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 23 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 142 107 125
Rank change year-on-year -35 +18 -82
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 207 186 349
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.17% 2.66% 2.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.59% 2.81% 2.54%
Number of salaries quoted 149 139 235
10th Percentile £40,000 £35,500 £36,250
25th Percentile £48,289 £44,375 £42,625
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +13.64% -4.35% +4.55%
75th Percentile £76,250 £80,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £83,750 £97,528 £78,750
England median annual salary £64,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +6.67% - -7.69%

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 12,993 6,608 13,762
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 73.20% 94.35% 83.36%
Number of salaries quoted 7,963 3,772 10,977
10th Percentile £28,800 £28,000 £27,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £37,500 £36,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,138 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.10% +4.28% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £85,000 £80,000
England median annual salary £57,591 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -4.02% +9.09% -12.00%

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 23 April 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 23 April 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 -6 106 £61,500 +11.82% 58
Yorkshire -58 63 £69,310 +38.62% 27
North East -33 38 £55,000 -6.78% 39
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 4 (1.93%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.45%) Oracle Workflow
3 2 (0.97%) Confluence
3 2 (0.97%) nginx
4 1 (0.48%) CMS
4 1 (0.48%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.48%) Umbraco
4 1 (0.48%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.48%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.48%) Oracle SCM
1 1 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.48%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 75 (36.23%) AWS
2 65 (31.40%) Azure
3 30 (14.49%) Azure DevOps
4 28 (13.53%) Serverless
5 17 (8.21%) SaaS
6 15 (7.25%) Azure AKS
6 15 (7.25%) GCP
7 11 (5.31%) GitHub
8 10 (4.83%) Azure Data Factory
8 10 (4.83%) Azure Service Bus
9 8 (3.86%) AWS CloudFormation
9 8 (3.86%) Azure Monitor
10 7 (3.38%) AWS Lambda
11 6 (2.90%) Amazon EKS
11 6 (2.90%) Azure Functions
11 6 (2.90%) Azure Logic Apps
11 6 (2.90%) dbt
11 6 (2.90%) PaaS
11 6 (2.90%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 5 (2.42%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.42%) HTTP
2 4 (1.93%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (13.53%) MongoDB
2 26 (12.56%) PostgreSQL
3 20 (9.66%) NoSQL
4 16 (7.73%) MySQL
5 10 (4.83%) Spark SQL
6 6 (2.90%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (2.42%) DynamoDB
7 5 (2.42%) SQL Server
8 4 (1.93%) Power BI
9 3 (1.45%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (1.45%) Flink
9 3 (1.45%) Relational Database
9 3 (1.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (0.97%) PostHog
10 2 (0.97%) Redis
11 1 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
11 1 (0.48%) BusinessObjects
Development Applications
1 23 (11.11%) GitLab
2 15 (7.25%) JIRA
3 14 (6.76%) Postman
4 12 (5.80%) Jenkins
5 11 (5.31%) Git
6 10 (4.83%) Cucumber
6 10 (4.83%) Selenium
7 8 (3.86%) Cypress.io
7 8 (3.86%) JMeter
8 7 (3.38%) REST Assured
9 4 (1.93%) Bitbucket
9 4 (1.93%) Gatling
9 4 (1.93%) SonarQube
9 4 (1.93%) Visual Studio
10 3 (1.45%) Artifactory
10 3 (1.45%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (1.45%) LabVIEW
10 3 (1.45%) LoadRunner
10 3 (1.45%) SpecFlow
10 3 (1.45%) TestRail
General
1 44 (21.26%) Social Skills
2 38 (18.36%) Public Sector
3 27 (13.04%) Finance
4 16 (7.73%) Analytical Skills
5 13 (6.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 10 (4.83%) Banking
7 6 (2.90%) Games
7 6 (2.90%) Investment Banking
7 6 (2.90%) Marketing
8 5 (2.42%) Organisational Skills
9 4 (1.93%) Law
10 3 (1.45%) Electronics
10 3 (1.45%) French Language
10 3 (1.45%) Health Technology
10 3 (1.45%) Italian Language
10 3 (1.45%) Portuguese Language
10 3 (1.45%) Retail
10 3 (1.45%) Spanish Language
11 2 (0.97%) Documentation Skills
11 2 (0.97%) Legal
Job Titles
1 61 (29.47%) Senior
2 40 (19.32%) Developer
3 39 (18.84%) Lead
4 29 (14.01%) Test Engineer
5 27 (13.04%) Java Engineer
6 22 (10.63%) Software Engineer
7 20 (9.66%) Senior Developer
8 17 (8.21%) Data Engineer
9 13 (6.28%) DevOps Engineer
9 13 (6.28%) QA Engineer
10 10 (4.83%) Analyst
10 10 (4.83%) Full-Stack Developer
10 10 (4.83%) Java Software Engineer
10 10 (4.83%) Lead Data Engineer
10 10 (4.83%) Platform Engineer
10 10 (4.83%) Senior DevOps
10 10 (4.83%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 10 (4.83%) Test Leader
11 9 (4.35%) Applications Engineer
11 9 (4.35%) Senior Applications Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (14.01%) Spring
2 27 (13.04%) React
3 25 (12.08%) REST
3 25 (12.08%) Spring Boot
4 21 (10.14%) Node.js
5 18 (8.70%) Playwright
6 16 (7.73%) .NET
6 16 (7.73%) RESTful
7 14 (6.76%) PySpark
8 12 (5.80%) CSS
8 12 (5.80%) Vue
9 11 (5.31%) HTML
9 11 (5.31%) OAuth
9 11 (5.31%) OAuth2
10 10 (4.83%) AngularJS
11 8 (3.86%) Flask
11 8 (3.86%) Kafka
12 6 (2.90%) ARM Templates
12 6 (2.90%) RabbitMQ
13 5 (2.42%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 25 (12.08%) Cloud Native
2 10 (4.83%) Mobile App
3 9 (4.35%) Product Ownership
4 8 (3.86%) Onboarding
5 6 (2.90%) Data Structures
6 5 (2.42%) Analytical Mindset
7 4 (1.93%) Client/Server
7 4 (1.93%) Distributed Systems
8 3 (1.45%) Algorithms
8 3 (1.45%) Data Centre
8 3 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
8 3 (1.45%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (1.45%) Low-Code
8 3 (1.45%) NHS
8 3 (1.45%) Online Games
8 3 (1.45%) PKI
8 3 (1.45%) Public Cloud
9 2 (0.97%) Enterprise Software
9 2 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (0.97%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 16 (7.73%) Linux
2 14 (6.76%) Windows
3 12 (5.80%) Apple iOS
4 10 (4.83%) Unix
5 9 (4.35%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 106 (51.21%) CI/CD
2 92 (44.44%) Agile
3 80 (38.65%) DevOps
4 79 (38.16%) Mentoring
5 48 (23.19%) Problem-Solving
6 45 (21.74%) Continuous Improvement
6 45 (21.74%) Microservices
7 43 (20.77%) Software Engineering
8 39 (18.84%) Infrastructure as Code
9 34 (16.43%) Coaching
10 32 (15.46%) TDD
11 30 (14.49%) Full-Stack Development
12 28 (13.53%) BDD
13 27 (13.04%) Continuous Integration
13 27 (13.04%) Scrum
14 25 (12.08%) Event-Driven
14 25 (12.08%) Observability
15 22 (10.63%) Test Strategy
16 20 (9.66%) AI
17 19 (9.18%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 78 (37.68%) Java
2 59 (28.50%) Python
3 55 (26.57%) SQL
4 30 (14.49%) C#
4 30 (14.49%) JavaScript
5 13 (6.28%) TypeScript
6 8 (3.86%) Go
7 6 (2.90%) Kotlin
8 5 (2.42%) Scala
9 4 (1.93%) C++
10 3 (1.45%) Groovy
10 3 (1.45%) Swift
11 2 (0.97%) PHP
11 2 (0.97%) VB
12 1 (0.48%) Bash
12 1 (0.48%) C
12 1 (0.48%) Delphi
12 1 (0.48%) Perl
12 1 (0.48%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.48%) VBA
Qualifications
1 17 (8.21%) Degree
2 9 (4.35%) Security Cleared
3 8 (3.86%) DBS Check
4 7 (3.38%) SC Cleared
5 6 (2.90%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (0.97%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.48%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 1 (0.48%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 46 (22.22%) QA
2 10 (4.83%) GDPR
3 8 (3.86%) Accessibility
4 3 (1.45%) Data Quality
4 3 (1.45%) WCAG
System Software
1 19 (9.18%) Docker
Systems Management
1 38 (18.36%) Terraform
2 18 (8.70%) Kubernetes
3 10 (4.83%) Argo
4 6 (2.90%) Ansible
4 6 (2.90%) Grafana
5 3 (1.45%) Packer
5 3 (1.45%) Rancher
6 1 (0.48%) HP Fortify
6 1 (0.48%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 15 (7.25%) Databricks
1 15 (7.25%) Microsoft
2 13 (6.28%) Salesforce
3 10 (4.83%) Oracle
4 4 (1.93%) AppDynamics
4 4 (1.93%) IBM
4 4 (1.93%) Palantir
5 3 (1.45%) Google
5 3 (1.45%) Software AG
5 3 (1.45%) webMethods
6 2 (0.97%) SAP
7 1 (0.48%) Blue Prism
7 1 (0.48%) DevExpress
7 1 (0.48%) Dynatrace
7 1 (0.48%) Genesys
7 1 (0.48%) Hotjar
7 1 (0.48%) Pega
7 1 (0.48%) Samsung
7 1 (0.48%) Siebel