QA Automation Engineer Job Trends in England

Automation QA Engineer
UK > England

The median Automation QA Engineer salary in England is £61,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 1 January 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 561 634 608
Rank change year-on-year +73 -26 +194
Permanent jobs requiring a QA Automation Engineer 39 42 58
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.075% 0.085% 0.13%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.083% 0.091% 0.13%
Number of salaries quoted 35 25 55
10th Percentile £50,500 £46,250 £36,750
25th Percentile £55,625 £47,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £61,500 £62,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% +19.05% -4.55%
75th Percentile £64,750 £75,000 £60,625
90th Percentile £65,750 £79,000 £67,500
UK median annual salary £61,500 £62,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year -1.60% +19.05% -4.55%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in England. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in England with a recognized job title 47,162 46,092 43,112
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.67% 92.95% 95.07%
Number of salaries quoted 29,558 24,542 33,827
10th Percentile £28,500 £33,205 £31,250
25th Percentile £36,250 £45,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -1.64%
75th Percentile £75,000 £79,000 £79,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £97,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -

QA Automation Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'QA Automation Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in England.

QA Automation Engineer job vacancy trend in England

QA Automation Engineer
Salary Trend in England

Salary distribution trend for QA Automation Engineer job vacancies in England.

Salary distribution trend for QA Automation Engineer job vacancies in England

QA Automation Engineer
Salary Histogram in England

Salary distribution for jobs citing QA Automation Engineer in England over the 6 months to 1 January 2026.

Salary histogram for QA Automation Engineer in England

QA Automation Engineer
Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing QA Automation Engineer within the England region over the 6 months to 1 January 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
North of England +35 11 £60,750 -
Midlands +27 8 £61,500 +23.00%
London +12 8 £61,250 -14.04% 15
South East +25 7 £57,500 +21.05% 5
West Midlands +24 7 £61,500 -
North East +12 4 £60,000 -
Yorkshire - 4 £61,500 -
North West - 3 £61,500 -
South West +7 2 - - 3
East of England +23 1 £50,000 +42.86%
East Midlands -7 1 - -
QA Automation Engineer
UK

QA Automation Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 1 January 2026, QA Automation Engineer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads across the England region featuring QA Automation Engineer in the job title.

1 39 (100.00%) QA
2 38 (97.44%) Test Automation
3 35 (89.74%) QA Automation
4 18 (46.15%) API Testing
5 17 (43.59%) C#
6 16 (41.03%) Mentoring
6 16 (41.03%) Selenium
6 16 (41.03%) SQL
7 14 (35.90%) Fintech
8 13 (33.33%) JavaScript
9 12 (30.77%) Cucumber
10 11 (28.21%) Postman
10 11 (28.21%) Python
10 11 (28.21%) SaaS
11 9 (23.08%) Coaching
11 9 (23.08%) Java
12 8 (20.51%) pytest
12 8 (20.51%) SoapUI
13 7 (17.95%) AI
13 7 (17.95%) Cypress.io
13 7 (17.95%) SOAP
13 7 (17.95%) Test Strategy
14 6 (15.38%) Black-Box Testing
14 6 (15.38%) CI/CD
14 6 (15.38%) Go
14 6 (15.38%) People Management
14 6 (15.38%) PHP
14 6 (15.38%) Playwright
14 6 (15.38%) Relational Database
14 6 (15.38%) Technical Leadership

QA Automation Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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:

Cloud Services
1 11 (28.21%) SaaS
2 4 (10.26%) Azure
3 2 (5.13%) AWS
3 2 (5.13%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (2.56%) SAP Commerce Cloud
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (15.38%) Relational Database
2 2 (5.13%) CockroachDB
Development Applications
1 16 (41.03%) Selenium
2 12 (30.77%) Cucumber
3 11 (28.21%) Postman
4 8 (20.51%) SoapUI
5 7 (17.95%) Cypress.io
6 4 (10.26%) Appium
7 3 (7.69%) Git
7 3 (7.69%) Jenkins
7 3 (7.69%) JIRA
7 3 (7.69%) JMeter
7 3 (7.69%) JUnit
7 3 (7.69%) REST Assured
7 3 (7.69%) SpecFlow
7 3 (7.69%) TestNG
8 2 (5.13%) GitLab
9 1 (2.56%) Katalon Studio
9 1 (2.56%) NUnit
9 1 (2.56%) Visual Studio
General
1 13 (33.33%) Finance
2 4 (10.26%) Social Skills
3 2 (5.13%) Games
4 1 (2.56%) Financial Institution
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (20.51%) pytest
2 7 (17.95%) SOAP
3 6 (15.38%) Playwright
4 2 (5.13%) .NET
4 2 (5.13%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (2.56%) Kafka
5 1 (2.56%) RabbitMQ
5 1 (2.56%) REST
5 1 (2.56%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 11 (28.21%) Product Ownership
2 1 (2.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 1 (2.56%) Hedge funds
2 1 (2.56%) Onboarding
Processes & Methodologies
1 38 (97.44%) Test Automation
2 35 (89.74%) QA Automation
3 18 (46.15%) API Testing
4 16 (41.03%) Mentoring
5 14 (35.90%) Fintech
6 9 (23.08%) Coaching
7 7 (17.95%) AI
7 7 (17.95%) Test Strategy
8 6 (15.38%) Black-Box Testing
8 6 (15.38%) CI/CD
8 6 (15.38%) People Management
8 6 (15.38%) Technical Leadership
8 6 (15.38%) Test Planning
8 6 (15.38%) White-Box Testing
9 5 (12.82%) Agile
9 5 (12.82%) Batch Processing
9 5 (12.82%) Full-Stack Development
9 5 (12.82%) Performance Testing
10 4 (10.26%) BDD
10 4 (10.26%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 17 (43.59%) C#
2 16 (41.03%) SQL
3 13 (33.33%) JavaScript
4 11 (28.21%) Python
5 9 (23.08%) Java
6 6 (15.38%) Go
6 6 (15.38%) PHP
7 5 (12.82%) TypeScript
8 1 (2.56%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1 (2.56%) Degree
1 1 (2.56%) ISTQB
1 1 (2.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (100.00%) QA
2 1 (2.56%) Accessibility
Vendors
1 2 (5.13%) Oracle
1 2 (5.13%) Splunk