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

6 months to
11 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 76 98 85
Rank change year-on-year +22 -13 -14
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,533 1,529 2,061
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.14% 3.10% 2.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.93% 3.48% 3.47%
Number of salaries quoted 1,370 733 926
10th Percentile £40,000 £40,000 £40,000
25th Percentile £46,939 £51,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £61,493 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.40% +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 £56,500
% change year-on-year -0.86% +2.65% -1.74%

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 86,578 43,908 59,440
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.25% 88.94% 82.23%
Number of salaries quoted 59,120 24,542 31,807
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,250 £32,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,054 £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 £78,250
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 11 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 11 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 +17 2,086 £62,500 -3.85% 2,809
UK excluding London +24 1,618 £57,500 -0.86% 1,735
Work from Home +20 908 £67,500 +8.00% 1,217
London +1 740 £80,000 -3.03% 1,295
North of England +33 433 £57,500 -4.17% 423
South East -2 285 £60,000 +4.35% 384
South West +21 255 £60,000 +14.29% 174
Midlands -7 214 £52,500 -12.50% 204
North West -2 195 £60,000 -2.44% 215
Northern Ireland +14 160 - - 83
North East +23 134 £55,000 +78.86% 64
Wales +6 129 £53,171 -3.33% 43
West Midlands -20 116 £52,500 -6.67% 138
Yorkshire +27 113 £69,305 +26.01% 144
East of England -2 110 £46,000 -23.33% 205
East Midlands -10 98 £52,500 -16.00% 66
Scotland -50 44 £62,500 -10.71% 229

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 58 (2.29%) Confluence
2 43 (1.70%) Apache Spark
3 36 (1.42%) Apache
4 25 (0.99%) SharePoint
5 24 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
6 20 (0.79%) 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 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
10 9 (0.36%) nginx
11 7 (0.28%) 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 85 (3.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (0.55%) Simulink
4 9 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.28%) Moqups
6 6 (0.24%) Chatbot
6 6 (0.24%) Lightworks
7 4 (0.16%) EPLAN
7 4 (0.16%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 1 (0.039%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.039%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.039%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 68 (2.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.07%) 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 (0.079%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.079%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.079%) Towers Watson Igloo
5 2 (0.079%) Visualfiles
5 2 (0.079%) 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%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.039%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.039%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 840 (33.16%) AWS
2 677 (26.73%) Azure
3 326 (12.87%) SaaS
4 264 (10.42%) GCP
5 246 (9.71%) GitHub
6 218 (8.61%) Azure DevOps
7 188 (7.42%) Serverless
8 126 (4.97%) GitHub Actions
9 107 (4.22%) AWS CloudFormation
10 102 (4.03%) Amazon EKS
11 96 (3.79%) Amazon S3
12 90 (3.55%) AWS Lambda
13 78 (3.08%) Power Platform
14 59 (2.33%) Google Ads
14 59 (2.33%) Meta Ads
15 55 (2.17%) Azure Service Bus
16 52 (2.05%) GitHub Copilot
17 51 (2.01%) Azure Logic Apps
17 51 (2.01%) Azure Monitor
18 47 (1.86%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 56 (2.21%) Broadband
2 32 (1.26%) TCP/IP
3 28 (1.11%) DNS
4 26 (1.03%) 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%) HTTP
8 14 (0.55%) MQTT
9 13 (0.51%) Ethernet
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 (0.36%) 3GPP
14 8 (0.32%) Internet
15 7 (0.28%) SS7
Database & Business Intelligence
1 154 (6.08%) PostgreSQL
2 117 (4.62%) NoSQL
3 89 (3.51%) MongoDB
4 83 (3.28%) SQL Server
5 72 (2.84%) Relational Database
6 52 (2.05%) Redis
7 51 (2.01%) Power BI
8 48 (1.89%) MySQL
9 40 (1.58%) DynamoDB
10 37 (1.46%) Data Warehouse
11 35 (1.38%) Data Lake
11 35 (1.38%) Metadata
12 30 (1.18%) Amazon Athena
12 30 (1.18%) BigQuery
13 29 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
14 26 (1.03%) Semantic Layer
15 18 (0.71%) Azure SQL Database
16 17 (0.67%) Amazon Aurora
17 16 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
17 16 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 360 (14.21%) Git
2 269 (10.62%) GitLab
3 212 (8.37%) Jenkins
4 160 (6.32%) Selenium
5 144 (5.68%) JIRA
6 115 (4.54%) Cypress.io
7 106 (4.18%) Cucumber
8 86 (3.40%) Postman
9 76 (3.00%) TeamCity
10 50 (1.97%) JUnit
11 47 (1.86%) JMeter
12 45 (1.78%) REST Assured
13 42 (1.66%) LabVIEW
14 30 (1.18%) Gatling
15 27 (1.07%) Claude Code
16 25 (0.99%) Zephyr
17 24 (0.95%) Robot Framework
18 23 (0.91%) SonarQube
19 22 (0.87%) Bitbucket
20 21 (0.83%) Maven
General
1 698 (27.56%) Social Skills
2 607 (23.96%) Finance
3 409 (16.15%) Analytical Skills
4 280 (11.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 274 (10.82%) Public Sector
6 210 (8.29%) Banking
7 203 (8.01%) Law
8 176 (6.95%) Marketing
9 135 (5.33%) Legal
10 133 (5.25%) Manufacturing
10 133 (5.25%) Retail
11 109 (4.30%) Electronics
12 86 (3.40%) Financial Institution
13 64 (2.53%) Back Office
14 61 (2.41%) Aerospace
15 47 (1.86%) Telecoms
16 40 (1.58%) Automotive
17 39 (1.54%) Games
18 36 (1.42%) Documentation Skills
19 25 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 705 (27.83%) Senior
2 388 (15.32%) Software Engineer
3 340 (13.42%) Developer
4 298 (11.76%) Lead
5 279 (11.01%) Test Engineer
6 126 (4.97%) Senior Developer
7 117 (4.62%) Java Engineer
8 116 (4.58%) QA Engineer
9 112 (4.42%) DevOps Engineer
9 112 (4.42%) Senior Software Engineer
10 89 (3.51%) Test Automation Engineer
11 87 (3.43%) Analyst
12 84 (3.32%) Data Engineer
13 80 (3.16%) Principal Engineer
14 78 (3.08%) Tester
15 76 (3.00%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 71 (2.80%) Lead Software Engineer
17 69 (2.72%) Automation Engineer
18 68 (2.68%) Software Developer
19 66 (2.61%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 349 (13.78%) Terraform
2 269 (10.62%) REST
3 233 (9.20%) .NET
4 220 (8.69%) React
5 210 (8.29%) Node.js
6 205 (8.09%) Spring
7 204 (8.05%) Playwright
8 202 (7.97%) RESTful
9 158 (6.24%) Spring Boot
10 149 (5.88%) Kafka
11 133 (5.25%) CSS
12 124 (4.90%) HTML
13 115 (4.54%) AngularJS
14 74 (2.92%) Middleware
15 72 (2.84%) OAuth
16 64 (2.53%) OAuth2
17 59 (2.33%) JSON
18 54 (2.13%) Next.js
19 52 (2.05%) PySpark
20 49 (1.93%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 441 (17.41%) Cloud Native
2 292 (11.53%) Product Ownership
3 219 (8.65%) Distributed Systems
4 114 (4.50%) Onboarding
5 113 (4.46%) Enterprise Software
6 94 (3.71%) Mobile App
7 91 (3.59%) Public Cloud
8 87 (3.43%) Blog
9 75 (2.96%) Virtual Team
10 72 (2.84%) Legacy Systems
11 64 (2.53%) Marketing Technology
12 55 (2.17%) Self-Motivation
13 53 (2.09%) Cyber Threat
14 51 (2.01%) Algorithms
14 51 (2.01%) Low-Code
15 49 (1.93%) Embedded Systems
16 46 (1.82%) e-Learning
17 44 (1.74%) AI Agents
18 40 (1.58%) Data Structures
19 37 (1.46%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 175 (6.91%) Linux
2 94 (3.71%) Windows
3 62 (2.45%) Android
4 57 (2.25%) Unix
5 52 (2.05%) Apple iOS
6 10 (0.39%) Embedded Linux
7 8 (0.32%) CentOS
8 7 (0.28%) 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 (0.079%) OpenWrt
13 2 (0.079%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 1 (0.039%) macOS
14 1 (0.039%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.039%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,400 (55.27%) CI/CD
2 1,022 (40.35%) Agile
3 865 (34.15%) DevOps
4 817 (32.25%) Software Engineering
5 747 (29.49%) Continuous Improvement
6 653 (25.78%) Mentoring
7 641 (25.31%) AI
8 596 (23.53%) Problem-Solving
9 460 (18.16%) Microservices
10 433 (17.09%) Software Testing
11 406 (16.03%) Infrastructure as Code
12 348 (13.74%) Validation
13 325 (12.83%) Test Strategy
14 310 (12.24%) Coaching
15 309 (12.20%) Observability
16 301 (11.88%) Code Quality
17 293 (11.57%) Technical Leadership
18 274 (10.82%) Containerisation
19 268 (10.58%) Event-Driven
20 260 (10.26%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 704 (27.79%) Python
2 594 (23.45%) Java
3 499 (19.70%) SQL
4 434 (17.13%) JavaScript
5 356 (14.05%) TypeScript
6 332 (13.11%) C#
7 124 (4.90%) C++
8 110 (4.34%) Go
9 102 (4.03%) PowerShell
10 100 (3.95%) Bash
11 81 (3.20%) C
12 46 (1.82%) Kotlin
13 43 (1.70%) Rust
14 36 (1.42%) PHP
15 31 (1.22%) Ruby
16 24 (0.95%) Bicep
16 24 (0.95%) MATLAB
17 23 (0.91%) Groovy
18 20 (0.79%) Swift
19 18 (0.71%) Scala
Qualifications
1 415 (16.38%) Security Cleared
2 264 (10.42%) Degree
3 257 (10.15%) SC Cleared
4 96 (3.79%) Computer Science Degree
5 77 (3.04%) DV Cleared
6 72 (2.84%) AWS Certification
7 70 (2.76%) ISTQB
8 55 (2.17%) CISSP
9 54 (2.13%) ITIL Certification
10 52 (2.05%) CISM
10 52 (2.05%) Master's Degree
11 48 (1.89%) HNC
12 46 (1.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 40 (1.58%) HND
14 39 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
15 27 (1.07%) 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
1 567 (22.38%) QA
2 205 (8.09%) Accessibility
3 106 (4.18%) Data Quality
4 66 (2.61%) WCAG
5 54 (2.13%) NIST
6 48 (1.89%) ISO 22301
7 35 (1.38%) GDPR
8 10 (0.39%) GRC
8 10 (0.39%) SLA
9 8 (0.32%) MISRA
10 7 (0.28%) 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 (14.41%) Docker
2 55 (2.17%) Firmware
3 15 (0.59%) Active Directory
4 11 (0.43%) Embedded Firmware
4 11 (0.43%) VMware Infrastructure
5 9 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.12%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.079%) KVM
7 2 (0.079%) 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
1 371 (14.65%) Kubernetes
2 173 (6.83%) Grafana
3 74 (2.92%) Ansible
4 68 (2.68%) Prometheus
5 27 (1.07%) 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 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
12 7 (0.28%) 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 (0.079%) Bosun
15 2 (0.079%) kaniko
16 1 (0.039%) Packer
Vendors
1 264 (10.42%) Microsoft
2 137 (5.41%) Google
3 67 (2.65%) Databricks
4 60 (2.37%) Salesforce
5 52 (2.05%) Oracle
6 50 (1.97%) SAP
7 49 (1.93%) ServiceNow
8 38 (1.50%) Dynatrace
9 36 (1.42%) Splunk
10 22 (0.87%) Pega
11 19 (0.75%) Adobe
11 19 (0.75%) MuleSoft
12 18 (0.71%) VMware
13 17 (0.67%) Allen-Bradley
13 17 (0.67%) Foundry
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