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

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 94 90
Rank change year-on-year -2 -4 -57
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,623 1,292 2,719
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.95% 3.16% 2.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.56% 3.40% 3.43%
Number of salaries quoted 1,015 890 1,805
10th Percentile £42,500 £38,750 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £46,691 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £60,000 £57,965
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% +3.51% -10.82%
75th Percentile £83,750 £80,938 £73,750
90th Percentile £105,000 £98,474 £91,934
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +4.55% +4.76% -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 63,393 38,022 79,332
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 76.08% 92.93% 86.08%
Number of salaries quoted 39,190 22,514 58,792
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,008
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -10.57%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £53,688 £50,000
% change year-on-year -6.87% +7.38% -7.94%

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 April 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 April 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 1,358 £62,500 +4.17% 674
UK excluding London -30 871 £57,500 +4.55% 573
Work from Home +9 675 £65,000 +6.56% 333
London +37 603 £80,000 +10.34% 183
North of England -53 192 £61,500 +11.82% 162
South East -40 176 £55,000 +4.76% 145
South West -24 159 £55,000 -4.35% 72
Midlands -34 128 £60,000 +4.35% 83
Scotland +11 118 £62,500 +4.17% 30
North West -13 101 £60,000 +14.29% 82
West Midlands -28 65 £61,000 -2.40% 57
East Midlands -23 63 £55,200 +10.40% 26
Yorkshire -63 57 £66,538 +33.08% 41
East of England -14 56 £50,000 -25.93% 65
Wales -6 39 £55,000 +4.76% 27
North East -24 34 £55,000 -9.10% 39
Northern Ireland -37 11 £80,000 +45.45% 7

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 (2.40%) Confluence
2 23 (1.42%) Apache Airflow
3 17 (1.05%) Apache Spark
4 13 (0.80%) Appian
5 11 (0.68%) Apache
6 10 (0.62%) CMS
6 10 (0.62%) Palantir Foundry
7 9 (0.55%) IIS
7 9 (0.55%) Jupyter
7 9 (0.55%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 9 (0.55%) SharePoint
8 6 (0.37%) WordPress
9 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.18%) nginx
9 3 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.12%) Camunda
10 2 (0.12%) JBoss
10 2 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.12%) SAS
10 2 (0.12%) Umbraco
Applications
1 14 (0.86%) Microsoft Excel
1 14 (0.86%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.55%) MS Visio
3 8 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.31%) PlantUML
5 4 (0.25%) Fusion 360
6 3 (0.18%) CANalyzer
7 2 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.062%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.062%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 17 (1.05%) Oracle ERP
2 12 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
4 4 (0.25%) Dynamics AX
4 4 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 4 (0.25%) Shopify
5 3 (0.18%) Visualfiles
6 2 (0.12%) SAP CX
7 1 (0.062%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.062%) Endur
7 1 (0.062%) Findur
7 1 (0.062%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.062%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.062%) Oracle SCM
7 1 (0.062%) SAP S/4HANA
7 1 (0.062%) Siebel CRM
7 1 (0.062%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 541 (33.33%) Azure
2 499 (30.75%) AWS
3 258 (15.90%) Azure DevOps
4 201 (12.38%) GCP
5 200 (12.32%) GitHub
6 131 (8.07%) SaaS
7 130 (8.01%) Serverless
8 78 (4.81%) Amazon EKS
9 71 (4.37%) PaaS
10 70 (4.31%) GitHub Actions
11 58 (3.57%) dbt
12 57 (3.51%) GitHub Copilot
13 55 (3.39%) Azure Data Factory
14 54 (3.33%) AWS Lambda
15 51 (3.14%) Power Platform
16 46 (2.83%) Amazon S3
16 46 (2.83%) AWS CloudFormation
17 41 (2.53%) Datadog
18 34 (2.09%) Entra ID
18 34 (2.09%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.23%) DNS
2 18 (1.11%) Broadband
3 14 (0.86%) HTTP
4 13 (0.80%) CHAP
4 13 (0.80%) WAN
5 12 (0.74%) Firewall
5 12 (0.74%) SD-WAN
6 10 (0.62%) TCP/IP
7 9 (0.55%) 5G
8 8 (0.49%) VPN
9 4 (0.25%) SMTP
10 3 (0.18%) Cisco ISE
10 3 (0.18%) Ethernet
10 3 (0.18%) Multicast
10 3 (0.18%) VLAN
10 3 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
11 2 (0.12%) Network Security
11 2 (0.12%) PuTTY
11 2 (0.12%) VSAN
11 2 (0.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 103 (6.35%) NoSQL
2 100 (6.16%) PostgreSQL
3 88 (5.42%) SQL Server
4 54 (3.33%) MongoDB
5 44 (2.71%) Relational Database
6 38 (2.34%) MySQL
7 36 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
8 34 (2.09%) Power BI
9 27 (1.66%) DynamoDB
10 18 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
11 15 (0.92%) Metadata
12 14 (0.86%) Redis
13 13 (0.80%) Data Lake
13 13 (0.80%) Pinecone
14 12 (0.74%) BigQuery
14 12 (0.74%) DB2
15 10 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
15 10 (0.62%) Oracle Database
15 10 (0.62%) Spark SQL
15 10 (0.62%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 189 (11.65%) Selenium
2 184 (11.34%) Git
3 138 (8.50%) Jenkins
4 135 (8.32%) JIRA
5 91 (5.61%) Cypress.io
6 85 (5.24%) GitLab
7 79 (4.87%) Cucumber
8 67 (4.13%) TeamCity
9 62 (3.82%) Postman
10 52 (3.20%) JMeter
11 38 (2.34%) SpecFlow
12 31 (1.91%) REST Assured
13 27 (1.66%) CircleCI
14 25 (1.54%) TestRail
15 24 (1.48%) JUnit
15 24 (1.48%) MLflow
16 22 (1.36%) Robot Framework
17 21 (1.29%) Bitbucket
18 18 (1.11%) WebDriver
18 18 (1.11%) Zephyr
General
1 460 (28.34%) Social Skills
2 446 (27.48%) Finance
3 184 (11.34%) Banking
4 153 (9.43%) Analytical Skills
5 137 (8.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 126 (7.76%) Law
7 96 (5.91%) Public Sector
7 96 (5.91%) Retail
8 64 (3.94%) Financial Institution
9 47 (2.90%) Back Office
10 43 (2.65%) Electronics
11 40 (2.46%) Legal
12 39 (2.40%) Manufacturing
13 37 (2.28%) Front Office
13 37 (2.28%) Marketing
14 26 (1.60%) Games
15 19 (1.17%) Documentation Skills
16 17 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
17 14 (0.86%) Telecoms
18 13 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 415 (25.57%) Senior
2 259 (15.96%) Lead
3 228 (14.05%) Developer
4 215 (13.25%) Software Engineer
5 165 (10.17%) Test Engineer
6 104 (6.41%) Senior Developer
7 97 (5.98%) QA Engineer
8 85 (5.24%) Tester
9 83 (5.11%) Java Engineer
10 79 (4.87%) Test Leader
11 73 (4.50%) Test Automation Engineer
12 69 (4.25%) Senior Software Engineer
13 67 (4.13%) Analyst
14 59 (3.64%) Automation Engineer
15 53 (3.27%) Automation Tester
15 53 (3.27%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 52 (3.20%) Python Developer
17 51 (3.14%) QA Automation Engineer
18 46 (2.83%) Data Engineer
18 46 (2.83%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 204 (12.57%) React
2 161 (9.92%) .NET
3 144 (8.87%) Playwright
3 144 (8.87%) RESTful
4 135 (8.32%) REST
5 97 (5.98%) Spring
6 89 (5.48%) Node.js
7 71 (4.37%) HTML
8 70 (4.31%) CSS
9 69 (4.25%) Spring Boot
10 66 (4.07%) Kafka
11 56 (3.45%) JSON
12 52 (3.20%) OAuth
13 49 (3.02%) pytest
14 41 (2.53%) AngularJS
14 41 (2.53%) Django
14 41 (2.53%) Elastic Stack
14 41 (2.53%) Web Services
15 39 (2.40%) OAuth2
16 37 (2.28%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 263 (16.20%) Cloud Native
2 137 (8.44%) Product Ownership
3 81 (4.99%) Mobile App
4 66 (4.07%) Distributed Systems
5 61 (3.76%) Management Information System
6 45 (2.77%) Enterprise Software
6 45 (2.77%) Self-Motivation
7 44 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
8 40 (2.46%) Onboarding
9 37 (2.28%) Algorithms
10 35 (2.16%) Greenfield Project
11 33 (2.03%) Data Structures
11 33 (2.03%) Low-Code
12 27 (1.66%) Hedge funds
12 27 (1.66%) Hybrid Cloud
13 26 (1.60%) Equities
13 26 (1.60%) Public Cloud
14 21 (1.29%) Blog
15 20 (1.23%) Client/Server
15 20 (1.23%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 159 (9.80%) Linux
2 85 (5.24%) Windows
3 65 (4.00%) Apple iOS
4 54 (3.33%) Android
5 38 (2.34%) Unix
6 10 (0.62%) CentOS
7 9 (0.55%) Windows Server
8 5 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.25%) Debian
9 4 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.18%) Ubuntu
10 3 (0.18%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
11 2 (0.12%) Kali Linux
11 2 (0.12%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.12%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.062%) AIX
12 1 (0.062%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 834 (51.39%) CI/CD
2 663 (40.85%) Agile
3 564 (34.75%) DevOps
4 400 (24.65%) Continuous Improvement
5 388 (23.91%) Software Engineering
6 349 (21.50%) Mentoring
7 347 (21.38%) Problem-Solving
8 264 (16.27%) Microservices
9 261 (16.08%) AI
10 248 (15.28%) Infrastructure as Code
11 236 (14.54%) Software Testing
12 229 (14.11%) Coaching
13 220 (13.56%) Observability
14 199 (12.26%) Clean Code
15 197 (12.14%) Test Strategy
16 191 (11.77%) Containerisation
17 186 (11.46%) Full-Stack Development
18 159 (9.80%) Deployment Automation
19 157 (9.67%) Validation
20 155 (9.55%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 498 (30.68%) Python
2 420 (25.88%) Java
3 311 (19.16%) SQL
4 245 (15.10%) JavaScript
5 209 (12.88%) TypeScript
6 178 (10.97%) C#
7 80 (4.93%) PowerShell
8 71 (4.37%) C++
9 57 (3.51%) Bash
10 50 (3.08%) Go
11 36 (2.22%) C
12 32 (1.97%) Bicep
13 28 (1.73%) Kotlin
14 26 (1.60%) PL/SQL
15 25 (1.54%) Apex Code
15 25 (1.54%) Shell Script
16 24 (1.48%) Rust
17 19 (1.17%) PHP
17 19 (1.17%) Swift
18 13 (0.80%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 215 (13.25%) Degree
2 151 (9.30%) Security Cleared
3 100 (6.16%) SC Cleared
4 84 (5.18%) Computer Science Degree
5 83 (5.11%) ISTQB
6 31 (1.91%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 31 (1.91%) Master's Degree
7 29 (1.79%) DV Cleared
8 21 (1.29%) AWS Certification
9 19 (1.17%) CISSP
10 18 (1.11%) ISEB
11 14 (0.86%) Azure Certification
11 14 (0.86%) CEH
11 14 (0.86%) CISA
11 14 (0.86%) HND
12 13 (0.80%) CGEIT
12 13 (0.80%) CISM
12 13 (0.80%) FFIEC
12 13 (0.80%) PhD
12 13 (0.80%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 386 (23.78%) QA
2 126 (7.76%) Accessibility
3 65 (4.00%) Data Quality
4 48 (2.96%) GDPR
5 44 (2.71%) NIST
6 34 (2.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 26 (1.60%) WCAG
8 14 (0.86%) ISO 22301
9 13 (0.80%) COBIT
9 13 (0.80%) SLA
10 10 (0.62%) ISO 9001
10 10 (0.62%) Software Quality Assurance
11 9 (0.55%) NCSC
12 7 (0.43%) GRC
12 7 (0.43%) IEC 61508
13 5 (0.31%) ISO 26262
13 5 (0.31%) PMO
13 5 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 5 (0.31%) SOC 2
14 4 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 233 (14.36%) Docker
2 28 (1.73%) Active Directory
3 21 (1.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (0.92%) Hyper-V
5 14 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
6 13 (0.80%) Firmware
6 13 (0.80%) KVM
7 8 (0.49%) Embedded Firmware
8 3 (0.18%) Terminal Server
9 2 (0.12%) vSphere
10 1 (0.062%) Xen
Systems Management
1 286 (17.62%) Kubernetes
1 286 (17.62%) Terraform
2 134 (8.26%) Grafana
3 68 (4.19%) Ansible
4 45 (2.77%) Prometheus
5 27 (1.66%) Single Sign-On
6 12 (0.74%) Argo
7 8 (0.49%) logstash
8 6 (0.37%) HP ALM
8 6 (0.37%) Kibana
8 6 (0.37%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (0.37%) SCCM
8 6 (0.37%) SCOM
9 4 (0.25%) Packer
9 4 (0.25%) Rancher
10 3 (0.18%) Functional Safety
10 3 (0.18%) HP Fortify
10 3 (0.18%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.12%) SCOrch
11 2 (0.12%) VxRail
Vendors
1 127 (7.83%) Microsoft
2 74 (4.56%) Oracle
3 52 (3.20%) Salesforce
4 51 (3.14%) Databricks
5 45 (2.77%) VMware
6 37 (2.28%) Google
7 20 (1.23%) Commvault
7 20 (1.23%) OpenAI
8 18 (1.11%) SAP
8 18 (1.11%) ServiceNow
9 17 (1.05%) Splunk
10 14 (0.86%) Atlassian
10 14 (0.86%) Palantir
11 13 (0.80%) Foundry
11 13 (0.80%) Pega
11 13 (0.80%) UiPath
12 12 (0.74%) Automation Anywhere
13 11 (0.68%) Black Duck
13 11 (0.68%) Blue Prism
13 11 (0.68%) Coverity