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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 47 52
Rank change year-on-year +1 +5 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 825 609 733
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.64% 4.89% 4.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.25% 5.30% 4.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 533 415 507
10th Percentile £331 £341 £363
25th Percentile £410 £407 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £505 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% -8.18% -4.35%
75th Percentile £588 £675 £688
90th Percentile £698 £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 £65.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +19.09% -12.00% -10.71%

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 15,718 11,485 15,694
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.39% 92.19% 88.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,513 7,782 11,264
10th Percentile £356 £350 £340
25th Percentile £430 £438 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -6.78%
75th Percentile £650 £688 £680
90th Percentile £755 £813 £800
England median daily rate £510 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 249 172 317
10th Percentile £18.66 £16.50 £15.98
25th Percentile £25.00 £22.73 £20.00
Median hourly rate £35.71 £34.25 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.26% +20.18% -26.92%
75th Percentile £58.92 £50.56 £48.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £63.75 £65.85
England median hourly rate £46.47 £29.15 £36.50
% change year-on-year +59.40% -20.14% -2.14%

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 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 8 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 8 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 +4 106 £525 +3.96% 51
South London -8 20 £513 +13.57% 4
West London -23 20 £450 +14.80% 5
East London +5 12 £448 +24.31% 10
North London - 1 £400 - 4
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 52 (6.30%) Confluence
2 24 (2.91%) Apache Airflow
3 21 (2.55%) Apache Spark
4 8 (0.97%) Apache
4 8 (0.97%) Appian
5 5 (0.61%) Camunda
6 4 (0.48%) nginx
6 4 (0.48%) Tomcat
7 3 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.36%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.24%) CMS
8 2 (0.24%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.12%) Anypoint
9 1 (0.12%) Ethereum
9 1 (0.12%) SAS
9 1 (0.12%) Solana
Applications
1 17 (2.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.73%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.48%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.12%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 20 (2.42%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.85%) Findur
2 7 (0.85%) Shopify
3 6 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.73%) Loan IQ
4 5 (0.61%) BambooHR
4 5 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.36%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.24%) iTrent
6 2 (0.24%) 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
1 252 (30.55%) Azure
2 211 (25.58%) AWS
3 137 (16.61%) GitHub
4 128 (15.52%) Azure DevOps
5 72 (8.73%) GitHub Actions
6 60 (7.27%) Serverless
7 51 (6.18%) GCP
8 39 (4.73%) Amazon S3
9 37 (4.48%) AWS Lambda
9 37 (4.48%) Power Platform
10 33 (4.00%) Snowflake
11 29 (3.52%) Azure AKS
11 29 (3.52%) Azure Data Factory
12 28 (3.39%) Amazon ECS
13 23 (2.79%) dbt
14 20 (2.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 20 (2.42%) Dynamics 365
15 18 (2.18%) Apigee
15 18 (2.18%) AWS CloudFormation
15 18 (2.18%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 10 (1.21%) HTTP
2 6 (0.73%) FTP
3 4 (0.48%) Ethernet
3 4 (0.48%) Firewall
3 4 (0.48%) SSL
3 4 (0.48%) WAN
3 4 (0.48%) WebEx
4 3 (0.36%) Multicast
5 2 (0.24%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (0.24%) DSL
5 2 (0.24%) NaaS
5 2 (0.24%) OpenLDAP
5 2 (0.24%) SD-WAN
5 2 (0.24%) SNMP
5 2 (0.24%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.12%) Cisco IPT
6 1 (0.12%) Network Security
6 1 (0.12%) NGFW
6 1 (0.12%) SSH
6 1 (0.12%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (7.03%) SQL Server
2 55 (6.67%) PostgreSQL
3 45 (5.45%) NoSQL
4 34 (4.12%) MongoDB
5 31 (3.76%) Data Warehouse
6 27 (3.27%) Power BI
6 27 (3.27%) Relational Database
7 22 (2.67%) DynamoDB
8 21 (2.55%) Tableau
9 20 (2.42%) Big Data
10 19 (2.30%) BigQuery
11 18 (2.18%) Amazon Athena
12 15 (1.82%) Data Lake
13 14 (1.70%) Amazon Redshift
14 13 (1.58%) Metadata
15 11 (1.33%) Amazon Aurora
16 10 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
16 10 (1.21%) Oracle Database
16 10 (1.21%) Redis
16 10 (1.21%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 140 (16.97%) JIRA
2 130 (15.76%) Git
3 108 (13.09%) Selenium
4 106 (12.85%) Jenkins
5 81 (9.82%) GitLab
6 52 (6.30%) Cucumber
7 50 (6.06%) Cypress.io
7 50 (6.06%) Postman
8 34 (4.12%) REST Assured
9 32 (3.88%) JMeter
10 29 (3.52%) JUnit
11 26 (3.15%) SpecFlow
12 20 (2.42%) MLflow
13 16 (1.94%) Appium
14 14 (1.70%) WebDriver
15 13 (1.58%) Maven
15 13 (1.58%) TestRail
15 13 (1.58%) Zephyr
16 12 (1.45%) Mockito
17 11 (1.33%) Gradle
General
1 222 (26.91%) Finance
2 218 (26.42%) Social Skills
3 109 (13.21%) Public Sector
4 107 (12.97%) Analytical Skills
5 105 (12.73%) Banking
6 27 (3.27%) Front Office
7 24 (2.91%) Investment Banking
8 19 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 15 (1.82%) Legal
10 13 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
11 12 (1.45%) Telecoms
12 11 (1.33%) Financial Institution
12 11 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
13 10 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
15 8 (0.97%) Back Office
16 7 (0.85%) Billing
16 7 (0.85%) Publishing
17 6 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
17 6 (0.73%) Retail
Job Titles
1 180 (21.82%) Developer
2 153 (18.55%) Senior
3 95 (11.52%) Tester
4 86 (10.42%) Lead
5 56 (6.79%) Test Engineer
6 53 (6.42%) QA Engineer
7 52 (6.30%) Automation Tester
8 50 (6.06%) Analyst
9 43 (5.21%) Architect
9 43 (5.21%) Senior Developer
10 42 (5.09%) Data Engineer
11 38 (4.61%) DevOps Engineer
12 36 (4.36%) Automation Engineer
13 32 (3.88%) Java Developer
14 29 (3.52%) Test Automation Engineer
15 26 (3.15%) QA Automation Engineer
15 26 (3.15%) Software Engineer
15 26 (3.15%) Test Manager
16 25 (3.03%) Full-Stack Developer
16 25 (3.03%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (12.85%) Playwright
2 94 (11.39%) REST
3 91 (11.03%) React
4 74 (8.97%) RESTful
5 69 (8.36%) .NET
6 68 (8.24%) Kafka
7 64 (7.76%) Node.js
8 48 (5.82%) Spring
9 44 (5.33%) Spring Boot
10 41 (4.97%) HTML
11 40 (4.85%) CSS
12 27 (3.27%) OAuth
12 27 (3.27%) Web Services
13 26 (3.15%) pytest
14 23 (2.79%) AngularJS
15 21 (2.55%) Gherkin
16 19 (2.30%) .NET Core
17 18 (2.18%) Django
17 18 (2.18%) GraphQL
17 18 (2.18%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 99 (12.00%) Cloud Native
2 56 (6.79%) Product Ownership
3 50 (6.06%) Distributed Systems
4 37 (4.48%) Legacy Systems
5 27 (3.27%) Data Protection Act
6 22 (2.67%) Algorithms
7 19 (2.30%) Fixed Income
7 19 (2.30%) Onboarding
8 18 (2.18%) Greenfield Project
8 18 (2.18%) Management Information System
9 17 (2.06%) Equities
10 16 (1.94%) Data Structures
11 15 (1.82%) Mobile App
11 15 (1.82%) Self-Motivation
11 15 (1.82%) Virtual Team
12 11 (1.33%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 10 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
14 9 (1.09%) Derivative
14 9 (1.09%) Low-Code
14 9 (1.09%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 41 (4.97%) Linux
2 30 (3.64%) Windows
3 19 (2.30%) Android
4 16 (1.94%) Apple iOS
5 10 (1.21%) Unix
6 5 (0.61%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.48%) Mac OS
7 4 (0.48%) Solaris
7 4 (0.48%) Windows Server 2008
8 3 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
8 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
9 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 456 (55.27%) CI/CD
2 328 (39.76%) Agile
3 300 (36.36%) DevOps
4 158 (19.15%) Problem-Solving
5 135 (16.36%) AI
6 132 (16.00%) Infrastructure as Code
7 127 (15.39%) Containerisation
8 121 (14.67%) Observability
9 119 (14.42%) Validation
10 114 (13.82%) Continuous Improvement
11 113 (13.70%) Microservices
12 112 (13.58%) Regression Testing
13 111 (13.45%) Test Strategy
14 102 (12.36%) User Acceptance Testing
15 96 (11.64%) Test Scripting
16 94 (11.39%) Software Testing
17 92 (11.15%) Software Engineering
18 90 (10.91%) Data Modelling
19 89 (10.79%) Analytics
20 85 (10.30%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 271 (32.85%) Python
2 212 (25.70%) SQL
3 167 (20.24%) Java
4 145 (17.58%) TypeScript
5 134 (16.24%) JavaScript
6 110 (13.33%) C#
7 31 (3.76%) PowerShell
8 21 (2.55%) Bash
9 19 (2.30%) Apex Code
10 16 (1.94%) PL/SQL
10 16 (1.94%) Ruby
11 13 (1.58%) Bicep
11 13 (1.58%) C++
11 13 (1.58%) Kotlin
12 9 (1.09%) Go
12 9 (1.09%) Scala
13 7 (0.85%) T-SQL
14 6 (0.73%) Rust
15 5 (0.61%) Shell Script
16 4 (0.48%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 185 (22.42%) Security Cleared
2 161 (19.52%) SC Cleared
3 46 (5.58%) Degree
4 31 (3.76%) ISTQB
5 25 (3.03%) BPSS Clearance
5 25 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (1.21%) Master's Degree
7 8 (0.97%) DBS Check
8 7 (0.85%) DV Cleared
9 5 (0.61%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 4 (0.48%) AWS Certification
10 4 (0.48%) Azure Certification
11 3 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.24%) Cisco Certification
12 2 (0.24%) CISSP
12 2 (0.24%) ISEB
12 2 (0.24%) OSCP
12 2 (0.24%) PhD
12 2 (0.24%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 202 (24.48%) QA
2 57 (6.91%) Data Quality
3 46 (5.58%) Accessibility
4 22 (2.67%) GDPR
5 20 (2.42%) WCAG
6 8 (0.97%) NIST
7 6 (0.73%) ISO 20022
7 6 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 5 (0.61%) SLA
9 4 (0.48%) HL7
9 4 (0.48%) MiFID
9 4 (0.48%) NCSC
10 3 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 3 (0.36%) Software Quality Assurance
11 2 (0.24%) GRC
12 1 (0.12%) EMIR
12 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 1 (0.12%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.12%) PERC
System Software
1 147 (17.82%) Docker
2 6 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.61%) Active Directory
3 5 (0.61%) VMware ESXi
3 5 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.48%) Oracle RAC
4 4 (0.48%) 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
1 136 (16.48%) Kubernetes
2 105 (12.73%) Terraform
3 40 (4.85%) Grafana
4 36 (4.36%) Prometheus
5 20 (2.42%) Ansible
6 11 (1.33%) HP ALM
7 9 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.97%) Kibana
9 4 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
9 4 (0.48%) Puppet
10 2 (0.24%) Amdocs OSS
10 2 (0.24%) Istio
10 2 (0.24%) Kustomize
10 2 (0.24%) Packer
10 2 (0.24%) Progress Chef
11 1 (0.12%) CloudHub
11 1 (0.12%) HP Quality Center
11 1 (0.12%) linkerd
11 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.12%) Rancher
Vendors
1 80 (9.70%) Microsoft
2 54 (6.55%) Oracle
3 50 (6.06%) Salesforce
4 42 (5.09%) Databricks
5 20 (2.42%) Google
5 20 (2.42%) ServiceNow
6 17 (2.06%) Splunk
7 15 (1.82%) UiPath
8 13 (1.58%) OpenAI
9 11 (1.33%) HP
9 11 (1.33%) MuleSoft
9 11 (1.33%) SAP
10 10 (1.21%) Dynatrace
10 10 (1.21%) IBM
11 9 (1.09%) Guidewire
12 8 (0.97%) Apple
12 8 (0.97%) Automation Anywhere
12 8 (0.97%) Citrix
13 7 (0.85%) OpenLink
13 7 (0.85%) Workday