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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 54 45
Rank change year-on-year +6 -9 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 867 624 758
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.35% 4.60% 4.59%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.89% 4.99% 5.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 588 420 518
10th Percentile £336 £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% -13.79%

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 17,727 12,515 14,665
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.96% 92.25% 88.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,711 8,371 10,405
10th Percentile £363 £326 £350
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £545 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.92% -0.91% -4.35%
75th Percentile £653 £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 £20.26 £24.66 £22.00
Median hourly rate £35.71 £30.00 £34.25
Median % change year-on-year +19.03% -12.41% -17.47%
75th Percentile £57.25 £49.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £63.25 £71.38
England median hourly rate £46.90 £25.15 £40.33
% change year-on-year +86.48% -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 28 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 28 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 +20 115 £550 +15.79% 40
South London -10 16 £535 +7.00% 2
East London +6 8 £545 +36.25% 12
West London -17 7 £525 +32.91% 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 63 (7.27%) Confluence
2 31 (3.58%) Apache Airflow
3 24 (2.77%) Apache Spark
4 13 (1.50%) CMS
5 12 (1.38%) Apache
6 10 (1.15%) SharePoint
7 6 (0.69%) 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 18 (2.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.27%) 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 15 (1.73%) 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
1 293 (33.79%) Azure
2 265 (30.57%) AWS
3 180 (20.76%) GitHub
4 138 (15.92%) Azure DevOps
5 115 (13.26%) GitHub Actions
6 75 (8.65%) Serverless
7 67 (7.73%) GCP
8 63 (7.27%) Power Platform
9 56 (6.46%) AWS Lambda
10 53 (6.11%) Amazon S3
11 41 (4.73%) dbt
12 32 (3.69%) Snowflake
13 31 (3.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 31 (3.58%) Amazon ECS
14 25 (2.88%) Amazon EC2
14 25 (2.88%) GitHub Copilot
15 22 (2.54%) Azure AKS
16 21 (2.42%) Azure Data Factory
17 20 (2.31%) Dynamics 365
18 17 (1.96%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.92%) HTTP
2 7 (0.81%) Network Security
3 6 (0.69%) Firewall
3 6 (0.69%) WAN
4 5 (0.58%) TCP/IP
5 4 (0.46%) DHCP
5 4 (0.46%) DNS
5 4 (0.46%) LAN
5 4 (0.46%) Wi-Fi
6 3 (0.35%) FTP
6 3 (0.35%) OpenLDAP
6 3 (0.35%) SMS
7 2 (0.23%) Ethernet
7 2 (0.23%) Multicast
7 2 (0.23%) NaaS
8 1 (0.12%) Bluetooth
8 1 (0.12%) Cisco IOS
8 1 (0.12%) DSL
8 1 (0.12%) NFC
8 1 (0.12%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (6.69%) PostgreSQL
2 51 (5.88%) Power BI
3 50 (5.77%) SQL Server
4 49 (5.65%) Data Warehouse
4 49 (5.65%) NoSQL
5 42 (4.84%) MongoDB
6 32 (3.69%) Relational Database
7 31 (3.58%) DynamoDB
8 23 (2.65%) Amazon Athena
9 22 (2.54%) Amazon Redshift
10 19 (2.19%) Amazon RDS
10 19 (2.19%) Big Data
11 18 (2.08%) Data Lake
12 15 (1.73%) BigQuery
12 15 (1.73%) Tableau
13 14 (1.61%) Metadata
14 12 (1.38%) MySQL
15 11 (1.27%) Elasticsearch
15 11 (1.27%) Redis
16 9 (1.04%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 139 (16.03%) Git
2 136 (15.69%) JIRA
3 127 (14.65%) 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 39 (4.50%) JMeter
10 38 (4.38%) JUnit
10 38 (4.38%) Postman
11 18 (2.08%) Bitbucket
11 18 (2.08%) Gatling
11 18 (2.08%) Maven
12 17 (1.96%) Gradle
12 17 (1.96%) Zephyr
13 16 (1.85%) Appium
14 15 (1.73%) Mockito
15 14 (1.61%) SpecFlow
16 10 (1.15%) WebDriver
General
1 261 (30.10%) Finance
2 233 (26.87%) Social Skills
3 119 (13.73%) Banking
4 113 (13.03%) Analytical Skills
5 96 (11.07%) 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 14 (1.61%) Legal
12 13 (1.50%) Telecoms
13 12 (1.38%) Back Office
13 12 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
14 8 (0.92%) Marketing
14 8 (0.92%) Retail
15 7 (0.81%) Organisational Skills
16 6 (0.69%) Law
16 6 (0.69%) Local Government
17 5 (0.58%) Games
Job Titles
1 191 (22.03%) Developer
2 151 (17.42%) Senior
3 93 (10.73%) Lead
4 76 (8.77%) Tester
5 56 (6.46%) Test Engineer
6 54 (6.23%) Data Engineer
7 51 (5.88%) DevOps Engineer
8 49 (5.65%) Java Developer
9 48 (5.54%) Analyst
9 48 (5.54%) QA Engineer
10 47 (5.42%) Architect
11 41 (4.73%) Software Engineer
12 38 (4.38%) Senior Developer
13 36 (4.15%) Full-Stack Developer
14 34 (3.92%) Automation Engineer
15 32 (3.69%) Automation Tester
16 31 (3.58%) Test Leader
17 30 (3.46%) Test Automation Engineer
18 26 (3.00%) Test Manager
19 23 (2.65%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (12.92%) REST
2 111 (12.80%) Playwright
3 100 (11.53%) React
4 87 (10.03%) RESTful
5 80 (9.23%) Kafka
6 68 (7.84%) .NET
7 66 (7.61%) Spring
8 57 (6.57%) Spring Boot
9 55 (6.34%) Node.js
10 49 (5.65%) 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%) AngularJS
14 23 (2.65%) CSS3
15 21 (2.42%) Jest
15 21 (2.42%) Redux
16 19 (2.19%) Next.js
16 19 (2.19%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 136 (15.69%) Cloud Native
2 82 (9.46%) Distributed Systems
3 58 (6.69%) Product Ownership
4 29 (3.34%) Legacy Systems
5 28 (3.23%) Data Protection Act
6 27 (3.11%) 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
11 16 (1.85%) Algorithms
11 16 (1.85%) Greenfield Project
12 15 (1.73%) Virtual Team
13 14 (1.61%) Data Structures
14 13 (1.50%) Management Information System
14 13 (1.50%) Mobile App
15 12 (1.38%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
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 30 (3.46%) Windows
3 19 (2.19%) Android
4 18 (2.08%) Unix
5 17 (1.96%) Apple iOS
6 8 (0.92%) 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
1 545 (62.86%) CI/CD
2 372 (42.91%) Agile
3 334 (38.52%) DevOps
4 172 (19.84%) AI
5 163 (18.80%) Infrastructure as Code
6 157 (18.11%) Microservices
7 148 (17.07%) Problem-Solving
8 141 (16.26%) Continuous Improvement
9 139 (16.03%) Validation
10 138 (15.92%) Test Strategy
11 135 (15.57%) Containerisation
12 134 (15.46%) Software Engineering
13 132 (15.22%) Observability
14 113 (13.03%) Regression Testing
15 107 (12.34%) Scrum
15 107 (12.34%) User Acceptance Testing
16 101 (11.65%) TDD
17 98 (11.30%) Full-Stack Development
18 90 (10.38%) Analytics
18 90 (10.38%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 255 (29.41%) Python
2 219 (25.26%) SQL
3 210 (24.22%) Java
4 129 (14.88%) TypeScript
5 124 (14.30%) JavaScript
6 89 (10.27%) 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%) C++
17 6 (0.69%) Shell Script
17 6 (0.69%) VBA
Qualifications
1 200 (23.07%) Security Cleared
2 176 (20.30%) SC Cleared
3 56 (6.46%) Degree
4 33 (3.81%) Computer Science Degree
5 21 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
6 18 (2.08%) 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%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 226 (26.07%) QA
2 68 (7.84%) Data Quality
3 53 (6.11%) Accessibility
4 23 (2.65%) GDPR
5 22 (2.54%) WCAG
6 9 (1.04%) NIST
7 7 (0.81%) SLA
8 6 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 4 (0.46%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.35%) EU AI Act
10 3 (0.35%) HL7
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%) NCSC
12 1 (0.12%) EMIR
12 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 1 (0.12%) PMO
12 1 (0.12%) SEPA
System Software
1 148 (17.07%) Docker
2 9 (1.04%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.81%) 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
1 152 (17.53%) Kubernetes
2 128 (14.76%) Terraform
3 47 (5.42%) 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%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (0.46%) 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%) HP Quality Center
12 1 (0.12%) linkerd
12 1 (0.12%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 92 (10.61%) Microsoft
2 53 (6.11%) Salesforce
3 50 (5.77%) Oracle
4 30 (3.46%) Databricks
5 23 (2.65%) Google
6 22 (2.54%) ServiceNow
7 17 (1.96%) Splunk
7 17 (1.96%) UiPath
8 15 (1.73%) IBM
9 14 (1.61%) Informatica
10 12 (1.38%) HP
11 10 (1.15%) Dynatrace
11 10 (1.15%) OpenAI
11 10 (1.15%) VMware
12 8 (0.92%) OpenLink
12 8 (0.92%) SAP
13 7 (0.81%) Guidewire
14 6 (0.69%) Charles River
14 6 (0.69%) MuleSoft
14 6 (0.69%) Workday