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

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 76 93 86
Rank change year-on-year +17 -7 -16
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,503 1,605 2,085
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.12% 3.22% 2.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.90% 3.62% 3.50%
Number of salaries quoted 1,350 741 940
10th Percentile £40,000 £40,000 £40,000
25th Percentile £47,000 £51,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £61,493 £65,000 £60,500
Median % change year-on-year -5.40% +7.44% -3.20%
75th Percentile £80,000 £85,000 £78,000
90th Percentile £94,100 £105,000 £102,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £58,000 £56,500
% change year-on-year -0.86% +2.65% -1.74%

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 86,265 44,296 59,619
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.17% 89.00% 82.18%
Number of salaries quoted 59,107 24,598 32,082
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,250 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £97,500
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 9 October 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 9 October 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 +10 2,059 £62,500 -3.85% 3,280
UK excluding London +17 1,593 £57,500 -0.86% 1,883
Work from Home +18 895 £67,500 +8.00% 1,327
London 0 735 £80,000 -1.23% 1,653
North of England +36 424 £57,500 -4.17% 447
South East -14 279 £60,000 +4.35% 415
South West +22 258 £60,000 +14.29% 219
Midlands -7 210 £52,500 -10.64% 208
North West -8 189 £60,000 -2.44% 220
Northern Ireland +12 161 £80,000 +45.45% 74
North East +27 132 £55,000 +78.86% 83
Wales +5 129 £53,171 -3.33% 36
West Midlands -17 113 £50,000 -9.09% 137
Yorkshire +32 112 £69,306 +26.01% 144
East of England -18 103 £46,750 -22.08% 206
East Midlands -23 97 £52,500 -16.00% 70
Scotland -51 41 £62,500 -10.71% 288

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 57 (2.28%) Confluence
2 42 (1.68%) Apache Spark
3 35 (1.40%) Apache
4 24 (0.96%) SharePoint
5 23 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 20 (0.80%) Jupyter
7 17 (0.68%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 14 (0.56%) Anypoint
8 14 (0.56%) CMS
8 14 (0.56%) Mule
9 11 (0.44%) Palantir Foundry
10 9 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
10 9 (0.36%) nginx
11 7 (0.28%) Headless CMS
12 6 (0.24%) WebLogic
13 5 (0.20%) Camunda
13 5 (0.20%) Cloud Foundry
13 5 (0.20%) SAS
13 5 (0.20%) WinCC
14 4 (0.16%) Umbraco
Applications
1 84 (3.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (0.56%) Simulink
4 9 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.28%) Moqups
6 6 (0.24%) Chatbot
6 6 (0.24%) Lightworks
7 4 (0.16%) EPLAN
7 4 (0.16%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 1 (0.040%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.040%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.040%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 68 (2.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.08%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.12%) Magento
4 3 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
4 3 (0.12%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.12%) Visualfiles
5 2 (0.080%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.080%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.080%) Towers Watson Igloo
5 2 (0.080%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.040%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.040%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.040%) Endur
6 1 (0.040%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.040%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.040%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.040%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.040%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.040%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 827 (33.04%) AWS
2 674 (26.93%) Azure
3 319 (12.74%) SaaS
4 265 (10.59%) GCP
5 235 (9.39%) GitHub
6 221 (8.83%) Azure DevOps
7 187 (7.47%) Serverless
8 125 (4.99%) GitHub Actions
9 106 (4.23%) AWS CloudFormation
10 101 (4.04%) Amazon EKS
11 91 (3.64%) Amazon S3
12 86 (3.44%) AWS Lambda
13 72 (2.88%) Power Platform
14 59 (2.36%) Google Ads
14 59 (2.36%) Meta Ads
15 57 (2.28%) Azure Service Bus
16 51 (2.04%) Azure Logic Apps
16 51 (2.04%) Azure Monitor
16 51 (2.04%) GitHub Copilot
17 47 (1.88%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 56 (2.24%) Broadband
2 32 (1.28%) TCP/IP
3 27 (1.08%) DNS
4 26 (1.04%) Firewall
5 17 (0.68%) SSL
6 16 (0.64%) Modbus
6 16 (0.64%) Wireless
7 15 (0.60%) DMARC
8 14 (0.56%) HTTP
8 14 (0.56%) MQTT
9 13 (0.52%) Ethernet
9 13 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
10 12 (0.48%) DHCP
10 12 (0.48%) Network Security
11 11 (0.44%) 5G
11 11 (0.44%) WAN
12 10 (0.40%) LTE
13 9 (0.36%) 3GPP
14 8 (0.32%) Internet
15 7 (0.28%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 154 (6.15%) PostgreSQL
2 119 (4.75%) NoSQL
3 91 (3.64%) MongoDB
4 82 (3.28%) SQL Server
5 71 (2.84%) Relational Database
6 50 (2.00%) Redis
7 46 (1.84%) MySQL
8 45 (1.80%) Power BI
9 41 (1.64%) DynamoDB
10 36 (1.44%) Data Lake
10 36 (1.44%) Data Warehouse
11 34 (1.36%) Metadata
12 30 (1.20%) BigQuery
13 28 (1.12%) Amazon Athena
14 27 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
15 25 (1.00%) Semantic Layer
16 17 (0.68%) Amazon Aurora
17 16 (0.64%) Elasticsearch
18 15 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
18 15 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 358 (14.30%) Git
2 266 (10.63%) GitLab
3 211 (8.43%) Jenkins
4 159 (6.35%) Selenium
5 144 (5.75%) JIRA
6 112 (4.47%) Cypress.io
7 105 (4.19%) Cucumber
8 85 (3.40%) Postman
9 74 (2.96%) TeamCity
10 51 (2.04%) JUnit
11 46 (1.84%) JMeter
12 43 (1.72%) REST Assured
13 41 (1.64%) LabVIEW
14 29 (1.16%) Gatling
15 27 (1.08%) Zephyr
16 24 (0.96%) Robot Framework
17 23 (0.92%) Bitbucket
17 23 (0.92%) Claude Code
17 23 (0.92%) SonarQube
18 21 (0.84%) Maven
General
1 689 (27.53%) Social Skills
2 598 (23.89%) Finance
3 402 (16.06%) Analytical Skills
4 278 (11.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 270 (10.79%) Public Sector
6 206 (8.23%) Banking
7 203 (8.11%) Law
8 175 (6.99%) Marketing
9 135 (5.39%) Legal
10 133 (5.31%) Manufacturing
11 131 (5.23%) Retail
12 108 (4.31%) Electronics
13 85 (3.40%) Financial Institution
14 63 (2.52%) Back Office
15 58 (2.32%) Aerospace
16 46 (1.84%) Telecoms
17 37 (1.48%) Games
18 36 (1.44%) Automotive
18 36 (1.44%) Documentation Skills
19 24 (0.96%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 692 (27.65%) Senior
2 383 (15.30%) Software Engineer
3 330 (13.18%) Developer
4 303 (12.11%) Lead
5 271 (10.83%) Test Engineer
6 119 (4.75%) Senior Developer
7 115 (4.59%) Java Engineer
8 112 (4.47%) DevOps Engineer
8 112 (4.47%) QA Engineer
9 108 (4.31%) Senior Software Engineer
10 87 (3.48%) Test Automation Engineer
11 86 (3.44%) Analyst
12 79 (3.16%) Data Engineer
12 79 (3.16%) Tester
13 76 (3.04%) Principal Engineer
14 75 (3.00%) Full-Stack Engineer
15 71 (2.84%) Lead Software Engineer
16 68 (2.72%) Architect
17 67 (2.68%) Automation Engineer
18 63 (2.52%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 343 (13.70%) Terraform
2 266 (10.63%) REST
3 228 (9.11%) .NET
4 219 (8.75%) React
5 209 (8.35%) Node.js
6 203 (8.11%) Playwright
6 203 (8.11%) Spring
7 200 (7.99%) RESTful
8 157 (6.27%) Spring Boot
9 145 (5.79%) Kafka
10 128 (5.11%) CSS
11 120 (4.79%) HTML
12 113 (4.51%) AngularJS
13 73 (2.92%) Middleware
14 72 (2.88%) OAuth
15 64 (2.56%) OAuth2
16 59 (2.36%) JSON
17 55 (2.20%) Next.js
18 52 (2.08%) PySpark
19 48 (1.92%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 432 (17.26%) Cloud Native
2 286 (11.43%) Product Ownership
3 213 (8.51%) Distributed Systems
4 111 (4.43%) Onboarding
5 109 (4.35%) Enterprise Software
6 95 (3.80%) Mobile App
7 92 (3.68%) Public Cloud
8 86 (3.44%) Blog
9 75 (3.00%) Virtual Team
10 71 (2.84%) Legacy Systems
11 64 (2.56%) Marketing Technology
12 55 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
13 53 (2.12%) Cyber Threat
14 51 (2.04%) Algorithms
14 51 (2.04%) Low-Code
15 48 (1.92%) Embedded Systems
16 46 (1.84%) e-Learning
17 42 (1.68%) AI Agents
18 40 (1.60%) Data Structures
19 37 (1.48%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 175 (6.99%) Linux
2 96 (3.84%) Windows
3 64 (2.56%) Android
4 59 (2.36%) Unix
5 54 (2.16%) Apple iOS
6 10 (0.40%) Embedded Linux
7 8 (0.32%) CentOS
8 7 (0.28%) Windows Server
9 6 (0.24%) FreeRTOS
10 5 (0.20%) AIX
11 4 (0.16%) Debian
11 4 (0.16%) VMS
11 4 (0.16%) VxWorks
12 3 (0.12%) Kali Linux
13 2 (0.080%) OpenWrt
14 1 (0.040%) Mac OS
14 1 (0.040%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 1 (0.040%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,383 (55.25%) CI/CD
2 1,012 (40.43%) Agile
3 855 (34.16%) DevOps
4 807 (32.24%) Software Engineering
5 735 (29.36%) Continuous Improvement
6 650 (25.97%) Mentoring
7 626 (25.01%) AI
8 583 (23.29%) Problem-Solving
9 457 (18.26%) Microservices
10 430 (17.18%) Software Testing
11 398 (15.90%) Infrastructure as Code
12 342 (13.66%) Validation
13 321 (12.82%) Test Strategy
14 308 (12.31%) Coaching
15 306 (12.23%) Observability
16 298 (11.91%) Code Quality
17 282 (11.27%) Technical Leadership
18 270 (10.79%) Containerisation
19 265 (10.59%) Event-Driven
20 258 (10.31%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 692 (27.65%) Python
2 588 (23.49%) Java
3 485 (19.38%) SQL
4 428 (17.10%) JavaScript
5 352 (14.06%) TypeScript
6 325 (12.98%) C#
7 124 (4.95%) C++
8 107 (4.27%) Go
9 100 (4.00%) PowerShell
10 97 (3.88%) Bash
11 82 (3.28%) C
12 45 (1.80%) Kotlin
13 41 (1.64%) Rust
14 33 (1.32%) PHP
15 31 (1.24%) Ruby
16 24 (0.96%) MATLAB
17 23 (0.92%) Bicep
17 23 (0.92%) Groovy
18 21 (0.84%) Swift
19 18 (0.72%) Scala
Qualifications
1 406 (16.22%) Security Cleared
2 265 (10.59%) Degree
3 249 (9.95%) SC Cleared
4 97 (3.88%) Computer Science Degree
5 76 (3.04%) DV Cleared
6 71 (2.84%) AWS Certification
6 71 (2.84%) ISTQB
7 55 (2.20%) CISSP
8 54 (2.16%) ITIL Certification
9 53 (2.12%) Master's Degree
10 52 (2.08%) CISM
11 48 (1.92%) HNC
12 46 (1.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 40 (1.60%) HND
14 39 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
15 24 (0.96%) Azure Certification
16 16 (0.64%) DBS Check
17 15 (0.60%) ISEB
18 13 (0.52%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
19 11 (0.44%) NVQ Level 4
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 564 (22.53%) QA
2 202 (8.07%) Accessibility
3 100 (4.00%) Data Quality
4 67 (2.68%) WCAG
5 54 (2.16%) NIST
6 48 (1.92%) ISO 22301
7 32 (1.28%) GDPR
8 10 (0.40%) GRC
8 10 (0.40%) SLA
9 8 (0.32%) MISRA
10 7 (0.28%) JTAG
10 7 (0.28%) Software Quality Assurance
11 6 (0.24%) SOC 2
12 5 (0.20%) ISO 9001
12 5 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 5 (0.20%) NCSC
13 4 (0.16%) COBIT
13 4 (0.16%) ISO 20022
13 4 (0.16%) PCI DSS
13 4 (0.16%) PMO
System Software
1 358 (14.30%) Docker
2 54 (2.16%) Firmware
3 15 (0.60%) Active Directory
4 11 (0.44%) Embedded Firmware
5 10 (0.40%) VMware Infrastructure
6 9 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.12%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.080%) KVM
8 2 (0.080%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.040%) IAG
9 1 (0.040%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.040%) QEMU
9 1 (0.040%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 363 (14.50%) Kubernetes
2 170 (6.79%) Grafana
3 74 (2.96%) Ansible
4 67 (2.68%) Prometheus
5 29 (1.16%) Argo
6 17 (0.68%) Puppet
7 16 (0.64%) Kibana
8 14 (0.56%) CloudHub
9 12 (0.48%) Rancher
10 11 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
11 9 (0.36%) logstash
12 8 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
13 7 (0.28%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.24%) Functional Safety
14 6 (0.24%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.24%) vCenter Server
15 3 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 2 (0.080%) Bosun
16 2 (0.080%) kaniko
17 1 (0.040%) Packer
Vendors
1 262 (10.47%) Microsoft
2 134 (5.35%) Google
3 65 (2.60%) Databricks
4 61 (2.44%) Salesforce
5 53 (2.12%) Oracle
6 50 (2.00%) SAP
7 48 (1.92%) ServiceNow
8 37 (1.48%) Dynatrace
9 36 (1.44%) Splunk
10 22 (0.88%) Pega
11 19 (0.76%) Adobe
11 19 (0.76%) MuleSoft
12 18 (0.72%) VMware
13 17 (0.68%) Foundry
13 17 (0.68%) OpenAI
14 16 (0.64%) Allen-Bradley
15 15 (0.60%) Atlassian
15 15 (0.60%) Red Hat
15 15 (0.60%) SendGrid
16 14 (0.56%) AppDynamics