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

6 months to
21 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 77 103
Rank change year-on-year -11 +26 -69
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,842 1,641 2,714
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.95% 3.65% 2.48%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.67% 3.95% 3.04%
Number of salaries quoted 1,148 795 1,715
10th Percentile £41,775 £39,000 £36,250
25th Percentile £48,289 £47,500 £44,000
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 £71,991
90th Percentile £96,250 £99,200 £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 68,936 41,540 89,299
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.11% 92.39% 81.68%
Number of salaries quoted 47,487 22,330 63,275
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,822 £29,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,824 £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 £92,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +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 21 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 21 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 1,624 £62,500 -0.40% 438
UK excluding London -29 1,027 £60,000 +4.35% 412
Work from Home +7 736 £66,250 +10.42% 221
London +16 646 £80,000 +6.67% 139
North of England -6 294 £62,500 +4.52% 96
South East -22 215 £60,000 +9.09% 130
South West -25 184 £55,000 -8.33% 40
Midlands -18 166 £61,000 +6.09% 48
North West -5 157 £65,000 - 47
West Midlands -35 84 £61,750 -6.79% 27
East Midlands -25 81 £55,000 +17.65% 21
North East -5 69 £52,500 -4.55% 23
East of England -14 69 £53,750 -5.70% 47
Yorkshire -31 68 £69,310 +37.40% 27
Wales -8 57 £55,000 - 7
Scotland -51 44 £60,000 - 18
Northern Ireland -29 11 £80,000 +45.45% 40

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 (1.85%) Confluence
2 25 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
3 23 (1.25%) Apache Spark
4 21 (1.14%) Apache
5 20 (1.09%) Jupyter
6 15 (0.81%) SharePoint
7 10 (0.54%) CMS
8 9 (0.49%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 9 (0.49%) Palantir Foundry
9 8 (0.43%) IIS
10 6 (0.33%) Appian
11 5 (0.27%) Anypoint
11 5 (0.27%) Mule
11 5 (0.27%) Umbraco
12 4 (0.22%) SAS
13 3 (0.16%) nginx
13 3 (0.16%) WordPress
14 2 (0.11%) Cloud Foundry
14 2 (0.11%) JBoss
14 2 (0.11%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 17 (0.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.54%) Simulink
4 6 (0.33%) PlantUML
5 5 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 3 (0.16%) CANalyzer
6 3 (0.16%) Lightworks
7 2 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.054%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 12 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.27%) Visualfiles
3 4 (0.22%) 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 (0.054%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.054%) Endur
6 1 (0.054%) Findur
6 1 (0.054%) Magento
6 1 (0.054%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.054%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle SCM
6 1 (0.054%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 647 (35.12%) AWS
2 558 (30.29%) Azure
3 236 (12.81%) Azure DevOps
4 223 (12.11%) GCP
5 176 (9.55%) Serverless
6 147 (7.98%) GitHub
7 132 (7.17%) SaaS
8 79 (4.29%) AWS Lambda
9 76 (4.13%) GitHub Actions
10 73 (3.96%) Amazon EKS
10 73 (3.96%) Amazon S3
11 70 (3.80%) AWS CloudFormation
12 55 (2.99%) PaaS
13 48 (2.61%) Azure Service Bus
14 47 (2.55%) Power Platform
15 41 (2.23%) Azure Monitor
16 40 (2.17%) dbt
17 39 (2.12%) Amazon EC2
18 38 (2.06%) Azure Logic Apps
19 37 (2.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 69 (3.75%) Broadband
2 24 (1.30%) Firewall
3 12 (0.65%) DMARC
4 11 (0.60%) CHAP
4 11 (0.60%) DNS
5 10 (0.54%) WAN
6 9 (0.49%) 5G
6 9 (0.49%) SD-WAN
7 8 (0.43%) Wireless
8 7 (0.38%) MQTT
9 6 (0.33%) Bluetooth
10 5 (0.27%) HTTP
10 5 (0.27%) SMS
10 5 (0.27%) SSL
10 5 (0.27%) Wi-Fi
10 5 (0.27%) ZigBee
11 4 (0.22%) DHCP
11 4 (0.22%) Ethernet
11 4 (0.22%) LTE
11 4 (0.22%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 136 (7.38%) NoSQL
2 116 (6.30%) PostgreSQL
3 96 (5.21%) MongoDB
4 65 (3.53%) SQL Server
5 44 (2.39%) DynamoDB
6 30 (1.63%) MySQL
7 29 (1.57%) Relational Database
8 28 (1.52%) Data Warehouse
9 25 (1.36%) Power BI
10 21 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
11 19 (1.03%) BigQuery
11 19 (1.03%) Redis
12 18 (0.98%) Spark SQL
13 16 (0.87%) Oracle Database
13 16 (0.87%) Semantic Layer
14 14 (0.76%) Metadata
15 12 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
15 12 (0.65%) Elasticsearch
16 9 (0.49%) Data Lake
17 8 (0.43%) Flink
Development Applications
1 218 (11.83%) Git
2 157 (8.52%) Jenkins
3 148 (8.03%) GitLab
4 142 (7.71%) Selenium
5 108 (5.86%) JIRA
6 89 (4.83%) Cypress.io
7 77 (4.18%) Cucumber
8 68 (3.69%) Postman
9 58 (3.15%) TeamCity
10 47 (2.55%) JMeter
11 39 (2.12%) REST Assured
12 31 (1.68%) JUnit
13 29 (1.57%) SpecFlow
14 23 (1.25%) CircleCI
14 23 (1.25%) Zephyr
15 22 (1.19%) LabVIEW
15 22 (1.19%) TestRail
16 21 (1.14%) Gatling
17 20 (1.09%) Crashlytics
17 20 (1.09%) fastlane
General
1 447 (24.27%) Social Skills
2 415 (22.53%) Finance
3 189 (10.26%) Banking
3 189 (10.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 163 (8.85%) Public Sector
5 154 (8.36%) Analytical Skills
6 110 (5.97%) Law
7 90 (4.89%) Retail
8 61 (3.31%) Manufacturing
9 60 (3.26%) Financial Institution
10 56 (3.04%) Games
11 51 (2.77%) Electronics
12 48 (2.61%) Back Office
13 33 (1.79%) Front Office
14 32 (1.74%) Legal
15 31 (1.68%) Marketing
16 20 (1.09%) Documentation Skills
17 18 (0.98%) Investment Banking
18 17 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
19 16 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 487 (26.44%) Senior
2 300 (16.29%) Lead
3 286 (15.53%) Software Engineer
4 263 (14.28%) Developer
5 217 (11.78%) Test Engineer
6 116 (6.30%) Senior Developer
7 110 (5.97%) Java Engineer
8 91 (4.94%) Test Automation Engineer
9 87 (4.72%) QA Engineer
10 84 (4.56%) Senior Software Engineer
11 79 (4.29%) Tester
12 75 (4.07%) Test Leader
13 68 (3.69%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 65 (3.53%) Architect
15 62 (3.37%) Data Engineer
16 56 (3.04%) Senior Test Engineer
17 55 (2.99%) DevOps Engineer
18 51 (2.77%) Python Developer
19 50 (2.71%) Software Developer
20 48 (2.61%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 193 (10.48%) .NET
2 188 (10.21%) React
3 163 (8.85%) RESTful
4 160 (8.69%) Playwright
4 160 (8.69%) REST
5 152 (8.25%) Spring
6 145 (7.87%) Node.js
7 109 (5.92%) Spring Boot
8 100 (5.43%) Kafka
9 76 (4.13%) AngularJS
10 63 (3.42%) CSS
10 63 (3.42%) HTML
11 53 (2.88%) OAuth
12 46 (2.50%) OAuth2
13 45 (2.44%) RabbitMQ
14 39 (2.12%) Vue
14 39 (2.12%) YAML
15 37 (2.01%) ASP.NET
15 37 (2.01%) JSON
16 36 (1.95%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 347 (18.84%) Cloud Native
2 200 (10.86%) Product Ownership
3 145 (7.87%) Distributed Systems
4 97 (5.27%) Mobile App
5 57 (3.09%) Management Information System
5 57 (3.09%) Public Cloud
6 52 (2.82%) Low-Code
7 51 (2.77%) Algorithms
8 50 (2.71%) Enterprise Software
9 49 (2.66%) Onboarding
10 46 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
11 42 (2.28%) Data Structures
12 37 (2.01%) Greenfield Project
13 34 (1.85%) Video\Live Streaming
14 31 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
15 27 (1.47%) Embedded Systems
16 24 (1.30%) Blog
16 24 (1.30%) Hedge funds
17 22 (1.19%) e-Learning
17 22 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 161 (8.74%) Linux
2 79 (4.29%) Windows
3 67 (3.64%) Apple iOS
4 54 (2.93%) Android
5 50 (2.71%) Unix
6 8 (0.43%) CentOS
6 8 (0.43%) Windows Server
7 5 (0.27%) FreeRTOS
8 4 (0.22%) Kali Linux
9 3 (0.16%) AIX
10 2 (0.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.054%) Debian
11 1 (0.054%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.054%) ThreadX
11 1 (0.054%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.054%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,026 (55.70%) CI/CD
2 771 (41.86%) Agile
3 633 (34.36%) DevOps
4 534 (28.99%) Software Engineering
5 465 (25.24%) Mentoring
6 463 (25.14%) Continuous Improvement
7 373 (20.25%) Problem-Solving
8 350 (19.00%) Microservices
9 331 (17.97%) Infrastructure as Code
10 309 (16.78%) AI
11 288 (15.64%) Software Testing
12 245 (13.30%) Containerisation
12 245 (13.30%) Observability
13 235 (12.76%) Full-Stack Development
14 231 (12.54%) Test Strategy
15 225 (12.21%) Coaching
16 213 (11.56%) Validation
17 192 (10.42%) Clean Code
18 186 (10.10%) Technical Leadership
19 180 (9.77%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 577 (31.32%) Python
2 515 (27.96%) Java
3 301 (16.34%) SQL
4 280 (15.20%) JavaScript
5 235 (12.76%) TypeScript
6 234 (12.70%) C#
7 103 (5.59%) C++
8 85 (4.61%) Go
9 76 (4.13%) Bash
10 66 (3.58%) C
11 60 (3.26%) PowerShell
12 34 (1.85%) Rust
13 33 (1.79%) Kotlin
14 28 (1.52%) Swift
15 24 (1.30%) Bicep
15 24 (1.30%) MATLAB
16 22 (1.19%) PHP
17 19 (1.03%) Ruby
18 17 (0.92%) Groovy
19 16 (0.87%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 232 (12.60%) Degree
2 224 (12.16%) Security Cleared
3 132 (7.17%) SC Cleared
4 93 (5.05%) Computer Science Degree
5 85 (4.61%) ISTQB
6 45 (2.44%) DV Cleared
7 31 (1.68%) AWS Certification
7 31 (1.68%) Master's Degree
8 22 (1.19%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 19 (1.03%) CISSP
9 19 (1.03%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 18 (0.98%) DBS Check
11 14 (0.76%) HND
12 13 (0.71%) PhD
13 12 (0.65%) ISEB
13 12 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
14 11 (0.60%) BPSS Clearance
14 11 (0.60%) CGEIT
14 11 (0.60%) CISA
14 11 (0.60%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 412 (22.37%) QA
2 169 (9.17%) Accessibility
3 81 (4.40%) Data Quality
4 45 (2.44%) GDPR
5 38 (2.06%) WCAG
6 21 (1.14%) NIST
7 16 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 14 (0.76%) SLA
9 13 (0.71%) Software Quality Assurance
10 12 (0.65%) COBIT
11 11 (0.60%) GRC
12 7 (0.38%) ISO 22301
12 7 (0.38%) ISO 9001
12 7 (0.38%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.33%) PMO
14 5 (0.27%) JTAG
14 5 (0.27%) MISRA
15 4 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
16 3 (0.16%) ECSS
16 3 (0.16%) MISRA C
System Software
1 250 (13.57%) Docker
2 25 (1.36%) VMware Infrastructure
3 22 (1.19%) Firmware
4 18 (0.98%) Hyper-V
5 15 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.76%) KVM
7 10 (0.54%) Active Directory
8 9 (0.49%) Embedded Firmware
9 2 (0.11%) Terminal Server
9 2 (0.11%) vSphere
10 1 (0.054%) IAG
10 1 (0.054%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.054%) Xen
Systems Management
1 297 (16.12%) Terraform
2 284 (15.42%) Kubernetes
3 135 (7.33%) Grafana
4 76 (4.13%) Ansible
5 64 (3.47%) Prometheus
6 24 (1.30%) Argo
7 15 (0.81%) Kibana
8 10 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (0.43%) logstash
10 6 (0.33%) Functional Safety
10 6 (0.33%) HP Fortify
11 5 (0.27%) CloudHub
11 5 (0.27%) Packer
11 5 (0.27%) SCCM
11 5 (0.27%) SCOM
11 5 (0.27%) vCenter Server
12 3 (0.16%) HP ALM
12 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Intune
12 3 (0.16%) Puppet
12 3 (0.16%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 141 (7.65%) Microsoft
2 51 (2.77%) Databricks
3 47 (2.55%) Oracle
4 44 (2.39%) Salesforce
5 41 (2.23%) Google
6 39 (2.12%) VMware
7 30 (1.63%) ServiceNow
8 26 (1.41%) Splunk
9 23 (1.25%) Dynatrace
10 18 (0.98%) OpenAI
11 16 (0.87%) Braze
12 14 (0.76%) Amplitude
12 14 (0.76%) AppDynamics
13 13 (0.71%) IFS
13 13 (0.71%) MuleSoft
13 13 (0.71%) SAP
14 12 (0.65%) CrowdStrike
14 12 (0.65%) SendGrid
15 11 (0.60%) Adobe
15 11 (0.60%) Foundry