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

6 months to
6 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 78 91 96
Rank change year-on-year +13 +5 -26
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,342 1,570 1,995
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.10% 3.17% 2.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.87% 3.58% 3.11%
Number of salaries quoted 1,284 747 1,090
10th Percentile £41,250 £38,650 £38,750
25th Percentile £48,750 £49,249 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%
75th Percentile £80,000 £82,751 £73,886
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £91,375
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +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 81,483 43,799 64,049
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 72.97% 88.49% 80.62%
Number of salaries quoted 56,701 24,787 38,319
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,585 £36,250 £41,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,750 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -8.65% -4.59%

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 6 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 6 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 +4 1,899 £65,000 - 1,829
UK excluding London +19 1,488 £60,000 +4.35% 1,091
Work from Home +11 865 £67,500 +8.00% 759
London +3 691 £80,000 - 995
North of England +10 369 £58,750 -2.08% 225
South East 0 267 £60,000 +4.35% 239
South West +10 249 £60,000 +14.29% 203
Midlands +1 206 £56,000 -6.67% 113
North West -5 187 £65,000 +4.00% 132
Northern Ireland +11 164 £80,000 +45.45% 46
Wales +11 118 £55,000 +4.76% 17
West Midlands -9 113 £60,500 +5.22% 68
North East +11 103 £53,750 +63.50% 36
East Midlands -20 93 £55,000 -10.20% 45
Yorkshire -18 79 £69,310 +40.73% 57
East of England -35 72 £50,000 -14.53% 123
Scotland -38 56 £62,500 -10.71% 141

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 53 (2.26%) Confluence
2 29 (1.24%) Apache Spark
3 25 (1.07%) SharePoint
4 24 (1.02%) Apache
5 19 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
6 17 (0.73%) Jupyter
7 14 (0.60%) Anypoint
7 14 (0.60%) Mule
8 13 (0.56%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 12 (0.51%) CMS
10 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
11 5 (0.21%) Cloud Foundry
11 5 (0.21%) nginx
11 5 (0.21%) Umbraco
12 4 (0.17%) Camunda
12 4 (0.17%) IIS
12 4 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
12 4 (0.17%) SAS
13 3 (0.13%) WinCC
13 3 (0.13%) WordPress
Applications
1 63 (2.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.56%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.56%) Simulink
3 7 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.21%) Lightworks
4 5 (0.21%) Moqups
5 3 (0.13%) CANalyzer
5 3 (0.13%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.13%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.085%) PlantUML
7 1 (0.043%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.043%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.043%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 67 (2.86%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.15%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.21%) Visualfiles
5 3 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
5 3 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
5 3 (0.13%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.085%) FLEXCUBE
6 2 (0.085%) Magento
6 2 (0.085%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.085%) Towers Watson Igloo
6 2 (0.085%) Workday HCM
7 1 (0.043%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.043%) Dynamics AX
7 1 (0.043%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.043%) Misys Equation
7 1 (0.043%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.043%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.043%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.043%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 800 (34.16%) AWS
2 678 (28.95%) Azure
3 297 (12.68%) SaaS
4 258 (11.02%) Azure DevOps
5 251 (10.72%) GCP
6 196 (8.37%) GitHub
7 183 (7.81%) Serverless
8 102 (4.36%) GitHub Actions
9 100 (4.27%) AWS CloudFormation
10 77 (3.29%) Amazon EKS
10 77 (3.29%) AWS Lambda
11 71 (3.03%) Amazon S3
12 63 (2.69%) Power Platform
13 52 (2.22%) Azure Service Bus
14 49 (2.09%) Azure Logic Apps
15 48 (2.05%) Azure Monitor
16 43 (1.84%) Google Ads
16 43 (1.84%) Meta Ads
17 38 (1.62%) Amazon EC2
18 37 (1.58%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 69 (2.95%) Broadband
2 27 (1.15%) TCP/IP
3 26 (1.11%) Firewall
4 23 (0.98%) DNS
5 16 (0.68%) SSL
5 16 (0.68%) Wireless
6 13 (0.56%) DMARC
6 13 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
7 12 (0.51%) DHCP
7 12 (0.51%) MQTT
8 11 (0.47%) HTTP
8 11 (0.47%) WAN
9 10 (0.43%) 5G
9 10 (0.43%) LTE
9 10 (0.43%) Modbus
10 9 (0.38%) 3GPP
10 9 (0.38%) Network Security
11 7 (0.30%) GSM
11 7 (0.30%) Radio Access Network
11 7 (0.30%) UMTS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (5.76%) PostgreSQL
2 123 (5.25%) NoSQL
3 90 (3.84%) MongoDB
4 76 (3.25%) SQL Server
5 64 (2.73%) Relational Database
6 46 (1.96%) DynamoDB
7 39 (1.67%) MySQL
8 36 (1.54%) Data Warehouse
9 35 (1.49%) Power BI
10 34 (1.45%) Redis
11 28 (1.20%) BigQuery
12 25 (1.07%) Data Lake
13 20 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
13 20 (0.85%) Semantic Layer
14 19 (0.81%) Metadata
15 18 (0.77%) Spark SQL
16 16 (0.68%) Amazon Athena
17 13 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
18 11 (0.47%) Big Data
18 11 (0.47%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 346 (14.77%) Git
2 229 (9.78%) GitLab
3 219 (9.35%) Jenkins
4 168 (7.17%) Selenium
5 145 (6.19%) JIRA
6 107 (4.57%) Cypress.io
7 103 (4.40%) Cucumber
8 96 (4.10%) Postman
9 61 (2.60%) TeamCity
10 53 (2.26%) JMeter
11 48 (2.05%) REST Assured
12 46 (1.96%) JUnit
13 37 (1.58%) Zephyr
14 35 (1.49%) Gatling
15 30 (1.28%) SonarQube
16 28 (1.20%) TestRail
17 25 (1.07%) Bitbucket
17 25 (1.07%) LabVIEW
18 23 (0.98%) Robot Framework
19 22 (0.94%) Maven
General
1 656 (28.01%) Social Skills
2 549 (23.44%) Finance
3 331 (14.13%) Analytical Skills
4 254 (10.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 227 (9.69%) Public Sector
6 197 (8.41%) Law
7 193 (8.24%) Banking
8 145 (6.19%) Legal
8 145 (6.19%) Marketing
9 107 (4.57%) Retail
10 100 (4.27%) Manufacturing
11 82 (3.50%) Electronics
12 74 (3.16%) Financial Institution
13 57 (2.43%) Back Office
14 49 (2.09%) Games
15 42 (1.79%) Aerospace
16 40 (1.71%) Telecoms
17 30 (1.28%) Documentation Skills
18 25 (1.07%) Front Office
19 23 (0.98%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 659 (28.14%) Senior
2 348 (14.86%) Software Engineer
3 347 (14.82%) Lead
4 333 (14.22%) Developer
5 253 (10.80%) Test Engineer
6 129 (5.51%) Senior Developer
7 112 (4.78%) Java Engineer
8 103 (4.40%) Senior Software Engineer
9 100 (4.27%) DevOps Engineer
10 98 (4.18%) QA Engineer
11 83 (3.54%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 83 (3.54%) Test Automation Engineer
12 69 (2.95%) Lead Software Engineer
13 68 (2.90%) Analyst
13 68 (2.90%) Data Engineer
14 63 (2.69%) Architect
14 63 (2.69%) Senior Manager
15 62 (2.65%) Software Developer
16 61 (2.60%) Tester
17 60 (2.56%) Marketing Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 326 (13.92%) Terraform
2 238 (10.16%) React
2 238 (10.16%) REST
3 217 (9.27%) .NET
4 207 (8.84%) Playwright
5 195 (8.33%) Node.js
5 195 (8.33%) Spring
6 193 (8.24%) RESTful
7 143 (6.11%) Spring Boot
8 129 (5.51%) Kafka
9 112 (4.78%) AngularJS
10 111 (4.74%) CSS
11 104 (4.44%) HTML
12 71 (3.03%) OAuth
13 67 (2.86%) Middleware
14 65 (2.78%) OAuth2
15 57 (2.43%) JSON
16 50 (2.13%) Vue
17 49 (2.09%) Next.js
17 49 (2.09%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 407 (17.38%) Cloud Native
2 287 (12.25%) Product Ownership
3 205 (8.75%) Distributed Systems
4 114 (4.87%) Mobile App
5 94 (4.01%) Enterprise Software
6 83 (3.54%) Public Cloud
7 82 (3.50%) Onboarding
8 78 (3.33%) Blog
8 78 (3.33%) Virtual Team
9 65 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
10 64 (2.73%) Marketing Technology
11 59 (2.52%) Algorithms
12 57 (2.43%) Cyber Threat
13 53 (2.26%) Low-Code
14 45 (1.92%) Self-Motivation
15 44 (1.88%) Data Structures
15 44 (1.88%) Embedded Systems
15 44 (1.88%) Management Information System
16 37 (1.58%) e-Learning
16 37 (1.58%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 190 (8.11%) Linux
2 103 (4.40%) Windows
3 64 (2.73%) Android
3 64 (2.73%) Apple iOS
4 52 (2.22%) Unix
5 11 (0.47%) Windows Server
6 9 (0.38%) CentOS
6 9 (0.38%) Embedded Linux
7 6 (0.26%) FreeRTOS
8 5 (0.21%) Kali Linux
9 4 (0.17%) AIX
9 4 (0.17%) Debian
9 4 (0.17%) VMS
10 3 (0.13%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.085%) OpenWrt
12 1 (0.043%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 1 (0.043%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.043%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.043%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.043%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,316 (56.19%) CI/CD
2 1,011 (43.17%) Agile
3 849 (36.25%) DevOps
4 755 (32.24%) Software Engineering
5 698 (29.80%) Continuous Improvement
6 612 (26.13%) Mentoring
7 557 (23.78%) AI
8 523 (22.33%) Problem-Solving
9 430 (18.36%) Microservices
10 410 (17.51%) Software Testing
11 398 (16.99%) Infrastructure as Code
12 333 (14.22%) Test Strategy
13 291 (12.43%) Observability
14 284 (12.13%) Code Quality
15 282 (12.04%) Full-Stack Development
15 282 (12.04%) Validation
16 276 (11.78%) Coaching
17 275 (11.74%) Containerisation
18 256 (10.93%) Decision-Making
19 254 (10.85%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 684 (29.21%) Python
2 581 (24.81%) Java
3 420 (17.93%) JavaScript
4 413 (17.63%) SQL
5 337 (14.39%) TypeScript
6 326 (13.92%) C#
7 127 (5.42%) C++
8 108 (4.61%) PowerShell
9 103 (4.40%) Go
10 85 (3.63%) Bash
11 82 (3.50%) C
12 40 (1.71%) Kotlin
13 33 (1.41%) PHP
14 32 (1.37%) Rust
15 29 (1.24%) Ruby
16 27 (1.15%) Swift
17 24 (1.02%) Bicep
18 23 (0.98%) Groovy
19 22 (0.94%) MATLAB
20 16 (0.68%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 326 (13.92%) Security Cleared
2 247 (10.55%) Degree
3 195 (8.33%) SC Cleared
4 108 (4.61%) Computer Science Degree
5 83 (3.54%) ISTQB
6 64 (2.73%) DV Cleared
7 58 (2.48%) CISSP
8 57 (2.43%) ITIL Certification
9 55 (2.35%) CISM
10 53 (2.26%) AWS Certification
11 45 (1.92%) Master's Degree
12 37 (1.58%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 34 (1.45%) HNC
14 31 (1.32%) BPSS Clearance
15 29 (1.24%) HND
16 19 (0.81%) ISEB
17 16 (0.68%) DBS Check
18 14 (0.60%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
18 14 (0.60%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
19 11 (0.47%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 552 (23.57%) QA
2 208 (8.88%) Accessibility
3 73 (3.12%) Data Quality
4 63 (2.69%) WCAG
5 58 (2.48%) NIST
6 49 (2.09%) ISO 22301
7 43 (1.84%) GDPR
8 14 (0.60%) SLA
9 12 (0.51%) GRC
10 11 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 10 (0.43%) Software Quality Assurance
12 9 (0.38%) SOC 2
13 8 (0.34%) MISRA
14 7 (0.30%) COBIT
14 7 (0.30%) JTAG
15 5 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
15 5 (0.21%) NCSC
15 5 (0.21%) PCI DSS
15 5 (0.21%) PMO
16 4 (0.17%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 325 (13.88%) Docker
2 42 (1.79%) Firmware
3 16 (0.68%) Active Directory
3 16 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (0.64%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.47%) Embedded Firmware
6 7 (0.30%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.21%) KVM
8 2 (0.085%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.043%) IAG
9 1 (0.043%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.043%) QEMU
9 1 (0.043%) Terminal Server
9 1 (0.043%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.043%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 335 (14.30%) Kubernetes
2 141 (6.02%) Grafana
3 84 (3.59%) Ansible
4 59 (2.52%) Prometheus
5 28 (1.20%) Argo
6 17 (0.73%) Kibana
7 15 (0.64%) Puppet
8 14 (0.60%) CloudHub
9 10 (0.43%) logstash
10 9 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
11 8 (0.34%) HP Fortify
12 7 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
12 7 (0.30%) vCenter Server
13 6 (0.26%) Functional Safety
13 6 (0.26%) Progress Chef
14 5 (0.21%) Packer
14 5 (0.21%) Rancher
15 4 (0.17%) SCCM
15 4 (0.17%) SCOM
16 3 (0.13%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 239 (10.20%) Microsoft
2 109 (4.65%) Google
3 63 (2.69%) Databricks
4 58 (2.48%) Salesforce
5 54 (2.31%) Oracle
6 46 (1.96%) SAP
7 41 (1.75%) ServiceNow
8 38 (1.62%) Splunk
9 27 (1.15%) Dynatrace
10 25 (1.07%) Pega
10 25 (1.07%) VMware
11 20 (0.85%) AppDynamics
12 18 (0.77%) MuleSoft
13 17 (0.73%) Atlassian
13 17 (0.73%) IBM
14 16 (0.68%) OpenAI
14 16 (0.68%) Red Hat
15 15 (0.64%) Allen-Bradley
16 14 (0.60%) Adobe
17 13 (0.56%) SendGrid