Test Engineer Job Trends in England

Test Engineer
UK > England

The median Test Engineer salary in England is £48,750 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 31 March 2026.

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

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 260 377 525
Rank change year-on-year +117 +148 -104
Permanent jobs requiring a Test Engineer 519 250 296
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.74% 0.68% 0.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.80% 0.76% 0.40%
Number of salaries quoted 364 75 166
10th Percentile £30,750 £31,750 £32,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £41,125 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £48,750 £52,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% +16.67% -16.67%
75th Percentile £60,438 £61,250 £52,500
90th Percentile £75,000 £67,500 £68,617
UK median annual salary £47,500 £52,500 £45,000
% change year-on-year -9.52% +16.67% -14.29%

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 64,550 32,940 73,733
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.14% 89.96% 94.39%
Number of salaries quoted 42,395 21,184 57,558
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,787 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -8.71%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £92,159
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -8.33%

Test Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Test Engineer job vacancy trend in England

Test Engineer
Salary Trend in England

Salary distribution trend for Test Engineer job vacancies in England.

Salary distribution trend for Test Engineer job vacancies in England

Test Engineer
Salary Histogram in England

Salary distribution for jobs citing Test Engineer in England over the 6 months to 31 March 2026.

Salary histogram for Test Engineer in England

Test 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 Test Engineer within the England region over the 6 months to 31 March 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
East of England +24 118 £45,000 -18.18% 23
North of England +38 110 £45,000 -5.26% 35
South East -21 95 £45,000 -18.18% 35
South West +6 67 £55,000 +59.42% 19
North West +37 66 £42,500 -10.53% 23
Midlands -3 62 £50,000 -9.09% 14
London +8 54 £57,500 +19.79% 19
West Midlands +25 41 £55,000 -4.35% 11
North East - 28 £47,500 - 6
East Midlands -56 21 £50,000 +17.65% 3
Yorkshire -31 16 £40,000 -19.80% 6
Test Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 31 March 2026, Test 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 Test Engineer in the job title.

1 150 (28.90%) Test Automation
2 64 (12.33%) Validation
3 59 (11.37%) Agile
4 51 (9.83%) Python
5 49 (9.44%) Software Testing
6 45 (8.67%) Security Cleared
7 44 (8.48%) CI/CD
8 43 (8.29%) Verification and Validation
9 42 (8.09%) QA
10 41 (7.90%) Test Scripting
11 40 (7.71%) Problem-Solving
12 37 (7.13%) Degree
12 37 (7.13%) Test Strategy
13 36 (6.94%) Playwright
14 34 (6.55%) AWS
15 32 (6.17%) Selenium
16 31 (5.97%) Continuous Improvement
16 31 (5.97%) Performance Testing
17 30 (5.78%) Azure
17 30 (5.78%) Java
18 27 (5.20%) JavaScript
19 26 (5.01%) LabVIEW
20 25 (4.82%) JMeter
21 24 (4.62%) API Testing
21 24 (4.62%) DevOps
22 22 (4.24%) Cypress.io
22 22 (4.24%) Git
23 21 (4.05%) Mentoring
24 20 (3.85%) JIRA
24 20 (3.85%) Manual Testing

Test 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:

Application Platforms
1 7 (1.35%) Confluence
2 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 12 (2.31%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.77%) Fusion 360
Business Applications
1 2 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.19%) Endur
2 1 (0.19%) Findur
Cloud Services
1 34 (6.55%) AWS
2 30 (5.78%) Azure
3 15 (2.89%) GitHub
4 11 (2.12%) Azure DevOps
5 6 (1.16%) SaaS
6 5 (0.96%) Azure Pipelines
7 4 (0.77%) GCP
8 3 (0.58%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (0.39%) AWS CodePipeline
9 2 (0.39%) BrowserStack
9 2 (0.39%) OpenShift
9 2 (0.39%) Power Platform
10 1 (0.19%) Amazon S3
10 1 (0.19%) Microsoft 365
10 1 (0.19%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.73%) SD-WAN
1 9 (1.73%) WAN
2 8 (1.54%) 5G
3 7 (1.35%) HTTP
4 2 (0.39%) Wireless
5 1 (0.19%) Broadband
5 1 (0.19%) Cisco IOS
5 1 (0.19%) DHCP
5 1 (0.19%) DNS
5 1 (0.19%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.19%) FTP
5 1 (0.19%) SNMP
5 1 (0.19%) Spanning Tree
5 1 (0.19%) SSH
5 1 (0.19%) TACACS
5 1 (0.19%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.19%) VoIP
5 1 (0.19%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.54%) Elasticsearch
2 4 (0.77%) Neo4j
3 2 (0.39%) InfluxDB
3 2 (0.39%) Relational Database
3 2 (0.39%) Tableau
4 1 (0.19%) MongoDB
4 1 (0.19%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 32 (6.17%) Selenium
2 26 (5.01%) LabVIEW
3 25 (4.82%) JMeter
4 22 (4.24%) Cypress.io
4 22 (4.24%) Git
5 20 (3.85%) JIRA
6 16 (3.08%) Jenkins
7 15 (2.89%) REST Assured
8 14 (2.70%) Cucumber
8 14 (2.70%) Gatling
8 14 (2.70%) Postman
9 12 (2.31%) LoadRunner
10 10 (1.93%) GitLab
11 9 (1.73%) SpecFlow
12 5 (0.96%) Subversion
12 5 (0.96%) WebDriver
13 4 (0.77%) NUnit
13 4 (0.77%) SonarQube
14 3 (0.58%) Robot Framework
14 3 (0.58%) TestRail
General
1 96 (18.50%) Manufacturing
2 84 (16.18%) Electronics
3 36 (6.94%) Social Skills
4 27 (5.20%) Aerospace
5 22 (4.24%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (4.24%) Public Sector
6 18 (3.47%) Aviation
7 14 (2.70%) Finance
8 13 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (1.73%) Automotive
9 9 (1.73%) Organisational Skills
9 9 (1.73%) Presentation Skills
10 7 (1.35%) Military
11 6 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
11 6 (1.16%) Telecoms
12 5 (0.96%) Games
12 5 (0.96%) Social Housing
13 4 (0.77%) Health Technology
14 3 (0.58%) Retail
14 3 (0.58%) Wearables
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (6.94%) Playwright
2 20 (3.85%) pytest
3 8 (1.54%) .NET
4 6 (1.16%) REST
5 5 (0.96%) Gherkin
5 5 (0.96%) React
5 5 (0.96%) Web Services
6 4 (0.77%) AngularJS
6 4 (0.77%) MERN Stack
7 3 (0.58%) Elastic Stack
7 3 (0.58%) Kafka
7 3 (0.58%) Middleware
7 3 (0.58%) SOAP
8 2 (0.39%) GraphQL
8 2 (0.39%) HTML
8 2 (0.39%) Nightwatchjs
8 2 (0.39%) RESTful
8 2 (0.39%) YAML
9 1 (0.19%) .NET Framework
9 1 (0.19%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 12 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
1 12 (2.31%) Self-Motivation
2 9 (1.73%) Embedded Systems
2 9 (1.73%) Mobile App
3 8 (1.54%) Self-Driving Car
4 5 (0.96%) Acoustics
4 5 (0.96%) Analogue Electronics
4 5 (0.96%) Robotics
5 4 (0.77%) Life Science
6 3 (0.58%) GNSS
6 3 (0.58%) Product Ownership
6 3 (0.58%) Satnav
7 2 (0.39%) AI Agents
7 2 (0.39%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (0.39%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.19%) Cloud Native
8 1 (0.19%) Linux Command Line
8 1 (0.19%) Online Games
8 1 (0.19%) PKI
8 1 (0.19%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 17 (3.28%) Windows
2 11 (2.12%) Unix
3 8 (1.54%) Linux
4 4 (0.77%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.58%) Android
6 2 (0.39%) CentOS
7 1 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.19%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.19%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 150 (28.90%) Test Automation
2 64 (12.33%) Validation
3 59 (11.37%) Agile
4 49 (9.44%) Software Testing
5 44 (8.48%) CI/CD
6 43 (8.29%) Verification and Validation
7 41 (7.90%) Test Scripting
8 40 (7.71%) Problem-Solving
9 37 (7.13%) Test Strategy
10 31 (5.97%) Continuous Improvement
10 31 (5.97%) Performance Testing
11 24 (4.62%) API Testing
11 24 (4.62%) DevOps
12 21 (4.05%) Mentoring
13 20 (3.85%) Manual Testing
14 19 (3.66%) End-to-End Testing
15 18 (3.47%) Non-Functional Testing
16 17 (3.28%) BDD
17 16 (3.08%) Kalman Filter
18 15 (2.89%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 51 (9.83%) Python
2 30 (5.78%) Java
3 27 (5.20%) JavaScript
4 16 (3.08%) TypeScript
5 15 (2.89%) C#
6 14 (2.70%) SQL
7 12 (2.31%) MATLAB
8 5 (0.96%) Bash
8 5 (0.96%) C
9 3 (0.58%) PowerShell
10 2 (0.39%) Scala
10 2 (0.39%) VB
11 1 (0.19%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.19%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.19%) Swift
Qualifications
1 45 (8.67%) Security Cleared
2 37 (7.13%) Degree
3 20 (3.85%) SC Cleared
4 15 (2.89%) HND
5 12 (2.31%) DV Cleared
5 12 (2.31%) ISTQB
6 7 (1.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 6 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (0.96%) HNC
9 4 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (0.77%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 3 (0.58%) CCA
11 2 (0.39%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 2 (0.39%) Master's Degree
12 1 (0.19%) ISEB
12 1 (0.19%) MCSA
12 1 (0.19%) MCSE
12 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.19%) Numerate Degree
12 1 (0.19%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (8.09%) QA
2 18 (3.47%) Accessibility
3 6 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 17025
4 4 (0.77%) ISO 13485
5 2 (0.39%) Def Stans
5 2 (0.39%) IEC 61508
5 2 (0.39%) ISO 26262
5 2 (0.39%) ISO 9001
5 2 (0.39%) WCAG
6 1 (0.19%) COSHH
6 1 (0.19%) GDPR
System Software
1 15 (2.89%) Docker
2 4 (0.77%) Firmware
2 4 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.19%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 14 (2.70%) Kubernetes
2 9 (1.73%) Grafana
3 7 (1.35%) Terraform
4 6 (1.16%) Kibana
5 3 (0.58%) HP Fortify
5 3 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.39%) Ansible
6 2 (0.39%) Control-M
6 2 (0.39%) logstash
6 2 (0.39%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.39%) vCenter Server
7 1 (0.19%) Argo
7 1 (0.19%) Functional Safety
Vendors
1 7 (1.35%) EMC
2 6 (1.16%) Microsoft
3 5 (0.96%) Dynatrace
4 4 (0.77%) AppDynamics
4 4 (0.77%) IBM
4 4 (0.77%) VMware
5 3 (0.58%) Oracle
5 3 (0.58%) Red Hat
5 3 (0.58%) Samsung
5 3 (0.58%) ServiceNow
6 2 (0.39%) Atlassian
6 2 (0.39%) Guidewire
6 2 (0.39%) Splunk
7 1 (0.19%) Cisco
7 1 (0.19%) Meraki
7 1 (0.19%) OneLogin
7 1 (0.19%) OpenLink
7 1 (0.19%) Perfecto Mobile