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 7 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 91 84
Rank change year-on-year +14 -7 -15
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 2,498 1,598 2,086
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.11% 3.22% 2.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.89% 3.61% 3.48%
Number of salaries quoted 1,354 736 939
10th Percentile £40,575 £40,000 £40,000
25th Percentile £47,000 £51,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £85,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £93,750 £105,000 £100,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +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 86,487 44,218 59,966
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.18% 89.02% 81.93%
Number of salaries quoted 59,402 24,461 32,381
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,325 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £96,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%

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 7 October 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 7 October 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 +12 2,051 £62,500 -3.85% 3,209
UK excluding London +15 1,582 £57,500 - 1,928
Work from Home +17 891 £67,500 +8.00% 1,316
London -1 742 £78,000 -2.50% 1,563
North of England +38 417 £57,500 -4.17% 452
South East -12 278 £60,000 +4.35% 451
South West +17 257 £60,000 +14.29% 244
Midlands -6 208 £52,500 -8.70% 212
North West -14 186 £60,000 - 240
Northern Ireland +10 163 £80,000 +45.45% 66
North East +24 131 £55,000 +78.86% 73
Wales +10 129 £53,171 -3.33% 37
West Midlands -22 112 £50,000 -9.09% 146
Yorkshire +34 109 £69,306 +26.01% 139
East of England -13 100 £46,000 -23.33% 208
East Midlands -21 96 £53,250 -14.80% 66
Scotland -51 43 £62,500 -10.71% 268

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 59 (2.36%) Confluence
2 42 (1.68%) Apache Spark
3 34 (1.36%) Apache
4 24 (0.96%) SharePoint
5 23 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 20 (0.80%) Jupyter
7 17 (0.68%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 15 (0.60%) CMS
9 14 (0.56%) Anypoint
9 14 (0.56%) Mule
10 11 (0.44%) Palantir Foundry
11 9 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
11 9 (0.36%) nginx
12 7 (0.28%) Headless CMS
13 5 (0.20%) Camunda
13 5 (0.20%) Cloud Foundry
13 5 (0.20%) SAS
13 5 (0.20%) Umbraco
13 5 (0.20%) WebLogic
13 5 (0.20%) WinCC
Applications
1 84 (3.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (0.56%) Simulink
4 9 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.28%) Moqups
6 6 (0.24%) Chatbot
6 6 (0.24%) Lightworks
7 4 (0.16%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.12%) EPLAN
8 3 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 2 (0.080%) PlantUML
10 1 (0.040%) AutoCAD
10 1 (0.040%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 68 (2.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (1.08%) Dynamics GP
3 11 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.12%) Magento
4 3 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
4 3 (0.12%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.12%) Visualfiles
5 2 (0.080%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.080%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.080%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.080%) Towers Watson Igloo
5 2 (0.080%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.040%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.040%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.040%) Endur
6 1 (0.040%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.040%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.040%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.040%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.040%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 826 (33.07%) AWS
2 678 (27.14%) Azure
3 319 (12.77%) SaaS
4 260 (10.41%) GCP
5 230 (9.21%) GitHub
6 228 (9.13%) Azure DevOps
7 189 (7.57%) Serverless
8 122 (4.88%) GitHub Actions
9 107 (4.28%) AWS CloudFormation
10 99 (3.96%) Amazon EKS
11 91 (3.64%) Amazon S3
12 86 (3.44%) AWS Lambda
13 71 (2.84%) Power Platform
14 59 (2.36%) Google Ads
14 59 (2.36%) Meta Ads
15 58 (2.32%) Azure Service Bus
16 52 (2.08%) Azure Logic Apps
16 52 (2.08%) Azure Monitor
17 49 (1.96%) Azure Functions
18 48 (1.92%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 56 (2.24%) Broadband
2 30 (1.20%) TCP/IP
3 27 (1.08%) DNS
4 26 (1.04%) Firewall
5 17 (0.68%) SSL
6 16 (0.64%) Modbus
6 16 (0.64%) Wireless
7 15 (0.60%) DMARC
8 14 (0.56%) MQTT
9 13 (0.52%) Ethernet
9 13 (0.52%) HTTP
9 13 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
10 12 (0.48%) DHCP
10 12 (0.48%) Network Security
11 11 (0.44%) 5G
11 11 (0.44%) WAN
12 10 (0.40%) LTE
13 9 (0.36%) 3GPP
14 8 (0.32%) Internet
15 7 (0.28%) UMTS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 155 (6.20%) PostgreSQL
2 125 (5.00%) NoSQL
3 93 (3.72%) MongoDB
4 82 (3.28%) SQL Server
5 72 (2.88%) Relational Database
6 50 (2.00%) Redis
7 45 (1.80%) MySQL
8 44 (1.76%) Power BI
9 42 (1.68%) DynamoDB
10 37 (1.48%) Data Warehouse
11 36 (1.44%) Data Lake
12 33 (1.32%) Metadata
13 31 (1.24%) BigQuery
14 28 (1.12%) Amazon Athena
15 26 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
16 25 (1.00%) Semantic Layer
17 17 (0.68%) Amazon Aurora
18 15 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
18 15 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
18 15 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 364 (14.57%) Git
2 260 (10.41%) GitLab
3 209 (8.37%) Jenkins
4 165 (6.61%) Selenium
5 147 (5.88%) JIRA
6 112 (4.48%) Cypress.io
7 107 (4.28%) Cucumber
8 85 (3.40%) Postman
9 72 (2.88%) TeamCity
10 51 (2.04%) JUnit
11 47 (1.88%) JMeter
12 44 (1.76%) REST Assured
13 38 (1.52%) LabVIEW
14 29 (1.16%) Gatling
15 26 (1.04%) Zephyr
16 24 (0.96%) Bitbucket
17 23 (0.92%) Claude Code
17 23 (0.92%) Maven
17 23 (0.92%) Robot Framework
17 23 (0.92%) SonarQube
General
1 690 (27.62%) Social Skills
2 595 (23.82%) Finance
3 406 (16.25%) Analytical Skills
4 277 (11.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 268 (10.73%) Public Sector
6 203 (8.13%) Banking
7 201 (8.05%) Law
8 174 (6.97%) Marketing
9 136 (5.44%) Legal
10 130 (5.20%) Retail
11 128 (5.12%) Manufacturing
12 101 (4.04%) Electronics
13 85 (3.40%) Financial Institution
14 62 (2.48%) Back Office
15 58 (2.32%) Aerospace
16 45 (1.80%) Telecoms
17 37 (1.48%) Games
18 36 (1.44%) Automotive
18 36 (1.44%) Documentation Skills
19 25 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 693 (27.74%) Senior
2 374 (14.97%) Software Engineer
3 334 (13.37%) Developer
4 309 (12.37%) Lead
5 263 (10.53%) Test Engineer
6 120 (4.80%) Senior Developer
7 116 (4.64%) Java Engineer
8 114 (4.56%) DevOps Engineer
8 114 (4.56%) QA Engineer
9 107 (4.28%) Senior Software Engineer
10 86 (3.44%) Analyst
10 86 (3.44%) Test Automation Engineer
11 80 (3.20%) Data Engineer
12 78 (3.12%) Tester
13 76 (3.04%) Principal Engineer
14 74 (2.96%) Full-Stack Engineer
15 72 (2.88%) Architect
15 72 (2.88%) Lead Software Engineer
16 67 (2.68%) Automation Engineer
17 63 (2.52%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 343 (13.73%) Terraform
2 264 (10.57%) REST
3 233 (9.33%) .NET
4 222 (8.89%) React
5 212 (8.49%) Node.js
6 206 (8.25%) Playwright
6 206 (8.25%) Spring
7 199 (7.97%) RESTful
8 159 (6.37%) Spring Boot
9 147 (5.88%) Kafka
10 127 (5.08%) CSS
11 118 (4.72%) HTML
12 113 (4.52%) AngularJS
13 74 (2.96%) Middleware
13 74 (2.96%) OAuth
14 66 (2.64%) OAuth2
15 59 (2.36%) JSON
16 55 (2.20%) Next.js
17 53 (2.12%) PySpark
18 48 (1.92%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 429 (17.17%) Cloud Native
2 289 (11.57%) Product Ownership
3 217 (8.69%) Distributed Systems
4 111 (4.44%) Onboarding
5 109 (4.36%) Enterprise Software
6 97 (3.88%) Mobile App
7 94 (3.76%) Public Cloud
8 85 (3.40%) Blog
9 75 (3.00%) Virtual Team
10 70 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
11 64 (2.56%) Marketing Technology
12 55 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
13 53 (2.12%) Cyber Threat
14 52 (2.08%) Algorithms
15 51 (2.04%) Low-Code
16 47 (1.88%) e-Learning
17 45 (1.80%) Embedded Systems
18 41 (1.64%) AI Agents
18 41 (1.64%) Data Structures
19 40 (1.60%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 179 (7.17%) Linux
2 101 (4.04%) Windows
3 65 (2.60%) Android
4 61 (2.44%) Unix
5 56 (2.24%) Apple iOS
6 9 (0.36%) Embedded Linux
6 9 (0.36%) Windows Server
7 7 (0.28%) CentOS
8 6 (0.24%) FreeRTOS
9 5 (0.20%) AIX
10 4 (0.16%) Debian
10 4 (0.16%) VMS
11 3 (0.12%) Kali Linux
11 3 (0.12%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.080%) OpenWrt
13 1 (0.040%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.040%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 1 (0.040%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,391 (55.68%) CI/CD
2 1,014 (40.59%) Agile
3 860 (34.43%) DevOps
4 802 (32.11%) Software Engineering
5 730 (29.22%) Continuous Improvement
6 649 (25.98%) Mentoring
7 611 (24.46%) AI
8 587 (23.50%) Problem-Solving
9 461 (18.45%) Microservices
10 430 (17.21%) Software Testing
11 401 (16.05%) Infrastructure as Code
12 334 (13.37%) Validation
13 321 (12.85%) Test Strategy
14 311 (12.45%) Observability
15 308 (12.33%) Coaching
16 296 (11.85%) Code Quality
17 278 (11.13%) Technical Leadership
18 268 (10.73%) Containerisation
19 267 (10.69%) Event-Driven
20 258 (10.33%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 691 (27.66%) Python
2 590 (23.62%) Java
3 488 (19.54%) SQL
4 428 (17.13%) JavaScript
5 352 (14.09%) TypeScript
6 333 (13.33%) C#
7 123 (4.92%) C++
8 103 (4.12%) Go
9 101 (4.04%) PowerShell
10 94 (3.76%) Bash
11 79 (3.16%) C
12 42 (1.68%) Kotlin
13 37 (1.48%) Rust
14 33 (1.32%) PHP
15 32 (1.28%) Ruby
16 25 (1.00%) Bicep
16 25 (1.00%) MATLAB
17 24 (0.96%) Groovy
18 21 (0.84%) Swift
19 18 (0.72%) Scala
Qualifications
1 399 (15.97%) Security Cleared
2 260 (10.41%) Degree
3 248 (9.93%) SC Cleared
4 99 (3.96%) Computer Science Degree
5 75 (3.00%) DV Cleared
6 73 (2.92%) ISTQB
7 72 (2.88%) AWS Certification
8 56 (2.24%) CISSP
9 54 (2.16%) ITIL Certification
10 53 (2.12%) CISM
11 50 (2.00%) Master's Degree
12 47 (1.88%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 45 (1.80%) HNC
14 38 (1.52%) HND
15 37 (1.48%) BPSS Clearance
16 22 (0.88%) Azure Certification
17 17 (0.68%) DBS Check
18 15 (0.60%) ISEB
19 12 (0.48%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
20 11 (0.44%) NVQ Level 4
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 568 (22.74%) QA
2 201 (8.05%) Accessibility
3 97 (3.88%) Data Quality
4 68 (2.72%) WCAG
5 55 (2.20%) NIST
6 48 (1.92%) ISO 22301
7 34 (1.36%) GDPR
8 10 (0.40%) SLA
9 9 (0.36%) GRC
9 9 (0.36%) MISRA
10 7 (0.28%) Software Quality Assurance
11 6 (0.24%) JTAG
11 6 (0.24%) SOC 2
12 5 (0.20%) COBIT
12 5 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 5 (0.20%) NCSC
13 4 (0.16%) ISO 20022
13 4 (0.16%) ISO 9001
13 4 (0.16%) PCI DSS
13 4 (0.16%) PMO
System Software
1 355 (14.21%) Docker
2 51 (2.04%) Firmware
3 15 (0.60%) Active Directory
4 11 (0.44%) Embedded Firmware
5 9 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
6 8 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.12%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.080%) KVM
8 2 (0.080%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.040%) IAG
9 1 (0.040%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.040%) QEMU
9 1 (0.040%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 359 (14.37%) Kubernetes
2 165 (6.61%) Grafana
3 74 (2.96%) Ansible
4 67 (2.68%) Prometheus
5 30 (1.20%) Argo
6 16 (0.64%) Kibana
6 16 (0.64%) Puppet
7 14 (0.56%) CloudHub
8 12 (0.48%) Rancher
9 11 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
10 8 (0.32%) logstash
10 8 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.28%) Functional Safety
11 7 (0.28%) HP Fortify
12 6 (0.24%) Progress Chef
13 5 (0.20%) vCenter Server
14 3 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 3 (0.12%) SCCM
14 3 (0.12%) SCOM
14 3 (0.12%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 268 (10.73%) Microsoft
2 130 (5.20%) Google
3 66 (2.64%) Databricks
4 61 (2.44%) Salesforce
5 53 (2.12%) Oracle
6 50 (2.00%) SAP
7 48 (1.92%) ServiceNow
8 38 (1.52%) Dynatrace
9 35 (1.40%) Splunk
10 22 (0.88%) Pega
11 19 (0.76%) Adobe
11 19 (0.76%) MuleSoft
12 17 (0.68%) VMware
13 16 (0.64%) Allen-Bradley
13 16 (0.64%) OpenAI
14 15 (0.60%) Foundry
14 15 (0.60%) SendGrid
15 14 (0.56%) AppDynamics
15 14 (0.56%) Atlassian
15 14 (0.56%) Red Hat