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 30 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 91 81 97
Rank change year-on-year -10 +16 -64
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,812 1,576 2,699
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.95% 3.63% 2.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.63% 3.90% 3.20%
Number of salaries quoted 1,133 808 1,742
10th Percentile £42,473 £40,000 £36,250
25th Percentile £48,750 £48,000 £44,063
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year - +8.70% -11.54%
75th Percentile £83,750 £82,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £99,650 £87,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,471 £52,500
% change year-on-year +4.40% +9.47% -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 68,833 40,438 84,237
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.92% 93.25% 83.74%
Number of salaries quoted 44,981 21,310 60,621
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,750 £29,200
25th Percentile £41,000 £40,871 £39,885
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,610 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.15% +4.75% -9.69%
75th Percentile £78,750 £78,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £51,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +2.94% +2.00% -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 30 May 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 30 May 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 -6 1,587 £62,500 - 606
UK excluding London -36 986 £60,000 +4.40% 441
Work from Home +7 736 £65,000 +8.33% 276
London +24 659 £80,000 +10.34% 248
North of England -30 271 £60,000 +0.39% 119
South East -19 205 £60,000 +9.09% 115
South West -22 176 £55,000 -8.33% 56
Midlands -29 165 £60,000 +4.35% 63
North West -15 140 £60,000 -7.69% 73
West Midlands -40 84 £61,000 -6.15% 44
East Midlands -17 80 £55,000 +15.79% 19
Yorkshire -40 67 £75,000 +49.34% 25
North East -7 64 £52,500 -11.02% 22
East of England -18 64 £50,000 -12.28% 44
Scotland -37 57 £60,000 - 21
Wales +2 50 £55,000 -4.35% 16
Northern Ireland -38 11 £80,000 +45.45% 21

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 39 (2.15%) Confluence
2 27 (1.49%) Apache Airflow
3 20 (1.10%) Apache Spark
4 19 (1.05%) Jupyter
5 18 (0.99%) Apache
6 15 (0.83%) SharePoint
7 11 (0.61%) CMS
8 10 (0.55%) IIS
8 10 (0.55%) Palantir Foundry
9 9 (0.50%) Appian
10 8 (0.44%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 5 (0.28%) Anypoint
11 5 (0.28%) Umbraco
12 4 (0.22%) Mule
12 4 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 4 (0.22%) SAS
13 3 (0.17%) nginx
13 3 (0.17%) WordPress
14 2 (0.11%) Cloud Foundry
14 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 14 (0.77%) 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
5 3 (0.17%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.055%) Lightworks
7 1 (0.055%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 11 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
3 5 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.28%) Visualfiles
4 4 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
4 4 (0.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.17%) Shopify
6 2 (0.11%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.055%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.055%) Endur
7 1 (0.055%) Findur
7 1 (0.055%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.055%) Magento
7 1 (0.055%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.055%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.055%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.055%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.055%) Oracle SCM
Cloud Services
1 602 (33.22%) AWS
2 566 (31.24%) Azure
3 255 (14.07%) Azure DevOps
4 215 (11.87%) GCP
5 164 (9.05%) Serverless
6 157 (8.66%) GitHub
7 130 (7.17%) SaaS
8 76 (4.19%) GitHub Actions
9 75 (4.14%) Amazon EKS
10 71 (3.92%) AWS Lambda
11 69 (3.81%) Amazon S3
12 64 (3.53%) AWS CloudFormation
13 58 (3.20%) PaaS
14 47 (2.59%) Power Platform
15 45 (2.48%) Azure Service Bus
16 42 (2.32%) Azure Data Factory
16 42 (2.32%) dbt
17 41 (2.26%) Azure Monitor
18 39 (2.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 39 (2.15%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 51 (2.81%) Broadband
2 24 (1.32%) Firewall
3 15 (0.83%) DNS
4 13 (0.72%) CHAP
5 12 (0.66%) WAN
6 11 (0.61%) HTTP
6 11 (0.61%) SD-WAN
7 10 (0.55%) 5G
8 7 (0.39%) DMARC
9 6 (0.33%) Bluetooth
9 6 (0.33%) TCP/IP
9 6 (0.33%) Wireless
10 5 (0.28%) MQTT
10 5 (0.28%) SMS
10 5 (0.28%) VPN
10 5 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
10 5 (0.28%) ZigBee
11 4 (0.22%) DHCP
11 4 (0.22%) LTE
11 4 (0.22%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (7.17%) NoSQL
2 111 (6.13%) PostgreSQL
3 88 (4.86%) MongoDB
4 77 (4.25%) SQL Server
5 39 (2.15%) DynamoDB
6 30 (1.66%) MySQL
6 30 (1.66%) Relational Database
7 28 (1.55%) Data Warehouse
8 25 (1.38%) Power BI
9 22 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
10 18 (0.99%) BigQuery
10 18 (0.99%) Metadata
10 18 (0.99%) Spark SQL
11 17 (0.94%) Redis
12 14 (0.77%) Oracle Database
13 11 (0.61%) Data Lake
13 11 (0.61%) Pinecone
13 11 (0.61%) Semantic Layer
14 10 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
15 9 (0.50%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 216 (11.92%) Git
2 158 (8.72%) Jenkins
3 149 (8.22%) Selenium
4 141 (7.78%) GitLab
5 119 (6.57%) JIRA
6 82 (4.53%) Cypress.io
7 74 (4.08%) Cucumber
8 63 (3.48%) Postman
8 63 (3.48%) TeamCity
9 42 (2.32%) JMeter
10 35 (1.93%) REST Assured
11 31 (1.71%) SpecFlow
12 30 (1.66%) JUnit
13 28 (1.55%) CircleCI
14 24 (1.32%) TestRail
15 23 (1.27%) LabVIEW
16 21 (1.16%) Zephyr
17 20 (1.10%) MLflow
18 18 (0.99%) Crashlytics
18 18 (0.99%) Gatling
General
1 466 (25.72%) Social Skills
2 424 (23.40%) Finance
3 189 (10.43%) Banking
4 183 (10.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 154 (8.50%) Analytical Skills
6 152 (8.39%) Public Sector
7 119 (6.57%) Law
8 97 (5.35%) Retail
9 63 (3.48%) Financial Institution
10 58 (3.20%) Electronics
10 58 (3.20%) Manufacturing
11 49 (2.70%) Back Office
12 43 (2.37%) Games
13 33 (1.82%) Front Office
13 33 (1.82%) Legal
14 30 (1.66%) Marketing
15 20 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
16 19 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
17 18 (0.99%) Documentation Skills
18 17 (0.94%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 481 (26.55%) Senior
2 302 (16.67%) Lead
3 263 (14.51%) Software Engineer
4 261 (14.40%) Developer
5 211 (11.64%) Test Engineer
6 119 (6.57%) Senior Developer
7 104 (5.74%) Java Engineer
8 90 (4.97%) QA Engineer
9 86 (4.75%) Test Automation Engineer
10 82 (4.53%) Tester
11 77 (4.25%) Senior Software Engineer
12 74 (4.08%) Test Leader
13 63 (3.48%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 61 (3.37%) Data Engineer
15 58 (3.20%) Architect
16 55 (3.04%) DevOps Engineer
16 55 (3.04%) Senior Test Engineer
17 50 (2.76%) Analyst
18 49 (2.70%) Automation Engineer
19 48 (2.65%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 195 (10.76%) .NET
2 191 (10.54%) React
3 159 (8.77%) REST
4 157 (8.66%) Playwright
5 156 (8.61%) RESTful
6 129 (7.12%) Spring
7 128 (7.06%) Node.js
8 96 (5.30%) Kafka
9 93 (5.13%) Spring Boot
10 65 (3.59%) AngularJS
10 65 (3.59%) HTML
11 64 (3.53%) CSS
12 56 (3.09%) OAuth
13 46 (2.54%) OAuth2
13 46 (2.54%) RabbitMQ
14 43 (2.37%) JSON
15 39 (2.15%) .NET Framework
16 37 (2.04%) pytest
17 36 (1.99%) PyTorch
17 36 (1.99%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 312 (17.22%) Cloud Native
2 187 (10.32%) Product Ownership
3 122 (6.73%) Distributed Systems
4 94 (5.19%) Mobile App
5 59 (3.26%) Management Information System
6 50 (2.76%) Algorithms
7 49 (2.70%) Enterprise Software
8 48 (2.65%) Onboarding
8 48 (2.65%) Public Cloud
9 45 (2.48%) Low-Code
10 39 (2.15%) Data Structures
10 39 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
11 36 (1.99%) Greenfield Project
12 35 (1.93%) Self-Motivation
13 26 (1.43%) Embedded Systems
14 25 (1.38%) Blog
14 25 (1.38%) Video\Live Streaming
15 24 (1.32%) Hedge funds
16 23 (1.27%) Hybrid Cloud
17 22 (1.21%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 162 (8.94%) Linux
2 81 (4.47%) Windows
3 71 (3.92%) Apple iOS
4 61 (3.37%) Android
5 51 (2.81%) Unix
6 9 (0.50%) CentOS
6 9 (0.50%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.22%) Kali Linux
7 4 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.17%) FreeRTOS
8 3 (0.17%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (0.11%) AIX
9 2 (0.11%) Debian
10 1 (0.055%) ThreadX
10 1 (0.055%) VxWorks
10 1 (0.055%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.055%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 987 (54.47%) CI/CD
2 751 (41.45%) Agile
3 627 (34.60%) DevOps
4 485 (26.77%) Software Engineering
5 447 (24.67%) Continuous Improvement
6 442 (24.39%) Mentoring
7 367 (20.25%) Problem-Solving
8 328 (18.10%) Microservices
9 320 (17.66%) Infrastructure as Code
10 294 (16.23%) AI
11 278 (15.34%) Software Testing
12 246 (13.58%) Observability
13 239 (13.19%) Containerisation
14 233 (12.86%) Coaching
15 223 (12.31%) Full-Stack Development
16 220 (12.14%) Test Strategy
17 204 (11.26%) Validation
18 200 (11.04%) Clean Code
19 173 (9.55%) Technical Leadership
20 172 (9.49%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 560 (30.91%) Python
2 489 (26.99%) Java
3 313 (17.27%) SQL
4 267 (14.74%) JavaScript
5 234 (12.91%) C#
6 226 (12.47%) TypeScript
7 98 (5.41%) C++
8 80 (4.42%) Bash
9 73 (4.03%) Go
10 70 (3.86%) PowerShell
11 57 (3.15%) C
12 31 (1.71%) Bicep
12 31 (1.71%) Kotlin
12 31 (1.71%) Rust
13 23 (1.27%) PHP
13 23 (1.27%) Swift
14 21 (1.16%) MATLAB
15 16 (0.88%) Groovy
15 16 (0.88%) PL/SQL
16 15 (0.83%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 238 (13.13%) Degree
2 207 (11.42%) Security Cleared
3 126 (6.95%) SC Cleared
4 94 (5.19%) Computer Science Degree
5 79 (4.36%) ISTQB
6 43 (2.37%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.77%) Master's Degree
8 27 (1.49%) AWS Certification
9 21 (1.16%) CISSP
10 19 (1.05%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 19 (1.05%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 18 (0.99%) DBS Check
12 15 (0.83%) HND
13 13 (0.72%) CGEIT
13 13 (0.72%) CISA
13 13 (0.72%) CISM
13 13 (0.72%) FFIEC
13 13 (0.72%) PhD
13 13 (0.72%) SANS
14 12 (0.66%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 414 (22.85%) QA
2 155 (8.55%) Accessibility
3 82 (4.53%) Data Quality
4 50 (2.76%) GDPR
5 28 (1.55%) WCAG
6 25 (1.38%) NIST
7 18 (0.99%) 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 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
16 5 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 4 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
18 3 (0.17%) IEC 61508
18 3 (0.17%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 256 (14.13%) Docker
2 25 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (1.10%) Firmware
4 19 (1.05%) Active Directory
5 18 (0.99%) Hyper-V
6 15 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
7 14 (0.77%) KVM
8 8 (0.44%) Embedded Firmware
9 3 (0.17%) Terminal Server
10 2 (0.11%) vSphere
11 1 (0.055%) IAG
11 1 (0.055%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.055%) Xen
Systems Management
1 307 (16.94%) Terraform
2 293 (16.17%) Kubernetes
3 137 (7.56%) Grafana
4 76 (4.19%) Ansible
5 65 (3.59%) Prometheus
6 25 (1.38%) Argo
7 17 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (0.72%) Kibana
9 8 (0.44%) logstash
10 6 (0.33%) SCCM
10 6 (0.33%) SCOM
11 5 (0.28%) HP Fortify
12 4 (0.22%) CloudHub
12 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (0.22%) Packer
12 4 (0.22%) vCenter Server
13 3 (0.17%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.17%) Puppet
13 3 (0.17%) Rancher
13 3 (0.17%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 142 (7.84%) Microsoft
2 57 (3.15%) Oracle
3 55 (3.04%) Databricks
4 49 (2.70%) Salesforce
5 41 (2.26%) VMware
6 35 (1.93%) Google
7 24 (1.32%) ServiceNow
8 23 (1.27%) Splunk
9 22 (1.21%) OpenAI
10 20 (1.10%) SAP
11 18 (0.99%) Dynatrace
12 15 (0.83%) Braze
13 14 (0.77%) CrowdStrike
14 13 (0.72%) Amplitude
14 13 (0.72%) MuleSoft
15 12 (0.66%) AppDynamics
15 12 (0.66%) Atlassian
15 12 (0.66%) Commvault
15 12 (0.66%) Foundry
15 12 (0.66%) IFS