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 27 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 56 46
Rank change year-on-year +6 -10 +5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 867 627 758
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.36% 4.59% 4.59%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.90% 4.97% 5.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 587 422 518
10th Percentile £331 £338 £363
25th Percentile £425 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £619 £675 £673
90th Percentile £710 £775 £775
England median daily rate £475 £475 £525
% change year-on-year - -9.52% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 4 7
10th Percentile - £37.25 £51.50
25th Percentile £92.50 £40.63 £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 £55.63 £68.44
90th Percentile - £70.25 £71.88
England median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £56.25
% change year-on-year +35.00% -11.11% -13.46%

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 17,699 12,607 14,667
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.97% 92.22% 88.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,693 8,437 10,407
10th Percentile £363 £326 £350
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £548 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.36% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £651 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £788 £800
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 283 241 219
10th Percentile £17.60 £16.50 £16.19
25th Percentile £20.69 £24.66 £22.00
Median hourly rate £35.71 £30.00 £34.25
Median % change year-on-year +19.03% -12.41% -20.35%
75th Percentile £57.25 £49.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £63.25 £71.38
England median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £40.33
% change year-on-year +86.88% -37.63% -5.12%

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 27 July 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 27 July 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 +15 113 £550 +22.22% 45
South London -7 16 £535 +7.00% 2
East London +7 8 £545 +36.25% 12
West London -18 7 £525 +32.91% 12
North London -2 1 £400 -
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 62 (7.15%) Confluence
2 31 (3.58%) Apache Airflow
3 24 (2.77%) Apache Spark
4 13 (1.50%) CMS
5 12 (1.38%) Apache
6 8 (0.92%) SharePoint
7 5 (0.58%) Microsoft Exchange
8 4 (0.46%) nginx
8 4 (0.46%) Tomcat
8 4 (0.46%) WebLogic
9 3 (0.35%) Appian
9 3 (0.35%) Camunda
9 3 (0.35%) Kentico
10 2 (0.23%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.23%) Mule
10 2 (0.23%) SAS
11 1 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.12%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.12%) Ethereum
11 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 17 (1.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (1.15%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.69%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.35%) Trello
8 2 (0.23%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.12%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 16 (1.85%) Aladdin
2 13 (1.50%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.92%) Findur
3 8 (0.92%) Oracle EBS
4 6 (0.69%) Shopify
5 5 (0.58%) BambooHR
6 4 (0.46%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.35%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.35%) Loan IQ
8 2 (0.23%) Infor CloudSuite
8 2 (0.23%) Infor LN
8 2 (0.23%) Infor M3
8 2 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
8 2 (0.23%) Summit
9 1 (0.12%) IntelliMatch
9 1 (0.12%) Misys Equation
9 1 (0.12%) Misys Midas
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
9 1 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 291 (33.56%) Azure
2 264 (30.45%) AWS
3 178 (20.53%) GitHub
4 138 (15.92%) Azure DevOps
5 115 (13.26%) GitHub Actions
6 74 (8.54%) Serverless
7 67 (7.73%) GCP
8 62 (7.15%) Power Platform
9 56 (6.46%) AWS Lambda
10 53 (6.11%) Amazon S3
11 40 (4.61%) dbt
12 33 (3.81%) Snowflake
13 31 (3.58%) Amazon ECS
14 30 (3.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 25 (2.88%) Amazon EC2
15 25 (2.88%) GitHub Copilot
16 22 (2.54%) Azure AKS
17 21 (2.42%) Azure Data Factory
18 20 (2.31%) Dynamics 365
19 17 (1.96%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.92%) HTTP
2 6 (0.69%) Network Security
3 5 (0.58%) Firewall
3 5 (0.58%) WAN
4 4 (0.46%) TCP/IP
5 3 (0.35%) DHCP
5 3 (0.35%) DNS
5 3 (0.35%) FTP
5 3 (0.35%) LAN
5 3 (0.35%) OpenLDAP
5 3 (0.35%) SMS
5 3 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
6 2 (0.23%) Ethernet
6 2 (0.23%) Multicast
6 2 (0.23%) NaaS
7 1 (0.12%) 5G
7 1 (0.12%) Cisco IOS
7 1 (0.12%) Cisco Nexus
7 1 (0.12%) NGFW
7 1 (0.12%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (6.69%) PostgreSQL
2 50 (5.77%) Power BI
3 49 (5.65%) NoSQL
3 49 (5.65%) SQL Server
4 47 (5.42%) Data Warehouse
5 41 (4.73%) MongoDB
6 31 (3.58%) DynamoDB
6 31 (3.58%) Relational Database
7 23 (2.65%) Amazon Athena
8 22 (2.54%) Amazon Redshift
9 19 (2.19%) Amazon RDS
9 19 (2.19%) Big Data
10 18 (2.08%) Data Lake
11 15 (1.73%) BigQuery
11 15 (1.73%) Tableau
12 14 (1.61%) Metadata
13 12 (1.38%) MySQL
14 11 (1.27%) Elasticsearch
14 11 (1.27%) Redis
15 10 (1.15%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 138 (15.92%) Git
2 133 (15.34%) JIRA
3 125 (14.42%) Jenkins
4 99 (11.42%) Selenium
5 96 (11.07%) GitLab
6 56 (6.46%) Cypress.io
7 49 (5.65%) Cucumber
8 44 (5.07%) REST Assured
9 38 (4.38%) JMeter
9 38 (4.38%) JUnit
9 38 (4.38%) Postman
10 18 (2.08%) Gatling
10 18 (2.08%) Maven
11 17 (1.96%) Bitbucket
11 17 (1.96%) Gradle
11 17 (1.96%) Zephyr
12 16 (1.85%) Appium
13 15 (1.73%) Mockito
13 15 (1.73%) SpecFlow
14 10 (1.15%) LoadRunner
General
1 260 (29.99%) Finance
2 232 (26.76%) Social Skills
3 121 (13.96%) Banking
4 113 (13.03%) Analytical Skills
5 95 (10.96%) Public Sector
6 27 (3.11%) Front Office
7 23 (2.65%) Investment Banking
8 20 (2.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 19 (2.19%) Financial Institution
10 17 (1.96%) Influencing Skills
11 15 (1.73%) Legal
12 12 (1.38%) Back Office
12 12 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
12 12 (1.38%) Telecoms
13 8 (0.92%) Marketing
13 8 (0.92%) Retail
14 7 (0.81%) Organisational Skills
15 6 (0.69%) Law
15 6 (0.69%) Local Government
16 5 (0.58%) Games
Job Titles
1 190 (21.91%) Developer
2 150 (17.30%) Senior
3 96 (11.07%) Lead
4 78 (9.00%) Tester
5 56 (6.46%) Test Engineer
6 54 (6.23%) Data Engineer
7 51 (5.88%) DevOps Engineer
8 49 (5.65%) Analyst
8 49 (5.65%) Java Developer
9 48 (5.54%) Architect
9 48 (5.54%) QA Engineer
10 41 (4.73%) Software Engineer
11 38 (4.38%) Senior Developer
12 36 (4.15%) Full-Stack Developer
13 34 (3.92%) Automation Engineer
14 33 (3.81%) Automation Tester
14 33 (3.81%) Test Leader
15 30 (3.46%) Test Automation Engineer
16 24 (2.77%) Test Analyst
16 24 (2.77%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (13.03%) Playwright
2 111 (12.80%) REST
3 101 (11.65%) React
4 87 (10.03%) RESTful
5 79 (9.11%) Kafka
6 68 (7.84%) .NET
7 66 (7.61%) Spring
8 57 (6.57%) Spring Boot
9 55 (6.34%) Node.js
10 50 (5.77%) CSS
11 46 (5.31%) HTML
12 26 (3.00%) HTML5
13 25 (2.88%) OAuth
13 25 (2.88%) PySpark
14 23 (2.65%) CSS3
15 22 (2.54%) AngularJS
16 21 (2.42%) Jest
16 21 (2.42%) Redux
17 19 (2.19%) Next.js
17 19 (2.19%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 135 (15.57%) Cloud Native
2 81 (9.34%) Distributed Systems
3 58 (6.69%) Product Ownership
4 30 (3.46%) Legacy Systems
5 28 (3.23%) Data Protection Act
6 26 (3.00%) Onboarding
7 22 (2.54%) AI Agents
8 21 (2.42%) Self-Motivation
9 20 (2.31%) Fixed Income
10 17 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
10 17 (1.96%) Greenfield Project
11 16 (1.85%) Algorithms
12 15 (1.73%) Virtual Team
13 14 (1.61%) Data Structures
14 13 (1.50%) Mobile App
15 12 (1.38%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 12 (1.38%) Management Information System
16 11 (1.27%) Equities
16 11 (1.27%) Security Posture
17 10 (1.15%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 34 (3.92%) Linux
2 28 (3.23%) Windows
3 19 (2.19%) Android
4 18 (2.08%) Unix
5 17 (1.96%) Apple iOS
6 7 (0.81%) Windows Server
7 6 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (0.46%) Solaris
8 4 (0.46%) Windows Server 2008
9 3 (0.35%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.23%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 541 (62.40%) CI/CD
2 370 (42.68%) Agile
3 333 (38.41%) DevOps
4 172 (19.84%) AI
5 163 (18.80%) Infrastructure as Code
6 156 (17.99%) Microservices
7 150 (17.30%) Problem-Solving
8 139 (16.03%) Continuous Improvement
9 138 (15.92%) Test Strategy
9 138 (15.92%) Validation
10 134 (15.46%) Software Engineering
11 133 (15.34%) Containerisation
12 131 (15.11%) Observability
13 112 (12.92%) Regression Testing
14 108 (12.46%) Scrum
15 106 (12.23%) User Acceptance Testing
16 101 (11.65%) TDD
17 98 (11.30%) Full-Stack Development
18 91 (10.50%) Stakeholder Management
19 89 (10.27%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 256 (29.53%) Python
2 218 (25.14%) SQL
3 210 (24.22%) Java
4 131 (15.11%) TypeScript
5 124 (14.30%) JavaScript
6 90 (10.38%) C#
7 35 (4.04%) PowerShell
8 26 (3.00%) Bash
9 24 (2.77%) Kotlin
10 20 (2.31%) Bicep
11 18 (2.08%) Ruby
12 15 (1.73%) Scala
13 14 (1.61%) Apex Code
14 13 (1.50%) PL/SQL
15 12 (1.38%) Go
16 7 (0.81%) Swift
16 7 (0.81%) T-SQL
17 6 (0.69%) Groovy
17 6 (0.69%) Shell Script
17 6 (0.69%) VBA
Qualifications
1 201 (23.18%) Security Cleared
2 177 (20.42%) SC Cleared
3 56 (6.46%) Degree
4 33 (3.81%) Computer Science Degree
5 22 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
6 19 (2.19%) ISTQB
7 17 (1.96%) AWS Certification
7 17 (1.96%) DV Cleared
8 10 (1.15%) Azure Certification
9 8 (0.92%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.81%) DBS Check
11 6 (0.69%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 5 (0.58%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 5 (0.58%) PhD
13 4 (0.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 4 (0.46%) CISSP
14 3 (0.35%) TOGAF Certification
15 2 (0.23%) Cisco Certification
15 2 (0.23%) CompTIA Security+
15 2 (0.23%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 223 (25.72%) QA
2 67 (7.73%) Data Quality
3 52 (6.00%) Accessibility
4 23 (2.65%) GDPR
5 22 (2.54%) WCAG
6 9 (1.04%) NIST
7 6 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.69%) SLA
8 4 (0.46%) ISO 20022
9 3 (0.35%) EU AI Act
9 3 (0.35%) HL7
9 3 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.35%) MiFID
9 3 (0.35%) Software Quality Assurance
10 2 (0.23%) GRC
10 2 (0.23%) NCSC
11 1 (0.12%) EMIR
11 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 1 (0.12%) PMO
11 1 (0.12%) SEPA
System Software
1 148 (17.07%) Docker
2 9 (1.04%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (0.69%) Active Directory
4 5 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.46%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.12%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 151 (17.42%) Kubernetes
2 128 (14.76%) Terraform
3 46 (5.31%) Grafana
4 42 (4.84%) Prometheus
5 32 (3.69%) Ansible
6 9 (1.04%) Kibana
7 8 (0.92%) HP ALM
7 8 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (0.69%) Progress Chef
8 6 (0.69%) Puppet
9 4 (0.46%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.35%) Control-M
10 3 (0.35%) Kustomize
10 3 (0.35%) Microsoft Intune
10 3 (0.35%) Packer
11 2 (0.23%) Amdocs OSS
12 1 (0.12%) Argo
12 1 (0.12%) HP Quality Center
12 1 (0.12%) Istio
12 1 (0.12%) linkerd
Vendors
1 90 (10.38%) Microsoft
2 53 (6.11%) Salesforce
3 51 (5.88%) Oracle
4 31 (3.58%) Databricks
5 23 (2.65%) Google
6 21 (2.42%) ServiceNow
7 17 (1.96%) UiPath
8 16 (1.85%) Splunk
9 15 (1.73%) IBM
10 14 (1.61%) Informatica
11 11 (1.27%) HP
12 10 (1.15%) OpenAI
13 9 (1.04%) Dynatrace
13 9 (1.04%) VMware
14 8 (0.92%) OpenLink
14 8 (0.92%) SAP
15 7 (0.81%) Guidewire
16 6 (0.69%) Charles River
16 6 (0.69%) MuleSoft
16 6 (0.69%) Workday