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

6 months to
26 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 84 99
Rank change year-on-year 0 +15 -45
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,060 1,695 2,198
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.04% 3.44% 2.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.76% 3.83% 3.03%
Number of salaries quoted 1,189 829 1,382
10th Percentile £42,500 £37,500 £37,500
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +8.70% -11.54%
75th Percentile £81,788 £82,500 £71,991
90th Percentile £96,250 £97,528 £87,399
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +5.26% +8.57% -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 74,528 44,262 72,639
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.71% 89.78% 81.61%
Number of salaries quoted 51,427 25,101 49,118
10th Percentile £30,500 £28,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £78,750 £76,250 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +10.00% - -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 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 26 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 -5 1,711 £65,000 +2.93% 776
UK excluding London -3 1,255 £60,000 +5.26% 540
Work from Home +21 886 £67,500 +12.50% 320
London +2 642 £80,000 +3.23% 330
North of England +12 342 £57,500 -4.01% 147
South East -25 230 £60,000 +9.09% 153
South West -14 204 £57,500 +0.10% 87
Midlands -13 183 £62,500 +4.17% 65
North West -2 177 £61,250 -5.77% 77
Northern Ireland +5 130 £80,000 +45.45% 16
West Midlands -15 96 £62,500 -3.85% 38
North East +7 91 £52,500 +16.67% 34
East Midlands -27 86 £61,250 +28.95% 27
Yorkshire -22 74 £69,310 +41.45% 39
Wales -4 70 £55,000 - 9
East of England -32 61 £55,000 -3.51% 55
Scotland -39 48 £62,500 -10.71% 28

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 43 (2.09%) Confluence
2 29 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
2 29 (1.41%) Apache Spark
3 23 (1.12%) Apache
3 23 (1.12%) SharePoint
4 14 (0.68%) Jupyter
5 13 (0.63%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 13 (0.63%) CMS
6 12 (0.58%) Anypoint
6 12 (0.58%) Mule
7 7 (0.34%) IIS
8 5 (0.24%) Umbraco
8 5 (0.24%) WordPress
9 4 (0.19%) nginx
9 4 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
10 3 (0.15%) Camunda
10 3 (0.15%) Cloud Foundry
10 3 (0.15%) Headless CMS
10 3 (0.15%) JBoss
10 3 (0.15%) SAS
Applications
1 23 (1.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.58%) Simulink
3 11 (0.53%) Microsoft Office
4 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.29%) PlantUML
6 5 (0.24%) Lightworks
7 3 (0.15%) CANalyzer
7 3 (0.15%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.097%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.097%) Chatbot
8 2 (0.097%) Moqups
9 1 (0.049%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 37 (1.80%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.31%) Dynamics GP
3 5 (0.24%) Visualfiles
4 4 (0.19%) Dynamics AX
4 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.097%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.097%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.097%) Payment Gateway
5 2 (0.097%) Towers Watson Igloo
5 2 (0.097%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.049%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.049%) Endur
6 1 (0.049%) Findur
6 1 (0.049%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.049%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle SCM
Cloud Services
1 764 (37.09%) AWS
2 655 (31.80%) Azure
3 247 (11.99%) Azure DevOps
4 233 (11.31%) SaaS
5 231 (11.21%) GCP
6 183 (8.88%) Serverless
7 174 (8.45%) GitHub
8 89 (4.32%) GitHub Actions
9 86 (4.17%) AWS CloudFormation
10 78 (3.79%) AWS Lambda
11 73 (3.54%) Amazon S3
12 68 (3.30%) Amazon EKS
13 55 (2.67%) Power Platform
14 53 (2.57%) Azure Service Bus
15 52 (2.52%) PaaS
16 45 (2.18%) Azure Logic Apps
17 44 (2.14%) Azure Monitor
17 44 (2.14%) dbt
18 41 (1.99%) Amazon EC2
19 34 (1.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 71 (3.45%) Broadband
2 24 (1.17%) Firewall
3 14 (0.68%) Wireless
4 13 (0.63%) DMARC
4 13 (0.63%) DNS
4 13 (0.63%) SSL
5 12 (0.58%) MQTT
6 11 (0.53%) TCP/IP
7 10 (0.49%) LTE
7 10 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
8 8 (0.39%) 3GPP
8 8 (0.39%) HTTP
9 7 (0.34%) CHAP
9 7 (0.34%) GSM
9 7 (0.34%) Radio Access Network
9 7 (0.34%) RANAP
9 7 (0.34%) SS7
9 7 (0.34%) UMTS
9 7 (0.34%) WAN
9 7 (0.34%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 136 (6.60%) NoSQL
2 131 (6.36%) PostgreSQL
3 104 (5.05%) MongoDB
4 68 (3.30%) SQL Server
5 47 (2.28%) DynamoDB
6 44 (2.14%) Relational Database
7 39 (1.89%) MySQL
8 29 (1.41%) Data Warehouse
9 27 (1.31%) Redis
10 26 (1.26%) Power BI
11 24 (1.17%) BigQuery
12 18 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
12 18 (0.87%) Spark SQL
13 16 (0.78%) Metadata
13 16 (0.78%) Semantic Layer
14 14 (0.68%) Amazon Athena
14 14 (0.68%) Data Lake
15 13 (0.63%) Oracle Database
16 12 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
17 10 (0.49%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 271 (13.16%) Git
2 187 (9.08%) Jenkins
3 184 (8.93%) GitLab
4 155 (7.52%) Selenium
5 129 (6.26%) JIRA
6 93 (4.51%) Cucumber
7 91 (4.42%) Cypress.io
8 81 (3.93%) Postman
9 55 (2.67%) TeamCity
10 52 (2.52%) JMeter
11 39 (1.89%) JUnit
12 38 (1.84%) REST Assured
13 32 (1.55%) Zephyr
14 25 (1.21%) Gatling
14 25 (1.21%) SpecFlow
14 25 (1.21%) TestRail
15 21 (1.02%) fastlane
16 20 (0.97%) Crashlytics
17 19 (0.92%) Bitbucket
17 19 (0.92%) SonarQube
General
1 541 (26.26%) Social Skills
2 457 (22.18%) Finance
3 217 (10.53%) Analytical Skills
4 212 (10.29%) Public Sector
5 202 (9.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 185 (8.98%) Banking
7 176 (8.54%) Law
8 112 (5.44%) Legal
9 91 (4.42%) Retail
10 69 (3.35%) Manufacturing
11 61 (2.96%) Marketing
12 60 (2.91%) Financial Institution
13 58 (2.82%) Electronics
14 54 (2.62%) Games
15 49 (2.38%) Back Office
16 30 (1.46%) Front Office
17 27 (1.31%) Telecoms
18 24 (1.17%) Documentation Skills
19 21 (1.02%) Aerospace
19 21 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 586 (28.45%) Senior
2 325 (15.78%) Lead
3 316 (15.34%) Software Engineer
4 295 (14.32%) Developer
5 217 (10.53%) Test Engineer
6 122 (5.92%) Senior Developer
7 117 (5.68%) Java Engineer
8 96 (4.66%) Senior Software Engineer
9 86 (4.17%) QA Engineer
9 86 (4.17%) Test Automation Engineer
10 82 (3.98%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 79 (3.83%) DevOps Engineer
12 70 (3.40%) Test Leader
13 69 (3.35%) Architect
14 66 (3.20%) Tester
15 63 (3.06%) Data Engineer
16 59 (2.86%) Senior Manager
17 55 (2.67%) Lead Software Engineer
17 55 (2.67%) Software Developer
18 54 (2.62%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 214 (10.39%) React
2 203 (9.85%) .NET
3 182 (8.83%) Playwright
3 182 (8.83%) Spring
4 180 (8.74%) REST
5 176 (8.54%) Node.js
6 174 (8.45%) RESTful
7 136 (6.60%) Spring Boot
8 119 (5.78%) Kafka
9 102 (4.95%) AngularJS
10 87 (4.22%) CSS
11 84 (4.08%) HTML
12 66 (3.20%) Middleware
12 66 (3.20%) OAuth
13 59 (2.86%) OAuth2
14 49 (2.38%) JSON
15 46 (2.23%) RabbitMQ
16 44 (2.14%) Vue
17 43 (2.09%) Next.js
18 39 (1.89%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 369 (17.91%) Cloud Native
2 231 (11.21%) Product Ownership
3 172 (8.35%) Distributed Systems
4 103 (5.00%) Mobile App
5 75 (3.64%) Enterprise Software
6 69 (3.35%) Virtual Team
7 66 (3.20%) Public Cloud
8 65 (3.16%) Legacy Systems
9 60 (2.91%) Cyber Threat
10 57 (2.77%) Algorithms
11 49 (2.38%) Blog
11 49 (2.38%) Low-Code
12 48 (2.33%) Management Information System
13 44 (2.14%) Data Structures
14 42 (2.04%) Onboarding
15 40 (1.94%) Greenfield Project
16 35 (1.70%) Embedded Systems
16 35 (1.70%) Self-Motivation
17 34 (1.65%) Video\Live Streaming
18 33 (1.60%) Marketing Technology
Operating Systems
1 186 (9.03%) Linux
2 93 (4.51%) Windows
3 60 (2.91%) Apple iOS
4 53 (2.57%) Unix
5 51 (2.48%) Android
6 10 (0.49%) Windows Server
7 7 (0.34%) CentOS
8 6 (0.29%) Embedded Linux
8 6 (0.29%) FreeRTOS
9 4 (0.19%) Kali Linux
10 3 (0.15%) AIX
10 3 (0.15%) Debian
11 1 (0.049%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.049%) ThreadX
11 1 (0.049%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.049%) VMS
11 1 (0.049%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.049%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.049%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,181 (57.33%) CI/CD
2 922 (44.76%) Agile
3 797 (38.69%) DevOps
4 660 (32.04%) Software Engineering
5 589 (28.59%) Continuous Improvement
6 585 (28.40%) Mentoring
7 413 (20.05%) Problem-Solving
8 406 (19.71%) Microservices
9 400 (19.42%) AI
10 374 (18.16%) Infrastructure as Code
11 347 (16.84%) Software Testing
12 290 (14.08%) Test Strategy
13 272 (13.20%) Containerisation
14 265 (12.86%) Coaching
15 264 (12.82%) Full-Stack Development
16 263 (12.77%) Observability
17 235 (11.41%) Code Quality
18 230 (11.17%) Validation
19 214 (10.39%) Scrum
20 208 (10.10%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 653 (31.70%) Python
2 558 (27.09%) Java
3 369 (17.91%) JavaScript
4 323 (15.68%) SQL
5 302 (14.66%) TypeScript
6 300 (14.56%) C#
7 119 (5.78%) C++
8 106 (5.15%) PowerShell
9 84 (4.08%) Go
10 77 (3.74%) Bash
11 74 (3.59%) C
12 41 (1.99%) Kotlin
13 34 (1.65%) Rust
14 30 (1.46%) Swift
15 29 (1.41%) PHP
16 25 (1.21%) Ruby
17 22 (1.07%) Bicep
18 21 (1.02%) MATLAB
19 18 (0.87%) Groovy
20 16 (0.78%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 257 (12.48%) Security Cleared
2 235 (11.41%) Degree
3 159 (7.72%) SC Cleared
4 106 (5.15%) Computer Science Degree
5 82 (3.98%) ISTQB
6 62 (3.01%) CISSP
7 60 (2.91%) ITIL Certification
8 56 (2.72%) CISM
9 51 (2.48%) DV Cleared
10 39 (1.89%) AWS Certification
11 37 (1.80%) Master's Degree
12 28 (1.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 17 (0.83%) BPSS Clearance
13 17 (0.83%) DBS Check
13 17 (0.83%) ISEB
14 13 (0.63%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 12 (0.58%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
16 11 (0.53%) HNC
17 9 (0.44%) HND
18 8 (0.39%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 484 (23.50%) QA
2 187 (9.08%) Accessibility
3 75 (3.64%) Data Quality
4 62 (3.01%) NIST
5 54 (2.62%) WCAG
6 53 (2.57%) ISO 22301
7 46 (2.23%) GDPR
8 14 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 14 (0.68%) SLA
9 13 (0.63%) Software Quality Assurance
10 11 (0.53%) GRC
11 9 (0.44%) SOC 2
12 8 (0.39%) COBIT
13 7 (0.34%) JTAG
13 7 (0.34%) MISRA
14 6 (0.29%) PMO
15 4 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials
15 4 (0.19%) ISO 9001
15 4 (0.19%) NCSC
16 3 (0.15%) Automotive SPICE
System Software
1 285 (13.83%) Docker
2 30 (1.46%) Firmware
3 22 (1.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (0.63%) Hyper-V
6 12 (0.58%) Active Directory
7 11 (0.53%) KVM
8 10 (0.49%) Embedded Firmware
9 2 (0.097%) vSphere
10 1 (0.049%) IAG
10 1 (0.049%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.049%) ProxySG
10 1 (0.049%) Terminal Server
10 1 (0.049%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.049%) Xen
Systems Management
1 315 (15.29%) Terraform
2 310 (15.05%) Kubernetes
3 132 (6.41%) Grafana
4 80 (3.88%) Ansible
5 62 (3.01%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.26%) Argo
7 16 (0.78%) Kibana
8 12 (0.58%) CloudHub
9 9 (0.44%) logstash
9 9 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.39%) Puppet
11 7 (0.34%) HP Fortify
12 6 (0.29%) Functional Safety
12 6 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
12 6 (0.29%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.24%) Packer
14 4 (0.19%) SCCM
14 4 (0.19%) SCOM
15 3 (0.15%) Progress Chef
15 3 (0.15%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 160 (7.77%) Microsoft
2 58 (2.82%) Databricks
3 51 (2.48%) Google
3 51 (2.48%) Oracle
4 49 (2.38%) Salesforce
5 42 (2.04%) ServiceNow
6 35 (1.70%) VMware
7 30 (1.46%) Splunk
8 26 (1.26%) Dynatrace
8 26 (1.26%) SAP
9 21 (1.02%) Pega
10 17 (0.83%) AppDynamics
11 16 (0.78%) Braze
12 15 (0.73%) Adobe
12 15 (0.73%) MuleSoft
12 15 (0.73%) OpenAI
13 14 (0.68%) Amplitude
13 14 (0.68%) Atlassian
13 14 (0.68%) IBM
14 13 (0.63%) SendGrid