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

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 93 80 91
Rank change year-on-year -13 +11 -58
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,549 1,556 2,541
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.07% 3.62% 2.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.66% 3.87% 3.43%
Number of salaries quoted 937 904 1,783
10th Percentile £42,500 £41,250 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,231 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £64,618 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.39% +4.17% -5.51%
75th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £105,000 £102,125 £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 58,222 40,192 73,990
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 77.86% 93.47% 87.20%
Number of salaries quoted 35,232 22,295 56,140
10th Percentile £29,750 £31,750 £29,035
25th Percentile £40,000 £44,188 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.41%
75th Percentile £77,424 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +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 17 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 17 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 -18 1,293 £64,000 +2.40% 736
UK excluding London -43 825 £57,500 +1.48% 645
Work from Home +14 657 £65,000 +6.12% 372
London +33 584 £80,000 +6.67% 208
South East -39 198 £55,000 - 171
North of England -57 151 £60,000 +11.31% 174
South West -13 138 £55,000 -8.33% 95
Scotland +13 131 £70,000 +16.67% 48
Midlands -45 112 £55,100 -5.32% 83
North West -22 83 £60,000 +14.29% 84
East Midlands -44 59 £55,000 - 34
East of England -48 59 £50,000 -28.57% 62
West Midlands -31 53 £57,500 -4.17% 49
Yorkshire -52 46 £55,000 +10.00% 49
Wales -10 30 £57,500 +13.30% 28
North East -31 22 £55,200 -9.51% 41
Northern Ireland -38 6 £80,000 +25.49% 7

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 (2.13%) Confluence
2 25 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
3 19 (1.23%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.90%) Appian
5 13 (0.84%) Apache
5 13 (0.84%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 10 (0.65%) Palantir Foundry
6 10 (0.65%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.58%) Jupyter
8 8 (0.52%) CMS
9 7 (0.45%) IIS
10 6 (0.39%) WordPress
11 4 (0.26%) Apache Solr
12 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.19%) nginx
12 3 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.13%) Camunda
13 2 (0.13%) JBoss
13 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
13 2 (0.13%) SAS
Applications
1 19 (1.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.65%) 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 (0.065%) CANalyzer
7 1 (0.065%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 30 (1.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.81%) 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 (0.065%) Aladdin
6 1 (0.065%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.065%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.065%) Oracle SCM
6 1 (0.065%) Postilion
6 1 (0.065%) SAP Hybris
6 1 (0.065%) Siebel CRM
6 1 (0.065%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 515 (33.25%) Azure
2 457 (29.50%) AWS
3 277 (17.88%) Azure DevOps
4 221 (14.27%) GitHub
5 186 (12.01%) GCP
6 123 (7.94%) SaaS
7 105 (6.78%) Serverless
8 79 (5.10%) GitHub Actions
9 69 (4.45%) Amazon EKS
10 67 (4.33%) GitHub Copilot
11 64 (4.13%) PaaS
12 62 (4.00%) Power Platform
13 55 (3.55%) Azure Data Factory
14 54 (3.49%) dbt
15 44 (2.84%) AWS Lambda
16 43 (2.78%) Datadog
17 42 (2.71%) AWS CloudFormation
18 40 (2.58%) Amazon S3
19 38 (2.45%) Entra ID
20 37 (2.39%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.48%) DNS
2 19 (1.23%) HTTP
3 17 (1.10%) Broadband
3 17 (1.10%) TCP/IP
4 16 (1.03%) WAN
5 15 (0.97%) SD-WAN
6 12 (0.77%) 5G
6 12 (0.77%) VPN
7 11 (0.71%) CHAP
8 10 (0.65%) Firewall
9 4 (0.26%) 3G
9 4 (0.26%) GPRS
9 4 (0.26%) GSM
9 4 (0.26%) Modbus
9 4 (0.26%) RS-232
9 4 (0.26%) RS-485
9 4 (0.26%) SMTP
9 4 (0.26%) SSL
9 4 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
10 3 (0.19%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 97 (6.26%) PostgreSQL
2 86 (5.55%) NoSQL
3 85 (5.49%) SQL Server
4 51 (3.29%) Relational Database
5 48 (3.10%) MongoDB
6 47 (3.03%) MySQL
7 39 (2.52%) Power BI
8 38 (2.45%) Data Warehouse
9 22 (1.42%) DynamoDB
10 16 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
11 15 (0.97%) Metadata
11 15 (0.97%) Tableau
12 14 (0.90%) Elasticsearch
13 13 (0.84%) DB2
14 12 (0.77%) Pinecone
15 11 (0.71%) BigQuery
16 10 (0.65%) Data Lake
16 10 (0.65%) Redis
16 10 (0.65%) Snowflake Schema
17 8 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 186 (12.01%) Selenium
2 164 (10.59%) Git
3 144 (9.30%) JIRA
4 139 (8.97%) Jenkins
5 88 (5.68%) Cypress.io
6 72 (4.65%) GitLab
7 69 (4.45%) Cucumber
8 64 (4.13%) TeamCity
9 56 (3.62%) Postman
10 47 (3.03%) JMeter
11 32 (2.07%) SpecFlow
12 29 (1.87%) REST Assured
13 27 (1.74%) Robot Framework
14 26 (1.68%) CircleCI
15 25 (1.61%) eCATT
15 25 (1.61%) Oracle Forms
16 24 (1.55%) JUnit
16 24 (1.55%) MLflow
17 20 (1.29%) Appium
17 20 (1.29%) Snyk
General
1 471 (30.41%) Finance
2 452 (29.18%) Social Skills
3 160 (10.33%) Banking
4 156 (10.07%) Analytical Skills
5 120 (7.75%) Law
6 116 (7.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 91 (5.87%) Retail
8 82 (5.29%) Public Sector
9 69 (4.45%) Marketing
10 64 (4.13%) Financial Institution
11 56 (3.62%) Manufacturing
12 45 (2.91%) Back Office
13 37 (2.39%) Electronics
14 35 (2.26%) Front Office
15 31 (2.00%) Legal
16 26 (1.68%) Games
17 23 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
18 22 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
19 20 (1.29%) Documentation Skills
20 15 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 424 (27.37%) Senior
2 248 (16.01%) Lead
3 222 (14.33%) Developer
4 189 (12.20%) Software Engineer
5 153 (9.88%) Test Engineer
6 107 (6.91%) Senior Developer
7 91 (5.87%) QA Engineer
8 85 (5.49%) Test Leader
9 75 (4.84%) Tester
10 72 (4.65%) Analyst
10 72 (4.65%) Java Engineer
10 72 (4.65%) Test Automation Engineer
11 60 (3.87%) Senior Software Engineer
12 59 (3.81%) Automation Engineer
13 49 (3.16%) Python Developer
13 49 (3.16%) QA Automation Engineer
14 48 (3.10%) Applications Engineer
15 47 (3.03%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 46 (2.97%) Automation Tester
17 44 (2.84%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 179 (11.56%) React
2 151 (9.75%) RESTful
3 140 (9.04%) .NET
4 125 (8.07%) Playwright
5 117 (7.55%) REST
6 88 (5.68%) Spring
7 80 (5.16%) Node.js
8 64 (4.13%) CSS
8 64 (4.13%) HTML
8 64 (4.13%) Spring Boot
9 62 (4.00%) JSON
9 62 (4.00%) Kafka
10 54 (3.49%) pytest
11 52 (3.36%) OAuth
12 46 (2.97%) SOAP
13 39 (2.52%) Django
13 39 (2.52%) OAuth2
14 38 (2.45%) Web Services
15 37 (2.39%) Elastic Stack
16 35 (2.26%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 252 (16.27%) Cloud Native
2 124 (8.01%) Product Ownership
3 68 (4.39%) Mobile App
4 56 (3.62%) Management Information System
5 51 (3.29%) Enterprise Software
5 51 (3.29%) Self-Motivation
6 48 (3.10%) Distributed Systems
7 42 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
8 39 (2.52%) Onboarding
9 36 (2.32%) Algorithms
10 34 (2.19%) Low-Code
11 33 (2.13%) Greenfield Project
12 30 (1.94%) Data Structures
13 26 (1.68%) Hedge funds
14 24 (1.55%) Equities
14 24 (1.55%) Hybrid Cloud
15 23 (1.48%) GNSS
16 20 (1.29%) Satnav
17 19 (1.23%) Blog
17 19 (1.23%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 147 (9.49%) Linux
2 82 (5.29%) Windows
3 59 (3.81%) Apple iOS
4 50 (3.23%) Android
5 35 (2.26%) Unix
6 11 (0.71%) 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 (0.065%) AIX
11 1 (0.065%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.065%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 784 (50.61%) CI/CD
2 639 (41.25%) Agile
3 515 (33.25%) DevOps
4 365 (23.56%) Continuous Improvement
5 349 (22.53%) Software Engineering
6 347 (22.40%) Mentoring
7 334 (21.56%) Problem-Solving
8 256 (16.53%) AI
9 239 (15.43%) Microservices
10 232 (14.98%) Coaching
11 209 (13.49%) Infrastructure as Code
12 205 (13.23%) Observability
13 203 (13.11%) Software Testing
14 200 (12.91%) Clean Code
15 183 (11.81%) Test Strategy
16 170 (10.97%) Containerisation
17 161 (10.39%) Analytics
18 156 (10.07%) Full-Stack Development
19 144 (9.30%) Validation
20 136 (8.78%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 464 (29.95%) Python
2 384 (24.79%) Java
3 299 (19.30%) SQL
4 219 (14.14%) JavaScript
5 186 (12.01%) TypeScript
6 150 (9.68%) C#
7 81 (5.23%) PowerShell
8 68 (4.39%) C++
9 53 (3.42%) Bash
10 45 (2.91%) Go
11 35 (2.26%) C
11 35 (2.26%) PL/SQL
12 32 (2.07%) Shell Script
13 29 (1.87%) Bicep
14 28 (1.81%) Apex Code
14 28 (1.81%) Kotlin
15 26 (1.68%) PHP
16 23 (1.48%) Rust
17 17 (1.10%) Swift
18 13 (0.84%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 203 (13.11%) Degree
2 133 (8.59%) Security Cleared
3 88 (5.68%) SC Cleared
4 75 (4.84%) Computer Science Degree
5 69 (4.45%) ISTQB
6 33 (2.13%) DV Cleared
6 33 (2.13%) Master's Degree
7 27 (1.74%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 21 (1.36%) AWS Certification
9 18 (1.16%) ISEB
10 17 (1.10%) CISSP
11 16 (1.03%) HND
12 15 (0.97%) CEH
13 13 (0.84%) Azure Certification
13 13 (0.84%) DBS Check
13 13 (0.84%) PhD
14 12 (0.77%) CISA
15 11 (0.71%) CGEIT
15 11 (0.71%) CISM
15 11 (0.71%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 355 (22.92%) QA
2 118 (7.62%) Accessibility
3 64 (4.13%) Data Quality
4 48 (3.10%) NIST
5 44 (2.84%) GDPR
6 38 (2.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 27 (1.74%) WCAG
8 15 (0.97%) ISO 22301
9 14 (0.90%) NCSC
10 13 (0.84%) SLA
11 12 (0.77%) ISO 9001
12 11 (0.71%) COBIT
13 7 (0.45%) Software Quality Assurance
14 5 (0.32%) 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%) Section 508
System Software
1 219 (14.14%) Docker
2 35 (2.26%) Active Directory
3 18 (1.16%) Firmware
3 18 (1.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (0.84%) Embedded Firmware
4 13 (0.84%) Hyper-V
5 12 (0.77%) KVM
5 12 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.19%) Terminal Server
7 2 (0.13%) vSphere
8 1 (0.065%) Xen
Systems Management
1 266 (17.17%) Kubernetes
2 265 (17.11%) Terraform
3 125 (8.07%) Grafana
4 66 (4.26%) Ansible
5 42 (2.71%) Prometheus
6 36 (2.32%) Single Sign-On
7 29 (1.87%) HP ALM
8 8 (0.52%) Argo
9 6 (0.39%) logstash
9 6 (0.39%) 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 (0.065%) MIIS
Vendors
1 120 (7.75%) Microsoft
2 78 (5.04%) Oracle
3 55 (3.55%) Salesforce
4 47 (3.03%) SAP
5 45 (2.91%) VMware
6 44 (2.84%) Databricks
7 35 (2.26%) Google
8 30 (1.94%) HP
9 21 (1.36%) Commvault
10 19 (1.23%) OpenAI
10 19 (1.23%) ServiceNow
10 19 (1.23%) Splunk
11 17 (1.10%) Black Duck
11 17 (1.10%) Coverity
12 14 (0.90%) Okta
12 14 (0.90%) Palantir
12 14 (0.90%) UiPath
13 13 (0.84%) Ab Initio
13 13 (0.84%) Foundry
14 12 (0.77%) Automation Anywhere