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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 82 92
Rank change year-on-year -10 +10 -59
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,682 1,570 2,738
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.86% 3.62% 2.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.49% 3.87% 3.34%
Number of salaries quoted 1,047 892 1,780
10th Percentile £42,500 £38,758 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £46,631 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% +4.35% -11.54%
75th Percentile £83,750 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £105,000 £98,474 £88,875
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +9.09% +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 67,484 40,549 82,082
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 74.46% 93.37% 85.36%
Number of salaries quoted 42,329 22,500 59,656
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - +9.09% -10.10%
75th Percentile £78,750 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year - +5.00% -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 8 May 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 8 May 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 -9 1,443 £65,000 +8.33% 606
UK excluding London -48 903 £60,000 +9.09% 482
Work from Home -5 707 £67,500 +12.50% 285
London +44 628 £80,000 +14.29% 203
North of England -51 219 £65,000 +18.18% 139
South East -57 180 £60,000 +14.29% 114
South West -22 172 £55,000 -8.33% 66
Midlands -50 143 £62,500 +8.70% 63
North West -36 114 £60,000 +9.09% 63
Scotland -17 89 £60,000 - 27
West Midlands -44 73 £62,500 +2.04% 40
East Midlands -37 69 £61,250 +22.50% 23
Yorkshire -51 62 £69,310 +38.01% 37
East of England -21 58 £52,500 -7.89% 65
Wales -5 45 £55,000 +4.58% 16
North East -20 43 £55,000 -6.78% 39
Northern Ireland -36 9 £80,000 +45.45% 5

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 (2.20%) Confluence
2 23 (1.37%) Apache Airflow
3 17 (1.01%) Apache Spark
4 12 (0.71%) Apache
4 12 (0.71%) Appian
5 11 (0.65%) CMS
5 11 (0.65%) Jupyter
5 11 (0.65%) SharePoint
6 10 (0.59%) IIS
6 10 (0.59%) Palantir Foundry
7 8 (0.48%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 6 (0.36%) WordPress
9 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.18%) nginx
9 3 (0.18%) Umbraco
10 2 (0.12%) Camunda
10 2 (0.12%) JBoss
10 2 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.12%) SAS
11 1 (0.059%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 12 (0.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (0.59%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.36%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.36%) PlantUML
5 4 (0.24%) Fusion 360
6 3 (0.18%) CANalyzer
6 3 (0.18%) Simulink
7 2 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.059%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.059%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 15 (0.89%) Oracle ERP
2 9 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.30%) Visualfiles
4 4 (0.24%) Dynamics AX
4 4 (0.24%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 4 (0.24%) Shopify
5 2 (0.12%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.059%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.059%) Endur
6 1 (0.059%) Findur
6 1 (0.059%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.059%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle SCM
6 1 (0.059%) SAP CX
6 1 (0.059%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.059%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 557 (33.12%) Azure
2 524 (31.15%) AWS
3 260 (15.46%) Azure DevOps
4 195 (11.59%) GCP
5 160 (9.51%) GitHub
6 147 (8.74%) Serverless
7 120 (7.13%) SaaS
8 68 (4.04%) Amazon EKS
9 67 (3.98%) GitHub Actions
10 61 (3.63%) AWS Lambda
11 57 (3.39%) Amazon S3
11 57 (3.39%) AWS CloudFormation
11 57 (3.39%) PaaS
12 52 (3.09%) Azure Data Factory
13 48 (2.85%) Power Platform
14 46 (2.73%) dbt
15 38 (2.26%) Azure Service Bus
16 37 (2.20%) GitHub Copilot
17 35 (2.08%) Datadog
18 34 (2.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 41 (2.44%) Broadband
2 19 (1.13%) Firewall
3 16 (0.95%) CHAP
3 16 (0.95%) DNS
4 12 (0.71%) WAN
5 11 (0.65%) SD-WAN
6 10 (0.59%) HTTP
7 8 (0.48%) 5G
7 8 (0.48%) TCP/IP
8 6 (0.36%) VPN
9 4 (0.24%) DHCP
9 4 (0.24%) SMTP
10 3 (0.18%) Bluetooth
10 3 (0.18%) Cisco ISE
10 3 (0.18%) Ethernet
10 3 (0.18%) LTE
10 3 (0.18%) VLAN
10 3 (0.18%) Wireless
11 2 (0.12%) Multicast
11 2 (0.12%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 117 (6.96%) NoSQL
2 116 (6.90%) PostgreSQL
3 86 (5.11%) MongoDB
4 82 (4.88%) SQL Server
5 34 (2.02%) DynamoDB
5 34 (2.02%) MySQL
6 33 (1.96%) Data Warehouse
6 33 (1.96%) Relational Database
7 29 (1.72%) Power BI
8 21 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
9 19 (1.13%) Metadata
10 17 (1.01%) Spark SQL
11 15 (0.89%) Redis
12 14 (0.83%) BigQuery
12 14 (0.83%) Oracle Database
12 14 (0.83%) Pinecone
13 11 (0.65%) Data Lake
13 11 (0.65%) DB2
14 10 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
15 9 (0.54%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 190 (11.30%) Git
2 161 (9.57%) Selenium
3 146 (8.68%) Jenkins
4 130 (7.73%) JIRA
5 112 (6.66%) GitLab
6 86 (5.11%) Cypress.io
7 66 (3.92%) Cucumber
8 62 (3.69%) Postman
9 59 (3.51%) TeamCity
10 44 (2.62%) JMeter
11 32 (1.90%) REST Assured
11 32 (1.90%) SpecFlow
12 30 (1.78%) CircleCI
13 27 (1.61%) TestRail
14 23 (1.37%) MLflow
15 21 (1.25%) Bitbucket
15 21 (1.25%) JUnit
16 20 (1.19%) Zephyr
17 18 (1.07%) WebDriver
18 17 (1.01%) LabVIEW
General
1 456 (27.11%) Social Skills
2 429 (25.51%) Finance
3 182 (10.82%) Banking
4 153 (9.10%) Analytical Skills
5 144 (8.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 118 (7.02%) Law
7 114 (6.78%) Public Sector
8 90 (5.35%) Retail
9 58 (3.45%) Financial Institution
10 54 (3.21%) Manufacturing
11 46 (2.73%) Electronics
12 43 (2.56%) Back Office
12 43 (2.56%) Games
13 33 (1.96%) Front Office
13 33 (1.96%) Legal
14 31 (1.84%) Marketing
15 19 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
16 16 (0.95%) Investment Banking
17 14 (0.83%) Influencing Skills
17 14 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 436 (25.92%) Senior
2 278 (16.53%) Lead
3 230 (13.67%) Software Engineer
4 225 (13.38%) Developer
5 183 (10.88%) Test Engineer
6 100 (5.95%) Senior Developer
7 93 (5.53%) QA Engineer
8 89 (5.29%) Tester
9 86 (5.11%) Java Engineer
9 86 (5.11%) Test Automation Engineer
10 74 (4.40%) Test Leader
11 71 (4.22%) Senior Software Engineer
12 60 (3.57%) Automation Engineer
12 60 (3.57%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 54 (3.21%) Data Engineer
14 53 (3.15%) DevOps Engineer
15 51 (3.03%) Automation Tester
16 50 (2.97%) QA Automation Engineer
16 50 (2.97%) Senior Test Engineer
17 49 (2.91%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 194 (11.53%) React
2 180 (10.70%) .NET
3 161 (9.57%) RESTful
4 154 (9.16%) REST
5 148 (8.80%) Playwright
6 108 (6.42%) Node.js
7 98 (5.83%) Spring
8 82 (4.88%) Kafka
9 73 (4.34%) Spring Boot
10 62 (3.69%) HTML
11 61 (3.63%) CSS
12 51 (3.03%) OAuth
13 50 (2.97%) JSON
14 46 (2.73%) AngularJS
15 43 (2.56%) RabbitMQ
16 40 (2.38%) pytest
16 40 (2.38%) Web Services
17 39 (2.32%) .NET Framework
18 38 (2.26%) OAuth2
19 35 (2.08%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 276 (16.41%) Cloud Native
2 155 (9.22%) Product Ownership
3 101 (6.00%) Distributed Systems
4 77 (4.58%) Mobile App
5 62 (3.69%) Management Information System
6 52 (3.09%) Enterprise Software
7 47 (2.79%) Low-Code
8 40 (2.38%) Algorithms
9 39 (2.32%) Greenfield Project
9 39 (2.32%) Onboarding
10 38 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
11 36 (2.14%) Legacy Systems
11 36 (2.14%) Public Cloud
12 30 (1.78%) Data Structures
13 26 (1.55%) Hybrid Cloud
14 24 (1.43%) Video\Live Streaming
15 23 (1.37%) Blog
15 23 (1.37%) Equities
15 23 (1.37%) Hedge funds
16 20 (1.19%) Embedded Systems
Operating Systems
1 167 (9.93%) Linux
2 87 (5.17%) Windows
3 66 (3.92%) Apple iOS
4 57 (3.39%) Android
5 48 (2.85%) Unix
6 11 (0.65%) CentOS
7 10 (0.59%) Windows Server
8 5 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.24%) Kali Linux
9 4 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.18%) FreeRTOS
10 3 (0.18%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.12%) AIX
11 2 (0.12%) Debian
12 1 (0.059%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.059%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.059%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 878 (52.20%) CI/CD
2 679 (40.37%) Agile
3 583 (34.66%) DevOps
4 431 (25.62%) Software Engineering
5 414 (24.61%) Continuous Improvement
6 376 (22.35%) Mentoring
7 346 (20.57%) Problem-Solving
8 293 (17.42%) Infrastructure as Code
9 286 (17.00%) Microservices
10 281 (16.71%) AI
11 258 (15.34%) Software Testing
12 243 (14.45%) Observability
13 227 (13.50%) Coaching
14 209 (12.43%) Containerisation
15 208 (12.37%) Test Strategy
16 207 (12.31%) Full-Stack Development
17 194 (11.53%) Clean Code
18 188 (11.18%) Validation
19 164 (9.75%) Deployment Automation
20 160 (9.51%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 523 (31.09%) Python
2 426 (25.33%) Java
3 309 (18.37%) SQL
4 232 (13.79%) JavaScript
5 210 (12.49%) C#
5 210 (12.49%) TypeScript
6 80 (4.76%) C++
7 76 (4.52%) PowerShell
8 70 (4.16%) Bash
9 67 (3.98%) Go
10 46 (2.73%) C
11 33 (1.96%) Bicep
12 27 (1.61%) Rust
13 26 (1.55%) Kotlin
14 23 (1.37%) Shell Script
15 22 (1.31%) PL/SQL
16 21 (1.25%) Apex Code
17 20 (1.19%) PHP
18 18 (1.07%) Swift
19 17 (1.01%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 220 (13.08%) Degree
2 168 (9.99%) Security Cleared
3 103 (6.12%) SC Cleared
4 90 (5.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 77 (4.58%) ISTQB
6 33 (1.96%) DV Cleared
7 27 (1.61%) Master's Degree
8 22 (1.31%) AWS Certification
8 22 (1.31%) CISSP
8 22 (1.31%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 18 (1.07%) DBS Check
10 16 (0.95%) CGEIT
10 16 (0.95%) CISA
10 16 (0.95%) CISM
10 16 (0.95%) FFIEC
10 16 (0.95%) SANS
11 15 (0.89%) Azure Certification
12 13 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 13 (0.77%) PhD
13 12 (0.71%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 393 (23.37%) QA
2 123 (7.31%) Accessibility
3 75 (4.46%) Data Quality
4 53 (3.15%) GDPR
5 35 (2.08%) NIST
6 23 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 18 (1.07%) WCAG
8 17 (1.01%) COBIT
9 14 (0.83%) SLA
10 12 (0.71%) ISO 22301
11 10 (0.59%) Software Quality Assurance
12 8 (0.48%) GRC
12 8 (0.48%) ISO 9001
13 7 (0.42%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.36%) IEC 61508
14 6 (0.36%) PMO
15 4 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
15 4 (0.24%) ISO 13485
15 4 (0.24%) ISO 26262
15 4 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 237 (14.09%) Docker
2 27 (1.61%) Active Directory
3 24 (1.43%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (1.01%) Firmware
4 17 (1.01%) Hyper-V
5 15 (0.89%) Virtual Machines
6 13 (0.77%) KVM
7 7 (0.42%) Embedded Firmware
8 3 (0.18%) Terminal Server
9 2 (0.12%) vSphere
10 1 (0.059%) IAG
10 1 (0.059%) Xen
Systems Management
1 292 (17.36%) Terraform
2 283 (16.83%) Kubernetes
3 122 (7.25%) Grafana
4 72 (4.28%) Ansible
5 55 (3.27%) Prometheus
6 25 (1.49%) Argo
6 25 (1.49%) Single Sign-On
7 10 (0.59%) logstash
8 8 (0.48%) Kibana
9 7 (0.42%) SCCM
9 7 (0.42%) SCOM
10 5 (0.30%) HP Fortify
10 5 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.24%) Packer
11 4 (0.24%) Rancher
11 4 (0.24%) vCenter Server
12 3 (0.18%) Functional Safety
12 3 (0.18%) HP ALM
12 3 (0.18%) Puppet
12 3 (0.18%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 131 (7.79%) Microsoft
2 67 (3.98%) Oracle
3 56 (3.33%) Databricks
4 52 (3.09%) Salesforce
5 45 (2.68%) VMware
6 37 (2.20%) Google
7 24 (1.43%) OpenAI
8 20 (1.19%) Splunk
9 18 (1.07%) ServiceNow
10 16 (0.95%) Commvault
11 15 (0.89%) Atlassian
11 15 (0.89%) SAP
12 12 (0.71%) Amplitude
12 12 (0.71%) Automation Anywhere
12 12 (0.71%) Braze
12 12 (0.71%) Palantir
12 12 (0.71%) UiPath
13 11 (0.65%) CrowdStrike
13 11 (0.65%) Foundry
13 11 (0.65%) IFS