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

6 months to
24 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 121 99 121
Rank change year-on-year -22 +22 -80
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 257 278 366
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.32% 3.59% 2.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.86% 3.79% 2.59%
Number of salaries quoted 186 124 246
10th Percentile £40,375 £36,625 £36,250
25th Percentile £47,500 £47,173 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £59,769 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +0.39% +8.67% -4.35%
75th Percentile £75,938 £80,688 £70,938
90th Percentile £83,750 £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 13,825 7,338 14,115
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 70.76% 94.83% 81.87%
Number of salaries quoted 9,257 3,462 11,226
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £35,000 £36,750
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 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +9.09% -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 24 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 24 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 -16 132 £60,000 -7.69% 69
Yorkshire -36 67 £69,310 +38.01% 28
North East -8 58 £52,500 -11.02% 32
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 7 (2.72%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.95%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 5 (1.95%) Apache
2 5 (1.95%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (1.95%) Jupyter
3 3 (1.17%) Confluence
3 3 (1.17%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.78%) nginx
5 1 (0.39%) CMS
5 1 (0.39%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.39%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (1.17%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (1.17%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.39%) Oracle SCM
2 1 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 98 (38.13%) AWS
2 83 (32.30%) Azure
3 46 (17.90%) Azure DevOps
4 33 (12.84%) Serverless
5 18 (7.00%) Azure AKS
6 17 (6.61%) GitHub
7 15 (5.84%) Azure Data Factory
8 13 (5.06%) Azure Service Bus
8 13 (5.06%) SaaS
9 12 (4.67%) Azure Monitor
9 12 (4.67%) GCP
10 11 (4.28%) Amazon S3
11 9 (3.50%) AWS CloudFormation
11 9 (3.50%) Azure Functions
11 9 (3.50%) Azure Logic Apps
12 8 (3.11%) Amazon EC2
12 8 (3.11%) AWS Lambda
12 8 (3.11%) Power Platform
13 7 (2.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 6 (2.33%) Firebase
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.17%) HTTP
2 2 (0.78%) SMS
2 2 (0.78%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (12.06%) MongoDB
2 28 (10.89%) PostgreSQL
3 23 (8.95%) NoSQL
4 15 (5.84%) Spark SQL
5 14 (5.45%) MySQL
6 10 (3.89%) DynamoDB
7 9 (3.50%) Data Warehouse
8 6 (2.33%) SQL Server
9 5 (1.95%) Amazon Athena
10 4 (1.56%) Flink
10 4 (1.56%) Power BI
10 4 (1.56%) Relational Database
11 3 (1.17%) Elasticsearch
12 2 (0.78%) Azure SQL Database
12 2 (0.78%) Big Data
12 2 (0.78%) PostHog
12 2 (0.78%) Redis
13 1 (0.39%) BusinessObjects
13 1 (0.39%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 39 (15.18%) GitLab
2 22 (8.56%) Jenkins
3 16 (6.23%) Git
3 16 (6.23%) JIRA
4 15 (5.84%) Postman
5 9 (3.50%) fastlane
6 7 (2.72%) Cucumber
6 7 (2.72%) Cypress.io
6 7 (2.72%) JMeter
6 7 (2.72%) REST Assured
6 7 (2.72%) Selenium
7 6 (2.33%) LabVIEW
8 4 (1.56%) Bitbucket
8 4 (1.56%) Gatling
8 4 (1.56%) JUnit
8 4 (1.56%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.56%) Spock
9 3 (1.17%) Android Studio
9 3 (1.17%) Artifactory
9 3 (1.17%) Gradle
General
1 58 (22.57%) Public Sector
2 42 (16.34%) Social Skills
3 31 (12.06%) Finance
4 24 (9.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 22 (8.56%) Analytical Skills
6 13 (5.06%) Banking
7 10 (3.89%) Marketing
8 9 (3.50%) Electronics
8 9 (3.50%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (2.72%) Games
10 5 (1.95%) Legal
10 5 (1.95%) Organisational Skills
11 4 (1.56%) Manufacturing
12 3 (1.17%) French Language
12 3 (1.17%) Italian Language
12 3 (1.17%) Law
12 3 (1.17%) Portuguese Language
12 3 (1.17%) Retail
12 3 (1.17%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 77 (29.96%) Senior
2 51 (19.84%) Developer
2 51 (19.84%) Lead
3 47 (18.29%) Test Engineer
4 31 (12.06%) Software Engineer
5 28 (10.89%) Senior Developer
6 27 (10.51%) Java Engineer
7 21 (8.17%) Data Engineer
8 19 (7.39%) DevOps Engineer
9 15 (5.84%) Lead Data Engineer
10 14 (5.45%) Java Developer
11 13 (5.06%) Platform Engineer
11 13 (5.06%) Senior DevOps
11 13 (5.06%) Senior DevOps Engineer
12 12 (4.67%) Azure Engineer
12 12 (4.67%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 12 (4.67%) Senior Test Engineer
13 10 (3.89%) Java Software Engineer
13 10 (3.89%) QA Engineer
13 10 (3.89%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (14.40%) Spring
2 33 (12.84%) REST
3 32 (12.45%) Spring Boot
4 31 (12.06%) React
5 26 (10.12%) Node.js
6 22 (8.56%) AngularJS
6 22 (8.56%) PySpark
6 22 (8.56%) RESTful
7 19 (7.39%) .NET
8 17 (6.61%) Playwright
9 15 (5.84%) CSS
10 14 (5.45%) HTML
11 11 (4.28%) OAuth
11 11 (4.28%) OAuth2
12 10 (3.89%) Next.js
12 10 (3.89%) Vue
13 9 (3.50%) ARM Templates
13 9 (3.50%) Kafka
14 7 (2.72%) React Native
14 7 (2.72%) Ruby on Rails
Miscellaneous
1 36 (14.01%) Cloud Native
2 23 (8.95%) Mobile App
3 21 (8.17%) Product Ownership
4 11 (4.28%) Onboarding
5 7 (2.72%) Distributed Systems
5 7 (2.72%) Low-Code
6 5 (1.95%) Analytical Mindset
6 5 (1.95%) Data Structures
7 4 (1.56%) Marketing Technology
7 4 (1.56%) Online Games
7 4 (1.56%) Private Cloud
8 3 (1.17%) Algorithms
8 3 (1.17%) Data Centre
8 3 (1.17%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (1.17%) NHS
8 3 (1.17%) PKI
8 3 (1.17%) Public Cloud
9 2 (0.78%) Client/Server
9 2 (0.78%) Educational Technology
9 2 (0.78%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 19 (7.39%) Linux
2 15 (5.84%) Windows
3 14 (5.45%) Apple iOS
4 13 (5.06%) Unix
5 11 (4.28%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 143 (55.64%) CI/CD
2 130 (50.58%) Agile
3 103 (40.08%) DevOps
4 100 (38.91%) Mentoring
5 60 (23.35%) Problem-Solving
6 59 (22.96%) Microservices
7 56 (21.79%) Continuous Improvement
8 53 (20.62%) Software Engineering
9 52 (20.23%) Infrastructure as Code
10 49 (19.07%) Scrum
11 48 (18.68%) Full-Stack Development
12 47 (18.29%) TDD
13 42 (16.34%) Coaching
14 32 (12.45%) Continuous Integration
15 31 (12.06%) Observability
16 28 (10.89%) AI
16 28 (10.89%) Deployment Automation
16 28 (10.89%) Design Patterns
17 26 (10.12%) BDD
17 26 (10.12%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 108 (42.02%) Java
2 81 (31.52%) Python
3 69 (26.85%) SQL
4 47 (18.29%) JavaScript
5 30 (11.67%) C#
6 21 (8.17%) TypeScript
7 9 (3.50%) Kotlin
8 8 (3.11%) C++
9 7 (2.72%) Bash
9 7 (2.72%) Go
9 7 (2.72%) Groovy
9 7 (2.72%) Ruby
10 6 (2.33%) Swift
11 5 (1.95%) VB
12 4 (1.56%) C
13 3 (1.17%) Scala
14 2 (0.78%) PHP
15 1 (0.39%) Perl
15 1 (0.39%) PL/SQL
15 1 (0.39%) VBA
Qualifications
1 22 (8.56%) Degree
2 16 (6.23%) Security Cleared
3 14 (5.45%) SC Cleared
4 10 (3.89%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.72%) DBS Check
6 6 (2.33%) HNC
7 4 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.56%) ISTQB
8 3 (1.17%) NVQ Level 3
9 1 (0.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.39%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (18.68%) QA
2 19 (7.39%) Accessibility
3 11 (4.28%) GDPR
4 10 (3.89%) WCAG
5 8 (3.11%) Data Quality
System Software
1 29 (11.28%) Docker
Systems Management
1 52 (20.23%) Terraform
2 22 (8.56%) Kubernetes
3 13 (5.06%) Argo
4 6 (2.33%) Ansible
5 5 (1.95%) Grafana
6 3 (1.17%) Packer
6 3 (1.17%) Rancher
7 1 (0.39%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 18 (7.00%) Databricks
2 15 (5.84%) Microsoft
3 13 (5.06%) Salesforce
4 8 (3.11%) AppDynamics
5 7 (2.72%) Dynatrace
5 7 (2.72%) Google
6 5 (1.95%) Adobe
6 5 (1.95%) Oracle
7 4 (1.56%) IBM
7 4 (1.56%) Splunk
8 3 (1.17%) Apple
8 3 (1.17%) Keysight
9 2 (0.78%) Braze
9 2 (0.78%) dotdigital
9 2 (0.78%) Palantir
10 1 (0.39%) Blue Prism
10 1 (0.39%) DevExpress
10 1 (0.39%) Hotjar
10 1 (0.39%) Pega
10 1 (0.39%) SAP