QA Contract Job Trends in the East Midlands

Quality Assurance (QA)
England > East Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the East Midlands requiring QA skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 6 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 46 43 46
Rank change year-on-year -3 +3 +10
Contract jobs citing QA 30 18 20
As % of all contract jobs in the East Midlands 3.47% 2.66% 2.65%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.74% 17.48% 25.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 27 14 18
10th Percentile £171 £314 £259
25th Percentile £331 £371 £365
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £430 £459 £438
Median % change year-on-year -6.27% +4.86% -
75th Percentile £550 £529 £512
90th Percentile £615 £545 £555
England median daily rate £500 £485 £525
% change year-on-year +3.09% -7.62% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £19.25 - -
Median hourly rate £19.50 - £70.00
75th Percentile £19.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £16.24 £19.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -14.53% -62.00% +92.31%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
East Midlands

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 East Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 138 103 80
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the East Midlands 15.95% 15.21% 10.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 111 55 56
10th Percentile £304 £210 £213
25th Percentile £359 £303 £311
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £382 £431
Median % change year-on-year +11.26% -11.42% +5.44%
75th Percentile £491 £500 £518
90th Percentile £638 £600 £675
England median daily rate £500 £500 £540
% change year-on-year - -7.41% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 4 7
10th Percentile £19.75 £13.10 £10.76
25th Percentile £20.40 £13.37 £13.72
Median hourly rate £22.95 £22.64 £20.51
Median % change year-on-year +1.38% +10.39% +4.30%
75th Percentile £25.11 £37.57 £32.51
90th Percentile £28.06 £48.03 £47.95
England median hourly rate £25.15 £29.50 £35.95
% change year-on-year -14.75% -17.94% +58.02%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend in the East Midlands

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

QA job vacancy trend in the East Midlands

QA
Daily Rate Trend in the East Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the East Midlands citing QA.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the East Midlands citing QA

QA
Daily Rate Histogram in the East Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA in the East Midlands over the 6 months to 6 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for QA in the East Midlands

QA
Hourly Rate Trend in the East Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the East Midlands citing QA.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the East Midlands citing QA

QA
Contract Job Locations in the East Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing QA within the East Midlands region over the 6 months to 6 December 2025. 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Nottinghamshire -5 8 £506 -0.25% 15
Northamptonshire -11 8 £356 -7.53% 10
Leicestershire - 8 £600 - 7
Derbyshire +3 4 £171 -62.72% 16
Lincolnshire -12 1 - - 19
QA
England

QA
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the East Midlands 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 2 (6.67%) Apache Spark
1 2 (6.67%) Confluence
2 1 (3.33%) Apache
2 1 (3.33%) Apache Synapse
2 1 (3.33%) CICS
2 1 (3.33%) Mule
Applications
1 2 (6.67%) Chatbot
1 2 (6.67%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (3.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (3.33%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (10.00%) Oracle Cash Management
1 3 (10.00%) Oracle General Ledger
1 3 (10.00%) Oracle Payables
1 3 (10.00%) Oracle Receivables
2 2 (6.67%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 4 (13.33%) Azure
2 3 (10.00%) AWS
2 3 (10.00%) Power Platform
3 1 (3.33%) Azure Data Factory
3 1 (3.33%) Azure DevOps
3 1 (3.33%) Azure Synapse Analytics
3 1 (3.33%) GCP
3 1 (3.33%) GitHub
3 1 (3.33%) Microsoft Purview
3 1 (3.33%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (6.67%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (10.00%) Power BI
2 2 (6.67%) Data Lake
3 1 (3.33%) Apache Hive
3 1 (3.33%) Big Data
3 1 (3.33%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (3.33%) DB2
3 1 (3.33%) Delta Lake
3 1 (3.33%) Hadoop
3 1 (3.33%) MySQL
3 1 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (3.33%) Spark SQL
3 1 (3.33%) SQL Server
3 1 (3.33%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 4 (13.33%) JIRA
2 2 (6.67%) Jenkins
2 2 (6.67%) Postman
2 2 (6.67%) Selenium
3 1 (3.33%) Cucumber
3 1 (3.33%) Eclipse
3 1 (3.33%) Git
3 1 (3.33%) IntelliJ
3 1 (3.33%) JMeter
3 1 (3.33%) Maven
3 1 (3.33%) SoapUI
3 1 (3.33%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 14 (46.67%) Social Skills
2 11 (36.67%) Finance
3 6 (20.00%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (16.67%) Banking
5 3 (10.00%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (6.67%) Corporate Banking
6 2 (6.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (6.67%) Retail
6 2 (6.67%) Retail Banking
7 1 (3.33%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 6 (20.00%) Analyst
2 5 (16.67%) Product Owner
3 4 (13.33%) Lead
4 3 (10.00%) Business Analyst
4 3 (10.00%) Consultant
4 3 (10.00%) Developer
4 3 (10.00%) Functional Consultant
4 3 (10.00%) Oracle Consultant
4 3 (10.00%) Oracle Functional Consultant
5 2 (6.67%) Customer Analyst
5 2 (6.67%) Desktop Engineer
5 2 (6.67%) Desktop Support
5 2 (6.67%) Desktop Support Engineer
5 2 (6.67%) Payments Analyst
5 2 (6.67%) Payments Business Analyst
5 2 (6.67%) Project Manager
5 2 (6.67%) Senior
5 2 (6.67%) Support Engineer
5 2 (6.67%) Windows Engineer
5 2 (6.67%) Windows Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (10.00%) Oracle Fusion
2 2 (6.67%) .NET
3 1 (3.33%) Lightning Web Components
3 1 (3.33%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 12 (40.00%) Product Ownership
2 5 (16.67%) Legacy Systems
2 5 (16.67%) Mobile App
3 4 (13.33%) PMI
4 3 (10.00%) Onboarding
5 1 (3.33%) Distributed Applications
5 1 (3.33%) Enterprise Software
5 1 (3.33%) Mainframe
5 1 (3.33%) Management Information System
5 1 (3.33%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 2 (6.67%) Windows
2 1 (3.33%) Android
2 1 (3.33%) Apple iOS
2 1 (3.33%) Linux
2 1 (3.33%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 11 (36.67%) Agile
2 7 (23.33%) Problem-Solving
2 7 (23.33%) Scrum
2 7 (23.33%) Stakeholder Management
3 6 (20.00%) CI/CD
3 6 (20.00%) Migration
4 5 (16.67%) Continuous Improvement
4 5 (16.67%) Kanban
4 5 (16.67%) Project Delivery
4 5 (16.67%) Software Engineering
4 5 (16.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 4 (13.33%) Data Migration
5 4 (13.33%) DevOps
5 4 (13.33%) Objectives and Key Results
5 4 (13.33%) Product Vision
5 4 (13.33%) Regulatory Change
5 4 (13.33%) Test Automation
6 3 (10.00%) AI
6 3 (10.00%) Root Cause Analysis
6 3 (10.00%) User Stories
Programming Languages
1 6 (20.00%) SQL
2 2 (6.67%) C#
2 2 (6.67%) PHP
2 2 (6.67%) PL/SQL
3 1 (3.33%) Apex Code
3 1 (3.33%) COBOL
3 1 (3.33%) Java
3 1 (3.33%) JCL
3 1 (3.33%) Python
3 1 (3.33%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 4 (13.33%) PMI Certification
2 3 (10.00%) Degree
3 2 (6.67%) CBAP
3 2 (6.67%) Master's Degree
3 2 (6.67%) MBA
3 2 (6.67%) PMP
3 2 (6.67%) SAFe Agilist
3 2 (6.67%) SC Cleared
3 2 (6.67%) Security Cleared
4 1 (3.33%) CISA
4 1 (3.33%) CISM
4 1 (3.33%) CISSP
4 1 (3.33%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (3.33%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (10.00%) Data Quality
2 2 (6.67%) Basel III
2 2 (6.67%) ISO 8583
2 2 (6.67%) PCI DSS
2 2 (6.67%) PSD2
3 1 (3.33%) COBIT
3 1 (3.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (3.33%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
3 1 (3.33%) NIST
3 1 (3.33%) NIST 800
3 1 (3.33%) PMO
3 1 (3.33%) Software Quality Assurance
Systems Management
1 1 (3.33%) Kubernetes
1 1 (3.33%) RSA Archer
1 1 (3.33%) Terraform
Vendors
1 5 (16.67%) Microsoft
1 5 (16.67%) Oracle
2 1 (3.33%) Ab Initio
2 1 (3.33%) Alteryx
2 1 (3.33%) Databricks
2 1 (3.33%) Google
2 1 (3.33%) Rapid7
2 1 (3.33%) Salesforce