QA Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Quality Assurance (QA)
Central London > City of London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the City of London requiring QA skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 6 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 55 46
Rank change year-on-year +15 -9 +16
Contract jobs citing QA 110 77 88
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.59% 4.12% 4.26%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 25.29% 21.81% 25.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 75 56 66
10th Percentile £404 £400 £369
25th Percentile £475 £404 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £523 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.21% -4.95% -12.00%
75th Percentile £653 £638 £643
90th Percentile £733 £816 £731
Central London median daily rate £550 £525 £550
% change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -10.20%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
City of London

QA falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills in the City of London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 435 353 347
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 18.16% 18.90% 16.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 318 257 233
10th Percentile £379 £359 £363
25th Percentile £465 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -6.52% -4.17%
75th Percentile £668 £700 £675
90th Percentile £770 £811 £751
Central London median daily rate £550 £538 £550
% change year-on-year +2.33% -2.27% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 2
10th Percentile - £28.05 £16.60
25th Percentile £72.25 £37.13 £17.50
Median hourly rate £74.50 £54.50 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.70% +172.50% -
75th Percentile £76.75 £72.75 £22.50
90th Percentile - £82.35 £23.40
Central London median hourly rate £66.00 £34.48 £23.80
% change year-on-year +91.42% +44.87% -4.80%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

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

QA job vacancy trend in the City of London

QA
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing QA.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing QA

QA
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

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

Daily rate histogram for QA in the City of London

QA
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing QA.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing QA

QA
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 9 (8.18%) Confluence
2 2 (1.82%) CMS
2 2 (1.82%) IIS
2 2 (1.82%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.91%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.91%) Apache
3 1 (0.91%) nginx
3 1 (0.91%) WordPress
Applications
1 8 (7.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.82%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (1.82%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (3.64%) Workday HCM
2 3 (2.73%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (1.82%) Aladdin
3 2 (1.82%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.91%) Magento
4 1 (0.91%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.91%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.91%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.91%) SAP HCM
4 1 (0.91%) SAP Payroll
4 1 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 25 (22.73%) Azure
2 14 (12.73%) GitHub
3 12 (10.91%) AWS
3 12 (10.91%) Power Platform
4 10 (9.09%) Azure DevOps
5 8 (7.27%) GitHub Actions
6 6 (5.45%) GitHub Copilot
6 6 (5.45%) Serverless
7 4 (3.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 4 (3.64%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 4 (3.64%) GCP
7 4 (3.64%) SuccessFactors
8 3 (2.73%) Amazon Kinesis
8 3 (2.73%) Amazon S3
8 3 (2.73%) AWS Lambda
8 3 (2.73%) Azure Functions
8 3 (2.73%) Azure Monitor
8 3 (2.73%) Microsoft Copilot
8 3 (2.73%) Power Automate
8 3 (2.73%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.73%) Internet
2 2 (1.82%) Firewall
2 2 (1.82%) Intranet
2 2 (1.82%) WAN
2 2 (1.82%) Wi-Fi
3 1 (0.91%) DHCP
3 1 (0.91%) DNS
3 1 (0.91%) LAN
3 1 (0.91%) MPLS
3 1 (0.91%) Multicast
3 1 (0.91%) Reverse Proxy
3 1 (0.91%) SD-WAN
3 1 (0.91%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.91%) VPN
3 1 (0.91%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (13.64%) SQL Server
2 9 (8.18%) Power BI
3 7 (6.36%) NoSQL
3 7 (6.36%) Oracle Database
4 4 (3.64%) DynamoDB
4 4 (3.64%) MongoDB
4 4 (3.64%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (3.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 3 (2.73%) Apache Cassandra
5 3 (2.73%) Metadata
5 3 (2.73%) Relational Database
5 3 (2.73%) SQL Server Analysis Services
5 3 (2.73%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 2 (1.82%) Amazon Athena
6 2 (1.82%) Elasticsearch
6 2 (1.82%) MySQL
6 2 (1.82%) RDBMS
6 2 (1.82%) SQLPlus
7 1 (0.91%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.91%) GIS
Development Applications
1 17 (15.45%) JIRA
2 11 (10.00%) Git
3 10 (9.09%) Jenkins
4 9 (8.18%) Selenium
5 8 (7.27%) GitLab
6 5 (4.55%) Cypress.io
7 4 (3.64%) Maven
7 4 (3.64%) TeamCity
8 3 (2.73%) Appium
8 3 (2.73%) Artifactory
8 3 (2.73%) Gatling
8 3 (2.73%) Gradle
8 3 (2.73%) JMeter
8 3 (2.73%) REST Assured
8 3 (2.73%) Zephyr
9 2 (1.82%) Bitbucket
9 2 (1.82%) Cucumber
9 2 (1.82%) NeoLoad
9 2 (1.82%) Postman
9 2 (1.82%) webpack
General
1 35 (31.82%) Social Skills
2 33 (30.00%) Finance
3 23 (20.91%) Banking
4 20 (18.18%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (10.00%) Public Sector
6 4 (3.64%) Front Office
6 4 (3.64%) Influencing Skills
6 4 (3.64%) Military
6 4 (3.64%) Publishing
6 4 (3.64%) Retail
7 3 (2.73%) Investment Banking
7 3 (2.73%) Manufacturing
7 3 (2.73%) Organisational Skills
7 3 (2.73%) Retail Banking
8 2 (1.82%) Back Office
8 2 (1.82%) Corporate Banking
8 2 (1.82%) Financial Institution
8 2 (1.82%) Law
8 2 (1.82%) Marketing
8 2 (1.82%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 26 (23.64%) Developer
2 18 (16.36%) Analyst
3 16 (14.55%) Lead
4 13 (11.82%) Senior
5 10 (9.09%) QA Engineer
6 7 (6.36%) C# Developer
6 7 (6.36%) Full-Stack Developer
6 7 (6.36%) Java Developer
7 6 (5.45%) Business Analyst
7 6 (5.45%) Consultant
8 5 (4.55%) Automation Engineer
8 5 (4.55%) Data Analyst
8 5 (4.55%) Lead Developer
8 5 (4.55%) Lead Full-Stack Developer
8 5 (4.55%) Senior Developer
8 5 (4.55%) Senior Java Developer
8 5 (4.55%) Test Engineer
9 4 (3.64%) QA Leader
9 4 (3.64%) Tester
9 4 (3.64%) Workday Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (10.91%) .NET
2 9 (8.18%) Playwright
2 9 (8.18%) REST
3 7 (6.36%) .NET Framework
4 6 (5.45%) Kafka
4 6 (5.45%) Spring
4 6 (5.45%) Spring Boot
5 5 (4.55%) GraphQL
5 5 (4.55%) RESTful
6 4 (3.64%) AngularJS
6 4 (3.64%) HTML
6 4 (3.64%) Node.js
6 4 (3.64%) React
7 3 (2.73%) ASP.NET
7 3 (2.73%) ASP.NET Web Forms
7 3 (2.73%) CSS
7 3 (2.73%) Gherkin
7 3 (2.73%) Middleware
7 3 (2.73%) OpenTelemetry
7 3 (2.73%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 11 (10.00%) Product Ownership
2 10 (9.09%) Cloud Native
3 6 (5.45%) Distributed Systems
4 5 (4.55%) Data Centre
5 4 (3.64%) AI Agents
5 4 (3.64%) Data Structures
6 3 (2.73%) Clustering
6 3 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (2.73%) Onboarding
7 2 (1.82%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (1.82%) Freedom of Information
7 2 (1.82%) Life Science
7 2 (1.82%) Management Information System
7 2 (1.82%) Operational Technology
7 2 (1.82%) Replication
7 2 (1.82%) Virtual Team
8 1 (0.91%) IoT
8 1 (0.91%) Low-Code
8 1 (0.91%) Marketing Technology
8 1 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 9 (8.18%) Windows
2 8 (7.27%) Linux
3 7 (6.36%) Unix
3 7 (6.36%) Windows Server
4 3 (2.73%) Android
4 3 (2.73%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.91%) VMS
5 1 (0.91%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 32 (29.09%) Agile
2 30 (27.27%) Test Automation
3 28 (25.45%) CI/CD
4 27 (24.55%) DevOps
4 27 (24.55%) Stakeholder Management
5 23 (20.91%) Validation
6 21 (19.09%) AI
7 18 (16.36%) Continuous Improvement
8 15 (13.64%) Problem-Solving
9 14 (12.73%) Analytics
9 14 (12.73%) Roadmaps
9 14 (12.73%) Scrum
9 14 (12.73%) Test Strategy
10 13 (11.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 12 (10.91%) Data Analysis
11 12 (10.91%) Migration
11 12 (10.91%) SDLC
12 11 (10.00%) Data Modelling
12 11 (10.00%) Microservices
12 11 (10.00%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 33 (30.00%) SQL
2 21 (19.09%) Python
3 15 (13.64%) Java
4 13 (11.82%) C#
5 9 (8.18%) JavaScript
5 9 (8.18%) PL/SQL
6 6 (5.45%) TypeScript
7 5 (4.55%) Korn
7 5 (4.55%) T-SQL
8 3 (2.73%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.82%) Bash
9 2 (1.82%) C
9 2 (1.82%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 2 (1.82%) Kotlin
9 2 (1.82%) ProC
9 2 (1.82%) Scala
10 1 (0.91%) PHP
10 1 (0.91%) R
10 1 (0.91%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.91%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 20 (18.18%) Security Cleared
2 15 (13.64%) SC Cleared
3 11 (10.00%) Degree
4 3 (2.73%) CSPO
5 2 (1.82%) DV Cleared
6 1 (0.91%) CBAP
6 1 (0.91%) CCIE
6 1 (0.91%) CCNP
6 1 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
6 1 (0.91%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.91%) IIBA
6 1 (0.91%) Master's Degree
6 1 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (0.91%) PMI Certification
6 1 (0.91%) RIBA
6 1 (0.91%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (12.73%) Data Quality
2 8 (7.27%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.82%) 21 CFR Part 11
3 2 (1.82%) GDPR
3 2 (1.82%) GxP
3 2 (1.82%) WCAG
4 1 (0.91%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.91%) Basel III
4 1 (0.91%) Government Security Classifications
4 1 (0.91%) GRC
4 1 (0.91%) IFRS
4 1 (0.91%) IFRS 9
4 1 (0.91%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.91%) PERC
4 1 (0.91%) PMO
4 1 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 1 (0.91%) Software Quality Assurance
4 1 (0.91%) Solvency II
System Software
1 13 (11.82%) Docker
2 5 (4.55%) Active Directory
3 4 (3.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.91%) GridGain
4 1 (0.91%) Varnish
4 1 (0.91%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 12 (10.91%) Kubernetes
2 6 (5.45%) Grafana
2 6 (5.45%) Prometheus
2 6 (5.45%) Terraform
3 3 (2.73%) Microsoft Clustering
3 3 (2.73%) SCOM
4 2 (1.82%) Ansible
5 1 (0.91%) Puppet
5 1 (0.91%) Salt
Vendors
1 19 (17.27%) Microsoft
2 15 (13.64%) Oracle
3 5 (4.55%) Citrix
3 5 (4.55%) Databricks
3 5 (4.55%) SAP
3 5 (4.55%) Workday
4 4 (3.64%) Google
4 4 (3.64%) Sitecore
4 4 (3.64%) VMware
5 3 (2.73%) BMC
5 3 (2.73%) Commvault
5 3 (2.73%) Remedy
6 2 (1.82%) Adobe
6 2 (1.82%) Cisco
6 2 (1.82%) Fortinet
6 2 (1.82%) Salesforce
7 1 (0.91%) Atlassian
7 1 (0.91%) Cognizant
7 1 (0.91%) Informatica
7 1 (0.91%) Sybase