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

6 months to
5 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 102 115 76
Rank change year-on-year +13 -39 +17
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 369 261 352
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.60% 2.79% 2.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.27% 3.18% 3.17%
Number of salaries quoted 252 111 154
10th Percentile £41,325 £37,500 £36,975
25th Percentile £47,500 £47,231 £45,643
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,750 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -2.08% +9.09% -4.35%
75th Percentile £75,000 £70,625 £70,000
90th Percentile £83,750 £82,751 £77,250
England median annual salary £65,000 £65,000 £60,500
% change year-on-year - +7.44% -6.92%

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 16,253 8,195 11,106
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 70.43% 87.63% 77.67%
Number of salaries quoted 12,184 4,121 6,566
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,000 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,890
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £48,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +14.58% -4.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £74,987 £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 5 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 5 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 +5 187 £65,000 +4.00% 164
North East +12 103 £53,750 +63.50% 46
Yorkshire -19 79 £69,310 +40.73% 70
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 (4.34%) Apache Spark
2 13 (3.52%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 13 (3.52%) Apache
2 13 (3.52%) Apache Airflow
2 13 (3.52%) Jupyter
3 8 (2.17%) Confluence
4 3 (0.81%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.54%) 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 (1.08%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 154 (41.73%) AWS
2 120 (32.52%) Azure
3 63 (17.07%) Azure DevOps
4 49 (13.28%) Serverless
5 28 (7.59%) Amazon S3
6 26 (7.05%) GitHub
7 22 (5.96%) GCP
8 20 (5.42%) SaaS
9 19 (5.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 19 (5.15%) Azure Data Factory
10 17 (4.61%) Amazon EC2
10 17 (4.61%) AWS Lambda
11 15 (4.07%) Amazon ECR
11 15 (4.07%) AWS CloudFormation
11 15 (4.07%) Azure AKS
12 14 (3.79%) Azure Service Bus
12 14 (3.79%) Firebase
13 13 (3.52%) Amazon EMR
13 13 (3.52%) Azure Monitor
14 11 (2.98%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.54%) HTTP
1 2 (0.54%) SMS
2 1 (0.27%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (7.05%) MongoDB
2 22 (5.96%) DynamoDB
2 22 (5.96%) PostgreSQL
3 19 (5.15%) NoSQL
4 15 (4.07%) Data Warehouse
4 15 (4.07%) Spark SQL
5 14 (3.79%) SQL Server
6 13 (3.52%) Amazon Athena
7 8 (2.17%) Relational Database
8 7 (1.90%) MySQL
9 5 (1.36%) Elasticsearch
10 4 (1.08%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (1.08%) Big Data
10 4 (1.08%) BigQuery
10 4 (1.08%) Delta Lake
10 4 (1.08%) Flink
10 4 (1.08%) Metadata
10 4 (1.08%) Neo4j
10 4 (1.08%) Power BI
11 3 (0.81%) DocumentDB
Development Applications
1 68 (18.43%) GitLab
2 39 (10.57%) Git
3 36 (9.76%) Jenkins
4 23 (6.23%) JIRA
5 19 (5.15%) Cypress.io
6 16 (4.34%) fastlane
7 15 (4.07%) Maven
7 15 (4.07%) Postman
8 13 (3.52%) JUnit
8 13 (3.52%) Spock
9 11 (2.98%) Cucumber
9 11 (2.98%) SonarQube
10 10 (2.71%) Bitbucket
11 9 (2.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 8 (2.17%) REST Assured
12 8 (2.17%) Storybook
13 7 (1.90%) Selenium
14 6 (1.63%) Xcode
15 5 (1.36%) Android Studio
15 5 (1.36%) Gradle
General
1 94 (25.47%) Social Skills
2 78 (21.14%) Public Sector
3 68 (18.43%) Finance
4 39 (10.57%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (10.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 14 (3.79%) Banking
6 13 (3.52%) Marketing
7 10 (2.71%) Publishing
8 9 (2.44%) Investment Banking
8 9 (2.44%) Legal
9 8 (2.17%) Games
10 7 (1.90%) Documentation Skills
11 6 (1.63%) Electronics
11 6 (1.63%) Law
11 6 (1.63%) Retail
12 4 (1.08%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.81%) Police
13 3 (0.81%) Tech for Good
14 2 (0.54%) Automotive
14 2 (0.54%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 110 (29.81%) Senior
2 66 (17.89%) Developer
3 60 (16.26%) Test Engineer
4 54 (14.63%) Lead
5 40 (10.84%) DevOps Engineer
6 34 (9.21%) Software Engineer
7 29 (7.86%) Full-Stack Engineer
8 28 (7.59%) Data Engineer
8 28 (7.59%) Senior Developer
9 24 (6.50%) Senior DevOps
9 24 (6.50%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 17 (4.61%) Analyst
10 17 (4.61%) Java Developer
11 16 (4.34%) Java Engineer
12 15 (4.07%) Lead Data Engineer
13 14 (3.79%) Databricks Engineer
14 13 (3.52%) Databricks Data Engineer
14 13 (3.52%) Platform Engineer
15 12 (3.25%) Azure Engineer
15 12 (3.25%) QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (18.70%) Terraform
2 67 (18.16%) Node.js
3 56 (15.18%) AngularJS
4 48 (13.01%) REST
5 47 (12.74%) Spring
6 41 (11.11%) React
7 34 (9.21%) Playwright
7 34 (9.21%) Spring Boot
8 32 (8.67%) PySpark
9 25 (6.78%) .NET
9 25 (6.78%) CSS
9 25 (6.78%) HTML
10 22 (5.96%) RESTful
11 17 (4.61%) Vue
12 16 (4.34%) Next.js
13 11 (2.98%) GraphQL
13 11 (2.98%) Kafka
14 10 (2.71%) React Native
15 9 (2.44%) ARM Templates
16 8 (2.17%) SwiftUI
Miscellaneous
1 41 (11.11%) Product Ownership
2 39 (10.57%) Cloud Native
3 32 (8.67%) Mobile App
4 20 (5.42%) Private Cloud
5 19 (5.15%) Distributed Systems
6 11 (2.98%) Data Structures
7 9 (2.44%) Low-Code
8 6 (1.63%) Driving Licence
8 6 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.63%) Marketing Technology
8 6 (1.63%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.36%) AI Agents
9 5 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
9 5 (1.36%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.08%) Online Games
11 3 (0.81%) Educational Technology
11 3 (0.81%) Enterprise Software
11 3 (0.81%) PKI
11 3 (0.81%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 31 (8.40%) Linux
2 23 (6.23%) Windows
3 20 (5.42%) Unix
4 14 (3.79%) Apple iOS
5 9 (2.44%) Android
6 4 (1.08%) VMS
7 1 (0.27%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 250 (67.75%) CI/CD
2 209 (56.64%) Agile
3 167 (45.26%) DevOps
4 126 (34.15%) Mentoring
5 106 (28.73%) Continuous Improvement
6 95 (25.75%) Software Engineering
7 91 (24.66%) Problem-Solving
8 75 (20.33%) Scrum
9 74 (20.05%) Full-Stack Development
10 73 (19.78%) Infrastructure as Code
10 73 (19.78%) Microservices
11 70 (18.97%) Coaching
12 63 (17.07%) Continuous Integration
13 62 (16.80%) AI
13 62 (16.80%) TDD
14 57 (15.45%) Observability
15 50 (13.55%) Technical Leadership
16 47 (12.74%) Test Strategy
17 41 (11.11%) Software Testing
18 40 (10.84%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 136 (36.86%) Java
2 116 (31.44%) Python
3 88 (23.85%) JavaScript
4 85 (23.04%) SQL
5 66 (17.89%) TypeScript
6 40 (10.84%) C#
7 15 (4.07%) Bash
8 13 (3.52%) Swift
9 12 (3.25%) Groovy
10 10 (2.71%) C++
11 9 (2.44%) Kotlin
12 8 (2.17%) PowerShell
12 8 (2.17%) Ruby
13 6 (1.63%) C
14 5 (1.36%) Go
14 5 (1.36%) PHP
15 3 (0.81%) Bicep
15 3 (0.81%) VB
15 3 (0.81%) VB.NET
16 2 (0.54%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 48 (13.01%) Security Cleared
2 37 (10.03%) SC Cleared
3 29 (7.86%) Degree
4 17 (4.61%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (2.71%) HNC
6 6 (1.63%) DBS Check
7 5 (1.36%) AWS Certification
7 5 (1.36%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
7 5 (1.36%) Master's Degree
8 4 (1.08%) HND
9 3 (0.81%) ISTQB
9 3 (0.81%) NVQ Level 3
10 2 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.27%) BPSS Clearance
11 1 (0.27%) CISM
11 1 (0.27%) CISSP
11 1 (0.27%) DV Cleared
11 1 (0.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 1 (0.27%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.27%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (22.49%) QA
2 39 (10.57%) Accessibility
3 22 (5.96%) WCAG
4 20 (5.42%) Data Quality
5 14 (3.79%) GDPR
6 1 (0.27%) GRC
6 1 (0.27%) ISO 22301
6 1 (0.27%) NIST
System Software
1 67 (18.16%) Docker
Systems Management
1 38 (10.30%) Kubernetes
2 13 (3.52%) Argo
3 7 (1.90%) Ansible
4 3 (0.81%) Grafana
4 3 (0.81%) Packer
4 3 (0.81%) Progress Chef
4 3 (0.81%) Puppet
5 2 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.27%) Fluentd
6 1 (0.27%) HP Fortify
6 1 (0.27%) Kibana
Vendors
1 30 (8.13%) Microsoft
2 25 (6.78%) Databricks
3 18 (4.88%) Splunk
4 16 (4.34%) AppDynamics
5 15 (4.07%) Dynatrace
6 13 (3.52%) Adobe
7 11 (2.98%) Google
8 9 (2.44%) Salesforce
9 8 (2.17%) Apple
10 7 (1.90%) Pega
11 4 (1.08%) Allen-Bradley
11 4 (1.08%) Siemens
12 3 (0.81%) Confluent
12 3 (0.81%) IBM
12 3 (0.81%) Keysight
12 3 (0.81%) Sage
13 2 (0.54%) Braze
13 2 (0.54%) dotdigital
13 2 (0.54%) Oracle
13 2 (0.54%) UiPath