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

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 91 96
Rank change year-on-year +14 +5 -25
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,349 1,569 2,020
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.07% 3.16% 2.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.84% 3.57% 3.19%
Number of salaries quoted 1,265 745 1,048
10th Percentile £41,250 £38,600 £38,750
25th Percentile £47,500 £50,000 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - +4.17% -7.69%
75th Percentile £80,000 £82,751 £75,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £93,400
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,500 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +3.48% +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 82,691 43,965 63,361
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 72.84% 88.66% 80.94%
Number of salaries quoted 57,506 24,819 36,681
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,000
25th Percentile £41,500 £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 £76,250
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -3.23%

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 13 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 13 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 +2 1,900 £64,635 -0.56% 1,855
UK excluding London +15 1,490 £59,500 +3.48% 1,060
Work from Home +14 854 £67,500 +8.00% 1,918
London +5 695 £80,000 - 1,008
North of England +17 373 £57,500 -4.17% 236
South East -2 264 £60,000 +4.35% 261
South West +14 250 £60,000 +12.38% 166
Midlands -11 204 £55,000 -9.47% 113
North West -9 186 £60,000 -2.04% 132
Northern Ireland +10 164 £80,000 +45.45% 23
Wales +9 131 £55,000 +4.76% 22
West Midlands -12 115 £55,000 -4.35% 70
North East +16 102 £52,500 +50.00% 34
East Midlands -27 89 £55,000 -12.00% 42
Yorkshire -4 85 £69,310 +38.62% 70
East of England -39 72 £50,000 -14.53% 110
Scotland -47 47 £61,250 -12.50% 145

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 53 (2.26%) Confluence
2 31 (1.32%) Apache Spark
3 24 (1.02%) Apache
3 24 (1.02%) SharePoint
4 19 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
5 17 (0.72%) Jupyter
6 14 (0.60%) Anypoint
6 14 (0.60%) Mule
7 13 (0.55%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 11 (0.47%) CMS
9 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.21%) Cloud Foundry
10 5 (0.21%) nginx
10 5 (0.21%) Umbraco
11 4 (0.17%) IIS
11 4 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
11 4 (0.17%) SAS
11 4 (0.17%) WinCC
12 3 (0.13%) Camunda
12 3 (0.13%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 80 (3.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.55%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.55%) Simulink
3 9 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.21%) Lightworks
4 5 (0.21%) Moqups
5 3 (0.13%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.13%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.085%) CANalyzer
6 2 (0.085%) PlantUML
7 1 (0.043%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.043%) EPLAN
7 1 (0.043%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.043%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 67 (2.85%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.15%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.21%) Visualfiles
5 3 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
5 3 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
5 3 (0.13%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.085%) Endur
6 2 (0.085%) FLEXCUBE
6 2 (0.085%) Magento
6 2 (0.085%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.085%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.085%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.043%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.043%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.043%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.043%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.043%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.043%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.043%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 806 (34.31%) AWS
2 664 (28.27%) Azure
3 311 (13.24%) SaaS
4 249 (10.60%) GCP
5 247 (10.52%) Azure DevOps
6 198 (8.43%) GitHub
7 190 (8.09%) Serverless
8 103 (4.38%) GitHub Actions
9 96 (4.09%) AWS CloudFormation
10 87 (3.70%) AWS Lambda
11 86 (3.66%) Amazon EKS
12 80 (3.41%) Amazon S3
13 60 (2.55%) Power Platform
14 59 (2.51%) Google Ads
14 59 (2.51%) Meta Ads
15 54 (2.30%) Azure Logic Apps
16 52 (2.21%) Azure Service Bus
17 49 (2.09%) Azure Monitor
18 43 (1.83%) Azure Functions
19 39 (1.66%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 65 (2.77%) Broadband
2 28 (1.19%) TCP/IP
3 24 (1.02%) Firewall
4 22 (0.94%) DNS
5 17 (0.72%) SSL
6 15 (0.64%) Wireless
7 13 (0.55%) DMARC
8 12 (0.51%) DHCP
8 12 (0.51%) HTTP
8 12 (0.51%) Modbus
8 12 (0.51%) MQTT
8 12 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
9 11 (0.47%) 5G
9 11 (0.47%) WAN
10 10 (0.43%) LTE
11 9 (0.38%) 3GPP
11 9 (0.38%) Network Security
12 7 (0.30%) GSM
12 7 (0.30%) RANAP
12 7 (0.30%) UMTS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 137 (5.83%) PostgreSQL
2 123 (5.24%) NoSQL
3 91 (3.87%) MongoDB
4 77 (3.28%) SQL Server
5 64 (2.72%) Relational Database
6 45 (1.92%) DynamoDB
7 38 (1.62%) Redis
8 37 (1.58%) Data Warehouse
8 37 (1.58%) MySQL
9 34 (1.45%) Power BI
10 32 (1.36%) Data Lake
11 29 (1.23%) BigQuery
12 24 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
13 21 (0.89%) Amazon RDS
13 21 (0.89%) Semantic Layer
14 20 (0.85%) Metadata
15 15 (0.64%) Spark SQL
16 14 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
17 13 (0.55%) Delta Lake
18 12 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 354 (15.07%) Git
2 229 (9.75%) GitLab
3 216 (9.20%) Jenkins
4 160 (6.81%) Selenium
5 147 (6.26%) JIRA
6 105 (4.47%) Cypress.io
7 104 (4.43%) Cucumber
8 94 (4.00%) Postman
9 65 (2.77%) TeamCity
10 51 (2.17%) JMeter
11 46 (1.96%) JUnit
12 40 (1.70%) REST Assured
13 35 (1.49%) Zephyr
14 31 (1.32%) Gatling
15 30 (1.28%) SonarQube
16 25 (1.06%) Bitbucket
16 25 (1.06%) TestRail
17 24 (1.02%) LabVIEW
18 23 (0.98%) Maven
19 22 (0.94%) Robot Framework
General
1 647 (27.54%) Social Skills
2 571 (24.31%) Finance
3 354 (15.07%) Analytical Skills
4 259 (11.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 222 (9.45%) Public Sector
6 201 (8.56%) Banking
7 199 (8.47%) Law
8 161 (6.85%) Marketing
9 144 (6.13%) Legal
10 115 (4.90%) Retail
11 104 (4.43%) Manufacturing
12 82 (3.49%) Electronics
13 76 (3.24%) Financial Institution
14 58 (2.47%) Back Office
15 46 (1.96%) Aerospace
16 45 (1.92%) Games
17 42 (1.79%) Telecoms
18 31 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
19 26 (1.11%) Automotive
20 25 (1.06%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 662 (28.18%) Senior
2 343 (14.60%) Software Engineer
3 333 (14.18%) Lead
4 327 (13.92%) Developer
5 247 (10.52%) Test Engineer
6 124 (5.28%) Senior Developer
7 113 (4.81%) Java Engineer
8 104 (4.43%) DevOps Engineer
9 100 (4.26%) Senior Software Engineer
10 97 (4.13%) QA Engineer
11 84 (3.58%) Test Automation Engineer
12 79 (3.36%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 73 (3.11%) Data Engineer
14 69 (2.94%) Lead Software Engineer
15 67 (2.85%) Analyst
16 63 (2.68%) Architect
17 62 (2.64%) Senior Manager
18 61 (2.60%) Tester
19 60 (2.55%) Marketing Manager
20 59 (2.51%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 324 (13.79%) Terraform
2 239 (10.17%) REST
3 231 (9.83%) React
4 214 (9.11%) .NET
5 202 (8.60%) Playwright
6 195 (8.30%) Spring
7 190 (8.09%) Node.js
8 188 (8.00%) RESTful
9 143 (6.09%) Spring Boot
10 132 (5.62%) Kafka
11 117 (4.98%) CSS
12 113 (4.81%) AngularJS
13 110 (4.68%) HTML
14 71 (3.02%) OAuth
15 65 (2.77%) Middleware
15 65 (2.77%) OAuth2
16 62 (2.64%) JSON
17 52 (2.21%) PySpark
18 49 (2.09%) Next.js
18 49 (2.09%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 413 (17.58%) Cloud Native
2 288 (12.26%) Product Ownership
3 206 (8.77%) Distributed Systems
4 107 (4.56%) Mobile App
5 99 (4.21%) Onboarding
6 93 (3.96%) Enterprise Software
7 87 (3.70%) Public Cloud
8 81 (3.45%) Blog
9 77 (3.28%) Virtual Team
10 65 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
11 64 (2.72%) Marketing Technology
12 58 (2.47%) Algorithms
13 53 (2.26%) Cyber Threat
14 51 (2.17%) Low-Code
15 46 (1.96%) Self-Motivation
16 43 (1.83%) Data Structures
16 43 (1.83%) Embedded Systems
17 39 (1.66%) e-Learning
17 39 (1.66%) Management Information System
18 33 (1.40%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 182 (7.75%) Linux
2 96 (4.09%) Windows
3 63 (2.68%) Android
4 58 (2.47%) Apple iOS
5 53 (2.26%) Unix
6 9 (0.38%) Embedded Linux
6 9 (0.38%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.34%) CentOS
8 6 (0.26%) FreeRTOS
9 4 (0.17%) AIX
9 4 (0.17%) Debian
9 4 (0.17%) Kali Linux
9 4 (0.17%) VMS
10 3 (0.13%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.085%) OpenWrt
12 1 (0.043%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 1 (0.043%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.043%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,315 (55.98%) CI/CD
2 994 (42.32%) Agile
3 839 (35.72%) DevOps
4 757 (32.23%) Software Engineering
5 695 (29.59%) Continuous Improvement
6 619 (26.35%) Mentoring
7 584 (24.86%) AI
8 533 (22.69%) Problem-Solving
9 430 (18.31%) Microservices
10 410 (17.45%) Software Testing
11 387 (16.48%) Infrastructure as Code
12 323 (13.75%) Test Strategy
13 294 (12.52%) Validation
14 290 (12.35%) Observability
15 284 (12.09%) Code Quality
16 282 (12.01%) Coaching
17 274 (11.66%) Full-Stack Development
18 266 (11.32%) Containerisation
19 256 (10.90%) Technical Leadership
20 253 (10.77%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 679 (28.91%) Python
2 577 (24.56%) Java
3 443 (18.86%) SQL
4 420 (17.88%) JavaScript
5 337 (14.35%) TypeScript
6 325 (13.84%) C#
7 123 (5.24%) C++
8 106 (4.51%) PowerShell
9 102 (4.34%) Go
10 88 (3.75%) Bash
11 79 (3.36%) C
12 37 (1.58%) Kotlin
13 32 (1.36%) PHP
14 31 (1.32%) Rust
15 29 (1.23%) Ruby
16 27 (1.15%) Groovy
17 24 (1.02%) MATLAB
17 24 (1.02%) Swift
18 23 (0.98%) Bicep
19 15 (0.64%) Scala
Qualifications
1 341 (14.52%) Security Cleared
2 246 (10.47%) Degree
3 209 (8.90%) SC Cleared
4 106 (4.51%) Computer Science Degree
5 81 (3.45%) ISTQB
6 64 (2.72%) DV Cleared
7 57 (2.43%) CISSP
8 56 (2.38%) AWS Certification
9 54 (2.30%) CISM
9 54 (2.30%) ITIL Certification
10 46 (1.96%) Master's Degree
11 39 (1.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 36 (1.53%) HNC
13 32 (1.36%) BPSS Clearance
14 31 (1.32%) HND
15 17 (0.72%) DBS Check
15 17 (0.72%) ISEB
16 13 (0.55%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
17 11 (0.47%) Azure Certification
17 11 (0.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 546 (23.24%) QA
2 207 (8.81%) Accessibility
3 80 (3.41%) Data Quality
4 66 (2.81%) WCAG
5 56 (2.38%) NIST
6 48 (2.04%) ISO 22301
7 41 (1.75%) GDPR
8 13 (0.55%) SLA
9 12 (0.51%) GRC
10 9 (0.38%) SOC 2
10 9 (0.38%) Software Quality Assurance
11 8 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 8 (0.34%) MISRA
12 6 (0.26%) COBIT
12 6 (0.26%) JTAG
12 6 (0.26%) PMO
13 5 (0.21%) NCSC
14 4 (0.17%) ISO 20022
14 4 (0.17%) PCI DSS
15 3 (0.13%) IEC 61508
System Software
1 324 (13.79%) Docker
2 42 (1.79%) Firmware
3 14 (0.60%) Active Directory
4 13 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
4 13 (0.55%) VMware Infrastructure
5 11 (0.47%) Embedded Firmware
6 6 (0.26%) Hyper-V
7 4 (0.17%) KVM
8 2 (0.085%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.043%) IAG
9 1 (0.043%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.043%) QEMU
9 1 (0.043%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 334 (14.22%) Kubernetes
2 145 (6.17%) Grafana
3 78 (3.32%) Ansible
4 62 (2.64%) Prometheus
5 29 (1.23%) Argo
6 17 (0.72%) Kibana
7 15 (0.64%) Puppet
8 14 (0.60%) CloudHub
9 9 (0.38%) logstash
9 9 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
10 8 (0.34%) HP Fortify
10 8 (0.34%) Rancher
10 8 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
11 6 (0.26%) Functional Safety
11 6 (0.26%) Progress Chef
11 6 (0.26%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.21%) Packer
13 3 (0.13%) SCCM
13 3 (0.13%) SCOM
13 3 (0.13%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 252 (10.73%) Microsoft
2 124 (5.28%) Google
3 63 (2.68%) Databricks
4 56 (2.38%) Salesforce
5 53 (2.26%) Oracle
6 47 (2.00%) SAP
7 42 (1.79%) ServiceNow
8 36 (1.53%) Splunk
9 29 (1.23%) Dynatrace
10 24 (1.02%) Pega
11 20 (0.85%) VMware
12 19 (0.81%) AppDynamics
13 18 (0.77%) MuleSoft
14 17 (0.72%) IBM
15 16 (0.68%) OpenAI
16 15 (0.64%) Allen-Bradley
16 15 (0.64%) Atlassian
16 15 (0.64%) Red Hat
17 14 (0.60%) Adobe
18 13 (0.55%) SendGrid