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 3 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 93 85 93
Rank change year-on-year -8 +8 -61
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,665 1,429 2,732
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.84% 3.36% 2.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.47% 3.62% 3.33%
Number of salaries quoted 1,038 887 1,773
10th Percentile £42,500 £38,750 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £46,278 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £63,625 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +6.04% +4.35% -11.54%
75th Percentile £83,750 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £105,000 £98,474 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +9.09% +4.76% -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 67,443 39,485 82,053
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 74.64% 92.88% 85.58%
Number of salaries quoted 41,986 22,655 59,675
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,668 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,599 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -2.34% +9.09% -10.57%
75th Percentile £78,750 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,001 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -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 3 May 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 3 May 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 -10 1,415 £64,169 +6.95% 615
UK excluding London -42 900 £60,000 +9.09% 507
Work from Home +11 712 £67,500 +12.50% 295
London +40 614 £80,000 +14.29% 186
North of England -39 217 £62,500 +13.64% 148
South West -23 171 £55,000 -8.33% 60
South East -55 171 £60,000 +14.29% 119
Midlands -41 141 £61,500 +6.96% 76
North West -19 107 £60,750 +10.45% 68
Scotland -15 100 £60,000 - 31
West Midlands -37 71 £62,000 +3.33% 51
East Midlands -31 69 £60,000 +20.00% 25
Yorkshire -58 66 £69,310 +38.01% 41
East of England -9 58 £50,000 -12.28% 66
Wales -5 44 £55,000 +4.58% 16
North East -17 44 £55,000 -6.78% 39
Northern Ireland -35 9 £80,000 +45.45% 5

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 37 (2.22%) Confluence
2 23 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
3 19 (1.14%) Apache Spark
4 12 (0.72%) Apache
4 12 (0.72%) Appian
5 11 (0.66%) CMS
5 11 (0.66%) Jupyter
6 10 (0.60%) IIS
6 10 (0.60%) Palantir Foundry
7 9 (0.54%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 9 (0.54%) SharePoint
8 6 (0.36%) WordPress
9 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.18%) nginx
9 3 (0.18%) Umbraco
10 2 (0.12%) Camunda
10 2 (0.12%) JBoss
10 2 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.12%) SAS
11 1 (0.060%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 12 (0.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.36%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.36%) PlantUML
5 4 (0.24%) Fusion 360
6 3 (0.18%) CANalyzer
6 3 (0.18%) Simulink
7 2 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.060%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.060%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 17 (1.02%) Oracle ERP
2 9 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.30%) Visualfiles
4 4 (0.24%) Dynamics AX
4 4 (0.24%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 4 (0.24%) Shopify
5 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.060%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.060%) Endur
6 1 (0.060%) Findur
6 1 (0.060%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.060%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.060%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.060%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.060%) Oracle SCM
6 1 (0.060%) SAP CX
6 1 (0.060%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 564 (33.87%) Azure
2 515 (30.93%) AWS
3 267 (16.04%) Azure DevOps
4 196 (11.77%) GCP
5 175 (10.51%) GitHub
6 143 (8.59%) Serverless
7 120 (7.21%) SaaS
8 70 (4.20%) GitHub Actions
9 68 (4.08%) Amazon EKS
10 61 (3.66%) PaaS
11 58 (3.48%) AWS Lambda
12 56 (3.36%) AWS CloudFormation
13 55 (3.30%) Azure Data Factory
14 54 (3.24%) Amazon S3
15 49 (2.94%) dbt
16 48 (2.88%) Power Platform
17 45 (2.70%) GitHub Copilot
18 39 (2.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 36 (2.16%) Azure Service Bus
20 35 (2.10%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.92%) Broadband
2 16 (0.96%) CHAP
2 16 (0.96%) Firewall
3 15 (0.90%) DNS
4 12 (0.72%) WAN
5 11 (0.66%) HTTP
5 11 (0.66%) SD-WAN
6 9 (0.54%) TCP/IP
7 8 (0.48%) 5G
8 6 (0.36%) VPN
9 4 (0.24%) SMTP
10 3 (0.18%) Cisco ISE
10 3 (0.18%) DHCP
10 3 (0.18%) Ethernet
10 3 (0.18%) LTE
10 3 (0.18%) VLAN
11 2 (0.12%) Modbus
11 2 (0.12%) Multicast
11 2 (0.12%) Network Security
11 2 (0.12%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (6.91%) NoSQL
2 113 (6.79%) PostgreSQL
3 89 (5.35%) SQL Server
4 77 (4.62%) MongoDB
5 36 (2.16%) MySQL
6 35 (2.10%) Data Warehouse
7 34 (2.04%) DynamoDB
8 32 (1.92%) Relational Database
9 31 (1.86%) Power BI
10 21 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
11 20 (1.20%) Metadata
12 16 (0.96%) Spark SQL
13 14 (0.84%) BigQuery
13 14 (0.84%) Oracle Database
13 14 (0.84%) Pinecone
13 14 (0.84%) Redis
14 12 (0.72%) Data Lake
15 11 (0.66%) DB2
16 10 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
16 10 (0.60%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 192 (11.53%) Git
2 166 (9.97%) Selenium
3 149 (8.95%) Jenkins
4 135 (8.11%) JIRA
5 112 (6.73%) GitLab
6 87 (5.23%) Cypress.io
7 70 (4.20%) Cucumber
8 61 (3.66%) Postman
9 59 (3.54%) TeamCity
10 45 (2.70%) JMeter
11 32 (1.92%) SpecFlow
12 31 (1.86%) REST Assured
13 30 (1.80%) CircleCI
14 27 (1.62%) TestRail
15 25 (1.50%) JUnit
16 24 (1.44%) MLflow
17 21 (1.26%) Bitbucket
18 19 (1.14%) Oracle Forms
18 19 (1.14%) Zephyr
19 18 (1.08%) WebDriver
General
1 462 (27.75%) Social Skills
2 435 (26.13%) Finance
3 179 (10.75%) Banking
4 153 (9.19%) Analytical Skills
5 145 (8.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 120 (7.21%) Law
7 113 (6.79%) Public Sector
8 90 (5.41%) Retail
9 58 (3.48%) Financial Institution
10 51 (3.06%) Manufacturing
11 44 (2.64%) Electronics
12 41 (2.46%) Back Office
13 34 (2.04%) Games
14 33 (1.98%) Front Office
14 33 (1.98%) Legal
15 31 (1.86%) Marketing
16 18 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
17 15 (0.90%) Investment Banking
18 14 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
19 13 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 430 (25.83%) Senior
2 273 (16.40%) Lead
3 227 (13.63%) Developer
4 223 (13.39%) Software Engineer
5 177 (10.63%) Test Engineer
6 100 (6.01%) Senior Developer
7 92 (5.53%) QA Engineer
8 88 (5.29%) Tester
9 86 (5.17%) Java Engineer
10 83 (4.98%) Test Automation Engineer
11 71 (4.26%) Test Leader
12 70 (4.20%) Senior Software Engineer
13 60 (3.60%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 59 (3.54%) Automation Engineer
15 55 (3.30%) Data Engineer
16 52 (3.12%) DevOps Engineer
17 51 (3.06%) Automation Tester
18 49 (2.94%) QA Automation Engineer
19 47 (2.82%) Senior Test Engineer
20 45 (2.70%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 195 (11.71%) React
2 178 (10.69%) .NET
3 155 (9.31%) RESTful
4 150 (9.01%) REST
5 148 (8.89%) Playwright
6 107 (6.43%) Node.js
7 100 (6.01%) Spring
8 79 (4.74%) Kafka
9 76 (4.56%) Spring Boot
10 62 (3.72%) HTML
11 61 (3.66%) CSS
12 52 (3.12%) JSON
12 52 (3.12%) OAuth
13 45 (2.70%) pytest
14 42 (2.52%) AngularJS
14 42 (2.52%) RabbitMQ
15 40 (2.40%) Elastic Stack
15 40 (2.40%) Web Services
16 39 (2.34%) .NET Framework
16 39 (2.34%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 270 (16.22%) Cloud Native
2 150 (9.01%) Product Ownership
3 88 (5.29%) Distributed Systems
4 75 (4.50%) Mobile App
5 62 (3.72%) Management Information System
6 52 (3.12%) Enterprise Software
7 41 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
8 40 (2.40%) Algorithms
9 39 (2.34%) Greenfield Project
9 39 (2.34%) Onboarding
10 37 (2.22%) Low-Code
10 37 (2.22%) Self-Motivation
11 33 (1.98%) Public Cloud
12 29 (1.74%) Data Structures
13 27 (1.62%) Hybrid Cloud
14 23 (1.38%) Blog
14 23 (1.38%) Equities
14 23 (1.38%) Hedge funds
15 20 (1.20%) Embedded Systems
16 19 (1.14%) Blockchain
Operating Systems
1 166 (9.97%) Linux
2 86 (5.17%) Windows
3 66 (3.96%) Apple iOS
4 57 (3.42%) Android
5 48 (2.88%) Unix
6 11 (0.66%) CentOS
7 10 (0.60%) Windows Server
8 5 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.24%) Kali Linux
9 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.18%) FreeRTOS
10 3 (0.18%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.12%) AIX
11 2 (0.12%) Debian
11 2 (0.12%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.060%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.060%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.060%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 872 (52.37%) CI/CD
2 673 (40.42%) Agile
3 587 (35.26%) DevOps
4 420 (25.23%) Software Engineering
5 405 (24.32%) Continuous Improvement
6 377 (22.64%) Mentoring
7 351 (21.08%) Problem-Solving
8 285 (17.12%) Microservices
9 278 (16.70%) Infrastructure as Code
10 274 (16.46%) AI
11 250 (15.02%) Software Testing
12 239 (14.35%) Observability
13 236 (14.17%) Coaching
14 208 (12.49%) Containerisation
15 201 (12.07%) Test Strategy
16 200 (12.01%) Clean Code
17 198 (11.89%) Full-Stack Development
18 177 (10.63%) Validation
19 162 (9.73%) Deployment Automation
20 159 (9.55%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 520 (31.23%) Python
2 426 (25.59%) Java
3 313 (18.80%) SQL
4 229 (13.75%) JavaScript
5 209 (12.55%) TypeScript
6 205 (12.31%) C#
7 79 (4.74%) C++
8 78 (4.68%) PowerShell
9 66 (3.96%) Bash
10 57 (3.42%) Go
11 46 (2.76%) C
12 33 (1.98%) Bicep
13 27 (1.62%) Kotlin
14 26 (1.56%) Rust
14 26 (1.56%) Shell Script
15 24 (1.44%) PL/SQL
16 23 (1.38%) Apex Code
17 20 (1.20%) PHP
18 18 (1.08%) Swift
19 17 (1.02%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 218 (13.09%) Degree
2 160 (9.61%) Security Cleared
3 102 (6.13%) SC Cleared
4 89 (5.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 78 (4.68%) ISTQB
6 29 (1.74%) DV Cleared
7 28 (1.68%) Master's Degree
8 23 (1.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 22 (1.32%) CISSP
10 21 (1.26%) AWS Certification
11 18 (1.08%) DBS Check
12 16 (0.96%) CGEIT
12 16 (0.96%) CISA
12 16 (0.96%) CISM
12 16 (0.96%) FFIEC
12 16 (0.96%) SANS
13 15 (0.90%) Azure Certification
14 13 (0.78%) PhD
15 12 (0.72%) CEH
15 12 (0.72%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 389 (23.36%) QA
2 120 (7.21%) Accessibility
3 76 (4.56%) Data Quality
4 51 (3.06%) GDPR
5 39 (2.34%) NIST
6 27 (1.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 19 (1.14%) WCAG
8 17 (1.02%) COBIT
9 14 (0.84%) SLA
10 12 (0.72%) ISO 22301
11 10 (0.60%) Software Quality Assurance
12 8 (0.48%) GRC
12 8 (0.48%) ISO 9001
13 7 (0.42%) IEC 61508
14 6 (0.36%) PMO
14 6 (0.36%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.30%) ISO 26262
15 5 (0.30%) NCSC
16 4 (0.24%) ISO 13485
16 4 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 237 (14.23%) Docker
2 28 (1.68%) Active Directory
3 23 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (1.08%) Firmware
5 16 (0.96%) Hyper-V
6 15 (0.90%) Virtual Machines
7 13 (0.78%) KVM
8 8 (0.48%) Embedded Firmware
9 3 (0.18%) Terminal Server
10 2 (0.12%) vSphere
11 1 (0.060%) IAG
11 1 (0.060%) Xen
Systems Management
1 288 (17.30%) Terraform
2 287 (17.24%) Kubernetes
3 125 (7.51%) Grafana
4 68 (4.08%) Ansible
5 51 (3.06%) Prometheus
6 27 (1.62%) Single Sign-On
7 25 (1.50%) Argo
8 10 (0.60%) logstash
9 8 (0.48%) Kibana
10 7 (0.42%) SCCM
10 7 (0.42%) SCOM
11 5 (0.30%) HP Fortify
11 5 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (0.24%) Packer
12 4 (0.24%) Rancher
12 4 (0.24%) vCenter Server
13 3 (0.18%) Functional Safety
13 3 (0.18%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.18%) Puppet
13 3 (0.18%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 131 (7.87%) Microsoft
2 77 (4.62%) Oracle
3 59 (3.54%) Databricks
4 51 (3.06%) Salesforce
5 45 (2.70%) VMware
6 36 (2.16%) Google
7 24 (1.44%) OpenAI
8 17 (1.02%) Commvault
8 17 (1.02%) ServiceNow
8 17 (1.02%) Splunk
9 16 (0.96%) SAP
10 14 (0.84%) Atlassian
10 14 (0.84%) Palantir
11 12 (0.72%) Amplitude
11 12 (0.72%) Automation Anywhere
11 12 (0.72%) Braze
11 12 (0.72%) UiPath
12 11 (0.66%) CrowdStrike
12 11 (0.66%) IBM
12 11 (0.66%) IFS