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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 80 95 83
Rank change year-on-year +15 -12 -13
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,456 1,552 2,205
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.09% 3.14% 2.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.86% 3.53% 3.53%
Number of salaries quoted 1,333 725 982
10th Percentile £41,250 £39,000 £39,500
25th Percentile £47,500 £50,000 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £63,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -0.79% +5.00% -4.71%
75th Percentile £80,000 £85,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £93,750 £104,000 £98,251
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +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 85,853 43,932 62,432
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.10% 88.75% 81.70%
Number of salaries quoted 59,280 24,639 34,370
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,585 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,965
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -5.11% -3.39%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £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 26 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 26 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 +10 2,009 £62,500 -3.85% 3,134
UK excluding London +18 1,559 £57,500 - 1,978
Work from Home +13 872 £67,500 +8.00% 1,337
London +1 728 £77,500 -3.13% 1,456
North of England +26 397 £57,500 -4.17% 492
South East +1 274 £60,000 +4.35% 434
South West +18 264 £60,000 +14.29% 292
Midlands -10 207 £54,000 -10.00% 221
North West -4 192 £60,000 - 265
Northern Ireland +6 164 £80,000 +45.45% 80
Wales +12 133 £53,171 -3.33% 44
North East +19 117 £55,000 +78.86% 75
West Midlands -7 116 £52,500 -4.55% 151
Yorkshire +13 94 £69,310 +26.02% 152
East Midlands -22 91 £54,000 -13.60% 69
East of England -22 91 £47,500 -19.83% 203
Scotland -52 44 £62,500 -5.66% 226

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 60 (2.44%) Confluence
2 35 (1.43%) Apache Spark
3 29 (1.18%) Apache
4 24 (0.98%) SharePoint
5 21 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
6 19 (0.77%) Jupyter
7 14 (0.57%) Anypoint
7 14 (0.57%) CMS
7 14 (0.57%) Mule
8 13 (0.53%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 8 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.29%) nginx
11 6 (0.24%) Umbraco
12 5 (0.20%) Cloud Foundry
12 5 (0.20%) Headless CMS
12 5 (0.20%) SAS
12 5 (0.20%) WinCC
13 4 (0.16%) Camunda
13 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
14 3 (0.12%) OpenStack
Applications
1 82 (3.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (0.57%) Simulink
4 9 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.29%) Moqups
6 6 (0.24%) Chatbot
6 6 (0.24%) Lightworks
7 3 (0.12%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.081%) EPLAN
8 2 (0.081%) PlantUML
8 2 (0.081%) SOLIDWORKS
9 1 (0.041%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.041%) CANalyzer
9 1 (0.041%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 68 (2.77%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.10%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.20%) Visualfiles
5 3 (0.12%) Magento
5 3 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
5 3 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
5 3 (0.12%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.081%) FLEXCUBE
6 2 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.081%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.081%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.041%) Adobe Campaign
7 1 (0.041%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.041%) Endur
7 1 (0.041%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.041%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.041%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.041%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.041%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 815 (33.18%) AWS
2 681 (27.73%) Azure
3 325 (13.23%) SaaS
4 256 (10.42%) GCP
5 243 (9.89%) Azure DevOps
6 213 (8.67%) GitHub
7 194 (7.90%) Serverless
8 118 (4.80%) GitHub Actions
9 103 (4.19%) AWS CloudFormation
10 101 (4.11%) Amazon EKS
11 93 (3.79%) AWS Lambda
12 88 (3.58%) Amazon S3
13 69 (2.81%) Power Platform
14 59 (2.40%) Google Ads
14 59 (2.40%) Meta Ads
15 58 (2.36%) Azure Service Bus
16 54 (2.20%) Azure Logic Apps
17 52 (2.12%) Azure Monitor
18 46 (1.87%) Azure Functions
19 42 (1.71%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 56 (2.28%) Broadband
2 30 (1.22%) TCP/IP
3 25 (1.02%) DNS
3 25 (1.02%) Firewall
4 17 (0.69%) SSL
5 16 (0.65%) Wireless
6 15 (0.61%) DMARC
6 15 (0.61%) Modbus
7 14 (0.57%) MQTT
8 13 (0.53%) HTTP
8 13 (0.53%) Wi-Fi
9 12 (0.49%) DHCP
10 11 (0.45%) 5G
10 11 (0.45%) Ethernet
10 11 (0.45%) WAN
11 10 (0.41%) LTE
11 10 (0.41%) Network Security
12 9 (0.37%) 3GPP
13 8 (0.33%) Internet
14 7 (0.29%) SS7
Database & Business Intelligence
1 147 (5.99%) PostgreSQL
2 124 (5.05%) NoSQL
3 92 (3.75%) MongoDB
4 83 (3.38%) SQL Server
5 70 (2.85%) Relational Database
6 47 (1.91%) Redis
7 45 (1.83%) DynamoDB
8 42 (1.71%) Power BI
9 41 (1.67%) MySQL
10 36 (1.47%) Data Warehouse
11 35 (1.43%) Data Lake
12 31 (1.26%) BigQuery
13 26 (1.06%) Amazon Athena
14 25 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
15 23 (0.94%) Metadata
15 23 (0.94%) Semantic Layer
16 15 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
17 14 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
17 14 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
18 13 (0.53%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 373 (15.19%) Git
2 253 (10.30%) GitLab
3 219 (8.92%) Jenkins
4 167 (6.80%) Selenium
5 153 (6.23%) JIRA
6 112 (4.56%) Cucumber
7 111 (4.52%) Cypress.io
8 93 (3.79%) Postman
9 71 (2.89%) TeamCity
10 50 (2.04%) JMeter
11 48 (1.95%) JUnit
12 43 (1.75%) REST Assured
13 32 (1.30%) Gatling
14 31 (1.26%) LabVIEW
14 31 (1.26%) Zephyr
15 30 (1.22%) SonarQube
16 25 (1.02%) Bitbucket
17 24 (0.98%) Maven
17 24 (0.98%) Robot Framework
17 24 (0.98%) TestRail
General
1 686 (27.93%) Social Skills
2 594 (24.19%) Finance
3 387 (15.76%) Analytical Skills
4 278 (11.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 241 (9.81%) Public Sector
6 206 (8.39%) Banking
7 203 (8.27%) Law
8 174 (7.08%) Marketing
9 140 (5.70%) Legal
10 129 (5.25%) Retail
11 119 (4.85%) Manufacturing
12 95 (3.87%) Electronics
13 82 (3.34%) Financial Institution
14 61 (2.48%) Back Office
15 54 (2.20%) Aerospace
16 44 (1.79%) Telecoms
17 37 (1.51%) Games
18 35 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
19 31 (1.26%) Automotive
20 25 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 670 (27.28%) Senior
2 356 (14.50%) Software Engineer
3 337 (13.72%) Developer
4 327 (13.31%) Lead
5 260 (10.59%) Test Engineer
6 121 (4.93%) Senior Developer
7 115 (4.68%) Java Engineer
8 111 (4.52%) DevOps Engineer
9 107 (4.36%) QA Engineer
10 103 (4.19%) Senior Software Engineer
11 90 (3.66%) Test Automation Engineer
12 84 (3.42%) Analyst
13 79 (3.22%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 76 (3.09%) Data Engineer
15 69 (2.81%) Lead Software Engineer
16 68 (2.77%) Principal Engineer
17 67 (2.73%) Architect
18 64 (2.61%) Software Developer
18 64 (2.61%) Tester
19 61 (2.48%) Marketing Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 339 (13.80%) Terraform
2 258 (10.50%) REST
3 232 (9.45%) React
4 227 (9.24%) .NET
5 214 (8.71%) Playwright
6 206 (8.39%) Node.js
7 202 (8.22%) RESTful
8 200 (8.14%) Spring
9 150 (6.11%) Spring Boot
10 142 (5.78%) Kafka
11 124 (5.05%) CSS
12 116 (4.72%) AngularJS
12 116 (4.72%) HTML
13 74 (3.01%) OAuth
14 71 (2.89%) Middleware
15 66 (2.69%) OAuth2
16 63 (2.57%) JSON
17 54 (2.20%) Next.js
18 52 (2.12%) PySpark
19 48 (1.95%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 421 (17.14%) Cloud Native
2 291 (11.85%) Product Ownership
3 210 (8.55%) Distributed Systems
4 106 (4.32%) Onboarding
5 101 (4.11%) Enterprise Software
5 101 (4.11%) Mobile App
6 90 (3.66%) Public Cloud
7 84 (3.42%) Blog
8 78 (3.18%) Virtual Team
9 68 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
10 64 (2.61%) Marketing Technology
11 54 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
12 53 (2.16%) Cyber Threat
13 52 (2.12%) Algorithms
14 51 (2.08%) Low-Code
15 48 (1.95%) Embedded Systems
16 43 (1.75%) e-Learning
17 42 (1.71%) Data Structures
18 41 (1.67%) Management Information System
19 38 (1.55%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 184 (7.49%) Linux
2 104 (4.23%) Windows
3 65 (2.65%) Android
4 57 (2.32%) Apple iOS
4 57 (2.32%) Unix
5 9 (0.37%) Embedded Linux
5 9 (0.37%) Windows Server
6 8 (0.33%) CentOS
7 7 (0.29%) FreeRTOS
8 5 (0.20%) AIX
9 4 (0.16%) Debian
9 4 (0.16%) Kali Linux
9 4 (0.16%) VMS
10 3 (0.12%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.081%) OpenWrt
12 1 (0.041%) Mac OS
12 1 (0.041%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 1 (0.041%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.041%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,376 (56.03%) CI/CD
2 1,022 (41.61%) Agile
3 874 (35.59%) DevOps
4 784 (31.92%) Software Engineering
5 719 (29.28%) Continuous Improvement
6 639 (26.02%) Mentoring
7 603 (24.55%) AI
8 576 (23.45%) Problem-Solving
9 455 (18.53%) Microservices
10 430 (17.51%) Software Testing
11 391 (15.92%) Infrastructure as Code
12 325 (13.23%) Test Strategy
13 315 (12.83%) Validation
14 299 (12.17%) Observability
15 297 (12.09%) Code Quality
16 296 (12.05%) Coaching
17 275 (11.20%) Containerisation
18 270 (10.99%) Technical Leadership
19 264 (10.75%) Full-Stack Development
20 259 (10.55%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 695 (28.30%) Python
2 589 (23.98%) Java
3 466 (18.97%) SQL
4 432 (17.59%) JavaScript
5 353 (14.37%) TypeScript
6 338 (13.76%) C#
7 126 (5.13%) C++
8 103 (4.19%) PowerShell
9 98 (3.99%) Go
10 93 (3.79%) Bash
11 79 (3.22%) C
12 36 (1.47%) Kotlin
13 34 (1.38%) PHP
14 33 (1.34%) Rust
15 32 (1.30%) Ruby
16 30 (1.22%) Groovy
17 26 (1.06%) MATLAB
18 25 (1.02%) Bicep
19 21 (0.86%) Swift
20 16 (0.65%) Scala
Qualifications
1 385 (15.68%) Security Cleared
2 258 (10.50%) Degree
3 237 (9.65%) SC Cleared
4 102 (4.15%) Computer Science Degree
5 80 (3.26%) ISTQB
6 69 (2.81%) DV Cleared
7 62 (2.52%) AWS Certification
8 56 (2.28%) CISSP
9 54 (2.20%) ITIL Certification
10 53 (2.16%) CISM
11 48 (1.95%) Master's Degree
12 43 (1.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 42 (1.71%) HNC
14 36 (1.47%) BPSS Clearance
15 34 (1.38%) HND
16 17 (0.69%) DBS Check
17 16 (0.65%) ISEB
18 15 (0.61%) Azure Certification
19 13 (0.53%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
20 11 (0.45%) NVQ Level 4
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 571 (23.25%) QA
2 206 (8.39%) Accessibility
3 89 (3.62%) Data Quality
4 69 (2.81%) WCAG
5 55 (2.24%) NIST
6 48 (1.95%) ISO 22301
7 37 (1.51%) GDPR
8 12 (0.49%) SLA
9 10 (0.41%) MISRA
10 9 (0.37%) GRC
10 9 (0.37%) Software Quality Assurance
11 7 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 7 (0.29%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.24%) JTAG
12 6 (0.24%) PMO
13 5 (0.20%) COBIT
13 5 (0.20%) NCSC
14 4 (0.16%) ECSS
14 4 (0.16%) ISO 20022
14 4 (0.16%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 343 (13.97%) Docker
2 48 (1.95%) Firmware
3 14 (0.57%) Active Directory
4 11 (0.45%) Embedded Firmware
5 10 (0.41%) VMware Infrastructure
6 8 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.12%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.081%) KVM
8 2 (0.081%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.041%) IAG
9 1 (0.041%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.041%) QEMU
9 1 (0.041%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 353 (14.37%) Kubernetes
2 162 (6.60%) Grafana
3 80 (3.26%) Ansible
4 68 (2.77%) Prometheus
5 31 (1.26%) Argo
6 17 (0.69%) Kibana
7 16 (0.65%) Puppet
8 14 (0.57%) CloudHub
9 12 (0.49%) Rancher
10 11 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
11 9 (0.37%) logstash
12 8 (0.33%) HP Fortify
12 8 (0.33%) Single Sign-On
13 7 (0.29%) Functional Safety
14 6 (0.24%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.24%) vCenter Server
15 5 (0.20%) Packer
16 3 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 3 (0.12%) SCCM
16 3 (0.12%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 262 (10.67%) Microsoft
2 126 (5.13%) Google
3 65 (2.65%) Databricks
4 62 (2.52%) Salesforce
5 57 (2.32%) Oracle
6 50 (2.04%) SAP
7 46 (1.87%) ServiceNow
8 36 (1.47%) Dynatrace
8 36 (1.47%) Splunk
9 23 (0.94%) Pega
10 20 (0.81%) MuleSoft
11 19 (0.77%) AppDynamics
12 17 (0.69%) IBM
12 17 (0.69%) VMware
13 16 (0.65%) OpenAI
14 15 (0.61%) Adobe
14 15 (0.61%) Allen-Bradley
14 15 (0.61%) Red Hat
14 15 (0.61%) SendGrid
15 14 (0.57%) Atlassian