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

6 months to
11 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 100 78 89
Rank change year-on-year -22 +11 -57
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,425 1,792 2,361
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.16% 3.61% 3.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.70% 3.92% 3.61%
Number of salaries quoted 873 849 1,709
10th Percentile £41,500 £41,594 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £48,750 £45,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £64,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.10% +7.50% -3.23%
75th Percentile £85,000 £83,750 £77,500
90th Percentile £107,500 £105,000 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,200 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year -4.00% +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 52,730 45,725 65,371
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 79.77% 92.08% 88.28%
Number of salaries quoted 31,308 22,323 50,742
10th Percentile £29,000 £35,000 £29,500
25th Percentile £38,000 £46,250 £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 £76,250 £81,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,125 £102,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.90%

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 11 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 11 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 -22 1,181 £62,500 -3.85% 567
UK excluding London -56 715 £55,200 -4.00% 481
Work from Home +10 591 £65,000 +0.78% 325
London +35 583 £80,000 - 179
South East -62 175 £55,000 - 162
Scotland +13 132 £85,000 +41.67% 34
North of England -68 125 £60,000 +4.35% 119
South West -14 124 £55,000 -12.70% 70
Midlands -63 83 £55,000 -8.33% 48
North West -24 74 £60,000 +14.29% 73
East of England -44 49 £55,000 -21.43% 51
West Midlands -42 46 £55,000 -8.33% 30
East Midlands -52 40 £55,000 -4.35% 18
Yorkshire -61 39 £55,000 -12.00% 31
Wales +4 26 £56,350 +15.55% 11
North East -27 12 £60,000 -1.64% 15
Northern Ireland -36 5 £64,859 +1.74%

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 37 (2.60%) Confluence
2 21 (1.47%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 20 (1.40%) Apache Airflow
4 17 (1.19%) Apache Spark
5 15 (1.05%) Appian
6 12 (0.84%) Apache
6 12 (0.84%) Jupyter
7 10 (0.70%) Palantir Foundry
8 9 (0.63%) CMS
8 9 (0.63%) SharePoint
9 7 (0.49%) Apache Solr
10 6 (0.42%) WordPress
11 5 (0.35%) IIS
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 18 (1.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.77%) MS Visio
4 10 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.28%) Fusion 360
5 4 (0.28%) Oracle Smart View
6 3 (0.21%) Photoshop
6 3 (0.21%) Sketch
7 2 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.14%) Adobe XD
7 2 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.070%) Doxygen
8 1 (0.070%) PlantUML
8 1 (0.070%) Trello
Business Applications
1 43 (3.02%) Oracle ERP
2 30 (2.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 20 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.35%) Oracle Financials
5 4 (0.28%) Hyperion Planning
5 4 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
5 4 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
5 4 (0.28%) Oracle General Ledger
5 4 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 4 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
5 4 (0.28%) Shopify
6 3 (0.21%) SAP CX
7 2 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.070%) Aladdin
8 1 (0.070%) Elite 3E
8 1 (0.070%) Postilion
8 1 (0.070%) SAP Hybris
8 1 (0.070%) Siebel CRM
8 1 (0.070%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 479 (33.61%) Azure
2 380 (26.67%) AWS
3 285 (20.00%) Azure DevOps
4 233 (16.35%) GitHub
5 149 (10.46%) GCP
6 105 (7.37%) SaaS
7 79 (5.54%) GitHub Actions
7 79 (5.54%) GitHub Copilot
8 78 (5.47%) Serverless
9 69 (4.84%) Power Platform
10 61 (4.28%) Amazon EKS
11 57 (4.00%) PaaS
12 52 (3.65%) Azure Data Factory
13 43 (3.02%) Datadog
14 40 (2.81%) Entra ID
14 40 (2.81%) Snowflake
15 39 (2.74%) OCI
16 38 (2.67%) dbt
17 34 (2.39%) Amazon S3
18 33 (2.32%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.54%) DNS
2 20 (1.40%) HTTP
2 20 (1.40%) TCP/IP
3 16 (1.12%) WAN
4 15 (1.05%) SD-WAN
5 12 (0.84%) 5G
5 12 (0.84%) VPN
6 9 (0.63%) CHAP
7 8 (0.56%) Firewall
8 5 (0.35%) Multicast
9 4 (0.28%) 3G
9 4 (0.28%) GPRS
9 4 (0.28%) GSM
9 4 (0.28%) Modbus
9 4 (0.28%) RS-232
9 4 (0.28%) RS-485
9 4 (0.28%) SMTP
9 4 (0.28%) SSL
10 3 (0.21%) VLAN
10 3 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 85 (5.96%) SQL Server
2 81 (5.68%) PostgreSQL
3 73 (5.12%) NoSQL
4 62 (4.35%) Relational Database
5 47 (3.30%) MySQL
6 46 (3.23%) Data Warehouse
7 42 (2.95%) Power BI
8 30 (2.11%) MongoDB
9 21 (1.47%) Tableau
10 18 (1.26%) DynamoDB
10 18 (1.26%) Elasticsearch
11 15 (1.05%) Pinecone
12 14 (0.98%) BigQuery
12 14 (0.98%) DB2
12 14 (0.98%) RDBMS
12 14 (0.98%) Snowflake Schema
13 13 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
14 12 (0.84%) Metadata
15 9 (0.63%) Data Lake
15 9 (0.63%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 185 (12.98%) Selenium
2 165 (11.58%) Git
3 163 (11.44%) JIRA
4 144 (10.11%) Jenkins
5 76 (5.33%) Cypress.io
6 66 (4.63%) Cucumber
7 64 (4.49%) GitLab
8 58 (4.07%) TeamCity
9 51 (3.58%) Postman
10 41 (2.88%) JMeter
10 41 (2.88%) Oracle Forms
11 27 (1.89%) Robot Framework
11 27 (1.89%) SpecFlow
12 26 (1.82%) JUnit
13 25 (1.75%) eCATT
13 25 (1.75%) WebDriver
14 24 (1.68%) MLflow
15 23 (1.61%) Snyk
16 22 (1.54%) CircleCI
16 22 (1.54%) REST Assured
General
1 458 (32.14%) Finance
2 430 (30.18%) Social Skills
3 160 (11.23%) Analytical Skills
4 129 (9.05%) Banking
5 104 (7.30%) Law
6 95 (6.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 76 (5.33%) Marketing
8 75 (5.26%) Retail
9 59 (4.14%) Public Sector
10 56 (3.93%) Financial Institution
11 42 (2.95%) Manufacturing
12 37 (2.60%) Front Office
13 36 (2.53%) Electronics
14 34 (2.39%) Back Office
15 27 (1.89%) Presentation Skills
16 25 (1.75%) Legal
17 20 (1.40%) Documentation Skills
17 20 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
18 19 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
19 14 (0.98%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 392 (27.51%) Senior
2 240 (16.84%) Developer
3 217 (15.23%) Lead
4 144 (10.11%) Software Engineer
5 136 (9.54%) Test Engineer
6 103 (7.23%) Senior Developer
7 79 (5.54%) QA Engineer
8 76 (5.33%) Analyst
9 68 (4.77%) Test Leader
9 68 (4.77%) Tester
10 65 (4.56%) Test Automation Engineer
11 56 (3.93%) Automation Engineer
12 53 (3.72%) Java Engineer
12 53 (3.72%) Python Developer
13 51 (3.58%) Applications Engineer
14 50 (3.51%) Cloud Engineer
15 49 (3.44%) Senior Software Engineer
16 48 (3.37%) QA Automation Engineer
17 46 (3.23%) Automation Tester
18 38 (2.67%) Quality Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 154 (10.81%) React
2 147 (10.32%) RESTful
3 132 (9.26%) .NET
4 119 (8.35%) REST
5 105 (7.37%) Playwright
6 77 (5.40%) Node.js
7 74 (5.19%) Spring
8 68 (4.77%) JSON
9 64 (4.49%) CSS
9 64 (4.49%) HTML
10 57 (4.00%) OAuth
11 56 (3.93%) pytest
11 56 (3.93%) SOAP
12 53 (3.72%) Kafka
13 48 (3.37%) Spring Boot
14 43 (3.02%) OAuth2
15 39 (2.74%) XML
16 37 (2.60%) Elastic Stack
16 37 (2.60%) Flask
17 34 (2.39%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 247 (17.33%) Cloud Native
2 112 (7.86%) Product Ownership
3 58 (4.07%) Self-Motivation
4 54 (3.79%) Enterprise Software
5 47 (3.30%) Management Information System
6 42 (2.95%) Mobile App
7 41 (2.88%) Onboarding
8 36 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
9 29 (2.04%) Distributed Systems
10 27 (1.89%) Low-Code
11 26 (1.82%) Algorithms
11 26 (1.82%) Data Structures
11 26 (1.82%) Hedge funds
12 22 (1.54%) Equities
12 22 (1.54%) Satnav
13 21 (1.47%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 21 (1.47%) Virtual Team
14 20 (1.40%) GNSS
14 20 (1.40%) Greenfield Project
14 20 (1.40%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 134 (9.40%) Linux
2 78 (5.47%) Windows
3 39 (2.74%) Apple iOS
4 38 (2.67%) Android
5 33 (2.32%) Unix
6 13 (0.91%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.56%) CentOS
8 5 (0.35%) Debian
8 5 (0.35%) Embedded Linux
8 5 (0.35%) FreeRTOS
8 5 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.21%) Windows 10
9 3 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.14%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.14%) Solaris
10 2 (0.14%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.14%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.070%) AIX
11 1 (0.070%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 754 (52.91%) CI/CD
2 618 (43.37%) Agile
3 498 (34.95%) DevOps
4 328 (23.02%) Problem-Solving
5 311 (21.82%) Mentoring
6 310 (21.75%) Continuous Improvement
7 290 (20.35%) Software Engineering
8 240 (16.84%) AI
9 228 (16.00%) Coaching
10 209 (14.67%) Microservices
11 180 (12.63%) Software Testing
12 177 (12.42%) Clean Code
12 177 (12.42%) Observability
13 166 (11.65%) Infrastructure as Code
14 164 (11.51%) Analytics
15 157 (11.02%) Test Strategy
16 138 (9.68%) Containerisation
17 127 (8.91%) Full-Stack Development
18 122 (8.56%) Asset Management
18 122 (8.56%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 436 (30.60%) Python
2 341 (23.93%) Java
3 308 (21.61%) SQL
4 201 (14.11%) JavaScript
5 164 (11.51%) TypeScript
6 158 (11.09%) C#
7 77 (5.40%) PowerShell
8 55 (3.86%) C++
9 47 (3.30%) PL/SQL
10 46 (3.23%) Bash
11 45 (3.16%) Shell Script
12 36 (2.53%) Go
13 34 (2.39%) PHP
14 33 (2.32%) Bicep
15 26 (1.82%) C
16 25 (1.75%) Apex Code
17 20 (1.40%) Kotlin
18 14 (0.98%) MATLAB
19 13 (0.91%) T-SQL
19 13 (0.91%) VBA
Qualifications
1 194 (13.61%) Degree
2 125 (8.77%) Security Cleared
3 81 (5.68%) SC Cleared
4 73 (5.12%) Computer Science Degree
5 68 (4.77%) ISTQB
6 39 (2.74%) Master's Degree
7 32 (2.25%) DV Cleared
8 25 (1.75%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 23 (1.61%) AWS Certification
10 19 (1.33%) DBS Check
10 19 (1.33%) HND
11 17 (1.19%) Azure Certification
12 16 (1.12%) ISEB
13 14 (0.98%) PhD
14 11 (0.77%) CEH
14 11 (0.77%) CISSP
15 10 (0.70%) BPSS Clearance
15 10 (0.70%) CISA
16 9 (0.63%) CGEIT
16 9 (0.63%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 328 (23.02%) QA
2 94 (6.60%) Accessibility
3 56 (3.93%) Data Quality
4 42 (2.95%) NIST
5 39 (2.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 37 (2.60%) GDPR
7 24 (1.68%) WCAG
8 16 (1.12%) SLA
9 15 (1.05%) NCSC
10 11 (0.77%) ISO 22301
11 9 (0.63%) COBIT
11 9 (0.63%) ISO 9001
12 5 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.35%) Software Quality Assurance
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 (14.18%) Docker
2 41 (2.88%) Active Directory
3 16 (1.12%) Firmware
4 13 (0.91%) Embedded Firmware
5 12 (0.84%) VMware Infrastructure
6 6 (0.42%) Hyper-V
6 6 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.35%) KVM
8 3 (0.21%) vSphere
9 2 (0.14%) Terminal Server
10 1 (0.070%) Xen
Systems Management
1 244 (17.12%) Terraform
2 232 (16.28%) Kubernetes
3 101 (7.09%) Grafana
4 61 (4.28%) Ansible
5 46 (3.23%) Single Sign-On
6 34 (2.39%) Prometheus
7 28 (1.96%) HP ALM
8 7 (0.49%) 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%) Packer
Vendors
1 120 (8.42%) Microsoft
2 96 (6.74%) Oracle
3 64 (4.49%) Salesforce
4 51 (3.58%) SAP
5 35 (2.46%) Databricks
6 34 (2.39%) Google
6 34 (2.39%) VMware
7 29 (2.04%) HP
8 20 (1.40%) Okta
9 19 (1.33%) OpenAI
10 18 (1.26%) Black Duck
10 18 (1.26%) Coverity
10 18 (1.26%) Splunk
11 16 (1.12%) Commvault
12 15 (1.05%) UiPath
13 14 (0.98%) Ab Initio
13 14 (0.98%) Guidewire
13 14 (0.98%) Palantir
13 14 (0.98%) ServiceNow
14 13 (0.91%) Foundry