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

6 months to
7 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 93 83 92
Rank change year-on-year -10 +9 -58
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,690 1,573 2,744
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.85% 3.60% 2.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.48% 3.87% 3.34%
Number of salaries quoted 1,044 896 1,783
10th Percentile £42,500 £38,750 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £46,506 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% +4.35% -11.54%
75th Percentile £83,750 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £105,000 £98,474 £90,000
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 68,096 40,631 82,220
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 74.48% 93.01% 85.54%
Number of salaries quoted 42,564 22,679 59,766
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,580 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,773 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -0.38% +9.09% -10.57%
75th Percentile £78,750 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -0.95% +5.00% -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 7 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 7 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 -10 1,440 £65,000 +8.33% 689
UK excluding London -49 910 £60,000 +9.09% 562
Work from Home 0 715 £67,500 +12.50% 308
London +43 628 £80,000 +14.29% 212
North of England -52 218 £65,000 +18.18% 167
South East -55 177 £60,000 +14.29% 126
South West -24 171 £55,000 -8.33% 69
Midlands -48 144 £62,500 +8.70% 79
North West -40 111 £60,750 +10.45% 74
Scotland -14 99 £60,000 - 32
West Midlands -44 73 £62,500 +2.04% 49
East Midlands -40 70 £60,000 +20.00% 30
Yorkshire -54 64 £69,310 +38.62% 43
East of England -21 59 £52,500 -7.89% 73
Wales -3 45 £55,000 +4.58% 22
North East -16 43 £55,000 -6.78% 50
Northern Ireland -38 9 £80,000 +45.45% 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 37 (2.19%) Confluence
2 23 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
3 17 (1.01%) Apache Spark
4 12 (0.71%) Apache
4 12 (0.71%) Appian
5 11 (0.65%) CMS
5 11 (0.65%) Jupyter
6 10 (0.59%) IIS
6 10 (0.59%) Palantir Foundry
6 10 (0.59%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 6 (0.36%) WordPress
9 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.18%) nginx
9 3 (0.18%) Umbraco
10 2 (0.12%) Camunda
10 2 (0.12%) JBoss
10 2 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.12%) SAS
11 1 (0.059%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 12 (0.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.59%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.36%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.36%) PlantUML
5 4 (0.24%) Fusion 360
6 3 (0.18%) CANalyzer
6 3 (0.18%) Simulink
7 2 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.059%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.059%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 17 (1.01%) Oracle ERP
2 9 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.30%) Visualfiles
4 4 (0.24%) Dynamics AX
4 4 (0.24%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 4 (0.24%) Shopify
5 2 (0.12%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.059%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.059%) Endur
6 1 (0.059%) Findur
6 1 (0.059%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.059%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle SCM
6 1 (0.059%) SAP CX
6 1 (0.059%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.059%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 567 (33.55%) Azure
2 522 (30.89%) AWS
3 268 (15.86%) Azure DevOps
4 195 (11.54%) GCP
5 169 (10.00%) GitHub
6 146 (8.64%) Serverless
7 119 (7.04%) SaaS
8 68 (4.02%) Amazon EKS
8 68 (4.02%) GitHub Actions
9 60 (3.55%) AWS Lambda
10 57 (3.37%) AWS CloudFormation
10 57 (3.37%) PaaS
11 56 (3.31%) Amazon S3
12 54 (3.20%) Azure Data Factory
13 49 (2.90%) dbt
13 49 (2.90%) Power Platform
14 44 (2.60%) GitHub Copilot
15 38 (2.25%) Azure Service Bus
16 35 (2.07%) Datadog
17 34 (2.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 37 (2.19%) Broadband
2 19 (1.12%) Firewall
3 16 (0.95%) CHAP
3 16 (0.95%) DNS
4 12 (0.71%) WAN
5 11 (0.65%) HTTP
5 11 (0.65%) SD-WAN
6 9 (0.53%) TCP/IP
7 8 (0.47%) 5G
8 6 (0.36%) VPN
9 4 (0.24%) DHCP
9 4 (0.24%) SMTP
10 3 (0.18%) Bluetooth
10 3 (0.18%) Cisco ISE
10 3 (0.18%) Ethernet
10 3 (0.18%) LTE
10 3 (0.18%) VLAN
10 3 (0.18%) Wireless
11 2 (0.12%) Modbus
11 2 (0.12%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 117 (6.92%) NoSQL
2 113 (6.69%) PostgreSQL
3 82 (4.85%) MongoDB
3 82 (4.85%) SQL Server
4 36 (2.13%) Data Warehouse
5 34 (2.01%) DynamoDB
5 34 (2.01%) MySQL
6 33 (1.95%) Relational Database
7 31 (1.83%) Power BI
8 21 (1.24%) Amazon RDS
9 19 (1.12%) Metadata
10 17 (1.01%) Spark SQL
11 15 (0.89%) Redis
12 14 (0.83%) BigQuery
12 14 (0.83%) Oracle Database
12 14 (0.83%) Pinecone
13 11 (0.65%) Data Lake
13 11 (0.65%) DB2
14 10 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
14 10 (0.59%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 191 (11.30%) Git
2 162 (9.59%) Selenium
3 148 (8.76%) Jenkins
4 135 (7.99%) JIRA
5 111 (6.57%) GitLab
6 86 (5.09%) Cypress.io
7 66 (3.91%) Cucumber
8 63 (3.73%) Postman
9 59 (3.49%) TeamCity
10 44 (2.60%) JMeter
11 32 (1.89%) REST Assured
11 32 (1.89%) SpecFlow
12 30 (1.78%) CircleCI
13 27 (1.60%) TestRail
14 23 (1.36%) MLflow
15 21 (1.24%) Bitbucket
16 20 (1.18%) JUnit
16 20 (1.18%) Zephyr
17 19 (1.12%) Oracle Forms
18 18 (1.07%) WebDriver
General
1 461 (27.28%) Social Skills
2 441 (26.09%) Finance
3 182 (10.77%) Banking
4 158 (9.35%) Analytical Skills
5 147 (8.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 118 (6.98%) Law
7 113 (6.69%) Public Sector
8 90 (5.33%) Retail
9 59 (3.49%) Financial Institution
10 53 (3.14%) Manufacturing
11 45 (2.66%) Electronics
12 43 (2.54%) Back Office
13 39 (2.31%) Games
14 34 (2.01%) Front Office
15 33 (1.95%) Legal
15 33 (1.95%) Marketing
16 19 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
17 16 (0.95%) Investment Banking
18 14 (0.83%) Influencing Skills
18 14 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 438 (25.92%) Senior
2 276 (16.33%) Lead
3 228 (13.49%) Software Engineer
4 223 (13.20%) Developer
5 183 (10.83%) Test Engineer
6 98 (5.80%) Senior Developer
7 94 (5.56%) QA Engineer
8 89 (5.27%) Tester
9 88 (5.21%) Java Engineer
10 86 (5.09%) Test Automation Engineer
11 74 (4.38%) Test Leader
12 71 (4.20%) Senior Software Engineer
13 60 (3.55%) Automation Engineer
13 60 (3.55%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 54 (3.20%) Data Engineer
15 53 (3.14%) DevOps Engineer
16 51 (3.02%) Automation Tester
17 50 (2.96%) QA Automation Engineer
17 50 (2.96%) Senior Test Engineer
18 48 (2.84%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 196 (11.60%) React
2 180 (10.65%) .NET
3 160 (9.47%) RESTful
4 155 (9.17%) REST
5 149 (8.82%) Playwright
6 110 (6.51%) Node.js
7 98 (5.80%) Spring
8 82 (4.85%) Kafka
9 72 (4.26%) Spring Boot
10 62 (3.67%) HTML
11 61 (3.61%) CSS
12 53 (3.14%) JSON
12 53 (3.14%) OAuth
13 45 (2.66%) AngularJS
14 43 (2.54%) RabbitMQ
15 40 (2.37%) OAuth2
15 40 (2.37%) pytest
15 40 (2.37%) Web Services
16 39 (2.31%) .NET Framework
17 36 (2.13%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 277 (16.39%) Cloud Native
2 155 (9.17%) Product Ownership
3 97 (5.74%) Distributed Systems
4 76 (4.50%) Mobile App
5 63 (3.73%) Management Information System
6 54 (3.20%) Enterprise Software
7 43 (2.54%) Low-Code
8 41 (2.43%) Algorithms
9 39 (2.31%) Greenfield Project
9 39 (2.31%) Onboarding
9 39 (2.31%) Self-Motivation
10 36 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
10 36 (2.13%) Public Cloud
11 31 (1.83%) Data Structures
12 27 (1.60%) Hybrid Cloud
13 24 (1.42%) Equities
13 24 (1.42%) Hedge funds
14 23 (1.36%) Blog
15 20 (1.18%) Embedded Systems
15 20 (1.18%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 168 (9.94%) Linux
2 87 (5.15%) Windows
3 66 (3.91%) Apple iOS
4 57 (3.37%) Android
5 48 (2.84%) Unix
6 11 (0.65%) CentOS
7 10 (0.59%) Windows Server
8 5 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.24%) Kali Linux
9 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.18%) FreeRTOS
10 3 (0.18%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.12%) AIX
11 2 (0.12%) Debian
12 1 (0.059%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.059%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.059%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 885 (52.37%) CI/CD
2 687 (40.65%) Agile
3 594 (35.15%) DevOps
4 429 (25.38%) Software Engineering
5 414 (24.50%) Continuous Improvement
6 377 (22.31%) Mentoring
7 344 (20.36%) Problem-Solving
8 289 (17.10%) Infrastructure as Code
9 287 (16.98%) Microservices
10 281 (16.63%) AI
11 257 (15.21%) Software Testing
12 245 (14.50%) Observability
13 239 (14.14%) Coaching
14 208 (12.31%) Containerisation
15 207 (12.25%) Test Strategy
16 204 (12.07%) Full-Stack Development
17 199 (11.78%) Clean Code
18 183 (10.83%) Validation
19 166 (9.82%) Deployment Automation
20 158 (9.35%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 523 (30.95%) Python
2 427 (25.27%) Java
3 312 (18.46%) SQL
4 233 (13.79%) JavaScript
5 211 (12.49%) C#
5 211 (12.49%) TypeScript
6 80 (4.73%) C++
7 77 (4.56%) PowerShell
8 70 (4.14%) Bash
9 63 (3.73%) Go
10 46 (2.72%) C
11 34 (2.01%) Bicep
12 27 (1.60%) Rust
13 26 (1.54%) Kotlin
14 25 (1.48%) Shell Script
15 24 (1.42%) PL/SQL
16 23 (1.36%) Apex Code
17 20 (1.18%) PHP
18 18 (1.07%) Swift
19 17 (1.01%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 219 (12.96%) Degree
2 167 (9.88%) Security Cleared
3 103 (6.09%) SC Cleared
4 90 (5.33%) Computer Science Degree
5 78 (4.62%) ISTQB
6 32 (1.89%) DV Cleared
7 27 (1.60%) Master's Degree
8 23 (1.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 22 (1.30%) AWS Certification
9 22 (1.30%) CISSP
10 18 (1.07%) DBS Check
11 16 (0.95%) CGEIT
11 16 (0.95%) CISA
11 16 (0.95%) CISM
11 16 (0.95%) FFIEC
11 16 (0.95%) SANS
12 15 (0.89%) Azure Certification
13 13 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 13 (0.77%) PhD
14 12 (0.71%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 394 (23.31%) QA
2 124 (7.34%) Accessibility
3 75 (4.44%) Data Quality
4 55 (3.25%) GDPR
5 36 (2.13%) NIST
6 24 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 19 (1.12%) WCAG
8 17 (1.01%) COBIT
9 14 (0.83%) SLA
10 12 (0.71%) ISO 22301
11 10 (0.59%) Software Quality Assurance
12 8 (0.47%) GRC
12 8 (0.47%) ISO 9001
13 7 (0.41%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.36%) IEC 61508
14 6 (0.36%) PMO
15 4 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
15 4 (0.24%) ISO 13485
15 4 (0.24%) ISO 26262
15 4 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 234 (13.85%) Docker
2 28 (1.66%) Active Directory
3 24 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (1.01%) Firmware
4 17 (1.01%) Hyper-V
5 15 (0.89%) Virtual Machines
6 13 (0.77%) KVM
7 7 (0.41%) Embedded Firmware
8 3 (0.18%) Terminal Server
9 2 (0.12%) vSphere
10 1 (0.059%) IAG
10 1 (0.059%) Xen
Systems Management
1 294 (17.40%) Terraform
2 282 (16.69%) Kubernetes
3 122 (7.22%) Grafana
4 72 (4.26%) Ansible
5 55 (3.25%) Prometheus
6 27 (1.60%) Single Sign-On
7 25 (1.48%) Argo
8 10 (0.59%) logstash
9 8 (0.47%) Kibana
10 7 (0.41%) SCCM
10 7 (0.41%) SCOM
11 5 (0.30%) HP Fortify
11 5 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (0.24%) Packer
12 4 (0.24%) Rancher
12 4 (0.24%) vCenter Server
13 3 (0.18%) Functional Safety
13 3 (0.18%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.18%) Puppet
13 3 (0.18%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 131 (7.75%) Microsoft
2 70 (4.14%) Oracle
3 56 (3.31%) Databricks
4 54 (3.20%) Salesforce
5 46 (2.72%) VMware
6 37 (2.19%) Google
7 24 (1.42%) OpenAI
8 19 (1.12%) Splunk
9 18 (1.07%) ServiceNow
10 17 (1.01%) Commvault
11 15 (0.89%) Atlassian
11 15 (0.89%) SAP
12 12 (0.71%) Amplitude
12 12 (0.71%) Automation Anywhere
12 12 (0.71%) Braze
12 12 (0.71%) Palantir
12 12 (0.71%) UiPath
13 11 (0.65%) CrowdStrike
13 11 (0.65%) Foundry
13 11 (0.65%) IFS