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 13 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 98 76 91
Rank change year-on-year -22 +15 -58
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,515 1,638 2,513
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.05% 3.75% 2.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.63% 4.01% 3.43%
Number of salaries quoted 921 901 1,776
10th Percentile £42,500 £41,250 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £63,076 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +0.92% +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £105,000 £102,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £56,659 £52,500
% change year-on-year +1.48% +7.92% -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 57,551 40,867 73,360
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 78.05% 93.60% 87.39%
Number of salaries quoted 34,815 22,139 55,867
10th Percentile £29,750 £32,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £39,860 £45,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.41%
75th Percentile £76,299 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £94,006
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -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 6 months to 13 March 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 13 March 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 -21 1,263 £62,500 - 699
UK excluding London -47 799 £57,500 +1.48% 633
Work from Home +12 640 £65,000 +5.91% 394
London +29 578 £80,000 +6.67% 207
South East -56 192 £55,000 - 174
North of England -67 146 £60,000 +9.09% 163
South West -11 136 £55,000 -8.33% 82
Scotland +10 128 £65,000 +8.33% 61
Midlands -61 103 £55,000 -6.93% 78
North West -28 80 £60,000 +14.29% 76
East of England -52 59 £50,000 -28.57% 57
East Midlands -50 54 £55,000 - 29
West Midlands -48 50 £56,350 -6.08% 49
Yorkshire -69 45 £55,000 -0.17% 53
Wales -7 29 £57,500 +13.30% 30
North East -32 21 £55,100 -9.67% 34
Northern Ireland -34 6 £80,000 +25.49% 6

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 (2.11%) Confluence
2 24 (1.58%) Apache Airflow
3 19 (1.25%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.92%) Appian
5 13 (0.86%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 12 (0.79%) Apache
7 10 (0.66%) Palantir Foundry
7 10 (0.66%) SharePoint
8 9 (0.59%) Jupyter
9 8 (0.53%) CMS
10 6 (0.40%) IIS
10 6 (0.40%) WordPress
11 4 (0.26%) Apache Solr
12 3 (0.20%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.20%) nginx
12 3 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.13%) Camunda
13 2 (0.13%) JBoss
13 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
13 2 (0.13%) SAS
Applications
1 20 (1.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.66%) MS Visio
4 9 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.26%) Fusion 360
5 4 (0.26%) PlantUML
6 2 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.13%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.066%) CANalyzer
7 1 (0.066%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 30 (1.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.85%) Oracle ERP
3 14 (0.92%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.26%) Dynamics AX
4 4 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
4 4 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 4 (0.26%) Shopify
5 3 (0.20%) SAP CX
6 1 (0.066%) Aladdin
6 1 (0.066%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.066%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.066%) Oracle SCM
6 1 (0.066%) Postilion
6 1 (0.066%) SAP Hybris
6 1 (0.066%) Siebel CRM
6 1 (0.066%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 509 (33.60%) Azure
2 440 (29.04%) AWS
3 274 (18.09%) Azure DevOps
4 219 (14.46%) GitHub
5 181 (11.95%) GCP
6 121 (7.99%) SaaS
7 102 (6.73%) Serverless
8 79 (5.21%) GitHub Actions
9 70 (4.62%) Amazon EKS
10 67 (4.42%) GitHub Copilot
11 64 (4.22%) PaaS
12 61 (4.03%) Power Platform
13 53 (3.50%) Azure Data Factory
13 53 (3.50%) dbt
14 43 (2.84%) AWS Lambda
14 43 (2.84%) Datadog
15 42 (2.77%) AWS CloudFormation
16 40 (2.64%) Amazon S3
17 38 (2.51%) Entra ID
18 37 (2.44%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.52%) DNS
2 19 (1.25%) HTTP
3 17 (1.12%) TCP/IP
4 16 (1.06%) WAN
5 15 (0.99%) SD-WAN
6 12 (0.79%) 5G
6 12 (0.79%) VPN
7 11 (0.73%) CHAP
8 10 (0.66%) Firewall
9 8 (0.53%) Broadband
10 4 (0.26%) 3G
10 4 (0.26%) GPRS
10 4 (0.26%) GSM
10 4 (0.26%) Modbus
10 4 (0.26%) RS-232
10 4 (0.26%) RS-485
10 4 (0.26%) SMTP
10 4 (0.26%) SSL
10 4 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
11 3 (0.20%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (6.14%) PostgreSQL
2 85 (5.61%) NoSQL
3 84 (5.54%) SQL Server
4 52 (3.43%) Relational Database
5 48 (3.17%) MySQL
6 43 (2.84%) MongoDB
7 38 (2.51%) Power BI
8 37 (2.44%) Data Warehouse
9 22 (1.45%) DynamoDB
10 16 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
11 15 (0.99%) Metadata
11 15 (0.99%) Tableau
12 14 (0.92%) Elasticsearch
13 13 (0.86%) DB2
14 12 (0.79%) Pinecone
15 11 (0.73%) BigQuery
16 10 (0.66%) Data Lake
16 10 (0.66%) Snowflake Schema
17 9 (0.59%) RDBMS
17 9 (0.59%) Redis
Development Applications
1 184 (12.15%) Selenium
2 159 (10.50%) Git
3 142 (9.37%) JIRA
4 135 (8.91%) Jenkins
5 87 (5.74%) Cypress.io
6 72 (4.75%) GitLab
7 71 (4.69%) Cucumber
8 64 (4.22%) TeamCity
9 54 (3.56%) Postman
10 48 (3.17%) JMeter
11 31 (2.05%) SpecFlow
12 28 (1.85%) REST Assured
13 27 (1.78%) Robot Framework
14 26 (1.72%) CircleCI
15 25 (1.65%) eCATT
15 25 (1.65%) JUnit
15 25 (1.65%) Oracle Forms
16 24 (1.58%) MLflow
17 20 (1.32%) Snyk
17 20 (1.32%) WebDriver
General
1 470 (31.02%) Finance
2 450 (29.70%) Social Skills
3 156 (10.30%) Banking
4 154 (10.17%) Analytical Skills
5 120 (7.92%) Law
6 115 (7.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 91 (6.01%) Retail
8 81 (5.35%) Public Sector
9 71 (4.69%) Marketing
10 64 (4.22%) Financial Institution
11 54 (3.56%) Manufacturing
12 43 (2.84%) Back Office
13 37 (2.44%) Electronics
13 37 (2.44%) Front Office
14 30 (1.98%) Legal
15 23 (1.52%) Presentation Skills
16 22 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
17 21 (1.39%) Games
18 20 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
19 16 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 409 (27.00%) Senior
2 242 (15.97%) Lead
3 221 (14.59%) Developer
4 184 (12.15%) Software Engineer
5 146 (9.64%) Test Engineer
6 105 (6.93%) Senior Developer
7 88 (5.81%) QA Engineer
8 85 (5.61%) Test Leader
9 73 (4.82%) Tester
10 72 (4.75%) Analyst
10 72 (4.75%) Java Engineer
11 71 (4.69%) Test Automation Engineer
12 59 (3.89%) Senior Software Engineer
13 58 (3.83%) Automation Engineer
14 49 (3.23%) Python Developer
14 49 (3.23%) QA Automation Engineer
15 48 (3.17%) Applications Engineer
16 47 (3.10%) Full-Stack Engineer
17 45 (2.97%) Automation Tester
18 40 (2.64%) QA Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 170 (11.22%) React
2 152 (10.03%) RESTful
3 138 (9.11%) .NET
4 124 (8.18%) Playwright
5 109 (7.19%) REST
6 88 (5.81%) Spring
7 79 (5.21%) Node.js
8 63 (4.16%) CSS
8 63 (4.16%) HTML
8 63 (4.16%) Kafka
8 63 (4.16%) Spring Boot
9 60 (3.96%) JSON
10 54 (3.56%) pytest
11 52 (3.43%) OAuth
12 46 (3.04%) SOAP
13 39 (2.57%) OAuth2
14 37 (2.44%) Elastic Stack
14 37 (2.44%) Web Services
15 34 (2.24%) Django
15 34 (2.24%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 248 (16.37%) Cloud Native
2 117 (7.72%) Product Ownership
3 63 (4.16%) Mobile App
4 58 (3.83%) Management Information System
5 53 (3.50%) Self-Motivation
6 51 (3.37%) Enterprise Software
7 43 (2.84%) Distributed Systems
8 42 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
9 38 (2.51%) Onboarding
10 31 (2.05%) Algorithms
10 31 (2.05%) Greenfield Project
11 29 (1.91%) Data Structures
11 29 (1.91%) Low-Code
12 28 (1.85%) Hedge funds
13 25 (1.65%) Equities
14 24 (1.58%) Hybrid Cloud
15 23 (1.52%) GNSS
16 20 (1.32%) Satnav
17 19 (1.25%) Blog
17 19 (1.25%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 142 (9.37%) Linux
2 81 (5.35%) Windows
3 55 (3.63%) Apple iOS
4 48 (3.17%) Android
5 35 (2.31%) Unix
6 11 (0.73%) Windows Server
7 9 (0.59%) CentOS
8 5 (0.33%) Debian
8 5 (0.33%) Embedded Linux
8 5 (0.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.26%) FreeRTOS
9 4 (0.26%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.13%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.13%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.13%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.066%) AIX
11 1 (0.066%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.066%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 765 (50.50%) CI/CD
2 625 (41.25%) Agile
3 508 (33.53%) DevOps
4 349 (23.04%) Continuous Improvement
5 337 (22.24%) Software Engineering
6 334 (22.05%) Mentoring
7 325 (21.45%) Problem-Solving
8 242 (15.97%) AI
9 239 (15.78%) Microservices
10 225 (14.85%) Coaching
11 199 (13.14%) Infrastructure as Code
12 196 (12.94%) Observability
13 193 (12.74%) Software Testing
14 192 (12.67%) Clean Code
15 177 (11.68%) Test Strategy
16 163 (10.76%) Containerisation
17 156 (10.30%) Analytics
18 153 (10.10%) Full-Stack Development
19 138 (9.11%) Validation
20 129 (8.51%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 448 (29.57%) Python
2 380 (25.08%) Java
3 299 (19.74%) SQL
4 215 (14.19%) JavaScript
5 184 (12.15%) TypeScript
6 147 (9.70%) C#
7 80 (5.28%) PowerShell
8 68 (4.49%) C++
9 52 (3.43%) Bash
10 40 (2.64%) Go
11 35 (2.31%) PL/SQL
12 34 (2.24%) C
13 32 (2.11%) Shell Script
14 29 (1.91%) Bicep
15 28 (1.85%) PHP
16 27 (1.78%) Apex Code
17 25 (1.65%) Kotlin
18 22 (1.45%) Rust
19 14 (0.92%) Swift
20 13 (0.86%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 199 (13.14%) Degree
2 132 (8.71%) Security Cleared
3 87 (5.74%) SC Cleared
4 74 (4.88%) Computer Science Degree
5 67 (4.42%) ISTQB
6 33 (2.18%) Master's Degree
7 32 (2.11%) DV Cleared
8 27 (1.78%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 20 (1.32%) AWS Certification
10 17 (1.12%) CISSP
10 17 (1.12%) ISEB
11 16 (1.06%) HND
12 15 (0.99%) CEH
13 14 (0.92%) DBS Check
14 13 (0.86%) Azure Certification
14 13 (0.86%) PhD
15 12 (0.79%) CISA
16 11 (0.73%) BPSS Clearance
16 11 (0.73%) CGEIT
16 11 (0.73%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 345 (22.77%) QA
2 112 (7.39%) Accessibility
3 64 (4.22%) Data Quality
4 48 (3.17%) NIST
5 43 (2.84%) GDPR
6 38 (2.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 27 (1.78%) WCAG
8 15 (0.99%) ISO 22301
9 14 (0.92%) NCSC
9 14 (0.92%) SLA
10 12 (0.79%) ISO 9001
11 11 (0.73%) COBIT
12 7 (0.46%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 4 (0.26%) GRC
14 4 (0.26%) IEC 61508
14 4 (0.26%) ISO 13485
14 4 (0.26%) ISO 26262
14 4 (0.26%) MISRA
15 3 (0.20%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 213 (14.06%) Docker
2 36 (2.38%) Active Directory
3 18 (1.19%) Firmware
4 17 (1.12%) VMware Infrastructure
5 13 (0.86%) Embedded Firmware
6 12 (0.79%) Hyper-V
7 11 (0.73%) KVM
8 7 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (0.20%) Terminal Server
10 2 (0.13%) vSphere
11 1 (0.066%) Xen
Systems Management
1 262 (17.29%) Kubernetes
2 261 (17.23%) Terraform
3 124 (8.18%) Grafana
4 67 (4.42%) Ansible
5 42 (2.77%) Prometheus
6 36 (2.38%) Single Sign-On
7 29 (1.91%) HP ALM
8 8 (0.53%) Argo
9 6 (0.40%) logstash
9 6 (0.40%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (0.26%) HP Fortify
10 4 (0.26%) SCCM
10 4 (0.26%) SCOM
11 3 (0.20%) Kibana
11 3 (0.20%) Rancher
12 2 (0.13%) Control-M
12 2 (0.13%) Nessus
12 2 (0.13%) Progress Chef
12 2 (0.13%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 119 (7.85%) Microsoft
2 78 (5.15%) Oracle
3 55 (3.63%) Salesforce
4 48 (3.17%) SAP
5 45 (2.97%) VMware
6 42 (2.77%) Databricks
7 35 (2.31%) Google
8 30 (1.98%) HP
9 21 (1.39%) Commvault
10 19 (1.25%) OpenAI
10 19 (1.25%) Splunk
11 18 (1.19%) ServiceNow
12 17 (1.12%) Black Duck
12 17 (1.12%) Coverity
13 14 (0.92%) Okta
13 14 (0.92%) Palantir
13 14 (0.92%) UiPath
14 13 (0.86%) Ab Initio
14 13 (0.86%) Foundry
15 12 (0.79%) Automation Anywhere