Test Automation Engineer Job Trends

Automation Test Engineer
UK

The median Automation Test Engineer salary in the UK is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 28 August 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 716 564 764
Rank change year-on-year -152 +200 -73
Permanent jobs requiring a Test Automation Engineer 86 114 48
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.079% 0.23% 0.057%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.084% 0.25% 0.060%
Number of salaries quoted 59 36 27
10th Percentile £24,000 £44,125 £38,500
25th Percentile £50,000 £50,000 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £59,900 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +8.51% +14.10% -
75th Percentile £75,000 £62,500 £61,250
90th Percentile £79,000 £68,750 £70,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £63,750 £60,000 £47,500
% change year-on-year +6.25% +26.32% -2.86%

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 102,724 44,889 79,411
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.88% 89.80% 95.11%
Number of salaries quoted 70,515 26,591 51,705
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £74,258 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £95,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -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 28 August 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 August 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 -129 69 £60,000 +9.09% 54
UK excluding London -120 58 £63,750 +6.25% 47
London -37 25 £70,000 +40.00% 21
South West -69 17 £42,500 -27.66% 6
Work from Home -39 14 £73,750 +31.11% 31
South East -68 10 £75,000 - 14
Scotland +14 9 £65,000 -7.14% 7
North of England -48 8 £55,000 -8.33% 5
Midlands -40 6 £50,000 -23.08% 5
Wales - 6 £70,000 - 1
North West -24 4 £70,000 - 2
West Midlands -28 4 £50,000 -23.08% 2
North East - 4 £55,000 - 3
East Midlands -39 2 - - 3
East of England -40 2 £60,000 - 6

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

For the 6 months to 28 August 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 30 (34.88%) Software Testing
3 29 (33.72%) CI/CD
4 28 (32.56%) Agile
5 27 (31.40%) QA
6 26 (30.23%) Playwright
7 22 (25.58%) Selenium
8 21 (24.42%) Python
9 20 (23.26%) Java
10 18 (20.93%) BDD
10 18 (20.93%) DevOps
11 17 (19.77%) Jenkins
11 17 (19.77%) Security Cleared
11 17 (19.77%) Test Strategy
12 16 (18.60%) API Testing
12 16 (18.60%) Azure
13 15 (17.44%) C#
14 14 (16.28%) JavaScript
15 13 (15.12%) AWS
15 13 (15.12%) Problem-Solving
16 12 (13.95%) Git
16 12 (13.95%) Validation
17 11 (12.79%) Azure DevOps
17 11 (12.79%) Continuous Improvement
17 11 (12.79%) GitLab
17 11 (12.79%) Test Management
17 11 (12.79%) Test Scripting
17 11 (12.79%) Windows
18 10 (11.63%) Integration Testing
19 9 (10.47%) 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 3 (3.49%) Confluence
Applications
1 2 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.16%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (1.16%) Endur
1 1 (1.16%) Findur
Cloud Services
1 16 (18.60%) Azure
2 13 (15.12%) AWS
3 11 (12.79%) Azure DevOps
4 6 (6.98%) GitHub
4 6 (6.98%) OpenShift
5 3 (3.49%) Azure Pipelines
5 3 (3.49%) GitHub Actions
6 2 (2.33%) Azure Functions
6 2 (2.33%) GitHub Copilot
6 2 (2.33%) SaaS
6 2 (2.33%) Serverless
7 1 (1.16%) Anthropic Claude
7 1 (1.16%) AWS Data Pipeline
7 1 (1.16%) Azure Monitor
7 1 (1.16%) BrowserStack
7 1 (1.16%) Dynamics 365
7 1 (1.16%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.33%) DNS
1 2 (2.33%) TCP/IP
2 1 (1.16%) BGP
2 1 (1.16%) Broadband
2 1 (1.16%) DHCP
2 1 (1.16%) OSPF
2 1 (1.16%) VLAN
2 1 (1.16%) VPN
2 1 (1.16%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (6.98%) InfluxDB
2 3 (3.49%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 22 (25.58%) Selenium
2 17 (19.77%) Jenkins
3 12 (13.95%) Git
4 11 (12.79%) GitLab
5 9 (10.47%) Cypress.io
6 8 (9.30%) Cucumber
7 7 (8.14%) JMeter
7 7 (8.14%) Robot Framework
8 6 (6.98%) JIRA
8 6 (6.98%) TestRail
9 5 (5.81%) Postman
9 5 (5.81%) SpecFlow
10 4 (4.65%) REST Assured
11 3 (3.49%) SoapUI
11 3 (3.49%) Zephyr
12 2 (2.33%) Rational DOORS
12 2 (2.33%) WebDriver
13 1 (1.16%) Appium
13 1 (1.16%) Maven
13 1 (1.16%) NUnit
General
1 10 (11.63%) Analytical Skills
2 6 (6.98%) Public Sector
2 6 (6.98%) Social Skills
3 5 (5.81%) Aviation
4 4 (4.65%) Games
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%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (2.33%) Environmental Health
6 2 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (2.33%) Military
7 1 (1.16%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (30.23%) Playwright
2 8 (9.30%) pytest
3 7 (8.14%) .NET
3 7 (8.14%) Terraform
4 6 (6.98%) Elastic Stack
5 4 (4.65%) Gherkin
5 4 (4.65%) JSON
5 4 (4.65%) XML
6 3 (3.49%) ADO
6 3 (3.49%) Model Context Protocol
6 3 (3.49%) SOAP
7 2 (2.33%) JSP
7 2 (2.33%) React
7 2 (2.33%) REST
8 1 (1.16%) AngularJS
8 1 (1.16%) Django
8 1 (1.16%) Kafka
8 1 (1.16%) RESTful
8 1 (1.16%) Spring
8 1 (1.16%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 10 (11.63%) Product Ownership
2 5 (5.81%) Distributed Systems
2 5 (5.81%) Mobile App
3 4 (4.65%) Online Games
4 3 (3.49%) Cloud Native
4 3 (3.49%) Virtual Team
5 2 (2.33%) AI Agents
5 2 (2.33%) Analytical Mindset
5 2 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (1.16%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 11 (12.79%) Windows
2 9 (10.47%) Linux
3 6 (6.98%) CentOS
4 2 (2.33%) Android
4 2 (2.33%) Apple iOS
5 1 (1.16%) Embedded Linux
5 1 (1.16%) OpenWrt
5 1 (1.16%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 30 (34.88%) Software Testing
3 29 (33.72%) CI/CD
4 28 (32.56%) Agile
5 18 (20.93%) BDD
5 18 (20.93%) DevOps
6 17 (19.77%) Test Strategy
7 16 (18.60%) API Testing
8 13 (15.12%) Problem-Solving
9 12 (13.95%) Validation
10 11 (12.79%) Continuous Improvement
10 11 (12.79%) Test Management
10 11 (12.79%) Test Scripting
11 10 (11.63%) Integration Testing
12 9 (10.47%) AI
12 9 (10.47%) Containerisation
12 9 (10.47%) Mentoring
13 8 (9.30%) Performance Testing
14 7 (8.14%) Regression Testing
15 6 (6.98%) Line Management
Programming Languages
1 21 (24.42%) Python
2 20 (23.26%) Java
3 15 (17.44%) C#
4 14 (16.28%) JavaScript
5 8 (9.30%) Bash
5 8 (9.30%) SQL
6 7 (8.14%) PowerShell
6 7 (8.14%) TypeScript
7 1 (1.16%) C
7 1 (1.16%) Go
7 1 (1.16%) Rust
7 1 (1.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 17 (19.77%) Security Cleared
2 8 (9.30%) ISTQB
3 6 (6.98%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
4 5 (5.81%) SC Cleared
5 4 (4.65%) ISEB
6 3 (3.49%) Degree
7 2 (2.33%) DV Cleared
8 1 (1.16%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (31.40%) QA
2 4 (4.65%) Accessibility
3 3 (3.49%) WCAG
4 1 (1.16%) Data Quality
System Software
1 7 (8.14%) Docker
1 7 (8.14%) Virtual Machines
2 6 (6.98%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.16%) QEMU
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%) 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 5 (5.81%) IBM
3 4 (4.65%) Microsoft
4 3 (3.49%) HP
4 3 (3.49%) Pega
4 3 (3.49%) SAP
5 1 (1.16%) OpenLink
5 1 (1.16%) Perfecto Mobile
5 1 (1.16%) Salesforce