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

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 46 54
Rank change year-on-year -2 +8 -10
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 733 634 714
As % of all contract jobs in London 5.02% 4.54% 3.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.50% 5.01% 4.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 493 416 536
10th Percentile £325 £341 £381
25th Percentile £406 £409 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £511 £568
Median % change year-on-year -2.20% -9.91% -5.42%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £675
90th Percentile £720 £750 £750
England median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 3
10th Percentile £55.99 - -
25th Percentile £58.15 - £52.50
Median hourly rate £63.50 - £55.00
75th Percentile £65.88 - £61.75
90th Percentile £66.25 - £64.30
England median hourly rate £64.25 £75.60 £75.00
% change year-on-year -15.01% +0.79% +25.00%

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 13,320 12,644 16,077
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 91.20% 90.45% 88.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,835 8,066 11,489
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £555
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -0.90% -7.50%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £800 £788
England median daily rate £500 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 221 159 292
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.60 £16.25
25th Percentile £24.61 £24.66 £19.83
Median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £30.63
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% +14.29% -14.34%
75th Percentile £56.00 £53.75 £53.75
90th Percentile £72.00 £80.15 £73.56
England median hourly rate £25.15 £34.50 £38.00
% change year-on-year -27.10% -9.21% +8.57%

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 22 January 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 22 January 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 -4 95 £525 - 43
West London -13 19 £375 +8.54% 10
South London -8 14 £513 +7.89% 7
East London -3 10 £448 +5.29% 10
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 47 (6.41%) Confluence
2 16 (2.18%) Apache Spark
3 8 (1.09%) Apache Airflow
4 5 (0.68%) Apache
4 5 (0.68%) Appian
4 5 (0.68%) SharePoint
5 4 (0.55%) CMS
6 3 (0.41%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 3 (0.41%) Camunda
7 2 (0.27%) Magnolia
7 2 (0.27%) Sitecore CMS
7 2 (0.27%) WordPress
8 1 (0.14%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.14%) nginx
8 1 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
8 1 (0.14%) WebLogic
Applications
1 16 (2.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.82%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.68%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.14%) Trello
Business Applications
1 18 (2.46%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.55%) SAP HR
3 3 (0.41%) Loan IQ
4 2 (0.27%) Eagle PACE
4 2 (0.27%) iTrent
4 2 (0.27%) Markit EDM
4 2 (0.27%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.27%) Shopify
5 1 (0.14%) Algo Collateral
5 1 (0.14%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.14%) CODA-Financials
5 1 (0.14%) IntelliMatch
5 1 (0.14%) ION Anvil
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.14%) PORTIA
5 1 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.14%) Summit
5 1 (0.14%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 230 (31.38%) Azure
2 168 (22.92%) AWS
3 104 (14.19%) GitHub
4 100 (13.64%) Azure DevOps
5 80 (10.91%) GCP
6 54 (7.37%) Serverless
7 45 (6.14%) GitHub Actions
8 26 (3.55%) Snowflake
9 25 (3.41%) AWS Lambda
9 25 (3.41%) SaaS
10 24 (3.27%) Power Platform
11 23 (3.14%) Azure AKS
12 22 (3.00%) Azure Cosmos DB
12 22 (3.00%) Azure Data Factory
13 20 (2.73%) Amazon S3
14 18 (2.46%) Amazon EKS
14 18 (2.46%) Dynamics 365
15 17 (2.32%) Azure Functions
16 16 (2.18%) Azure Monitor
17 15 (2.05%) Apigee
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.77%) HTTP
1 13 (1.77%) SSL
2 12 (1.64%) Firewall
3 10 (1.36%) HTTPS
4 9 (1.23%) TCP/IP
5 8 (1.09%) VPN
6 7 (0.95%) DNS
6 7 (0.95%) SD-WAN
6 7 (0.95%) WAN
7 5 (0.68%) Cisco IPT
7 5 (0.68%) Network Security
8 4 (0.55%) FTP
8 4 (0.55%) Multicast
9 3 (0.41%) DHCP
9 3 (0.41%) WebEx
9 3 (0.41%) Wireshark
10 2 (0.27%) Ethernet
10 2 (0.27%) VLAN
11 1 (0.14%) MPLS
11 1 (0.14%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (6.82%) PostgreSQL
2 41 (5.59%) SQL Server
3 37 (5.05%) NoSQL
4 24 (3.27%) Relational Database
5 21 (2.86%) MongoDB
6 19 (2.59%) BigQuery
7 18 (2.46%) Data Warehouse
8 14 (1.91%) Big Data
8 14 (1.91%) Power BI
9 11 (1.50%) Data Lake
10 10 (1.36%) Redis
10 10 (1.36%) Tableau
11 9 (1.23%) Amazon Aurora
12 8 (1.09%) Amazon RDS
12 8 (1.09%) Azure SQL Database
12 8 (1.09%) Star Schema
13 6 (0.82%) Amazon Athena
13 6 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
13 6 (0.82%) Data Vault
13 6 (0.82%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 124 (16.92%) JIRA
2 117 (15.96%) Git
3 104 (14.19%) Selenium
4 99 (13.51%) Jenkins
5 76 (10.37%) GitLab
6 57 (7.78%) Postman
7 52 (7.09%) Cucumber
8 49 (6.68%) Cypress.io
9 34 (4.64%) JMeter
10 29 (3.96%) JUnit
11 27 (3.68%) REST Assured
12 23 (3.14%) SpecFlow
13 21 (2.86%) Bitbucket
14 15 (2.05%) Appium
14 15 (2.05%) TestRail
15 14 (1.91%) WebDriver
16 13 (1.77%) MLflow
17 11 (1.50%) Gatling
17 11 (1.50%) Gradle
17 11 (1.50%) Maven
General
1 189 (25.78%) Social Skills
2 161 (21.96%) Finance
3 83 (11.32%) Banking
4 80 (10.91%) Analytical Skills
5 76 (10.37%) Public Sector
6 22 (3.00%) Investment Banking
7 20 (2.73%) Front Office
8 19 (2.59%) Pharmaceutical
9 18 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 13 (1.77%) Documentation Skills
11 10 (1.36%) Financial Institution
12 9 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
13 7 (0.95%) Legal
14 5 (0.68%) Marketing
14 5 (0.68%) Publishing
14 5 (0.68%) Telecoms
15 4 (0.55%) Back Office
15 4 (0.55%) Electronics
15 4 (0.55%) International Banking
15 4 (0.55%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 171 (23.33%) Developer
2 138 (18.83%) Senior
3 92 (12.55%) Tester
4 58 (7.91%) Lead
5 53 (7.23%) Automation Tester
6 52 (7.09%) Test Engineer
7 46 (6.28%) Analyst
8 42 (5.73%) QA Engineer
9 35 (4.77%) Senior Developer
10 33 (4.50%) Java Developer
11 32 (4.37%) Automation Engineer
11 32 (4.37%) Software Engineer
12 30 (4.09%) Test Automation Engineer
13 28 (3.82%) Test Analyst
14 27 (3.68%) Python Developer
15 26 (3.55%) Consultant
16 25 (3.41%) Architect
17 24 (3.27%) Data Engineer
17 24 (3.27%) Python Engineer
18 21 (2.86%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 101 (13.78%) Playwright
2 81 (11.05%) REST
3 77 (10.50%) React
4 70 (9.55%) Node.js
5 65 (8.87%) .NET
6 63 (8.59%) RESTful
7 54 (7.37%) Kafka
8 37 (5.05%) pytest
8 37 (5.05%) Spring Boot
8 37 (5.05%) Web Services
9 36 (4.91%) Spring
10 29 (3.96%) JSON
11 28 (3.82%) HTML
12 26 (3.55%) FastAPI
13 25 (3.41%) XML
14 24 (3.27%) CSS
15 23 (3.14%) SOAP
16 21 (2.86%) AngularJS
16 21 (2.86%) GraphQL
16 21 (2.86%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 83 (11.32%) Cloud Native
2 47 (6.41%) Product Ownership
3 30 (4.09%) Distributed Systems
4 22 (3.00%) Mobile App
5 19 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
6 18 (2.46%) Algorithms
6 18 (2.46%) Data Structures
6 18 (2.46%) Virtual Team
7 16 (2.18%) Genomics
7 16 (2.18%) Life Science
8 15 (2.05%) Equities
9 14 (1.91%) Greenfield Project
10 13 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
10 13 (1.77%) Management Information System
11 12 (1.64%) Derivative
12 11 (1.50%) Fixed Income
12 11 (1.50%) Onboarding
13 9 (1.23%) Public Cloud
13 9 (1.23%) Security Posture
14 8 (1.09%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 57 (7.78%) Linux
2 28 (3.82%) Windows
3 22 (3.00%) Android
3 22 (3.00%) Apple iOS
4 14 (1.91%) Unix
5 6 (0.82%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.27%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.14%) FreeRTOS
7 1 (0.14%) Kali Linux
7 1 (0.14%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 378 (51.57%) CI/CD
2 352 (48.02%) Agile
3 286 (39.02%) DevOps
4 163 (22.24%) Problem-Solving
5 111 (15.14%) Containerisation
6 106 (14.46%) AI
7 103 (14.05%) Software Engineering
7 103 (14.05%) Test Scripting
8 98 (13.37%) Microservices
9 87 (11.87%) Test Strategy
10 85 (11.60%) Continuous Improvement
10 85 (11.60%) Software Testing
11 83 (11.32%) Infrastructure as Code
11 83 (11.32%) Validation
12 82 (11.19%) Observability
13 77 (10.50%) TDD
14 75 (10.23%) Scrum
15 72 (9.82%) API Testing
16 70 (9.55%) Regression Testing
16 70 (9.55%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 253 (34.52%) Python
2 168 (22.92%) SQL
3 144 (19.65%) Java
4 132 (18.01%) TypeScript
5 125 (17.05%) JavaScript
6 100 (13.64%) C#
7 23 (3.14%) PowerShell
8 22 (3.00%) Bash
9 19 (2.59%) C++
10 16 (2.18%) Go
11 13 (1.77%) Bicep
12 12 (1.64%) Kotlin
13 10 (1.36%) Apex Code
14 9 (1.23%) PL/SQL
15 8 (1.09%) Swift
16 7 (0.95%) Ruby
16 7 (0.95%) Rust
17 6 (0.82%) Perl
17 6 (0.82%) T-SQL
18 5 (0.68%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 135 (18.42%) Security Cleared
2 115 (15.69%) SC Cleared
3 53 (7.23%) Degree
4 37 (5.05%) ISTQB
5 23 (3.14%) Computer Science Degree
6 17 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
7 15 (2.05%) Master's Degree
8 12 (1.64%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 9 (1.23%) OSCP
10 7 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (0.82%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 6 (0.82%) SANS
12 5 (0.68%) GPEN
12 5 (0.68%) ISEB
13 4 (0.55%) Azure Certification
13 4 (0.55%) CEH
13 4 (0.55%) DBS Check
13 4 (0.55%) MCP
14 3 (0.41%) CREST Certified
14 3 (0.41%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 164 (22.37%) QA
2 45 (6.14%) Accessibility
3 31 (4.23%) Data Quality
4 19 (2.59%) GDPR
5 13 (1.77%) WCAG
6 10 (1.36%) NIST
7 8 (1.09%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 6 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.82%) NCSC
9 5 (0.68%) PERC
10 4 (0.55%) ISO 20022
10 4 (0.55%) MiFID
10 4 (0.55%) SLA
10 4 (0.55%) Software Quality Assurance
11 3 (0.41%) EU AI Act
11 3 (0.41%) GMP
11 3 (0.41%) NIST 800
11 3 (0.41%) PCI DSS
12 1 (0.14%) GRC
12 1 (0.14%) ITGC
System Software
1 159 (21.69%) Docker
2 10 (1.36%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
4 2 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
4 2 (0.27%) zsh
5 1 (0.14%) Embedded Firmware
5 1 (0.14%) Firmware
5 1 (0.14%) Squid
5 1 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.14%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.14%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 126 (17.19%) Kubernetes
2 78 (10.64%) Terraform
3 28 (3.82%) Ansible
4 22 (3.00%) Grafana
5 18 (2.46%) Prometheus
6 9 (1.23%) HP ALM
7 5 (0.68%) Nmap
8 4 (0.55%) Nessus
8 4 (0.55%) Rancher
9 3 (0.41%) Progress Chef
9 3 (0.41%) Puppet
9 3 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.27%) Argo
10 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (0.27%) SCCM
10 2 (0.27%) vRealize
11 1 (0.14%) CloudHub
11 1 (0.14%) HP Quality Center
11 1 (0.14%) Istio
11 1 (0.14%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 65 (8.87%) Microsoft
2 47 (6.41%) Oracle
3 39 (5.32%) Databricks
4 38 (5.18%) Salesforce
5 37 (5.05%) Google
6 24 (3.27%) ServiceNow
7 17 (2.32%) SAP
7 17 (2.32%) Splunk
8 16 (2.18%) OpenAI
9 15 (2.05%) MuleSoft
10 11 (1.50%) Guidewire
11 10 (1.36%) Apple
12 9 (1.23%) Dynatrace
12 9 (1.23%) HP
13 8 (1.09%) UiPath
14 7 (0.95%) webMethods
15 6 (0.82%) Charles River
15 6 (0.82%) Cisco
15 6 (0.82%) IBM
15 6 (0.82%) VMware