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

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 51 47
Rank change year-on-year +2 -4 +2
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 875 632 780
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.42% 4.66% 4.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.97% 5.06% 5.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 589 422 536
10th Percentile £341 £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 £625 £674 £670
90th Percentile £709 £775 £772
England median daily rate £475 £485 £525
% change year-on-year -2.06% -7.62% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 4 9
10th Percentile - £37.25 £52.00
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 £65.00
90th Percentile - £70.25 £71.88
England median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +35.00% -9.09% -24.66%

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 17,610 12,492 15,271
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.97% 92.11% 88.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,678 8,360 10,852
10th Percentile £363 £331 £350
25th Percentile £448 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.82% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
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 272 240 266
10th Percentile £17.60 £16.50 £16.12
25th Percentile £22.00 £24.66 £20.50
Median hourly rate £36.25 £31.75 £32.40
Median % change year-on-year +14.17% -1.99% -21.94%
75th Percentile £57.81 £50.13 £50.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £63.30 £70.38
England median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -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 17 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 17 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 +20 117 £550 +22.22% 25
South London -9 15 £535 +7.00% 3
West London -11 11 £523 +30.63% 5
East London +6 8 £545 +18.48% 13
North London -1 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 (6.86%) Confluence
2 32 (3.66%) Apache Airflow
3 24 (2.74%) Apache Spark
4 13 (1.49%) CMS
5 12 (1.37%) Apache
6 5 (0.57%) Appian
6 5 (0.57%) Camunda
7 4 (0.46%) nginx
7 4 (0.46%) Tomcat
7 4 (0.46%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.34%) Kentico
8 3 (0.34%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.23%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.23%) Mule
9 2 (0.23%) SAS
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
10 1 (0.11%) Ethereum
10 1 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.11%) Solana
Applications
1 20 (2.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (1.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.91%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.69%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.23%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.23%) Trello
7 1 (0.11%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 16 (1.83%) Aladdin
2 13 (1.49%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.91%) Findur
3 8 (0.91%) Oracle EBS
4 6 (0.69%) Shopify
5 5 (0.57%) BambooHR
6 4 (0.46%) Loan IQ
6 4 (0.46%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.34%) Distributed Ledger
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 (0.11%) IntelliMatch
9 1 (0.11%) Misys Equation
9 1 (0.11%) Misys Midas
9 1 (0.11%) Oracle EBS R12
9 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 286 (32.69%) Azure
2 263 (30.06%) AWS
3 177 (20.23%) GitHub
4 140 (16.00%) Azure DevOps
5 113 (12.91%) GitHub Actions
6 75 (8.57%) Serverless
7 62 (7.09%) Power Platform
8 60 (6.86%) GCP
9 57 (6.51%) AWS Lambda
10 55 (6.29%) Amazon S3
11 40 (4.57%) dbt
12 33 (3.77%) Snowflake
13 31 (3.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 30 (3.43%) Amazon ECS
15 25 (2.86%) Amazon EC2
16 23 (2.63%) Azure Data Factory
17 22 (2.51%) GitHub Copilot
18 21 (2.40%) Azure AKS
18 21 (2.40%) Dynamics 365
19 19 (2.17%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.91%) HTTP
2 3 (0.34%) FTP
2 3 (0.34%) Network Security
2 3 (0.34%) OpenLDAP
2 3 (0.34%) SMS
2 3 (0.34%) WAN
3 2 (0.23%) Ethernet
3 2 (0.23%) Firewall
3 2 (0.23%) Multicast
3 2 (0.23%) NaaS
4 1 (0.11%) Bluetooth
4 1 (0.11%) Cisco IOS
4 1 (0.11%) Cisco Nexus
4 1 (0.11%) DSL
4 1 (0.11%) MPLS
4 1 (0.11%) NFC
4 1 (0.11%) NGFW
4 1 (0.11%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.11%) SNMP
4 1 (0.11%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (6.40%) PostgreSQL
2 50 (5.71%) Power BI
3 49 (5.60%) NoSQL
4 48 (5.49%) SQL Server
5 47 (5.37%) Data Warehouse
6 40 (4.57%) MongoDB
7 32 (3.66%) DynamoDB
8 29 (3.31%) Relational Database
9 24 (2.74%) Amazon Athena
10 22 (2.51%) Amazon Redshift
11 20 (2.29%) Amazon RDS
12 19 (2.17%) Big Data
13 18 (2.06%) Data Lake
14 16 (1.83%) Tableau
15 15 (1.71%) BigQuery
15 15 (1.71%) Metadata
16 12 (1.37%) Redis
17 10 (1.14%) Elasticsearch
17 10 (1.14%) MySQL
17 10 (1.14%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 142 (16.23%) Git
2 135 (15.43%) JIRA
3 125 (14.29%) Jenkins
4 103 (11.77%) Selenium
5 97 (11.09%) GitLab
6 57 (6.51%) Cypress.io
7 52 (5.94%) Cucumber
8 48 (5.49%) REST Assured
9 43 (4.91%) Postman
10 38 (4.34%) JMeter
11 37 (4.23%) JUnit
12 17 (1.94%) Gatling
12 17 (1.94%) Gradle
12 17 (1.94%) Maven
13 16 (1.83%) Appium
13 16 (1.83%) Bitbucket
13 16 (1.83%) Mockito
14 15 (1.71%) SpecFlow
14 15 (1.71%) Zephyr
15 13 (1.49%) WebDriver
General
1 262 (29.94%) Finance
2 233 (26.63%) Social Skills
3 121 (13.83%) Analytical Skills
4 119 (13.60%) Banking
5 93 (10.63%) Public Sector
6 27 (3.09%) Front Office
7 25 (2.86%) Investment Banking
8 22 (2.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 20 (2.29%) Financial Institution
10 17 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
11 15 (1.71%) Legal
12 12 (1.37%) Back Office
12 12 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
13 9 (1.03%) Retail
13 9 (1.03%) Telecoms
14 8 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
15 7 (0.80%) Marketing
16 6 (0.69%) Games
16 6 (0.69%) Local Government
16 6 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 191 (21.83%) Developer
2 146 (16.69%) Senior
3 97 (11.09%) Lead
4 80 (9.14%) Tester
5 58 (6.63%) Test Engineer
6 54 (6.17%) Data Engineer
7 51 (5.83%) Analyst
7 51 (5.83%) QA Engineer
8 49 (5.60%) Architect
8 49 (5.60%) DevOps Engineer
9 47 (5.37%) Java Developer
10 38 (4.34%) Automation Engineer
10 38 (4.34%) Software Engineer
11 36 (4.11%) Full-Stack Developer
12 35 (4.00%) Senior Developer
13 34 (3.89%) Automation Tester
14 33 (3.77%) Test Leader
15 31 (3.54%) Test Automation Engineer
16 25 (2.86%) Test Manager
17 24 (2.74%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (12.91%) Playwright
2 110 (12.57%) REST
3 102 (11.66%) React
4 84 (9.60%) RESTful
5 74 (8.46%) Kafka
6 69 (7.89%) .NET
7 63 (7.20%) Spring
8 57 (6.51%) Node.js
9 55 (6.29%) Spring Boot
10 48 (5.49%) CSS
11 45 (5.14%) HTML
12 27 (3.09%) OAuth
13 26 (2.97%) HTML5
14 25 (2.86%) PySpark
15 23 (2.63%) Redux
16 22 (2.51%) AngularJS
16 22 (2.51%) CSS3
17 20 (2.29%) Next.js
18 19 (2.17%) GraphQL
18 19 (2.17%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 130 (14.86%) Cloud Native
2 78 (8.91%) Distributed Systems
3 55 (6.29%) Product Ownership
4 32 (3.66%) Legacy Systems
5 27 (3.09%) Data Protection Act
6 24 (2.74%) Onboarding
7 21 (2.40%) Self-Motivation
8 20 (2.29%) Fixed Income
8 20 (2.29%) Virtual Team
9 19 (2.17%) AI Agents
9 19 (2.17%) Greenfield Project
10 17 (1.94%) Algorithms
10 17 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
11 15 (1.71%) Management Information System
11 15 (1.71%) Mobile App
12 14 (1.60%) Data Structures
13 12 (1.37%) Equities
14 11 (1.26%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 10 (1.14%) NHS
15 10 (1.14%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 33 (3.77%) Linux
2 23 (2.63%) Windows
3 19 (2.17%) Android
4 17 (1.94%) Apple iOS
5 15 (1.71%) Unix
6 6 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 4 (0.46%) Solaris
7 4 (0.46%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.46%) Windows Server 2008
8 3 (0.34%) Mac OS
8 3 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
8 3 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (0.23%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 545 (62.29%) CI/CD
2 371 (42.40%) Agile
3 332 (37.94%) DevOps
4 172 (19.66%) AI
5 158 (18.06%) Infrastructure as Code
6 152 (17.37%) Problem-Solving
7 149 (17.03%) Microservices
8 138 (15.77%) Test Strategy
8 138 (15.77%) Validation
9 137 (15.66%) Continuous Improvement
10 130 (14.86%) Containerisation
10 130 (14.86%) Software Engineering
11 125 (14.29%) Observability
12 116 (13.26%) Regression Testing
13 110 (12.57%) User Acceptance Testing
14 104 (11.89%) Scrum
15 99 (11.31%) TDD
16 98 (11.20%) Full-Stack Development
17 89 (10.17%) Stakeholder Management
18 88 (10.06%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 262 (29.94%) Python
2 221 (25.26%) SQL
3 203 (23.20%) Java
4 134 (15.31%) TypeScript
5 126 (14.40%) JavaScript
6 93 (10.63%) C#
7 34 (3.89%) PowerShell
8 25 (2.86%) Bash
9 24 (2.74%) Kotlin
10 18 (2.06%) Ruby
11 17 (1.94%) Bicep
12 16 (1.83%) Apex Code
13 15 (1.71%) Scala
14 14 (1.60%) Go
15 13 (1.49%) PL/SQL
16 8 (0.91%) Swift
17 7 (0.80%) T-SQL
18 6 (0.69%) C++
18 6 (0.69%) Groovy
18 6 (0.69%) VBA
Qualifications
1 201 (22.97%) Security Cleared
2 179 (20.46%) SC Cleared
3 55 (6.29%) Degree
4 34 (3.89%) Computer Science Degree
5 23 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
6 20 (2.29%) ISTQB
7 16 (1.83%) AWS Certification
7 16 (1.83%) DV Cleared
8 11 (1.26%) Master's Degree
9 8 (0.91%) Azure Certification
10 7 (0.80%) DBS Check
11 6 (0.69%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 5 (0.57%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 4 (0.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 4 (0.46%) CISSP
14 3 (0.34%) TOGAF Certification
15 2 (0.23%) Cisco Certification
15 2 (0.23%) ISEB
15 2 (0.23%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 2 (0.23%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 222 (25.37%) QA
2 71 (8.11%) Data Quality
3 54 (6.17%) Accessibility
4 24 (2.74%) GDPR
5 22 (2.51%) WCAG
6 9 (1.03%) NIST
7 6 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.46%) ISO 20022
9 3 (0.34%) EU AI Act
9 3 (0.34%) HL7
9 3 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.34%) MiFID
9 3 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
10 2 (0.23%) GRC
10 2 (0.23%) NCSC
10 2 (0.23%) SLA
11 1 (0.11%) GMP
11 1 (0.11%) GxP
11 1 (0.11%) ISO 8583
11 1 (0.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 150 (17.14%) Docker
2 8 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.57%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.46%) Oracle RAC
4 4 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.34%) Active Directory
5 3 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.11%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 151 (17.26%) Kubernetes
2 124 (14.17%) Terraform
3 45 (5.14%) Grafana
4 40 (4.57%) Prometheus
5 32 (3.66%) Ansible
6 9 (1.03%) Kibana
7 8 (0.91%) HP ALM
7 8 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
8 5 (0.57%) Progress Chef
8 5 (0.57%) Puppet
9 4 (0.46%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.34%) Control-M
10 3 (0.34%) Kustomize
10 3 (0.34%) Packer
11 2 (0.23%) Amdocs OSS
12 1 (0.11%) HP Quality Center
12 1 (0.11%) Istio
12 1 (0.11%) linkerd
12 1 (0.11%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 92 (10.51%) Microsoft
2 56 (6.40%) Salesforce
3 51 (5.83%) Oracle
4 31 (3.54%) Databricks
5 19 (2.17%) Google
5 19 (2.17%) ServiceNow
5 19 (2.17%) UiPath
6 16 (1.83%) Splunk
7 14 (1.60%) Informatica
8 13 (1.49%) IBM
9 9 (1.03%) Dynatrace
9 9 (1.03%) OpenAI
10 8 (0.91%) HP
10 8 (0.91%) OpenLink
10 8 (0.91%) SAP
11 7 (0.80%) Guidewire
11 7 (0.80%) MuleSoft
12 6 (0.69%) Charles River
12 6 (0.69%) Foundry
12 6 (0.69%) Workday