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

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 91 84 100
Rank change year-on-year -7 +16 -66
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,805 1,584 2,695
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.95% 3.62% 2.61%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.65% 3.89% 3.15%
Number of salaries quoted 1,127 794 1,727
10th Percentile £42,000 £40,000 £36,250
25th Percentile £48,750 £48,000 £44,125
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year - +8.70% -11.54%
75th Percentile £83,125 £82,500 £72,433
90th Percentile £97,500 £100,000 £87,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +4.35% +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 68,040 40,758 85,662
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.42% 93.05% 83.05%
Number of salaries quoted 45,181 21,501 61,227
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,250 £29,250
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% -9.69%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,967 £50,000
% change year-on-year +3.01% +1.93% -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 5 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 5 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 -1 1,584 £62,500 - 779
UK excluding London -33 983 £60,000 +4.35% 567
Work from Home +10 727 £65,000 +8.33% 750
London +29 658 £80,000 +9.59% 292
North of England -29 272 £62,500 +4.57% 164
South East -35 202 £60,000 +9.09% 134
South West -24 176 £55,000 -8.33% 61
Midlands -22 165 £60,000 +4.35% 81
North West -21 141 £60,000 -7.69% 96
West Midlands -45 83 £61,000 -6.15% 55
East Midlands -17 81 £55,000 +20.88% 26
Yorkshire -37 67 £75,000 +49.34% 40
North East -9 64 £52,500 -8.70% 29
East of England -22 64 £50,000 -12.28% 67
Wales +1 55 £55,000 -4.35% 12
Scotland -36 51 £60,000 -2.04% 32
Northern Ireland -35 11 £80,000 +45.45% 27

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 35 (1.94%) Confluence
2 27 (1.50%) Apache Airflow
3 20 (1.11%) Apache Spark
4 19 (1.05%) Jupyter
5 18 (1.00%) Apache
6 14 (0.78%) SharePoint
7 10 (0.55%) Palantir Foundry
8 9 (0.50%) CMS
8 9 (0.50%) IIS
9 8 (0.44%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 8 (0.44%) Appian
10 5 (0.28%) Anypoint
10 5 (0.28%) Umbraco
11 4 (0.22%) Mule
11 4 (0.22%) SAS
12 3 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 3 (0.17%) WordPress
13 2 (0.11%) Camunda
13 2 (0.11%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.11%) nginx
Applications
1 15 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.33%) PlantUML
3 6 (0.33%) Simulink
4 5 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.17%) CANalyzer
5 3 (0.17%) Fusion 360
6 2 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.11%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.055%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.055%) Lightworks
7 1 (0.055%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 10 (0.55%) 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
1 614 (34.02%) AWS
2 554 (30.69%) Azure
3 245 (13.57%) Azure DevOps
4 215 (11.91%) GCP
5 172 (9.53%) Serverless
6 153 (8.48%) GitHub
7 130 (7.20%) SaaS
8 78 (4.32%) AWS Lambda
9 76 (4.21%) GitHub Actions
10 75 (4.16%) Amazon EKS
11 72 (3.99%) Amazon S3
12 67 (3.71%) AWS CloudFormation
13 57 (3.16%) PaaS
14 46 (2.55%) Power Platform
15 44 (2.44%) Azure Service Bus
16 42 (2.33%) dbt
17 39 (2.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 39 (2.16%) Azure Data Factory
17 39 (2.16%) Azure Monitor
18 38 (2.11%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 51 (2.83%) Broadband
2 26 (1.44%) Firewall
3 13 (0.72%) CHAP
3 13 (0.72%) DNS
4 12 (0.66%) WAN
5 11 (0.61%) SD-WAN
6 10 (0.55%) 5G
7 7 (0.39%) DMARC
8 6 (0.33%) Bluetooth
8 6 (0.33%) HTTP
8 6 (0.33%) Wireless
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
10 4 (0.22%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (7.09%) NoSQL
2 110 (6.09%) PostgreSQL
3 88 (4.88%) MongoDB
4 70 (3.88%) SQL Server
5 39 (2.16%) DynamoDB
6 30 (1.66%) MySQL
6 30 (1.66%) Relational Database
7 29 (1.61%) Data Warehouse
8 25 (1.39%) Power BI
9 20 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
10 18 (1.00%) BigQuery
10 18 (1.00%) Spark SQL
11 17 (0.94%) Metadata
12 16 (0.89%) Redis
13 15 (0.83%) Oracle Database
14 11 (0.61%) Data Lake
14 11 (0.61%) Semantic Layer
15 10 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
15 10 (0.55%) Pinecone
16 9 (0.50%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 209 (11.58%) Git
2 155 (8.59%) Jenkins
3 146 (8.09%) Selenium
4 143 (7.92%) GitLab
5 111 (6.15%) JIRA
6 84 (4.65%) Cypress.io
7 75 (4.16%) Cucumber
8 62 (3.43%) Postman
9 61 (3.38%) TeamCity
10 43 (2.38%) JMeter
11 36 (1.99%) REST Assured
12 30 (1.66%) JUnit
13 29 (1.61%) SpecFlow
14 26 (1.44%) CircleCI
15 23 (1.27%) LabVIEW
15 23 (1.27%) Zephyr
16 22 (1.22%) TestRail
17 19 (1.05%) Crashlytics
17 19 (1.05%) Gatling
18 18 (1.00%) MLflow
General
1 458 (25.37%) Social Skills
2 420 (23.27%) Finance
3 190 (10.53%) Banking
4 183 (10.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 157 (8.70%) Public Sector
6 151 (8.37%) Analytical Skills
7 118 (6.54%) Law
8 97 (5.37%) Retail
9 62 (3.43%) Financial Institution
10 59 (3.27%) Manufacturing
11 56 (3.10%) Electronics
12 48 (2.66%) Back Office
13 43 (2.38%) Games
14 33 (1.83%) Front Office
15 32 (1.77%) Legal
16 30 (1.66%) Marketing
17 18 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
17 18 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
18 17 (0.94%) Documentation Skills
18 17 (0.94%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 474 (26.26%) Senior
2 296 (16.40%) Lead
3 267 (14.79%) Software Engineer
4 255 (14.13%) Developer
5 213 (11.80%) Test Engineer
6 115 (6.37%) Senior Developer
7 105 (5.82%) Java Engineer
8 88 (4.88%) Test Automation Engineer
9 87 (4.82%) QA Engineer
10 80 (4.43%) Tester
11 77 (4.27%) Senior Software Engineer
12 76 (4.21%) Test Leader
13 64 (3.55%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 61 (3.38%) Data Engineer
15 59 (3.27%) Architect
16 56 (3.10%) Senior Test Engineer
17 54 (2.99%) DevOps Engineer
18 48 (2.66%) Python Developer
19 47 (2.60%) Analyst
19 47 (2.60%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 193 (10.69%) .NET
1 193 (10.69%) React
2 157 (8.70%) REST
3 156 (8.64%) Playwright
4 149 (8.25%) RESTful
5 138 (7.65%) Spring
6 134 (7.42%) Node.js
7 99 (5.48%) Spring Boot
8 96 (5.32%) Kafka
9 68 (3.77%) AngularJS
10 64 (3.55%) HTML
11 63 (3.49%) CSS
12 53 (2.94%) OAuth
13 44 (2.44%) OAuth2
14 43 (2.38%) RabbitMQ
15 41 (2.27%) JSON
16 36 (1.99%) .NET Framework
16 36 (1.99%) ASP.NET
16 36 (1.99%) pytest
16 36 (1.99%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 317 (17.56%) Cloud Native
2 190 (10.53%) Product Ownership
3 125 (6.93%) Distributed Systems
4 95 (5.26%) Mobile App
5 59 (3.27%) Management Information System
6 53 (2.94%) Public Cloud
7 51 (2.83%) Algorithms
7 51 (2.83%) Enterprise Software
8 47 (2.60%) Onboarding
9 43 (2.38%) Low-Code
10 41 (2.27%) Data Structures
11 39 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
12 37 (2.05%) Greenfield Project
13 32 (1.77%) Self-Motivation
14 25 (1.39%) Blog
14 25 (1.39%) Video\Live Streaming
15 24 (1.33%) Embedded Systems
15 24 (1.33%) Hedge funds
15 24 (1.33%) Hybrid Cloud
16 22 (1.22%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 156 (8.64%) Linux
2 75 (4.16%) Windows
3 70 (3.88%) Apple iOS
4 59 (3.27%) Android
5 50 (2.77%) 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
1 987 (54.68%) CI/CD
2 749 (41.50%) Agile
3 617 (34.18%) DevOps
4 491 (27.20%) Software Engineering
5 440 (24.38%) Continuous Improvement
6 439 (24.32%) Mentoring
7 367 (20.33%) Problem-Solving
8 330 (18.28%) Microservices
9 322 (17.84%) Infrastructure as Code
10 291 (16.12%) AI
11 278 (15.40%) Software Testing
12 245 (13.57%) Observability
13 238 (13.19%) Containerisation
14 227 (12.58%) Coaching
15 222 (12.30%) Full-Stack Development
15 222 (12.30%) Test Strategy
16 201 (11.14%) Validation
17 194 (10.75%) Clean Code
18 177 (9.81%) Technical Leadership
19 170 (9.42%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 563 (31.19%) Python
2 498 (27.59%) Java
3 303 (16.79%) SQL
4 268 (14.85%) JavaScript
5 228 (12.63%) C#
6 227 (12.58%) TypeScript
7 96 (5.32%) C++
8 79 (4.38%) Bash
9 76 (4.21%) Go
10 67 (3.71%) PowerShell
11 57 (3.16%) C
12 32 (1.77%) Kotlin
13 31 (1.72%) Rust
14 29 (1.61%) Bicep
15 24 (1.33%) Swift
16 22 (1.22%) PHP
17 21 (1.16%) MATLAB
18 18 (1.00%) Ruby
19 16 (0.89%) Groovy
20 14 (0.78%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 235 (13.02%) Degree
2 208 (11.52%) Security Cleared
3 124 (6.87%) SC Cleared
4 94 (5.21%) Computer Science Degree
5 79 (4.38%) ISTQB
6 42 (2.33%) DV Cleared
7 30 (1.66%) AWS Certification
7 30 (1.66%) Master's Degree
8 21 (1.16%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 21 (1.16%) CISSP
9 18 (1.00%) DBS Check
10 17 (0.94%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
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
1 406 (22.49%) QA
2 158 (8.75%) Accessibility
3 81 (4.49%) Data Quality
4 49 (2.71%) GDPR
5 30 (1.66%) WCAG
6 25 (1.39%) NIST
7 18 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.83%) SLA
9 14 (0.78%) COBIT
10 12 (0.66%) Software Quality Assurance
11 11 (0.61%) GRC
12 9 (0.50%) ISO 22301
13 8 (0.44%) ISO 9001
14 7 (0.39%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.33%) PMO
16 5 (0.28%) JTAG
17 4 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
17 4 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 3 (0.17%) IEC 61508
18 3 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 12207
System Software
1 253 (14.02%) Docker
2 24 (1.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (1.11%) Firmware
4 18 (1.00%) Hyper-V
5 15 (0.83%) Active Directory
5 15 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.78%) 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
1 304 (16.84%) Terraform
2 288 (15.96%) Kubernetes
3 136 (7.53%) Grafana
4 76 (4.21%) Ansible
5 66 (3.66%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.44%) 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%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.22%) Packer
11 4 (0.22%) vCenter Server
12 3 (0.17%) Functional Safety
12 3 (0.17%) HP ALM
12 3 (0.17%) Puppet
12 3 (0.17%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 137 (7.59%) Microsoft
2 54 (2.99%) Databricks
2 54 (2.99%) Oracle
3 47 (2.60%) Salesforce
4 40 (2.22%) VMware
5 36 (1.99%) Google
6 24 (1.33%) ServiceNow
7 23 (1.27%) Splunk
8 21 (1.16%) OpenAI
9 19 (1.05%) Dynatrace
10 18 (1.00%) SAP
11 16 (0.89%) Braze
12 14 (0.78%) Amplitude
13 13 (0.72%) CrowdStrike
13 13 (0.72%) IFS
13 13 (0.72%) MuleSoft
14 12 (0.66%) AppDynamics
14 12 (0.66%) Commvault
14 12 (0.66%) Foundry
15 11 (0.61%) Atlassian