QA Automation Job Trends in England

Quality Assurance (QA) Automation
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in England requiring QA Automation skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 573 621 604
Rank change year-on-year +48 -17 +63
Permanent jobs citing QA Automation 44 58 76
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.083% 0.12% 0.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.10% 0.13% 0.17%
Number of salaries quoted 38 28 64
10th Percentile £49,250 £46,250 £42,500
25th Percentile £56,250 £53,438 £47,188
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £61,500 £63,750 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.53% +6.25% +9.09%
75th Percentile £64,750 £75,625 £65,000
90th Percentile £69,612 £80,000 £77,625
UK median annual salary £61,500 £63,750 £58,750
% change year-on-year -3.53% +8.51% +4.91%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

QA Automation falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in England.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 42,913 43,729 44,234
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 81.21% 90.84% 89.77%
Number of salaries quoted 25,804 21,413 34,236
10th Percentile £28,742 £35,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £37,500 £46,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £76,250 £81,250 £80,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £100,000 £98,750
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

QA Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

QA Automation job vacancy trend in England

QA Automation
Salary Trend in England

Salary distribution trend for jobs in England citing QA Automation.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in England citing QA Automation

QA Automation
Salary Histogram in England

Salary distribution for jobs citing QA Automation in England over the 6 months to 14 January 2026.

Salary histogram for QA Automation in England

QA Automation
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 within the England region over the 6 months to 14 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
London +20 13 £62,500 -16.67% 10
North of England - 10 £61,500 - 3
South East +42 8 £57,500 +21.05% 17
Midlands +23 6 £61,500 +2.50% 1
West Midlands +25 5 £61,500 -
North East - 4 £60,000 - 1
South West +12 3 £67,500 +8.00% 4
North West - 3 £61,500 - 1
Yorkshire - 3 £61,500 - 1
East of England +25 1 £50,000 +42.86% 6
East Midlands -10 1 - - 1
QA Automation
UK

QA Automation
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:

Application Platforms
1 1 (2.27%) SharePoint
Cloud Services
1 8 (18.18%) Azure
1 8 (18.18%) SaaS
2 5 (11.36%) Azure DevOps
3 3 (6.82%) AWS
3 3 (6.82%) GitHub
4 1 (2.27%) Copilot Studio
4 1 (2.27%) Dynamics 365
4 1 (2.27%) Microsoft 365
4 1 (2.27%) Microsoft Copilot
4 1 (2.27%) Power Automate
4 1 (2.27%) Power Platform
4 1 (2.27%) PowerApps
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (11.36%) Relational Database
2 3 (6.82%) SQL Server
3 2 (4.55%) CockroachDB
4 1 (2.27%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 20 (45.45%) Selenium
2 12 (27.27%) Cucumber
3 8 (18.18%) Cypress.io
3 8 (18.18%) Postman
4 7 (15.91%) SoapUI
5 4 (9.09%) SpecFlow
5 4 (9.09%) Visual Studio
6 3 (6.82%) Appium
6 3 (6.82%) Git
6 3 (6.82%) Jenkins
6 3 (6.82%) JIRA
6 3 (6.82%) JMeter
6 3 (6.82%) JUnit
6 3 (6.82%) REST Assured
6 3 (6.82%) TestNG
7 2 (4.55%) GitLab
8 1 (2.27%) Katalon Studio
General
1 14 (31.82%) Finance
2 4 (9.09%) Social Skills
3 2 (4.55%) Games
3 2 (4.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 38 (86.36%) QA Engineer
2 35 (79.55%) QA Automation Engineer
3 30 (68.18%) Automation Engineer
4 13 (29.55%) Lead
4 13 (29.55%) QA Leader
5 6 (13.64%) Tester
6 5 (11.36%) Automation Tester
6 5 (11.36%) JavaScript Engineer
7 3 (6.82%) Python Engineer
7 3 (6.82%) QA Test Engineer
7 3 (6.82%) QA Tester
7 3 (6.82%) Senior
7 3 (6.82%) Software Tester
7 3 (6.82%) Test Automation Engineer
7 3 (6.82%) Test Engineer
8 2 (4.55%) QA Automation Tester
8 2 (4.55%) Senior QA Engineer
9 1 (2.27%) Microsoft Engineer
9 1 (2.27%) Platform Engineer
9 1 (2.27%) Senior Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (15.91%) pytest
2 6 (13.64%) SOAP
3 5 (11.36%) Playwright
4 3 (6.82%) .NET
4 3 (6.82%) ASP.NET
5 2 (4.55%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (2.27%) Kafka
6 1 (2.27%) Node.js
6 1 (2.27%) RabbitMQ
6 1 (2.27%) REST
6 1 (2.27%) SPFx
6 1 (2.27%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 8 (18.18%) Product Ownership
2 2 (4.55%) Greenfield Project
3 1 (2.27%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 1 (2.27%) Hedge funds
3 1 (2.27%) Low-Code
3 1 (2.27%) Mobile App
3 1 (2.27%) Onboarding
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (95.45%) Test Automation
2 16 (36.36%) API Testing
3 15 (34.09%) Fintech
4 14 (31.82%) Mentoring
5 9 (20.45%) AI
5 9 (20.45%) Test Strategy
6 8 (18.18%) Coaching
6 8 (18.18%) DevOps
6 8 (18.18%) Performance Testing
7 7 (15.91%) BDD
7 7 (15.91%) Black-Box Testing
7 7 (15.91%) Test Planning
7 7 (15.91%) White-Box Testing
8 6 (13.64%) Agile
8 6 (13.64%) CI/CD
8 6 (13.64%) Full-Stack Development
8 6 (13.64%) People Management
8 6 (13.64%) Software Testing
8 6 (13.64%) Technical Leadership
9 5 (11.36%) Batch Processing
Programming Languages
1 20 (45.45%) C#
1 20 (45.45%) SQL
2 15 (34.09%) Python
3 14 (31.82%) Java
4 13 (29.55%) JavaScript
5 6 (13.64%) PHP
6 5 (11.36%) Go
7 4 (9.09%) TypeScript
8 1 (2.27%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 4 (9.09%) Degree
2 2 (4.55%) ISTQB
2 2 (4.55%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (100.00%) QA
2 1 (2.27%) Accessibility
Vendors
1 2 (4.55%) Oracle
1 2 (4.55%) Splunk
2 1 (2.27%) Microsoft