Test Automation Job Trends

Automated Testing
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Test Automation skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 29 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 81 90 98
Rank change year-on-year +9 +8 -26
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,297 1,627 2,027
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.10% 3.25% 2.49%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.87% 3.66% 3.09%
Number of salaries quoted 1,266 784 1,160
10th Percentile £41,625 £37,500 £38,750
25th Percentile £48,750 £47,500 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%
75th Percentile £80,000 £82,751 £72,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -4.35%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Test Automation falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 80,048 44,438 65,626
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.13% 88.74% 80.77%
Number of salaries quoted 55,528 25,365 40,468
10th Percentile £31,125 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,465
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -0.84% -7.56%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,803
% change year-on-year +15.79% -6.50% -6.94%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Test Automation relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Test Automation job vacancy trend in the UK

Test Automation
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Test Automation.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Test Automation over the 6 months to 29 August 2026.

Salary histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 17 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Test Automation within the UK over the 6 months to 29 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 +3 1,868 £65,000 +3.17% 2,253
UK excluding London +12 1,462 £60,000 +9.09% 1,372
Work from Home +13 867 £67,500 +8.00% 975
London +4 681 £80,000 - 1,231
North of England +14 368 £60,000 - 286
South East -4 264 £60,000 +9.09% 298
South West +7 242 £60,000 +14.29% 233
Midlands -7 199 £60,000 - 146
North West -7 185 £65,000 - 162
Northern Ireland +9 166 £80,000 +45.45% 61
West Midlands -6 110 £62,500 +2.88% 90
Wales +11 108 £55,000 +2.33% 33
North East +15 103 £53,750 +74.80% 51
East Midlands -23 89 £55,000 -6.38% 55
Yorkshire -16 80 £69,310 +41.45% 74
East of England -23 72 £50,000 -11.89% 146
Scotland -46 56 £62,500 +2.04% 186

Test Automation
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 52 (2.26%) Confluence
2 27 (1.18%) Apache Spark
3 25 (1.09%) SharePoint
4 24 (1.04%) Apache
5 20 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
6 17 (0.74%) Jupyter
7 14 (0.61%) Anypoint
7 14 (0.61%) Mule
8 13 (0.57%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 11 (0.48%) CMS
10 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
11 5 (0.22%) Cloud Foundry
11 5 (0.22%) IIS
11 5 (0.22%) nginx
11 5 (0.22%) Umbraco
12 4 (0.17%) Camunda
12 4 (0.17%) SAS
13 3 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
13 3 (0.13%) WordPress
14 2 (0.087%) WebLogic
Applications
1 56 (2.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (0.57%) Simulink
4 7 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.22%) Lightworks
5 5 (0.22%) Moqups
6 3 (0.13%) CANalyzer
6 3 (0.13%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 2 (0.087%) PlantUML
8 1 (0.044%) AutoCAD
8 1 (0.044%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.044%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 67 (2.92%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.18%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.22%) Visualfiles
5 3 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
5 3 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
5 3 (0.13%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.087%) FLEXCUBE
6 2 (0.087%) Magento
6 2 (0.087%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.087%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.087%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.044%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.044%) Dynamics AX
7 1 (0.044%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.044%) Endur
7 1 (0.044%) Findur
7 1 (0.044%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.044%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.044%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 792 (34.48%) AWS
2 667 (29.04%) Azure
3 294 (12.80%) SaaS
4 251 (10.93%) Azure DevOps
5 245 (10.67%) GCP
6 195 (8.49%) GitHub
7 181 (7.88%) Serverless
8 101 (4.40%) GitHub Actions
9 97 (4.22%) AWS CloudFormation
10 79 (3.44%) AWS Lambda
11 72 (3.13%) Amazon S3
12 71 (3.09%) Amazon EKS
13 62 (2.70%) Power Platform
14 51 (2.22%) Azure Service Bus
15 49 (2.13%) Azure Logic Apps
16 45 (1.96%) Azure Monitor
17 41 (1.78%) PaaS
18 39 (1.70%) Amazon EC2
19 38 (1.65%) dbt
20 36 (1.57%) Meta Ads
Communications & Networking
1 70 (3.05%) Broadband
2 26 (1.13%) Firewall
3 23 (1.00%) TCP/IP
4 20 (0.87%) DNS
5 16 (0.70%) SSL
5 16 (0.70%) Wireless
6 13 (0.57%) DMARC
6 13 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
7 12 (0.52%) MQTT
8 11 (0.48%) DHCP
8 11 (0.48%) WAN
9 10 (0.44%) HTTP
9 10 (0.44%) LTE
10 9 (0.39%) 3GPP
10 9 (0.39%) Network Security
11 8 (0.35%) 5G
12 7 (0.30%) GSM
12 7 (0.30%) Modbus
12 7 (0.30%) Radio Access Network
12 7 (0.30%) UMTS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 132 (5.75%) PostgreSQL
2 120 (5.22%) NoSQL
3 91 (3.96%) MongoDB
4 77 (3.35%) SQL Server
5 62 (2.70%) Relational Database
6 47 (2.05%) DynamoDB
7 40 (1.74%) MySQL
8 36 (1.57%) Data Warehouse
9 34 (1.48%) Power BI
10 28 (1.22%) Redis
11 27 (1.18%) BigQuery
12 23 (1.00%) Data Lake
13 19 (0.83%) Metadata
13 19 (0.83%) Semantic Layer
14 18 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
14 18 (0.78%) Spark SQL
15 16 (0.70%) Amazon Athena
16 12 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
17 11 (0.48%) Big Data
17 11 (0.48%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 332 (14.45%) Git
2 218 (9.49%) GitLab
3 213 (9.27%) Jenkins
4 168 (7.31%) Selenium
5 145 (6.31%) JIRA
6 105 (4.57%) Cypress.io
7 101 (4.40%) Cucumber
8 96 (4.18%) Postman
9 59 (2.57%) TeamCity
10 53 (2.31%) JMeter
11 48 (2.09%) REST Assured
12 46 (2.00%) JUnit
13 37 (1.61%) Zephyr
14 36 (1.57%) Gatling
15 30 (1.31%) SonarQube
16 27 (1.18%) TestRail
17 25 (1.09%) Bitbucket
18 23 (1.00%) LabVIEW
19 22 (0.96%) Robot Framework
19 22 (0.96%) SpecFlow
General
1 645 (28.08%) Social Skills
2 531 (23.12%) Finance
3 318 (13.84%) Analytical Skills
4 247 (10.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 217 (9.45%) Public Sector
6 197 (8.58%) Law
7 191 (8.32%) Banking
8 145 (6.31%) Legal
9 135 (5.88%) Marketing
10 103 (4.48%) Retail
11 91 (3.96%) Manufacturing
12 79 (3.44%) Electronics
13 71 (3.09%) Financial Institution
14 55 (2.39%) Back Office
15 50 (2.18%) Games
16 40 (1.74%) Aerospace
17 37 (1.61%) Telecoms
18 29 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
19 27 (1.18%) Front Office
20 22 (0.96%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 642 (27.95%) Senior
2 354 (15.41%) Lead
3 342 (14.89%) Software Engineer
4 328 (14.28%) Developer
5 250 (10.88%) Test Engineer
6 125 (5.44%) Senior Developer
7 109 (4.75%) Java Engineer
8 101 (4.40%) Senior Software Engineer
9 96 (4.18%) QA Engineer
10 95 (4.14%) DevOps Engineer
11 86 (3.74%) Test Automation Engineer
12 82 (3.57%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 70 (3.05%) Lead Software Engineer
14 65 (2.83%) Data Engineer
15 64 (2.79%) Analyst
16 63 (2.74%) Senior Manager
16 63 (2.74%) Software Developer
16 63 (2.74%) Tester
17 62 (2.70%) Architect
17 62 (2.70%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 314 (13.67%) Terraform
2 239 (10.40%) React
3 232 (10.10%) REST
4 216 (9.40%) .NET
5 201 (8.75%) Playwright
6 192 (8.36%) Node.js
7 190 (8.27%) Spring
8 188 (8.18%) RESTful
9 139 (6.05%) Spring Boot
10 124 (5.40%) Kafka
11 111 (4.83%) AngularJS
12 103 (4.48%) CSS
13 97 (4.22%) HTML
14 70 (3.05%) OAuth
15 66 (2.87%) Middleware
16 64 (2.79%) OAuth2
17 57 (2.48%) JSON
18 50 (2.18%) Next.js
18 50 (2.18%) Vue
19 48 (2.09%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 398 (17.33%) Cloud Native
2 281 (12.23%) Product Ownership
3 202 (8.79%) Distributed Systems
4 115 (5.01%) Mobile App
5 90 (3.92%) Enterprise Software
6 81 (3.53%) Public Cloud
7 78 (3.40%) Virtual Team
8 77 (3.35%) Blog
9 74 (3.22%) Onboarding
10 69 (3.00%) Legacy Systems
11 64 (2.79%) Marketing Technology
12 60 (2.61%) Algorithms
13 57 (2.48%) Cyber Threat
14 54 (2.35%) Low-Code
15 45 (1.96%) Data Structures
15 45 (1.96%) Self-Motivation
16 44 (1.92%) Management Information System
17 42 (1.83%) Embedded Systems
18 38 (1.65%) Greenfield Project
19 35 (1.52%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 190 (8.27%) Linux
2 103 (4.48%) Windows
3 66 (2.87%) Apple iOS
4 64 (2.79%) Android
5 52 (2.26%) Unix
6 11 (0.48%) Windows Server
7 9 (0.39%) Embedded Linux
8 8 (0.35%) CentOS
9 6 (0.26%) FreeRTOS
10 5 (0.22%) Kali Linux
11 4 (0.17%) AIX
11 4 (0.17%) Debian
12 3 (0.13%) VMS
12 3 (0.13%) VxWorks
13 2 (0.087%) OpenWrt
14 1 (0.044%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 1 (0.044%) ThreadX
14 1 (0.044%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.044%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,289 (56.12%) CI/CD
2 999 (43.49%) Agile
3 830 (36.13%) DevOps
4 742 (32.30%) Software Engineering
5 679 (29.56%) Continuous Improvement
6 602 (26.21%) Mentoring
7 538 (23.42%) AI
8 506 (22.03%) Problem-Solving
9 424 (18.46%) Microservices
10 394 (17.15%) Software Testing
11 386 (16.80%) Infrastructure as Code
12 329 (14.32%) Test Strategy
13 284 (12.36%) Code Quality
13 284 (12.36%) Observability
14 283 (12.32%) Full-Stack Development
15 278 (12.10%) Validation
16 273 (11.89%) Containerisation
17 268 (11.67%) Coaching
18 253 (11.01%) Decision-Making
19 245 (10.67%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 683 (29.73%) Python
2 581 (25.29%) Java
3 410 (17.85%) JavaScript
4 392 (17.07%) SQL
5 335 (14.58%) TypeScript
6 327 (14.24%) C#
7 127 (5.53%) C++
8 109 (4.75%) PowerShell
9 102 (4.44%) Go
10 81 (3.53%) C
11 78 (3.40%) Bash
12 41 (1.78%) Kotlin
13 34 (1.48%) PHP
13 34 (1.48%) Rust
14 29 (1.26%) Ruby
14 29 (1.26%) Swift
15 22 (0.96%) Bicep
15 22 (0.96%) MATLAB
16 21 (0.91%) Groovy
17 16 (0.70%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 313 (13.63%) Security Cleared
2 244 (10.62%) Degree
3 184 (8.01%) SC Cleared
4 108 (4.70%) Computer Science Degree
5 78 (3.40%) ISTQB
6 64 (2.79%) DV Cleared
7 58 (2.53%) CISSP
8 57 (2.48%) ITIL Certification
9 55 (2.39%) CISM
10 50 (2.18%) AWS Certification
11 42 (1.83%) Master's Degree
12 35 (1.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 31 (1.35%) BPSS Clearance
14 27 (1.18%) HNC
15 22 (0.96%) HND
16 18 (0.78%) ISEB
17 16 (0.70%) DBS Check
18 14 (0.61%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
19 13 (0.57%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
20 11 (0.48%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 544 (23.68%) QA
2 207 (9.01%) Accessibility
3 70 (3.05%) Data Quality
4 61 (2.66%) WCAG
5 59 (2.57%) NIST
6 50 (2.18%) ISO 22301
7 43 (1.87%) GDPR
8 14 (0.61%) SLA
9 13 (0.57%) GRC
10 12 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 10 (0.44%) Software Quality Assurance
12 9 (0.39%) SOC 2
13 8 (0.35%) MISRA
14 7 (0.30%) COBIT
14 7 (0.30%) JTAG
15 5 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
15 5 (0.22%) NCSC
15 5 (0.22%) PCI DSS
15 5 (0.22%) PMO
16 4 (0.17%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 312 (13.58%) Docker
2 40 (1.74%) Firmware
3 16 (0.70%) Active Directory
3 16 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.48%) Embedded Firmware
6 8 (0.35%) Hyper-V
7 6 (0.26%) KVM
8 2 (0.087%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.044%) IAG
9 1 (0.044%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.044%) QEMU
9 1 (0.044%) Terminal Server
9 1 (0.044%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 321 (13.97%) Kubernetes
2 133 (5.79%) Grafana
3 81 (3.53%) Ansible
4 53 (2.31%) Prometheus
5 27 (1.18%) Argo
6 16 (0.70%) Kibana
7 14 (0.61%) CloudHub
8 13 (0.57%) Puppet
9 9 (0.39%) logstash
9 9 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
10 8 (0.35%) HP Fortify
11 7 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (0.26%) Functional Safety
12 6 (0.26%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.26%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.22%) Packer
14 4 (0.17%) SCCM
14 4 (0.17%) SCOM
15 3 (0.13%) HP ALM
15 3 (0.13%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 223 (9.71%) Microsoft
2 100 (4.35%) Google
3 61 (2.66%) Databricks
4 56 (2.44%) Salesforce
5 54 (2.35%) Oracle
6 46 (2.00%) SAP
7 39 (1.70%) ServiceNow
8 36 (1.57%) Splunk
9 26 (1.13%) Dynatrace
9 26 (1.13%) VMware
10 23 (1.00%) Pega
11 20 (0.87%) AppDynamics
12 17 (0.74%) IBM
12 17 (0.74%) MuleSoft
13 16 (0.70%) Atlassian
14 15 (0.65%) OpenAI
14 15 (0.65%) Red Hat
15 14 (0.61%) Adobe
16 13 (0.57%) Braze
16 13 (0.57%) SendGrid