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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 80 93 96
Rank change year-on-year +13 +3 -24
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,416 1,561 2,092
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.08% 3.16% 2.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.85% 3.56% 3.29%
Number of salaries quoted 1,305 734 1,033
10th Percentile £41,250 £38,825 £38,750
25th Percentile £47,500 £50,000 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £63,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -0.79% +5.00% -4.71%
75th Percentile £80,000 £83,500 £76,000
90th Percentile £94,600 £101,750 £94,750
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 84,848 43,853 63,499
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.08% 88.72% 81.26%
Number of salaries quoted 58,707 24,746 35,929
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,000
25th Percentile £41,585 £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 £96,750 £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 19 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 19 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 +4 1,964 £62,500 -3.85% 2,875
UK excluding London +20 1,542 £57,500 - 1,724
Work from Home +13 864 £65,000 +4.00% 1,187
London -1 706 £80,000 - 1,446
North of England +15 391 £57,500 -4.17% 415
South East +3 275 £60,000 +4.35% 392
South West +11 259 £60,000 +10.53% 237
Midlands -8 206 £54,500 -11.38% 185
North West +2 190 £60,000 - 232
Northern Ireland +13 165 £80,000 +45.45% 57
Wales +10 132 £55,000 +4.76% 35
West Midlands -12 117 £55,000 -2.22% 121
North East +11 110 £55,000 +57.14% 61
Yorkshire +8 94 £69,310 +26.02% 122
East Midlands -28 89 £54,000 -13.60% 64
East of England -27 82 £50,000 -14.53% 190
Scotland -48 47 £61,250 -12.50% 221

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 56 (2.32%) Confluence
2 33 (1.37%) Apache Spark
3 26 (1.08%) Apache
4 24 (0.99%) SharePoint
5 19 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
6 18 (0.75%) Jupyter
7 14 (0.58%) Anypoint
7 14 (0.58%) CMS
7 14 (0.58%) Mule
8 13 (0.54%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
9 6 (0.25%) nginx
9 6 (0.25%) Umbraco
10 5 (0.21%) Cloud Foundry
10 5 (0.21%) Headless CMS
10 5 (0.21%) SAS
10 5 (0.21%) WinCC
11 4 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
12 3 (0.12%) Camunda
12 3 (0.12%) OpenStack
Applications
1 81 (3.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.58%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (0.58%) Simulink
3 9 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.25%) Lightworks
4 6 (0.25%) Moqups
5 4 (0.17%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.12%) MS Visio
7 2 (0.083%) CANalyzer
7 2 (0.083%) EPLAN
7 2 (0.083%) PlantUML
7 2 (0.083%) SOLIDWORKS
8 1 (0.041%) AutoCAD
8 1 (0.041%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 68 (2.81%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.12%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.46%) 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 (0.083%) FLEXCUBE
6 2 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.083%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.083%) Workday HCM
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
1 810 (33.53%) AWS
2 682 (28.23%) Azure
3 321 (13.29%) SaaS
4 256 (10.60%) GCP
5 248 (10.26%) Azure DevOps
6 207 (8.57%) GitHub
7 195 (8.07%) Serverless
8 110 (4.55%) GitHub Actions
9 99 (4.10%) AWS CloudFormation
10 98 (4.06%) Amazon EKS
11 89 (3.68%) AWS Lambda
12 83 (3.44%) Amazon S3
13 64 (2.65%) Power Platform
14 59 (2.44%) Google Ads
14 59 (2.44%) Meta Ads
15 55 (2.28%) Azure Logic Apps
16 54 (2.24%) Azure Service Bus
17 50 (2.07%) Azure Monitor
18 46 (1.90%) Azure Functions
19 40 (1.66%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 57 (2.36%) Broadband
2 30 (1.24%) TCP/IP
3 25 (1.03%) DNS
4 24 (0.99%) Firewall
5 17 (0.70%) SSL
6 16 (0.66%) Wireless
7 14 (0.58%) DMARC
7 14 (0.58%) Modbus
8 13 (0.54%) DHCP
8 13 (0.54%) HTTP
8 13 (0.54%) MQTT
8 13 (0.54%) Wi-Fi
9 11 (0.46%) 5G
9 11 (0.46%) WAN
10 10 (0.41%) Ethernet
10 10 (0.41%) LTE
11 9 (0.37%) 3GPP
11 9 (0.37%) Network Security
12 7 (0.29%) RANAP
12 7 (0.29%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 144 (5.96%) PostgreSQL
2 124 (5.13%) NoSQL
3 90 (3.73%) MongoDB
4 81 (3.35%) SQL Server
5 66 (2.73%) Relational Database
6 45 (1.86%) DynamoDB
7 44 (1.82%) Redis
8 41 (1.70%) MySQL
9 37 (1.53%) Power BI
10 35 (1.45%) Data Warehouse
11 34 (1.41%) Data Lake
12 30 (1.24%) BigQuery
13 25 (1.03%) Amazon Athena
14 23 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
15 22 (0.91%) Semantic Layer
16 21 (0.87%) Metadata
17 16 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
18 14 (0.58%) Amazon Aurora
19 13 (0.54%) Delta Lake
19 13 (0.54%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 369 (15.27%) Git
2 240 (9.93%) GitLab
3 216 (8.94%) Jenkins
4 165 (6.83%) Selenium
5 152 (6.29%) JIRA
6 108 (4.47%) Cucumber
7 106 (4.39%) Cypress.io
8 95 (3.93%) Postman
9 71 (2.94%) TeamCity
10 52 (2.15%) JMeter
11 47 (1.95%) JUnit
12 41 (1.70%) REST Assured
13 33 (1.37%) Zephyr
14 32 (1.32%) Gatling
15 30 (1.24%) SonarQube
16 28 (1.16%) LabVIEW
17 24 (0.99%) Bitbucket
17 24 (0.99%) Robot Framework
17 24 (0.99%) TestRail
18 23 (0.95%) Maven
General
1 671 (27.77%) Social Skills
2 584 (24.17%) Finance
3 371 (15.36%) Analytical Skills
4 271 (11.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 232 (9.60%) Public Sector
6 203 (8.40%) Banking
6 203 (8.40%) Law
7 168 (6.95%) Marketing
8 143 (5.92%) Legal
9 125 (5.17%) Retail
10 117 (4.84%) Manufacturing
11 89 (3.68%) Electronics
12 80 (3.31%) Financial Institution
13 60 (2.48%) Back Office
14 51 (2.11%) Aerospace
15 44 (1.82%) Telecoms
16 39 (1.61%) Games
17 33 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
18 30 (1.24%) Automotive
19 24 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 662 (27.40%) Senior
2 355 (14.69%) Software Engineer
3 339 (14.03%) Developer
4 328 (13.58%) Lead
5 252 (10.43%) Test Engineer
6 125 (5.17%) Senior Developer
7 115 (4.76%) Java Engineer
8 110 (4.55%) DevOps Engineer
9 103 (4.26%) Senior Software Engineer
10 101 (4.18%) QA Engineer
11 87 (3.60%) Test Automation Engineer
12 80 (3.31%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 76 (3.15%) Analyst
14 73 (3.02%) Data Engineer
15 69 (2.86%) Lead Software Engineer
16 64 (2.65%) Architect
17 62 (2.57%) Principal Engineer
17 62 (2.57%) Software Developer
17 62 (2.57%) Tester
18 61 (2.52%) Marketing Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 337 (13.95%) Terraform
2 248 (10.26%) REST
3 236 (9.77%) React
4 227 (9.40%) .NET
5 209 (8.65%) Playwright
6 200 (8.28%) Node.js
7 197 (8.15%) RESTful
8 194 (8.03%) Spring
9 143 (5.92%) Spring Boot
10 137 (5.67%) Kafka
11 128 (5.30%) CSS
12 120 (4.97%) HTML
13 116 (4.80%) AngularJS
14 76 (3.15%) OAuth
15 68 (2.81%) Middleware
15 68 (2.81%) OAuth2
16 62 (2.57%) JSON
17 53 (2.19%) PySpark
17 53 (2.19%) Vue
18 52 (2.15%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 424 (17.55%) Cloud Native
2 290 (12.00%) Product Ownership
3 208 (8.61%) Distributed Systems
4 107 (4.43%) Onboarding
5 102 (4.22%) Mobile App
6 98 (4.06%) Enterprise Software
7 90 (3.73%) Public Cloud
8 84 (3.48%) Blog
9 79 (3.27%) Virtual Team
10 65 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
11 64 (2.65%) Marketing Technology
12 54 (2.24%) Algorithms
13 53 (2.19%) Cyber Threat
14 50 (2.07%) Low-Code
15 49 (2.03%) Self-Motivation
16 47 (1.95%) Embedded Systems
17 43 (1.78%) Data Structures
18 41 (1.70%) e-Learning
19 38 (1.57%) Management Information System
20 36 (1.49%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 186 (7.70%) Linux
2 103 (4.26%) Windows
3 63 (2.61%) Android
4 57 (2.36%) Unix
5 56 (2.32%) Apple iOS
6 9 (0.37%) Embedded Linux
6 9 (0.37%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.33%) CentOS
8 7 (0.29%) FreeRTOS
9 4 (0.17%) AIX
9 4 (0.17%) Debian
9 4 (0.17%) Kali Linux
9 4 (0.17%) VMS
10 3 (0.12%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.083%) OpenWrt
12 1 (0.041%) Mac OS
12 1 (0.041%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 1 (0.041%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.041%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,358 (56.21%) CI/CD
2 1,013 (41.93%) Agile
3 870 (36.01%) DevOps
4 778 (32.20%) Software Engineering
5 707 (29.26%) Continuous Improvement
6 624 (25.83%) Mentoring
7 597 (24.71%) AI
8 553 (22.89%) Problem-Solving
9 446 (18.46%) Microservices
10 423 (17.51%) Software Testing
11 392 (16.23%) Infrastructure as Code
12 324 (13.41%) Test Strategy
13 306 (12.67%) Validation
14 296 (12.25%) Code Quality
14 296 (12.25%) Observability
15 292 (12.09%) Coaching
16 272 (11.26%) Full-Stack Development
17 269 (11.13%) Containerisation
18 263 (10.89%) Technical Leadership
19 261 (10.80%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 697 (28.85%) Python
2 580 (24.01%) Java
3 455 (18.83%) SQL
4 439 (18.17%) JavaScript
5 350 (14.49%) TypeScript
6 338 (13.99%) C#
7 126 (5.22%) C++
8 104 (4.30%) PowerShell
9 98 (4.06%) Go
10 93 (3.85%) Bash
11 81 (3.35%) C
12 36 (1.49%) Kotlin
13 35 (1.45%) PHP
14 33 (1.37%) Rust
15 30 (1.24%) Groovy
16 29 (1.20%) Ruby
17 25 (1.03%) MATLAB
18 24 (0.99%) Bicep
19 21 (0.87%) Swift
20 16 (0.66%) Scala
Qualifications
1 361 (14.94%) Security Cleared
2 253 (10.47%) Degree
3 223 (9.23%) SC Cleared
4 105 (4.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 81 (3.35%) ISTQB
6 64 (2.65%) DV Cleared
7 58 (2.40%) AWS Certification
8 56 (2.32%) CISSP
9 54 (2.24%) ITIL Certification
10 53 (2.19%) CISM
11 47 (1.95%) Master's Degree
12 41 (1.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 40 (1.66%) HNC
14 34 (1.41%) HND
15 33 (1.37%) BPSS Clearance
16 17 (0.70%) DBS Check
17 16 (0.66%) ISEB
18 13 (0.54%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
19 12 (0.50%) Azure Certification
20 11 (0.46%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 557 (23.05%) QA
2 206 (8.53%) Accessibility
3 84 (3.48%) Data Quality
4 69 (2.86%) WCAG
5 55 (2.28%) NIST
6 48 (1.99%) ISO 22301
7 40 (1.66%) GDPR
8 13 (0.54%) SLA
9 11 (0.46%) GRC
10 9 (0.37%) MISRA
10 9 (0.37%) SOC 2
10 9 (0.37%) Software Quality Assurance
11 8 (0.33%) 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 (0.17%) IEC 61508
14 4 (0.17%) ISO 20022
14 4 (0.17%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 335 (13.87%) Docker
2 44 (1.82%) Firmware
3 14 (0.58%) Active Directory
4 12 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
5 11 (0.46%) Embedded Firmware
6 8 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.21%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.12%) KVM
9 2 (0.083%) ProxySG
10 1 (0.041%) IAG
10 1 (0.041%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.041%) QEMU
10 1 (0.041%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 344 (14.24%) Kubernetes
2 156 (6.46%) Grafana
3 79 (3.27%) Ansible
4 67 (2.77%) Prometheus
5 30 (1.24%) Argo
6 17 (0.70%) Kibana
7 15 (0.62%) Puppet
8 14 (0.58%) CloudHub
9 12 (0.50%) Rancher
10 11 (0.46%) 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
1 261 (10.80%) Microsoft
2 126 (5.22%) Google
3 65 (2.69%) Databricks
4 61 (2.52%) Salesforce
5 53 (2.19%) Oracle
6 50 (2.07%) SAP
7 46 (1.90%) ServiceNow
8 36 (1.49%) Splunk
9 32 (1.32%) Dynatrace
10 24 (0.99%) Pega
11 20 (0.83%) MuleSoft
12 19 (0.79%) AppDynamics
12 19 (0.79%) VMware
13 17 (0.70%) IBM
14 16 (0.66%) OpenAI
15 15 (0.62%) Allen-Bradley
15 15 (0.62%) Atlassian
15 15 (0.62%) Red Hat
16 14 (0.58%) Adobe
16 14 (0.58%) SendGrid