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

6 months to
2 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 82 98
Rank change year-on-year -10 +16 -65
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,808 1,578 2,699
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.94% 3.61% 2.64%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.63% 3.87% 3.17%
Number of salaries quoted 1,131 806 1,736
10th Percentile £42,125 £40,000 £36,250
25th Percentile £48,750 £48,063 £43,938
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year - +8.70% -11.54%
75th Percentile £82,500 £82,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £99,750 £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 68,751 40,768 85,185
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.84% 93.20% 83.29%
Number of salaries quoted 44,945 21,478 61,112
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,625 £29,250
25th Percentile £41,000 £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 £78,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,967 £50,000
% change year-on-year +3.01% +1.93% -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 2 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 2 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 -3 1,584 £62,500 - 857
UK excluding London -35 986 £60,000 +4.35% 639
Work from Home +11 738 £65,000 +8.33% 776
London +28 656 £80,000 +10.34% 363
North of England -29 271 £60,000 +0.39% 157
South East -24 204 £60,000 +9.09% 158
South West -22 176 £55,000 -8.33% 87
Midlands -23 166 £60,000 +4.35% 74
North West -22 141 £60,000 -7.69% 95
West Midlands -40 84 £61,000 -6.15% 52
East Midlands -19 81 £55,000 +15.79% 22
Yorkshire -37 67 £75,000 +49.34% 40
East of England -11 64 £50,000 -12.28% 81
North East -6 63 £52,500 -11.02% 23
Scotland -34 57 £60,000 - 40
Wales +1 50 £56,250 -2.17% 21
Northern Ireland -38 11 £80,000 +45.45% 35

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 38 (2.10%) Confluence
2 27 (1.49%) Apache Airflow
3 20 (1.11%) Apache Spark
4 19 (1.05%) Jupyter
5 18 (1.00%) Apache
6 15 (0.83%) SharePoint
7 11 (0.61%) CMS
8 10 (0.55%) IIS
8 10 (0.55%) Palantir Foundry
9 8 (0.44%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 8 (0.44%) Appian
10 5 (0.28%) Anypoint
10 5 (0.28%) Umbraco
11 4 (0.22%) Mule
11 4 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.22%) SAS
12 3 (0.17%) nginx
12 3 (0.17%) WordPress
13 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
13 2 (0.11%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 15 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.33%) PlantUML
3 6 (0.33%) Simulink
4 5 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.17%) CANalyzer
5 3 (0.17%) Fusion 360
6 2 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.11%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.055%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.055%) Lightworks
7 1 (0.055%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 11 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
3 5 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.28%) Visualfiles
4 4 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
4 4 (0.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.11%) Shopify
6 2 (0.11%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.055%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.055%) Endur
7 1 (0.055%) Findur
7 1 (0.055%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.055%) Magento
7 1 (0.055%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.055%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.055%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.055%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.055%) Oracle SCM
Cloud Services
1 602 (33.30%) AWS
2 560 (30.97%) Azure
3 252 (13.94%) Azure DevOps
4 214 (11.84%) GCP
5 164 (9.07%) Serverless
6 155 (8.57%) GitHub
7 129 (7.13%) SaaS
8 75 (4.15%) Amazon EKS
9 74 (4.09%) GitHub Actions
10 72 (3.98%) AWS Lambda
11 70 (3.87%) Amazon S3
12 63 (3.48%) AWS CloudFormation
13 57 (3.15%) PaaS
14 48 (2.65%) Power Platform
15 45 (2.49%) Azure Service Bus
16 42 (2.32%) dbt
17 41 (2.27%) Azure Data Factory
17 41 (2.27%) Azure Monitor
18 38 (2.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 38 (2.10%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 51 (2.82%) Broadband
2 26 (1.44%) Firewall
3 13 (0.72%) CHAP
3 13 (0.72%) DNS
4 12 (0.66%) WAN
5 11 (0.61%) SD-WAN
6 10 (0.55%) 5G
6 10 (0.55%) HTTP
7 7 (0.39%) DMARC
8 6 (0.33%) Bluetooth
8 6 (0.33%) Wireless
9 5 (0.28%) MQTT
9 5 (0.28%) SMS
9 5 (0.28%) TCP/IP
9 5 (0.28%) VPN
9 5 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (0.28%) ZigBee
10 4 (0.22%) DHCP
10 4 (0.22%) LTE
10 4 (0.22%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (7.08%) NoSQL
2 110 (6.08%) PostgreSQL
3 88 (4.87%) MongoDB
4 73 (4.04%) SQL Server
5 38 (2.10%) DynamoDB
6 29 (1.60%) MySQL
6 29 (1.60%) Relational Database
7 28 (1.55%) Data Warehouse
8 26 (1.44%) Power BI
9 20 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
10 18 (1.00%) BigQuery
10 18 (1.00%) Metadata
10 18 (1.00%) Spark SQL
11 17 (0.94%) Redis
12 14 (0.77%) Oracle Database
13 11 (0.61%) Data Lake
13 11 (0.61%) Semantic Layer
14 10 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
14 10 (0.55%) Pinecone
15 9 (0.50%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 212 (11.73%) Git
2 155 (8.57%) Jenkins
3 146 (8.08%) Selenium
4 140 (7.74%) GitLab
5 117 (6.47%) JIRA
6 82 (4.54%) Cypress.io
7 72 (3.98%) Cucumber
8 63 (3.48%) Postman
9 62 (3.43%) TeamCity
10 42 (2.32%) JMeter
11 35 (1.94%) REST Assured
12 30 (1.66%) JUnit
13 29 (1.60%) SpecFlow
14 26 (1.44%) CircleCI
15 23 (1.27%) LabVIEW
15 23 (1.27%) TestRail
16 21 (1.16%) Zephyr
17 18 (1.00%) Crashlytics
17 18 (1.00%) Gatling
17 18 (1.00%) MLflow
General
1 459 (25.39%) Social Skills
2 423 (23.40%) Finance
3 187 (10.34%) Banking
4 183 (10.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 154 (8.52%) Public Sector
6 150 (8.30%) Analytical Skills
7 119 (6.58%) Law
8 97 (5.37%) Retail
9 63 (3.48%) Financial Institution
10 58 (3.21%) Electronics
10 58 (3.21%) Manufacturing
11 49 (2.71%) Back Office
12 43 (2.38%) Games
13 33 (1.83%) Front Office
13 33 (1.83%) Legal
14 30 (1.66%) Marketing
15 19 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
15 19 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
15 19 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
16 17 (0.94%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 481 (26.60%) Senior
2 301 (16.65%) Lead
3 263 (14.55%) Software Engineer
4 256 (14.16%) Developer
5 211 (11.67%) Test Engineer
6 117 (6.47%) Senior Developer
7 104 (5.75%) Java Engineer
8 89 (4.92%) QA Engineer
9 87 (4.81%) Test Automation Engineer
10 81 (4.48%) Tester
11 77 (4.26%) Senior Software Engineer
12 75 (4.15%) Test Leader
13 63 (3.48%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 60 (3.32%) Data Engineer
15 58 (3.21%) Architect
16 56 (3.10%) Senior Test Engineer
17 55 (3.04%) DevOps Engineer
18 50 (2.77%) Analyst
19 48 (2.65%) Python Developer
20 47 (2.60%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 194 (10.73%) .NET
2 189 (10.45%) React
3 157 (8.68%) REST
4 155 (8.57%) Playwright
5 152 (8.41%) RESTful
6 131 (7.25%) Spring
7 129 (7.13%) Node.js
8 95 (5.25%) Kafka
9 93 (5.14%) Spring Boot
10 65 (3.60%) AngularJS
11 64 (3.54%) HTML
12 63 (3.48%) CSS
13 55 (3.04%) OAuth
14 46 (2.54%) OAuth2
15 45 (2.49%) RabbitMQ
16 43 (2.38%) JSON
17 38 (2.10%) .NET Framework
18 36 (1.99%) pytest
18 36 (1.99%) YAML
19 35 (1.94%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 314 (17.37%) Cloud Native
2 189 (10.45%) Product Ownership
3 122 (6.75%) Distributed Systems
4 93 (5.14%) Mobile App
5 59 (3.26%) Management Information System
6 50 (2.77%) Algorithms
6 50 (2.77%) Public Cloud
7 49 (2.71%) Enterprise Software
8 47 (2.60%) Onboarding
9 44 (2.43%) Low-Code
10 39 (2.16%) Data Structures
11 38 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
12 35 (1.94%) Greenfield Project
13 33 (1.83%) Self-Motivation
14 26 (1.44%) Embedded Systems
15 25 (1.38%) Blog
15 25 (1.38%) Video\Live Streaming
16 24 (1.33%) Hedge funds
17 23 (1.27%) Hybrid Cloud
18 22 (1.22%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 159 (8.79%) Linux
2 79 (4.37%) Windows
3 70 (3.87%) Apple iOS
4 60 (3.32%) Android
5 51 (2.82%) Unix
6 9 (0.50%) CentOS
6 9 (0.50%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.22%) Kali Linux
7 4 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.17%) FreeRTOS
8 3 (0.17%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (0.11%) AIX
9 2 (0.11%) Debian
10 1 (0.055%) ThreadX
10 1 (0.055%) VxWorks
10 1 (0.055%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.055%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 983 (54.37%) CI/CD
2 748 (41.37%) Agile
3 622 (34.40%) DevOps
4 486 (26.88%) Software Engineering
5 446 (24.67%) Continuous Improvement
6 443 (24.50%) Mentoring
7 363 (20.08%) Problem-Solving
8 325 (17.98%) Microservices
9 320 (17.70%) Infrastructure as Code
10 291 (16.10%) AI
11 278 (15.38%) Software Testing
12 245 (13.55%) Observability
13 234 (12.94%) Coaching
13 234 (12.94%) Containerisation
14 220 (12.17%) Full-Stack Development
15 219 (12.11%) Test Strategy
16 199 (11.01%) Validation
17 198 (10.95%) Clean Code
18 175 (9.68%) Technical Leadership
19 170 (9.40%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 559 (30.92%) Python
2 490 (27.10%) Java
3 308 (17.04%) SQL
4 266 (14.71%) JavaScript
5 233 (12.89%) C#
6 223 (12.33%) TypeScript
7 97 (5.37%) C++
8 81 (4.48%) Bash
9 73 (4.04%) Go
10 69 (3.82%) PowerShell
11 57 (3.15%) C
12 31 (1.71%) Bicep
12 31 (1.71%) Kotlin
12 31 (1.71%) Rust
13 23 (1.27%) Swift
14 22 (1.22%) PHP
15 21 (1.16%) MATLAB
16 16 (0.88%) Groovy
16 16 (0.88%) PL/SQL
17 15 (0.83%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 234 (12.94%) Degree
2 207 (11.45%) Security Cleared
3 125 (6.91%) SC Cleared
4 92 (5.09%) Computer Science Degree
5 77 (4.26%) ISTQB
6 44 (2.43%) DV Cleared
7 30 (1.66%) Master's Degree
8 27 (1.49%) AWS Certification
9 21 (1.16%) CISSP
10 19 (1.05%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 18 (1.00%) DBS Check
11 18 (1.00%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 15 (0.83%) HND
13 13 (0.72%) CGEIT
13 13 (0.72%) CISA
13 13 (0.72%) CISM
13 13 (0.72%) FFIEC
13 13 (0.72%) PhD
13 13 (0.72%) SANS
14 11 (0.61%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 412 (22.79%) QA
2 155 (8.57%) Accessibility
3 81 (4.48%) Data Quality
4 50 (2.77%) GDPR
5 28 (1.55%) WCAG
6 25 (1.38%) NIST
7 18 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.83%) SLA
9 14 (0.77%) COBIT
10 12 (0.66%) Software Quality Assurance
11 11 (0.61%) GRC
12 9 (0.50%) ISO 22301
13 8 (0.44%) ISO 9001
14 7 (0.39%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.33%) PMO
16 5 (0.28%) JTAG
16 5 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 4 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
18 3 (0.17%) ISO 13485
18 3 (0.17%) PERC
System Software
1 250 (13.83%) Docker
2 25 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (1.11%) Firmware
4 18 (1.00%) Active Directory
4 18 (1.00%) Hyper-V
5 15 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.77%) KVM
7 8 (0.44%) Embedded Firmware
8 3 (0.17%) 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
1 307 (16.98%) Terraform
2 288 (15.93%) Kubernetes
3 138 (7.63%) Grafana
4 76 (4.20%) Ansible
5 66 (3.65%) Prometheus
6 25 (1.38%) Argo
7 17 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (0.72%) Kibana
9 8 (0.44%) logstash
10 6 (0.33%) SCCM
10 6 (0.33%) SCOM
11 5 (0.28%) HP Fortify
12 4 (0.22%) CloudHub
12 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (0.22%) Packer
12 4 (0.22%) vCenter Server
13 3 (0.17%) Functional Safety
13 3 (0.17%) Puppet
13 3 (0.17%) Rancher
13 3 (0.17%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 140 (7.74%) Microsoft
2 57 (3.15%) Oracle
3 54 (2.99%) Databricks
4 49 (2.71%) Salesforce
5 41 (2.27%) VMware
6 35 (1.94%) Google
7 24 (1.33%) ServiceNow
8 23 (1.27%) Splunk
9 21 (1.16%) OpenAI
10 20 (1.11%) SAP
11 18 (1.00%) Dynatrace
12 15 (0.83%) Braze
13 14 (0.77%) CrowdStrike
14 13 (0.72%) Amplitude
14 13 (0.72%) MuleSoft
15 12 (0.66%) AppDynamics
15 12 (0.66%) Commvault
15 12 (0.66%) Foundry
15 12 (0.66%) IFS
16 11 (0.61%) Atlassian