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

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 53 47
Rank change year-on-year +4 -6 +5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 873 626 774
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.41% 4.59% 4.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.96% 4.98% 5.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 588 418 529
10th Percentile £340 £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 £675 £675
90th Percentile £710 £775 £775
England median daily rate £475 £484 £525
% change year-on-year -1.86% -7.81% -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% -26.67%

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 17,611 12,570 15,108
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.90% 92.12% 88.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,652 8,414 10,744
10th Percentile £363 £331 £350
25th Percentile £450 £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 274 239 254
10th Percentile £17.60 £16.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £21.63 £24.66 £20.99
Median hourly rate £36.00 £31.00 £33.53
Median % change year-on-year +16.13% -7.53% -22.03%
75th Percentile £57.50 £49.88 £51.50
90th Percentile £81.25 £63.35 £70.73
England median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £39.50
% change year-on-year +88.87% -36.33% -7.06%

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 20 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 20 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 +22 117 £550 +22.22% 30
South London -8 15 £535 +7.00% 4
West London -14 11 £523 +32.28% 5
East London +5 8 £545 +18.48% 11
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 61 (6.99%) Confluence
2 32 (3.67%) Apache Airflow
3 24 (2.75%) Apache Spark
4 13 (1.49%) CMS
5 12 (1.37%) Apache
6 5 (0.57%) Camunda
7 4 (0.46%) Appian
7 4 (0.46%) nginx
7 4 (0.46%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.46%) Tomcat
7 4 (0.46%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.34%) Kentico
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 (1.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.92%) 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 (0.92%) Findur
3 8 (0.92%) 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 (32.76%) Azure
2 261 (29.90%) AWS
3 177 (20.27%) GitHub
4 140 (16.04%) Azure DevOps
5 114 (13.06%) GitHub Actions
6 74 (8.48%) Serverless
7 62 (7.10%) Power Platform
8 61 (6.99%) GCP
9 56 (6.41%) AWS Lambda
10 54 (6.19%) Amazon S3
11 40 (4.58%) dbt
12 33 (3.78%) Snowflake
13 30 (3.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 29 (3.32%) Amazon ECS
15 25 (2.86%) Amazon EC2
16 22 (2.52%) Azure AKS
16 22 (2.52%) Azure Data Factory
16 22 (2.52%) GitHub Copilot
17 21 (2.41%) Dynamics 365
18 18 (2.06%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.92%) 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 55 (6.30%) PostgreSQL
2 50 (5.73%) Power BI
3 49 (5.61%) NoSQL
4 47 (5.38%) Data Warehouse
4 47 (5.38%) SQL Server
5 39 (4.47%) MongoDB
6 32 (3.67%) DynamoDB
7 29 (3.32%) Relational Database
8 24 (2.75%) Amazon Athena
9 22 (2.52%) Amazon Redshift
10 20 (2.29%) Amazon RDS
11 19 (2.18%) Big Data
12 18 (2.06%) Data Lake
13 16 (1.83%) Tableau
14 15 (1.72%) BigQuery
14 15 (1.72%) Metadata
15 11 (1.26%) Redis
16 10 (1.15%) Elasticsearch
16 10 (1.15%) MySQL
16 10 (1.15%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 141 (16.15%) Git
2 133 (15.23%) JIRA
3 124 (14.20%) Jenkins
4 102 (11.68%) Selenium
5 95 (10.88%) GitLab
6 57 (6.53%) Cypress.io
7 52 (5.96%) Cucumber
8 47 (5.38%) REST Assured
9 42 (4.81%) Postman
10 38 (4.35%) JMeter
10 38 (4.35%) JUnit
11 17 (1.95%) Gatling
11 17 (1.95%) Gradle
11 17 (1.95%) Maven
12 16 (1.83%) Appium
12 16 (1.83%) Bitbucket
12 16 (1.83%) Mockito
12 16 (1.83%) Zephyr
13 15 (1.72%) SpecFlow
14 13 (1.49%) WebDriver
General
1 260 (29.78%) Finance
2 234 (26.80%) Social Skills
3 120 (13.75%) Analytical Skills
3 120 (13.75%) Banking
4 94 (10.77%) Public Sector
5 28 (3.21%) Front Office
6 24 (2.75%) Investment Banking
7 22 (2.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 20 (2.29%) Financial Institution
9 17 (1.95%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (1.72%) Legal
11 12 (1.37%) Back Office
11 12 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
12 9 (1.03%) Retail
12 9 (1.03%) Telecoms
13 8 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
14 7 (0.80%) Marketing
15 6 (0.69%) Games
15 6 (0.69%) Local Government
15 6 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 192 (21.99%) Developer
2 147 (16.84%) Senior
3 97 (11.11%) Lead
4 79 (9.05%) Tester
5 57 (6.53%) Test Engineer
6 54 (6.19%) Data Engineer
7 51 (5.84%) Analyst
7 51 (5.84%) QA Engineer
8 50 (5.73%) DevOps Engineer
9 49 (5.61%) Architect
10 48 (5.50%) Java Developer
11 38 (4.35%) Software Engineer
12 37 (4.24%) Automation Engineer
13 36 (4.12%) Full-Stack Developer
13 36 (4.12%) Senior Developer
14 34 (3.89%) Automation Tester
15 33 (3.78%) Test Leader
16 31 (3.55%) Test Automation Engineer
17 25 (2.86%) Test Manager
18 24 (2.75%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (12.94%) Playwright
2 108 (12.37%) REST
3 101 (11.57%) React
4 83 (9.51%) RESTful
5 75 (8.59%) Kafka
6 69 (7.90%) .NET
7 64 (7.33%) Spring
8 56 (6.41%) Node.js
8 56 (6.41%) Spring Boot
9 49 (5.61%) CSS
10 46 (5.27%) HTML
11 26 (2.98%) HTML5
12 25 (2.86%) OAuth
12 25 (2.86%) PySpark
13 22 (2.52%) AngularJS
13 22 (2.52%) CSS3
13 22 (2.52%) Redux
14 20 (2.29%) Next.js
15 19 (2.18%) Jest
15 19 (2.18%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 130 (14.89%) Cloud Native
2 79 (9.05%) Distributed Systems
3 54 (6.19%) Product Ownership
4 31 (3.55%) Legacy Systems
5 27 (3.09%) Data Protection Act
6 24 (2.75%) Onboarding
7 21 (2.41%) Fixed Income
7 21 (2.41%) Self-Motivation
8 19 (2.18%) AI Agents
8 19 (2.18%) Greenfield Project
8 19 (2.18%) Virtual Team
9 17 (1.95%) Algorithms
9 17 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
10 14 (1.60%) Data Structures
10 14 (1.60%) Management Information System
10 14 (1.60%) Mobile App
11 12 (1.37%) Equities
11 12 (1.37%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 10 (1.15%) NHS
12 10 (1.15%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 32 (3.67%) Linux
2 23 (2.63%) Windows
3 19 (2.18%) Android
4 17 (1.95%) Apple iOS
5 16 (1.83%) 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
10 1 (0.11%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 543 (62.20%) CI/CD
2 372 (42.61%) Agile
3 331 (37.92%) DevOps
4 172 (19.70%) AI
5 158 (18.10%) Infrastructure as Code
6 152 (17.41%) Problem-Solving
7 149 (17.07%) Microservices
8 139 (15.92%) Test Strategy
9 136 (15.58%) Continuous Improvement
9 136 (15.58%) Validation
10 129 (14.78%) Containerisation
10 129 (14.78%) Software Engineering
11 125 (14.32%) Observability
12 116 (13.29%) Regression Testing
13 109 (12.49%) User Acceptance Testing
14 105 (12.03%) Scrum
15 100 (11.45%) TDD
16 97 (11.11%) Full-Stack Development
17 90 (10.31%) Stakeholder Management
18 89 (10.19%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 259 (29.67%) Python
2 221 (25.32%) SQL
3 204 (23.37%) Java
4 134 (15.35%) TypeScript
5 125 (14.32%) JavaScript
6 93 (10.65%) C#
7 35 (4.01%) PowerShell
8 26 (2.98%) Bash
9 24 (2.75%) Kotlin
10 18 (2.06%) Bicep
10 18 (2.06%) Ruby
11 16 (1.83%) Apex Code
12 15 (1.72%) Scala
13 13 (1.49%) Go
13 13 (1.49%) PL/SQL
14 8 (0.92%) Swift
15 7 (0.80%) T-SQL
16 6 (0.69%) C++
16 6 (0.69%) Groovy
16 6 (0.69%) VBA
Qualifications
1 199 (22.79%) Security Cleared
2 177 (20.27%) SC Cleared
3 55 (6.30%) 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
8 15 (1.72%) DV Cleared
9 10 (1.15%) Master's Degree
10 9 (1.03%) Azure Certification
11 7 (0.80%) DBS Check
12 6 (0.69%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 5 (0.57%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 4 (0.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 4 (0.46%) CISSP
15 3 (0.34%) TOGAF Certification
16 2 (0.23%) Cisco Certification
16 2 (0.23%) ISEB
16 2 (0.23%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 2 (0.23%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 223 (25.54%) QA
2 69 (7.90%) Data Quality
3 53 (6.07%) Accessibility
4 24 (2.75%) GDPR
5 22 (2.52%) 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%) SLA
9 3 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
10 2 (0.23%) GRC
10 2 (0.23%) NCSC
11 1 (0.11%) GMP
11 1 (0.11%) GxP
11 1 (0.11%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 1 (0.11%) PMO
System Software
1 146 (16.72%) Docker
2 9 (1.03%) 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
1 150 (17.18%) Kubernetes
2 124 (14.20%) Terraform
3 45 (5.15%) Grafana
4 40 (4.58%) Prometheus
5 32 (3.67%) Ansible
6 9 (1.03%) Kibana
7 8 (0.92%) HP ALM
7 8 (0.92%) 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 90 (10.31%) Microsoft
2 55 (6.30%) Salesforce
3 52 (5.96%) Oracle
4 31 (3.55%) Databricks
5 21 (2.41%) ServiceNow
6 19 (2.18%) Google
7 18 (2.06%) UiPath
8 16 (1.83%) Splunk
9 14 (1.60%) IBM
9 14 (1.60%) Informatica
10 9 (1.03%) Dynatrace
11 8 (0.92%) HP
11 8 (0.92%) OpenAI
11 8 (0.92%) OpenLink
11 8 (0.92%) SAP
12 7 (0.80%) Guidewire
12 7 (0.80%) MuleSoft
13 6 (0.69%) Charles River
13 6 (0.69%) Foundry
13 6 (0.69%) Workday