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 22 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 104 88 73
Rank change year-on-year -16 -15 -35
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,351 2,004 2,033
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.53% 2.92% 3.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.97% 3.49% 4.15%
Number of salaries quoted 776 924 1,612
10th Percentile £40,000 £40,000 £41,250
25th Percentile £50,438 £47,500 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,500 £62,734
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -0.37% +4.56%
75th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £105,000 £105,000 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +4.55% -

All Process and 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 45,432 57,470 49,015
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 85.24% 83.88% 93.81%
Number of salaries quoted 27,673 30,239 37,620
10th Percentile £28,250 £33,975 £32,500
25th Percentile £36,250 £45,000 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £54,150 £52,500
% change year-on-year -12.28% +3.14% -

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 22 November 2025.

Salary histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 18 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 22 November 2025. 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 -20 1,123 £65,000 - 1,038
UK excluding London -37 716 £57,500 - 692
London +27 534 £83,750 +5.35% 485
Work from Home 0 479 £65,000 - 556
South East -32 198 £55,000 -4.35% 227
North of England -48 143 £60,000 +21.21% 137
Scotland +12 123 £77,359 +40.65% 53
Midlands -14 93 £60,000 - 76
South West -9 92 £52,500 -14.29% 107
North West -28 86 £60,000 +26.98% 84
West Midlands -1 60 £57,500 -4.17% 47
Yorkshire -27 44 £55,000 +11.11% 32
East of England -52 42 £60,000 +4.35% 64
East Midlands -18 36 £61,250 +11.36% 27
Wales +11 27 £55,200 +13.19% 22
North East -3 13 £52,600 -9.25% 21
Northern Ireland -17 5 £67,500 +14.89% 18
Isle of Man - 1 £52,500 -

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 28 (2.07%) Apache Spark
2 27 (2.00%) Confluence
3 21 (1.55%) Apache Airflow
4 20 (1.48%) SharePoint
5 17 (1.26%) Apache
6 16 (1.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 9 (0.67%) Appian
8 8 (0.59%) Headless CMS
9 7 (0.52%) Apache Solr
10 6 (0.44%) Jupyter
11 5 (0.37%) CMS
11 5 (0.37%) nginx
12 3 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.22%) WordPress
13 2 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 2 (0.15%) IIS
14 1 (0.074%) JBoss
14 1 (0.074%) Microsoft Exchange
14 1 (0.074%) Umbraco
14 1 (0.074%) WebLogic
Applications
1 15 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.67%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.30%) Blender
5 4 (0.30%) Oracle Smart View
6 3 (0.22%) Photoshop
6 3 (0.22%) Simulink
7 2 (0.15%) Adobe XD
7 2 (0.15%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.15%) Sketch
8 1 (0.074%) Doxygen
8 1 (0.074%) Trello
Business Applications
1 34 (2.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (2.44%) Oracle ERP
3 19 (1.41%) Dynamics CRM
4 12 (0.89%) Dynamics NAV
5 9 (0.67%) Shopify
6 7 (0.52%) Elite 3E
7 4 (0.30%) Hyperion Planning
7 4 (0.30%) Oracle Assets
7 4 (0.30%) Oracle Financials
7 4 (0.30%) Oracle General Ledger
7 4 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
7 4 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
8 3 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
8 3 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.22%) SAP CX
8 3 (0.22%) Unit4 Business World
9 2 (0.15%) Aladdin
10 1 (0.074%) Postilion
10 1 (0.074%) SAP Hybris
10 1 (0.074%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 441 (32.64%) Azure
2 378 (27.98%) AWS
3 264 (19.54%) Azure DevOps
4 202 (14.95%) GitHub
5 114 (8.44%) SaaS
6 113 (8.36%) GCP
7 83 (6.14%) Serverless
8 75 (5.55%) PaaS
9 68 (5.03%) GitHub Actions
9 68 (5.03%) Power Platform
10 57 (4.22%) GitHub Copilot
11 40 (2.96%) AWS Lambda
12 39 (2.89%) Amazon S3
13 37 (2.74%) Datadog
13 37 (2.74%) Snowflake
14 35 (2.59%) Amazon EKS
14 35 (2.59%) dbt
15 33 (2.44%) Azure Data Factory
16 32 (2.37%) Entra ID
17 30 (2.22%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.78%) DNS
2 18 (1.33%) HTTP
3 16 (1.18%) TCP/IP
4 13 (0.96%) SD-WAN
4 13 (0.96%) WAN
5 12 (0.89%) 5G
6 10 (0.74%) Firewall
6 10 (0.74%) VPN
7 9 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
8 7 (0.52%) Network Security
8 7 (0.52%) VLAN
9 6 (0.44%) DHCP
9 6 (0.44%) Modbus
9 6 (0.44%) Multicast
10 5 (0.37%) SSL
11 4 (0.30%) 3G
11 4 (0.30%) Cisco ISE
11 4 (0.30%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 4 (0.30%) RS-232
11 4 (0.30%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 97 (7.18%) Relational Database
2 82 (6.07%) SQL Server
3 75 (5.55%) NoSQL
4 72 (5.33%) PostgreSQL
5 43 (3.18%) Data Warehouse
6 41 (3.03%) MySQL
7 37 (2.74%) Power BI
8 25 (1.85%) MongoDB
9 22 (1.63%) RDBMS
10 21 (1.55%) DynamoDB
11 18 (1.33%) Big Data
12 15 (1.11%) Tableau
13 14 (1.04%) Snowflake Schema
14 13 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
14 13 (0.96%) Elasticsearch
15 10 (0.74%) BigQuery
15 10 (0.74%) MariaDB
16 9 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
16 9 (0.67%) DB2
16 9 (0.67%) Redis
Development Applications
1 191 (14.14%) Selenium
2 182 (13.47%) Git
3 164 (12.14%) JIRA
4 136 (10.07%) Jenkins
5 80 (5.92%) Cypress.io
6 68 (5.03%) Cucumber
7 65 (4.81%) Postman
8 52 (3.85%) GitLab
9 42 (3.11%) JMeter
10 35 (2.59%) TeamCity
11 33 (2.44%) JUnit
12 31 (2.29%) Oracle Forms
13 28 (2.07%) eCATT
14 24 (1.78%) Appium
14 24 (1.78%) Snyk
15 22 (1.63%) REST Assured
15 22 (1.63%) Robot Framework
16 20 (1.48%) NeoLoad
17 19 (1.41%) SpecFlow
18 18 (1.33%) Maven
General
1 472 (34.94%) Finance
2 404 (29.90%) Social Skills
3 158 (11.70%) Analytical Skills
4 154 (11.40%) Law
5 134 (9.92%) Marketing
6 124 (9.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 110 (8.14%) Banking
8 68 (5.03%) Manufacturing
9 62 (4.59%) Public Sector
10 42 (3.11%) Retail
11 41 (3.03%) Front Office
12 39 (2.89%) Back Office
13 35 (2.59%) Legal
14 34 (2.52%) Financial Institution
15 33 (2.44%) Electronics
16 27 (2.00%) Presentation Skills
17 26 (1.92%) Documentation Skills
18 19 (1.41%) Automotive
18 19 (1.41%) Games
19 17 (1.26%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 379 (28.05%) Senior
2 321 (23.76%) Developer
3 250 (18.50%) Lead
4 138 (10.21%) Senior Developer
5 131 (9.70%) Software Engineer
6 102 (7.55%) Test Engineer
7 74 (5.48%) Analyst
8 65 (4.81%) Python Developer
9 59 (4.37%) QA Engineer
10 55 (4.07%) Test Leader
11 53 (3.92%) Test Automation Engineer
12 52 (3.85%) Java Engineer
13 51 (3.77%) Java Developer
14 49 (3.63%) Tester
15 48 (3.55%) Full-Stack Developer
16 47 (3.48%) Test Analyst
17 42 (3.11%) Software Developer
18 41 (3.03%) Lead Developer
19 40 (2.96%) Senior Python Developer
20 39 (2.89%) Quality Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 168 (12.44%) React
2 131 (9.70%) .NET
3 130 (9.62%) RESTful
4 107 (7.92%) REST
5 106 (7.85%) Playwright
6 97 (7.18%) CSS
7 96 (7.11%) HTML
8 81 (6.00%) Node.js
9 78 (5.77%) Kafka
10 76 (5.63%) Spring
11 65 (4.81%) JSON
12 52 (3.85%) SOAP
13 48 (3.55%) Spring Boot
14 47 (3.48%) XML
15 46 (3.40%) AngularJS
16 40 (2.96%) OAuth
16 40 (2.96%) pytest
17 39 (2.89%) GraphQL
17 39 (2.89%) YAML
18 35 (2.59%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 207 (15.32%) Cloud Native
2 81 (6.00%) Product Ownership
3 56 (4.15%) Onboarding
4 54 (4.00%) Management Information System
4 54 (4.00%) Mobile App
5 51 (3.77%) Self-Motivation
6 48 (3.55%) Data Structures
7 46 (3.40%) Enterprise Software
8 42 (3.11%) Algorithms
9 35 (2.59%) Hedge funds
10 32 (2.37%) Security Posture
11 30 (2.22%) Equities
12 26 (1.92%) Distributed Systems
12 26 (1.92%) Public Cloud
13 25 (1.85%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 25 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
14 23 (1.70%) Virtual Team
15 18 (1.33%) GNSS
15 18 (1.33%) Satnav
16 17 (1.26%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 111 (8.22%) Linux
2 62 (4.59%) Windows
3 29 (2.15%) Unix
4 20 (1.48%) Windows Server
5 19 (1.41%) Apple iOS
6 12 (0.89%) Android
7 5 (0.37%) Embedded Linux
7 5 (0.37%) FreeRTOS
7 5 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
8 3 (0.22%) Debian
8 3 (0.22%) VMS
8 3 (0.22%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.15%) CentOS
9 2 (0.15%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.15%) Solaris
10 1 (0.074%) Kali Linux
10 1 (0.074%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 704 (52.11%) Agile
2 691 (51.15%) CI/CD
3 504 (37.31%) DevOps
4 349 (25.83%) Problem-Solving
5 303 (22.43%) Mentoring
6 272 (20.13%) Software Engineering
7 242 (17.91%) Continuous Improvement
8 195 (14.43%) Coaching
9 187 (13.84%) AI
10 182 (13.47%) SDLC
11 160 (11.84%) Microservices
12 147 (10.88%) Computer Science
13 146 (10.81%) Test Strategy
14 144 (10.66%) Analytics
15 140 (10.36%) Scrum
16 137 (10.14%) Software Testing
17 135 (9.99%) Infrastructure as Code
18 134 (9.92%) Clean Code
19 129 (9.55%) Roadmaps
20 126 (9.33%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 391 (28.94%) Python
2 322 (23.83%) SQL
3 311 (23.02%) Java
4 218 (16.14%) JavaScript
5 190 (14.06%) C#
6 134 (9.92%) TypeScript
7 78 (5.77%) C++
8 76 (5.63%) PowerShell
9 44 (3.26%) C
9 44 (3.26%) Shell Script
10 41 (3.03%) Go
11 39 (2.89%) PHP
12 37 (2.74%) PL/SQL
13 24 (1.78%) Bicep
14 23 (1.70%) Kotlin
15 22 (1.63%) Bash
16 17 (1.26%) MATLAB
17 14 (1.04%) Apex Code
18 13 (0.96%) Swift
19 12 (0.89%) VBA
Qualifications
1 201 (14.88%) Degree
2 105 (7.77%) Computer Science Degree
3 97 (7.18%) Security Cleared
4 75 (5.55%) ISTQB
5 70 (5.18%) SC Cleared
6 52 (3.85%) Master's Degree
7 31 (2.29%) AWS Certification
8 29 (2.15%) DV Cleared
9 26 (1.92%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 25 (1.85%) DBS Check
11 19 (1.41%) ISEB
12 17 (1.26%) HND
13 11 (0.81%) BPSS Clearance
14 10 (0.74%) Azure Certification
15 9 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
16 8 (0.59%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 6 (0.44%) HNC
18 5 (0.37%) CEH
18 5 (0.37%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
18 5 (0.37%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 297 (21.98%) QA
2 72 (5.33%) Accessibility
3 70 (5.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 51 (3.77%) NIST
5 35 (2.59%) Data Quality
6 32 (2.37%) NCSC
7 27 (2.00%) GDPR
8 23 (1.70%) WCAG
9 19 (1.41%) ISO 9001
10 10 (0.74%) SLA
11 5 (0.37%) ISO 22301
11 5 (0.37%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
12 4 (0.30%) IEC 61508
12 4 (0.30%) ISO 26262
12 4 (0.30%) MISRA
12 4 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 3 (0.22%) COBIT
13 3 (0.22%) Section 508
13 3 (0.22%) SEPA
System Software
1 177 (13.10%) Docker
2 42 (3.11%) Active Directory
3 21 (1.55%) Firmware
4 17 (1.26%) Embedded Firmware
5 11 (0.81%) VMware Infrastructure
6 6 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.44%) vSphere
7 4 (0.30%) HDFS
7 4 (0.30%) Terminal Server
7 4 (0.30%) zsh
Systems Management
1 189 (13.99%) Kubernetes
2 176 (13.03%) Terraform
3 55 (4.07%) Grafana
4 48 (3.55%) Ansible
5 28 (2.07%) HP ALM
5 28 (2.07%) Single Sign-On
6 20 (1.48%) Prometheus
7 10 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
8 5 (0.37%) SCCM
8 5 (0.37%) SCOM
9 4 (0.30%) Control-M
9 4 (0.30%) Mesos
10 3 (0.22%) HP Quality Center
10 3 (0.22%) Kubeflow
10 3 (0.22%) Nessus
10 3 (0.22%) Progress Chef
11 2 (0.15%) Argo
11 2 (0.15%) Functional Safety
11 2 (0.15%) HP Fortify
12 1 (0.074%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 157 (11.62%) Microsoft
2 80 (5.92%) Oracle
3 62 (4.59%) Salesforce
4 55 (4.07%) Google
5 52 (3.85%) SAP
6 39 (2.89%) Databricks
7 28 (2.07%) HP
7 28 (2.07%) VMware
8 21 (1.55%) Guidewire
9 18 (1.33%) Black Duck
10 17 (1.26%) Coverity
11 16 (1.18%) Apple
12 15 (1.11%) Okta
13 14 (1.04%) Blue Prism
14 13 (0.96%) Splunk
15 12 (0.89%) Pega
16 10 (0.74%) Atlassian
16 10 (0.74%) UiPath
17 9 (0.67%) Ab Initio
17 9 (0.67%) ServiceNow