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

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 93 91 89
Rank change year-on-year -2 -2 -56
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,564 1,435 2,581
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.08% 3.39% 3.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.67% 3.63% 3.46%
Number of salaries quoted 950 889 1,781
10th Percentile £42,500 £40,698 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,231 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £64,482 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.17% +4.17% -5.51%
75th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £105,125 £101,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £56,659 £52,500
% change year-on-year +1.48% +7.92% -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 58,555 39,559 74,495
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 77.69% 93.50% 87.13%
Number of salaries quoted 35,503 22,222 56,291
10th Percentile £29,750 £31,750 £29,035
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,910 £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 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.90%

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 20 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 20 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 -8 1,312 £64,000 +4.07% 691
UK excluding London -23 834 £57,500 +1.48% 598
Work from Home +21 665 £65,000 +4.00% 338
London +38 590 £80,750 +7.67% 188
South East -34 200 £55,000 - 158
North of England -52 155 £60,000 +13.95% 168
South West -18 139 £55,000 -8.33% 81
Scotland +11 127 £65,000 +8.33% 39
Midlands -39 117 £55,200 -5.14% 76
North West -23 83 £60,000 +14.29% 83
East Midlands -46 62 £55,000 - 29
East of England -24 60 £52,500 -25.00% 65
West Midlands -26 55 £58,750 -2.08% 47
Yorkshire -54 47 £58,250 +17.68% 46
Wales -12 29 £56,350 +15.00% 27
North East -28 25 £55,000 -9.84% 39
Northern Ireland -36 7 £80,000 +25.49% 4

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 34 (2.17%) Confluence
2 25 (1.60%) Apache Airflow
3 19 (1.21%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.90%) Appian
5 13 (0.83%) Apache
6 12 (0.77%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 11 (0.70%) SharePoint
8 10 (0.64%) Palantir Foundry
9 9 (0.58%) Jupyter
10 8 (0.51%) CMS
10 8 (0.51%) IIS
11 6 (0.38%) WordPress
12 4 (0.26%) Apache Solr
13 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
13 3 (0.19%) nginx
13 3 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
14 2 (0.13%) Camunda
14 2 (0.13%) JBoss
14 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
14 2 (0.13%) SAS
Applications
1 19 (1.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.64%) MS Visio
4 9 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.26%) Fusion 360
5 4 (0.26%) PlantUML
6 2 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.13%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.064%) CANalyzer
7 1 (0.064%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 30 (1.92%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (1.60%) Oracle ERP
3 14 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.26%) Dynamics AX
4 4 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
4 4 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 4 (0.26%) Shopify
5 2 (0.13%) SAP CX
6 1 (0.064%) Aladdin
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
Cloud Services
1 515 (32.93%) Azure
2 468 (29.92%) AWS
3 270 (17.26%) Azure DevOps
4 218 (13.94%) GitHub
5 191 (12.21%) GCP
6 122 (7.80%) SaaS
7 109 (6.97%) Serverless
8 78 (4.99%) GitHub Actions
9 70 (4.48%) Amazon EKS
10 65 (4.16%) PaaS
11 64 (4.09%) GitHub Copilot
12 60 (3.84%) Power Platform
13 54 (3.45%) Azure Data Factory
13 54 (3.45%) dbt
14 45 (2.88%) AWS Lambda
15 43 (2.75%) AWS CloudFormation
15 43 (2.75%) Datadog
16 41 (2.62%) Amazon S3
17 37 (2.37%) Entra ID
18 36 (2.30%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.47%) DNS
2 18 (1.15%) Broadband
2 18 (1.15%) HTTP
3 17 (1.09%) TCP/IP
4 16 (1.02%) WAN
5 15 (0.96%) SD-WAN
6 12 (0.77%) 5G
6 12 (0.77%) CHAP
6 12 (0.77%) VPN
7 10 (0.64%) Firewall
8 4 (0.26%) 3G
8 4 (0.26%) GPRS
8 4 (0.26%) GSM
8 4 (0.26%) Modbus
8 4 (0.26%) RS-232
8 4 (0.26%) RS-485
8 4 (0.26%) SMTP
8 4 (0.26%) SSL
8 4 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
9 3 (0.19%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 99 (6.33%) PostgreSQL
2 89 (5.69%) NoSQL
3 86 (5.50%) SQL Server
4 49 (3.13%) MongoDB
4 49 (3.13%) Relational Database
5 47 (3.01%) MySQL
6 37 (2.37%) Data Warehouse
6 37 (2.37%) Power BI
7 23 (1.47%) DynamoDB
8 17 (1.09%) Amazon RDS
9 15 (0.96%) Metadata
10 14 (0.90%) Elasticsearch
10 14 (0.90%) Tableau
11 13 (0.83%) DB2
12 12 (0.77%) Pinecone
13 11 (0.70%) BigQuery
14 10 (0.64%) Data Lake
14 10 (0.64%) Redis
15 9 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
16 8 (0.51%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 185 (11.83%) Selenium
2 163 (10.42%) Git
3 144 (9.21%) JIRA
4 136 (8.70%) Jenkins
5 89 (5.69%) Cypress.io
6 74 (4.73%) GitLab
7 70 (4.48%) Cucumber
8 64 (4.09%) TeamCity
9 56 (3.58%) Postman
10 48 (3.07%) JMeter
11 35 (2.24%) SpecFlow
12 28 (1.79%) REST Assured
13 27 (1.73%) CircleCI
13 27 (1.73%) Robot Framework
14 25 (1.60%) eCATT
15 24 (1.53%) JUnit
15 24 (1.53%) MLflow
16 22 (1.41%) Oracle Forms
17 20 (1.28%) Snyk
18 19 (1.21%) Appium
General
1 469 (29.99%) Finance
2 452 (28.90%) Social Skills
3 165 (10.55%) Banking
4 157 (10.04%) Analytical Skills
5 121 (7.74%) Law
6 119 (7.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 91 (5.82%) Retail
8 84 (5.37%) Public Sector
9 69 (4.41%) Marketing
10 65 (4.16%) Financial Institution
11 58 (3.71%) Manufacturing
12 45 (2.88%) Back Office
13 38 (2.43%) Electronics
14 37 (2.37%) Front Office
15 32 (2.05%) Legal
16 28 (1.79%) Games
17 22 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
17 22 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
18 20 (1.28%) Documentation Skills
19 15 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 423 (27.05%) Senior
2 252 (16.11%) Lead
3 222 (14.19%) Developer
4 193 (12.34%) Software Engineer
5 156 (9.97%) Test Engineer
6 107 (6.84%) Senior Developer
7 92 (5.88%) QA Engineer
8 85 (5.43%) Test Leader
9 76 (4.86%) Tester
10 74 (4.73%) Java Engineer
10 74 (4.73%) Test Automation Engineer
11 73 (4.67%) Analyst
12 61 (3.90%) Senior Software Engineer
13 58 (3.71%) Automation Engineer
14 50 (3.20%) Python Developer
14 50 (3.20%) QA Automation Engineer
15 47 (3.01%) Senior Test Engineer
16 46 (2.94%) Automation Tester
16 46 (2.94%) Full-Stack Engineer
17 45 (2.88%) Applications Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 183 (11.70%) React
2 147 (9.40%) RESTful
3 140 (8.95%) .NET
4 124 (7.93%) Playwright
5 117 (7.48%) REST
6 89 (5.69%) Spring
7 83 (5.31%) Node.js
8 65 (4.16%) Spring Boot
9 63 (4.03%) CSS
9 63 (4.03%) HTML
9 63 (4.03%) Kafka
10 58 (3.71%) JSON
11 53 (3.39%) pytest
12 50 (3.20%) OAuth
13 44 (2.81%) SOAP
14 41 (2.62%) Django
15 39 (2.49%) Web Services
16 37 (2.37%) Elastic Stack
16 37 (2.37%) OAuth2
17 34 (2.17%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 249 (15.92%) Cloud Native
2 127 (8.12%) Product Ownership
3 71 (4.54%) Mobile App
4 57 (3.64%) Management Information System
5 52 (3.32%) Self-Motivation
6 50 (3.20%) Distributed Systems
7 48 (3.07%) Enterprise Software
8 44 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
9 39 (2.49%) Onboarding
10 37 (2.37%) Algorithms
11 34 (2.17%) Greenfield Project
11 34 (2.17%) Low-Code
12 30 (1.92%) Data Structures
13 27 (1.73%) Hedge funds
14 25 (1.60%) Hybrid Cloud
15 24 (1.53%) Equities
15 24 (1.53%) GNSS
16 20 (1.28%) Satnav
17 19 (1.21%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 19 (1.21%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 152 (9.72%) Linux
2 84 (5.37%) Windows
3 60 (3.84%) Apple iOS
4 50 (3.20%) Android
5 37 (2.37%) Unix
6 11 (0.70%) Windows Server
7 9 (0.58%) CentOS
8 5 (0.32%) Debian
8 5 (0.32%) Embedded Linux
8 5 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.26%) FreeRTOS
9 4 (0.26%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
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%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.064%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 786 (50.26%) CI/CD
2 641 (40.98%) Agile
3 517 (33.06%) DevOps
4 374 (23.91%) Continuous Improvement
5 354 (22.63%) Software Engineering
6 343 (21.93%) Mentoring
7 336 (21.48%) Problem-Solving
8 258 (16.50%) AI
9 243 (15.54%) Microservices
10 229 (14.64%) Coaching
11 216 (13.81%) Infrastructure as Code
12 209 (13.36%) Software Testing
13 200 (12.79%) Observability
14 198 (12.66%) Clean Code
15 188 (12.02%) Test Strategy
16 170 (10.87%) Containerisation
17 160 (10.23%) Full-Stack Development
18 158 (10.10%) Analytics
19 148 (9.46%) Validation
20 137 (8.76%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 468 (29.92%) Python
2 387 (24.74%) Java
3 301 (19.25%) SQL
4 225 (14.39%) JavaScript
5 187 (11.96%) TypeScript
6 149 (9.53%) C#
7 83 (5.31%) PowerShell
8 68 (4.35%) C++
9 55 (3.52%) Bash
10 47 (3.01%) Go
11 35 (2.24%) C
12 32 (2.05%) PL/SQL
13 29 (1.85%) Shell Script
14 28 (1.79%) Bicep
14 28 (1.79%) Kotlin
15 27 (1.73%) Apex Code
16 26 (1.66%) PHP
17 24 (1.53%) Rust
18 18 (1.15%) Swift
19 13 (0.83%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 203 (12.98%) Degree
2 134 (8.57%) Security Cleared
3 89 (5.69%) SC Cleared
4 76 (4.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 69 (4.41%) ISTQB
6 33 (2.11%) DV Cleared
6 33 (2.11%) Master's Degree
7 27 (1.73%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 22 (1.41%) AWS Certification
9 18 (1.15%) CISSP
9 18 (1.15%) ISEB
10 15 (0.96%) CEH
10 15 (0.96%) HND
11 13 (0.83%) Azure Certification
11 13 (0.83%) CISA
11 13 (0.83%) DBS Check
11 13 (0.83%) PhD
12 12 (0.77%) CISM
12 12 (0.77%) FFIEC
12 12 (0.77%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 360 (23.02%) QA
2 116 (7.42%) Accessibility
3 63 (4.03%) Data Quality
4 49 (3.13%) NIST
5 43 (2.75%) GDPR
6 38 (2.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 25 (1.60%) WCAG
8 15 (0.96%) ISO 22301
9 14 (0.90%) NCSC
10 13 (0.83%) ISO 9001
10 13 (0.83%) SLA
11 12 (0.77%) COBIT
12 7 (0.45%) Software Quality Assurance
13 6 (0.38%) GRC
14 5 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 4 (0.26%) IEC 61508
15 4 (0.26%) ISO 13485
15 4 (0.26%) ISO 26262
15 4 (0.26%) MISRA
16 3 (0.19%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 222 (14.19%) Docker
2 33 (2.11%) Active Directory
3 19 (1.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (1.09%) Firmware
5 14 (0.90%) Hyper-V
6 13 (0.83%) KVM
6 13 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
7 12 (0.77%) Embedded Firmware
8 3 (0.19%) Terminal Server
9 2 (0.13%) vSphere
10 1 (0.064%) Xen
Systems Management
1 268 (17.14%) Kubernetes
2 266 (17.01%) Terraform
3 125 (7.99%) Grafana
4 67 (4.28%) Ansible
5 43 (2.75%) Prometheus
6 33 (2.11%) Single Sign-On
7 29 (1.85%) HP ALM
8 8 (0.51%) Argo
9 6 (0.38%) logstash
9 6 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (0.26%) HP Fortify
10 4 (0.26%) SCCM
10 4 (0.26%) SCOM
11 3 (0.19%) Kibana
11 3 (0.19%) Rancher
12 2 (0.13%) Control-M
12 2 (0.13%) Nessus
12 2 (0.13%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.13%) VxRail
13 1 (0.064%) MIIS
Vendors
1 120 (7.67%) Microsoft
2 75 (4.80%) Oracle
3 53 (3.39%) Salesforce
4 47 (3.01%) SAP
5 46 (2.94%) VMware
6 43 (2.75%) Databricks
7 33 (2.11%) Google
8 30 (1.92%) HP
9 21 (1.34%) Commvault
10 20 (1.28%) ServiceNow
11 19 (1.21%) OpenAI
11 19 (1.21%) Splunk
12 17 (1.09%) Black Duck
12 17 (1.09%) Coverity
13 14 (0.90%) Palantir
13 14 (0.90%) UiPath
14 13 (0.83%) Foundry
15 12 (0.77%) Ab Initio
15 12 (0.77%) Okta
15 12 (0.77%) Pega