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

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 48 53
Rank change year-on-year -1 +5 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 813 596 735
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.57% 4.82% 4.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.17% 5.23% 4.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 526 408 506
10th Percentile £330 £341 £363
25th Percentile £410 £406 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £491 £500 £548
Median % change year-on-year -1.80% -8.68% -4.78%
75th Percentile £588 £688 £688
90th Percentile £688 £800 £775
England median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 10
10th Percentile £56.71 - £52.25
25th Percentile £59.95 - £52.50
Median hourly rate £64.75 £35.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +85.00% -36.36% -38.89%
75th Percentile £74.25 - £65.75
90th Percentile £88.20 - £71.88
England median hourly rate £66.00 £52.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +25.71% -16.00% -15.54%

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 15,715 11,404 15,572
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.26% 92.24% 88.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,518 7,710 11,153
10th Percentile £356 £350 £340
25th Percentile £431 £433 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -6.78%
75th Percentile £650 £688 £688
90th Percentile £755 £813 £800
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 241 175 312
10th Percentile £18.75 £16.50 £15.95
25th Percentile £25.15 £23.33 £20.00
Median hourly rate £35.71 £34.50 £27.92
Median % change year-on-year +3.51% +23.57% -28.41%
75th Percentile £57.50 £50.75 £48.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £63.75 £66.45
England median hourly rate £47.00 £29.02 £36.50
% change year-on-year +61.96% -20.49% -2.25%

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 May 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 14 May 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 14 May 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 +8 107 £525 +5.00% 55
South London -3 19 £513 +13.57% 2
West London -19 19 £450 +14.80% 6
East London +6 12 £448 +24.31% 8
North London - 1 £400 - 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 54 (6.64%) Confluence
2 24 (2.95%) Apache Airflow
3 20 (2.46%) Apache Spark
4 9 (1.11%) Apache
5 8 (0.98%) Appian
6 5 (0.62%) Camunda
7 4 (0.49%) nginx
7 4 (0.49%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.37%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 3 (0.37%) CMS
8 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.37%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.12%) Ethereum
9 1 (0.12%) SAS
9 1 (0.12%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.12%) Solana
Applications
1 18 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.74%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.12%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 20 (2.46%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (0.86%) Findur
2 7 (0.86%) Shopify
3 6 (0.74%) Loan IQ
4 5 (0.62%) BambooHR
4 5 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.37%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.25%) iTrent
6 2 (0.25%) Summit
7 1 (0.12%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.12%) Infor CloudSuite
7 1 (0.12%) Infor LN
7 1 (0.12%) Infor M3
7 1 (0.12%) IntelliMatch
7 1 (0.12%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
7 1 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.12%) PORTIA
Cloud Services
1 242 (29.77%) Azure
2 210 (25.83%) AWS
3 135 (16.61%) GitHub
4 121 (14.88%) Azure DevOps
5 73 (8.98%) GitHub Actions
6 60 (7.38%) Serverless
7 48 (5.90%) GCP
8 40 (4.92%) Amazon S3
9 38 (4.67%) AWS Lambda
9 38 (4.67%) Power Platform
10 32 (3.94%) Snowflake
11 29 (3.57%) Azure Data Factory
12 28 (3.44%) Amazon ECS
13 27 (3.32%) Azure AKS
14 23 (2.83%) dbt
15 20 (2.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 20 (2.46%) Dynamics 365
16 18 (2.21%) AWS CloudFormation
16 18 (2.21%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 18 (2.21%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.11%) HTTP
2 6 (0.74%) FTP
3 4 (0.49%) Ethernet
3 4 (0.49%) SSL
3 4 (0.49%) WAN
3 4 (0.49%) WebEx
4 3 (0.37%) Firewall
5 2 (0.25%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (0.25%) DSL
5 2 (0.25%) Multicast
5 2 (0.25%) NaaS
5 2 (0.25%) OpenLDAP
5 2 (0.25%) SD-WAN
5 2 (0.25%) SNMP
5 2 (0.25%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.12%) Cisco Nexus
6 1 (0.12%) DHCP
6 1 (0.12%) DNS
6 1 (0.12%) NGFW
6 1 (0.12%) Spanning Tree
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (7.13%) SQL Server
2 55 (6.77%) PostgreSQL
3 44 (5.41%) NoSQL
4 35 (4.31%) MongoDB
5 32 (3.94%) Data Warehouse
6 28 (3.44%) Power BI
7 27 (3.32%) Relational Database
8 22 (2.71%) DynamoDB
8 22 (2.71%) Tableau
9 20 (2.46%) Big Data
10 18 (2.21%) Amazon Athena
10 18 (2.21%) BigQuery
11 15 (1.85%) Data Lake
12 14 (1.72%) Amazon Redshift
12 14 (1.72%) Metadata
13 11 (1.35%) Amazon Aurora
13 11 (1.35%) Amazon RDS
13 11 (1.35%) Star Schema
14 10 (1.23%) Oracle Database
14 10 (1.23%) Redis
Development Applications
1 139 (17.10%) JIRA
2 127 (15.62%) Git
3 105 (12.92%) Selenium
4 104 (12.79%) Jenkins
5 79 (9.72%) GitLab
6 50 (6.15%) Cucumber
6 50 (6.15%) Cypress.io
7 49 (6.03%) Postman
8 34 (4.18%) REST Assured
9 33 (4.06%) JMeter
10 29 (3.57%) JUnit
11 25 (3.08%) SpecFlow
12 20 (2.46%) MLflow
13 16 (1.97%) Appium
14 13 (1.60%) WebDriver
15 12 (1.48%) Maven
15 12 (1.48%) Mockito
15 12 (1.48%) Zephyr
16 11 (1.35%) Gradle
16 11 (1.35%) SonarQube
General
1 219 (26.94%) Finance
2 210 (25.83%) Social Skills
3 108 (13.28%) Analytical Skills
3 108 (13.28%) Public Sector
4 105 (12.92%) Banking
5 26 (3.20%) Front Office
6 24 (2.95%) Investment Banking
7 19 (2.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 15 (1.85%) Legal
9 13 (1.60%) Documentation Skills
10 12 (1.48%) Telecoms
11 11 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
12 10 (1.23%) Financial Institution
12 10 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
14 8 (0.98%) Back Office
15 7 (0.86%) Billing
15 7 (0.86%) Publishing
15 7 (0.86%) Retail
16 4 (0.49%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 174 (21.40%) Developer
2 153 (18.82%) Senior
3 91 (11.19%) Tester
4 84 (10.33%) Lead
5 55 (6.77%) Test Engineer
6 51 (6.27%) Analyst
6 51 (6.27%) QA Engineer
7 49 (6.03%) Automation Tester
8 42 (5.17%) Data Engineer
9 41 (5.04%) Senior Developer
10 39 (4.80%) Architect
11 38 (4.67%) DevOps Engineer
12 35 (4.31%) Automation Engineer
13 33 (4.06%) Java Developer
14 28 (3.44%) Test Automation Engineer
15 27 (3.32%) Software Engineer
16 26 (3.20%) Test Manager
17 25 (3.08%) Full-Stack Developer
17 25 (3.08%) QA Automation Engineer
18 24 (2.95%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 101 (12.42%) Playwright
2 92 (11.32%) REST
3 91 (11.19%) React
4 76 (9.35%) RESTful
5 70 (8.61%) .NET
6 67 (8.24%) Kafka
7 62 (7.63%) Node.js
8 45 (5.54%) Spring
9 41 (5.04%) Spring Boot
10 40 (4.92%) HTML
11 39 (4.80%) CSS
12 28 (3.44%) OAuth
13 26 (3.20%) Web Services
14 25 (3.08%) pytest
15 22 (2.71%) AngularJS
16 20 (2.46%) Gherkin
17 19 (2.34%) .NET Core
18 18 (2.21%) Django
18 18 (2.21%) SOAP
19 17 (2.09%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 99 (12.18%) Cloud Native
2 54 (6.64%) Product Ownership
3 50 (6.15%) Distributed Systems
4 37 (4.55%) Legacy Systems
5 28 (3.44%) Data Protection Act
6 23 (2.83%) Algorithms
7 19 (2.34%) Fixed Income
7 19 (2.34%) Greenfield Project
8 18 (2.21%) Management Information System
8 18 (2.21%) Virtual Team
9 17 (2.09%) Mobile App
9 17 (2.09%) Onboarding
10 16 (1.97%) Equities
10 16 (1.97%) Self-Motivation
11 15 (1.85%) Data Structures
12 10 (1.23%) Derivative
12 10 (1.23%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 10 (1.23%) NHS
13 9 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
13 9 (1.11%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 40 (4.92%) Linux
2 29 (3.57%) Windows
3 22 (2.71%) Android
4 18 (2.21%) Apple iOS
5 11 (1.35%) Unix
6 5 (0.62%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.49%) Solaris
7 4 (0.49%) Windows Server 2008
8 3 (0.37%) Mac OS
8 3 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
8 3 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
9 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 450 (55.35%) CI/CD
2 323 (39.73%) Agile
3 285 (35.06%) DevOps
4 157 (19.31%) Problem-Solving
5 134 (16.48%) AI
6 132 (16.24%) Infrastructure as Code
7 124 (15.25%) Containerisation
8 122 (15.01%) Observability
9 117 (14.39%) Validation
10 113 (13.90%) Continuous Improvement
11 112 (13.78%) Test Strategy
12 110 (13.53%) Microservices
13 108 (13.28%) Regression Testing
14 100 (12.30%) User Acceptance Testing
15 92 (11.32%) Software Engineering
15 92 (11.32%) Test Scripting
16 91 (11.19%) Data Modelling
17 90 (11.07%) Software Testing
18 89 (10.95%) Analytics
19 84 (10.33%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 263 (32.35%) Python
2 207 (25.46%) SQL
3 164 (20.17%) Java
4 135 (16.61%) TypeScript
5 129 (15.87%) JavaScript
6 110 (13.53%) C#
7 33 (4.06%) PowerShell
8 21 (2.58%) Bash
9 19 (2.34%) Apex Code
10 17 (2.09%) PL/SQL
11 16 (1.97%) Kotlin
11 16 (1.97%) Ruby
12 14 (1.72%) Bicep
13 13 (1.60%) C++
14 9 (1.11%) Go
14 9 (1.11%) Scala
15 8 (0.98%) T-SQL
16 7 (0.86%) Rust
17 6 (0.74%) Swift
18 5 (0.62%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 179 (22.02%) Security Cleared
2 153 (18.82%) SC Cleared
3 44 (5.41%) Degree
4 30 (3.69%) ISTQB
5 25 (3.08%) BPSS Clearance
5 25 (3.08%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (1.23%) Master's Degree
7 8 (0.98%) DBS Check
7 8 (0.98%) DV Cleared
8 5 (0.62%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 4 (0.49%) AWS Certification
9 4 (0.49%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.37%) CISSP
10 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.25%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.25%) ISEB
11 2 (0.25%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 2 (0.25%) PhD
11 2 (0.25%) SAFe Agilist
11 2 (0.25%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 198 (24.35%) QA
2 57 (7.01%) Data Quality
3 48 (5.90%) Accessibility
4 22 (2.71%) GDPR
5 20 (2.46%) WCAG
6 8 (0.98%) NIST
7 6 (0.74%) ISO 20022
8 5 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.62%) SLA
9 4 (0.49%) HL7
9 4 (0.49%) MiFID
9 4 (0.49%) NCSC
9 4 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 3 (0.37%) Software Quality Assurance
11 2 (0.25%) GRC
12 1 (0.12%) EMIR
12 1 (0.12%) HIPAA
12 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 1 (0.12%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 143 (17.59%) Docker
2 6 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
3 5 (0.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.49%) Active Directory
4 4 (0.49%) Oracle RAC
4 4 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.12%) Embedded Firmware
5 1 (0.12%) Firmware
5 1 (0.12%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.12%) Squid
5 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 134 (16.48%) Kubernetes
2 103 (12.67%) Terraform
3 41 (5.04%) Grafana
4 37 (4.55%) Prometheus
5 21 (2.58%) Ansible
6 11 (1.35%) HP ALM
7 9 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.98%) Kibana
9 4 (0.49%) Oracle RMAN
9 4 (0.49%) Puppet
10 2 (0.25%) Amdocs OSS
10 2 (0.25%) Istio
10 2 (0.25%) Kustomize
10 2 (0.25%) Packer
10 2 (0.25%) Progress Chef
11 1 (0.12%) Control-M
11 1 (0.12%) HP Quality Center
11 1 (0.12%) linkerd
11 1 (0.12%) Rancher
Vendors
1 79 (9.72%) Microsoft
2 54 (6.64%) Oracle
3 49 (6.03%) Salesforce
4 42 (5.17%) Databricks
5 20 (2.46%) ServiceNow
6 17 (2.09%) Google
7 16 (1.97%) Splunk
8 15 (1.85%) UiPath
9 13 (1.60%) OpenAI
10 11 (1.35%) HP
11 10 (1.23%) Dynatrace
11 10 (1.23%) MuleSoft
11 10 (1.23%) SAP
12 9 (1.11%) Guidewire
12 9 (1.11%) IBM
13 8 (0.98%) Apple
13 8 (0.98%) Automation Anywhere
13 8 (0.98%) Citrix
14 7 (0.86%) OpenLink
14 7 (0.86%) Workday