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

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 56 44
Rank change year-on-year +6 -12 +3
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 924 591 776
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.54% 4.41% 4.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.11% 4.77% 5.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 622 397 510
10th Percentile £350 £348 £356
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -8.30%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £638
90th Percentile £712 £775 £751
England median daily rate £475 £500 £516
% change year-on-year -5.00% -3.10% -6.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 4 3
10th Percentile £44.32 £37.25 £53.13
25th Percentile £47.33 £40.63 £57.81
Median hourly rate £72.00 £45.00 £68.75
Median % change year-on-year +60.00% -34.55% -23.61%
75th Percentile £97.50 £55.63 £71.88
90th Percentile - £70.25 -
England median hourly rate £67.86 £56.75 £57.50
% change year-on-year +19.57% -1.30% -21.23%

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 18,098 12,396 14,317
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 89.01% 92.48% 89.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,824 8,192 9,654
10th Percentile £359 £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 £680
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
England median daily rate £525 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 292 255 178
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.03 £17.25
25th Percentile £19.76 £25.01 £22.28
Median hourly rate £35.50 £32.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.94% -8.57% -12.50%
75th Percentile £57.50 £49.63 £55.00
90th Percentile £86.93 £63.75 £72.81
England median hourly rate £43.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +72.96% -41.51% +0.58%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +13 121 £550 +22.22% 52
South London -1 16 £593 +18.50% 9
East London +6 10 £590 +13.46% 17
West London -17 6 £600 +50.00% 40
North London -1 2 £463 - 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 70 (7.58%) Confluence
2 37 (4.00%) Apache Airflow
3 26 (2.81%) Apache Spark
4 23 (2.49%) SharePoint
5 14 (1.52%) Apache
5 14 (1.52%) CMS
6 7 (0.76%) Camunda
6 7 (0.76%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 4 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.32%) Kentico
8 3 (0.32%) nginx
8 3 (0.32%) SAS
8 3 (0.32%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.32%) 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 19 (2.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.41%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.54%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.32%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.32%) Trello
6 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.22%) Mingle
7 1 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 13 (1.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 10 (1.08%) Aladdin
3 8 (0.87%) Findur
4 7 (0.76%) SAP S/4HANA
5 6 (0.65%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.54%) SAP GRC
7 4 (0.43%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.43%) Shopify
8 3 (0.32%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.22%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
10 1 (0.11%) FLEXCUBE
10 1 (0.11%) Infor CloudSuite
10 1 (0.11%) Infor LN
10 1 (0.11%) Infor M3
10 1 (0.11%) IntelliMatch
10 1 (0.11%) Misys Equation
10 1 (0.11%) Misys Midas
10 1 (0.11%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 317 (34.31%) Azure
2 279 (30.19%) AWS
3 198 (21.43%) GitHub
4 162 (17.53%) Azure DevOps
5 125 (13.53%) GitHub Actions
6 83 (8.98%) Serverless
7 77 (8.33%) GCP
8 68 (7.36%) Power Platform
9 67 (7.25%) AWS Lambda
10 56 (6.06%) Amazon S3
11 49 (5.30%) dbt
12 39 (4.22%) Snowflake
13 37 (4.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 35 (3.79%) Amazon ECS
15 30 (3.25%) GitHub Copilot
16 26 (2.81%) Amazon EC2
16 26 (2.81%) AWS CloudFormation
17 24 (2.60%) Azure Monitor
18 22 (2.38%) Amazon EKS
18 22 (2.38%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 9 (0.97%) HTTP
2 7 (0.76%) DNS
2 7 (0.76%) Network Security
2 7 (0.76%) TCP/IP
2 7 (0.76%) WAN
2 7 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
3 6 (0.65%) BGP
3 6 (0.65%) DHCP
3 6 (0.65%) Firewall
3 6 (0.65%) LAN
4 4 (0.43%) Ethernet VPN
4 4 (0.43%) NX-OS
4 4 (0.43%) TACACS
4 4 (0.43%) VXLAN
5 3 (0.32%) FTP
5 3 (0.32%) OpenLDAP
5 3 (0.32%) SMS
6 2 (0.22%) Bluetooth
6 2 (0.22%) SSH
6 2 (0.22%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (6.39%) PostgreSQL
2 56 (6.06%) Data Warehouse
2 56 (6.06%) Power BI
3 51 (5.52%) NoSQL
4 49 (5.30%) SQL Server
5 39 (4.22%) MongoDB
6 35 (3.79%) Relational Database
7 27 (2.92%) DynamoDB
8 24 (2.60%) Amazon Athena
8 24 (2.60%) Amazon Redshift
9 22 (2.38%) Data Lake
10 20 (2.16%) Amazon RDS
11 19 (2.06%) Big Data
12 16 (1.73%) BigQuery
12 16 (1.73%) Tableau
13 14 (1.52%) Metadata
14 12 (1.30%) MySQL
14 12 (1.30%) Oracle Database
14 12 (1.30%) Redis
15 11 (1.19%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 180 (19.48%) Git
2 162 (17.53%) Jenkins
3 133 (14.39%) JIRA
4 122 (13.20%) Selenium
5 109 (11.80%) GitLab
6 63 (6.82%) Cypress.io
7 55 (5.95%) JMeter
8 51 (5.52%) JUnit
9 48 (5.19%) Postman
10 44 (4.76%) Cucumber
11 43 (4.65%) REST Assured
12 22 (2.38%) Gatling
13 21 (2.27%) Gradle
14 20 (2.16%) LoadRunner
14 20 (2.16%) Maven
14 20 (2.16%) Mockito
14 20 (2.16%) SonarQube
15 19 (2.06%) Appium
16 17 (1.84%) Bitbucket
17 15 (1.62%) WebDriver
General
1 279 (30.19%) Finance
2 249 (26.95%) Social Skills
3 146 (15.80%) Analytical Skills
4 135 (14.61%) Banking
5 90 (9.74%) Public Sector
6 33 (3.57%) Front Office
7 24 (2.60%) Investment Banking
8 20 (2.16%) Financial Institution
8 20 (2.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 15 (1.62%) Back Office
9 15 (1.62%) Telecoms
10 13 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
11 12 (1.30%) Legal
11 12 (1.30%) Marketing
12 11 (1.19%) Documentation Skills
13 10 (1.08%) Law
13 10 (1.08%) Retail
14 8 (0.87%) Local Government
15 6 (0.65%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.54%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 209 (22.62%) Developer
2 164 (17.75%) Senior
3 93 (10.06%) Lead
4 68 (7.36%) Tester
5 61 (6.60%) Test Engineer
6 57 (6.17%) Data Engineer
7 56 (6.06%) Java Developer
7 56 (6.06%) QA Engineer
8 55 (5.95%) DevOps Engineer
9 47 (5.09%) Analyst
9 47 (5.09%) Automation Engineer
9 47 (5.09%) Software Engineer
10 44 (4.76%) Architect
11 43 (4.65%) Full-Stack Developer
11 43 (4.65%) Senior Developer
12 36 (3.90%) Test Automation Engineer
12 36 (3.90%) Test Manager
13 33 (3.57%) Test Leader
14 27 (2.92%) Automation Tester
15 26 (2.81%) QA Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 144 (15.58%) Terraform
2 141 (15.26%) REST
3 115 (12.45%) Playwright
4 107 (11.58%) Kafka
5 102 (11.04%) RESTful
6 96 (10.39%) React
7 83 (8.98%) Spring
8 72 (7.79%) Spring Boot
9 71 (7.68%) .NET
10 60 (6.49%) HTML
11 52 (5.63%) CSS
12 48 (5.19%) Node.js
13 35 (3.79%) PySpark
14 31 (3.35%) AngularJS
15 30 (3.25%) Middleware
16 28 (3.03%) JSON
16 28 (3.03%) XML
17 27 (2.92%) SOAP
18 23 (2.49%) HTML5
18 23 (2.49%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 152 (16.45%) Cloud Native
2 89 (9.63%) Distributed Systems
3 77 (8.33%) Product Ownership
4 34 (3.68%) Onboarding
5 31 (3.35%) AI Agents
6 27 (2.92%) Enterprise Software
7 25 (2.71%) Data Protection Act
8 20 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
9 18 (1.95%) Data Structures
9 18 (1.95%) Self-Motivation
9 18 (1.95%) Virtual Team
10 16 (1.73%) Mobile App
11 14 (1.52%) Fixed Income
12 12 (1.30%) Algorithms
13 11 (1.19%) Greenfield Project
13 11 (1.19%) Security Posture
14 10 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 9 (0.97%) SWIFT Messaging Network
16 8 (0.87%) Management Information System
16 8 (0.87%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 61 (6.60%) Linux
2 44 (4.76%) Unix
3 34 (3.68%) Windows
4 19 (2.06%) Android
5 18 (1.95%) Apple iOS
6 14 (1.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (0.76%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.43%) VMS
9 3 (0.32%) Solaris
9 3 (0.32%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.22%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.11%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 583 (63.10%) CI/CD
2 405 (43.83%) Agile
3 372 (40.26%) DevOps
4 198 (21.43%) AI
5 179 (19.37%) Infrastructure as Code
6 177 (19.16%) Problem-Solving
7 172 (18.61%) Microservices
8 169 (18.29%) Software Engineering
9 165 (17.86%) Validation
10 162 (17.53%) Continuous Improvement
11 149 (16.13%) Test Strategy
12 148 (16.02%) Containerisation
13 142 (15.37%) Observability
14 129 (13.96%) Scrum
15 117 (12.66%) TDD
16 116 (12.55%) Stakeholder Management
17 113 (12.23%) Regression Testing
18 108 (11.69%) User Acceptance Testing
19 105 (11.36%) Event-Driven
20 99 (10.71%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 319 (34.52%) Python
2 252 (27.27%) Java
3 251 (27.16%) SQL
4 145 (15.69%) JavaScript
5 126 (13.64%) TypeScript
6 84 (9.09%) C#
7 43 (4.65%) PowerShell
8 37 (4.00%) Bash
9 25 (2.71%) Bicep
10 23 (2.49%) Kotlin
11 16 (1.73%) Ruby
11 16 (1.73%) Scala
12 13 (1.41%) C++
13 12 (1.30%) PL/SQL
14 11 (1.19%) Apex Code
14 11 (1.19%) Go
15 9 (0.97%) Shell Script
15 9 (0.97%) VB.NET
16 7 (0.76%) Perl
16 7 (0.76%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 250 (27.06%) Security Cleared
2 223 (24.13%) SC Cleared
3 62 (6.71%) Degree
4 37 (4.00%) Computer Science Degree
5 34 (3.68%) ISTQB
6 26 (2.81%) DV Cleared
7 23 (2.49%) AWS Certification
8 20 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
9 13 (1.41%) Azure Certification
10 9 (0.97%) ISEB
11 8 (0.87%) Master's Degree
12 7 (0.76%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 7 (0.76%) DBS Check
12 7 (0.76%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 6 (0.65%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 4 (0.43%) CISSP
14 4 (0.43%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 3 (0.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 3 (0.32%) PhD
16 2 (0.22%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 262 (28.35%) QA
2 74 (8.01%) Data Quality
3 47 (5.09%) Accessibility
4 22 (2.38%) GDPR
5 18 (1.95%) WCAG
6 12 (1.30%) ISO 20022
7 11 (1.19%) SLA
8 9 (0.97%) GRC
8 9 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 9 (0.97%) NIST
9 3 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.32%) EU AI Act
9 3 (0.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.32%) Software Quality Assurance
10 2 (0.22%) ISO 9001
10 2 (0.22%) MiFID
10 2 (0.22%) NCSC
10 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.22%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.11%) GxP
System Software
1 174 (18.83%) Docker
2 11 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.65%) Active Directory
5 3 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.32%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.11%) Firmware
6 1 (0.11%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.11%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 168 (18.18%) Kubernetes
2 52 (5.63%) Grafana
3 43 (4.65%) Ansible
3 43 (4.65%) Prometheus
4 16 (1.73%) Puppet
5 14 (1.52%) Progress Chef
6 10 (1.08%) Kibana
7 9 (0.97%) Control-M
8 7 (0.76%) HP ALM
9 5 (0.54%) HP Fortify
9 5 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
10 4 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
11 3 (0.32%) Argo
11 3 (0.32%) Kustomize
11 3 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
11 3 (0.32%) Packer
12 2 (0.22%) Istio
13 1 (0.11%) Amdocs OSS
13 1 (0.11%) Rancher
13 1 (0.11%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 107 (11.58%) Microsoft
2 59 (6.39%) Oracle
3 42 (4.55%) Salesforce
4 41 (4.44%) Databricks
5 34 (3.68%) Google
6 29 (3.14%) ServiceNow
7 28 (3.03%) IBM
8 22 (2.38%) SAP
9 20 (2.16%) Splunk
10 18 (1.95%) UiPath
11 17 (1.84%) Informatica
12 15 (1.62%) Red Hat
13 14 (1.52%) Cisco
14 12 (1.30%) VMware
15 11 (1.19%) Dynatrace
15 11 (1.19%) HP
15 11 (1.19%) OpenAI
16 10 (1.08%) Foundry
17 9 (0.97%) SaltStack
18 8 (0.87%) OpenLink