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

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 81 91 99
Rank change year-on-year +10 +8 -29
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,257 1,643 2,056
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.08% 3.28% 2.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.84% 3.69% 3.05%
Number of salaries quoted 1,248 795 1,219
10th Percentile £41,925 £37,500 £38,750
25th Percentile £48,750 £47,750 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%
75th Percentile £80,000 £82,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -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 79,395 44,536 67,357
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.20% 88.97% 80.72%
Number of salaries quoted 54,920 25,310 42,355
10th Percentile £31,000 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,750 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -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 24 August 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 August 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 +3 1,829 £65,000 - 636
UK excluding London +12 1,440 £60,000 +9.09% 523
Work from Home +17 864 £67,500 +8.87% 296
London 0 665 £80,000 +0.75% 194
North of England +23 363 £58,750 +0.43% 125
South East -5 260 £62,000 +12.73% 148
South West +5 235 £60,000 +14.29% 104
Midlands -9 195 £60,000 - 80
North West -1 182 £65,000 - 64
Northern Ireland +10 166 £80,000 +45.45% 5
Wales +14 109 £55,000 +2.33% 6
West Midlands -3 109 £62,500 +0.81% 55
North East +11 104 £55,000 +57.14% 28
East Midlands -19 86 £55,000 -4.35% 25
Yorkshire -8 77 £69,310 +41.45% 34
East of England -39 68 £50,000 -13.42% 53
Scotland -33 57 £62,500 +4.17% 19

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 50 (2.22%) Confluence
2 28 (1.24%) Apache Spark
3 25 (1.11%) Apache
4 24 (1.06%) SharePoint
5 23 (1.02%) Apache Airflow
6 17 (0.75%) Jupyter
7 14 (0.62%) Anypoint
7 14 (0.62%) Mule
8 13 (0.58%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 11 (0.49%) CMS
10 5 (0.22%) Cloud Foundry
10 5 (0.22%) IIS
10 5 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.22%) nginx
10 5 (0.22%) Umbraco
11 4 (0.18%) Camunda
11 4 (0.18%) SAS
12 3 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
12 3 (0.13%) WordPress
13 2 (0.089%) NServiceBus
Applications
1 55 (2.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.53%) Simulink
4 7 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.22%) Lightworks
5 5 (0.22%) Moqups
6 3 (0.13%) CANalyzer
6 3 (0.13%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.13%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.13%) PlantUML
7 1 (0.044%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.044%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.044%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 67 (2.97%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.20%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.49%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.22%) Visualfiles
5 3 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
5 3 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
5 3 (0.13%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.089%) Dynamics AX
6 2 (0.089%) FLEXCUBE
6 2 (0.089%) Magento
6 2 (0.089%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.089%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.089%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.044%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.044%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.044%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.044%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.044%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.044%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.044%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 782 (34.65%) AWS
2 661 (29.29%) Azure
3 292 (12.94%) SaaS
4 250 (11.08%) Azure DevOps
5 239 (10.59%) GCP
6 186 (8.24%) GitHub
7 183 (8.11%) Serverless
8 94 (4.16%) AWS CloudFormation
8 94 (4.16%) GitHub Actions
9 79 (3.50%) AWS Lambda
10 73 (3.23%) Amazon S3
11 67 (2.97%) Amazon EKS
12 62 (2.75%) Power Platform
13 52 (2.30%) Azure Service Bus
14 49 (2.17%) Azure Logic Apps
15 47 (2.08%) PaaS
16 44 (1.95%) Azure Monitor
17 42 (1.86%) dbt
18 40 (1.77%) Amazon EC2
19 36 (1.60%) Google Ads
Communications & Networking
1 70 (3.10%) Broadband
2 25 (1.11%) Firewall
3 18 (0.80%) TCP/IP
4 17 (0.75%) DNS
5 16 (0.71%) Wireless
6 15 (0.66%) SSL
7 13 (0.58%) DMARC
7 13 (0.58%) Wi-Fi
8 12 (0.53%) MQTT
9 10 (0.44%) LTE
9 10 (0.44%) WAN
10 9 (0.40%) 3GPP
10 9 (0.40%) DHCP
10 9 (0.40%) HTTP
11 8 (0.35%) Network Security
12 7 (0.31%) CHAP
12 7 (0.31%) Radio Access Network
12 7 (0.31%) RANAP
12 7 (0.31%) SS7
12 7 (0.31%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (5.76%) PostgreSQL
2 118 (5.23%) NoSQL
3 91 (4.03%) MongoDB
4 75 (3.32%) SQL Server
5 59 (2.61%) Relational Database
6 48 (2.13%) DynamoDB
7 37 (1.64%) MySQL
8 35 (1.55%) Data Warehouse
9 33 (1.46%) Power BI
10 27 (1.20%) BigQuery
10 27 (1.20%) Redis
11 23 (1.02%) Data Lake
12 18 (0.80%) Spark SQL
13 17 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
13 17 (0.75%) Metadata
13 17 (0.75%) Semantic Layer
14 16 (0.71%) Amazon Athena
15 12 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
15 12 (0.53%) Oracle Database
16 11 (0.49%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 319 (14.13%) Git
2 204 (9.04%) GitLab
3 202 (8.95%) Jenkins
4 159 (7.04%) Selenium
5 141 (6.25%) JIRA
6 99 (4.39%) Cucumber
6 99 (4.39%) Cypress.io
7 91 (4.03%) Postman
8 56 (2.48%) TeamCity
9 52 (2.30%) JMeter
10 44 (1.95%) JUnit
11 40 (1.77%) REST Assured
12 35 (1.55%) Zephyr
13 32 (1.42%) Gatling
14 30 (1.33%) SonarQube
15 26 (1.15%) TestRail
16 25 (1.11%) Bitbucket
17 23 (1.02%) SpecFlow
18 20 (0.89%) fastlane
18 20 (0.89%) LabVIEW
General
1 630 (27.91%) Social Skills
2 527 (23.35%) Finance
3 310 (13.74%) Analytical Skills
4 241 (10.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 216 (9.57%) Public Sector
6 195 (8.64%) Law
7 183 (8.11%) Banking
8 144 (6.38%) Legal
9 136 (6.03%) Marketing
10 97 (4.30%) Retail
11 84 (3.72%) Manufacturing
12 71 (3.15%) Electronics
13 68 (3.01%) Financial Institution
14 52 (2.30%) Back Office
15 49 (2.17%) Games
16 39 (1.73%) Aerospace
17 34 (1.51%) Telecoms
18 28 (1.24%) Documentation Skills
19 27 (1.20%) Front Office
20 21 (0.93%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 637 (28.22%) Senior
2 355 (15.73%) Lead
3 334 (14.80%) Software Engineer
4 320 (14.18%) Developer
5 239 (10.59%) Test Engineer
6 123 (5.45%) Senior Developer
7 107 (4.74%) Java Engineer
8 100 (4.43%) Senior Software Engineer
9 92 (4.08%) DevOps Engineer
10 91 (4.03%) QA Engineer
11 84 (3.72%) Test Automation Engineer
12 81 (3.59%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 69 (3.06%) Lead Software Engineer
14 67 (2.97%) Test Leader
15 66 (2.92%) Data Engineer
16 63 (2.79%) Architect
16 63 (2.79%) Senior Manager
16 63 (2.79%) Software Developer
17 62 (2.75%) Analyst
17 62 (2.75%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 316 (14.00%) Terraform
2 238 (10.54%) React
3 216 (9.57%) REST
4 214 (9.48%) .NET
5 192 (8.51%) Node.js
5 192 (8.51%) Playwright
6 186 (8.24%) RESTful
6 186 (8.24%) Spring
7 137 (6.07%) Spring Boot
8 119 (5.27%) Kafka
9 111 (4.92%) AngularJS
10 99 (4.39%) CSS
11 93 (4.12%) HTML
12 69 (3.06%) OAuth
13 64 (2.84%) Middleware
14 63 (2.79%) OAuth2
15 56 (2.48%) JSON
16 50 (2.22%) Next.js
17 48 (2.13%) Vue
18 46 (2.04%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 389 (17.24%) Cloud Native
2 265 (11.74%) Product Ownership
3 197 (8.73%) Distributed Systems
4 114 (5.05%) Mobile App
5 89 (3.94%) Enterprise Software
6 78 (3.46%) Public Cloud
7 77 (3.41%) Blog
7 77 (3.41%) Virtual Team
8 74 (3.28%) Onboarding
9 71 (3.15%) Legacy Systems
10 64 (2.84%) Marketing Technology
11 61 (2.70%) Algorithms
12 57 (2.53%) Cyber Threat
13 54 (2.39%) Low-Code
14 46 (2.04%) Data Structures
14 46 (2.04%) Management Information System
15 45 (1.99%) Self-Motivation
16 38 (1.68%) Embedded Systems
17 36 (1.60%) Greenfield Project
18 34 (1.51%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 186 (8.24%) Linux
2 100 (4.43%) Windows
3 62 (2.75%) Apple iOS
4 60 (2.66%) Android
5 51 (2.26%) Unix
6 11 (0.49%) Windows Server
7 9 (0.40%) Embedded Linux
8 7 (0.31%) CentOS
9 6 (0.27%) FreeRTOS
10 5 (0.22%) Kali Linux
11 4 (0.18%) AIX
11 4 (0.18%) Debian
12 3 (0.13%) VxWorks
13 2 (0.089%) OpenWrt
13 2 (0.089%) VMS
14 1 (0.044%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 1 (0.044%) ThreadX
14 1 (0.044%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.044%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,260 (55.83%) CI/CD
2 986 (43.69%) Agile
3 826 (36.60%) DevOps
4 728 (32.26%) Software Engineering
5 669 (29.64%) Continuous Improvement
6 590 (26.14%) Mentoring
7 526 (23.31%) AI
8 481 (21.31%) Problem-Solving
9 415 (18.39%) Microservices
10 385 (17.06%) Infrastructure as Code
11 383 (16.97%) Software Testing
12 322 (14.27%) Test Strategy
13 281 (12.45%) Full-Stack Development
14 280 (12.41%) Observability
15 275 (12.18%) Containerisation
16 274 (12.14%) Code Quality
17 270 (11.96%) Validation
18 263 (11.65%) Coaching
19 252 (11.17%) Decision-Making
20 241 (10.68%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 686 (30.39%) Python
2 573 (25.39%) Java
3 403 (17.86%) JavaScript
4 384 (17.01%) SQL
5 333 (14.75%) TypeScript
6 325 (14.40%) C#
7 124 (5.49%) C++
8 107 (4.74%) PowerShell
9 97 (4.30%) Go
10 77 (3.41%) C
11 75 (3.32%) Bash
12 39 (1.73%) Kotlin
13 35 (1.55%) Rust
14 32 (1.42%) PHP
15 29 (1.28%) Swift
16 27 (1.20%) Ruby
17 21 (0.93%) Bicep
17 21 (0.93%) MATLAB
18 19 (0.84%) Groovy
19 16 (0.71%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 306 (13.56%) Security Cleared
2 244 (10.81%) Degree
3 184 (8.15%) SC Cleared
4 108 (4.79%) Computer Science Degree
5 76 (3.37%) ISTQB
6 59 (2.61%) CISSP
6 59 (2.61%) DV Cleared
7 57 (2.53%) ITIL Certification
8 56 (2.48%) CISM
9 47 (2.08%) AWS Certification
10 40 (1.77%) Master's Degree
11 33 (1.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 30 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
13 24 (1.06%) HNC
14 19 (0.84%) HND
15 18 (0.80%) ISEB
16 16 (0.71%) DBS Check
17 14 (0.62%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
18 12 (0.53%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
19 10 (0.44%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 528 (23.39%) QA
2 210 (9.30%) Accessibility
3 70 (3.10%) Data Quality
4 64 (2.84%) WCAG
5 61 (2.70%) NIST
6 50 (2.22%) ISO 22301
7 43 (1.91%) GDPR
8 14 (0.62%) SLA
9 13 (0.58%) GRC
9 13 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 10 (0.44%) Software Quality Assurance
11 9 (0.40%) SOC 2
12 8 (0.35%) COBIT
12 8 (0.35%) MISRA
13 7 (0.31%) JTAG
14 6 (0.27%) PMO
15 5 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
15 5 (0.22%) ISO 9001
15 5 (0.22%) NCSC
15 5 (0.22%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 308 (13.65%) Docker
2 35 (1.55%) Firmware
3 16 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (0.66%) Active Directory
4 15 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (0.44%) Embedded Firmware
6 8 (0.35%) Hyper-V
7 6 (0.27%) KVM
8 2 (0.089%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.044%) IAG
9 1 (0.044%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.044%) QEMU
9 1 (0.044%) Terminal Server
9 1 (0.044%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 318 (14.09%) Kubernetes
2 132 (5.85%) Grafana
3 83 (3.68%) Ansible
4 53 (2.35%) Prometheus
5 27 (1.20%) Argo
6 16 (0.71%) Kibana
7 14 (0.62%) CloudHub
8 13 (0.58%) Puppet
9 9 (0.40%) logstash
9 9 (0.40%) Microsoft Intune
10 8 (0.35%) HP Fortify
11 7 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (0.27%) Functional Safety
12 6 (0.27%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.27%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.22%) Packer
14 4 (0.18%) SCCM
14 4 (0.18%) SCOM
15 3 (0.13%) HP ALM
15 3 (0.13%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 221 (9.79%) Microsoft
2 99 (4.39%) Google
3 62 (2.75%) Databricks
4 56 (2.48%) Oracle
5 53 (2.35%) Salesforce
6 41 (1.82%) SAP
7 37 (1.64%) ServiceNow
8 34 (1.51%) Splunk
9 27 (1.20%) VMware
10 25 (1.11%) Dynatrace
11 22 (0.97%) Pega
12 19 (0.84%) AppDynamics
13 17 (0.75%) MuleSoft
14 16 (0.71%) Atlassian
14 16 (0.71%) IBM
15 15 (0.66%) OpenAI
16 14 (0.62%) Adobe
16 14 (0.62%) Red Hat
17 13 (0.58%) Braze
17 13 (0.58%) SendGrid