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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 50 50
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 822 564 746
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.41% 4.61% 4.22%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.97% 4.99% 4.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 539 383 520
10th Percentile £350 £356 £363
25th Percentile £413 £407 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.48% -3.33% -8.70%
75th Percentile £588 £688 £675
90th Percentile £678 £800 £775
England median daily rate £475 £490 £525
% change year-on-year -3.06% -6.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 2 10
10th Percentile - £39.50 £52.25
25th Percentile £92.50 £46.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £95.00 £57.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.22% +4.55% -38.89%
75th Percentile £97.50 £68.75 £65.75
90th Percentile - £75.50 £71.88
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -8.33% -14.89%

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 16,527 11,302 15,611
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.72% 92.31% 88.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,014 7,563 11,181
10th Percentile £358 £347 £340
25th Percentile £435 £425 £446
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -6.78%
75th Percentile £650 £681 £675
90th Percentile £763 £800 £800
England median daily rate £515 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 248 199 318
10th Percentile £18.07 £16.50 £15.50
25th Percentile £25.15 £24.66 £20.00
Median hourly rate £37.00 £32.89 £28.25
Median % change year-on-year +12.50% +16.42% -28.34%
75th Percentile £58.75 £49.88 £48.75
90th Percentile £80.38 £63.75 £68.23
England median hourly rate £47.00 £28.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +67.86% -25.33% +4.17%

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 10 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 10 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 +7 107 £550 +10.00% 55
South London -2 16 £513 +13.57% 1
West London -20 12 £413 +3.13% 4
East London +6 10 £450 +18.42% 13
North London - 1 £400 - 3
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 53 (6.45%) Confluence
2 30 (3.65%) Apache Airflow
3 22 (2.68%) Apache Spark
4 12 (1.46%) CMS
5 10 (1.22%) Apache
6 9 (1.09%) Appian
7 6 (0.73%) Camunda
8 4 (0.49%) nginx
8 4 (0.49%) Tomcat
9 3 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 3 (0.36%) Kentico
9 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.36%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.24%) SAS
11 1 (0.12%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.12%) Ethereum
11 1 (0.12%) Mule
11 1 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
11 1 (0.12%) SharePoint
11 1 (0.12%) Solana
Applications
1 20 (2.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.61%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.12%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 18 (2.19%) Aladdin
2 13 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.97%) Findur
4 6 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
4 6 (0.73%) Shopify
5 5 (0.61%) BambooHR
5 5 (0.61%) Loan IQ
6 3 (0.36%) Distributed Ledger
6 3 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
7 2 (0.24%) Infor CloudSuite
7 2 (0.24%) Infor LN
7 2 (0.24%) Infor M3
7 2 (0.24%) iTrent
7 2 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
8 1 (0.12%) Bloomberg TOMS
8 1 (0.12%) IntelliMatch
8 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
8 1 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.12%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 240 (29.20%) Azure
2 229 (27.86%) AWS
3 139 (16.91%) GitHub
4 119 (14.48%) Azure DevOps
5 79 (9.61%) GitHub Actions
6 69 (8.39%) Serverless
7 50 (6.08%) AWS Lambda
7 50 (6.08%) Power Platform
8 48 (5.84%) GCP
9 47 (5.72%) Amazon S3
10 30 (3.65%) dbt
10 30 (3.65%) Snowflake
11 28 (3.41%) Amazon ECS
11 28 (3.41%) Azure Data Factory
12 26 (3.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 21 (2.55%) Dynamics 365
14 20 (2.43%) Azure AKS
15 18 (2.19%) Power Automate
16 17 (2.07%) Amazon EC2
16 17 (2.07%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.97%) HTTP
2 4 (0.49%) FTP
3 3 (0.36%) OpenLDAP
3 3 (0.36%) SMS
3 3 (0.36%) SSL
3 3 (0.36%) WAN
4 2 (0.24%) Ethernet
4 2 (0.24%) Firewall
4 2 (0.24%) Multicast
4 2 (0.24%) NaaS
5 1 (0.12%) 5G
5 1 (0.12%) Cisco IOS
5 1 (0.12%) Cisco Nexus
5 1 (0.12%) DSL
5 1 (0.12%) MPLS
5 1 (0.12%) Network Security
5 1 (0.12%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.12%) SNMP
5 1 (0.12%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.12%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (7.06%) SQL Server
2 57 (6.93%) PostgreSQL
3 41 (4.99%) NoSQL
4 38 (4.62%) Power BI
5 36 (4.38%) Data Warehouse
6 35 (4.26%) MongoDB
7 28 (3.41%) DynamoDB
7 28 (3.41%) Relational Database
8 22 (2.68%) Amazon Athena
8 22 (2.68%) Tableau
9 20 (2.43%) Big Data
10 19 (2.31%) Amazon Redshift
11 18 (2.19%) Data Lake
12 17 (2.07%) Amazon RDS
12 17 (2.07%) BigQuery
13 14 (1.70%) Metadata
14 13 (1.58%) Star Schema
15 11 (1.34%) Amazon Aurora
16 10 (1.22%) Redis
17 9 (1.09%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 126 (15.33%) JIRA
2 122 (14.84%) Git
3 104 (12.65%) Jenkins
4 99 (12.04%) Selenium
5 86 (10.46%) GitLab
6 49 (5.96%) Cucumber
6 49 (5.96%) Cypress.io
7 47 (5.72%) Postman
8 41 (4.99%) REST Assured
9 37 (4.50%) JMeter
10 30 (3.65%) JUnit
11 18 (2.19%) SpecFlow
12 16 (1.95%) MLflow
12 16 (1.95%) Mockito
13 14 (1.70%) Gradle
13 14 (1.70%) Maven
13 14 (1.70%) WebDriver
14 13 (1.58%) Zephyr
15 12 (1.46%) Appium
16 11 (1.34%) Gatling
General
1 228 (27.74%) Finance
2 217 (26.40%) Social Skills
3 111 (13.50%) Banking
4 107 (13.02%) Public Sector
5 106 (12.90%) Analytical Skills
6 26 (3.16%) Front Office
6 26 (3.16%) Investment Banking
7 21 (2.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 16 (1.95%) Legal
9 14 (1.70%) Financial Institution
10 13 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
11 12 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
12 9 (1.09%) Back Office
12 9 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
12 9 (1.09%) Telecoms
13 8 (0.97%) Retail
14 7 (0.85%) Billing
14 7 (0.85%) Marketing
14 7 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
14 7 (0.85%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 177 (21.53%) Developer
2 142 (17.27%) Senior
3 87 (10.58%) Lead
4 83 (10.10%) Tester
5 55 (6.69%) Test Engineer
6 51 (6.20%) Analyst
7 50 (6.08%) QA Engineer
8 44 (5.35%) Architect
9 42 (5.11%) DevOps Engineer
10 41 (4.99%) Automation Tester
10 41 (4.99%) Data Engineer
11 38 (4.62%) Automation Engineer
12 36 (4.38%) Senior Developer
13 34 (4.14%) Java Developer
14 30 (3.65%) Test Automation Engineer
15 27 (3.28%) Software Engineer
15 27 (3.28%) Test Leader
16 26 (3.16%) Test Manager
17 25 (3.04%) Full-Stack Developer
17 25 (3.04%) QA Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 97 (11.80%) REST
2 96 (11.68%) Playwright
3 92 (11.19%) React
4 79 (9.61%) RESTful
5 68 (8.27%) Kafka
6 65 (7.91%) .NET
7 52 (6.33%) Node.js
8 49 (5.96%) Spring
9 46 (5.60%) Spring Boot
10 40 (4.87%) HTML
11 39 (4.74%) CSS
12 29 (3.53%) OAuth
13 25 (3.04%) pytest
14 24 (2.92%) Web Services
15 21 (2.55%) Redux
16 20 (2.43%) AngularJS
16 20 (2.43%) Swagger
17 19 (2.31%) .NET Core
18 18 (2.19%) OAuth2
18 18 (2.19%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 108 (13.14%) Cloud Native
2 59 (7.18%) Distributed Systems
3 50 (6.08%) Product Ownership
4 41 (4.99%) Legacy Systems
5 29 (3.53%) Data Protection Act
6 21 (2.55%) Algorithms
7 20 (2.43%) Fixed Income
8 19 (2.31%) Greenfield Project
8 19 (2.31%) Virtual Team
9 18 (2.19%) Onboarding
9 18 (2.19%) Self-Motivation
10 16 (1.95%) Management Information System
11 14 (1.70%) Equities
11 14 (1.70%) Mobile App
12 13 (1.58%) Data Structures
12 13 (1.58%) NHS
13 11 (1.34%) AI Agents
13 11 (1.34%) Distributed Architecture
14 10 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
14 10 (1.22%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 38 (4.62%) Linux
2 25 (3.04%) Windows
3 21 (2.55%) Android
4 17 (2.07%) Apple iOS
5 13 (1.58%) Unix
6 4 (0.49%) Solaris
6 4 (0.49%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.49%) Windows Server 2008
7 3 (0.36%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
7 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 459 (55.84%) CI/CD
2 325 (39.54%) Agile
3 278 (33.82%) DevOps
4 140 (17.03%) AI
5 135 (16.42%) Infrastructure as Code
6 134 (16.30%) Problem-Solving
7 130 (15.82%) Validation
8 125 (15.21%) Observability
9 124 (15.09%) Test Strategy
10 123 (14.96%) Continuous Improvement
11 115 (13.99%) Microservices
12 113 (13.75%) Containerisation
13 107 (13.02%) Regression Testing
14 105 (12.77%) User Acceptance Testing
15 98 (11.92%) Software Engineering
16 94 (11.44%) Data Modelling
17 89 (10.83%) Analytics
17 89 (10.83%) Scrum
18 86 (10.46%) Software Testing
19 81 (9.85%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 252 (30.66%) Python
2 213 (25.91%) SQL
3 177 (21.53%) Java
4 121 (14.72%) TypeScript
5 119 (14.48%) JavaScript
6 101 (12.29%) C#
7 35 (4.26%) PowerShell
8 21 (2.55%) Bash
8 21 (2.55%) Kotlin
9 17 (2.07%) PL/SQL
10 16 (1.95%) Apex Code
11 15 (1.82%) Ruby
12 14 (1.70%) Bicep
13 13 (1.58%) Scala
14 11 (1.34%) Go
15 9 (1.09%) C++
16 8 (0.97%) T-SQL
17 7 (0.85%) Swift
18 6 (0.73%) Groovy
19 4 (0.49%) VBA
Qualifications
1 178 (21.65%) Security Cleared
2 153 (18.61%) SC Cleared
3 40 (4.87%) Degree
4 27 (3.28%) ISTQB
5 26 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
6 22 (2.68%) Computer Science Degree
7 16 (1.95%) DV Cleared
8 9 (1.09%) AWS Certification
8 9 (1.09%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.85%) DBS Check
10 6 (0.73%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 5 (0.61%) Azure Certification
12 4 (0.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 3 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
14 2 (0.24%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 2 (0.24%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 2 (0.24%) CISSP
14 2 (0.24%) PhD
15 1 (0.12%) Cisco Certification
15 1 (0.12%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 196 (23.84%) QA
2 65 (7.91%) Data Quality
3 49 (5.96%) Accessibility
4 26 (3.16%) GDPR
5 18 (2.19%) WCAG
6 10 (1.22%) NIST
7 6 (0.73%) ISO 20022
8 5 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.61%) SLA
9 4 (0.49%) HL7
9 4 (0.49%) NCSC
9 4 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 4 (0.49%) Software Quality Assurance
10 3 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 2 (0.24%) EU AI Act
11 2 (0.24%) GRC
11 2 (0.24%) MiFID
12 1 (0.12%) GMP
12 1 (0.12%) HIPAA
12 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 133 (16.18%) Docker
2 6 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.49%) Active Directory
4 4 (0.49%) Oracle RAC
4 4 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.12%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.12%) Squid
6 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 137 (16.67%) Kubernetes
2 105 (12.77%) Terraform
3 38 (4.62%) Grafana
4 36 (4.38%) Prometheus
5 26 (3.16%) Ansible
6 8 (0.97%) HP ALM
6 8 (0.97%) Kibana
6 8 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
7 4 (0.49%) Oracle RMAN
8 3 (0.36%) Control-M
8 3 (0.36%) Kustomize
8 3 (0.36%) Puppet
9 2 (0.24%) Amdocs OSS
9 2 (0.24%) Packer
9 2 (0.24%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.12%) HP Quality Center
10 1 (0.12%) Istio
10 1 (0.12%) linkerd
Vendors
1 80 (9.73%) Microsoft
2 54 (6.57%) Oracle
2 54 (6.57%) Salesforce
3 34 (4.14%) Databricks
4 21 (2.55%) ServiceNow
5 19 (2.31%) UiPath
6 15 (1.82%) Google
7 14 (1.70%) Splunk
8 12 (1.46%) OpenAI
9 11 (1.34%) IBM
10 9 (1.09%) Apple
10 9 (1.09%) Dynatrace
10 9 (1.09%) Guidewire
11 8 (0.97%) Automation Anywhere
11 8 (0.97%) HP
11 8 (0.97%) MuleSoft
11 8 (0.97%) OpenLink
11 8 (0.97%) SAP
12 7 (0.85%) Informatica
13 6 (0.73%) Red Hat