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

6 months to
2 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 87 99
Rank change year-on-year +3 +12 -42
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,132 1,690 2,062
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.06% 3.40% 2.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.80% 3.80% 3.04%
Number of salaries quoted 1,212 831 1,269
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 £57,965
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +7.82% -10.82%
75th Percentile £81,250 £82,500 £71,991
90th Percentile £96,250 £97,528 £86,485
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,000 £52,647
% change year-on-year +5.26% +8.27% -8.44%

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 76,271 44,428 67,881
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.70% 89.49% 81.01%
Number of salaries quoted 52,568 25,332 44,788
10th Percentile £30,750 £28,500 £31,199
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £41,000
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 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
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 2 August 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 August 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 1,766 £65,000 +3.17% 1,009
UK excluding London +1 1,317 £60,000 +5.26% 637
Work from Home +22 893 £67,500 +12.50% 431
London +1 656 £80,000 +3.23% 481
North of England +14 356 £57,500 -4.01% 162
South East -21 243 £62,000 +12.73% 175
South West -13 213 £60,000 +9.09% 104
Midlands -8 192 £62,500 +4.17% 76
North West +2 184 £65,000 - 93
Northern Ireland +2 134 £80,000 +45.45% 34
West Midlands -30 98 £62,500 -1.96% 51
North East +7 95 £53,750 +34.38% 21
East Midlands -21 93 £60,000 +26.32% 25
Wales -5 78 £55,000 - 8
Yorkshire -15 77 £69,310 +41.45% 49
East of England -41 62 £55,000 -3.51% 58
Scotland -40 52 £62,500 +2.04% 35

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 47 (2.20%) Confluence
2 31 (1.45%) Apache Spark
3 30 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
4 25 (1.17%) Apache
5 23 (1.08%) SharePoint
6 16 (0.75%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.61%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 13 (0.61%) Anypoint
7 13 (0.61%) Mule
8 11 (0.52%) CMS
9 5 (0.23%) Cloud Foundry
9 5 (0.23%) IIS
9 5 (0.23%) Umbraco
10 4 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.19%) nginx
10 4 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
10 4 (0.19%) WordPress
11 3 (0.14%) Camunda
11 3 (0.14%) JBoss
11 3 (0.14%) SAS
Applications
1 29 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.56%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (0.56%) Simulink
3 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.28%) PlantUML
5 5 (0.23%) Lightworks
6 3 (0.14%) CANalyzer
6 3 (0.14%) Moqups
6 3 (0.14%) MS Visio
7 2 (0.094%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.047%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.047%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 38 (1.78%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.27%) Dynamics GP
3 5 (0.23%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.23%) Visualfiles
4 4 (0.19%) Dynamics AX
5 3 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.094%) FLEXCUBE
6 2 (0.094%) Oracle Applications
6 2 (0.094%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.094%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.094%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.047%) Endur
7 1 (0.047%) Findur
7 1 (0.047%) Magento
7 1 (0.047%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.047%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.047%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle SCM
Cloud Services
1 778 (36.49%) AWS
2 661 (31.00%) Azure
3 251 (11.77%) SaaS
4 247 (11.59%) Azure DevOps
5 238 (11.16%) GCP
6 183 (8.58%) Serverless
7 178 (8.35%) GitHub
8 90 (4.22%) GitHub Actions
9 87 (4.08%) AWS CloudFormation
10 78 (3.66%) AWS Lambda
11 73 (3.42%) Amazon S3
12 71 (3.33%) Amazon EKS
13 58 (2.72%) Power Platform
14 52 (2.44%) Azure Service Bus
15 49 (2.30%) PaaS
16 45 (2.11%) Azure Logic Apps
16 45 (2.11%) dbt
17 44 (2.06%) Azure Monitor
18 42 (1.97%) Amazon EC2
19 35 (1.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 71 (3.33%) Broadband
2 25 (1.17%) Firewall
3 15 (0.70%) Wireless
4 14 (0.66%) DNS
4 14 (0.66%) SSL
5 13 (0.61%) DMARC
6 12 (0.56%) MQTT
6 12 (0.56%) TCP/IP
7 11 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (0.47%) LTE
9 9 (0.42%) 3GPP
10 8 (0.38%) HTTP
10 8 (0.38%) WAN
11 7 (0.33%) CHAP
11 7 (0.33%) DHCP
11 7 (0.33%) Radio Access Network
11 7 (0.33%) RANAP
11 7 (0.33%) SS7
11 7 (0.33%) Wireshark
11 7 (0.33%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 133 (6.24%) PostgreSQL
2 131 (6.14%) NoSQL
3 104 (4.88%) MongoDB
4 71 (3.33%) SQL Server
5 50 (2.35%) Relational Database
6 47 (2.20%) DynamoDB
7 42 (1.97%) MySQL
8 30 (1.41%) Data Warehouse
8 30 (1.41%) Redis
9 28 (1.31%) Power BI
10 26 (1.22%) BigQuery
11 18 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
11 18 (0.84%) Spark SQL
12 17 (0.80%) Data Lake
13 16 (0.75%) Metadata
13 16 (0.75%) Semantic Layer
14 15 (0.70%) Amazon Athena
15 13 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
15 13 (0.61%) Oracle Database
16 10 (0.47%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 281 (13.18%) Git
2 192 (9.01%) GitLab
3 190 (8.91%) Jenkins
4 161 (7.55%) Selenium
5 136 (6.38%) JIRA
6 95 (4.46%) Cucumber
7 94 (4.41%) Cypress.io
8 85 (3.99%) Postman
9 57 (2.67%) TeamCity
10 51 (2.39%) JMeter
11 43 (2.02%) JUnit
12 40 (1.88%) REST Assured
13 33 (1.55%) Zephyr
14 27 (1.27%) Gatling
15 26 (1.22%) TestRail
16 25 (1.17%) SpecFlow
17 21 (0.98%) Bitbucket
17 21 (0.98%) fastlane
18 20 (0.94%) Crashlytics
18 20 (0.94%) SonarQube
General
1 568 (26.64%) Social Skills
2 484 (22.70%) Finance
3 242 (11.35%) Analytical Skills
4 222 (10.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 214 (10.04%) Public Sector
6 190 (8.91%) Banking
7 188 (8.82%) Law
8 116 (5.44%) Legal
9 95 (4.46%) Retail
10 76 (3.56%) Manufacturing
11 73 (3.42%) Marketing
12 64 (3.00%) Financial Institution
13 61 (2.86%) Electronics
14 53 (2.49%) Games
15 50 (2.35%) Back Office
16 30 (1.41%) Telecoms
17 29 (1.36%) Front Office
18 25 (1.17%) Aerospace
19 24 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
20 20 (0.94%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 603 (28.28%) Senior
2 337 (15.81%) Lead
3 328 (15.38%) Software Engineer
4 299 (14.02%) Developer
5 224 (10.51%) Test Engineer
6 121 (5.68%) Senior Developer
7 118 (5.53%) Java Engineer
8 100 (4.69%) Senior Software Engineer
9 86 (4.03%) Full-Stack Engineer
9 86 (4.03%) QA Engineer
9 86 (4.03%) Test Automation Engineer
10 80 (3.75%) DevOps Engineer
11 69 (3.24%) Architect
11 69 (3.24%) Test Leader
12 66 (3.10%) Data Engineer
13 65 (3.05%) Tester
14 62 (2.91%) Senior Manager
15 61 (2.86%) Lead Software Engineer
16 58 (2.72%) Analyst
17 55 (2.58%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 219 (10.27%) React
2 207 (9.71%) .NET
3 189 (8.86%) Playwright
3 189 (8.86%) REST
4 183 (8.58%) Spring
5 180 (8.44%) RESTful
6 178 (8.35%) Node.js
7 134 (6.29%) Spring Boot
8 122 (5.72%) Kafka
9 109 (5.11%) AngularJS
10 89 (4.17%) CSS
11 86 (4.03%) HTML
12 66 (3.10%) OAuth
13 65 (3.05%) Middleware
14 60 (2.81%) OAuth2
15 53 (2.49%) JSON
16 47 (2.20%) Vue
17 46 (2.16%) RabbitMQ
18 43 (2.02%) Next.js
19 39 (1.83%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 378 (17.73%) Cloud Native
2 241 (11.30%) Product Ownership
3 178 (8.35%) Distributed Systems
4 109 (5.11%) Mobile App
5 83 (3.89%) Enterprise Software
6 73 (3.42%) Virtual Team
7 70 (3.28%) Legacy Systems
8 69 (3.24%) Public Cloud
9 60 (2.81%) Cyber Threat
10 59 (2.77%) Algorithms
11 51 (2.39%) Blog
12 50 (2.35%) Low-Code
13 49 (2.30%) Management Information System
14 48 (2.25%) Onboarding
15 44 (2.06%) Data Structures
16 40 (1.88%) Greenfield Project
16 40 (1.88%) Self-Motivation
17 35 (1.64%) Embedded Systems
18 34 (1.59%) Marketing Technology
18 34 (1.59%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 187 (8.77%) Linux
2 95 (4.46%) Windows
3 64 (3.00%) Apple iOS
4 55 (2.58%) Android
5 53 (2.49%) Unix
6 11 (0.52%) Windows Server
7 7 (0.33%) CentOS
7 7 (0.33%) Embedded Linux
8 6 (0.28%) FreeRTOS
9 4 (0.19%) Debian
9 4 (0.19%) Kali Linux
10 3 (0.14%) AIX
11 2 (0.094%) VMS
11 2 (0.094%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.047%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 1 (0.047%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.047%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.047%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.047%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,217 (57.08%) CI/CD
2 947 (44.42%) Agile
3 815 (38.23%) DevOps
4 691 (32.41%) Software Engineering
5 614 (28.80%) Continuous Improvement
6 598 (28.05%) Mentoring
7 436 (20.45%) Problem-Solving
8 430 (20.17%) AI
9 408 (19.14%) Microservices
10 372 (17.45%) Infrastructure as Code
11 360 (16.89%) Software Testing
12 303 (14.21%) Test Strategy
13 272 (12.76%) Coaching
13 272 (12.76%) Full-Stack Development
13 272 (12.76%) Observability
14 267 (12.52%) Containerisation
15 249 (11.68%) Code Quality
16 239 (11.21%) Validation
17 220 (10.32%) Scrum
18 214 (10.04%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 669 (31.38%) Python
2 570 (26.74%) Java
3 381 (17.87%) JavaScript
4 340 (15.95%) SQL
5 318 (14.92%) TypeScript
6 310 (14.54%) C#
7 123 (5.77%) C++
8 105 (4.92%) PowerShell
9 86 (4.03%) Go
10 75 (3.52%) C
11 74 (3.47%) Bash
12 42 (1.97%) Kotlin
13 34 (1.59%) Rust
14 32 (1.50%) Swift
15 30 (1.41%) PHP
16 25 (1.17%) Ruby
17 22 (1.03%) Bicep
18 21 (0.98%) MATLAB
19 19 (0.89%) Groovy
20 16 (0.75%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 274 (12.85%) Security Cleared
2 244 (11.44%) Degree
3 171 (8.02%) SC Cleared
4 110 (5.16%) Computer Science Degree
5 80 (3.75%) ISTQB
6 62 (2.91%) CISSP
7 60 (2.81%) ITIL Certification
8 56 (2.63%) CISM
9 52 (2.44%) DV Cleared
10 42 (1.97%) AWS Certification
11 36 (1.69%) Master's Degree
12 29 (1.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 20 (0.94%) BPSS Clearance
14 17 (0.80%) DBS Check
14 17 (0.80%) HNC
14 17 (0.80%) ISEB
15 14 (0.66%) HND
16 13 (0.61%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 12 (0.56%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
18 8 (0.38%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 500 (23.45%) QA
2 194 (9.10%) Accessibility
3 75 (3.52%) Data Quality
4 61 (2.86%) NIST
5 58 (2.72%) WCAG
6 52 (2.44%) ISO 22301
7 46 (2.16%) GDPR
8 14 (0.66%) SLA
9 13 (0.61%) Software Quality Assurance
10 12 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 11 (0.52%) GRC
12 9 (0.42%) SOC 2
13 8 (0.38%) COBIT
14 7 (0.33%) JTAG
14 7 (0.33%) MISRA
15 6 (0.28%) PMO
16 5 (0.23%) NCSC
17 4 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials
17 4 (0.19%) ISO 9001
17 4 (0.19%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 292 (13.70%) Docker
2 30 (1.41%) Firmware
3 22 (1.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.66%) Active Directory
6 13 (0.61%) Hyper-V
7 11 (0.52%) KVM
8 10 (0.47%) Embedded Firmware
9 2 (0.094%) vSphere
10 1 (0.047%) IAG
10 1 (0.047%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.047%) ProxySG
10 1 (0.047%) Terminal Server
10 1 (0.047%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.047%) Xen
Systems Management
1 319 (14.96%) Terraform
2 314 (14.73%) Kubernetes
3 133 (6.24%) Grafana
4 80 (3.75%) Ansible
5 60 (2.81%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.22%) Argo
7 16 (0.75%) Kibana
8 13 (0.61%) CloudHub
9 10 (0.47%) Puppet
10 9 (0.42%) logstash
10 9 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.33%) HP Fortify
11 7 (0.33%) Microsoft Intune
12 6 (0.28%) Functional Safety
12 6 (0.28%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.23%) Packer
14 4 (0.19%) SCCM
14 4 (0.19%) SCOM
15 3 (0.14%) Progress Chef
15 3 (0.14%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 177 (8.30%) Microsoft
2 64 (3.00%) Google
3 60 (2.81%) Databricks
4 55 (2.58%) Oracle
5 50 (2.35%) Salesforce
6 41 (1.92%) ServiceNow
7 35 (1.64%) VMware
8 32 (1.50%) Splunk
9 29 (1.36%) SAP
10 26 (1.22%) Dynatrace
11 21 (0.98%) Pega
12 19 (0.89%) AppDynamics
13 16 (0.75%) Braze
13 16 (0.75%) MuleSoft
14 15 (0.70%) Atlassian
15 14 (0.66%) Adobe
15 14 (0.66%) Amplitude
15 14 (0.66%) IBM
15 14 (0.66%) OpenAI
16 13 (0.61%) SendGrid