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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 52 49
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 839 569 761
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.39% 4.52% 4.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.93% 4.89% 4.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 556 383 526
10th Percentile £357 £341 £363
25th Percentile £425 £404 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £600 £688 £675
90th Percentile £709 £800 £766
England median daily rate £475 £485 £525
% change year-on-year -2.06% -7.62% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 3 10
10th Percentile - £36.50 £52.25
25th Percentile £92.50 £38.75 £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 £63.75 £65.75
90th Percentile - £73.50 £71.88
England median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -4.35% -19.01%

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 17,007 11,628 15,522
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.90% 92.40% 88.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,350 7,788 11,072
10th Percentile £360 £338 £343
25th Percentile £438 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% - -6.38%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £763 £800 £800
England median daily rate £520 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 261 214 309
10th Percentile £18.00 £16.50 £15.50
25th Percentile £25.25 £24.66 £20.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £33.45 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.12% +17.35% -28.75%
75th Percentile £60.25 £49.94 £48.75
90th Percentile £81.25 £63.75 £68.15
England median hourly rate £47.00 £26.50 £38.00
% change year-on-year +77.36% -30.26% +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 24 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
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 24 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 +10 110 £550 +10.00% 22
South London -6 12 £513 +13.57% 5
East London +7 10 £450 +18.42% 11
West London -26 10 £450 +12.50% 7
North London - 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 60 (7.15%) Confluence
2 32 (3.81%) Apache Airflow
3 22 (2.62%) Apache Spark
4 12 (1.43%) CMS
5 11 (1.31%) Apache
6 8 (0.95%) Appian
7 6 (0.72%) Camunda
8 4 (0.48%) nginx
8 4 (0.48%) Tomcat
8 4 (0.48%) WebLogic
9 3 (0.36%) Kentico
9 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.24%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.24%) Mule
10 2 (0.24%) SAS
10 2 (0.24%) SharePoint
11 1 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.12%) Ethereum
11 1 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
11 1 (0.12%) Solana
Applications
1 22 (2.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.83%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.60%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.12%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 17 (2.03%) Aladdin
2 13 (1.55%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.95%) Findur
4 7 (0.83%) Oracle EBS
5 6 (0.72%) Shopify
6 5 (0.60%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.60%) Loan IQ
7 3 (0.36%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
8 2 (0.24%) Infor CloudSuite
8 2 (0.24%) Infor LN
8 2 (0.24%) Infor M3
8 2 (0.24%) IntelliMatch
8 2 (0.24%) iTrent
8 2 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.24%) Summit
9 1 (0.12%) Bloomberg TOMS
9 1 (0.12%) Misys Equation
9 1 (0.12%) Misys Midas
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 254 (30.27%) Azure
2 245 (29.20%) AWS
3 146 (17.40%) GitHub
4 121 (14.42%) Azure DevOps
5 90 (10.73%) GitHub Actions
6 75 (8.94%) Serverless
7 56 (6.67%) AWS Lambda
8 54 (6.44%) Power Platform
9 53 (6.32%) Amazon S3
10 50 (5.96%) GCP
11 38 (4.53%) dbt
12 31 (3.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 31 (3.69%) Snowflake
13 29 (3.46%) Amazon ECS
14 27 (3.22%) Azure Data Factory
15 23 (2.74%) Amazon EC2
15 23 (2.74%) Azure AKS
16 21 (2.50%) Azure AI
17 17 (2.03%) Amazon SQS
18 15 (1.79%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.95%) HTTP
2 3 (0.36%) FTP
2 3 (0.36%) Network Security
2 3 (0.36%) OpenLDAP
2 3 (0.36%) SMS
2 3 (0.36%) WAN
3 2 (0.24%) Ethernet
3 2 (0.24%) Firewall
3 2 (0.24%) Multicast
3 2 (0.24%) NaaS
4 1 (0.12%) 5G
4 1 (0.12%) Cisco IOS
4 1 (0.12%) Cisco Nexus
4 1 (0.12%) DSL
4 1 (0.12%) MPLS
4 1 (0.12%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.12%) SNMP
4 1 (0.12%) SSL
4 1 (0.12%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.12%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (6.56%) PostgreSQL
2 50 (5.96%) SQL Server
3 45 (5.36%) NoSQL
4 42 (5.01%) Data Warehouse
4 42 (5.01%) Power BI
5 37 (4.41%) MongoDB
6 32 (3.81%) Relational Database
7 30 (3.58%) DynamoDB
8 26 (3.10%) Amazon Athena
9 24 (2.86%) Amazon Redshift
10 19 (2.26%) Amazon RDS
10 19 (2.26%) Big Data
10 19 (2.26%) Data Lake
10 19 (2.26%) Tableau
11 15 (1.79%) BigQuery
12 14 (1.67%) Metadata
13 12 (1.43%) Redis
14 11 (1.31%) Star Schema
15 10 (1.19%) Amazon Aurora
15 10 (1.19%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 133 (15.85%) JIRA
2 131 (15.61%) Git
3 108 (12.87%) Jenkins
4 95 (11.32%) GitLab
4 95 (11.32%) Selenium
5 53 (6.32%) Cucumber
6 49 (5.84%) Cypress.io
7 45 (5.36%) Postman
8 44 (5.24%) REST Assured
9 39 (4.65%) JMeter
10 35 (4.17%) JUnit
11 19 (2.26%) Mockito
12 17 (2.03%) Gradle
12 17 (2.03%) Maven
12 17 (2.03%) SpecFlow
13 14 (1.67%) Bitbucket
13 14 (1.67%) MLflow
14 13 (1.55%) Gatling
14 13 (1.55%) WebDriver
15 12 (1.43%) Zephyr
General
1 246 (29.32%) Finance
2 223 (26.58%) Social Skills
3 119 (14.18%) Banking
4 111 (13.23%) Analytical Skills
5 97 (11.56%) Public Sector
6 27 (3.22%) Investment Banking
7 26 (3.10%) Front Office
8 23 (2.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 20 (2.38%) Financial Institution
10 15 (1.79%) Legal
11 13 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
12 11 (1.31%) Documentation Skills
13 10 (1.19%) Back Office
14 9 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (1.07%) Retail
14 9 (1.07%) Telecoms
15 8 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
16 7 (0.83%) Billing
16 7 (0.83%) Marketing
16 7 (0.83%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 175 (20.86%) Developer
2 150 (17.88%) Senior
3 87 (10.37%) Lead
4 82 (9.77%) Tester
5 54 (6.44%) Test Engineer
6 51 (6.08%) Analyst
7 49 (5.84%) Data Engineer
8 47 (5.60%) QA Engineer
9 45 (5.36%) Architect
9 45 (5.36%) DevOps Engineer
10 38 (4.53%) Automation Engineer
10 38 (4.53%) Automation Tester
10 38 (4.53%) Java Developer
11 36 (4.29%) Senior Developer
12 33 (3.93%) Software Engineer
13 32 (3.81%) Test Automation Engineer
14 27 (3.22%) Full-Stack Developer
15 26 (3.10%) Test Leader
16 24 (2.86%) QA Automation Engineer
17 23 (2.74%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 103 (12.28%) React
2 102 (12.16%) REST
3 94 (11.20%) Playwright
4 78 (9.30%) RESTful
5 70 (8.34%) Kafka
6 58 (6.91%) .NET
7 57 (6.79%) Spring
8 53 (6.32%) Spring Boot
9 51 (6.08%) Node.js
10 39 (4.65%) CSS
11 38 (4.53%) HTML
12 30 (3.58%) OAuth
13 24 (2.86%) PySpark
14 22 (2.62%) pytest
15 21 (2.50%) AngularJS
15 21 (2.50%) Redux
16 19 (2.26%) Django
16 19 (2.26%) Gherkin
16 19 (2.26%) Swagger
17 18 (2.15%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 113 (13.47%) Cloud Native
2 65 (7.75%) Distributed Systems
3 53 (6.32%) Product Ownership
4 40 (4.77%) Legacy Systems
5 28 (3.34%) Data Protection Act
6 20 (2.38%) Greenfield Project
6 20 (2.38%) Onboarding
6 20 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
7 19 (2.26%) Fixed Income
7 19 (2.26%) Virtual Team
8 18 (2.15%) Algorithms
8 18 (2.15%) Management Information System
9 15 (1.79%) AI Agents
10 14 (1.67%) Mobile App
11 13 (1.55%) Data Structures
11 13 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
11 13 (1.55%) Equities
12 10 (1.19%) Distributed Architecture
12 10 (1.19%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 10 (1.19%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 33 (3.93%) Linux
2 24 (2.86%) Windows
3 19 (2.26%) Android
4 17 (2.03%) Apple iOS
5 13 (1.55%) Unix
6 5 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 4 (0.48%) Solaris
7 4 (0.48%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.48%) Windows Server 2008
8 3 (0.36%) Mac OS
8 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
8 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (0.24%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 487 (58.05%) CI/CD
2 339 (40.41%) Agile
3 291 (34.68%) DevOps
4 151 (18.00%) AI
5 146 (17.40%) Infrastructure as Code
6 135 (16.09%) Problem-Solving
7 131 (15.61%) Validation
8 130 (15.49%) Continuous Improvement
8 130 (15.49%) Observability
9 124 (14.78%) Microservices
10 120 (14.30%) Test Strategy
11 115 (13.71%) Containerisation
11 115 (13.71%) Software Engineering
12 110 (13.11%) Regression Testing
13 108 (12.87%) User Acceptance Testing
14 96 (11.44%) Data Modelling
15 90 (10.73%) Scrum
16 89 (10.61%) Analytics
17 86 (10.25%) Full-Stack Development
18 85 (10.13%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 257 (30.63%) Python
2 217 (25.86%) SQL
3 183 (21.81%) Java
4 128 (15.26%) TypeScript
5 121 (14.42%) JavaScript
6 97 (11.56%) C#
7 30 (3.58%) PowerShell
8 20 (2.38%) Bash
8 20 (2.38%) Kotlin
9 17 (2.03%) Bicep
10 16 (1.91%) Ruby
11 15 (1.79%) Apex Code
12 14 (1.67%) Go
12 14 (1.67%) PL/SQL
13 13 (1.55%) Scala
14 8 (0.95%) C++
14 8 (0.95%) T-SQL
15 7 (0.83%) Swift
16 6 (0.72%) Groovy
16 6 (0.72%) VBA
Qualifications
1 182 (21.69%) Security Cleared
2 160 (19.07%) SC Cleared
3 47 (5.60%) Degree
4 27 (3.22%) Computer Science Degree
5 26 (3.10%) ISTQB
6 20 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
7 16 (1.91%) DV Cleared
8 13 (1.55%) AWS Certification
9 10 (1.19%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.83%) DBS Check
11 6 (0.72%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 6 (0.72%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 5 (0.60%) Azure Certification
13 4 (0.48%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 3 (0.36%) CISSP
14 3 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
15 2 (0.24%) Cisco Certification
15 2 (0.24%) PhD
15 2 (0.24%) PMI Certification
15 2 (0.24%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 201 (23.96%) QA
2 72 (8.58%) Data Quality
3 49 (5.84%) Accessibility
4 24 (2.86%) GDPR
5 18 (2.15%) WCAG
6 11 (1.31%) NIST
7 6 (0.72%) ISO 20022
8 5 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.60%) SLA
9 4 (0.48%) HL7
9 4 (0.48%) NCSC
10 3 (0.36%) EU AI Act
10 3 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 3 (0.36%) MiFID
10 3 (0.36%) Software Quality Assurance
11 2 (0.24%) GRC
11 2 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.12%) GMP
12 1 (0.12%) GxP
12 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 131 (15.61%) Docker
2 6 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.48%) Oracle RAC
4 4 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.36%) Active Directory
5 3 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.12%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 136 (16.21%) Kubernetes
2 116 (13.83%) Terraform
3 38 (4.53%) Grafana
4 35 (4.17%) Prometheus
5 28 (3.34%) Ansible
6 8 (0.95%) HP ALM
6 8 (0.95%) Kibana
7 7 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
9 3 (0.36%) Control-M
9 3 (0.36%) Kustomize
9 3 (0.36%) Puppet
10 2 (0.24%) Amdocs OSS
10 2 (0.24%) Packer
10 2 (0.24%) Progress Chef
11 1 (0.12%) HP Quality Center
11 1 (0.12%) Istio
11 1 (0.12%) linkerd
11 1 (0.12%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 78 (9.30%) Microsoft
2 53 (6.32%) Salesforce
3 48 (5.72%) Oracle
4 31 (3.69%) Databricks
5 26 (3.10%) ServiceNow
6 18 (2.15%) UiPath
7 16 (1.91%) Google
8 15 (1.79%) Splunk
9 14 (1.67%) Informatica
9 14 (1.67%) OpenAI
10 12 (1.43%) IBM
11 10 (1.19%) Dynatrace
12 9 (1.07%) Guidewire
13 8 (0.95%) Apple
13 8 (0.95%) HP
13 8 (0.95%) OpenLink
13 8 (0.95%) SAP
14 7 (0.83%) Automation Anywhere
14 7 (0.83%) MuleSoft
15 6 (0.72%) Workday