Test Automation Engineer Job Trends

Automation Test Engineer
UK

The median Automation Test Engineer salary in the UK is £60,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 7 October 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 703 544 727
Rank change year-on-year -159 +183 -73
Permanent jobs requiring a Test Automation Engineer 86 119 52
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.073% 0.24% 0.071%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.078% 0.27% 0.075%
Number of salaries quoted 57 42 26
10th Percentile £33,600 £49,525 £40,000
25th Percentile £40,750 £50,000 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £53,750
Median % change year-on-year - +11.63% +7.50%
75th Percentile £70,000 £63,438 £61,875
90th Percentile £75,000 £67,500 £66,875
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year - +14.29% +10.18%

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 109,636 44,590 69,789
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.77% 89.77% 95.35%
Number of salaries quoted 74,743 25,694 40,249
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £31,000
25th Percentile £40,750 £35,750 £41,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,750 £54,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.80% -0.91% -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,424 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £98,750 £95,000 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £46,750 £50,000
% change year-on-year +17.65% -6.50% -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 7 October 2026.

Salary histogram for Test Automation Engineer in the UK

Test Automation Engineer
Top 16 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 October 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
UK excluding London -139 64 £60,000 - 127
England -174 64 £43,750 -23.91% 170
London -83 17 £42,000 -23.64% 48
East of England -40 14 £40,000 -33.33% 17
Work from Home -61 14 £72,500 +26.09% 59
South West -69 14 £42,500 -29.17% 17
Scotland +16 12 £61,250 -12.50% 9
South East -72 7 £75,000 +30.43% 27
Wales -61 6 £70,000 - 1
North of England -63 6 £55,000 -8.03% 38
Midlands -50 5 - - 16
Yorkshire -32 3 £72,500 +21.24% 13
West Midlands -48 3 - - 11
East Midlands -41 2 - - 5
North East - 2 £55,000 - 10
North West -28 1 £50,000 - 15

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

For the 6 months to 7 October 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%) Agile
2 28 (32.56%) Software Testing
3 27 (31.40%) CI/CD
4 26 (30.23%) Playwright
5 25 (29.07%) QA
6 20 (23.26%) Python
6 20 (23.26%) Selenium
7 17 (19.77%) DevOps
7 17 (19.77%) Security Cleared
8 16 (18.60%) Jenkins
9 15 (17.44%) Java
9 15 (17.44%) JavaScript
10 14 (16.28%) AWS
10 14 (16.28%) BDD
11 13 (15.12%) GitLab
11 13 (15.12%) Test Strategy
12 12 (13.95%) API Testing
12 12 (13.95%) Azure
12 12 (13.95%) Test Scripting
13 11 (12.79%) Cypress.io
13 11 (12.79%) Problem-Solving
13 11 (12.79%) Test Management
14 10 (11.63%) Git
14 10 (11.63%) Performance Testing
14 10 (11.63%) Validation
15 9 (10.47%) AI
15 9 (10.47%) Azure DevOps
15 9 (10.47%) C#
15 9 (10.47%) ISTQB

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
Cloud Services
1 14 (16.28%) AWS
2 12 (13.95%) Azure
3 9 (10.47%) Azure DevOps
4 7 (8.14%) GitHub
5 5 (5.81%) OpenShift
6 4 (4.65%) GitHub Actions
6 4 (4.65%) Serverless
7 2 (2.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 2 (2.33%) Amazon EC2
7 2 (2.33%) Amazon S3
7 2 (2.33%) AWS Lambda
7 2 (2.33%) Azure Functions
7 2 (2.33%) GitHub Copilot
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%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (3.49%) DNS
1 3 (3.49%) TCP/IP
2 2 (2.33%) BGP
2 2 (2.33%) DHCP
2 2 (2.33%) OSPF
2 2 (2.33%) VLAN
2 2 (2.33%) VPN
3 1 (1.16%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (5.81%) InfluxDB
2 3 (3.49%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 20 (23.26%) Selenium
2 16 (18.60%) Jenkins
3 13 (15.12%) GitLab
4 11 (12.79%) Cypress.io
5 10 (11.63%) Git
6 9 (10.47%) JMeter
7 8 (9.30%) Cucumber
7 8 (9.30%) JIRA
8 7 (8.14%) Robot Framework
9 6 (6.98%) Postman
10 5 (5.81%) TestRail
11 3 (3.49%) REST Assured
11 3 (3.49%) SoapUI
11 3 (3.49%) Zephyr
12 2 (2.33%) Appium
12 2 (2.33%) Rational DOORS
12 2 (2.33%) WebDriver
13 1 (1.16%) Burp Suite
13 1 (1.16%) Claude Code
13 1 (1.16%) SpecFlow
General
1 12 (13.95%) Analytical Skills
2 7 (8.14%) Public Sector
3 5 (5.81%) Aviation
3 5 (5.81%) Social Skills
4 3 (3.49%) Manufacturing
4 3 (3.49%) Telecoms
5 2 (2.33%) Documentation Skills
5 2 (2.33%) Environmental Health
5 2 (2.33%) Finance
5 2 (2.33%) Games
5 2 (2.33%) Health Technology
5 2 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (2.33%) Military
6 1 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (1.16%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (30.23%) Playwright
2 7 (8.14%) pytest
3 6 (6.98%) .NET
3 6 (6.98%) Terraform
4 5 (5.81%) Elastic Stack
5 4 (4.65%) JSON
5 4 (4.65%) XML
6 3 (3.49%) ADO
6 3 (3.49%) SOAP
7 2 (2.33%) Gherkin
7 2 (2.33%) JSP
7 2 (2.33%) Model Context Protocol
7 2 (2.33%) REST
7 2 (2.33%) RESTful
8 1 (1.16%) .NET Framework
8 1 (1.16%) Jest
8 1 (1.16%) Kafka
8 1 (1.16%) Swagger
8 1 (1.16%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 11 (12.79%) Product Ownership
2 4 (4.65%) Distributed Systems
2 4 (4.65%) Mobile App
3 3 (3.49%) Cloud Native
3 3 (3.49%) Virtual Team
4 2 (2.33%) AI Agents
4 2 (2.33%) Analytical Mindset
4 2 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (2.33%) Online Games
5 1 (1.16%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 9 (10.47%) Windows
2 8 (9.30%) Linux
3 5 (5.81%) CentOS
4 2 (2.33%) Android
4 2 (2.33%) Apple iOS
4 2 (2.33%) Unix
5 1 (1.16%) Embedded Linux
5 1 (1.16%) OpenWrt
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 28 (32.56%) Agile
2 28 (32.56%) Software Testing
3 27 (31.40%) CI/CD
4 17 (19.77%) DevOps
5 14 (16.28%) BDD
6 13 (15.12%) Test Strategy
7 12 (13.95%) API Testing
7 12 (13.95%) Test Scripting
8 11 (12.79%) Problem-Solving
8 11 (12.79%) Test Management
9 10 (11.63%) Performance Testing
9 10 (11.63%) Validation
10 9 (10.47%) AI
11 8 (9.30%) Containerisation
11 8 (9.30%) Continuous Improvement
11 8 (9.30%) SDLC
12 7 (8.14%) Acceptance Criteria
12 7 (8.14%) Manual Testing
12 7 (8.14%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 20 (23.26%) Python
2 15 (17.44%) Java
2 15 (17.44%) JavaScript
3 9 (10.47%) C#
3 9 (10.47%) TypeScript
4 7 (8.14%) Bash
5 6 (6.98%) SQL
6 5 (5.81%) PowerShell
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 9 (10.47%) ISTQB
3 7 (8.14%) SC Cleared
4 5 (5.81%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
5 4 (4.65%) ISEB
6 2 (2.33%) Degree
6 2 (2.33%) DV Cleared
6 2 (2.33%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (29.07%) QA
2 4 (4.65%) Accessibility
3 3 (3.49%) WCAG
4 1 (1.16%) Data Quality
System Software
1 6 (6.98%) Docker
2 5 (5.81%) Virtual Machines
2 5 (5.81%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.16%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 6 (6.98%) Grafana
2 5 (5.81%) Ansible
2 5 (5.81%) Kibana
2 5 (5.81%) Kubernetes
2 5 (5.81%) logstash
2 5 (5.81%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 5 (5.81%) Atlassian
1 5 (5.81%) IBM
1 5 (5.81%) Red Hat
1 5 (5.81%) Splunk
1 5 (5.81%) VMware
2 3 (3.49%) HP
2 3 (3.49%) Microsoft
2 3 (3.49%) Pega
2 3 (3.49%) SAP
3 1 (1.16%) Salesforce