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

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 55 46
Rank change year-on-year +9 -9 +3
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 990 600 750
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.83% 4.48% 4.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.42% 4.84% 5.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 677 416 488
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -7.49%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £630
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
England median daily rate £475 £500 £505
% change year-on-year -5.00% -0.99% -8.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 4 3
10th Percentile £37.89 £37.25 £53.13
25th Percentile £44.91 £40.63 £57.81
Median hourly rate £50.00 £45.00 £68.75
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -34.55% -23.61%
75th Percentile £76.50 £55.63 £71.88
90th Percentile £97.50 £70.25 -
England median hourly rate £69.00 £55.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +25.45% -4.35% -23.33%

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 18,249 12,388 14,284
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.99% 92.48% 89.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,954 8,186 9,270
10th Percentile £360 £333 £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 £665 £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 345 242 178
10th Percentile £15.93 £18.25 £17.43
25th Percentile £18.75 £25.02 £24.18
Median hourly rate £32.50 £30.25 £36.65
Median % change year-on-year +7.44% -17.46% -8.38%
75th Percentile £58.75 £47.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £79.50 £64.98 £78.75
England median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -5.56%

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 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 14 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 14 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 +14 122 £550 +15.79% 132
South London -7 15 £593 +18.50% 12
East London +5 8 £663 +27.40% 12
West London -26 3 £600 +50.94% 30
North London -1 2 £463 - 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 71 (7.17%) Confluence
2 45 (4.55%) Apache Airflow
3 28 (2.83%) Apache Spark
4 25 (2.53%) SharePoint
5 19 (1.92%) Apache
6 16 (1.62%) CMS
7 8 (0.81%) Camunda
8 7 (0.71%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 5 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.30%) Kentico
11 2 (0.20%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.20%) Mule
11 2 (0.20%) nginx
11 2 (0.20%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.20%) SAS
11 2 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 1 (0.10%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.10%) ColdFusion
12 1 (0.10%) Tomcat
Applications
1 20 (2.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.41%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.51%) Chatbot
4 5 (0.51%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.30%) Mingle
5 3 (0.30%) Trello
6 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.10%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.10%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 14 (1.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (0.91%) Aladdin
2 9 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.51%) SAP GRC
4 4 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
4 4 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.20%) SAP MDG
7 1 (0.10%) Findur
7 1 (0.10%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.10%) Infor LN
7 1 (0.10%) Maximo
7 1 (0.10%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.10%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
7 1 (0.10%) SimCorp Dimension
7 1 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 1 (0.10%) Summit
7 1 (0.10%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 353 (35.66%) Azure
2 313 (31.62%) AWS
3 198 (20.00%) GitHub
4 169 (17.07%) Azure DevOps
5 130 (13.13%) GitHub Actions
6 94 (9.49%) GCP
7 89 (8.99%) Serverless
8 76 (7.68%) Power Platform
9 68 (6.87%) AWS Lambda
10 64 (6.46%) Amazon S3
11 49 (4.95%) dbt
12 41 (4.14%) Snowflake
13 40 (4.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 35 (3.54%) GitHub Copilot
15 34 (3.43%) AWS CloudFormation
16 32 (3.23%) Amazon ECS
17 31 (3.13%) Amazon EKS
18 30 (3.03%) Amazon EC2
18 30 (3.03%) Microsoft Copilot
19 27 (2.73%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.52%) DNS
2 12 (1.21%) TCP/IP
3 10 (1.01%) Firewall
4 9 (0.91%) BGP
4 9 (0.91%) HTTP
5 8 (0.81%) Network Security
5 8 (0.81%) WAN
6 7 (0.71%) DHCP
6 7 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.61%) Internet
7 6 (0.61%) LAN
8 5 (0.51%) VPN
9 4 (0.40%) Ethernet VPN
9 4 (0.40%) NX-OS
9 4 (0.40%) SD-WAN
9 4 (0.40%) SSL
9 4 (0.40%) TACACS
9 4 (0.40%) VXLAN
10 3 (0.30%) OpenLDAP
10 3 (0.30%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (7.58%) PostgreSQL
2 58 (5.86%) Power BI
2 58 (5.86%) SQL Server
3 51 (5.15%) Data Warehouse
4 48 (4.85%) NoSQL
5 44 (4.44%) Relational Database
6 40 (4.04%) MongoDB
7 25 (2.53%) Amazon RDS
7 25 (2.53%) Amazon Redshift
8 23 (2.32%) Data Lake
9 22 (2.22%) Amazon Athena
10 21 (2.12%) Metadata
11 20 (2.02%) MySQL
12 19 (1.92%) DynamoDB
12 19 (1.92%) Oracle Database
12 19 (1.92%) Redis
13 15 (1.52%) Delta Lake
14 14 (1.41%) Amazon Aurora
14 14 (1.41%) Big Data
14 14 (1.41%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 207 (20.91%) Git
2 193 (19.49%) Jenkins
3 133 (13.43%) JIRA
3 133 (13.43%) Selenium
4 117 (11.82%) GitLab
5 65 (6.57%) Cucumber
5 65 (6.57%) Cypress.io
6 64 (6.46%) JUnit
7 62 (6.26%) Postman
8 57 (5.76%) JMeter
9 48 (4.85%) REST Assured
10 29 (2.93%) Gradle
11 26 (2.63%) Maven
12 24 (2.42%) Gatling
13 22 (2.22%) LoadRunner
13 22 (2.22%) Mockito
13 22 (2.22%) SonarQube
14 20 (2.02%) TestNG
15 18 (1.82%) Appium
16 16 (1.62%) Bitbucket
General
1 293 (29.60%) Finance
2 279 (28.18%) Social Skills
3 165 (16.67%) Analytical Skills
4 159 (16.06%) Banking
5 86 (8.69%) Public Sector
6 34 (3.43%) Front Office
7 30 (3.03%) Investment Banking
8 20 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 18 (1.82%) Back Office
9 18 (1.82%) Financial Institution
10 17 (1.72%) Marketing
11 14 (1.41%) Local Government
12 13 (1.31%) Telecoms
13 12 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
14 11 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
14 11 (1.11%) Law
15 10 (1.01%) Retail
16 7 (0.71%) Military
17 6 (0.61%) Games
17 6 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 214 (21.62%) Developer
2 186 (18.79%) Senior
3 109 (11.01%) Lead
4 69 (6.97%) Data Engineer
5 67 (6.77%) Test Engineer
6 61 (6.16%) Tester
7 57 (5.76%) Java Developer
8 55 (5.56%) Automation Engineer
8 55 (5.56%) QA Engineer
9 54 (5.45%) Software Engineer
10 53 (5.35%) DevOps Engineer
11 48 (4.85%) Architect
12 47 (4.75%) Senior Developer
13 40 (4.04%) Analyst
14 39 (3.94%) Full-Stack Developer
15 38 (3.84%) Test Leader
16 34 (3.43%) Test Automation Engineer
17 33 (3.33%) Test Manager
18 30 (3.03%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 29 (2.93%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 175 (17.68%) REST
2 172 (17.37%) Terraform
3 137 (13.84%) Kafka
4 123 (12.42%) Playwright
5 113 (11.41%) RESTful
6 93 (9.39%) Spring
7 86 (8.69%) React
8 84 (8.48%) .NET
9 82 (8.28%) Spring Boot
10 66 (6.67%) HTML
11 56 (5.66%) CSS
12 43 (4.34%) Node.js
13 40 (4.04%) Middleware
14 38 (3.84%) PySpark
15 36 (3.64%) OAuth
15 36 (3.64%) SOAP
16 33 (3.33%) AngularJS
17 31 (3.13%) XML
18 30 (3.03%) JSON
18 30 (3.03%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 169 (17.07%) Cloud Native
2 99 (10.00%) Product Ownership
3 94 (9.49%) Distributed Systems
4 42 (4.24%) AI Agents
5 40 (4.04%) Enterprise Software
6 38 (3.84%) Onboarding
7 26 (2.63%) Data Structures
8 24 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
8 24 (2.42%) Self-Motivation
9 21 (2.12%) Mobile App
10 19 (1.92%) Data Protection Act
11 16 (1.62%) Algorithms
12 15 (1.52%) Virtual Team
13 14 (1.41%) Security Posture
14 13 (1.31%) Fixed Income
15 12 (1.21%) Distributed Architecture
15 12 (1.21%) Private Cloud
16 11 (1.11%) Market Risk
17 10 (1.01%) Legacy Applications
17 10 (1.01%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 76 (7.68%) Linux
2 49 (4.95%) Unix
3 34 (3.43%) Windows
4 22 (2.22%) Android
4 22 (2.22%) Apple iOS
5 16 (1.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (0.71%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.40%) macOS
7 4 (0.40%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.40%) VMS
8 1 (0.10%) CentOS
8 1 (0.10%) Solaris
8 1 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
8 1 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.10%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 661 (66.77%) CI/CD
2 462 (46.67%) Agile
3 420 (42.42%) DevOps
4 227 (22.93%) AI
5 204 (20.61%) Problem-Solving
6 199 (20.10%) Continuous Improvement
7 198 (20.00%) Infrastructure as Code
7 198 (20.00%) Software Engineering
8 186 (18.79%) Microservices
9 183 (18.48%) Validation
10 165 (16.67%) Containerisation
11 160 (16.16%) Test Strategy
12 159 (16.06%) Observability
13 150 (15.15%) Stakeholder Management
14 146 (14.75%) Scrum
15 124 (12.53%) TDD
16 119 (12.02%) SDLC
17 118 (11.92%) Event-Driven
18 108 (10.91%) Data Pipeline
19 106 (10.71%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 358 (36.16%) Python
2 288 (29.09%) SQL
3 283 (28.59%) Java
4 160 (16.16%) JavaScript
5 130 (13.13%) TypeScript
6 98 (9.90%) C#
7 44 (4.44%) PowerShell
8 42 (4.24%) Bash
9 33 (3.33%) Bicep
10 26 (2.63%) Kotlin
11 25 (2.53%) Scala
12 18 (1.82%) C++
13 17 (1.72%) Go
14 14 (1.41%) Shell Script
15 11 (1.11%) Ruby
16 10 (1.01%) C
16 10 (1.01%) Groovy
16 10 (1.01%) PL/SQL
17 9 (0.91%) VB.NET
18 8 (0.81%) Perl
Qualifications
1 274 (27.68%) Security Cleared
2 245 (24.75%) SC Cleared
3 73 (7.37%) Degree
4 43 (4.34%) Computer Science Degree
5 37 (3.74%) ISTQB
6 35 (3.54%) DV Cleared
7 31 (3.13%) AWS Certification
8 23 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
9 18 (1.82%) Azure Certification
10 10 (1.01%) ISEB
11 9 (0.91%) CISSP
12 8 (0.81%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 8 (0.81%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 8 (0.81%) Master's Degree
13 7 (0.71%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 6 (0.61%) DBS Check
15 5 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 5 (0.51%) Cisco Certification
16 4 (0.40%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 4 (0.40%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 280 (28.28%) QA
2 86 (8.69%) Data Quality
3 51 (5.15%) Accessibility
4 18 (1.82%) GDPR
5 14 (1.41%) WCAG
6 13 (1.31%) ISO 20022
7 12 (1.21%) NIST
8 11 (1.11%) SLA
9 10 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 8 (0.81%) GRC
11 4 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.30%) EU AI Act
12 3 (0.30%) SOC 2
13 2 (0.20%) ISO 9001
13 2 (0.20%) MiFID
13 2 (0.20%) NCSC
13 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 2 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
14 1 (0.10%) COBIT
14 1 (0.10%) WAI
System Software
1 212 (21.41%) Docker
2 9 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.71%) Active Directory
4 4 (0.40%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.30%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.10%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.10%) Firmware
6 1 (0.10%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.10%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 194 (19.60%) Kubernetes
2 69 (6.97%) Grafana
3 53 (5.35%) Ansible
4 49 (4.95%) Prometheus
5 22 (2.22%) Puppet
6 18 (1.82%) Progress Chef
7 17 (1.72%) Kibana
8 10 (1.01%) Control-M
9 6 (0.61%) Argo
9 6 (0.61%) HP Fortify
10 5 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.30%) HP ALM
12 3 (0.30%) Kustomize
12 3 (0.30%) Packer
12 3 (0.30%) Podman
12 3 (0.30%) Rancher
13 2 (0.20%) Istio
13 2 (0.20%) systemd
14 1 (0.10%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 124 (12.53%) Microsoft
2 58 (5.86%) Oracle
3 51 (5.15%) Databricks
4 50 (5.05%) Google
5 34 (3.43%) Salesforce
6 33 (3.33%) IBM
7 31 (3.13%) ServiceNow
8 25 (2.53%) SAP
8 25 (2.53%) Splunk
8 25 (2.53%) UiPath
9 21 (2.12%) Foundry
10 20 (2.02%) OpenAI
11 18 (1.82%) Dynatrace
11 18 (1.82%) Informatica
12 15 (1.52%) Cisco
13 13 (1.31%) Red Hat
14 11 (1.11%) SaltStack
14 11 (1.11%) VMware
15 10 (1.01%) MuleSoft
16 9 (0.91%) HP