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 26 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 81 90 101
Rank change year-on-year +9 +11 -31
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,287 1,628 2,055
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.10% 3.26% 2.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.87% 3.67% 3.05%
Number of salaries quoted 1,261 785 1,220
10th Percentile £41,750 £37,500 £38,750
25th Percentile £48,750 £47,500 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%
75th Percentile £80,000 £82,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -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 79,759 44,399 67,357
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.20% 88.84% 80.67%
Number of salaries quoted 55,200 25,247 42,330
10th Percentile £31,000 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -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 26 August 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 26 August 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 1,855 £65,000 +3.17% 676
UK excluding London +17 1,459 £60,000 +9.09% 538
Work from Home +20 868 £67,500 +8.00% 307
London +1 673 £80,000 - 253
North of England +12 367 £60,000 +0.33% 111
South East -6 264 £62,000 +12.73% 110
South West +3 237 £60,000 +14.29% 137
Midlands -7 199 £60,000 - 74
North West -3 185 £65,000 - 53
Northern Ireland +8 166 £80,000 +45.45% 12
West Midlands -12 111 £62,500 +2.88% 48
Wales +15 110 £55,000 +2.33% 8
North East +9 104 £55,000 +57.14% 25
East Midlands -16 88 £55,000 -4.35% 26
Yorkshire -16 78 £69,310 +41.45% 34
East of England -35 72 £50,000 -14.53% 51
Scotland -36 57 £62,500 +4.17% 54

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 50 (2.19%) Confluence
2 28 (1.22%) Apache Spark
3 25 (1.09%) SharePoint
4 24 (1.05%) Apache
5 22 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
6 17 (0.74%) Jupyter
7 14 (0.61%) Anypoint
7 14 (0.61%) Mule
8 13 (0.57%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 11 (0.48%) CMS
10 5 (0.22%) Cloud Foundry
10 5 (0.22%) IIS
10 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.22%) nginx
10 5 (0.22%) Umbraco
11 4 (0.17%) Camunda
11 4 (0.17%) SAS
12 3 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
12 3 (0.13%) WordPress
13 2 (0.087%) WinCC
Applications
1 55 (2.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.52%) Simulink
4 7 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.22%) Lightworks
5 5 (0.22%) Moqups
6 3 (0.13%) CANalyzer
6 3 (0.13%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.13%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.13%) PlantUML
7 1 (0.044%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.044%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.044%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 67 (2.93%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.18%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.22%) Visualfiles
5 3 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
5 3 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
5 3 (0.13%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.087%) FLEXCUBE
6 2 (0.087%) Magento
6 2 (0.087%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.087%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.087%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.044%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.044%) Dynamics AX
7 1 (0.044%) Endur
7 1 (0.044%) Findur
7 1 (0.044%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.044%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.044%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.044%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 789 (34.50%) AWS
2 662 (28.95%) Azure
3 296 (12.94%) SaaS
4 249 (10.89%) Azure DevOps
5 245 (10.71%) GCP
6 189 (8.26%) GitHub
7 181 (7.91%) Serverless
8 97 (4.24%) AWS CloudFormation
8 97 (4.24%) GitHub Actions
9 78 (3.41%) AWS Lambda
10 72 (3.15%) Amazon S3
11 70 (3.06%) Amazon EKS
12 62 (2.71%) Power Platform
13 51 (2.23%) Azure Service Bus
14 49 (2.14%) Azure Logic Apps
15 47 (2.06%) PaaS
16 45 (1.97%) Azure Monitor
17 43 (1.88%) dbt
18 39 (1.71%) Amazon EC2
19 36 (1.57%) Google Ads
Communications & Networking
1 70 (3.06%) Broadband
2 26 (1.14%) Firewall
3 22 (0.96%) TCP/IP
4 20 (0.87%) DNS
5 16 (0.70%) SSL
5 16 (0.70%) Wireless
6 13 (0.57%) DMARC
6 13 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
7 12 (0.52%) MQTT
8 11 (0.48%) DHCP
8 11 (0.48%) WAN
9 10 (0.44%) HTTP
9 10 (0.44%) LTE
10 9 (0.39%) 3GPP
10 9 (0.39%) Network Security
11 8 (0.35%) 5G
12 7 (0.31%) Modbus
12 7 (0.31%) Radio Access Network
12 7 (0.31%) RANAP
12 7 (0.31%) UMTS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (5.68%) PostgreSQL
2 121 (5.29%) NoSQL
3 92 (4.02%) MongoDB
4 76 (3.32%) SQL Server
5 60 (2.62%) Relational Database
6 47 (2.06%) DynamoDB
7 40 (1.75%) MySQL
8 35 (1.53%) Data Warehouse
9 34 (1.49%) Power BI
10 27 (1.18%) BigQuery
10 27 (1.18%) Redis
11 23 (1.01%) Data Lake
12 18 (0.79%) Semantic Layer
12 18 (0.79%) Spark SQL
13 17 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
13 17 (0.74%) Metadata
14 16 (0.70%) Amazon Athena
15 12 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
15 12 (0.52%) Oracle Database
16 11 (0.48%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 326 (14.25%) Git
2 213 (9.31%) GitLab
3 206 (9.01%) Jenkins
4 164 (7.17%) Selenium
5 142 (6.21%) JIRA
6 103 (4.50%) Cucumber
7 102 (4.46%) Cypress.io
8 92 (4.02%) Postman
9 59 (2.58%) TeamCity
10 53 (2.32%) JMeter
11 45 (1.97%) JUnit
11 45 (1.97%) REST Assured
12 36 (1.57%) Zephyr
13 33 (1.44%) Gatling
14 30 (1.31%) SonarQube
15 27 (1.18%) TestRail
16 25 (1.09%) Bitbucket
17 23 (1.01%) SpecFlow
18 21 (0.92%) LabVIEW
18 21 (0.92%) Robot Framework
General
1 639 (27.94%) Social Skills
2 532 (23.26%) Finance
3 316 (13.82%) Analytical Skills
4 247 (10.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 216 (9.44%) Public Sector
6 197 (8.61%) Law
7 188 (8.22%) Banking
8 145 (6.34%) Legal
9 135 (5.90%) Marketing
10 100 (4.37%) Retail
11 87 (3.80%) Manufacturing
12 76 (3.32%) Electronics
13 71 (3.10%) Financial Institution
14 55 (2.40%) Back Office
15 50 (2.19%) Games
16 40 (1.75%) Aerospace
17 36 (1.57%) Telecoms
18 29 (1.27%) Front Office
19 28 (1.22%) Documentation Skills
20 21 (0.92%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 643 (28.12%) Senior
2 355 (15.52%) Lead
3 340 (14.87%) Software Engineer
4 326 (14.25%) Developer
5 245 (10.71%) Test Engineer
6 124 (5.42%) Senior Developer
7 110 (4.81%) Java Engineer
8 101 (4.42%) Senior Software Engineer
9 94 (4.11%) DevOps Engineer
9 94 (4.11%) QA Engineer
10 84 (3.67%) Test Automation Engineer
11 83 (3.63%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 69 (3.02%) Lead Software Engineer
13 65 (2.84%) Data Engineer
13 65 (2.84%) Test Leader
14 63 (2.75%) Analyst
14 63 (2.75%) Architect
14 63 (2.75%) Senior Manager
14 63 (2.75%) Software Developer
14 63 (2.75%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 318 (13.90%) Terraform
2 238 (10.41%) React
3 225 (9.84%) REST
4 218 (9.53%) .NET
5 196 (8.57%) Playwright
6 192 (8.40%) Node.js
7 189 (8.26%) RESTful
7 189 (8.26%) Spring
8 139 (6.08%) Spring Boot
9 124 (5.42%) Kafka
10 112 (4.90%) AngularJS
11 103 (4.50%) CSS
12 97 (4.24%) HTML
13 69 (3.02%) OAuth
14 65 (2.84%) Middleware
15 63 (2.75%) OAuth2
16 57 (2.49%) JSON
17 50 (2.19%) Next.js
17 50 (2.19%) Vue
18 48 (2.10%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 396 (17.32%) Cloud Native
2 276 (12.07%) Product Ownership
3 202 (8.83%) Distributed Systems
4 115 (5.03%) Mobile App
5 91 (3.98%) Enterprise Software
6 80 (3.50%) Public Cloud
7 77 (3.37%) Blog
7 77 (3.37%) Virtual Team
8 74 (3.24%) Onboarding
9 71 (3.10%) Legacy Systems
10 64 (2.80%) Marketing Technology
11 61 (2.67%) Algorithms
12 57 (2.49%) Cyber Threat
13 54 (2.36%) Low-Code
14 46 (2.01%) Data Structures
15 45 (1.97%) Management Information System
15 45 (1.97%) Self-Motivation
16 40 (1.75%) Embedded Systems
17 38 (1.66%) Greenfield Project
18 35 (1.53%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 191 (8.35%) Linux
2 102 (4.46%) Windows
3 63 (2.75%) Apple iOS
4 62 (2.71%) Android
5 52 (2.27%) Unix
6 11 (0.48%) Windows Server
7 9 (0.39%) Embedded Linux
8 8 (0.35%) CentOS
9 6 (0.26%) FreeRTOS
10 5 (0.22%) Kali Linux
11 4 (0.17%) AIX
11 4 (0.17%) Debian
12 3 (0.13%) VMS
12 3 (0.13%) VxWorks
13 2 (0.087%) OpenWrt
14 1 (0.044%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 1 (0.044%) ThreadX
14 1 (0.044%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.044%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,283 (56.10%) CI/CD
2 998 (43.64%) Agile
3 834 (36.47%) DevOps
4 741 (32.40%) Software Engineering
5 678 (29.65%) Continuous Improvement
6 597 (26.10%) Mentoring
7 534 (23.35%) AI
8 496 (21.69%) Problem-Solving
9 426 (18.63%) Microservices
10 391 (17.10%) Infrastructure as Code
10 391 (17.10%) Software Testing
11 327 (14.30%) Test Strategy
12 286 (12.51%) Observability
13 285 (12.46%) Full-Stack Development
14 282 (12.33%) Code Quality
15 277 (12.11%) Containerisation
15 277 (12.11%) Validation
16 268 (11.72%) Coaching
17 254 (11.11%) Decision-Making
18 244 (10.67%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 687 (30.04%) Python
2 583 (25.49%) Java
3 408 (17.84%) JavaScript
4 389 (17.01%) SQL
5 335 (14.65%) TypeScript
6 328 (14.34%) C#
7 126 (5.51%) C++
8 109 (4.77%) PowerShell
9 99 (4.33%) Go
10 79 (3.45%) C
11 78 (3.41%) Bash
12 40 (1.75%) Kotlin
13 35 (1.53%) Rust
14 34 (1.49%) PHP
15 29 (1.27%) Ruby
15 29 (1.27%) Swift
16 22 (0.96%) Bicep
17 21 (0.92%) MATLAB
18 20 (0.87%) Groovy
19 16 (0.70%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 313 (13.69%) Security Cleared
2 244 (10.67%) Degree
3 184 (8.05%) SC Cleared
4 108 (4.72%) Computer Science Degree
5 76 (3.32%) ISTQB
6 64 (2.80%) DV Cleared
7 58 (2.54%) CISSP
8 57 (2.49%) ITIL Certification
9 55 (2.40%) CISM
10 50 (2.19%) AWS Certification
11 42 (1.84%) Master's Degree
12 35 (1.53%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 31 (1.36%) BPSS Clearance
14 26 (1.14%) HNC
15 21 (0.92%) HND
16 18 (0.79%) ISEB
17 16 (0.70%) DBS Check
18 14 (0.61%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
19 13 (0.57%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
20 11 (0.48%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 537 (23.48%) QA
2 211 (9.23%) Accessibility
3 70 (3.06%) Data Quality
4 64 (2.80%) WCAG
5 59 (2.58%) NIST
6 50 (2.19%) ISO 22301
7 42 (1.84%) GDPR
8 14 (0.61%) SLA
9 13 (0.57%) GRC
10 12 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 10 (0.44%) Software Quality Assurance
12 9 (0.39%) SOC 2
13 8 (0.35%) MISRA
14 7 (0.31%) COBIT
14 7 (0.31%) JTAG
15 6 (0.26%) PMO
16 5 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
16 5 (0.22%) ISO 9001
16 5 (0.22%) NCSC
16 5 (0.22%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 315 (13.77%) Docker
2 37 (1.62%) Firmware
3 16 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (0.66%) Active Directory
4 15 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.48%) Embedded Firmware
6 8 (0.35%) Hyper-V
7 6 (0.26%) KVM
8 2 (0.087%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.044%) IAG
9 1 (0.044%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.044%) QEMU
9 1 (0.044%) Terminal Server
9 1 (0.044%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 325 (14.21%) Kubernetes
2 136 (5.95%) Grafana
3 83 (3.63%) Ansible
4 53 (2.32%) Prometheus
5 27 (1.18%) Argo
6 16 (0.70%) Kibana
7 14 (0.61%) CloudHub
8 13 (0.57%) Puppet
9 9 (0.39%) logstash
9 9 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
10 8 (0.35%) HP Fortify
11 7 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (0.26%) Functional Safety
12 6 (0.26%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.26%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.22%) Packer
14 4 (0.17%) SCCM
14 4 (0.17%) SCOM
15 3 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 3 (0.13%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 222 (9.71%) Microsoft
2 100 (4.37%) Google
3 62 (2.71%) Databricks
4 55 (2.40%) Oracle
5 53 (2.32%) Salesforce
6 43 (1.88%) SAP
7 37 (1.62%) ServiceNow
8 36 (1.57%) Splunk
9 26 (1.14%) VMware
10 25 (1.09%) Dynatrace
11 22 (0.96%) Pega
12 20 (0.87%) AppDynamics
13 17 (0.74%) IBM
14 16 (0.70%) Atlassian
14 16 (0.70%) MuleSoft
15 15 (0.66%) OpenAI
15 15 (0.66%) Red Hat
16 14 (0.61%) Adobe
17 13 (0.57%) Braze
17 13 (0.57%) SendGrid