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 12 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 54 48
Rank change year-on-year +4 -6 +3
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 880 606 742
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.37% 4.46% 4.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.90% 4.83% 5.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 598 413 502
10th Percentile £350 £341 £358
25th Percentile £425 £400 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -7.08%
75th Percentile £600 £675 £675
90th Percentile £709 £785 £775
England median daily rate £475 £498 £525
% change year-on-year -4.52% -5.24% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 4 5
10th Percentile £52.35 £37.25 £51.00
25th Percentile £67.41 £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 £71.88
90th Percentile - £70.25 -
England median hourly rate £67.86 £50.00 £56.25
% change year-on-year +35.72% -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 17,953 12,554 14,427
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 89.10% 92.35% 88.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,817 8,388 10,113
10th Percentile £363 £325 £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 £660 £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 294 250 200
10th Percentile £17.60 £16.50 £17.05
25th Percentile £19.50 £24.66 £22.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £29.75 £35.61
Median % change year-on-year +19.33% -16.44% -12.67%
75th Percentile £56.25 £48.44 £54.06
90th Percentile £81.25 £63.30 £71.31
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +3.61%

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 12 August 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 12 August 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 12 August 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 +9 119 £550 +15.79% 52
South London -3 18 £530 +6.00% 9
East London +8 9 £545 +36.25% 11
West London -16 8 £525 +32.91% 11
North London -2 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 (6.82%) Confluence
2 38 (4.32%) Apache Airflow
3 26 (2.95%) Apache Spark
4 15 (1.70%) Apache
5 14 (1.59%) SharePoint
6 13 (1.48%) CMS
7 5 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
8 4 (0.45%) nginx
8 4 (0.45%) Tomcat
8 4 (0.45%) WebLogic
9 3 (0.34%) Camunda
9 3 (0.34%) Kentico
10 2 (0.23%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.23%) Mule
10 2 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.23%) SAS
11 1 (0.11%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.11%) ColdFusion
11 1 (0.11%) Ethereum
11 1 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 16 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.34%) Trello
7 2 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.11%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 15 (1.70%) Aladdin
2 12 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.91%) Findur
4 6 (0.68%) Oracle EBS
5 5 (0.57%) BambooHR
5 5 (0.57%) Shopify
6 4 (0.45%) 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%) Loan IQ
8 2 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
9 1 (0.11%) IntelliMatch
9 1 (0.11%) Misys Equation
9 1 (0.11%) Misys Midas
9 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
9 1 (0.11%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 308 (35.00%) Azure
2 270 (30.68%) AWS
3 192 (21.82%) GitHub
4 150 (17.05%) Azure DevOps
5 121 (13.75%) GitHub Actions
6 76 (8.64%) Serverless
7 67 (7.61%) Power Platform
8 66 (7.50%) GCP
9 58 (6.59%) AWS Lambda
10 53 (6.02%) Amazon S3
11 47 (5.34%) dbt
12 39 (4.43%) Snowflake
13 33 (3.75%) Amazon ECS
14 32 (3.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 28 (3.18%) GitHub Copilot
16 26 (2.95%) Amazon EC2
17 24 (2.73%) Azure Data Factory
18 23 (2.61%) Azure AKS
19 21 (2.39%) Azure Monitor
20 19 (2.16%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.91%) HTTP
2 7 (0.80%) Network Security
3 6 (0.68%) Firewall
3 6 (0.68%) TCP/IP
3 6 (0.68%) WAN
4 5 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.45%) BGP
5 4 (0.45%) DHCP
5 4 (0.45%) DNS
5 4 (0.45%) LAN
6 3 (0.34%) Ethernet VPN
6 3 (0.34%) FTP
6 3 (0.34%) NX-OS
6 3 (0.34%) OpenLDAP
6 3 (0.34%) SMS
6 3 (0.34%) TACACS
6 3 (0.34%) VXLAN
7 2 (0.23%) Bluetooth
7 2 (0.23%) Multicast
7 2 (0.23%) NaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (6.70%) PostgreSQL
2 56 (6.36%) Power BI
3 54 (6.14%) Data Warehouse
4 49 (5.57%) NoSQL
5 44 (5.00%) SQL Server
6 40 (4.55%) MongoDB
7 30 (3.41%) Relational Database
8 29 (3.30%) DynamoDB
9 23 (2.61%) Amazon Athena
9 23 (2.61%) Amazon Redshift
9 23 (2.61%) Data Lake
10 20 (2.27%) Big Data
11 19 (2.16%) Tableau
12 18 (2.05%) Amazon RDS
13 16 (1.82%) BigQuery
14 13 (1.48%) Metadata
15 11 (1.25%) Elasticsearch
15 11 (1.25%) MySQL
15 11 (1.25%) Redis
16 9 (1.02%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 155 (17.61%) Git
2 143 (16.25%) Jenkins
3 128 (14.55%) JIRA
4 103 (11.70%) Selenium
5 102 (11.59%) GitLab
6 56 (6.36%) Cypress.io
7 47 (5.34%) Cucumber
8 43 (4.89%) JMeter
9 41 (4.66%) JUnit
9 41 (4.66%) Postman
10 39 (4.43%) REST Assured
11 20 (2.27%) Maven
12 19 (2.16%) Appium
12 19 (2.16%) Gradle
13 18 (2.05%) Gatling
14 17 (1.93%) Zephyr
15 16 (1.82%) Bitbucket
16 15 (1.70%) LoadRunner
16 15 (1.70%) Mockito
17 14 (1.59%) SpecFlow
General
1 256 (29.09%) Finance
2 234 (26.59%) Social Skills
3 123 (13.98%) Analytical Skills
4 121 (13.75%) Banking
5 91 (10.34%) Public Sector
6 25 (2.84%) Front Office
7 24 (2.73%) Investment Banking
8 20 (2.27%) Financial Institution
9 19 (2.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 15 (1.70%) Back Office
10 15 (1.70%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (1.70%) Legal
10 15 (1.70%) Telecoms
11 13 (1.48%) Documentation Skills
12 9 (1.02%) Marketing
12 9 (1.02%) Retail
13 7 (0.80%) Law
13 7 (0.80%) Local Government
13 7 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
14 5 (0.57%) Games
Job Titles
1 187 (21.25%) Developer
2 150 (17.05%) Senior
3 94 (10.68%) Lead
4 71 (8.07%) Tester
5 59 (6.70%) Test Engineer
6 56 (6.36%) Data Engineer
7 50 (5.68%) QA Engineer
8 49 (5.57%) DevOps Engineer
9 47 (5.34%) Architect
9 47 (5.34%) Java Developer
10 46 (5.23%) Analyst
11 41 (4.66%) Software Engineer
12 37 (4.20%) Automation Engineer
13 36 (4.09%) Full-Stack Developer
13 36 (4.09%) Senior Developer
14 34 (3.86%) Test Automation Engineer
15 32 (3.64%) Test Leader
16 30 (3.41%) Automation Tester
17 27 (3.07%) Test Manager
18 24 (2.73%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 126 (14.32%) REST
2 110 (12.50%) Playwright
3 96 (10.91%) Kafka
3 96 (10.91%) React
4 91 (10.34%) RESTful
5 70 (7.95%) Spring
6 64 (7.27%) .NET
7 58 (6.59%) Spring Boot
8 51 (5.80%) Node.js
9 47 (5.34%) CSS
9 47 (5.34%) HTML
10 29 (3.30%) PySpark
11 26 (2.95%) AngularJS
12 24 (2.73%) HTML5
12 24 (2.73%) JSON
13 22 (2.50%) CSS3
13 22 (2.50%) Jest
13 22 (2.50%) OAuth
13 22 (2.50%) Redux
14 21 (2.39%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 143 (16.25%) Cloud Native
2 81 (9.20%) Distributed Systems
3 63 (7.16%) Product Ownership
4 28 (3.18%) Data Protection Act
4 28 (3.18%) Onboarding
5 23 (2.61%) AI Agents
5 23 (2.61%) Self-Motivation
6 22 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
7 20 (2.27%) Enterprise Software
8 18 (2.05%) Fixed Income
8 18 (2.05%) Virtual Team
9 14 (1.59%) Data Structures
10 13 (1.48%) Algorithms
10 13 (1.48%) Mobile App
11 12 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
11 12 (1.36%) Management Information System
12 11 (1.25%) Equities
12 11 (1.25%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 9 (1.02%) Distributed Architecture
13 9 (1.02%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 51 (5.80%) Linux
2 33 (3.75%) Windows
3 32 (3.64%) Unix
4 17 (1.93%) Android
5 16 (1.82%) Apple iOS
6 12 (1.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 8 (0.91%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.45%) Solaris
8 4 (0.45%) Windows Server 2008
9 3 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.23%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.11%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.11%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 557 (63.30%) CI/CD
2 367 (41.70%) Agile
3 354 (40.23%) DevOps
4 177 (20.11%) AI
5 168 (19.09%) Infrastructure as Code
6 157 (17.84%) Problem-Solving
7 156 (17.73%) Microservices
8 151 (17.16%) Continuous Improvement
9 144 (16.36%) Validation
10 142 (16.14%) Software Engineering
11 137 (15.57%) Test Strategy
12 136 (15.45%) Containerisation
13 134 (15.23%) Observability
14 108 (12.27%) Regression Testing
15 105 (11.93%) Scrum
16 104 (11.82%) TDD
17 96 (10.91%) User Acceptance Testing
18 95 (10.80%) Stakeholder Management
19 94 (10.68%) Full-Stack Development
20 92 (10.45%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 283 (32.16%) Python
2 227 (25.80%) SQL
3 223 (25.34%) Java
4 133 (15.11%) JavaScript
5 123 (13.98%) TypeScript
6 90 (10.23%) C#
7 43 (4.89%) PowerShell
8 29 (3.30%) Bash
9 23 (2.61%) Kotlin
10 21 (2.39%) Bicep
11 17 (1.93%) Ruby
12 16 (1.82%) Scala
13 14 (1.59%) Apex Code
13 14 (1.59%) PL/SQL
14 12 (1.36%) C++
15 11 (1.25%) Go
16 7 (0.80%) C
16 7 (0.80%) Shell Script
17 6 (0.68%) Perl
17 6 (0.68%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 219 (24.89%) Security Cleared
2 192 (21.82%) SC Cleared
3 54 (6.14%) Degree
4 34 (3.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 24 (2.73%) ISTQB
6 19 (2.16%) DV Cleared
7 17 (1.93%) AWS Certification
7 17 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
8 9 (1.02%) Azure Certification
9 7 (0.80%) DBS Check
10 6 (0.68%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 6 (0.68%) Master's Degree
11 5 (0.57%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 4 (0.45%) CISSP
12 4 (0.45%) ISEB
13 3 (0.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 3 (0.34%) PhD
14 2 (0.23%) Cisco Certification
14 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 2 (0.23%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 236 (26.82%) QA
2 71 (8.07%) Data Quality
3 50 (5.68%) Accessibility
4 24 (2.73%) GDPR
5 23 (2.61%) WCAG
6 10 (1.14%) SLA
7 9 (1.02%) ISO 20022
8 7 (0.80%) NIST
9 6 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 3 (0.34%) EU AI Act
10 3 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 3 (0.34%) MiFID
10 3 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
11 2 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.23%) GRC
11 2 (0.23%) ISO 9001
11 2 (0.23%) NCSC
12 1 (0.11%) GxP
12 1 (0.11%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 154 (17.50%) Docker
2 11 (1.25%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.68%) Active Directory
5 4 (0.45%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.23%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.11%) Firmware
8 1 (0.11%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 153 (17.39%) Kubernetes
2 134 (15.23%) Terraform
3 49 (5.57%) Grafana
4 42 (4.77%) Prometheus
5 37 (4.20%) Ansible
6 13 (1.48%) Puppet
7 12 (1.36%) Progress Chef
8 9 (1.02%) Kibana
9 7 (0.80%) HP ALM
9 7 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (0.68%) Control-M
11 4 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.45%) Oracle RMAN
11 4 (0.45%) Packer
12 3 (0.34%) HP Fortify
12 3 (0.34%) Kustomize
13 2 (0.23%) Amdocs OSS
13 2 (0.23%) Istio
14 1 (0.11%) Argo
14 1 (0.11%) linkerd
Vendors
1 93 (10.57%) Microsoft
2 52 (5.91%) Salesforce
3 50 (5.68%) Oracle
4 38 (4.32%) Databricks
5 28 (3.18%) ServiceNow
6 27 (3.07%) Google
7 22 (2.50%) IBM
8 17 (1.93%) Splunk
9 15 (1.70%) Informatica
9 15 (1.70%) UiPath
10 13 (1.48%) Red Hat
11 12 (1.36%) VMware
12 11 (1.25%) Dynatrace
12 11 (1.25%) HP
13 10 (1.14%) SAP
14 9 (1.02%) Cisco
14 9 (1.02%) OpenAI
15 8 (0.91%) OpenLink
16 7 (0.80%) Charles River
16 7 (0.80%) SaltStack