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

6 months to
23 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 46 50
Rank change year-on-year +1 +4 -3
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 822 618 718
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.96% 4.81% 3.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.53% 5.27% 4.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 532 426 516
10th Percentile £325 £341 £378
25th Percentile £406 £407 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £503 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.50% -8.64% -8.33%
75th Percentile £600 £656 £688
90th Percentile £708 £775 £763
England median daily rate £487 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -2.55% -4.76% -7.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 7
10th Percentile £55.99 - -
25th Percentile £58.15 - £52.50
Median hourly rate £63.50 - £55.00
75th Percentile £65.88 - £61.25
90th Percentile £66.25 - £65.40
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £61.25
% change year-on-year +14.54% -7.35% +2.08%

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 14,871 11,726 15,989
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 89.70% 91.30% 88.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,969 7,878 11,440
10th Percentile £353 £350 £338
25th Percentile £425 £445 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -6.78%
75th Percentile £650 £677 £675
90th Percentile £750 £800 £788
England median daily rate £504 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.05% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 231 165 337
10th Percentile £18.07 £19.52 £15.98
25th Percentile £21.73 £24.66 £19.57
Median hourly rate £35.50 £35.89 £30.50
Median % change year-on-year -1.09% +17.67% -21.54%
75th Percentile £56.98 £52.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £71.15 £70.50
England median hourly rate £35.00 £33.26 £32.50
% change year-on-year +5.25% +2.32% -13.33%

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 23 March 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 23 March 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 +3 109 £525 - 69
South London -8 21 £513 +6.22% 7
West London -14 21 £450 +19.05% 6
East London +4 11 £445 +11.25% 7
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 56 (6.81%) Confluence
2 15 (1.82%) Apache Airflow
3 14 (1.70%) Apache Spark
4 8 (0.97%) Appian
5 5 (0.61%) Apache
6 4 (0.49%) Camunda
6 4 (0.49%) CMS
6 4 (0.49%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.36%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.24%) Magnolia
8 2 (0.24%) nginx
8 2 (0.24%) Sitecore CMS
8 2 (0.24%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.24%) WordPress
9 1 (0.12%) Anypoint
9 1 (0.12%) Ethereum
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
9 1 (0.12%) SAS
Applications
1 20 (2.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
3 6 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.12%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 24 (2.92%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.73%) Findur
2 6 (0.73%) Loan IQ
2 6 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.61%) Shopify
4 4 (0.49%) SAP HR
5 3 (0.36%) BambooHR
5 3 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
6 2 (0.24%) iTrent
6 2 (0.24%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.24%) Summit
7 1 (0.12%) Algo Collateral
7 1 (0.12%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.12%) CODA-Financials
7 1 (0.12%) Infor LN
7 1 (0.12%) Infor M3
7 1 (0.12%) IntelliMatch
7 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
7 1 (0.12%) PORTIA
7 1 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 258 (31.39%) Azure
2 200 (24.33%) AWS
3 134 (16.30%) GitHub
4 126 (15.33%) Azure DevOps
5 76 (9.25%) GCP
6 62 (7.54%) GitHub Actions
7 58 (7.06%) Serverless
8 34 (4.14%) AWS Lambda
9 33 (4.01%) Power Platform
9 33 (4.01%) Snowflake
10 32 (3.89%) Amazon S3
11 28 (3.41%) Azure Data Factory
12 26 (3.16%) Azure AKS
13 20 (2.43%) Dynamics 365
13 20 (2.43%) SaaS
14 19 (2.31%) Amazon ECS
15 17 (2.07%) Apigee
15 17 (2.07%) Power Automate
16 16 (1.95%) Amazon EKS
16 16 (1.95%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 11 (1.34%) Firewall
2 9 (1.09%) HTTP
2 9 (1.09%) WAN
3 7 (0.85%) DNS
3 7 (0.85%) SD-WAN
3 7 (0.85%) TCP/IP
4 6 (0.73%) SSL
4 6 (0.73%) VPN
5 5 (0.61%) Cisco IPT
5 5 (0.61%) Multicast
6 4 (0.49%) FTP
6 4 (0.49%) WebEx
7 3 (0.36%) DHCP
7 3 (0.36%) Ethernet
7 3 (0.36%) HTTPS
8 2 (0.24%) Cisco IOS
8 2 (0.24%) DSL
8 2 (0.24%) Network Security
8 2 (0.24%) SNMP
8 2 (0.24%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (5.72%) SQL Server
2 45 (5.47%) PostgreSQL
3 31 (3.77%) NoSQL
4 27 (3.28%) Relational Database
5 26 (3.16%) Data Warehouse
6 24 (2.92%) MongoDB
7 22 (2.68%) BigQuery
8 19 (2.31%) Power BI
9 18 (2.19%) Tableau
10 16 (1.95%) DynamoDB
11 12 (1.46%) Amazon Athena
12 11 (1.34%) Amazon RDS
12 11 (1.34%) Data Lake
12 11 (1.34%) Metadata
12 11 (1.34%) Oracle Database
12 11 (1.34%) Redis
13 10 (1.22%) Big Data
14 9 (1.09%) Pinecone
15 8 (0.97%) Amazon Aurora
15 8 (0.97%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 145 (17.64%) JIRA
2 134 (16.30%) Git
3 110 (13.38%) Selenium
4 104 (12.65%) Jenkins
5 87 (10.58%) GitLab
6 61 (7.42%) Cucumber
7 51 (6.20%) Cypress.io
7 51 (6.20%) Postman
8 37 (4.50%) REST Assured
9 33 (4.01%) SpecFlow
10 31 (3.77%) JMeter
11 28 (3.41%) JUnit
12 21 (2.55%) MLflow
13 19 (2.31%) Bitbucket
14 15 (1.82%) Appium
15 14 (1.70%) TestRail
16 13 (1.58%) Maven
16 13 (1.58%) WebDriver
16 13 (1.58%) Zephyr
17 11 (1.34%) Mockito
General
1 221 (26.89%) Social Skills
2 203 (24.70%) Finance
3 109 (13.26%) Banking
4 100 (12.17%) Public Sector
5 90 (10.95%) Analytical Skills
6 29 (3.53%) Investment Banking
7 27 (3.28%) Front Office
8 14 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 12 (1.46%) Legal
9 12 (1.46%) Pharmaceutical
10 10 (1.22%) Documentation Skills
10 10 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
10 10 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
12 8 (0.97%) Telecoms
13 7 (0.85%) Back Office
13 7 (0.85%) Billing
13 7 (0.85%) Financial Institution
14 5 (0.61%) Publishing
14 5 (0.61%) Retail
Job Titles
1 181 (22.02%) Developer
2 162 (19.71%) Senior
3 91 (11.07%) Tester
4 90 (10.95%) Lead
5 69 (8.39%) Test Engineer
6 58 (7.06%) Automation Tester
7 57 (6.93%) Analyst
8 50 (6.08%) QA Engineer
9 43 (5.23%) Senior Developer
10 40 (4.87%) Architect
11 38 (4.62%) Automation Engineer
11 38 (4.62%) Test Automation Engineer
12 33 (4.01%) Data Engineer
13 31 (3.77%) DevOps Engineer
13 31 (3.77%) Java Developer
14 30 (3.65%) Test Analyst
15 26 (3.16%) Python Developer
15 26 (3.16%) Test Manager
16 24 (2.92%) Software Engineer
16 24 (2.92%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 120 (14.60%) Playwright
2 89 (10.83%) REST
3 86 (10.46%) React
4 70 (8.52%) Node.js
5 69 (8.39%) .NET
6 67 (8.15%) RESTful
7 64 (7.79%) Kafka
8 40 (4.87%) Spring
9 38 (4.62%) Spring Boot
10 35 (4.26%) pytest
11 34 (4.14%) Web Services
12 33 (4.01%) HTML
13 31 (3.77%) CSS
14 28 (3.41%) OAuth
15 23 (2.80%) FastAPI
16 22 (2.68%) AngularJS
16 22 (2.68%) GraphQL
16 22 (2.68%) Middleware
17 19 (2.31%) JSON
17 19 (2.31%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 92 (11.19%) Cloud Native
2 53 (6.45%) Product Ownership
3 42 (5.11%) Distributed Systems
4 34 (4.14%) Legacy Systems
5 27 (3.28%) Algorithms
6 23 (2.80%) Data Protection Act
6 23 (2.80%) Equities
7 21 (2.55%) Data Structures
8 19 (2.31%) Virtual Team
9 18 (2.19%) Greenfield Project
10 17 (2.07%) Mobile App
10 17 (2.07%) Onboarding
11 16 (1.95%) Fixed Income
11 16 (1.95%) Management Information System
12 14 (1.70%) Derivative
13 13 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
14 10 (1.22%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 10 (1.22%) Genomics
14 10 (1.22%) Life Science
14 10 (1.22%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 45 (5.47%) Linux
2 33 (4.01%) Windows
3 20 (2.43%) Android
4 18 (2.19%) Apple iOS
5 9 (1.09%) Unix
6 5 (0.61%) Mac OS
6 5 (0.61%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.24%) Solaris
7 2 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
7 2 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
7 2 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
8 1 (0.12%) Kali Linux
8 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 441 (53.65%) CI/CD
2 349 (42.46%) Agile
3 306 (37.23%) DevOps
4 170 (20.68%) Problem-Solving
5 134 (16.30%) AI
6 117 (14.23%) Containerisation
7 112 (13.63%) Continuous Improvement
7 112 (13.63%) Observability
8 110 (13.38%) Test Strategy
9 108 (13.14%) Microservices
10 107 (13.02%) Infrastructure as Code
11 105 (12.77%) Test Scripting
12 102 (12.41%) Software Testing
13 100 (12.17%) Validation
14 98 (11.92%) Software Engineering
15 96 (11.68%) Regression Testing
16 84 (10.22%) Analytics
17 83 (10.10%) API Testing
18 82 (9.98%) Stakeholder Management
19 81 (9.85%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 288 (35.04%) Python
2 207 (25.18%) SQL
3 166 (20.19%) Java
4 152 (18.49%) TypeScript
5 135 (16.42%) JavaScript
6 120 (14.60%) C#
7 26 (3.16%) PowerShell
8 21 (2.55%) C++
9 18 (2.19%) Bash
10 15 (1.82%) Apex Code
11 14 (1.70%) Ruby
12 13 (1.58%) Bicep
12 13 (1.58%) Kotlin
13 12 (1.46%) PL/SQL
14 8 (0.97%) Go
14 8 (0.97%) Rust
14 8 (0.97%) T-SQL
15 7 (0.85%) Swift
16 6 (0.73%) Shell Script
17 4 (0.49%) C
Qualifications
1 169 (20.56%) Security Cleared
2 143 (17.40%) SC Cleared
3 53 (6.45%) Degree
4 39 (4.74%) ISTQB
5 27 (3.28%) Computer Science Degree
6 25 (3.04%) BPSS Clearance
7 12 (1.46%) Master's Degree
8 10 (1.22%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 6 (0.73%) DBS Check
10 5 (0.61%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 5 (0.61%) OSCP
11 4 (0.49%) Azure Certification
11 4 (0.49%) CEH
11 4 (0.49%) DV Cleared
11 4 (0.49%) ISEB
11 4 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
11 4 (0.49%) SANS
12 3 (0.36%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.36%) CREST Certified
13 2 (0.24%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 205 (24.94%) QA
2 47 (5.72%) Data Quality
3 46 (5.60%) Accessibility
4 19 (2.31%) GDPR
5 16 (1.95%) WCAG
6 9 (1.09%) NIST
7 8 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 8 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 6 (0.73%) NCSC
9 5 (0.61%) MiFID
9 5 (0.61%) PERC
9 5 (0.61%) SLA
10 4 (0.49%) HL7
10 4 (0.49%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 4 (0.49%) ISO 20022
10 4 (0.49%) Software Quality Assurance
11 3 (0.36%) NIST 800
11 3 (0.36%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.24%) GMP
13 1 (0.12%) GxP
System Software
1 157 (19.10%) Docker
2 6 (0.73%) Active Directory
3 4 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
3 4 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
4 3 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
5 2 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.12%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.12%) Firmware
6 1 (0.12%) Squid
6 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 136 (16.55%) Kubernetes
2 92 (11.19%) Terraform
3 32 (3.89%) Grafana
4 28 (3.41%) Prometheus
5 22 (2.68%) Ansible
6 11 (1.34%) HP ALM
7 6 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.49%) Puppet
9 3 (0.36%) Kibana
9 3 (0.36%) Rancher
10 2 (0.24%) Amdocs OSS
10 2 (0.24%) HP Quality Center
10 2 (0.24%) Istio
10 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (0.24%) Nmap
10 2 (0.24%) Oracle RMAN
10 2 (0.24%) Progress Chef
10 2 (0.24%) SCCM
11 1 (0.12%) Control-M
11 1 (0.12%) linkerd
Vendors
1 74 (9.00%) Microsoft
2 52 (6.33%) Oracle
3 45 (5.47%) Databricks
3 45 (5.47%) Salesforce
4 31 (3.77%) Google
5 22 (2.68%) ServiceNow
6 16 (1.95%) SAP
7 13 (1.58%) OpenAI
8 12 (1.46%) MuleSoft
8 12 (1.46%) Splunk
9 11 (1.34%) Dynatrace
9 11 (1.34%) HP
9 11 (1.34%) UiPath
10 10 (1.22%) Guidewire
11 9 (1.09%) Apple
11 9 (1.09%) Charles River
11 9 (1.09%) Workday
12 8 (0.97%) Automation Anywhere
12 8 (0.97%) Citrix
12 8 (0.97%) IBM