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 £62,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 3 September 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 594 467 615
Rank change year-on-year -127 +148 -75
Permanent jobs requiring a Test Automation Engineer 60 86 33
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.074% 0.25% 0.057%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.079% 0.28% 0.060%
Number of salaries quoted 37 14 17
10th Percentile £45,000 £56,250 £36,250
25th Percentile £55,000 £57,275 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £60,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% +26.32% -5.00%
75th Percentile £70,000 £69,375 £55,000
90th Percentile £75,000 £70,000 £61,000
UK median annual salary £62,500 £59,900 £52,500
% change year-on-year +4.34% +14.10% -

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 75,781 31,047 55,105
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.09% 89.48% 95.14%
Number of salaries quoted 52,695 17,911 34,510
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £57,500 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.55% - -8.33%

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 3 September 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 3 September 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 West -69 18 £42,500 -27.66% 5
Scotland +19 10 £63,750 -8.93% 10
South East -59 10 £75,000 - 12
North of England -45 8 £55,000 -8.33% 5
Midlands -52 6 £50,000 -23.08% 5
Wales - 6 £70,000 - 1
North West -17 4 £70,000 - 2
West Midlands -29 4 £50,000 -23.08% 2
North East - 4 £55,000 - 3
East Midlands -32 2 - - 3
East of England -50 2 £60,000 - 8
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 3 September 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 60 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 28 (46.67%) Software Testing
3 21 (35.00%) Agile
4 20 (33.33%) Selenium
5 17 (28.33%) Playwright
5 17 (28.33%) QA
6 16 (26.67%) Python
7 15 (25.00%) CI/CD
7 15 (25.00%) Jenkins
7 15 (25.00%) Security Cleared
8 12 (20.00%) AWS
8 12 (20.00%) C#
8 12 (20.00%) Test Management
9 11 (18.33%) DevOps
9 11 (18.33%) GitLab
9 11 (18.33%) Test Scripting
9 11 (18.33%) Windows
10 10 (16.67%) Git
11 9 (15.00%) Bash
11 9 (15.00%) BDD
11 9 (15.00%) Cypress.io
11 9 (15.00%) Java
11 9 (15.00%) JavaScript
12 8 (13.33%) Grafana
12 8 (13.33%) Linux
12 8 (13.33%) Problem-Solving
12 8 (13.33%) Robot Framework
12 8 (13.33%) Test Strategy
13 7 (11.67%) Ansible
13 7 (11.67%) Atlassian

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:

Application Platforms
1 3 (5.00%) Confluence
Applications
1 2 (3.33%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 12 (20.00%) AWS
2 7 (11.67%) Azure
2 7 (11.67%) OpenShift
3 6 (10.00%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (1.67%) AWS Data Pipeline
4 1 (1.67%) Azure Monitor
4 1 (1.67%) GCP
4 1 (1.67%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.67%) BGP
1 1 (1.67%) DHCP
1 1 (1.67%) DNS
1 1 (1.67%) OSPF
1 1 (1.67%) TCP/IP
1 1 (1.67%) VLAN
1 1 (1.67%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (11.67%) InfluxDB
2 3 (5.00%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 20 (33.33%) Selenium
2 15 (25.00%) Jenkins
3 11 (18.33%) GitLab
4 10 (16.67%) Git
5 9 (15.00%) Cypress.io
6 8 (13.33%) Robot Framework
7 7 (11.67%) JMeter
7 7 (11.67%) TestRail
8 5 (8.33%) JIRA
9 4 (6.67%) Cucumber
10 3 (5.00%) Postman
10 3 (5.00%) SoapUI
10 3 (5.00%) Zephyr
11 2 (3.33%) Rational DOORS
11 2 (3.33%) REST Assured
12 1 (1.67%) Burp Suite
12 1 (1.67%) NUnit
General
1 7 (11.67%) Analytical Skills
2 5 (8.33%) Aviation
2 5 (8.33%) Public Sector
3 4 (6.67%) Games
3 4 (6.67%) Social Skills
4 3 (5.00%) Telecoms
5 2 (3.33%) Documentation Skills
5 2 (3.33%) Environmental Health
5 2 (3.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (3.33%) Influencing Skills
5 2 (3.33%) Military
6 1 (1.67%) Finance
6 1 (1.67%) Health Technology
6 1 (1.67%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (28.33%) Playwright
2 7 (11.67%) Elastic Stack
2 7 (11.67%) pytest
2 7 (11.67%) Terraform
3 3 (5.00%) .NET
3 3 (5.00%) ADO
3 3 (5.00%) JSON
3 3 (5.00%) SOAP
3 3 (5.00%) XML
4 2 (3.33%) JSP
5 1 (1.67%) AngularJS
5 1 (1.67%) React
5 1 (1.67%) React Native
5 1 (1.67%) REST
5 1 (1.67%) RESTful
5 1 (1.67%) Spring
5 1 (1.67%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 9 (15.00%) Product Ownership
2 4 (6.67%) Mobile App
2 4 (6.67%) Online Games
3 3 (5.00%) Virtual Team
4 2 (3.33%) Analytical Mindset
4 2 (3.33%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 11 (18.33%) Windows
2 8 (13.33%) Linux
3 7 (11.67%) CentOS
4 1 (1.67%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 60 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 28 (46.67%) Software Testing
3 21 (35.00%) Agile
4 15 (25.00%) CI/CD
5 12 (20.00%) Test Management
6 11 (18.33%) DevOps
6 11 (18.33%) Test Scripting
7 9 (15.00%) BDD
8 8 (13.33%) Problem-Solving
8 8 (13.33%) Test Strategy
9 7 (11.67%) Collaborative Culture
9 7 (11.67%) Containerisation
9 7 (11.67%) Continuous Improvement
9 7 (11.67%) Dashboard Development
9 7 (11.67%) Infrastructure as Code
9 7 (11.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 6 (10.00%) API Testing
10 6 (10.00%) Line Management
10 6 (10.00%) Validation
11 5 (8.33%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 16 (26.67%) Python
2 12 (20.00%) C#
3 9 (15.00%) Bash
3 9 (15.00%) Java
3 9 (15.00%) JavaScript
4 7 (11.67%) PowerShell
5 3 (5.00%) SQL
Qualifications
1 15 (25.00%) Security Cleared
2 7 (11.67%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
3 6 (10.00%) ISTQB
4 5 (8.33%) SC Cleared
5 4 (6.67%) ISEB
6 2 (3.33%) Degree
6 2 (3.33%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (28.33%) QA
2 2 (3.33%) Accessibility
2 2 (3.33%) WCAG
3 1 (1.67%) Data Quality
System Software
1 7 (11.67%) Docker
1 7 (11.67%) Virtual Machines
1 7 (11.67%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 8 (13.33%) Grafana
2 7 (11.67%) Ansible
2 7 (11.67%) Kibana
2 7 (11.67%) Kubernetes
2 7 (11.67%) logstash
2 7 (11.67%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 7 (11.67%) Atlassian
1 7 (11.67%) Red Hat
1 7 (11.67%) Splunk
1 7 (11.67%) VMware
2 5 (8.33%) IBM
3 3 (5.00%) HP
3 3 (5.00%) Pega
3 3 (5.00%) SAP
4 2 (3.33%) Microsoft