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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 95 82 102
Rank change year-on-year -13 +20 -64
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,851 1,655 2,637
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.92% 3.55% 2.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.61% 3.88% 3.04%
Number of salaries quoted 1,137 809 1,695
10th Percentile £42,125 £39,000 £36,250
25th Percentile £48,750 £47,500 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £63,500 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +1.60% +8.70% -11.54%
75th Percentile £81,250 £82,500 £72,433
90th Percentile £96,250 £100,000 £87,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +4.35% +9.52% -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 70,838 42,616 86,708
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.43% 91.47% 82.17%
Number of salaries quoted 48,971 23,341 61,278
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,822 £29,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.09%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £53,171 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +6.34% - -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 1 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 1 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 1,628 £65,000 - 770
UK excluding London -24 1,047 £60,000 +4.35% 563
Work from Home +5 749 £67,500 +12.50% 397
London +13 630 £80,000 +6.67% 317
North of England +1 310 £62,500 +4.17% 140
South East -28 213 £60,000 +9.09% 170
South West -26 186 £55,000 -8.33% 71
Midlands -19 170 £62,500 +6.38% 77
North West -9 162 £65,000 - 68
West Midlands -31 89 £62,500 -7.41% 41
East Midlands -24 80 £62,500 +31.58% 36
North East 0 78 £52,500 -4.55% 29
Yorkshire -25 70 £69,310 +38.62% 43
East of England -22 66 £52,500 -10.26% 57
Wales -6 59 £55,000 - 8
Scotland -40 45 £60,000 - 26
Northern Ireland -30 11 £80,000 +45.45% 23

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 (1.78%) Confluence
2 27 (1.46%) Apache Spark
3 26 (1.40%) Apache Airflow
4 22 (1.19%) Apache
5 18 (0.97%) Jupyter
6 15 (0.81%) SharePoint
7 11 (0.59%) CMS
8 9 (0.49%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 8 (0.43%) IIS
9 8 (0.43%) Palantir Foundry
10 7 (0.38%) Anypoint
10 7 (0.38%) Mule
11 5 (0.27%) Appian
11 5 (0.27%) Umbraco
12 4 (0.22%) SAS
13 3 (0.16%) nginx
13 3 (0.16%) WordPress
14 2 (0.11%) Cloud Foundry
14 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
14 2 (0.11%) NServiceBus
Applications
1 18 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.65%) Simulink
3 10 (0.54%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (0.32%) PlantUML
5 5 (0.27%) Lightworks
5 5 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 3 (0.16%) CANalyzer
7 2 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.054%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 13 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.27%) Visualfiles
3 4 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
4 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.11%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.11%) Towers Watson Igloo
5 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.054%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.054%) Endur
6 1 (0.054%) Findur
6 1 (0.054%) Magento
6 1 (0.054%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.054%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle SCM
6 1 (0.054%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 683 (36.90%) AWS
2 567 (30.63%) Azure
3 235 (12.70%) Azure DevOps
4 227 (12.26%) GCP
5 181 (9.78%) Serverless
6 153 (8.27%) GitHub
7 135 (7.29%) SaaS
8 83 (4.48%) AWS Lambda
9 82 (4.43%) GitHub Actions
10 78 (4.21%) AWS CloudFormation
11 77 (4.16%) Amazon EKS
11 77 (4.16%) Amazon S3
12 53 (2.86%) PaaS
13 49 (2.65%) Azure Service Bus
14 46 (2.49%) Power Platform
15 43 (2.32%) Azure Monitor
16 41 (2.22%) Amazon EC2
17 40 (2.16%) dbt
18 39 (2.11%) Azure Logic Apps
19 36 (1.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 71 (3.84%) Broadband
2 24 (1.30%) Firewall
3 13 (0.70%) DMARC
4 10 (0.54%) CHAP
4 10 (0.54%) DNS
4 10 (0.54%) MQTT
5 9 (0.49%) WAN
5 9 (0.49%) Wireless
6 7 (0.38%) 5G
6 7 (0.38%) SD-WAN
6 7 (0.38%) SSL
7 6 (0.32%) Bluetooth
7 6 (0.32%) HTTP
7 6 (0.32%) LTE
7 6 (0.32%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (0.27%) DHCP
8 5 (0.27%) Ethernet
8 5 (0.27%) SMS
8 5 (0.27%) ZigBee
9 4 (0.22%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 137 (7.40%) NoSQL
2 125 (6.75%) PostgreSQL
3 98 (5.29%) MongoDB
4 67 (3.62%) SQL Server
5 47 (2.54%) DynamoDB
6 33 (1.78%) Relational Database
7 31 (1.67%) MySQL
8 27 (1.46%) Data Warehouse
9 24 (1.30%) Power BI
10 21 (1.13%) Redis
11 20 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
12 19 (1.03%) BigQuery
13 18 (0.97%) Spark SQL
14 16 (0.86%) Semantic Layer
15 15 (0.81%) Metadata
16 14 (0.76%) Oracle Database
17 13 (0.70%) Amazon Athena
17 13 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
18 9 (0.49%) Data Lake
19 8 (0.43%) Flink
Development Applications
1 232 (12.53%) Git
2 163 (8.81%) Jenkins
3 157 (8.48%) GitLab
4 134 (7.24%) Selenium
5 108 (5.83%) JIRA
6 84 (4.54%) Cypress.io
7 82 (4.43%) Cucumber
8 66 (3.57%) Postman
9 61 (3.30%) TeamCity
10 49 (2.65%) JMeter
11 40 (2.16%) REST Assured
12 30 (1.62%) JUnit
12 30 (1.62%) SpecFlow
13 26 (1.40%) Zephyr
14 24 (1.30%) TestRail
15 23 (1.24%) CircleCI
16 22 (1.19%) Gatling
17 21 (1.13%) fastlane
17 21 (1.13%) LabVIEW
18 20 (1.08%) Crashlytics
General
1 446 (24.10%) Social Skills
2 425 (22.96%) Finance
3 192 (10.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 190 (10.26%) Banking
5 186 (10.05%) Public Sector
6 159 (8.59%) Analytical Skills
7 118 (6.37%) Law
8 95 (5.13%) Retail
9 64 (3.46%) Manufacturing
10 61 (3.30%) Financial Institution
11 54 (2.92%) Games
12 50 (2.70%) Back Office
13 49 (2.65%) Electronics
14 35 (1.89%) Legal
15 32 (1.73%) Front Office
16 31 (1.67%) Marketing
17 21 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
18 20 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
19 19 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
20 18 (0.97%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 504 (27.23%) Senior
2 301 (16.26%) Lead
3 293 (15.83%) Software Engineer
4 273 (14.75%) Developer
5 212 (11.45%) Test Engineer
6 117 (6.32%) Senior Developer
7 111 (6.00%) Java Engineer
8 88 (4.75%) Senior Software Engineer
9 87 (4.70%) Test Automation Engineer
10 82 (4.43%) QA Engineer
11 72 (3.89%) Test Leader
12 69 (3.73%) DevOps Engineer
12 69 (3.73%) Tester
13 67 (3.62%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 66 (3.57%) Architect
15 61 (3.30%) Data Engineer
16 56 (3.03%) Software Developer
17 55 (2.97%) Senior Test Engineer
18 48 (2.59%) Python Developer
19 46 (2.49%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 193 (10.43%) .NET
2 191 (10.32%) React
3 169 (9.13%) RESTful
4 165 (8.91%) REST
5 159 (8.59%) Playwright
6 156 (8.43%) Spring
7 155 (8.37%) Node.js
8 114 (6.16%) Spring Boot
9 101 (5.46%) Kafka
10 83 (4.48%) AngularJS
11 69 (3.73%) CSS
11 69 (3.73%) HTML
12 55 (2.97%) OAuth
13 48 (2.59%) OAuth2
14 44 (2.38%) RabbitMQ
15 40 (2.16%) Vue
15 40 (2.16%) YAML
16 39 (2.11%) JSON
17 38 (2.05%) ASP.NET
18 36 (1.94%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 357 (19.29%) Cloud Native
2 202 (10.91%) Product Ownership
3 151 (8.16%) Distributed Systems
4 97 (5.24%) Mobile App
5 59 (3.19%) Enterprise Software
5 59 (3.19%) Public Cloud
6 55 (2.97%) Management Information System
7 53 (2.86%) Algorithms
7 53 (2.86%) Low-Code
8 48 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
9 47 (2.54%) Onboarding
10 42 (2.27%) Data Structures
11 37 (2.00%) Greenfield Project
12 34 (1.84%) Video\Live Streaming
13 31 (1.67%) Embedded Systems
14 30 (1.62%) Self-Motivation
15 28 (1.51%) Blog
16 24 (1.30%) e-Learning
17 23 (1.24%) Hedge funds
18 21 (1.13%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 176 (9.51%) Linux
2 86 (4.65%) Windows
3 63 (3.40%) Apple iOS
4 58 (3.13%) Unix
5 50 (2.70%) Android
6 9 (0.49%) CentOS
6 9 (0.49%) Windows Server
7 6 (0.32%) FreeRTOS
8 4 (0.22%) Kali Linux
9 3 (0.16%) AIX
10 2 (0.11%) Debian
10 2 (0.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.054%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.054%) ThreadX
11 1 (0.054%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.054%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,072 (57.91%) CI/CD
2 795 (42.95%) Agile
3 652 (35.22%) DevOps
4 555 (29.98%) Software Engineering
5 494 (26.69%) Mentoring
6 476 (25.72%) Continuous Improvement
7 386 (20.85%) Problem-Solving
8 366 (19.77%) Microservices
9 350 (18.91%) Infrastructure as Code
10 316 (17.07%) AI
11 282 (15.24%) Software Testing
12 256 (13.83%) Containerisation
13 250 (13.51%) Observability
14 244 (13.18%) Coaching
15 238 (12.86%) Full-Stack Development
16 235 (12.70%) Test Strategy
17 219 (11.83%) Validation
18 193 (10.43%) Clean Code
19 188 (10.16%) Technical Leadership
20 185 (9.99%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 587 (31.71%) Python
2 522 (28.20%) Java
3 307 (16.59%) SQL
4 289 (15.61%) JavaScript
5 233 (12.59%) C#
6 232 (12.53%) TypeScript
7 107 (5.78%) C++
8 87 (4.70%) Go
9 76 (4.11%) Bash
10 69 (3.73%) C
11 59 (3.19%) PowerShell
12 36 (1.94%) Rust
13 33 (1.78%) Kotlin
14 28 (1.51%) Swift
15 24 (1.30%) MATLAB
16 23 (1.24%) PHP
17 22 (1.19%) Bicep
18 20 (1.08%) Ruby
19 17 (0.92%) Groovy
20 16 (0.86%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 238 (12.86%) Security Cleared
2 230 (12.43%) Degree
3 139 (7.51%) SC Cleared
4 96 (5.19%) Computer Science Degree
5 78 (4.21%) ISTQB
6 47 (2.54%) DV Cleared
7 35 (1.89%) Master's Degree
8 34 (1.84%) AWS Certification
9 24 (1.30%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 22 (1.19%) DBS Check
11 18 (0.97%) CISSP
11 18 (0.97%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 13 (0.70%) ISEB
13 12 (0.65%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 12 (0.65%) HND
13 12 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
14 11 (0.59%) BPSS Clearance
15 10 (0.54%) FFIEC
15 10 (0.54%) HNC
15 10 (0.54%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 402 (21.72%) QA
2 172 (9.29%) Accessibility
3 81 (4.38%) Data Quality
4 45 (2.43%) GDPR
5 41 (2.22%) WCAG
6 19 (1.03%) NIST
7 15 (0.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 14 (0.76%) SLA
9 12 (0.65%) Software Quality Assurance
10 11 (0.59%) COBIT
10 11 (0.59%) GRC
11 7 (0.38%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.32%) ISO 22301
12 6 (0.32%) ISO 9001
12 6 (0.32%) MISRA
12 6 (0.32%) PMO
13 5 (0.27%) JTAG
14 4 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
14 4 (0.22%) ECSS
15 3 (0.16%) MISRA C
System Software
1 257 (13.88%) Docker
2 26 (1.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 25 (1.35%) Firmware
4 18 (0.97%) Hyper-V
5 16 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.76%) KVM
7 12 (0.65%) Active Directory
8 10 (0.54%) Embedded Firmware
9 2 (0.11%) Terminal Server
9 2 (0.11%) vSphere
10 1 (0.054%) IAG
10 1 (0.054%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.054%) Xen
Systems Management
1 310 (16.75%) Terraform
2 300 (16.21%) Kubernetes
3 141 (7.62%) Grafana
4 79 (4.27%) Ansible
5 63 (3.40%) Prometheus
6 25 (1.35%) Argo
7 15 (0.81%) Kibana
8 9 (0.49%) logstash
8 9 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.38%) CloudHub
9 7 (0.38%) HP Fortify
9 7 (0.38%) Puppet
10 6 (0.32%) Functional Safety
10 6 (0.32%) vCenter Server
11 5 (0.27%) Packer
11 5 (0.27%) SCCM
11 5 (0.27%) SCOM
12 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
13 3 (0.16%) Rancher
13 3 (0.16%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 141 (7.62%) Microsoft
2 54 (2.92%) Databricks
3 45 (2.43%) Oracle
3 45 (2.43%) Salesforce
4 40 (2.16%) Google
4 40 (2.16%) VMware
5 33 (1.78%) ServiceNow
6 24 (1.30%) Dynatrace
7 23 (1.24%) Splunk
8 19 (1.03%) OpenAI
9 17 (0.92%) Pega
10 16 (0.86%) Braze
10 16 (0.86%) SAP
11 14 (0.76%) Amplitude
12 13 (0.70%) AppDynamics
12 13 (0.70%) IFS
12 13 (0.70%) MuleSoft
12 13 (0.70%) SendGrid
13 12 (0.65%) CrowdStrike
14 11 (0.59%) Atlassian