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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 56 43
Rank change year-on-year +6 -13 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 911 597 768
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.51% 4.43% 4.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.07% 4.79% 5.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 620 400 502
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £509 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.72% -3.10% -7.49%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £629
90th Percentile £725 £775 £750
England median daily rate £475 £500 £510
% change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 3
10th Percentile £44.39 £37.25 £53.13
25th Percentile £47.50 £40.63 £57.81
Median hourly rate £50.00 £45.00 £68.75
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -34.55% -23.61%
75th Percentile £97.50 £55.63 £71.88
90th Percentile - £70.25 -
England median hourly rate £68.61 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +19.32% - -23.33%

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 17,959 12,462 14,550
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.91% 92.53% 89.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,758 8,244 9,685
10th Percentile £360 £327 £350
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.85% -1.82% -4.35%
75th Percentile £663 £675 £675
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 302 252 179
10th Percentile £16.52 £17.01 £17.25
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £35.00 £31.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.24% -9.29% -9.58%
75th Percentile £57.50 £49.56 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £63.75 £72.50
England median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -3.37%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 +13 118 £550 +22.22% 111
South London -1 16 £593 +18.50% 6
East London +6 11 £545 +4.81% 17
West London -23 4 £600 +50.94% 44
North London +1 2 £463 - 2
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 71 (7.79%) Confluence
2 41 (4.50%) Apache Airflow
3 26 (2.85%) Apache Spark
4 23 (2.52%) SharePoint
5 15 (1.65%) CMS
6 14 (1.54%) Apache
7 7 (0.77%) Camunda
7 7 (0.77%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.33%) Kentico
9 3 (0.33%) nginx
9 3 (0.33%) SAS
9 3 (0.33%) Tomcat
9 3 (0.33%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.22%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.22%) Mule
10 2 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 1 (0.11%) Appian
11 1 (0.11%) Ethereum
11 1 (0.11%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 18 (1.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.55%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.33%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.33%) Trello
6 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.22%) Mingle
7 1 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 13 (1.43%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (0.99%) Aladdin
2 9 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.55%) SAP GRC
4 4 (0.44%) Findur
4 4 (0.44%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.33%) Distributed Ledger
5 3 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.22%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.22%) SAP MDG
6 2 (0.22%) Shopify
7 1 (0.11%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.11%) Infor CloudSuite
7 1 (0.11%) Infor M3
7 1 (0.11%) IntelliMatch
7 1 (0.11%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.11%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.11%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 314 (34.47%) Azure
2 276 (30.30%) AWS
3 187 (20.53%) GitHub
4 152 (16.68%) Azure DevOps
5 122 (13.39%) GitHub Actions
6 82 (9.00%) Serverless
7 75 (8.23%) GCP
8 69 (7.57%) Power Platform
9 64 (7.03%) AWS Lambda
10 53 (5.82%) Amazon S3
11 51 (5.60%) dbt
12 42 (4.61%) Snowflake
13 39 (4.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 34 (3.73%) GitHub Copilot
15 32 (3.51%) Amazon ECS
16 28 (3.07%) AWS CloudFormation
17 26 (2.85%) Azure Monitor
18 24 (2.63%) Amazon EC2
18 24 (2.63%) Amazon EKS
18 24 (2.63%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 10 (1.10%) HTTP
2 9 (0.99%) DNS
3 8 (0.88%) TCP/IP
4 7 (0.77%) DHCP
4 7 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
5 6 (0.66%) BGP
5 6 (0.66%) Firewall
5 6 (0.66%) LAN
5 6 (0.66%) Network Security
5 6 (0.66%) WAN
6 4 (0.44%) Ethernet VPN
6 4 (0.44%) NX-OS
6 4 (0.44%) TACACS
6 4 (0.44%) VXLAN
7 3 (0.33%) 5G
7 3 (0.33%) FTP
7 3 (0.33%) Internet
7 3 (0.33%) OpenLDAP
7 3 (0.33%) SMS
7 3 (0.33%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 62 (6.81%) PostgreSQL
2 55 (6.04%) Power BI
3 54 (5.93%) Data Warehouse
4 52 (5.71%) NoSQL
5 51 (5.60%) SQL Server
6 38 (4.17%) MongoDB
6 38 (4.17%) Relational Database
7 24 (2.63%) Amazon Redshift
8 23 (2.52%) DynamoDB
9 22 (2.41%) Amazon Athena
9 22 (2.41%) Data Lake
10 19 (2.09%) Amazon RDS
10 19 (2.09%) Big Data
11 16 (1.76%) Tableau
12 15 (1.65%) BigQuery
13 14 (1.54%) Metadata
13 14 (1.54%) Redis
14 13 (1.43%) MySQL
14 13 (1.43%) Oracle Database
15 12 (1.32%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 185 (20.31%) Git
2 169 (18.55%) Jenkins
3 131 (14.38%) JIRA
4 114 (12.51%) Selenium
5 107 (11.75%) GitLab
6 60 (6.59%) Cypress.io
7 50 (5.49%) JMeter
8 49 (5.38%) JUnit
9 46 (5.05%) Postman
10 45 (4.94%) Cucumber
11 43 (4.72%) REST Assured
12 23 (2.52%) Gradle
13 22 (2.41%) Gatling
13 22 (2.41%) Maven
14 21 (2.31%) SonarQube
15 18 (1.98%) LoadRunner
15 18 (1.98%) Mockito
16 15 (1.65%) Appium
16 15 (1.65%) WebDriver
17 14 (1.54%) Bitbucket
General
1 278 (30.52%) Finance
2 246 (27.00%) Social Skills
3 142 (15.59%) Analytical Skills
4 139 (15.26%) Banking
5 80 (8.78%) Public Sector
6 33 (3.62%) Front Office
7 23 (2.52%) Investment Banking
8 20 (2.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 18 (1.98%) Financial Institution
10 15 (1.65%) Telecoms
11 14 (1.54%) Marketing
12 12 (1.32%) Back Office
13 11 (1.21%) Documentation Skills
13 11 (1.21%) Law
13 11 (1.21%) Legal
14 10 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
14 10 (1.10%) Retail
15 9 (0.99%) Local Government
16 5 (0.55%) Games
16 5 (0.55%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 208 (22.83%) Developer
2 160 (17.56%) Senior
3 90 (9.88%) Lead
4 68 (7.46%) Tester
5 60 (6.59%) Data Engineer
6 57 (6.26%) Java Developer
7 54 (5.93%) DevOps Engineer
7 54 (5.93%) Test Engineer
8 52 (5.71%) QA Engineer
9 50 (5.49%) Software Engineer
10 45 (4.94%) Analyst
10 45 (4.94%) Automation Engineer
11 42 (4.61%) Architect
11 42 (4.61%) Full-Stack Developer
11 42 (4.61%) Senior Developer
12 35 (3.84%) Test Manager
13 32 (3.51%) Test Leader
14 29 (3.18%) Test Automation Engineer
15 28 (3.07%) Automation Tester
16 26 (2.85%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 146 (16.03%) Terraform
2 145 (15.92%) REST
3 112 (12.29%) Playwright
4 107 (11.75%) Kafka
5 103 (11.31%) RESTful
6 93 (10.21%) React
7 84 (9.22%) Spring
8 73 (8.01%) .NET
8 73 (8.01%) Spring Boot
9 63 (6.92%) HTML
10 55 (6.04%) CSS
11 51 (5.60%) Node.js
12 35 (3.84%) PySpark
13 30 (3.29%) AngularJS
14 29 (3.18%) Middleware
15 26 (2.85%) JSON
15 26 (2.85%) SOAP
15 26 (2.85%) XML
16 23 (2.52%) OAuth
17 22 (2.41%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 151 (16.58%) Cloud Native
2 88 (9.66%) Distributed Systems
3 79 (8.67%) Product Ownership
4 36 (3.95%) Onboarding
5 34 (3.73%) AI Agents
6 25 (2.74%) Enterprise Software
7 22 (2.41%) Data Protection Act
8 21 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
9 20 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
10 19 (2.09%) Data Structures
11 16 (1.76%) Virtual Team
12 15 (1.65%) Fixed Income
12 15 (1.65%) Mobile App
13 11 (1.21%) Algorithms
13 11 (1.21%) Private Cloud
13 11 (1.21%) Security Posture
14 10 (1.10%) Legacy Applications
15 9 (0.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 9 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
15 9 (0.99%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 65 (7.14%) Linux
2 46 (5.05%) Unix
3 33 (3.62%) Windows
4 18 (1.98%) Android
5 17 (1.87%) Apple iOS
6 14 (1.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 8 (0.88%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.44%) VMS
9 3 (0.33%) Solaris
9 3 (0.33%) 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
11 1 (0.11%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 583 (64.00%) CI/CD
2 405 (44.46%) Agile
3 368 (40.40%) DevOps
4 204 (22.39%) AI
5 180 (19.76%) Infrastructure as Code
6 178 (19.54%) Problem-Solving
7 175 (19.21%) Microservices
8 170 (18.66%) Software Engineering
9 164 (18.00%) Validation
10 162 (17.78%) Continuous Improvement
11 152 (16.68%) Containerisation
12 145 (15.92%) Test Strategy
13 143 (15.70%) Observability
14 131 (14.38%) Scrum
15 122 (13.39%) TDD
16 117 (12.84%) Stakeholder Management
17 104 (11.42%) Event-Driven
18 103 (11.31%) Regression Testing
19 99 (10.87%) User Acceptance Testing
20 97 (10.65%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 310 (34.03%) Python
2 253 (27.77%) Java
2 253 (27.77%) SQL
3 141 (15.48%) JavaScript
4 122 (13.39%) TypeScript
5 82 (9.00%) C#
6 40 (4.39%) PowerShell
7 37 (4.06%) Bash
8 26 (2.85%) Bicep
9 23 (2.52%) Kotlin
10 21 (2.31%) Scala
11 13 (1.43%) Ruby
12 12 (1.32%) C++
12 12 (1.32%) Go
12 12 (1.32%) PL/SQL
13 11 (1.21%) Shell Script
14 10 (1.10%) C
15 9 (0.99%) Apex Code
15 9 (0.99%) VB.NET
16 8 (0.88%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 245 (26.89%) Security Cleared
2 218 (23.93%) SC Cleared
3 63 (6.92%) Degree
4 38 (4.17%) Computer Science Degree
5 31 (3.40%) ISTQB
6 29 (3.18%) DV Cleared
7 22 (2.41%) AWS Certification
8 18 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
9 15 (1.65%) Azure Certification
10 9 (0.99%) ISEB
11 8 (0.88%) Master's Degree
12 7 (0.77%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 7 (0.77%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 6 (0.66%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 6 (0.66%) DBS Check
14 4 (0.44%) CISSP
14 4 (0.44%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 3 (0.33%) PhD
16 2 (0.22%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 259 (28.43%) QA
2 75 (8.23%) Data Quality
3 47 (5.16%) Accessibility
4 22 (2.41%) GDPR
5 17 (1.87%) WCAG
6 12 (1.32%) ISO 20022
7 10 (1.10%) SLA
8 9 (0.99%) GRC
8 9 (0.99%) NIST
9 6 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 3 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.33%) EU AI Act
11 2 (0.22%) ISO 9001
11 2 (0.22%) MiFID
11 2 (0.22%) NCSC
11 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.22%) SOC 2
11 2 (0.22%) Software Quality Assurance
12 1 (0.11%) ISO 15022
12 1 (0.11%) SEPA
System Software
1 181 (19.87%) Docker
2 11 (1.21%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.77%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
4 3 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
4 3 (0.33%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
5 1 (0.11%) Firmware
5 1 (0.11%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 171 (18.77%) Kubernetes
2 61 (6.70%) Grafana
3 47 (5.16%) Ansible
3 47 (5.16%) Prometheus
4 18 (1.98%) Puppet
5 16 (1.76%) Progress Chef
6 14 (1.54%) Kibana
7 10 (1.10%) Control-M
8 7 (0.77%) HP ALM
9 5 (0.55%) HP Fortify
9 5 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
9 5 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (0.33%) Argo
10 3 (0.33%) Kustomize
10 3 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.33%) Packer
11 2 (0.22%) Istio
11 2 (0.22%) Rancher
12 1 (0.11%) systemd
12 1 (0.11%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 107 (11.75%) Microsoft
2 56 (6.15%) Oracle
3 45 (4.94%) Databricks
4 36 (3.95%) Salesforce
5 35 (3.84%) Google
6 31 (3.40%) ServiceNow
7 27 (2.96%) IBM
8 24 (2.63%) SAP
9 23 (2.52%) Splunk
10 20 (2.20%) UiPath
11 18 (1.98%) Informatica
12 15 (1.65%) Red Hat
13 14 (1.54%) Cisco
13 14 (1.54%) Dynatrace
13 14 (1.54%) VMware
14 13 (1.43%) OpenAI
15 12 (1.32%) Foundry
15 12 (1.32%) HP
16 11 (1.21%) SaltStack
17 7 (0.77%) MuleSoft