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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 53 45
Rank change year-on-year +5 -8 +4
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 947 615 748
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.68% 4.62% 4.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.26% 4.99% 5.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 651 418 489
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £509 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.72% -3.10% -8.70%
75th Percentile £620 £638 £630
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
England median daily rate £475 £500 £510
% change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -7.27%
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 £69.25 £57.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +20.43% -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 17,988 12,322 14,318
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.85% 92.57% 89.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,771 8,124 9,349
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 £663 £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 337 241 182
10th Percentile £16.03 £17.98 £17.28
25th Percentile £19.03 £25.01 £24.18
Median hourly rate £32.50 £30.00 £36.65
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% -18.14% -5.32%
75th Percentile £57.50 £47.50 £56.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £64.75 £78.72
England median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -3.37%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 +14 120 £550 +18.92% 133
South London -3 15 £593 +18.50% 8
East London +2 7 £658 +26.44% 12
West London -24 3 £600 +50.94% 30
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 71 (7.50%) Confluence
2 45 (4.75%) Apache Airflow
3 26 (2.75%) Apache Spark
4 23 (2.43%) SharePoint
5 18 (1.90%) Apache
6 16 (1.69%) CMS
7 8 (0.84%) Camunda
8 7 (0.74%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 5 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.32%) 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 (0.11%) Appian
12 1 (0.11%) ColdFusion
12 1 (0.11%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 18 (1.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.48%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.53%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.32%) Mingle
5 3 (0.32%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.32%) Trello
6 2 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.11%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.11%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 13 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (0.95%) Aladdin
2 9 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.53%) SAP GRC
4 4 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 4 (0.42%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.21%) SAP MDG
7 1 (0.11%) BambooHR
7 1 (0.11%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.11%) Infor M3
7 1 (0.11%) IntelliMatch
7 1 (0.11%) Maximo
7 1 (0.11%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.11%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.11%) Shopify
7 1 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 1 (0.11%) Summit
7 1 (0.11%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 338 (35.69%) Azure
2 300 (31.68%) AWS
3 194 (20.49%) GitHub
4 162 (17.11%) Azure DevOps
5 125 (13.20%) GitHub Actions
6 88 (9.29%) GCP
6 88 (9.29%) Serverless
7 74 (7.81%) Power Platform
8 67 (7.07%) AWS Lambda
9 62 (6.55%) Amazon S3
10 49 (5.17%) dbt
11 42 (4.44%) Snowflake
12 39 (4.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 35 (3.70%) GitHub Copilot
14 32 (3.38%) Amazon ECS
15 31 (3.27%) AWS CloudFormation
16 30 (3.17%) Amazon EKS
17 29 (3.06%) Amazon EC2
18 27 (2.85%) Microsoft Copilot
19 25 (2.64%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 12 (1.27%) DNS
2 10 (1.06%) TCP/IP
3 9 (0.95%) Firewall
4 7 (0.74%) BGP
4 7 (0.74%) DHCP
4 7 (0.74%) HTTP
4 7 (0.74%) Network Security
4 7 (0.74%) WAN
4 7 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
5 6 (0.63%) LAN
6 5 (0.53%) Internet
7 4 (0.42%) Ethernet VPN
7 4 (0.42%) NX-OS
7 4 (0.42%) SSL
7 4 (0.42%) TACACS
7 4 (0.42%) VXLAN
8 3 (0.32%) OpenLDAP
8 3 (0.32%) SD-WAN
8 3 (0.32%) SSH
8 3 (0.32%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 74 (7.81%) PostgreSQL
2 58 (6.12%) Power BI
3 53 (5.60%) SQL Server
4 52 (5.49%) Data Warehouse
5 46 (4.86%) NoSQL
6 41 (4.33%) Relational Database
7 40 (4.22%) MongoDB
8 24 (2.53%) Amazon RDS
8 24 (2.53%) Amazon Redshift
9 22 (2.32%) Data Lake
10 21 (2.22%) Amazon Athena
11 19 (2.01%) DynamoDB
11 19 (2.01%) MySQL
12 18 (1.90%) Redis
13 17 (1.80%) Oracle Database
14 15 (1.58%) Amazon Aurora
14 15 (1.58%) Big Data
14 15 (1.58%) Metadata
14 15 (1.58%) Tableau
15 14 (1.48%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 197 (20.80%) Git
2 186 (19.64%) Jenkins
3 130 (13.73%) JIRA
4 126 (13.31%) Selenium
5 115 (12.14%) GitLab
6 60 (6.34%) Cucumber
6 60 (6.34%) JUnit
7 58 (6.12%) Cypress.io
8 55 (5.81%) JMeter
8 55 (5.81%) Postman
9 46 (4.86%) REST Assured
10 24 (2.53%) Gatling
11 23 (2.43%) Gradle
11 23 (2.43%) Maven
12 22 (2.32%) LoadRunner
13 21 (2.22%) SonarQube
14 20 (2.11%) Mockito
15 18 (1.90%) TestNG
16 17 (1.80%) Appium
17 16 (1.69%) SoapUI
General
1 285 (30.10%) Finance
2 263 (27.77%) Social Skills
3 156 (16.47%) Analytical Skills
4 150 (15.84%) Banking
5 84 (8.87%) Public Sector
6 33 (3.48%) Front Office
7 27 (2.85%) Investment Banking
8 20 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 19 (2.01%) Financial Institution
10 16 (1.69%) Back Office
10 16 (1.69%) Marketing
11 14 (1.48%) Telecoms
12 11 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
12 11 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
12 11 (1.16%) Law
12 11 (1.16%) Local Government
13 10 (1.06%) Retail
14 7 (0.74%) Military
15 6 (0.63%) Games
15 6 (0.63%) Legal
Job Titles
1 204 (21.54%) Developer
2 170 (17.95%) Senior
3 101 (10.67%) Lead
4 66 (6.97%) Data Engineer
5 65 (6.86%) Test Engineer
6 62 (6.55%) Tester
7 54 (5.70%) Java Developer
7 54 (5.70%) Software Engineer
8 51 (5.39%) Automation Engineer
8 51 (5.39%) DevOps Engineer
8 51 (5.39%) QA Engineer
9 46 (4.86%) Architect
10 41 (4.33%) Analyst
11 39 (4.12%) Full-Stack Developer
11 39 (4.12%) Senior Developer
12 35 (3.70%) Test Leader
13 33 (3.48%) Test Automation Engineer
13 33 (3.48%) Test Manager
14 29 (3.06%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 26 (2.75%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 167 (17.63%) Terraform
2 159 (16.79%) REST
3 133 (14.04%) Kafka
4 116 (12.25%) Playwright
5 108 (11.40%) RESTful
6 88 (9.29%) Spring
7 87 (9.19%) React
8 77 (8.13%) .NET
9 76 (8.03%) Spring Boot
10 67 (7.07%) HTML
11 57 (6.02%) CSS
12 46 (4.86%) Node.js
13 39 (4.12%) Middleware
14 35 (3.70%) OAuth
14 35 (3.70%) SOAP
15 33 (3.48%) PySpark
16 32 (3.38%) AngularJS
17 29 (3.06%) XML
18 28 (2.96%) JSON
18 28 (2.96%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 164 (17.32%) Cloud Native
2 91 (9.61%) Product Ownership
3 89 (9.40%) Distributed Systems
4 41 (4.33%) AI Agents
5 37 (3.91%) Onboarding
6 32 (3.38%) Enterprise Software
7 25 (2.64%) Data Structures
8 21 (2.22%) Self-Motivation
9 20 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
10 18 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
11 16 (1.69%) Mobile App
12 15 (1.58%) Virtual Team
13 14 (1.48%) Security Posture
14 13 (1.37%) Algorithms
14 13 (1.37%) Fixed Income
15 12 (1.27%) Private Cloud
16 11 (1.16%) Market Risk
17 10 (1.06%) Distributed Architecture
17 10 (1.06%) Legacy Applications
17 10 (1.06%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 76 (8.03%) Linux
2 50 (5.28%) Unix
3 34 (3.59%) Windows
4 19 (2.01%) Android
5 18 (1.90%) Apple iOS
6 16 (1.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (0.74%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.42%) Ubuntu
8 4 (0.42%) VMS
9 3 (0.32%) Mac OS X
10 1 (0.11%) CentOS
10 1 (0.11%) Solaris
10 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 621 (65.58%) CI/CD
2 436 (46.04%) Agile
3 396 (41.82%) DevOps
4 219 (23.13%) AI
5 191 (20.17%) Infrastructure as Code
6 189 (19.96%) Problem-Solving
7 187 (19.75%) Software Engineering
8 180 (19.01%) Microservices
9 177 (18.69%) Continuous Improvement
10 170 (17.95%) Validation
11 161 (17.00%) Containerisation
12 151 (15.95%) Test Strategy
13 146 (15.42%) Observability
14 138 (14.57%) Scrum
15 134 (14.15%) Stakeholder Management
16 123 (12.99%) TDD
17 115 (12.14%) Event-Driven
18 104 (10.98%) Data Pipeline
18 104 (10.98%) SDLC
19 101 (10.67%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 339 (35.80%) Python
2 275 (29.04%) SQL
3 273 (28.83%) Java
4 157 (16.58%) JavaScript
5 127 (13.41%) TypeScript
6 89 (9.40%) C#
7 41 (4.33%) Bash
8 40 (4.22%) PowerShell
9 30 (3.17%) Bicep
10 24 (2.53%) Scala
11 22 (2.32%) Kotlin
12 17 (1.80%) C++
13 16 (1.69%) Go
14 12 (1.27%) Shell Script
15 10 (1.06%) C
15 10 (1.06%) Groovy
15 10 (1.06%) PL/SQL
15 10 (1.06%) Ruby
16 9 (0.95%) VB.NET
17 8 (0.84%) Perl
Qualifications
1 264 (27.88%) Security Cleared
2 235 (24.82%) SC Cleared
3 67 (7.07%) Degree
4 41 (4.33%) Computer Science Degree
5 35 (3.70%) DV Cleared
6 31 (3.27%) ISTQB
7 30 (3.17%) AWS Certification
8 23 (2.43%) BPSS Clearance
9 16 (1.69%) Azure Certification
10 10 (1.06%) ISEB
11 9 (0.95%) CISSP
11 9 (0.95%) Master's Degree
12 7 (0.74%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 7 (0.74%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 7 (0.74%) DBS Check
12 7 (0.74%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 5 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
14 4 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 4 (0.42%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 4 (0.42%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 266 (28.09%) QA
2 80 (8.45%) Data Quality
3 51 (5.39%) Accessibility
4 19 (2.01%) GDPR
5 15 (1.58%) WCAG
6 13 (1.37%) ISO 20022
7 12 (1.27%) NIST
8 11 (1.16%) SLA
9 10 (1.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 9 (0.95%) GRC
11 3 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.32%) EU AI Act
11 3 (0.32%) 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 (0.11%) WAI
13 1 (0.11%) WAI-ARIA
System Software
1 204 (21.54%) Docker
2 9 (0.95%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.74%) Active Directory
4 5 (0.53%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.32%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.11%) Firmware
6 1 (0.11%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 188 (19.85%) Kubernetes
2 69 (7.29%) Grafana
3 52 (5.49%) Ansible
4 50 (5.28%) Prometheus
5 21 (2.22%) Puppet
6 19 (2.01%) Kibana
7 17 (1.80%) Progress Chef
8 10 (1.06%) Control-M
9 6 (0.63%) Argo
9 6 (0.63%) HP Fortify
10 5 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.42%) HP ALM
11 4 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.32%) Kustomize
12 3 (0.32%) Packer
12 3 (0.32%) Rancher
13 2 (0.21%) Istio
13 2 (0.21%) Podman
13 2 (0.21%) systemd
14 1 (0.11%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 116 (12.25%) Microsoft
2 50 (5.28%) Oracle
3 46 (4.86%) Databricks
4 45 (4.75%) Google
5 32 (3.38%) IBM
5 32 (3.38%) Salesforce
6 31 (3.27%) ServiceNow
7 25 (2.64%) SAP
8 24 (2.53%) Splunk
9 23 (2.43%) UiPath
10 17 (1.80%) Dynatrace
10 17 (1.80%) Informatica
10 17 (1.80%) OpenAI
11 16 (1.69%) Foundry
12 14 (1.48%) Cisco
13 13 (1.37%) Red Hat
14 12 (1.27%) VMware
15 11 (1.16%) SaltStack
16 10 (1.06%) HP
17 8 (0.84%) MuleSoft