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 27 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 101 77 87
Rank change year-on-year -24 +10 -55
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,459 1,765 2,371
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.09% 3.73% 3.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.65% 4.01% 3.56%
Number of salaries quoted 887 863 1,676
10th Percentile £41,250 £41,250 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £48,250 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £77,500
90th Percentile £106,250 £105,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,200 £57,500 £53,000
% change year-on-year -4.00% +8.49% -7.83%

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 55,039 44,035 66,669
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 78.92% 92.97% 88.39%
Number of salaries quoted 32,968 22,033 51,326
10th Percentile £29,000 £33,750 £29,487
25th Percentile £38,541 £45,651 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,001 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £76,250 £81,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £95,000
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 27 February 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 27 February 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 -25 1,210 £62,500 - 570
UK excluding London -59 744 £55,200 -4.00% 490
Work from Home +10 626 £65,000 +4.00% 304
London +33 579 £80,000 +3.23% 172
South East -61 179 £55,000 - 149
North of England -75 135 £60,000 +4.35% 122
Scotland +2 130 £82,500 +37.50% 36
South West -12 126 £55,000 -8.33% 75
Midlands -63 91 £55,000 -8.33% 56
North West -32 79 £60,000 +14.29% 60
East of England -46 54 £52,500 -25.00% 51
East Midlands -52 47 £55,000 -4.35% 18
West Midlands -42 45 £55,000 -8.33% 38
Yorkshire -68 41 £55,000 -12.00% 40
Wales -7 27 £55,200 +13.19% 11
North East -29 15 £55,200 -9.51% 22
Northern Ireland -43 5 £64,859 +1.74% 2

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 (2.26%) Confluence
2 25 (1.71%) Apache Airflow
3 19 (1.30%) Apache Spark
4 18 (1.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 15 (1.03%) Appian
6 12 (0.82%) Apache
7 10 (0.69%) Palantir Foundry
8 9 (0.62%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.62%) SharePoint
9 8 (0.55%) CMS
10 6 (0.41%) WordPress
11 5 (0.34%) IIS
12 4 (0.27%) Apache Solr
13 3 (0.21%) JBoss
13 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
13 3 (0.21%) nginx
13 3 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
14 2 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 2 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
14 2 (0.14%) SAS
Applications
1 19 (1.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.89%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.75%) MS Visio
4 10 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.27%) Fusion 360
6 3 (0.21%) Photoshop
6 3 (0.21%) PlantUML
7 2 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
7 2 (0.14%) Sketch
8 1 (0.069%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.069%) Trello
Business Applications
1 38 (2.60%) Oracle ERP
2 30 (2.06%) SAP S/4HANA
3 20 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
4 4 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 4 (0.27%) Shopify
5 3 (0.21%) Dynamics AX
5 3 (0.21%) Oracle Financials
5 3 (0.21%) SAP CX
6 2 (0.14%) Hyperion Planning
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
6 2 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.069%) NEC Housing
7 1 (0.069%) Oracle SCM
7 1 (0.069%) Postilion
7 1 (0.069%) SAP Hybris
7 1 (0.069%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 494 (33.86%) Azure
2 416 (28.51%) AWS
3 281 (19.26%) Azure DevOps
4 222 (15.22%) GitHub
5 169 (11.58%) GCP
6 109 (7.47%) SaaS
7 87 (5.96%) Serverless
8 75 (5.14%) GitHub Copilot
9 74 (5.07%) GitHub Actions
10 70 (4.80%) Amazon EKS
10 70 (4.80%) Power Platform
11 56 (3.84%) PaaS
12 49 (3.36%) Azure Data Factory
13 42 (2.88%) Snowflake
14 41 (2.81%) dbt
15 39 (2.67%) Datadog
15 39 (2.67%) Entra ID
16 37 (2.54%) Amazon S3
16 37 (2.54%) AWS CloudFormation
17 36 (2.47%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.44%) DNS
2 18 (1.23%) HTTP
2 18 (1.23%) TCP/IP
3 16 (1.10%) WAN
4 15 (1.03%) SD-WAN
5 12 (0.82%) 5G
6 10 (0.69%) CHAP
6 10 (0.69%) VPN
7 8 (0.55%) Firewall
8 4 (0.27%) 3G
8 4 (0.27%) Broadband
8 4 (0.27%) GPRS
8 4 (0.27%) GSM
8 4 (0.27%) Modbus
8 4 (0.27%) Multicast
8 4 (0.27%) RS-232
8 4 (0.27%) RS-485
8 4 (0.27%) SMTP
8 4 (0.27%) SSL
9 3 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 87 (5.96%) PostgreSQL
2 80 (5.48%) NoSQL
2 80 (5.48%) SQL Server
3 56 (3.84%) Relational Database
4 47 (3.22%) MySQL
5 44 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
6 41 (2.81%) Power BI
7 39 (2.67%) MongoDB
8 20 (1.37%) DynamoDB
9 19 (1.30%) Tableau
10 15 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
10 15 (1.03%) Elasticsearch
11 14 (0.96%) DB2
12 13 (0.89%) Metadata
12 13 (0.89%) Pinecone
12 13 (0.89%) Snowflake Schema
13 12 (0.82%) BigQuery
14 10 (0.69%) Data Lake
14 10 (0.69%) Oracle Database
14 10 (0.69%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 185 (12.68%) Selenium
2 154 (10.56%) Git
3 151 (10.35%) JIRA
4 140 (9.60%) Jenkins
5 79 (5.41%) Cypress.io
6 68 (4.66%) Cucumber
7 67 (4.59%) GitLab
8 62 (4.25%) TeamCity
9 48 (3.29%) Postman
10 43 (2.95%) JMeter
11 35 (2.40%) Oracle Forms
12 27 (1.85%) Robot Framework
12 27 (1.85%) SpecFlow
13 26 (1.78%) JUnit
14 25 (1.71%) CircleCI
14 25 (1.71%) eCATT
15 24 (1.64%) MLflow
16 22 (1.51%) WebDriver
17 21 (1.44%) REST Assured
17 21 (1.44%) Snyk
General
1 477 (32.69%) Finance
2 441 (30.23%) Social Skills
3 155 (10.62%) Analytical Skills
4 152 (10.42%) Banking
5 115 (7.88%) Law
6 106 (7.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 87 (5.96%) Retail
8 73 (5.00%) Marketing
9 71 (4.87%) Public Sector
10 63 (4.32%) Financial Institution
11 46 (3.15%) Manufacturing
12 40 (2.74%) Back Office
13 36 (2.47%) Front Office
14 31 (2.12%) Electronics
15 28 (1.92%) Legal
16 26 (1.78%) Presentation Skills
17 21 (1.44%) Documentation Skills
17 21 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
18 18 (1.23%) Games
18 18 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 406 (27.83%) Senior
2 225 (15.42%) Developer
3 221 (15.15%) Lead
4 167 (11.45%) Software Engineer
5 136 (9.32%) Test Engineer
6 103 (7.06%) Senior Developer
7 85 (5.83%) QA Engineer
8 72 (4.93%) Analyst
8 72 (4.93%) Tester
9 68 (4.66%) Java Engineer
9 68 (4.66%) Test Leader
10 66 (4.52%) Test Automation Engineer
11 59 (4.04%) Automation Engineer
12 53 (3.63%) Senior Software Engineer
13 51 (3.50%) Applications Engineer
14 50 (3.43%) QA Automation Engineer
15 46 (3.15%) Automation Tester
15 46 (3.15%) Cloud Engineer
15 46 (3.15%) Python Developer
16 41 (2.81%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 156 (10.69%) React
2 152 (10.42%) RESTful
3 131 (8.98%) .NET
4 114 (7.81%) Playwright
5 106 (7.27%) REST
6 86 (5.89%) Spring
7 70 (4.80%) Node.js
8 65 (4.46%) JSON
9 64 (4.39%) Kafka
10 60 (4.11%) Spring Boot
11 59 (4.04%) CSS
11 59 (4.04%) HTML
12 57 (3.91%) OAuth
13 53 (3.63%) pytest
14 52 (3.56%) SOAP
15 43 (2.95%) OAuth2
16 37 (2.54%) Elastic Stack
16 37 (2.54%) XML
17 32 (2.19%) AngularJS
17 32 (2.19%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 255 (17.48%) Cloud Native
2 109 (7.47%) Product Ownership
3 57 (3.91%) Self-Motivation
4 54 (3.70%) Enterprise Software
5 53 (3.63%) Management Information System
6 51 (3.50%) Mobile App
7 40 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
8 38 (2.60%) Onboarding
9 34 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
10 28 (1.92%) Algorithms
10 28 (1.92%) Data Structures
10 28 (1.92%) Hedge funds
10 28 (1.92%) Low-Code
11 26 (1.78%) Greenfield Project
12 24 (1.64%) Equities
13 23 (1.58%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 21 (1.44%) GNSS
14 21 (1.44%) Hybrid Cloud
14 21 (1.44%) Satnav
15 19 (1.30%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 138 (9.46%) Linux
2 73 (5.00%) Windows
3 47 (3.22%) Apple iOS
4 43 (2.95%) Android
5 35 (2.40%) Unix
6 9 (0.62%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.55%) CentOS
8 5 (0.34%) Debian
8 5 (0.34%) Embedded Linux
8 5 (0.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.27%) FreeRTOS
10 3 (0.21%) Windows 10
10 3 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.14%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.14%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.14%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.069%) AIX
12 1 (0.069%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 745 (51.06%) CI/CD
2 614 (42.08%) Agile
3 505 (34.61%) DevOps
4 332 (22.76%) Mentoring
5 330 (22.62%) Continuous Improvement
6 325 (22.28%) Problem-Solving
7 316 (21.66%) Software Engineering
8 237 (16.24%) AI
9 235 (16.11%) Coaching
10 233 (15.97%) Microservices
11 186 (12.75%) Observability
12 184 (12.61%) Software Testing
13 182 (12.47%) Clean Code
14 178 (12.20%) Infrastructure as Code
15 162 (11.10%) Test Strategy
16 159 (10.90%) Analytics
17 146 (10.01%) Containerisation
18 136 (9.32%) Full-Stack Development
19 124 (8.50%) Deployment Automation
19 124 (8.50%) Manual Testing
Programming Languages
1 428 (29.34%) Python
2 366 (25.09%) Java
3 309 (21.18%) SQL
4 199 (13.64%) JavaScript
5 172 (11.79%) TypeScript
6 148 (10.14%) C#
7 79 (5.41%) PowerShell
8 61 (4.18%) C++
9 48 (3.29%) Bash
10 43 (2.95%) PL/SQL
11 40 (2.74%) Shell Script
12 38 (2.60%) Go
13 29 (1.99%) C
14 28 (1.92%) Bicep
14 28 (1.92%) PHP
15 26 (1.78%) Apex Code
16 22 (1.51%) Kotlin
17 19 (1.30%) Rust
18 14 (0.96%) MATLAB
19 13 (0.89%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 189 (12.95%) Degree
2 136 (9.32%) Security Cleared
3 92 (6.31%) SC Cleared
4 70 (4.80%) Computer Science Degree
5 67 (4.59%) ISTQB
6 34 (2.33%) Master's Degree
7 33 (2.26%) DV Cleared
8 24 (1.64%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 23 (1.58%) AWS Certification
10 17 (1.17%) HND
11 16 (1.10%) CISSP
11 16 (1.10%) DBS Check
12 15 (1.03%) ISEB
13 14 (0.96%) Azure Certification
13 14 (0.96%) PhD
14 13 (0.89%) CEH
15 11 (0.75%) CISA
16 10 (0.69%) BPSS Clearance
16 10 (0.69%) CGEIT
16 10 (0.69%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 333 (22.82%) QA
2 99 (6.79%) Accessibility
3 61 (4.18%) Data Quality
4 45 (3.08%) NIST
5 42 (2.88%) GDPR
6 36 (2.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 22 (1.51%) WCAG
8 16 (1.10%) SLA
9 14 (0.96%) NCSC
10 13 (0.89%) ISO 22301
11 10 (0.69%) COBIT
11 10 (0.69%) ISO 9001
12 6 (0.41%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 4 (0.27%) IEC 61508
14 4 (0.27%) ISO 13485
14 4 (0.27%) ISO 26262
14 4 (0.27%) MISRA
15 3 (0.21%) Section 508
15 3 (0.21%) SEPA
System Software
1 208 (14.26%) Docker
2 39 (2.67%) Active Directory
3 16 (1.10%) Firmware
4 14 (0.96%) VMware Infrastructure
5 13 (0.89%) Embedded Firmware
6 10 (0.69%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.62%) KVM
8 5 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (0.14%) Terminal Server
9 2 (0.14%) vSphere
10 1 (0.069%) Xen
Systems Management
1 254 (17.41%) Terraform
2 252 (17.27%) Kubernetes
3 111 (7.61%) Grafana
4 63 (4.32%) Ansible
5 43 (2.95%) Single Sign-On
6 40 (2.74%) Prometheus
7 28 (1.92%) HP ALM
8 8 (0.55%) Argo
9 6 (0.41%) Microsoft Intune
10 5 (0.34%) logstash
11 3 (0.21%) HP Fortify
11 3 (0.21%) Rancher
11 3 (0.21%) SCCM
11 3 (0.21%) SCOM
12 2 (0.14%) Control-M
12 2 (0.14%) Kibana
12 2 (0.14%) Nessus
12 2 (0.14%) Progress Chef
13 1 (0.069%) Packer
13 1 (0.069%) Puppet
Vendors
1 113 (7.75%) Microsoft
2 93 (6.37%) Oracle
3 56 (3.84%) Salesforce
4 48 (3.29%) SAP
5 40 (2.74%) VMware
6 37 (2.54%) Databricks
7 34 (2.33%) Google
8 29 (1.99%) HP
9 19 (1.30%) Commvault
9 19 (1.30%) OpenAI
10 18 (1.23%) Black Duck
10 18 (1.23%) Coverity
10 18 (1.23%) Okta
11 17 (1.17%) Splunk
12 15 (1.03%) ServiceNow
12 15 (1.03%) UiPath
13 14 (0.96%) Ab Initio
13 14 (0.96%) Palantir
14 13 (0.89%) Foundry
15 12 (0.82%) Guidewire