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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 78 91 86
Rank change year-on-year +13 -5 -16
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,485 1,596 2,146
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.10% 3.22% 2.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.87% 3.61% 3.50%
Number of salaries quoted 1,347 735 962
10th Percentile £40,750 £39,797 £40,000
25th Percentile £47,046 £51,250 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £78,750 £85,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £93,750 £105,000 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +4.55% -4.35%

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 86,437 44,202 61,341
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.18% 89.12% 81.82%
Number of salaries quoted 59,483 24,460 33,440
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,500 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £58,465
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -5.93% -2.56%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £96,250
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 2 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 2 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 +9 2,038 £62,500 -3.85% 3,394
UK excluding London +15 1,579 £57,500 - 2,133
Work from Home +17 887 £67,500 +8.00% 1,414
London -1 735 £80,000 - 1,598
North of England +35 410 £57,500 -4.17% 508
South East -18 273 £60,000 +4.35% 464
South West +20 263 £60,000 +12.38% 316
Midlands -13 209 £52,500 -8.70% 254
North West -10 188 £60,000 - 274
Northern Ireland +6 163 £80,000 +45.45% 66
Wales +6 131 £53,171 -3.33% 37
North East +23 127 £55,000 +78.86% 72
West Midlands -26 115 £52,500 -4.55% 169
Yorkshire +31 104 £69,306 +26.01% 162
East of England -23 97 £46,750 -22.08% 222
East Midlands -24 94 £54,000 -13.60% 84
Scotland -49 44 £62,500 -5.66% 278

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 (2.37%) Confluence
2 40 (1.61%) Apache Spark
3 32 (1.29%) Apache
4 24 (0.97%) SharePoint
5 22 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
6 20 (0.80%) Jupyter
7 16 (0.64%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 15 (0.60%) CMS
9 14 (0.56%) Anypoint
9 14 (0.56%) Mule
10 8 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
10 8 (0.32%) nginx
10 8 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
11 6 (0.24%) Headless CMS
11 6 (0.24%) Umbraco
12 5 (0.20%) Camunda
12 5 (0.20%) Cloud Foundry
12 5 (0.20%) SAS
12 5 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 5 (0.20%) WinCC
Applications
1 82 (3.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.68%) 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 3 (0.12%) EPLAN
7 3 (0.12%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.080%) PlantUML
8 2 (0.080%) SOLIDWORKS
9 1 (0.040%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.040%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 69 (2.78%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.09%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.16%) Visualfiles
5 3 (0.12%) Magento
5 3 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
5 3 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
5 3 (0.12%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.080%) FLEXCUBE
6 2 (0.080%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.080%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.080%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.040%) Adobe Campaign
7 1 (0.040%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.040%) Endur
7 1 (0.040%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.040%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.040%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.040%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.040%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 823 (33.12%) AWS
2 681 (27.40%) Azure
3 324 (13.04%) SaaS
4 262 (10.54%) GCP
5 235 (9.46%) Azure DevOps
6 221 (8.89%) GitHub
7 191 (7.69%) Serverless
8 120 (4.83%) GitHub Actions
9 107 (4.31%) AWS CloudFormation
10 100 (4.02%) Amazon EKS
11 89 (3.58%) Amazon S3
11 89 (3.58%) AWS Lambda
12 68 (2.74%) Power Platform
13 59 (2.37%) Azure Service Bus
13 59 (2.37%) Google Ads
13 59 (2.37%) Meta Ads
14 53 (2.13%) Azure Logic Apps
15 51 (2.05%) Azure Monitor
16 46 (1.85%) Azure Functions
17 45 (1.81%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 56 (2.25%) Broadband
2 30 (1.21%) TCP/IP
3 25 (1.01%) DNS
3 25 (1.01%) Firewall
4 17 (0.68%) SSL
5 16 (0.64%) Wireless
6 15 (0.60%) DMARC
6 15 (0.60%) Modbus
7 14 (0.56%) MQTT
8 13 (0.52%) HTTP
8 13 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
9 12 (0.48%) DHCP
9 12 (0.48%) Ethernet
10 11 (0.44%) 5G
10 11 (0.44%) WAN
11 10 (0.40%) LTE
11 10 (0.40%) Network Security
12 9 (0.36%) 3GPP
13 8 (0.32%) Internet
14 7 (0.28%) SS7
Database & Business Intelligence
1 155 (6.24%) PostgreSQL
2 124 (4.99%) NoSQL
3 92 (3.70%) MongoDB
4 84 (3.38%) SQL Server
5 73 (2.94%) Relational Database
6 49 (1.97%) Redis
7 44 (1.77%) DynamoDB
7 44 (1.77%) MySQL
8 41 (1.65%) Power BI
9 36 (1.45%) Data Lake
9 36 (1.45%) Data Warehouse
10 31 (1.25%) BigQuery
11 28 (1.13%) Metadata
12 27 (1.09%) Amazon Athena
13 26 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
14 24 (0.97%) Semantic Layer
15 16 (0.64%) Amazon Aurora
16 15 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
17 14 (0.56%) Amazon Redshift
17 14 (0.56%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 368 (14.81%) Git
2 257 (10.34%) GitLab
3 212 (8.53%) Jenkins
4 164 (6.60%) Selenium
5 149 (6.00%) JIRA
6 109 (4.39%) Cypress.io
7 106 (4.27%) Cucumber
8 90 (3.62%) Postman
9 74 (2.98%) TeamCity
10 50 (2.01%) JUnit
11 49 (1.97%) JMeter
12 41 (1.65%) REST Assured
13 34 (1.37%) LabVIEW
14 31 (1.25%) Zephyr
15 30 (1.21%) Gatling
16 24 (0.97%) Bitbucket
16 24 (0.97%) Maven
16 24 (0.97%) Robot Framework
16 24 (0.97%) SonarQube
17 22 (0.89%) TestRail
General
1 687 (27.65%) Social Skills
2 599 (24.10%) Finance
3 401 (16.14%) Analytical Skills
4 278 (11.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 262 (10.54%) Public Sector
6 202 (8.13%) Law
7 201 (8.09%) Banking
8 175 (7.04%) Marketing
9 137 (5.51%) Legal
10 132 (5.31%) Retail
11 125 (5.03%) Manufacturing
12 98 (3.94%) Electronics
13 84 (3.38%) Financial Institution
14 62 (2.49%) Back Office
15 56 (2.25%) Aerospace
16 45 (1.81%) Telecoms
17 37 (1.49%) Games
18 34 (1.37%) Automotive
18 34 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
19 24 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 689 (27.73%) Senior
2 371 (14.93%) Software Engineer
3 332 (13.36%) Developer
4 321 (12.92%) Lead
5 261 (10.50%) Test Engineer
6 121 (4.87%) Senior Developer
7 116 (4.67%) Java Engineer
8 115 (4.63%) DevOps Engineer
9 107 (4.31%) Senior Software Engineer
10 105 (4.23%) QA Engineer
11 86 (3.46%) Test Automation Engineer
12 85 (3.42%) Analyst
13 78 (3.14%) Tester
14 76 (3.06%) Data Engineer
15 75 (3.02%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 72 (2.90%) Lead Software Engineer
17 71 (2.86%) Principal Engineer
18 69 (2.78%) Architect
19 64 (2.58%) Software Developer
20 61 (2.45%) Marketing Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 347 (13.96%) Terraform
2 257 (10.34%) REST
3 236 (9.50%) .NET
4 226 (9.09%) React
5 210 (8.45%) Node.js
6 205 (8.25%) Playwright
7 203 (8.17%) RESTful
8 202 (8.13%) Spring
9 155 (6.24%) Spring Boot
10 146 (5.88%) Kafka
11 124 (4.99%) CSS
12 116 (4.67%) HTML
13 114 (4.59%) AngularJS
14 75 (3.02%) OAuth
15 71 (2.86%) Middleware
16 67 (2.70%) OAuth2
17 58 (2.33%) JSON
18 55 (2.21%) Next.js
19 52 (2.09%) PySpark
20 48 (1.93%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 428 (17.22%) Cloud Native
2 288 (11.59%) Product Ownership
3 213 (8.57%) Distributed Systems
4 109 (4.39%) Onboarding
5 103 (4.14%) Enterprise Software
6 97 (3.90%) Mobile App
7 90 (3.62%) Public Cloud
8 86 (3.46%) Blog
9 78 (3.14%) Virtual Team
10 70 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
11 64 (2.58%) Marketing Technology
12 55 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
13 53 (2.13%) Cyber Threat
14 51 (2.05%) Algorithms
14 51 (2.05%) Low-Code
15 48 (1.93%) Embedded Systems
16 45 (1.81%) e-Learning
17 42 (1.69%) Data Structures
18 41 (1.65%) AI Agents
19 39 (1.57%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 181 (7.28%) Linux
2 103 (4.14%) Windows
3 64 (2.58%) Android
4 61 (2.45%) Unix
5 56 (2.25%) Apple iOS
6 9 (0.36%) Embedded Linux
6 9 (0.36%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.32%) CentOS
8 6 (0.24%) FreeRTOS
9 5 (0.20%) AIX
10 4 (0.16%) Debian
10 4 (0.16%) VMS
11 3 (0.12%) Kali Linux
11 3 (0.12%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.080%) OpenWrt
13 1 (0.040%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.040%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 1 (0.040%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,386 (55.77%) CI/CD
2 1,024 (41.21%) Agile
3 869 (34.97%) DevOps
4 797 (32.07%) Software Engineering
5 727 (29.26%) Continuous Improvement
6 645 (25.96%) Mentoring
7 608 (24.47%) AI
8 574 (23.10%) Problem-Solving
9 458 (18.43%) Microservices
10 429 (17.26%) Software Testing
11 399 (16.06%) Infrastructure as Code
12 330 (13.28%) Validation
13 322 (12.96%) Test Strategy
14 309 (12.43%) Coaching
15 308 (12.39%) Observability
16 298 (11.99%) Code Quality
17 275 (11.07%) Technical Leadership
18 272 (10.95%) Containerisation
19 264 (10.62%) Event-Driven
20 260 (10.46%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 699 (28.13%) Python
2 593 (23.86%) Java
3 476 (19.15%) SQL
4 428 (17.22%) JavaScript
5 355 (14.29%) TypeScript
6 338 (13.60%) C#
7 123 (4.95%) C++
8 103 (4.14%) Go
9 102 (4.10%) PowerShell
10 95 (3.82%) Bash
11 78 (3.14%) C
12 41 (1.65%) Kotlin
13 37 (1.49%) Rust
14 32 (1.29%) PHP
14 32 (1.29%) Ruby
15 25 (1.01%) Groovy
15 25 (1.01%) MATLAB
16 24 (0.97%) Bicep
17 21 (0.85%) Swift
18 17 (0.68%) Scala
Qualifications
1 390 (15.69%) Security Cleared
2 258 (10.38%) Degree
3 241 (9.70%) SC Cleared
4 99 (3.98%) Computer Science Degree
5 79 (3.18%) ISTQB
6 70 (2.82%) DV Cleared
7 67 (2.70%) AWS Certification
8 56 (2.25%) CISSP
9 54 (2.17%) ITIL Certification
10 53 (2.13%) CISM
11 49 (1.97%) Master's Degree
12 45 (1.81%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 43 (1.73%) HNC
14 37 (1.49%) BPSS Clearance
15 36 (1.45%) HND
16 19 (0.76%) Azure Certification
17 17 (0.68%) DBS Check
18 15 (0.60%) ISEB
19 13 (0.52%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
20 11 (0.44%) NVQ Level 4
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 563 (22.66%) QA
2 206 (8.29%) Accessibility
3 94 (3.78%) Data Quality
4 67 (2.70%) WCAG
5 55 (2.21%) NIST
6 48 (1.93%) ISO 22301
7 34 (1.37%) GDPR
8 11 (0.44%) SLA
9 10 (0.40%) GRC
10 9 (0.36%) MISRA
10 9 (0.36%) Software Quality Assurance
11 7 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 6 (0.24%) JTAG
12 6 (0.24%) SOC 2
13 5 (0.20%) COBIT
13 5 (0.20%) NCSC
14 4 (0.16%) ISO 20022
14 4 (0.16%) ISO 9001
14 4 (0.16%) PCI DSS
14 4 (0.16%) PMO
System Software
1 356 (14.33%) Docker
2 50 (2.01%) Firmware
3 14 (0.56%) Active Directory
4 11 (0.44%) Embedded Firmware
5 10 (0.40%) VMware Infrastructure
6 8 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.12%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.080%) KVM
8 2 (0.080%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.040%) IAG
9 1 (0.040%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.040%) QEMU
9 1 (0.040%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 360 (14.49%) Kubernetes
2 166 (6.68%) Grafana
3 75 (3.02%) Ansible
4 69 (2.78%) Prometheus
5 30 (1.21%) Argo
6 17 (0.68%) Kibana
7 16 (0.64%) Puppet
8 14 (0.56%) CloudHub
9 12 (0.48%) Rancher
10 11 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
11 9 (0.36%) logstash
12 8 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
13 7 (0.28%) Functional Safety
13 7 (0.28%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.24%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.24%) vCenter Server
15 3 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 3 (0.12%) SCCM
15 3 (0.12%) SCOM
15 3 (0.12%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 267 (10.74%) Microsoft
2 132 (5.31%) Google
3 65 (2.62%) Databricks
4 62 (2.49%) Salesforce
5 60 (2.41%) Oracle
6 51 (2.05%) SAP
7 47 (1.89%) ServiceNow
8 36 (1.45%) Dynatrace
8 36 (1.45%) Splunk
9 22 (0.89%) Pega
10 19 (0.76%) MuleSoft
11 18 (0.72%) Adobe
12 17 (0.68%) VMware
13 16 (0.64%) OpenAI
14 15 (0.60%) Allen-Bradley
14 15 (0.60%) AppDynamics
14 15 (0.60%) Red Hat
14 15 (0.60%) SendGrid
15 13 (0.52%) Atlassian
16 12 (0.48%) Siemens