Test Automation Engineer Job Trends

Automation Test Engineer
UK

The median Automation Test Engineer salary in the UK is £55,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 7 December 2025.

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

6 months to
7 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 602 685 629
Rank change year-on-year +83 -56 +81
Permanent jobs requiring a Test Automation Engineer 52 57 81
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.092% 0.092% 0.16%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.10% 0.098% 0.17%
Number of salaries quoted 46 35 66
10th Percentile £42,500 £41,000 £42,125
25th Percentile £49,813 £46,875 £42,905
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year - +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £62,500 £62,500 £58,750
90th Percentile £66,250 £71,500 £73,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £53,500 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -2.73% +10.00% -9.09%

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
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 50,704 58,391 48,070
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 89.90% 94.00% 95.24%
Number of salaries quoted 31,404 32,367 37,457
10th Percentile £28,250 £32,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £36,250 £42,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £58,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.17% -3.33% -
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £80,000
90th Percentile £92,500 £95,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £52,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year -9.52% - -

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 7 December 2025.

Salary histogram for Test Automation Engineer in the UK

Test Automation Engineer
Top 14 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 7 December 2025. 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 +109 45 £53,500 -2.73% 22
UK excluding London +80 29 £53,500 -2.73% 27
Work from Home +78 22 £53,500 -2.73% 11
London +85 20 £53,750 -20.37% 2
South East +44 7 £46,500 -2.11% 4
East of England +26 6 £60,000 +9.09% 3
North of England +27 5 £53,500 - 10
South West +29 4 £45,000 -28.00% 2
Yorkshire -6 4 £53,500 - 9
West Midlands +35 3 £61,250 +25.64%
Midlands +32 3 £61,250 +36.11% 2
Scotland -3 2 £70,000 +27.27% 4
Wales - 2 £41,000 - 2
North West +40 1 - - 1

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

For the 6 months to 7 December 2025, 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 52 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 30 (57.69%) Selenium
3 25 (48.08%) Agile
3 25 (48.08%) CI/CD
4 21 (40.38%) Python
5 19 (36.54%) QA
6 18 (34.62%) Playwright
7 16 (30.77%) DevOps
8 13 (25.00%) Manual Testing
8 13 (25.00%) Software Testing
8 13 (25.00%) Test Scripting
9 12 (23.08%) JavaScript
9 12 (23.08%) Security Testing
10 11 (21.15%) API Testing
10 11 (21.15%) AWS
10 11 (21.15%) Azure
10 11 (21.15%) Jenkins
10 11 (21.15%) SQL
11 10 (19.23%) AI
11 10 (19.23%) Appium
11 10 (19.23%) C#
11 10 (19.23%) ISTQB
11 10 (19.23%) Java
11 10 (19.23%) Postman
12 9 (17.31%) Azure DevOps
12 9 (17.31%) Continuous Improvement
12 9 (17.31%) Cypress.io
12 9 (17.31%) TypeScript
13 8 (15.38%) BDD
13 8 (15.38%) Docker

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 2 (3.85%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (1.92%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (3.85%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (1.92%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 11 (21.15%) AWS
1 11 (21.15%) Azure
2 9 (17.31%) Azure DevOps
3 5 (9.62%) GitHub
3 5 (9.62%) Power Platform
4 4 (7.69%) GitHub Actions
5 3 (5.77%) SaaS
6 2 (3.85%) Amazon Bedrock
6 2 (3.85%) Amazon ECS
6 2 (3.85%) Amazon EKS
6 2 (3.85%) Amazon S3
6 2 (3.85%) Amazon SageMaker
6 2 (3.85%) AWS Lambda
6 2 (3.85%) GCP
6 2 (3.85%) Serverless
7 1 (1.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 1 (1.92%) BrowserStack
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.92%) Modbus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (13.46%) Relational Database
2 4 (7.69%) Data Warehouse
3 3 (5.77%) MongoDB
4 2 (3.85%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 30 (57.69%) Selenium
2 11 (21.15%) Jenkins
3 10 (19.23%) Appium
3 10 (19.23%) Postman
4 9 (17.31%) Cypress.io
5 8 (15.38%) JIRA
6 6 (11.54%) JMeter
7 5 (9.62%) Git
8 4 (7.69%) Cucumber
9 3 (5.77%) LoadRunner
9 3 (5.77%) NUnit
9 3 (5.77%) SonarQube
9 3 (5.77%) SpecFlow
10 2 (3.85%) GitLab
10 2 (3.85%) Locust
10 2 (3.85%) MSTest
10 2 (3.85%) REST Assured
10 2 (3.85%) TestNG
10 2 (3.85%) WebDriver
11 1 (1.92%) Robot Framework
General
1 14 (26.92%) Finance
2 9 (17.31%) Social Skills
3 7 (13.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 3 (5.77%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (5.77%) Health Technology
5 2 (3.85%) Banking
5 2 (3.85%) Law
5 2 (3.85%) Marketing
5 2 (3.85%) Public Sector
5 2 (3.85%) Tech for Good
6 1 (1.92%) Advertising
6 1 (1.92%) Electronics
6 1 (1.92%) Financial Institution
6 1 (1.92%) International Banking
6 1 (1.92%) Investment Banking
6 1 (1.92%) Manufacturing
6 1 (1.92%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (34.62%) Playwright
2 6 (11.54%) pytest
3 5 (9.62%) RESTful
4 4 (7.69%) ADO
4 4 (7.69%) JSON
4 4 (7.69%) REST
4 4 (7.69%) XML
5 3 (5.77%) .NET
5 3 (5.77%) Kafka
5 3 (5.77%) Middleware
6 2 (3.85%) Web Services
6 2 (3.85%) WebdriverIO
6 2 (3.85%) YAML
7 1 (1.92%) .NET Framework
7 1 (1.92%) Gherkin
7 1 (1.92%) React Native
7 1 (1.92%) SOAP
7 1 (1.92%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 4 (7.69%) Mobile App
2 1 (1.92%) AI Agents
2 1 (1.92%) Analytical Mindset
2 1 (1.92%) Biopharmaceutical
2 1 (1.92%) Hackathon
2 1 (1.92%) Hedge funds
2 1 (1.92%) Operational Technology
2 1 (1.92%) Product Ownership
2 1 (1.92%) Renewable Energy
2 1 (1.92%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.92%) Android
1 1 (1.92%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 25 (48.08%) Agile
2 25 (48.08%) CI/CD
3 16 (30.77%) DevOps
4 13 (25.00%) Manual Testing
4 13 (25.00%) Software Testing
4 13 (25.00%) Test Scripting
5 12 (23.08%) Security Testing
6 11 (21.15%) API Testing
7 10 (19.23%) AI
8 9 (17.31%) Continuous Improvement
9 8 (15.38%) BDD
10 7 (13.46%) Mentoring
10 7 (13.46%) Performance Testing
10 7 (13.46%) Scrum
10 7 (13.46%) Test Management
11 6 (11.54%) Exploratory Testing
11 6 (11.54%) Non-Functional Testing
11 6 (11.54%) SDLC
11 6 (11.54%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 21 (40.38%) Python
2 12 (23.08%) JavaScript
3 11 (21.15%) SQL
4 10 (19.23%) C#
4 10 (19.23%) Java
5 9 (17.31%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 10 (19.23%) ISTQB
2 6 (11.54%) Security Cleared
3 4 (7.69%) Degree
4 3 (5.77%) SC Cleared
5 2 (3.85%) Master's Degree
6 1 (1.92%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.92%) DV Cleared
6 1 (1.92%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (36.54%) QA
2 4 (7.69%) Accessibility
2 4 (7.69%) Data Quality
3 1 (1.92%) ISO 9001
3 1 (1.92%) WCAG
System Software
1 8 (15.38%) Docker
Systems Management
1 8 (15.38%) Kubernetes
2 3 (5.77%) HP Fortify
3 2 (3.85%) Control-M
4 1 (1.92%) Functional Safety
Vendors
1 5 (9.62%) Microsoft
2 3 (5.77%) IBM
3 2 (3.85%) Databricks
3 2 (3.85%) Oracle