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

6 months to
27 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 95 97 90
Rank change year-on-year +2 -7 -56
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,569 1,287 2,655
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.02% 3.17% 3.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.62% 3.39% 3.46%
Number of salaries quoted 965 892 1,812
10th Percentile £42,500 £40,000 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,231 £44,813
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £62,500 £58,000
Median % change year-on-year - +7.76% -10.25%
75th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £105,000 £99,847 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £57,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +0.88% +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 59,873 37,939 76,774
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 77.17% 93.46% 86.66%
Number of salaries quoted 36,505 22,139 57,454
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,079
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.29%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,410 £93,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.41%

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 27 March 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 27 March 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 1,312 £63,076 +0.92% 674
UK excluding London -24 834 £57,500 +0.88% 573
Work from Home +21 658 £65,000 +3.17% 333
London +40 591 £80,750 +7.67% 183
South East -27 193 £55,000 +2.33% 145
North of England -42 168 £60,000 +9.09% 162
South West -21 137 £55,000 -8.33% 72
Scotland +5 123 £65,000 +8.33% 30
Midlands -27 114 £56,350 -6.08% 83
North West -13 86 £60,000 +14.29% 82
East Midlands -17 62 £55,000 +4.76% 26
East of England +6 59 £50,000 -28.57% 65
West Midlands -33 52 £60,500 -3.20% 57
Yorkshire -70 52 £62,000 +24.00% 41
Wales -8 33 £55,000 +8.37% 27
North East -28 30 £55,000 -9.47% 39
Northern Ireland -39 7 £80,000 +18.52% 7

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 33 (2.10%) Confluence
2 23 (1.47%) Apache Airflow
3 19 (1.21%) Apache Spark
4 13 (0.83%) Appian
5 12 (0.76%) Apache
6 11 (0.70%) SharePoint
7 10 (0.64%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 10 (0.64%) Palantir Foundry
8 9 (0.57%) Jupyter
9 8 (0.51%) CMS
9 8 (0.51%) IIS
10 6 (0.38%) WordPress
11 4 (0.25%) Apache Solr
12 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.19%) nginx
12 3 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.13%) Camunda
13 2 (0.13%) JBoss
13 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
13 2 (0.13%) SAS
Applications
1 19 (1.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.89%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (0.57%) MS Visio
4 8 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.25%) Fusion 360
5 4 (0.25%) PlantUML
6 2 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.13%) CANalyzer
6 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.13%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.064%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 23 (1.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 22 (1.40%) Oracle ERP
3 14 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.25%) Dynamics AX
4 4 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
4 4 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 4 (0.25%) Shopify
5 2 (0.13%) SAP CX
6 1 (0.064%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.064%) Endur
6 1 (0.064%) Findur
6 1 (0.064%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.064%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.064%) Oracle SCM
6 1 (0.064%) Postilion
6 1 (0.064%) SAP Hybris
6 1 (0.064%) Siebel CRM
6 1 (0.064%) Temenos T24
6 1 (0.064%) Visualfiles
Cloud Services
1 523 (33.33%) Azure
2 474 (30.21%) AWS
3 265 (16.89%) Azure DevOps
4 212 (13.51%) GitHub
5 194 (12.36%) GCP
6 120 (7.65%) SaaS
7 112 (7.14%) Serverless
8 74 (4.72%) GitHub Actions
9 70 (4.46%) Amazon EKS
10 66 (4.21%) PaaS
11 61 (3.89%) GitHub Copilot
12 57 (3.63%) Power Platform
13 54 (3.44%) Azure Data Factory
14 53 (3.38%) dbt
15 45 (2.87%) AWS Lambda
16 43 (2.74%) AWS CloudFormation
16 43 (2.74%) Datadog
17 40 (2.55%) Amazon S3
18 36 (2.29%) Entra ID
19 34 (2.17%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.53%) DNS
2 18 (1.15%) Broadband
3 15 (0.96%) WAN
4 14 (0.89%) HTTP
4 14 (0.89%) SD-WAN
5 12 (0.76%) CHAP
5 12 (0.76%) TCP/IP
6 11 (0.70%) 5G
6 11 (0.70%) Firewall
7 9 (0.57%) VPN
8 4 (0.25%) SMTP
8 4 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
9 3 (0.19%) Cisco ISE
9 3 (0.19%) Multicast
9 3 (0.19%) VLAN
10 2 (0.13%) LTE
10 2 (0.13%) Network Security
10 2 (0.13%) PuTTY
10 2 (0.13%) SpaceWire
10 2 (0.13%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 96 (6.12%) PostgreSQL
2 92 (5.86%) NoSQL
3 85 (5.42%) SQL Server
4 48 (3.06%) MongoDB
5 45 (2.87%) MySQL
5 45 (2.87%) Relational Database
6 36 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
6 36 (2.29%) Power BI
7 22 (1.40%) DynamoDB
8 17 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
9 15 (0.96%) Metadata
10 14 (0.89%) Elasticsearch
11 13 (0.83%) Tableau
12 12 (0.76%) DB2
12 12 (0.76%) Pinecone
13 11 (0.70%) BigQuery
13 11 (0.70%) Data Lake
13 11 (0.70%) Redis
14 8 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
15 7 (0.45%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 184 (11.73%) Selenium
2 167 (10.64%) Git
3 139 (8.86%) JIRA
4 129 (8.22%) Jenkins
5 87 (5.54%) Cypress.io
6 73 (4.65%) GitLab
7 70 (4.46%) Cucumber
8 65 (4.14%) TeamCity
9 58 (3.70%) Postman
10 50 (3.19%) JMeter
11 35 (2.23%) SpecFlow
12 29 (1.85%) REST Assured
13 27 (1.72%) CircleCI
14 26 (1.66%) Robot Framework
15 24 (1.53%) JUnit
15 24 (1.53%) MLflow
16 19 (1.21%) Appium
16 19 (1.21%) Oracle Forms
16 19 (1.21%) WebDriver
17 18 (1.15%) TestRail
General
1 458 (29.19%) Finance
2 451 (28.74%) Social Skills
3 167 (10.64%) Banking
4 153 (9.75%) Analytical Skills
5 124 (7.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 121 (7.71%) Law
7 92 (5.86%) Retail
8 88 (5.61%) Public Sector
9 66 (4.21%) Financial Institution
10 61 (3.89%) Marketing
11 52 (3.31%) Manufacturing
12 46 (2.93%) Back Office
13 39 (2.49%) Electronics
14 36 (2.29%) Front Office
15 35 (2.23%) Legal
16 29 (1.85%) Games
17 20 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
18 19 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
18 19 (1.21%) Presentation Skills
19 15 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 418 (26.64%) Senior
2 249 (15.87%) Lead
3 221 (14.09%) Developer
4 199 (12.68%) Software Engineer
5 162 (10.33%) Test Engineer
6 105 (6.69%) Senior Developer
7 95 (6.05%) QA Engineer
8 81 (5.16%) Test Leader
9 80 (5.10%) Tester
10 74 (4.72%) Java Engineer
11 73 (4.65%) Test Automation Engineer
12 70 (4.46%) Analyst
13 65 (4.14%) Senior Software Engineer
14 58 (3.70%) Automation Engineer
15 52 (3.31%) Python Developer
16 51 (3.25%) Automation Tester
17 50 (3.19%) QA Automation Engineer
18 47 (3.00%) Full-Stack Engineer
18 47 (3.00%) Senior Test Engineer
19 42 (2.68%) Applications Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 185 (11.79%) React
2 143 (9.11%) RESTful
3 141 (8.99%) .NET
4 130 (8.29%) Playwright
5 115 (7.33%) REST
6 87 (5.54%) Spring
7 84 (5.35%) Node.js
8 67 (4.27%) HTML
9 66 (4.21%) CSS
10 63 (4.02%) Spring Boot
11 60 (3.82%) Kafka
12 55 (3.51%) JSON
13 53 (3.38%) pytest
14 49 (3.12%) OAuth
15 41 (2.61%) Django
16 40 (2.55%) SOAP
16 40 (2.55%) Web Services
17 36 (2.29%) Elastic Stack
17 36 (2.29%) OAuth2
18 34 (2.17%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 252 (16.06%) Cloud Native
2 128 (8.16%) Product Ownership
3 73 (4.65%) Mobile App
4 56 (3.57%) Management Information System
5 55 (3.51%) Distributed Systems
6 49 (3.12%) Self-Motivation
7 46 (2.93%) Enterprise Software
8 44 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
9 39 (2.49%) Onboarding
10 37 (2.36%) Algorithms
11 33 (2.10%) Greenfield Project
11 33 (2.10%) Low-Code
12 31 (1.98%) Data Structures
13 26 (1.66%) Hedge funds
13 26 (1.66%) Hybrid Cloud
14 23 (1.47%) Equities
15 21 (1.34%) GNSS
15 21 (1.34%) Public Cloud
16 20 (1.27%) Blog
17 19 (1.21%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 148 (9.43%) Linux
2 84 (5.35%) Windows
3 61 (3.89%) Apple iOS
4 51 (3.25%) Android
5 36 (2.29%) Unix
6 11 (0.70%) Windows Server
7 9 (0.57%) CentOS
8 5 (0.32%) Debian
8 5 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.25%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
10 2 (0.13%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.13%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.13%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.064%) AIX
11 1 (0.064%) FreeRTOS
11 1 (0.064%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.064%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 787 (50.16%) CI/CD
2 641 (40.85%) Agile
3 529 (33.72%) DevOps
4 381 (24.28%) Continuous Improvement
5 362 (23.07%) Software Engineering
6 343 (21.86%) Mentoring
7 339 (21.61%) Problem-Solving
8 258 (16.44%) AI
9 240 (15.30%) Microservices
10 229 (14.60%) Infrastructure as Code
11 226 (14.40%) Coaching
12 212 (13.51%) Software Testing
13 202 (12.87%) Observability
14 195 (12.43%) Clean Code
15 192 (12.24%) Test Strategy
16 171 (10.90%) Containerisation
17 169 (10.77%) Full-Stack Development
18 153 (9.75%) Analytics
19 152 (9.69%) Validation
20 143 (9.11%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 471 (30.02%) Python
2 385 (24.54%) Java
3 303 (19.31%) SQL
4 236 (15.04%) JavaScript
5 189 (12.05%) TypeScript
6 150 (9.56%) C#
7 84 (5.35%) PowerShell
8 65 (4.14%) C++
9 56 (3.57%) Bash
10 48 (3.06%) Go
11 33 (2.10%) C
12 29 (1.85%) Bicep
12 29 (1.85%) PL/SQL
13 27 (1.72%) Kotlin
14 26 (1.66%) Apex Code
14 26 (1.66%) PHP
14 26 (1.66%) Shell Script
15 24 (1.53%) Rust
16 18 (1.15%) Swift
17 12 (0.76%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 206 (13.13%) Degree
2 136 (8.67%) Security Cleared
3 91 (5.80%) SC Cleared
4 80 (5.10%) Computer Science Degree
5 72 (4.59%) ISTQB
6 31 (1.98%) DV Cleared
6 31 (1.98%) Master's Degree
7 29 (1.85%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 22 (1.40%) AWS Certification
9 18 (1.15%) CISSP
9 18 (1.15%) ISEB
10 15 (0.96%) CEH
11 14 (0.89%) HND
12 13 (0.83%) Azure Certification
12 13 (0.83%) CISA
12 13 (0.83%) PhD
13 12 (0.76%) CGEIT
13 12 (0.76%) DBS Check
13 12 (0.76%) FFIEC
13 12 (0.76%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (22.88%) QA
2 118 (7.52%) Accessibility
3 62 (3.95%) Data Quality
4 49 (3.12%) NIST
5 45 (2.87%) GDPR
6 39 (2.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 26 (1.66%) WCAG
8 15 (0.96%) ISO 22301
9 14 (0.89%) NCSC
10 13 (0.83%) SLA
11 12 (0.76%) COBIT
12 11 (0.70%) ISO 9001
13 7 (0.45%) Software Quality Assurance
14 6 (0.38%) GRC
15 5 (0.32%) IEC 61508
15 5 (0.32%) ISO 26262
15 5 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 4 (0.25%) ISO 13485
16 4 (0.25%) PMO
16 4 (0.25%) SOC 2
System Software
1 222 (14.15%) Docker
2 31 (1.98%) Active Directory
3 20 (1.27%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (0.96%) Hyper-V
5 13 (0.83%) Firmware
5 13 (0.83%) KVM
5 13 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.51%) Embedded Firmware
7 3 (0.19%) Terminal Server
8 2 (0.13%) vSphere
9 1 (0.064%) Xen
Systems Management
1 271 (17.27%) Terraform
2 268 (17.08%) Kubernetes
3 129 (8.22%) Grafana
4 66 (4.21%) Ansible
5 44 (2.80%) Prometheus
6 30 (1.91%) Single Sign-On
7 22 (1.40%) HP ALM
8 8 (0.51%) Argo
9 6 (0.38%) logstash
9 6 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (0.25%) HP Fortify
10 4 (0.25%) SCCM
10 4 (0.25%) SCOM
11 3 (0.19%) Kibana
11 3 (0.19%) Rancher
12 2 (0.13%) Control-M
12 2 (0.13%) MIIS
12 2 (0.13%) Nessus
12 2 (0.13%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 124 (7.90%) Microsoft
2 71 (4.53%) Oracle
3 50 (3.19%) Salesforce
4 46 (2.93%) Databricks
5 45 (2.87%) VMware
6 40 (2.55%) SAP
7 34 (2.17%) Google
8 23 (1.47%) HP
9 21 (1.34%) Commvault
10 19 (1.21%) OpenAI
10 19 (1.21%) ServiceNow
11 17 (1.08%) Splunk
12 16 (1.02%) Black Duck
12 16 (1.02%) Coverity
13 14 (0.89%) Palantir
14 13 (0.83%) Foundry
14 13 (0.83%) UiPath
15 12 (0.76%) Automation Anywhere
15 12 (0.76%) Pega
16 11 (0.70%) Ab Initio