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 23 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 101 74 91
Rank change year-on-year -27 +17 -59
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,435 1,783 2,368
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.08% 3.70% 3.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.64% 4.00% 3.55%
Number of salaries quoted 870 861 1,685
10th Percentile £41,250 £41,250 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £48,250 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £77,500
90th Percentile £106,250 £105,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £56,750 £57,500 £53,000
% change year-on-year -1.30% +8.49% -7.83%

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 54,457 44,608 66,712
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 79.02% 92.69% 88.37%
Number of salaries quoted 32,644 22,001 51,499
10th Percentile £29,000 £33,797 £29,429
25th Percentile £38,000 £45,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £76,000 £81,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £96,250 £102,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.97%

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 23 February 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 23 February 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 -30 1,192 £62,500 - 577
UK excluding London -57 731 £56,750 -1.30% 506
Work from Home +7 610 £64,741 +3.59% 317
London +34 569 £80,000 - 174
South East -60 177 £55,000 - 158
North of England -80 134 £60,000 +4.35% 126
Scotland +5 126 £83,750 +39.58% 42
South West -17 123 £55,000 -8.33% 60
Midlands -62 91 £55,000 -8.33% 63
North West -35 78 £60,000 +14.29% 71
East of England -44 52 £50,000 -28.57% 56
East Midlands -49 48 £55,000 -4.35% 17
West Midlands -49 44 £55,000 -8.33% 45
Yorkshire -66 41 £55,000 -12.00% 38
Wales +3 26 £56,350 +15.55% 13
North East -35 15 £55,200 -9.51% 17
Northern Ireland -46 5 £64,859 +1.74% 4

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 33 (2.30%) Confluence
2 22 (1.53%) Apache Airflow
3 18 (1.25%) Apache Spark
3 18 (1.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 15 (1.05%) Appian
5 11 (0.77%) Apache
6 10 (0.70%) Jupyter
6 10 (0.70%) Palantir Foundry
7 9 (0.63%) SharePoint
8 8 (0.56%) CMS
9 6 (0.42%) WordPress
10 5 (0.35%) IIS
11 4 (0.28%) Apache Solr
12 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.21%) nginx
12 3 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 2 (0.14%) JBoss
13 2 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
13 2 (0.14%) SAS
Applications
1 19 (1.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.91%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.77%) MS Visio
4 10 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.28%) Fusion 360
6 3 (0.21%) Photoshop
6 3 (0.21%) PlantUML
7 2 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
7 2 (0.14%) Sketch
8 1 (0.070%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.070%) Trello
Business Applications
1 37 (2.58%) Oracle ERP
2 30 (2.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 20 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
4 4 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 4 (0.28%) Shopify
5 3 (0.21%) Oracle Financials
5 3 (0.21%) SAP CX
6 2 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
6 2 (0.14%) Hyperion Planning
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
6 2 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.070%) Aladdin
7 1 (0.070%) NEC Housing
7 1 (0.070%) Postilion
7 1 (0.070%) SAP Hybris
7 1 (0.070%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 484 (33.73%) Azure
2 409 (28.50%) AWS
3 277 (19.30%) Azure DevOps
4 223 (15.54%) GitHub
5 166 (11.57%) GCP
6 109 (7.60%) SaaS
7 83 (5.78%) Serverless
8 75 (5.23%) GitHub Actions
8 75 (5.23%) GitHub Copilot
9 70 (4.88%) Amazon EKS
10 68 (4.74%) Power Platform
11 56 (3.90%) PaaS
12 49 (3.41%) Azure Data Factory
13 41 (2.86%) Snowflake
14 40 (2.79%) dbt
15 39 (2.72%) Datadog
16 38 (2.65%) Entra ID
17 36 (2.51%) AWS CloudFormation
18 35 (2.44%) Amazon S3
18 35 (2.44%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.46%) DNS
2 19 (1.32%) HTTP
2 19 (1.32%) TCP/IP
3 16 (1.11%) WAN
4 15 (1.05%) SD-WAN
5 12 (0.84%) 5G
6 11 (0.77%) VPN
7 9 (0.63%) CHAP
8 8 (0.56%) Firewall
9 5 (0.35%) Multicast
10 4 (0.28%) 3G
10 4 (0.28%) GPRS
10 4 (0.28%) GSM
10 4 (0.28%) Modbus
10 4 (0.28%) RS-232
10 4 (0.28%) RS-485
10 4 (0.28%) SMTP
10 4 (0.28%) SSL
11 3 (0.21%) VLAN
11 3 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 87 (6.06%) PostgreSQL
2 79 (5.51%) NoSQL
2 79 (5.51%) SQL Server
3 56 (3.90%) Relational Database
4 47 (3.28%) MySQL
5 44 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
6 41 (2.86%) Power BI
7 39 (2.72%) MongoDB
8 19 (1.32%) Tableau
9 18 (1.25%) DynamoDB
10 15 (1.05%) Elasticsearch
11 14 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
11 14 (0.98%) DB2
12 13 (0.91%) Pinecone
13 12 (0.84%) BigQuery
13 12 (0.84%) Metadata
13 12 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
14 11 (0.77%) RDBMS
15 10 (0.70%) Data Lake
16 9 (0.63%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 185 (12.89%) Selenium
2 154 (10.73%) Git
3 152 (10.59%) JIRA
4 138 (9.62%) Jenkins
5 77 (5.37%) Cypress.io
6 69 (4.81%) Cucumber
7 66 (4.60%) GitLab
8 63 (4.39%) TeamCity
9 49 (3.41%) Postman
10 43 (3.00%) JMeter
11 35 (2.44%) Oracle Forms
12 27 (1.88%) Robot Framework
12 27 (1.88%) SpecFlow
13 26 (1.81%) JUnit
14 25 (1.74%) eCATT
15 24 (1.67%) MLflow
16 23 (1.60%) CircleCI
16 23 (1.60%) WebDriver
17 22 (1.53%) REST Assured
17 22 (1.53%) Snyk
General
1 471 (32.82%) Finance
2 432 (30.10%) Social Skills
3 154 (10.73%) Analytical Skills
4 147 (10.24%) Banking
5 112 (7.80%) Law
6 105 (7.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 85 (5.92%) Retail
8 74 (5.16%) Marketing
9 69 (4.81%) Public Sector
10 62 (4.32%) Financial Institution
11 46 (3.21%) Manufacturing
12 40 (2.79%) Back Office
13 34 (2.37%) Front Office
14 33 (2.30%) Electronics
15 27 (1.88%) Legal
16 26 (1.81%) Presentation Skills
17 21 (1.46%) Documentation Skills
17 21 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
18 18 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
19 15 (1.05%) Games
Job Titles
1 398 (27.74%) Senior
2 223 (15.54%) Developer
3 214 (14.91%) Lead
4 163 (11.36%) Software Engineer
5 134 (9.34%) Test Engineer
6 102 (7.11%) Senior Developer
7 84 (5.85%) QA Engineer
8 73 (5.09%) Tester
9 72 (5.02%) Analyst
10 67 (4.67%) Test Leader
11 66 (4.60%) Java Engineer
12 65 (4.53%) Test Automation Engineer
13 57 (3.97%) Automation Engineer
14 51 (3.55%) Senior Software Engineer
15 50 (3.48%) Applications Engineer
16 49 (3.41%) QA Automation Engineer
17 47 (3.28%) Automation Tester
17 47 (3.28%) Python Developer
18 46 (3.21%) Cloud Engineer
19 38 (2.65%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 154 (10.73%) React
2 149 (10.38%) RESTful
3 130 (9.06%) .NET
4 112 (7.80%) Playwright
5 108 (7.53%) REST
6 81 (5.64%) Spring
7 70 (4.88%) Node.js
8 65 (4.53%) JSON
9 60 (4.18%) Kafka
10 59 (4.11%) CSS
10 59 (4.11%) HTML
11 57 (3.97%) OAuth
12 55 (3.83%) Spring Boot
13 54 (3.76%) pytest
14 53 (3.69%) SOAP
15 43 (3.00%) OAuth2
16 37 (2.58%) XML
17 36 (2.51%) Elastic Stack
18 33 (2.30%) Flask
19 32 (2.23%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 254 (17.70%) Cloud Native
2 110 (7.67%) Product Ownership
3 57 (3.97%) Self-Motivation
4 52 (3.62%) Enterprise Software
5 49 (3.41%) Management Information System
5 49 (3.41%) Mobile App
6 38 (2.65%) Legacy Systems
6 38 (2.65%) Onboarding
7 33 (2.30%) Distributed Systems
8 28 (1.95%) Low-Code
9 27 (1.88%) Algorithms
9 27 (1.88%) Data Structures
9 27 (1.88%) Hedge funds
10 26 (1.81%) Greenfield Project
11 23 (1.60%) Equities
11 23 (1.60%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 20 (1.39%) GNSS
12 20 (1.39%) Satnav
12 20 (1.39%) Security Posture
13 19 (1.32%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 137 (9.55%) Linux
2 73 (5.09%) Windows
3 47 (3.28%) Apple iOS
4 43 (3.00%) Android
5 34 (2.37%) Unix
6 9 (0.63%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.56%) CentOS
8 5 (0.35%) Debian
8 5 (0.35%) Embedded Linux
8 5 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.28%) FreeRTOS
10 3 (0.21%) Windows 10
10 3 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.14%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.14%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.14%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.070%) AIX
12 1 (0.070%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 737 (51.36%) CI/CD
2 608 (42.37%) Agile
3 496 (34.56%) DevOps
4 326 (22.72%) Mentoring
5 324 (22.58%) Continuous Improvement
6 317 (22.09%) Problem-Solving
7 310 (21.60%) Software Engineering
8 234 (16.31%) AI
8 234 (16.31%) Coaching
9 225 (15.68%) Microservices
10 185 (12.89%) Observability
11 182 (12.68%) Software Testing
12 181 (12.61%) Clean Code
13 171 (11.92%) Infrastructure as Code
14 160 (11.15%) Test Strategy
15 156 (10.87%) Analytics
16 140 (9.76%) Containerisation
17 133 (9.27%) Full-Stack Development
18 123 (8.57%) Manual Testing
18 123 (8.57%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 418 (29.13%) Python
2 361 (25.16%) Java
3 305 (21.25%) SQL
4 193 (13.45%) JavaScript
5 168 (11.71%) TypeScript
6 145 (10.10%) C#
7 76 (5.30%) PowerShell
8 58 (4.04%) C++
9 46 (3.21%) Bash
10 43 (3.00%) PL/SQL
11 40 (2.79%) Shell Script
12 37 (2.58%) Go
13 30 (2.09%) Bicep
14 29 (2.02%) C
15 28 (1.95%) PHP
16 26 (1.81%) Apex Code
17 22 (1.53%) Kotlin
18 17 (1.18%) Rust
19 14 (0.98%) MATLAB
20 13 (0.91%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 185 (12.89%) Degree
2 132 (9.20%) Security Cleared
3 88 (6.13%) SC Cleared
4 68 (4.74%) Computer Science Degree
5 65 (4.53%) ISTQB
6 33 (2.30%) DV Cleared
6 33 (2.30%) Master's Degree
7 24 (1.67%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 23 (1.60%) AWS Certification
9 17 (1.18%) DBS Check
9 17 (1.18%) HND
10 15 (1.05%) CISSP
11 14 (0.98%) Azure Certification
11 14 (0.98%) ISEB
11 14 (0.98%) PhD
12 12 (0.84%) CEH
13 10 (0.70%) BPSS Clearance
13 10 (0.70%) CISA
14 9 (0.63%) FFIEC
14 9 (0.63%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 326 (22.72%) QA
2 96 (6.69%) Accessibility
3 59 (4.11%) Data Quality
4 42 (2.93%) GDPR
4 42 (2.93%) NIST
5 35 (2.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 22 (1.53%) WCAG
7 16 (1.11%) SLA
8 14 (0.98%) NCSC
9 12 (0.84%) ISO 22301
10 9 (0.63%) COBIT
10 9 (0.63%) ISO 9001
11 6 (0.42%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.28%) IEC 61508
13 4 (0.28%) ISO 13485
13 4 (0.28%) ISO 26262
13 4 (0.28%) MISRA
14 3 (0.21%) Section 508
14 3 (0.21%) SEPA
System Software
1 202 (14.08%) Docker
2 39 (2.72%) Active Directory
3 16 (1.11%) Firmware
4 15 (1.05%) VMware Infrastructure
5 13 (0.91%) Embedded Firmware
6 10 (0.70%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.63%) KVM
8 6 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (0.21%) vSphere
10 2 (0.14%) Terminal Server
11 1 (0.070%) Xen
Systems Management
1 250 (17.42%) Terraform
2 246 (17.14%) Kubernetes
3 109 (7.60%) Grafana
4 62 (4.32%) Ansible
5 43 (3.00%) Single Sign-On
6 37 (2.58%) Prometheus
7 28 (1.95%) HP ALM
8 8 (0.56%) Argo
9 6 (0.42%) Microsoft Intune
10 5 (0.35%) logstash
11 3 (0.21%) HP Fortify
11 3 (0.21%) Progress Chef
11 3 (0.21%) Rancher
11 3 (0.21%) SCCM
11 3 (0.21%) SCOM
12 2 (0.14%) Control-M
12 2 (0.14%) Kibana
12 2 (0.14%) Nessus
12 2 (0.14%) Puppet
13 1 (0.070%) CA Service Virtualization
Vendors
1 111 (7.74%) Microsoft
2 91 (6.34%) Oracle
3 58 (4.04%) Salesforce
4 49 (3.41%) SAP
5 39 (2.72%) VMware
6 34 (2.37%) Databricks
6 34 (2.37%) Google
7 29 (2.02%) HP
8 19 (1.32%) OpenAI
9 18 (1.25%) Black Duck
9 18 (1.25%) Coverity
9 18 (1.25%) Okta
9 18 (1.25%) Splunk
10 17 (1.18%) Commvault
11 15 (1.05%) UiPath
12 14 (0.98%) Ab Initio
12 14 (0.98%) Palantir
12 14 (0.98%) ServiceNow
13 13 (0.91%) Foundry
14 12 (0.84%) Guidewire