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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 52 46
Rank change year-on-year +7 -6 0
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 972 609 755
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.80% 4.54% 4.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.40% 4.91% 5.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 667 418 493
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -8.70%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £630
90th Percentile £725 £755 £750
England median daily rate £475 £500 £505
% change year-on-year -5.00% -0.99% -8.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 4 3
10th Percentile £36.78 £37.25 £53.13
25th Percentile £43.61 £40.63 £57.81
Median hourly rate £49.50 £45.00 £68.75
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -34.55% -23.61%
75th Percentile £86.25 £55.63 £71.88
90th Percentile £97.50 £70.25 -
England median hourly rate £69.50 £57.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +20.87% -4.17% -20.00%

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 17,999 12,398 14,420
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.95% 92.52% 89.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,778 8,176 9,391
10th Percentile £360 £331 £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 £664 £663 £675
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 243 184
10th Percentile £15.96 £18.03 £17.33
25th Percentile £18.75 £25.01 £24.17
Median hourly rate £33.60 £30.00 £36.65
Median % change year-on-year +12.00% -18.14% -8.18%
75th Percentile £61.50 £47.25 £56.38
90th Percentile £81.25 £64.55 £78.75
England median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -4.49%

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 October 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 10 October 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 10 October 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 +7 121 £550 +15.79% 127
South London -9 15 £593 +18.50% 11
East London +6 8 £663 +27.40% 14
West London -20 3 £600 +50.94% 31
North London -1 2 £463 - 1
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 71 (7.30%) Confluence
2 46 (4.73%) Apache Airflow
3 28 (2.88%) Apache Spark
4 24 (2.47%) SharePoint
5 19 (1.95%) Apache
6 16 (1.65%) CMS
7 8 (0.82%) Camunda
8 7 (0.72%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 5 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.31%) Kentico
11 2 (0.21%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.21%) Mule
11 2 (0.21%) nginx
11 2 (0.21%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.21%) SAS
11 2 (0.21%) WebLogic
12 1 (0.10%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.10%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.10%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 19 (1.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.44%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.51%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.31%) Mingle
6 3 (0.31%) Trello
7 2 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.10%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.10%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 14 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (0.93%) Aladdin
2 9 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.51%) SAP GRC
4 4 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
4 4 (0.41%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.21%) SAP MDG
7 1 (0.10%) Findur
7 1 (0.10%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.10%) Infor M3
7 1 (0.10%) IntelliMatch
7 1 (0.10%) Maximo
7 1 (0.10%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.10%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.10%) NEC Housing
7 1 (0.10%) Shopify
7 1 (0.10%) Summit
7 1 (0.10%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 351 (36.11%) Azure
2 312 (32.10%) AWS
3 196 (20.16%) GitHub
4 166 (17.08%) Azure DevOps
5 128 (13.17%) GitHub Actions
6 92 (9.47%) GCP
7 88 (9.05%) Serverless
8 75 (7.72%) Power Platform
9 68 (7.00%) AWS Lambda
10 64 (6.58%) Amazon S3
11 49 (5.04%) dbt
12 41 (4.22%) Snowflake
13 40 (4.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 34 (3.50%) AWS CloudFormation
14 34 (3.50%) GitHub Copilot
15 33 (3.40%) Amazon ECS
16 31 (3.19%) Amazon EKS
17 30 (3.09%) Amazon EC2
18 29 (2.98%) Microsoft Copilot
19 26 (2.67%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.34%) DNS
2 11 (1.13%) TCP/IP
3 9 (0.93%) Firewall
4 8 (0.82%) BGP
4 8 (0.82%) HTTP
5 7 (0.72%) DHCP
5 7 (0.72%) Network Security
5 7 (0.72%) WAN
5 7 (0.72%) Wi-Fi
6 6 (0.62%) LAN
7 5 (0.51%) Internet
8 4 (0.41%) Ethernet VPN
8 4 (0.41%) NX-OS
8 4 (0.41%) SSL
8 4 (0.41%) TACACS
8 4 (0.41%) VPN
8 4 (0.41%) VXLAN
9 3 (0.31%) OpenLDAP
9 3 (0.31%) SD-WAN
9 3 (0.31%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 76 (7.82%) PostgreSQL
2 58 (5.97%) Power BI
2 58 (5.97%) SQL Server
3 51 (5.25%) Data Warehouse
4 49 (5.04%) NoSQL
5 44 (4.53%) Relational Database
6 41 (4.22%) MongoDB
7 25 (2.57%) Amazon RDS
8 24 (2.47%) Amazon Redshift
9 23 (2.37%) Data Lake
10 21 (2.16%) Amazon Athena
11 20 (2.06%) Metadata
11 20 (2.06%) MySQL
12 19 (1.95%) DynamoDB
12 19 (1.95%) Oracle Database
12 19 (1.95%) Redis
13 15 (1.54%) Amazon Aurora
13 15 (1.54%) Big Data
14 14 (1.44%) Data Vault
14 14 (1.44%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 204 (20.99%) Git
2 192 (19.75%) Jenkins
3 132 (13.58%) JIRA
3 132 (13.58%) Selenium
4 115 (11.83%) GitLab
5 65 (6.69%) Cypress.io
6 64 (6.58%) Cucumber
7 63 (6.48%) JUnit
8 61 (6.28%) Postman
9 56 (5.76%) JMeter
10 46 (4.73%) REST Assured
11 27 (2.78%) Gradle
12 25 (2.57%) Maven
13 24 (2.47%) Gatling
14 22 (2.26%) LoadRunner
14 22 (2.26%) Mockito
14 22 (2.26%) SonarQube
15 19 (1.95%) TestNG
16 18 (1.85%) Appium
17 16 (1.65%) Bitbucket
General
1 288 (29.63%) Finance
2 272 (27.98%) Social Skills
3 163 (16.77%) Analytical Skills
4 155 (15.95%) Banking
5 84 (8.64%) Public Sector
6 32 (3.29%) Front Office
7 28 (2.88%) Investment Banking
8 19 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 17 (1.75%) Back Office
9 17 (1.75%) Financial Institution
9 17 (1.75%) Marketing
10 14 (1.44%) Local Government
11 13 (1.34%) Telecoms
12 12 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
13 11 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
13 11 (1.13%) Law
14 10 (1.03%) Retail
15 7 (0.72%) Military
16 6 (0.62%) Games
16 6 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 209 (21.50%) Developer
2 180 (18.52%) Senior
3 108 (11.11%) Lead
4 70 (7.20%) Data Engineer
5 66 (6.79%) Test Engineer
6 60 (6.17%) Tester
7 56 (5.76%) Automation Engineer
7 56 (5.76%) Java Developer
7 56 (5.76%) QA Engineer
8 53 (5.45%) Software Engineer
9 52 (5.35%) DevOps Engineer
10 46 (4.73%) Architect
11 44 (4.53%) Senior Developer
12 40 (4.12%) Full-Stack Developer
13 39 (4.01%) Analyst
14 38 (3.91%) Test Leader
15 33 (3.40%) Test Automation Engineer
16 32 (3.29%) Test Manager
17 30 (3.09%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 29 (2.98%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 171 (17.59%) Terraform
2 170 (17.49%) REST
3 136 (13.99%) Kafka
4 122 (12.55%) Playwright
5 112 (11.52%) RESTful
6 91 (9.36%) Spring
7 85 (8.74%) React
8 81 (8.33%) .NET
9 80 (8.23%) Spring Boot
10 67 (6.89%) HTML
11 57 (5.86%) CSS
12 44 (4.53%) Node.js
13 39 (4.01%) Middleware
13 39 (4.01%) PySpark
14 36 (3.70%) OAuth
14 36 (3.70%) SOAP
15 33 (3.40%) AngularJS
16 30 (3.09%) XML
17 29 (2.98%) JSON
17 29 (2.98%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 167 (17.18%) Cloud Native
2 97 (9.98%) Product Ownership
3 92 (9.47%) Distributed Systems
4 42 (4.32%) AI Agents
5 37 (3.81%) Enterprise Software
5 37 (3.81%) Onboarding
6 25 (2.57%) Data Structures
7 24 (2.47%) Self-Motivation
8 23 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
9 19 (1.95%) Mobile App
10 18 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
11 15 (1.54%) Algorithms
11 15 (1.54%) Virtual Team
12 14 (1.44%) Security Posture
13 13 (1.34%) Fixed Income
14 12 (1.23%) Private Cloud
15 11 (1.13%) Distributed Architecture
15 11 (1.13%) Market Risk
16 10 (1.03%) Legacy Applications
16 10 (1.03%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 76 (7.82%) Linux
2 50 (5.14%) Unix
3 34 (3.50%) Windows
4 20 (2.06%) Android
4 20 (2.06%) Apple iOS
5 16 (1.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (0.72%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.41%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.41%) VMS
8 3 (0.31%) Mac OS X
9 1 (0.10%) CentOS
9 1 (0.10%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.10%) Solaris
9 1 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 645 (66.36%) CI/CD
2 453 (46.60%) Agile
3 411 (42.28%) DevOps
4 223 (22.94%) AI
5 201 (20.68%) Problem-Solving
6 195 (20.06%) Infrastructure as Code
7 193 (19.86%) Continuous Improvement
8 191 (19.65%) Software Engineering
9 184 (18.93%) Microservices
10 179 (18.42%) Validation
11 165 (16.98%) Containerisation
12 155 (15.95%) Test Strategy
13 153 (15.74%) Observability
14 148 (15.23%) Stakeholder Management
15 144 (14.81%) Scrum
16 124 (12.76%) TDD
17 116 (11.93%) Event-Driven
18 115 (11.83%) SDLC
19 107 (11.01%) Data Pipeline
20 104 (10.70%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 352 (36.21%) Python
2 286 (29.42%) SQL
3 278 (28.60%) Java
4 161 (16.56%) JavaScript
5 130 (13.37%) TypeScript
6 96 (9.88%) C#
7 42 (4.32%) PowerShell
8 40 (4.12%) Bash
9 31 (3.19%) Bicep
10 26 (2.67%) Scala
11 24 (2.47%) Kotlin
12 17 (1.75%) C++
13 16 (1.65%) Go
14 13 (1.34%) Shell Script
15 11 (1.13%) Ruby
16 10 (1.03%) C
16 10 (1.03%) Groovy
16 10 (1.03%) PL/SQL
17 9 (0.93%) VB.NET
18 8 (0.82%) Perl
Qualifications
1 270 (27.78%) Security Cleared
2 241 (24.79%) SC Cleared
3 74 (7.61%) Degree
4 44 (4.53%) Computer Science Degree
5 37 (3.81%) ISTQB
6 35 (3.60%) DV Cleared
7 31 (3.19%) AWS Certification
8 24 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
9 17 (1.75%) Azure Certification
10 10 (1.03%) ISEB
11 9 (0.93%) CISSP
12 8 (0.82%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 8 (0.82%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 8 (0.82%) Master's Degree
13 7 (0.72%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 6 (0.62%) DBS Check
15 5 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 5 (0.51%) Cisco Certification
16 4 (0.41%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 4 (0.41%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 275 (28.29%) QA
2 85 (8.74%) Data Quality
3 50 (5.14%) Accessibility
4 18 (1.85%) GDPR
5 14 (1.44%) WCAG
6 13 (1.34%) ISO 20022
7 12 (1.23%) NIST
8 11 (1.13%) SLA
9 10 (1.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 8 (0.82%) GRC
11 3 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.31%) EU AI Act
11 3 (0.31%) SOC 2
12 2 (0.21%) ISO 9001
12 2 (0.21%) MiFID
12 2 (0.21%) NCSC
12 2 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.21%) Software Quality Assurance
13 1 (0.10%) COBIT
13 1 (0.10%) WAI
System Software
1 210 (21.60%) Docker
2 9 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.72%) Active Directory
4 4 (0.41%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.31%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.10%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.10%) Firmware
6 1 (0.10%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.10%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 193 (19.86%) Kubernetes
2 68 (7.00%) Grafana
3 53 (5.45%) Ansible
4 49 (5.04%) Prometheus
5 22 (2.26%) Puppet
6 18 (1.85%) Kibana
6 18 (1.85%) Progress Chef
7 10 (1.03%) Control-M
8 6 (0.62%) Argo
8 6 (0.62%) HP Fortify
9 5 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
11 3 (0.31%) HP ALM
11 3 (0.31%) Kustomize
11 3 (0.31%) Packer
11 3 (0.31%) Rancher
12 2 (0.21%) Istio
12 2 (0.21%) Podman
12 2 (0.21%) systemd
13 1 (0.10%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 123 (12.65%) Microsoft
2 57 (5.86%) Oracle
3 50 (5.14%) Databricks
4 48 (4.94%) Google
5 32 (3.29%) IBM
5 32 (3.29%) Salesforce
6 31 (3.19%) ServiceNow
7 26 (2.67%) Splunk
8 25 (2.57%) SAP
8 25 (2.57%) UiPath
9 20 (2.06%) Foundry
10 19 (1.95%) OpenAI
11 18 (1.85%) Dynatrace
11 18 (1.85%) Informatica
12 15 (1.54%) Cisco
13 13 (1.34%) Red Hat
14 11 (1.13%) SaltStack
14 11 (1.13%) VMware
15 10 (1.03%) MuleSoft
16 9 (0.93%) HP