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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 80 93 83
Rank change year-on-year +13 -10 -13
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,433 1,550 2,181
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.08% 3.15% 2.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.85% 3.55% 3.50%
Number of salaries quoted 1,317 728 977
10th Percentile £41,250 £38,948 £39,439
25th Percentile £47,500 £50,000 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £83,750 £77,500
90th Percentile £94,400 £102,500 £95,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +4.55% -4.35%

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 85,482 43,719 62,334
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.07% 88.75% 81.46%
Number of salaries quoted 58,986 24,656 34,489
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,750 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%

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 24 September 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 24 September 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 +5 1,986 £62,500 -0.79% 2,973
UK excluding London +18 1,541 £57,500 - 1,850
Work from Home +16 871 £67,500 +8.00% 1,238
London +1 724 £80,000 - 1,436
North of England +20 386 £57,500 -4.17% 458
South East -16 274 £60,000 +4.35% 407
South West +10 261 £60,000 +14.29% 261
Midlands -11 207 £54,000 -10.00% 202
North West -13 188 £60,000 - 245
Northern Ireland +8 164 £80,000 +45.45% 82
Wales +5 132 £55,000 - 43
West Midlands -17 117 £52,500 -4.55% 141
North East +13 109 £55,000 +78.86% 70
Yorkshire +15 92 £69,310 +26.02% 143
East Midlands -23 90 £54,000 -13.60% 60
East of England -26 87 £48,750 -17.72% 179
Scotland -54 45 £61,250 -7.55% 231

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 59 (2.42%) Confluence
2 33 (1.36%) Apache Spark
3 27 (1.11%) Apache
4 24 (0.99%) SharePoint
5 19 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
6 18 (0.74%) Jupyter
7 14 (0.58%) Anypoint
7 14 (0.58%) CMS
7 14 (0.58%) Mule
8 13 (0.53%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 8 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.25%) nginx
10 6 (0.25%) Umbraco
11 5 (0.21%) Cloud Foundry
11 5 (0.21%) Headless CMS
11 5 (0.21%) SAS
11 5 (0.21%) WinCC
12 4 (0.16%) Camunda
12 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 3 (0.12%) OpenStack
Applications
1 82 (3.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (0.58%) Simulink
4 9 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.29%) Moqups
6 6 (0.25%) Lightworks
7 5 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.12%) MS Visio
9 2 (0.082%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.082%) PlantUML
9 2 (0.082%) SOLIDWORKS
10 1 (0.041%) AutoCAD
10 1 (0.041%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.041%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 68 (2.79%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.11%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.21%) Visualfiles
5 3 (0.12%) Magento
5 3 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
5 3 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
5 3 (0.12%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.082%) FLEXCUBE
6 2 (0.082%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.082%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.082%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.041%) Adobe Campaign
7 1 (0.041%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.041%) Endur
7 1 (0.041%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.041%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.041%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.041%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.041%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 812 (33.37%) AWS
2 683 (28.07%) Azure
3 323 (13.28%) SaaS
4 256 (10.52%) GCP
5 245 (10.07%) Azure DevOps
6 207 (8.51%) GitHub
7 195 (8.01%) Serverless
8 113 (4.64%) GitHub Actions
9 101 (4.15%) AWS CloudFormation
10 99 (4.07%) Amazon EKS
11 90 (3.70%) AWS Lambda
12 84 (3.45%) Amazon S3
13 67 (2.75%) Power Platform
14 59 (2.42%) Google Ads
14 59 (2.42%) Meta Ads
15 58 (2.38%) Azure Service Bus
16 55 (2.26%) Azure Logic Apps
17 52 (2.14%) Azure Monitor
18 48 (1.97%) Azure Functions
19 42 (1.73%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 56 (2.30%) Broadband
2 30 (1.23%) TCP/IP
3 26 (1.07%) DNS
3 26 (1.07%) Firewall
4 17 (0.70%) SSL
5 16 (0.66%) Wireless
6 15 (0.62%) Modbus
7 14 (0.58%) DMARC
7 14 (0.58%) MQTT
8 13 (0.53%) DHCP
8 13 (0.53%) HTTP
8 13 (0.53%) Wi-Fi
9 11 (0.45%) 5G
9 11 (0.45%) WAN
10 10 (0.41%) Ethernet
10 10 (0.41%) LTE
10 10 (0.41%) Network Security
11 9 (0.37%) 3GPP
12 7 (0.29%) GSM
12 7 (0.29%) UMTS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 145 (5.96%) PostgreSQL
2 126 (5.18%) NoSQL
3 90 (3.70%) MongoDB
4 83 (3.41%) SQL Server
5 69 (2.84%) Relational Database
6 46 (1.89%) Redis
7 45 (1.85%) DynamoDB
8 41 (1.69%) MySQL
9 40 (1.64%) Power BI
10 34 (1.40%) Data Lake
10 34 (1.40%) Data Warehouse
11 30 (1.23%) BigQuery
12 25 (1.03%) Amazon Athena
13 24 (0.99%) Amazon RDS
14 22 (0.90%) Metadata
14 22 (0.90%) Semantic Layer
15 15 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
16 14 (0.58%) Amazon Aurora
16 14 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
17 13 (0.53%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 371 (15.25%) Git
2 244 (10.03%) GitLab
3 218 (8.96%) Jenkins
4 168 (6.91%) Selenium
5 152 (6.25%) JIRA
6 110 (4.52%) Cucumber
6 110 (4.52%) Cypress.io
7 93 (3.82%) Postman
8 71 (2.92%) TeamCity
9 50 (2.06%) JMeter
10 48 (1.97%) JUnit
11 43 (1.77%) REST Assured
12 31 (1.27%) Gatling
12 31 (1.27%) Zephyr
13 30 (1.23%) SonarQube
14 29 (1.19%) LabVIEW
15 25 (1.03%) Bitbucket
16 24 (0.99%) Maven
16 24 (0.99%) Robot Framework
16 24 (0.99%) TestRail
General
1 681 (27.99%) Social Skills
2 595 (24.46%) Finance
3 378 (15.54%) Analytical Skills
4 273 (11.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 230 (9.45%) Public Sector
6 207 (8.51%) Banking
7 204 (8.38%) Law
8 171 (7.03%) Marketing
9 141 (5.80%) Legal
10 128 (5.26%) Retail
11 116 (4.77%) Manufacturing
12 92 (3.78%) Electronics
13 82 (3.37%) Financial Institution
14 61 (2.51%) Back Office
15 54 (2.22%) Aerospace
16 43 (1.77%) Telecoms
17 37 (1.52%) Games
18 34 (1.40%) Documentation Skills
19 30 (1.23%) Automotive
20 24 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 671 (27.58%) Senior
2 358 (14.71%) Software Engineer
3 336 (13.81%) Developer
4 329 (13.52%) Lead
5 253 (10.40%) Test Engineer
6 121 (4.97%) Senior Developer
7 114 (4.69%) Java Engineer
8 109 (4.48%) DevOps Engineer
9 107 (4.40%) QA Engineer
10 105 (4.32%) Senior Software Engineer
11 87 (3.58%) Test Automation Engineer
12 83 (3.41%) Analyst
13 80 (3.29%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 72 (2.96%) Data Engineer
15 70 (2.88%) Lead Software Engineer
16 66 (2.71%) Architect
17 65 (2.67%) Principal Engineer
17 65 (2.67%) Tester
18 62 (2.55%) Software Developer
19 61 (2.51%) Marketing Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 336 (13.81%) Terraform
2 257 (10.56%) REST
3 232 (9.54%) React
4 229 (9.41%) .NET
5 212 (8.71%) Playwright
6 203 (8.34%) Node.js
7 198 (8.14%) RESTful
8 196 (8.06%) Spring
9 146 (6.00%) Spring Boot
10 138 (5.67%) Kafka
11 125 (5.14%) CSS
12 117 (4.81%) HTML
13 116 (4.77%) AngularJS
14 76 (3.12%) OAuth
15 70 (2.88%) Middleware
16 68 (2.79%) OAuth2
17 63 (2.59%) JSON
18 53 (2.18%) Next.js
19 52 (2.14%) PySpark
20 49 (2.01%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 424 (17.43%) Cloud Native
2 289 (11.88%) Product Ownership
3 213 (8.75%) Distributed Systems
4 106 (4.36%) Onboarding
5 101 (4.15%) Mobile App
6 100 (4.11%) Enterprise Software
7 91 (3.74%) Public Cloud
8 84 (3.45%) Blog
9 79 (3.25%) Virtual Team
10 66 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
11 64 (2.63%) Marketing Technology
12 53 (2.18%) Cyber Threat
12 53 (2.18%) Self-Motivation
13 52 (2.14%) Algorithms
14 50 (2.06%) Low-Code
15 46 (1.89%) Embedded Systems
16 43 (1.77%) Data Structures
16 43 (1.77%) e-Learning
17 41 (1.69%) Management Information System
18 37 (1.52%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 183 (7.52%) Linux
2 103 (4.23%) Windows
3 65 (2.67%) Android
4 57 (2.34%) Apple iOS
4 57 (2.34%) Unix
5 9 (0.37%) Embedded Linux
5 9 (0.37%) Windows Server
6 8 (0.33%) CentOS
7 7 (0.29%) FreeRTOS
8 4 (0.16%) AIX
8 4 (0.16%) Debian
8 4 (0.16%) Kali Linux
8 4 (0.16%) VMS
9 3 (0.12%) VxWorks
10 2 (0.082%) OpenWrt
11 1 (0.041%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.041%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.041%) ThreadX
11 1 (0.041%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,365 (56.10%) CI/CD
2 1,013 (41.64%) Agile
3 869 (35.72%) DevOps
4 784 (32.22%) Software Engineering
5 711 (29.22%) Continuous Improvement
6 631 (25.94%) Mentoring
7 603 (24.78%) AI
8 562 (23.10%) Problem-Solving
9 454 (18.66%) Microservices
10 427 (17.55%) Software Testing
11 390 (16.03%) Infrastructure as Code
12 322 (13.23%) Test Strategy
13 313 (12.86%) Validation
14 297 (12.21%) Code Quality
14 297 (12.21%) Observability
15 296 (12.17%) Coaching
16 273 (11.22%) Containerisation
17 268 (11.02%) Technical Leadership
18 267 (10.97%) Full-Stack Development
19 257 (10.56%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 691 (28.40%) Python
2 586 (24.09%) Java
3 464 (19.07%) SQL
4 434 (17.84%) JavaScript
5 352 (14.47%) TypeScript
6 338 (13.89%) C#
7 124 (5.10%) C++
8 103 (4.23%) PowerShell
9 98 (4.03%) Go
10 93 (3.82%) Bash
11 78 (3.21%) C
12 36 (1.48%) Kotlin
13 35 (1.44%) PHP
14 32 (1.32%) Rust
15 30 (1.23%) Groovy
15 30 (1.23%) Ruby
16 26 (1.07%) Bicep
16 26 (1.07%) MATLAB
17 21 (0.86%) Swift
18 16 (0.66%) Scala
Qualifications
1 373 (15.33%) Security Cleared
2 253 (10.40%) Degree
3 228 (9.37%) SC Cleared
4 103 (4.23%) Computer Science Degree
5 80 (3.29%) ISTQB
6 68 (2.79%) DV Cleared
7 59 (2.42%) AWS Certification
8 56 (2.30%) CISSP
9 54 (2.22%) ITIL Certification
10 53 (2.18%) CISM
11 48 (1.97%) Master's Degree
12 43 (1.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 40 (1.64%) HNC
14 35 (1.44%) BPSS Clearance
15 33 (1.36%) HND
16 17 (0.70%) DBS Check
17 16 (0.66%) ISEB
18 15 (0.62%) Azure Certification
19 13 (0.53%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
20 11 (0.45%) NVQ Level 4
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 564 (23.18%) QA
2 204 (8.38%) Accessibility
3 86 (3.53%) Data Quality
4 68 (2.79%) WCAG
5 55 (2.26%) NIST
6 48 (1.97%) ISO 22301
7 37 (1.52%) GDPR
8 13 (0.53%) SLA
9 9 (0.37%) GRC
9 9 (0.37%) MISRA
9 9 (0.37%) Software Quality Assurance
10 8 (0.33%) SOC 2
11 7 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 6 (0.25%) JTAG
12 6 (0.25%) PMO
13 5 (0.21%) COBIT
13 5 (0.21%) NCSC
14 4 (0.16%) ECSS
14 4 (0.16%) ISO 20022
14 4 (0.16%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 340 (13.97%) Docker
2 45 (1.85%) Firmware
3 15 (0.62%) Active Directory
4 11 (0.45%) Embedded Firmware
4 11 (0.45%) VMware Infrastructure
5 8 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (0.16%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.082%) KVM
7 2 (0.082%) ProxySG
8 1 (0.041%) IAG
8 1 (0.041%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.041%) QEMU
8 1 (0.041%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 351 (14.43%) Kubernetes
2 161 (6.62%) Grafana
3 80 (3.29%) Ansible
4 67 (2.75%) Prometheus
5 30 (1.23%) Argo
6 17 (0.70%) Kibana
7 16 (0.66%) Puppet
8 14 (0.58%) CloudHub
9 12 (0.49%) Rancher
10 11 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
11 9 (0.37%) logstash
12 8 (0.33%) Functional Safety
12 8 (0.33%) HP Fortify
12 8 (0.33%) Single Sign-On
13 6 (0.25%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.25%) vCenter Server
14 5 (0.21%) Packer
15 3 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 3 (0.12%) SCCM
15 3 (0.12%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 263 (10.81%) Microsoft
2 127 (5.22%) Google
3 64 (2.63%) Databricks
4 61 (2.51%) Salesforce
5 56 (2.30%) Oracle
6 50 (2.06%) SAP
7 45 (1.85%) ServiceNow
8 36 (1.48%) Splunk
9 35 (1.44%) Dynatrace
10 23 (0.95%) Pega
11 20 (0.82%) MuleSoft
12 19 (0.78%) AppDynamics
13 18 (0.74%) VMware
14 17 (0.70%) IBM
15 16 (0.66%) OpenAI
16 15 (0.62%) Adobe
16 15 (0.62%) Allen-Bradley
16 15 (0.62%) Red Hat
17 14 (0.58%) Atlassian
17 14 (0.58%) SendGrid