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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 85 85 100
Rank change year-on-year 0 +15 -46
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,019 1,704 2,338
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.02% 3.47% 2.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.74% 3.85% 3.05%
Number of salaries quoted 1,170 835 1,471
10th Percentile £42,500 £37,500 £37,500
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +8.70% -11.54%
75th Percentile £82,135 £82,500 £71,991
90th Percentile £95,125 £98,474 £86,485
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,443 £52,500
% change year-on-year +4.45% +9.41% -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 73,727 44,243 76,601
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.60% 89.97% 81.83%
Number of salaries quoted 51,045 24,911 52,533
10th Percentile £30,500 £28,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £56,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +1.82% -8.73%
75th Percentile £78,750 £76,250 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £98,474 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +10.00% - -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 22 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 22 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 -3 1,677 £66,500 +2.31% 791
UK excluding London -5 1,219 £60,000 +4.45% 547
Work from Home +23 883 £67,500 +12.50% 342
London +1 639 £80,000 +2.89% 344
North of England +10 331 £57,500 -4.17% 140
South East -29 224 £62,000 +12.73% 171
South West -28 194 £55,000 -6.38% 79
Midlands -12 176 £63,250 +5.42% 68
North West -4 173 £62,500 -3.85% 81
Northern Ireland +5 131 £80,000 +45.45% 12
West Midlands -12 94 £62,500 -1.96% 36
North East 0 86 £52,500 +7.35% 22
East Midlands -24 81 £64,000 +34.74% 32
Yorkshire -27 72 £69,310 +41.45% 40
Wales -12 65 £55,000 - 11
East of England -19 63 £55,000 -3.51% 57
Scotland -36 48 £62,500 -10.71% 30

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 39 (1.93%) Confluence
2 28 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
3 27 (1.34%) Apache Spark
4 22 (1.09%) Apache
5 19 (0.94%) SharePoint
6 14 (0.69%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.64%) CMS
8 12 (0.59%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 12 (0.59%) Anypoint
8 12 (0.59%) Mule
9 7 (0.35%) IIS
10 5 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
10 5 (0.25%) Umbraco
10 5 (0.25%) WordPress
11 3 (0.15%) Headless CMS
11 3 (0.15%) nginx
11 3 (0.15%) SAS
12 2 (0.099%) JBoss
12 2 (0.099%) NServiceBus
12 2 (0.099%) WebLogic
Applications
1 21 (1.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.59%) Simulink
3 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
4 7 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.30%) PlantUML
6 5 (0.25%) Lightworks
7 3 (0.15%) CANalyzer
7 3 (0.15%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.099%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.050%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.050%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.050%) Moqups
Business Applications
1 37 (1.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.34%) Dynamics GP
3 5 (0.25%) Visualfiles
4 4 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
5 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.099%) FLEXCUBE
6 2 (0.099%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.099%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.099%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.050%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.050%) Endur
7 1 (0.050%) Findur
7 1 (0.050%) Magento
7 1 (0.050%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.050%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.050%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.050%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.050%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.050%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.050%) Oracle SCM
Cloud Services
1 752 (37.25%) AWS
2 629 (31.15%) Azure
3 237 (11.74%) Azure DevOps
4 233 (11.54%) GCP
5 232 (11.49%) SaaS
6 178 (8.82%) Serverless
7 164 (8.12%) GitHub
8 85 (4.21%) GitHub Actions
9 83 (4.11%) AWS CloudFormation
10 76 (3.76%) Amazon EKS
11 75 (3.71%) AWS Lambda
12 71 (3.52%) Amazon S3
13 52 (2.58%) Azure Service Bus
14 51 (2.53%) PaaS
14 51 (2.53%) Power Platform
15 44 (2.18%) Azure Logic Apps
15 44 (2.18%) Azure Monitor
16 43 (2.13%) dbt
17 39 (1.93%) Amazon EC2
18 32 (1.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 71 (3.52%) Broadband
2 23 (1.14%) Firewall
3 14 (0.69%) Wireless
4 13 (0.64%) DMARC
5 12 (0.59%) MQTT
5 12 (0.59%) SSL
6 10 (0.50%) DNS
7 9 (0.45%) LTE
7 9 (0.45%) Wi-Fi
8 8 (0.40%) TCP/IP
9 7 (0.35%) 3GPP
9 7 (0.35%) CHAP
9 7 (0.35%) ZigBee
10 6 (0.30%) GSM
10 6 (0.30%) Radio Access Network
10 6 (0.30%) RANAP
10 6 (0.30%) SS7
10 6 (0.30%) UMTS
10 6 (0.30%) WAN
10 6 (0.30%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 134 (6.64%) NoSQL
2 132 (6.54%) PostgreSQL
3 102 (5.05%) MongoDB
4 68 (3.37%) SQL Server
5 44 (2.18%) DynamoDB
6 40 (1.98%) Relational Database
7 35 (1.73%) MySQL
8 27 (1.34%) Data Warehouse
9 26 (1.29%) Redis
10 24 (1.19%) Power BI
11 21 (1.04%) BigQuery
12 18 (0.89%) Spark SQL
13 17 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
14 16 (0.79%) Metadata
14 16 (0.79%) Semantic Layer
15 14 (0.69%) Amazon Athena
15 14 (0.69%) Data Lake
16 13 (0.64%) Oracle Database
17 11 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
18 9 (0.45%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 253 (12.53%) Git
2 177 (8.77%) GitLab
3 175 (8.67%) Jenkins
4 148 (7.33%) Selenium
5 122 (6.04%) JIRA
6 92 (4.56%) Cucumber
7 88 (4.36%) Cypress.io
8 74 (3.67%) Postman
9 63 (3.12%) TeamCity
10 50 (2.48%) JMeter
11 37 (1.83%) REST Assured
12 34 (1.68%) JUnit
13 31 (1.54%) Zephyr
14 25 (1.24%) SpecFlow
14 25 (1.24%) TestRail
15 24 (1.19%) Gatling
16 21 (1.04%) fastlane
17 20 (0.99%) Crashlytics
18 18 (0.89%) LabVIEW
19 17 (0.84%) Robot Framework
General
1 525 (26.00%) Social Skills
2 437 (21.64%) Finance
3 210 (10.40%) Analytical Skills
4 202 (10.00%) Public Sector
5 197 (9.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 190 (9.41%) Banking
7 177 (8.77%) Law
8 112 (5.55%) Legal
9 101 (5.00%) Retail
10 67 (3.32%) Manufacturing
11 63 (3.12%) Financial Institution
12 58 (2.87%) Marketing
13 56 (2.77%) Electronics
14 54 (2.67%) Back Office
15 53 (2.63%) Games
16 31 (1.54%) Front Office
17 26 (1.29%) Telecoms
18 24 (1.19%) Documentation Skills
19 21 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
20 19 (0.94%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 568 (28.13%) Senior
2 321 (15.90%) Lead
3 308 (15.26%) Software Engineer
4 284 (14.07%) Developer
5 215 (10.65%) Test Engineer
6 121 (5.99%) Java Engineer
7 116 (5.75%) Senior Developer
8 93 (4.61%) Senior Software Engineer
9 85 (4.21%) Test Automation Engineer
10 83 (4.11%) QA Engineer
11 82 (4.06%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 73 (3.62%) DevOps Engineer
13 71 (3.52%) Test Leader
14 69 (3.42%) Architect
15 67 (3.32%) Tester
16 60 (2.97%) Senior Manager
17 59 (2.92%) Data Engineer
18 55 (2.72%) Senior Test Engineer
18 55 (2.72%) Software Developer
19 52 (2.58%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 205 (10.15%) React
2 198 (9.81%) .NET
3 175 (8.67%) Spring
4 173 (8.57%) Playwright
5 171 (8.47%) REST
6 169 (8.37%) Node.js
7 165 (8.17%) RESTful
8 130 (6.44%) Spring Boot
9 113 (5.60%) Kafka
10 94 (4.66%) AngularJS
11 78 (3.86%) CSS
12 77 (3.81%) HTML
13 66 (3.27%) Middleware
14 64 (3.17%) OAuth
15 56 (2.77%) OAuth2
16 44 (2.18%) JSON
17 43 (2.13%) RabbitMQ
18 42 (2.08%) Vue
19 39 (1.93%) ASP.NET
20 38 (1.88%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 365 (18.08%) Cloud Native
2 228 (11.29%) Product Ownership
3 165 (8.17%) Distributed Systems
4 102 (5.05%) Mobile App
5 70 (3.47%) Enterprise Software
6 68 (3.37%) Virtual Team
7 66 (3.27%) Public Cloud
8 61 (3.02%) Legacy Systems
9 60 (2.97%) Cyber Threat
10 55 (2.72%) Algorithms
10 55 (2.72%) Blog
11 50 (2.48%) Low-Code
12 49 (2.43%) Management Information System
13 42 (2.08%) Data Structures
13 42 (2.08%) Onboarding
14 39 (1.93%) Greenfield Project
15 34 (1.68%) Embedded Systems
15 34 (1.68%) Video\Live Streaming
16 33 (1.63%) Marketing Technology
17 32 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 174 (8.62%) Linux
2 89 (4.41%) Windows
3 60 (2.97%) Apple iOS
4 51 (2.53%) Android
4 51 (2.53%) Unix
5 8 (0.40%) Windows Server
6 7 (0.35%) CentOS
7 6 (0.30%) FreeRTOS
8 5 (0.25%) Embedded Linux
9 4 (0.20%) Kali Linux
10 3 (0.15%) Debian
11 2 (0.099%) AIX
12 1 (0.050%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.050%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.050%) VMS
12 1 (0.050%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.050%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,148 (56.86%) CI/CD
2 888 (43.98%) Agile
3 769 (38.09%) DevOps
4 641 (31.75%) Software Engineering
5 578 (28.63%) Mentoring
6 572 (28.33%) Continuous Improvement
7 397 (19.66%) Problem-Solving
8 391 (19.37%) Microservices
9 379 (18.77%) AI
10 358 (17.73%) Infrastructure as Code
11 342 (16.94%) Software Testing
12 283 (14.02%) Test Strategy
13 260 (12.88%) Coaching
14 259 (12.83%) Containerisation
15 256 (12.68%) Full-Stack Development
16 252 (12.48%) Observability
17 218 (10.80%) Code Quality
17 218 (10.80%) Validation
18 203 (10.05%) Clean Code
19 202 (10.00%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 637 (31.55%) Python
2 553 (27.39%) Java
3 355 (17.58%) JavaScript
4 312 (15.45%) SQL
5 295 (14.61%) C#
6 292 (14.46%) TypeScript
7 111 (5.50%) C++
8 104 (5.15%) PowerShell
9 82 (4.06%) Go
10 75 (3.71%) Bash
11 71 (3.52%) C
12 40 (1.98%) Kotlin
13 32 (1.58%) Rust
14 30 (1.49%) Swift
15 27 (1.34%) PHP
16 23 (1.14%) Ruby
17 21 (1.04%) Bicep
17 21 (1.04%) MATLAB
18 18 (0.89%) Groovy
19 16 (0.79%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 238 (11.79%) Security Cleared
2 228 (11.29%) Degree
3 146 (7.23%) SC Cleared
4 100 (4.95%) Computer Science Degree
5 81 (4.01%) ISTQB
6 62 (3.07%) CISSP
7 60 (2.97%) ITIL Certification
8 56 (2.77%) CISM
9 45 (2.23%) DV Cleared
10 39 (1.93%) AWS Certification
11 37 (1.83%) Master's Degree
12 29 (1.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 18 (0.89%) DBS Check
14 16 (0.79%) ISEB
15 13 (0.64%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 12 (0.59%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
17 11 (0.54%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (0.54%) HNC
18 9 (0.45%) HND
19 7 (0.35%) CGEIT
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 463 (22.93%) QA
2 172 (8.52%) Accessibility
3 76 (3.76%) Data Quality
4 62 (3.07%) NIST
5 53 (2.63%) ISO 22301
6 48 (2.38%) WCAG
7 46 (2.28%) GDPR
8 14 (0.69%) SLA
9 13 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 13 (0.64%) Software Quality Assurance
10 11 (0.54%) GRC
11 8 (0.40%) COBIT
12 7 (0.35%) JTAG
12 7 (0.35%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.30%) MISRA
13 6 (0.30%) PMO
14 4 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials
14 4 (0.20%) ISO 9001
15 3 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 12207
15 3 (0.15%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 264 (13.08%) Docker
2 29 (1.44%) Firmware
3 22 (1.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (0.64%) Hyper-V
6 11 (0.54%) KVM
7 10 (0.50%) Active Directory
7 10 (0.50%) Embedded Firmware
8 2 (0.099%) vSphere
9 1 (0.050%) IAG
9 1 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.050%) Terminal Server
9 1 (0.050%) Xen
Systems Management
1 311 (15.40%) Terraform
2 305 (15.11%) Kubernetes
3 138 (6.84%) Grafana
4 77 (3.81%) Ansible
5 59 (2.92%) Prometheus
6 24 (1.19%) Argo
7 15 (0.74%) Kibana
8 12 (0.59%) CloudHub
9 9 (0.45%) logstash
9 9 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.35%) HP Fortify
10 7 (0.35%) Puppet
11 6 (0.30%) Functional Safety
11 6 (0.30%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.25%) Packer
13 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
13 4 (0.20%) SCCM
13 4 (0.20%) SCOM
14 3 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 3 (0.15%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 149 (7.38%) Microsoft
2 56 (2.77%) Databricks
3 49 (2.43%) Google
4 48 (2.38%) Salesforce
5 43 (2.13%) Oracle
6 42 (2.08%) ServiceNow
7 35 (1.73%) VMware
8 26 (1.29%) Splunk
9 24 (1.19%) Dynatrace
10 23 (1.14%) SAP
11 20 (0.99%) Pega
12 16 (0.79%) AppDynamics
12 16 (0.79%) Braze
12 16 (0.79%) OpenAI
13 15 (0.74%) MuleSoft
14 14 (0.69%) Adobe
14 14 (0.69%) Amplitude
15 13 (0.64%) Atlassian
15 13 (0.64%) SendGrid
16 12 (0.59%) IBM