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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 97 88 91
Rank change year-on-year -9 +3 -58
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,636 1,353 2,723
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.90% 3.25% 2.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.52% 3.50% 3.35%
Number of salaries quoted 1,016 887 1,800
10th Percentile £42,500 £38,750 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £46,500 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,788 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +4.65% +4.35% -11.54%
75th Percentile £83,750 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £105,000 £97,906 £91,934
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,500 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +8.18% +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 64,999 38,652 81,347
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 75.50% 92.94% 86.02%
Number of salaries quoted 40,056 22,591 59,648
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £39,757
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -10.20%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,600 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.94% +5.20% -8.26%

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 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 17 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 1,374 £63,750 +6.25% 565
UK excluding London -38 873 £59,500 +8.18% 500
Work from Home +13 688 £65,000 +8.33% 289
London +36 609 £80,000 +14.29% 161
North of England -36 195 £61,500 +11.82% 115
South East -68 171 £57,500 +9.52% 135
South West -22 167 £55,000 -4.35% 63
Midlands -43 130 £61,000 +6.09% 75
Scotland +10 116 £62,500 +4.17% 41
North West -8 100 £60,000 +9.09% 49
West Midlands -36 67 £61,500 +0.41% 49
East Midlands -31 62 £57,600 +15.20% 26
Yorkshire -65 58 £68,690 +37.38% 32
East of England -14 55 £52,500 -23.64% 61
Wales -8 38 £55,000 +4.58% 18
North East -28 37 £55,000 -9.10% 34
Northern Ireland -37 10 £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 40 (2.44%) Confluence
2 23 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
3 18 (1.10%) Apache Spark
4 12 (0.73%) Appian
5 11 (0.67%) Apache
6 10 (0.61%) CMS
6 10 (0.61%) Palantir Foundry
7 9 (0.55%) IIS
7 9 (0.55%) Jupyter
7 9 (0.55%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 9 (0.55%) SharePoint
8 6 (0.37%) WordPress
9 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.18%) nginx
9 3 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.12%) Camunda
10 2 (0.12%) JBoss
10 2 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.12%) SAS
10 2 (0.12%) Umbraco
Applications
1 14 (0.86%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.67%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.55%) MS Visio
4 8 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.37%) PlantUML
6 4 (0.24%) Fusion 360
7 3 (0.18%) CANalyzer
8 2 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
8 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.061%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.061%) Simulink
9 1 (0.061%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 17 (1.04%) Oracle ERP
2 12 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
4 4 (0.24%) Dynamics AX
4 4 (0.24%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 4 (0.24%) Shopify
4 4 (0.24%) Visualfiles
5 2 (0.12%) SAP CX
6 1 (0.061%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.061%) Endur
6 1 (0.061%) Findur
6 1 (0.061%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.061%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.061%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.061%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.061%) Oracle SCM
6 1 (0.061%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.061%) Siebel CRM
6 1 (0.061%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 553 (33.80%) Azure
2 500 (30.56%) AWS
3 262 (16.01%) Azure DevOps
4 203 (12.41%) GCP
5 196 (11.98%) GitHub
6 136 (8.31%) Serverless
7 132 (8.07%) SaaS
8 80 (4.89%) Amazon EKS
9 71 (4.34%) PaaS
10 69 (4.22%) GitHub Actions
11 59 (3.61%) dbt
12 58 (3.55%) GitHub Copilot
13 57 (3.48%) Azure Data Factory
14 54 (3.30%) AWS Lambda
15 51 (3.12%) Power Platform
16 46 (2.81%) AWS CloudFormation
17 45 (2.75%) Amazon S3
18 41 (2.51%) Datadog
19 34 (2.08%) Entra ID
19 34 (2.08%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.10%) Broadband
1 18 (1.10%) DNS
2 14 (0.86%) CHAP
3 13 (0.79%) Firewall
3 13 (0.79%) HTTP
4 12 (0.73%) WAN
5 11 (0.67%) SD-WAN
6 10 (0.61%) TCP/IP
7 8 (0.49%) 5G
8 7 (0.43%) VPN
9 4 (0.24%) 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%) Modbus
11 2 (0.12%) Multicast
11 2 (0.12%) Network Security
11 2 (0.12%) PuTTY
11 2 (0.12%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 105 (6.42%) NoSQL
2 103 (6.30%) PostgreSQL
3 90 (5.50%) SQL Server
4 60 (3.67%) MongoDB
5 41 (2.51%) Relational Database
6 37 (2.26%) Data Warehouse
6 37 (2.26%) MySQL
7 34 (2.08%) Power BI
8 27 (1.65%) DynamoDB
9 18 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
10 16 (0.98%) Metadata
11 14 (0.86%) Data Lake
11 14 (0.86%) Pinecone
11 14 (0.86%) Redis
12 13 (0.79%) BigQuery
12 13 (0.79%) DB2
13 11 (0.67%) Oracle Database
13 11 (0.67%) Spark SQL
14 10 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
14 10 (0.61%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 187 (11.43%) Git
2 181 (11.06%) Selenium
3 143 (8.74%) Jenkins
4 138 (8.44%) JIRA
5 91 (5.56%) Cypress.io
6 90 (5.50%) GitLab
7 76 (4.65%) Cucumber
8 70 (4.28%) TeamCity
9 64 (3.91%) Postman
10 52 (3.18%) JMeter
11 37 (2.26%) SpecFlow
12 32 (1.96%) REST Assured
13 27 (1.65%) CircleCI
13 27 (1.65%) TestRail
14 25 (1.53%) JUnit
15 24 (1.47%) MLflow
16 22 (1.34%) Bitbucket
17 20 (1.22%) Robot Framework
18 19 (1.16%) Zephyr
19 17 (1.04%) Visual Studio
General
1 457 (27.93%) Social Skills
2 449 (27.44%) Finance
3 191 (11.67%) Banking
4 155 (9.47%) Analytical Skills
5 141 (8.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 128 (7.82%) Law
7 101 (6.17%) Retail
8 98 (5.99%) Public Sector
9 64 (3.91%) Financial Institution
10 50 (3.06%) Back Office
11 44 (2.69%) Electronics
12 42 (2.57%) Manufacturing
13 39 (2.38%) Legal
14 36 (2.20%) Marketing
15 35 (2.14%) Front Office
16 26 (1.59%) Games
17 19 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
18 16 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
19 14 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
19 14 (0.86%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 417 (25.49%) Senior
2 272 (16.63%) Lead
3 228 (13.94%) Developer
4 222 (13.57%) Software Engineer
5 166 (10.15%) Test Engineer
6 102 (6.23%) Senior Developer
7 91 (5.56%) QA Engineer
8 88 (5.38%) Tester
9 86 (5.26%) Java Engineer
10 81 (4.95%) Test Leader
11 74 (4.52%) Test Automation Engineer
12 71 (4.34%) Senior Software Engineer
13 63 (3.85%) Analyst
14 56 (3.42%) Automation Engineer
14 56 (3.42%) Full-Stack Engineer
15 54 (3.30%) Automation Tester
16 49 (3.00%) Python Developer
17 48 (2.93%) QA Automation Engineer
18 47 (2.87%) Data Engineer
19 45 (2.75%) QA Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 206 (12.59%) React
2 170 (10.39%) .NET
3 148 (9.05%) Playwright
4 147 (8.99%) RESTful
5 142 (8.68%) REST
6 99 (6.05%) Spring
7 95 (5.81%) Node.js
8 70 (4.28%) Spring Boot
9 69 (4.22%) HTML
10 68 (4.16%) CSS
11 67 (4.10%) Kafka
12 56 (3.42%) JSON
13 53 (3.24%) OAuth
14 48 (2.93%) pytest
15 43 (2.63%) AngularJS
15 43 (2.63%) Elastic Stack
16 41 (2.51%) Web Services
17 40 (2.44%) .NET Framework
17 40 (2.44%) OAuth2
18 38 (2.32%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 267 (16.32%) Cloud Native
2 143 (8.74%) Product Ownership
3 81 (4.95%) Mobile App
4 68 (4.16%) Distributed Systems
5 61 (3.73%) Management Information System
6 47 (2.87%) Enterprise Software
7 43 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
7 43 (2.63%) Self-Motivation
8 40 (2.44%) Onboarding
9 38 (2.32%) Algorithms
10 36 (2.20%) Greenfield Project
11 33 (2.02%) Low-Code
12 31 (1.89%) Data Structures
13 28 (1.71%) Public Cloud
14 27 (1.65%) Hybrid Cloud
15 25 (1.53%) Equities
15 25 (1.53%) Hedge funds
16 22 (1.34%) Blog
17 20 (1.22%) Client/Server
18 19 (1.16%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 159 (9.72%) Linux
2 86 (5.26%) Windows
3 66 (4.03%) Apple iOS
4 57 (3.48%) Android
5 39 (2.38%) Unix
6 12 (0.73%) CentOS
7 9 (0.55%) Windows Server
8 5 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.18%) Debian
10 3 (0.18%) FreeRTOS
10 3 (0.18%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.12%) AIX
11 2 (0.12%) Kali Linux
11 2 (0.12%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.12%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.12%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.061%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.061%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 845 (51.65%) CI/CD
2 663 (40.53%) Agile
3 573 (35.02%) DevOps
4 405 (24.76%) Continuous Improvement
5 404 (24.69%) Software Engineering
6 354 (21.64%) Mentoring
7 350 (21.39%) Problem-Solving
8 269 (16.44%) Microservices
9 267 (16.32%) AI
10 252 (15.40%) Infrastructure as Code
11 239 (14.61%) Software Testing
12 236 (14.43%) Coaching
13 224 (13.69%) Observability
14 206 (12.59%) Clean Code
15 201 (12.29%) Containerisation
16 200 (12.22%) Test Strategy
17 189 (11.55%) Full-Stack Development
18 165 (10.09%) Deployment Automation
19 161 (9.84%) Validation
20 156 (9.54%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 501 (30.62%) Python
2 422 (25.79%) Java
3 306 (18.70%) SQL
4 245 (14.98%) JavaScript
5 216 (13.20%) TypeScript
6 186 (11.37%) C#
7 80 (4.89%) PowerShell
8 73 (4.46%) C++
9 60 (3.67%) Bash
10 49 (3.00%) Go
11 39 (2.38%) C
12 35 (2.14%) Bicep
13 28 (1.71%) Kotlin
14 26 (1.59%) Shell Script
15 25 (1.53%) Apex Code
15 25 (1.53%) Rust
16 24 (1.47%) PL/SQL
17 19 (1.16%) PHP
17 19 (1.16%) Swift
18 13 (0.79%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 215 (13.14%) Degree
2 152 (9.29%) Security Cleared
3 98 (5.99%) SC Cleared
4 84 (5.13%) Computer Science Degree
4 84 (5.13%) ISTQB
5 31 (1.89%) Master's Degree
6 30 (1.83%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 28 (1.71%) DV Cleared
8 20 (1.22%) CISSP
9 19 (1.16%) AWS Certification
10 17 (1.04%) ISEB
11 15 (0.92%) CISA
12 14 (0.86%) Azure Certification
12 14 (0.86%) CGEIT
12 14 (0.86%) CISM
12 14 (0.86%) FFIEC
12 14 (0.86%) SANS
13 13 (0.79%) CEH
13 13 (0.79%) HND
13 13 (0.79%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 382 (23.35%) QA
2 125 (7.64%) Accessibility
3 67 (4.10%) Data Quality
4 49 (3.00%) GDPR
5 43 (2.63%) NIST
6 32 (1.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 27 (1.65%) WCAG
8 14 (0.86%) COBIT
8 14 (0.86%) SLA
9 13 (0.79%) ISO 22301
10 10 (0.61%) Software Quality Assurance
11 9 (0.55%) ISO 9001
12 8 (0.49%) NCSC
13 7 (0.43%) GRC
13 7 (0.43%) IEC 61508
14 6 (0.37%) PMO
15 5 (0.31%) ISO 26262
15 5 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 5 (0.31%) SOC 2
16 4 (0.24%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 239 (14.61%) Docker
2 28 (1.71%) Active Directory
3 22 (1.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (0.92%) Hyper-V
4 15 (0.92%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.86%) Firmware
6 13 (0.79%) KVM
7 8 (0.49%) Embedded Firmware
8 3 (0.18%) Terminal Server
9 2 (0.12%) vSphere
10 1 (0.061%) Xen
Systems Management
1 297 (18.15%) Kubernetes
2 293 (17.91%) Terraform
3 139 (8.50%) Grafana
4 67 (4.10%) Ansible
5 46 (2.81%) Prometheus
6 27 (1.65%) Single Sign-On
7 15 (0.92%) Argo
8 9 (0.55%) logstash
9 7 (0.43%) Kibana
9 7 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
10 6 (0.37%) HP ALM
10 6 (0.37%) SCCM
10 6 (0.37%) SCOM
11 4 (0.24%) Packer
11 4 (0.24%) Rancher
11 4 (0.24%) vCenter Server
12 3 (0.18%) Functional Safety
12 3 (0.18%) HP Fortify
13 2 (0.12%) SCOrch
13 2 (0.12%) VxRail
Vendors
1 132 (8.07%) Microsoft
2 74 (4.52%) Oracle
3 53 (3.24%) Databricks
4 52 (3.18%) Salesforce
5 45 (2.75%) VMware
6 40 (2.44%) Google
7 21 (1.28%) OpenAI
8 19 (1.16%) Commvault
8 19 (1.16%) Splunk
9 18 (1.10%) SAP
9 18 (1.10%) ServiceNow
10 15 (0.92%) Atlassian
11 14 (0.86%) Foundry
11 14 (0.86%) Palantir
12 13 (0.79%) Pega
13 12 (0.73%) Automation Anywhere
13 12 (0.73%) IBM
13 12 (0.73%) UiPath
14 11 (0.67%) Dynatrace
14 11 (0.67%) Red Hat