Test Automation Engineer Job Trends

Automation Test Engineer
UK

The median Automation Test Engineer salary in the UK is £63,750 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 28 July 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 692 559 787
Rank change year-on-year -133 +228 -83
Permanent jobs requiring a Test Automation Engineer 86 112 44
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.085% 0.23% 0.050%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.090% 0.25% 0.053%
Number of salaries quoted 62 32 27
10th Percentile £25,725 £42,425 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,313 £50,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £63,750 £60,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% +14.29% -
75th Percentile £75,000 £62,500 £57,500
90th Percentile £84,500 £69,750 £66,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £63,750 £60,000 £42,500
% change year-on-year +6.25% +41.18% -13.09%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 95,905 44,405 83,583
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.37% 90.07% 94.76%
Number of salaries quoted 65,604 26,372 57,917
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £37,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £96,250 £96,250 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -5.87%

Test Automation Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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.

Test Automation Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Test Automation Engineer
Salary Trend

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

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

Test Automation Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Test Automation Engineer over the 6 months to 28 July 2026.

Salary histogram for Test Automation Engineer in the UK

Test Automation Engineer
Top 15 Job Locations

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 over the 6 months to 28 July 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 -98 71 £55,500 -3.48% 17
UK excluding London -107 59 £63,750 +6.25% 16
London -35 24 £70,000 +40.00% 3
Work from Home -28 19 £75,000 +30.43% 9
South East -30 16 £75,000 +25.00% 1
South West -56 16 £42,500 -27.66% 2
North of England -38 9 £55,000 -8.33% 8
Scotland +18 6 £65,000 -7.14% 1
Wales - 6 £70,000 -
North West +1 5 £63,000 +5.00% 4
Midlands -47 4 £50,000 -23.08% 5
North East - 4 £55,000 - 4
West Midlands -16 2 £50,000 -23.08% 3
East of England -29 2 £55,000 -8.33% 1
East Midlands -34 2 - - 2

Test Automation Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 28 July 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 featuring Test Automation Engineer in the job title.

1 86 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 28 (32.56%) Software Testing
3 26 (30.23%) Agile
4 25 (29.07%) QA
5 24 (27.91%) CI/CD
5 24 (27.91%) Playwright
6 21 (24.42%) Python
7 20 (23.26%) Selenium
8 17 (19.77%) Azure
9 16 (18.60%) DevOps
9 16 (18.60%) Java
9 16 (18.60%) Test Strategy
10 15 (17.44%) BDD
10 15 (17.44%) C#
10 15 (17.44%) JavaScript
10 15 (17.44%) Jenkins
10 15 (17.44%) Security Cleared
11 12 (13.95%) API Testing
11 12 (13.95%) Azure DevOps
12 11 (12.79%) Continuous Improvement
12 11 (12.79%) Problem-Solving
12 11 (12.79%) Windows
13 10 (11.63%) AWS
13 10 (11.63%) Cypress.io
13 10 (11.63%) Test Scripting
13 10 (11.63%) Validation
14 9 (10.47%) Git
14 9 (10.47%) SDET
14 9 (10.47%) TypeScript
15 8 (9.30%) AI

Test Automation Engineer Skill Set
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 (1.16%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (1.16%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (1.16%) Endur
1 1 (1.16%) Findur
Cloud Services
1 17 (19.77%) Azure
2 12 (13.95%) Azure DevOps
3 10 (11.63%) AWS
4 6 (6.98%) GitHub
4 6 (6.98%) OpenShift
5 4 (4.65%) GitHub Actions
6 3 (3.49%) Azure Pipelines
7 2 (2.33%) Azure Functions
7 2 (2.33%) Serverless
8 1 (1.16%) Anthropic Claude
8 1 (1.16%) AWS Data Pipeline
8 1 (1.16%) Azure Monitor
8 1 (1.16%) BrowserStack
8 1 (1.16%) Dynamics 365
8 1 (1.16%) GCP
8 1 (1.16%) GitHub Copilot
8 1 (1.16%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.16%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (6.98%) InfluxDB
2 1 (1.16%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 20 (23.26%) Selenium
2 15 (17.44%) Jenkins
3 10 (11.63%) Cypress.io
4 9 (10.47%) Git
5 8 (9.30%) GitLab
6 6 (6.98%) Robot Framework
6 6 (6.98%) TestRail
7 5 (5.81%) Cucumber
7 5 (5.81%) JMeter
7 5 (5.81%) SpecFlow
8 3 (3.49%) Postman
8 3 (3.49%) REST Assured
9 2 (2.33%) JIRA
10 1 (1.16%) Appium
10 1 (1.16%) Burp Suite
10 1 (1.16%) Claude Code
10 1 (1.16%) Rational DOORS
10 1 (1.16%) SoapUI
10 1 (1.16%) WebDriver
10 1 (1.16%) Zephyr
General
1 8 (9.30%) Analytical Skills
2 7 (8.14%) Games
3 5 (5.81%) Aviation
4 4 (4.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 4 (4.65%) Social Skills
5 3 (3.49%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (3.49%) Finance
5 3 (3.49%) Health Technology
5 3 (3.49%) Influencing Skills
5 3 (3.49%) Telecoms
6 2 (2.33%) Public Sector
7 1 (1.16%) Environmental Health
7 1 (1.16%) Military
7 1 (1.16%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (27.91%) Playwright
2 8 (9.30%) pytest
3 7 (8.14%) .NET
4 6 (6.98%) Elastic Stack
5 4 (4.65%) Gherkin
6 3 (3.49%) Model Context Protocol
7 2 (2.33%) React
8 1 (1.16%) .NET Framework
8 1 (1.16%) ADO
8 1 (1.16%) AngularJS
8 1 (1.16%) Blazor
8 1 (1.16%) Django
8 1 (1.16%) JSON
8 1 (1.16%) JSP
8 1 (1.16%) React Native
8 1 (1.16%) SOAP
8 1 (1.16%) Spring
8 1 (1.16%) Spring Boot
8 1 (1.16%) WebAssembly
8 1 (1.16%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 8 (9.30%) Product Ownership
2 7 (8.14%) Mobile App
3 4 (4.65%) Online Games
4 3 (3.49%) Distributed Systems
5 2 (2.33%) AI Agents
5 2 (2.33%) Analytical Mindset
5 2 (2.33%) Cloud Native
5 2 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (1.16%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 11 (12.79%) Windows
2 7 (8.14%) Linux
3 6 (6.98%) CentOS
4 2 (2.33%) Android
4 2 (2.33%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 28 (32.56%) Software Testing
3 26 (30.23%) Agile
4 24 (27.91%) CI/CD
5 16 (18.60%) DevOps
5 16 (18.60%) Test Strategy
6 15 (17.44%) BDD
7 12 (13.95%) API Testing
8 11 (12.79%) Continuous Improvement
8 11 (12.79%) Problem-Solving
9 10 (11.63%) Test Scripting
9 10 (11.63%) Validation
10 9 (10.47%) SDET
11 8 (9.30%) AI
11 8 (9.30%) Containerisation
11 8 (9.30%) Test Management
12 7 (8.14%) Integration Testing
12 7 (8.14%) Mentoring
12 7 (8.14%) Regression Testing
13 6 (6.98%) Dashboard Development
Programming Languages
1 21 (24.42%) Python
2 16 (18.60%) Java
3 15 (17.44%) C#
3 15 (17.44%) JavaScript
4 9 (10.47%) TypeScript
5 7 (8.14%) Bash
5 7 (8.14%) PowerShell
6 5 (5.81%) SQL
Qualifications
1 15 (17.44%) Security Cleared
2 6 (6.98%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
3 5 (5.81%) ISTQB
4 4 (4.65%) SC Cleared
5 3 (3.49%) Degree
6 2 (2.33%) DV Cleared
6 2 (2.33%) ISEB
7 1 (1.16%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (29.07%) QA
2 3 (3.49%) Accessibility
3 2 (2.33%) WCAG
4 1 (1.16%) Data Quality
System Software
1 7 (8.14%) Virtual Machines
2 6 (6.98%) Docker
2 6 (6.98%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 7 (8.14%) Grafana
2 6 (6.98%) Ansible
2 6 (6.98%) Kibana
2 6 (6.98%) Kubernetes
2 6 (6.98%) logstash
2 6 (6.98%) Terraform
2 6 (6.98%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 6 (6.98%) Atlassian
1 6 (6.98%) Red Hat
1 6 (6.98%) Splunk
1 6 (6.98%) VMware
2 4 (4.65%) IBM
3 3 (3.49%) HP
4 2 (2.33%) Microsoft
5 1 (1.16%) OpenLink
5 1 (1.16%) Pega
5 1 (1.16%) Perfecto Mobile
5 1 (1.16%) SAP
5 1 (1.16%) ServiceNow