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 9 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 86 82 100
Rank change year-on-year -4 +18 -66
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,822 1,618 2,697
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.98% 3.66% 2.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.72% 3.94% 3.09%
Number of salaries quoted 1,134 794 1,717
10th Percentile £41,250 £40,000 £36,250
25th Percentile £48,289 £48,063 £44,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year - +8.70% -11.54%
75th Percentile £82,500 £82,751 £72,433
90th Percentile £97,500 £100,000 £87,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,500 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +3.48% +9.52% -8.70%

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 66,949 41,023 87,141
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 72.83% 92.72% 82.59%
Number of salaries quoted 45,661 21,815 61,905
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,000 £29,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £40,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.54%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,055 £50,000
% change year-on-year +4.89% +0.11% -9.09%

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 9 June 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 9 June 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 +5 1,600 £62,500 - 579
UK excluding London -29 997 £59,500 +3.48% 448
Work from Home +10 737 £65,000 +8.33% 313
London +21 661 £80,000 +9.59% 195
North of England -16 279 £60,000 -0.42% 123
South East -20 206 £60,000 +9.09% 118
South West -26 177 £55,000 -8.33% 48
Midlands -15 166 £58,750 +2.17% 71
North West -6 145 £60,000 -7.69% 66
West Midlands -36 84 £60,500 -10.37% 46
East Midlands -14 81 £55,000 +22.22% 25
Yorkshire -35 68 £73,750 +46.20% 31
North East -5 66 £52,500 -8.70% 27
East of England -10 64 £52,500 -7.89% 63
Wales +2 55 £55,000 -4.35% 8
Scotland -44 52 £60,000 -2.04% 17
Northern Ireland -37 11 £80,000 +45.45% 12

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 34 (1.87%) Confluence
2 27 (1.48%) Apache Airflow
3 20 (1.10%) Apache Spark
4 19 (1.04%) Jupyter
5 18 (0.99%) Apache
6 15 (0.82%) SharePoint
7 10 (0.55%) Palantir Foundry
8 9 (0.49%) CMS
8 9 (0.49%) IIS
9 8 (0.44%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 8 (0.44%) Appian
10 5 (0.27%) Anypoint
10 5 (0.27%) Umbraco
11 4 (0.22%) Mule
11 4 (0.22%) SAS
12 3 (0.16%) nginx
12 3 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 3 (0.16%) WordPress
13 2 (0.11%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.11%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 16 (0.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.38%) Simulink
4 6 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.33%) PlantUML
5 3 (0.16%) CANalyzer
5 3 (0.16%) Fusion 360
5 3 (0.16%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.055%) Lightworks
7 1 (0.055%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 11 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
2 5 (0.27%) Visualfiles
3 4 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
3 4 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.11%) Shopify
5 2 (0.11%) Towers Watson Igloo
5 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.055%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.055%) Endur
6 1 (0.055%) Findur
6 1 (0.055%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.055%) Magento
6 1 (0.055%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.055%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.055%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.055%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.055%) Oracle SCM
Cloud Services
1 620 (34.03%) AWS
2 560 (30.74%) Azure
3 247 (13.56%) Azure DevOps
4 216 (11.86%) GCP
5 173 (9.50%) Serverless
6 155 (8.51%) GitHub
7 130 (7.14%) SaaS
8 78 (4.28%) AWS Lambda
9 77 (4.23%) GitHub Actions
10 75 (4.12%) Amazon EKS
11 72 (3.95%) Amazon S3
12 67 (3.68%) AWS CloudFormation
13 57 (3.13%) PaaS
14 47 (2.58%) Power Platform
15 46 (2.52%) Azure Service Bus
16 42 (2.31%) dbt
17 41 (2.25%) Azure Monitor
18 39 (2.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 39 (2.14%) Azure Data Factory
19 38 (2.09%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 58 (3.18%) Broadband
2 26 (1.43%) Firewall
3 13 (0.71%) CHAP
3 13 (0.71%) WAN
4 12 (0.66%) DNS
4 12 (0.66%) SD-WAN
5 11 (0.60%) 5G
6 9 (0.49%) DMARC
7 6 (0.33%) Bluetooth
7 6 (0.33%) HTTP
7 6 (0.33%) Wireless
8 5 (0.27%) MQTT
8 5 (0.27%) SMS
8 5 (0.27%) VPN
8 5 (0.27%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (0.27%) ZigBee
9 4 (0.22%) DHCP
9 4 (0.22%) LTE
9 4 (0.22%) SSL
10 3 (0.16%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 129 (7.08%) NoSQL
2 115 (6.31%) PostgreSQL
3 94 (5.16%) MongoDB
4 70 (3.84%) SQL Server
5 39 (2.14%) DynamoDB
6 31 (1.70%) MySQL
7 30 (1.65%) Data Warehouse
7 30 (1.65%) Relational Database
8 26 (1.43%) Power BI
9 20 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
10 19 (1.04%) BigQuery
11 18 (0.99%) Spark SQL
12 16 (0.88%) Metadata
12 16 (0.88%) Oracle Database
12 16 (0.88%) Redis
13 12 (0.66%) Semantic Layer
14 11 (0.60%) Data Lake
15 10 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
15 10 (0.55%) Pinecone
16 9 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 211 (11.58%) Git
2 154 (8.45%) Jenkins
3 145 (7.96%) Selenium
4 141 (7.74%) GitLab
5 112 (6.15%) JIRA
6 85 (4.67%) Cypress.io
7 75 (4.12%) Cucumber
8 63 (3.46%) Postman
9 60 (3.29%) TeamCity
10 43 (2.36%) JMeter
11 36 (1.98%) REST Assured
12 29 (1.59%) JUnit
12 29 (1.59%) SpecFlow
13 25 (1.37%) CircleCI
14 24 (1.32%) LabVIEW
14 24 (1.32%) Zephyr
15 22 (1.21%) TestRail
16 20 (1.10%) Crashlytics
17 19 (1.04%) Gatling
18 18 (0.99%) MLflow
General
1 459 (25.19%) Social Skills
2 420 (23.05%) Finance
3 189 (10.37%) Banking
4 186 (10.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 158 (8.67%) Public Sector
6 152 (8.34%) Analytical Skills
7 117 (6.42%) Law
8 95 (5.21%) Retail
9 62 (3.40%) Financial Institution
10 58 (3.18%) Manufacturing
11 56 (3.07%) Electronics
12 49 (2.69%) Games
13 48 (2.63%) Back Office
14 33 (1.81%) Front Office
15 32 (1.76%) Legal
16 31 (1.70%) Marketing
17 18 (0.99%) Documentation Skills
17 18 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
17 18 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
18 17 (0.93%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 478 (26.23%) Senior
2 297 (16.30%) Lead
3 268 (14.71%) Software Engineer
4 256 (14.05%) Developer
5 215 (11.80%) Test Engineer
6 116 (6.37%) Senior Developer
7 106 (5.82%) Java Engineer
8 88 (4.83%) QA Engineer
9 87 (4.77%) Test Automation Engineer
10 81 (4.45%) Tester
11 77 (4.23%) Senior Software Engineer
12 76 (4.17%) Test Leader
13 64 (3.51%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 62 (3.40%) Data Engineer
15 61 (3.35%) Architect
16 56 (3.07%) Senior Test Engineer
17 54 (2.96%) DevOps Engineer
18 50 (2.74%) Python Developer
19 49 (2.69%) Analyst
20 47 (2.58%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 194 (10.65%) .NET
2 192 (10.54%) React
3 158 (8.67%) RESTful
4 157 (8.62%) Playwright
4 157 (8.62%) REST
5 139 (7.63%) Spring
6 137 (7.52%) Node.js
7 100 (5.49%) Spring Boot
8 96 (5.27%) Kafka
9 68 (3.73%) AngularJS
10 63 (3.46%) HTML
11 62 (3.40%) CSS
12 55 (3.02%) OAuth
13 46 (2.52%) OAuth2
14 43 (2.36%) RabbitMQ
15 40 (2.20%) JSON
16 37 (2.03%) pytest
16 37 (2.03%) YAML
17 36 (1.98%) PyTorch
17 36 (1.98%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 326 (17.89%) Cloud Native
2 194 (10.65%) Product Ownership
3 132 (7.24%) Distributed Systems
4 99 (5.43%) Mobile App
5 59 (3.24%) Management Information System
6 53 (2.91%) Public Cloud
7 51 (2.80%) Algorithms
7 51 (2.80%) Enterprise Software
8 49 (2.69%) Low-Code
9 48 (2.63%) Onboarding
10 42 (2.31%) Data Structures
11 39 (2.14%) Legacy Systems
12 36 (1.98%) Greenfield Project
13 31 (1.70%) Self-Motivation
13 31 (1.70%) Video\Live Streaming
14 25 (1.37%) Blog
15 24 (1.32%) Embedded Systems
15 24 (1.32%) Hedge funds
16 23 (1.26%) Hybrid Cloud
17 22 (1.21%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 154 (8.45%) Linux
2 76 (4.17%) Windows
3 71 (3.90%) Apple iOS
4 60 (3.29%) Android
5 51 (2.80%) Unix
6 9 (0.49%) CentOS
7 8 (0.44%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.22%) Kali Linux
8 4 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.16%) AIX
9 3 (0.16%) FreeRTOS
9 3 (0.16%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.11%) Debian
10 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.055%) ThreadX
11 1 (0.055%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.055%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.055%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 997 (54.72%) CI/CD
2 754 (41.38%) Agile
3 621 (34.08%) DevOps
4 500 (27.44%) Software Engineering
5 451 (24.75%) Continuous Improvement
6 445 (24.42%) Mentoring
7 366 (20.09%) Problem-Solving
8 333 (18.28%) Microservices
9 327 (17.95%) Infrastructure as Code
10 302 (16.58%) AI
11 280 (15.37%) Software Testing
12 252 (13.83%) Observability
13 238 (13.06%) Containerisation
14 228 (12.51%) Coaching
14 228 (12.51%) Full-Stack Development
15 224 (12.29%) Test Strategy
16 212 (11.64%) Validation
17 195 (10.70%) Clean Code
18 177 (9.71%) Technical Leadership
19 172 (9.44%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 569 (31.23%) Python
2 500 (27.44%) Java
3 305 (16.74%) SQL
4 267 (14.65%) JavaScript
5 232 (12.73%) C#
6 226 (12.40%) TypeScript
7 97 (5.32%) C++
8 83 (4.56%) Go
9 78 (4.28%) Bash
10 65 (3.57%) PowerShell
11 58 (3.18%) C
12 33 (1.81%) Kotlin
13 31 (1.70%) Rust
14 29 (1.59%) Bicep
15 25 (1.37%) Swift
16 23 (1.26%) MATLAB
16 23 (1.26%) PHP
17 18 (0.99%) Ruby
18 16 (0.88%) Groovy
19 15 (0.82%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 236 (12.95%) Degree
2 206 (11.31%) Security Cleared
3 123 (6.75%) SC Cleared
4 95 (5.21%) Computer Science Degree
5 81 (4.45%) ISTQB
6 41 (2.25%) DV Cleared
7 30 (1.65%) AWS Certification
7 30 (1.65%) Master's Degree
8 21 (1.15%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 21 (1.15%) CISSP
9 19 (1.04%) DBS Check
9 19 (1.04%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 16 (0.88%) HND
11 13 (0.71%) CGEIT
11 13 (0.71%) CISA
11 13 (0.71%) CISM
11 13 (0.71%) FFIEC
11 13 (0.71%) PhD
11 13 (0.71%) SANS
12 12 (0.66%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 411 (22.56%) QA
2 160 (8.78%) Accessibility
3 84 (4.61%) Data Quality
4 49 (2.69%) GDPR
5 32 (1.76%) WCAG
6 24 (1.32%) NIST
7 17 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.82%) SLA
9 14 (0.77%) COBIT
10 12 (0.66%) Software Quality Assurance
11 11 (0.60%) GRC
12 8 (0.44%) ISO 22301
12 8 (0.44%) ISO 9001
13 7 (0.38%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.33%) PMO
15 5 (0.27%) JTAG
16 4 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
16 4 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 3 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 12207
17 3 (0.16%) PERC
System Software
1 249 (13.67%) Docker
2 24 (1.32%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (1.04%) Firmware
4 18 (0.99%) Hyper-V
5 16 (0.88%) Active Directory
6 15 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
7 14 (0.77%) KVM
8 8 (0.44%) Embedded Firmware
9 2 (0.11%) Terminal Server
9 2 (0.11%) vSphere
10 1 (0.055%) IAG
10 1 (0.055%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.055%) Xen
Systems Management
1 303 (16.63%) Terraform
2 285 (15.64%) Kubernetes
3 135 (7.41%) Grafana
4 74 (4.06%) Ansible
5 66 (3.62%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.43%) Argo
7 15 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (0.71%) Kibana
9 7 (0.38%) logstash
10 5 (0.27%) HP Fortify
10 5 (0.27%) SCCM
10 5 (0.27%) SCOM
11 4 (0.22%) CloudHub
11 4 (0.22%) Functional Safety
11 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.22%) Packer
11 4 (0.22%) vCenter Server
12 3 (0.16%) Puppet
12 3 (0.16%) Rancher
12 3 (0.16%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 141 (7.74%) Microsoft
2 55 (3.02%) Databricks
3 54 (2.96%) Oracle
4 49 (2.69%) Salesforce
5 39 (2.14%) VMware
6 36 (1.98%) Google
7 24 (1.32%) ServiceNow
8 23 (1.26%) Splunk
9 21 (1.15%) Dynatrace
9 21 (1.15%) OpenAI
10 17 (0.93%) SAP
11 16 (0.88%) Braze
12 14 (0.77%) Amplitude
13 13 (0.71%) CrowdStrike
13 13 (0.71%) IFS
13 13 (0.71%) MuleSoft
14 12 (0.66%) AppDynamics
14 12 (0.66%) Foundry
15 11 (0.60%) Atlassian
15 11 (0.60%) Commvault