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 5 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 124 76
Rank change year-on-year +36 -48 +14
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 413 245 356
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.71% 2.55% 2.63%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.42% 2.90% 3.29%
Number of salaries quoted 289 91 124
10th Percentile £40,000 £39,750 £38,166
25th Percentile £47,000 £50,000 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £60,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% +14.29% -12.50%
75th Percentile £74,987 £70,000 £67,813
90th Percentile £83,750 £80,000 £72,500
England median annual salary £62,500 £65,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -3.85% +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 17,093 8,453 10,821
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 70.93% 88.09% 79.83%
Number of salaries quoted 12,672 4,072 5,484
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £39,980
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £48,720 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.89% -2.56% -9.09%
75th Percentile £74,987 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £79,488
England median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -1.64%

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 5 October 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 5 October 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 -16 186 £60,000 - 254
North East +26 132 £55,000 +78.86% 85
Yorkshire +21 104 £69,306 +26.01% 164
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 22 (5.33%) Apache Spark
2 18 (4.36%) Apache
2 18 (4.36%) Apache Airflow
3 16 (3.87%) Jupyter
4 13 (3.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 8 (1.94%) Confluence
6 5 (1.21%) CMS
6 5 (1.21%) nginx
7 4 (0.97%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.73%) Headless CMS
8 3 (0.73%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.48%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.48%) Umbraco
10 1 (0.24%) Kentico
10 1 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.24%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (0.97%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 178 (43.10%) AWS
2 123 (29.78%) Azure
3 52 (12.59%) Serverless
4 51 (12.35%) Azure DevOps
5 43 (10.41%) Amazon S3
6 36 (8.72%) GitHub
7 31 (7.51%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 26 (6.30%) AWS Lambda
9 22 (5.33%) Amazon EC2
10 21 (5.08%) Amazon ECR
10 21 (5.08%) Amazon ECS
10 21 (5.08%) GCP
11 19 (4.60%) GitHub Actions
12 18 (4.36%) AWS CloudFormation
12 18 (4.36%) Azure Data Factory
13 17 (4.12%) Amazon EMR
14 15 (3.63%) Azure AKS
15 14 (3.39%) Azure Service Bus
15 14 (3.39%) Firebase
16 13 (3.15%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.73%) Reverse Proxy
2 2 (0.48%) HTTP
2 2 (0.48%) SMS
3 1 (0.24%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (8.23%) MongoDB
2 25 (6.05%) PostgreSQL
3 22 (5.33%) DynamoDB
4 19 (4.60%) Amazon Athena
4 19 (4.60%) SQL Server
5 18 (4.36%) NoSQL
6 14 (3.39%) Data Warehouse
7 11 (2.66%) Spark SQL
8 9 (2.18%) Metadata
8 9 (2.18%) MySQL
9 8 (1.94%) Amazon Redshift
9 8 (1.94%) Data Lake
9 8 (1.94%) Relational Database
10 7 (1.69%) Delta Lake
10 7 (1.69%) Semantic Layer
11 6 (1.45%) DocumentDB
12 5 (1.21%) Elasticsearch
13 4 (0.97%) Big Data
13 4 (0.97%) Neo4j
13 4 (0.97%) Redis
Development Applications
1 87 (21.07%) GitLab
2 48 (11.62%) Git
3 38 (9.20%) Jenkins
4 21 (5.08%) Cypress.io
5 20 (4.84%) JIRA
6 15 (3.63%) fastlane
6 15 (3.63%) Maven
7 14 (3.39%) JUnit
8 13 (3.15%) Spock
9 12 (2.91%) Postman
10 9 (2.18%) Bitbucket
11 8 (1.94%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 8 (1.94%) Cucumber
11 8 (1.94%) Selenium
11 8 (1.94%) SonarQube
11 8 (1.94%) Storybook
12 7 (1.69%) JMeter
13 6 (1.45%) Xcode
14 5 (1.21%) Android Studio
14 5 (1.21%) Gradle
General
1 118 (28.57%) Public Sector
2 103 (24.94%) Social Skills
3 66 (15.98%) Finance
4 55 (13.32%) Analytical Skills
5 41 (9.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 13 (3.15%) Banking
6 13 (3.15%) Marketing
7 11 (2.66%) Publishing
8 10 (2.42%) Electronics
9 8 (1.94%) Legal
9 8 (1.94%) Manufacturing
10 6 (1.45%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (1.45%) Games
10 6 (1.45%) Investment Banking
10 6 (1.45%) Law
10 6 (1.45%) Retail
11 3 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (0.73%) Police
11 3 (0.73%) Tech for Good
12 2 (0.48%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 130 (31.48%) Senior
2 72 (17.43%) Developer
3 55 (13.32%) Test Engineer
4 49 (11.86%) DevOps Engineer
5 39 (9.44%) Lead
6 35 (8.47%) Software Engineer
7 29 (7.02%) Data Engineer
7 29 (7.02%) Senior Developer
7 29 (7.02%) Senior DevOps
7 29 (7.02%) Senior DevOps Engineer
8 26 (6.30%) Full-Stack Engineer
9 23 (5.57%) Tester
10 21 (5.08%) QA Engineer
11 20 (4.84%) Analyst
12 18 (4.36%) Java Developer
13 16 (3.87%) QA Tester
13 16 (3.87%) Software Developer
14 14 (3.39%) Databricks Engineer
15 13 (3.15%) Databricks Data Engineer
16 12 (2.91%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 80 (19.37%) Node.js
2 72 (17.43%) Terraform
3 53 (12.83%) AngularJS
4 52 (12.59%) REST
5 45 (10.90%) Spring
6 39 (9.44%) React
7 38 (9.20%) CSS
7 38 (9.20%) HTML
8 33 (7.99%) PySpark
9 32 (7.75%) Spring Boot
10 31 (7.51%) Playwright
11 29 (7.02%) .NET
11 29 (7.02%) RESTful
12 20 (4.84%) Kafka
13 16 (3.87%) Next.js
14 12 (2.91%) GraphQL
14 12 (2.91%) Vue
15 11 (2.66%) React Native
16 10 (2.42%) .NET Core
17 9 (2.18%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 47 (11.38%) Product Ownership
2 46 (11.14%) Cloud Native
3 30 (7.26%) Mobile App
4 20 (4.84%) Private Cloud
5 19 (4.60%) Distributed Systems
6 9 (2.18%) Onboarding
6 9 (2.18%) Self-Motivation
7 8 (1.94%) Data Structures
7 8 (1.94%) Low-Code
8 7 (1.69%) AI Agents
8 7 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (1.45%) Driving Licence
9 6 (1.45%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (1.45%) Marketing Technology
9 6 (1.45%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.21%) Culture of Ownership
10 5 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (0.73%) Replication
12 2 (0.48%) Online Games
12 2 (0.48%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 35 (8.47%) Linux
2 27 (6.54%) Windows
3 26 (6.30%) Unix
4 13 (3.15%) Apple iOS
5 9 (2.18%) Android
6 4 (0.97%) VMS
7 1 (0.24%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 280 (67.80%) CI/CD
2 238 (57.63%) Agile
3 183 (44.31%) DevOps
4 148 (35.84%) Mentoring
5 131 (31.72%) Continuous Improvement
6 108 (26.15%) Problem-Solving
7 103 (24.94%) Software Engineering
8 88 (21.31%) Coaching
9 83 (20.10%) Scrum
10 80 (19.37%) Microservices
11 78 (18.89%) Infrastructure as Code
12 69 (16.71%) Observability
13 67 (16.22%) AI
14 66 (15.98%) TDD
15 65 (15.74%) Full-Stack Development
16 64 (15.50%) Continuous Integration
17 61 (14.77%) Software Testing
17 61 (14.77%) Technical Leadership
18 57 (13.80%) Validation
19 49 (11.86%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 126 (30.51%) Java
2 121 (29.30%) Python
3 105 (25.42%) JavaScript
4 92 (22.28%) SQL
5 79 (19.13%) TypeScript
6 43 (10.41%) C#
7 20 (4.84%) Bash
8 12 (2.91%) Swift
9 10 (2.42%) C++
9 10 (2.42%) Kotlin
10 9 (2.18%) Groovy
10 9 (2.18%) PowerShell
11 8 (1.94%) Ruby
12 7 (1.69%) Go
13 5 (1.21%) C
14 4 (0.97%) PHP
15 3 (0.73%) VB
15 3 (0.73%) VB.NET
16 2 (0.48%) Rust
16 2 (0.48%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 74 (17.92%) Security Cleared
2 63 (15.25%) SC Cleared
3 28 (6.78%) Degree
4 15 (3.63%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (2.66%) AWS Certification
5 11 (2.66%) HNC
6 6 (1.45%) DBS Check
6 6 (1.45%) Master's Degree
7 5 (1.21%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
8 4 (0.97%) HND
9 3 (0.73%) DV Cleared
9 3 (0.73%) NVQ Level 3
10 2 (0.48%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.48%) ISTQB
10 2 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.24%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.24%) CISM
11 1 (0.24%) CISSP
11 1 (0.24%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.24%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 105 (25.42%) QA
2 49 (11.86%) Accessibility
3 27 (6.54%) WCAG
4 26 (6.30%) Data Quality
5 9 (2.18%) GDPR
6 3 (0.73%) GRC
7 2 (0.48%) PMO
8 1 (0.24%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.24%) NIST
System Software
1 79 (19.13%) Docker
2 1 (0.24%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 48 (11.62%) Kubernetes
2 13 (3.15%) Argo
3 7 (1.69%) Ansible
4 5 (1.21%) Grafana
5 3 (0.73%) Progress Chef
5 3 (0.73%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.73%) Puppet
6 2 (0.48%) Kibana
6 2 (0.48%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.24%) Fluentd
7 1 (0.24%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 33 (7.99%) Microsoft
2 28 (6.78%) Databricks
3 18 (4.36%) Dynatrace
3 18 (4.36%) Splunk
4 13 (3.15%) Adobe
4 13 (3.15%) AppDynamics
5 11 (2.66%) Google
6 8 (1.94%) Apple
7 6 (1.45%) Confluent
7 6 (1.45%) Pega
8 4 (0.97%) Allen-Bradley
8 4 (0.97%) Sage
8 4 (0.97%) Salesforce
8 4 (0.97%) Siemens
9 3 (0.73%) Keysight
9 3 (0.73%) Oracle
9 3 (0.73%) SAP
10 2 (0.48%) Braze
10 2 (0.48%) dotdigital
10 2 (0.48%) UiPath