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 8 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 105 80 74
Rank change year-on-year -25 -6 -32
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,313 2,015 1,989
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.33% 3.24% 3.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.77% 3.74% 4.20%
Number of salaries quoted 772 967 1,543
10th Percentile £40,550 £40,000 £41,250
25th Percentile £51,250 £47,000 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.84% -4.62% +8.33%
75th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,375
90th Percentile £105,000 £102,500 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +4.55% -

All Process and 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 47,424 53,892 47,309
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 84.09% 86.75% 93.74%
Number of salaries quoted 28,060 28,022 36,472
10th Percentile £28,250 £35,000 £32,500
25th Percentile £36,250 £45,000 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -0.83%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £98,750 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -13.64% +4.76% -1.87%

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 8 December 2025.

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 8 December 2025. 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 -27 1,083 £65,000 +4.00% 763
UK excluding London -45 711 £57,500 - 726
Work from Home -1 506 £65,000 +4.00% 438
London +20 505 £82,500 +4.43% 169
South East -32 194 £55,000 - 229
North of England -59 137 £60,000 +21.21% 161
Scotland +10 129 £79,859 +45.20% 44
South West -8 94 £52,500 -12.50% 94
Midlands -50 88 £60,000 - 105
North West -33 79 £60,000 +26.98% 86
West Midlands -24 55 £57,500 -4.17% 60
Yorkshire -46 44 £55,000 +11.11% 55
East of England -51 43 £60,000 +9.09% 86
East Midlands -37 36 £61,250 +8.89% 41
Wales +5 29 £55,000 +13.32% 17
North East -14 14 £52,600 -12.33% 20
Northern Ireland -28 4 £64,859 +10.40% 9

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 27 (2.06%) Confluence
2 24 (1.83%) Apache Spark
3 20 (1.52%) Apache Airflow
3 20 (1.52%) SharePoint
4 18 (1.37%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 12 (0.91%) Apache
6 10 (0.76%) Appian
7 8 (0.61%) Headless CMS
8 7 (0.53%) Apache Solr
9 6 (0.46%) CMS
10 4 (0.30%) Jupyter
10 4 (0.30%) WordPress
11 3 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 2 (0.15%) nginx
13 1 (0.076%) Camunda
13 1 (0.076%) IIS
13 1 (0.076%) JBoss
13 1 (0.076%) Microsoft Exchange
13 1 (0.076%) SAS
Applications
1 15 (1.14%) Microsoft Excel
1 15 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (0.69%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.30%) Oracle Smart View
5 3 (0.23%) Photoshop
5 3 (0.23%) Simulink
6 2 (0.15%) Adobe XD
6 2 (0.15%) Blender
6 2 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.15%) Sketch
7 1 (0.076%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.076%) Doxygen
7 1 (0.076%) Fusion 360
7 1 (0.076%) Trello
Business Applications
1 39 (2.97%) Oracle ERP
2 34 (2.59%) SAP S/4HANA
3 18 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
4 12 (0.91%) Dynamics NAV
5 10 (0.76%) Shopify
6 6 (0.46%) Elite 3E
7 4 (0.30%) Hyperion Planning
7 4 (0.30%) Oracle Assets
7 4 (0.30%) Oracle Financials
7 4 (0.30%) Oracle General Ledger
7 4 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
7 4 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
8 3 (0.23%) SAP CX
8 3 (0.23%) Unit4 Business World
9 2 (0.15%) Aladdin
9 2 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
10 1 (0.076%) NEC Housing
10 1 (0.076%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 1 (0.076%) Salesforce CRM
10 1 (0.076%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 455 (34.65%) Azure
2 342 (26.05%) AWS
3 283 (21.55%) Azure DevOps
4 216 (16.45%) GitHub
5 113 (8.61%) SaaS
6 106 (8.07%) GCP
7 72 (5.48%) GitHub Actions
7 72 (5.48%) PaaS
7 72 (5.48%) Serverless
8 71 (5.41%) GitHub Copilot
9 69 (5.26%) Power Platform
10 39 (2.97%) Azure Data Factory
11 38 (2.89%) Snowflake
12 36 (2.74%) Datadog
12 36 (2.74%) dbt
12 36 (2.74%) Entra ID
13 34 (2.59%) OCI
14 32 (2.44%) Salesforce Service Cloud
15 31 (2.36%) Amazon EKS
15 31 (2.36%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.68%) DNS
1 22 (1.68%) HTTP
2 19 (1.45%) TCP/IP
3 11 (0.84%) Firewall
3 11 (0.84%) SD-WAN
3 11 (0.84%) VPN
3 11 (0.84%) WAN
4 9 (0.69%) 5G
4 9 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
5 7 (0.53%) VLAN
6 6 (0.46%) DHCP
7 5 (0.38%) Modbus
7 5 (0.38%) Multicast
8 4 (0.30%) Cisco ISE
8 4 (0.30%) GPRS
8 4 (0.30%) GSM
8 4 (0.30%) RS-232
8 4 (0.30%) RS-485
8 4 (0.30%) SMTP
8 4 (0.30%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 87 (6.63%) Relational Database
2 85 (6.47%) SQL Server
3 68 (5.18%) PostgreSQL
4 63 (4.80%) NoSQL
5 41 (3.12%) Data Warehouse
5 41 (3.12%) MySQL
6 39 (2.97%) Power BI
7 22 (1.68%) MongoDB
8 19 (1.45%) RDBMS
9 18 (1.37%) Tableau
10 15 (1.14%) Snowflake Schema
11 14 (1.07%) DynamoDB
11 14 (1.07%) Elasticsearch
12 12 (0.91%) Big Data
13 11 (0.84%) BigQuery
13 11 (0.84%) DB2
14 9 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
14 9 (0.69%) Data Lake
14 9 (0.69%) MariaDB
15 8 (0.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 186 (14.17%) Selenium
2 175 (13.33%) Git
3 165 (12.57%) JIRA
4 130 (9.90%) Jenkins
5 77 (5.86%) Cypress.io
6 69 (5.26%) Cucumber
7 63 (4.80%) Postman
8 45 (3.43%) GitLab
9 44 (3.35%) JMeter
10 37 (2.82%) Oracle Forms
11 34 (2.59%) TeamCity
12 28 (2.13%) eCATT
13 27 (2.06%) JUnit
14 26 (1.98%) Robot Framework
14 26 (1.98%) Snyk
15 23 (1.75%) Appium
15 23 (1.75%) SpecFlow
16 22 (1.68%) REST Assured
16 22 (1.68%) WebDriver
17 20 (1.52%) NeoLoad
General
1 429 (32.67%) Finance
2 398 (30.31%) Social Skills
3 152 (11.58%) Analytical Skills
4 114 (8.68%) Marketing
5 113 (8.61%) Law
6 87 (6.63%) Banking
7 85 (6.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 66 (5.03%) Manufacturing
9 61 (4.65%) Public Sector
10 41 (3.12%) Front Office
11 40 (3.05%) Retail
12 38 (2.89%) Back Office
13 37 (2.82%) Electronics
14 36 (2.74%) Financial Institution
15 32 (2.44%) Legal
16 30 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
17 26 (1.98%) Presentation Skills
18 18 (1.37%) Automotive
19 17 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
20 16 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 374 (28.48%) Senior
2 289 (22.01%) Developer
3 235 (17.90%) Lead
4 132 (10.05%) Senior Developer
5 109 (8.30%) Test Engineer
6 97 (7.39%) Software Engineer
7 73 (5.56%) Analyst
8 62 (4.72%) QA Engineer
9 60 (4.57%) Python Developer
10 58 (4.42%) Test Leader
11 52 (3.96%) Test Automation Engineer
12 50 (3.81%) Tester
13 47 (3.58%) Cloud Engineer
14 45 (3.43%) Test Analyst
15 44 (3.35%) Applications Engineer
15 44 (3.35%) Full-Stack Developer
16 43 (3.27%) Automation Engineer
17 42 (3.20%) Java Engineer
18 41 (3.12%) Java Developer
18 41 (3.12%) QA Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 160 (12.19%) React
2 132 (10.05%) RESTful
3 130 (9.90%) .NET
4 101 (7.69%) REST
5 99 (7.54%) Playwright
6 82 (6.25%) Node.js
7 81 (6.17%) CSS
8 79 (6.02%) HTML
9 66 (5.03%) JSON
10 59 (4.49%) Spring
11 55 (4.19%) Kafka
11 55 (4.19%) SOAP
12 48 (3.66%) XML
13 43 (3.27%) OAuth
14 41 (3.12%) pytest
15 38 (2.89%) GraphQL
16 36 (2.74%) .NET Framework
16 36 (2.74%) YAML
17 35 (2.67%) Flask
18 34 (2.59%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 210 (15.99%) Cloud Native
2 87 (6.63%) Product Ownership
3 54 (4.11%) Self-Motivation
4 53 (4.04%) Onboarding
5 49 (3.73%) Management Information System
5 49 (3.73%) Mobile App
6 46 (3.50%) Enterprise Software
7 39 (2.97%) Data Structures
8 35 (2.67%) Algorithms
9 34 (2.59%) Hedge funds
10 29 (2.21%) Security Posture
11 26 (1.98%) Equities
12 25 (1.90%) Legacy Systems
13 22 (1.68%) Distributed Systems
13 22 (1.68%) Virtual Team
14 21 (1.60%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 21 (1.60%) Low-Code
15 20 (1.52%) Satnav
16 18 (1.37%) GNSS
17 17 (1.29%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 106 (8.07%) Linux
2 71 (5.41%) Windows
3 23 (1.75%) Apple iOS
4 22 (1.68%) Unix
5 20 (1.52%) Windows Server
6 16 (1.22%) Android
7 5 (0.38%) Embedded Linux
7 5 (0.38%) FreeRTOS
7 5 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
8 3 (0.23%) CentOS
8 3 (0.23%) Debian
8 3 (0.23%) VMS
8 3 (0.23%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.15%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.15%) Solaris
10 1 (0.076%) Kali Linux
10 1 (0.076%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 1 (0.076%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 685 (52.17%) CI/CD
2 666 (50.72%) Agile
3 503 (38.31%) DevOps
4 343 (26.12%) Problem-Solving
5 307 (23.38%) Mentoring
6 260 (19.80%) Continuous Improvement
7 227 (17.29%) Software Engineering
8 208 (15.84%) Coaching
9 199 (15.16%) AI
10 153 (11.65%) SDLC
11 150 (11.42%) Microservices
12 148 (11.27%) Analytics
13 145 (11.04%) Test Strategy
14 143 (10.89%) Clean Code
15 140 (10.66%) Software Testing
16 135 (10.28%) Computer Science
17 133 (10.13%) Scrum
18 128 (9.75%) Infrastructure as Code
18 128 (9.75%) Observability
19 127 (9.67%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 378 (28.79%) Python
2 315 (23.99%) SQL
3 291 (22.16%) Java
4 203 (15.46%) JavaScript
5 193 (14.70%) C#
6 133 (10.13%) TypeScript
7 77 (5.86%) PowerShell
8 70 (5.33%) C++
9 41 (3.12%) C
9 41 (3.12%) PL/SQL
9 41 (3.12%) Shell Script
10 35 (2.67%) PHP
11 30 (2.28%) Go
12 29 (2.21%) Bicep
13 25 (1.90%) Bash
14 21 (1.60%) Kotlin
15 20 (1.52%) Apex Code
16 14 (1.07%) MATLAB
17 13 (0.99%) Swift
18 12 (0.91%) Scala
Qualifications
1 194 (14.78%) Degree
2 96 (7.31%) Security Cleared
3 95 (7.24%) Computer Science Degree
4 72 (5.48%) ISTQB
5 67 (5.10%) SC Cleared
6 52 (3.96%) Master's Degree
7 30 (2.28%) DV Cleared
8 26 (1.98%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 24 (1.83%) AWS Certification
9 24 (1.83%) DBS Check
10 18 (1.37%) HND
11 17 (1.29%) ISEB
12 13 (0.99%) Azure Certification
13 10 (0.76%) BPSS Clearance
14 9 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
15 6 (0.46%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 6 (0.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 6 (0.46%) CEH
15 6 (0.46%) HNC
16 5 (0.38%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 305 (23.23%) QA
2 74 (5.64%) Accessibility
3 66 (5.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 49 (3.73%) NIST
5 34 (2.59%) Data Quality
6 30 (2.28%) NCSC
7 28 (2.13%) GDPR
8 24 (1.83%) WCAG
9 18 (1.37%) ISO 9001
10 10 (0.76%) SLA
11 6 (0.46%) ISO 22301
12 5 (0.38%) PCI DSS
12 5 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
13 4 (0.30%) IEC 61508
13 4 (0.30%) ISO 26262
13 4 (0.30%) MISRA
14 3 (0.23%) GRC
14 3 (0.23%) Section 508
14 3 (0.23%) SEPA
System Software
1 159 (12.11%) Docker
2 46 (3.50%) Active Directory
3 21 (1.60%) Firmware
4 17 (1.29%) Embedded Firmware
5 10 (0.76%) VMware Infrastructure
6 5 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.38%) vSphere
7 4 (0.30%) Terminal Server
8 3 (0.23%) zsh
9 2 (0.15%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 175 (13.33%) Terraform
2 174 (13.25%) Kubernetes
3 56 (4.27%) Grafana
4 46 (3.50%) Ansible
5 33 (2.51%) Single Sign-On
6 28 (2.13%) HP ALM
7 16 (1.22%) Prometheus
8 10 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
9 5 (0.38%) SCCM
9 5 (0.38%) SCOM
10 4 (0.30%) Control-M
11 3 (0.23%) Argo
11 3 (0.23%) HP Fortify
11 3 (0.23%) HP Quality Center
11 3 (0.23%) Kubeflow
11 3 (0.23%) logstash
11 3 (0.23%) Nessus
11 3 (0.23%) Progress Chef
12 1 (0.076%) Functional Safety
12 1 (0.076%) Rancher
Vendors
1 156 (11.88%) Microsoft
2 87 (6.63%) Oracle
3 66 (5.03%) Salesforce
4 51 (3.88%) SAP
5 44 (3.35%) Google
6 35 (2.67%) Databricks
7 28 (2.13%) HP
8 27 (2.06%) VMware
9 20 (1.52%) Black Duck
9 20 (1.52%) Guidewire
10 19 (1.45%) Coverity
11 18 (1.37%) Okta
12 17 (1.29%) Apple
13 13 (0.99%) Blue Prism
13 13 (0.99%) Splunk
14 12 (0.91%) Ab Initio
15 11 (0.84%) Pega
15 11 (0.84%) UiPath
16 9 (0.69%) Commvault
16 9 (0.69%) ServiceNow