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 5 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 78 94 85
Rank change year-on-year +16 -9 -15
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,471 1,589 2,109
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.09% 3.20% 2.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.86% 3.59% 3.47%
Number of salaries quoted 1,338 729 948
10th Percentile £40,000 £39,844 £40,000
25th Percentile £47,000 £51,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £61,018 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.13% +8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £78,750 £85,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £93,750 £105,000 £100,000
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 86,353 44,239 60,788
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.12% 89.09% 81.92%
Number of salaries quoted 59,227 24,477 32,914
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,250 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £59,430
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -7.45% -0.95%
75th Percentile £78,750 £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 5 October 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 5 October 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 +11 2,025 £62,500 -3.85% 3,320
UK excluding London +15 1,568 £57,500 - 2,156
Work from Home +16 885 £67,500 +8.00% 1,511
London 0 730 £77,500 -3.13% 1,521
North of England +36 413 £57,500 -4.17% 510
South East -21 272 £60,000 +4.35% 471
South West +20 255 £60,000 +14.29% 265
Midlands -18 205 £52,500 -10.64% 248
North West -16 186 £60,000 - 256
Northern Ireland +8 163 £80,000 +45.45% 86
North East +26 132 £55,000 +78.86% 89
Wales +6 128 £53,171 -3.33% 55
West Midlands -19 110 £50,000 -9.09% 168
Yorkshire +21 104 £69,306 +26.01% 167
East of England -16 99 £46,000 -20.00% 226
East Midlands -24 95 £53,250 -14.80% 80
Scotland -55 44 £62,500 -10.71% 309

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 59 (2.39%) Confluence
2 41 (1.66%) Apache Spark
3 33 (1.34%) Apache
4 24 (0.97%) SharePoint
5 23 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 20 (0.81%) Jupyter
7 16 (0.65%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 16 (0.65%) CMS
8 14 (0.57%) Anypoint
8 14 (0.57%) Mule
9 8 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
9 8 (0.32%) nginx
9 8 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
10 7 (0.28%) Headless CMS
11 6 (0.24%) Umbraco
12 5 (0.20%) Camunda
12 5 (0.20%) Cloud Foundry
12 5 (0.20%) SAS
12 5 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 5 (0.20%) WinCC
Applications
1 84 (3.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.73%) 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 4 (0.16%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.12%) EPLAN
8 3 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 2 (0.081%) PlantUML
10 1 (0.040%) AutoCAD
10 1 (0.040%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 68 (2.75%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.09%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.12%) Magento
4 3 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
4 3 (0.12%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.12%) Visualfiles
5 2 (0.081%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.081%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.081%) Towers Watson Igloo
5 2 (0.081%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.040%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.040%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.040%) Endur
6 1 (0.040%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.040%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.040%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.040%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.040%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 816 (33.02%) AWS
2 670 (27.11%) Azure
3 317 (12.83%) SaaS
4 258 (10.44%) GCP
5 225 (9.11%) Azure DevOps
6 224 (9.07%) GitHub
7 187 (7.57%) Serverless
8 120 (4.86%) GitHub Actions
9 105 (4.25%) AWS CloudFormation
10 97 (3.93%) Amazon EKS
11 89 (3.60%) Amazon S3
12 86 (3.48%) AWS Lambda
13 71 (2.87%) Power Platform
14 59 (2.39%) Google Ads
14 59 (2.39%) Meta Ads
15 57 (2.31%) Azure Service Bus
16 51 (2.06%) Azure Logic Apps
17 49 (1.98%) Azure Monitor
18 47 (1.90%) Azure Functions
18 47 (1.90%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 56 (2.27%) Broadband
2 30 (1.21%) 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 (0.40%) LTE
11 10 (0.40%) Network Security
12 9 (0.36%) 3GPP
13 8 (0.32%) Internet
14 7 (0.28%) UMTS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 153 (6.19%) PostgreSQL
2 123 (4.98%) NoSQL
3 93 (3.76%) MongoDB
4 81 (3.28%) SQL Server
5 72 (2.91%) Relational Database
6 49 (1.98%) Redis
7 45 (1.82%) MySQL
8 44 (1.78%) Power BI
9 42 (1.70%) DynamoDB
10 37 (1.50%) Data Warehouse
11 36 (1.46%) Data Lake
12 31 (1.25%) BigQuery
13 29 (1.17%) Metadata
14 28 (1.13%) Amazon Athena
15 26 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
16 24 (0.97%) Semantic Layer
17 16 (0.65%) Amazon Aurora
18 15 (0.61%) Amazon Redshift
18 15 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
19 14 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 363 (14.69%) Git
2 255 (10.32%) GitLab
3 209 (8.46%) Jenkins
4 157 (6.35%) Selenium
5 146 (5.91%) JIRA
6 107 (4.33%) Cypress.io
7 103 (4.17%) Cucumber
8 85 (3.44%) Postman
9 71 (2.87%) TeamCity
10 51 (2.06%) JUnit
11 47 (1.90%) JMeter
12 40 (1.62%) REST Assured
13 37 (1.50%) LabVIEW
14 28 (1.13%) Gatling
15 26 (1.05%) Zephyr
16 24 (0.97%) Bitbucket
17 23 (0.93%) Maven
17 23 (0.93%) Robot Framework
17 23 (0.93%) SonarQube
18 22 (0.89%) Claude Code
General
1 681 (27.56%) Social Skills
2 587 (23.76%) Finance
3 402 (16.27%) Analytical Skills
4 274 (11.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 264 (10.68%) Public Sector
6 201 (8.13%) Banking
7 199 (8.05%) Law
8 175 (7.08%) Marketing
9 135 (5.46%) Legal
10 129 (5.22%) Retail
11 125 (5.06%) Manufacturing
12 99 (4.01%) Electronics
13 83 (3.36%) Financial Institution
14 61 (2.47%) Back Office
15 57 (2.31%) Aerospace
16 45 (1.82%) Telecoms
17 37 (1.50%) Games
18 36 (1.46%) Documentation Skills
19 35 (1.42%) Automotive
20 25 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 687 (27.80%) Senior
2 369 (14.93%) Software Engineer
3 333 (13.48%) Developer
4 308 (12.46%) Lead
5 263 (10.64%) Test Engineer
6 120 (4.86%) Senior Developer
7 113 (4.57%) DevOps Engineer
7 113 (4.57%) Java Engineer
8 107 (4.33%) QA Engineer
9 106 (4.29%) Senior Software Engineer
10 86 (3.48%) Analyst
10 86 (3.48%) Test Automation Engineer
11 78 (3.16%) Tester
12 76 (3.08%) Data Engineer
13 74 (2.99%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 72 (2.91%) Principal Engineer
15 71 (2.87%) Lead Software Engineer
16 68 (2.75%) Architect
17 63 (2.55%) Software Developer
18 61 (2.47%) Marketing Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 338 (13.68%) Terraform
2 258 (10.44%) REST
3 229 (9.27%) .NET
4 222 (8.98%) React
5 211 (8.54%) Node.js
6 202 (8.17%) Spring
7 200 (8.09%) Playwright
8 198 (8.01%) RESTful
9 155 (6.27%) Spring Boot
10 143 (5.79%) Kafka
11 126 (5.10%) CSS
12 117 (4.73%) HTML
13 112 (4.53%) AngularJS
14 73 (2.95%) OAuth
15 72 (2.91%) Middleware
16 65 (2.63%) OAuth2
17 58 (2.35%) JSON
18 55 (2.23%) Next.js
19 51 (2.06%) PySpark
20 48 (1.94%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 421 (17.04%) Cloud Native
2 285 (11.53%) Product Ownership
3 211 (8.54%) Distributed Systems
4 109 (4.41%) Onboarding
5 105 (4.25%) Enterprise Software
6 97 (3.93%) Mobile App
7 92 (3.72%) Public Cloud
8 85 (3.44%) Blog
9 75 (3.04%) Virtual Team
10 69 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
11 64 (2.59%) Marketing Technology
12 55 (2.23%) Self-Motivation
13 53 (2.14%) Cyber Threat
14 52 (2.10%) Algorithms
15 51 (2.06%) Low-Code
16 45 (1.82%) e-Learning
16 45 (1.82%) Embedded Systems
17 41 (1.66%) AI Agents
17 41 (1.66%) Data Structures
18 38 (1.54%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 179 (7.24%) Linux
2 101 (4.09%) Windows
3 65 (2.63%) Android
4 61 (2.47%) Unix
5 56 (2.27%) Apple iOS
6 9 (0.36%) Embedded Linux
6 9 (0.36%) Windows Server
7 7 (0.28%) CentOS
8 6 (0.24%) 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 (0.040%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.040%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 1 (0.040%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,368 (55.36%) CI/CD
2 1,009 (40.83%) Agile
3 853 (34.52%) DevOps
4 792 (32.05%) Software Engineering
5 725 (29.34%) Continuous Improvement
6 642 (25.98%) Mentoring
7 607 (24.56%) AI
8 579 (23.43%) Problem-Solving
9 452 (18.29%) Microservices
10 428 (17.32%) Software Testing
11 394 (15.94%) Infrastructure as Code
12 328 (13.27%) Validation
13 317 (12.83%) Test Strategy
14 305 (12.34%) Coaching
15 302 (12.22%) Observability
16 295 (11.94%) Code Quality
17 272 (11.01%) Technical Leadership
18 264 (10.68%) Containerisation
19 260 (10.52%) Event-Driven
20 253 (10.24%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 689 (27.88%) Python
2 585 (23.67%) Java
3 478 (19.34%) SQL
4 425 (17.20%) JavaScript
5 350 (14.16%) TypeScript
6 330 (13.35%) C#
7 123 (4.98%) C++
8 103 (4.17%) Go
9 100 (4.05%) PowerShell
10 94 (3.80%) Bash
11 79 (3.20%) C
12 41 (1.66%) Kotlin
13 37 (1.50%) Rust
14 33 (1.34%) PHP
15 32 (1.30%) Ruby
16 25 (1.01%) MATLAB
17 24 (0.97%) Groovy
18 23 (0.93%) Bicep
19 21 (0.85%) Swift
20 17 (0.69%) Scala
Qualifications
1 388 (15.70%) Security Cleared
2 256 (10.36%) Degree
3 243 (9.83%) SC Cleared
4 97 (3.93%) Computer Science Degree
5 75 (3.04%) ISTQB
6 71 (2.87%) DV Cleared
7 68 (2.75%) AWS Certification
8 56 (2.27%) CISSP
9 54 (2.19%) ITIL Certification
10 53 (2.14%) CISM
11 48 (1.94%) Master's Degree
12 45 (1.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 44 (1.78%) HNC
14 37 (1.50%) BPSS Clearance
14 37 (1.50%) HND
15 19 (0.77%) Azure Certification
16 17 (0.69%) DBS Check
17 15 (0.61%) ISEB
18 12 (0.49%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
19 11 (0.45%) NVQ Level 4
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 560 (22.66%) QA
2 201 (8.13%) Accessibility
3 92 (3.72%) Data Quality
4 68 (2.75%) WCAG
5 55 (2.23%) NIST
6 48 (1.94%) ISO 22301
7 34 (1.38%) GDPR
8 10 (0.40%) SLA
9 9 (0.36%) GRC
9 9 (0.36%) MISRA
10 7 (0.28%) Software Quality Assurance
11 6 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 6 (0.24%) JTAG
11 6 (0.24%) SOC 2
12 5 (0.20%) COBIT
12 5 (0.20%) NCSC
13 4 (0.16%) ECSS
13 4 (0.16%) ISO 20022
13 4 (0.16%) PCI DSS
13 4 (0.16%) PMO
System Software
1 351 (14.20%) Docker
2 51 (2.06%) Firmware
3 15 (0.61%) Active Directory
4 11 (0.45%) Embedded Firmware
5 9 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
6 7 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.12%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.081%) KVM
8 2 (0.081%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.040%) IAG
9 1 (0.040%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.040%) QEMU
9 1 (0.040%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 354 (14.33%) Kubernetes
2 162 (6.56%) Grafana
3 72 (2.91%) Ansible
4 67 (2.71%) Prometheus
5 30 (1.21%) Argo
6 16 (0.65%) Kibana
6 16 (0.65%) Puppet
7 14 (0.57%) CloudHub
8 12 (0.49%) Rancher
9 11 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
10 8 (0.32%) logstash
10 8 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.28%) Functional Safety
11 7 (0.28%) HP Fortify
12 6 (0.24%) Progress Chef
13 5 (0.20%) vCenter Server
14 3 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 3 (0.12%) SCCM
14 3 (0.12%) SCOM
14 3 (0.12%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 265 (10.72%) Microsoft
2 131 (5.30%) Google
3 65 (2.63%) Databricks
4 60 (2.43%) Salesforce
5 54 (2.19%) Oracle
6 50 (2.02%) SAP
7 48 (1.94%) ServiceNow
8 36 (1.46%) Dynatrace
9 35 (1.42%) Splunk
10 22 (0.89%) Pega
11 19 (0.77%) MuleSoft
12 18 (0.73%) Adobe
13 16 (0.65%) Allen-Bradley
13 16 (0.65%) OpenAI
13 16 (0.65%) VMware
14 15 (0.61%) SendGrid
15 14 (0.57%) AppDynamics
15 14 (0.57%) Red Hat
16 13 (0.53%) Siemens
17 12 (0.49%) Atlassian