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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 94 118 69
Rank change year-on-year +24 -49 +18
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 404 243 364
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.68% 2.57% 2.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.36% 2.92% 3.36%
Number of salaries quoted 275 90 130
10th Percentile £40,200 £39,675 £39,498
25th Percentile £47,000 £50,000 £45,125
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £60,000 £54,250
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% +10.60% -5.65%
75th Percentile £74,987 £69,750 £68,438
90th Percentile £83,750 £77,750 £78,750
England median annual salary £62,500 £65,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -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 17,088 8,327 10,840
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 70.98% 87.99% 79.43%
Number of salaries quoted 12,688 4,016 5,580
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £39,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £48,720 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.89% -2.56% -9.09%
75th Percentile £75,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £79,225
England median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -2.44%

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 29 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 29 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 -5 192 £60,000 - 238
North East +19 119 £55,000 +78.86% 70
Yorkshire +28 99 £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 20 (4.95%) Apache Spark
2 16 (3.96%) Apache
2 16 (3.96%) Apache Airflow
3 15 (3.71%) Jupyter
4 13 (3.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 8 (1.98%) Confluence
6 4 (0.99%) CMS
6 4 (0.99%) nginx
7 3 (0.74%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.74%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.50%) Headless CMS
8 2 (0.50%) Umbraco
9 1 (0.25%) Kentico
9 1 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.25%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (0.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.25%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (0.99%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 167 (41.34%) AWS
2 123 (30.45%) Azure
3 57 (14.11%) Azure DevOps
4 55 (13.61%) Serverless
5 43 (10.64%) Amazon S3
6 34 (8.42%) GitHub
7 30 (7.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 28 (6.93%) AWS Lambda
9 24 (5.94%) Amazon EC2
10 21 (5.20%) GCP
11 20 (4.95%) Amazon ECR
12 18 (4.46%) Amazon ECS
12 18 (4.46%) Azure Data Factory
12 18 (4.46%) GitHub Actions
13 17 (4.21%) AWS CloudFormation
14 16 (3.96%) Amazon EMR
14 16 (3.96%) SaaS
15 15 (3.71%) Azure AKS
16 14 (3.47%) Azure Service Bus
16 14 (3.47%) Firebase
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.50%) HTTP
1 2 (0.50%) Reverse Proxy
1 2 (0.50%) SMS
2 1 (0.25%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (7.67%) MongoDB
2 23 (5.69%) PostgreSQL
3 22 (5.45%) DynamoDB
4 19 (4.70%) SQL Server
5 18 (4.46%) Amazon Athena
6 16 (3.96%) NoSQL
7 14 (3.47%) Data Warehouse
8 11 (2.72%) Spark SQL
9 8 (1.98%) Metadata
9 8 (1.98%) Relational Database
10 7 (1.73%) Amazon Redshift
10 7 (1.73%) Data Lake
10 7 (1.73%) Delta Lake
10 7 (1.73%) MySQL
11 6 (1.49%) DocumentDB
11 6 (1.49%) Semantic Layer
12 5 (1.24%) Elasticsearch
13 4 (0.99%) BigQuery
13 4 (0.99%) Power BI
13 4 (0.99%) Redis
Development Applications
1 84 (20.79%) GitLab
2 48 (11.88%) Git
3 40 (9.90%) Jenkins
4 23 (5.69%) JIRA
5 21 (5.20%) Cypress.io
6 15 (3.71%) fastlane
6 15 (3.71%) Maven
6 15 (3.71%) Postman
7 13 (3.22%) JUnit
7 13 (3.22%) Spock
8 11 (2.72%) SonarQube
9 10 (2.48%) Bitbucket
9 10 (2.48%) Cucumber
10 9 (2.23%) Selenium
11 8 (1.98%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 8 (1.98%) Storybook
12 7 (1.73%) JMeter
13 6 (1.49%) Xcode
14 5 (1.24%) Android Studio
14 5 (1.24%) Gradle
General
1 105 (25.99%) Social Skills
2 98 (24.26%) Public Sector
3 66 (16.34%) Finance
4 50 (12.38%) Analytical Skills
5 42 (10.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 14 (3.47%) Banking
7 13 (3.22%) Marketing
8 11 (2.72%) Publishing
9 10 (2.48%) Electronics
10 9 (2.23%) Investment Banking
10 9 (2.23%) Legal
11 8 (1.98%) Manufacturing
12 7 (1.73%) Games
13 6 (1.49%) Documentation Skills
13 6 (1.49%) Law
13 6 (1.49%) Retail
14 3 (0.74%) Organisational Skills
14 3 (0.74%) Police
14 3 (0.74%) Tech for Good
15 2 (0.50%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 119 (29.46%) Senior
2 73 (18.07%) Developer
3 56 (13.86%) Test Engineer
4 45 (11.14%) DevOps Engineer
5 44 (10.89%) Lead
6 33 (8.17%) Software Engineer
7 29 (7.18%) Data Engineer
7 29 (7.18%) Senior Developer
8 28 (6.93%) Full-Stack Engineer
9 25 (6.19%) Senior DevOps
9 25 (6.19%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 21 (5.20%) Analyst
11 19 (4.70%) Java Developer
11 19 (4.70%) QA Engineer
12 15 (3.71%) Databricks Engineer
12 15 (3.71%) Software Developer
13 14 (3.47%) Databricks Data Engineer
13 14 (3.47%) Java Engineer
13 14 (3.47%) Tester
14 11 (2.72%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (18.81%) Node.js
2 72 (17.82%) Terraform
3 58 (14.36%) AngularJS
4 57 (14.11%) REST
5 46 (11.39%) Spring
6 43 (10.64%) React
7 35 (8.66%) CSS
7 35 (8.66%) HTML
7 35 (8.66%) Playwright
8 34 (8.42%) PySpark
9 33 (8.17%) .NET
9 33 (8.17%) Spring Boot
10 28 (6.93%) RESTful
11 17 (4.21%) Kafka
12 16 (3.96%) Next.js
13 12 (2.97%) Vue
14 11 (2.72%) GraphQL
14 11 (2.72%) React Native
15 9 (2.23%) .NET Core
15 9 (2.23%) Express.js
Miscellaneous
1 49 (12.13%) Product Ownership
2 45 (11.14%) Cloud Native
3 31 (7.67%) Mobile App
4 22 (5.45%) Distributed Systems
5 20 (4.95%) Private Cloud
6 9 (2.23%) Onboarding
7 8 (1.98%) Data Structures
7 8 (1.98%) Low-Code
7 8 (1.98%) Self-Motivation
8 7 (1.73%) AI Agents
9 6 (1.49%) Driving Licence
9 6 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (1.49%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (1.49%) Marketing Technology
9 6 (1.49%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (0.74%) Online Games
11 3 (0.74%) Replication
12 2 (0.50%) Analogue Electronics
12 2 (0.50%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 33 (8.17%) Linux
2 27 (6.68%) Windows
3 22 (5.45%) Unix
4 14 (3.47%) Apple iOS
5 10 (2.48%) Android
6 4 (0.99%) VMS
7 1 (0.25%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 273 (67.57%) CI/CD
2 229 (56.68%) Agile
3 181 (44.80%) DevOps
4 142 (35.15%) Mentoring
5 122 (30.20%) Continuous Improvement
6 108 (26.73%) Problem-Solving
7 100 (24.75%) Software Engineering
8 81 (20.05%) Coaching
9 78 (19.31%) Microservices
10 77 (19.06%) Scrum
11 74 (18.32%) Infrastructure as Code
12 70 (17.33%) Full-Stack Development
12 70 (17.33%) Observability
13 68 (16.83%) AI
14 63 (15.59%) Continuous Integration
15 62 (15.35%) TDD
16 59 (14.60%) Software Testing
16 59 (14.60%) Technical Leadership
17 55 (13.61%) Validation
18 47 (11.63%) Clean Code
Programming Languages
1 129 (31.93%) Java
2 120 (29.70%) Python
3 103 (25.50%) JavaScript
4 91 (22.52%) SQL
5 77 (19.06%) TypeScript
6 48 (11.88%) C#
7 18 (4.46%) Bash
8 12 (2.97%) Groovy
8 12 (2.97%) Swift
9 10 (2.48%) C++
10 9 (2.23%) PowerShell
11 8 (1.98%) Kotlin
11 8 (1.98%) Ruby
12 5 (1.24%) C
12 5 (1.24%) Go
13 4 (0.99%) PHP
14 3 (0.74%) Bicep
14 3 (0.74%) VB
14 3 (0.74%) VB.NET
15 2 (0.50%) Scala
Qualifications
1 68 (16.83%) Security Cleared
2 56 (13.86%) SC Cleared
3 29 (7.18%) Degree
4 16 (3.96%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (2.72%) HNC
6 9 (2.23%) AWS Certification
7 6 (1.49%) DBS Check
7 6 (1.49%) Master's Degree
8 5 (1.24%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 4 (0.99%) HND
10 3 (0.74%) DV Cleared
10 3 (0.74%) NVQ Level 3
11 2 (0.50%) ISTQB
11 2 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.25%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 1 (0.25%) BPSS Clearance
12 1 (0.25%) CISM
12 1 (0.25%) CISSP
12 1 (0.25%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.25%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 104 (25.74%) QA
2 48 (11.88%) Accessibility
3 27 (6.68%) WCAG
4 26 (6.44%) Data Quality
5 11 (2.72%) GDPR
6 3 (0.74%) GRC
7 2 (0.50%) PMO
8 1 (0.25%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.25%) NIST
System Software
1 74 (18.32%) Docker
2 1 (0.25%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 44 (10.89%) Kubernetes
2 13 (3.22%) Argo
3 9 (2.23%) Ansible
4 4 (0.99%) Grafana
5 3 (0.74%) Packer
5 3 (0.74%) Progress Chef
5 3 (0.74%) Puppet
6 2 (0.50%) Kibana
6 2 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.50%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.25%) Fluentd
7 1 (0.25%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 36 (8.91%) Microsoft
2 27 (6.68%) Databricks
3 18 (4.46%) Dynatrace
3 18 (4.46%) Splunk
4 16 (3.96%) AppDynamics
5 13 (3.22%) Adobe
6 10 (2.48%) Google
7 8 (1.98%) Apple
8 7 (1.73%) Salesforce
9 6 (1.49%) Confluent
9 6 (1.49%) Pega
10 4 (0.99%) Allen-Bradley
10 4 (0.99%) Sage
10 4 (0.99%) Siemens
11 3 (0.74%) IBM
11 3 (0.74%) Keysight
11 3 (0.74%) SAP
12 2 (0.50%) Braze
12 2 (0.50%) dotdigital
12 2 (0.50%) UiPath