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 6 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 81 89 101
Rank change year-on-year +8 +12 -42
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,163 1,673 2,067
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.07% 3.37% 2.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.81% 3.77% 3.05%
Number of salaries quoted 1,226 820 1,258
10th Percentile £42,125 £37,500 £37,850
25th Percentile £48,750 £47,433 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,500 £58,750
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +6.38% -9.62%
75th Percentile £81,250 £81,250 £71,991
90th Percentile £96,250 £97,500 £86,790
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £56,000 £53,500
% change year-on-year +7.14% +4.67% -6.96%

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 76,965 44,351 67,835
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.55% 89.45% 81.04%
Number of salaries quoted 53,101 25,205 44,372
10th Percentile £30,750 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £48,750 £50,000
% change year-on-year +12.82% -2.50% -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 6 August 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 6 August 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 0 1,791 £65,000 +4.00% 1,223
UK excluding London 0 1,343 £60,000 +7.14% 726
Work from Home +16 902 £67,500 +12.50% 510
London +4 662 £80,000 +3.23% 595
North of England +11 357 £57,500 -1.71% 183
South East -23 250 £62,250 +13.18% 205
South West -9 223 £60,000 +14.29% 107
Midlands -9 190 £62,500 +4.17% 93
North West +6 186 £62,500 -3.85% 99
Northern Ireland +5 140 £80,000 +45.45% 16
West Midlands -24 97 £62,500 - 62
North East +8 95 £52,500 +31.25% 32
East Midlands -6 92 £55,000 +15.79% 31
Wales +1 78 £55,000 - 17
Yorkshire -11 76 £69,310 +41.45% 52
East of England -39 65 £51,250 -10.09% 67
Scotland -23 53 £62,500 +2.04% 56

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 47 (2.17%) Confluence
2 28 (1.29%) Apache Spark
3 27 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
4 25 (1.16%) Apache
5 24 (1.11%) SharePoint
6 16 (0.74%) Jupyter
7 14 (0.65%) Anypoint
7 14 (0.65%) Mule
8 13 (0.60%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 11 (0.51%) CMS
10 5 (0.23%) Cloud Foundry
10 5 (0.23%) IIS
10 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.23%) Umbraco
11 4 (0.18%) Camunda
11 4 (0.18%) nginx
11 4 (0.18%) SAS
11 4 (0.18%) WordPress
12 2 (0.092%) Headless CMS
12 2 (0.092%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 29 (1.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.55%) Simulink
4 7 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.28%) PlantUML
6 5 (0.23%) Lightworks
7 3 (0.14%) CANalyzer
7 3 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.14%) Moqups
7 3 (0.14%) MS Visio
8 1 (0.046%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.046%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 44 (2.03%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.25%) Dynamics GP
3 7 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.23%) Visualfiles
5 4 (0.18%) Dynamics AX
6 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
6 3 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
7 2 (0.092%) FLEXCUBE
7 2 (0.092%) Magento
7 2 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.092%) Towers Watson Igloo
7 2 (0.092%) Workday HCM
8 1 (0.046%) Elite 3E
8 1 (0.046%) Endur
8 1 (0.046%) Findur
8 1 (0.046%) Misys Equation
8 1 (0.046%) Misys Midas
8 1 (0.046%) Oracle Assets
8 1 (0.046%) Oracle ERP
8 1 (0.046%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 793 (36.66%) AWS
2 672 (31.07%) Azure
3 251 (11.60%) SaaS
4 250 (11.56%) Azure DevOps
5 243 (11.23%) GCP
6 185 (8.55%) Serverless
7 183 (8.46%) GitHub
8 93 (4.30%) AWS CloudFormation
8 93 (4.30%) GitHub Actions
9 78 (3.61%) AWS Lambda
10 74 (3.42%) Amazon EKS
10 74 (3.42%) Amazon S3
11 58 (2.68%) Power Platform
12 52 (2.40%) Azure Service Bus
13 49 (2.27%) PaaS
14 46 (2.13%) Azure Logic Apps
15 44 (2.03%) Azure Monitor
16 43 (1.99%) Amazon EC2
16 43 (1.99%) dbt
17 35 (1.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 72 (3.33%) Broadband
2 26 (1.20%) Firewall
3 16 (0.74%) DNS
4 15 (0.69%) SSL
4 15 (0.69%) Wireless
5 13 (0.60%) DMARC
5 13 (0.60%) TCP/IP
6 12 (0.55%) MQTT
6 12 (0.55%) Wi-Fi
7 10 (0.46%) LTE
8 9 (0.42%) 3GPP
8 9 (0.42%) HTTP
8 9 (0.42%) WAN
9 8 (0.37%) DHCP
9 8 (0.37%) Network Security
10 7 (0.32%) Radio Access Network
10 7 (0.32%) RANAP
10 7 (0.32%) UMTS
10 7 (0.32%) Wireshark
10 7 (0.32%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 134 (6.20%) PostgreSQL
2 133 (6.15%) NoSQL
3 103 (4.76%) MongoDB
4 73 (3.37%) SQL Server
5 51 (2.36%) Relational Database
6 47 (2.17%) DynamoDB
7 42 (1.94%) MySQL
8 31 (1.43%) Data Warehouse
9 30 (1.39%) Redis
10 28 (1.29%) Power BI
11 26 (1.20%) BigQuery
12 19 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
13 18 (0.83%) Data Lake
13 18 (0.83%) Spark SQL
14 17 (0.79%) Metadata
15 16 (0.74%) Semantic Layer
16 15 (0.69%) Amazon Athena
17 13 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
18 12 (0.55%) Oracle Database
19 10 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 289 (13.36%) Git
2 197 (9.11%) GitLab
3 195 (9.02%) Jenkins
4 160 (7.40%) Selenium
5 138 (6.38%) JIRA
6 97 (4.48%) Cucumber
7 94 (4.35%) Cypress.io
8 87 (4.02%) Postman
9 59 (2.73%) TeamCity
10 51 (2.36%) JMeter
11 44 (2.03%) JUnit
12 40 (1.85%) REST Assured
13 34 (1.57%) Zephyr
14 27 (1.25%) Gatling
15 26 (1.20%) SpecFlow
15 26 (1.20%) TestRail
16 23 (1.06%) SonarQube
17 22 (1.02%) Bitbucket
18 21 (0.97%) fastlane
19 20 (0.92%) Crashlytics
General
1 584 (27.00%) Social Skills
2 495 (22.88%) Finance
3 250 (11.56%) Analytical Skills
4 228 (10.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 219 (10.12%) Public Sector
6 196 (9.06%) Law
7 191 (8.83%) Banking
8 122 (5.64%) Legal
9 98 (4.53%) Retail
10 82 (3.79%) Marketing
11 80 (3.70%) Manufacturing
12 66 (3.05%) Financial Institution
13 64 (2.96%) Electronics
14 53 (2.45%) Games
15 51 (2.36%) Back Office
16 32 (1.48%) Telecoms
17 30 (1.39%) Aerospace
18 29 (1.34%) Front Office
19 25 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
20 21 (0.97%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 612 (28.29%) Senior
2 345 (15.95%) Lead
3 339 (15.67%) Software Engineer
4 304 (14.05%) Developer
5 225 (10.40%) Test Engineer
6 123 (5.69%) Senior Developer
7 119 (5.50%) Java Engineer
8 102 (4.72%) Senior Software Engineer
9 90 (4.16%) QA Engineer
10 86 (3.98%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 84 (3.88%) Test Automation Engineer
12 83 (3.84%) DevOps Engineer
13 71 (3.28%) Architect
14 68 (3.14%) Test Leader
15 67 (3.10%) Lead Software Engineer
16 65 (3.01%) Data Engineer
16 65 (3.01%) Tester
17 62 (2.87%) Senior Manager
18 60 (2.77%) Analyst
19 59 (2.73%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 224 (10.36%) React
2 214 (9.89%) .NET
3 192 (8.88%) REST
4 188 (8.69%) Playwright
5 184 (8.51%) Spring
6 182 (8.41%) RESTful
7 181 (8.37%) Node.js
8 135 (6.24%) Spring Boot
9 123 (5.69%) Kafka
10 109 (5.04%) AngularJS
11 87 (4.02%) CSS
12 84 (3.88%) HTML
13 68 (3.14%) OAuth
14 64 (2.96%) Middleware
15 62 (2.87%) OAuth2
16 53 (2.45%) JSON
17 48 (2.22%) Vue
18 47 (2.17%) RabbitMQ
19 43 (1.99%) .NET Core
19 43 (1.99%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 389 (17.98%) Cloud Native
2 246 (11.37%) Product Ownership
3 184 (8.51%) Distributed Systems
4 111 (5.13%) Mobile App
5 85 (3.93%) Enterprise Software
6 73 (3.37%) Virtual Team
7 72 (3.33%) Legacy Systems
7 72 (3.33%) Public Cloud
8 61 (2.82%) Algorithms
9 60 (2.77%) Cyber Threat
10 57 (2.64%) Blog
11 51 (2.36%) Low-Code
12 50 (2.31%) Management Information System
13 47 (2.17%) Onboarding
14 44 (2.03%) Data Structures
15 42 (1.94%) Self-Motivation
16 41 (1.90%) Greenfield Project
17 40 (1.85%) Marketing Technology
18 36 (1.66%) Embedded Systems
19 34 (1.57%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 189 (8.74%) Linux
2 98 (4.53%) Windows
3 66 (3.05%) Apple iOS
4 57 (2.64%) Android
5 53 (2.45%) Unix
6 12 (0.55%) Windows Server
7 7 (0.32%) CentOS
7 7 (0.32%) Embedded Linux
8 6 (0.28%) FreeRTOS
9 4 (0.18%) Debian
9 4 (0.18%) Kali Linux
10 3 (0.14%) AIX
11 2 (0.092%) VMS
11 2 (0.092%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.046%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 1 (0.046%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.046%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.046%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.046%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,237 (57.19%) CI/CD
2 967 (44.71%) Agile
3 826 (38.19%) DevOps
4 707 (32.69%) Software Engineering
5 630 (29.13%) Continuous Improvement
6 603 (27.88%) Mentoring
7 446 (20.62%) AI
8 444 (20.53%) Problem-Solving
9 415 (19.19%) Microservices
10 380 (17.57%) Infrastructure as Code
11 364 (16.83%) Software Testing
12 305 (14.10%) Test Strategy
13 275 (12.71%) Containerisation
13 275 (12.71%) Observability
14 274 (12.67%) Coaching
15 272 (12.58%) Full-Stack Development
16 256 (11.84%) Code Quality
17 241 (11.14%) Validation
18 225 (10.40%) Decision-Making
19 222 (10.26%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 677 (31.30%) Python
2 574 (26.54%) Java
3 383 (17.71%) JavaScript
4 344 (15.90%) SQL
5 316 (14.61%) TypeScript
6 315 (14.56%) C#
7 126 (5.83%) C++
8 106 (4.90%) PowerShell
9 90 (4.16%) Go
10 79 (3.65%) C
11 74 (3.42%) Bash
12 42 (1.94%) Kotlin
13 36 (1.66%) Rust
14 32 (1.48%) Swift
15 30 (1.39%) PHP
16 26 (1.20%) Ruby
17 22 (1.02%) Bicep
18 21 (0.97%) MATLAB
19 19 (0.88%) Groovy
20 16 (0.74%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 288 (13.31%) Security Cleared
2 244 (11.28%) Degree
3 179 (8.28%) SC Cleared
4 109 (5.04%) Computer Science Degree
5 78 (3.61%) ISTQB
6 63 (2.91%) CISSP
7 60 (2.77%) ITIL Certification
8 58 (2.68%) DV Cleared
9 56 (2.59%) CISM
10 44 (2.03%) AWS Certification
11 36 (1.66%) Master's Degree
12 31 (1.43%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 21 (0.97%) BPSS Clearance
14 19 (0.88%) HNC
15 17 (0.79%) DBS Check
15 17 (0.79%) ISEB
16 14 (0.65%) HND
17 13 (0.60%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
18 12 (0.55%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
19 8 (0.37%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 507 (23.44%) QA
2 196 (9.06%) Accessibility
3 71 (3.28%) Data Quality
4 63 (2.91%) NIST
5 59 (2.73%) WCAG
6 52 (2.40%) ISO 22301
7 48 (2.22%) GDPR
8 14 (0.65%) SLA
9 13 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 12 (0.55%) GRC
10 12 (0.55%) Software Quality Assurance
11 9 (0.42%) SOC 2
12 8 (0.37%) COBIT
12 8 (0.37%) MISRA
13 7 (0.32%) JTAG
14 6 (0.28%) PMO
15 5 (0.23%) ISO 9001
15 5 (0.23%) NCSC
16 4 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials
16 4 (0.18%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 299 (13.82%) Docker
2 32 (1.48%) Firmware
3 22 (1.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
5 15 (0.69%) Active Directory
6 13 (0.60%) Hyper-V
7 11 (0.51%) KVM
8 10 (0.46%) Embedded Firmware
9 2 (0.092%) ProxySG
9 2 (0.092%) vSphere
10 1 (0.046%) IAG
10 1 (0.046%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.046%) Terminal Server
10 1 (0.046%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.046%) Xen
Systems Management
1 325 (15.03%) Kubernetes
2 323 (14.93%) Terraform
3 136 (6.29%) Grafana
4 83 (3.84%) Ansible
5 61 (2.82%) Prometheus
6 27 (1.25%) Argo
7 16 (0.74%) Kibana
8 14 (0.65%) CloudHub
9 10 (0.46%) Puppet
10 9 (0.42%) logstash
10 9 (0.42%) Microsoft Intune
11 7 (0.32%) HP Fortify
11 7 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (0.28%) Functional Safety
12 6 (0.28%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.23%) Packer
14 4 (0.18%) SCCM
14 4 (0.18%) SCOM
15 3 (0.14%) Progress Chef
15 3 (0.14%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 182 (8.41%) Microsoft
2 66 (3.05%) Google
3 59 (2.73%) Databricks
4 55 (2.54%) Oracle
5 51 (2.36%) Salesforce
6 40 (1.85%) ServiceNow
7 36 (1.66%) VMware
8 33 (1.53%) Splunk
9 32 (1.48%) SAP
10 26 (1.20%) Dynatrace
11 21 (0.97%) Pega
12 19 (0.88%) AppDynamics
13 17 (0.79%) MuleSoft
14 16 (0.74%) Braze
15 15 (0.69%) Adobe
15 15 (0.69%) Atlassian
16 14 (0.65%) Amplitude
16 14 (0.65%) IBM
16 14 (0.65%) OpenAI
17 13 (0.60%) SendGrid