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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 123 93 125
Rank change year-on-year -30 +32 -82
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 271 287 363
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.36% 3.66% 2.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.92% 3.86% 2.52%
Number of salaries quoted 194 128 241
10th Percentile £40,900 £36,250 £36,250
25th Percentile £47,500 £47,000 £42,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £59,769 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +0.39% +8.67% -4.35%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £84,625 £97,528 £78,750
England median annual salary £62,500 £62,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year - +4.17% -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 14,098 7,426 14,388
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 70.73% 94.65% 81.15%
Number of salaries quoted 9,539 3,504 11,365
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £34,939 £36,565
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,055 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.88% +0.11% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £88,750 £85,000 £80,000
England median annual salary £60,000 £59,400 £55,000
% change year-on-year +1.01% +8.00% -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 30 May 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 30 May 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 -15 140 £60,000 -7.69% 72
Yorkshire -40 67 £75,000 +49.34% 25
North East -7 64 £52,500 -11.02% 22
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 8 (2.95%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 7 (2.58%) Apache
2 7 (2.58%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (2.58%) Apache Spark
2 7 (2.58%) Jupyter
3 3 (1.11%) Confluence
3 3 (1.11%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.74%) nginx
5 1 (0.37%) CMS
5 1 (0.37%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.37%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (1.11%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.37%) Oracle SCM
2 1 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 108 (39.85%) AWS
2 85 (31.37%) Azure
3 51 (18.82%) Azure DevOps
4 36 (13.28%) Serverless
5 20 (7.38%) GitHub
6 16 (5.90%) Azure AKS
7 15 (5.54%) Azure Data Factory
7 15 (5.54%) SaaS
8 14 (5.17%) Amazon S3
8 14 (5.17%) Azure Service Bus
9 12 (4.43%) Azure Monitor
10 11 (4.06%) Amazon EC2
11 10 (3.69%) AWS Lambda
11 10 (3.69%) GCP
12 9 (3.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 9 (3.32%) AWS CloudFormation
12 9 (3.32%) Azure Functions
12 9 (3.32%) Azure Logic Apps
12 9 (3.32%) Firebase
13 8 (2.95%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.85%) HTTP
2 2 (0.74%) SMS
2 2 (0.74%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (10.33%) PostgreSQL
2 27 (9.96%) MongoDB
3 24 (8.86%) NoSQL
4 15 (5.54%) Spark SQL
5 13 (4.80%) MySQL
6 12 (4.43%) DynamoDB
7 9 (3.32%) Data Warehouse
8 7 (2.58%) Amazon Athena
9 6 (2.21%) SQL Server
10 5 (1.85%) Relational Database
11 4 (1.48%) Flink
11 4 (1.48%) Power BI
12 3 (1.11%) Big Data
13 2 (0.74%) Azure SQL Database
13 2 (0.74%) Data Lake
13 2 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
13 2 (0.74%) Redis
14 1 (0.37%) BusinessObjects
14 1 (0.37%) Delta Lake
14 1 (0.37%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 43 (15.87%) GitLab
2 27 (9.96%) Jenkins
3 19 (7.01%) Git
4 17 (6.27%) JIRA
5 15 (5.54%) Postman
6 12 (4.43%) fastlane
7 10 (3.69%) Cypress.io
8 7 (2.58%) Cucumber
8 7 (2.58%) REST Assured
9 6 (2.21%) JMeter
9 6 (2.21%) LabVIEW
9 6 (2.21%) Maven
9 6 (2.21%) Selenium
10 4 (1.48%) Android Studio
10 4 (1.48%) Crashlytics
10 4 (1.48%) Gatling
10 4 (1.48%) Gradle
10 4 (1.48%) SonarQube
10 4 (1.48%) Spock
10 4 (1.48%) Xcode
General
1 59 (21.77%) Public Sector
2 49 (18.08%) Social Skills
3 36 (13.28%) Finance
4 27 (9.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 26 (9.59%) Analytical Skills
6 13 (4.80%) Banking
6 13 (4.80%) Marketing
7 9 (3.32%) Electronics
7 9 (3.32%) Investment Banking
8 8 (2.95%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (2.58%) Games
10 6 (2.21%) Legal
11 5 (1.85%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (1.48%) Manufacturing
13 3 (1.11%) French Language
13 3 (1.11%) Italian Language
13 3 (1.11%) Portuguese Language
13 3 (1.11%) Publishing
13 3 (1.11%) Retail
13 3 (1.11%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 78 (28.78%) Senior
2 59 (21.77%) Developer
3 53 (19.56%) Lead
4 49 (18.08%) Test Engineer
5 33 (12.18%) Software Engineer
6 29 (10.70%) Senior Developer
7 27 (9.96%) Java Engineer
8 20 (7.38%) Data Engineer
9 19 (7.01%) DevOps Engineer
10 15 (5.54%) Java Developer
10 15 (5.54%) Lead Data Engineer
11 13 (4.80%) Platform Engineer
11 13 (4.80%) Senior DevOps
11 13 (4.80%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 13 (4.80%) Senior Test Engineer
12 12 (4.43%) Azure Engineer
12 12 (4.43%) Full-Stack Developer
12 12 (4.43%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 10 (3.69%) Java Software Engineer
13 10 (3.69%) QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (14.39%) REST
2 38 (14.02%) Spring
3 35 (12.92%) React
4 34 (12.55%) Node.js
5 33 (12.18%) Spring Boot
6 26 (9.59%) AngularJS
7 24 (8.86%) PySpark
7 24 (8.86%) RESTful
8 20 (7.38%) .NET
9 19 (7.01%) Playwright
10 16 (5.90%) CSS
11 15 (5.54%) HTML
12 12 (4.43%) Vue
13 11 (4.06%) Next.js
13 11 (4.06%) OAuth
13 11 (4.06%) OAuth2
14 9 (3.32%) ARM Templates
14 9 (3.32%) GraphQL
15 8 (2.95%) Kafka
15 8 (2.95%) Ruby on Rails
Miscellaneous
1 40 (14.76%) Cloud Native
2 28 (10.33%) Mobile App
3 27 (9.96%) Product Ownership
4 12 (4.43%) Onboarding
5 9 (3.32%) Distributed Systems
6 7 (2.58%) Low-Code
7 6 (2.21%) Data Structures
8 5 (1.85%) Analytical Mindset
8 5 (1.85%) Marketing Technology
9 4 (1.48%) Online Games
9 4 (1.48%) Private Cloud
10 3 (1.11%) Algorithms
10 3 (1.11%) Data Centre
10 3 (1.11%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (1.11%) NHS
10 3 (1.11%) PKI
11 2 (0.74%) AI Agents
11 2 (0.74%) Client/Server
11 2 (0.74%) Educational Technology
11 2 (0.74%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 19 (7.01%) Linux
2 16 (5.90%) Apple iOS
3 15 (5.54%) Windows
4 13 (4.80%) Android
4 13 (4.80%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 158 (58.30%) CI/CD
2 139 (51.29%) Agile
3 112 (41.33%) DevOps
4 103 (38.01%) Mentoring
5 64 (23.62%) Microservices
5 64 (23.62%) Problem-Solving
6 59 (21.77%) Continuous Improvement
7 58 (21.40%) Software Engineering
8 57 (21.03%) Full-Stack Development
9 55 (20.30%) Infrastructure as Code
10 53 (19.56%) Scrum
11 51 (18.82%) TDD
12 44 (16.24%) Coaching
13 33 (12.18%) Observability
14 32 (11.81%) Continuous Integration
15 31 (11.44%) Design Patterns
16 30 (11.07%) AI
17 29 (10.70%) Deployment Automation
18 28 (10.33%) Architectural Patterns
19 26 (9.59%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 113 (41.70%) Java
2 83 (30.63%) Python
3 72 (26.57%) SQL
4 53 (19.56%) JavaScript
5 31 (11.44%) C#
6 30 (11.07%) TypeScript
7 11 (4.06%) Kotlin
8 9 (3.32%) Bash
9 8 (2.95%) C++
9 8 (2.95%) Groovy
9 8 (2.95%) Ruby
9 8 (2.95%) Swift
10 6 (2.21%) Go
11 5 (1.85%) VB
12 4 (1.48%) C
12 4 (1.48%) PHP
13 1 (0.37%) Dart
13 1 (0.37%) Perl
13 1 (0.37%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.37%) VBA
Qualifications
1 24 (8.86%) Degree
2 18 (6.64%) Security Cleared
3 16 (5.90%) SC Cleared
4 12 (4.43%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.58%) DBS Check
6 6 (2.21%) HNC
7 4 (1.48%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.48%) ISTQB
8 3 (1.11%) NVQ Level 3
9 1 (0.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.37%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (19.19%) QA
2 24 (8.86%) Accessibility
3 14 (5.17%) WCAG
4 12 (4.43%) GDPR
5 10 (3.69%) Data Quality
System Software
1 32 (11.81%) Docker
Systems Management
1 53 (19.56%) Terraform
2 20 (7.38%) Kubernetes
3 13 (4.80%) Argo
4 5 (1.85%) Ansible
5 4 (1.48%) Grafana
6 3 (1.11%) Packer
7 2 (0.74%) Rancher
8 1 (0.37%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 18 (6.64%) Databricks
2 16 (5.90%) Microsoft
3 12 (4.43%) Salesforce
4 9 (3.32%) Dynatrace
5 8 (2.95%) Adobe
5 8 (2.95%) AppDynamics
5 8 (2.95%) Google
6 4 (1.48%) Apple
6 4 (1.48%) Splunk
7 3 (1.11%) IBM
7 3 (1.11%) Keysight
7 3 (1.11%) Oracle
8 2 (0.74%) Braze
8 2 (0.74%) dotdigital
9 1 (0.37%) Blue Prism
9 1 (0.37%) DevExpress
9 1 (0.37%) Hotjar
9 1 (0.37%) Pega
9 1 (0.37%) SAP