Automation Test Engineer

An automation test engineer writes code that tests other people's code. Rather than clicking through a website or app by hand to check it works, you build scripts that do the checking automatically — logging in, filling forms, calling the software's internal interfaces — and run them repeatedly whenever developers change something. You usually sit inside a software development team, working for whoever owns the product: a bank, a retailer, a government department, a software company or a consultancy placing you with clients.

Starting salary: £25k–£35k
Live graduate jobs: 5 open now
Main way in: Graduate schemes in technology at large employers
They usually ask for: A degree in computer science, software engineering or a closely…

Approximate graduate salary

Typically somewhere around £25,000–£35,000 to start, though this varies widely. Consultancy academy roles and smaller regional employers often sit at the lower end, while London-based finance and tech employers and structured graduate schemes sit at or above the upper end. Treat any single figure with caution — location, sector and whether the role is genuinely automation-focused all shift it significantly.

What you'd actually do

Writing and maintaining automated test scripts in a language like Java, Python, C# or JavaScript, using frameworks such as Selenium, Playwright, Cypress or REST Assured
Investigating failed test runs — a large share of failures are the tests themselves breaking because a button moved or a test environment went down, so you spend real time working out whether you've found a genuine bug or a flaky test
Raising and describing defects clearly enough that a developer can reproduce them, usually in a tracking tool like Jira, then re-checking fixes
Attending daily stand-ups and sprint planning with developers, business analysts and a product owner, and giving a view on whether a feature is ready to release

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Testing APIs (the behind-the-scenes interfaces different bits of software use to talk to each other) with tools like Postman, often alongside or instead of testing the visible user interface
Working with the CI/CD pipeline — the automated build-and-deploy system, often Jenkins, GitLab CI or Azure DevOps — so tests run automatically on every code change, and keeping the test suite fast enough that people don't start ignoring it
Some manual and exploratory testing: poking at a new feature by hand to understand it before deciding what's worth automating

How graduates get in

Graduate schemes in technology at large employers — banks, insurers, retailers, telecoms, consultancies and the Civil Service. Many of these recruit into a general 'technology' or 'software engineering' stream and stream you into testing/quality engineering after an initial rotation or training block; applying directly to a named 'graduate test engineer' scheme is also common but less widespread.
Direct entry to a junior QA or test analyst job, then moving into automation once you're inside. This is probably the most common route in the UK outside the big schemes — many employers will hire a graduate into a mostly manual testing role and let you pick up automation on the job.
IT consultancies and outsourcing firms that hire graduates in volume, train them for a few weeks, then place them on client projects. Pay often starts lower than in-house roles and you may be tied in by a training agreement, so read the contract.
Apprenticeship and 'bootcamp-to-job' style routes — degree apprenticeships in digital/software, or a paid academy run by a consultancy. These are a realistic alternative if you don't have a computing degree.

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Internships and placement years in software development or QA, which carry a lot of weight because the work is so hands-on. A placement year from a sandwich degree is a strong route into a graduate role at the same employer.
Sideways moves from support desks, data roles or business analysis. Unusual as a first graduate job but very common a year or two in.

What employers ask for

A degree in computer science, software engineering or a closely related subject is the most common background, but the subject matters less here than in some tech roles — maths, physics, engineering and even non-STEM graduates get in if they can show coding ability. Some employers advertise testing roles as open to any discipline.
Most structured graduate schemes ask for a 2:1; plenty of direct-entry junior roles ask for a 2:2 or simply don't specify, and some skip degree requirements entirely in favour of a technical test. This varies a lot between large scheme employers and smaller firms.
Demonstrable programming ability in at least one language — this is the single thing that separates automation roles from general QA. A GitHub repository, a university project, or a personal project where you've written tests counts.
The ISTQB Foundation certificate (a widely recognised entry-level software testing qualification) is often asked for or funded after you join. It is rarely a hard requirement to apply, and some employers consider it fairly basic.

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Understanding of version control (Git) and, increasingly, some exposure to cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) and containers (Docker). Not usually mandatory for a graduate, but it helps.
Security clearance for defence, policing and some government work — this usually requires UK residency for a set period, which can rule out some applicants regardless of skill.

Skills that matter

Writing maintainable code, not just working code

A test suite that nobody can understand or update gets deleted within a year; you're judged on whether your tests still run cleanly six months later.

Systematic debugging

When fifteen tests go red overnight, you need a method for narrowing down whether it's the application, the test, the data or the environment.

Thinking about edge cases and failure modes

The job is largely imagining what a user, a bad network or a malformed input could do that the developer didn't consider.

Reading and writing SQL

You constantly need to set up test data or check that an action actually wrote the right thing to the database.

Understanding HTTP and APIs

Most modern testing happens at the API layer rather than through the screen, because it's faster and less brittle.

Being able to disagree constructively

You will regularly tell a developer their work is broken, or tell a project manager a release isn't ready — doing that without souring the relationship is a genuine part of the job.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Graduate or junior test engineer: you work on tests others have designed, within an existing framework, with someone reviewing your code.
Test engineer / QA engineer (commonly reached within a couple of years, though it varies): you own testing for a feature or team, choose what to automate, and contribute to the framework itself.
Senior test engineer or SDET (software development engineer in test — a more developer-heavy version of the role): you design test frameworks, set the approach across teams, and spend more time on tooling and pipelines than on individual test cases.
From there the paths fork. Some move into test leadership — test lead, QA manager, head of quality engineering — which is more about strategy, hiring and release decisions. Others move sideways into software development, DevOps or site reliability engineering, which is a well-trodden route because the skills overlap heavily. Performance testing, security testing and test consultancy are common specialisms.
Timelines vary widely. In a small company you might be the only tester and owning the strategy within a year; in a large bank or consultancy the ladder is more formal and slower.

What people get wrong

“Testing is where you go if you're not good enough to be a developer.”

Automation testing is a software development job — you write code, review code and design frameworks. A good automation engineer often has broader system knowledge than a developer working on one component, and SDET roles at some employers pay comparably to development roles.

“The goal is to automate everything and eliminate manual testing.”

Mature teams automate the repetitive regression checks and keep humans for exploratory testing, usability and anything genuinely new. Trying to automate everything produces a huge, slow, flaky suite that nobody trusts, which is a well-known failure mode.

“You find bugs at the end, just before release.”

Most teams now expect testers to be involved from the start — questioning requirements, pairing with developers, and building tests as the feature is built. Finding a bug late is often treated as a process failure rather than a win.

“AI tools are about to make the role redundant.”

AI is genuinely changing how test scripts get written and maintained, and the low-skill end of manual test execution is shrinking. But deciding what risk matters, interpreting ambiguous failures and designing the overall approach is still human work, and the shift tends to push the role further towards engineering rather than away from it.

Where this varies

The job title covers quite different realities. In a product-focused tech company or a bank's in-house engineering team, you'll be writing code most of the day and may be called an SDET or quality engineer, embedded in a development squad. In a consultancy or outsourced delivery setting, you may be placed on a client site, work within someone else's framework, and spend more time on documentation, test plans and sign-off processes — and the proportion of manual testing can be much higher than the advert suggests. In regulated sectors such as banking, pharmaceuticals, defence and medical devices, there is substantially more formal evidence and traceability work, because test results form part of an audit trail. Geographically, roles cluster in London, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Belfast, and remote or hybrid working is common but less so in cleared defence work. It's worth asking at interview what share of the role is actually automation versus manual testing — the gap between the title and the day job is a frequent source of disappointment.

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General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.