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 4 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 91 84 100
Rank change year-on-year -7 +16 -56
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,883 1,669 2,636
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.95% 3.50% 2.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.64% 3.85% 3.06%
Number of salaries quoted 1,143 819 1,697
10th Percentile £42,193 £39,000 £36,250
25th Percentile £48,750 £47,500 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £64,000 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +2.40% +8.70% -11.54%
75th Percentile £81,250 £82,500 £72,433
90th Percentile £96,000 £99,600 £87,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +4.35% +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 71,201 43,352 86,215
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.63% 91.03% 82.05%
Number of salaries quoted 49,187 23,974 60,816
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,822 £29,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.09%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £53,738 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +7.48% - -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 4 July 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 4 July 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 1,637 £65,000 - 756
UK excluding London -17 1,079 £60,000 +4.35% 557
Work from Home +9 771 £67,500 +12.50% 385
London +9 628 £80,000 +6.67% 309
North of England +2 314 £60,000 +0.17% 136
South East -22 216 £60,000 +9.09% 169
South West -28 187 £55,000 -8.33% 72
Midlands -21 171 £62,500 +6.38% 79
North West -15 166 £65,000 - 70
West Midlands -29 90 £62,500 -3.85% 39
East Midlands -19 80 £62,500 +31.58% 40
North East +5 79 £52,500 -2.61% 24
Yorkshire -18 69 £69,310 +39.32% 42
East of England -26 64 £52,500 -10.26% 57
Wales -4 60 £55,000 - 8
Scotland -44 46 £60,000 -2.04% 26
Northern Ireland -26 34 £80,000 +45.45% 21

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 32 (1.70%) Confluence
2 27 (1.43%) Apache Spark
3 25 (1.33%) Apache Airflow
4 22 (1.17%) Apache
5 18 (0.96%) Jupyter
6 15 (0.80%) SharePoint
7 11 (0.58%) CMS
8 9 (0.48%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 8 (0.42%) Anypoint
9 8 (0.42%) IIS
9 8 (0.42%) Mule
10 7 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
11 5 (0.27%) Umbraco
12 4 (0.21%) Appian
12 4 (0.21%) SAS
13 3 (0.16%) nginx
13 3 (0.16%) WordPress
14 2 (0.11%) Cloud Foundry
14 2 (0.11%) NServiceBus
14 2 (0.11%) WebLogic
Applications
1 18 (0.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.64%) Simulink
3 10 (0.53%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (0.32%) PlantUML
5 5 (0.27%) Lightworks
5 5 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 3 (0.16%) CANalyzer
7 2 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.053%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 11 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.27%) Visualfiles
3 4 (0.21%) Dynamics AX
4 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.11%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.11%) Towers Watson Igloo
5 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.053%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.053%) Endur
6 1 (0.053%) Findur
6 1 (0.053%) Magento
6 1 (0.053%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.053%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle SCM
6 1 (0.053%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 705 (37.44%) AWS
2 589 (31.28%) Azure
3 237 (12.59%) Azure DevOps
4 231 (12.27%) GCP
5 184 (9.77%) Serverless
6 159 (8.44%) SaaS
7 157 (8.34%) GitHub
8 83 (4.41%) GitHub Actions
9 81 (4.30%) AWS Lambda
10 79 (4.20%) AWS CloudFormation
11 76 (4.04%) Amazon EKS
12 75 (3.98%) Amazon S3
13 52 (2.76%) PaaS
14 50 (2.66%) Azure Service Bus
15 47 (2.50%) Power Platform
16 43 (2.28%) Azure Monitor
17 40 (2.12%) Amazon EC2
17 40 (2.12%) Azure Logic Apps
18 39 (2.07%) dbt
19 34 (1.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 71 (3.77%) Broadband
2 24 (1.27%) Firewall
3 13 (0.69%) DMARC
4 10 (0.53%) CHAP
4 10 (0.53%) DNS
4 10 (0.53%) MQTT
5 9 (0.48%) WAN
5 9 (0.48%) Wireless
6 8 (0.42%) SSL
7 7 (0.37%) 5G
7 7 (0.37%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.32%) Bluetooth
8 6 (0.32%) HTTP
8 6 (0.32%) LTE
8 6 (0.32%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (0.27%) DHCP
9 5 (0.27%) Ethernet
9 5 (0.27%) SMS
9 5 (0.27%) TCP/IP
9 5 (0.27%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 137 (7.28%) NoSQL
2 126 (6.69%) PostgreSQL
3 100 (5.31%) MongoDB
4 66 (3.51%) SQL Server
5 46 (2.44%) DynamoDB
6 34 (1.81%) Relational Database
7 32 (1.70%) MySQL
8 27 (1.43%) Data Warehouse
9 24 (1.27%) Power BI
10 22 (1.17%) Redis
11 19 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
11 19 (1.01%) BigQuery
12 18 (0.96%) Spark SQL
13 16 (0.85%) Metadata
13 16 (0.85%) Semantic Layer
14 14 (0.74%) Oracle Database
15 13 (0.69%) Amazon Athena
15 13 (0.69%) Elasticsearch
16 10 (0.53%) Data Lake
17 8 (0.42%) Flink
Development Applications
1 235 (12.48%) Git
2 165 (8.76%) Jenkins
3 157 (8.34%) GitLab
4 136 (7.22%) Selenium
5 107 (5.68%) JIRA
6 85 (4.51%) Cypress.io
7 84 (4.46%) Cucumber
8 67 (3.56%) Postman
9 61 (3.24%) TeamCity
10 49 (2.60%) JMeter
11 39 (2.07%) REST Assured
12 30 (1.59%) JUnit
13 29 (1.54%) SpecFlow
14 27 (1.43%) Zephyr
15 24 (1.27%) TestRail
16 22 (1.17%) CircleCI
16 22 (1.17%) Gatling
17 21 (1.12%) fastlane
17 21 (1.12%) LabVIEW
18 20 (1.06%) Crashlytics
General
1 454 (24.11%) Social Skills
2 427 (22.68%) Finance
3 195 (10.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 190 (10.09%) Public Sector
5 188 (9.98%) Banking
6 163 (8.66%) Analytical Skills
7 143 (7.59%) Law
8 97 (5.15%) Retail
9 64 (3.40%) Manufacturing
10 61 (3.24%) Financial Institution
11 54 (2.87%) Games
12 50 (2.66%) Back Office
12 50 (2.66%) Electronics
13 46 (2.44%) Legal
14 31 (1.65%) Front Office
14 31 (1.65%) Marketing
15 21 (1.12%) Documentation Skills
16 20 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
17 19 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
18 18 (0.96%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 514 (27.30%) Senior
2 303 (16.09%) Lead
3 295 (15.67%) Software Engineer
4 276 (14.66%) Developer
5 214 (11.36%) Test Engineer
6 116 (6.16%) Senior Developer
7 113 (6.00%) Java Engineer
8 88 (4.67%) Senior Software Engineer
9 87 (4.62%) Test Automation Engineer
10 81 (4.30%) QA Engineer
11 74 (3.93%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 72 (3.82%) Test Leader
13 70 (3.72%) DevOps Engineer
14 67 (3.56%) Architect
14 67 (3.56%) Tester
15 61 (3.24%) Data Engineer
16 56 (2.97%) Software Developer
17 54 (2.87%) Senior Test Engineer
18 47 (2.50%) Python Developer
19 46 (2.44%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 199 (10.57%) React
2 197 (10.46%) .NET
3 168 (8.92%) RESTful
4 164 (8.71%) REST
5 159 (8.44%) Node.js
5 159 (8.44%) Playwright
5 159 (8.44%) Spring
6 117 (6.21%) Spring Boot
7 103 (5.47%) Kafka
8 86 (4.57%) AngularJS
9 70 (3.72%) CSS
9 70 (3.72%) HTML
10 56 (2.97%) OAuth
11 48 (2.55%) OAuth2
12 44 (2.34%) RabbitMQ
13 40 (2.12%) Vue
13 40 (2.12%) YAML
14 38 (2.02%) ASP.NET
14 38 (2.02%) JSON
15 36 (1.91%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 361 (19.17%) Cloud Native
2 209 (11.10%) Product Ownership
3 156 (8.28%) Distributed Systems
4 95 (5.05%) Mobile App
5 59 (3.13%) Enterprise Software
5 59 (3.13%) Public Cloud
6 54 (2.87%) Management Information System
7 53 (2.81%) Algorithms
7 53 (2.81%) Low-Code
8 49 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
9 45 (2.39%) Onboarding
10 41 (2.18%) Data Structures
11 37 (1.96%) Greenfield Project
12 34 (1.81%) Video\Live Streaming
13 32 (1.70%) Embedded Systems
14 31 (1.65%) Self-Motivation
15 29 (1.54%) Virtual Team
16 28 (1.49%) Blog
17 26 (1.38%) Cyber Threat
18 24 (1.27%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 175 (9.29%) Linux
2 86 (4.57%) Windows
3 62 (3.29%) Apple iOS
4 58 (3.08%) Unix
5 49 (2.60%) Android
6 9 (0.48%) CentOS
6 9 (0.48%) Windows Server
7 6 (0.32%) FreeRTOS
8 4 (0.21%) Kali Linux
9 3 (0.16%) AIX
10 2 (0.11%) Debian
10 2 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
10 2 (0.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.053%) ThreadX
11 1 (0.053%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.053%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.053%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,083 (57.51%) CI/CD
2 824 (43.76%) Agile
3 683 (36.27%) DevOps
4 571 (30.32%) Software Engineering
5 509 (27.03%) Mentoring
6 489 (25.97%) Continuous Improvement
7 390 (20.71%) Problem-Solving
8 374 (19.86%) Microservices
9 355 (18.85%) Infrastructure as Code
10 320 (16.99%) AI
11 295 (15.67%) Software Testing
12 260 (13.81%) Containerisation
13 252 (13.38%) Observability
14 245 (13.01%) Full-Stack Development
15 244 (12.96%) Test Strategy
16 243 (12.90%) Coaching
17 220 (11.68%) Validation
18 194 (10.30%) Clean Code
18 194 (10.30%) Code Quality
19 190 (10.09%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 604 (32.08%) Python
2 528 (28.04%) Java
3 307 (16.30%) SQL
4 304 (16.14%) JavaScript
5 245 (13.01%) C#
6 243 (12.90%) TypeScript
7 107 (5.68%) C++
8 87 (4.62%) Go
9 77 (4.09%) Bash
10 70 (3.72%) C
11 69 (3.66%) PowerShell
12 36 (1.91%) Rust
13 32 (1.70%) Kotlin
14 28 (1.49%) Swift
15 24 (1.27%) MATLAB
16 23 (1.22%) PHP
17 22 (1.17%) Bicep
18 21 (1.12%) Ruby
19 17 (0.90%) Groovy
20 16 (0.85%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 244 (12.96%) Security Cleared
2 232 (12.32%) Degree
3 145 (7.70%) SC Cleared
4 97 (5.15%) Computer Science Degree
5 77 (4.09%) ISTQB
6 47 (2.50%) DV Cleared
7 36 (1.91%) Master's Degree
8 34 (1.81%) AWS Certification
9 33 (1.75%) CISSP
10 27 (1.43%) ITIL Certification
11 25 (1.33%) CISM
12 24 (1.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 22 (1.17%) DBS Check
14 16 (0.85%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 13 (0.69%) ISEB
16 12 (0.64%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
16 12 (0.64%) HND
17 11 (0.58%) BPSS Clearance
18 10 (0.53%) FFIEC
18 10 (0.53%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 416 (22.09%) QA
2 171 (9.08%) Accessibility
3 80 (4.25%) Data Quality
4 46 (2.44%) GDPR
5 41 (2.18%) WCAG
6 34 (1.81%) NIST
7 21 (1.12%) ISO 22301
8 15 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 14 (0.74%) SLA
10 11 (0.58%) COBIT
10 11 (0.58%) GRC
10 11 (0.58%) Software Quality Assurance
11 7 (0.37%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.32%) MISRA
12 6 (0.32%) PMO
13 5 (0.27%) ISO 9001
13 5 (0.27%) JTAG
14 4 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
14 4 (0.21%) ECSS
15 3 (0.16%) MISRA C
System Software
1 261 (13.86%) Docker
2 26 (1.38%) Firmware
2 26 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (0.96%) Hyper-V
4 16 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.74%) KVM
6 12 (0.64%) Active Directory
7 10 (0.53%) Embedded Firmware
8 2 (0.11%) Terminal Server
8 2 (0.11%) vSphere
9 1 (0.053%) IAG
9 1 (0.053%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.053%) Xen
Systems Management
1 314 (16.68%) Terraform
2 305 (16.20%) Kubernetes
3 141 (7.49%) Grafana
4 80 (4.25%) Ansible
5 62 (3.29%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.38%) Argo
7 15 (0.80%) Kibana
8 9 (0.48%) logstash
8 9 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (0.42%) CloudHub
10 7 (0.37%) HP Fortify
10 7 (0.37%) Puppet
11 6 (0.32%) Functional Safety
11 6 (0.32%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.27%) Packer
12 5 (0.27%) SCCM
12 5 (0.27%) SCOM
13 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
14 3 (0.16%) Rancher
14 3 (0.16%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 140 (7.43%) Microsoft
2 53 (2.81%) Databricks
3 45 (2.39%) Oracle
4 44 (2.34%) Salesforce
5 41 (2.18%) Google
6 40 (2.12%) VMware
7 35 (1.86%) ServiceNow
8 24 (1.27%) Dynatrace
9 23 (1.22%) Splunk
10 19 (1.01%) OpenAI
11 17 (0.90%) Pega
12 16 (0.85%) Braze
12 16 (0.85%) SAP
13 14 (0.74%) Amplitude
14 13 (0.69%) AppDynamics
14 13 (0.69%) IFS
14 13 (0.69%) SendGrid
15 12 (0.64%) CrowdStrike
15 12 (0.64%) MuleSoft
16 11 (0.58%) Atlassian