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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 104 98 128
Rank change year-on-year -6 +30 -88
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 310 292 366
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.51% 3.31% 1.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.17% 3.60% 2.40%
Number of salaries quoted 220 127 224
10th Percentile £41,925 £34,750 £33,750
25th Percentile £47,500 £47,115 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £61,250 £59,800 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% +8.73% -4.35%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £83,750 £97,528 £78,750
England median annual salary £65,000 £63,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +3.17% +5.00% -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 14,293 8,104 15,262
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 69.80% 91.99% 79.56%
Number of salaries quoted 10,688 3,886 11,461
10th Percentile £30,000 £25,750 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £33,000 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £82,500 £80,000
England median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -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 June 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 June 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 -6 163 £65,000 - 45
North East +1 78 £52,500 -4.55% 24
Yorkshire -23 69 £69,310 +38.62% 30
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 12 (3.87%) Apache Spark
2 9 (2.90%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 9 (2.90%) Apache
2 9 (2.90%) Apache Airflow
2 9 (2.90%) Jupyter
3 4 (1.29%) Confluence
4 3 (0.97%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.65%) nginx
6 1 (0.32%) CMS
6 1 (0.32%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.32%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (0.97%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.32%) Oracle SCM
2 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 138 (44.52%) AWS
2 103 (33.23%) Azure
3 54 (17.42%) Azure DevOps
4 42 (13.55%) Serverless
5 23 (7.42%) GitHub
6 20 (6.45%) Amazon S3
7 18 (5.81%) Azure Data Factory
8 16 (5.16%) SaaS
9 14 (4.52%) AWS Lambda
9 14 (4.52%) Azure AKS
9 14 (4.52%) Azure Service Bus
10 13 (4.19%) Amazon EC2
11 12 (3.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 12 (3.87%) AWS CloudFormation
11 12 (3.87%) Firebase
11 12 (3.87%) GCP
12 11 (3.55%) Azure Monitor
13 9 (2.90%) Azure Logic Apps
13 9 (2.90%) GitHub Actions
13 9 (2.90%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.97%) HTTP
2 2 (0.65%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (9.03%) PostgreSQL
2 27 (8.71%) MongoDB
3 25 (8.06%) NoSQL
4 16 (5.16%) DynamoDB
5 15 (4.84%) Spark SQL
6 14 (4.52%) MySQL
7 11 (3.55%) Data Warehouse
8 9 (2.90%) Amazon Athena
9 8 (2.58%) SQL Server
10 5 (1.61%) Elasticsearch
10 5 (1.61%) Power BI
10 5 (1.61%) Relational Database
11 4 (1.29%) Flink
11 4 (1.29%) Neo4j
12 3 (0.97%) Big Data
13 2 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
13 2 (0.65%) Data Lake
13 2 (0.65%) Redis
14 1 (0.32%) BusinessObjects
14 1 (0.32%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 48 (15.48%) GitLab
2 31 (10.00%) Jenkins
3 23 (7.42%) Git
4 18 (5.81%) fastlane
4 18 (5.81%) JIRA
5 16 (5.16%) Postman
6 14 (4.52%) Cypress.io
7 11 (3.55%) Cucumber
8 9 (2.90%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 7 (2.26%) Maven
9 7 (2.26%) REST Assured
10 6 (1.94%) JMeter
10 6 (1.94%) JUnit
10 6 (1.94%) LabVIEW
10 6 (1.94%) Selenium
10 6 (1.94%) Spock
10 6 (1.94%) Xcode
11 5 (1.61%) Android Studio
11 5 (1.61%) Gradle
11 5 (1.61%) SonarQube
General
1 77 (24.84%) Public Sector
2 58 (18.71%) Social Skills
3 49 (15.81%) Finance
4 33 (10.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 30 (9.68%) Analytical Skills
6 16 (5.16%) Banking
7 14 (4.52%) Marketing
8 9 (2.90%) Electronics
8 9 (2.90%) Games
8 9 (2.90%) Investment Banking
9 8 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (1.94%) Legal
11 5 (1.61%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (1.29%) Law
12 4 (1.29%) Manufacturing
12 4 (1.29%) Publishing
12 4 (1.29%) Retail
13 3 (0.97%) French Language
13 3 (0.97%) Italian Language
13 3 (0.97%) Portuguese Language
Job Titles
1 93 (30.00%) Senior
2 60 (19.35%) Developer
3 55 (17.74%) Test Engineer
4 51 (16.45%) Lead
5 39 (12.58%) Software Engineer
6 30 (9.68%) DevOps Engineer
7 26 (8.39%) Java Engineer
7 26 (8.39%) Senior Developer
8 22 (7.10%) Data Engineer
9 19 (6.13%) Senior DevOps
9 19 (6.13%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 17 (5.48%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 16 (5.16%) Java Developer
12 15 (4.84%) Lead Data Engineer
13 14 (4.52%) Applications Engineer
14 13 (4.19%) Full-Stack Developer
14 13 (4.19%) Platform Engineer
14 13 (4.19%) Senior Test Engineer
15 12 (3.87%) Azure Engineer
16 11 (3.55%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (15.48%) Node.js
2 43 (13.87%) REST
3 42 (13.55%) Spring
4 38 (12.26%) AngularJS
4 38 (12.26%) React
5 36 (11.61%) Spring Boot
6 28 (9.03%) RESTful
7 26 (8.39%) PySpark
8 23 (7.42%) .NET
9 18 (5.81%) CSS
9 18 (5.81%) Vue
10 17 (5.48%) HTML
10 17 (5.48%) Playwright
11 12 (3.87%) Next.js
12 10 (3.23%) OAuth
12 10 (3.23%) OAuth2
13 9 (2.90%) ARM Templates
13 9 (2.90%) GraphQL
13 9 (2.90%) Kafka
14 8 (2.58%) React Native
Miscellaneous
1 43 (13.87%) Cloud Native
2 35 (11.29%) Product Ownership
3 31 (10.00%) Mobile App
4 12 (3.87%) Distributed Systems
4 12 (3.87%) Onboarding
5 8 (2.58%) Data Structures
6 7 (2.26%) Low-Code
6 7 (2.26%) Private Cloud
7 5 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (1.61%) Marketing Technology
8 4 (1.29%) AI Agents
8 4 (1.29%) Greenfield Project
8 4 (1.29%) Online Games
8 4 (1.29%) Virtual Team
9 3 (0.97%) Algorithms
9 3 (0.97%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (0.97%) Data Centre
9 3 (0.97%) NHS
9 3 (0.97%) PKI
10 2 (0.65%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 25 (8.06%) Linux
2 19 (6.13%) Apple iOS
2 19 (6.13%) Unix
2 19 (6.13%) Windows
3 12 (3.87%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 194 (62.58%) CI/CD
2 171 (55.16%) Agile
3 133 (42.90%) DevOps
4 120 (38.71%) Mentoring
5 80 (25.81%) Continuous Improvement
6 77 (24.84%) Problem-Solving
7 74 (23.87%) Software Engineering
8 70 (22.58%) Microservices
9 66 (21.29%) Full-Stack Development
9 66 (21.29%) Scrum
10 65 (20.97%) Coaching
11 64 (20.65%) Infrastructure as Code
12 63 (20.32%) TDD
13 45 (14.52%) Continuous Integration
14 41 (13.23%) Observability
15 37 (11.94%) AI
16 36 (11.61%) Deployment Automation
16 36 (11.61%) Design Patterns
17 33 (10.65%) Clean Code
17 33 (10.65%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 129 (41.61%) Java
2 101 (32.58%) Python
3 83 (26.77%) SQL
4 66 (21.29%) JavaScript
5 40 (12.90%) TypeScript
6 34 (10.97%) C#
7 13 (4.19%) Swift
8 11 (3.55%) Kotlin
9 10 (3.23%) Bash
10 8 (2.58%) Go
10 8 (2.58%) Groovy
10 8 (2.58%) Ruby
11 6 (1.94%) C++
12 5 (1.61%) PHP
12 5 (1.61%) VB
13 4 (1.29%) C
14 2 (0.65%) VB.NET
15 1 (0.32%) Perl
15 1 (0.32%) PL/SQL
15 1 (0.32%) VBA
Qualifications
1 27 (8.71%) Degree
1 27 (8.71%) Security Cleared
2 21 (6.77%) SC Cleared
3 13 (4.19%) Computer Science Degree
4 11 (3.55%) DBS Check
5 6 (1.94%) HNC
6 4 (1.29%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (0.97%) AWS Certification
7 3 (0.97%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
7 3 (0.97%) ISTQB
7 3 (0.97%) Master's Degree
7 3 (0.97%) NVQ Level 3
8 2 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.32%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.32%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (16.77%) QA
2 31 (10.00%) Accessibility
3 18 (5.81%) WCAG
4 14 (4.52%) Data Quality
5 12 (3.87%) GDPR
System Software
1 41 (13.23%) Docker
Systems Management
1 59 (19.03%) Terraform
2 31 (10.00%) Kubernetes
3 13 (4.19%) Argo
4 5 (1.61%) Ansible
5 4 (1.29%) Grafana
6 3 (0.97%) Packer
7 1 (0.32%) HP Fortify
7 1 (0.32%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.32%) Puppet
7 1 (0.32%) Rancher
Vendors
1 23 (7.42%) Databricks
2 17 (5.48%) Microsoft
3 13 (4.19%) Dynatrace
4 11 (3.55%) Salesforce
5 10 (3.23%) AppDynamics
6 9 (2.90%) Adobe
6 9 (2.90%) Google
6 9 (2.90%) Splunk
7 7 (2.26%) Pega
8 6 (1.94%) Apple
9 3 (0.97%) IBM
9 3 (0.97%) Keysight
10 2 (0.65%) Braze
10 2 (0.65%) dotdigital
10 2 (0.65%) Oracle
11 1 (0.32%) Blue Prism
11 1 (0.32%) Confluent
11 1 (0.32%) DevExpress
11 1 (0.32%) Hotjar
11 1 (0.32%) SAP