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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 93 86 92
Rank change year-on-year -7 +6 -58
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,770 1,593 2,716
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.92% 3.63% 2.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.60% 3.89% 3.29%
Number of salaries quoted 1,098 865 1,760
10th Percentile £42,500 £38,780 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,231 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% +4.35% -11.54%
75th Percentile £83,750 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £98,474 £88,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +9.09% +4.76% -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 67,989 40,970 82,440
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.70% 93.29% 84.80%
Number of salaries quoted 43,964 22,120 59,644
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,750 £41,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £58,033 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.39% +5.51% -10.10%
75th Percentile £78,750 £78,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £51,887 £50,000
% change year-on-year +1.18% +3.77% -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 21 May 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 21 May 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 -7 1,523 £62,500 +4.17% 664
UK excluding London -38 962 £60,000 +9.09% 526
Work from Home +7 733 £65,000 +8.33% 364
London +34 640 £80,000 +14.29% 246
North of England -30 250 £61,250 +8.89% 129
South East -30 197 £60,000 +11.63% 147
South West -27 173 £55,000 -8.33% 71
Midlands -41 154 £62,500 +13.64% 59
North West -21 128 £60,000 - 76
Scotland -23 81 £60,000 - 31
West Midlands -58 77 £62,500 +4.17% 46
East Midlands -26 76 £57,500 +21.05% 13
Yorkshire -33 67 £69,310 +38.62% 24
East of England -20 62 £50,000 -12.28% 66
North East -14 55 £52,500 -11.02% 29
Wales -2 47 £55,000 - 20
Northern Ireland -37 11 £80,000 +45.45% 14

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 38 (2.15%) Confluence
2 25 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
3 19 (1.07%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.85%) Apache
4 15 (0.85%) Jupyter
5 13 (0.73%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.62%) CMS
7 10 (0.56%) Appian
7 10 (0.56%) IIS
7 10 (0.56%) Palantir Foundry
8 7 (0.40%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 5 (0.28%) WordPress
10 4 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.23%) Umbraco
11 3 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.17%) nginx
11 3 (0.17%) SAS
12 2 (0.11%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.11%) JBoss
12 2 (0.11%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 12 (0.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.56%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.34%) PlantUML
4 5 (0.28%) Simulink
5 4 (0.23%) Fusion 360
6 3 (0.17%) CANalyzer
6 3 (0.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 3 (0.17%) MS Visio
7 2 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.056%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 13 (0.73%) Oracle ERP
2 8 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.28%) Visualfiles
4 4 (0.23%) Dynamics AX
4 4 (0.23%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.17%) Shopify
6 2 (0.11%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.056%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.056%) Endur
7 1 (0.056%) Findur
7 1 (0.056%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.056%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.056%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.056%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.056%) Oracle SCM
Cloud Services
1 576 (32.54%) AWS
2 570 (32.20%) Azure
3 267 (15.08%) Azure DevOps
4 210 (11.86%) GCP
5 167 (9.44%) GitHub
6 155 (8.76%) Serverless
7 125 (7.06%) SaaS
8 75 (4.24%) Amazon EKS
9 72 (4.07%) GitHub Actions
10 66 (3.73%) AWS Lambda
11 64 (3.62%) Amazon S3
12 60 (3.39%) AWS CloudFormation
13 54 (3.05%) PaaS
14 49 (2.77%) Azure Data Factory
15 47 (2.66%) Power Platform
16 46 (2.60%) dbt
17 41 (2.32%) Azure Service Bus
18 39 (2.20%) Azure Logic Apps
18 39 (2.20%) Datadog
19 38 (2.15%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 46 (2.60%) Broadband
2 23 (1.30%) Firewall
3 16 (0.90%) DNS
4 13 (0.73%) CHAP
4 13 (0.73%) WAN
5 12 (0.68%) SD-WAN
6 9 (0.51%) 5G
6 9 (0.51%) HTTP
7 6 (0.34%) TCP/IP
7 6 (0.34%) VPN
8 5 (0.28%) Bluetooth
8 5 (0.28%) Wireless
9 4 (0.23%) DHCP
9 4 (0.23%) LTE
9 4 (0.23%) SMS
9 4 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
9 4 (0.23%) ZigBee
10 3 (0.17%) Cisco ISE
10 3 (0.17%) MQTT
10 3 (0.17%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (7.06%) NoSQL
2 114 (6.44%) PostgreSQL
3 89 (5.03%) MongoDB
4 75 (4.24%) SQL Server
5 37 (2.09%) DynamoDB
6 33 (1.86%) MySQL
7 32 (1.81%) Data Warehouse
8 28 (1.58%) Relational Database
9 27 (1.53%) Power BI
10 22 (1.24%) Amazon RDS
11 18 (1.02%) Metadata
11 18 (1.02%) Spark SQL
12 17 (0.96%) Redis
13 16 (0.90%) BigQuery
14 13 (0.73%) Oracle Database
15 12 (0.68%) Pinecone
16 10 (0.56%) Data Lake
17 9 (0.51%) Elasticsearch
17 9 (0.51%) Oracle Reports
18 8 (0.45%) DB2
Development Applications
1 199 (11.24%) Git
2 157 (8.87%) Jenkins
3 153 (8.64%) Selenium
4 127 (7.18%) GitLab
5 121 (6.84%) JIRA
6 83 (4.69%) Cypress.io
7 66 (3.73%) Cucumber
8 63 (3.56%) TeamCity
9 59 (3.33%) Postman
10 44 (2.49%) JMeter
11 33 (1.86%) REST Assured
12 31 (1.75%) SpecFlow
13 28 (1.58%) CircleCI
14 25 (1.41%) JUnit
15 24 (1.36%) TestRail
16 21 (1.19%) MLflow
17 20 (1.13%) LabVIEW
17 20 (1.13%) Zephyr
18 17 (0.96%) Robot Framework
18 17 (0.96%) WebDriver
General
1 454 (25.65%) Social Skills
2 430 (24.29%) Finance
3 186 (10.51%) Banking
4 171 (9.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 155 (8.76%) Analytical Skills
6 145 (8.19%) Public Sector
7 119 (6.72%) Law
8 96 (5.42%) Retail
9 61 (3.45%) Financial Institution
10 56 (3.16%) Manufacturing
11 54 (3.05%) Electronics
12 49 (2.77%) Back Office
13 43 (2.43%) Games
14 33 (1.86%) Front Office
14 33 (1.86%) Legal
15 30 (1.69%) Marketing
16 20 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
17 18 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
18 17 (0.96%) Investment Banking
19 16 (0.90%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 469 (26.50%) Senior
2 294 (16.61%) Lead
3 252 (14.24%) Software Engineer
4 240 (13.56%) Developer
5 204 (11.53%) Test Engineer
6 111 (6.27%) Senior Developer
7 95 (5.37%) Java Engineer
8 88 (4.97%) QA Engineer
9 86 (4.86%) Test Automation Engineer
10 85 (4.80%) Tester
11 76 (4.29%) Senior Software Engineer
12 75 (4.24%) Test Leader
13 66 (3.73%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 59 (3.33%) Data Engineer
15 58 (3.28%) Architect
16 57 (3.22%) DevOps Engineer
17 51 (2.88%) Senior Test Engineer
18 50 (2.82%) Automation Engineer
19 48 (2.71%) Python Developer
20 47 (2.66%) Automation Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 191 (10.79%) React
2 190 (10.73%) .NET
3 160 (9.04%) RESTful
4 156 (8.81%) REST
5 152 (8.59%) Playwright
6 114 (6.44%) Spring
7 113 (6.38%) Node.js
8 89 (5.03%) Kafka
9 82 (4.63%) Spring Boot
10 60 (3.39%) AngularJS
11 58 (3.28%) HTML
12 57 (3.22%) CSS
13 54 (3.05%) OAuth
14 49 (2.77%) JSON
15 45 (2.54%) RabbitMQ
16 43 (2.43%) OAuth2
17 39 (2.20%) .NET Framework
17 39 (2.20%) Web Services
18 37 (2.09%) pytest
19 34 (1.92%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 305 (17.23%) Cloud Native
2 178 (10.06%) Product Ownership
3 111 (6.27%) Distributed Systems
4 90 (5.08%) Mobile App
5 58 (3.28%) Management Information System
6 52 (2.94%) Enterprise Software
7 47 (2.66%) Low-Code
8 46 (2.60%) Onboarding
9 44 (2.49%) Algorithms
9 44 (2.49%) Public Cloud
10 38 (2.15%) Greenfield Project
11 37 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
11 37 (2.09%) Self-Motivation
12 34 (1.92%) Data Structures
13 25 (1.41%) Blog
14 24 (1.36%) Embedded Systems
14 24 (1.36%) Video\Live Streaming
15 23 (1.30%) Hedge funds
15 23 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
16 21 (1.19%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 161 (9.10%) Linux
2 83 (4.69%) Windows
3 69 (3.90%) Apple iOS
4 59 (3.33%) Android
5 49 (2.77%) Unix
6 10 (0.56%) CentOS
6 10 (0.56%) Windows Server
7 5 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (0.23%) Kali Linux
8 4 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (0.17%) FreeRTOS
9 3 (0.17%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.11%) AIX
10 2 (0.11%) Debian
11 1 (0.056%) ThreadX
11 1 (0.056%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.056%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.056%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 956 (54.01%) CI/CD
2 737 (41.64%) Agile
3 622 (35.14%) DevOps
4 464 (26.21%) Software Engineering
5 440 (24.86%) Continuous Improvement
6 423 (23.90%) Mentoring
7 364 (20.56%) Problem-Solving
8 311 (17.57%) Infrastructure as Code
9 308 (17.40%) Microservices
10 298 (16.84%) AI
11 268 (15.14%) Software Testing
12 253 (14.29%) Observability
13 245 (13.84%) Coaching
14 228 (12.88%) Containerisation
15 218 (12.32%) Full-Stack Development
16 212 (11.98%) Test Strategy
17 210 (11.86%) Clean Code
18 193 (10.90%) Validation
19 172 (9.72%) Deployment Automation
20 163 (9.21%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 551 (31.13%) Python
2 473 (26.72%) Java
3 308 (17.40%) SQL
4 250 (14.12%) JavaScript
5 228 (12.88%) C#
6 217 (12.26%) TypeScript
7 90 (5.08%) C++
8 75 (4.24%) Bash
9 73 (4.12%) PowerShell
10 70 (3.95%) Go
11 52 (2.94%) C
12 35 (1.98%) Bicep
13 30 (1.69%) Rust
14 29 (1.64%) Kotlin
15 21 (1.19%) PL/SQL
15 21 (1.19%) Swift
16 20 (1.13%) Shell Script
17 19 (1.07%) Apex Code
17 19 (1.07%) MATLAB
18 18 (1.02%) PHP
Qualifications
1 231 (13.05%) Degree
2 193 (10.90%) Security Cleared
3 114 (6.44%) SC Cleared
4 89 (5.03%) Computer Science Degree
5 76 (4.29%) ISTQB
6 40 (2.26%) DV Cleared
7 29 (1.64%) Master's Degree
8 25 (1.41%) AWS Certification
9 21 (1.19%) CISSP
10 19 (1.07%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 17 (0.96%) DBS Check
12 16 (0.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 15 (0.85%) Azure Certification
14 13 (0.73%) CGEIT
14 13 (0.73%) CISA
14 13 (0.73%) CISM
14 13 (0.73%) FFIEC
14 13 (0.73%) HND
14 13 (0.73%) PhD
14 13 (0.73%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 393 (22.20%) QA
2 145 (8.19%) Accessibility
3 78 (4.41%) Data Quality
4 50 (2.82%) GDPR
5 26 (1.47%) NIST
6 24 (1.36%) WCAG
7 19 (1.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 14 (0.79%) COBIT
8 14 (0.79%) SLA
9 11 (0.62%) Software Quality Assurance
10 10 (0.56%) GRC
10 10 (0.56%) ISO 22301
11 8 (0.45%) ISO 9001
12 7 (0.40%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.34%) PMO
14 5 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 4 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials
15 4 (0.23%) ISO 13485
15 4 (0.23%) JTAG
16 3 (0.17%) IEC 61508
System Software
1 247 (13.95%) Docker
2 25 (1.41%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (1.36%) Active Directory
4 18 (1.02%) Hyper-V
5 16 (0.90%) Firmware
6 15 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
7 14 (0.79%) KVM
8 6 (0.34%) Embedded Firmware
9 3 (0.17%) Terminal Server
10 2 (0.11%) vSphere
11 1 (0.056%) IAG
11 1 (0.056%) Xen
Systems Management
1 310 (17.51%) Terraform
2 293 (16.55%) Kubernetes
3 136 (7.68%) Grafana
4 74 (4.18%) Ansible
5 64 (3.62%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.47%) Argo
7 23 (1.30%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (0.62%) Kibana
9 10 (0.56%) logstash
10 7 (0.40%) SCCM
10 7 (0.40%) SCOM
11 5 (0.28%) HP Fortify
11 5 (0.28%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (0.23%) Packer
12 4 (0.23%) Rancher
12 4 (0.23%) vCenter Server
13 3 (0.17%) Functional Safety
13 3 (0.17%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.17%) Puppet
13 3 (0.17%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 138 (7.80%) Microsoft
2 63 (3.56%) Oracle
3 57 (3.22%) Databricks
4 52 (2.94%) Salesforce
5 43 (2.43%) VMware
6 38 (2.15%) Google
7 23 (1.30%) OpenAI
7 23 (1.30%) Splunk
8 20 (1.13%) ServiceNow
9 17 (0.96%) Dynatrace
9 17 (0.96%) SAP
10 15 (0.85%) Braze
11 13 (0.73%) Amplitude
11 13 (0.73%) Commvault
11 13 (0.73%) CrowdStrike
12 12 (0.68%) AppDynamics
12 12 (0.68%) Atlassian
12 12 (0.68%) Foundry
12 12 (0.68%) Palantir
13 11 (0.62%) IFS