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 12 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 127 86 124
Rank change year-on-year -41 +38 -81
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 230 301 360
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.25% 3.97% 2.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.76% 4.18% 2.57%
Number of salaries quoted 167 143 241
10th Percentile £40,450 £36,250 £36,250
25th Percentile £48,289 £44,375 £42,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +13.64% -4.35% -
75th Percentile £76,875 £80,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £83,750 £97,528 £78,750
England median annual salary £64,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +6.67% - -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 13,102 7,199 13,982
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 71.08% 94.99% 82.83%
Number of salaries quoted 8,572 3,798 11,128
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,248 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £36,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £51,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% +2.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £88,148 £85,000 £80,000
England median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £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 12 May 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 12 May 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 -39 120 £60,000 +9.09% 53
Yorkshire -55 61 £69,310 +38.62% 31
North East -16 49 £52,500 -11.02% 38
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 (1.74%) Apache Spark
2 2 (0.87%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 2 (0.87%) Apache
2 2 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (0.87%) Confluence
2 2 (0.87%) Jupyter
2 2 (0.87%) nginx
2 2 (0.87%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.43%) CMS
3 1 (0.43%) Umbraco
3 1 (0.43%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (1.30%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.43%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.43%) Oracle SCM
1 1 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 85 (36.96%) AWS
2 77 (33.48%) Azure
3 42 (18.26%) Azure DevOps
4 30 (13.04%) Serverless
5 18 (7.83%) Azure AKS
6 15 (6.52%) SaaS
7 14 (6.09%) Azure Data Factory
7 14 (6.09%) GitHub
8 13 (5.65%) Azure Service Bus
9 12 (5.22%) GCP
10 10 (4.35%) Azure Monitor
11 9 (3.91%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (3.48%) Azure Functions
12 8 (3.48%) Azure Logic Apps
13 7 (3.04%) Amazon S3
13 7 (3.04%) AWS Lambda
14 6 (2.61%) Amazon EKS
14 6 (2.61%) dbt
14 6 (2.61%) PaaS
14 6 (2.61%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.30%) HTTP
2 2 (0.87%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (13.48%) MongoDB
2 28 (12.17%) PostgreSQL
3 23 (10.00%) NoSQL
4 14 (6.09%) MySQL
4 14 (6.09%) Spark SQL
5 8 (3.48%) Data Warehouse
6 7 (3.04%) DynamoDB
7 5 (2.17%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.74%) Flink
8 4 (1.74%) Power BI
8 4 (1.74%) SQL Server
9 3 (1.30%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.87%) Amazon Athena
10 2 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
10 2 (0.87%) PostHog
10 2 (0.87%) Redis
11 1 (0.43%) Big Data
11 1 (0.43%) BusinessObjects
Development Applications
1 34 (14.78%) GitLab
2 19 (8.26%) Jenkins
3 16 (6.96%) JIRA
3 16 (6.96%) Postman
4 15 (6.52%) Git
5 9 (3.91%) Cucumber
6 8 (3.48%) JMeter
6 8 (3.48%) Selenium
7 7 (3.04%) Cypress.io
7 7 (3.04%) fastlane
7 7 (3.04%) REST Assured
8 4 (1.74%) Bitbucket
8 4 (1.74%) Gatling
8 4 (1.74%) LabVIEW
8 4 (1.74%) SonarQube
9 3 (1.30%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (1.30%) JUnit
9 3 (1.30%) LoadRunner
9 3 (1.30%) SpecFlow
9 3 (1.30%) TestRail
General
1 47 (20.43%) Public Sector
2 38 (16.52%) Social Skills
3 29 (12.61%) Finance
4 19 (8.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 18 (7.83%) Analytical Skills
6 12 (5.22%) Banking
7 8 (3.48%) Investment Banking
8 7 (3.04%) Games
8 7 (3.04%) Marketing
9 6 (2.61%) Electronics
10 5 (2.17%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (2.17%) Organisational Skills
11 4 (1.74%) Legal
12 3 (1.30%) French Language
12 3 (1.30%) Italian Language
12 3 (1.30%) Law
12 3 (1.30%) Manufacturing
12 3 (1.30%) Portuguese Language
12 3 (1.30%) Retail
12 3 (1.30%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 71 (30.87%) Senior
2 46 (20.00%) Lead
3 44 (19.13%) Developer
4 37 (16.09%) Test Engineer
5 27 (11.74%) Software Engineer
6 26 (11.30%) Java Engineer
7 24 (10.43%) Senior Developer
8 20 (8.70%) Data Engineer
9 18 (7.83%) DevOps Engineer
10 14 (6.09%) Lead Data Engineer
10 14 (6.09%) QA Engineer
11 13 (5.65%) Senior DevOps
11 13 (5.65%) Senior DevOps Engineer
12 12 (5.22%) Platform Engineer
13 11 (4.78%) Azure Engineer
13 11 (4.78%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 11 (4.78%) Java Developer
13 11 (4.78%) Senior Test Engineer
14 10 (4.35%) Full-Stack Developer
14 10 (4.35%) Java Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (14.35%) Spring
2 31 (13.48%) REST
3 29 (12.61%) Spring Boot
4 28 (12.17%) React
5 23 (10.00%) Node.js
6 20 (8.70%) RESTful
7 19 (8.26%) PySpark
8 18 (7.83%) .NET
8 18 (7.83%) Playwright
9 17 (7.39%) AngularJS
10 12 (5.22%) CSS
11 11 (4.78%) HTML
11 11 (4.78%) OAuth
11 11 (4.78%) OAuth2
12 9 (3.91%) Kafka
12 9 (3.91%) Vue
13 8 (3.48%) ARM Templates
14 6 (2.61%) Next.js
14 6 (2.61%) RabbitMQ
15 5 (2.17%) Entity Framework
Miscellaneous
1 31 (13.48%) Cloud Native
2 18 (7.83%) Mobile App
3 17 (7.39%) Product Ownership
4 9 (3.91%) Onboarding
5 6 (2.61%) Distributed Systems
6 5 (2.17%) Analytical Mindset
6 5 (2.17%) Low-Code
7 4 (1.74%) Data Structures
7 4 (1.74%) Online Games
8 3 (1.30%) Algorithms
8 3 (1.30%) Data Centre
8 3 (1.30%) NHS
8 3 (1.30%) PKI
8 3 (1.30%) Private Cloud
8 3 (1.30%) Public Cloud
9 2 (0.87%) Client/Server
9 2 (0.87%) Educational Technology
9 2 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (0.87%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.87%) Marketing Technology
Operating Systems
1 19 (8.26%) Linux
2 15 (6.52%) Windows
3 13 (5.65%) Apple iOS
3 13 (5.65%) Unix
4 10 (4.35%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (53.04%) CI/CD
2 109 (47.39%) Agile
3 91 (39.57%) DevOps
4 88 (38.26%) Mentoring
5 53 (23.04%) Microservices
5 53 (23.04%) Problem-Solving
6 50 (21.74%) Continuous Improvement
7 47 (20.43%) Infrastructure as Code
8 43 (18.70%) Scrum
9 42 (18.26%) Software Engineering
10 41 (17.83%) TDD
11 40 (17.39%) Full-Stack Development
12 33 (14.35%) Coaching
13 29 (12.61%) Observability
14 27 (11.74%) BDD
15 26 (11.30%) AI
16 25 (10.87%) Continuous Integration
16 25 (10.87%) Deployment Automation
16 25 (10.87%) Event-Driven
17 24 (10.43%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 93 (40.43%) Java
2 69 (30.00%) Python
3 64 (27.83%) SQL
4 35 (15.22%) JavaScript
5 31 (13.48%) C#
6 18 (7.83%) TypeScript
7 8 (3.48%) Go
7 8 (3.48%) Kotlin
8 6 (2.61%) Groovy
9 5 (2.17%) C++
9 5 (2.17%) Swift
10 4 (1.74%) Bash
10 4 (1.74%) Ruby
11 3 (1.30%) C
11 3 (1.30%) PHP
11 3 (1.30%) Scala
11 3 (1.30%) VB
12 1 (0.43%) Perl
12 1 (0.43%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.43%) VBA
Qualifications
1 20 (8.70%) Degree
2 12 (5.22%) Security Cleared
3 10 (4.35%) SC Cleared
4 9 (3.91%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (3.04%) DBS Check
6 4 (1.74%) ISTQB
7 3 (1.30%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (1.30%) HNC
8 2 (0.87%) NVQ Level 3
9 1 (0.43%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (20.87%) QA
2 11 (4.78%) Accessibility
3 10 (4.35%) GDPR
4 7 (3.04%) WCAG
5 6 (2.61%) Data Quality
System Software
1 23 (10.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 47 (20.43%) Terraform
2 20 (8.70%) Kubernetes
3 13 (5.65%) Argo
4 6 (2.61%) Ansible
5 5 (2.17%) Grafana
6 3 (1.30%) Packer
6 3 (1.30%) Rancher
7 1 (0.43%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 17 (7.39%) Databricks
2 13 (5.65%) Microsoft
3 12 (5.22%) Salesforce
4 7 (3.04%) AppDynamics
5 6 (2.61%) Google
6 5 (2.17%) Dynatrace
7 4 (1.74%) IBM
7 4 (1.74%) Oracle
8 3 (1.30%) Splunk
9 2 (0.87%) Adobe
9 2 (0.87%) Apple
9 2 (0.87%) Keysight
9 2 (0.87%) Palantir
10 1 (0.43%) Blue Prism
10 1 (0.43%) DevExpress
10 1 (0.43%) Hotjar
10 1 (0.43%) Pega
10 1 (0.43%) SAP