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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 103 118 74
Rank change year-on-year +15 -44 +26
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 378 254 361
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.60% 2.71% 2.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.27% 3.09% 3.28%
Number of salaries quoted 255 102 138
10th Percentile £40,800 £39,000 £39,054
25th Percentile £47,000 £48,313 £45,643
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -4.35%
75th Percentile £75,000 £70,000 £68,750
90th Percentile £83,750 £81,125 £78,750
England median annual salary £62,500 £64,075 £62,500
% change year-on-year -2.46% +2.52% -0.79%

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 16,632 8,209 11,010
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 70.57% 87.48% 78.41%
Number of salaries quoted 12,400 4,082 6,061
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £39,221
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £48,735 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.86% -2.53% -9.09%
75th Percentile £75,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £78,750
England median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -7.26%

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 16 September 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 16 September 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 -1 186 £60,000 - 283
North East +13 104 £52,500 +50.00% 63
Yorkshire +11 88 £69,310 +26.02% 144
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 16 (4.23%) Apache Spark
2 13 (3.44%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 13 (3.44%) Apache
2 13 (3.44%) Apache Airflow
2 13 (3.44%) Jupyter
3 8 (2.12%) Confluence
4 3 (0.79%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.53%) CMS
5 2 (0.53%) nginx
5 2 (0.53%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.26%) Kentico
6 1 (0.26%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.26%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (0.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.26%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (1.06%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 157 (41.53%) AWS
2 118 (31.22%) Azure
3 61 (16.14%) Azure DevOps
4 56 (14.81%) Serverless
5 36 (9.52%) Amazon S3
6 32 (8.47%) GitHub
7 26 (6.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 25 (6.61%) AWS Lambda
9 22 (5.82%) Amazon EC2
10 21 (5.56%) GCP
11 18 (4.76%) Azure Data Factory
11 18 (4.76%) SaaS
12 16 (4.23%) Amazon ECR
12 16 (4.23%) GitHub Actions
13 15 (3.97%) Azure AKS
14 14 (3.70%) Amazon EMR
14 14 (3.70%) Azure Service Bus
14 14 (3.70%) Firebase
15 13 (3.44%) AWS CloudFormation
16 12 (3.17%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.53%) HTTP
1 2 (0.53%) SMS
2 1 (0.26%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (6.88%) MongoDB
2 22 (5.82%) DynamoDB
2 22 (5.82%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (4.76%) SQL Server
4 17 (4.50%) NoSQL
5 16 (4.23%) Amazon Athena
6 14 (3.70%) Data Warehouse
7 12 (3.17%) Spark SQL
8 8 (2.12%) Relational Database
9 7 (1.85%) MySQL
10 6 (1.59%) Amazon Redshift
11 5 (1.32%) Data Lake
11 5 (1.32%) Delta Lake
11 5 (1.32%) Elasticsearch
11 5 (1.32%) Metadata
12 4 (1.06%) Big Data
12 4 (1.06%) DocumentDB
12 4 (1.06%) Neo4j
12 4 (1.06%) Redis
12 4 (1.06%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 72 (19.05%) GitLab
2 41 (10.85%) Git
3 39 (10.32%) Jenkins
4 26 (6.88%) JIRA
5 23 (6.08%) Cypress.io
6 19 (5.03%) Postman
7 15 (3.97%) fastlane
7 15 (3.97%) Maven
8 13 (3.44%) JUnit
8 13 (3.44%) Spock
9 11 (2.91%) Cucumber
9 11 (2.91%) SonarQube
10 10 (2.65%) Bitbucket
11 9 (2.38%) JMeter
12 8 (2.12%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 8 (2.12%) Storybook
13 7 (1.85%) Selenium
14 6 (1.59%) Xcode
15 5 (1.32%) Android Studio
15 5 (1.32%) Gradle
General
1 95 (25.13%) Social Skills
2 75 (19.84%) Public Sector
3 67 (17.72%) Finance
4 40 (10.58%) Analytical Skills
4 40 (10.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 14 (3.70%) Banking
6 13 (3.44%) Marketing
7 11 (2.91%) Publishing
8 10 (2.65%) Legal
9 9 (2.38%) Investment Banking
10 8 (2.12%) Games
11 7 (1.85%) Documentation Skills
11 7 (1.85%) Electronics
11 7 (1.85%) Retail
12 6 (1.59%) Law
13 5 (1.32%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
14 3 (0.79%) Police
14 3 (0.79%) Tech for Good
15 2 (0.53%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 109 (28.84%) Senior
2 70 (18.52%) Developer
3 57 (15.08%) Test Engineer
4 48 (12.70%) Lead
5 40 (10.58%) DevOps Engineer
6 32 (8.47%) Software Engineer
7 30 (7.94%) Senior Developer
8 28 (7.41%) Full-Stack Engineer
9 27 (7.14%) Data Engineer
10 24 (6.35%) Senior DevOps
10 24 (6.35%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 20 (5.29%) Analyst
12 17 (4.50%) Java Developer
13 15 (3.97%) Java Engineer
14 14 (3.70%) Databricks Engineer
14 14 (3.70%) QA Engineer
15 13 (3.44%) Databricks Data Engineer
16 12 (3.17%) Lead Data Engineer
16 12 (3.17%) Software Developer
17 11 (2.91%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (17.99%) Terraform
2 67 (17.72%) Node.js
3 56 (14.81%) AngularJS
4 53 (14.02%) REST
5 44 (11.64%) Spring
6 42 (11.11%) React
7 34 (8.99%) CSS
7 34 (8.99%) HTML
8 33 (8.73%) Playwright
9 32 (8.47%) PySpark
10 31 (8.20%) Spring Boot
11 28 (7.41%) .NET
12 25 (6.61%) RESTful
13 16 (4.23%) Next.js
13 16 (4.23%) Vue
14 11 (2.91%) GraphQL
14 11 (2.91%) Kafka
15 10 (2.65%) React Native
16 8 (2.12%) Gherkin
16 8 (2.12%) UIKit
Miscellaneous
1 47 (12.43%) Product Ownership
2 42 (11.11%) Cloud Native
3 31 (8.20%) Mobile App
4 20 (5.29%) Distributed Systems
4 20 (5.29%) Private Cloud
5 11 (2.91%) Data Structures
6 9 (2.38%) Onboarding
7 8 (2.12%) Low-Code
8 7 (1.85%) AI Agents
9 6 (1.59%) Driving Licence
9 6 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (1.59%) Marketing Technology
9 6 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (1.59%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.32%) Greenfield Project
11 4 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
11 4 (1.06%) Online Games
12 3 (0.79%) PKI
12 3 (0.79%) Replication
13 2 (0.53%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 31 (8.20%) Linux
2 25 (6.61%) Windows
3 20 (5.29%) Unix
4 13 (3.44%) Apple iOS
5 9 (2.38%) Android
6 4 (1.06%) VMS
7 1 (0.26%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 255 (67.46%) CI/CD
2 213 (56.35%) Agile
3 169 (44.71%) DevOps
4 133 (35.19%) Mentoring
5 105 (27.78%) Continuous Improvement
6 94 (24.87%) Problem-Solving
6 94 (24.87%) Software Engineering
7 77 (20.37%) Scrum
8 74 (19.58%) Coaching
8 74 (19.58%) Full-Stack Development
9 73 (19.31%) Microservices
10 70 (18.52%) Infrastructure as Code
11 68 (17.99%) AI
12 65 (17.20%) TDD
13 63 (16.67%) Continuous Integration
14 59 (15.61%) Observability
15 53 (14.02%) Software Testing
16 52 (13.76%) Technical Leadership
17 46 (12.17%) Test Strategy
18 43 (11.38%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 128 (33.86%) Java
2 117 (30.95%) Python
3 105 (27.78%) JavaScript
4 92 (24.34%) SQL
5 73 (19.31%) TypeScript
6 43 (11.38%) C#
7 15 (3.97%) Bash
8 12 (3.17%) Groovy
8 12 (3.17%) Swift
9 10 (2.65%) C++
10 8 (2.12%) Kotlin
10 8 (2.12%) PowerShell
10 8 (2.12%) Ruby
11 6 (1.59%) C
12 5 (1.32%) Go
13 4 (1.06%) PHP
14 3 (0.79%) Bicep
14 3 (0.79%) VB
14 3 (0.79%) VB.NET
15 2 (0.53%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 56 (14.81%) Security Cleared
2 45 (11.90%) SC Cleared
3 28 (7.41%) Degree
4 16 (4.23%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (2.65%) HNC
6 6 (1.59%) DBS Check
7 5 (1.32%) AWS Certification
7 5 (1.32%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
7 5 (1.32%) Master's Degree
8 4 (1.06%) HND
9 3 (0.79%) ISTQB
9 3 (0.79%) NVQ Level 3
10 2 (0.53%) DV Cleared
10 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.26%) BPSS Clearance
11 1 (0.26%) CISM
11 1 (0.26%) CISSP
11 1 (0.26%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 1 (0.26%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.26%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 92 (24.34%) QA
2 47 (12.43%) Accessibility
3 29 (7.67%) WCAG
4 22 (5.82%) Data Quality
5 13 (3.44%) GDPR
6 3 (0.79%) GRC
7 2 (0.53%) PMO
8 1 (0.26%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.26%) NIST
System Software
1 69 (18.25%) Docker
Systems Management
1 39 (10.32%) Kubernetes
2 13 (3.44%) Argo
3 7 (1.85%) Ansible
4 4 (1.06%) Grafana
5 3 (0.79%) Packer
5 3 (0.79%) Progress Chef
5 3 (0.79%) Puppet
6 2 (0.53%) Kibana
6 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.26%) Fluentd
7 1 (0.26%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 32 (8.47%) Microsoft
2 23 (6.08%) Databricks
3 18 (4.76%) Splunk
4 16 (4.23%) AppDynamics
4 16 (4.23%) Dynatrace
5 13 (3.44%) Adobe
6 11 (2.91%) Google
7 9 (2.38%) Salesforce
8 8 (2.12%) Apple
9 7 (1.85%) Pega
10 4 (1.06%) Allen-Bradley
10 4 (1.06%) Confluent
10 4 (1.06%) Sage
10 4 (1.06%) Siemens
11 3 (0.79%) IBM
11 3 (0.79%) Keysight
12 2 (0.53%) dotdigital
12 2 (0.53%) Oracle
12 2 (0.53%) SAP
12 2 (0.53%) UiPath