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 20 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 104 102 125
Rank change year-on-year -2 +23 -89
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 291 293 382
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.45% 3.53% 1.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.09% 3.79% 2.42%
Number of salaries quoted 207 128 232
10th Percentile £40,650 £35,125 £34,000
25th Percentile £47,500 £47,173 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £59,900 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +0.17% +8.91% -4.35%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £83,750 £97,528 £78,750
England median annual salary £62,500 £63,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -0.79% +5.00% -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 13,924 7,740 15,777
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 69.28% 93.35% 78.99%
Number of salaries quoted 10,354 3,692 11,971
10th Percentile £30,000 £25,750 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £33,125 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £82,500 £80,000
England median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -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 20 June 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 20 June 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 -10 154 £62,500 -3.85% 48
North East -7 69 £52,500 -4.55% 24
Yorkshire -31 68 £69,310 +37.40% 29
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 9 (3.09%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 8 (2.75%) Apache
2 8 (2.75%) Apache Airflow
2 8 (2.75%) Apache Spark
2 8 (2.75%) Jupyter
3 4 (1.37%) Confluence
4 3 (1.03%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.69%) nginx
6 1 (0.34%) CMS
6 1 (0.34%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.34%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (1.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.34%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.34%) Oracle SCM
2 1 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 124 (42.61%) AWS
2 95 (32.65%) Azure
3 54 (18.56%) Azure DevOps
4 41 (14.09%) Serverless
5 23 (7.90%) GitHub
6 19 (6.53%) Amazon S3
7 16 (5.50%) SaaS
8 15 (5.15%) Azure Data Factory
9 14 (4.81%) AWS Lambda
9 14 (4.81%) Azure AKS
9 14 (4.81%) Azure Service Bus
10 12 (4.12%) Amazon EC2
10 12 (4.12%) Firebase
11 11 (3.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 11 (3.78%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (3.78%) Azure Monitor
11 11 (3.78%) GCP
12 9 (3.09%) Azure Functions
12 9 (3.09%) Azure Logic Apps
12 9 (3.09%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.03%) HTTP
2 2 (0.69%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (9.28%) PostgreSQL
2 26 (8.93%) MongoDB
3 25 (8.59%) NoSQL
4 15 (5.15%) DynamoDB
4 15 (5.15%) Spark SQL
5 13 (4.47%) MySQL
6 11 (3.78%) Data Warehouse
7 8 (2.75%) Amazon Athena
8 5 (1.72%) Power BI
8 5 (1.72%) Relational Database
9 4 (1.37%) Flink
10 3 (1.03%) Big Data
10 3 (1.03%) Elasticsearch
10 3 (1.03%) SQL Server
11 2 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
11 2 (0.69%) Data Lake
11 2 (0.69%) Neo4j
12 1 (0.34%) BusinessObjects
12 1 (0.34%) Redis
12 1 (0.34%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 46 (15.81%) GitLab
2 30 (10.31%) Jenkins
3 22 (7.56%) Git
4 18 (6.19%) JIRA
5 17 (5.84%) fastlane
6 16 (5.50%) Postman
7 12 (4.12%) Cypress.io
8 9 (3.09%) Cucumber
9 8 (2.75%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 7 (2.41%) Maven
10 7 (2.41%) REST Assured
11 6 (2.06%) JMeter
11 6 (2.06%) JUnit
11 6 (2.06%) LabVIEW
11 6 (2.06%) Selenium
11 6 (2.06%) Spock
11 6 (2.06%) Xcode
12 5 (1.72%) Android Studio
12 5 (1.72%) Bitbucket
12 5 (1.72%) Gradle
General
1 67 (23.02%) Public Sector
2 55 (18.90%) Social Skills
3 47 (16.15%) Finance
4 32 (11.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 28 (9.62%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (5.15%) Banking
7 13 (4.47%) Marketing
8 9 (3.09%) Electronics
8 9 (3.09%) Investment Banking
9 8 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
10 7 (2.41%) Games
11 6 (2.06%) Legal
12 5 (1.72%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (1.37%) Manufacturing
13 4 (1.37%) Publishing
14 3 (1.03%) French Language
14 3 (1.03%) Health Technology
14 3 (1.03%) Italian Language
14 3 (1.03%) Portuguese Language
14 3 (1.03%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 84 (28.87%) Senior
2 59 (20.27%) Developer
3 52 (17.87%) Test Engineer
4 51 (17.53%) Lead
5 37 (12.71%) Software Engineer
6 27 (9.28%) Java Engineer
7 26 (8.93%) Senior Developer
8 22 (7.56%) Data Engineer
9 21 (7.22%) DevOps Engineer
10 17 (5.84%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 15 (5.15%) Java Developer
11 15 (5.15%) Lead Data Engineer
11 15 (5.15%) Senior DevOps
11 15 (5.15%) Senior DevOps Engineer
12 14 (4.81%) Applications Engineer
13 13 (4.47%) Full-Stack Developer
13 13 (4.47%) Platform Engineer
13 13 (4.47%) Senior Test Engineer
14 12 (4.12%) Azure Engineer
15 11 (3.78%) Senior Applications Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (15.12%) Spring
2 43 (14.78%) Node.js
3 42 (14.43%) REST
4 37 (12.71%) Spring Boot
5 36 (12.37%) AngularJS
5 36 (12.37%) React
6 27 (9.28%) RESTful
7 25 (8.59%) PySpark
8 23 (7.90%) .NET
9 17 (5.84%) Playwright
10 16 (5.50%) CSS
11 15 (5.15%) HTML
11 15 (5.15%) Vue
12 12 (4.12%) Next.js
13 11 (3.78%) OAuth
13 11 (3.78%) OAuth2
14 10 (3.44%) GraphQL
15 9 (3.09%) ARM Templates
15 9 (3.09%) Kafka
16 8 (2.75%) React Native
Miscellaneous
1 43 (14.78%) Cloud Native
2 35 (12.03%) Product Ownership
3 32 (11.00%) Mobile App
4 12 (4.12%) Distributed Systems
4 12 (4.12%) Onboarding
5 7 (2.41%) Data Structures
5 7 (2.41%) Low-Code
6 6 (2.06%) Private Cloud
7 5 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (1.72%) Marketing Technology
8 4 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
8 4 (1.37%) Online Games
9 3 (1.03%) AI Agents
9 3 (1.03%) Algorithms
9 3 (1.03%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (1.03%) Data Centre
9 3 (1.03%) NHS
9 3 (1.03%) PKI
9 3 (1.03%) Virtual Team
10 2 (0.69%) Educational Technology
Operating Systems
1 21 (7.22%) Linux
2 20 (6.87%) Apple iOS
3 15 (5.15%) Unix
3 15 (5.15%) Windows
4 14 (4.81%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 175 (60.14%) CI/CD
2 157 (53.95%) Agile
3 123 (42.27%) DevOps
4 109 (37.46%) Mentoring
5 71 (24.40%) Continuous Improvement
6 69 (23.71%) Microservices
7 67 (23.02%) Software Engineering
8 66 (22.68%) Problem-Solving
9 65 (22.34%) Full-Stack Development
10 61 (20.96%) Scrum
10 61 (20.96%) TDD
11 57 (19.59%) Infrastructure as Code
12 54 (18.56%) Coaching
13 39 (13.40%) Continuous Integration
14 37 (12.71%) Observability
15 35 (12.03%) AI
16 32 (11.00%) Architectural Patterns
16 32 (11.00%) Clean Code
16 32 (11.00%) Deployment Automation
17 31 (10.65%) Design Patterns
Programming Languages
1 126 (43.30%) Java
2 93 (31.96%) Python
3 77 (26.46%) SQL
4 61 (20.96%) JavaScript
5 37 (12.71%) TypeScript
6 34 (11.68%) C#
7 12 (4.12%) Kotlin
7 12 (4.12%) Swift
8 9 (3.09%) Bash
9 8 (2.75%) Groovy
9 8 (2.75%) Ruby
10 7 (2.41%) Go
11 6 (2.06%) C++
12 5 (1.72%) PHP
12 5 (1.72%) VB
13 4 (1.37%) C
14 2 (0.69%) VB.NET
15 1 (0.34%) Perl
15 1 (0.34%) PL/SQL
15 1 (0.34%) VBA
Qualifications
1 27 (9.28%) Degree
2 22 (7.56%) Security Cleared
3 18 (6.19%) SC Cleared
4 12 (4.12%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.41%) DBS Check
6 6 (2.06%) HNC
7 4 (1.37%) BPSS Clearance
8 3 (1.03%) AWS Certification
8 3 (1.03%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
8 3 (1.03%) ISTQB
8 3 (1.03%) Master's Degree
8 3 (1.03%) NVQ Level 3
9 1 (0.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.34%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (16.84%) QA
2 31 (10.65%) Accessibility
3 18 (6.19%) WCAG
4 13 (4.47%) Data Quality
5 12 (4.12%) GDPR
System Software
1 38 (13.06%) Docker
Systems Management
1 56 (19.24%) Terraform
2 23 (7.90%) Kubernetes
3 13 (4.47%) Argo
4 4 (1.37%) Ansible
5 3 (1.03%) Grafana
5 3 (1.03%) Packer
6 1 (0.34%) HP Fortify
6 1 (0.34%) Rancher
Vendors
1 20 (6.87%) Databricks
2 16 (5.50%) Microsoft
3 13 (4.47%) Dynatrace
4 11 (3.78%) Salesforce
5 10 (3.44%) AppDynamics
6 9 (3.09%) Adobe
6 9 (3.09%) Google
6 9 (3.09%) Splunk
7 6 (2.06%) Apple
8 3 (1.03%) IBM
8 3 (1.03%) Keysight
8 3 (1.03%) Pega
9 2 (0.69%) Braze
9 2 (0.69%) dotdigital
9 2 (0.69%) Oracle
10 1 (0.34%) Blue Prism
10 1 (0.34%) Confluent
10 1 (0.34%) DevExpress
10 1 (0.34%) Hotjar
10 1 (0.34%) SAP