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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 118 97 121
Rank change year-on-year -21 +24 -77
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 264 281 365
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.34% 3.63% 2.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.89% 3.84% 2.57%
Number of salaries quoted 189 124 246
10th Percentile £41,150 £36,625 £36,250
25th Percentile £47,500 £47,173 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £59,769 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.57% +8.67% -4.35%
75th Percentile £76,250 £80,688 £70,938
90th Percentile £85,000 £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 13,943 7,324 14,183
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 70.85% 94.72% 81.44%
Number of salaries quoted 9,378 3,425 11,269
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £35,000 £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 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £88,750 £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 27 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 27 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 -22 137 £60,000 -7.69% 77
Yorkshire -33 67 £75,000 +49.34% 26
North East -7 60 £52,500 -11.02% 26
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 (3.03%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 5 (1.89%) Apache
2 5 (1.89%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (1.89%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.89%) Jupyter
3 3 (1.14%) Confluence
3 3 (1.14%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.38%) CMS
4 1 (0.38%) nginx
4 1 (0.38%) Umbraco
4 1 (0.38%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (1.14%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.38%) Oracle SCM
2 1 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 103 (39.02%) AWS
2 82 (31.06%) Azure
3 48 (18.18%) Azure DevOps
4 34 (12.88%) Serverless
5 19 (7.20%) GitHub
6 17 (6.44%) Azure AKS
7 15 (5.68%) Azure Data Factory
8 14 (5.30%) SaaS
9 13 (4.92%) Azure Service Bus
10 12 (4.55%) Amazon S3
10 12 (4.55%) Azure Monitor
11 10 (3.79%) AWS CloudFormation
11 10 (3.79%) GCP
12 9 (3.41%) AWS Lambda
12 9 (3.41%) Azure Functions
12 9 (3.41%) Azure Logic Apps
13 8 (3.03%) Amazon EC2
13 8 (3.03%) Power Platform
14 7 (2.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 7 (2.65%) Firebase
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.89%) HTTP
2 2 (0.76%) SMS
2 2 (0.76%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (10.98%) PostgreSQL
2 28 (10.61%) MongoDB
3 23 (8.71%) NoSQL
4 15 (5.68%) Spark SQL
5 12 (4.55%) MySQL
6 11 (4.17%) DynamoDB
7 9 (3.41%) Data Warehouse
8 5 (1.89%) Amazon Athena
8 5 (1.89%) SQL Server
9 4 (1.52%) Flink
9 4 (1.52%) Power BI
9 4 (1.52%) Relational Database
10 3 (1.14%) Elasticsearch
11 2 (0.76%) Azure SQL Database
11 2 (0.76%) Big Data
12 1 (0.38%) BusinessObjects
12 1 (0.38%) Data Lake
12 1 (0.38%) PostHog
12 1 (0.38%) Redis
12 1 (0.38%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 42 (15.91%) GitLab
2 25 (9.47%) Jenkins
3 18 (6.82%) Git
4 16 (6.06%) JIRA
5 15 (5.68%) Postman
6 10 (3.79%) Cypress.io
6 10 (3.79%) fastlane
7 7 (2.65%) Cucumber
7 7 (2.65%) JMeter
7 7 (2.65%) REST Assured
7 7 (2.65%) Selenium
8 6 (2.27%) LabVIEW
8 6 (2.27%) Maven
9 5 (1.89%) SonarQube
10 4 (1.52%) Bitbucket
10 4 (1.52%) Gatling
10 4 (1.52%) JUnit
10 4 (1.52%) Spock
11 3 (1.14%) LoadRunner
11 3 (1.14%) Xcode
General
1 56 (21.21%) Public Sector
2 46 (17.42%) Social Skills
3 35 (13.26%) Finance
4 24 (9.09%) Analytical Skills
4 24 (9.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 13 (4.92%) Banking
6 12 (4.55%) Marketing
7 9 (3.41%) Electronics
7 9 (3.41%) Investment Banking
8 8 (3.03%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (2.65%) Games
10 5 (1.89%) Legal
10 5 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
11 4 (1.52%) Manufacturing
12 3 (1.14%) French Language
12 3 (1.14%) Italian Language
12 3 (1.14%) Portuguese Language
12 3 (1.14%) Publishing
12 3 (1.14%) Retail
12 3 (1.14%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 78 (29.55%) Senior
2 56 (21.21%) Developer
3 53 (20.08%) Lead
4 49 (18.56%) Test Engineer
5 31 (11.74%) Software Engineer
6 29 (10.98%) Senior Developer
7 27 (10.23%) Java Engineer
8 20 (7.58%) Data Engineer
9 19 (7.20%) DevOps Engineer
10 15 (5.68%) Java Developer
10 15 (5.68%) Lead Data Engineer
11 13 (4.92%) Platform Engineer
11 13 (4.92%) Senior DevOps
11 13 (4.92%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 13 (4.92%) Senior Test Engineer
12 12 (4.55%) Azure Engineer
12 12 (4.55%) Full-Stack Developer
12 12 (4.55%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 10 (3.79%) Java Software Engineer
13 10 (3.79%) QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (14.39%) Spring
2 37 (14.02%) REST
3 33 (12.50%) Spring Boot
4 32 (12.12%) React
5 30 (11.36%) Node.js
6 26 (9.85%) AngularJS
7 23 (8.71%) RESTful
8 22 (8.33%) PySpark
9 19 (7.20%) Playwright
10 18 (6.82%) .NET
11 16 (6.06%) CSS
12 15 (5.68%) HTML
13 11 (4.17%) OAuth
13 11 (4.17%) OAuth2
14 10 (3.79%) Next.js
14 10 (3.79%) Vue
15 9 (3.41%) ARM Templates
15 9 (3.41%) GraphQL
15 9 (3.41%) Kafka
16 8 (3.03%) React Native
Miscellaneous
1 38 (14.39%) Cloud Native
2 25 (9.47%) Mobile App
3 23 (8.71%) Product Ownership
4 12 (4.55%) Onboarding
5 7 (2.65%) Distributed Systems
5 7 (2.65%) Low-Code
6 5 (1.89%) Analytical Mindset
6 5 (1.89%) Data Structures
6 5 (1.89%) Marketing Technology
7 4 (1.52%) Online Games
7 4 (1.52%) Private Cloud
8 3 (1.14%) Algorithms
8 3 (1.14%) Data Centre
8 3 (1.14%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (1.14%) NHS
8 3 (1.14%) PKI
8 3 (1.14%) Public Cloud
9 2 (0.76%) Client/Server
9 2 (0.76%) Educational Technology
9 2 (0.76%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 19 (7.20%) Linux
2 15 (5.68%) Apple iOS
2 15 (5.68%) Windows
3 13 (4.92%) Unix
4 12 (4.55%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 150 (56.82%) CI/CD
2 133 (50.38%) Agile
3 109 (41.29%) DevOps
4 101 (38.26%) Mentoring
5 61 (23.11%) Microservices
5 61 (23.11%) Problem-Solving
6 58 (21.97%) Continuous Improvement
7 55 (20.83%) Full-Stack Development
8 54 (20.45%) Software Engineering
9 52 (19.70%) Infrastructure as Code
10 51 (19.32%) Scrum
11 48 (18.18%) TDD
12 42 (15.91%) Coaching
13 32 (12.12%) Continuous Integration
14 31 (11.74%) Observability
15 30 (11.36%) Design Patterns
16 28 (10.61%) AI
16 28 (10.61%) Deployment Automation
17 27 (10.23%) Software Testing
18 26 (9.85%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 112 (42.42%) Java
2 82 (31.06%) Python
3 69 (26.14%) SQL
4 53 (20.08%) JavaScript
5 29 (10.98%) C#
6 27 (10.23%) TypeScript
7 10 (3.79%) Kotlin
8 8 (3.03%) Bash
8 8 (3.03%) C++
8 8 (3.03%) Groovy
8 8 (3.03%) Ruby
9 7 (2.65%) Go
9 7 (2.65%) Swift
10 5 (1.89%) VB
11 4 (1.52%) C
12 2 (0.76%) PHP
13 1 (0.38%) Perl
13 1 (0.38%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.38%) Scala
13 1 (0.38%) VBA
Qualifications
1 23 (8.71%) Degree
2 16 (6.06%) Security Cleared
3 14 (5.30%) SC Cleared
4 11 (4.17%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.65%) DBS Check
6 6 (2.27%) HNC
7 4 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.52%) ISTQB
8 3 (1.14%) NVQ Level 3
9 1 (0.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.38%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (18.56%) QA
2 22 (8.33%) Accessibility
3 12 (4.55%) WCAG
4 11 (4.17%) GDPR
5 9 (3.41%) Data Quality
System Software
1 29 (10.98%) Docker
Systems Management
1 52 (19.70%) Terraform
2 21 (7.95%) Kubernetes
3 13 (4.92%) Argo
4 6 (2.27%) Ansible
5 4 (1.52%) Grafana
6 3 (1.14%) Packer
6 3 (1.14%) Rancher
7 2 (0.76%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 17 (6.44%) Databricks
2 15 (5.68%) Microsoft
3 12 (4.55%) Salesforce
4 8 (3.03%) Adobe
4 8 (3.03%) AppDynamics
5 7 (2.65%) Dynatrace
5 7 (2.65%) Google
6 4 (1.52%) IBM
6 4 (1.52%) Splunk
7 3 (1.14%) Apple
7 3 (1.14%) Keysight
7 3 (1.14%) Oracle
8 2 (0.76%) Braze
8 2 (0.76%) dotdigital
9 1 (0.38%) Blue Prism
9 1 (0.38%) DevExpress
9 1 (0.38%) Hotjar
9 1 (0.38%) Pega
9 1 (0.38%) SAP