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 13 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 99 84
Rank change year-on-year +22 -15 -13
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,549 1,524 2,043
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.15% 3.11% 2.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.94% 3.49% 3.48%
Number of salaries quoted 1,373 730 915
10th Percentile £40,000 £39,856 £40,000
25th Percentile £46,939 £51,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £61,005 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.15% +8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £85,000 £78,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £105,000 £102,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £58,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -0.86% +5.45% -3.22%

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 86,825 43,614 58,687
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.38% 88.89% 82.21%
Number of salaries quoted 59,360 24,460 31,261
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,250 £32,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,000 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £78,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +17.02% -10.48% -2.78%

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 13 October 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 13 October 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 +12 2,099 £62,500 -3.85% 2,453
UK excluding London +15 1,626 £57,500 -0.86% 1,409
Work from Home +19 913 £67,500 +8.00% 1,095
London -2 746 £80,000 -3.03% 1,259
North of England +45 435 £57,500 -4.17% 374
South East +5 287 £60,000 +6.67% 308
South West +20 255 £60,000 +14.29% 146
Midlands -5 216 £52,500 -13.58% 153
North West -8 194 £60,000 -2.44% 188
Northern Ireland +13 160 - - 81
North East +22 135 £55,000 +78.86% 61
Wales +7 130 £53,171 -3.33% 30
West Midlands -12 117 £52,500 -8.70% 109
Yorkshire +35 115 £69,305 +26.01% 125
East of England +4 111 £46,000 -23.33% 130
East Midlands -12 99 £52,500 -16.00% 44
Scotland -55 44 £62,500 -10.71% 193

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 59 (2.31%) Confluence
2 43 (1.69%) Apache Spark
3 36 (1.41%) Apache
4 25 (0.98%) SharePoint
5 24 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
6 20 (0.78%) Jupyter
7 17 (0.67%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 14 (0.55%) Anypoint
8 14 (0.55%) CMS
8 14 (0.55%) Mule
9 11 (0.43%) Palantir Foundry
10 9 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
10 9 (0.35%) nginx
11 7 (0.27%) Headless CMS
12 6 (0.24%) SAS
12 6 (0.24%) WebLogic
13 5 (0.20%) Camunda
13 5 (0.20%) Cloud Foundry
13 5 (0.20%) WinCC
14 4 (0.16%) Umbraco
Applications
1 86 (3.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (0.55%) Simulink
4 9 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.27%) Moqups
6 6 (0.24%) Chatbot
6 6 (0.24%) Lightworks
7 5 (0.20%) MS Visio
8 4 (0.16%) EPLAN
8 4 (0.16%) SOLIDWORKS
9 1 (0.039%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.039%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.039%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 68 (2.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.06%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.12%) Magento
4 3 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
4 3 (0.12%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.078%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.078%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.078%) Towers Watson Igloo
5 2 (0.078%) Visualfiles
5 2 (0.078%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.039%) Academy Revenues and Benefits
6 1 (0.039%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.039%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.039%) Endur
6 1 (0.039%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.039%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.039%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.039%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.039%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 842 (33.03%) AWS
2 679 (26.64%) Azure
3 328 (12.87%) SaaS
4 265 (10.40%) GCP
5 247 (9.69%) GitHub
6 219 (8.59%) Azure DevOps
7 187 (7.34%) Serverless
8 126 (4.94%) GitHub Actions
9 107 (4.20%) AWS CloudFormation
10 103 (4.04%) Amazon EKS
11 96 (3.77%) Amazon S3
12 90 (3.53%) AWS Lambda
13 78 (3.06%) Power Platform
14 59 (2.31%) Google Ads
14 59 (2.31%) Meta Ads
15 54 (2.12%) Azure Service Bus
16 53 (2.08%) GitHub Copilot
17 51 (2.00%) Azure Logic Apps
17 51 (2.00%) Azure Monitor
18 47 (1.84%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 56 (2.20%) Broadband
2 34 (1.33%) TCP/IP
3 28 (1.10%) DNS
4 26 (1.02%) Firewall
5 17 (0.67%) SSL
5 17 (0.67%) Wireless
6 16 (0.63%) Modbus
7 15 (0.59%) DMARC
8 14 (0.55%) Ethernet
8 14 (0.55%) HTTP
8 14 (0.55%) MQTT
9 13 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
10 12 (0.47%) 5G
10 12 (0.47%) DHCP
10 12 (0.47%) Network Security
11 11 (0.43%) WAN
12 10 (0.39%) LTE
13 9 (0.35%) 3GPP
14 8 (0.31%) Internet
15 7 (0.27%) SS7
Database & Business Intelligence
1 155 (6.08%) PostgreSQL
2 118 (4.63%) NoSQL
3 90 (3.53%) MongoDB
4 83 (3.26%) SQL Server
5 73 (2.86%) Relational Database
6 52 (2.04%) Redis
7 51 (2.00%) Power BI
8 48 (1.88%) MySQL
9 41 (1.61%) DynamoDB
10 37 (1.45%) Data Warehouse
11 36 (1.41%) Metadata
12 35 (1.37%) Data Lake
13 30 (1.18%) Amazon Athena
13 30 (1.18%) BigQuery
14 29 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
15 27 (1.06%) Semantic Layer
16 18 (0.71%) Azure SQL Database
17 17 (0.67%) Amazon Aurora
18 16 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
18 16 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 362 (14.20%) Git
2 269 (10.55%) GitLab
3 213 (8.36%) Jenkins
4 163 (6.39%) Selenium
5 146 (5.73%) JIRA
6 118 (4.63%) Cypress.io
7 106 (4.16%) Cucumber
8 86 (3.37%) Postman
9 77 (3.02%) TeamCity
10 51 (2.00%) JUnit
11 48 (1.88%) REST Assured
12 47 (1.84%) JMeter
13 45 (1.77%) LabVIEW
14 30 (1.18%) Gatling
15 27 (1.06%) Claude Code
16 25 (0.98%) Zephyr
17 24 (0.94%) Robot Framework
18 23 (0.90%) SonarQube
19 22 (0.86%) Bitbucket
20 21 (0.82%) Maven
General
1 700 (27.46%) Social Skills
2 615 (24.13%) Finance
3 411 (16.12%) Analytical Skills
4 285 (11.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 275 (10.79%) Public Sector
6 214 (8.40%) Banking
7 204 (8.00%) Law
8 176 (6.90%) Marketing
9 136 (5.34%) Manufacturing
10 135 (5.30%) Legal
11 133 (5.22%) Retail
12 114 (4.47%) Electronics
13 87 (3.41%) Financial Institution
14 65 (2.55%) Back Office
15 62 (2.43%) Aerospace
16 48 (1.88%) Telecoms
17 40 (1.57%) Automotive
18 39 (1.53%) Games
19 36 (1.41%) Documentation Skills
20 25 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 708 (27.78%) Senior
2 391 (15.34%) Software Engineer
3 342 (13.42%) Developer
4 297 (11.65%) Lead
5 281 (11.02%) Test Engineer
6 127 (4.98%) Senior Developer
7 119 (4.67%) QA Engineer
8 117 (4.59%) Java Engineer
9 113 (4.43%) DevOps Engineer
9 113 (4.43%) Senior Software Engineer
10 88 (3.45%) Test Automation Engineer
11 87 (3.41%) Analyst
12 85 (3.33%) Data Engineer
13 81 (3.18%) Principal Engineer
14 78 (3.06%) Tester
15 76 (2.98%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 72 (2.82%) Automation Engineer
17 71 (2.79%) Lead Software Engineer
18 69 (2.71%) Software Developer
19 66 (2.59%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 349 (13.69%) Terraform
2 274 (10.75%) REST
3 232 (9.10%) .NET
4 222 (8.71%) React
5 211 (8.28%) Node.js
6 206 (8.08%) Playwright
7 205 (8.04%) Spring
8 202 (7.92%) RESTful
9 158 (6.20%) Spring Boot
10 148 (5.81%) Kafka
11 134 (5.26%) CSS
12 125 (4.90%) HTML
13 116 (4.55%) AngularJS
14 74 (2.90%) Middleware
15 73 (2.86%) OAuth
16 65 (2.55%) OAuth2
17 59 (2.31%) JSON
18 54 (2.12%) Next.js
19 53 (2.08%) PySpark
20 49 (1.92%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 440 (17.26%) Cloud Native
2 292 (11.46%) Product Ownership
3 220 (8.63%) Distributed Systems
4 114 (4.47%) Enterprise Software
4 114 (4.47%) Onboarding
5 95 (3.73%) Mobile App
6 92 (3.61%) Public Cloud
7 87 (3.41%) Blog
8 75 (2.94%) Virtual Team
9 72 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
10 64 (2.51%) Marketing Technology
11 55 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
12 53 (2.08%) Cyber Threat
13 51 (2.00%) Low-Code
14 50 (1.96%) Algorithms
15 49 (1.92%) Embedded Systems
16 46 (1.80%) e-Learning
17 44 (1.73%) AI Agents
18 39 (1.53%) Data Structures
19 37 (1.45%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 175 (6.87%) Linux
2 95 (3.73%) Windows
3 63 (2.47%) Android
4 57 (2.24%) Unix
5 52 (2.04%) Apple iOS
6 10 (0.39%) Embedded Linux
7 8 (0.31%) CentOS
8 7 (0.27%) Windows Server
9 6 (0.24%) FreeRTOS
10 5 (0.20%) AIX
11 4 (0.16%) Debian
11 4 (0.16%) VMS
11 4 (0.16%) VxWorks
12 3 (0.12%) Kali Linux
13 2 (0.078%) OpenWrt
13 2 (0.078%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 1 (0.039%) macOS
14 1 (0.039%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.039%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,405 (55.12%) CI/CD
2 1,023 (40.13%) Agile
3 867 (34.01%) DevOps
4 821 (32.21%) Software Engineering
5 750 (29.42%) Continuous Improvement
6 654 (25.66%) Mentoring
7 645 (25.30%) AI
8 602 (23.62%) Problem-Solving
9 462 (18.12%) Microservices
10 435 (17.07%) Software Testing
11 404 (15.85%) Infrastructure as Code
12 349 (13.69%) Validation
13 329 (12.91%) Test Strategy
14 311 (12.20%) Coaching
15 309 (12.12%) Observability
16 301 (11.81%) Code Quality
17 292 (11.46%) Technical Leadership
18 273 (10.71%) Containerisation
19 268 (10.51%) Event-Driven
20 261 (10.24%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 709 (27.81%) Python
2 599 (23.50%) Java
3 500 (19.62%) SQL
4 437 (17.14%) JavaScript
5 361 (14.16%) TypeScript
6 332 (13.02%) C#
7 125 (4.90%) C++
8 111 (4.35%) Go
9 102 (4.00%) PowerShell
10 100 (3.92%) Bash
11 83 (3.26%) C
12 48 (1.88%) Kotlin
13 43 (1.69%) Rust
14 36 (1.41%) PHP
15 31 (1.22%) Ruby
16 24 (0.94%) Bicep
16 24 (0.94%) MATLAB
17 23 (0.90%) Groovy
18 20 (0.78%) Swift
19 18 (0.71%) Scala
Qualifications
1 419 (16.44%) Security Cleared
2 268 (10.51%) Degree
3 256 (10.04%) SC Cleared
4 96 (3.77%) Computer Science Degree
5 81 (3.18%) DV Cleared
6 72 (2.82%) AWS Certification
7 70 (2.75%) ISTQB
8 55 (2.16%) CISSP
9 54 (2.12%) ITIL Certification
10 52 (2.04%) CISM
10 52 (2.04%) Master's Degree
11 48 (1.88%) HNC
12 46 (1.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 41 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
14 40 (1.57%) HND
15 28 (1.10%) Azure Certification
16 16 (0.63%) DBS Check
17 15 (0.59%) ISEB
18 13 (0.51%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
19 11 (0.43%) NVQ Level 4
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 570 (22.36%) QA
2 208 (8.16%) Accessibility
3 106 (4.16%) Data Quality
4 67 (2.63%) WCAG
5 54 (2.12%) NIST
6 48 (1.88%) ISO 22301
7 35 (1.37%) GDPR
8 10 (0.39%) GRC
8 10 (0.39%) SLA
9 8 (0.31%) MISRA
10 7 (0.27%) JTAG
11 6 (0.24%) SOC 2
11 6 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.20%) ISO 9001
12 5 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 5 (0.20%) NCSC
13 4 (0.16%) COBIT
13 4 (0.16%) ECSS
13 4 (0.16%) ISO 26262
13 4 (0.16%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 365 (14.32%) Docker
2 57 (2.24%) Firmware
3 15 (0.59%) Active Directory
4 11 (0.43%) Embedded Firmware
4 11 (0.43%) VMware Infrastructure
5 9 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.12%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.078%) KVM
7 2 (0.078%) ProxySG
8 1 (0.039%) IAG
8 1 (0.039%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.039%) QEMU
8 1 (0.039%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.039%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.039%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 370 (14.52%) Kubernetes
2 174 (6.83%) Grafana
3 74 (2.90%) Ansible
4 68 (2.67%) Prometheus
5 27 (1.06%) Argo
6 17 (0.67%) Puppet
7 16 (0.63%) Kibana
8 14 (0.55%) CloudHub
9 11 (0.43%) Rancher
10 10 (0.39%) logstash
10 10 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
11 8 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
12 7 (0.27%) HP Fortify
13 6 (0.24%) Functional Safety
13 6 (0.24%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.24%) vCenter Server
14 3 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 2 (0.078%) Bosun
15 2 (0.078%) kaniko
16 1 (0.039%) Packer
Vendors
1 266 (10.44%) Microsoft
2 138 (5.41%) Google
3 68 (2.67%) Databricks
4 61 (2.39%) Salesforce
5 53 (2.08%) Oracle
6 50 (1.96%) SAP
7 49 (1.92%) ServiceNow
8 38 (1.49%) Dynatrace
9 36 (1.41%) Splunk
10 22 (0.86%) Pega
11 19 (0.75%) Adobe
11 19 (0.75%) MuleSoft
12 18 (0.71%) Foundry
12 18 (0.71%) VMware
13 17 (0.67%) Allen-Bradley
13 17 (0.67%) OpenAI
14 15 (0.59%) AppDynamics
14 15 (0.59%) Atlassian
14 15 (0.59%) Red Hat
14 15 (0.59%) SendGrid