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 10 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 44 53
Rank change year-on-year -2 +9 -5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 833 623 691
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.80% 4.92% 3.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.38% 5.37% 4.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 537 427 484
10th Percentile £325 £341 £363
25th Percentile £406 £407 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% -6.49%
75th Percentile £594 £656 £688
90th Percentile £710 £775 £775
England median daily rate £481 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -3.80% -4.76% -5.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 7
10th Percentile £55.99 - -
25th Percentile £58.15 - £52.50
Median hourly rate £63.50 - £55.00
75th Percentile £65.88 - £61.25
90th Percentile £66.25 - £65.40
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £55.00
% change year-on-year +14.54% +3.18% -12.00%

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 15,475 11,601 15,860
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 89.22% 91.69% 88.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,379 7,867 11,338
10th Percentile £353 £350 £338
25th Percentile £425 £445 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -6.38%
75th Percentile £650 £688 £675
90th Percentile £760 £803 £788
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 249 165 333
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.11 £15.96
25th Percentile £22.41 £24.18 £19.57
Median hourly rate £35.50 £35.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% +16.67% -23.08%
75th Percentile £56.00 £50.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £64.50 £66.95
England median hourly rate £40.00 £32.03 £34.11
% change year-on-year +24.90% -6.10% -9.05%

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 10 April 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 10 April 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 +5 109 £525 +1.45% 65
West London -18 22 £450 +19.05% 5
South London -7 21 £513 +4.59% 7
East London +4 11 £445 +11.25% 8
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 56 (6.72%) Confluence
2 17 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
3 11 (1.32%) Apache Spark
4 8 (0.96%) Appian
5 5 (0.60%) Apache
5 5 (0.60%) Camunda
5 5 (0.60%) CMS
6 4 (0.48%) nginx
6 4 (0.48%) SharePoint
6 4 (0.48%) Tomcat
6 4 (0.48%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
8 2 (0.24%) Magnolia
8 2 (0.24%) Sitecore CMS
8 2 (0.24%) WordPress
9 1 (0.12%) Anypoint
9 1 (0.12%) Ethereum
9 1 (0.12%) SAS
9 1 (0.12%) Solana
Applications
1 18 (2.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
3 6 (0.72%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.48%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.12%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 22 (2.64%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.84%) Findur
3 6 (0.72%) Loan IQ
3 6 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
3 6 (0.72%) Shopify
4 5 (0.60%) BambooHR
5 4 (0.48%) Dynamics CRM
6 3 (0.36%) Distributed Ledger
7 2 (0.24%) iTrent
7 2 (0.24%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.24%) SAP HR
7 2 (0.24%) Summit
8 1 (0.12%) Algo Collateral
8 1 (0.12%) Bloomberg TOMS
8 1 (0.12%) CODA-Financials
8 1 (0.12%) Infor M3
8 1 (0.12%) IntelliMatch
8 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
8 1 (0.12%) PORTIA
8 1 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 251 (30.13%) Azure
2 196 (23.53%) AWS
3 132 (15.85%) GitHub
4 122 (14.65%) Azure DevOps
5 64 (7.68%) GCP
6 59 (7.08%) GitHub Actions
7 57 (6.84%) Serverless
8 34 (4.08%) Snowflake
9 32 (3.84%) Power Platform
10 30 (3.60%) AWS Lambda
11 29 (3.48%) Amazon S3
12 28 (3.36%) Azure AKS
12 28 (3.36%) Azure Data Factory
13 20 (2.40%) Dynamics 365
14 19 (2.28%) dbt
15 18 (2.16%) Amazon ECS
15 18 (2.16%) Azure Monitor
16 17 (2.04%) Apigee
16 17 (2.04%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 17 (2.04%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 12 (1.44%) HTTP
2 6 (0.72%) Firewall
2 6 (0.72%) FTP
3 5 (0.60%) Cisco IPT
3 5 (0.60%) DNS
3 5 (0.60%) SSL
4 4 (0.48%) Ethernet
4 4 (0.48%) Multicast
4 4 (0.48%) TCP/IP
4 4 (0.48%) WAN
4 4 (0.48%) WebEx
5 3 (0.36%) DHCP
6 2 (0.24%) Cisco IOS
6 2 (0.24%) DSL
6 2 (0.24%) HTTPS
6 2 (0.24%) NaaS
6 2 (0.24%) SD-WAN
6 2 (0.24%) SNMP
7 1 (0.12%) MPLS
7 1 (0.12%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (5.88%) SQL Server
2 43 (5.16%) PostgreSQL
3 38 (4.56%) NoSQL
4 27 (3.24%) Data Warehouse
4 27 (3.24%) MongoDB
5 26 (3.12%) Relational Database
6 24 (2.88%) BigQuery
7 20 (2.40%) Tableau
8 19 (2.28%) Power BI
9 18 (2.16%) DynamoDB
10 13 (1.56%) Metadata
11 12 (1.44%) Amazon Athena
11 12 (1.44%) Redis
12 11 (1.32%) Big Data
12 11 (1.32%) Oracle Database
13 10 (1.20%) Amazon RDS
13 10 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
13 10 (1.20%) Data Lake
14 9 (1.08%) Pinecone
15 7 (0.84%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 150 (18.01%) JIRA
2 140 (16.81%) Git
3 115 (13.81%) Selenium
4 95 (11.40%) Jenkins
5 74 (8.88%) GitLab
6 57 (6.84%) Cucumber
7 51 (6.12%) Postman
8 50 (6.00%) Cypress.io
9 38 (4.56%) REST Assured
10 30 (3.60%) SpecFlow
11 29 (3.48%) JUnit
12 28 (3.36%) JMeter
13 20 (2.40%) MLflow
14 17 (2.04%) Bitbucket
15 16 (1.92%) Appium
16 14 (1.68%) Maven
16 14 (1.68%) TestRail
16 14 (1.68%) Zephyr
17 13 (1.56%) WebDriver
18 12 (1.44%) Mockito
General
1 222 (26.65%) Social Skills
2 215 (25.81%) Finance
3 112 (13.45%) Banking
4 107 (12.85%) Public Sector
5 90 (10.80%) Analytical Skills
6 29 (3.48%) Front Office
7 28 (3.36%) Investment Banking
8 18 (2.16%) Legal
9 16 (1.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 11 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
10 11 (1.32%) Financial Institution
10 11 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
10 11 (1.32%) Telecoms
11 10 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
12 9 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
13 8 (0.96%) Pharmaceutical
14 7 (0.84%) Back Office
14 7 (0.84%) Billing
14 7 (0.84%) Publishing
15 6 (0.72%) Retail
Job Titles
1 188 (22.57%) Developer
2 159 (19.09%) Senior
3 93 (11.16%) Tester
4 86 (10.32%) Lead
5 64 (7.68%) Test Engineer
6 60 (7.20%) Automation Tester
7 57 (6.84%) Analyst
8 52 (6.24%) QA Engineer
9 44 (5.28%) Architect
10 41 (4.92%) Senior Developer
11 37 (4.44%) Automation Engineer
12 36 (4.32%) Java Developer
13 33 (3.96%) DevOps Engineer
14 32 (3.84%) Data Engineer
14 32 (3.84%) Test Automation Engineer
15 29 (3.48%) Test Analyst
16 27 (3.24%) Test Manager
17 24 (2.88%) Software Engineer
18 23 (2.76%) QA Automation Engineer
18 23 (2.76%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (13.33%) Playwright
2 90 (10.80%) React
3 89 (10.68%) REST
4 74 (8.88%) Node.js
5 72 (8.64%) RESTful
6 65 (7.80%) .NET
7 59 (7.08%) Kafka
8 47 (5.64%) Spring
9 43 (5.16%) Spring Boot
10 34 (4.08%) HTML
11 33 (3.96%) Web Services
12 32 (3.84%) CSS
13 30 (3.60%) pytest
14 26 (3.12%) OAuth
15 25 (3.00%) AngularJS
16 21 (2.52%) Gherkin
16 21 (2.52%) GraphQL
17 20 (2.40%) SOAP
18 19 (2.28%) JSON
19 18 (2.16%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 92 (11.04%) Cloud Native
2 51 (6.12%) Product Ownership
3 44 (5.28%) Distributed Systems
4 33 (3.96%) Legacy Systems
5 26 (3.12%) Algorithms
6 25 (3.00%) Data Protection Act
7 21 (2.52%) Onboarding
8 20 (2.40%) Data Structures
8 20 (2.40%) Equities
9 18 (2.16%) Fixed Income
9 18 (2.16%) Management Information System
9 18 (2.16%) Virtual Team
10 17 (2.04%) Greenfield Project
10 17 (2.04%) Mobile App
11 14 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
12 11 (1.32%) Derivative
12 11 (1.32%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 10 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
14 9 (1.08%) Low-Code
14 9 (1.08%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 43 (5.16%) Linux
2 36 (4.32%) Windows
3 21 (2.52%) Android
4 19 (2.28%) Apple iOS
5 8 (0.96%) Unix
6 6 (0.72%) Windows Server
7 5 (0.60%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.48%) Solaris
8 4 (0.48%) Windows Server 2008
9 3 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
10 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 447 (53.66%) CI/CD
2 345 (41.42%) Agile
3 293 (35.17%) DevOps
4 167 (20.05%) Problem-Solving
5 137 (16.45%) AI
6 117 (14.05%) Containerisation
7 116 (13.93%) Observability
8 114 (13.69%) Infrastructure as Code
9 113 (13.57%) Continuous Improvement
10 111 (13.33%) Microservices
11 109 (13.09%) Validation
12 107 (12.85%) Test Strategy
13 105 (12.61%) Test Scripting
14 104 (12.48%) Regression Testing
15 97 (11.64%) Software Testing
16 92 (11.04%) User Acceptance Testing
17 91 (10.92%) Analytics
18 89 (10.68%) Software Engineering
19 83 (9.96%) Data Modelling
20 80 (9.60%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 272 (32.65%) Python
2 207 (24.85%) SQL
3 169 (20.29%) Java
4 147 (17.65%) TypeScript
5 130 (15.61%) JavaScript
6 115 (13.81%) C#
7 27 (3.24%) PowerShell
8 21 (2.52%) Bash
9 20 (2.40%) Apex Code
10 17 (2.04%) C++
10 17 (2.04%) Ruby
11 14 (1.68%) Kotlin
12 13 (1.56%) Bicep
12 13 (1.56%) PL/SQL
13 9 (1.08%) Go
14 8 (0.96%) T-SQL
15 7 (0.84%) Swift
16 6 (0.72%) Rust
17 5 (0.60%) Shell Script
18 4 (0.48%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 180 (21.61%) Security Cleared
2 154 (18.49%) SC Cleared
3 51 (6.12%) Degree
4 38 (4.56%) ISTQB
5 27 (3.24%) Computer Science Degree
6 26 (3.12%) BPSS Clearance
7 12 (1.44%) Master's Degree
8 9 (1.08%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 7 (0.84%) DBS Check
9 7 (0.84%) DV Cleared
10 4 (0.48%) Azure Certification
10 4 (0.48%) ISEB
10 4 (0.48%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 4 (0.48%) OSCP
10 4 (0.48%) SANS
11 3 (0.36%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.36%) CEH
11 3 (0.36%) CREST Certified
11 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.24%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 204 (24.49%) QA
2 51 (6.12%) Data Quality
3 47 (5.64%) Accessibility
4 24 (2.88%) GDPR
5 19 (2.28%) WCAG
6 9 (1.08%) NIST
7 8 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 7 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 6 (0.72%) NCSC
10 5 (0.60%) PERC
10 5 (0.60%) SLA
11 4 (0.48%) HL7
11 4 (0.48%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 4 (0.48%) ISO 20022
11 4 (0.48%) MiFID
11 4 (0.48%) Software Quality Assurance
12 3 (0.36%) NIST 800
12 3 (0.36%) PCI DSS
13 2 (0.24%) GRC
14 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 148 (17.77%) Docker
2 6 (0.72%) Active Directory
2 6 (0.72%) VMware ESXi
2 6 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (0.48%) Oracle RAC
3 4 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
3 4 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.12%) Embedded Firmware
4 1 (0.12%) Firmware
4 1 (0.12%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.12%) Squid
4 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 132 (15.85%) Kubernetes
2 92 (11.04%) Terraform
3 31 (3.72%) Grafana
4 30 (3.60%) Prometheus
5 15 (1.80%) Ansible
6 13 (1.56%) HP ALM
7 8 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.48%) Kibana
8 4 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
8 4 (0.48%) Puppet
9 3 (0.36%) Rancher
10 2 (0.24%) Amdocs OSS
10 2 (0.24%) Istio
10 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (0.24%) Progress Chef
10 2 (0.24%) SCCM
11 1 (0.12%) Control-M
11 1 (0.12%) HP Quality Center
11 1 (0.12%) Nessus
11 1 (0.12%) Nmap
Vendors
1 78 (9.36%) Microsoft
2 57 (6.84%) Oracle
3 51 (6.12%) Salesforce
4 45 (5.40%) Databricks
5 26 (3.12%) Google
6 23 (2.76%) ServiceNow
7 15 (1.80%) SAP
8 13 (1.56%) HP
8 13 (1.56%) OpenAI
9 12 (1.44%) Dynatrace
9 12 (1.44%) MuleSoft
9 12 (1.44%) Splunk
10 11 (1.32%) IBM
11 10 (1.20%) Workday
12 9 (1.08%) Apple
12 9 (1.08%) Guidewire
12 9 (1.08%) UiPath
12 9 (1.08%) VMware
13 8 (0.96%) Automation Anywhere
13 8 (0.96%) Citrix