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

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 107 118
Rank change year-on-year -27 +11 -76
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 214 186 357
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.18% 2.62% 2.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.62% 2.77% 2.58%
Number of salaries quoted 153 140 238
10th Percentile £40,000 £35,875 £36,250
25th Percentile £48,289 £44,688 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £55,000 £56,250
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -2.22% -0.44%
75th Percentile £76,250 £80,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £83,750 £97,528 £78,750
England median annual salary £65,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +8.33% - -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 13,236 6,709 13,837
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 72.76% 94.43% 83.23%
Number of salaries quoted 8,173 3,743 11,018
10th Percentile £29,000 £27,750 £27,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £36,875 £36,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,130 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -0.70% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £87,400 £85,000 £80,000
England median annual salary £59,773 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -0.38% +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 29 April 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 29 April 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 -15 107 £62,500 +13.64% 56
Yorkshire -64 65 £69,310 +38.62% 29
North East -21 42 £55,000 -6.78% 38
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 (2.34%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.40%) Oracle Workflow
3 2 (0.93%) Confluence
3 2 (0.93%) nginx
4 1 (0.47%) CMS
4 1 (0.47%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.47%) Umbraco
4 1 (0.47%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.47%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.47%) Oracle SCM
1 1 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 79 (36.92%) AWS
2 71 (33.18%) Azure
3 34 (15.89%) Azure DevOps
4 28 (13.08%) Serverless
5 18 (8.41%) Azure AKS
6 17 (7.94%) SaaS
7 15 (7.01%) GCP
8 13 (6.07%) Azure Service Bus
9 12 (5.61%) Azure Data Factory
10 10 (4.67%) GitHub
11 9 (4.21%) AWS CloudFormation
11 9 (4.21%) Azure Monitor
12 7 (3.27%) AWS Lambda
12 7 (3.27%) Azure Functions
12 7 (3.27%) Azure Logic Apps
13 6 (2.80%) Amazon EKS
13 6 (2.80%) dbt
13 6 (2.80%) PaaS
13 6 (2.80%) Salesforce Service Cloud
14 5 (2.34%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.34%) HTTP
2 4 (1.87%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (14.49%) MongoDB
2 29 (13.55%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (9.81%) NoSQL
4 16 (7.48%) MySQL
5 12 (5.61%) Spark SQL
6 7 (3.27%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (2.34%) DynamoDB
7 5 (2.34%) SQL Server
8 4 (1.87%) Flink
8 4 (1.87%) Power BI
9 3 (1.40%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (1.40%) Relational Database
9 3 (1.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (0.93%) PostHog
10 2 (0.93%) Redis
11 1 (0.47%) Azure SQL Database
11 1 (0.47%) Big Data
11 1 (0.47%) BusinessObjects
Development Applications
1 28 (13.08%) GitLab
2 16 (7.48%) JIRA
3 15 (7.01%) Postman
4 13 (6.07%) Git
4 13 (6.07%) Jenkins
5 10 (4.67%) Cucumber
5 10 (4.67%) Selenium
6 8 (3.74%) JMeter
7 7 (3.27%) Cypress.io
7 7 (3.27%) REST Assured
8 4 (1.87%) Bitbucket
8 4 (1.87%) Gatling
8 4 (1.87%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.87%) Visual Studio
9 3 (1.40%) Artifactory
9 3 (1.40%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (1.40%) LabVIEW
9 3 (1.40%) LoadRunner
9 3 (1.40%) SpecFlow
9 3 (1.40%) TestRail
General
1 43 (20.09%) Public Sector
2 42 (19.63%) Social Skills
3 27 (12.62%) Finance
4 16 (7.48%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (6.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 10 (4.67%) Banking
7 7 (3.27%) Games
8 6 (2.80%) Investment Banking
8 6 (2.80%) Marketing
9 5 (2.34%) Organisational Skills
10 4 (1.87%) Law
11 3 (1.40%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.40%) Electronics
11 3 (1.40%) French Language
11 3 (1.40%) Health Technology
11 3 (1.40%) Italian Language
11 3 (1.40%) Portuguese Language
11 3 (1.40%) Retail
11 3 (1.40%) Spanish Language
12 2 (0.93%) Legal
Job Titles
1 65 (30.37%) Senior
2 42 (19.63%) Lead
3 39 (18.22%) Developer
4 29 (13.55%) Test Engineer
5 26 (12.15%) Java Engineer
6 24 (11.21%) Software Engineer
7 21 (9.81%) Senior Developer
8 20 (9.35%) Data Engineer
9 18 (8.41%) DevOps Engineer
10 13 (6.07%) QA Engineer
10 13 (6.07%) Senior DevOps
10 13 (6.07%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 12 (5.61%) Lead Data Engineer
12 11 (5.14%) Platform Engineer
13 10 (4.67%) Full-Stack Developer
13 10 (4.67%) Java Software Engineer
13 10 (4.67%) Test Automation Engineer
13 10 (4.67%) Test Leader
14 9 (4.21%) Applications Engineer
14 9 (4.21%) Senior Applications Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (13.55%) Spring
2 27 (12.62%) REST
3 26 (12.15%) Spring Boot
4 25 (11.68%) React
5 23 (10.75%) Node.js
6 17 (7.94%) Playwright
6 17 (7.94%) PySpark
7 16 (7.48%) .NET
7 16 (7.48%) RESTful
8 11 (5.14%) CSS
8 11 (5.14%) OAuth
8 11 (5.14%) OAuth2
9 10 (4.67%) AngularJS
9 10 (4.67%) HTML
9 10 (4.67%) Vue
10 9 (4.21%) Kafka
11 7 (3.27%) ARM Templates
12 6 (2.80%) Flask
12 6 (2.80%) RabbitMQ
13 5 (2.34%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 24 (11.21%) Cloud Native
2 10 (4.67%) Mobile App
3 9 (4.21%) Product Ownership
4 8 (3.74%) Onboarding
5 5 (2.34%) Analytical Mindset
5 5 (2.34%) Data Structures
6 4 (1.87%) Client/Server
6 4 (1.87%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (1.87%) Online Games
7 3 (1.40%) Algorithms
7 3 (1.40%) Data Centre
7 3 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (1.40%) Low-Code
7 3 (1.40%) NHS
7 3 (1.40%) PKI
7 3 (1.40%) Public Cloud
8 2 (0.93%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (0.93%) Educational Technology
8 2 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (0.93%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 19 (8.88%) Linux
2 17 (7.94%) Windows
3 13 (6.07%) Unix
4 11 (5.14%) Apple iOS
5 8 (3.74%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (52.34%) CI/CD
2 96 (44.86%) Agile
3 86 (40.19%) DevOps
4 80 (37.38%) Mentoring
5 49 (22.90%) Problem-Solving
6 47 (21.96%) Microservices
7 46 (21.50%) Continuous Improvement
8 43 (20.09%) Infrastructure as Code
9 42 (19.63%) Software Engineering
10 34 (15.89%) Coaching
11 33 (15.42%) TDD
12 32 (14.95%) Scrum
13 29 (13.55%) Full-Stack Development
14 28 (13.08%) BDD
14 28 (13.08%) Continuous Integration
15 27 (12.62%) Observability
16 26 (12.15%) Event-Driven
17 21 (9.81%) AI
18 20 (9.35%) Software Testing
18 20 (9.35%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 81 (37.85%) Java
2 62 (28.97%) Python
3 59 (27.57%) SQL
4 32 (14.95%) C#
5 28 (13.08%) JavaScript
6 14 (6.54%) TypeScript
7 8 (3.74%) Go
8 6 (2.80%) Kotlin
9 5 (2.34%) Scala
10 4 (1.87%) C++
11 3 (1.40%) Groovy
11 3 (1.40%) PHP
11 3 (1.40%) Swift
12 2 (0.93%) Bash
12 2 (0.93%) VB
13 1 (0.47%) C
13 1 (0.47%) Delphi
13 1 (0.47%) Perl
13 1 (0.47%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.47%) VBA
Qualifications
1 19 (8.88%) Degree
2 10 (4.67%) Security Cleared
3 8 (3.74%) Computer Science Degree
3 8 (3.74%) DBS Check
3 8 (3.74%) SC Cleared
4 3 (1.40%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (1.40%) ISTQB
5 1 (0.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 1 (0.47%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (22.43%) QA
2 11 (5.14%) GDPR
3 7 (3.27%) Accessibility
4 4 (1.87%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.40%) WCAG
System Software
1 18 (8.41%) Docker
Systems Management
1 43 (20.09%) Terraform
2 19 (8.88%) Kubernetes
3 13 (6.07%) Argo
4 6 (2.80%) Ansible
4 6 (2.80%) Grafana
5 3 (1.40%) Packer
5 3 (1.40%) Rancher
6 1 (0.47%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 17 (7.94%) Databricks
2 15 (7.01%) Microsoft
3 13 (6.07%) Salesforce
4 10 (4.67%) Oracle
5 4 (1.87%) AppDynamics
5 4 (1.87%) Google
5 4 (1.87%) IBM
5 4 (1.87%) Palantir
6 3 (1.40%) Software AG
6 3 (1.40%) webMethods
7 2 (0.93%) SAP
8 1 (0.47%) Blue Prism
8 1 (0.47%) DevExpress
8 1 (0.47%) Dynatrace
8 1 (0.47%) Hotjar
8 1 (0.47%) Pega