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 11 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 78 93 98
Rank change year-on-year +15 +5 -27
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,383 1,576 2,018
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.10% 3.17% 2.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.88% 3.58% 3.17%
Number of salaries quoted 1,295 751 1,052
10th Percentile £41,250 £38,500 £38,750
25th Percentile £48,269 £50,000 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,740 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +0.38% +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £82,751 £75,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £93,175
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -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 82,871 44,018 63,575
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.00% 88.61% 80.87%
Number of salaries quoted 57,674 24,857 36,941
10th Percentile £31,000 £28,500 £31,875
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £76,250
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -3.67%

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 11 September 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 11 September 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 +2 1,929 £65,000 - 1,659
UK excluding London +14 1,518 £60,000 +4.35% 993
Work from Home +18 868 £67,500 +8.00% 2,141
London +5 699 £80,000 - 893
North of England +21 380 £57,500 -4.17% 209
South East -6 268 £60,000 +4.35% 238
South West +11 254 £60,000 +14.29% 165
Midlands -4 208 £55,000 -9.47% 113
North West -8 190 £60,000 -2.04% 111
Northern Ireland +11 164 £80,000 +45.45% 20
Wales +8 130 £55,000 +4.76% 22
West Midlands -7 115 £55,000 -4.35% 72
North East +18 104 £52,500 +50.00% 33
East Midlands -28 93 £55,000 -12.00% 41
Yorkshire -6 86 £69,310 +39.32% 65
East of England -33 77 £50,000 -14.53% 108
Scotland -41 52 £62,500 -10.71% 136

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 (2.18%) Confluence
2 31 (1.30%) Apache Spark
3 25 (1.05%) SharePoint
4 24 (1.01%) Apache
5 19 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 17 (0.71%) Jupyter
7 14 (0.59%) Anypoint
7 14 (0.59%) Mule
8 13 (0.55%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 12 (0.50%) CMS
10 6 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
11 5 (0.21%) Cloud Foundry
11 5 (0.21%) nginx
11 5 (0.21%) Umbraco
12 4 (0.17%) Camunda
12 4 (0.17%) IIS
12 4 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
12 4 (0.17%) SAS
12 4 (0.17%) WinCC
13 3 (0.13%) WordPress
Applications
1 78 (3.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.55%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.55%) Simulink
3 9 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.21%) Lightworks
4 5 (0.21%) Moqups
5 3 (0.13%) CANalyzer
5 3 (0.13%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.13%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.084%) PlantUML
7 1 (0.042%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.042%) EPLAN
7 1 (0.042%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.042%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 67 (2.81%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.13%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.46%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.21%) Visualfiles
5 3 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
5 3 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
5 3 (0.13%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.084%) Endur
6 2 (0.084%) FLEXCUBE
6 2 (0.084%) Magento
6 2 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.084%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.084%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.042%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.042%) Findur
7 1 (0.042%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.042%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.042%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.042%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.042%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 813 (34.12%) AWS
2 678 (28.45%) Azure
3 305 (12.80%) SaaS
4 253 (10.62%) Azure DevOps
5 250 (10.49%) GCP
6 202 (8.48%) GitHub
7 193 (8.10%) Serverless
8 105 (4.41%) GitHub Actions
9 100 (4.20%) AWS CloudFormation
10 87 (3.65%) AWS Lambda
11 83 (3.48%) Amazon EKS
12 79 (3.32%) Amazon S3
13 61 (2.56%) Power Platform
14 56 (2.35%) Google Ads
14 56 (2.35%) Meta Ads
15 54 (2.27%) Azure Logic Apps
16 53 (2.22%) Azure Service Bus
17 49 (2.06%) Azure Monitor
18 42 (1.76%) Azure Functions
19 39 (1.64%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 65 (2.73%) Broadband
2 28 (1.17%) TCP/IP
3 25 (1.05%) Firewall
4 23 (0.97%) DNS
5 17 (0.71%) SSL
6 16 (0.67%) Wireless
7 13 (0.55%) DMARC
7 13 (0.55%) Wi-Fi
8 12 (0.50%) DHCP
8 12 (0.50%) HTTP
8 12 (0.50%) Modbus
8 12 (0.50%) MQTT
9 11 (0.46%) 5G
9 11 (0.46%) WAN
10 10 (0.42%) LTE
11 9 (0.38%) 3GPP
11 9 (0.38%) Network Security
12 7 (0.29%) GSM
12 7 (0.29%) Radio Access Network
12 7 (0.29%) UMTS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 141 (5.92%) PostgreSQL
2 125 (5.25%) NoSQL
3 92 (3.86%) MongoDB
4 80 (3.36%) SQL Server
5 65 (2.73%) Relational Database
6 46 (1.93%) DynamoDB
7 40 (1.68%) MySQL
8 38 (1.59%) Redis
9 37 (1.55%) Data Warehouse
10 34 (1.43%) Power BI
11 30 (1.26%) Data Lake
12 28 (1.17%) BigQuery
13 22 (0.92%) Amazon Athena
13 22 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
14 21 (0.88%) Semantic Layer
15 20 (0.84%) Metadata
16 16 (0.67%) Spark SQL
17 13 (0.55%) Delta Lake
17 13 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
18 12 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 354 (14.86%) Git
2 231 (9.69%) GitLab
3 219 (9.19%) Jenkins
4 165 (6.92%) Selenium
5 148 (6.21%) JIRA
6 108 (4.53%) Cypress.io
7 105 (4.41%) Cucumber
8 95 (3.99%) Postman
9 64 (2.69%) TeamCity
10 53 (2.22%) JMeter
11 46 (1.93%) JUnit
12 44 (1.85%) REST Assured
13 36 (1.51%) Zephyr
14 33 (1.38%) Gatling
15 30 (1.26%) SonarQube
16 26 (1.09%) TestRail
17 25 (1.05%) Bitbucket
17 25 (1.05%) LabVIEW
18 23 (0.97%) Maven
19 22 (0.92%) Robot Framework
General
1 658 (27.61%) Social Skills
2 569 (23.88%) Finance
3 349 (14.65%) Analytical Skills
4 262 (10.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 229 (9.61%) Public Sector
6 198 (8.31%) Banking
6 198 (8.31%) Law
7 157 (6.59%) Marketing
8 144 (6.04%) Legal
9 112 (4.70%) Retail
10 110 (4.62%) Manufacturing
11 87 (3.65%) Electronics
12 74 (3.11%) Financial Institution
13 57 (2.39%) Back Office
14 46 (1.93%) Aerospace
15 45 (1.89%) Games
16 43 (1.80%) Telecoms
17 30 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
18 26 (1.09%) Automotive
19 25 (1.05%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 673 (28.24%) Senior
2 347 (14.56%) Software Engineer
3 337 (14.14%) Developer
4 336 (14.10%) Lead
5 252 (10.57%) Test Engineer
6 130 (5.46%) Senior Developer
7 116 (4.87%) Java Engineer
8 104 (4.36%) DevOps Engineer
9 103 (4.32%) Senior Software Engineer
10 96 (4.03%) QA Engineer
11 84 (3.52%) Test Automation Engineer
12 81 (3.40%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 73 (3.06%) Data Engineer
14 69 (2.90%) Lead Software Engineer
15 68 (2.85%) Analyst
16 64 (2.69%) Architect
17 63 (2.64%) Software Developer
17 63 (2.64%) Tester
18 62 (2.60%) Senior Manager
19 60 (2.52%) Marketing Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 329 (13.81%) Terraform
2 243 (10.20%) REST
3 235 (9.86%) React
4 220 (9.23%) .NET
5 206 (8.64%) Playwright
6 199 (8.35%) Spring
7 195 (8.18%) Node.js
7 195 (8.18%) RESTful
8 146 (6.13%) Spring Boot
9 135 (5.67%) Kafka
10 116 (4.87%) AngularJS
10 116 (4.87%) CSS
11 109 (4.57%) HTML
12 72 (3.02%) OAuth
13 67 (2.81%) Middleware
14 66 (2.77%) OAuth2
15 61 (2.56%) JSON
16 52 (2.18%) PySpark
17 50 (2.10%) Next.js
17 50 (2.10%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 416 (17.46%) Cloud Native
2 288 (12.09%) Product Ownership
3 208 (8.73%) Distributed Systems
4 113 (4.74%) Mobile App
5 97 (4.07%) Onboarding
6 94 (3.94%) Enterprise Software
7 87 (3.65%) Public Cloud
8 81 (3.40%) Blog
9 78 (3.27%) Virtual Team
10 65 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
11 64 (2.69%) Marketing Technology
12 59 (2.48%) Algorithms
13 53 (2.22%) Cyber Threat
14 52 (2.18%) Low-Code
15 47 (1.97%) Self-Motivation
16 46 (1.93%) Embedded Systems
17 44 (1.85%) Data Structures
18 41 (1.72%) Management Information System
19 39 (1.64%) e-Learning
20 35 (1.47%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 186 (7.81%) Linux
2 100 (4.20%) Windows
3 66 (2.77%) Android
4 62 (2.60%) Apple iOS
5 53 (2.22%) Unix
6 11 (0.46%) Windows Server
7 9 (0.38%) Embedded Linux
8 8 (0.34%) CentOS
9 6 (0.25%) FreeRTOS
10 4 (0.17%) AIX
10 4 (0.17%) Debian
10 4 (0.17%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.17%) VMS
11 3 (0.13%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.084%) OpenWrt
13 1 (0.042%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 1 (0.042%) ThreadX
13 1 (0.042%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.042%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,328 (55.73%) CI/CD
2 1,017 (42.68%) Agile
3 849 (35.63%) DevOps
4 764 (32.06%) Software Engineering
5 707 (29.67%) Continuous Improvement
6 626 (26.27%) Mentoring
7 581 (24.38%) AI
8 536 (22.49%) Problem-Solving
9 433 (18.17%) Microservices
10 412 (17.29%) Software Testing
11 396 (16.62%) Infrastructure as Code
12 329 (13.81%) Test Strategy
13 297 (12.46%) Observability
14 296 (12.42%) Validation
15 284 (11.92%) Code Quality
16 282 (11.83%) Coaching
17 280 (11.75%) Full-Stack Development
18 270 (11.33%) Containerisation
19 259 (10.87%) Technical Leadership
20 256 (10.74%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 688 (28.87%) Python
2 584 (24.51%) Java
3 440 (18.46%) SQL
4 423 (17.75%) JavaScript
5 342 (14.35%) TypeScript
6 331 (13.89%) C#
7 128 (5.37%) C++
8 109 (4.57%) PowerShell
9 101 (4.24%) Go
10 88 (3.69%) Bash
11 83 (3.48%) C
12 40 (1.68%) Kotlin
13 34 (1.43%) PHP
14 31 (1.30%) Rust
15 29 (1.22%) Ruby
16 27 (1.13%) Groovy
17 26 (1.09%) Swift
18 25 (1.05%) Bicep
19 24 (1.01%) MATLAB
20 16 (0.67%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 341 (14.31%) Security Cleared
2 253 (10.62%) Degree
3 208 (8.73%) SC Cleared
4 108 (4.53%) Computer Science Degree
5 84 (3.52%) ISTQB
6 65 (2.73%) DV Cleared
7 57 (2.39%) CISSP
8 56 (2.35%) AWS Certification
9 54 (2.27%) CISM
9 54 (2.27%) ITIL Certification
10 46 (1.93%) Master's Degree
11 39 (1.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 37 (1.55%) HNC
13 33 (1.38%) HND
14 32 (1.34%) BPSS Clearance
15 19 (0.80%) ISEB
16 17 (0.71%) DBS Check
17 14 (0.59%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
18 13 (0.55%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
19 11 (0.46%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 548 (23.00%) QA
2 213 (8.94%) Accessibility
3 79 (3.32%) Data Quality
4 66 (2.77%) WCAG
5 57 (2.39%) NIST
6 49 (2.06%) ISO 22301
7 42 (1.76%) GDPR
8 13 (0.55%) GRC
8 13 (0.55%) SLA
9 11 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 9 (0.38%) SOC 2
10 9 (0.38%) Software Quality Assurance
11 8 (0.34%) MISRA
12 7 (0.29%) JTAG
13 6 (0.25%) COBIT
13 6 (0.25%) PMO
14 5 (0.21%) NCSC
14 5 (0.21%) PCI DSS
15 4 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
15 4 (0.17%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 326 (13.68%) Docker
2 44 (1.85%) Firmware
3 16 (0.67%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
5 13 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.46%) Embedded Firmware
7 6 (0.25%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.17%) KVM
9 2 (0.084%) ProxySG
10 1 (0.042%) IAG
10 1 (0.042%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.042%) QEMU
10 1 (0.042%) Terminal Server
10 1 (0.042%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.042%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 335 (14.06%) Kubernetes
2 145 (6.08%) Grafana
3 80 (3.36%) Ansible
4 63 (2.64%) Prometheus
5 28 (1.17%) Argo
6 17 (0.71%) Kibana
7 15 (0.63%) Puppet
8 14 (0.59%) CloudHub
9 9 (0.38%) logstash
9 9 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
9 9 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.34%) HP Fortify
10 8 (0.34%) Rancher
11 6 (0.25%) Functional Safety
11 6 (0.25%) Progress Chef
11 6 (0.25%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.21%) Packer
13 4 (0.17%) SCCM
13 4 (0.17%) SCOM
14 3 (0.13%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 255 (10.70%) Microsoft
2 123 (5.16%) Google
3 64 (2.69%) Databricks
4 56 (2.35%) Salesforce
5 53 (2.22%) Oracle
6 47 (1.97%) SAP
7 42 (1.76%) ServiceNow
8 36 (1.51%) Splunk
9 31 (1.30%) Dynatrace
10 25 (1.05%) Pega
11 23 (0.97%) VMware
12 19 (0.80%) AppDynamics
13 18 (0.76%) MuleSoft
14 17 (0.71%) IBM
15 16 (0.67%) Atlassian
15 16 (0.67%) OpenAI
16 15 (0.63%) Allen-Bradley
16 15 (0.63%) Red Hat
17 14 (0.59%) Adobe
18 13 (0.55%) SendGrid