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

6 months to
23 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 94 98 89
Rank change year-on-year +4 -9 -56
Permanent jobs citing Test Automation 1,579 1,346 2,646
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.06% 3.17% 3.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.65% 3.39% 3.49%
Number of salaries quoted 961 903 1,819
10th Percentile £42,500 £40,550 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,231 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £64,000 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.40% +4.17% -7.69%
75th Percentile £85,000 £82,625 £75,000
90th Percentile £105,000 £100,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £57,443 £52,500
% change year-on-year +0.10% +9.41% -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 59,502 39,701 75,893
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 77.59% 93.45% 86.91%
Number of salaries quoted 36,057 22,405 57,038
10th Percentile £29,750 £31,452 £29,031
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.29%
75th Percentile £77,424 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £93,750
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 23 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 23 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 -3 1,321 £63,538 +1.66% 680
UK excluding London -24 842 £57,500 +0.10% 572
Work from Home +14 667 £65,000 +3.17% 328
London +35 593 £80,000 +6.67% 185
South East -23 200 £55,000 - 150
North of England -56 160 £60,000 +11.31% 162
South West -17 138 £55,000 -10.20% 76
Scotland +15 128 £67,500 +12.50% 31
Midlands -41 118 £55,200 -8.00% 77
North West -17 84 £60,000 +14.29% 84
East Midlands -20 62 £55,000 - 29
East of England +18 60 £52,500 -25.00% 68
West Midlands -27 56 £58,750 -4.08% 48
Yorkshire -60 48 £61,500 +23.00% 43
Wales -9 31 £55,000 +8.37% 24
North East -24 28 £55,000 -9.47% 35
Northern Ireland -40 7 £80,000 +25.49% 4

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 33 (2.09%) Confluence
2 25 (1.58%) Apache Airflow
3 19 (1.20%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.89%) Appian
5 13 (0.82%) Apache
6 12 (0.76%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 11 (0.70%) SharePoint
8 10 (0.63%) Palantir Foundry
9 9 (0.57%) Jupyter
10 8 (0.51%) CMS
10 8 (0.51%) IIS
11 6 (0.38%) WordPress
12 4 (0.25%) Apache Solr
13 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
13 3 (0.19%) nginx
13 3 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
14 2 (0.13%) Camunda
14 2 (0.13%) JBoss
14 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
14 2 (0.13%) SAS
Applications
1 19 (1.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.89%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (0.57%) MS Visio
4 8 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.25%) Fusion 360
5 4 (0.25%) PlantUML
6 2 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.13%) CANalyzer
6 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.13%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.063%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 30 (1.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (1.58%) Oracle ERP
3 14 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.25%) Dynamics AX
4 4 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
4 4 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 4 (0.25%) Shopify
5 2 (0.13%) SAP CX
6 1 (0.063%) Aladdin
6 1 (0.063%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.063%) Endur
6 1 (0.063%) Findur
6 1 (0.063%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.063%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.063%) Oracle SCM
6 1 (0.063%) Postilion
6 1 (0.063%) SAP Hybris
6 1 (0.063%) Siebel CRM
6 1 (0.063%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 521 (33.00%) Azure
2 472 (29.89%) AWS
3 275 (17.42%) Azure DevOps
4 220 (13.93%) GitHub
5 193 (12.22%) GCP
6 123 (7.79%) SaaS
7 109 (6.90%) Serverless
8 77 (4.88%) GitHub Actions
9 71 (4.50%) Amazon EKS
10 65 (4.12%) PaaS
11 64 (4.05%) GitHub Copilot
12 60 (3.80%) Power Platform
13 54 (3.42%) Azure Data Factory
13 54 (3.42%) dbt
14 45 (2.85%) AWS Lambda
15 43 (2.72%) AWS CloudFormation
15 43 (2.72%) Datadog
16 41 (2.60%) Amazon S3
17 37 (2.34%) Entra ID
18 36 (2.28%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.46%) DNS
2 18 (1.14%) Broadband
2 18 (1.14%) HTTP
2 18 (1.14%) TCP/IP
3 15 (0.95%) WAN
4 14 (0.89%) SD-WAN
5 12 (0.76%) CHAP
5 12 (0.76%) VPN
6 11 (0.70%) 5G
7 10 (0.63%) Firewall
8 4 (0.25%) 3G
8 4 (0.25%) GPRS
8 4 (0.25%) GSM
8 4 (0.25%) Modbus
8 4 (0.25%) RS-232
8 4 (0.25%) RS-485
8 4 (0.25%) SMTP
8 4 (0.25%) SSL
8 4 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
9 3 (0.19%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 97 (6.14%) PostgreSQL
2 89 (5.64%) NoSQL
3 86 (5.45%) SQL Server
4 49 (3.10%) MongoDB
4 49 (3.10%) Relational Database
5 47 (2.98%) MySQL
6 37 (2.34%) Data Warehouse
6 37 (2.34%) Power BI
7 23 (1.46%) DynamoDB
8 17 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
9 15 (0.95%) Elasticsearch
9 15 (0.95%) Metadata
10 14 (0.89%) Tableau
11 12 (0.76%) DB2
11 12 (0.76%) Pinecone
12 11 (0.70%) BigQuery
13 10 (0.63%) Data Lake
13 10 (0.63%) Redis
14 9 (0.57%) Snowflake Schema
15 8 (0.51%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 186 (11.78%) Selenium
2 162 (10.26%) Git
3 146 (9.25%) JIRA
4 135 (8.55%) Jenkins
5 90 (5.70%) Cypress.io
6 75 (4.75%) GitLab
7 69 (4.37%) Cucumber
8 65 (4.12%) TeamCity
9 59 (3.74%) Postman
10 49 (3.10%) JMeter
11 36 (2.28%) SpecFlow
12 31 (1.96%) REST Assured
13 27 (1.71%) CircleCI
13 27 (1.71%) Robot Framework
14 25 (1.58%) eCATT
15 24 (1.52%) MLflow
16 23 (1.46%) JUnit
17 22 (1.39%) Oracle Forms
18 20 (1.27%) Snyk
19 19 (1.20%) Appium
General
1 471 (29.83%) Finance
2 455 (28.82%) Social Skills
3 165 (10.45%) Banking
4 156 (9.88%) Analytical Skills
5 122 (7.73%) Law
6 121 (7.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 92 (5.83%) Public Sector
7 92 (5.83%) Retail
8 69 (4.37%) Marketing
9 66 (4.18%) Financial Institution
10 59 (3.74%) Manufacturing
11 46 (2.91%) Back Office
12 38 (2.41%) Front Office
13 37 (2.34%) Electronics
14 33 (2.09%) Legal
15 28 (1.77%) Games
16 22 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
16 22 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
17 20 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
18 15 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 432 (27.36%) Senior
2 252 (15.96%) Lead
3 226 (14.31%) Developer
4 195 (12.35%) Software Engineer
5 162 (10.26%) Test Engineer
6 111 (7.03%) Senior Developer
7 92 (5.83%) QA Engineer
8 85 (5.38%) Test Leader
9 78 (4.94%) Tester
10 75 (4.75%) Test Automation Engineer
11 74 (4.69%) Java Engineer
12 73 (4.62%) Analyst
13 62 (3.93%) Senior Software Engineer
14 58 (3.67%) Automation Engineer
15 53 (3.36%) Python Developer
16 50 (3.17%) QA Automation Engineer
17 49 (3.10%) Senior Test Engineer
18 48 (3.04%) Automation Tester
19 45 (2.85%) Applications Engineer
19 45 (2.85%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 184 (11.65%) React
2 148 (9.37%) RESTful
3 142 (8.99%) .NET
4 127 (8.04%) Playwright
5 119 (7.54%) REST
6 88 (5.57%) Spring
7 82 (5.19%) Node.js
8 65 (4.12%) Spring Boot
9 63 (3.99%) CSS
9 63 (3.99%) HTML
9 63 (3.99%) Kafka
10 58 (3.67%) JSON
11 54 (3.42%) pytest
12 50 (3.17%) OAuth
13 44 (2.79%) SOAP
14 41 (2.60%) Django
15 40 (2.53%) Web Services
16 37 (2.34%) OAuth2
17 36 (2.28%) Elastic Stack
18 34 (2.15%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 252 (15.96%) Cloud Native
2 128 (8.11%) Product Ownership
3 71 (4.50%) Mobile App
4 58 (3.67%) Management Information System
5 52 (3.29%) Self-Motivation
6 50 (3.17%) Distributed Systems
7 48 (3.04%) Enterprise Software
8 44 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
9 39 (2.47%) Onboarding
10 38 (2.41%) Algorithms
11 34 (2.15%) Low-Code
12 33 (2.09%) Greenfield Project
13 31 (1.96%) Data Structures
14 28 (1.77%) Hedge funds
15 25 (1.58%) Equities
15 25 (1.58%) Hybrid Cloud
16 23 (1.46%) GNSS
17 20 (1.27%) Blog
17 20 (1.27%) Satnav
18 19 (1.20%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 152 (9.63%) Linux
2 84 (5.32%) Windows
3 60 (3.80%) Apple iOS
4 50 (3.17%) Android
5 37 (2.34%) Unix
6 11 (0.70%) Windows Server
7 9 (0.57%) CentOS
8 5 (0.32%) Debian
8 5 (0.32%) Embedded Linux
8 5 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.25%) FreeRTOS
9 4 (0.25%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.13%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.13%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.13%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.063%) AIX
11 1 (0.063%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.063%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 792 (50.16%) CI/CD
2 649 (41.10%) Agile
3 525 (33.25%) DevOps
4 378 (23.94%) Continuous Improvement
5 356 (22.55%) Software Engineering
6 348 (22.04%) Mentoring
7 335 (21.22%) Problem-Solving
8 258 (16.34%) AI
9 244 (15.45%) Microservices
10 231 (14.63%) Coaching
11 219 (13.87%) Infrastructure as Code
12 210 (13.30%) Software Testing
13 200 (12.67%) Observability
14 199 (12.60%) Clean Code
15 194 (12.29%) Test Strategy
16 171 (10.83%) Containerisation
17 161 (10.20%) Full-Stack Development
18 158 (10.01%) Analytics
19 149 (9.44%) Validation
20 138 (8.74%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 474 (30.02%) Python
2 389 (24.64%) Java
3 302 (19.13%) SQL
4 230 (14.57%) JavaScript
5 187 (11.84%) TypeScript
6 152 (9.63%) C#
7 83 (5.26%) PowerShell
8 69 (4.37%) C++
9 55 (3.48%) Bash
10 48 (3.04%) Go
11 36 (2.28%) C
12 32 (2.03%) PL/SQL
13 29 (1.84%) Bicep
13 29 (1.84%) Shell Script
14 28 (1.77%) Kotlin
15 27 (1.71%) Apex Code
16 26 (1.65%) PHP
17 24 (1.52%) Rust
18 18 (1.14%) Swift
19 13 (0.82%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 203 (12.86%) Degree
2 138 (8.74%) Security Cleared
3 93 (5.89%) SC Cleared
4 76 (4.81%) Computer Science Degree
5 71 (4.50%) ISTQB
6 33 (2.09%) DV Cleared
6 33 (2.09%) Master's Degree
7 29 (1.84%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 22 (1.39%) AWS Certification
9 18 (1.14%) CISSP
9 18 (1.14%) ISEB
10 16 (1.01%) HND
11 15 (0.95%) CEH
12 13 (0.82%) Azure Certification
12 13 (0.82%) CISA
12 13 (0.82%) DBS Check
12 13 (0.82%) PhD
13 12 (0.76%) CGEIT
13 12 (0.76%) CISM
13 12 (0.76%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 361 (22.86%) QA
2 118 (7.47%) Accessibility
3 63 (3.99%) Data Quality
4 49 (3.10%) NIST
5 44 (2.79%) GDPR
6 39 (2.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 26 (1.65%) WCAG
8 15 (0.95%) ISO 22301
9 14 (0.89%) NCSC
10 13 (0.82%) ISO 9001
10 13 (0.82%) SLA
11 12 (0.76%) COBIT
12 7 (0.44%) Software Quality Assurance
13 6 (0.38%) GRC
14 5 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 4 (0.25%) IEC 61508
15 4 (0.25%) ISO 13485
15 4 (0.25%) ISO 26262
15 4 (0.25%) MISRA
16 3 (0.19%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 224 (14.19%) Docker
2 33 (2.09%) Active Directory
3 19 (1.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (1.01%) Firmware
5 14 (0.89%) Hyper-V
6 13 (0.82%) KVM
6 13 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.70%) Embedded Firmware
8 3 (0.19%) Terminal Server
9 2 (0.13%) vSphere
10 1 (0.063%) Xen
Systems Management
1 270 (17.10%) Kubernetes
2 269 (17.04%) Terraform
3 128 (8.11%) Grafana
4 66 (4.18%) Ansible
5 44 (2.79%) Prometheus
6 33 (2.09%) Single Sign-On
7 29 (1.84%) HP ALM
8 8 (0.51%) Argo
9 6 (0.38%) logstash
9 6 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (0.25%) HP Fortify
10 4 (0.25%) SCCM
10 4 (0.25%) SCOM
11 3 (0.19%) Kibana
11 3 (0.19%) Rancher
12 2 (0.13%) Control-M
12 2 (0.13%) MIIS
12 2 (0.13%) Nessus
12 2 (0.13%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 122 (7.73%) Microsoft
2 75 (4.75%) Oracle
3 54 (3.42%) Salesforce
4 47 (2.98%) SAP
5 45 (2.85%) VMware
6 43 (2.72%) Databricks
7 33 (2.09%) Google
8 30 (1.90%) HP
9 21 (1.33%) Commvault
10 20 (1.27%) ServiceNow
11 19 (1.20%) OpenAI
11 19 (1.20%) Splunk
12 17 (1.08%) Black Duck
12 17 (1.08%) Coverity
13 14 (0.89%) Palantir
13 14 (0.89%) UiPath
14 13 (0.82%) Foundry
15 12 (0.76%) Ab Initio
15 12 (0.76%) Okta
15 12 (0.76%) Pega