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 5 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 123 94 124
Rank change year-on-year -29 +30 -86
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 272 291 368
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.37% 3.63% 1.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.96% 3.85% 2.47%
Number of salaries quoted 195 128 241
10th Percentile £40,600 £36,250 £36,250
25th Percentile £47,500 £47,000 £42,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £59,769 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.57% +8.67% -4.35%
75th Percentile £75,625 £80,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £84,500 £97,528 £78,750
England median annual salary £62,500 £62,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year - +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 13,845 7,564 14,869
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 69.68% 94.31% 80.44%
Number of salaries quoted 9,713 3,579 11,500
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,000 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £33,250 £36,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,055 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.88% +0.11% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £68,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £84,280 £80,000
England median annual salary £60,000 £58,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +3.45% +5.45% -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 5 June 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 5 June 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 -21 141 £60,000 -7.69% 95
Yorkshire -37 67 £75,000 +49.34% 40
North East -9 64 £52,500 -8.70% 29
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 8 (2.94%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 7 (2.57%) Apache
2 7 (2.57%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (2.57%) Apache Spark
2 7 (2.57%) Jupyter
3 3 (1.10%) Confluence
4 2 (0.74%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.37%) CMS
5 1 (0.37%) nginx
5 1 (0.37%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.37%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.37%) Oracle SCM
2 1 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 112 (41.18%) AWS
2 84 (30.88%) Azure
3 50 (18.38%) Azure DevOps
4 38 (13.97%) Serverless
5 21 (7.72%) GitHub
6 16 (5.88%) Amazon S3
7 15 (5.51%) Azure AKS
7 15 (5.51%) Azure Data Factory
7 15 (5.51%) SaaS
8 14 (5.15%) Azure Service Bus
9 12 (4.41%) AWS Lambda
10 11 (4.04%) Amazon EC2
10 11 (4.04%) Azure Monitor
11 10 (3.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 10 (3.68%) AWS CloudFormation
11 10 (3.68%) GCP
12 9 (3.31%) Azure Functions
12 9 (3.31%) Azure Logic Apps
12 9 (3.31%) Firebase
13 8 (2.94%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.47%) HTTP
2 2 (0.74%) SMS
3 1 (0.37%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (10.29%) PostgreSQL
2 27 (9.93%) MongoDB
3 24 (8.82%) NoSQL
4 15 (5.51%) Spark SQL
5 13 (4.78%) DynamoDB
5 13 (4.78%) MySQL
6 10 (3.68%) Data Warehouse
7 7 (2.57%) Amazon Athena
8 5 (1.84%) Relational Database
9 4 (1.47%) Flink
9 4 (1.47%) Power BI
10 3 (1.10%) Big Data
10 3 (1.10%) Elasticsearch
10 3 (1.10%) SQL Server
11 2 (0.74%) Azure SQL Database
11 2 (0.74%) Data Lake
12 1 (0.37%) BusinessObjects
12 1 (0.37%) Neo4j
12 1 (0.37%) Redis
12 1 (0.37%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 44 (16.18%) GitLab
2 27 (9.93%) Jenkins
3 19 (6.99%) Git
4 16 (5.88%) JIRA
5 15 (5.51%) Postman
6 12 (4.41%) fastlane
7 11 (4.04%) Cypress.io
8 8 (2.94%) Cucumber
9 7 (2.57%) REST Assured
10 6 (2.21%) JMeter
10 6 (2.21%) LabVIEW
10 6 (2.21%) Maven
10 6 (2.21%) Selenium
11 4 (1.47%) Android Studio
11 4 (1.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 4 (1.47%) Bitbucket
11 4 (1.47%) Gradle
11 4 (1.47%) JUnit
11 4 (1.47%) SonarQube
11 4 (1.47%) Xcode
General
1 60 (22.06%) Public Sector
2 49 (18.01%) Social Skills
3 38 (13.97%) Finance
4 28 (10.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 26 (9.56%) Analytical Skills
6 13 (4.78%) Banking
6 13 (4.78%) Marketing
7 9 (3.31%) Electronics
7 9 (3.31%) Investment Banking
8 8 (2.94%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (2.57%) Games
10 6 (2.21%) Legal
11 5 (1.84%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (1.47%) Manufacturing
13 3 (1.10%) French Language
13 3 (1.10%) Italian Language
13 3 (1.10%) Portuguese Language
13 3 (1.10%) Publishing
13 3 (1.10%) Retail
13 3 (1.10%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 76 (27.94%) Senior
2 58 (21.32%) Developer
3 52 (19.12%) Lead
4 50 (18.38%) Test Engineer
5 33 (12.13%) Software Engineer
6 27 (9.93%) Java Engineer
6 27 (9.93%) Senior Developer
7 21 (7.72%) Data Engineer
8 19 (6.99%) DevOps Engineer
9 15 (5.51%) Java Developer
9 15 (5.51%) Lead Data Engineer
10 13 (4.78%) Full-Stack Developer
10 13 (4.78%) Platform Engineer
10 13 (4.78%) Senior DevOps
10 13 (4.78%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 13 (4.78%) Senior Test Engineer
11 12 (4.41%) Azure Engineer
11 12 (4.41%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 10 (3.68%) Java Software Engineer
12 10 (3.68%) QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (14.71%) REST
2 39 (14.34%) Spring
3 36 (13.24%) Node.js
4 35 (12.87%) React
5 34 (12.50%) Spring Boot
6 29 (10.66%) AngularJS
7 24 (8.82%) PySpark
7 24 (8.82%) RESTful
8 19 (6.99%) .NET
9 18 (6.62%) Playwright
10 15 (5.51%) CSS
11 14 (5.15%) HTML
12 13 (4.78%) Vue
13 11 (4.04%) OAuth
13 11 (4.04%) OAuth2
14 10 (3.68%) Next.js
15 9 (3.31%) ARM Templates
15 9 (3.31%) GraphQL
15 9 (3.31%) Kafka
16 8 (2.94%) React Native
Miscellaneous
1 40 (14.71%) Cloud Native
2 28 (10.29%) Mobile App
2 28 (10.29%) Product Ownership
3 12 (4.41%) Onboarding
4 9 (3.31%) Distributed Systems
5 6 (2.21%) Data Structures
5 6 (2.21%) Low-Code
6 5 (1.84%) Marketing Technology
7 4 (1.47%) Analytical Mindset
7 4 (1.47%) Online Games
7 4 (1.47%) Private Cloud
8 3 (1.10%) Algorithms
8 3 (1.10%) Data Centre
8 3 (1.10%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (1.10%) NHS
8 3 (1.10%) PKI
9 2 (0.74%) AI Agents
9 2 (0.74%) Educational Technology
9 2 (0.74%) Enterprise Software
9 2 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 19 (6.99%) Linux
2 16 (5.88%) Apple iOS
3 14 (5.15%) Windows
4 13 (4.78%) Android
4 13 (4.78%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 158 (58.09%) CI/CD
2 139 (51.10%) Agile
3 111 (40.81%) DevOps
4 103 (37.87%) Mentoring
5 65 (23.90%) Problem-Solving
6 64 (23.53%) Microservices
7 61 (22.43%) Continuous Improvement
8 58 (21.32%) Full-Stack Development
8 58 (21.32%) Software Engineering
9 57 (20.96%) Infrastructure as Code
10 52 (19.12%) Scrum
10 52 (19.12%) TDD
11 45 (16.54%) Coaching
12 33 (12.13%) Continuous Integration
12 33 (12.13%) Observability
13 31 (11.40%) AI
13 31 (11.40%) Design Patterns
14 29 (10.66%) Deployment Automation
15 27 (9.93%) Architectural Patterns
15 27 (9.93%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 116 (42.65%) Java
2 87 (31.99%) Python
3 74 (27.21%) SQL
4 54 (19.85%) JavaScript
5 31 (11.40%) TypeScript
6 30 (11.03%) C#
7 11 (4.04%) Kotlin
8 9 (3.31%) Bash
9 8 (2.94%) Groovy
9 8 (2.94%) Ruby
9 8 (2.94%) Swift
10 7 (2.57%) C++
10 7 (2.57%) Go
11 5 (1.84%) VB
12 4 (1.47%) C
12 4 (1.47%) PHP
13 1 (0.37%) Perl
13 1 (0.37%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.37%) Scala
13 1 (0.37%) VBA
Qualifications
1 25 (9.19%) Degree
2 19 (6.99%) Security Cleared
3 16 (5.88%) SC Cleared
4 12 (4.41%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.57%) DBS Check
6 6 (2.21%) HNC
7 4 (1.47%) BPSS Clearance
8 3 (1.10%) ISTQB
8 3 (1.10%) NVQ Level 3
9 1 (0.37%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.37%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 1 (0.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.37%) Master's Degree
9 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.37%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (18.38%) QA
2 25 (9.19%) Accessibility
3 14 (5.15%) WCAG
4 12 (4.41%) GDPR
5 11 (4.04%) Data Quality
System Software
1 33 (12.13%) Docker
Systems Management
1 55 (20.22%) Terraform
2 21 (7.72%) Kubernetes
3 13 (4.78%) Argo
4 5 (1.84%) Ansible
5 3 (1.10%) Grafana
5 3 (1.10%) Packer
6 2 (0.74%) Rancher
7 1 (0.37%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 19 (6.99%) Databricks
2 14 (5.15%) Microsoft
3 12 (4.41%) Salesforce
4 10 (3.68%) Dynatrace
5 8 (2.94%) Adobe
5 8 (2.94%) AppDynamics
5 8 (2.94%) Google
6 5 (1.84%) Splunk
7 4 (1.47%) Apple
8 3 (1.10%) IBM
8 3 (1.10%) Keysight
9 2 (0.74%) Braze
9 2 (0.74%) dotdigital
9 2 (0.74%) Oracle
10 1 (0.37%) Blue Prism
10 1 (0.37%) Confluent
10 1 (0.37%) DevExpress
10 1 (0.37%) Hotjar
10 1 (0.37%) Pega
10 1 (0.37%) SAP