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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 136 85 119
Rank change year-on-year -51 +34 -78
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 219 269 359
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.19% 3.66% 2.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.66% 3.86% 2.58%
Number of salaries quoted 157 142 238
10th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £36,250
25th Percentile £48,289 £44,063 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £83,750 £97,528 £78,750
England median annual salary £65,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +8.33% - -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 13,189 6,974 13,905
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 71.85% 94.97% 82.96%
Number of salaries quoted 8,349 3,756 11,084
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,500 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £36,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £51,882 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.19% +3.76% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £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 8 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 8 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 -36 114 £60,000 +9.09% 63
Yorkshire -51 62 £69,310 +38.01% 39
North East -20 43 £55,000 -6.78% 39
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 (1.83%) Apache Spark
2 2 (0.91%) Apache
2 2 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (0.91%) Confluence
2 2 (0.91%) Jupyter
2 2 (0.91%) nginx
2 2 (0.91%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.46%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.46%) CMS
3 1 (0.46%) Umbraco
3 1 (0.46%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (1.37%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.46%) Oracle SCM
1 1 (0.46%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 78 (35.62%) AWS
2 71 (32.42%) Azure
3 36 (16.44%) Azure DevOps
4 29 (13.24%) Serverless
5 18 (8.22%) Azure AKS
6 17 (7.76%) SaaS
7 14 (6.39%) Azure Data Factory
8 13 (5.94%) Azure Service Bus
9 12 (5.48%) GCP
10 10 (4.57%) Azure Monitor
11 9 (4.11%) AWS CloudFormation
11 9 (4.11%) GitHub
12 8 (3.65%) Azure Functions
12 8 (3.65%) Azure Logic Apps
13 7 (3.20%) Amazon S3
13 7 (3.20%) AWS Lambda
14 6 (2.74%) Amazon EKS
14 6 (2.74%) PaaS
14 6 (2.74%) Power Platform
14 6 (2.74%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.37%) HTTP
2 2 (0.91%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (13.24%) MongoDB
2 28 (12.79%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (9.59%) NoSQL
4 14 (6.39%) MySQL
4 14 (6.39%) Spark SQL
5 8 (3.65%) Data Warehouse
6 7 (3.20%) DynamoDB
7 4 (1.83%) Flink
7 4 (1.83%) Power BI
7 4 (1.83%) SQL Server
8 3 (1.37%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (1.37%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.91%) Amazon Athena
9 2 (0.91%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (0.91%) PostHog
9 2 (0.91%) Redis
10 1 (0.46%) Big Data
10 1 (0.46%) BusinessObjects
Development Applications
1 31 (14.16%) GitLab
2 16 (7.31%) JIRA
2 16 (7.31%) Postman
3 13 (5.94%) Git
3 13 (5.94%) Jenkins
4 9 (4.11%) Cucumber
4 9 (4.11%) Selenium
5 8 (3.65%) JMeter
6 7 (3.20%) Cypress.io
6 7 (3.20%) REST Assured
7 4 (1.83%) Bitbucket
7 4 (1.83%) Gatling
7 4 (1.83%) SonarQube
8 3 (1.37%) Artifactory
8 3 (1.37%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 3 (1.37%) fastlane
8 3 (1.37%) LabVIEW
8 3 (1.37%) LoadRunner
8 3 (1.37%) SpecFlow
8 3 (1.37%) TestRail
General
1 43 (19.63%) Public Sector
2 38 (17.35%) Social Skills
3 28 (12.79%) Finance
4 17 (7.76%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (6.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 12 (5.48%) Banking
7 8 (3.65%) Investment Banking
8 7 (3.20%) Games
8 7 (3.20%) Marketing
9 5 (2.28%) Organisational Skills
10 4 (1.83%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (1.83%) Electronics
10 4 (1.83%) Law
10 4 (1.83%) Legal
11 3 (1.37%) French Language
11 3 (1.37%) Health Technology
11 3 (1.37%) Italian Language
11 3 (1.37%) Portuguese Language
11 3 (1.37%) Retail
11 3 (1.37%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 65 (29.68%) Senior
2 45 (20.55%) Lead
3 38 (17.35%) Developer
4 35 (15.98%) Test Engineer
5 26 (11.87%) Java Engineer
6 25 (11.42%) Software Engineer
7 20 (9.13%) Data Engineer
7 20 (9.13%) Senior Developer
8 18 (8.22%) DevOps Engineer
9 15 (6.85%) QA Engineer
10 14 (6.39%) Lead Data Engineer
11 13 (5.94%) Senior DevOps
11 13 (5.94%) Senior DevOps Engineer
12 12 (5.48%) Platform Engineer
13 11 (5.02%) Azure Engineer
14 10 (4.57%) Full-Stack Developer
14 10 (4.57%) Java Software Engineer
14 10 (4.57%) Senior Test Engineer
14 10 (4.57%) Test Automation Engineer
15 9 (4.11%) Applications Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (14.16%) REST
1 31 (14.16%) Spring
2 28 (12.79%) Spring Boot
3 26 (11.87%) React
4 22 (10.05%) Node.js
5 19 (8.68%) PySpark
6 18 (8.22%) Playwright
7 16 (7.31%) .NET
7 16 (7.31%) RESTful
8 14 (6.39%) AngularJS
9 11 (5.02%) CSS
9 11 (5.02%) OAuth
9 11 (5.02%) OAuth2
10 10 (4.57%) HTML
11 9 (4.11%) Kafka
11 9 (4.11%) Vue
12 8 (3.65%) ARM Templates
13 6 (2.74%) RabbitMQ
14 4 (1.83%) Flask
14 4 (1.83%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 26 (11.87%) Cloud Native
2 11 (5.02%) Mobile App
2 11 (5.02%) Product Ownership
3 8 (3.65%) Onboarding
4 5 (2.28%) Analytical Mindset
4 5 (2.28%) Distributed Systems
5 4 (1.83%) Data Structures
5 4 (1.83%) Low-Code
5 4 (1.83%) Online Games
6 3 (1.37%) Algorithms
6 3 (1.37%) Data Centre
6 3 (1.37%) NHS
6 3 (1.37%) PKI
6 3 (1.37%) Public Cloud
7 2 (0.91%) Client/Server
7 2 (0.91%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (0.91%) Educational Technology
7 2 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
7 2 (0.91%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (0.91%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 19 (8.68%) Linux
2 15 (6.85%) Windows
3 13 (5.94%) Unix
4 11 (5.02%) Apple iOS
5 8 (3.65%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 113 (51.60%) CI/CD
2 100 (45.66%) Agile
3 84 (38.36%) Mentoring
4 83 (37.90%) DevOps
5 49 (22.37%) Microservices
5 49 (22.37%) Problem-Solving
6 48 (21.92%) Continuous Improvement
7 44 (20.09%) Infrastructure as Code
8 39 (17.81%) Software Engineering
9 37 (16.89%) Scrum
10 35 (15.98%) TDD
11 34 (15.53%) Coaching
12 33 (15.07%) Full-Stack Development
13 29 (13.24%) Observability
14 27 (12.33%) BDD
15 25 (11.42%) Continuous Integration
15 25 (11.42%) Event-Driven
16 24 (10.96%) Software Testing
17 23 (10.50%) AI
18 21 (9.59%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 86 (39.27%) Java
2 64 (29.22%) Python
3 63 (28.77%) SQL
4 31 (14.16%) JavaScript
5 30 (13.70%) C#
6 17 (7.76%) TypeScript
7 8 (3.65%) Go
8 6 (2.74%) Kotlin
9 5 (2.28%) Groovy
10 4 (1.83%) Bash
11 3 (1.37%) C++
11 3 (1.37%) PHP
11 3 (1.37%) Scala
11 3 (1.37%) Swift
12 2 (0.91%) C
12 2 (0.91%) VB
13 1 (0.46%) Perl
13 1 (0.46%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.46%) Ruby
13 1 (0.46%) VBA
Qualifications
1 20 (9.13%) Degree
2 12 (5.48%) Security Cleared
3 10 (4.57%) SC Cleared
4 9 (4.11%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (3.65%) DBS Check
6 4 (1.83%) ISTQB
7 3 (1.37%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (0.46%) HNC
8 1 (0.46%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 1 (0.46%) NVQ Level 3
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (22.83%) QA
2 10 (4.57%) GDPR
3 7 (3.20%) Accessibility
4 6 (2.74%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.37%) WCAG
System Software
1 19 (8.68%) Docker
Systems Management
1 44 (20.09%) Terraform
2 19 (8.68%) Kubernetes
3 13 (5.94%) Argo
4 6 (2.74%) Ansible
5 5 (2.28%) Grafana
6 3 (1.37%) Packer
6 3 (1.37%) Rancher
7 1 (0.46%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 17 (7.76%) Databricks
2 13 (5.94%) Microsoft
2 13 (5.94%) Salesforce
3 6 (2.74%) AppDynamics
4 4 (1.83%) Google
4 4 (1.83%) IBM
4 4 (1.83%) Oracle
5 2 (0.91%) Palantir
5 2 (0.91%) Splunk
6 1 (0.46%) Adobe
6 1 (0.46%) Blue Prism
6 1 (0.46%) DevExpress
6 1 (0.46%) Dynatrace
6 1 (0.46%) Hotjar
6 1 (0.46%) Keysight
6 1 (0.46%) Pega
6 1 (0.46%) SAP