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

6 months to
18 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 86 82 100
Rank change year-on-year -4 +18 -48
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,984 1,707 2,467
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.00% 3.48% 2.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.71% 3.87% 3.07%
Number of salaries quoted 1,168 837 1,576
10th Percentile £42,500 £38,650 £37,500
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +8.70% -11.54%
75th Percentile £82,500 £82,500 £72,450
90th Percentile £97,500 £98,474 £87,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +5.26% +8.57% -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 73,194 44,164 80,263
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.69% 90.07% 82.10%
Number of salaries quoted 50,654 24,819 55,696
10th Percentile £30,250 £28,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £56,888 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.47% +3.43% -8.71%
75th Percentile £78,750 £76,840 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £98,474 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +10.00% - -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 18 July 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 18 July 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 1,670 £67,249 +6.74% 488
UK excluding London -7 1,181 £60,000 +5.26% 387
Work from Home +16 854 £67,750 +12.92% 234
London +4 638 £80,000 +3.23% 177
North of England -1 328 £57,500 -3.85% 104
South East -35 223 £60,000 +9.09% 135
South West -27 191 £55,000 -8.33% 47
Midlands -14 175 £62,500 +8.70% 48
North West -4 171 £65,000 - 54
Northern Ireland -3 101 £80,000 +45.45% 5
West Midlands -20 94 £62,500 - 24
North East +3 86 £52,500 +7.35% 19
East Midlands -15 80 £64,000 +34.74% 24
Yorkshire -20 71 £69,310 +41.45% 32
Wales -5 65 £55,000 - 12
East of England -24 63 £55,000 -3.51% 43
Scotland -45 48 £62,500 -10.71% 10

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 38 (1.92%) Confluence
2 28 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
2 28 (1.41%) Apache Spark
3 23 (1.16%) Apache
4 16 (0.81%) SharePoint
5 15 (0.76%) Jupyter
6 13 (0.66%) CMS
7 12 (0.60%) Anypoint
7 12 (0.60%) Mule
8 10 (0.50%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 7 (0.35%) IIS
10 5 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
10 5 (0.25%) Umbraco
10 5 (0.25%) WordPress
11 3 (0.15%) Headless CMS
11 3 (0.15%) nginx
11 3 (0.15%) SAS
12 2 (0.10%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.10%) JBoss
12 2 (0.10%) NServiceBus
Applications
1 21 (1.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.60%) Simulink
3 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
4 7 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.30%) PlantUML
6 5 (0.25%) Lightworks
7 3 (0.15%) CANalyzer
7 3 (0.15%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.10%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.050%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.050%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.050%) Moqups
Business Applications
1 23 (1.16%) Dynamics CRM
2 13 (0.66%) Dynamics GP
3 5 (0.25%) Visualfiles
4 4 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
5 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.10%) FLEXCUBE
6 2 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.10%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.10%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.050%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.050%) Endur
7 1 (0.050%) Findur
7 1 (0.050%) Magento
7 1 (0.050%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.050%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.050%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.050%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.050%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.050%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.050%) Oracle SCM
Cloud Services
1 745 (37.55%) AWS
2 627 (31.60%) Azure
3 239 (12.05%) Azure DevOps
4 233 (11.74%) GCP
5 215 (10.84%) SaaS
6 181 (9.12%) Serverless
7 163 (8.22%) GitHub
8 85 (4.28%) GitHub Actions
9 82 (4.13%) AWS CloudFormation
10 77 (3.88%) AWS Lambda
11 74 (3.73%) Amazon EKS
12 73 (3.68%) Amazon S3
13 52 (2.62%) Azure Service Bus
13 52 (2.62%) PaaS
14 49 (2.47%) Power Platform
15 44 (2.22%) Azure Logic Apps
15 44 (2.22%) Azure Monitor
16 41 (2.07%) dbt
17 40 (2.02%) Amazon EC2
18 33 (1.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 71 (3.58%) Broadband
2 23 (1.16%) Firewall
3 13 (0.66%) DMARC
4 12 (0.60%) MQTT
4 12 (0.60%) SSL
4 12 (0.60%) Wireless
5 10 (0.50%) DNS
6 9 (0.45%) CHAP
7 8 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
8 7 (0.35%) LTE
8 7 (0.35%) TCP/IP
8 7 (0.35%) WAN
8 7 (0.35%) ZigBee
9 6 (0.30%) Bluetooth
9 6 (0.30%) HTTP
10 5 (0.25%) 5G
10 5 (0.25%) DHCP
10 5 (0.25%) Ethernet
10 5 (0.25%) SD-WAN
10 5 (0.25%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 134 (6.75%) NoSQL
2 127 (6.40%) PostgreSQL
3 103 (5.19%) MongoDB
4 67 (3.38%) SQL Server
5 45 (2.27%) DynamoDB
6 38 (1.92%) Relational Database
7 33 (1.66%) MySQL
8 26 (1.31%) Data Warehouse
8 26 (1.31%) Redis
9 22 (1.11%) Power BI
10 20 (1.01%) BigQuery
11 18 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
11 18 (0.91%) Spark SQL
12 16 (0.81%) Metadata
12 16 (0.81%) Semantic Layer
13 14 (0.71%) Amazon Athena
14 13 (0.66%) Data Lake
14 13 (0.66%) Oracle Database
15 11 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
16 9 (0.45%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 248 (12.50%) Git
2 173 (8.72%) GitLab
2 173 (8.72%) Jenkins
3 148 (7.46%) Selenium
4 120 (6.05%) JIRA
5 89 (4.49%) Cucumber
5 89 (4.49%) Cypress.io
6 74 (3.73%) Postman
7 62 (3.13%) TeamCity
8 50 (2.52%) JMeter
9 37 (1.86%) REST Assured
10 33 (1.66%) JUnit
11 31 (1.56%) Zephyr
12 25 (1.26%) SpecFlow
12 25 (1.26%) TestRail
13 23 (1.16%) Gatling
14 21 (1.06%) fastlane
15 20 (1.01%) Crashlytics
16 19 (0.96%) LabVIEW
17 18 (0.91%) CircleCI
General
1 501 (25.25%) Social Skills
2 437 (22.03%) Finance
3 202 (10.18%) Public Sector
4 194 (9.78%) Analytical Skills
4 194 (9.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 191 (9.63%) Banking
6 174 (8.77%) Law
7 98 (4.94%) Retail
8 86 (4.33%) Legal
9 67 (3.38%) Manufacturing
10 64 (3.23%) Financial Institution
11 56 (2.82%) Electronics
12 54 (2.72%) Games
13 53 (2.67%) Back Office
14 43 (2.17%) Marketing
15 32 (1.61%) Front Office
16 23 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
17 21 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
18 20 (1.01%) Telecoms
19 19 (0.96%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 552 (27.82%) Senior
2 321 (16.18%) Lead
3 305 (15.37%) Software Engineer
4 281 (14.16%) Developer
5 212 (10.69%) Test Engineer
6 120 (6.05%) Java Engineer
7 116 (5.85%) Senior Developer
8 93 (4.69%) Senior Software Engineer
9 86 (4.33%) Test Automation Engineer
10 84 (4.23%) QA Engineer
11 81 (4.08%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 74 (3.73%) Test Leader
13 71 (3.58%) DevOps Engineer
14 68 (3.43%) Architect
14 68 (3.43%) Tester
15 59 (2.97%) Data Engineer
16 55 (2.77%) Software Developer
17 53 (2.67%) Analyst
18 52 (2.62%) Senior Test Engineer
19 50 (2.52%) Lead Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 202 (10.18%) .NET
1 202 (10.18%) React
2 172 (8.67%) Playwright
3 171 (8.62%) Spring
4 167 (8.42%) RESTful
5 165 (8.32%) Node.js
6 164 (8.27%) REST
7 126 (6.35%) Spring Boot
8 110 (5.54%) Kafka
9 91 (4.59%) AngularJS
10 75 (3.78%) CSS
10 75 (3.78%) HTML
11 63 (3.18%) Middleware
11 63 (3.18%) OAuth
12 56 (2.82%) OAuth2
13 44 (2.22%) JSON
14 43 (2.17%) RabbitMQ
15 41 (2.07%) Vue
16 39 (1.97%) ASP.NET
16 39 (1.97%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 368 (18.55%) Cloud Native
2 224 (11.29%) Product Ownership
3 164 (8.27%) Distributed Systems
4 97 (4.89%) Mobile App
5 68 (3.43%) Enterprise Software
6 64 (3.23%) Public Cloud
7 61 (3.07%) Legacy Systems
8 57 (2.87%) Virtual Team
9 56 (2.82%) Cyber Threat
10 55 (2.77%) Algorithms
11 52 (2.62%) Management Information System
12 51 (2.57%) Low-Code
13 44 (2.22%) Onboarding
14 41 (2.07%) Data Structures
15 40 (2.02%) Blog
16 39 (1.97%) Greenfield Project
17 35 (1.76%) Embedded Systems
18 34 (1.71%) Video\Live Streaming
19 32 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
20 27 (1.36%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 174 (8.77%) Linux
2 89 (4.49%) Windows
3 59 (2.97%) Apple iOS
4 54 (2.72%) Unix
5 49 (2.47%) Android
6 8 (0.40%) Windows Server
7 7 (0.35%) CentOS
8 6 (0.30%) FreeRTOS
9 5 (0.25%) Embedded Linux
10 4 (0.20%) Kali Linux
11 3 (0.15%) AIX
11 3 (0.15%) Debian
12 1 (0.050%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.050%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.050%) VMS
12 1 (0.050%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.050%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.050%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.050%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,135 (57.21%) CI/CD
2 881 (44.41%) Agile
3 752 (37.90%) DevOps
4 624 (31.45%) Software Engineering
5 564 (28.43%) Mentoring
6 540 (27.22%) Continuous Improvement
7 399 (20.11%) Problem-Solving
8 392 (19.76%) Microservices
9 358 (18.04%) AI
10 356 (17.94%) Infrastructure as Code
11 327 (16.48%) Software Testing
12 273 (13.76%) Test Strategy
13 259 (13.05%) Containerisation
14 258 (13.00%) Coaching
15 254 (12.80%) Full-Stack Development
16 252 (12.70%) Observability
17 225 (11.34%) Validation
18 213 (10.74%) Code Quality
19 201 (10.13%) Scrum
20 200 (10.08%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 627 (31.60%) Python
2 548 (27.62%) Java
3 338 (17.04%) JavaScript
4 314 (15.83%) SQL
5 283 (14.26%) C#
6 274 (13.81%) TypeScript
7 110 (5.54%) C++
8 95 (4.79%) PowerShell
9 83 (4.18%) Go
10 76 (3.83%) Bash
11 71 (3.58%) C
12 38 (1.92%) Kotlin
13 34 (1.71%) Rust
14 29 (1.46%) Swift
15 27 (1.36%) PHP
16 23 (1.16%) Ruby
17 22 (1.11%) Bicep
17 22 (1.11%) MATLAB
18 18 (0.91%) Groovy
19 16 (0.81%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 238 (12.00%) Security Cleared
2 232 (11.69%) Degree
3 146 (7.36%) SC Cleared
4 100 (5.04%) Computer Science Degree
5 81 (4.08%) ISTQB
6 61 (3.07%) CISSP
7 56 (2.82%) ITIL Certification
8 54 (2.72%) CISM
9 45 (2.27%) DV Cleared
10 38 (1.92%) Master's Degree
11 37 (1.86%) AWS Certification
12 27 (1.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 20 (1.01%) DBS Check
14 16 (0.81%) ISEB
15 13 (0.66%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 12 (0.60%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
17 11 (0.55%) BPSS Clearance
18 10 (0.50%) HNC
18 10 (0.50%) HND
19 9 (0.45%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 455 (22.93%) QA
2 166 (8.37%) Accessibility
3 76 (3.83%) Data Quality
4 61 (3.07%) NIST
5 50 (2.52%) ISO 22301
6 48 (2.42%) GDPR
7 44 (2.22%) WCAG
8 14 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 12 (0.60%) SLA
9 12 (0.60%) Software Quality Assurance
10 11 (0.55%) GRC
11 10 (0.50%) COBIT
12 7 (0.35%) JTAG
12 7 (0.35%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.30%) MISRA
13 6 (0.30%) PMO
14 4 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials
14 4 (0.20%) ECSS
14 4 (0.20%) ISO 9001
15 3 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 12207
System Software
1 259 (13.05%) Docker
2 29 (1.46%) Firmware
3 23 (1.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
5 15 (0.76%) Hyper-V
6 12 (0.60%) KVM
7 11 (0.55%) Active Directory
8 10 (0.50%) Embedded Firmware
9 2 (0.10%) vSphere
10 1 (0.050%) IAG
10 1 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.050%) Terminal Server
10 1 (0.050%) Xen
Systems Management
1 312 (15.73%) Terraform
2 300 (15.12%) Kubernetes
3 137 (6.91%) Grafana
4 77 (3.88%) Ansible
5 60 (3.02%) Prometheus
6 24 (1.21%) Argo
7 15 (0.76%) Kibana
8 12 (0.60%) CloudHub
9 9 (0.45%) logstash
10 8 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.35%) HP Fortify
11 7 (0.35%) Puppet
12 6 (0.30%) Functional Safety
12 6 (0.30%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.25%) Packer
14 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
14 4 (0.20%) SCCM
14 4 (0.20%) SCOM
15 3 (0.15%) HP ALM
15 3 (0.15%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 146 (7.36%) Microsoft
2 55 (2.77%) Databricks
3 50 (2.52%) Google
4 47 (2.37%) Salesforce
5 44 (2.22%) Oracle
6 41 (2.07%) ServiceNow
7 36 (1.81%) VMware
8 26 (1.31%) Splunk
9 25 (1.26%) SAP
10 24 (1.21%) Dynatrace
11 20 (1.01%) Pega
12 16 (0.81%) AppDynamics
12 16 (0.81%) Braze
12 16 (0.81%) OpenAI
13 15 (0.76%) MuleSoft
14 14 (0.71%) Amplitude
15 13 (0.66%) IFS
15 13 (0.66%) SendGrid
16 12 (0.60%) Adobe
16 12 (0.60%) Atlassian