Test Automation Engineer Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Automation Test Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Automation Test Engineer salary in the UK excluding London is £55,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 28 May 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 530 438 721
Rank change year-on-year -92 +283 -82
Permanent jobs requiring a Test Automation Engineer 56 83 28
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.083% 0.29% 0.039%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.089% 0.33% 0.041%
Number of salaries quoted 46 14 21
10th Percentile £45,000 £55,000 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £55,313 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £59,900 £42,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.18% +40.94% -21.30%
75th Percentile £73,750 £63,063 £45,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £79,625 £53,750
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £45,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +33.33% -18.18%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 63,254 25,325 67,646
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.80% 88.96% 94.84%
Number of salaries quoted 42,166 13,423 49,263
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,250 £26,750
25th Percentile £36,250 £35,000 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £51,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% +2.00% -6.54%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £85,000 £81,250 £76,250
UK median annual salary £55,000 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year -4.35% +9.52% -12.50%

Test Automation Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Test Automation Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Test Automation Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Test Automation Engineer
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for Test Automation Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Salary distribution trend for Test Automation Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Test Automation Engineer
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Test Automation Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 28 May 2026.

Salary histogram for Test Automation Engineer in the UK excluding London

Test Automation Engineer
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Test Automation Engineer within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 28 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
South East -39 17 £75,000 +23.46% 5
East of England -31 13 £50,000 -9.09% 3
North of England -41 9 £55,000 -15.38% 9
South West -59 8 £72,500 +20.83% 3
Wales - 5 £70,000 - 1
North East - 5 £55,000 - 1
North West -8 4 £70,000 -1.75% 4
Midlands -45 3 £50,000 - 1
East Midlands -38 2 - -
Scotland -2 1 £55,000 - 3
West Midlands -33 1 £50,000 - 1
Test Automation Engineer
UK

Test Automation Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 28 May 2026, Test Automation Engineer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Test Automation Engineer in the job title.

1 56 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 23 (41.07%) Software Testing
3 21 (37.50%) QA
4 17 (30.36%) Python
5 16 (28.57%) Agile
6 12 (21.43%) C#
6 12 (21.43%) Playwright
7 10 (17.86%) CI/CD
7 10 (17.86%) SDET
7 10 (17.86%) Selenium
8 9 (16.07%) Fintech
9 8 (14.29%) API Testing
10 7 (12.50%) GitLab
10 7 (12.50%) Java
10 7 (12.50%) Test Strategy
11 6 (10.71%) AWS
11 6 (10.71%) Collaborative Culture
11 6 (10.71%) Containerisation
11 6 (10.71%) Docker
11 6 (10.71%) Kubernetes
11 6 (10.71%) Manual Testing
11 6 (10.71%) Security Cleared
11 6 (10.71%) Terraform
12 5 (8.93%) Azure
12 5 (8.93%) Continuous Improvement
12 5 (8.93%) Cypress.io
12 5 (8.93%) DevOps
12 5 (8.93%) JavaScript
12 5 (8.93%) Jenkins
12 5 (8.93%) Line Management

Test Automation Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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:

Cloud Services
1 6 (10.71%) AWS
2 5 (8.93%) Azure
3 4 (7.14%) OpenShift
4 3 (5.36%) GCP
5 2 (3.57%) Azure DevOps
5 2 (3.57%) Azure Pipelines
6 1 (1.79%) AWS Data Pipeline
6 1 (1.79%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.79%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (7.14%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 10 (17.86%) Selenium
2 7 (12.50%) GitLab
3 5 (8.93%) Cypress.io
3 5 (8.93%) Jenkins
4 4 (7.14%) Git
4 4 (7.14%) Robot Framework
4 4 (7.14%) TestRail
5 2 (3.57%) REST Assured
6 1 (1.79%) Cucumber
6 1 (1.79%) JMeter
6 1 (1.79%) NUnit
6 1 (1.79%) Postman
6 1 (1.79%) WebDriver
General
1 10 (17.86%) Games
2 2 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
2 2 (3.57%) Influencing Skills
3 1 (1.79%) Advertising
3 1 (1.79%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (1.79%) Electronics
3 1 (1.79%) Finance
3 1 (1.79%) Health Technology
3 1 (1.79%) Public Sector
3 1 (1.79%) Social Skills
3 1 (1.79%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (21.43%) Playwright
2 4 (7.14%) Elastic Stack
2 4 (7.14%) pytest
3 3 (5.36%) .NET
4 2 (3.57%) RESTful
5 1 (1.79%) AngularJS
5 1 (1.79%) Blazor
5 1 (1.79%) React
5 1 (1.79%) React Native
5 1 (1.79%) REST
5 1 (1.79%) Spring
5 1 (1.79%) Spring Boot
5 1 (1.79%) WebAssembly
Miscellaneous
1 5 (8.93%) Mobile App
1 5 (8.93%) Product Ownership
2 4 (7.14%) Online Games
3 2 (3.57%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (1.79%) Linux Command Line
4 1 (1.79%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 5 (8.93%) Linux
2 4 (7.14%) CentOS
2 4 (7.14%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 23 (41.07%) Software Testing
3 16 (28.57%) Agile
4 10 (17.86%) CI/CD
4 10 (17.86%) SDET
5 9 (16.07%) Fintech
6 8 (14.29%) API Testing
7 7 (12.50%) Test Strategy
8 6 (10.71%) Collaborative Culture
8 6 (10.71%) Containerisation
8 6 (10.71%) Manual Testing
9 5 (8.93%) Continuous Improvement
9 5 (8.93%) DevOps
9 5 (8.93%) Line Management
9 5 (8.93%) QA Automation
10 4 (7.14%) Dashboard Development
10 4 (7.14%) Infrastructure as Code
10 4 (7.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 4 (7.14%) Software Engineering
10 4 (7.14%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 17 (30.36%) Python
2 12 (21.43%) C#
3 7 (12.50%) Java
4 5 (8.93%) JavaScript
5 4 (7.14%) Bash
5 4 (7.14%) PowerShell
6 3 (5.36%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 6 (10.71%) Security Cleared
2 4 (7.14%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
3 2 (3.57%) ISTQB
3 2 (3.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
3 2 (3.57%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
4 1 (1.79%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (37.50%) QA
2 2 (3.57%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.79%) Data Quality
System Software
1 6 (10.71%) Docker
2 4 (7.14%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (7.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.79%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 6 (10.71%) Kubernetes
1 6 (10.71%) Terraform
2 4 (7.14%) Ansible
2 4 (7.14%) Grafana
2 4 (7.14%) Kibana
2 4 (7.14%) logstash
2 4 (7.14%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 4 (7.14%) Atlassian
1 4 (7.14%) Red Hat
1 4 (7.14%) Splunk
1 4 (7.14%) VMware
2 2 (3.57%) Guidewire
3 1 (1.79%) ServiceNow