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

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 92 98
Rank change year-on-year +15 +6 -28
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,387 1,574 2,012
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.11% 3.17% 2.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.89% 3.58% 3.17%
Number of salaries quoted 1,297 750 1,049
10th Percentile £41,250 £38,400 £38,750
25th Percentile £48,289 £50,000 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £63,500 £62,750 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.20% +4.58% -4.38%
75th Percentile £80,000 £82,751 £75,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £93,350
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -4.35%

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 82,520 44,009 63,385
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.04% 88.59% 80.80%
Number of salaries quoted 57,449 24,888 36,814
10th Percentile £31,000 £28,500 £31,875
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £76,250
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,288 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%

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 September 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 September 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 1,931 £65,000 - 1,394
UK excluding London +16 1,525 £60,000 +4.35% 885
Work from Home +15 877 £67,500 +8.00% 598
London -1 695 £80,000 - 696
North of England +16 376 £58,750 -2.08% 201
South East +7 272 £60,000 +4.35% 217
South West +9 252 £60,000 +14.29% 164
Midlands +1 216 £55,000 -9.47% 101
North West -3 189 £60,000 -2.04% 108
Northern Ireland +11 164 £80,000 +45.45% 15
Wales +9 130 £55,000 +4.76% 20
West Midlands -2 121 £55,000 -4.35% 63
North East +19 105 £55,000 +57.14% 33
East Midlands -18 95 £55,000 -12.00% 38
Yorkshire -9 82 £70,905 +41.81% 60
East of England -30 77 £50,000 -14.53% 87
Scotland -40 53 £62,500 -10.71% 101

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 53 (2.22%) Confluence
2 30 (1.26%) Apache Spark
3 25 (1.05%) SharePoint
4 24 (1.01%) Apache
5 19 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 17 (0.71%) Jupyter
7 14 (0.59%) Anypoint
7 14 (0.59%) Mule
8 13 (0.54%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 12 (0.50%) CMS
10 6 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
11 5 (0.21%) Cloud Foundry
11 5 (0.21%) nginx
11 5 (0.21%) Umbraco
12 4 (0.17%) Camunda
12 4 (0.17%) IIS
12 4 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
12 4 (0.17%) SAS
12 4 (0.17%) WinCC
13 3 (0.13%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 78 (3.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.54%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.54%) Simulink
3 9 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.21%) Lightworks
4 5 (0.21%) Moqups
5 3 (0.13%) CANalyzer
5 3 (0.13%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.13%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.084%) PlantUML
7 1 (0.042%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.042%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.042%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 67 (2.81%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.13%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.46%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.21%) Visualfiles
5 3 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
5 3 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
5 3 (0.13%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.084%) FLEXCUBE
6 2 (0.084%) Magento
6 2 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.084%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.084%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.042%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.042%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.042%) Endur
7 1 (0.042%) Findur
7 1 (0.042%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.042%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.042%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.042%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 810 (33.93%) AWS
2 687 (28.78%) Azure
3 306 (12.82%) SaaS
4 258 (10.81%) Azure DevOps
5 251 (10.52%) GCP
6 201 (8.42%) GitHub
7 188 (7.88%) Serverless
8 104 (4.36%) GitHub Actions
9 102 (4.27%) AWS CloudFormation
10 81 (3.39%) AWS Lambda
11 78 (3.27%) Amazon EKS
12 75 (3.14%) Amazon S3
13 62 (2.60%) Power Platform
14 56 (2.35%) Google Ads
14 56 (2.35%) Meta Ads
15 53 (2.22%) Azure Logic Apps
16 52 (2.18%) Azure Service Bus
17 49 (2.05%) Azure Monitor
18 41 (1.72%) Azure Functions
19 37 (1.55%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 65 (2.72%) Broadband
2 28 (1.17%) TCP/IP
3 26 (1.09%) Firewall
4 24 (1.01%) DNS
5 17 (0.71%) SSL
6 16 (0.67%) Wireless
7 13 (0.54%) DMARC
7 13 (0.54%) Wi-Fi
8 12 (0.50%) DHCP
8 12 (0.50%) HTTP
8 12 (0.50%) Modbus
8 12 (0.50%) MQTT
9 11 (0.46%) 5G
9 11 (0.46%) WAN
10 10 (0.42%) LTE
11 9 (0.38%) 3GPP
11 9 (0.38%) Network Security
12 7 (0.29%) GSM
12 7 (0.29%) RANAP
12 7 (0.29%) UMTS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (5.66%) PostgreSQL
2 126 (5.28%) NoSQL
3 93 (3.90%) MongoDB
4 80 (3.35%) SQL Server
5 65 (2.72%) Relational Database
6 46 (1.93%) DynamoDB
7 40 (1.68%) MySQL
8 36 (1.51%) Data Warehouse
9 35 (1.47%) Power BI
9 35 (1.47%) Redis
10 28 (1.17%) BigQuery
10 28 (1.17%) Data Lake
11 20 (0.84%) Semantic Layer
12 19 (0.80%) Amazon Athena
12 19 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
12 19 (0.80%) Metadata
13 18 (0.75%) Spark SQL
14 13 (0.54%) Azure SQL Database
14 13 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
15 12 (0.50%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 352 (14.75%) Git
2 232 (9.72%) GitLab
3 217 (9.09%) Jenkins
4 170 (7.12%) Selenium
5 147 (6.16%) JIRA
6 110 (4.61%) Cypress.io
7 107 (4.48%) Cucumber
8 95 (3.98%) Postman
9 61 (2.56%) TeamCity
10 53 (2.22%) JMeter
11 47 (1.97%) JUnit
11 47 (1.97%) REST Assured
12 37 (1.55%) Zephyr
13 35 (1.47%) Gatling
14 31 (1.30%) SonarQube
15 28 (1.17%) TestRail
16 25 (1.05%) Bitbucket
16 25 (1.05%) LabVIEW
17 23 (0.96%) Maven
17 23 (0.96%) Robot Framework
General
1 662 (27.73%) Social Skills
2 570 (23.88%) Finance
3 348 (14.58%) Analytical Skills
4 259 (10.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 229 (9.59%) Public Sector
6 196 (8.21%) Law
7 195 (8.17%) Banking
8 157 (6.58%) Marketing
9 145 (6.07%) Legal
10 109 (4.57%) Retail
11 103 (4.32%) Manufacturing
12 84 (3.52%) Electronics
13 74 (3.10%) Financial Institution
14 57 (2.39%) Back Office
15 45 (1.89%) Games
16 44 (1.84%) Aerospace
17 42 (1.76%) Telecoms
18 30 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
19 25 (1.05%) Automotive
19 25 (1.05%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 673 (28.19%) Senior
2 347 (14.54%) Software Engineer
3 342 (14.33%) Lead
4 337 (14.12%) Developer
5 253 (10.60%) Test Engineer
6 129 (5.40%) Senior Developer
7 114 (4.78%) Java Engineer
8 102 (4.27%) Senior Software Engineer
9 101 (4.23%) DevOps Engineer
10 99 (4.15%) QA Engineer
11 85 (3.56%) Test Automation Engineer
12 83 (3.48%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 72 (3.02%) Data Engineer
14 69 (2.89%) Analyst
14 69 (2.89%) Lead Software Engineer
15 64 (2.68%) Architect
16 63 (2.64%) Senior Manager
16 63 (2.64%) Software Developer
16 63 (2.64%) Tester
17 60 (2.51%) Marketing Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 326 (13.66%) Terraform
2 242 (10.14%) REST
3 238 (9.97%) React
4 219 (9.17%) .NET
5 208 (8.71%) Playwright
6 199 (8.34%) Spring
7 196 (8.21%) Node.js
8 194 (8.13%) RESTful
9 146 (6.12%) Spring Boot
10 131 (5.49%) Kafka
11 117 (4.90%) CSS
12 116 (4.86%) AngularJS
13 110 (4.61%) HTML
14 71 (2.97%) OAuth
15 67 (2.81%) Middleware
16 65 (2.72%) OAuth2
17 60 (2.51%) JSON
18 51 (2.14%) Next.js
18 51 (2.14%) PySpark
19 50 (2.09%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 413 (17.30%) Cloud Native
2 292 (12.23%) Product Ownership
3 208 (8.71%) Distributed Systems
4 117 (4.90%) Mobile App
5 98 (4.11%) Onboarding
6 96 (4.02%) Enterprise Software
7 87 (3.64%) Public Cloud
8 78 (3.27%) Blog
8 78 (3.27%) Virtual Team
9 65 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
10 64 (2.68%) Marketing Technology
11 59 (2.47%) Algorithms
12 53 (2.22%) Cyber Threat
12 53 (2.22%) Low-Code
13 48 (2.01%) Self-Motivation
14 44 (1.84%) Data Structures
14 44 (1.84%) Embedded Systems
15 43 (1.80%) Management Information System
16 39 (1.63%) e-Learning
17 37 (1.55%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 190 (7.96%) Linux
2 102 (4.27%) Windows
3 67 (2.81%) Android
4 64 (2.68%) Apple iOS
5 53 (2.22%) Unix
6 11 (0.46%) Windows Server
7 9 (0.38%) CentOS
7 9 (0.38%) Embedded Linux
8 6 (0.25%) FreeRTOS
9 5 (0.21%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.17%) AIX
10 4 (0.17%) Debian
10 4 (0.17%) VMS
11 3 (0.13%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.084%) OpenWrt
13 1 (0.042%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 1 (0.042%) ThreadX
13 1 (0.042%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.042%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.042%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,329 (55.68%) CI/CD
2 1,024 (42.90%) Agile
3 857 (35.90%) DevOps
4 763 (31.96%) Software Engineering
5 712 (29.83%) Continuous Improvement
6 623 (26.10%) Mentoring
7 582 (24.38%) AI
8 533 (22.33%) Problem-Solving
9 434 (18.18%) Microservices
10 414 (17.34%) Software Testing
11 398 (16.67%) Infrastructure as Code
12 336 (14.08%) Test Strategy
13 296 (12.40%) Observability
14 292 (12.23%) Validation
15 285 (11.94%) Code Quality
15 285 (11.94%) Full-Stack Development
16 284 (11.90%) Coaching
17 274 (11.48%) Containerisation
18 260 (10.89%) Technical Leadership
19 258 (10.81%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 689 (28.86%) Python
2 585 (24.51%) Java
3 434 (18.18%) SQL
4 425 (17.80%) JavaScript
5 342 (14.33%) TypeScript
6 331 (13.87%) C#
7 127 (5.32%) C++
8 110 (4.61%) PowerShell
9 101 (4.23%) Go
10 87 (3.64%) Bash
11 82 (3.44%) C
12 41 (1.72%) Kotlin
13 34 (1.42%) PHP
14 32 (1.34%) Rust
15 29 (1.21%) Ruby
16 27 (1.13%) Swift
17 25 (1.05%) Bicep
18 24 (1.01%) Groovy
18 24 (1.01%) MATLAB
19 16 (0.67%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 336 (14.08%) Security Cleared
2 253 (10.60%) Degree
3 202 (8.46%) SC Cleared
4 110 (4.61%) Computer Science Degree
5 84 (3.52%) ISTQB
6 65 (2.72%) DV Cleared
7 57 (2.39%) CISSP
8 55 (2.30%) AWS Certification
9 54 (2.26%) CISM
9 54 (2.26%) ITIL Certification
10 46 (1.93%) Master's Degree
11 39 (1.63%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 35 (1.47%) HNC
13 32 (1.34%) BPSS Clearance
14 30 (1.26%) HND
15 19 (0.80%) ISEB
16 17 (0.71%) DBS Check
17 14 (0.59%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
17 14 (0.59%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
18 11 (0.46%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 556 (23.29%) QA
2 217 (9.09%) Accessibility
3 77 (3.23%) Data Quality
4 67 (2.81%) WCAG
5 57 (2.39%) NIST
6 49 (2.05%) ISO 22301
7 42 (1.76%) GDPR
8 14 (0.59%) GRC
8 14 (0.59%) SLA
9 11 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 10 (0.42%) Software Quality Assurance
11 9 (0.38%) SOC 2
12 8 (0.34%) MISRA
13 7 (0.29%) JTAG
13 7 (0.29%) PMO
14 6 (0.25%) COBIT
15 5 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
15 5 (0.21%) NCSC
15 5 (0.21%) PCI DSS
16 4 (0.17%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 326 (13.66%) Docker
2 42 (1.76%) Firmware
3 16 (0.67%) Active Directory
3 16 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (0.63%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.46%) Embedded Firmware
6 7 (0.29%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.21%) KVM
8 2 (0.084%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.042%) IAG
9 1 (0.042%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.042%) QEMU
9 1 (0.042%) Terminal Server
9 1 (0.042%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.042%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 334 (13.99%) Kubernetes
2 143 (5.99%) Grafana
3 82 (3.44%) Ansible
4 59 (2.47%) Prometheus
5 28 (1.17%) Argo
6 18 (0.75%) Kibana
7 15 (0.63%) Puppet
8 14 (0.59%) CloudHub
9 10 (0.42%) logstash
10 9 (0.38%) HP Fortify
10 9 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
10 9 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.29%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.25%) Functional Safety
12 6 (0.25%) Progress Chef
13 5 (0.21%) Packer
13 5 (0.21%) Rancher
14 4 (0.17%) SCCM
14 4 (0.17%) SCOM
15 3 (0.13%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 258 (10.81%) Microsoft
2 123 (5.15%) Google
3 65 (2.72%) Databricks
4 57 (2.39%) Salesforce
5 54 (2.26%) Oracle
6 46 (1.93%) SAP
7 39 (1.63%) ServiceNow
8 38 (1.59%) Splunk
9 28 (1.17%) Dynatrace
10 25 (1.05%) Pega
10 25 (1.05%) VMware
11 20 (0.84%) AppDynamics
12 18 (0.75%) MuleSoft
13 17 (0.71%) Atlassian
13 17 (0.71%) IBM
14 16 (0.67%) OpenAI
14 16 (0.67%) Red Hat
15 15 (0.63%) Allen-Bradley
16 14 (0.59%) Adobe
17 13 (0.54%) SendGrid