2 7 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
3 6 (0.67%) BGP
3 6 (0.67%) DNS
3 6 (0.67%) 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 (6.55%) Power BI
2 57 (6.33%) Data Warehouse
3 55 (6.10%) PostgreSQL
4 51 (5.66%) NoSQL
4 51 (5.66%) SQL Server
5 41 (4.55%) MongoDB
6 33 (3.66%) Relational Database
7 26 (2.89%) Amazon Redshift
7 26 (2.89%) DynamoDB
8 24 (2.66%) Amazon Athena
9 21 (2.33%) Tableau
10 20 (2.22%) Amazon RDS
10 20 (2.22%) Data Lake
11 19 (2.11%) Big Data
12 18 (2.00%) BigQuery
13 15 (1.66%) Metadata
14 12 (1.33%) Oracle Database
15 11 (1.22%) MySQL
15 11 (1.22%) Redis
16 10 (1.11%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 170 (18.87%) Git
2 149 (16.54%) Jenkins
3 129 (14.32%) JIRA
4 117 (12.99%) Selenium
5 109 (12.10%) GitLab
6 60 (6.66%) Cypress.io
7 49 (5.44%) JMeter
8 47 (5.22%) JUnit
9 43 (4.77%) Postman
10 40 (4.44%) Cucumber
10 40 (4.44%) REST Assured
11 21 (2.33%) Gatling
11 21 (2.33%) Gradle
12 18 (2.00%) Appium
12 18 (2.00%) LoadRunner
12 18 (2.00%) Maven
13 17 (1.89%) Bitbucket
13 17 (1.89%) Mockito
14 16 (1.78%) SonarQube
14 16 (1.78%) Zephyr
General
1 272 (30.19%) Finance
2 249 (27.64%) Social Skills
3 137 (15.21%) Analytical Skills
4 128 (14.21%) Banking
5 90 (9.99%) Public Sector
6 29 (3.22%) Front Office
7 23 (2.55%) Investment Banking
8 20 (2.22%) Financial Institution
8 20 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 17 (1.89%) Telecoms
10 15 (1.66%) Back Office
10 15 (1.66%) Legal
11 14 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
12 13 (1.44%) Documentation Skills
13 11 (1.22%) Marketing
14 10 (1.11%) Retail
15 8 (0.89%) Law
16 7 (0.78%) Local Government
17 5 (0.55%) Publishing
17 5 (0.55%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 202 (22.42%) Developer
2 152 (16.87%) Senior
3 86 (9.54%) Lead
4 65 (7.21%) Tester
5 57 (6.33%) Test Engineer
6 56 (6.22%) DevOps Engineer
7 55 (6.10%) Data Engineer
8 54 (5.99%) Java Developer
9 51 (5.66%) QA Engineer
10 47 (5.22%) Analyst
11 44 (4.88%) Automation Engineer
11 44 (4.88%) Software Engineer
12 43 (4.77%) Architect
13 41 (4.55%) Full-Stack Developer
14 38 (4.22%) Senior Developer
15 35 (3.88%) Test Manager
16 33 (3.66%) Test Automation Engineer
16 33 (3.66%) Test Leader
17 28 (3.11%) Automation Tester
18 24 (2.66%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 143 (15.87%) Terraform
2 134 (14.87%) REST
3 107 (11.88%) Playwright
4 99 (10.99%) Kafka
5 96 (10.65%) RESTful
6 94 (10.43%) React
7 76 (8.44%) Spring
8 72 (7.99%) .NET
9 65 (7.21%) Spring Boot
10 58 (6.44%) HTML
11 50 (5.55%) CSS
11 50 (5.55%) Node.js
12 32 (3.55%) PySpark
13 29 (3.22%) JSON
14 28 (3.11%) AngularJS
14 28 (3.11%) Middleware
14 28 (3.11%) XML
15 24 (2.66%) SOAP
16 23 (2.55%) HTML5
17 22 (2.44%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 143 (15.87%) Cloud Native
2 84 (9.32%) Distributed Systems
3 70 (7.77%) Product Ownership
4 33 (3.66%) Onboarding
5 26 (2.89%) AI Agents
5 26 (2.89%) Data Protection Act
6 24 (2.66%) Enterprise Software
7 19 (2.11%) Self-Motivation
8 18 (2.00%) Legacy Systems
9 17 (1.89%) Virtual Team
10 16 (1.78%) Fixed Income
11 15 (1.66%) Data Structures
12 14 (1.55%) Mobile App
13 11 (1.22%) Algorithms
13 11 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
14 10 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 10 (1.11%) Management Information System
15 9 (1.00%) Equities
15 9 (1.00%) Security Posture
15 9 (1.00%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 62 (6.88%) Linux
2 45 (4.99%) Unix
3 37 (4.11%) Windows
4 18 (2.00%) Android
5 17 (1.89%) Apple iOS
6 13 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (0.78%) 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
1 565 (62.71%) CI/CD
2 386 (42.84%) Agile
3 364 (40.40%) DevOps
4 185 (20.53%) AI
5 174 (19.31%) Infrastructure as Code
6 172 (19.09%) Problem-Solving
7 162 (17.98%) Microservices
7 162 (17.98%) Validation
8 159 (17.65%) Continuous Improvement
9 154 (17.09%) Software Engineering
10 144 (15.98%) Test Strategy
11 138 (15.32%) Containerisation
12 135 (14.98%) Observability
13 119 (13.21%) Scrum
14 110 (12.21%) Regression Testing
14 110 (12.21%) TDD
14 110 (12.21%) User Acceptance Testing
15 109 (12.10%) Stakeholder Management
16 98 (10.88%) End-to-End Testing
17 95 (10.54%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 299 (33.19%) Python
2 252 (27.97%) SQL
3 243 (26.97%) Java
4 135 (14.98%) JavaScript
5 117 (12.99%) TypeScript
6 84 (9.32%) C#
7 50 (5.55%) PowerShell
8 36 (4.00%) Bash
9 26 (2.89%) Bicep
10 21 (2.33%) Kotlin
11 17 (1.89%) Ruby
12 16 (1.78%) Scala
13 13 (1.44%) Apex Code
14 12 (1.33%) C++
14 12 (1.33%) Go
14 12 (1.33%) PL/SQL
15 9 (1.00%) Shell Script
15 9 (1.00%) VB.NET
16 7 (0.78%) Perl
16 7 (0.78%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 239 (26.53%) Security Cleared
2 212 (23.53%) SC Cleared
3 62 (6.88%) Degree
4 37 (4.11%) Computer Science Degree
5 33 (3.66%) ISTQB
6 23 (2.55%) DV Cleared
7 19 (2.11%) AWS Certification
8 17 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
9 12 (1.33%) Azure Certification
10 9 (1.00%) ISEB
11 7 (0.78%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 7 (0.78%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 7 (0.78%) Master's Degree
12 6 (0.67%) 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%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 3 (0.33%) PhD
16 2 (0.22%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 243 (26.97%) QA
2 75 (8.32%) Data Quality
3 44 (4.88%) Accessibility
4 22 (2.44%) GDPR
5 19 (2.11%) WCAG
6 12 (1.33%) ISO 20022
7 11 (1.22%) SLA
8 9 (1.00%) NIST
9 8 (0.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 7 (0.78%) 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%) Software Quality Assurance
12 2 (0.22%) ISO 9001
12 2 (0.22%) MiFID
12 2 (0.22%) NCSC
12 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.11%) ITGC
13 1 (0.11%) PMO
System Software
1 160 (17.76%) Docker
2 12 (1.33%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.67%) 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
1 158 (17.54%) Kubernetes
2 50 (5.55%) Grafana
3 44 (4.88%) Ansible
4 41 (4.55%) Prometheus
5 16 (1.78%) Puppet
6 14 (1.55%) Progress Chef
7 10 (1.11%) Kibana
8 9 (1.00%) Control-M
9 8 (0.89%) 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 (11.43%) Microsoft
2 60 (6.66%) Oracle
3 44 (4.88%) Salesforce
4 40 (4.44%) Databricks
5 30 (3.33%) Google
6 28 (3.11%) ServiceNow
7 26 (2.89%) IBM
8 20 (2.22%) SAP
9 18 (2.00%) Splunk
9 18 (2.00%) UiPath
10 17 (1.89%) Informatica
11 15 (1.66%) Red Hat
12 14 (1.55%) Cisco
13 12 (1.33%) HP
13 12 (1.33%) VMware
14 10 (1.11%) OpenAI
15 9 (1.00%) Dynatrace
15 9 (1.00%) SaltStack
16 8 (0.89%) OpenLink
17 7 (0.78%) MuleSoft