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 19 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 105 89 73
Rank change year-on-year -16 -16 -34
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,376 1,945 2,037
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.60% 2.90% 3.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.03% 3.47% 4.17%
Number of salaries quoted 783 871 1,618
10th Percentile £40,000 £41,250 £41,250
25th Percentile £51,250 £48,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £63,000 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% +4.17%
75th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £105,000 £105,000 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £57,965 £55,000
% change year-on-year -0.80% +5.39% -

All Process and 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 45,394 56,021 48,891
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 85.81% 83.52% 93.81%
Number of salaries quoted 27,423 29,005 37,472
10th Percentile £28,250 £34,404 £32,500
25th Percentile £36,128 £45,000 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £98,475
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -13.64% +4.76% -

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 19 November 2025.

Salary histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 18 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 19 November 2025. 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 -15 1,157 £65,000 - 1,109
UK excluding London -38 719 £57,500 -0.80% 700
London +24 556 £85,000 +8.97% 542
Work from Home +6 476 £65,000 - 597
South East -35 204 £55,000 -5.98% 207
North of England -48 144 £60,000 +20.00% 159
Scotland +2 118 £77,359 +40.65% 56
Midlands -11 96 £60,000 - 67
South West -4 91 £52,500 -16.00% 104
North West -35 87 £60,000 +26.32% 96
West Midlands -5 61 £58,750 -2.08% 44
Yorkshire -31 45 £55,000 +11.11% 42
East of England -53 45 £60,000 +9.09% 68
East Midlands -13 38 £60,000 - 23
Wales +7 23 £55,200 +16.68% 31
North East -14 12 £50,000 -15.23% 21
Northern Ireland -23 5 £67,500 +20.00% 20
Isle of Man - 1 £52,500 -

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 (2.47%) Apache Spark
2 29 (2.11%) Confluence
3 27 (1.96%) Apache Airflow
4 20 (1.45%) SharePoint
5 19 (1.38%) Apache
6 15 (1.09%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 14 (1.02%) Appian
8 8 (0.58%) Headless CMS
9 7 (0.51%) Apache Solr
9 7 (0.51%) Jupyter
10 6 (0.44%) CMS
11 5 (0.36%) nginx
12 4 (0.29%) IIS
13 3 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
13 3 (0.22%) Umbraco
14 2 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 2 (0.15%) WordPress
15 1 (0.073%) JBoss
15 1 (0.073%) Microsoft Exchange
15 1 (0.073%) SAS
Applications
1 15 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.36%) Blender
6 4 (0.29%) Oracle Smart View
7 3 (0.22%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.22%) Simulink
8 2 (0.15%) Adobe XD
8 2 (0.15%) Chatbot
8 2 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.15%) Sketch
9 1 (0.073%) Doxygen
9 1 (0.073%) Trello
Business Applications
1 34 (2.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (2.25%) Oracle ERP
3 20 (1.45%) Dynamics CRM
4 12 (0.87%) Dynamics NAV
5 9 (0.65%) Shopify
6 8 (0.58%) Elite 3E
7 4 (0.29%) Hyperion Planning
7 4 (0.29%) Oracle Assets
7 4 (0.29%) Oracle Financials
7 4 (0.29%) Oracle General Ledger
7 4 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
7 4 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
7 4 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
8 3 (0.22%) SAP CX
8 3 (0.22%) Unit4 Business World
9 2 (0.15%) Aladdin
10 1 (0.073%) Postilion
10 1 (0.073%) SAP Hybris
10 1 (0.073%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 448 (32.56%) Azure
2 403 (29.29%) AWS
3 262 (19.04%) Azure DevOps
4 198 (14.39%) GitHub
5 118 (8.58%) GCP
6 111 (8.07%) SaaS
7 84 (6.10%) Serverless
8 75 (5.45%) PaaS
9 70 (5.09%) Power Platform
10 68 (4.94%) GitHub Actions
11 51 (3.71%) GitHub Copilot
12 48 (3.49%) Amazon S3
13 43 (3.13%) AWS Lambda
14 39 (2.83%) Datadog
15 37 (2.69%) Amazon EKS
16 35 (2.54%) Snowflake
17 34 (2.47%) dbt
18 31 (2.25%) Azure Data Factory
18 31 (2.25%) Dynamics 365
19 30 (2.18%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.74%) DNS
2 18 (1.31%) HTTP
3 16 (1.16%) TCP/IP
4 14 (1.02%) 5G
4 14 (1.02%) SD-WAN
4 14 (1.02%) WAN
5 10 (0.73%) Firewall
5 10 (0.73%) VPN
6 9 (0.65%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (0.51%) Network Security
7 7 (0.51%) VLAN
8 6 (0.44%) DHCP
8 6 (0.44%) Modbus
8 6 (0.44%) Multicast
9 5 (0.36%) SSL
10 4 (0.29%) 3G
10 4 (0.29%) GPRS
10 4 (0.29%) GSM
10 4 (0.29%) Internet
10 4 (0.29%) RS-232
Database & Business Intelligence
1 104 (7.56%) Relational Database
2 82 (5.96%) NoSQL
2 82 (5.96%) SQL Server
3 77 (5.60%) PostgreSQL
4 45 (3.27%) MySQL
5 43 (3.13%) Data Warehouse
6 34 (2.47%) Power BI
7 27 (1.96%) MongoDB
8 25 (1.82%) DynamoDB
9 23 (1.67%) RDBMS
10 20 (1.45%) Big Data
11 17 (1.24%) Amazon RDS
12 13 (0.94%) Elasticsearch
12 13 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
12 13 (0.94%) Tableau
13 10 (0.73%) Amazon Athena
13 10 (0.73%) BigQuery
13 10 (0.73%) MariaDB
13 10 (0.73%) Redis
14 9 (0.65%) Apache Iceberg
Development Applications
1 197 (14.32%) Selenium
2 185 (13.44%) Git
3 164 (11.92%) JIRA
4 138 (10.03%) Jenkins
5 79 (5.74%) Cypress.io
6 67 (4.87%) Cucumber
6 67 (4.87%) Postman
7 52 (3.78%) GitLab
8 41 (2.98%) JMeter
9 36 (2.62%) TeamCity
10 35 (2.54%) JUnit
11 29 (2.11%) Oracle Forms
11 29 (2.11%) Snyk
12 28 (2.03%) eCATT
13 27 (1.96%) Robot Framework
14 23 (1.67%) Appium
15 22 (1.60%) Maven
15 22 (1.60%) REST Assured
16 20 (1.45%) NeoLoad
17 18 (1.31%) SpecFlow
General
1 488 (35.47%) Finance
2 413 (30.01%) Social Skills
3 178 (12.94%) Law
4 164 (11.92%) Analytical Skills
5 150 (10.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 143 (10.39%) Marketing
7 120 (8.72%) Banking
8 69 (5.01%) Manufacturing
8 69 (5.01%) Public Sector
9 43 (3.13%) Retail
10 42 (3.05%) Back Office
11 41 (2.98%) Front Office
12 38 (2.76%) Legal
13 35 (2.54%) Financial Institution
14 34 (2.47%) Electronics
15 28 (2.03%) Presentation Skills
16 26 (1.89%) Documentation Skills
17 20 (1.45%) Games
18 19 (1.38%) Automotive
19 18 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 386 (28.05%) Senior
2 334 (24.27%) Developer
3 264 (19.19%) Lead
4 148 (10.76%) Software Engineer
5 142 (10.32%) Senior Developer
6 99 (7.19%) Test Engineer
7 74 (5.38%) Analyst
8 68 (4.94%) Python Developer
9 58 (4.22%) QA Engineer
10 57 (4.14%) Java Engineer
11 55 (4.00%) Java Developer
12 54 (3.92%) Test Leader
13 52 (3.78%) Full-Stack Developer
13 52 (3.78%) Test Automation Engineer
14 45 (3.27%) Software Developer
14 45 (3.27%) Test Analyst
14 45 (3.27%) Tester
15 44 (3.20%) Lead Developer
16 41 (2.98%) Python Engineer
16 41 (2.98%) Senior Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 170 (12.35%) React
2 133 (9.67%) .NET
2 133 (9.67%) RESTful
3 112 (8.14%) REST
4 107 (7.78%) Playwright
5 100 (7.27%) CSS
5 100 (7.27%) HTML
6 91 (6.61%) Kafka
7 82 (5.96%) Spring
8 81 (5.89%) Node.js
9 63 (4.58%) JSON
10 53 (3.85%) Spring Boot
11 52 (3.78%) SOAP
12 50 (3.63%) AngularJS
13 46 (3.34%) XML
14 41 (2.98%) pytest
15 40 (2.91%) GraphQL
15 40 (2.91%) OAuth
15 40 (2.91%) YAML
16 39 (2.83%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 217 (15.77%) Cloud Native
2 81 (5.89%) Product Ownership
3 59 (4.29%) Mobile App
4 58 (4.22%) Management Information System
5 56 (4.07%) Onboarding
6 52 (3.78%) Data Structures
6 52 (3.78%) Self-Motivation
7 44 (3.20%) Algorithms
7 44 (3.20%) Enterprise Software
8 35 (2.54%) Hedge funds
9 33 (2.40%) Security Posture
10 30 (2.18%) Equities
11 29 (2.11%) Distributed Systems
12 27 (1.96%) Public Cloud
13 26 (1.89%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 26 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
14 25 (1.82%) Virtual Team
15 22 (1.60%) Client/Server
15 22 (1.60%) Low-Code
16 19 (1.38%) GNSS
Operating Systems
1 114 (8.28%) Linux
2 62 (4.51%) Windows
3 33 (2.40%) Unix
4 20 (1.45%) Windows Server
5 19 (1.38%) Apple iOS
6 12 (0.87%) Android
7 5 (0.36%) Embedded Linux
7 5 (0.36%) FreeRTOS
7 5 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
8 3 (0.22%) Debian
8 3 (0.22%) VMS
8 3 (0.22%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.15%) CentOS
9 2 (0.15%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.15%) Solaris
10 1 (0.073%) Kali Linux
10 1 (0.073%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 729 (52.98%) Agile
2 707 (51.38%) CI/CD
3 509 (36.99%) DevOps
4 360 (26.16%) Problem-Solving
5 304 (22.09%) Mentoring
6 295 (21.44%) Software Engineering
7 239 (17.37%) Continuous Improvement
8 200 (14.53%) SDLC
9 188 (13.66%) Coaching
10 187 (13.59%) AI
11 173 (12.57%) Microservices
12 156 (11.34%) Computer Science
13 146 (10.61%) Test Strategy
14 145 (10.54%) Infrastructure as Code
14 145 (10.54%) Scrum
15 142 (10.32%) Analytics
16 136 (9.88%) Containerisation
16 136 (9.88%) Software Testing
17 134 (9.74%) Clean Code
18 130 (9.45%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 412 (29.94%) Python
2 340 (24.71%) SQL
3 322 (23.40%) Java
4 220 (15.99%) JavaScript
5 191 (13.88%) C#
6 135 (9.81%) TypeScript
7 81 (5.89%) C++
8 76 (5.52%) PowerShell
9 50 (3.63%) Go
10 46 (3.34%) Shell Script
11 42 (3.05%) C
12 41 (2.98%) PHP
13 36 (2.62%) PL/SQL
14 26 (1.89%) Kotlin
15 23 (1.67%) Bicep
16 21 (1.53%) Bash
17 19 (1.38%) MATLAB
18 13 (0.94%) Apex Code
18 13 (0.94%) Scala
18 13 (0.94%) Swift
Qualifications
1 208 (15.12%) Degree
2 110 (7.99%) Computer Science Degree
3 105 (7.63%) Security Cleared
4 76 (5.52%) ISTQB
5 75 (5.45%) SC Cleared
6 51 (3.71%) Master's Degree
7 33 (2.40%) DV Cleared
8 32 (2.33%) AWS Certification
9 25 (1.82%) DBS Check
9 25 (1.82%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 18 (1.31%) ISEB
11 17 (1.24%) HND
12 10 (0.73%) BPSS Clearance
13 9 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 9 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
14 7 (0.51%) Azure Certification
15 6 (0.44%) HNC
16 5 (0.36%) CEH
16 5 (0.36%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 5 (0.36%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 298 (21.66%) QA
2 72 (5.23%) Accessibility
2 72 (5.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 51 (3.71%) NIST
4 36 (2.62%) Data Quality
5 33 (2.40%) NCSC
6 27 (1.96%) GDPR
7 22 (1.60%) WCAG
8 19 (1.38%) ISO 9001
9 10 (0.73%) SLA
10 5 (0.36%) ISO 22301
10 5 (0.36%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
11 4 (0.29%) MISRA
11 4 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 3 (0.22%) COBIT
12 3 (0.22%) GRC
12 3 (0.22%) Section 508
12 3 (0.22%) SEPA
13 2 (0.15%) IEC 61508
System Software
1 188 (13.66%) Docker
2 40 (2.91%) Active Directory
3 18 (1.31%) Firmware
4 16 (1.16%) VMware Infrastructure
5 15 (1.09%) Embedded Firmware
6 7 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.51%) vSphere
7 5 (0.36%) HDFS
7 5 (0.36%) zsh
8 4 (0.29%) Terminal Server
Systems Management
1 199 (14.46%) Kubernetes
2 185 (13.44%) Terraform
3 57 (4.14%) Grafana
4 55 (4.00%) Ansible
5 28 (2.03%) HP ALM
6 26 (1.89%) Single Sign-On
7 22 (1.60%) Prometheus
8 10 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
9 6 (0.44%) Mesos
10 5 (0.36%) SCCM
10 5 (0.36%) SCOM
11 4 (0.29%) Control-M
12 3 (0.22%) HP Quality Center
12 3 (0.22%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.22%) Nessus
12 3 (0.22%) Progress Chef
13 2 (0.15%) Argo
13 2 (0.15%) Functional Safety
13 2 (0.15%) HP Fortify
14 1 (0.073%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 156 (11.34%) Microsoft
2 82 (5.96%) Oracle
3 62 (4.51%) Salesforce
4 57 (4.14%) Google
5 53 (3.85%) SAP
6 43 (3.13%) Databricks
7 34 (2.47%) VMware
8 28 (2.03%) HP
9 23 (1.67%) Black Duck
10 22 (1.60%) Guidewire
11 18 (1.31%) Coverity
12 16 (1.16%) Apple
13 15 (1.09%) Blue Prism
13 15 (1.09%) Splunk
13 15 (1.09%) UiPath
14 14 (1.02%) Okta
15 11 (0.80%) Atlassian
15 11 (0.80%) BiZZdesign
15 11 (0.80%) Pega
16 10 (0.73%) IBM