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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 86 83 102
Rank change year-on-year -3 +19 -59
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,884 1,663 2,639
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.95% 3.52% 2.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.65% 3.86% 3.05%
Number of salaries quoted 1,144 815 1,700
10th Percentile £42,476 £39,000 £36,250
25th Percentile £48,750 £47,500 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £64,809 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +3.69% +8.70% -11.54%
75th Percentile £81,385 £82,625 £72,433
90th Percentile £96,250 £99,800 £87,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +4.35% +9.52% -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 71,140 43,093 86,602
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.59% 91.19% 82.11%
Number of salaries quoted 49,140 23,729 61,208
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,822 £29,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.09%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £53,688 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +7.38% - -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 3 July 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 3 July 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 -2 1,639 £65,000 - 756
UK excluding London -18 1,077 £60,000 +4.35% 557
Work from Home +11 771 £67,500 +12.50% 385
London +13 631 £80,000 +6.67% 309
North of England -1 313 £60,000 - 136
South East -18 215 £60,000 +9.09% 169
South West -26 187 £55,000 -8.33% 72
Midlands -16 171 £62,500 +6.38% 79
North West -13 165 £65,000 - 70
West Midlands -26 90 £62,500 -3.85% 39
East Midlands -11 80 £62,500 +31.58% 40
North East +1 79 £52,500 -2.61% 24
Yorkshire -23 69 £69,310 +38.62% 42
East of England -19 65 £53,750 -8.12% 57
Wales -1 59 £55,000 - 8
Scotland -44 46 £60,000 - 26
Northern Ireland -21 34 £80,000 +45.45% 21

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 (1.75%) Confluence
2 27 (1.43%) Apache Spark
3 25 (1.33%) Apache Airflow
4 22 (1.17%) Apache
5 18 (0.96%) Jupyter
6 15 (0.80%) SharePoint
7 11 (0.58%) CMS
8 9 (0.48%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 8 (0.42%) IIS
10 7 (0.37%) Anypoint
10 7 (0.37%) Mule
10 7 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
11 5 (0.27%) Appian
11 5 (0.27%) Umbraco
12 4 (0.21%) SAS
13 3 (0.16%) nginx
13 3 (0.16%) WordPress
14 2 (0.11%) Camunda
14 2 (0.11%) NServiceBus
14 2 (0.11%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 18 (0.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.64%) Simulink
3 10 (0.53%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (0.32%) PlantUML
5 5 (0.27%) Lightworks
5 5 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 3 (0.16%) CANalyzer
7 2 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.053%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 12 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.27%) Visualfiles
3 4 (0.21%) Dynamics AX
4 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.11%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.11%) Towers Watson Igloo
5 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.053%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.053%) Endur
6 1 (0.053%) Findur
6 1 (0.053%) Magento
6 1 (0.053%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.053%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle SCM
6 1 (0.053%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 703 (37.31%) AWS
2 592 (31.42%) Azure
3 237 (12.58%) Azure DevOps
4 231 (12.26%) GCP
5 185 (9.82%) Serverless
6 159 (8.44%) SaaS
7 156 (8.28%) GitHub
8 83 (4.41%) GitHub Actions
9 82 (4.35%) AWS Lambda
10 79 (4.19%) AWS CloudFormation
11 76 (4.03%) Amazon EKS
11 76 (4.03%) Amazon S3
12 53 (2.81%) PaaS
13 50 (2.65%) Azure Service Bus
14 47 (2.49%) Power Platform
15 43 (2.28%) Azure Monitor
16 41 (2.18%) Amazon EC2
17 40 (2.12%) Azure Logic Apps
18 39 (2.07%) dbt
19 35 (1.86%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 71 (3.77%) Broadband
2 24 (1.27%) Firewall
3 13 (0.69%) DMARC
4 10 (0.53%) CHAP
4 10 (0.53%) DNS
4 10 (0.53%) MQTT
5 9 (0.48%) WAN
5 9 (0.48%) Wireless
6 7 (0.37%) 5G
6 7 (0.37%) SD-WAN
6 7 (0.37%) SSL
7 6 (0.32%) Bluetooth
7 6 (0.32%) HTTP
7 6 (0.32%) LTE
7 6 (0.32%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (0.27%) DHCP
8 5 (0.27%) Ethernet
8 5 (0.27%) SMS
8 5 (0.27%) TCP/IP
8 5 (0.27%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 138 (7.32%) NoSQL
2 126 (6.69%) PostgreSQL
3 100 (5.31%) MongoDB
4 67 (3.56%) SQL Server
5 47 (2.49%) DynamoDB
6 34 (1.80%) Relational Database
7 32 (1.70%) MySQL
8 27 (1.43%) Data Warehouse
9 24 (1.27%) Power BI
10 22 (1.17%) Redis
11 20 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
12 19 (1.01%) BigQuery
13 18 (0.96%) Spark SQL
14 16 (0.85%) Metadata
14 16 (0.85%) Semantic Layer
15 14 (0.74%) Oracle Database
16 13 (0.69%) Amazon Athena
16 13 (0.69%) Elasticsearch
17 10 (0.53%) Data Lake
18 8 (0.42%) Flink
Development Applications
1 234 (12.42%) Git
2 165 (8.76%) Jenkins
3 157 (8.33%) GitLab
4 136 (7.22%) Selenium
5 108 (5.73%) JIRA
6 85 (4.51%) Cypress.io
7 83 (4.41%) Cucumber
8 67 (3.56%) Postman
9 61 (3.24%) TeamCity
10 49 (2.60%) JMeter
11 39 (2.07%) REST Assured
12 30 (1.59%) JUnit
13 29 (1.54%) SpecFlow
14 27 (1.43%) Zephyr
15 24 (1.27%) TestRail
16 23 (1.22%) CircleCI
17 22 (1.17%) Gatling
18 21 (1.11%) fastlane
18 21 (1.11%) LabVIEW
19 20 (1.06%) Crashlytics
General
1 457 (24.26%) Social Skills
2 429 (22.77%) Finance
3 194 (10.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 190 (10.08%) Banking
4 190 (10.08%) Public Sector
5 162 (8.60%) Analytical Skills
6 142 (7.54%) Law
7 96 (5.10%) Retail
8 64 (3.40%) Manufacturing
9 61 (3.24%) Financial Institution
10 54 (2.87%) Games
11 50 (2.65%) Back Office
11 50 (2.65%) Electronics
12 45 (2.39%) Legal
13 31 (1.65%) Front Office
13 31 (1.65%) Marketing
14 21 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
15 20 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
16 19 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
17 18 (0.96%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 514 (27.28%) Senior
2 304 (16.14%) Lead
3 295 (15.66%) Software Engineer
4 276 (14.65%) Developer
5 214 (11.36%) Test Engineer
6 117 (6.21%) Senior Developer
7 113 (6.00%) Java Engineer
8 88 (4.67%) Senior Software Engineer
9 87 (4.62%) Test Automation Engineer
10 80 (4.25%) QA Engineer
11 74 (3.93%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 72 (3.82%) Test Leader
13 70 (3.72%) DevOps Engineer
14 67 (3.56%) Architect
14 67 (3.56%) Tester
15 61 (3.24%) Data Engineer
16 56 (2.97%) Software Developer
17 54 (2.87%) Senior Test Engineer
18 47 (2.49%) Python Developer
19 45 (2.39%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 199 (10.56%) React
2 198 (10.51%) .NET
3 170 (9.02%) RESTful
4 165 (8.76%) REST
5 159 (8.44%) Node.js
5 159 (8.44%) Playwright
5 159 (8.44%) Spring
6 117 (6.21%) Spring Boot
7 104 (5.52%) Kafka
8 86 (4.56%) AngularJS
9 70 (3.72%) CSS
9 70 (3.72%) HTML
10 56 (2.97%) OAuth
11 47 (2.49%) OAuth2
12 45 (2.39%) RabbitMQ
13 40 (2.12%) Vue
13 40 (2.12%) YAML
14 38 (2.02%) ASP.NET
14 38 (2.02%) JSON
15 36 (1.91%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 363 (19.27%) Cloud Native
2 208 (11.04%) Product Ownership
3 157 (8.33%) Distributed Systems
4 95 (5.04%) Mobile App
5 59 (3.13%) Enterprise Software
5 59 (3.13%) Public Cloud
6 54 (2.87%) Low-Code
6 54 (2.87%) Management Information System
7 52 (2.76%) Algorithms
8 49 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
9 46 (2.44%) Onboarding
10 41 (2.18%) Data Structures
11 37 (1.96%) Greenfield Project
12 34 (1.80%) Video\Live Streaming
13 32 (1.70%) Embedded Systems
14 31 (1.65%) Self-Motivation
15 30 (1.59%) Virtual Team
16 28 (1.49%) Blog
17 26 (1.38%) Cyber Threat
18 24 (1.27%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 175 (9.29%) Linux
2 86 (4.56%) Windows
3 62 (3.29%) Apple iOS
4 58 (3.08%) Unix
5 49 (2.60%) Android
6 9 (0.48%) CentOS
6 9 (0.48%) Windows Server
7 6 (0.32%) FreeRTOS
8 4 (0.21%) Kali Linux
9 3 (0.16%) AIX
10 2 (0.11%) Debian
10 2 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
10 2 (0.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.053%) ThreadX
11 1 (0.053%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.053%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.053%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,085 (57.59%) CI/CD
2 822 (43.63%) Agile
3 685 (36.36%) DevOps
4 570 (30.25%) Software Engineering
5 508 (26.96%) Mentoring
6 488 (25.90%) Continuous Improvement
7 389 (20.65%) Problem-Solving
8 375 (19.90%) Microservices
9 355 (18.84%) Infrastructure as Code
10 321 (17.04%) AI
11 293 (15.55%) Software Testing
12 261 (13.85%) Containerisation
13 252 (13.38%) Observability
14 245 (13.00%) Full-Stack Development
15 244 (12.95%) Coaching
15 244 (12.95%) Test Strategy
16 222 (11.78%) Validation
17 195 (10.35%) Clean Code
18 191 (10.14%) Code Quality
18 191 (10.14%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 602 (31.95%) Python
2 528 (28.03%) Java
3 308 (16.35%) SQL
4 304 (16.14%) JavaScript
5 247 (13.11%) C#
6 243 (12.90%) TypeScript
7 107 (5.68%) C++
8 87 (4.62%) Go
9 77 (4.09%) Bash
10 69 (3.66%) C
10 69 (3.66%) PowerShell
11 36 (1.91%) Rust
12 32 (1.70%) Kotlin
13 28 (1.49%) Swift
14 24 (1.27%) MATLAB
15 23 (1.22%) PHP
16 22 (1.17%) Bicep
17 20 (1.06%) Ruby
18 17 (0.90%) Groovy
19 16 (0.85%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 243 (12.90%) Security Cleared
2 231 (12.26%) Degree
3 144 (7.64%) SC Cleared
4 97 (5.15%) Computer Science Degree
5 77 (4.09%) ISTQB
6 47 (2.49%) DV Cleared
7 35 (1.86%) Master's Degree
8 33 (1.75%) AWS Certification
8 33 (1.75%) CISSP
9 27 (1.43%) ITIL Certification
10 25 (1.33%) CISM
11 24 (1.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 22 (1.17%) DBS Check
13 16 (0.85%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 13 (0.69%) ISEB
15 12 (0.64%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 12 (0.64%) HND
16 11 (0.58%) BPSS Clearance
17 10 (0.53%) CGEIT
17 10 (0.53%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 415 (22.03%) QA
2 171 (9.08%) Accessibility
3 81 (4.30%) Data Quality
4 46 (2.44%) GDPR
5 41 (2.18%) WCAG
6 34 (1.80%) NIST
7 21 (1.11%) ISO 22301
8 15 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 14 (0.74%) SLA
10 11 (0.58%) COBIT
10 11 (0.58%) GRC
10 11 (0.58%) Software Quality Assurance
11 7 (0.37%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.32%) MISRA
12 6 (0.32%) PMO
13 5 (0.27%) ISO 9001
13 5 (0.27%) JTAG
14 4 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
14 4 (0.21%) ECSS
15 3 (0.16%) Automotive SPICE
System Software
1 262 (13.91%) Docker
2 26 (1.38%) Firmware
2 26 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (0.96%) Hyper-V
4 16 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.74%) KVM
6 12 (0.64%) Active Directory
7 10 (0.53%) Embedded Firmware
8 2 (0.11%) Terminal Server
8 2 (0.11%) vSphere
9 1 (0.053%) IAG
9 1 (0.053%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.053%) Xen
Systems Management
1 314 (16.67%) Terraform
2 305 (16.19%) Kubernetes
3 141 (7.48%) Grafana
4 80 (4.25%) Ansible
5 63 (3.34%) Prometheus
6 25 (1.33%) Argo
7 15 (0.80%) Kibana
8 9 (0.48%) logstash
8 9 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.37%) CloudHub
9 7 (0.37%) HP Fortify
9 7 (0.37%) Puppet
10 6 (0.32%) Functional Safety
10 6 (0.32%) vCenter Server
11 5 (0.27%) Packer
11 5 (0.27%) SCCM
11 5 (0.27%) SCOM
12 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
13 3 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.16%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 141 (7.48%) Microsoft
2 54 (2.87%) Databricks
3 45 (2.39%) Oracle
4 44 (2.34%) Salesforce
5 41 (2.18%) Google
6 40 (2.12%) VMware
7 34 (1.80%) ServiceNow
8 24 (1.27%) Dynatrace
9 23 (1.22%) Splunk
10 20 (1.06%) OpenAI
11 17 (0.90%) Pega
12 16 (0.85%) Braze
13 15 (0.80%) SAP
14 14 (0.74%) Amplitude
15 13 (0.69%) AppDynamics
15 13 (0.69%) IFS
15 13 (0.69%) SendGrid
16 12 (0.64%) CrowdStrike
16 12 (0.64%) MuleSoft
17 11 (0.58%) Atlassian