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

6 months to
19 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 156 81 131
Rank change year-on-year -75 +50 -91
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 136 247 237
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.06% 3.17% 1.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.37% 3.41% 2.20%
Number of salaries quoted 106 104 175
10th Percentile £42,875 £37,716 £36,750
25th Percentile £50,000 £45,000 £42,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £58,619 £57,965
Median % change year-on-year +2.36% +1.13% +10.41%
75th Percentile £70,000 £76,840 £73,091
90th Percentile £83,750 £97,528 £83,269
England median annual salary £62,500 £62,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year - +4.17% -4.00%

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 9,893 7,246 10,753
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 77.21% 92.91% 86.38%
Number of salaries quoted 5,600 3,449 8,742
10th Percentile £28,250 £31,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,050 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -6.54%
75th Percentile £67,500 £70,000 £66,250
90th Percentile £83,750 £83,850 £80,435
England median annual salary £55,000 £62,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year -12.00% +13.64% -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 19 February 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 19 February 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 -43 79 £60,000 +14.29% 71
Yorkshire -62 42 £55,000 -12.00% 35
North East -26 15 £55,200 -9.51% 15
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 (3.68%) Apache Spark
2 3 (2.21%) Oracle Workflow
3 2 (1.47%) Confluence
3 2 (1.47%) nginx
4 1 (0.74%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (0.74%) Apache
4 1 (0.74%) Apache Solr
4 1 (0.74%) CMS
4 1 (0.74%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.74%) Trello
Business Applications
1 3 (2.21%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (1.47%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.74%) Oracle SCM
3 1 (0.74%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 52 (38.24%) AWS
2 33 (24.26%) Azure
3 16 (11.76%) SaaS
4 15 (11.03%) GCP
5 14 (10.29%) Salesforce Service Cloud
6 10 (7.35%) GitHub
7 8 (5.88%) AWS CloudFormation
7 8 (5.88%) Serverless
8 6 (4.41%) OpenShift
8 6 (4.41%) PaaS
9 5 (3.68%) Azure AKS
10 4 (2.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 4 (2.94%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (2.94%) Datadog
10 4 (2.94%) GitHub Actions
10 4 (2.94%) Power Platform
11 3 (2.21%) Amazon EKS
11 3 (2.21%) Boomi
11 3 (2.21%) Cloud Computing
11 3 (2.21%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 6 (4.41%) HTTP
2 5 (3.68%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.74%) SSH
3 1 (0.74%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (12.50%) MongoDB
2 16 (11.76%) MySQL
3 15 (11.03%) NoSQL
4 12 (8.82%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (3.68%) SQL Server
6 4 (2.94%) Elasticsearch
7 3 (2.21%) DynamoDB
7 3 (2.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 2 (1.47%) PostHog
8 2 (1.47%) Redis
8 2 (1.47%) Relational Database
8 2 (1.47%) Tableau
9 1 (0.74%) Amazon Athena
9 1 (0.74%) Big Data
9 1 (0.74%) BusinessObjects
9 1 (0.74%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 10 (7.35%) Selenium
2 8 (5.88%) GitLab
2 8 (5.88%) Jenkins
2 8 (5.88%) JIRA
3 7 (5.15%) Git
3 7 (5.15%) JMeter
4 6 (4.41%) Cucumber
5 5 (3.68%) Cypress.io
5 5 (3.68%) SonarQube
6 4 (2.94%) Postman
6 4 (2.94%) Visual Studio
7 3 (2.21%) Bitbucket
7 3 (2.21%) LoadRunner
8 2 (1.47%) Appium
8 2 (1.47%) JUnit
8 2 (1.47%) LabVIEW
8 2 (1.47%) Locust
8 2 (1.47%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.74%) Protractor
9 1 (0.74%) SoapUI
General
1 31 (22.79%) Social Skills
2 16 (11.76%) Public Sector
3 14 (10.29%) Finance
3 14 (10.29%) Marketing
4 11 (8.09%) Analytical Skills
5 7 (5.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 5 (3.68%) Games
6 5 (3.68%) Law
6 5 (3.68%) Organisational Skills
7 4 (2.94%) Retail
8 3 (2.21%) Billing
8 3 (2.21%) French Language
8 3 (2.21%) Italian Language
8 3 (2.21%) Portuguese Language
8 3 (2.21%) Spanish Language
9 2 (1.47%) Electronics
10 1 (0.74%) Automotive
10 1 (0.74%) Banking
10 1 (0.74%) Pharmaceutical
10 1 (0.74%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 40 (29.41%) Senior
2 37 (27.21%) Developer
3 23 (16.91%) Senior Developer
4 21 (15.44%) Lead
5 17 (12.50%) QA Engineer
6 16 (11.76%) Java Engineer
7 13 (9.56%) Salesforce Developer
7 13 (9.56%) Senior Salesforce Developer
7 13 (9.56%) Software Engineer
8 11 (8.09%) Automation Engineer
8 11 (8.09%) QA Automation Engineer
9 9 (6.62%) Analyst
9 9 (6.62%) Java Software Engineer
9 9 (6.62%) Test Engineer
10 7 (5.15%) Graduate
11 6 (4.41%) Applications Engineer
11 6 (4.41%) Data Engineer
11 6 (4.41%) Python Developer
11 6 (4.41%) Senior Applications Engineer
12 5 (3.68%) QA Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (11.76%) RESTful
1 16 (11.76%) Spring
2 13 (9.56%) CSS
2 13 (9.56%) React
3 12 (8.82%) HTML
4 11 (8.09%) .NET
4 11 (8.09%) Spring Boot
5 7 (5.15%) Django
5 7 (5.15%) Flask
5 7 (5.15%) Kafka
6 6 (4.41%) FastAPI
6 6 (4.41%) Middleware
6 6 (4.41%) Node.js
6 6 (4.41%) OAuth
6 6 (4.41%) Vue
7 5 (3.68%) OAuth2
7 5 (3.68%) Playwright
7 5 (3.68%) REST
8 4 (2.94%) Qt
8 4 (2.94%) STL
Miscellaneous
1 23 (16.91%) Cloud Native
2 8 (5.88%) Onboarding
2 8 (5.88%) Product Ownership
3 6 (4.41%) Mobile App
4 5 (3.68%) Data Structures
5 4 (2.94%) Client/Server
6 3 (2.21%) Algorithms
6 3 (2.21%) Analytical Mindset
6 3 (2.21%) Data Centre
6 3 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (2.21%) Public Cloud
7 2 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (1.47%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 2 (1.47%) Management Information System
7 2 (1.47%) Virtual Team
8 1 (0.74%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.74%) IoT
8 1 (0.74%) Life Science
8 1 (0.74%) Linux Command Line
8 1 (0.74%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 9 (6.62%) Apple iOS
2 8 (5.88%) Android
3 5 (3.68%) Linux
3 5 (3.68%) Windows
4 1 (0.74%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 67 (49.26%) Mentoring
2 58 (42.65%) Agile
3 56 (41.18%) CI/CD
4 37 (27.21%) DevOps
5 35 (25.74%) Problem-Solving
5 35 (25.74%) Software Engineering
6 31 (22.79%) Continuous Improvement
7 25 (18.38%) Coaching
7 25 (18.38%) Microservices
8 24 (17.65%) TDD
9 20 (14.71%) BDD
10 19 (13.97%) Infrastructure as Code
11 18 (13.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 17 (12.50%) SDLC
13 15 (11.03%) Open Source
14 14 (10.29%) Machine Learning
14 14 (10.29%) Process Improvement
15 13 (9.56%) AI
15 13 (9.56%) Business Analysis
15 13 (9.56%) Business Transformation
Programming Languages
1 40 (29.41%) Java
2 38 (27.94%) Python
2 38 (27.94%) SQL
3 24 (17.65%) JavaScript
4 21 (15.44%) C#
5 8 (5.88%) Go
5 8 (5.88%) TypeScript
6 6 (4.41%) Kotlin
6 6 (4.41%) Scala
7 4 (2.94%) C++
8 3 (2.21%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.47%) Bash
9 2 (1.47%) PHP
9 2 (1.47%) VB
10 1 (0.74%) Delphi
10 1 (0.74%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.74%) Swift
Qualifications
1 16 (11.76%) DBS Check
2 13 (9.56%) Degree
3 4 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (2.21%) SC Cleared
4 3 (2.21%) Security Cleared
5 1 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.74%) ISTQB
5 1 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
5 1 (0.74%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (29.41%) QA
2 5 (3.68%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.47%) GDPR
3 2 (1.47%) WCAG
4 1 (0.74%) GRC
System Software
1 18 (13.24%) Docker
Systems Management
1 15 (11.03%) Terraform
2 14 (10.29%) Kubernetes
3 6 (4.41%) Grafana
4 5 (3.68%) Ansible
5 3 (2.21%) HP Fortify
5 3 (2.21%) Rancher
6 2 (1.47%) Control-M
7 1 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.74%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 15 (11.03%) Salesforce
2 12 (8.82%) Oracle
3 7 (5.15%) Databricks
4 6 (4.41%) Microsoft
5 4 (2.94%) Palantir
6 3 (2.21%) IBM
6 3 (2.21%) Software AG
6 3 (2.21%) webMethods
7 2 (1.47%) AppDynamics
8 1 (0.74%) Adobe
8 1 (0.74%) Checkmarx
8 1 (0.74%) Genesys
8 1 (0.74%) Google
8 1 (0.74%) Qualys
8 1 (0.74%) Samsung
8 1 (0.74%) SAP
8 1 (0.74%) Siebel