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

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 141 94 131
Rank change year-on-year -47 +37 -89
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 187 175 317
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.20% 2.75% 2.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.62% 2.91% 2.40%
Number of salaries quoted 140 133 227
10th Percentile £40,000 £32,100 £33,750
25th Percentile £48,289 £41,625 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% +4.55%
75th Percentile £76,563 £82,751 £71,991
90th Percentile £83,750 £97,528 £79,250
England median annual salary £62,500 £61,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +2.46% +1.67% -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 11,561 6,012 13,203
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 74.28% 94.32% 84.11%
Number of salaries quoted 6,970 3,666 10,568
10th Percentile £28,250 £28,500 £27,500
25th Percentile £35,000 £38,500 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £69,759 £71,238 £65,593
90th Percentile £85,000 £85,000 £80,000
England median annual salary £56,875 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -5.21% +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 2 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 2 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 -7 99 £60,000 +11.63% 82
Yorkshire -57 57 £63,750 +27.50% 41
North East -23 31 £55,000 -9.10% 39
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 4 (2.14%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.60%) Oracle Workflow
3 2 (1.07%) Confluence
3 2 (1.07%) nginx
4 1 (0.53%) Apache Solr
4 1 (0.53%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (1.60%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.53%) Oracle ERP
1 1 (0.53%) Oracle SCM
1 1 (0.53%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 69 (36.90%) AWS
2 48 (25.67%) Azure
3 23 (12.30%) Serverless
4 18 (9.63%) SaaS
5 16 (8.56%) GCP
6 14 (7.49%) Azure DevOps
7 13 (6.95%) GitHub
8 9 (4.81%) Salesforce Service Cloud
9 8 (4.28%) AWS CloudFormation
10 6 (3.21%) Amazon EKS
10 6 (3.21%) Azure Data Factory
10 6 (3.21%) dbt
10 6 (3.21%) PaaS
11 5 (2.67%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (2.67%) Azure AKS
11 5 (2.67%) Azure Monitor
11 5 (2.67%) Datadog
12 4 (2.14%) OpenShift
12 4 (2.14%) Power Platform
13 3 (1.60%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 6 (3.21%) HTTP
2 4 (2.14%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (9.63%) MongoDB
1 18 (9.63%) NoSQL
2 17 (9.09%) MySQL
3 15 (8.02%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (3.21%) Spark SQL
5 5 (2.67%) SQL Server
6 4 (2.14%) Elasticsearch
7 3 (1.60%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.60%) DynamoDB
7 3 (1.60%) Power BI
7 3 (1.60%) Relational Database
7 3 (1.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 2 (1.07%) Flink
8 2 (1.07%) PostHog
8 2 (1.07%) Redis
9 1 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (0.53%) BusinessObjects
9 1 (0.53%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 15 (8.02%) JIRA
2 14 (7.49%) GitLab
3 13 (6.95%) Cucumber
3 13 (6.95%) Jenkins
4 12 (6.42%) JMeter
5 11 (5.88%) Git
5 11 (5.88%) Postman
5 11 (5.88%) Selenium
6 9 (4.81%) Cypress.io
7 7 (3.74%) REST Assured
8 5 (2.67%) SonarQube
9 4 (2.14%) Bitbucket
9 4 (2.14%) Gatling
9 4 (2.14%) LoadRunner
9 4 (2.14%) SpecFlow
9 4 (2.14%) Visual Studio
10 3 (1.60%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (1.60%) fastlane
10 3 (1.60%) LabVIEW
10 3 (1.60%) TestRail
General
1 44 (23.53%) Social Skills
2 25 (13.37%) Public Sector
3 22 (11.76%) Finance
4 15 (8.02%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (5.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 8 (4.28%) Marketing
7 7 (3.74%) Banking
7 7 (3.74%) Games
8 5 (2.67%) Law
8 5 (2.67%) Organisational Skills
8 5 (2.67%) Retail
9 3 (1.60%) Electronics
9 3 (1.60%) French Language
9 3 (1.60%) Health Technology
9 3 (1.60%) Investment Banking
9 3 (1.60%) Italian Language
9 3 (1.60%) Portuguese Language
9 3 (1.60%) Spanish Language
10 2 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
10 2 (1.07%) Legal
Job Titles
1 51 (27.27%) Senior
2 43 (22.99%) Developer
3 34 (18.18%) Lead
4 28 (14.97%) Test Engineer
5 24 (12.83%) Java Engineer
6 22 (11.76%) Senior Developer
7 20 (10.70%) Software Engineer
8 15 (8.02%) QA Engineer
9 12 (6.42%) Data Engineer
10 11 (5.88%) Analyst
10 11 (5.88%) Java Software Engineer
10 11 (5.88%) Python Developer
11 9 (4.81%) Applications Engineer
11 9 (4.81%) Automation Engineer
11 9 (4.81%) Full-Stack Developer
11 9 (4.81%) QA Automation Engineer
11 9 (4.81%) Senior Applications Engineer
11 9 (4.81%) Senior Test Engineer
11 9 (4.81%) Test Automation Engineer
11 9 (4.81%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (12.83%) React
2 23 (12.30%) Spring
3 19 (10.16%) Spring Boot
4 18 (9.63%) Playwright
4 18 (9.63%) REST
5 17 (9.09%) RESTful
6 15 (8.02%) CSS
7 14 (7.49%) HTML
8 13 (6.95%) Vue
9 12 (6.42%) .NET
10 10 (5.35%) Flask
10 10 (5.35%) OAuth
10 10 (5.35%) OAuth2
11 9 (4.81%) PySpark
12 8 (4.28%) Node.js
13 7 (3.74%) AngularJS
13 7 (3.74%) Django
13 7 (3.74%) Kafka
14 6 (3.21%) Elastic Stack
14 6 (3.21%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 22 (11.76%) Cloud Native
2 10 (5.35%) Mobile App
3 8 (4.28%) Data Structures
3 8 (4.28%) Onboarding
4 7 (3.74%) Product Ownership
5 5 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
6 4 (2.14%) Client/Server
6 4 (2.14%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (2.14%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (1.60%) Algorithms
7 3 (1.60%) Data Centre
7 3 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.60%) NHS
7 3 (1.60%) PKI
7 3 (1.60%) Public Cloud
8 2 (1.07%) Educational Technology
8 2 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (1.07%) Low-Code
8 2 (1.07%) Management Information System
8 2 (1.07%) Online Games
Operating Systems
1 12 (6.42%) Apple iOS
2 9 (4.81%) Android
3 7 (3.74%) Linux
4 5 (2.67%) Windows
5 1 (0.53%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 92 (49.20%) CI/CD
2 83 (44.39%) Agile
3 72 (38.50%) Mentoring
4 60 (32.09%) DevOps
5 47 (25.13%) Continuous Improvement
6 44 (23.53%) Problem-Solving
7 41 (21.93%) Software Engineering
8 36 (19.25%) Infrastructure as Code
9 31 (16.58%) Microservices
9 31 (16.58%) TDD
10 29 (15.51%) BDD
11 26 (13.90%) Coaching
12 24 (12.83%) Full-Stack Development
13 21 (11.23%) Test Strategy
14 20 (10.70%) Event-Driven
15 18 (9.63%) AI
15 18 (9.63%) API Testing
15 18 (9.63%) Containerisation
16 17 (9.09%) Open Source
16 17 (9.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 64 (34.22%) Java
2 58 (31.02%) Python
3 51 (27.27%) SQL
4 34 (18.18%) JavaScript
5 26 (13.90%) C#
6 11 (5.88%) TypeScript
7 8 (4.28%) Go
8 6 (3.21%) Kotlin
9 5 (2.67%) Scala
10 4 (2.14%) C++
11 3 (1.60%) Groovy
11 3 (1.60%) PHP
11 3 (1.60%) Swift
12 2 (1.07%) Bash
12 2 (1.07%) VB
13 1 (0.53%) C
13 1 (0.53%) Delphi
13 1 (0.53%) Perl
13 1 (0.53%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.53%) VBA
Qualifications
1 16 (8.56%) Degree
2 11 (5.88%) DBS Check
3 10 (5.35%) Security Cleared
4 9 (4.81%) SC Cleared
5 5 (2.67%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (2.14%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (1.07%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.53%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 1 (0.53%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 51 (27.27%) QA
2 9 (4.81%) Accessibility
3 7 (3.74%) GDPR
4 4 (2.14%) WCAG
5 2 (1.07%) Data Quality
System Software
1 24 (12.83%) Docker
Systems Management
1 29 (15.51%) Terraform
2 19 (10.16%) Kubernetes
3 9 (4.81%) Grafana
4 8 (4.28%) Ansible
5 3 (1.60%) Packer
5 3 (1.60%) Rancher
6 2 (1.07%) HP Fortify
7 1 (0.53%) Control-M
7 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.53%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 13 (6.95%) Salesforce
2 12 (6.42%) Microsoft
3 11 (5.88%) Databricks
3 11 (5.88%) Oracle
4 5 (2.67%) IBM
5 4 (2.14%) AppDynamics
5 4 (2.14%) Palantir
6 3 (1.60%) Software AG
6 3 (1.60%) webMethods
7 1 (0.53%) Blue Prism
7 1 (0.53%) DevExpress
7 1 (0.53%) Dynatrace
7 1 (0.53%) Genesys
7 1 (0.53%) Google
7 1 (0.53%) Pega
7 1 (0.53%) Samsung
7 1 (0.53%) SAP
7 1 (0.53%) Siebel