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

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 132 95 119
Rank change year-on-year -37 +24 -78
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 241 295 363
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.27% 3.74% 2.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.79% 3.94% 2.58%
Number of salaries quoted 175 139 245
10th Percentile £40,300 £35,500 £36,250
25th Percentile £47,500 £45,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +13.64% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £83,750 £97,528 £78,750
England median annual salary £63,625 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +6.04% - -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 13,447 7,496 14,044
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 70.75% 95.04% 82.50%
Number of salaries quoted 8,910 3,754 11,180
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £35,000 £36,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £53,350 £50,055 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.58% +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 18 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 18 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 -21 123 £60,000 +3.45% 72
Yorkshire -35 66 £69,310 +38.62% 23
North East -13 52 £52,500 -11.02% 34
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 5 (2.07%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.66%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 3 (1.24%) Apache
3 3 (1.24%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (1.24%) Jupyter
4 2 (0.83%) Confluence
4 2 (0.83%) nginx
4 2 (0.83%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.41%) CMS
5 1 (0.41%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.41%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (1.24%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.41%) Oracle SCM
1 1 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 89 (36.93%) AWS
2 78 (32.37%) Azure
3 43 (17.84%) Azure DevOps
4 32 (13.28%) Serverless
5 18 (7.47%) Azure AKS
6 15 (6.22%) Azure Data Factory
6 15 (6.22%) GitHub
7 14 (5.81%) SaaS
8 13 (5.39%) Azure Service Bus
9 11 (4.56%) Azure Monitor
9 11 (4.56%) GCP
10 9 (3.73%) AWS CloudFormation
10 9 (3.73%) Azure Functions
10 9 (3.73%) Azure Logic Apps
11 8 (3.32%) Amazon S3
12 7 (2.90%) AWS Lambda
13 6 (2.49%) Amazon EC2
13 6 (2.49%) Amazon EKS
13 6 (2.49%) PaaS
13 6 (2.49%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.24%) HTTP
2 2 (0.83%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.41%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (12.86%) MongoDB
2 28 (11.62%) PostgreSQL
3 23 (9.54%) NoSQL
4 15 (6.22%) Spark SQL
5 14 (5.81%) MySQL
6 9 (3.73%) Data Warehouse
7 8 (3.32%) DynamoDB
8 4 (1.66%) Flink
8 4 (1.66%) Power BI
8 4 (1.66%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.66%) SQL Server
9 3 (1.24%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (1.24%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
10 2 (0.83%) PostHog
10 2 (0.83%) Redis
11 1 (0.41%) Big Data
11 1 (0.41%) BusinessObjects
Development Applications
1 37 (15.35%) GitLab
2 20 (8.30%) Jenkins
3 16 (6.64%) Git
3 16 (6.64%) JIRA
4 15 (6.22%) Postman
5 8 (3.32%) Cucumber
5 8 (3.32%) JMeter
6 7 (2.90%) Cypress.io
6 7 (2.90%) fastlane
6 7 (2.90%) REST Assured
6 7 (2.90%) Selenium
7 5 (2.07%) LabVIEW
8 4 (1.66%) Bitbucket
8 4 (1.66%) Gatling
8 4 (1.66%) JUnit
8 4 (1.66%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.66%) Spock
9 3 (1.24%) Artifactory
9 3 (1.24%) SpecFlow
9 3 (1.24%) TestRail
General
1 54 (22.41%) Public Sector
2 38 (15.77%) Social Skills
3 30 (12.45%) Finance
4 20 (8.30%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (8.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 12 (4.98%) Banking
6 8 (3.32%) Investment Banking
6 8 (3.32%) Marketing
7 7 (2.90%) Electronics
7 7 (2.90%) Games
8 6 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (2.07%) Legal
9 5 (2.07%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (1.24%) French Language
10 3 (1.24%) Italian Language
10 3 (1.24%) Law
10 3 (1.24%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.24%) Portuguese Language
10 3 (1.24%) Retail
10 3 (1.24%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 71 (29.46%) Senior
2 49 (20.33%) Lead
3 45 (18.67%) Developer
4 44 (18.26%) Test Engineer
5 28 (11.62%) Software Engineer
6 26 (10.79%) Java Engineer
7 24 (9.96%) Senior Developer
8 21 (8.71%) Data Engineer
9 19 (7.88%) DevOps Engineer
10 15 (6.22%) Lead Data Engineer
11 13 (5.39%) Java Developer
11 13 (5.39%) Platform Engineer
11 13 (5.39%) Senior DevOps
11 13 (5.39%) Senior DevOps Engineer
12 12 (4.98%) Azure Engineer
12 12 (4.98%) QA Engineer
13 11 (4.56%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 11 (4.56%) Senior Test Engineer
14 10 (4.15%) Java Software Engineer
14 10 (4.15%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (14.52%) Spring
2 32 (13.28%) REST
3 30 (12.45%) Spring Boot
4 28 (11.62%) React
5 24 (9.96%) Node.js
6 20 (8.30%) AngularJS
6 20 (8.30%) PySpark
6 20 (8.30%) RESTful
7 18 (7.47%) .NET
7 18 (7.47%) Playwright
8 13 (5.39%) CSS
9 12 (4.98%) HTML
10 11 (4.56%) OAuth
10 11 (4.56%) OAuth2
11 9 (3.73%) ARM Templates
11 9 (3.73%) Kafka
11 9 (3.73%) Vue
12 6 (2.49%) Next.js
12 6 (2.49%) RabbitMQ
13 5 (2.07%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 30 (12.45%) Cloud Native
2 18 (7.47%) Mobile App
3 16 (6.64%) Product Ownership
4 10 (4.15%) Onboarding
5 6 (2.49%) Distributed Systems
6 5 (2.07%) Analytical Mindset
6 5 (2.07%) Low-Code
7 4 (1.66%) Data Structures
7 4 (1.66%) Online Games
7 4 (1.66%) Private Cloud
8 3 (1.24%) Algorithms
8 3 (1.24%) Data Centre
8 3 (1.24%) Marketing Technology
8 3 (1.24%) NHS
8 3 (1.24%) PKI
8 3 (1.24%) Public Cloud
9 2 (0.83%) Client/Server
9 2 (0.83%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (0.83%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 19 (7.88%) Linux
2 15 (6.22%) Windows
3 13 (5.39%) Apple iOS
3 13 (5.39%) Unix
4 10 (4.15%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 133 (55.19%) CI/CD
2 120 (49.79%) Agile
3 96 (39.83%) DevOps
4 94 (39.00%) Mentoring
5 55 (22.82%) Microservices
6 54 (22.41%) Problem-Solving
7 51 (21.16%) Continuous Improvement
8 50 (20.75%) Infrastructure as Code
9 46 (19.09%) Software Engineering
10 45 (18.67%) Scrum
11 43 (17.84%) Full-Stack Development
11 43 (17.84%) TDD
12 39 (16.18%) Coaching
13 31 (12.86%) Continuous Integration
14 29 (12.03%) Observability
15 27 (11.20%) BDD
16 26 (10.79%) AI
16 26 (10.79%) Deployment Automation
16 26 (10.79%) Software Testing
17 25 (10.37%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 102 (42.32%) Java
2 73 (30.29%) Python
3 66 (27.39%) SQL
4 43 (17.84%) JavaScript
5 30 (12.45%) C#
6 20 (8.30%) TypeScript
7 8 (3.32%) Kotlin
8 7 (2.90%) Go
8 7 (2.90%) Groovy
9 6 (2.49%) Bash
9 6 (2.49%) C++
10 5 (2.07%) Swift
11 4 (1.66%) Ruby
11 4 (1.66%) VB
12 3 (1.24%) C
12 3 (1.24%) Scala
13 2 (0.83%) PHP
14 1 (0.41%) Perl
14 1 (0.41%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.41%) VBA
Qualifications
1 21 (8.71%) Degree
2 13 (5.39%) Security Cleared
3 11 (4.56%) SC Cleared
4 10 (4.15%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (2.49%) DBS Check
6 4 (1.66%) HNC
6 4 (1.66%) ISTQB
7 3 (1.24%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (0.83%) NVQ Level 3
9 1 (0.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (19.92%) QA
2 17 (7.05%) Accessibility
3 11 (4.56%) GDPR
4 8 (3.32%) WCAG
5 7 (2.90%) Data Quality
System Software
1 26 (10.79%) Docker
Systems Management
1 50 (20.75%) Terraform
2 21 (8.71%) Kubernetes
3 13 (5.39%) Argo
4 6 (2.49%) Ansible
5 5 (2.07%) Grafana
6 3 (1.24%) Packer
6 3 (1.24%) Rancher
7 1 (0.41%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 18 (7.47%) Databricks
2 13 (5.39%) Microsoft
3 12 (4.98%) Salesforce
4 8 (3.32%) AppDynamics
5 6 (2.49%) Google
6 5 (2.07%) Dynatrace
7 4 (1.66%) Adobe
7 4 (1.66%) IBM
7 4 (1.66%) Oracle
7 4 (1.66%) Splunk
8 2 (0.83%) Apple
8 2 (0.83%) Keysight
8 2 (0.83%) Palantir
9 1 (0.41%) Blue Prism
9 1 (0.41%) Braze
9 1 (0.41%) DevExpress
9 1 (0.41%) dotdigital
9 1 (0.41%) Hotjar
9 1 (0.41%) Pega
9 1 (0.41%) SAP