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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 55 46
Rank change year-on-year +2 -9 +4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 852 619 746
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.26% 4.54% 4.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.78% 4.93% 5.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 578 423 512
10th Percentile £350 £341 £363
25th Percentile £425 £400 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -8.70%
75th Percentile £619 £688 £675
90th Percentile £712 £775 £775
England median daily rate £475 £490 £525
% change year-on-year -3.06% -6.67% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 4 5
10th Percentile £52.35 £37.25 £51.00
25th Percentile £67.41 £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 £71.88
90th Percentile - £70.25 -
England median hourly rate £67.86 £50.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +35.72% -13.04% -11.88%

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 17,809 12,563 14,469
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 89.02% 92.23% 88.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,743 8,414 10,214
10th Percentile £363 £325 £350
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £541 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.62% -1.59% -4.35%
75th Percentile £660 £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 294 248 196
10th Percentile £17.60 £16.50 £16.97
25th Percentile £20.02 £24.62 £22.00
Median hourly rate £35.86 £29.50 £35.25
Median % change year-on-year +21.54% -16.31% -14.59%
75th Percentile £57.50 £49.56 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £63.25 £71.88
England median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +78.93% -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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +12 111 £550 +15.79% 71
South London -6 18 £535 +7.00% 5
East London +7 9 £545 +36.25% 13
West London -20 7 £525 +32.91% 11
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 60 (7.04%) Confluence
2 35 (4.11%) Apache Airflow
3 24 (2.82%) Apache Spark
4 13 (1.53%) Apache
4 13 (1.53%) CMS
5 10 (1.17%) SharePoint
6 6 (0.70%) Microsoft Exchange
7 4 (0.47%) nginx
7 4 (0.47%) Tomcat
7 4 (0.47%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.35%) Camunda
8 3 (0.35%) Kentico
9 2 (0.23%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.23%) Appian
9 2 (0.23%) Mule
9 2 (0.23%) SAS
10 1 (0.12%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.12%) Ethereum
10 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 16 (1.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (1.17%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.59%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.47%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.35%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.35%) Trello
7 2 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.12%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 15 (1.76%) Aladdin
2 13 (1.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.94%) Findur
4 6 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
4 6 (0.70%) Shopify
5 5 (0.59%) BambooHR
6 4 (0.47%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.35%) Distributed Ledger
8 2 (0.23%) Infor CloudSuite
8 2 (0.23%) Infor LN
8 2 (0.23%) Infor M3
8 2 (0.23%) Loan IQ
8 2 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
9 1 (0.12%) IntelliMatch
9 1 (0.12%) Misys Equation
9 1 (0.12%) Misys Midas
9 1 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
9 1 (0.12%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 298 (34.98%) Azure
2 267 (31.34%) AWS
3 183 (21.48%) GitHub
4 142 (16.67%) Azure DevOps
5 117 (13.73%) GitHub Actions
6 76 (8.92%) Serverless
7 67 (7.86%) GCP
7 67 (7.86%) Power Platform
8 56 (6.57%) AWS Lambda
9 53 (6.22%) Amazon S3
10 45 (5.28%) dbt
11 35 (4.11%) Snowflake
12 31 (3.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 31 (3.64%) Amazon ECS
13 27 (3.17%) GitHub Copilot
14 25 (2.93%) Amazon EC2
15 22 (2.58%) Azure AKS
16 21 (2.46%) Azure Data Factory
17 19 (2.23%) Dynamics 365
18 18 (2.11%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.94%) HTTP
2 7 (0.82%) Network Security
3 6 (0.70%) Firewall
3 6 (0.70%) WAN
4 5 (0.59%) TCP/IP
5 4 (0.47%) DHCP
5 4 (0.47%) DNS
5 4 (0.47%) LAN
5 4 (0.47%) Wi-Fi
6 3 (0.35%) FTP
6 3 (0.35%) OpenLDAP
6 3 (0.35%) SMS
7 2 (0.23%) Multicast
7 2 (0.23%) NaaS
7 2 (0.23%) SSL
8 1 (0.12%) BGP
8 1 (0.12%) Bluetooth
8 1 (0.12%) Ethernet
8 1 (0.12%) NGFW
8 1 (0.12%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 57 (6.69%) PostgreSQL
2 56 (6.57%) Power BI
3 52 (6.10%) Data Warehouse
4 48 (5.63%) NoSQL
5 45 (5.28%) SQL Server
6 41 (4.81%) MongoDB
7 31 (3.64%) DynamoDB
7 31 (3.64%) Relational Database
8 24 (2.82%) Amazon Athena
9 23 (2.70%) Amazon Redshift
10 20 (2.35%) Data Lake
11 19 (2.23%) Amazon RDS
11 19 (2.23%) Big Data
12 16 (1.88%) BigQuery
13 15 (1.76%) Tableau
14 14 (1.64%) Metadata
15 12 (1.41%) MySQL
16 11 (1.29%) Elasticsearch
16 11 (1.29%) Redis
17 8 (0.94%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 146 (17.14%) Git
2 133 (15.61%) Jenkins
3 129 (15.14%) JIRA
4 98 (11.50%) GitLab
5 94 (11.03%) Selenium
6 54 (6.34%) Cypress.io
7 46 (5.40%) Cucumber
8 42 (4.93%) REST Assured
9 40 (4.69%) JMeter
9 40 (4.69%) JUnit
10 36 (4.23%) Postman
11 19 (2.23%) Maven
12 18 (2.11%) Gatling
12 18 (2.11%) Gradle
13 17 (2.00%) Appium
13 17 (2.00%) Bitbucket
13 17 (2.00%) Zephyr
14 15 (1.76%) Mockito
15 14 (1.64%) SpecFlow
16 12 (1.41%) LoadRunner
General
1 250 (29.34%) Finance
2 221 (25.94%) Social Skills
3 117 (13.73%) Analytical Skills
4 113 (13.26%) Banking
5 92 (10.80%) Public Sector
6 24 (2.82%) Front Office
7 22 (2.58%) Investment Banking
8 20 (2.35%) Financial Institution
8 20 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 17 (2.00%) Influencing Skills
10 14 (1.64%) Legal
11 13 (1.53%) Telecoms
12 12 (1.41%) Back Office
12 12 (1.41%) Documentation Skills
13 9 (1.06%) Retail
14 8 (0.94%) Marketing
15 6 (0.70%) Law
15 6 (0.70%) Local Government
15 6 (0.70%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.59%) Games
Job Titles
1 186 (21.83%) Developer
2 148 (17.37%) Senior
3 90 (10.56%) Lead
4 70 (8.22%) Tester
5 57 (6.69%) Test Engineer
6 54 (6.34%) Data Engineer
7 49 (5.75%) DevOps Engineer
7 49 (5.75%) QA Engineer
8 46 (5.40%) Analyst
8 46 (5.40%) Java Developer
9 45 (5.28%) Architect
10 41 (4.81%) Software Engineer
11 38 (4.46%) Full-Stack Developer
12 37 (4.34%) Senior Developer
13 35 (4.11%) Automation Engineer
14 32 (3.76%) Test Automation Engineer
15 29 (3.40%) Test Leader
16 28 (3.29%) Automation Tester
17 26 (3.05%) Test Manager
18 24 (2.82%) React Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 117 (13.73%) REST
2 110 (12.91%) Playwright
3 96 (11.27%) React
4 88 (10.33%) RESTful
5 81 (9.51%) Kafka
6 67 (7.86%) .NET
7 64 (7.51%) Spring
8 56 (6.57%) Node.js
9 55 (6.46%) Spring Boot
10 46 (5.40%) CSS
11 42 (4.93%) HTML
12 28 (3.29%) PySpark
13 25 (2.93%) AngularJS
13 25 (2.93%) HTML5
14 24 (2.82%) OAuth
15 23 (2.70%) CSS3
16 22 (2.58%) Jest
16 22 (2.58%) Redux
17 19 (2.23%) JSON
17 19 (2.23%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 139 (16.31%) Cloud Native
2 82 (9.62%) Distributed Systems
3 57 (6.69%) Product Ownership
4 29 (3.40%) Data Protection Act
5 26 (3.05%) Onboarding
6 25 (2.93%) Legacy Systems
7 22 (2.58%) AI Agents
8 21 (2.46%) Self-Motivation
9 18 (2.11%) Enterprise Software
9 18 (2.11%) Fixed Income
10 17 (2.00%) Virtual Team
11 15 (1.76%) Algorithms
12 14 (1.64%) Data Structures
13 13 (1.53%) Greenfield Project
13 13 (1.53%) Mobile App
14 12 (1.41%) Management Information System
15 11 (1.29%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 10 (1.17%) Distributed Architecture
16 10 (1.17%) Security Posture
17 9 (1.06%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 40 (4.69%) Linux
2 30 (3.52%) Windows
3 22 (2.58%) Unix
4 19 (2.23%) Android
5 17 (2.00%) Apple iOS
6 10 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 8 (0.94%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.47%) Solaris
8 4 (0.47%) 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
1 544 (63.85%) CI/CD
2 363 (42.61%) Agile
3 340 (39.91%) DevOps
4 174 (20.42%) AI
5 167 (19.60%) Infrastructure as Code
6 155 (18.19%) Microservices
7 150 (17.61%) Problem-Solving
8 142 (16.67%) Continuous Improvement
9 137 (16.08%) Containerisation
10 136 (15.96%) Software Engineering
11 133 (15.61%) Validation
12 132 (15.49%) Test Strategy
13 131 (15.38%) Observability
14 110 (12.91%) Regression Testing
15 104 (12.21%) TDD
16 101 (11.85%) Scrum
17 100 (11.74%) Full-Stack Development
18 98 (11.50%) User Acceptance Testing
19 90 (10.56%) Analytics
20 89 (10.45%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 261 (30.63%) Python
2 212 (24.88%) SQL
3 205 (24.06%) Java
4 124 (14.55%) TypeScript
5 120 (14.08%) JavaScript
6 90 (10.56%) C#
7 37 (4.34%) PowerShell
8 25 (2.93%) Bash
8 25 (2.93%) Kotlin
9 22 (2.58%) Bicep
10 18 (2.11%) Ruby
11 15 (1.76%) Scala
12 14 (1.64%) Apex Code
13 13 (1.53%) PL/SQL
14 12 (1.41%) Go
15 9 (1.06%) C++
16 7 (0.82%) Shell Script
16 7 (0.82%) Swift
16 7 (0.82%) T-SQL
17 6 (0.70%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 200 (23.47%) Security Cleared
2 175 (20.54%) SC Cleared
3 51 (5.99%) Degree
4 32 (3.76%) Computer Science Degree
5 19 (2.23%) ISTQB
6 18 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
6 18 (2.11%) DV Cleared
7 17 (2.00%) AWS Certification
8 10 (1.17%) Azure Certification
9 7 (0.82%) DBS Check
10 6 (0.70%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 6 (0.70%) Master's Degree
11 5 (0.59%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 4 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 4 (0.47%) CISSP
13 3 (0.35%) PhD
13 3 (0.35%) TOGAF Certification
14 2 (0.23%) Cisco Certification
14 2 (0.23%) ISEB
14 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 228 (26.76%) QA
2 70 (8.22%) Data Quality
3 52 (6.10%) Accessibility
4 23 (2.70%) WCAG
5 22 (2.58%) GDPR
6 8 (0.94%) NIST
7 7 (0.82%) SLA
8 6 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 5 (0.59%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.35%) EU AI Act
10 3 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 3 (0.35%) MiFID
10 3 (0.35%) Software Quality Assurance
11 2 (0.23%) GRC
11 2 (0.23%) HL7
11 2 (0.23%) NCSC
12 1 (0.12%) GxP
12 1 (0.12%) ISO 8583
12 1 (0.12%) ISO 9001
12 1 (0.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 148 (17.37%) Docker
2 9 (1.06%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.82%) Active Directory
4 5 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.47%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.12%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 150 (17.61%) Kubernetes
2 131 (15.38%) Terraform
3 45 (5.28%) Grafana
4 39 (4.58%) Prometheus
5 34 (3.99%) Ansible
6 10 (1.17%) Progress Chef
6 10 (1.17%) Puppet
7 8 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.82%) HP ALM
8 7 (0.82%) Kibana
9 4 (0.47%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.35%) Control-M
10 3 (0.35%) Kustomize
10 3 (0.35%) Packer
11 2 (0.23%) Amdocs OSS
11 2 (0.23%) Istio
12 1 (0.12%) Argo
12 1 (0.12%) linkerd
12 1 (0.12%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 91 (10.68%) Microsoft
2 51 (5.99%) Salesforce
3 46 (5.40%) Oracle
4 34 (3.99%) Databricks
5 25 (2.93%) Google
6 21 (2.46%) ServiceNow
7 16 (1.88%) Splunk
7 16 (1.88%) UiPath
8 15 (1.76%) IBM
8 15 (1.76%) Informatica
9 11 (1.29%) HP
10 10 (1.17%) Dynatrace
10 10 (1.17%) VMware
11 9 (1.06%) OpenAI
12 8 (0.94%) OpenLink
12 8 (0.94%) Red Hat
12 8 (0.94%) SAP
13 7 (0.82%) Charles River
13 7 (0.82%) Guidewire
14 6 (0.70%) MuleSoft