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 15 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 104 88 73
Rank change year-on-year -16 -15 -34
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,389 1,957 2,078
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.62% 2.88% 3.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.04% 3.47% 4.18%
Number of salaries quoted 785 883 1,656
10th Percentile £39,921 £41,250 £41,250
25th Percentile £51,250 £48,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £63,000 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% +4.17%
75th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £105,000 £105,000 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £58,079 £55,000
% change year-on-year -1.00% +5.60% -

All Process and 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 45,647 56,467 49,706
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 86.17% 83.08% 93.81%
Number of salaries quoted 27,329 29,505 38,075
10th Percentile £28,250 £34,000 £32,500
25th Percentile £35,625 £45,000 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £75,000 £79,250 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £54,714 £52,500
% change year-on-year -13.18% +4.22% -

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 15 November 2025.

Salary histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 18 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 15 November 2025. 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 -18 1,168 £65,000 - 1,025
UK excluding London -36 735 £57,500 -1.00% 667
London +28 551 £85,000 +8.97% 489
Work from Home -2 476 £65,000 - 563
South East -35 214 £55,000 -5.98% 196
North of England -51 146 £60,000 +21.21% 158
Scotland +1 118 £77,359 +40.65% 55
Midlands -19 96 £60,000 - 65
South West -7 90 £55,000 -12.00% 94
North West -29 90 £60,000 +26.32% 93
West Midlands -5 61 £57,500 -4.17% 42
East of England -46 48 £62,500 +13.64% 61
Yorkshire -27 44 £55,000 +11.11% 42
East Midlands -12 38 £60,000 - 23
Wales +11 23 £55,200 +20.46% 27
North East -10 12 £50,000 -15.23% 23
Northern Ireland -20 7 £67,500 +20.00% 19
Isle of Man - 1 £52,500 - 1

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 34 (2.45%) Apache Spark
2 32 (2.30%) Confluence
3 27 (1.94%) Apache Airflow
4 20 (1.44%) Apache
4 20 (1.44%) SharePoint
5 15 (1.08%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 13 (0.94%) Appian
7 8 (0.58%) Headless CMS
8 7 (0.50%) Apache Solr
8 7 (0.50%) Jupyter
9 6 (0.43%) CMS
10 5 (0.36%) nginx
11 4 (0.29%) IIS
12 3 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.22%) Umbraco
13 2 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 1 (0.072%) JBoss
14 1 (0.072%) Microsoft Exchange
14 1 (0.072%) WebLogic
14 1 (0.072%) WordPress
Applications
1 15 (1.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.36%) Blender
6 4 (0.29%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.29%) Oracle Smart View
7 3 (0.22%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.22%) Simulink
8 2 (0.14%) Adobe XD
8 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.14%) Sketch
9 1 (0.072%) Doxygen
9 1 (0.072%) Trello
Business Applications
1 34 (2.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (2.23%) Oracle ERP
3 21 (1.51%) Dynamics CRM
4 12 (0.86%) Dynamics NAV
5 8 (0.58%) Elite 3E
5 8 (0.58%) Shopify
6 4 (0.29%) Hyperion Planning
6 4 (0.29%) Oracle Assets
6 4 (0.29%) Oracle Financials
6 4 (0.29%) Oracle General Ledger
6 4 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
6 4 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
6 4 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.22%) Aladdin
7 3 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
7 3 (0.22%) Unit4 Business World
8 2 (0.14%) SAP CX
9 1 (0.072%) Oracle BPM
9 1 (0.072%) Postilion
9 1 (0.072%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 444 (31.97%) Azure
2 407 (29.30%) AWS
3 261 (18.79%) Azure DevOps
4 200 (14.40%) GitHub
5 121 (8.71%) GCP
6 110 (7.92%) SaaS
7 84 (6.05%) Serverless
8 74 (5.33%) PaaS
9 70 (5.04%) Power Platform
10 68 (4.90%) GitHub Actions
11 51 (3.67%) GitHub Copilot
12 48 (3.46%) Amazon S3
13 43 (3.10%) AWS Lambda
14 39 (2.81%) Datadog
15 37 (2.66%) Amazon EKS
16 35 (2.52%) Snowflake
17 34 (2.45%) dbt
18 33 (2.38%) Dynamics 365
19 32 (2.30%) Azure Logic Apps
20 30 (2.16%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.66%) DNS
2 17 (1.22%) HTTP
3 15 (1.08%) TCP/IP
4 14 (1.01%) 5G
4 14 (1.01%) SD-WAN
4 14 (1.01%) WAN
5 10 (0.72%) Firewall
5 10 (0.72%) VPN
6 9 (0.65%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (0.50%) Network Security
7 7 (0.50%) VLAN
8 6 (0.43%) DHCP
8 6 (0.43%) Modbus
8 6 (0.43%) Multicast
9 5 (0.36%) SSL
10 4 (0.29%) 3G
10 4 (0.29%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 4 (0.29%) Internet
10 4 (0.29%) RS-232
10 4 (0.29%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 101 (7.27%) Relational Database
2 85 (6.12%) NoSQL
3 80 (5.76%) SQL Server
4 79 (5.69%) PostgreSQL
5 46 (3.31%) MySQL
6 43 (3.10%) Data Warehouse
7 34 (2.45%) Power BI
8 29 (2.09%) MongoDB
9 24 (1.73%) DynamoDB
10 23 (1.66%) RDBMS
11 20 (1.44%) Big Data
12 17 (1.22%) Amazon RDS
13 13 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
13 13 (0.94%) Tableau
14 12 (0.86%) Elasticsearch
15 10 (0.72%) Amazon Athena
15 10 (0.72%) BigQuery
15 10 (0.72%) MariaDB
15 10 (0.72%) Redis
16 9 (0.65%) Apache Iceberg
Development Applications
1 199 (14.33%) Selenium
2 181 (13.03%) Git
3 163 (11.74%) JIRA
4 132 (9.50%) Jenkins
5 79 (5.69%) Cypress.io
6 68 (4.90%) Cucumber
7 66 (4.75%) Postman
8 54 (3.89%) GitLab
9 40 (2.88%) JMeter
10 36 (2.59%) JUnit
10 36 (2.59%) TeamCity
11 29 (2.09%) Oracle Forms
11 29 (2.09%) Snyk
12 28 (2.02%) eCATT
13 27 (1.94%) Robot Framework
14 24 (1.73%) Appium
15 22 (1.58%) Maven
15 22 (1.58%) REST Assured
16 20 (1.44%) NeoLoad
17 18 (1.30%) SpecFlow
General
1 491 (35.35%) Finance
2 415 (29.88%) Social Skills
3 178 (12.81%) Law
4 163 (11.74%) Analytical Skills
5 162 (11.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 142 (10.22%) Marketing
7 118 (8.50%) Banking
8 83 (5.98%) Public Sector
9 69 (4.97%) Manufacturing
10 43 (3.10%) Back Office
10 43 (3.10%) Front Office
11 42 (3.02%) Retail
12 38 (2.74%) Legal
13 34 (2.45%) Electronics
13 34 (2.45%) Financial Institution
14 28 (2.02%) Presentation Skills
15 26 (1.87%) Documentation Skills
16 20 (1.44%) Games
17 19 (1.37%) Automotive
18 18 (1.30%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 386 (27.79%) Senior
2 336 (24.19%) Developer
3 260 (18.72%) Lead
4 146 (10.51%) Software Engineer
5 142 (10.22%) Senior Developer
6 101 (7.27%) Test Engineer
7 75 (5.40%) Analyst
8 69 (4.97%) Python Developer
9 59 (4.25%) Java Engineer
10 56 (4.03%) Java Developer
10 56 (4.03%) QA Engineer
11 53 (3.82%) Test Automation Engineer
11 53 (3.82%) Test Leader
12 52 (3.74%) Full-Stack Developer
13 47 (3.38%) Software Developer
14 46 (3.31%) Test Analyst
15 45 (3.24%) Tester
16 44 (3.17%) DevOps Engineer
16 44 (3.17%) Lead Developer
17 42 (3.02%) Senior Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 170 (12.24%) React
2 134 (9.65%) .NET
3 132 (9.50%) RESTful
4 109 (7.85%) Playwright
4 109 (7.85%) REST
5 97 (6.98%) CSS
5 97 (6.98%) HTML
6 94 (6.77%) Kafka
7 85 (6.12%) Spring
8 80 (5.76%) Node.js
9 63 (4.54%) JSON
10 56 (4.03%) Spring Boot
11 51 (3.67%) SOAP
12 50 (3.60%) AngularJS
13 46 (3.31%) XML
14 40 (2.88%) .NET Framework
14 40 (2.88%) GraphQL
14 40 (2.88%) pytest
14 40 (2.88%) YAML
15 39 (2.81%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 215 (15.48%) Cloud Native
2 79 (5.69%) Product Ownership
3 60 (4.32%) Mobile App
4 57 (4.10%) Management Information System
5 56 (4.03%) Onboarding
6 53 (3.82%) Data Structures
7 52 (3.74%) Self-Motivation
8 45 (3.24%) Algorithms
9 43 (3.10%) Enterprise Software
10 36 (2.59%) Hedge funds
11 33 (2.38%) Security Posture
12 31 (2.23%) Equities
13 30 (2.16%) Distributed Systems
14 28 (2.02%) e-Learning
14 28 (2.02%) Public Cloud
15 26 (1.87%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 25 (1.80%) Hybrid Cloud
16 25 (1.80%) Legacy Systems
16 25 (1.80%) Virtual Team
17 22 (1.58%) Client/Server
Operating Systems
1 115 (8.28%) Linux
2 62 (4.46%) Windows
3 34 (2.45%) Unix
4 20 (1.44%) Windows Server
5 19 (1.37%) Apple iOS
6 12 (0.86%) Android
7 5 (0.36%) Embedded Linux
7 5 (0.36%) FreeRTOS
7 5 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
8 3 (0.22%) Debian
8 3 (0.22%) VMS
8 3 (0.22%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.14%) CentOS
9 2 (0.14%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.14%) Solaris
10 1 (0.072%) Kali Linux
10 1 (0.072%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 748 (53.85%) Agile
2 711 (51.19%) CI/CD
3 525 (37.80%) DevOps
4 360 (25.92%) Problem-Solving
5 315 (22.68%) Mentoring
6 294 (21.17%) Software Engineering
7 236 (16.99%) Continuous Improvement
8 205 (14.76%) SDLC
9 197 (14.18%) Coaching
10 196 (14.11%) AI
11 176 (12.67%) Microservices
12 153 (11.02%) Computer Science
13 151 (10.87%) Containerisation
14 149 (10.73%) Infrastructure as Code
15 146 (10.51%) Scrum
15 146 (10.51%) Test Strategy
16 136 (9.79%) Analytics
16 136 (9.79%) Software Testing
17 133 (9.58%) Clean Code
17 133 (9.58%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 410 (29.52%) Python
2 334 (24.05%) SQL
3 328 (23.61%) Java
4 218 (15.69%) JavaScript
5 191 (13.75%) C#
6 135 (9.72%) TypeScript
7 80 (5.76%) C++
8 75 (5.40%) PowerShell
9 51 (3.67%) Go
10 46 (3.31%) Shell Script
11 41 (2.95%) C
11 41 (2.95%) PHP
12 36 (2.59%) PL/SQL
13 26 (1.87%) Kotlin
14 23 (1.66%) Bicep
15 21 (1.51%) Bash
16 19 (1.37%) MATLAB
17 13 (0.94%) Scala
17 13 (0.94%) Swift
18 12 (0.86%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 204 (14.69%) Degree
2 107 (7.70%) Computer Science Degree
3 106 (7.63%) Security Cleared
4 76 (5.47%) ISTQB
4 76 (5.47%) SC Cleared
5 50 (3.60%) Master's Degree
6 33 (2.38%) AWS Certification
6 33 (2.38%) DV Cleared
7 25 (1.80%) DBS Check
8 24 (1.73%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 18 (1.30%) ISEB
10 17 (1.22%) HND
11 10 (0.72%) BPSS Clearance
12 9 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 9 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
13 6 (0.43%) Azure Certification
13 6 (0.43%) HNC
14 5 (0.36%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 5 (0.36%) CRISC
14 5 (0.36%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 294 (21.17%) QA
2 72 (5.18%) Accessibility
3 70 (5.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 47 (3.38%) NIST
5 34 (2.45%) Data Quality
6 33 (2.38%) NCSC
7 26 (1.87%) GDPR
8 22 (1.58%) WCAG
9 19 (1.37%) ISO 9001
10 10 (0.72%) SLA
11 5 (0.36%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
12 4 (0.29%) ISO 22301
12 4 (0.29%) MISRA
12 4 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 3 (0.22%) GRC
13 3 (0.22%) Section 508
13 3 (0.22%) SEPA
14 2 (0.14%) IEC 61508
14 2 (0.14%) ISO 26262
System Software
1 189 (13.61%) Docker
2 40 (2.88%) Active Directory
3 17 (1.22%) Firmware
3 17 (1.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (1.08%) Embedded Firmware
5 7 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (0.50%) vSphere
6 5 (0.36%) HDFS
6 5 (0.36%) zsh
7 4 (0.29%) Terminal Server
8 1 (0.072%) KVM
8 1 (0.072%) Xen
Systems Management
1 201 (14.47%) Kubernetes
2 185 (13.32%) Terraform
3 57 (4.10%) Grafana
4 54 (3.89%) Ansible
5 28 (2.02%) HP ALM
6 26 (1.87%) Single Sign-On
7 22 (1.58%) Prometheus
8 10 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
9 6 (0.43%) Mesos
10 5 (0.36%) SCCM
10 5 (0.36%) SCOM
11 4 (0.29%) Control-M
11 4 (0.29%) Progress Chef
12 3 (0.22%) HP Quality Center
12 3 (0.22%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.22%) Nessus
13 2 (0.14%) Argo
13 2 (0.14%) Functional Safety
13 2 (0.14%) HP Fortify
13 2 (0.14%) Puppet
Vendors
1 157 (11.30%) Microsoft
2 82 (5.90%) Oracle
3 61 (4.39%) Salesforce
4 56 (4.03%) Google
5 52 (3.74%) SAP
6 43 (3.10%) Databricks
7 33 (2.38%) VMware
8 28 (2.02%) HP
9 25 (1.80%) IBM
10 23 (1.66%) Black Duck
11 22 (1.58%) Guidewire
12 20 (1.44%) Red Hat
13 18 (1.30%) Coverity
14 16 (1.15%) Apple
15 15 (1.08%) Blue Prism
15 15 (1.08%) Splunk
16 14 (1.01%) Okta
16 14 (1.01%) UiPath
17 11 (0.79%) Atlassian
17 11 (0.79%) BiZZdesign