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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 80 100
Rank change year-on-year -3 +20 -66
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,817 1,615 2,694
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.98% 3.65% 2.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.72% 3.94% 3.07%
Number of salaries quoted 1,127 788 1,721
10th Percentile £41,250 £39,700 £36,250
25th Percentile £48,289 £47,500 £44,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year - +8.70% -11.54%
75th Percentile £82,500 £82,563 £72,433
90th Percentile £97,500 £100,000 £87,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,500 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +3.48% +9.52% -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 66,839 40,980 87,741
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 72.86% 92.69% 82.42%
Number of salaries quoted 45,659 21,831 62,274
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,000 £29,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £40,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.54%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +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 10 June 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 10 June 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 1,594 £62,500 - 567
UK excluding London -28 999 £59,500 +3.48% 446
Work from Home +12 738 £65,000 +8.33% 322
London +21 655 £80,000 +9.59% 179
North of England -11 279 £61,250 +1.23% 123
South East -23 207 £60,000 +9.09% 115
South West -24 177 £55,000 -8.33% 52
Midlands -18 165 £60,000 +5.73% 71
North West -9 145 £60,000 -7.69% 66
West Midlands -34 83 £61,000 -7.92% 46
East Midlands -12 81 £55,000 +25.71% 25
Yorkshire -38 68 £73,750 +46.20% 30
North East -2 66 £52,500 -8.70% 28
East of England -15 64 £51,250 -10.09% 62
Wales -1 55 £55,000 -4.35% 9
Scotland -33 54 £60,000 - 17
Northern Ireland -32 11 £80,000 +45.45% 9

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 32 (1.76%) Confluence
2 25 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
3 20 (1.10%) Apache Spark
4 19 (1.05%) Jupyter
5 18 (0.99%) Apache
6 15 (0.83%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.50%) CMS
7 9 (0.50%) IIS
7 9 (0.50%) Palantir Foundry
8 8 (0.44%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 8 (0.44%) Appian
9 5 (0.28%) Anypoint
9 5 (0.28%) Umbraco
10 4 (0.22%) Mule
10 4 (0.22%) SAS
11 3 (0.17%) nginx
11 3 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 3 (0.17%) WordPress
12 2 (0.11%) Camunda
12 2 (0.11%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 16 (0.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.39%) Simulink
4 6 (0.33%) PlantUML
5 5 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 3 (0.17%) CANalyzer
6 3 (0.17%) Fusion 360
7 2 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.11%) MS Visio
8 1 (0.055%) Lightworks
Business Applications
1 11 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
2 5 (0.28%) Visualfiles
3 4 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
3 4 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.11%) Shopify
5 2 (0.11%) Towers Watson Igloo
5 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.055%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.055%) Endur
6 1 (0.055%) Findur
6 1 (0.055%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.055%) Magento
6 1 (0.055%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.055%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.055%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.055%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.055%) Oracle SCM
Cloud Services
1 620 (34.12%) AWS
2 556 (30.60%) Azure
3 246 (13.54%) Azure DevOps
4 213 (11.72%) GCP
5 171 (9.41%) Serverless
6 153 (8.42%) GitHub
7 129 (7.10%) SaaS
8 77 (4.24%) AWS Lambda
9 76 (4.18%) GitHub Actions
10 74 (4.07%) Amazon EKS
11 71 (3.91%) Amazon S3
12 67 (3.69%) AWS CloudFormation
13 56 (3.08%) PaaS
14 47 (2.59%) Power Platform
15 46 (2.53%) Azure Service Bus
16 41 (2.26%) dbt
17 40 (2.20%) Azure Monitor
18 38 (2.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 38 (2.09%) Azure Data Factory
18 38 (2.09%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 61 (3.36%) Broadband
2 26 (1.43%) Firewall
3 13 (0.72%) CHAP
4 12 (0.66%) DNS
4 12 (0.66%) WAN
5 11 (0.61%) SD-WAN
6 10 (0.55%) 5G
7 9 (0.50%) DMARC
8 6 (0.33%) HTTP
8 6 (0.33%) Wireless
9 5 (0.28%) Bluetooth
9 5 (0.28%) MQTT
9 5 (0.28%) SMS
9 5 (0.28%) VPN
9 5 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (0.28%) ZigBee
10 4 (0.22%) DHCP
10 4 (0.22%) LTE
10 4 (0.22%) SSL
11 3 (0.17%) RS-232
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (7.04%) NoSQL
2 115 (6.33%) PostgreSQL
3 97 (5.34%) MongoDB
4 69 (3.80%) SQL Server
5 39 (2.15%) DynamoDB
6 31 (1.71%) MySQL
7 30 (1.65%) Data Warehouse
7 30 (1.65%) Relational Database
8 26 (1.43%) Power BI
9 20 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
10 18 (0.99%) Spark SQL
11 17 (0.94%) BigQuery
11 17 (0.94%) Redis
12 16 (0.88%) Metadata
12 16 (0.88%) Oracle Database
13 12 (0.66%) Semantic Layer
14 11 (0.61%) Data Lake
15 10 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
15 10 (0.55%) Pinecone
16 9 (0.50%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 208 (11.45%) Git
2 154 (8.48%) Jenkins
3 141 (7.76%) GitLab
3 141 (7.76%) Selenium
4 110 (6.05%) JIRA
5 85 (4.68%) Cypress.io
6 74 (4.07%) Cucumber
7 64 (3.52%) Postman
8 59 (3.25%) TeamCity
9 45 (2.48%) JMeter
10 37 (2.04%) REST Assured
11 29 (1.60%) JUnit
11 29 (1.60%) SpecFlow
12 24 (1.32%) Zephyr
13 23 (1.27%) CircleCI
13 23 (1.27%) LabVIEW
14 22 (1.21%) TestRail
15 20 (1.10%) Crashlytics
16 19 (1.05%) Gatling
17 17 (0.94%) fastlane
General
1 458 (25.21%) Social Skills
2 418 (23.00%) Finance
3 190 (10.46%) Banking
4 187 (10.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 157 (8.64%) Public Sector
6 152 (8.37%) Analytical Skills
7 115 (6.33%) Law
8 95 (5.23%) Retail
9 62 (3.41%) Financial Institution
10 58 (3.19%) Manufacturing
11 54 (2.97%) Electronics
12 52 (2.86%) Games
13 48 (2.64%) Back Office
14 34 (1.87%) Front Office
15 32 (1.76%) Legal
16 31 (1.71%) Marketing
17 19 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
18 18 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
18 18 (0.99%) Investment Banking
18 18 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 478 (26.31%) Senior
2 293 (16.13%) Lead
3 266 (14.64%) Software Engineer
4 256 (14.09%) Developer
5 216 (11.89%) Test Engineer
6 118 (6.49%) Senior Developer
7 106 (5.83%) Java Engineer
8 89 (4.90%) Test Automation Engineer
9 88 (4.84%) QA Engineer
10 81 (4.46%) Tester
11 76 (4.18%) Senior Software Engineer
12 74 (4.07%) Test Leader
13 62 (3.41%) Architect
13 62 (3.41%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 61 (3.36%) Data Engineer
15 56 (3.08%) Senior Test Engineer
16 54 (2.97%) DevOps Engineer
17 52 (2.86%) Python Developer
18 49 (2.70%) Analyst
19 47 (2.59%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 192 (10.57%) .NET
2 188 (10.35%) React
3 161 (8.86%) RESTful
4 157 (8.64%) REST
5 155 (8.53%) Playwright
6 139 (7.65%) Spring
7 136 (7.48%) Node.js
8 100 (5.50%) Spring Boot
9 96 (5.28%) Kafka
10 68 (3.74%) AngularJS
11 62 (3.41%) HTML
12 61 (3.36%) CSS
13 55 (3.03%) OAuth
14 46 (2.53%) OAuth2
15 43 (2.37%) RabbitMQ
16 40 (2.20%) JSON
17 37 (2.04%) Vue
17 37 (2.04%) YAML
18 36 (1.98%) pytest
18 36 (1.98%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 330 (18.16%) Cloud Native
2 194 (10.68%) Product Ownership
3 135 (7.43%) Distributed Systems
4 99 (5.45%) Mobile App
5 59 (3.25%) Management Information System
6 53 (2.92%) Public Cloud
7 52 (2.86%) Low-Code
8 51 (2.81%) Algorithms
8 51 (2.81%) Enterprise Software
9 48 (2.64%) Onboarding
10 42 (2.31%) Data Structures
11 39 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
12 35 (1.93%) Greenfield Project
13 34 (1.87%) Video\Live Streaming
14 30 (1.65%) Self-Motivation
15 25 (1.38%) Blog
15 25 (1.38%) Hedge funds
16 24 (1.32%) Embedded Systems
17 23 (1.27%) Hybrid Cloud
18 22 (1.21%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 154 (8.48%) Linux
2 75 (4.13%) Windows
3 69 (3.80%) Apple iOS
4 58 (3.19%) Android
5 51 (2.81%) Unix
6 9 (0.50%) CentOS
7 8 (0.44%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.22%) Kali Linux
8 4 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.17%) AIX
9 3 (0.17%) FreeRTOS
9 3 (0.17%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.11%) Debian
10 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.055%) ThreadX
11 1 (0.055%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.055%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.055%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 996 (54.82%) CI/CD
2 752 (41.39%) Agile
3 620 (34.12%) DevOps
4 501 (27.57%) Software Engineering
5 455 (25.04%) Continuous Improvement
6 440 (24.22%) Mentoring
7 363 (19.98%) Problem-Solving
8 332 (18.27%) Microservices
9 327 (18.00%) Infrastructure as Code
10 305 (16.79%) AI
11 282 (15.52%) Software Testing
12 252 (13.87%) Observability
13 238 (13.10%) Containerisation
14 228 (12.55%) Coaching
14 228 (12.55%) Full-Stack Development
15 226 (12.44%) Test Strategy
16 215 (11.83%) Validation
17 196 (10.79%) Clean Code
18 174 (9.58%) Technical Leadership
19 170 (9.36%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 571 (31.43%) Python
2 499 (27.46%) Java
3 301 (16.57%) SQL
4 264 (14.53%) JavaScript
5 230 (12.66%) C#
6 224 (12.33%) TypeScript
7 96 (5.28%) C++
8 86 (4.73%) Go
9 78 (4.29%) Bash
10 65 (3.58%) PowerShell
11 58 (3.19%) C
12 33 (1.82%) Kotlin
13 30 (1.65%) Rust
14 27 (1.49%) Bicep
15 25 (1.38%) Swift
16 23 (1.27%) PHP
17 22 (1.21%) MATLAB
18 18 (0.99%) Ruby
19 16 (0.88%) Groovy
20 15 (0.83%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 235 (12.93%) Degree
2 205 (11.28%) Security Cleared
3 123 (6.77%) SC Cleared
4 93 (5.12%) Computer Science Degree
5 83 (4.57%) ISTQB
6 41 (2.26%) DV Cleared
7 29 (1.60%) AWS Certification
7 29 (1.60%) Master's Degree
8 21 (1.16%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 21 (1.16%) CISSP
9 19 (1.05%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 18 (0.99%) DBS Check
11 15 (0.83%) HND
12 13 (0.72%) CGEIT
12 13 (0.72%) CISA
12 13 (0.72%) CISM
12 13 (0.72%) FFIEC
12 13 (0.72%) PhD
12 13 (0.72%) SANS
13 12 (0.66%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 410 (22.56%) QA
2 161 (8.86%) Accessibility
3 83 (4.57%) Data Quality
4 49 (2.70%) GDPR
5 33 (1.82%) WCAG
6 24 (1.32%) NIST
7 17 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.83%) SLA
9 14 (0.77%) COBIT
10 12 (0.66%) Software Quality Assurance
11 11 (0.61%) GRC
12 8 (0.44%) ISO 22301
12 8 (0.44%) ISO 9001
13 7 (0.39%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.33%) PMO
15 5 (0.28%) JTAG
16 4 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
16 4 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 3 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 12207
17 3 (0.17%) PERC
System Software
1 244 (13.43%) Docker
2 24 (1.32%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (1.05%) Firmware
4 18 (0.99%) Hyper-V
5 15 (0.83%) Active Directory
5 15 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.77%) KVM
7 8 (0.44%) Embedded Firmware
8 2 (0.11%) Terminal Server
8 2 (0.11%) vSphere
9 1 (0.055%) IAG
9 1 (0.055%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.055%) Xen
Systems Management
1 298 (16.40%) Terraform
2 281 (15.47%) Kubernetes
3 133 (7.32%) Grafana
4 74 (4.07%) Ansible
5 65 (3.58%) Prometheus
6 24 (1.32%) Argo
7 15 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (0.72%) Kibana
9 7 (0.39%) logstash
10 5 (0.28%) HP Fortify
10 5 (0.28%) SCCM
10 5 (0.28%) SCOM
11 4 (0.22%) CloudHub
11 4 (0.22%) Functional Safety
11 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.22%) Packer
11 4 (0.22%) vCenter Server
12 3 (0.17%) HP ALM
12 3 (0.17%) Puppet
12 3 (0.17%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 141 (7.76%) Microsoft
2 54 (2.97%) Databricks
2 54 (2.97%) Oracle
3 47 (2.59%) Salesforce
4 39 (2.15%) VMware
5 36 (1.98%) Google
6 24 (1.32%) ServiceNow
7 23 (1.27%) Splunk
8 21 (1.16%) Dynatrace
8 21 (1.16%) OpenAI
9 17 (0.94%) SAP
10 16 (0.88%) Braze
11 14 (0.77%) Amplitude
12 13 (0.72%) CrowdStrike
12 13 (0.72%) IFS
12 13 (0.72%) MuleSoft
13 12 (0.66%) AppDynamics
14 11 (0.61%) Commvault
14 11 (0.61%) Foundry
15 10 (0.55%) Atlassian