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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 53
Rank change year-on-year -1 +6 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 809 606 736
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.56% 4.85% 4.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.16% 5.26% 4.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 522 416 507
10th Percentile £331 £341 £363
25th Percentile £410 £407 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £508 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.05% -7.73% -4.35%
75th Percentile £588 £675 £688
90th Percentile £699 £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 £52.50 £61.25
% change year-on-year +24.76% -14.29% -17.23%

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 15,677 11,512 15,660
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.30% 92.23% 88.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,479 7,802 11,216
10th Percentile £356 £350 £341
25th Percentile £431 £436 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -6.78%
75th Percentile £650 £688 £681
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 246 175 313
10th Percentile £18.52 £16.50 £15.96
25th Percentile £23.66 £23.35 £20.00
Median hourly rate £35.61 £34.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.20% +23.21% -26.80%
75th Percentile £57.50 £50.75 £48.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £63.75 £66.40
England median hourly rate £47.00 £29.07 £36.50
% change year-on-year +61.68% -20.36% -2.67%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +6 106 £525 +3.96% 52
South London -3 19 £513 +13.57% 4
West London -23 19 £450 +14.80% 4
East London +6 12 £448 +24.31% 7
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 52 (6.43%) Confluence
2 23 (2.84%) Apache Airflow
3 20 (2.47%) Apache Spark
4 8 (0.99%) Apache
4 8 (0.99%) Appian
5 5 (0.62%) Camunda
6 4 (0.49%) nginx
6 4 (0.49%) Tomcat
7 3 (0.37%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.37%) CMS
7 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.37%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.12%) Ethereum
8 1 (0.12%) SAS
8 1 (0.12%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.12%) Solana
Applications
1 18 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.87%) 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 (2.47%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (0.87%) Findur
2 7 (0.87%) 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 (29.91%) Azure
2 209 (25.83%) AWS
3 134 (16.56%) GitHub
4 123 (15.20%) Azure DevOps
5 71 (8.78%) GitHub Actions
6 59 (7.29%) Serverless
7 49 (6.06%) GCP
8 39 (4.82%) Amazon S3
9 37 (4.57%) AWS Lambda
9 37 (4.57%) Power Platform
10 33 (4.08%) Snowflake
11 29 (3.58%) Azure Data Factory
12 28 (3.46%) Amazon ECS
13 27 (3.34%) Azure AKS
14 23 (2.84%) dbt
15 21 (2.60%) Dynamics 365
16 20 (2.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 18 (2.22%) AWS CloudFormation
17 18 (2.22%) Azure Cosmos DB
17 18 (2.22%) 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
4 3 (0.37%) Multicast
5 2 (0.25%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (0.25%) DSL
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%) 5G
6 1 (0.12%) NGFW
6 1 (0.12%) RS-232
6 1 (0.12%) RS-485
6 1 (0.12%) Spanning Tree
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (7.17%) SQL Server
2 55 (6.80%) PostgreSQL
3 44 (5.44%) NoSQL
4 34 (4.20%) MongoDB
5 31 (3.83%) Data Warehouse
6 27 (3.34%) Power BI
6 27 (3.34%) Relational Database
7 22 (2.72%) DynamoDB
8 21 (2.60%) Tableau
9 20 (2.47%) Big Data
10 18 (2.22%) Amazon Athena
10 18 (2.22%) BigQuery
11 15 (1.85%) Data Lake
12 14 (1.73%) Amazon Redshift
13 13 (1.61%) Metadata
14 11 (1.36%) Amazon Aurora
15 10 (1.24%) Amazon RDS
15 10 (1.24%) Oracle Database
15 10 (1.24%) Redis
15 10 (1.24%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 137 (16.93%) JIRA
2 125 (15.45%) Git
3 106 (13.10%) Selenium
4 103 (12.73%) Jenkins
5 81 (10.01%) GitLab
6 51 (6.30%) Cucumber
7 49 (6.06%) Cypress.io
7 49 (6.06%) Postman
8 34 (4.20%) REST Assured
9 33 (4.08%) JMeter
10 29 (3.58%) JUnit
11 25 (3.09%) SpecFlow
12 20 (2.47%) MLflow
13 16 (1.98%) Appium
14 14 (1.73%) WebDriver
15 12 (1.48%) Maven
15 12 (1.48%) Mockito
15 12 (1.48%) Zephyr
16 11 (1.36%) Gradle
16 11 (1.36%) TestRail
General
1 220 (27.19%) Finance
2 211 (26.08%) Social Skills
3 107 (13.23%) Analytical Skills
3 107 (13.23%) Public Sector
4 104 (12.86%) Banking
5 26 (3.21%) Front Office
6 24 (2.97%) Investment Banking
7 19 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 14 (1.73%) Legal
9 13 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
10 12 (1.48%) Telecoms
11 11 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
12 10 (1.24%) Financial Institution
12 10 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
14 8 (0.99%) Back Office
15 7 (0.87%) Billing
15 7 (0.87%) Publishing
16 6 (0.74%) Retail
17 5 (0.62%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 176 (21.76%) Developer
2 152 (18.79%) Senior
3 91 (11.25%) Tester
4 85 (10.51%) Lead
5 56 (6.92%) Test Engineer
6 51 (6.30%) QA Engineer
7 49 (6.06%) Analyst
7 49 (6.06%) Automation Tester
8 42 (5.19%) Senior Developer
9 41 (5.07%) Data Engineer
10 40 (4.94%) Architect
11 38 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
12 35 (4.33%) Automation Engineer
13 32 (3.96%) Java Developer
14 29 (3.58%) Test Automation Engineer
15 27 (3.34%) Software Engineer
16 25 (3.09%) Full-Stack Developer
16 25 (3.09%) QA Automation Engineer
16 25 (3.09%) Test Manager
17 24 (2.97%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 103 (12.73%) Playwright
2 92 (11.37%) REST
3 91 (11.25%) React
4 74 (9.15%) RESTful
5 69 (8.53%) .NET
6 68 (8.41%) Kafka
7 61 (7.54%) Node.js
8 46 (5.69%) Spring
9 42 (5.19%) Spring Boot
10 41 (5.07%) HTML
11 40 (4.94%) CSS
12 27 (3.34%) OAuth
12 27 (3.34%) Web Services
13 25 (3.09%) pytest
14 21 (2.60%) AngularJS
14 21 (2.60%) Gherkin
15 19 (2.35%) .NET Core
16 18 (2.22%) Django
16 18 (2.22%) SOAP
17 17 (2.10%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 98 (12.11%) Cloud Native
2 54 (6.67%) Product Ownership
3 51 (6.30%) Distributed Systems
4 37 (4.57%) Legacy Systems
5 27 (3.34%) Data Protection Act
6 22 (2.72%) Algorithms
7 19 (2.35%) Fixed Income
8 18 (2.22%) Greenfield Project
8 18 (2.22%) Management Information System
9 17 (2.10%) Onboarding
9 17 (2.10%) Virtual Team
10 16 (1.98%) Data Structures
10 16 (1.98%) Equities
10 16 (1.98%) Mobile App
10 16 (1.98%) Self-Motivation
11 11 (1.36%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 10 (1.24%) Derivative
12 10 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
13 9 (1.11%) Low-Code
13 9 (1.11%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 40 (4.94%) Linux
2 29 (3.58%) Windows
3 20 (2.47%) Android
4 17 (2.10%) Apple iOS
5 10 (1.24%) 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
1 447 (55.25%) CI/CD
2 320 (39.56%) Agile
3 288 (35.60%) DevOps
4 157 (19.41%) Problem-Solving
5 135 (16.69%) AI
6 130 (16.07%) Infrastructure as Code
7 124 (15.33%) Containerisation
8 121 (14.96%) Observability
9 117 (14.46%) Validation
10 111 (13.72%) Continuous Improvement
10 111 (13.72%) Test Strategy
11 110 (13.60%) Microservices
12 109 (13.47%) Regression Testing
13 100 (12.36%) User Acceptance Testing
14 94 (11.62%) Test Scripting
15 92 (11.37%) Software Engineering
16 91 (11.25%) Software Testing
17 89 (11.00%) Data Modelling
18 87 (10.75%) Analytics
19 83 (10.26%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 267 (33.00%) Python
2 208 (25.71%) SQL
3 165 (20.40%) Java
4 140 (17.31%) TypeScript
5 132 (16.32%) JavaScript
6 110 (13.60%) C#
7 32 (3.96%) PowerShell
8 21 (2.60%) Bash
9 19 (2.35%) Apex Code
10 16 (1.98%) PL/SQL
10 16 (1.98%) Ruby
11 14 (1.73%) Kotlin
12 13 (1.61%) Bicep
12 13 (1.61%) C++
13 9 (1.11%) Go
13 9 (1.11%) Scala
14 7 (0.87%) Rust
14 7 (0.87%) T-SQL
15 5 (0.62%) Shell Script
15 5 (0.62%) Swift
Qualifications
1 177 (21.88%) Security Cleared
2 153 (18.91%) SC Cleared
3 44 (5.44%) Degree
4 30 (3.71%) ISTQB
5 25 (3.09%) BPSS Clearance
5 25 (3.09%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (1.24%) Master's Degree
7 8 (0.99%) DBS Check
8 7 (0.87%) DV Cleared
9 5 (0.62%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 4 (0.49%) AWS Certification
10 4 (0.49%) Azure Certification
11 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.25%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.25%) Cisco Certification
12 2 (0.25%) CISSP
12 2 (0.25%) ISEB
12 2 (0.25%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 2 (0.25%) PhD
12 2 (0.25%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 198 (24.47%) QA
2 57 (7.05%) Data Quality
3 48 (5.93%) Accessibility
4 21 (2.60%) GDPR
5 20 (2.47%) WCAG
6 7 (0.87%) 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 (17.68%) 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 (16.56%) Kubernetes
2 101 (12.48%) Terraform
3 41 (5.07%) Grafana
4 37 (4.57%) Prometheus
5 21 (2.60%) Ansible
6 11 (1.36%) HP ALM
7 9 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.99%) 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 78 (9.64%) Microsoft
2 54 (6.67%) Oracle
3 49 (6.06%) Salesforce
4 42 (5.19%) Databricks
5 20 (2.47%) ServiceNow
6 18 (2.22%) Google
7 16 (1.98%) Splunk
8 15 (1.85%) UiPath
9 13 (1.61%) OpenAI
10 11 (1.36%) HP
11 10 (1.24%) Dynatrace
11 10 (1.24%) MuleSoft
11 10 (1.24%) SAP
12 9 (1.11%) Guidewire
12 9 (1.11%) IBM
13 8 (0.99%) Apple
13 8 (0.99%) Automation Anywhere
13 8 (0.99%) Citrix
14 7 (0.87%) OpenLink
14 7 (0.87%) Workday