Test Automation Job Trends in the North of England

Automated Testing
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the North of England requiring Test Automation skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 2 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 100 119 81
Rank change year-on-year +19 -38 +17
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 366 267 371
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.60% 2.81% 2.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.27% 3.20% 3.20%
Number of salaries quoted 248 114 178
10th Percentile £41,775 £37,950 £36,600
25th Percentile £47,500 £47,231 £45,125
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - +9.09% -4.35%
75th Percentile £75,000 £71,813 £71,493
90th Percentile £83,750 £82,751 £72,500
England median annual salary £65,000 £63,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -3.85%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North of England

Test 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 the North of England.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 16,129 8,337 11,608
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 70.43% 87.88% 78.12%
Number of salaries quoted 12,111 4,249 7,047
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,000 £29,988
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £48,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +14.58% -4.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £74,112 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £78,750
England median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -8.00%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

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

Test Automation job vacancy trend in the North of England

Test Automation
Salary Trend in the North of England

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Test Automation.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Salary Histogram in the North of England

Salary distribution for jobs citing Test Automation in the North of England over the 6 months to 2 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Test Automation in the North of England

Test Automation
Job Locations in the North of England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Test Automation within the North of England region over the 6 months to 2 September 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 West -2 185 £65,000 +4.00% 174
North East +16 103 £53,750 +74.80% 58
Yorkshire -21 78 £69,310 +40.73% 74
Test Automation
England

Test Automation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of 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 16 (4.37%) Apache Spark
2 13 (3.55%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 13 (3.55%) Apache
2 13 (3.55%) Apache Airflow
2 13 (3.55%) Jupyter
3 8 (2.19%) Confluence
4 3 (0.82%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.55%) nginx
6 1 (0.27%) CMS
6 1 (0.27%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.27%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.27%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.27%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (1.09%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 154 (42.08%) AWS
2 120 (32.79%) Azure
3 63 (17.21%) Azure DevOps
4 49 (13.39%) Serverless
5 28 (7.65%) Amazon S3
6 26 (7.10%) GitHub
7 22 (6.01%) GCP
8 20 (5.46%) SaaS
9 19 (5.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 19 (5.19%) Azure Data Factory
10 17 (4.64%) Amazon EC2
10 17 (4.64%) AWS Lambda
11 15 (4.10%) Amazon ECR
11 15 (4.10%) AWS CloudFormation
11 15 (4.10%) Azure AKS
12 14 (3.83%) Azure Service Bus
12 14 (3.83%) Firebase
13 13 (3.55%) Amazon EMR
13 13 (3.55%) Azure Monitor
14 11 (3.01%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.55%) HTTP
1 2 (0.55%) SMS
2 1 (0.27%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (7.10%) MongoDB
2 22 (6.01%) DynamoDB
2 22 (6.01%) PostgreSQL
3 19 (5.19%) NoSQL
4 15 (4.10%) Data Warehouse
4 15 (4.10%) Spark SQL
5 14 (3.83%) SQL Server
6 13 (3.55%) Amazon Athena
7 8 (2.19%) Relational Database
8 7 (1.91%) MySQL
9 5 (1.37%) Elasticsearch
10 4 (1.09%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (1.09%) Big Data
10 4 (1.09%) BigQuery
10 4 (1.09%) Flink
10 4 (1.09%) Neo4j
10 4 (1.09%) Power BI
11 3 (0.82%) Data Lake
11 3 (0.82%) Delta Lake
11 3 (0.82%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 68 (18.58%) GitLab
2 39 (10.66%) Git
3 36 (9.84%) Jenkins
4 23 (6.28%) JIRA
5 19 (5.19%) Cypress.io
6 16 (4.37%) fastlane
7 15 (4.10%) Maven
7 15 (4.10%) Postman
8 13 (3.55%) JUnit
8 13 (3.55%) Spock
9 11 (3.01%) Cucumber
9 11 (3.01%) SonarQube
10 10 (2.73%) Bitbucket
11 9 (2.46%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 8 (2.19%) REST Assured
12 8 (2.19%) Storybook
13 7 (1.91%) Selenium
14 6 (1.64%) Xcode
15 5 (1.37%) Android Studio
15 5 (1.37%) Gradle
General
1 92 (25.14%) Social Skills
2 78 (21.31%) Public Sector
3 69 (18.85%) Finance
4 39 (10.66%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (10.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 14 (3.83%) Banking
6 13 (3.55%) Marketing
7 10 (2.73%) Publishing
8 9 (2.46%) Investment Banking
8 9 (2.46%) Legal
9 8 (2.19%) Games
10 7 (1.91%) Documentation Skills
10 7 (1.91%) Electronics
11 6 (1.64%) Law
11 6 (1.64%) Retail
12 4 (1.09%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.82%) Police
13 3 (0.82%) Tech for Good
14 2 (0.55%) Automotive
14 2 (0.55%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 109 (29.78%) Senior
2 66 (18.03%) Developer
3 59 (16.12%) Test Engineer
4 54 (14.75%) Lead
5 40 (10.93%) DevOps Engineer
6 34 (9.29%) Software Engineer
7 29 (7.92%) Full-Stack Engineer
8 28 (7.65%) Senior Developer
9 27 (7.38%) Data Engineer
10 24 (6.56%) Senior DevOps
10 24 (6.56%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 17 (4.64%) Analyst
11 17 (4.64%) Java Developer
12 16 (4.37%) Java Engineer
13 15 (4.10%) Lead Data Engineer
14 13 (3.55%) Databricks Engineer
14 13 (3.55%) Platform Engineer
15 12 (3.28%) Azure Engineer
15 12 (3.28%) Databricks Data Engineer
15 12 (3.28%) QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (18.85%) Terraform
2 67 (18.31%) Node.js
3 56 (15.30%) AngularJS
4 48 (13.11%) REST
5 47 (12.84%) Spring
6 41 (11.20%) React
7 34 (9.29%) Playwright
7 34 (9.29%) Spring Boot
8 31 (8.47%) PySpark
9 25 (6.83%) .NET
9 25 (6.83%) CSS
9 25 (6.83%) HTML
10 22 (6.01%) RESTful
11 17 (4.64%) Vue
12 16 (4.37%) Next.js
13 11 (3.01%) GraphQL
13 11 (3.01%) Kafka
14 10 (2.73%) React Native
15 9 (2.46%) ARM Templates
16 8 (2.19%) SwiftUI
Miscellaneous
1 41 (11.20%) Product Ownership
2 39 (10.66%) Cloud Native
3 32 (8.74%) Mobile App
4 20 (5.46%) Private Cloud
5 19 (5.19%) Distributed Systems
6 11 (3.01%) Data Structures
7 9 (2.46%) Low-Code
8 6 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.64%) Marketing Technology
8 6 (1.64%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.37%) AI Agents
9 5 (1.37%) Driving Licence
9 5 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
9 5 (1.37%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.09%) Online Games
11 3 (0.82%) Educational Technology
11 3 (0.82%) Enterprise Software
11 3 (0.82%) PKI
11 3 (0.82%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 31 (8.47%) Linux
2 23 (6.28%) Windows
3 20 (5.46%) Unix
4 14 (3.83%) Apple iOS
5 9 (2.46%) Android
6 4 (1.09%) VMS
7 1 (0.27%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 249 (68.03%) CI/CD
2 209 (57.10%) Agile
3 167 (45.63%) DevOps
4 125 (34.15%) Mentoring
5 105 (28.69%) Continuous Improvement
6 95 (25.96%) Software Engineering
7 91 (24.86%) Problem-Solving
8 75 (20.49%) Scrum
9 74 (20.22%) Full-Stack Development
10 73 (19.95%) Infrastructure as Code
10 73 (19.95%) Microservices
11 70 (19.13%) Coaching
12 63 (17.21%) Continuous Integration
13 62 (16.94%) AI
13 62 (16.94%) TDD
14 56 (15.30%) Observability
15 49 (13.39%) Technical Leadership
16 47 (12.84%) Test Strategy
17 41 (11.20%) Software Testing
18 40 (10.93%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 136 (37.16%) Java
2 117 (31.97%) Python
3 88 (24.04%) JavaScript
4 84 (22.95%) SQL
5 66 (18.03%) TypeScript
6 40 (10.93%) C#
7 15 (4.10%) Bash
8 13 (3.55%) Swift
9 12 (3.28%) Groovy
10 10 (2.73%) C++
11 9 (2.46%) Kotlin
12 8 (2.19%) PowerShell
12 8 (2.19%) Ruby
13 6 (1.64%) C
14 5 (1.37%) Go
14 5 (1.37%) PHP
15 3 (0.82%) Bicep
15 3 (0.82%) VB
15 3 (0.82%) VB.NET
16 2 (0.55%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 48 (13.11%) Security Cleared
2 37 (10.11%) SC Cleared
3 29 (7.92%) Degree
4 17 (4.64%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (2.46%) HNC
6 6 (1.64%) DBS Check
7 5 (1.37%) AWS Certification
7 5 (1.37%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
7 5 (1.37%) Master's Degree
8 3 (0.82%) HND
8 3 (0.82%) ISTQB
8 3 (0.82%) NVQ Level 3
9 2 (0.55%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.27%) CISM
10 1 (0.27%) CISSP
10 1 (0.27%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 1 (0.27%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.27%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (22.68%) QA
2 39 (10.66%) Accessibility
3 22 (6.01%) WCAG
4 19 (5.19%) Data Quality
5 14 (3.83%) GDPR
6 1 (0.27%) GRC
6 1 (0.27%) ISO 22301
6 1 (0.27%) NIST
System Software
1 67 (18.31%) Docker
Systems Management
1 38 (10.38%) Kubernetes
2 13 (3.55%) Argo
3 7 (1.91%) Ansible
4 3 (0.82%) Grafana
4 3 (0.82%) Packer
4 3 (0.82%) Progress Chef
4 3 (0.82%) Puppet
5 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.27%) Fluentd
6 1 (0.27%) HP Fortify
6 1 (0.27%) Kibana
Vendors
1 30 (8.20%) Microsoft
2 24 (6.56%) Databricks
3 18 (4.92%) Splunk
4 16 (4.37%) AppDynamics
5 15 (4.10%) Dynatrace
6 13 (3.55%) Adobe
7 11 (3.01%) Google
8 9 (2.46%) Salesforce
9 8 (2.19%) Apple
10 7 (1.91%) Pega
11 3 (0.82%) Allen-Bradley
11 3 (0.82%) Confluent
11 3 (0.82%) IBM
11 3 (0.82%) Keysight
11 3 (0.82%) Sage
11 3 (0.82%) Siemens
12 2 (0.55%) Braze
12 2 (0.55%) dotdigital
12 2 (0.55%) Oracle
12 2 (0.55%) UiPath