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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 51 44
Rank change year-on-year +5 -7 +4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 966 621 750
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.78% 4.64% 4.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.38% 5.01% 5.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 662 422 491
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 £619 £638 £628
90th Percentile £725 £766 £750
England median daily rate £475 £500 £507
% change year-on-year -5.00% -1.38% -7.82%
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 17,967 12,400 14,406
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.89% 92.57% 89.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,762 8,167 9,402
10th Percentile £359 £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 336 240 183
10th Percentile £16.00 £18.22 £17.25
25th Percentile £19.02 £25.03 £24.17
Median hourly rate £33.60 £30.25 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +11.07% -17.12% -8.36%
75th Percentile £59.25 £47.50 £56.00
90th Percentile £80.63 £64.78 £78.68
England median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.69
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.09% -4.07%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 +12 120 £550 +15.79% 127
South London -2 15 £593 +18.50% 12
East London +5 8 £663 +27.40% 10
West London -20 3 £600 +50.94% 32
North London +1 2 £463 - 5
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 70 (7.25%) Confluence
2 47 (4.87%) Apache Airflow
3 28 (2.90%) Apache Spark
4 23 (2.38%) SharePoint
5 19 (1.97%) Apache
6 17 (1.76%) CMS
7 8 (0.83%) Camunda
8 7 (0.72%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 5 (0.52%) 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%) Appian
12 1 (0.10%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 18 (1.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.45%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.52%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.31%) Mingle
5 3 (0.31%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.31%) Trello
6 2 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.10%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.10%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 13 (1.35%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (0.93%) Aladdin
2 9 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.52%) 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%) BambooHR
7 1 (0.10%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.10%) Infor CloudSuite
7 1 (0.10%) Infor LN
7 1 (0.10%) Infor M3
7 1 (0.10%) Maximo
7 1 (0.10%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.10%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 1 (0.10%) Summit
7 1 (0.10%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 347 (35.92%) Azure
2 312 (32.30%) AWS
3 195 (20.19%) GitHub
4 165 (17.08%) Azure DevOps
5 127 (13.15%) GitHub Actions
6 91 (9.42%) GCP
7 88 (9.11%) Serverless
8 75 (7.76%) Power Platform
9 68 (7.04%) AWS Lambda
10 64 (6.63%) Amazon S3
11 51 (5.28%) dbt
12 43 (4.45%) Snowflake
13 40 (4.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 34 (3.52%) AWS CloudFormation
14 34 (3.52%) GitHub Copilot
15 33 (3.42%) Amazon ECS
16 31 (3.21%) Amazon EKS
17 30 (3.11%) Amazon EC2
18 28 (2.90%) Microsoft Copilot
19 25 (2.59%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 12 (1.24%) DNS
2 10 (1.04%) TCP/IP
3 9 (0.93%) Firewall
4 8 (0.83%) HTTP
5 7 (0.72%) BGP
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 (0.52%) 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%) VXLAN
9 3 (0.31%) OpenLDAP
9 3 (0.31%) SMS
9 3 (0.31%) SSH
9 3 (0.31%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (7.76%) PostgreSQL
2 59 (6.11%) Power BI
3 56 (5.80%) SQL Server
4 52 (5.38%) Data Warehouse
5 48 (4.97%) NoSQL
6 43 (4.45%) Relational Database
7 40 (4.14%) MongoDB
8 25 (2.59%) Amazon RDS
8 25 (2.59%) Amazon Redshift
9 23 (2.38%) Data Lake
10 21 (2.17%) Amazon Athena
11 20 (2.07%) Metadata
12 19 (1.97%) DynamoDB
12 19 (1.97%) MySQL
12 19 (1.97%) Redis
13 17 (1.76%) Oracle Database
14 15 (1.55%) Amazon Aurora
14 15 (1.55%) Big Data
14 15 (1.55%) Tableau
15 14 (1.45%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 202 (20.91%) Git
2 192 (19.88%) Jenkins
3 129 (13.35%) JIRA
3 129 (13.35%) Selenium
4 117 (12.11%) GitLab
5 62 (6.42%) Cucumber
5 62 (6.42%) Cypress.io
5 62 (6.42%) JUnit
6 57 (5.90%) Postman
7 56 (5.80%) JMeter
8 46 (4.76%) REST Assured
9 24 (2.48%) Gatling
9 24 (2.48%) Gradle
9 24 (2.48%) Maven
10 22 (2.28%) LoadRunner
11 21 (2.17%) Mockito
11 21 (2.17%) SonarQube
12 19 (1.97%) TestNG
13 17 (1.76%) Appium
14 16 (1.66%) SoapUI
General
1 288 (29.81%) Finance
2 265 (27.43%) Social Skills
3 159 (16.46%) Analytical Skills
4 151 (15.63%) Banking
5 85 (8.80%) Public Sector
6 33 (3.42%) Front Office
7 28 (2.90%) Investment Banking
8 22 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 18 (1.86%) Financial Institution
10 16 (1.66%) Back Office
10 16 (1.66%) Marketing
11 14 (1.45%) Telecoms
12 13 (1.35%) Local Government
13 11 (1.14%) Documentation Skills
13 11 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
13 11 (1.14%) Law
14 10 (1.04%) Retail
15 7 (0.72%) Military
16 6 (0.62%) Games
16 6 (0.62%) Legal
Job Titles
1 209 (21.64%) Developer
2 178 (18.43%) Senior
3 105 (10.87%) Lead
4 71 (7.35%) Data Engineer
5 66 (6.83%) Test Engineer
6 61 (6.31%) Tester
7 56 (5.80%) Java Developer
8 54 (5.59%) Software Engineer
9 53 (5.49%) DevOps Engineer
9 53 (5.49%) QA Engineer
10 52 (5.38%) Automation Engineer
11 46 (4.76%) Architect
12 42 (4.35%) Senior Developer
13 40 (4.14%) Analyst
13 40 (4.14%) Full-Stack Developer
14 37 (3.83%) Test Leader
15 33 (3.42%) Test Automation Engineer
15 33 (3.42%) Test Manager
16 30 (3.11%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 27 (2.80%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 171 (17.70%) Terraform
2 164 (16.98%) REST
3 136 (14.08%) Kafka
4 120 (12.42%) Playwright
5 109 (11.28%) RESTful
6 91 (9.42%) Spring
7 86 (8.90%) React
8 79 (8.18%) Spring Boot
9 77 (7.97%) .NET
10 67 (6.94%) HTML
11 57 (5.90%) CSS
12 44 (4.55%) Node.js
13 38 (3.93%) Middleware
14 37 (3.83%) PySpark
15 36 (3.73%) OAuth
16 35 (3.62%) SOAP
17 33 (3.42%) AngularJS
18 29 (3.00%) pytest
18 29 (3.00%) XML
19 28 (2.90%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 166 (17.18%) Cloud Native
2 94 (9.73%) Product Ownership
3 89 (9.21%) Distributed Systems
4 42 (4.35%) AI Agents
5 37 (3.83%) Onboarding
6 36 (3.73%) Enterprise Software
7 26 (2.69%) Data Structures
8 22 (2.28%) Self-Motivation
9 20 (2.07%) Legacy Systems
10 18 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
11 16 (1.66%) Mobile App
12 15 (1.55%) Algorithms
12 15 (1.55%) Virtual Team
13 14 (1.45%) Fixed Income
13 14 (1.45%) Security Posture
14 12 (1.24%) Private Cloud
15 11 (1.14%) Market Risk
16 10 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
16 10 (1.04%) Legacy Applications
16 10 (1.04%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 77 (7.97%) Linux
2 50 (5.18%) Unix
3 35 (3.62%) Windows
4 19 (1.97%) Android
5 18 (1.86%) Apple iOS
6 16 (1.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (0.72%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.41%) Ubuntu
8 4 (0.41%) VMS
9 3 (0.31%) Mac OS X
10 1 (0.10%) CentOS
10 1 (0.10%) Solaris
10 1 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 637 (65.94%) CI/CD
2 447 (46.27%) Agile
3 404 (41.82%) DevOps
4 223 (23.08%) AI
5 195 (20.19%) Problem-Solving
6 194 (20.08%) Infrastructure as Code
7 190 (19.67%) Software Engineering
8 187 (19.36%) Continuous Improvement
9 184 (19.05%) Microservices
10 176 (18.22%) Validation
11 163 (16.87%) Containerisation
12 153 (15.84%) Observability
12 153 (15.84%) Test Strategy
13 140 (14.49%) Stakeholder Management
14 138 (14.29%) Scrum
15 124 (12.84%) TDD
16 116 (12.01%) Event-Driven
17 111 (11.49%) SDLC
18 108 (11.18%) Data Pipeline
19 103 (10.66%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 349 (36.13%) Python
2 282 (29.19%) SQL
3 277 (28.67%) Java
4 159 (16.46%) JavaScript
5 130 (13.46%) TypeScript
6 92 (9.52%) C#
7 43 (4.45%) PowerShell
8 42 (4.35%) Bash
9 30 (3.11%) Bicep
10 24 (2.48%) Scala
11 22 (2.28%) Kotlin
12 17 (1.76%) C++
13 16 (1.66%) Go
14 13 (1.35%) Shell Script
15 11 (1.14%) Ruby
16 10 (1.04%) C
16 10 (1.04%) Groovy
16 10 (1.04%) PL/SQL
17 9 (0.93%) VB.NET
18 8 (0.83%) Perl
Qualifications
1 270 (27.95%) Security Cleared
2 241 (24.95%) SC Cleared
3 69 (7.14%) Degree
4 40 (4.14%) Computer Science Degree
5 35 (3.62%) DV Cleared
6 33 (3.42%) ISTQB
7 31 (3.21%) AWS Certification
8 24 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
9 16 (1.66%) Azure Certification
10 10 (1.04%) ISEB
11 9 (0.93%) CISSP
12 8 (0.83%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 8 (0.83%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 8 (0.83%) Master's Degree
13 7 (0.72%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 7 (0.72%) DBS Check
14 5 (0.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 5 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
15 4 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 4 (0.41%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 271 (28.05%) QA
2 86 (8.90%) Data Quality
3 51 (5.28%) Accessibility
4 19 (1.97%) GDPR
5 14 (1.45%) WCAG
6 13 (1.35%) ISO 20022
7 12 (1.24%) NIST
8 11 (1.14%) SLA
9 10 (1.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 9 (0.93%) 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
1 208 (21.53%) Docker
2 9 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.72%) Active Directory
4 5 (0.52%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.31%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.10%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.10%) Firmware
6 1 (0.10%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.10%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.10%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 191 (19.77%) Kubernetes
2 69 (7.14%) Grafana
3 53 (5.49%) Ansible
4 50 (5.18%) Prometheus
5 22 (2.28%) Puppet
6 19 (1.97%) Kibana
7 18 (1.86%) Progress Chef
8 10 (1.04%) Control-M
9 6 (0.62%) Argo
9 6 (0.62%) HP Fortify
10 5 (0.52%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.31%) HP ALM
12 3 (0.31%) Kustomize
12 3 (0.31%) Packer
12 3 (0.31%) Rancher
13 2 (0.21%) Istio
13 2 (0.21%) Podman
13 2 (0.21%) systemd
14 1 (0.10%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 120 (12.42%) Microsoft
2 54 (5.59%) Oracle
3 50 (5.18%) Databricks
4 47 (4.87%) Google
5 32 (3.31%) IBM
5 32 (3.31%) Salesforce
6 31 (3.21%) ServiceNow
7 25 (2.59%) SAP
8 24 (2.48%) Splunk
9 23 (2.38%) UiPath
10 18 (1.86%) Dynatrace
10 18 (1.86%) Foundry
10 18 (1.86%) Informatica
10 18 (1.86%) OpenAI
11 14 (1.45%) Cisco
12 13 (1.35%) Red Hat
13 12 (1.24%) VMware
14 11 (1.14%) SaltStack
15 10 (1.04%) MuleSoft
16 9 (0.93%) HP