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 20 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 93 112 86
Rank change year-on-year +19 -26 +15
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 361 282 359
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 1.61% 2.94% 2.37%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.29% 3.31% 3.03%
Number of salaries quoted 244 121 205
10th Percentile £41,475 £32,500 £36,250
25th Percentile £47,500 £47,000 £44,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - +4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £75,000 £70,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £83,750 £82,751 £72,500
England median annual salary £65,000 £62,750 £60,000
% change year-on-year +3.59% +4.58% -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 15,747 8,511 11,862
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 70.27% 88.79% 78.27%
Number of salaries quoted 11,766 4,261 7,649
10th Percentile £30,000 £25,750 £29,750
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £48,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +14.58% -4.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £72,594 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £78,750
England median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,465
% change year-on-year +9.09% -0.84% -11.26%

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 20 August 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 20 August 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 -4 182 £65,000 - 68
North East +5 104 £55,000 +59.42% 30
Yorkshire -15 75 £69,310 +41.45% 37
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 16 (4.43%) Apache Spark
2 13 (3.60%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 13 (3.60%) Apache
2 13 (3.60%) Apache Airflow
2 13 (3.60%) Jupyter
3 8 (2.22%) Confluence
4 3 (0.83%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.55%) nginx
6 1 (0.28%) CMS
6 1 (0.28%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.28%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.28%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.28%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (1.11%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 154 (42.66%) AWS
2 116 (32.13%) Azure
3 60 (16.62%) Azure DevOps
4 52 (14.40%) Serverless
5 28 (7.76%) Amazon S3
6 25 (6.93%) GitHub
7 22 (6.09%) GCP
8 20 (5.54%) SaaS
9 19 (5.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 19 (5.26%) Azure Data Factory
10 18 (4.99%) AWS Lambda
11 17 (4.71%) Amazon EC2
12 15 (4.16%) Amazon ECR
12 15 (4.16%) AWS CloudFormation
13 14 (3.88%) Azure Service Bus
13 14 (3.88%) Firebase
14 13 (3.60%) Amazon EMR
14 13 (3.60%) Azure AKS
15 11 (3.05%) Amazon ECS
15 11 (3.05%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.83%) HTTP
2 2 (0.55%) SMS
3 1 (0.28%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (7.20%) MongoDB
2 23 (6.37%) PostgreSQL
3 22 (6.09%) DynamoDB
4 19 (5.26%) NoSQL
5 15 (4.16%) Data Warehouse
5 15 (4.16%) Spark SQL
6 14 (3.88%) SQL Server
7 13 (3.60%) Amazon Athena
8 8 (2.22%) Relational Database
9 7 (1.94%) MySQL
10 5 (1.39%) Elasticsearch
11 4 (1.11%) Amazon Redshift
11 4 (1.11%) Big Data
11 4 (1.11%) BigQuery
11 4 (1.11%) Flink
11 4 (1.11%) Neo4j
11 4 (1.11%) Power BI
12 3 (0.83%) Data Lake
12 3 (0.83%) DocumentDB
12 3 (0.83%) Redis
Development Applications
1 65 (18.01%) GitLab
2 37 (10.25%) Jenkins
3 36 (9.97%) Git
4 22 (6.09%) JIRA
5 17 (4.71%) Cypress.io
5 17 (4.71%) fastlane
6 15 (4.16%) Postman
7 13 (3.60%) Maven
8 11 (3.05%) Cucumber
8 11 (3.05%) JUnit
8 11 (3.05%) SonarQube
8 11 (3.05%) Spock
9 10 (2.77%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 9 (2.49%) Bitbucket
11 8 (2.22%) Storybook
12 7 (1.94%) REST Assured
13 6 (1.66%) JMeter
13 6 (1.66%) Xcode
14 5 (1.39%) Gradle
14 5 (1.39%) Selenium
General
1 87 (24.10%) Social Skills
2 76 (21.05%) Public Sector
3 66 (18.28%) Finance
4 39 (10.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 38 (10.53%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (4.16%) Banking
7 13 (3.60%) Marketing
8 10 (2.77%) Publishing
9 9 (2.49%) Investment Banking
9 9 (2.49%) Legal
10 8 (2.22%) Games
11 7 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
11 7 (1.94%) Electronics
12 6 (1.66%) Law
12 6 (1.66%) Retail
13 4 (1.11%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.83%) Police
14 3 (0.83%) Tech for Good
15 2 (0.55%) Health Technology
15 2 (0.55%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 106 (29.36%) Senior
2 67 (18.56%) Developer
3 60 (16.62%) Test Engineer
4 55 (15.24%) Lead
5 38 (10.53%) DevOps Engineer
6 35 (9.70%) Software Engineer
7 28 (7.76%) Senior Developer
8 26 (7.20%) Data Engineer
8 26 (7.20%) Full-Stack Engineer
9 24 (6.65%) Senior DevOps
9 24 (6.65%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 17 (4.71%) Java Developer
11 15 (4.16%) Analyst
11 15 (4.16%) Java Engineer
11 15 (4.16%) Lead Data Engineer
12 13 (3.60%) Platform Engineer
13 12 (3.32%) Applications Engineer
13 12 (3.32%) Azure Engineer
14 11 (3.05%) Full-Stack Developer
14 11 (3.05%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (19.11%) Terraform
2 66 (18.28%) Node.js
3 54 (14.96%) AngularJS
4 46 (12.74%) REST
5 45 (12.47%) Spring
6 42 (11.63%) React
7 34 (9.42%) Spring Boot
8 32 (8.86%) Playwright
9 29 (8.03%) PySpark
10 23 (6.37%) .NET
10 23 (6.37%) CSS
10 23 (6.37%) HTML
11 21 (5.82%) RESTful
12 18 (4.99%) Vue
13 16 (4.43%) Next.js
14 12 (3.32%) GraphQL
15 10 (2.77%) Kafka
15 10 (2.77%) React Native
16 9 (2.49%) ARM Templates
17 8 (2.22%) SwiftUI
Miscellaneous
1 40 (11.08%) Product Ownership
2 37 (10.25%) Cloud Native
3 32 (8.86%) Mobile App
4 18 (4.99%) Distributed Systems
4 18 (4.99%) Private Cloud
5 11 (3.05%) Data Structures
6 9 (2.49%) Low-Code
7 7 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.66%) Marketing Technology
8 6 (1.66%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.39%) AI Agents
9 5 (1.39%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.11%) Driving Licence
10 4 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
10 4 (1.11%) Online Games
11 3 (0.83%) Educational Technology
11 3 (0.83%) Enterprise Software
11 3 (0.83%) PKI
11 3 (0.83%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 31 (8.59%) Linux
2 23 (6.37%) Windows
3 20 (5.54%) Unix
4 15 (4.16%) Apple iOS
5 9 (2.49%) Android
6 2 (0.55%) VMS
7 1 (0.28%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 243 (67.31%) CI/CD
2 207 (57.34%) Agile
3 164 (45.43%) DevOps
4 120 (33.24%) Mentoring
5 100 (27.70%) Continuous Improvement
6 93 (25.76%) Software Engineering
7 85 (23.55%) Problem-Solving
8 75 (20.78%) Scrum
9 73 (20.22%) Full-Stack Development
9 73 (20.22%) Infrastructure as Code
10 69 (19.11%) Coaching
10 69 (19.11%) Microservices
11 63 (17.45%) Continuous Integration
12 62 (17.17%) TDD
13 61 (16.90%) AI
14 49 (13.57%) Observability
15 46 (12.74%) Test Strategy
16 44 (12.19%) Technical Leadership
17 40 (11.08%) Containerisation
18 39 (10.80%) Clean Code
Programming Languages
1 136 (37.67%) Java
2 118 (32.69%) Python
3 85 (23.55%) JavaScript
4 82 (22.71%) SQL
5 63 (17.45%) TypeScript
6 39 (10.80%) C#
7 14 (3.88%) Swift
8 13 (3.60%) Bash
9 10 (2.77%) C++
9 10 (2.77%) Groovy
10 9 (2.49%) Kotlin
11 8 (2.22%) Ruby
12 6 (1.66%) C
12 6 (1.66%) Go
12 6 (1.66%) PowerShell
13 5 (1.39%) PHP
14 3 (0.83%) VB
14 3 (0.83%) VB.NET
15 2 (0.55%) Scala
15 2 (0.55%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 45 (12.47%) Security Cleared
2 35 (9.70%) SC Cleared
3 29 (8.03%) Degree
4 17 (4.71%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (2.22%) HNC
6 6 (1.66%) DBS Check
7 5 (1.39%) AWS Certification
7 5 (1.39%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
7 5 (1.39%) Master's Degree
8 3 (0.83%) ISTQB
8 3 (0.83%) NVQ Level 3
9 2 (0.55%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.55%) HND
9 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.28%) CISM
10 1 (0.28%) CISSP
10 1 (0.28%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 1 (0.28%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.28%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (21.88%) QA
2 38 (10.53%) Accessibility
3 22 (6.09%) WCAG
4 17 (4.71%) Data Quality
5 14 (3.88%) GDPR
6 1 (0.28%) ISO 22301
6 1 (0.28%) NIST
System Software
1 64 (17.73%) Docker
Systems Management
1 37 (10.25%) Kubernetes
2 13 (3.60%) Argo
3 7 (1.94%) Ansible
4 4 (1.11%) Grafana
5 3 (0.83%) Packer
5 3 (0.83%) Progress Chef
5 3 (0.83%) Puppet
6 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.28%) Fluentd
7 1 (0.28%) HP Fortify
7 1 (0.28%) Kibana
Vendors
1 27 (7.48%) Microsoft
2 22 (6.09%) Databricks
3 16 (4.43%) Dynatrace
3 16 (4.43%) Splunk
4 15 (4.16%) AppDynamics
5 13 (3.60%) Adobe
6 11 (3.05%) Google
7 9 (2.49%) Salesforce
8 8 (2.22%) Apple
9 7 (1.94%) Pega
10 3 (0.83%) Confluent
10 3 (0.83%) IBM
10 3 (0.83%) Keysight
10 3 (0.83%) Sage
11 2 (0.55%) Allen-Bradley
11 2 (0.55%) Braze
11 2 (0.55%) dotdigital
11 2 (0.55%) Oracle
11 2 (0.55%) Siemens
11 2 (0.55%) UiPath