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

6 months to
27 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 82 101
Rank change year-on-year -10 +19 -67
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,838 1,646 2,648
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.93% 3.61% 2.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.63% 3.92% 3.05%
Number of salaries quoted 1,129 800 1,698
10th Percentile £42,000 £39,000 £36,250
25th Percentile £48,750 £47,500 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year - +8.70% -11.54%
75th Percentile £81,788 £82,500 £72,483
90th Percentile £96,250 £99,550 £87,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +4.35% +9.52% -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 69,907 41,954 86,795
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.40% 92.11% 82.23%
Number of salaries quoted 48,219 22,640 61,471
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,750 £29,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.54%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £53,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +6.00% - -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 27 June 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 27 June 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 -1 1,618 £65,000 +3.59% 502
UK excluding London -29 1,032 £60,000 +4.35% 419
Work from Home +9 739 £67,500 +12.75% 226
London +18 636 £80,000 +6.67% 181
North of England -4 300 £61,250 +2.48% 105
South East -32 211 £60,000 +9.09% 139
South West -23 184 £55,000 -8.33% 51
Midlands -22 169 £61,750 +7.39% 56
North West -5 161 £65,000 - 51
West Midlands -28 87 £62,500 -5.66% 27
East Midlands -20 81 £57,500 +21.05% 29
North East +4 74 £52,500 -4.55% 27
East of England -21 66 £52,500 -10.26% 46
Yorkshire -30 65 £69,310 +38.62% 28
Wales -7 59 £55,000 - 6
Scotland -42 45 £60,000 - 17
Northern Ireland -32 11 £80,000 +45.45% 12

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 32 (1.74%) Confluence
2 27 (1.47%) Apache Spark
3 26 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
4 22 (1.20%) Apache
5 18 (0.98%) Jupyter
6 15 (0.82%) SharePoint
7 10 (0.54%) CMS
8 9 (0.49%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 8 (0.44%) IIS
9 8 (0.44%) Palantir Foundry
10 7 (0.38%) Anypoint
10 7 (0.38%) Mule
11 5 (0.27%) Appian
11 5 (0.27%) Umbraco
12 4 (0.22%) SAS
13 3 (0.16%) nginx
13 3 (0.16%) WordPress
14 2 (0.11%) Camunda
14 2 (0.11%) Cloud Foundry
14 2 (0.11%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 17 (0.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.54%) Simulink
4 6 (0.33%) PlantUML
5 5 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 3 (0.16%) CANalyzer
6 3 (0.16%) Lightworks
7 2 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.054%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 12 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.27%) Visualfiles
3 4 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
4 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.11%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.11%) Towers Watson Igloo
5 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.054%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.054%) Endur
6 1 (0.054%) Findur
6 1 (0.054%) Magento
6 1 (0.054%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.054%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle SCM
6 1 (0.054%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 666 (36.24%) AWS
2 562 (30.58%) Azure
3 236 (12.84%) Azure DevOps
4 225 (12.24%) GCP
5 179 (9.74%) Serverless
6 151 (8.22%) GitHub
7 135 (7.34%) SaaS
8 82 (4.46%) AWS Lambda
8 82 (4.46%) GitHub Actions
9 77 (4.19%) Amazon EKS
10 76 (4.13%) Amazon S3
11 73 (3.97%) AWS CloudFormation
12 53 (2.88%) PaaS
13 48 (2.61%) Azure Service Bus
14 47 (2.56%) Power Platform
15 42 (2.29%) Azure Monitor
16 41 (2.23%) Amazon EC2
17 40 (2.18%) dbt
18 38 (2.07%) Azure Logic Apps
19 37 (2.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 70 (3.81%) Broadband
2 24 (1.31%) Firewall
3 13 (0.71%) DMARC
4 11 (0.60%) CHAP
4 11 (0.60%) DNS
5 10 (0.54%) WAN
6 8 (0.44%) 5G
6 8 (0.44%) MQTT
6 8 (0.44%) SD-WAN
6 8 (0.44%) Wireless
7 7 (0.38%) SSL
8 6 (0.33%) Bluetooth
8 6 (0.33%) LTE
8 6 (0.33%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (0.27%) DHCP
9 5 (0.27%) HTTP
9 5 (0.27%) SMS
9 5 (0.27%) ZigBee
10 4 (0.22%) Ethernet
10 4 (0.22%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 136 (7.40%) NoSQL
2 123 (6.69%) PostgreSQL
3 97 (5.28%) MongoDB
4 68 (3.70%) SQL Server
5 46 (2.50%) DynamoDB
6 32 (1.74%) Relational Database
7 30 (1.63%) MySQL
8 27 (1.47%) Data Warehouse
9 24 (1.31%) Power BI
10 20 (1.09%) Amazon RDS
10 20 (1.09%) Redis
11 19 (1.03%) BigQuery
12 18 (0.98%) Spark SQL
13 16 (0.87%) Semantic Layer
14 15 (0.82%) Metadata
14 15 (0.82%) Oracle Database
15 13 (0.71%) Amazon Athena
16 12 (0.65%) Elasticsearch
17 9 (0.49%) Data Lake
18 8 (0.44%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 227 (12.35%) Git
2 162 (8.81%) Jenkins
3 154 (8.38%) GitLab
4 140 (7.62%) Selenium
5 108 (5.88%) JIRA
6 87 (4.73%) Cypress.io
7 79 (4.30%) Cucumber
8 68 (3.70%) Postman
9 61 (3.32%) TeamCity
10 47 (2.56%) JMeter
11 39 (2.12%) REST Assured
12 31 (1.69%) JUnit
13 30 (1.63%) SpecFlow
14 25 (1.36%) Zephyr
15 24 (1.31%) TestRail
16 23 (1.25%) CircleCI
17 21 (1.14%) fastlane
17 21 (1.14%) Gatling
17 21 (1.14%) LabVIEW
18 20 (1.09%) Crashlytics
General
1 446 (24.27%) Social Skills
2 421 (22.91%) Finance
3 192 (10.45%) Banking
4 190 (10.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 172 (9.36%) Public Sector
6 158 (8.60%) Analytical Skills
7 118 (6.42%) Law
8 95 (5.17%) Retail
9 62 (3.37%) Financial Institution
9 62 (3.37%) Manufacturing
10 56 (3.05%) Games
11 50 (2.72%) Back Office
11 50 (2.72%) Electronics
12 36 (1.96%) Legal
13 32 (1.74%) Front Office
14 31 (1.69%) Marketing
15 20 (1.09%) Documentation Skills
16 19 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
17 18 (0.98%) Investment Banking
18 17 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 492 (26.77%) Senior
2 302 (16.43%) Lead
3 291 (15.83%) Software Engineer
4 270 (14.69%) Developer
5 211 (11.48%) Test Engineer
6 113 (6.15%) Senior Developer
7 110 (5.98%) Java Engineer
8 87 (4.73%) Senior Software Engineer
8 87 (4.73%) Test Automation Engineer
9 83 (4.52%) QA Engineer
10 75 (4.08%) Test Leader
11 72 (3.92%) Tester
12 67 (3.65%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 65 (3.54%) Architect
14 61 (3.32%) Data Engineer
15 58 (3.16%) DevOps Engineer
16 55 (2.99%) Senior Test Engineer
17 53 (2.88%) Software Developer
18 49 (2.67%) Python Developer
19 46 (2.50%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 191 (10.39%) .NET
2 189 (10.28%) React
3 164 (8.92%) RESTful
4 163 (8.87%) REST
5 160 (8.71%) Playwright
6 155 (8.43%) Spring
7 151 (8.22%) Node.js
8 113 (6.15%) Spring Boot
9 100 (5.44%) Kafka
10 79 (4.30%) AngularJS
11 67 (3.65%) CSS
11 67 (3.65%) HTML
12 55 (2.99%) OAuth
13 49 (2.67%) OAuth2
14 44 (2.39%) RabbitMQ
15 40 (2.18%) YAML
16 38 (2.07%) Vue
17 37 (2.01%) ASP.NET
17 37 (2.01%) JSON
18 36 (1.96%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 353 (19.21%) Cloud Native
2 204 (11.10%) Product Ownership
3 148 (8.05%) Distributed Systems
4 95 (5.17%) Mobile App
5 58 (3.16%) Public Cloud
6 56 (3.05%) Enterprise Software
6 56 (3.05%) Management Information System
7 52 (2.83%) Algorithms
7 52 (2.83%) Low-Code
8 47 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
9 46 (2.50%) Onboarding
10 42 (2.29%) Data Structures
11 37 (2.01%) Greenfield Project
12 34 (1.85%) Video\Live Streaming
13 31 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
14 28 (1.52%) Embedded Systems
15 26 (1.41%) Blog
16 23 (1.25%) e-Learning
16 23 (1.25%) Hedge funds
17 21 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 168 (9.14%) Linux
2 82 (4.46%) Windows
3 64 (3.48%) Apple iOS
4 53 (2.88%) Unix
5 50 (2.72%) Android
6 9 (0.49%) CentOS
6 9 (0.49%) Windows Server
7 5 (0.27%) FreeRTOS
8 4 (0.22%) Kali Linux
9 3 (0.16%) AIX
10 2 (0.11%) Debian
10 2 (0.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.054%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.054%) ThreadX
11 1 (0.054%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.054%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,053 (57.29%) CI/CD
2 780 (42.44%) Agile
3 641 (34.87%) DevOps
4 546 (29.71%) Software Engineering
5 481 (26.17%) Mentoring
6 472 (25.68%) Continuous Improvement
7 378 (20.57%) Problem-Solving
8 361 (19.64%) Microservices
9 340 (18.50%) Infrastructure as Code
10 312 (16.97%) AI
11 282 (15.34%) Software Testing
12 250 (13.60%) Containerisation
13 246 (13.38%) Observability
14 236 (12.84%) Full-Stack Development
15 233 (12.68%) Coaching
16 232 (12.62%) Test Strategy
17 218 (11.86%) Validation
18 195 (10.61%) Clean Code
19 186 (10.12%) Technical Leadership
20 184 (10.01%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 578 (31.45%) Python
2 520 (28.29%) Java
3 308 (16.76%) SQL
4 285 (15.51%) JavaScript
5 233 (12.68%) C#
6 230 (12.51%) TypeScript
7 105 (5.71%) C++
8 87 (4.73%) Go
9 76 (4.13%) Bash
10 67 (3.65%) C
11 59 (3.21%) PowerShell
12 34 (1.85%) Rust
13 32 (1.74%) Kotlin
14 29 (1.58%) Swift
15 23 (1.25%) MATLAB
15 23 (1.25%) PHP
16 22 (1.20%) Bicep
17 20 (1.09%) Ruby
18 17 (0.92%) Groovy
19 16 (0.87%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 231 (12.57%) Security Cleared
2 228 (12.40%) Degree
3 138 (7.51%) SC Cleared
4 96 (5.22%) Computer Science Degree
5 81 (4.41%) ISTQB
6 45 (2.45%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.74%) AWS Certification
7 32 (1.74%) Master's Degree
8 23 (1.25%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 22 (1.20%) DBS Check
10 19 (1.03%) CISSP
11 18 (0.98%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 13 (0.71%) HND
13 12 (0.65%) ISEB
13 12 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
14 11 (0.60%) BPSS Clearance
14 11 (0.60%) CGEIT
14 11 (0.60%) CISA
14 11 (0.60%) CISM
14 11 (0.60%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 409 (22.25%) QA
2 168 (9.14%) Accessibility
3 81 (4.41%) Data Quality
4 46 (2.50%) GDPR
5 39 (2.12%) WCAG
6 20 (1.09%) NIST
7 15 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 14 (0.76%) SLA
9 12 (0.65%) COBIT
9 12 (0.65%) Software Quality Assurance
10 11 (0.60%) GRC
11 7 (0.38%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.33%) ISO 22301
12 6 (0.33%) ISO 9001
12 6 (0.33%) PMO
13 5 (0.27%) JTAG
13 5 (0.27%) MISRA
14 4 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
15 3 (0.16%) Automotive SPICE
15 3 (0.16%) MISRA C
System Software
1 253 (13.76%) Docker
2 26 (1.41%) VMware Infrastructure
3 23 (1.25%) Firmware
4 18 (0.98%) Hyper-V
5 16 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.76%) KVM
7 11 (0.60%) Active Directory
8 10 (0.54%) Embedded Firmware
9 2 (0.11%) Terminal Server
9 2 (0.11%) vSphere
10 1 (0.054%) IAG
10 1 (0.054%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.054%) Xen
Systems Management
1 306 (16.65%) Terraform
2 290 (15.78%) Kubernetes
3 139 (7.56%) Grafana
4 78 (4.24%) Ansible
5 63 (3.43%) Prometheus
6 24 (1.31%) Argo
7 15 (0.82%) Kibana
8 9 (0.49%) logstash
8 9 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.38%) CloudHub
10 6 (0.33%) Functional Safety
10 6 (0.33%) HP Fortify
10 6 (0.33%) vCenter Server
11 5 (0.27%) Packer
11 5 (0.27%) Puppet
11 5 (0.27%) SCCM
11 5 (0.27%) SCOM
12 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
13 3 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.16%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 141 (7.67%) Microsoft
2 54 (2.94%) Databricks
3 47 (2.56%) Oracle
4 45 (2.45%) Salesforce
5 40 (2.18%) Google
5 40 (2.18%) VMware
6 32 (1.74%) ServiceNow
7 24 (1.31%) Splunk
8 23 (1.25%) Dynatrace
9 18 (0.98%) OpenAI
10 16 (0.87%) Braze
10 16 (0.87%) SAP
11 14 (0.76%) Amplitude
12 13 (0.71%) AppDynamics
12 13 (0.71%) IFS
12 13 (0.71%) MuleSoft
12 13 (0.71%) SendGrid
13 12 (0.65%) CrowdStrike
14 11 (0.60%) Atlassian
14 11 (0.60%) Pega