QA Automation Job Trends

Quality Assurance (QA) Automation
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring QA Automation skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 606 656 658
Rank change year-on-year +50 +2 +22
Permanent jobs citing QA Automation 45 56 79
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.075% 0.10% 0.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.093% 0.12% 0.16%
Number of salaries quoted 37 28 66
10th Percentile £49,000 £46,250 £42,500
25th Percentile £56,250 £53,438 £46,563
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £61,500 £63,750 £58,750
Median % change year-on-year -3.53% +8.51% +4.91%
75th Percentile £64,750 £75,625 £65,000
90th Percentile £69,899 £80,000 £76,875
UK excluding London median annual salary £61,500 £55,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +11.82% -4.35% +4.55%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

QA 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.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 48,315 48,345 50,335
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 81.00% 90.62% 89.96%
Number of salaries quoted 28,473 23,469 38,401
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £78,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £52,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +5.77% -5.45%

QA Automation
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing QA Automation relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

QA Automation job vacancy trend in the UK

QA Automation
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing QA Automation.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing QA Automation

QA Automation
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing QA Automation over the 6 months to 13 January 2026.

Salary histogram for QA Automation in the UK

QA Automation
Top 14 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing QA Automation within the UK over the 6 months to 13 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
England +58 43 £61,500 -3.53% 35
UK excluding London +83 28 £61,500 +11.82% 34
Work from Home +67 22 £62,000 -17.33% 30
London +23 12 £62,500 -16.67% 8
North of England - 10 £61,500 - 3
South East +29 8 £57,500 +21.05% 18
Midlands +27 6 £61,500 +2.50% 1
West Midlands +28 5 £61,500 -
North East - 4 £60,000 - 1
South West +10 3 £67,500 +8.00% 3
North West - 3 £61,500 - 1
Yorkshire - 3 £61,500 - 1
East of England +23 1 £50,000 +42.86% 6
East Midlands -11 1 - - 1

QA Automation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 1 (2.22%) SharePoint
Cloud Services
1 8 (17.78%) Azure
1 8 (17.78%) SaaS
2 5 (11.11%) Azure DevOps
3 3 (6.67%) AWS
3 3 (6.67%) GitHub
4 1 (2.22%) Copilot Studio
4 1 (2.22%) Dynamics 365
4 1 (2.22%) Microsoft 365
4 1 (2.22%) Microsoft Copilot
4 1 (2.22%) Power Automate
4 1 (2.22%) Power Platform
4 1 (2.22%) PowerApps
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (11.11%) Relational Database
2 3 (6.67%) SQL Server
3 2 (4.44%) CockroachDB
4 1 (2.22%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 20 (44.44%) Selenium
2 12 (26.67%) Cucumber
3 8 (17.78%) Cypress.io
3 8 (17.78%) Postman
4 7 (15.56%) SoapUI
5 4 (8.89%) SpecFlow
5 4 (8.89%) Visual Studio
6 3 (6.67%) Appium
6 3 (6.67%) Git
6 3 (6.67%) Jenkins
6 3 (6.67%) JIRA
6 3 (6.67%) JMeter
6 3 (6.67%) JUnit
6 3 (6.67%) REST Assured
6 3 (6.67%) TestNG
7 2 (4.44%) GitLab
8 1 (2.22%) Katalon Studio
General
1 14 (31.11%) Finance
2 4 (8.89%) Social Skills
3 2 (4.44%) Games
3 2 (4.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 39 (86.67%) QA Engineer
2 36 (80.00%) QA Automation Engineer
3 32 (71.11%) Automation Engineer
4 13 (28.89%) Lead
4 13 (28.89%) QA Leader
5 5 (11.11%) JavaScript Engineer
5 5 (11.11%) Tester
6 4 (8.89%) Automation Tester
7 3 (6.67%) Python Engineer
7 3 (6.67%) QA Test Engineer
7 3 (6.67%) Senior
7 3 (6.67%) Software Tester
7 3 (6.67%) Test Automation Engineer
7 3 (6.67%) Test Engineer
8 2 (4.44%) QA Tester
8 2 (4.44%) Senior QA Engineer
9 1 (2.22%) Java Engineer
9 1 (2.22%) Microsoft Engineer
9 1 (2.22%) Power Platform Engineer
9 1 (2.22%) QA Automation Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (15.56%) pytest
2 6 (13.33%) SOAP
3 5 (11.11%) Playwright
4 3 (6.67%) .NET
4 3 (6.67%) ASP.NET
5 2 (4.44%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (2.22%) Kafka
6 1 (2.22%) Node.js
6 1 (2.22%) RabbitMQ
6 1 (2.22%) REST
6 1 (2.22%) SPFx
6 1 (2.22%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 8 (17.78%) Product Ownership
2 2 (4.44%) Greenfield Project
3 1 (2.22%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 1 (2.22%) Hedge funds
3 1 (2.22%) Low-Code
3 1 (2.22%) Mobile App
3 1 (2.22%) Onboarding
Processes & Methodologies
1 43 (95.56%) Test Automation
2 16 (35.56%) API Testing
3 15 (33.33%) Fintech
4 14 (31.11%) Mentoring
5 9 (20.00%) AI
5 9 (20.00%) Test Strategy
6 8 (17.78%) Agile
6 8 (17.78%) CI/CD
6 8 (17.78%) Coaching
6 8 (17.78%) DevOps
6 8 (17.78%) Performance Testing
7 7 (15.56%) BDD
7 7 (15.56%) Black-Box Testing
7 7 (15.56%) Test Planning
7 7 (15.56%) White-Box Testing
8 6 (13.33%) Full-Stack Development
8 6 (13.33%) People Management
8 6 (13.33%) Technical Leadership
9 5 (11.11%) Scenario Testing
9 5 (11.11%) SDET
Programming Languages
1 20 (44.44%) C#
1 20 (44.44%) SQL
2 15 (33.33%) Python
3 14 (31.11%) Java
4 13 (28.89%) JavaScript
5 6 (13.33%) PHP
6 5 (11.11%) Go
7 4 (8.89%) TypeScript
8 1 (2.22%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 4 (8.89%) Degree
2 2 (4.44%) ISTQB
2 2 (4.44%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (100.00%) QA
2 1 (2.22%) Accessibility
Vendors
1 2 (4.44%) Oracle
1 2 (4.44%) Splunk
2 1 (2.22%) Microsoft