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

6 months to
24 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 47 50
Rank change year-on-year -2 +3 -5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 820 573 728
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.49% 4.69% 4.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.08% 5.09% 4.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 529 396 505
10th Percentile £336 £347 £363
25th Percentile £413 £406 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £508 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.05% -6.02% -8.09%
75th Percentile £588 £688 £688
90th Percentile £688 £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 £66.00 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +20.00% -8.33% -22.08%

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 16,137 11,264 15,406
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 88.41% 92.21% 88.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,779 7,595 11,054
10th Percentile £356 £350 £340
25th Percentile £431 £431 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -7.56%
75th Percentile £650 £688 £675
90th Percentile £760 £800 £800
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 238 182 310
10th Percentile £18.75 £16.50 £15.90
25th Percentile £25.25 £23.76 £20.00
Median hourly rate £37.25 £31.67 £27.83
Median % change year-on-year +17.61% +13.83% -29.04%
75th Percentile £57.50 £49.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £63.23 £66.78
England median hourly rate £45.25 £28.48 £36.50
% change year-on-year +58.88% -21.97% -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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +4 105 £550 +10.00% 40
South London -4 20 £513 +24.24%
West London -23 16 £450 +13.92% 6
East London +5 12 £450 +25.00% 9
North London - 1 £400 -
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 51 (6.22%) Confluence
2 26 (3.17%) Apache Airflow
3 20 (2.44%) Apache Spark
4 9 (1.10%) Apache
5 8 (0.98%) Appian
6 7 (0.85%) CMS
7 5 (0.61%) Camunda
8 4 (0.49%) nginx
8 4 (0.49%) Tomcat
9 3 (0.37%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.12%) Ethereum
10 1 (0.12%) Kentico
10 1 (0.12%) SAS
10 1 (0.12%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.12%) Solana
Applications
1 18 (2.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.61%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.12%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 22 (2.68%) Aladdin
2 10 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.98%) Findur
4 6 (0.73%) Shopify
5 5 (0.61%) BambooHR
5 5 (0.61%) Loan IQ
5 5 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.37%) Distributed Ledger
7 2 (0.24%) iTrent
7 2 (0.24%) Summit
8 1 (0.12%) Bloomberg TOMS
8 1 (0.12%) Infor CloudSuite
8 1 (0.12%) Infor LN
8 1 (0.12%) Infor M3
8 1 (0.12%) IntelliMatch
8 1 (0.12%) NetSuite
8 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
8 1 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 239 (29.15%) Azure
2 215 (26.22%) AWS
3 139 (16.95%) GitHub
4 124 (15.12%) Azure DevOps
5 78 (9.51%) GitHub Actions
6 64 (7.80%) Serverless
7 46 (5.61%) GCP
8 43 (5.24%) AWS Lambda
9 41 (5.00%) Amazon S3
9 41 (5.00%) Power Platform
10 33 (4.02%) Snowflake
11 31 (3.78%) Azure Data Factory
12 25 (3.05%) Amazon ECS
12 25 (3.05%) dbt
13 23 (2.80%) Azure AKS
14 22 (2.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 22 (2.68%) Dynamics 365
15 18 (2.20%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 18 (2.20%) Power Automate
16 17 (2.07%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.10%) HTTP
2 4 (0.49%) FTP
2 4 (0.49%) SSL
3 3 (0.37%) Firewall
3 3 (0.37%) WAN
4 2 (0.24%) DSL
4 2 (0.24%) Ethernet
4 2 (0.24%) Multicast
4 2 (0.24%) NaaS
4 2 (0.24%) OpenLDAP
4 2 (0.24%) WebEx
5 1 (0.12%) 5G
5 1 (0.12%) Cisco IOS
5 1 (0.12%) Cisco Nexus
5 1 (0.12%) MPLS
5 1 (0.12%) Network Security
5 1 (0.12%) NGFW
5 1 (0.12%) SMS
5 1 (0.12%) SNMP
5 1 (0.12%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (6.83%) PostgreSQL
1 56 (6.83%) SQL Server
2 44 (5.37%) NoSQL
3 36 (4.39%) MongoDB
4 34 (4.15%) Data Warehouse
5 29 (3.54%) Power BI
6 28 (3.41%) Relational Database
7 26 (3.17%) DynamoDB
8 22 (2.68%) Tableau
9 20 (2.44%) Big Data
10 19 (2.32%) Amazon Athena
11 17 (2.07%) BigQuery
11 17 (2.07%) Data Lake
12 15 (1.83%) Amazon Redshift
13 14 (1.71%) Amazon RDS
13 14 (1.71%) Metadata
14 11 (1.34%) Amazon Aurora
14 11 (1.34%) Oracle Database
14 11 (1.34%) Star Schema
15 9 (1.10%) Flink
Development Applications
1 131 (15.98%) JIRA
2 124 (15.12%) Git
3 108 (13.17%) Jenkins
3 108 (13.17%) Selenium
4 80 (9.76%) GitLab
5 54 (6.59%) Cucumber
6 52 (6.34%) Cypress.io
7 50 (6.10%) Postman
8 38 (4.63%) JMeter
8 38 (4.63%) REST Assured
9 29 (3.54%) JUnit
10 24 (2.93%) SpecFlow
11 19 (2.32%) MLflow
12 14 (1.71%) Appium
12 14 (1.71%) Mockito
13 13 (1.59%) WebDriver
14 12 (1.46%) Gradle
14 12 (1.46%) Maven
14 12 (1.46%) Zephyr
15 11 (1.34%) TestRail
General
1 222 (27.07%) Finance
2 211 (25.73%) Social Skills
3 111 (13.54%) Banking
4 107 (13.05%) Analytical Skills
5 106 (12.93%) Public Sector
6 27 (3.29%) Front Office
7 26 (3.17%) Investment Banking
8 20 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 15 (1.83%) Legal
10 13 (1.59%) Documentation Skills
11 11 (1.34%) Financial Institution
11 11 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
12 10 (1.22%) Telecoms
13 9 (1.10%) Back Office
13 9 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
14 7 (0.85%) Billing
14 7 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
14 7 (0.85%) Publishing
14 7 (0.85%) Retail
15 4 (0.49%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 176 (21.46%) Developer
2 151 (18.41%) Senior
3 91 (11.10%) Tester
4 85 (10.37%) Lead
5 55 (6.71%) Test Engineer
6 51 (6.22%) Analyst
6 51 (6.22%) QA Engineer
7 50 (6.10%) Automation Tester
8 42 (5.12%) Data Engineer
9 40 (4.88%) DevOps Engineer
10 39 (4.76%) Architect
10 39 (4.76%) Automation Engineer
11 38 (4.63%) Senior Developer
12 31 (3.78%) Java Developer
13 29 (3.54%) Software Engineer
13 29 (3.54%) Test Automation Engineer
14 27 (3.29%) QA Automation Engineer
14 27 (3.29%) Test Leader
15 26 (3.17%) Full-Stack Developer
16 25 (3.05%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 103 (12.56%) Playwright
2 96 (11.71%) REST
3 88 (10.73%) React
4 81 (9.88%) RESTful
5 70 (8.54%) .NET
6 66 (8.05%) Kafka
7 61 (7.44%) Node.js
8 44 (5.37%) Spring
9 40 (4.88%) Spring Boot
10 39 (4.76%) HTML
11 38 (4.63%) CSS
12 29 (3.54%) OAuth
13 25 (3.05%) Web Services
14 24 (2.93%) pytest
15 21 (2.56%) Gherkin
16 19 (2.32%) .NET Core
16 19 (2.32%) Swagger
17 18 (2.20%) ASP.NET
17 18 (2.20%) Django
17 18 (2.20%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 104 (12.68%) Cloud Native
2 55 (6.71%) Product Ownership
3 54 (6.59%) Distributed Systems
4 37 (4.51%) Legacy Systems
5 29 (3.54%) Data Protection Act
6 22 (2.68%) Algorithms
7 19 (2.32%) Fixed Income
7 19 (2.32%) Greenfield Project
8 18 (2.20%) Virtual Team
9 17 (2.07%) Management Information System
9 17 (2.07%) Onboarding
9 17 (2.07%) Self-Motivation
10 15 (1.83%) Equities
10 15 (1.83%) Mobile App
11 14 (1.71%) Data Structures
12 13 (1.59%) NHS
13 11 (1.34%) Derivative
14 10 (1.22%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 9 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
15 9 (1.10%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 40 (4.88%) Linux
2 25 (3.05%) Windows
3 22 (2.68%) Android
4 17 (2.07%) Apple iOS
5 13 (1.59%) Unix
6 4 (0.49%) Solaris
6 4 (0.49%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.49%) Windows Server 2008
7 3 (0.37%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
7 3 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 455 (55.49%) CI/CD
2 327 (39.88%) Agile
3 285 (34.76%) DevOps
4 144 (17.56%) Problem-Solving
5 133 (16.22%) AI
6 127 (15.49%) Infrastructure as Code
7 126 (15.37%) Validation
8 122 (14.88%) Observability
8 122 (14.88%) Test Strategy
9 117 (14.27%) Containerisation
10 116 (14.15%) Continuous Improvement
11 108 (13.17%) Regression Testing
12 107 (13.05%) Microservices
13 101 (12.32%) User Acceptance Testing
14 97 (11.83%) Software Engineering
15 90 (10.98%) Data Modelling
15 90 (10.98%) Software Testing
15 90 (10.98%) Test Scripting
16 83 (10.12%) Analytics
16 83 (10.12%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 259 (31.59%) Python
2 215 (26.22%) SQL
3 170 (20.73%) Java
4 127 (15.49%) TypeScript
5 126 (15.37%) JavaScript
6 109 (13.29%) C#
7 33 (4.02%) PowerShell
8 20 (2.44%) Bash
9 19 (2.32%) Apex Code
10 18 (2.20%) Kotlin
11 17 (2.07%) PL/SQL
12 16 (1.95%) Ruby
13 15 (1.83%) Bicep
14 12 (1.46%) Scala
15 11 (1.34%) C++
16 8 (0.98%) Go
17 7 (0.85%) Rust
17 7 (0.85%) T-SQL
18 6 (0.73%) Swift
19 5 (0.61%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 179 (21.83%) Security Cleared
2 153 (18.66%) SC Cleared
3 43 (5.24%) Degree
4 29 (3.54%) ISTQB
5 24 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
6 23 (2.80%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (1.46%) DV Cleared
8 9 (1.10%) DBS Check
9 8 (0.98%) Master's Degree
10 5 (0.61%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 4 (0.49%) AWS Certification
11 4 (0.49%) Azure Certification
12 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
13 2 (0.24%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (0.24%) CISSP
13 2 (0.24%) ISEB
13 2 (0.24%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 2 (0.24%) PhD
13 2 (0.24%) TOGAF Certification
14 1 (0.12%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 200 (24.39%) QA
2 56 (6.83%) Data Quality
3 49 (5.98%) Accessibility
4 24 (2.93%) GDPR
5 20 (2.44%) WCAG
6 7 (0.85%) NIST
7 6 (0.73%) ISO 20022
8 5 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.61%) SLA
9 4 (0.49%) HL7
9 4 (0.49%) MiFID
9 4 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 3 (0.37%) NCSC
10 3 (0.37%) Software Quality Assurance
11 2 (0.24%) GRC
12 1 (0.12%) EMIR
12 1 (0.12%) GMP
12 1 (0.12%) HIPAA
12 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 138 (16.83%) Docker
2 6 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.49%) Oracle RAC
4 4 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.37%) Active Directory
5 3 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.12%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.12%) Squid
6 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 137 (16.71%) Kubernetes
2 98 (11.95%) Terraform
3 40 (4.88%) Grafana
4 36 (4.39%) Prometheus
5 22 (2.68%) Ansible
6 10 (1.22%) HP ALM
7 9 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.98%) Kibana
9 4 (0.49%) Oracle RMAN
9 4 (0.49%) Puppet
10 2 (0.24%) Amdocs OSS
10 2 (0.24%) Kustomize
10 2 (0.24%) Packer
10 2 (0.24%) Progress Chef
11 1 (0.12%) Control-M
11 1 (0.12%) HP Quality Center
11 1 (0.12%) Istio
11 1 (0.12%) linkerd
Vendors
1 79 (9.63%) Microsoft
2 55 (6.71%) Oracle
3 51 (6.22%) Salesforce
4 42 (5.12%) Databricks
5 20 (2.44%) ServiceNow
6 17 (2.07%) UiPath
7 16 (1.95%) Google
8 15 (1.83%) Splunk
9 13 (1.59%) OpenAI
10 11 (1.34%) IBM
11 10 (1.22%) HP
11 10 (1.22%) MuleSoft
12 9 (1.10%) Guidewire
12 9 (1.10%) SAP
13 8 (0.98%) Apple
13 8 (0.98%) Automation Anywhere
13 8 (0.98%) Dynatrace
13 8 (0.98%) OpenLink
14 7 (0.85%) Workday
15 6 (0.73%) Red Hat