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 12 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 79 90 98
Rank change year-on-year +11 +8 -28
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,369 1,576 2,019
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.09% 3.18% 2.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.87% 3.58% 3.17%
Number of salaries quoted 1,276 750 1,049
10th Percentile £41,250 £38,725 £38,750
25th Percentile £47,875 £50,000 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £63,075 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -0.91% +5.13% -7.69%
75th Percentile £80,000 £82,751 £75,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -4.35%

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 82,683 43,966 63,604
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 72.91% 88.62% 80.92%
Number of salaries quoted 57,515 24,838 36,851
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,875
25th Percentile £41,500 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £76,250
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,375 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -3.37%

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 1,914 £65,000 - 1,666
UK excluding London +13 1,504 £60,000 +4.35% 971
Work from Home +14 863 £67,500 +8.00% 2,136
London +5 698 £80,000 - 900
North of England +20 377 £57,500 -4.17% 219
South East +3 266 £60,000 +4.35% 237
South West +8 252 £60,000 +12.38% 156
Midlands +2 205 £55,000 -9.47% 105
North West -4 189 £60,000 -4.00% 118
Northern Ireland +12 164 £80,000 +45.45% 19
Wales +13 132 £55,000 +4.76% 22
West Midlands -11 115 £55,000 -4.35% 67
North East +15 102 £52,500 +50.00% 33
East Midlands -26 90 £55,000 -12.00% 38
Yorkshire -8 86 £70,905 +42.52% 68
East of England -33 73 £50,000 -14.53% 102
Scotland -44 50 £62,500 -10.71% 127

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 53 (2.24%) Confluence
2 31 (1.31%) Apache Spark
3 25 (1.06%) SharePoint
4 24 (1.01%) Apache
5 19 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 17 (0.72%) Jupyter
7 14 (0.59%) Anypoint
7 14 (0.59%) Mule
8 13 (0.55%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 11 (0.46%) CMS
10 6 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
11 5 (0.21%) Cloud Foundry
11 5 (0.21%) nginx
11 5 (0.21%) Umbraco
12 4 (0.17%) IIS
12 4 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
12 4 (0.17%) SAS
12 4 (0.17%) WinCC
13 3 (0.13%) OpenStack
13 3 (0.13%) WordPress
Applications
1 80 (3.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.55%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.55%) Simulink
3 9 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.21%) Lightworks
4 5 (0.21%) Moqups
5 3 (0.13%) CANalyzer
5 3 (0.13%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.13%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.084%) PlantUML
7 1 (0.042%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.042%) EPLAN
7 1 (0.042%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.042%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 67 (2.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.14%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.46%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.21%) Visualfiles
5 3 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
5 3 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
5 3 (0.13%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.084%) Endur
6 2 (0.084%) FLEXCUBE
6 2 (0.084%) Magento
6 2 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.084%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.084%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.042%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.042%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.042%) Findur
7 1 (0.042%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.042%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.042%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.042%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 813 (34.32%) AWS
2 671 (28.32%) Azure
3 313 (13.21%) SaaS
4 253 (10.68%) GCP
5 252 (10.64%) Azure DevOps
6 201 (8.48%) GitHub
7 190 (8.02%) Serverless
8 106 (4.47%) GitHub Actions
9 99 (4.18%) AWS CloudFormation
10 87 (3.67%) Amazon EKS
10 87 (3.67%) AWS Lambda
11 80 (3.38%) Amazon S3
12 61 (2.57%) Power Platform
13 59 (2.49%) Google Ads
13 59 (2.49%) Meta Ads
14 54 (2.28%) Azure Logic Apps
15 52 (2.20%) Azure Service Bus
16 49 (2.07%) Azure Monitor
17 43 (1.82%) Azure Functions
18 40 (1.69%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 65 (2.74%) Broadband
2 28 (1.18%) TCP/IP
3 25 (1.06%) Firewall
4 23 (0.97%) DNS
5 17 (0.72%) SSL
6 15 (0.63%) Wireless
7 13 (0.55%) DMARC
8 12 (0.51%) DHCP
8 12 (0.51%) HTTP
8 12 (0.51%) Modbus
8 12 (0.51%) MQTT
8 12 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
9 11 (0.46%) 5G
9 11 (0.46%) WAN
10 10 (0.42%) LTE
11 9 (0.38%) 3GPP
11 9 (0.38%) Network Security
12 7 (0.30%) GSM
12 7 (0.30%) RANAP
12 7 (0.30%) UMTS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 139 (5.87%) PostgreSQL
2 124 (5.23%) NoSQL
3 92 (3.88%) MongoDB
4 79 (3.33%) SQL Server
5 64 (2.70%) Relational Database
6 45 (1.90%) DynamoDB
7 39 (1.65%) MySQL
8 38 (1.60%) Redis
9 37 (1.56%) Data Warehouse
10 34 (1.44%) Power BI
11 31 (1.31%) Data Lake
12 29 (1.22%) BigQuery
13 23 (0.97%) Amazon Athena
14 21 (0.89%) Amazon RDS
14 21 (0.89%) Semantic Layer
15 20 (0.84%) Metadata
16 16 (0.68%) Spark SQL
17 14 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
18 13 (0.55%) Delta Lake
19 12 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 353 (14.90%) Git
2 230 (9.71%) GitLab
3 219 (9.24%) Jenkins
4 161 (6.80%) Selenium
5 149 (6.29%) JIRA
6 106 (4.47%) Cypress.io
7 105 (4.43%) Cucumber
8 95 (4.01%) Postman
9 67 (2.83%) TeamCity
10 52 (2.20%) JMeter
11 46 (1.94%) JUnit
12 42 (1.77%) REST Assured
13 36 (1.52%) Zephyr
14 32 (1.35%) Gatling
15 30 (1.27%) SonarQube
16 26 (1.10%) TestRail
17 25 (1.06%) Bitbucket
18 24 (1.01%) LabVIEW
19 23 (0.97%) Maven
20 22 (0.93%) Robot Framework
General
1 652 (27.52%) Social Skills
2 576 (24.31%) Finance
3 355 (14.99%) Analytical Skills
4 264 (11.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 226 (9.54%) Public Sector
6 203 (8.57%) Banking
7 202 (8.53%) Law
8 161 (6.80%) Marketing
9 145 (6.12%) Legal
10 117 (4.94%) Retail
11 106 (4.47%) Manufacturing
12 84 (3.55%) Electronics
13 78 (3.29%) Financial Institution
14 60 (2.53%) Back Office
15 46 (1.94%) Aerospace
16 45 (1.90%) Games
17 42 (1.77%) Telecoms
18 31 (1.31%) Documentation Skills
19 26 (1.10%) Automotive
19 26 (1.10%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 672 (28.37%) Senior
2 349 (14.73%) Software Engineer
3 336 (14.18%) Lead
4 331 (13.97%) Developer
5 249 (10.51%) Test Engineer
6 128 (5.40%) Senior Developer
7 114 (4.81%) Java Engineer
8 104 (4.39%) DevOps Engineer
9 102 (4.31%) Senior Software Engineer
10 97 (4.09%) QA Engineer
11 84 (3.55%) Test Automation Engineer
12 79 (3.33%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 74 (3.12%) Data Engineer
14 70 (2.95%) Lead Software Engineer
15 67 (2.83%) Analyst
16 63 (2.66%) Architect
17 62 (2.62%) Senior Manager
17 62 (2.62%) Tester
18 60 (2.53%) Marketing Manager
18 60 (2.53%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 327 (13.80%) Terraform
2 241 (10.17%) REST
3 232 (9.79%) React
4 216 (9.12%) .NET
5 204 (8.61%) Playwright
6 197 (8.32%) Spring
7 193 (8.15%) RESTful
8 192 (8.10%) Node.js
9 145 (6.12%) Spring Boot
10 133 (5.61%) Kafka
11 117 (4.94%) CSS
12 113 (4.77%) AngularJS
13 110 (4.64%) HTML
14 72 (3.04%) OAuth
15 66 (2.79%) Middleware
15 66 (2.79%) OAuth2
16 62 (2.62%) JSON
17 53 (2.24%) PySpark
18 49 (2.07%) Next.js
18 49 (2.07%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 418 (17.64%) Cloud Native
2 292 (12.33%) Product Ownership
3 207 (8.74%) Distributed Systems
4 112 (4.73%) Mobile App
5 100 (4.22%) Onboarding
6 94 (3.97%) Enterprise Software
7 87 (3.67%) Public Cloud
8 81 (3.42%) Blog
9 77 (3.25%) Virtual Team
10 65 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
11 64 (2.70%) Marketing Technology
12 58 (2.45%) Algorithms
13 53 (2.24%) Cyber Threat
14 51 (2.15%) Low-Code
15 47 (1.98%) Self-Motivation
16 45 (1.90%) Embedded Systems
17 44 (1.86%) Data Structures
18 41 (1.73%) Management Information System
19 39 (1.65%) e-Learning
20 33 (1.39%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 184 (7.77%) Linux
2 97 (4.09%) Windows
3 66 (2.79%) Android
4 60 (2.53%) Apple iOS
5 53 (2.24%) Unix
6 10 (0.42%) Windows Server
7 9 (0.38%) Embedded Linux
8 8 (0.34%) CentOS
9 6 (0.25%) FreeRTOS
10 4 (0.17%) AIX
10 4 (0.17%) Debian
10 4 (0.17%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.17%) VMS
11 3 (0.13%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.084%) OpenWrt
13 1 (0.042%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 1 (0.042%) ThreadX
13 1 (0.042%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.042%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,325 (55.93%) CI/CD
2 1,006 (42.47%) Agile
3 847 (35.75%) DevOps
4 763 (32.21%) Software Engineering
5 703 (29.67%) Continuous Improvement
6 624 (26.34%) Mentoring
7 584 (24.65%) AI
8 536 (22.63%) Problem-Solving
9 435 (18.36%) Microservices
10 409 (17.26%) Software Testing
11 390 (16.46%) Infrastructure as Code
12 327 (13.80%) Test Strategy
13 294 (12.41%) Observability
13 294 (12.41%) Validation
14 286 (12.07%) Coaching
15 283 (11.95%) Code Quality
16 276 (11.65%) Full-Stack Development
17 268 (11.31%) Containerisation
18 257 (10.85%) Technical Leadership
19 256 (10.81%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 681 (28.75%) Python
2 584 (24.65%) Java
3 447 (18.87%) SQL
4 420 (17.73%) JavaScript
5 337 (14.23%) TypeScript
6 327 (13.80%) C#
7 126 (5.32%) C++
8 107 (4.52%) PowerShell
9 102 (4.31%) Go
10 88 (3.71%) Bash
11 81 (3.42%) C
12 39 (1.65%) Kotlin
13 33 (1.39%) PHP
14 31 (1.31%) Rust
15 29 (1.22%) Ruby
16 27 (1.14%) Groovy
17 25 (1.06%) Swift
18 24 (1.01%) MATLAB
19 23 (0.97%) Bicep
20 16 (0.68%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 340 (14.35%) Security Cleared
2 250 (10.55%) Degree
3 208 (8.78%) SC Cleared
4 107 (4.52%) Computer Science Degree
5 82 (3.46%) ISTQB
6 64 (2.70%) DV Cleared
7 57 (2.41%) CISSP
8 56 (2.36%) AWS Certification
9 54 (2.28%) CISM
9 54 (2.28%) ITIL Certification
10 46 (1.94%) Master's Degree
11 39 (1.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 37 (1.56%) HNC
13 32 (1.35%) BPSS Clearance
13 32 (1.35%) HND
14 17 (0.72%) DBS Check
14 17 (0.72%) ISEB
15 13 (0.55%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
16 12 (0.51%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 11 (0.46%) NVQ Level 4
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 547 (23.09%) QA
2 210 (8.86%) Accessibility
3 80 (3.38%) Data Quality
4 67 (2.83%) WCAG
5 56 (2.36%) NIST
6 48 (2.03%) ISO 22301
7 42 (1.77%) GDPR
8 13 (0.55%) GRC
8 13 (0.55%) SLA
9 9 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 9 (0.38%) SOC 2
9 9 (0.38%) Software Quality Assurance
10 8 (0.34%) MISRA
11 6 (0.25%) COBIT
11 6 (0.25%) JTAG
11 6 (0.25%) PMO
12 5 (0.21%) NCSC
13 4 (0.17%) ISO 20022
13 4 (0.17%) PCI DSS
14 3 (0.13%) IEC 61508
System Software
1 323 (13.63%) Docker
2 43 (1.82%) Firmware
3 15 (0.63%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
5 13 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.46%) Embedded Firmware
7 6 (0.25%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.17%) KVM
9 2 (0.084%) ProxySG
10 1 (0.042%) IAG
10 1 (0.042%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.042%) QEMU
10 1 (0.042%) Terminal Server
10 1 (0.042%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 337 (14.23%) Kubernetes
2 148 (6.25%) Grafana
3 79 (3.33%) Ansible
4 62 (2.62%) Prometheus
5 29 (1.22%) Argo
6 17 (0.72%) Kibana
7 15 (0.63%) Puppet
8 14 (0.59%) CloudHub
9 9 (0.38%) logstash
9 9 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
10 8 (0.34%) HP Fortify
10 8 (0.34%) Rancher
10 8 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
11 6 (0.25%) Functional Safety
11 6 (0.25%) Progress Chef
11 6 (0.25%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.21%) Packer
13 4 (0.17%) SCCM
13 4 (0.17%) SCOM
14 3 (0.13%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 254 (10.72%) Microsoft
2 125 (5.28%) Google
3 64 (2.70%) Databricks
4 57 (2.41%) Salesforce
5 53 (2.24%) Oracle
6 47 (1.98%) SAP
7 42 (1.77%) ServiceNow
8 36 (1.52%) Splunk
9 31 (1.31%) Dynatrace
10 24 (1.01%) Pega
11 21 (0.89%) VMware
12 19 (0.80%) AppDynamics
13 18 (0.76%) MuleSoft
14 17 (0.72%) IBM
15 16 (0.68%) Atlassian
15 16 (0.68%) OpenAI
16 15 (0.63%) Allen-Bradley
16 15 (0.63%) Red Hat
17 14 (0.59%) Adobe
18 13 (0.55%) SendGrid