Test Automation Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Automated Testing
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Test Automation skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 1 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 118 74 82
Rank change year-on-year -44 +8 -39
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 719 1,265 1,086
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 1.71% 3.40% 3.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.15% 3.85% 3.90%
Number of salaries quoted 407 546 771
10th Percentile £36,250 £37,716 £36,250
25th Percentile £45,000 £46,250 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,200 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% +4.55% -2.62%
75th Percentile £69,000 £71,250 £70,000
90th Percentile £83,000 £85,000 £83,750
UK median annual salary £65,000 £62,500 £62,500
% change year-on-year +4.00% - +4.17%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 33,380 32,892 27,855
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 79.58% 88.28% 90.59%
Number of salaries quoted 19,063 15,104 20,736
10th Percentile £27,707 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £32,755 £41,250 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £49,000 £55,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -10.91% +4.76% -4.50%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £83,750 £80,070
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Test Automation job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Test Automation
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Test Automation.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Test Automation in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 1 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Test Automation in the UK excluding London

Test Automation
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 within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 1 January 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 -36 197 £55,000 - 185
Scotland +18 136 £79,859 +39.02% 45
North of England -59 133 £60,000 +20.00% 184
South West -7 103 £52,500 -6.67% 79
Midlands -58 85 £55,200 -8.00% 64
North West -39 72 £60,000 +27.66% 92
West Midlands -39 53 £55,200 -8.00% 41
Yorkshire -39 46 £55,000 +11.11% 66
East of England -51 42 £55,000 -12.00% 69
East Midlands -53 35 £55,200 -8.00% 22
Wales +5 26 £56,350 +7.33% 14
North East -13 15 £55,200 -9.51% 26
Northern Ireland -29 3 £64,859 +8.10% 7
Test Automation
UK

Test Automation
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 17 (2.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 10 (1.39%) Confluence
3 8 (1.11%) Apache
3 8 (1.11%) Apache Spark
3 8 (1.11%) SharePoint
4 7 (0.97%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (0.83%) Appian
6 5 (0.70%) CMS
7 4 (0.56%) Apache Solr
8 3 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.28%) IIS
9 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.28%) nginx
10 1 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 1 (0.14%) Camunda
10 1 (0.14%) JBoss
10 1 (0.14%) SAS
Applications
1 11 (1.53%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.39%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.56%) Fusion 360
3 4 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.56%) Oracle Smart View
4 2 (0.28%) Simulink
5 1 (0.14%) Doxygen
5 1 (0.14%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.14%) Sketch
5 1 (0.14%) Trello
Business Applications
1 43 (5.98%) Oracle ERP
2 29 (4.03%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (1.67%) Dynamics CRM
4 6 (0.83%) Dynamics NAV
5 4 (0.56%) Hyperion Planning
5 4 (0.56%) Oracle Assets
5 4 (0.56%) Oracle Financials
5 4 (0.56%) Oracle General Ledger
5 4 (0.56%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (0.56%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.42%) Unit4 Business World
7 1 (0.14%) NEC Housing
7 1 (0.14%) Postilion
7 1 (0.14%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 265 (36.86%) Azure
2 197 (27.40%) Azure DevOps
3 162 (22.53%) GitHub
4 157 (21.84%) AWS
5 73 (10.15%) GitHub Copilot
6 52 (7.23%) SaaS
7 40 (5.56%) Power Platform
8 39 (5.42%) GCP
9 38 (5.29%) OCI
10 32 (4.45%) Azure Data Factory
10 32 (4.45%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 31 (4.31%) GitHub Actions
12 27 (3.76%) dbt
12 27 (3.76%) Snowflake
13 22 (3.06%) Entra ID
13 22 (3.06%) Serverless
14 21 (2.92%) PaaS
15 18 (2.50%) Power Automate
16 17 (2.36%) Azure Logic Apps
17 15 (2.09%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 21 (2.92%) DNS
2 17 (2.36%) HTTP
2 17 (2.36%) TCP/IP
3 11 (1.53%) SD-WAN
3 11 (1.53%) WAN
4 10 (1.39%) VPN
5 9 (1.25%) 5G
6 7 (0.97%) Firewall
6 7 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.83%) VLAN
8 4 (0.56%) 3G
8 4 (0.56%) DHCP
8 4 (0.56%) GPRS
8 4 (0.56%) GSM
8 4 (0.56%) Modbus
8 4 (0.56%) RS-232
8 4 (0.56%) RS-485
8 4 (0.56%) SMTP
8 4 (0.56%) SSL
9 2 (0.28%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (3.62%) SQL Server
2 25 (3.48%) Power BI
3 23 (3.20%) PostgreSQL
4 22 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
5 19 (2.64%) Tableau
6 18 (2.50%) Relational Database
7 17 (2.36%) MySQL
8 15 (2.09%) MongoDB
9 14 (1.95%) Snowflake Schema
10 10 (1.39%) Metadata
11 9 (1.25%) Elasticsearch
11 9 (1.25%) NoSQL
12 8 (1.11%) Data Lake
13 5 (0.70%) Airbyte
13 5 (0.70%) DynamoDB
14 4 (0.56%) CockroachDB
14 4 (0.56%) Essbase
14 4 (0.56%) Oracle Database
15 3 (0.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 2 (0.28%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 118 (16.41%) Git
2 106 (14.74%) JIRA
3 101 (14.05%) Selenium
4 84 (11.68%) Jenkins
5 41 (5.70%) Oracle Forms
6 36 (5.01%) Cypress.io
7 32 (4.45%) Cucumber
7 32 (4.45%) Postman
8 26 (3.62%) Robot Framework
9 25 (3.48%) eCATT
9 25 (3.48%) GitLab
9 25 (3.48%) Snyk
10 22 (3.06%) JMeter
11 16 (2.23%) NeoLoad
12 15 (2.09%) JUnit
13 13 (1.81%) REST Assured
14 12 (1.67%) SpecFlow
15 11 (1.53%) Visual Studio
15 11 (1.53%) WebDriver
16 10 (1.39%) LabVIEW
General
1 206 (28.65%) Finance
2 203 (28.23%) Social Skills
3 96 (13.35%) Analytical Skills
4 80 (11.13%) Marketing
5 52 (7.23%) Manufacturing
6 33 (4.59%) Electronics
6 33 (4.59%) Law
7 24 (3.34%) Presentation Skills
8 20 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
9 16 (2.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 16 (2.23%) Public Sector
10 14 (1.95%) Organisational Skills
11 12 (1.67%) Retail
12 11 (1.53%) Aviation
12 11 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
12 11 (1.53%) Legal
13 10 (1.39%) Automotive
13 10 (1.39%) Games
14 9 (1.25%) Aerospace
15 7 (0.97%) Banking
Job Titles
1 201 (27.96%) Senior
2 104 (14.46%) Developer
2 104 (14.46%) Lead
3 90 (12.52%) Test Engineer
4 53 (7.37%) Senior Developer
5 48 (6.68%) Analyst
6 45 (6.26%) Applications Engineer
6 45 (6.26%) Cloud Engineer
7 42 (5.84%) QA Engineer
7 42 (5.84%) Test Leader
8 41 (5.70%) Tester
9 34 (4.73%) Software Engineer
10 33 (4.59%) Test Automation Engineer
11 31 (4.31%) Automation Test Lead
12 29 (4.03%) QA Automation Engineer
13 28 (3.89%) Quality Engineer
14 27 (3.76%) Automation Tester
14 27 (3.76%) Test Analyst
15 25 (3.48%) Automation Engineer
16 24 (3.34%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (12.24%) RESTful
2 58 (8.07%) React
3 53 (7.37%) .NET
4 51 (7.09%) SOAP
5 45 (6.26%) Playwright
5 45 (6.26%) REST
6 43 (5.98%) JSON
7 36 (5.01%) OAuth
8 35 (4.87%) OAuth2
9 32 (4.45%) XML
10 30 (4.17%) Node.js
10 30 (4.17%) Spring
11 29 (4.03%) HTML
12 28 (3.89%) CSS
13 24 (3.34%) Lightning Web Components
14 20 (2.78%) pytest
15 18 (2.50%) Spring Boot
16 17 (2.36%) SAML
17 16 (2.23%) Kafka
18 12 (1.67%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 109 (15.16%) Cloud Native
2 65 (9.04%) Product Ownership
3 41 (5.70%) Enterprise Software
4 26 (3.62%) Self-Motivation
5 23 (3.20%) Satnav
6 19 (2.64%) GNSS
7 15 (2.09%) Low-Code
8 14 (1.95%) Embedded Systems
8 14 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
9 13 (1.81%) Mobile App
9 13 (1.81%) Onboarding
10 12 (1.67%) Security Posture
11 11 (1.53%) FPGA
11 11 (1.53%) Virtual Team
12 9 (1.25%) Self-Driving Car
13 6 (0.83%) Client/Server
13 6 (0.83%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 6 (0.83%) NHS
14 5 (0.70%) Life Science
14 5 (0.70%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 56 (7.79%) Linux
2 51 (7.09%) Windows
3 12 (1.67%) Unix
4 11 (1.53%) Windows Server
5 8 (1.11%) Android
5 8 (1.11%) Apple iOS
6 5 (0.70%) Embedded Linux
6 5 (0.70%) FreeRTOS
7 3 (0.42%) Debian
7 3 (0.42%) Windows 10
7 3 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.28%) CentOS
9 1 (0.14%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 370 (51.46%) CI/CD
2 356 (49.51%) Agile
3 295 (41.03%) DevOps
4 179 (24.90%) Continuous Improvement
4 179 (24.90%) Problem-Solving
5 169 (23.50%) Mentoring
6 161 (22.39%) Coaching
7 116 (16.13%) Asset Management
8 99 (13.77%) Software Engineering
9 96 (13.35%) AI
10 93 (12.93%) Observability
11 88 (12.24%) Software Testing
12 80 (11.13%) Infrastructure as Code
13 78 (10.85%) Analytics
13 78 (10.85%) Clean Code
14 76 (10.57%) ERP
14 76 (10.57%) Test Strategy
15 74 (10.29%) Roadmaps
16 72 (10.01%) Test Management
17 68 (9.46%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 174 (24.20%) Python
2 141 (19.61%) SQL
3 132 (18.36%) Java
4 97 (13.49%) C#
5 79 (10.99%) JavaScript
6 47 (6.54%) TypeScript
7 39 (5.42%) Shell Script
8 37 (5.15%) PL/SQL
9 33 (4.59%) C++
10 29 (4.03%) C
11 25 (3.48%) PowerShell
12 23 (3.20%) Apex Code
13 15 (2.09%) Bicep
14 14 (1.95%) Go
14 14 (1.95%) PHP
15 13 (1.81%) Bash
15 13 (1.81%) MATLAB
16 9 (1.25%) VBA
17 7 (0.97%) Scala
17 7 (0.97%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 96 (13.35%) Degree
2 68 (9.46%) Security Cleared
3 40 (5.56%) SC Cleared
4 35 (4.87%) Computer Science Degree
5 33 (4.59%) ISTQB
6 27 (3.76%) DV Cleared
7 21 (2.92%) DBS Check
7 21 (2.92%) HND
8 17 (2.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 8 (1.11%) BPSS Clearance
9 8 (1.11%) Master's Degree
10 6 (0.83%) AWS Certification
10 6 (0.83%) ISEB
11 5 (0.70%) CRISC
11 5 (0.70%) HNC
11 5 (0.70%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 4 (0.56%) Numerate Degree
13 3 (0.42%) Azure Certification
14 2 (0.28%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 1 (0.14%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 189 (26.29%) QA
2 33 (4.59%) Accessibility
3 17 (2.36%) GDPR
4 15 (2.09%) Data Quality
4 15 (2.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 14 (1.95%) ISO 9001
5 14 (1.95%) WCAG
6 11 (1.53%) NIST
7 6 (0.83%) NCSC
8 4 (0.56%) IEC 61508
8 4 (0.56%) ISO 13485
8 4 (0.56%) ISO 26262
8 4 (0.56%) MISRA
8 4 (0.56%) SLA
9 3 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.42%) GRC
9 3 (0.42%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.14%) ECSS
10 1 (0.14%) IEC 62304
System Software
1 74 (10.29%) Docker
2 28 (3.89%) Active Directory
3 19 (2.64%) Firmware
4 15 (2.09%) Embedded Firmware
5 3 (0.42%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.28%) Terminal Server
Systems Management
1 111 (15.44%) Terraform
2 68 (9.46%) Kubernetes
3 37 (5.15%) Ansible
3 37 (5.15%) Single Sign-On
4 25 (3.48%) HP ALM
5 24 (3.34%) Grafana
6 8 (1.11%) Prometheus
7 7 (0.97%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (0.56%) Control-M
9 3 (0.42%) HP Fortify
9 3 (0.42%) SCCM
9 3 (0.42%) SCOM
10 2 (0.28%) HP Quality Center
10 2 (0.28%) Nessus
10 2 (0.28%) Progress Chef
10 2 (0.28%) Rancher
11 1 (0.14%) CA Service Virtualization
11 1 (0.14%) Packer
Vendors
1 74 (10.29%) Oracle
2 63 (8.76%) Microsoft
3 61 (8.48%) Salesforce
4 31 (4.31%) SAP
5 25 (3.48%) HP
6 21 (2.92%) Black Duck
7 20 (2.78%) Coverity
7 20 (2.78%) Okta
8 19 (2.64%) Databricks
9 14 (1.95%) Ab Initio
10 11 (1.53%) VMware
11 10 (1.39%) Blue Prism
12 6 (0.83%) BiZZdesign
12 6 (0.83%) Palantir
12 6 (0.83%) Splunk
12 6 (0.83%) UiPath
13 5 (0.70%) Google
13 5 (0.70%) Pega
14 4 (0.56%) Hyperion
14 4 (0.56%) Qualys