QA Engineer Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Quality Assurance Engineer
Central London > City of London

The median Quality Assurance Engineer daily rate in the City of London is £519, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 29 May 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 129 107 119
Rank change year-on-year -22 +12 +47
Contract jobs requiring a QA Engineer 6 9 7
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 0.26% 0.54% 0.32%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.27% 0.58% 0.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 2 5 6
10th Percentile £437 - £350
25th Percentile £464 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.75% +11.11% -21.47%
75th Percentile £564 £580 £494
90th Percentile £586 £603 £500
Central London median daily rate £519 £500 £450
% change year-on-year +3.75% +11.11% -25.00%

All Contract IT Job Roles
City of London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the City of London. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the City of London with a recognized job title 2,201 1,564 2,053
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 94.38% 93.37% 95.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,491 982 1,435
10th Percentile £350 £350 £346
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £551
Median % change year-on-year - -0.09% -8.25%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £550
% change year-on-year - - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 16 14
10th Percentile £17.99 £19.25 £14.90
25th Percentile £18.75 £23.31 £20.22
Median hourly rate £29.78 £28.33 £22.75
Median % change year-on-year +5.15% +24.51% -35.00%
75th Percentile £53.44 £45.00 £28.91
90th Percentile £65.00 £81.88 £40.00
Central London median hourly rate £26.56 £27.30 £26.78
% change year-on-year -2.73% +1.94% -23.49%

QA Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'QA Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London.

QA Engineer job vacancy trend in the City of London

QA Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for QA Engineer job vacancies in the City of London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for QA Engineer job vacancies in the City of London

QA Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA Engineer in the City of London over the 6 months to 29 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for QA Engineer in the City of London

QA Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for QA Engineer job vacancies in the City of London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for QA Engineer job vacancies in the City of London

QA Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London

For the 6 months to 29 May 2026, QA Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the City of London region featuring QA Engineer in the job title.

1 6 (100.00%) QA
2 5 (83.33%) Test Automation
3 4 (66.67%) CI/CD
4 3 (50.00%) Accessibility
4 3 (50.00%) Agile
4 3 (50.00%) AI
4 3 (50.00%) Scrum
4 3 (50.00%) Software Testing
4 3 (50.00%) Validation
5 2 (33.33%) API Testing
5 2 (33.33%) Data Validation
5 2 (33.33%) Jenkins
5 2 (33.33%) JIRA
5 2 (33.33%) Python
5 2 (33.33%) QA Automation
5 2 (33.33%) Regression Testing
5 2 (33.33%) SQL
5 2 (33.33%) WCAG
6 1 (16.67%) Acceptance Criteria
6 1 (16.67%) Actionable Insight
6 1 (16.67%) ADO
6 1 (16.67%) Analytics
6 1 (16.67%) Android
6 1 (16.67%) Android SDK
6 1 (16.67%) Appium
6 1 (16.67%) Apple iOS
6 1 (16.67%) BDD
6 1 (16.67%) Big Data
6 1 (16.67%) Case Management
6 1 (16.67%) Collaborative Engineering

QA Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London 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 1 (16.67%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 1 (16.67%) GCP
1 1 (16.67%) GitHub
1 1 (16.67%) GitHub Actions
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (16.67%) Big Data
1 1 (16.67%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 2 (33.33%) Jenkins
1 2 (33.33%) JIRA
2 1 (16.67%) Appium
2 1 (16.67%) Gatling
2 1 (16.67%) Git
2 1 (16.67%) GitLab
2 1 (16.67%) JMeter
2 1 (16.67%) Katalon Studio
2 1 (16.67%) MonkeyTalk
2 1 (16.67%) Postman
2 1 (16.67%) REST Assured
2 1 (16.67%) Robot Framework
2 1 (16.67%) Selendroid
2 1 (16.67%) Selenium
2 1 (16.67%) Visual Studio Code
2 1 (16.67%) XCUITest
2 1 (16.67%) Zephyr
General
1 3 (50.00%) Finance
2 2 (33.33%) Banking
3 1 (16.67%) Social Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (16.67%) ADO
1 1 (16.67%) Android SDK
1 1 (16.67%) CSS
1 1 (16.67%) Gherkin
1 1 (16.67%) HTML
1 1 (16.67%) iOS SDK
1 1 (16.67%) Playwright
1 1 (16.67%) PySpark
1 1 (16.67%) pytest
1 1 (16.67%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 1 (16.67%) Mobile App
1 1 (16.67%) Product Ownership
1 1 (16.67%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1 (16.67%) Android
1 1 (16.67%) Apple iOS
1 1 (16.67%) Linux
1 1 (16.67%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (83.33%) Test Automation
2 4 (66.67%) CI/CD
3 3 (50.00%) Agile
3 3 (50.00%) AI
3 3 (50.00%) Scrum
3 3 (50.00%) Software Testing
3 3 (50.00%) Validation
4 2 (33.33%) API Testing
4 2 (33.33%) Data Validation
4 2 (33.33%) QA Automation
4 2 (33.33%) Regression Testing
5 1 (16.67%) Analytics
5 1 (16.67%) BDD
5 1 (16.67%) Data Engineering
5 1 (16.67%) Defect Management
5 1 (16.67%) Functional Testing
5 1 (16.67%) OWASP
5 1 (16.67%) Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (16.67%) SDLC
5 1 (16.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 2 (33.33%) Python
1 2 (33.33%) SQL
2 1 (16.67%) JavaScript
2 1 (16.67%) Korn
Qualifications
1 1 (16.67%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (100.00%) QA
2 3 (50.00%) Accessibility
3 2 (33.33%) WCAG
4 1 (16.67%) GDPR
4 1 (16.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 1 (16.67%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (16.67%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 1 (16.67%) Google