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 3 months leading up to 26 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

3 months to
26 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 97 90 97
Rank change year-on-year -7 +7 -48
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 890 746 1,475
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.85% 3.43% 2.78%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.50% 3.73% 3.26%
Number of salaries quoted 567 464 927
10th Percentile £43,125 £38,773 £37,500
25th Percentile £51,250 £46,438 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% +9.09% -15.38%
75th Percentile £82,500 £81,250 £71,991
90th Percentile £100,000 £98,474 £85,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £62,500 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +13.64% +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 35,651 20,009 45,263
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 74.12% 91.94% 85.35%
Number of salaries quoted 23,539 11,988 31,563
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,750 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £40,000 £38,890
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,750 £57,500 £54,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.17% +6.48% -10.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £77,500 £71,250
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year - - -8.90%

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 3 months to 26 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 3 months to 26 April 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 3 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 3 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -2 771 £67,249 +12.08% 519
UK excluding London -16 524 £62,500 +13.64% 465
Work from Home +15 370 £67,500 +17.39% 369
London +3 281 £80,000 +23.08% 134
North of England -5 142 £69,308 +26.01% 126
South East -35 101 £60,000 +9.09% 120
Midlands -9 100 £67,500 +42.11% 68
South West -36 94 £55,000 -4.35% 54
North West 0 68 £65,000 -10.34% 59
West Midlands -13 54 £67,500 +3.85% 44
East Midlands -17 45 £67,500 +58.82% 23
Yorkshire -30 41 £80,000 +63.27% 30
North East -18 33 £55,000 - 37
Scotland -21 33 £62,500 - 30
Wales -11 29 £55,000 -15.38% 10
East of England -37 28 £62,500 +9.65% 59
Northern Ireland -30 7 £80,000 +45.45% 10

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 37 (2.27%) Confluence
2 22 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
3 18 (1.10%) Apache Spark
4 12 (0.74%) Appian
5 11 (0.67%) Apache
6 10 (0.61%) CMS
6 10 (0.61%) 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 12 (0.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.43%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.37%) PlantUML
6 4 (0.25%) Fusion 360
7 3 (0.18%) CANalyzer
8 2 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.061%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.061%) Simulink
9 1 (0.061%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 17 (1.04%) Oracle ERP
2 9 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.31%) Visualfiles
4 4 (0.25%) Dynamics AX
4 4 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 4 (0.25%) Shopify
5 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.061%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.061%) Endur
6 1 (0.061%) Findur
6 1 (0.061%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.061%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.061%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.061%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.061%) Oracle SCM
6 1 (0.061%) SAP CX
6 1 (0.061%) Siebel CRM
6 1 (0.061%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 562 (34.48%) Azure
2 497 (30.49%) AWS
3 263 (16.13%) Azure DevOps
4 191 (11.72%) GCP
5 181 (11.10%) GitHub
6 140 (8.59%) Serverless
7 116 (7.12%) SaaS
8 70 (4.29%) Amazon EKS
9 69 (4.23%) GitHub Actions
10 62 (3.80%) PaaS
11 57 (3.50%) AWS Lambda
12 56 (3.44%) Azure Data Factory
13 51 (3.13%) dbt
13 51 (3.13%) GitHub Copilot
14 50 (3.07%) Amazon S3
14 50 (3.07%) AWS CloudFormation
15 48 (2.94%) Power Platform
16 35 (2.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 34 (2.09%) Azure Service Bus
17 34 (2.09%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.10%) Broadband
2 15 (0.92%) CHAP
2 15 (0.92%) DNS
2 15 (0.92%) Firewall
3 12 (0.74%) HTTP
3 12 (0.74%) WAN
4 11 (0.67%) SD-WAN
5 10 (0.61%) TCP/IP
6 8 (0.49%) 5G
7 6 (0.37%) VPN
8 4 (0.25%) SMTP
9 3 (0.18%) Cisco ISE
9 3 (0.18%) Ethernet
9 3 (0.18%) LTE
9 3 (0.18%) VLAN
10 2 (0.12%) DHCP
10 2 (0.12%) Modbus
10 2 (0.12%) Multicast
10 2 (0.12%) Network Security
10 2 (0.12%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 109 (6.69%) NoSQL
2 105 (6.44%) PostgreSQL
3 89 (5.46%) SQL Server
4 69 (4.23%) MongoDB
5 36 (2.21%) Data Warehouse
5 36 (2.21%) MySQL
5 36 (2.21%) Relational Database
6 32 (1.96%) Power BI
7 30 (1.84%) DynamoDB
8 19 (1.17%) Amazon RDS
9 16 (0.98%) Metadata
10 14 (0.86%) Pinecone
10 14 (0.86%) Spark SQL
11 13 (0.80%) Data Lake
11 13 (0.80%) Oracle Database
11 13 (0.80%) Redis
12 12 (0.74%) DB2
13 11 (0.67%) BigQuery
14 10 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
14 10 (0.61%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 192 (11.78%) Git
2 169 (10.37%) Selenium
3 142 (8.71%) Jenkins
4 133 (8.16%) JIRA
5 101 (6.20%) GitLab
6 91 (5.58%) Cypress.io
7 70 (4.29%) Cucumber
8 61 (3.74%) Postman
9 60 (3.68%) TeamCity
10 46 (2.82%) JMeter
11 33 (2.02%) SpecFlow
12 31 (1.90%) REST Assured
13 28 (1.72%) CircleCI
14 27 (1.66%) TestRail
15 25 (1.53%) JUnit
16 24 (1.47%) MLflow
17 22 (1.35%) Bitbucket
18 19 (1.17%) Zephyr
19 18 (1.10%) WebDriver
20 17 (1.04%) SonarQube
General
1 459 (28.16%) Social Skills
2 434 (26.63%) Finance
3 182 (11.17%) Banking
4 151 (9.26%) Analytical Skills
5 137 (8.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 121 (7.42%) Law
7 108 (6.63%) Public Sector
8 92 (5.64%) Retail
9 56 (3.44%) Financial Institution
10 47 (2.88%) Manufacturing
11 43 (2.64%) Electronics
12 40 (2.45%) Back Office
13 36 (2.21%) Legal
14 34 (2.09%) Front Office
15 33 (2.02%) Marketing
16 27 (1.66%) Games
17 18 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
18 16 (0.98%) Documentation Skills
19 14 (0.86%) Investment Banking
19 14 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 422 (25.89%) Senior
2 266 (16.32%) Lead
3 224 (13.74%) Developer
4 222 (13.62%) Software Engineer
5 169 (10.37%) Test Engineer
6 99 (6.07%) Senior Developer
7 90 (5.52%) Tester
8 89 (5.46%) QA Engineer
9 83 (5.09%) Java Engineer
10 77 (4.72%) Test Automation Engineer
11 70 (4.29%) Senior Software Engineer
11 70 (4.29%) Test Leader
12 58 (3.56%) Automation Engineer
12 58 (3.56%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 54 (3.31%) Automation Tester
14 53 (3.25%) Analyst
15 50 (3.07%) Data Engineer
16 48 (2.94%) QA Automation Engineer
17 47 (2.88%) Senior Test Engineer
18 46 (2.82%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 201 (12.33%) React
2 173 (10.61%) .NET
3 152 (9.33%) Playwright
4 150 (9.20%) RESTful
5 145 (8.90%) REST
6 102 (6.26%) Node.js
7 99 (6.07%) Spring
8 73 (4.48%) Kafka
8 73 (4.48%) Spring Boot
9 64 (3.93%) HTML
10 63 (3.87%) CSS
11 53 (3.25%) OAuth
12 51 (3.13%) JSON
13 45 (2.76%) pytest
14 43 (2.64%) AngularJS
15 41 (2.52%) Web Services
16 40 (2.45%) Elastic Stack
16 40 (2.45%) OAuth2
17 38 (2.33%) .NET Framework
17 38 (2.33%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 259 (15.89%) Cloud Native
2 146 (8.96%) Product Ownership
3 81 (4.97%) Mobile App
4 75 (4.60%) Distributed Systems
5 63 (3.87%) Management Information System
6 49 (3.01%) Enterprise Software
7 41 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
8 40 (2.45%) Onboarding
9 38 (2.33%) Algorithms
9 38 (2.33%) Greenfield Project
9 38 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
10 31 (1.90%) Low-Code
10 31 (1.90%) Public Cloud
11 30 (1.84%) Data Structures
12 27 (1.66%) Hybrid Cloud
13 24 (1.47%) Hedge funds
14 23 (1.41%) Equities
15 22 (1.35%) Blog
16 20 (1.23%) Client/Server
17 18 (1.10%) Embedded Systems
Operating Systems
1 163 (10.00%) Linux
2 83 (5.09%) Windows
3 68 (4.17%) Apple iOS
4 59 (3.62%) Android
5 45 (2.76%) Unix
6 11 (0.67%) CentOS
7 10 (0.61%) Windows Server
8 5 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.25%) Kali Linux
9 4 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.18%) FreeRTOS
10 3 (0.18%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.12%) AIX
11 2 (0.12%) Debian
11 2 (0.12%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.061%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.061%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.061%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 851 (52.21%) CI/CD
2 664 (40.74%) Agile
3 576 (35.34%) DevOps
4 407 (24.97%) Software Engineering
5 402 (24.66%) Continuous Improvement
6 364 (22.33%) Mentoring
7 346 (21.23%) Problem-Solving
8 273 (16.75%) Microservices
9 263 (16.13%) AI
10 260 (15.95%) Infrastructure as Code
11 239 (14.66%) Coaching
11 239 (14.66%) Software Testing
12 225 (13.80%) Observability
13 203 (12.45%) Containerisation
14 200 (12.27%) Clean Code
15 198 (12.15%) Test Strategy
16 190 (11.66%) Full-Stack Development
17 161 (9.88%) Deployment Automation
18 157 (9.63%) Validation
19 156 (9.57%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 495 (30.37%) Python
2 415 (25.46%) Java
3 303 (18.59%) SQL
4 236 (14.48%) JavaScript
5 215 (13.19%) TypeScript
6 195 (11.96%) C#
7 79 (4.85%) PowerShell
8 75 (4.60%) C++
9 61 (3.74%) Bash
10 49 (3.01%) Go
11 41 (2.52%) C
12 34 (2.09%) Bicep
13 28 (1.72%) Kotlin
14 26 (1.60%) Rust
14 26 (1.60%) Shell Script
15 24 (1.47%) Apex Code
16 23 (1.41%) PL/SQL
17 21 (1.29%) PHP
18 19 (1.17%) Swift
19 12 (0.74%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 213 (13.07%) Degree
2 149 (9.14%) Security Cleared
3 94 (5.77%) SC Cleared
4 89 (5.46%) Computer Science Degree
5 78 (4.79%) ISTQB
6 29 (1.78%) Master's Degree
7 27 (1.66%) DV Cleared
8 25 (1.53%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 21 (1.29%) CISSP
10 20 (1.23%) AWS Certification
11 15 (0.92%) Azure Certification
11 15 (0.92%) CGEIT
11 15 (0.92%) CISA
11 15 (0.92%) CISM
11 15 (0.92%) FFIEC
11 15 (0.92%) SANS
12 14 (0.86%) DBS Check
13 13 (0.80%) PhD
14 12 (0.74%) CEH
14 12 (0.74%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (23.37%) QA
2 120 (7.36%) Accessibility
3 70 (4.29%) Data Quality
4 50 (3.07%) GDPR
5 40 (2.45%) NIST
6 29 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 20 (1.23%) WCAG
8 16 (0.98%) COBIT
9 14 (0.86%) SLA
10 12 (0.74%) ISO 22301
11 10 (0.61%) Software Quality Assurance
12 8 (0.49%) ISO 9001
13 7 (0.43%) GRC
13 7 (0.43%) IEC 61508
14 6 (0.37%) NCSC
14 6 (0.37%) PMO
15 5 (0.31%) ISO 26262
15 5 (0.31%) SOC 2
16 4 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
16 4 (0.25%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 233 (14.29%) Docker
2 27 (1.66%) Active Directory
3 22 (1.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (0.92%) Hyper-V
4 15 (0.92%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.86%) Firmware
6 13 (0.80%) KVM
7 7 (0.43%) Embedded Firmware
8 3 (0.18%) Terminal Server
9 2 (0.12%) vSphere
10 1 (0.061%) IAG
10 1 (0.061%) Xen
Systems Management
1 283 (17.36%) Kubernetes
1 283 (17.36%) Terraform
2 125 (7.67%) Grafana
3 67 (4.11%) Ansible
4 48 (2.94%) Prometheus
5 27 (1.66%) Single Sign-On
6 22 (1.35%) Argo
7 10 (0.61%) logstash
8 8 (0.49%) Kibana
8 8 (0.49%) Microsoft Intune
9 7 (0.43%) SCCM
9 7 (0.43%) SCOM
10 5 (0.31%) HP Fortify
11 4 (0.25%) Packer
11 4 (0.25%) Rancher
11 4 (0.25%) vCenter Server
12 3 (0.18%) Functional Safety
12 3 (0.18%) HP ALM
12 3 (0.18%) SCOrch
13 2 (0.12%) Puppet
Vendors
1 132 (8.10%) Microsoft
2 76 (4.66%) Oracle
3 56 (3.44%) Databricks
4 52 (3.19%) Salesforce
5 45 (2.76%) VMware
6 37 (2.27%) Google
7 23 (1.41%) OpenAI
8 18 (1.10%) Commvault
9 17 (1.04%) SAP
9 17 (1.04%) ServiceNow
9 17 (1.04%) Splunk
10 15 (0.92%) Atlassian
11 14 (0.86%) Palantir
12 13 (0.80%) Foundry
13 12 (0.74%) Automation Anywhere
13 12 (0.74%) Dynatrace
13 12 (0.74%) IBM
13 12 (0.74%) UiPath
14 11 (0.67%) Amplitude
14 11 (0.67%) Braze