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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 74 93 85
Rank change year-on-year +19 -8 -15
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,519 1,599 2,069
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.13% 3.23% 2.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.91% 3.64% 3.46%
Number of salaries quoted 1,360 738 931
10th Percentile £40,000 £39,960 £40,000
25th Percentile £46,985 £51,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £61,984 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.64% +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 £59,000 £56,500
% change year-on-year -2.54% +4.42% -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 86,418 43,977 59,769
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.19% 88.96% 82.26%
Number of salaries quoted 59,113 24,503 32,039
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,250 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £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 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -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 10 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 10 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 +11 2,072 £62,500 -3.85% 3,175
UK excluding London +15 1,604 £57,500 -2.54% 1,834
Work from Home +16 904 £67,500 +8.00% 1,290
London -3 740 £80,000 -1.23% 1,602
North of England +42 428 £57,500 -4.17% 426
South East -14 283 £60,000 +4.35% 404
South West +24 256 £60,000 +11.63% 202
Midlands -13 209 £52,500 -12.50% 205
North West -2 190 £60,000 -2.44% 212
Northern Ireland +12 160 - - 79
North East +21 135 £55,000 +78.86% 71
Wales +2 129 £53,171 -3.33% 38
Yorkshire +38 112 £69,305 +26.01% 143
West Midlands -22 112 £50,000 -11.11% 136
East of England -11 107 £46,000 -23.33% 214
East Midlands -21 97 £52,500 -16.00% 69
Scotland -51 44 £62,500 -10.71% 277

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 57 (2.26%) Confluence
2 43 (1.71%) Apache Spark
3 36 (1.43%) 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 (0.56%) Anypoint
8 14 (0.56%) CMS
8 14 (0.56%) Mule
9 11 (0.44%) 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 (3.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (0.56%) 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 (0.040%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.040%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.040%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 68 (2.70%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.07%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.44%) 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 (0.040%) Academy Revenues and Benefits
6 1 (0.040%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.040%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.040%) Endur
6 1 (0.040%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.040%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.040%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.040%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.040%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 834 (33.11%) AWS
2 674 (26.76%) Azure
3 324 (12.86%) SaaS
4 265 (10.52%) GCP
5 245 (9.73%) GitHub
6 217 (8.61%) Azure DevOps
7 187 (7.42%) Serverless
8 126 (5.00%) GitHub Actions
9 106 (4.21%) AWS CloudFormation
10 102 (4.05%) Amazon EKS
11 95 (3.77%) Amazon S3
12 89 (3.53%) AWS Lambda
13 77 (3.06%) Power Platform
14 59 (2.34%) Google Ads
14 59 (2.34%) Meta Ads
15 55 (2.18%) Azure Service Bus
16 52 (2.06%) GitHub Copilot
17 51 (2.02%) Azure Logic Apps
17 51 (2.02%) Azure Monitor
18 47 (1.87%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 56 (2.22%) Broadband
2 32 (1.27%) TCP/IP
3 28 (1.11%) DNS
4 26 (1.03%) Firewall
5 17 (0.67%) SSL
6 16 (0.64%) Modbus
6 16 (0.64%) Wireless
7 15 (0.60%) DMARC
8 14 (0.56%) HTTP
8 14 (0.56%) MQTT
9 13 (0.52%) Ethernet
9 13 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
10 12 (0.48%) DHCP
10 12 (0.48%) Network Security
11 11 (0.44%) 5G
11 11 (0.44%) WAN
12 10 (0.40%) LTE
13 9 (0.36%) 3GPP
14 8 (0.32%) Internet
15 7 (0.28%) SS7
Database & Business Intelligence
1 153 (6.07%) PostgreSQL
2 117 (4.64%) NoSQL
3 89 (3.53%) MongoDB
4 82 (3.26%) SQL Server
5 72 (2.86%) Relational Database
6 52 (2.06%) Redis
7 50 (1.98%) Power BI
8 48 (1.91%) MySQL
9 40 (1.59%) DynamoDB
10 37 (1.47%) Data Warehouse
11 35 (1.39%) Data Lake
12 34 (1.35%) Metadata
13 30 (1.19%) BigQuery
14 29 (1.15%) Amazon Athena
15 28 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
16 25 (0.99%) Semantic Layer
17 17 (0.67%) Amazon Aurora
17 17 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
18 16 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
19 15 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 359 (14.25%) Git
2 268 (10.64%) GitLab
3 212 (8.42%) Jenkins
4 157 (6.23%) Selenium
5 144 (5.72%) JIRA
6 113 (4.49%) Cypress.io
7 106 (4.21%) Cucumber
8 85 (3.37%) Postman
9 76 (3.02%) TeamCity
10 51 (2.02%) JUnit
11 47 (1.87%) JMeter
12 43 (1.71%) REST Assured
13 41 (1.63%) LabVIEW
14 30 (1.19%) Gatling
15 26 (1.03%) Zephyr
16 24 (0.95%) Claude Code
16 24 (0.95%) Robot Framework
17 23 (0.91%) SonarQube
18 22 (0.87%) Bitbucket
19 21 (0.83%) Maven
General
1 697 (27.67%) Social Skills
2 605 (24.02%) Finance
3 404 (16.04%) Analytical Skills
4 281 (11.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 274 (10.88%) Public Sector
6 211 (8.38%) Banking
7 204 (8.10%) Law
8 176 (6.99%) Marketing
9 135 (5.36%) Legal
10 133 (5.28%) Retail
11 131 (5.20%) Manufacturing
12 107 (4.25%) Electronics
13 86 (3.41%) Financial Institution
14 64 (2.54%) Back Office
15 59 (2.34%) Aerospace
16 46 (1.83%) Telecoms
17 38 (1.51%) Automotive
18 37 (1.47%) Games
19 36 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
20 25 (0.99%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 701 (27.83%) Senior
2 387 (15.36%) Software Engineer
3 337 (13.38%) Developer
4 298 (11.83%) Lead
5 277 (11.00%) Test Engineer
6 124 (4.92%) Senior Developer
7 117 (4.64%) Java Engineer
8 114 (4.53%) QA Engineer
9 111 (4.41%) DevOps Engineer
10 110 (4.37%) Senior Software Engineer
11 88 (3.49%) Test Automation Engineer
12 86 (3.41%) Analyst
13 83 (3.29%) Data Engineer
14 80 (3.18%) Principal Engineer
15 79 (3.14%) Tester
16 75 (2.98%) Full-Stack Engineer
17 71 (2.82%) Lead Software Engineer
18 68 (2.70%) Architect
18 68 (2.70%) Automation Engineer
19 67 (2.66%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 346 (13.74%) Terraform
2 267 (10.60%) REST
3 231 (9.17%) .NET
4 218 (8.65%) React
5 210 (8.34%) Node.js
6 204 (8.10%) Spring
7 203 (8.06%) Playwright
8 202 (8.02%) RESTful
9 157 (6.23%) Spring Boot
10 147 (5.84%) Kafka
11 133 (5.28%) CSS
12 124 (4.92%) HTML
13 114 (4.53%) AngularJS
14 74 (2.94%) Middleware
15 72 (2.86%) OAuth
16 64 (2.54%) OAuth2
17 59 (2.34%) JSON
18 54 (2.14%) Next.js
19 51 (2.02%) PySpark
20 48 (1.91%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 439 (17.43%) Cloud Native
2 288 (11.43%) Product Ownership
3 217 (8.61%) Distributed Systems
4 114 (4.53%) Onboarding
5 112 (4.45%) Enterprise Software
6 95 (3.77%) Mobile App
7 91 (3.61%) Public Cloud
8 87 (3.45%) Blog
9 75 (2.98%) Virtual Team
10 72 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
11 64 (2.54%) Marketing Technology
12 55 (2.18%) Self-Motivation
13 53 (2.10%) Cyber Threat
14 51 (2.02%) Algorithms
14 51 (2.02%) Low-Code
15 48 (1.91%) Embedded Systems
16 46 (1.83%) e-Learning
17 43 (1.71%) AI Agents
18 40 (1.59%) Data Structures
19 37 (1.47%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 174 (6.91%) Linux
2 94 (3.73%) Windows
3 64 (2.54%) Android
4 57 (2.26%) Unix
5 53 (2.10%) Apple iOS
6 10 (0.40%) 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 (0.040%) Mac OS
14 1 (0.040%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.040%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,392 (55.26%) CI/CD
2 1,015 (40.29%) Agile
3 859 (34.10%) DevOps
4 816 (32.39%) Software Engineering
5 741 (29.42%) Continuous Improvement
6 649 (25.76%) Mentoring
7 635 (25.21%) AI
8 592 (23.50%) Problem-Solving
9 458 (18.18%) Microservices
10 429 (17.03%) Software Testing
11 403 (16.00%) Infrastructure as Code
12 345 (13.70%) Validation
13 323 (12.82%) Test Strategy
14 307 (12.19%) Coaching
14 307 (12.19%) Observability
15 299 (11.87%) Code Quality
16 289 (11.47%) Technical Leadership
17 272 (10.80%) Containerisation
18 264 (10.48%) Event-Driven
19 257 (10.20%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 700 (27.79%) Python
2 592 (23.50%) Java
3 495 (19.65%) SQL
4 432 (17.15%) JavaScript
5 355 (14.09%) TypeScript
6 330 (13.10%) C#
7 124 (4.92%) C++
8 108 (4.29%) Go
9 102 (4.05%) PowerShell
10 99 (3.93%) Bash
11 81 (3.22%) C
12 47 (1.87%) Kotlin
13 43 (1.71%) Rust
14 36 (1.43%) PHP
15 31 (1.23%) 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
1 411 (16.32%) Security Cleared
2 263 (10.44%) Degree
3 254 (10.08%) SC Cleared
4 96 (3.81%) Computer Science Degree
5 76 (3.02%) DV Cleared
6 72 (2.86%) AWS Certification
7 70 (2.78%) ISTQB
8 55 (2.18%) CISSP
9 54 (2.14%) ITIL Certification
10 52 (2.06%) CISM
10 52 (2.06%) Master's Degree
11 48 (1.91%) HNC
12 46 (1.83%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 40 (1.59%) HND
14 39 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
15 27 (1.07%) Azure Certification
16 16 (0.64%) DBS Check
17 15 (0.60%) ISEB
18 13 (0.52%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
19 11 (0.44%) NVQ Level 4
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 565 (22.43%) QA
2 203 (8.06%) Accessibility
3 105 (4.17%) Data Quality
4 67 (2.66%) WCAG
5 54 (2.14%) NIST
6 48 (1.91%) ISO 22301
7 33 (1.31%) GDPR
8 10 (0.40%) GRC
8 10 (0.40%) 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 20022
13 4 (0.16%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 362 (14.37%) Docker
2 54 (2.14%) Firmware
3 15 (0.60%) Active Directory
4 11 (0.44%) Embedded Firmware
4 11 (0.44%) 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 (0.040%) IAG
8 1 (0.040%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.040%) QEMU
8 1 (0.040%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.040%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.040%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 368 (14.61%) Kubernetes
2 173 (6.87%) Grafana
3 74 (2.94%) Ansible
4 68 (2.70%) Prometheus
5 27 (1.07%) Argo
6 17 (0.67%) Puppet
7 16 (0.64%) Kibana
8 14 (0.56%) CloudHub
9 11 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
9 11 (0.44%) Rancher
10 10 (0.40%) logstash
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 (0.040%) Packer
Vendors
1 264 (10.48%) Microsoft
2 137 (5.44%) Google
3 67 (2.66%) Databricks
4 60 (2.38%) Salesforce
5 52 (2.06%) Oracle
6 50 (1.98%) SAP
7 49 (1.95%) ServiceNow
8 38 (1.51%) Dynatrace
9 36 (1.43%) Splunk
10 22 (0.87%) Pega
11 19 (0.75%) Adobe
11 19 (0.75%) MuleSoft
11 19 (0.75%) VMware
12 17 (0.67%) Allen-Bradley
12 17 (0.67%) Foundry
12 17 (0.67%) OpenAI
13 15 (0.60%) AppDynamics
13 15 (0.60%) Atlassian
13 15 (0.60%) Red Hat
13 15 (0.60%) SendGrid