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

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 56 46
Rank change year-on-year +6 -10 +5
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 874 614 747
As % of all contract jobs in London 4.33% 4.53% 4.61%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.86% 4.90% 5.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 595 418 507
10th Percentile £350 £342 £361
25th Percentile £425 £400 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.20% -2.62% -8.70%
75th Percentile £616 £688 £675
90th Percentile £712 £775 £775
England median daily rate £475 £498 £525
% change year-on-year -4.52% -5.24% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 4 5
10th Percentile £52.35 £37.25 £51.00
25th Percentile £67.41 £40.63 £52.50
Median hourly rate £95.00 £45.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +111.11% -18.18% -38.89%
75th Percentile £97.50 £55.63 £71.88
90th Percentile - £70.25 -
England median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £56.25
% change year-on-year +35.00% -11.11% -13.79%

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 18,001 12,519 14,410
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 89.11% 92.32% 88.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,856 8,363 10,133
10th Percentile £363 £325 £350
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £543 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.38% -1.36% -4.35%
75th Percentile £662 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £788 £800
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 297 250 198
10th Percentile £17.60 £16.50 £17.01
25th Percentile £19.85 £24.66 £22.00
Median hourly rate £35.71 £30.00 £35.25
Median % change year-on-year +19.03% -14.89% -14.11%
75th Percentile £57.00 £49.31 £54.69
90th Percentile £81.25 £63.03 £71.44
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% -

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 7 August 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 7 August 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 7 August 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 +8 114 £550 +10.00% 68
South London -7 20 £535 +7.00% 6
East London +5 9 £545 +36.25% 10
West London -18 7 £525 +32.91% 9
North London -2 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 61 (6.98%) Confluence
2 36 (4.12%) Apache Airflow
3 24 (2.75%) Apache Spark
4 13 (1.49%) Apache
4 13 (1.49%) CMS
5 10 (1.14%) SharePoint
6 6 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
7 4 (0.46%) nginx
7 4 (0.46%) Tomcat
7 4 (0.46%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.34%) Camunda
8 3 (0.34%) Kentico
9 2 (0.23%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.23%) Appian
9 2 (0.23%) Mule
9 2 (0.23%) SAS
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.11%) ColdFusion
10 1 (0.11%) Ethereum
10 1 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 16 (1.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.46%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.34%) Trello
7 2 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.11%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 15 (1.72%) Aladdin
2 12 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.92%) Findur
4 6 (0.69%) Oracle EBS
4 6 (0.69%) Shopify
5 5 (0.57%) BambooHR
6 4 (0.46%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.34%) Distributed Ledger
8 2 (0.23%) Infor CloudSuite
8 2 (0.23%) Infor LN
8 2 (0.23%) Infor M3
8 2 (0.23%) Loan IQ
8 2 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
9 1 (0.11%) IntelliMatch
9 1 (0.11%) Misys Equation
9 1 (0.11%) Misys Midas
9 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
9 1 (0.11%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 308 (35.24%) Azure
2 273 (31.24%) AWS
3 192 (21.97%) GitHub
4 147 (16.82%) Azure DevOps
5 121 (13.84%) GitHub Actions
6 76 (8.70%) Serverless
7 70 (8.01%) GCP
8 68 (7.78%) Power Platform
9 57 (6.52%) AWS Lambda
10 53 (6.06%) Amazon S3
11 47 (5.38%) dbt
12 37 (4.23%) Snowflake
13 32 (3.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 32 (3.66%) Amazon ECS
14 28 (3.20%) GitHub Copilot
15 26 (2.97%) Amazon EC2
16 24 (2.75%) Azure AKS
17 21 (2.40%) Azure Data Factory
18 19 (2.17%) AWS CloudFormation
18 19 (2.17%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.92%) HTTP
2 7 (0.80%) Network Security
3 6 (0.69%) Firewall
3 6 (0.69%) TCP/IP
3 6 (0.69%) WAN
4 5 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.46%) DHCP
5 4 (0.46%) DNS
5 4 (0.46%) LAN
6 3 (0.34%) FTP
6 3 (0.34%) OpenLDAP
6 3 (0.34%) SMS
7 2 (0.23%) Bluetooth
7 2 (0.23%) Multicast
7 2 (0.23%) NaaS
7 2 (0.23%) SSL
8 1 (0.11%) 5G
8 1 (0.11%) Ethernet
8 1 (0.11%) NGFW
8 1 (0.11%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (6.75%) PostgreSQL
2 57 (6.52%) Power BI
3 53 (6.06%) Data Warehouse
4 49 (5.61%) NoSQL
5 47 (5.38%) SQL Server
6 41 (4.69%) MongoDB
7 31 (3.55%) Relational Database
8 30 (3.43%) DynamoDB
9 24 (2.75%) Amazon Athena
10 23 (2.63%) Amazon Redshift
11 22 (2.52%) Data Lake
12 19 (2.17%) Amazon RDS
12 19 (2.17%) Big Data
13 16 (1.83%) BigQuery
13 16 (1.83%) Tableau
14 14 (1.60%) Metadata
15 12 (1.37%) MySQL
16 11 (1.26%) Elasticsearch
16 11 (1.26%) Redis
17 8 (0.92%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 153 (17.51%) Git
2 139 (15.90%) Jenkins
3 132 (15.10%) JIRA
4 103 (11.78%) GitLab
5 101 (11.56%) Selenium
6 56 (6.41%) Cypress.io
7 47 (5.38%) Cucumber
8 41 (4.69%) JUnit
8 41 (4.69%) REST Assured
9 40 (4.58%) JMeter
10 37 (4.23%) Postman
11 20 (2.29%) Maven
12 19 (2.17%) Gradle
13 18 (2.06%) Gatling
13 18 (2.06%) Zephyr
14 17 (1.95%) Appium
14 17 (1.95%) Bitbucket
15 15 (1.72%) Mockito
16 14 (1.60%) SpecFlow
17 13 (1.49%) WebDriver
General
1 255 (29.18%) Finance
2 230 (26.32%) Social Skills
3 120 (13.73%) Analytical Skills
4 118 (13.50%) Banking
5 94 (10.76%) Public Sector
6 25 (2.86%) Front Office
7 23 (2.63%) Investment Banking
8 20 (2.29%) Financial Institution
8 20 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 17 (1.95%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (1.72%) Telecoms
11 14 (1.60%) Legal
12 13 (1.49%) Back Office
13 12 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
14 9 (1.03%) Marketing
14 9 (1.03%) Retail
15 6 (0.69%) Law
15 6 (0.69%) Local Government
15 6 (0.69%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.57%) Games
Job Titles
1 188 (21.51%) Developer
2 153 (17.51%) Senior
3 92 (10.53%) Lead
4 70 (8.01%) Tester
5 56 (6.41%) Data Engineer
5 56 (6.41%) Test Engineer
6 51 (5.84%) QA Engineer
7 50 (5.72%) DevOps Engineer
8 48 (5.49%) Java Developer
9 46 (5.26%) Architect
10 45 (5.15%) Analyst
11 43 (4.92%) Software Engineer
12 38 (4.35%) Full-Stack Developer
13 37 (4.23%) Senior Developer
14 36 (4.12%) Automation Engineer
15 31 (3.55%) Test Automation Engineer
15 31 (3.55%) Test Leader
16 29 (3.32%) Automation Tester
17 27 (3.09%) Test Manager
18 24 (2.75%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 120 (13.73%) REST
2 112 (12.81%) Playwright
3 100 (11.44%) React
4 93 (10.64%) RESTful
5 88 (10.07%) Kafka
6 68 (7.78%) Spring
7 67 (7.67%) .NET
8 57 (6.52%) Spring Boot
9 55 (6.29%) Node.js
10 48 (5.49%) CSS
11 45 (5.15%) HTML
12 28 (3.20%) PySpark
13 26 (2.97%) HTML5
14 25 (2.86%) AngularJS
15 24 (2.75%) CSS3
15 24 (2.75%) OAuth
16 22 (2.52%) Jest
16 22 (2.52%) Redux
17 20 (2.29%) JSON
18 19 (2.17%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 144 (16.48%) Cloud Native
2 81 (9.27%) Distributed Systems
3 62 (7.09%) Product Ownership
4 28 (3.20%) Data Protection Act
4 28 (3.20%) Onboarding
5 24 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
6 22 (2.52%) AI Agents
6 22 (2.52%) Self-Motivation
7 18 (2.06%) Enterprise Software
7 18 (2.06%) Fixed Income
8 17 (1.95%) Virtual Team
9 14 (1.60%) Algorithms
10 13 (1.49%) Data Structures
10 13 (1.49%) Greenfield Project
10 13 (1.49%) Mobile App
11 12 (1.37%) Management Information System
12 11 (1.26%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 10 (1.14%) Equities
14 9 (1.03%) NHS
14 9 (1.03%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 44 (5.03%) Linux
2 31 (3.55%) Windows
3 25 (2.86%) Unix
4 17 (1.95%) Android
5 16 (1.83%) Apple iOS
6 10 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 8 (0.92%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.46%) Solaris
8 4 (0.46%) Windows Server 2008
9 3 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.23%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.23%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.11%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 559 (63.96%) CI/CD
2 367 (41.99%) Agile
3 353 (40.39%) DevOps
4 178 (20.37%) AI
5 173 (19.79%) Infrastructure as Code
6 160 (18.31%) Microservices
7 151 (17.28%) Problem-Solving
8 146 (16.70%) Continuous Improvement
9 144 (16.48%) Software Engineering
10 142 (16.25%) Validation
11 141 (16.13%) Containerisation
12 137 (15.68%) Test Strategy
13 136 (15.56%) Observability
14 109 (12.47%) Regression Testing
15 105 (12.01%) Scrum
15 105 (12.01%) TDD
16 101 (11.56%) Full-Stack Development
17 98 (11.21%) User Acceptance Testing
18 93 (10.64%) Stakeholder Management
19 91 (10.41%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 274 (31.35%) Python
2 219 (25.06%) SQL
3 217 (24.83%) Java
4 130 (14.87%) JavaScript
5 125 (14.30%) TypeScript
6 93 (10.64%) C#
7 41 (4.69%) PowerShell
8 27 (3.09%) Bash
9 23 (2.63%) Kotlin
10 22 (2.52%) Bicep
11 18 (2.06%) Ruby
12 15 (1.72%) Scala
13 14 (1.60%) Apex Code
14 12 (1.37%) Go
14 12 (1.37%) PL/SQL
15 10 (1.14%) C++
16 7 (0.80%) Shell Script
17 6 (0.69%) Groovy
17 6 (0.69%) Swift
17 6 (0.69%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 214 (24.49%) Security Cleared
2 187 (21.40%) SC Cleared
3 53 (6.06%) Degree
4 33 (3.78%) Computer Science Degree
5 22 (2.52%) ISTQB
6 18 (2.06%) AWS Certification
6 18 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
6 18 (2.06%) DV Cleared
7 10 (1.14%) Azure Certification
8 7 (0.80%) DBS Check
9 6 (0.69%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 6 (0.69%) Master's Degree
10 5 (0.57%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 4 (0.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 4 (0.46%) CISSP
12 3 (0.34%) PhD
12 3 (0.34%) TOGAF Certification
13 2 (0.23%) Cisco Certification
13 2 (0.23%) ISEB
13 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 237 (27.12%) QA
2 71 (8.12%) Data Quality
3 53 (6.06%) Accessibility
4 24 (2.75%) GDPR
5 23 (2.63%) WCAG
6 9 (1.03%) SLA
7 8 (0.92%) ISO 20022
8 7 (0.80%) NIST
9 6 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 3 (0.34%) EU AI Act
10 3 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 3 (0.34%) MiFID
10 3 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
11 2 (0.23%) GRC
11 2 (0.23%) HL7
11 2 (0.23%) ISO 9001
11 2 (0.23%) NCSC
12 1 (0.11%) GxP
12 1 (0.11%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 155 (17.73%) Docker
2 11 (1.26%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.80%) Active Directory
4 5 (0.57%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.46%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.11%) Firmware
7 1 (0.11%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 156 (17.85%) Kubernetes
2 138 (15.79%) Terraform
3 47 (5.38%) Grafana
4 41 (4.69%) Prometheus
5 35 (4.00%) Ansible
6 10 (1.14%) Progress Chef
6 10 (1.14%) Puppet
7 8 (0.92%) Kibana
8 7 (0.80%) HP ALM
8 7 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
9 4 (0.46%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (0.46%) Oracle RMAN
9 4 (0.46%) Packer
10 3 (0.34%) Control-M
10 3 (0.34%) Kustomize
11 2 (0.23%) Amdocs OSS
11 2 (0.23%) Istio
12 1 (0.11%) Argo
12 1 (0.11%) linkerd
12 1 (0.11%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 91 (10.41%) Microsoft
2 52 (5.95%) Salesforce
3 48 (5.49%) Oracle
4 35 (4.00%) Databricks
5 27 (3.09%) Google
6 23 (2.63%) ServiceNow
7 17 (1.95%) IBM
8 16 (1.83%) Splunk
8 16 (1.83%) UiPath
9 15 (1.72%) Informatica
10 11 (1.26%) HP
11 10 (1.14%) Dynatrace
11 10 (1.14%) OpenAI
11 10 (1.14%) VMware
12 8 (0.92%) OpenLink
12 8 (0.92%) Red Hat
12 8 (0.92%) SAP
13 7 (0.80%) Charles River
13 7 (0.80%) Guidewire
14 6 (0.69%) MuleSoft