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

6 months to
23 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 80 80
Rank change year-on-year -16 0 -47
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,374 1,836 2,172
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.21% 3.45% 3.40%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.74% 3.79% 3.81%
Number of salaries quoted 847 854 1,566
10th Percentile £41,250 £41,250 £37,500
25th Percentile £50,438 £48,250 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - +4.17% -1.64%
75th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £78,750
90th Percentile £107,500 £105,000 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,200 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year -4.00% +4.55% -2.65%

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 50,076 48,429 57,012
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.42% 91.10% 89.12%
Number of salaries quoted 29,566 23,408 43,853
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £30,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £96,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +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 23 January 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 23 January 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 -20 1,136 £62,500 - 1,103
UK excluding London -51 705 £55,200 -4.00% 1,052
Work from Home +13 560 £65,000 +1.56% 444
London +27 556 £80,000 - 193
South East -53 169 £55,000 - 308
Scotland +17 133 £83,750 +39.58% 45
North of England -62 129 £60,000 +20.00% 197
South West +4 117 £60,000 +6.67% 157
Midlands -58 83 £55,000 -8.33% 138
North West -37 77 £60,000 +27.66% 85
West Midlands -36 50 £55,100 -8.17% 52
East of England -37 48 £52,500 -25.00% 164
Yorkshire -50 40 £55,000 +10.00% 85
East Midlands -53 36 £55,000 -8.33% 81
Wales +6 26 £56,350 +15.00% 52
North East -22 12 £57,600 -5.57% 27
Northern Ireland -30 5 £64,859 +8.10% 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 36 (2.62%) Confluence
2 21 (1.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 17 (1.24%) Apache Airflow
4 16 (1.16%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.95%) Appian
6 11 (0.80%) Jupyter
7 10 (0.73%) Apache
8 9 (0.66%) SharePoint
9 7 (0.51%) Apache Solr
9 7 (0.51%) CMS
10 4 (0.29%) WordPress
11 3 (0.22%) IIS
11 3 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 2 (0.15%) nginx
12 2 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
12 2 (0.15%) SAS
13 1 (0.073%) Anypoint
13 1 (0.073%) Camunda
Applications
1 18 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.80%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.29%) Fusion 360
4 4 (0.29%) Oracle Smart View
5 3 (0.22%) Photoshop
5 3 (0.22%) Sketch
6 2 (0.15%) Adobe XD
6 2 (0.15%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.073%) Doxygen
7 1 (0.073%) Trello
Business Applications
1 43 (3.13%) Oracle ERP
2 30 (2.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.36%) Oracle Financials
5 4 (0.29%) Elite 3E
5 4 (0.29%) Hyperion Planning
5 4 (0.29%) Oracle Assets
5 4 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
5 4 (0.29%) Oracle General Ledger
5 4 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (0.29%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 4 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
5 4 (0.29%) Shopify
6 3 (0.22%) SAP CX
7 2 (0.15%) Aladdin
7 2 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.073%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.073%) Postilion
8 1 (0.073%) SAP Hybris
8 1 (0.073%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 466 (33.92%) Azure
2 349 (25.40%) AWS
3 286 (20.82%) Azure DevOps
4 229 (16.67%) GitHub
5 133 (9.68%) GCP
6 107 (7.79%) SaaS
7 79 (5.75%) GitHub Copilot
8 75 (5.46%) GitHub Actions
9 72 (5.24%) Power Platform
10 69 (5.02%) Serverless
11 58 (4.22%) PaaS
12 50 (3.64%) Amazon EKS
13 49 (3.57%) Azure Data Factory
14 41 (2.98%) Entra ID
14 41 (2.98%) Snowflake
15 39 (2.84%) dbt
15 39 (2.84%) OCI
16 37 (2.69%) Datadog
17 32 (2.33%) Power Automate
18 30 (2.18%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.60%) DNS
2 21 (1.53%) HTTP
3 20 (1.46%) TCP/IP
4 16 (1.16%) WAN
5 15 (1.09%) SD-WAN
6 12 (0.87%) 5G
6 12 (0.87%) VPN
7 9 (0.66%) CHAP
7 9 (0.66%) Firewall
8 5 (0.36%) Multicast
9 4 (0.29%) 3G
9 4 (0.29%) GPRS
9 4 (0.29%) GSM
9 4 (0.29%) Modbus
9 4 (0.29%) RS-232
9 4 (0.29%) RS-485
9 4 (0.29%) SMTP
9 4 (0.29%) SSL
9 4 (0.29%) VLAN
9 4 (0.29%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 82 (5.97%) SQL Server
2 72 (5.24%) PostgreSQL
3 68 (4.95%) Relational Database
4 59 (4.29%) NoSQL
5 50 (3.64%) Data Warehouse
6 43 (3.13%) MySQL
6 43 (3.13%) Power BI
7 26 (1.89%) MongoDB
8 20 (1.46%) Tableau
9 17 (1.24%) Elasticsearch
9 17 (1.24%) RDBMS
10 16 (1.16%) BigQuery
10 16 (1.16%) DynamoDB
11 14 (1.02%) DB2
11 14 (1.02%) Snowflake Schema
12 13 (0.95%) Pinecone
13 11 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
13 11 (0.80%) Metadata
14 9 (0.66%) Data Lake
14 9 (0.66%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 188 (13.68%) Selenium
2 170 (12.37%) JIRA
3 161 (11.72%) Git
4 144 (10.48%) Jenkins
5 76 (5.53%) Cypress.io
6 64 (4.66%) Cucumber
7 59 (4.29%) GitLab
8 57 (4.15%) Postman
9 47 (3.42%) TeamCity
10 42 (3.06%) JMeter
11 41 (2.98%) Oracle Forms
12 27 (1.97%) Robot Framework
12 27 (1.97%) SpecFlow
13 25 (1.82%) eCATT
13 25 (1.82%) JUnit
13 25 (1.82%) WebDriver
14 24 (1.75%) REST Assured
15 23 (1.67%) Snyk
16 21 (1.53%) Bitbucket
16 21 (1.53%) CircleCI
General
1 443 (32.24%) Finance
2 427 (31.08%) Social Skills
3 154 (11.21%) Analytical Skills
4 108 (7.86%) Banking
5 97 (7.06%) Law
6 79 (5.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 78 (5.68%) Marketing
8 63 (4.59%) Retail
9 56 (4.08%) Public Sector
10 52 (3.78%) Financial Institution
11 47 (3.42%) Manufacturing
12 37 (2.69%) Electronics
12 37 (2.69%) Front Office
13 30 (2.18%) Back Office
14 28 (2.04%) Legal
15 27 (1.97%) Presentation Skills
16 20 (1.46%) Documentation Skills
16 20 (1.46%) Organisational Skills
17 16 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
18 15 (1.09%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 377 (27.44%) Senior
2 246 (17.90%) Developer
3 221 (16.08%) Lead
4 133 (9.68%) Test Engineer
5 121 (8.81%) Software Engineer
6 106 (7.71%) Senior Developer
7 78 (5.68%) Analyst
8 72 (5.24%) QA Engineer
9 68 (4.95%) Test Leader
10 66 (4.80%) Tester
11 62 (4.51%) Test Automation Engineer
12 56 (4.08%) Python Developer
13 50 (3.64%) Applications Engineer
13 50 (3.64%) Automation Engineer
13 50 (3.64%) Cloud Engineer
14 45 (3.28%) Automation Tester
14 45 (3.28%) QA Automation Engineer
15 41 (2.98%) Test Analyst
16 40 (2.91%) Senior Software Engineer
17 39 (2.84%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 147 (10.70%) React
2 137 (9.97%) RESTful
3 121 (8.81%) .NET
4 112 (8.15%) REST
5 96 (6.99%) Playwright
6 72 (5.24%) Node.js
7 67 (4.88%) JSON
7 67 (4.88%) Spring
8 58 (4.22%) CSS
8 58 (4.22%) HTML
8 58 (4.22%) SOAP
9 54 (3.93%) OAuth
9 54 (3.93%) pytest
10 46 (3.35%) Kafka
11 42 (3.06%) OAuth2
12 40 (2.91%) XML
13 39 (2.84%) Spring Boot
14 36 (2.62%) Elastic Stack
14 36 (2.62%) Flask
15 34 (2.47%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 220 (16.01%) Cloud Native
2 107 (7.79%) Product Ownership
3 62 (4.51%) Self-Motivation
4 49 (3.57%) Management Information System
5 48 (3.49%) Enterprise Software
6 40 (2.91%) Mobile App
7 38 (2.77%) Onboarding
8 31 (2.26%) Legacy Systems
9 29 (2.11%) Hedge funds
10 27 (1.97%) Data Structures
11 25 (1.82%) Algorithms
11 25 (1.82%) Low-Code
12 24 (1.75%) Distributed Systems
12 24 (1.75%) Satnav
13 23 (1.67%) Security Posture
14 22 (1.60%) Equities
14 22 (1.60%) Virtual Team
15 20 (1.46%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 20 (1.46%) GNSS
16 19 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 127 (9.24%) Linux
2 78 (5.68%) Windows
3 35 (2.55%) Apple iOS
4 34 (2.47%) Android
4 34 (2.47%) Unix
5 14 (1.02%) Windows Server
6 8 (0.58%) CentOS
7 5 (0.36%) Debian
7 5 (0.36%) Embedded Linux
7 5 (0.36%) FreeRTOS
7 5 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.22%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (0.15%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.15%) Solaris
9 2 (0.15%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.15%) VxWorks
10 1 (0.073%) AIX
10 1 (0.073%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 713 (51.89%) CI/CD
2 607 (44.18%) Agile
3 486 (35.37%) DevOps
4 326 (23.73%) Problem-Solving
5 295 (21.47%) Mentoring
6 292 (21.25%) Continuous Improvement
7 248 (18.05%) Software Engineering
8 224 (16.30%) AI
9 217 (15.79%) Coaching
10 182 (13.25%) Microservices
11 166 (12.08%) Observability
12 164 (11.94%) Software Testing
13 163 (11.86%) Analytics
14 159 (11.57%) Clean Code
14 159 (11.57%) Test Strategy
15 140 (10.19%) Infrastructure as Code
16 124 (9.02%) Containerisation
17 122 (8.88%) Asset Management
18 118 (8.59%) Scrum
18 118 (8.59%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 411 (29.91%) Python
2 309 (22.49%) Java
3 302 (21.98%) SQL
4 188 (13.68%) JavaScript
5 158 (11.50%) C#
6 146 (10.63%) TypeScript
7 75 (5.46%) PowerShell
8 56 (4.08%) C++
9 46 (3.35%) PL/SQL
10 44 (3.20%) Shell Script
11 36 (2.62%) Bash
12 35 (2.55%) Go
13 34 (2.47%) PHP
14 32 (2.33%) Bicep
15 26 (1.89%) C
16 24 (1.75%) Apex Code
17 19 (1.38%) Kotlin
18 14 (1.02%) MATLAB
19 13 (0.95%) T-SQL
19 13 (0.95%) VBA
Qualifications
1 187 (13.61%) Degree
2 118 (8.59%) Security Cleared
3 74 (5.39%) Computer Science Degree
3 74 (5.39%) SC Cleared
4 73 (5.31%) ISTQB
5 43 (3.13%) Master's Degree
6 33 (2.40%) DV Cleared
7 28 (2.04%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 21 (1.53%) DBS Check
8 21 (1.53%) HND
9 20 (1.46%) AWS Certification
10 17 (1.24%) Azure Certification
11 16 (1.16%) ISEB
12 14 (1.02%) PhD
13 11 (0.80%) CISSP
14 10 (0.73%) CEH
14 10 (0.73%) CISA
15 9 (0.66%) CGEIT
15 9 (0.66%) CISM
15 9 (0.66%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 329 (23.94%) QA
2 83 (6.04%) Accessibility
3 49 (3.57%) Data Quality
4 45 (3.28%) NIST
5 42 (3.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 35 (2.55%) GDPR
7 24 (1.75%) WCAG
8 18 (1.31%) NCSC
9 15 (1.09%) SLA
10 10 (0.73%) ISO 22301
10 10 (0.73%) ISO 9001
11 9 (0.66%) COBIT
12 7 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.29%) IEC 61508
13 4 (0.29%) ISO 13485
13 4 (0.29%) ISO 26262
13 4 (0.29%) MISRA
13 4 (0.29%) PCI DSS
14 3 (0.22%) Section 508
14 3 (0.22%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 186 (13.54%) Docker
2 44 (3.20%) Active Directory
3 16 (1.16%) Firmware
4 13 (0.95%) Embedded Firmware
5 10 (0.73%) VMware Infrastructure
6 6 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.36%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.29%) KVM
9 3 (0.22%) vSphere
10 2 (0.15%) Terminal Server
Systems Management
1 214 (15.57%) Terraform
2 206 (14.99%) Kubernetes
3 82 (5.97%) Grafana
4 55 (4.00%) Ansible
5 43 (3.13%) Single Sign-On
6 29 (2.11%) Prometheus
7 28 (2.04%) HP ALM
8 7 (0.51%) Argo
8 7 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
9 5 (0.36%) logstash
10 3 (0.22%) Control-M
10 3 (0.22%) HP Fortify
10 3 (0.22%) Progress Chef
10 3 (0.22%) Rancher
10 3 (0.22%) SCCM
10 3 (0.22%) SCOM
11 2 (0.15%) HP Quality Center
11 2 (0.15%) Kibana
11 2 (0.15%) Nessus
11 2 (0.15%) Puppet
Vendors
1 129 (9.39%) Microsoft
2 99 (7.21%) Oracle
3 67 (4.88%) Salesforce
4 52 (3.78%) SAP
5 34 (2.47%) Google
6 33 (2.40%) Databricks
7 30 (2.18%) VMware
8 29 (2.11%) HP
9 20 (1.46%) Okta
10 19 (1.38%) Splunk
11 18 (1.31%) Black Duck
11 18 (1.31%) Coverity
12 16 (1.16%) Guidewire
12 16 (1.16%) OpenAI
13 14 (1.02%) Ab Initio
13 14 (1.02%) Commvault
13 14 (1.02%) UiPath
14 12 (0.87%) Palantir
15 11 (0.80%) Blue Prism
15 11 (0.80%) MuleSoft