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 28 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 100 90 94
Rank change year-on-year -10 +4 -63
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,623 1,358 2,714
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.81% 3.21% 2.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.42% 3.46% 3.32%
Number of salaries quoted 1,020 894 1,763
10th Percentile £42,500 £38,750 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £46,500 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £63,625 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +6.04% +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 67,035 39,288 81,690
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 74.86% 92.85% 85.64%
Number of salaries quoted 41,557 22,685 59,435
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,000 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £39,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -10.93%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £98,750 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +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 28 April 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 28 April 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 1,372 £64,169 +6.95% 665
UK excluding London -36 883 £60,000 +9.09% 558
Work from Home +9 692 £67,500 +12.50% 311
London +36 593 £80,000 +14.29% 218
North of England -29 209 £62,500 +13.64% 148
South West -26 170 £55,000 -6.38% 74
South East -67 166 £60,000 +11.63% 155
Midlands -30 136 £61,500 +6.96% 74
Scotland -1 105 £61,250 +2.08% 31
North West -12 104 £61,500 +11.82% 71
West Midlands -32 70 £62,000 +3.33% 48
East Midlands -25 65 £60,000 +20.00% 24
Yorkshire -63 64 £69,310 +38.62% 38
East of England -12 56 £50,000 -20.00% 63
Wales -7 42 £55,000 +4.58% 15
North East -27 41 £55,000 -6.78% 39
Northern Ireland -42 9 £80,000 +45.45% 13

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 (2.28%) Confluence
2 22 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
3 18 (1.11%) Apache Spark
4 12 (0.74%) Appian
5 10 (0.62%) Apache
5 10 (0.62%) CMS
5 10 (0.62%) IIS
5 10 (0.62%) Palantir Foundry
6 9 (0.55%) Jupyter
6 9 (0.55%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 9 (0.55%) SharePoint
7 6 (0.37%) WordPress
8 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.18%) nginx
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.12%) Camunda
9 2 (0.12%) JBoss
9 2 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
9 2 (0.12%) SAS
9 2 (0.12%) Umbraco
Applications
1 12 (0.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.43%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.37%) PlantUML
6 4 (0.25%) Fusion 360
7 3 (0.18%) CANalyzer
8 2 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
8 2 (0.12%) Simulink
9 1 (0.062%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.062%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 17 (1.05%) Oracle ERP
2 9 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.31%) Visualfiles
4 4 (0.25%) Dynamics AX
4 4 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 4 (0.25%) Shopify
5 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.062%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.062%) Endur
6 1 (0.062%) Findur
6 1 (0.062%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.062%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.062%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.062%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.062%) Oracle SCM
6 1 (0.062%) SAP CX
6 1 (0.062%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 562 (34.63%) Azure
2 493 (30.38%) AWS
3 265 (16.33%) Azure DevOps
4 191 (11.77%) GCP
5 179 (11.03%) GitHub
6 138 (8.50%) Serverless
7 119 (7.33%) SaaS
8 69 (4.25%) Amazon EKS
8 69 (4.25%) GitHub Actions
9 61 (3.76%) PaaS
10 57 (3.51%) AWS Lambda
11 56 (3.45%) Azure Data Factory
12 51 (3.14%) Amazon S3
12 51 (3.14%) AWS CloudFormation
12 51 (3.14%) dbt
13 50 (3.08%) GitHub Copilot
14 49 (3.02%) Power Platform
15 35 (2.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 35 (2.16%) Azure Service Bus
16 34 (2.09%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.11%) Broadband
2 16 (0.99%) CHAP
3 15 (0.92%) DNS
3 15 (0.92%) Firewall
4 12 (0.74%) HTTP
4 12 (0.74%) WAN
5 11 (0.68%) SD-WAN
6 10 (0.62%) TCP/IP
7 8 (0.49%) 5G
8 6 (0.37%) VPN
9 4 (0.25%) SMTP
10 3 (0.18%) Cisco ISE
10 3 (0.18%) Ethernet
10 3 (0.18%) LTE
10 3 (0.18%) VLAN
11 2 (0.12%) Bluetooth
11 2 (0.12%) Modbus
11 2 (0.12%) Multicast
11 2 (0.12%) Network Security
11 2 (0.12%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (6.90%) NoSQL
2 106 (6.53%) PostgreSQL
3 89 (5.48%) SQL Server
4 70 (4.31%) MongoDB
5 36 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
5 36 (2.22%) MySQL
6 33 (2.03%) Relational Database
7 32 (1.97%) Power BI
8 31 (1.91%) DynamoDB
9 20 (1.23%) Amazon RDS
10 16 (0.99%) Metadata
11 14 (0.86%) Oracle Database
11 14 (0.86%) Pinecone
11 14 (0.86%) Spark SQL
12 13 (0.80%) Data Lake
12 13 (0.80%) Redis
13 12 (0.74%) DB2
14 11 (0.68%) BigQuery
15 10 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
15 10 (0.62%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 193 (11.89%) Git
2 170 (10.47%) Selenium
3 143 (8.81%) Jenkins
4 134 (8.26%) JIRA
5 104 (6.41%) GitLab
6 89 (5.48%) Cypress.io
7 70 (4.31%) Cucumber
8 62 (3.82%) Postman
9 60 (3.70%) TeamCity
10 45 (2.77%) JMeter
11 33 (2.03%) SpecFlow
12 31 (1.91%) REST Assured
13 29 (1.79%) CircleCI
14 27 (1.66%) TestRail
15 25 (1.54%) JUnit
16 24 (1.48%) MLflow
17 22 (1.36%) Bitbucket
18 19 (1.17%) Oracle Forms
18 19 (1.17%) Zephyr
19 18 (1.11%) WebDriver
General
1 456 (28.10%) Social Skills
2 434 (26.74%) Finance
3 179 (11.03%) Banking
4 151 (9.30%) Analytical Skills
5 139 (8.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 121 (7.46%) Law
7 109 (6.72%) Public Sector
8 88 (5.42%) Retail
9 57 (3.51%) Financial Institution
10 48 (2.96%) Manufacturing
11 43 (2.65%) Electronics
12 40 (2.46%) Back Office
13 34 (2.09%) Front Office
14 33 (2.03%) Marketing
15 31 (1.91%) Legal
16 28 (1.73%) Games
17 18 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
18 14 (0.86%) Investment Banking
18 14 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
19 13 (0.80%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 415 (25.57%) Senior
2 270 (16.64%) Lead
3 223 (13.74%) Developer
4 219 (13.49%) Software Engineer
5 167 (10.29%) Test Engineer
6 99 (6.10%) Senior Developer
7 89 (5.48%) QA Engineer
8 88 (5.42%) Tester
9 83 (5.11%) Java Engineer
10 78 (4.81%) Test Automation Engineer
11 72 (4.44%) Test Leader
12 68 (4.19%) Senior Software Engineer
13 58 (3.57%) Automation Engineer
14 57 (3.51%) Full-Stack Engineer
15 52 (3.20%) Automation Tester
16 50 (3.08%) Data Engineer
17 49 (3.02%) DevOps Engineer
18 48 (2.96%) QA Automation Engineer
19 47 (2.90%) Analyst
20 46 (2.83%) QA Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 196 (12.08%) React
2 176 (10.84%) .NET
3 149 (9.18%) Playwright
3 149 (9.18%) RESTful
4 147 (9.06%) REST
5 101 (6.22%) Node.js
6 96 (5.91%) Spring
7 74 (4.56%) Kafka
8 72 (4.44%) Spring Boot
9 63 (3.88%) HTML
10 62 (3.82%) CSS
11 52 (3.20%) JSON
11 52 (3.20%) OAuth
12 45 (2.77%) pytest
13 44 (2.71%) AngularJS
14 41 (2.53%) Web Services
15 40 (2.46%) Elastic Stack
16 39 (2.40%) .NET Framework
16 39 (2.40%) OAuth2
16 39 (2.40%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 254 (15.65%) Cloud Native
2 147 (9.06%) Product Ownership
3 75 (4.62%) Distributed Systems
3 75 (4.62%) Mobile App
4 64 (3.94%) Management Information System
5 51 (3.14%) Enterprise Software
6 40 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
7 39 (2.40%) Algorithms
7 39 (2.40%) Onboarding
8 38 (2.34%) Greenfield Project
8 38 (2.34%) Self-Motivation
9 31 (1.91%) Low-Code
10 30 (1.85%) Public Cloud
11 29 (1.79%) Data Structures
12 28 (1.73%) Hybrid Cloud
13 24 (1.48%) Hedge funds
14 23 (1.42%) Blog
14 23 (1.42%) Equities
15 20 (1.23%) Client/Server
16 18 (1.11%) Embedded Systems
Operating Systems
1 163 (10.04%) Linux
2 84 (5.18%) Windows
3 67 (4.13%) Apple iOS
4 58 (3.57%) Android
5 45 (2.77%) Unix
6 11 (0.68%) CentOS
7 10 (0.62%) Windows Server
8 5 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.25%) Kali Linux
9 4 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.18%) FreeRTOS
10 3 (0.18%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.12%) AIX
11 2 (0.12%) Debian
11 2 (0.12%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.062%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.062%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.062%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 851 (52.43%) CI/CD
2 664 (40.91%) Agile
3 577 (35.55%) DevOps
4 405 (24.95%) Software Engineering
5 394 (24.28%) Continuous Improvement
6 365 (22.49%) Mentoring
7 347 (21.38%) Problem-Solving
8 275 (16.94%) Microservices
9 265 (16.33%) AI
10 259 (15.96%) Infrastructure as Code
11 238 (14.66%) Software Testing
12 236 (14.54%) Coaching
13 226 (13.92%) Observability
14 205 (12.63%) Containerisation
15 199 (12.26%) Clean Code
16 196 (12.08%) Test Strategy
17 188 (11.58%) Full-Stack Development
18 160 (9.86%) Deployment Automation
19 159 (9.80%) Validation
20 157 (9.67%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 491 (30.25%) Python
2 409 (25.20%) Java
3 302 (18.61%) SQL
4 230 (14.17%) JavaScript
5 209 (12.88%) TypeScript
6 196 (12.08%) C#
7 79 (4.87%) PowerShell
8 76 (4.68%) C++
9 62 (3.82%) Bash
10 50 (3.08%) Go
11 42 (2.59%) C
12 34 (2.09%) Bicep
13 28 (1.73%) Kotlin
14 26 (1.60%) Rust
14 26 (1.60%) Shell Script
15 24 (1.48%) Apex Code
15 24 (1.48%) PL/SQL
16 20 (1.23%) PHP
17 19 (1.17%) Swift
18 13 (0.80%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 212 (13.06%) Degree
2 152 (9.37%) Security Cleared
3 95 (5.85%) SC Cleared
4 87 (5.36%) Computer Science Degree
5 78 (4.81%) ISTQB
6 29 (1.79%) DV Cleared
6 29 (1.79%) Master's Degree
7 24 (1.48%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 22 (1.36%) CISSP
9 19 (1.17%) AWS Certification
10 17 (1.05%) DBS Check
11 16 (0.99%) CGEIT
11 16 (0.99%) CISA
11 16 (0.99%) CISM
11 16 (0.99%) FFIEC
11 16 (0.99%) SANS
12 15 (0.92%) Azure Certification
13 13 (0.80%) PhD
14 12 (0.74%) CEH
14 12 (0.74%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (23.48%) QA
2 119 (7.33%) Accessibility
3 70 (4.31%) Data Quality
4 51 (3.14%) GDPR
5 41 (2.53%) NIST
6 29 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 20 (1.23%) WCAG
8 17 (1.05%) COBIT
9 14 (0.86%) SLA
10 12 (0.74%) ISO 22301
11 10 (0.62%) Software Quality Assurance
12 8 (0.49%) ISO 9001
13 7 (0.43%) GRC
13 7 (0.43%) IEC 61508
14 6 (0.37%) NCSC
14 6 (0.37%) PMO
15 5 (0.31%) ISO 26262
15 5 (0.31%) SOC 2
16 4 (0.25%) ISO 13485
16 4 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 232 (14.29%) Docker
2 27 (1.66%) Active Directory
3 22 (1.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (0.92%) Firmware
4 15 (0.92%) Hyper-V
4 15 (0.92%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (0.80%) KVM
6 7 (0.43%) Embedded Firmware
7 3 (0.18%) Terminal Server
8 2 (0.12%) vSphere
9 1 (0.062%) IAG
9 1 (0.062%) Xen
Systems Management
1 283 (17.44%) Terraform
2 282 (17.38%) Kubernetes
3 123 (7.58%) Grafana
4 67 (4.13%) Ansible
5 48 (2.96%) Prometheus
6 27 (1.66%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (1.42%) Argo
8 10 (0.62%) logstash
9 8 (0.49%) Kibana
10 7 (0.43%) SCCM
10 7 (0.43%) SCOM
11 6 (0.37%) Microsoft Intune
12 5 (0.31%) HP Fortify
13 4 (0.25%) Packer
13 4 (0.25%) Rancher
13 4 (0.25%) vCenter Server
14 3 (0.18%) Functional Safety
14 3 (0.18%) HP ALM
14 3 (0.18%) SCOrch
15 2 (0.12%) Puppet
Vendors
1 132 (8.13%) Microsoft
2 79 (4.87%) Oracle
3 56 (3.45%) Databricks
4 52 (3.20%) Salesforce
5 45 (2.77%) VMware
6 37 (2.28%) Google
7 23 (1.42%) OpenAI
8 18 (1.11%) Commvault
9 17 (1.05%) SAP
9 17 (1.05%) ServiceNow
9 17 (1.05%) Splunk
10 15 (0.92%) Atlassian
11 14 (0.86%) Palantir
12 12 (0.74%) Automation Anywhere
12 12 (0.74%) Foundry
12 12 (0.74%) IBM
12 12 (0.74%) UiPath
13 11 (0.68%) Amplitude
13 11 (0.68%) Dynatrace
13 11 (0.68%) IFS