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 14 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 46 52
Rank change year-on-year -1 +6 -4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 832 622 681
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.83% 4.92% 3.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.42% 5.36% 4.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 536 425 478
10th Percentile £325 £341 £363
25th Percentile £406 £406 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% -6.78%
75th Percentile £594 £656 £695
90th Percentile £709 £775 £775
England median daily rate £480 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -4.00% -4.76% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 7
10th Percentile £55.99 - -
25th Percentile £58.15 - £52.50
Median hourly rate £63.50 - £55.00
75th Percentile £65.88 - £61.25
90th Percentile £66.25 - £65.40
England median hourly rate £65.50 £56.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +15.42% -5.42% -4.00%

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 15,359 11,601 15,694
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 89.09% 91.69% 88.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,283 7,873 11,235
10th Percentile £353 £350 £338
25th Percentile £425 £444 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -6.78%
75th Percentile £650 £688 £675
90th Percentile £755 £800 £800
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 249 166 331
10th Percentile £18.25 £17.42 £16.00
25th Percentile £22.41 £23.90 £19.57
Median hourly rate £35.50 £35.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% +16.67% -23.08%
75th Percentile £56.00 £50.75 £48.92
90th Percentile £72.50 £63.75 £66.75
England median hourly rate £41.00 £31.88 £34.00
% change year-on-year +28.61% -6.24% -9.33%

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 14 April 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 14 April 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 -1 108 £525 +3.96% 53
West London -14 22 £450 +26.05% 4
South London -5 20 £519 +5.87% 1
East London +4 11 £445 +11.25% 11
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 56 (6.73%) Confluence
2 18 (2.16%) Apache Airflow
3 12 (1.44%) Apache Spark
4 8 (0.96%) Appian
5 5 (0.60%) Apache
5 5 (0.60%) Camunda
5 5 (0.60%) CMS
6 4 (0.48%) nginx
6 4 (0.48%) Tomcat
6 4 (0.48%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.36%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.24%) Magnolia
8 2 (0.24%) Sitecore CMS
8 2 (0.24%) WordPress
9 1 (0.12%) Anypoint
9 1 (0.12%) Ethereum
9 1 (0.12%) SAS
9 1 (0.12%) Solana
Applications
1 18 (2.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
3 6 (0.72%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.48%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.12%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 22 (2.64%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.84%) Findur
2 7 (0.84%) Shopify
3 6 (0.72%) Loan IQ
3 6 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
4 5 (0.60%) BambooHR
5 4 (0.48%) Dynamics CRM
6 3 (0.36%) Distributed Ledger
7 2 (0.24%) iTrent
7 2 (0.24%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.24%) SAP HR
7 2 (0.24%) Summit
8 1 (0.12%) Algo Collateral
8 1 (0.12%) Bloomberg TOMS
8 1 (0.12%) CODA-Financials
8 1 (0.12%) Infor M3
8 1 (0.12%) IntelliMatch
8 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
8 1 (0.12%) PORTIA
8 1 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 250 (30.05%) Azure
2 197 (23.68%) AWS
3 131 (15.75%) GitHub
4 122 (14.66%) Azure DevOps
5 62 (7.45%) GCP
6 59 (7.09%) GitHub Actions
7 57 (6.85%) Serverless
8 34 (4.09%) Snowflake
9 32 (3.85%) Power Platform
10 31 (3.73%) AWS Lambda
11 30 (3.61%) Amazon S3
12 28 (3.37%) Azure AKS
12 28 (3.37%) Azure Data Factory
13 20 (2.40%) Dynamics 365
14 19 (2.28%) Amazon ECS
14 19 (2.28%) dbt
15 18 (2.16%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 18 (2.16%) Azure Monitor
16 17 (2.04%) Power Automate
16 17 (2.04%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 12 (1.44%) HTTP
2 6 (0.72%) Firewall
2 6 (0.72%) FTP
3 5 (0.60%) Cisco IPT
3 5 (0.60%) DNS
3 5 (0.60%) SSL
4 4 (0.48%) Ethernet
4 4 (0.48%) Multicast
4 4 (0.48%) TCP/IP
4 4 (0.48%) WAN
4 4 (0.48%) WebEx
5 3 (0.36%) DHCP
6 2 (0.24%) Cisco IOS
6 2 (0.24%) DSL
6 2 (0.24%) HTTPS
6 2 (0.24%) NaaS
6 2 (0.24%) SD-WAN
6 2 (0.24%) SNMP
7 1 (0.12%) 5G
7 1 (0.12%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (5.89%) SQL Server
2 44 (5.29%) PostgreSQL
3 39 (4.69%) NoSQL
4 28 (3.37%) MongoDB
5 27 (3.25%) Data Warehouse
6 26 (3.13%) Relational Database
7 24 (2.88%) BigQuery
8 20 (2.40%) Tableau
9 19 (2.28%) Power BI
10 18 (2.16%) DynamoDB
11 13 (1.56%) Metadata
12 12 (1.44%) Amazon Athena
12 12 (1.44%) Big Data
12 12 (1.44%) Redis
13 11 (1.32%) Oracle Database
14 10 (1.20%) Amazon RDS
14 10 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
14 10 (1.20%) Data Lake
15 9 (1.08%) Pinecone
16 8 (0.96%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 149 (17.91%) JIRA
2 139 (16.71%) Git
3 116 (13.94%) Selenium
4 96 (11.54%) Jenkins
5 73 (8.77%) GitLab
6 57 (6.85%) Cucumber
7 51 (6.13%) Cypress.io
7 51 (6.13%) Postman
8 38 (4.57%) REST Assured
9 30 (3.61%) SpecFlow
10 29 (3.49%) JUnit
11 27 (3.25%) JMeter
12 20 (2.40%) MLflow
13 17 (2.04%) Bitbucket
14 16 (1.92%) Appium
15 14 (1.68%) Maven
15 14 (1.68%) TestRail
15 14 (1.68%) Zephyr
16 13 (1.56%) WebDriver
17 12 (1.44%) Mockito
General
1 221 (26.56%) Social Skills
2 214 (25.72%) Finance
3 112 (13.46%) Banking
4 106 (12.74%) Public Sector
5 90 (10.82%) Analytical Skills
6 29 (3.49%) Front Office
7 28 (3.37%) Investment Banking
8 18 (2.16%) Legal
9 16 (1.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 11 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
10 11 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
10 11 (1.32%) Telecoms
11 10 (1.20%) Financial Institution
11 10 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
12 9 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
13 8 (0.96%) Pharmaceutical
14 7 (0.84%) Back Office
14 7 (0.84%) Billing
14 7 (0.84%) Publishing
15 6 (0.72%) Retail
Job Titles
1 188 (22.60%) Developer
2 159 (19.11%) Senior
3 93 (11.18%) Tester
4 86 (10.34%) Lead
5 62 (7.45%) Test Engineer
6 60 (7.21%) Automation Tester
7 56 (6.73%) Analyst
8 53 (6.37%) QA Engineer
9 44 (5.29%) Architect
10 42 (5.05%) Senior Developer
11 38 (4.57%) Automation Engineer
12 36 (4.33%) Java Developer
13 34 (4.09%) Data Engineer
14 33 (3.97%) DevOps Engineer
15 31 (3.73%) Test Automation Engineer
16 29 (3.49%) Test Analyst
17 27 (3.25%) Test Manager
18 24 (2.88%) QA Automation Engineer
18 24 (2.88%) Software Engineer
19 23 (2.76%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (13.34%) Playwright
2 91 (10.94%) React
3 89 (10.70%) REST
4 74 (8.89%) Node.js
5 71 (8.53%) RESTful
6 64 (7.69%) .NET
7 58 (6.97%) Kafka
8 47 (5.65%) Spring
9 43 (5.17%) Spring Boot
10 35 (4.21%) HTML
11 33 (3.97%) CSS
11 33 (3.97%) Web Services
12 30 (3.61%) pytest
13 26 (3.13%) OAuth
14 25 (3.00%) AngularJS
15 21 (2.52%) Gherkin
15 21 (2.52%) GraphQL
16 20 (2.40%) SOAP
17 19 (2.28%) JSON
18 18 (2.16%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 91 (10.94%) Cloud Native
2 52 (6.25%) Product Ownership
3 44 (5.29%) Distributed Systems
4 33 (3.97%) Legacy Systems
5 26 (3.13%) Algorithms
6 25 (3.00%) Data Protection Act
7 20 (2.40%) Data Structures
7 20 (2.40%) Equities
7 20 (2.40%) Onboarding
8 18 (2.16%) Fixed Income
8 18 (2.16%) Management Information System
8 18 (2.16%) Virtual Team
9 17 (2.04%) Greenfield Project
9 17 (2.04%) Mobile App
10 14 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
11 11 (1.32%) Derivative
11 11 (1.32%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 10 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
13 9 (1.08%) Low-Code
13 9 (1.08%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 43 (5.17%) Linux
2 36 (4.33%) Windows
3 21 (2.52%) Android
4 19 (2.28%) Apple iOS
5 8 (0.96%) Unix
6 6 (0.72%) Windows Server
7 5 (0.60%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.48%) Solaris
8 4 (0.48%) Windows Server 2008
9 3 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
10 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 444 (53.37%) CI/CD
2 346 (41.59%) Agile
3 292 (35.10%) DevOps
4 166 (19.95%) Problem-Solving
5 136 (16.35%) AI
6 117 (14.06%) Containerisation
7 115 (13.82%) Infrastructure as Code
7 115 (13.82%) Observability
8 113 (13.58%) Continuous Improvement
9 110 (13.22%) Microservices
10 109 (13.10%) Validation
11 106 (12.74%) Test Strategy
12 104 (12.50%) Regression Testing
12 104 (12.50%) Test Scripting
13 97 (11.66%) Software Testing
14 92 (11.06%) User Acceptance Testing
15 91 (10.94%) Analytics
16 89 (10.70%) Software Engineering
17 82 (9.86%) Data Modelling
18 80 (9.62%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 272 (32.69%) Python
2 207 (24.88%) SQL
3 169 (20.31%) Java
4 148 (17.79%) TypeScript
5 132 (15.87%) JavaScript
6 114 (13.70%) C#
7 27 (3.25%) PowerShell
8 21 (2.52%) Bash
9 20 (2.40%) Apex Code
10 17 (2.04%) C++
10 17 (2.04%) Ruby
11 14 (1.68%) Kotlin
12 13 (1.56%) Bicep
12 13 (1.56%) PL/SQL
13 9 (1.08%) Go
14 7 (0.84%) Swift
14 7 (0.84%) T-SQL
15 6 (0.72%) Rust
16 5 (0.60%) Scala
17 4 (0.48%) C
Qualifications
1 178 (21.39%) Security Cleared
2 152 (18.27%) SC Cleared
3 50 (6.01%) Degree
4 38 (4.57%) ISTQB
5 26 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
5 26 (3.13%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (1.44%) Master's Degree
7 9 (1.08%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 7 (0.84%) DBS Check
8 7 (0.84%) DV Cleared
9 4 (0.48%) Azure Certification
9 4 (0.48%) ISEB
9 4 (0.48%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 3 (0.36%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.36%) OSCP
10 3 (0.36%) SANS
11 2 (0.24%) CEH
11 2 (0.24%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.24%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 204 (24.52%) QA
2 52 (6.25%) Data Quality
3 47 (5.65%) Accessibility
4 24 (2.88%) GDPR
5 19 (2.28%) WCAG
6 8 (0.96%) NIST
7 7 (0.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 7 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 6 (0.72%) NCSC
9 5 (0.60%) PERC
9 5 (0.60%) SLA
10 4 (0.48%) HL7
10 4 (0.48%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 4 (0.48%) ISO 20022
10 4 (0.48%) Software Quality Assurance
11 3 (0.36%) MiFID
11 3 (0.36%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.24%) GRC
12 2 (0.24%) NIST 800
13 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 148 (17.79%) Docker
2 6 (0.72%) Active Directory
2 6 (0.72%) VMware ESXi
2 6 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (0.48%) Oracle RAC
3 4 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
3 4 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.12%) Embedded Firmware
4 1 (0.12%) Firmware
4 1 (0.12%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.12%) Squid
4 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 131 (15.75%) Kubernetes
2 94 (11.30%) Terraform
3 32 (3.85%) Grafana
4 30 (3.61%) Prometheus
5 15 (1.80%) Ansible
6 13 (1.56%) HP ALM
7 8 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
8 5 (0.60%) Kibana
9 4 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
9 4 (0.48%) Puppet
10 3 (0.36%) Rancher
11 2 (0.24%) Amdocs OSS
11 2 (0.24%) Istio
11 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
11 2 (0.24%) Progress Chef
11 2 (0.24%) SCCM
12 1 (0.12%) Control-M
12 1 (0.12%) linkerd
12 1 (0.12%) Nessus
12 1 (0.12%) Nmap
Vendors
1 78 (9.38%) Microsoft
2 57 (6.85%) Oracle
3 51 (6.13%) Salesforce
4 45 (5.41%) Databricks
5 25 (3.00%) Google
6 23 (2.76%) ServiceNow
7 15 (1.80%) SAP
8 13 (1.56%) HP
8 13 (1.56%) OpenAI
8 13 (1.56%) Splunk
9 12 (1.44%) Dynatrace
9 12 (1.44%) MuleSoft
10 11 (1.32%) IBM
11 10 (1.20%) Workday
12 9 (1.08%) Apple
12 9 (1.08%) Guidewire
12 9 (1.08%) UiPath
12 9 (1.08%) VMware
13 8 (0.96%) Automation Anywhere
13 8 (0.96%) Citrix