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

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 97 106 88
Rank change year-on-year +9 -18 +4
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 358 286 358
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.62% 2.96% 2.36%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.30% 3.32% 3.01%
Number of salaries quoted 243 124 207
10th Percentile £42,000 £32,000 £36,250
25th Percentile £47,500 £47,000 £44,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £58,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% +5.45% -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £71,438 £70,625
90th Percentile £83,750 £82,751 £72,500
England median annual salary £65,000 £62,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -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 15,582 8,611 11,882
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 70.32% 89.18% 78.49%
Number of salaries quoted 11,641 4,281 7,765
10th Percentile £30,000 £25,750 £29,750
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £48,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +14.58% -4.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £72,500 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £78,750
England median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £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 14 August 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 14 August 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 +2 183 £65,000 - 86
North East +5 100 £55,000 +57.14% 37
Yorkshire -21 75 £69,310 +41.45% 49
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 (4.47%) Apache Spark
2 13 (3.63%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 13 (3.63%) Apache
2 13 (3.63%) Apache Airflow
2 13 (3.63%) Jupyter
3 8 (2.23%) Confluence
4 3 (0.84%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.56%) nginx
6 1 (0.28%) CMS
6 1 (0.28%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.28%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.28%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.28%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 153 (42.74%) AWS
2 114 (31.84%) Azure
3 61 (17.04%) Azure DevOps
4 50 (13.97%) Serverless
5 28 (7.82%) Amazon S3
6 26 (7.26%) GitHub
7 19 (5.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 19 (5.31%) AWS Lambda
7 19 (5.31%) Azure Data Factory
7 19 (5.31%) GCP
7 19 (5.31%) SaaS
8 17 (4.75%) Amazon EC2
9 15 (4.19%) Amazon ECR
10 14 (3.91%) Azure Service Bus
10 14 (3.91%) Firebase
11 13 (3.63%) Amazon EMR
11 13 (3.63%) AWS CloudFormation
11 13 (3.63%) Azure AKS
12 12 (3.35%) Amazon ECS
13 11 (3.07%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.84%) HTTP
2 2 (0.56%) SMS
3 1 (0.28%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (7.26%) MongoDB
2 23 (6.42%) PostgreSQL
3 22 (6.15%) DynamoDB
4 19 (5.31%) NoSQL
5 15 (4.19%) Data Warehouse
5 15 (4.19%) Spark SQL
6 14 (3.91%) SQL Server
7 13 (3.63%) Amazon Athena
8 8 (2.23%) Relational Database
9 7 (1.96%) MySQL
10 5 (1.40%) Elasticsearch
11 4 (1.12%) Amazon Redshift
11 4 (1.12%) Big Data
11 4 (1.12%) BigQuery
11 4 (1.12%) Flink
11 4 (1.12%) Neo4j
11 4 (1.12%) Power BI
12 3 (0.84%) Data Lake
12 3 (0.84%) DocumentDB
12 3 (0.84%) Redis
Development Applications
1 63 (17.60%) GitLab
2 35 (9.78%) Git
2 35 (9.78%) Jenkins
3 22 (6.15%) JIRA
4 18 (5.03%) fastlane
5 17 (4.75%) Cypress.io
6 16 (4.47%) Postman
7 13 (3.63%) Maven
8 11 (3.07%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 11 (3.07%) Cucumber
8 11 (3.07%) JUnit
8 11 (3.07%) Spock
9 9 (2.51%) Bitbucket
10 8 (2.23%) SonarQube
10 8 (2.23%) Storybook
11 7 (1.96%) REST Assured
12 6 (1.68%) JMeter
12 6 (1.68%) Xcode
13 5 (1.40%) Gradle
13 5 (1.40%) Selenium
General
1 83 (23.18%) Social Skills
2 77 (21.51%) Public Sector
3 67 (18.72%) Finance
4 39 (10.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 36 (10.06%) Analytical Skills
6 16 (4.47%) Banking
7 12 (3.35%) Marketing
8 10 (2.79%) Publishing
9 9 (2.51%) Investment Banking
10 8 (2.23%) Documentation Skills
10 8 (2.23%) Games
10 8 (2.23%) Legal
11 7 (1.96%) Electronics
12 6 (1.68%) Law
12 6 (1.68%) Retail
13 4 (1.12%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.84%) Health Technology
14 3 (0.84%) Police
14 3 (0.84%) Tech for Good
15 2 (0.56%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 108 (30.17%) Senior
2 67 (18.72%) Developer
3 61 (17.04%) Test Engineer
4 54 (15.08%) Lead
5 35 (9.78%) DevOps Engineer
5 35 (9.78%) Software Engineer
6 29 (8.10%) Senior Developer
7 26 (7.26%) Data Engineer
7 26 (7.26%) Full-Stack Engineer
8 23 (6.42%) Senior DevOps
8 23 (6.42%) Senior DevOps Engineer
9 17 (4.75%) Java Developer
10 15 (4.19%) Analyst
10 15 (4.19%) Java Engineer
10 15 (4.19%) Lead Data Engineer
11 14 (3.91%) Applications Engineer
12 13 (3.63%) Platform Engineer
13 12 (3.35%) Azure Engineer
13 12 (3.35%) Full-Stack Developer
14 11 (3.07%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (17.88%) Node.js
2 54 (15.08%) AngularJS
3 46 (12.85%) Spring
4 45 (12.57%) REST
5 43 (12.01%) React
6 35 (9.78%) Spring Boot
7 31 (8.66%) Playwright
8 29 (8.10%) PySpark
9 23 (6.42%) .NET
9 23 (6.42%) CSS
9 23 (6.42%) HTML
10 21 (5.87%) RESTful
11 19 (5.31%) Vue
12 16 (4.47%) Next.js
13 12 (3.35%) GraphQL
14 10 (2.79%) Kafka
14 10 (2.79%) React Native
15 9 (2.51%) ARM Templates
15 9 (2.51%) OAuth
16 8 (2.23%) SwiftUI
Miscellaneous
1 40 (11.17%) Product Ownership
2 37 (10.34%) Cloud Native
3 32 (8.94%) Mobile App
4 18 (5.03%) Distributed Systems
5 15 (4.19%) Private Cloud
6 11 (3.07%) Data Structures
7 9 (2.51%) Low-Code
8 8 (2.23%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (1.68%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.40%) AI Agents
10 5 (1.40%) Marketing Technology
10 5 (1.40%) Onboarding
10 5 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
11 4 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
11 4 (1.12%) Online Games
12 3 (0.84%) Driving Licence
12 3 (0.84%) Enterprise Software
12 3 (0.84%) NHS
12 3 (0.84%) PKI
12 3 (0.84%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 30 (8.38%) Linux
2 23 (6.42%) Windows
3 20 (5.59%) Unix
4 16 (4.47%) Apple iOS
5 9 (2.51%) Android
6 2 (0.56%) VMS
7 1 (0.28%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 241 (67.32%) CI/CD
2 203 (56.70%) Agile
3 162 (45.25%) DevOps
4 120 (33.52%) Mentoring
5 97 (27.09%) Continuous Improvement
6 92 (25.70%) Software Engineering
7 80 (22.35%) Problem-Solving
8 75 (20.95%) Scrum
9 74 (20.67%) Full-Stack Development
10 71 (19.83%) Infrastructure as Code
11 69 (19.27%) Coaching
11 69 (19.27%) Microservices
12 63 (17.60%) TDD
13 60 (16.76%) Continuous Integration
14 59 (16.48%) AI
15 49 (13.69%) Observability
16 46 (12.85%) Test Strategy
17 42 (11.73%) Technical Leadership
18 39 (10.89%) Clean Code
18 39 (10.89%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 136 (37.99%) Java
2 117 (32.68%) Python
3 85 (23.74%) JavaScript
4 81 (22.63%) SQL
5 61 (17.04%) TypeScript
6 38 (10.61%) C#
7 15 (4.19%) Swift
8 11 (3.07%) Bash
9 10 (2.79%) Groovy
9 10 (2.79%) Kotlin
10 9 (2.51%) C++
11 8 (2.23%) Ruby
12 6 (1.68%) C
12 6 (1.68%) Go
13 5 (1.40%) PHP
14 4 (1.12%) PowerShell
15 3 (0.84%) VB
15 3 (0.84%) VB.NET
16 2 (0.56%) Scala
16 2 (0.56%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 44 (12.29%) Security Cleared
2 35 (9.78%) SC Cleared
3 29 (8.10%) Degree
4 17 (4.75%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (1.96%) HNC
6 6 (1.68%) DBS Check
7 5 (1.40%) AWS Certification
7 5 (1.40%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
7 5 (1.40%) Master's Degree
8 3 (0.84%) ISTQB
8 3 (0.84%) NVQ Level 3
9 2 (0.56%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.28%) CISM
10 1 (0.28%) CISSP
10 1 (0.28%) HND
10 1 (0.28%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 1 (0.28%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.28%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (21.51%) QA
2 38 (10.61%) Accessibility
3 22 (6.15%) WCAG
4 17 (4.75%) Data Quality
5 14 (3.91%) GDPR
6 1 (0.28%) ISO 22301
6 1 (0.28%) NIST
System Software
1 61 (17.04%) Docker
Systems Management
1 67 (18.72%) Terraform
2 34 (9.50%) Kubernetes
3 13 (3.63%) Argo
4 5 (1.40%) Ansible
5 4 (1.12%) Grafana
6 3 (0.84%) Packer
7 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.28%) Fluentd
8 1 (0.28%) HP Fortify
8 1 (0.28%) Kibana
8 1 (0.28%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.28%) Puppet
Vendors
1 27 (7.54%) Microsoft
2 22 (6.15%) Databricks
3 16 (4.47%) Dynatrace
3 16 (4.47%) Splunk
4 15 (4.19%) AppDynamics
5 13 (3.63%) Adobe
6 11 (3.07%) Google
7 9 (2.51%) Salesforce
8 8 (2.23%) Apple
9 7 (1.96%) Pega
10 3 (0.84%) Confluent
10 3 (0.84%) IBM
10 3 (0.84%) Keysight
10 3 (0.84%) Sage
11 2 (0.56%) Braze
11 2 (0.56%) dotdigital
11 2 (0.56%) Oracle
11 2 (0.56%) UiPath
12 1 (0.28%) SAP
12 1 (0.28%) Siemens