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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 95 86
Rank change year-on-year +18 -9 -16
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,466 1,555 2,148
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.10% 3.17% 2.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.87% 3.56% 3.50%
Number of salaries quoted 1,336 718 954
10th Percentile £41,250 £39,750 £40,000
25th Percentile £47,500 £51,250 £46,306
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +8.33% -4.71%
75th Percentile £80,000 £85,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £93,125 £105,000 £99,542
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +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 86,023 43,711 61,337
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.11% 89.05% 81.75%
Number of salaries quoted 59,242 24,267 33,446
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,880 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £58,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -5.17% -3.33%
75th Percentile £79,688 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £96,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%

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 29 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 29 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 +9 2,016 £62,500 -3.85% 2,682
UK excluding London +19 1,571 £57,500 - 1,687
Work from Home +22 880 £67,500 +8.00% 1,160
London +1 724 £80,000 - 1,199
North of England +24 404 £57,500 -4.17% 434
South East -7 278 £60,000 +4.35% 340
South West +11 262 £60,000 +14.29% 242
Midlands -13 211 £54,000 -6.09% 203
North West -5 192 £60,000 - 237
Northern Ireland +10 164 £80,000 +45.45% 76
Wales +9 133 £53,171 -3.33% 40
North East +19 119 £55,000 +78.86% 65
West Midlands -16 119 £53,750 -0.92% 142
Yorkshire +28 99 £69,310 +26.02% 132
East of England -16 93 £47,500 -20.83% 168
East Midlands -27 92 £54,000 -13.60% 61
Scotland -49 44 £62,500 -5.66% 195

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 60 (2.43%) Confluence
2 37 (1.50%) Apache Spark
3 29 (1.18%) Apache
4 24 (0.97%) SharePoint
5 21 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
6 19 (0.77%) Jupyter
7 15 (0.61%) CMS
8 14 (0.57%) Anypoint
8 14 (0.57%) Mule
9 13 (0.53%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 8 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
11 7 (0.28%) nginx
12 6 (0.24%) Headless CMS
12 6 (0.24%) Umbraco
13 5 (0.20%) Camunda
13 5 (0.20%) Cloud Foundry
13 5 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
13 5 (0.20%) SAS
13 5 (0.20%) WinCC
14 4 (0.16%) WebLogic
Applications
1 82 (3.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (0.57%) Simulink
4 9 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.28%) Moqups
6 6 (0.24%) Chatbot
6 6 (0.24%) Lightworks
7 3 (0.12%) EPLAN
7 3 (0.12%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.081%) PlantUML
8 2 (0.081%) SOLIDWORKS
9 1 (0.041%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.041%) CANalyzer
9 1 (0.041%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 68 (2.76%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.09%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.16%) Visualfiles
5 3 (0.12%) Magento
5 3 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
5 3 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
5 3 (0.12%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.081%) FLEXCUBE
6 2 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.081%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.081%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.041%) Adobe Campaign
7 1 (0.041%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.041%) Endur
7 1 (0.041%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.041%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.041%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.041%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.041%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 817 (33.13%) AWS
2 680 (27.58%) Azure
3 326 (13.22%) SaaS
4 259 (10.50%) GCP
5 240 (9.73%) Azure DevOps
6 213 (8.64%) GitHub
7 197 (7.99%) Serverless
8 116 (4.70%) GitHub Actions
9 104 (4.22%) Amazon EKS
9 104 (4.22%) AWS CloudFormation
10 94 (3.81%) AWS Lambda
11 90 (3.65%) Amazon S3
12 70 (2.84%) Power Platform
13 59 (2.39%) Azure Service Bus
13 59 (2.39%) Google Ads
13 59 (2.39%) Meta Ads
14 54 (2.19%) Azure Logic Apps
15 52 (2.11%) Azure Monitor
16 47 (1.91%) Azure Functions
17 42 (1.70%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 56 (2.27%) Broadband
2 30 (1.22%) TCP/IP
3 25 (1.01%) DNS
3 25 (1.01%) Firewall
4 17 (0.69%) SSL
5 16 (0.65%) Wireless
6 15 (0.61%) DMARC
6 15 (0.61%) Modbus
7 14 (0.57%) MQTT
8 13 (0.53%) Ethernet
8 13 (0.53%) HTTP
8 13 (0.53%) Wi-Fi
9 12 (0.49%) DHCP
10 11 (0.45%) 5G
10 11 (0.45%) WAN
11 10 (0.41%) LTE
11 10 (0.41%) Network Security
12 9 (0.36%) 3GPP
13 8 (0.32%) Internet
14 7 (0.28%) SS7
Database & Business Intelligence
1 149 (6.04%) PostgreSQL
2 122 (4.95%) NoSQL
3 92 (3.73%) MongoDB
4 84 (3.41%) SQL Server
5 73 (2.96%) Relational Database
6 49 (1.99%) Redis
7 44 (1.78%) DynamoDB
8 43 (1.74%) Power BI
9 41 (1.66%) MySQL
10 37 (1.50%) Data Warehouse
11 36 (1.46%) Data Lake
12 31 (1.26%) BigQuery
13 27 (1.09%) Amazon Athena
14 26 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
15 24 (0.97%) Metadata
16 23 (0.93%) Semantic Layer
17 15 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
17 15 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
18 14 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
18 14 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 370 (15.00%) Git
2 252 (10.22%) GitLab
3 216 (8.76%) Jenkins
4 167 (6.77%) Selenium
5 153 (6.20%) JIRA
6 110 (4.46%) Cucumber
6 110 (4.46%) Cypress.io
7 91 (3.69%) Postman
8 73 (2.96%) TeamCity
9 49 (1.99%) JMeter
9 49 (1.99%) JUnit
10 41 (1.66%) REST Assured
11 32 (1.30%) LabVIEW
12 31 (1.26%) Gatling
12 31 (1.26%) Zephyr
13 29 (1.18%) SonarQube
14 25 (1.01%) Bitbucket
15 24 (0.97%) Maven
15 24 (0.97%) Robot Framework
15 24 (0.97%) TestRail
General
1 683 (27.70%) Social Skills
2 591 (23.97%) Finance
3 391 (15.86%) Analytical Skills
4 278 (11.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 246 (9.98%) Public Sector
6 202 (8.19%) Banking
6 202 (8.19%) Law
7 174 (7.06%) Marketing
8 139 (5.64%) Legal
9 130 (5.27%) Retail
10 122 (4.95%) Manufacturing
11 93 (3.77%) Electronics
12 82 (3.33%) Financial Institution
13 61 (2.47%) Back Office
14 56 (2.27%) Aerospace
15 44 (1.78%) Telecoms
16 38 (1.54%) Games
17 34 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
18 33 (1.34%) Automotive
19 25 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 679 (27.53%) Senior
2 360 (14.60%) Software Engineer
3 336 (13.63%) Developer
4 325 (13.18%) Lead
5 259 (10.50%) Test Engineer
6 121 (4.91%) Senior Developer
7 117 (4.74%) Java Engineer
8 113 (4.58%) DevOps Engineer
9 106 (4.30%) Senior Software Engineer
10 105 (4.26%) QA Engineer
11 88 (3.57%) Test Automation Engineer
12 85 (3.45%) Analyst
13 78 (3.16%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 77 (3.12%) Data Engineer
15 71 (2.88%) Tester
16 69 (2.80%) Lead Software Engineer
16 69 (2.80%) Principal Engineer
17 68 (2.76%) Architect
18 64 (2.60%) Software Developer
19 61 (2.47%) Marketing Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 345 (13.99%) Terraform
2 261 (10.58%) REST
3 236 (9.57%) .NET
4 232 (9.41%) React
5 213 (8.64%) Playwright
6 207 (8.39%) Node.js
7 202 (8.19%) RESTful
7 202 (8.19%) Spring
8 153 (6.20%) Spring Boot
9 143 (5.80%) Kafka
10 123 (4.99%) CSS
11 116 (4.70%) AngularJS
12 115 (4.66%) HTML
13 77 (3.12%) OAuth
14 72 (2.92%) Middleware
15 68 (2.76%) OAuth2
16 63 (2.55%) JSON
17 55 (2.23%) Next.js
18 52 (2.11%) PySpark
19 49 (1.99%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 425 (17.23%) Cloud Native
2 291 (11.80%) Product Ownership
3 213 (8.64%) Distributed Systems
4 107 (4.34%) Onboarding
5 102 (4.14%) Enterprise Software
6 99 (4.01%) Mobile App
7 89 (3.61%) Public Cloud
8 86 (3.49%) Blog
9 78 (3.16%) Virtual Team
10 70 (2.84%) Legacy Systems
11 64 (2.60%) Marketing Technology
12 54 (2.19%) Self-Motivation
13 53 (2.15%) Cyber Threat
14 52 (2.11%) Algorithms
15 51 (2.07%) Low-Code
16 47 (1.91%) Embedded Systems
17 43 (1.74%) e-Learning
18 42 (1.70%) Data Structures
19 40 (1.62%) Management Information System
20 39 (1.58%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 182 (7.38%) Linux
2 103 (4.18%) Windows
3 64 (2.60%) Android
4 57 (2.31%) Unix
5 56 (2.27%) Apple iOS
6 9 (0.36%) Embedded Linux
6 9 (0.36%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.32%) CentOS
8 7 (0.28%) FreeRTOS
9 5 (0.20%) AIX
10 4 (0.16%) Debian
10 4 (0.16%) VMS
11 3 (0.12%) Kali Linux
11 3 (0.12%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.081%) OpenWrt
13 1 (0.041%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.041%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 1 (0.041%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,379 (55.92%) CI/CD
2 1,018 (41.28%) Agile
3 869 (35.24%) DevOps
4 788 (31.95%) Software Engineering
5 719 (29.16%) Continuous Improvement
6 636 (25.79%) Mentoring
7 603 (24.45%) AI
8 572 (23.20%) Problem-Solving
9 459 (18.61%) Microservices
10 432 (17.52%) Software Testing
11 395 (16.02%) Infrastructure as Code
12 323 (13.10%) Validation
13 322 (13.06%) Test Strategy
14 306 (12.41%) Observability
15 298 (12.08%) Coaching
16 296 (12.00%) Code Quality
17 273 (11.07%) Containerisation
18 272 (11.03%) Technical Leadership
19 262 (10.62%) Event-Driven
20 259 (10.50%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 693 (28.10%) Python
2 591 (23.97%) Java
3 468 (18.98%) SQL
4 428 (17.36%) JavaScript
5 351 (14.23%) TypeScript
6 343 (13.91%) C#
7 125 (5.07%) C++
8 103 (4.18%) PowerShell
9 98 (3.97%) Go
10 93 (3.77%) Bash
11 79 (3.20%) C
12 36 (1.46%) Kotlin
13 33 (1.34%) Rust
14 32 (1.30%) PHP
14 32 (1.30%) Ruby
15 30 (1.22%) Groovy
16 26 (1.05%) MATLAB
17 25 (1.01%) Bicep
18 21 (0.85%) Swift
19 16 (0.65%) Scala
Qualifications
1 385 (15.61%) Security Cleared
2 256 (10.38%) Degree
3 237 (9.61%) SC Cleared
4 99 (4.01%) Computer Science Degree
5 80 (3.24%) ISTQB
6 69 (2.80%) DV Cleared
7 62 (2.51%) AWS Certification
8 56 (2.27%) CISSP
9 54 (2.19%) ITIL Certification
10 53 (2.15%) CISM
11 48 (1.95%) Master's Degree
12 43 (1.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 42 (1.70%) HNC
14 37 (1.50%) BPSS Clearance
15 34 (1.38%) HND
16 17 (0.69%) DBS Check
17 16 (0.65%) ISEB
18 15 (0.61%) Azure Certification
19 13 (0.53%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
20 11 (0.45%) NVQ Level 4
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 568 (23.03%) QA
2 206 (8.35%) Accessibility
3 92 (3.73%) Data Quality
4 68 (2.76%) WCAG
5 55 (2.23%) NIST
6 48 (1.95%) ISO 22301
7 38 (1.54%) GDPR
8 12 (0.49%) SLA
9 10 (0.41%) MISRA
10 9 (0.36%) GRC
10 9 (0.36%) Software Quality Assurance
11 7 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 7 (0.28%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.24%) JTAG
13 5 (0.20%) COBIT
13 5 (0.20%) NCSC
14 4 (0.16%) ECSS
14 4 (0.16%) ISO 20022
14 4 (0.16%) PCI DSS
14 4 (0.16%) PMO
System Software
1 350 (14.19%) Docker
2 48 (1.95%) Firmware
3 14 (0.57%) Active Directory
4 11 (0.45%) Embedded Firmware
5 10 (0.41%) VMware Infrastructure
6 8 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.12%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.081%) KVM
8 2 (0.081%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.041%) IAG
9 1 (0.041%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.041%) QEMU
9 1 (0.041%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 359 (14.56%) Kubernetes
2 162 (6.57%) Grafana
3 79 (3.20%) Ansible
4 68 (2.76%) Prometheus
5 31 (1.26%) Argo
6 17 (0.69%) Kibana
7 16 (0.65%) Puppet
8 14 (0.57%) CloudHub
9 12 (0.49%) Rancher
10 11 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
11 9 (0.36%) logstash
12 8 (0.32%) Functional Safety
12 8 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
13 7 (0.28%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.24%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.24%) vCenter Server
15 5 (0.20%) Packer
16 3 (0.12%) SCCM
16 3 (0.12%) SCOM
16 3 (0.12%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 266 (10.79%) Microsoft
2 127 (5.15%) Google
3 65 (2.64%) Databricks
4 62 (2.51%) Salesforce
5 57 (2.31%) Oracle
6 50 (2.03%) SAP
7 46 (1.87%) ServiceNow
8 36 (1.46%) Dynatrace
8 36 (1.46%) Splunk
9 22 (0.89%) Pega
10 20 (0.81%) MuleSoft
11 19 (0.77%) AppDynamics
12 17 (0.69%) IBM
12 17 (0.69%) VMware
13 16 (0.65%) OpenAI
14 15 (0.61%) Adobe
14 15 (0.61%) Allen-Bradley
14 15 (0.61%) Red Hat
14 15 (0.61%) SendGrid
15 14 (0.57%) Atlassian