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 12 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 82 100
Rank change year-on-year -5 +18 -51
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,969 1,716 2,583
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.00% 3.49% 2.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.70% 3.86% 3.10%
Number of salaries quoted 1,178 839 1,641
10th Percentile £42,364 £38,700 £37,000
25th Percentile £48,750 £47,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +8.70% -11.54%
75th Percentile £82,438 £82,751 £71,991
90th Percentile £96,250 £100,000 £86,485
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +4.35% +9.52% -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 72,826 44,439 83,222
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.81% 90.30% 82.24%
Number of salaries quoted 50,337 24,847 58,274
10th Percentile £30,250 £28,750 £29,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -8.71%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £98,750 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +10.00% - -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 12 July 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 12 July 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 1,688 £65,000 - 769
UK excluding London -12 1,145 £60,000 +4.35% 594
Work from Home +9 822 £67,500 +12.50% 323
London +7 646 £80,000 +3.23% 296
North of England +7 325 £57,500 -4.17% 151
South East -26 222 £60,000 +9.09% 174
South West -22 196 £55,000 -8.33% 100
Midlands -22 176 £62,500 +6.38% 69
North West -11 170 £62,500 -3.85% 76
West Midlands -19 92 £62,500 -3.85% 36
North East -3 85 £52,500 -0.59% 29
East Midlands -25 83 £64,000 +34.74% 33
Yorkshire -19 70 £69,310 +41.45% 46
East of England -24 66 £55,000 -4.76% 45
Wales -2 62 £55,000 - 11
Northern Ireland -14 62 £80,000 +45.45% 27
Scotland -41 49 £62,500 -5.66% 25

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 36 (1.83%) Confluence
2 28 (1.42%) Apache Spark
3 26 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
4 23 (1.17%) Apache
5 17 (0.86%) Jupyter
5 17 (0.86%) SharePoint
6 13 (0.66%) CMS
7 10 (0.51%) Anypoint
7 10 (0.51%) Mule
8 9 (0.46%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 8 (0.41%) IIS
10 6 (0.30%) Palantir Foundry
11 5 (0.25%) Umbraco
11 5 (0.25%) WordPress
12 4 (0.20%) SAS
13 3 (0.15%) Appian
13 3 (0.15%) Headless CMS
13 3 (0.15%) nginx
14 2 (0.10%) Camunda
14 2 (0.10%) NServiceBus
Applications
1 22 (1.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.61%) Simulink
3 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Office
4 7 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.30%) PlantUML
6 5 (0.25%) Lightworks
7 3 (0.15%) CANalyzer
7 3 (0.15%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.10%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.051%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 11 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.25%) Visualfiles
3 4 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
4 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.10%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
5 2 (0.10%) Towers Watson Igloo
5 2 (0.10%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.051%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.051%) Endur
6 1 (0.051%) Findur
6 1 (0.051%) Magento
6 1 (0.051%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.051%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.051%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle SCM
Cloud Services
1 740 (37.58%) AWS
2 624 (31.69%) Azure
3 243 (12.34%) Azure DevOps
4 242 (12.29%) GCP
5 191 (9.70%) SaaS
6 186 (9.45%) Serverless
7 166 (8.43%) GitHub
8 85 (4.32%) GitHub Actions
9 83 (4.22%) AWS CloudFormation
10 81 (4.11%) AWS Lambda
11 76 (3.86%) Amazon EKS
11 76 (3.86%) Amazon S3
12 52 (2.64%) Azure Service Bus
12 52 (2.64%) PaaS
12 52 (2.64%) Power Platform
13 43 (2.18%) Azure Logic Apps
13 43 (2.18%) Azure Monitor
14 41 (2.08%) Amazon EC2
15 39 (1.98%) dbt
16 34 (1.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 71 (3.61%) Broadband
2 24 (1.22%) Firewall
3 13 (0.66%) DMARC
4 12 (0.61%) MQTT
5 11 (0.56%) Wireless
6 10 (0.51%) DNS
6 10 (0.51%) SSL
7 9 (0.46%) CHAP
8 8 (0.41%) WAN
8 8 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
9 7 (0.36%) LTE
9 7 (0.36%) ZigBee
10 6 (0.30%) 5G
10 6 (0.30%) Bluetooth
10 6 (0.30%) HTTP
10 6 (0.30%) SD-WAN
10 6 (0.30%) TCP/IP
11 5 (0.25%) DHCP
11 5 (0.25%) Ethernet
11 5 (0.25%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 141 (7.16%) NoSQL
2 133 (6.75%) PostgreSQL
3 103 (5.23%) MongoDB
4 67 (3.40%) SQL Server
5 48 (2.44%) DynamoDB
6 37 (1.88%) Relational Database
7 34 (1.73%) MySQL
8 30 (1.52%) Data Warehouse
9 26 (1.32%) Redis
10 25 (1.27%) Power BI
11 20 (1.02%) BigQuery
12 19 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
13 18 (0.91%) Spark SQL
14 17 (0.86%) Metadata
15 16 (0.81%) Semantic Layer
16 14 (0.71%) Amazon Athena
16 14 (0.71%) Oracle Database
17 13 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
18 12 (0.61%) Data Lake
19 9 (0.46%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 252 (12.80%) Git
2 177 (8.99%) Jenkins
3 172 (8.74%) GitLab
4 148 (7.52%) Selenium
5 118 (5.99%) JIRA
6 92 (4.67%) Cypress.io
7 87 (4.42%) Cucumber
8 73 (3.71%) Postman
9 64 (3.25%) TeamCity
10 52 (2.64%) JMeter
11 40 (2.03%) REST Assured
12 33 (1.68%) JUnit
13 30 (1.52%) SpecFlow
13 30 (1.52%) Zephyr
14 27 (1.37%) TestRail
15 22 (1.12%) CircleCI
15 22 (1.12%) Gatling
16 21 (1.07%) fastlane
17 20 (1.02%) Crashlytics
17 20 (1.02%) LabVIEW
General
1 481 (24.43%) Social Skills
2 441 (22.40%) Finance
3 198 (10.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 197 (10.01%) Public Sector
5 192 (9.75%) Banking
6 178 (9.04%) Law
7 173 (8.79%) Analytical Skills
8 102 (5.18%) Retail
9 65 (3.30%) Manufacturing
10 63 (3.20%) Financial Institution
11 61 (3.10%) Legal
12 54 (2.74%) Electronics
12 54 (2.74%) Games
13 53 (2.69%) Back Office
14 32 (1.63%) Front Office
15 31 (1.57%) Marketing
16 23 (1.17%) Documentation Skills
17 20 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
18 19 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
19 18 (0.91%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 542 (27.53%) Senior
2 319 (16.20%) Lead
3 309 (15.69%) Software Engineer
4 285 (14.47%) Developer
5 219 (11.12%) Test Engineer
6 118 (5.99%) Senior Developer
7 117 (5.94%) Java Engineer
8 92 (4.67%) Senior Software Engineer
9 89 (4.52%) Test Automation Engineer
10 84 (4.27%) QA Engineer
11 80 (4.06%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 76 (3.86%) Test Leader
13 72 (3.66%) Tester
14 71 (3.61%) DevOps Engineer
15 68 (3.45%) Architect
16 62 (3.15%) Data Engineer
17 56 (2.84%) Software Developer
18 54 (2.74%) Senior Test Engineer
19 51 (2.59%) Analyst
20 50 (2.54%) Lead Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 208 (10.56%) React
2 205 (10.41%) .NET
3 173 (8.79%) RESTful
4 171 (8.68%) Playwright
5 169 (8.58%) Spring
6 168 (8.53%) Node.js
6 168 (8.53%) REST
7 125 (6.35%) Spring Boot
8 109 (5.54%) Kafka
9 91 (4.62%) AngularJS
10 74 (3.76%) CSS
10 74 (3.76%) HTML
11 58 (2.95%) OAuth
12 51 (2.59%) OAuth2
13 48 (2.44%) Middleware
14 45 (2.29%) RabbitMQ
15 42 (2.13%) Vue
16 41 (2.08%) JSON
17 40 (2.03%) YAML
18 39 (1.98%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 370 (18.79%) Cloud Native
2 220 (11.17%) Product Ownership
3 162 (8.23%) Distributed Systems
4 96 (4.88%) Mobile App
5 65 (3.30%) Enterprise Software
6 64 (3.25%) Public Cloud
7 56 (2.84%) Legacy Systems
8 54 (2.74%) Algorithms
9 53 (2.69%) Low-Code
9 53 (2.69%) Management Information System
10 45 (2.29%) Onboarding
10 45 (2.29%) Virtual Team
11 42 (2.13%) Data Structures
12 40 (2.03%) Cyber Threat
13 38 (1.93%) Greenfield Project
14 35 (1.78%) Embedded Systems
15 34 (1.73%) Video\Live Streaming
16 30 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
17 29 (1.47%) Blog
18 26 (1.32%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 181 (9.19%) Linux
2 92 (4.67%) Windows
3 61 (3.10%) Apple iOS
4 57 (2.89%) Unix
5 50 (2.54%) Android
6 10 (0.51%) CentOS
7 9 (0.46%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.30%) FreeRTOS
9 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
9 4 (0.20%) Kali Linux
10 3 (0.15%) AIX
10 3 (0.15%) Debian
11 2 (0.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.051%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.051%) VMS
12 1 (0.051%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.051%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.051%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,133 (57.54%) CI/CD
2 874 (44.39%) Agile
3 736 (37.38%) DevOps
4 614 (31.18%) Software Engineering
5 549 (27.88%) Mentoring
6 523 (26.56%) Continuous Improvement
7 399 (20.26%) Problem-Solving
8 396 (20.11%) Microservices
9 366 (18.59%) Infrastructure as Code
10 337 (17.12%) AI
11 322 (16.35%) Software Testing
12 267 (13.56%) Test Strategy
13 265 (13.46%) Containerisation
14 255 (12.95%) Full-Stack Development
14 255 (12.95%) Observability
15 251 (12.75%) Coaching
16 231 (11.73%) Validation
17 211 (10.72%) Code Quality
18 201 (10.21%) Clean Code
19 198 (10.06%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 635 (32.25%) Python
2 550 (27.93%) Java
3 334 (16.96%) JavaScript
4 325 (16.51%) SQL
5 271 (13.76%) C#
6 268 (13.61%) TypeScript
7 109 (5.54%) C++
8 88 (4.47%) Go
8 88 (4.47%) PowerShell
9 81 (4.11%) Bash
10 71 (3.61%) C
11 36 (1.83%) Kotlin
12 35 (1.78%) Rust
13 28 (1.42%) Swift
14 27 (1.37%) PHP
15 23 (1.17%) Bicep
15 23 (1.17%) MATLAB
16 22 (1.12%) Ruby
17 18 (0.91%) Groovy
18 16 (0.81%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 256 (13.00%) Security Cleared
2 237 (12.04%) Degree
3 151 (7.67%) SC Cleared
4 101 (5.13%) Computer Science Degree
5 82 (4.16%) ISTQB
6 48 (2.44%) DV Cleared
7 46 (2.34%) CISSP
8 41 (2.08%) ITIL Certification
9 39 (1.98%) Master's Degree
10 38 (1.93%) CISM
11 36 (1.83%) AWS Certification
12 26 (1.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 21 (1.07%) DBS Check
14 16 (0.81%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 15 (0.76%) ISEB
16 14 (0.71%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
17 11 (0.56%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (0.56%) HND
18 10 (0.51%) HNC
19 9 (0.46%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 450 (22.85%) QA
2 173 (8.79%) Accessibility
3 82 (4.16%) Data Quality
4 47 (2.39%) NIST
5 46 (2.34%) GDPR
6 43 (2.18%) WCAG
7 35 (1.78%) ISO 22301
8 15 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 13 (0.66%) Software Quality Assurance
10 12 (0.61%) SLA
11 11 (0.56%) GRC
12 10 (0.51%) COBIT
13 7 (0.36%) JTAG
13 7 (0.36%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.30%) MISRA
14 6 (0.30%) PMO
15 4 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials
15 4 (0.20%) ECSS
15 4 (0.20%) ISO 9001
16 3 (0.15%) NCSC
System Software
1 273 (13.86%) Docker
2 29 (1.47%) Firmware
3 26 (1.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.86%) Hyper-V
4 17 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (0.66%) KVM
6 12 (0.61%) Active Directory
7 10 (0.51%) Embedded Firmware
8 2 (0.10%) Terminal Server
8 2 (0.10%) vSphere
9 1 (0.051%) IAG
9 1 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.051%) Xen
Systems Management
1 325 (16.51%) Terraform
2 316 (16.05%) Kubernetes
3 144 (7.31%) Grafana
4 84 (4.27%) Ansible
5 62 (3.15%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.32%) Argo
7 16 (0.81%) Kibana
8 10 (0.51%) CloudHub
8 10 (0.51%) logstash
9 8 (0.41%) Puppet
9 8 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.36%) HP Fortify
10 7 (0.36%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.30%) Functional Safety
12 5 (0.25%) Packer
12 5 (0.25%) SCCM
12 5 (0.25%) SCOM
13 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
14 3 (0.15%) Rancher
14 3 (0.15%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 149 (7.57%) Microsoft
2 55 (2.79%) Databricks
3 48 (2.44%) Oracle
4 46 (2.34%) Google
4 46 (2.34%) Salesforce
5 40 (2.03%) VMware
6 37 (1.88%) ServiceNow
7 27 (1.37%) Splunk
8 24 (1.22%) Dynatrace
9 20 (1.02%) SAP
10 18 (0.91%) OpenAI
10 18 (0.91%) Pega
11 16 (0.81%) Braze
12 15 (0.76%) AppDynamics
13 14 (0.71%) Amplitude
13 14 (0.71%) MuleSoft
14 13 (0.66%) Atlassian
14 13 (0.66%) IFS
14 13 (0.66%) SendGrid
15 12 (0.61%) CrowdStrike