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 12 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 154 88 126
Rank change year-on-year -66 +38 -86
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 130 243 246
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.05% 3.04% 2.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.35% 3.30% 2.32%
Number of salaries quoted 100 97 183
10th Percentile £44,575 £37,716 £37,750
25th Percentile £50,000 £45,000 £43,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% - +6.08%
75th Percentile £70,688 £76,840 £73,091
90th Percentile £83,750 £97,528 £82,548
England median annual salary £62,500 £65,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -3.85% +8.33% -4.00%

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 9,654 7,365 10,596
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 77.71% 92.27% 86.24%
Number of salaries quoted 5,353 3,491 8,632
10th Percentile £28,250 £31,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -6.46%
75th Percentile £66,250 £70,000 £66,250
90th Percentile £83,000 £83,750 £80,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £62,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year -12.00% +13.64% -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 12 February 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 12 February 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 -29 76 £60,000 +14.29% 74
Yorkshire -66 40 £55,000 -12.00% 32
North East -23 14 £57,600 -5.57% 16
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 5 (3.85%) Apache Spark
2 3 (2.31%) Oracle Workflow
3 2 (1.54%) Apache Solr
3 2 (1.54%) Confluence
3 2 (1.54%) nginx
4 1 (0.77%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (0.77%) Apache
4 1 (0.77%) CMS
4 1 (0.77%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.77%) Trello
Business Applications
1 3 (2.31%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (1.54%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.77%) Oracle SCM
3 1 (0.77%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 47 (36.15%) AWS
2 30 (23.08%) Azure
3 16 (12.31%) SaaS
4 15 (11.54%) GCP
4 15 (11.54%) Salesforce Service Cloud
5 10 (7.69%) GitHub
6 8 (6.15%) AWS CloudFormation
6 8 (6.15%) Serverless
7 6 (4.62%) OpenShift
7 6 (4.62%) PaaS
8 5 (3.85%) Azure AKS
9 4 (3.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 4 (3.08%) Datadog
9 4 (3.08%) GitHub Actions
9 4 (3.08%) Power Platform
10 3 (2.31%) Amazon EKS
10 3 (2.31%) Azure DevOps
10 3 (2.31%) Boomi
10 3 (2.31%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 3 (2.31%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 6 (4.62%) HTTP
2 5 (3.85%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.77%) SSH
3 1 (0.77%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (10.77%) MongoDB
1 14 (10.77%) MySQL
2 12 (9.23%) NoSQL
3 9 (6.92%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (3.85%) Elasticsearch
4 5 (3.85%) SQL Server
5 3 (2.31%) DynamoDB
5 3 (2.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 2 (1.54%) PostHog
6 2 (1.54%) Redis
6 2 (1.54%) Relational Database
6 2 (1.54%) Tableau
7 1 (0.77%) Amazon Athena
7 1 (0.77%) Big Data
7 1 (0.77%) BusinessObjects
7 1 (0.77%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 9 (6.92%) Selenium
2 8 (6.15%) Git
2 8 (6.15%) GitLab
2 8 (6.15%) Jenkins
2 8 (6.15%) JIRA
3 7 (5.38%) JMeter
4 6 (4.62%) Cucumber
5 5 (3.85%) Cypress.io
5 5 (3.85%) SonarQube
6 4 (3.08%) Visual Studio
7 3 (2.31%) Bitbucket
7 3 (2.31%) LoadRunner
7 3 (2.31%) Postman
8 2 (1.54%) Appium
8 2 (1.54%) JUnit
8 2 (1.54%) LabVIEW
8 2 (1.54%) Locust
8 2 (1.54%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.77%) Maven
9 1 (0.77%) SoapUI
General
1 30 (23.08%) Social Skills
2 15 (11.54%) Marketing
3 13 (10.00%) Finance
4 11 (8.46%) Public Sector
5 10 (7.69%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (5.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 5 (3.85%) Games
7 5 (3.85%) Law
8 4 (3.08%) Organisational Skills
8 4 (3.08%) Retail
9 3 (2.31%) Billing
9 3 (2.31%) French Language
9 3 (2.31%) Italian Language
9 3 (2.31%) Portuguese Language
9 3 (2.31%) Spanish Language
10 2 (1.54%) Electronics
11 1 (0.77%) Automotive
11 1 (0.77%) Pharmaceutical
11 1 (0.77%) Publishing
11 1 (0.77%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 40 (30.77%) Developer
2 38 (29.23%) Senior
3 24 (18.46%) Senior Developer
4 21 (16.15%) Lead
5 17 (13.08%) QA Engineer
6 14 (10.77%) Salesforce Developer
6 14 (10.77%) Senior Salesforce Developer
7 11 (8.46%) Automation Engineer
7 11 (8.46%) Java Engineer
7 11 (8.46%) QA Automation Engineer
8 9 (6.92%) Software Engineer
9 8 (6.15%) Analyst
9 8 (6.15%) Test Engineer
10 7 (5.38%) Graduate
11 6 (4.62%) Data Engineer
11 6 (4.62%) Python Developer
12 5 (3.85%) Cloud Engineer
12 5 (3.85%) Java Software Engineer
12 5 (3.85%) QA Leader
12 5 (3.85%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (10.77%) Spring
2 13 (10.00%) CSS
2 13 (10.00%) React
3 12 (9.23%) HTML
3 12 (9.23%) RESTful
4 11 (8.46%) .NET
5 9 (6.92%) Spring Boot
6 7 (5.38%) Django
6 7 (5.38%) Flask
6 7 (5.38%) Kafka
6 7 (5.38%) Node.js
7 6 (4.62%) FastAPI
7 6 (4.62%) Middleware
7 6 (4.62%) REST
7 6 (4.62%) Vue
8 5 (3.85%) Playwright
9 4 (3.08%) OAuth
9 4 (3.08%) Qt
9 4 (3.08%) STL
10 3 (2.31%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 19 (14.62%) Cloud Native
2 8 (6.15%) Product Ownership
3 7 (5.38%) Onboarding
4 5 (3.85%) Data Structures
5 4 (3.08%) Client/Server
5 4 (3.08%) Mobile App
6 3 (2.31%) Algorithms
6 3 (2.31%) Analytical Mindset
6 3 (2.31%) Data Centre
6 3 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (2.31%) Public Cloud
7 2 (1.54%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (1.54%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 2 (1.54%) Management Information System
7 2 (1.54%) Virtual Team
8 1 (0.77%) IoT
8 1 (0.77%) Legacy Applications
8 1 (0.77%) Linux Command Line
8 1 (0.77%) Low-Code
8 1 (0.77%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 8 (6.15%) Android
1 8 (6.15%) Apple iOS
2 6 (4.62%) Linux
2 6 (4.62%) Windows
3 2 (1.54%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 61 (46.92%) Mentoring
2 55 (42.31%) CI/CD
3 54 (41.54%) Agile
4 36 (27.69%) DevOps
5 34 (26.15%) Problem-Solving
6 32 (24.62%) Software Engineering
7 28 (21.54%) Continuous Improvement
8 21 (16.15%) Coaching
9 20 (15.38%) Microservices
10 19 (14.62%) Infrastructure as Code
10 19 (14.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 19 (14.62%) TDD
11 15 (11.54%) BDD
11 15 (11.54%) Machine Learning
11 15 (11.54%) Process Improvement
11 15 (11.54%) SDLC
12 14 (10.77%) AI
12 14 (10.77%) Business Analysis
12 14 (10.77%) Business Transformation
13 13 (10.00%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 39 (30.00%) Python
2 35 (26.92%) Java
3 34 (26.15%) SQL
4 25 (19.23%) JavaScript
5 20 (15.38%) C#
6 8 (6.15%) Go
6 8 (6.15%) TypeScript
7 6 (4.62%) Scala
8 4 (3.08%) C++
8 4 (3.08%) Kotlin
9 3 (2.31%) PHP
9 3 (2.31%) PowerShell
10 2 (1.54%) Bash
10 2 (1.54%) VB
11 1 (0.77%) Delphi
11 1 (0.77%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 17 (13.08%) DBS Check
2 13 (10.00%) Degree
3 5 (3.85%) BPSS Clearance
4 4 (3.08%) SC Cleared
4 4 (3.08%) Security Cleared
5 1 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.77%) ISTQB
5 1 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
5 1 (0.77%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (30.77%) QA
2 5 (3.85%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.54%) GDPR
3 2 (1.54%) WCAG
4 1 (0.77%) GRC
System Software
1 19 (14.62%) Docker
Systems Management
1 15 (11.54%) Terraform
2 14 (10.77%) Kubernetes
3 6 (4.62%) Ansible
3 6 (4.62%) Grafana
4 3 (2.31%) HP Fortify
4 3 (2.31%) Rancher
5 2 (1.54%) Control-M
6 1 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.77%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 16 (12.31%) Salesforce
2 12 (9.23%) Oracle
3 7 (5.38%) Databricks
3 7 (5.38%) Microsoft
4 4 (3.08%) Palantir
5 3 (2.31%) IBM
5 3 (2.31%) Software AG
5 3 (2.31%) webMethods
6 2 (1.54%) AppDynamics
7 1 (0.77%) Adobe
7 1 (0.77%) Checkmarx
7 1 (0.77%) Genesys
7 1 (0.77%) Google
7 1 (0.77%) Qualys
7 1 (0.77%) Samsung
7 1 (0.77%) SAP
7 1 (0.77%) Siebel