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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 93 83 95
Rank change year-on-year -10 +12 -63
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,800 1,552 2,706
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.93% 3.62% 2.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.61% 3.88% 3.23%
Number of salaries quoted 1,125 801 1,748
10th Percentile £42,480 £41,250 £36,250
25th Percentile £48,750 £48,750 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year - +8.70% -11.54%
75th Percentile £83,750 £82,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £98,250 £98,750 £87,650
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +4.35% +9.52% -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 68,838 39,983 83,789
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.88% 93.25% 83.85%
Number of salaries quoted 44,890 21,039 60,407
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,750 £29,250
25th Percentile £41,000 £40,903 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £58,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% +5.45% -9.84%
75th Percentile £78,750 £78,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £101,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £51,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +2.94% +2.00% -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 29 May 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 29 May 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 1,576 £62,500 - 386
UK excluding London -35 981 £60,000 +4.35% 330
Work from Home +7 730 £65,000 +8.33% 182
London +26 652 £80,000 +14.29% 125
North of England -27 269 £61,250 +2.48% 83
South East -38 205 £60,000 +9.09% 102
South West -22 176 £55,000 -8.33% 40
Midlands -28 164 £60,000 +4.35% 48
North West -16 140 £60,000 -7.69% 47
West Midlands -45 83 £61,000 -6.15% 37
East Midlands -24 80 £55,000 +17.65% 11
Yorkshire -47 67 £75,000 +50.00% 17
East of England -23 63 £50,000 -12.28% 40
North East -2 62 £52,500 -11.02% 19
Scotland -41 57 £60,000 - 7
Wales -1 49 £55,000 -4.35% 16
Northern Ireland -37 11 £80,000 +45.45% 4

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 39 (2.17%) Confluence
2 25 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
3 18 (1.00%) Apache Spark
4 17 (0.94%) Jupyter
5 16 (0.89%) Apache
6 15 (0.83%) SharePoint
7 11 (0.61%) CMS
8 10 (0.56%) IIS
8 10 (0.56%) Palantir Foundry
9 9 (0.50%) Appian
10 8 (0.44%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 5 (0.28%) Umbraco
12 4 (0.22%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 4 (0.22%) SAS
13 3 (0.17%) Mule
13 3 (0.17%) nginx
13 3 (0.17%) WordPress
14 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
14 2 (0.11%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 14 (0.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.33%) PlantUML
3 6 (0.33%) Simulink
4 5 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.17%) CANalyzer
5 3 (0.17%) Fusion 360
5 3 (0.17%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.056%) Lightworks
7 1 (0.056%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 10 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
3 5 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.28%) Visualfiles
4 4 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
4 4 (0.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.17%) Shopify
6 2 (0.11%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.056%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.056%) Endur
7 1 (0.056%) Findur
7 1 (0.056%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.056%) Magento
7 1 (0.056%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.056%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.056%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.056%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.056%) Oracle SCM
Cloud Services
1 597 (33.17%) AWS
2 563 (31.28%) Azure
3 253 (14.06%) Azure DevOps
4 215 (11.94%) GCP
5 163 (9.06%) Serverless
6 155 (8.61%) GitHub
7 130 (7.22%) SaaS
8 75 (4.17%) Amazon EKS
8 75 (4.17%) GitHub Actions
9 71 (3.94%) AWS Lambda
10 67 (3.72%) Amazon S3
11 63 (3.50%) AWS CloudFormation
12 58 (3.22%) PaaS
13 47 (2.61%) Power Platform
14 45 (2.50%) Azure Service Bus
15 42 (2.33%) Azure Data Factory
15 42 (2.33%) dbt
16 41 (2.28%) Azure Monitor
17 39 (2.17%) Datadog
18 38 (2.11%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 50 (2.78%) Broadband
2 24 (1.33%) Firewall
3 15 (0.83%) DNS
4 13 (0.72%) CHAP
5 12 (0.67%) WAN
6 11 (0.61%) HTTP
6 11 (0.61%) SD-WAN
7 10 (0.56%) 5G
8 7 (0.39%) DMARC
9 6 (0.33%) Bluetooth
9 6 (0.33%) TCP/IP
9 6 (0.33%) Wireless
10 5 (0.28%) MQTT
10 5 (0.28%) SMS
10 5 (0.28%) VPN
10 5 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
10 5 (0.28%) ZigBee
11 4 (0.22%) DHCP
11 4 (0.22%) LTE
12 3 (0.17%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 129 (7.17%) NoSQL
2 111 (6.17%) PostgreSQL
3 88 (4.89%) MongoDB
4 77 (4.28%) SQL Server
5 37 (2.06%) DynamoDB
6 30 (1.67%) MySQL
7 29 (1.61%) Relational Database
8 28 (1.56%) Data Warehouse
9 25 (1.39%) Power BI
10 22 (1.22%) Amazon RDS
11 18 (1.00%) BigQuery
11 18 (1.00%) Metadata
11 18 (1.00%) Spark SQL
12 17 (0.94%) Redis
13 14 (0.78%) Oracle Database
14 11 (0.61%) Pinecone
14 11 (0.61%) Semantic Layer
15 10 (0.56%) Data Lake
16 9 (0.50%) Oracle Reports
17 8 (0.44%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 215 (11.94%) Git
2 157 (8.72%) Jenkins
3 147 (8.17%) Selenium
4 137 (7.61%) GitLab
5 118 (6.56%) JIRA
6 81 (4.50%) Cypress.io
7 72 (4.00%) Cucumber
8 63 (3.50%) TeamCity
9 62 (3.44%) Postman
10 42 (2.33%) JMeter
11 34 (1.89%) REST Assured
12 30 (1.67%) JUnit
13 29 (1.61%) SpecFlow
14 28 (1.56%) CircleCI
15 24 (1.33%) TestRail
16 23 (1.28%) LabVIEW
17 21 (1.17%) Zephyr
18 20 (1.11%) MLflow
19 18 (1.00%) Crashlytics
19 18 (1.00%) Gatling
General
1 463 (25.72%) Social Skills
2 422 (23.44%) Finance
3 188 (10.44%) Banking
4 181 (10.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 153 (8.50%) Analytical Skills
6 150 (8.33%) Public Sector
7 118 (6.56%) Law
8 97 (5.39%) Retail
9 62 (3.44%) Financial Institution
10 58 (3.22%) Electronics
10 58 (3.22%) Manufacturing
11 49 (2.72%) Back Office
12 43 (2.39%) Games
13 33 (1.83%) Front Office
13 33 (1.83%) Legal
14 30 (1.67%) Marketing
15 20 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
16 19 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
17 18 (1.00%) Documentation Skills
18 17 (0.94%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 478 (26.56%) Senior
2 300 (16.67%) Lead
3 262 (14.56%) Software Engineer
4 259 (14.39%) Developer
5 207 (11.50%) Test Engineer
6 119 (6.61%) Senior Developer
7 103 (5.72%) Java Engineer
8 90 (5.00%) QA Engineer
9 84 (4.67%) Test Automation Engineer
10 80 (4.44%) Tester
11 77 (4.28%) Senior Software Engineer
12 74 (4.11%) Test Leader
13 63 (3.50%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 61 (3.39%) Data Engineer
15 58 (3.22%) Architect
16 55 (3.06%) DevOps Engineer
17 53 (2.94%) Senior Test Engineer
18 50 (2.78%) Analyst
19 49 (2.72%) Automation Engineer
20 48 (2.67%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 194 (10.78%) .NET
2 190 (10.56%) React
3 159 (8.83%) REST
4 155 (8.61%) RESTful
5 154 (8.56%) Playwright
6 128 (7.11%) Node.js
6 128 (7.11%) Spring
7 95 (5.28%) Kafka
8 92 (5.11%) Spring Boot
9 65 (3.61%) AngularJS
10 64 (3.56%) HTML
11 62 (3.44%) CSS
12 55 (3.06%) OAuth
13 46 (2.56%) RabbitMQ
14 45 (2.50%) OAuth2
15 43 (2.39%) JSON
16 39 (2.17%) .NET Framework
17 37 (2.06%) pytest
18 36 (2.00%) PyTorch
18 36 (2.00%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 309 (17.17%) Cloud Native
2 187 (10.39%) Product Ownership
3 119 (6.61%) Distributed Systems
4 94 (5.22%) Mobile App
5 59 (3.28%) Management Information System
6 50 (2.78%) Algorithms
7 49 (2.72%) Enterprise Software
8 48 (2.67%) Onboarding
9 47 (2.61%) Public Cloud
10 45 (2.50%) Low-Code
11 38 (2.11%) Data Structures
11 38 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
12 36 (2.00%) Greenfield Project
13 35 (1.94%) Self-Motivation
14 26 (1.44%) Embedded Systems
15 25 (1.39%) Blog
15 25 (1.39%) Video\Live Streaming
16 24 (1.33%) Hedge funds
17 23 (1.28%) Hybrid Cloud
18 22 (1.22%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 162 (9.00%) Linux
2 81 (4.50%) Windows
3 71 (3.94%) Apple iOS
4 61 (3.39%) Android
5 51 (2.83%) Unix
6 9 (0.50%) CentOS
6 9 (0.50%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.22%) Kali Linux
7 4 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.17%) FreeRTOS
8 3 (0.17%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (0.11%) AIX
9 2 (0.11%) Debian
10 1 (0.056%) ThreadX
10 1 (0.056%) VxWorks
10 1 (0.056%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.056%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 980 (54.44%) CI/CD
2 746 (41.44%) Agile
3 622 (34.56%) DevOps
4 483 (26.83%) Software Engineering
5 442 (24.56%) Continuous Improvement
6 437 (24.28%) Mentoring
7 365 (20.28%) Problem-Solving
8 326 (18.11%) Microservices
9 316 (17.56%) Infrastructure as Code
10 292 (16.22%) AI
11 276 (15.33%) Software Testing
12 245 (13.61%) Observability
13 236 (13.11%) Containerisation
14 229 (12.72%) Coaching
15 223 (12.39%) Full-Stack Development
16 215 (11.94%) Test Strategy
17 201 (11.17%) Validation
18 200 (11.11%) Clean Code
19 171 (9.50%) Technical Leadership
20 170 (9.44%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 557 (30.94%) Python
2 486 (27.00%) Java
3 309 (17.17%) SQL
4 264 (14.67%) JavaScript
5 232 (12.89%) C#
6 225 (12.50%) TypeScript
7 98 (5.44%) C++
8 79 (4.39%) Bash
9 73 (4.06%) Go
10 70 (3.89%) PowerShell
11 57 (3.17%) C
12 31 (1.72%) Bicep
12 31 (1.72%) Kotlin
12 31 (1.72%) Rust
13 23 (1.28%) Swift
14 22 (1.22%) PHP
15 21 (1.17%) MATLAB
16 16 (0.89%) Groovy
16 16 (0.89%) PL/SQL
17 15 (0.83%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 238 (13.22%) Degree
2 203 (11.28%) Security Cleared
3 122 (6.78%) SC Cleared
4 94 (5.22%) Computer Science Degree
5 78 (4.33%) ISTQB
6 43 (2.39%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.78%) Master's Degree
8 26 (1.44%) AWS Certification
9 21 (1.17%) CISSP
10 19 (1.06%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 18 (1.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 18 (1.00%) DBS Check
12 15 (0.83%) HND
13 13 (0.72%) CGEIT
13 13 (0.72%) CISA
13 13 (0.72%) CISM
13 13 (0.72%) FFIEC
13 13 (0.72%) PhD
13 13 (0.72%) SANS
14 12 (0.67%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 409 (22.72%) QA
2 154 (8.56%) Accessibility
3 81 (4.50%) Data Quality
4 50 (2.78%) GDPR
5 28 (1.56%) WCAG
6 25 (1.39%) NIST
7 18 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.83%) SLA
9 14 (0.78%) COBIT
10 12 (0.67%) Software Quality Assurance
11 11 (0.61%) GRC
12 9 (0.50%) ISO 22301
13 8 (0.44%) ISO 9001
14 7 (0.39%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.33%) PMO
16 5 (0.28%) JTAG
16 5 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 4 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
18 3 (0.17%) ISO 13485
18 3 (0.17%) PERC
System Software
1 254 (14.11%) Docker
2 25 (1.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (1.11%) Firmware
4 19 (1.06%) Active Directory
5 18 (1.00%) Hyper-V
6 15 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
7 14 (0.78%) KVM
8 8 (0.44%) Embedded Firmware
9 3 (0.17%) Terminal Server
10 2 (0.11%) vSphere
11 1 (0.056%) IAG
11 1 (0.056%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.056%) Xen
Systems Management
1 305 (16.94%) Terraform
2 293 (16.28%) Kubernetes
3 137 (7.61%) Grafana
4 76 (4.22%) Ansible
5 65 (3.61%) Prometheus
6 25 (1.39%) Argo
7 17 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (0.72%) Kibana
9 8 (0.44%) logstash
10 6 (0.33%) SCCM
10 6 (0.33%) SCOM
11 5 (0.28%) HP Fortify
12 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (0.22%) Packer
12 4 (0.22%) vCenter Server
13 3 (0.17%) CloudHub
13 3 (0.17%) Functional Safety
13 3 (0.17%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.17%) Rancher
13 3 (0.17%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 141 (7.83%) Microsoft
2 57 (3.17%) Oracle
3 55 (3.06%) Databricks
4 48 (2.67%) Salesforce
5 41 (2.28%) VMware
6 35 (1.94%) Google
7 23 (1.28%) ServiceNow
7 23 (1.28%) Splunk
8 22 (1.22%) OpenAI
9 19 (1.06%) SAP
10 18 (1.00%) Dynatrace
11 15 (0.83%) Braze
12 14 (0.78%) CrowdStrike
13 13 (0.72%) Amplitude
14 12 (0.67%) AppDynamics
14 12 (0.67%) Atlassian
14 12 (0.67%) Commvault
14 12 (0.67%) Foundry
14 12 (0.67%) IFS
14 12 (0.67%) MuleSoft