Test Automation Engineer Job Trends

Automation Test Engineer
UK

The median Automation Test Engineer salary in the UK is £54,250 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 20 April 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 644 527 835
Rank change year-on-year -117 +308 -73
Permanent jobs requiring a Test Automation Engineer 75 111 45
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.086% 0.27% 0.048%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.093% 0.30% 0.050%
Number of salaries quoted 66 37 35
10th Percentile £42,500 £42,300 £36,250
25th Percentile £45,188 £52,500 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £54,250 £60,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.58% +33.33% -18.18%
75th Percentile £75,000 £68,750 £57,500
90th Percentile £85,000 £72,500 £65,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £58,650 £42,500
% change year-on-year -10.49% +38.00% -22.73%

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 80,885 37,363 89,466
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.69% 89.33% 94.57%
Number of salaries quoted 51,875 23,453 66,238
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £53,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +13.21% -11.67%
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £71,250
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -4.76%

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 20 April 2026.

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 20 April 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 -107 70 £55,000 -8.33% 16
UK excluding London -121 55 £52,500 -10.49% 16
Work from Home +17 30 £56,000 -6.67% 11
South East -55 20 £55,000 -9.47% 5
London 0 16 £70,000 +16.67% 7
East of England -37 14 £50,000 -9.09% 2
South West -46 10 £59,500 -0.83% 1
North of England -56 9 £55,000 -15.38% 4
North West -27 4 £70,000 -1.75% 1
North East - 4 £55,000 - 2
West Midlands -33 1 £50,000 -
Midlands -52 1 £50,000 -4.76%
Yorkshire -61 1 £53,500 -17.57% 1
Wales - 1 £41,000 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 20 April 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 75 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 29 (38.67%) QA
3 26 (34.67%) Playwright
4 25 (33.33%) Software Testing
5 24 (32.00%) Python
6 22 (29.33%) CI/CD
7 19 (25.33%) Selenium
8 17 (22.67%) Agile
9 16 (21.33%) C#
10 14 (18.67%) Azure
10 14 (18.67%) DevOps
10 14 (18.67%) JavaScript
11 12 (16.00%) API Testing
11 12 (16.00%) Test Strategy
12 11 (14.67%) Cypress.io
12 11 (14.67%) SDET
12 11 (14.67%) TypeScript
13 10 (13.33%) Continuous Improvement
13 10 (13.33%) Java
14 9 (12.00%) Azure DevOps
15 8 (10.67%) Fintech
15 8 (10.67%) Manual Testing
15 8 (10.67%) QA Automation
15 8 (10.67%) Security Cleared
16 7 (9.33%) .NET
16 7 (9.33%) GitLab
16 7 (9.33%) Jenkins
16 7 (9.33%) SpecFlow
16 7 (9.33%) SQL
17 6 (8.00%) BDD

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 (1.33%) Confluence
Applications
1 2 (2.67%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (1.33%) Endur
1 1 (1.33%) Findur
Cloud Services
1 14 (18.67%) Azure
2 9 (12.00%) Azure DevOps
3 5 (6.67%) AWS
3 5 (6.67%) Azure Pipelines
4 4 (5.33%) OpenShift
5 3 (4.00%) GitHub
5 3 (4.00%) GitHub Actions
6 2 (2.67%) GCP
7 1 (1.33%) Azure Functions
7 1 (1.33%) SaaS
7 1 (1.33%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.33%) Broadband
1 1 (1.33%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (5.33%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 19 (25.33%) Selenium
2 11 (14.67%) Cypress.io
3 7 (9.33%) GitLab
3 7 (9.33%) Jenkins
3 7 (9.33%) SpecFlow
4 5 (6.67%) Git
4 5 (6.67%) Robot Framework
5 4 (5.33%) TestRail
6 3 (4.00%) Postman
6 3 (4.00%) REST Assured
7 2 (2.67%) Appium
7 2 (2.67%) WebDriver
8 1 (1.33%) JIRA
8 1 (1.33%) JMeter
8 1 (1.33%) LoadRunner
8 1 (1.33%) NUnit
8 1 (1.33%) SonarQube
General
1 9 (12.00%) Games
2 5 (6.67%) Social Skills
3 4 (5.33%) Finance
4 3 (4.00%) Health Technology
5 2 (2.67%) Electronics
5 2 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (2.67%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (1.33%) Advertising
6 1 (1.33%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (1.33%) Public Sector
6 1 (1.33%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (34.67%) Playwright
2 7 (9.33%) .NET
3 5 (6.67%) pytest
4 4 (5.33%) Elastic Stack
4 4 (5.33%) Gherkin
5 3 (4.00%) REST
5 3 (4.00%) RESTful
6 2 (2.67%) GraphQL
6 2 (2.67%) React
7 1 (1.33%) .NET Framework
7 1 (1.33%) AngularJS
7 1 (1.33%) Blazor
7 1 (1.33%) Kafka
7 1 (1.33%) Middleware
7 1 (1.33%) Model Context Protocol
7 1 (1.33%) React Native
7 1 (1.33%) Spring
7 1 (1.33%) Spring Boot
7 1 (1.33%) Web Services
7 1 (1.33%) WebAssembly
Miscellaneous
1 6 (8.00%) Mobile App
2 4 (5.33%) Product Ownership
3 3 (4.00%) Online Games
4 1 (1.33%) AI Agents
4 1 (1.33%) Distributed Systems
4 1 (1.33%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 6 (8.00%) Linux
2 5 (6.67%) Windows
3 4 (5.33%) CentOS
4 1 (1.33%) Android
4 1 (1.33%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 75 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 25 (33.33%) Software Testing
3 22 (29.33%) CI/CD
4 17 (22.67%) Agile
5 14 (18.67%) DevOps
6 12 (16.00%) API Testing
6 12 (16.00%) Test Strategy
7 11 (14.67%) SDET
8 10 (13.33%) Continuous Improvement
9 8 (10.67%) Fintech
9 8 (10.67%) Manual Testing
9 8 (10.67%) QA Automation
10 6 (8.00%) BDD
10 6 (8.00%) Collaborative Culture
10 6 (8.00%) Containerisation
10 6 (8.00%) Performance Testing
10 6 (8.00%) Security Testing
10 6 (8.00%) Validation
11 5 (6.67%) Integration Testing
11 5 (6.67%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 24 (32.00%) Python
2 16 (21.33%) C#
3 14 (18.67%) JavaScript
4 11 (14.67%) TypeScript
5 10 (13.33%) Java
6 7 (9.33%) SQL
7 5 (6.67%) PowerShell
8 4 (5.33%) Bash
Qualifications
1 8 (10.67%) Security Cleared
2 4 (5.33%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
2 4 (5.33%) Degree
3 2 (2.67%) ISTQB
3 2 (2.67%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
3 2 (2.67%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
3 2 (2.67%) Master's Degree
3 2 (2.67%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (38.67%) QA
2 2 (2.67%) Accessibility
System Software
1 6 (8.00%) Docker
2 5 (6.67%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (5.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (1.33%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 6 (8.00%) Kubernetes
1 6 (8.00%) Terraform
2 4 (5.33%) Ansible
2 4 (5.33%) Grafana
2 4 (5.33%) Kibana
2 4 (5.33%) logstash
2 4 (5.33%) vCenter Server
3 1 (1.33%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 4 (5.33%) Atlassian
1 4 (5.33%) Red Hat
1 4 (5.33%) Splunk
1 4 (5.33%) VMware
2 2 (2.67%) Guidewire
3 1 (1.33%) IBM
3 1 (1.33%) Microsoft
3 1 (1.33%) OpenLink
3 1 (1.33%) Perfecto Mobile
3 1 (1.33%) ServiceNow