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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 89 83 100
Rank change year-on-year -6 +17 -52
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,907 1,671 2,638
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.95% 3.48% 2.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.65% 3.83% 3.09%
Number of salaries quoted 1,145 818 1,694
10th Percentile £42,262 £38,825 £36,250
25th Percentile £48,750 £47,500 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +8.70% -11.54%
75th Percentile £81,250 £82,500 £71,991
90th Percentile £95,750 £99,650 £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 71,870 43,651 85,354
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.67% 90.86% 82.18%
Number of salaries quoted 49,673 24,244 60,243
10th Percentile £30,250 £28,822 £29,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -8.71%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £54,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +8.00% - -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 7 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 7 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 -2 1,646 £65,000 +1.56% 699
UK excluding London -16 1,101 £60,000 +4.35% 574
Work from Home +9 785 £67,500 +12.50% 2,649
London +13 629 £80,000 +6.67% 260
North of England +1 320 £58,750 -2.08% 131
South East -22 219 £60,000 +9.09% 174
South West -25 189 £55,000 -8.33% 68
Midlands -20 171 £62,500 +8.70% 77
North West -4 170 £63,750 -1.92% 65
West Midlands -28 89 £62,500 -3.85% 36
East Midlands -18 81 £64,000 +34.74% 41
North East +1 80 £52,500 -0.59% 22
Yorkshire -13 70 £69,310 +41.45% 44
East of England -29 61 £55,000 -5.98% 56
Wales -6 60 £55,000 - 17
Northern Ireland -16 48 £80,000 +45.45% 28
Scotland -49 46 £60,000 -4.00% 33

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 (1.68%) Confluence
2 27 (1.42%) Apache Spark
3 25 (1.31%) Apache Airflow
4 22 (1.15%) Apache
5 18 (0.94%) Jupyter
6 15 (0.79%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.63%) CMS
8 9 (0.47%) 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 (0.26%) Umbraco
12 4 (0.21%) Appian
12 4 (0.21%) SAS
13 3 (0.16%) Headless CMS
13 3 (0.16%) nginx
13 3 (0.16%) WordPress
14 2 (0.10%) Camunda
14 2 (0.10%) NServiceBus
Applications
1 19 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.63%) Simulink
3 10 (0.52%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (0.31%) PlantUML
5 5 (0.26%) Lightworks
5 5 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 3 (0.16%) CANalyzer
7 2 (0.10%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.052%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 11 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.26%) Visualfiles
3 4 (0.21%) Dynamics AX
4 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.10%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
5 2 (0.10%) Towers Watson Igloo
5 2 (0.10%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.052%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.052%) Endur
6 1 (0.052%) Findur
6 1 (0.052%) Magento
6 1 (0.052%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.052%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle SCM
Cloud Services
1 718 (37.65%) AWS
2 601 (31.52%) Azure
3 238 (12.48%) Azure DevOps
4 232 (12.17%) GCP
5 184 (9.65%) Serverless
6 174 (9.12%) SaaS
7 157 (8.23%) GitHub
8 83 (4.35%) GitHub Actions
9 81 (4.25%) AWS CloudFormation
9 81 (4.25%) AWS Lambda
10 76 (3.99%) Amazon EKS
11 75 (3.93%) Amazon S3
12 52 (2.73%) PaaS
13 50 (2.62%) Azure Service Bus
14 47 (2.46%) Power Platform
15 43 (2.25%) Azure Monitor
16 40 (2.10%) Amazon EC2
16 40 (2.10%) Azure Logic Apps
17 39 (2.05%) dbt
18 34 (1.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 71 (3.72%) Broadband
2 24 (1.26%) Firewall
3 13 (0.68%) DMARC
4 10 (0.52%) CHAP
4 10 (0.52%) DNS
4 10 (0.52%) MQTT
5 9 (0.47%) WAN
5 9 (0.47%) Wireless
6 8 (0.42%) SSL
7 7 (0.37%) 5G
7 7 (0.37%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.31%) Bluetooth
8 6 (0.31%) HTTP
8 6 (0.31%) LTE
8 6 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (0.26%) DHCP
9 5 (0.26%) Ethernet
9 5 (0.26%) SMS
9 5 (0.26%) TCP/IP
9 5 (0.26%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 139 (7.29%) NoSQL
2 126 (6.61%) PostgreSQL
3 100 (5.24%) MongoDB
4 66 (3.46%) SQL Server
5 46 (2.41%) DynamoDB
6 34 (1.78%) Relational Database
7 32 (1.68%) MySQL
8 27 (1.42%) Data Warehouse
9 24 (1.26%) Power BI
10 22 (1.15%) Redis
11 19 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
11 19 (1.00%) BigQuery
12 18 (0.94%) Spark SQL
13 16 (0.84%) Metadata
13 16 (0.84%) Semantic Layer
14 14 (0.73%) Oracle Database
15 13 (0.68%) Amazon Athena
15 13 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
16 10 (0.52%) Data Lake
17 8 (0.42%) Flink
Development Applications
1 238 (12.48%) Git
2 165 (8.65%) Jenkins
3 161 (8.44%) GitLab
4 136 (7.13%) Selenium
5 108 (5.66%) JIRA
6 86 (4.51%) Cucumber
7 85 (4.46%) Cypress.io
8 67 (3.51%) Postman
9 61 (3.20%) TeamCity
10 49 (2.57%) JMeter
11 39 (2.05%) REST Assured
12 32 (1.68%) JUnit
13 29 (1.52%) SpecFlow
14 27 (1.42%) Zephyr
15 24 (1.26%) TestRail
16 22 (1.15%) CircleCI
16 22 (1.15%) Gatling
17 21 (1.10%) fastlane
17 21 (1.10%) LabVIEW
18 20 (1.05%) Crashlytics
General
1 463 (24.28%) Social Skills
2 431 (22.60%) Finance
3 195 (10.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 190 (9.96%) Public Sector
5 188 (9.86%) Banking
6 166 (8.70%) Analytical Skills
7 158 (8.29%) Law
8 98 (5.14%) Retail
9 65 (3.41%) Manufacturing
10 62 (3.25%) Financial Institution
11 54 (2.83%) Games
12 52 (2.73%) Electronics
13 51 (2.67%) Legal
14 50 (2.62%) Back Office
15 31 (1.63%) Front Office
15 31 (1.63%) Marketing
16 22 (1.15%) Documentation Skills
17 20 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
18 19 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
19 18 (0.94%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 522 (27.37%) Senior
2 305 (15.99%) Lead
3 296 (15.52%) Software Engineer
4 277 (14.53%) Developer
5 214 (11.22%) Test Engineer
6 117 (6.14%) Senior Developer
7 115 (6.03%) Java Engineer
8 88 (4.61%) Senior Software Engineer
9 85 (4.46%) Test Automation Engineer
10 84 (4.40%) QA Engineer
11 79 (4.14%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 72 (3.78%) Test Leader
13 70 (3.67%) DevOps Engineer
14 67 (3.51%) Architect
14 67 (3.51%) Tester
15 61 (3.20%) Data Engineer
16 56 (2.94%) Software Developer
17 52 (2.73%) Senior Test Engineer
18 47 (2.46%) Python Developer
19 46 (2.41%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 201 (10.54%) React
2 198 (10.38%) .NET
3 168 (8.81%) RESTful
4 165 (8.65%) REST
5 164 (8.60%) Spring
6 160 (8.39%) Node.js
6 160 (8.39%) Playwright
7 120 (6.29%) Spring Boot
8 105 (5.51%) Kafka
9 89 (4.67%) AngularJS
10 71 (3.72%) CSS
10 71 (3.72%) HTML
11 56 (2.94%) OAuth
12 48 (2.52%) OAuth2
13 44 (2.31%) RabbitMQ
14 43 (2.25%) Middleware
15 41 (2.15%) Vue
16 40 (2.10%) YAML
17 38 (1.99%) ASP.NET
17 38 (1.99%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 362 (18.98%) Cloud Native
2 210 (11.01%) Product Ownership
3 160 (8.39%) Distributed Systems
4 95 (4.98%) Mobile App
5 61 (3.20%) Public Cloud
6 60 (3.15%) Enterprise Software
7 54 (2.83%) Management Information System
8 53 (2.78%) Algorithms
8 53 (2.78%) Low-Code
9 50 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
10 45 (2.36%) Onboarding
11 41 (2.15%) Data Structures
12 37 (1.94%) Greenfield Project
13 35 (1.84%) Cyber Threat
13 35 (1.84%) Virtual Team
14 34 (1.78%) Video\Live Streaming
15 33 (1.73%) Embedded Systems
16 31 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
17 28 (1.47%) Blog
18 26 (1.36%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 176 (9.23%) Linux
2 86 (4.51%) Windows
3 62 (3.25%) Apple iOS
4 58 (3.04%) Unix
5 49 (2.57%) Android
6 9 (0.47%) CentOS
6 9 (0.47%) Windows Server
7 6 (0.31%) FreeRTOS
8 4 (0.21%) Kali Linux
9 3 (0.16%) AIX
9 3 (0.16%) Debian
10 2 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
10 2 (0.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.052%) ThreadX
11 1 (0.052%) VMS
11 1 (0.052%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.052%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.052%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,093 (57.32%) CI/CD
2 843 (44.21%) Agile
3 705 (36.97%) DevOps
4 582 (30.52%) Software Engineering
5 520 (27.27%) Mentoring
6 500 (26.22%) Continuous Improvement
7 392 (20.56%) Problem-Solving
8 382 (20.03%) Microservices
9 358 (18.77%) Infrastructure as Code
10 325 (17.04%) AI
11 302 (15.84%) Software Testing
12 260 (13.63%) Containerisation
13 254 (13.32%) Observability
14 253 (13.27%) Test Strategy
15 250 (13.11%) Full-Stack Development
16 247 (12.95%) Coaching
17 222 (11.64%) Validation
18 198 (10.38%) Code Quality
19 195 (10.23%) Clean Code
20 192 (10.07%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 609 (31.93%) Python
2 534 (28.00%) Java
3 314 (16.47%) JavaScript
4 312 (16.36%) SQL
5 254 (13.32%) C#
6 252 (13.21%) TypeScript
7 106 (5.56%) C++
8 87 (4.56%) Go
9 77 (4.04%) Bash
10 75 (3.93%) PowerShell
11 70 (3.67%) C
12 36 (1.89%) Rust
13 32 (1.68%) Kotlin
14 28 (1.47%) Swift
15 25 (1.31%) PHP
16 24 (1.26%) MATLAB
17 22 (1.15%) Bicep
18 21 (1.10%) Ruby
19 18 (0.94%) Groovy
20 16 (0.84%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 244 (12.79%) Security Cleared
2 234 (12.27%) Degree
3 145 (7.60%) SC Cleared
4 98 (5.14%) Computer Science Degree
5 78 (4.09%) ISTQB
6 47 (2.46%) DV Cleared
7 42 (2.20%) CISSP
8 36 (1.89%) AWS Certification
8 36 (1.89%) ITIL Certification
8 36 (1.89%) Master's Degree
9 34 (1.78%) CISM
10 26 (1.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 22 (1.15%) DBS Check
12 16 (0.84%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 14 (0.73%) ISEB
14 12 (0.63%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 12 (0.63%) HND
15 11 (0.58%) BPSS Clearance
16 10 (0.52%) CGEIT
16 10 (0.52%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 424 (22.23%) QA
2 172 (9.02%) Accessibility
3 80 (4.20%) Data Quality
4 46 (2.41%) GDPR
5 43 (2.25%) NIST
6 41 (2.15%) WCAG
7 30 (1.57%) ISO 22301
8 15 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 14 (0.73%) SLA
10 12 (0.63%) Software Quality Assurance
11 11 (0.58%) COBIT
11 11 (0.58%) GRC
12 7 (0.37%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.31%) MISRA
13 6 (0.31%) PMO
14 5 (0.26%) ISO 9001
14 5 (0.26%) JTAG
15 4 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
15 4 (0.21%) ECSS
16 3 (0.16%) MISRA C
System Software
1 265 (13.90%) Docker
2 27 (1.42%) Firmware
3 26 (1.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.94%) Hyper-V
5 16 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.73%) KVM
7 12 (0.63%) Active Directory
8 10 (0.52%) Embedded Firmware
9 2 (0.10%) Terminal Server
9 2 (0.10%) vSphere
10 1 (0.052%) IAG
10 1 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.052%) Xen
Systems Management
1 315 (16.52%) Terraform
2 306 (16.05%) Kubernetes
3 141 (7.39%) Grafana
4 80 (4.20%) Ansible
5 62 (3.25%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.36%) Argo
7 15 (0.79%) Kibana
8 9 (0.47%) logstash
8 9 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (0.42%) CloudHub
9 8 (0.42%) Puppet
10 7 (0.37%) HP Fortify
11 6 (0.31%) Functional Safety
11 6 (0.31%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.26%) Packer
12 5 (0.26%) SCCM
12 5 (0.26%) SCOM
13 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
14 3 (0.16%) HP ALM
14 3 (0.16%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 141 (7.39%) Microsoft
2 53 (2.78%) Databricks
3 45 (2.36%) Oracle
4 44 (2.31%) Salesforce
5 42 (2.20%) Google
6 40 (2.10%) VMware
7 35 (1.84%) ServiceNow
8 25 (1.31%) Splunk
9 24 (1.26%) Dynatrace
10 19 (1.00%) OpenAI
11 17 (0.89%) Pega
12 16 (0.84%) Braze
12 16 (0.84%) SAP
13 15 (0.79%) AppDynamics
14 14 (0.73%) Amplitude
15 13 (0.68%) IFS
15 13 (0.68%) SendGrid
16 12 (0.63%) CrowdStrike
16 12 (0.63%) MuleSoft
17 11 (0.58%) Atlassian