With the growing demand for test automation experts and new technologies emerge at a rapid pace, gaining the relevant technical skills is crucial for candidates who are looking to improve their chances to get hired.

In order to answer the question – “What are the most desirable test automation skills in the upcoming year of 2016?”, our research team took over the top job searching websites around the globe looking for the most popular and required technologies in the test automation field.

Most popular test automation frameworks

Selenium is considered to be the world’s most popular framework (as also reflected in ‘Test Automation Trends of 2015’). The most surprising fact regarding Selenium in the United States is that it’s almost 300% more demanded than QTP/UTF which has made to second place. This huge gap practically renders all other technologies as less relevant for people looking to learn a new automation framework.

The broad use of Cucumber and the fact that Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) and testing has become one of the promising technologies in Europe, influence the rising popularity of the Ruby programming language. As can be seen in the graph above, Ruby for test automation has become second most popular language in Europe, and third most popular in the US.

We can summarize by saying that in case you are looking for test automation position in Europe, Cucumber & Ruby may be the right buzzwords in your resume.

If your destination is India; Selenium or a premium solution such as QTP or Microsoft testing tools (Coded UI/Unit Testing) will most likely improve your chances in finding a job in the test automation field.

World’s test automation programming languages distribution

In case you are debating on whether to acquire Java programming skills to improve your chances for sitting behind an interview desk, you probably on the right path. The combination of Java and Selenium are so far considered the most popular for test automation in the world.

The broad use of Python in test automation is already well known, yet our research reveals that Python is highly popular when used for internally developed tools. This and the fact that it’s broadly used with Selenium contributes to its continuous and rapid growth in the US and Europe in specific.

Finally, if it hasn’t been clear so far, SQL is a very useful asset for all QA engineers. SQL validation queries are very common and complementary to automated test scenarios, as it’s broadly use with any of the existing programming languages.

Demand for mobile test automation experts

The demand for mobile test automation experts is higher in the US compared to India, which is considered as very much lean in mobile skills demand for test automation compared to the rest of the world.

While discussing mobile technologies, acquiring test automation skills for iOS considered a must have skill, while Android isn’t too far behind. Therefore, we recommend targeting both technologies in order to increase your chances in finding a job in the mobile test automation field. You may refer to popular tools drill down here: ‘My Open Source Tools for Mobile App Test Automation’.

Operation Systems Distribution

Currently, the need for Linux automation experts is similar to Windows, and continues to grow in the world of test automation across the globe, as also reflected in the growth of use in cross platform programming languages such as (Java, Python, Rubby, etc). In any case, acquiring “advanced user” skills with Linux based distributions is necessary.

In addition, it is interesting to see the almost equal segmentation between desktop and mobile OSes (Linux<->Windows/ iOS<->Android). This trend may very much show that smart phone – mobile world is taking over the world, as also reflected “here”.