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 29 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 37 28 48
Rank change year-on-year -9 +20 -1
Contract jobs citing QA 45 40 23
As % of all contract jobs in the East Midlands 4.02% 5.76% 2.64%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 29.22% 32.52% 21.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 24 34 19
10th Percentile £335 £130 £200
25th Percentile £360 £171 £227
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £407 £370 £325
Median % change year-on-year +10.14% +13.77% -13.33%
75th Percentile £539 £415 £390
90th Percentile £656 £474 £503
England median daily rate £481 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +1.18% -5.00% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 2 3
10th Percentile - - £14.00
25th Percentile £12.76 - £21.88
Median hourly rate £16.13 £15.12 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.68% -56.80% -50.00%
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile £19.39 - -
England median hourly rate £31.46 £15.63 £14.00
% change year-on-year +101.34% +11.61% -52.94%

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 154 123 108
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the East Midlands 13.75% 17.72% 12.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 100 87 70
10th Percentile £340 £171 £200
25th Percentile £397 £350 £264
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £449 £400 £413
Median % change year-on-year +12.13% -3.03% -8.33%
75th Percentile £548 £458 £595
90th Percentile £656 £500 £624
England median daily rate £505 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +0.90% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 8 15
10th Percentile £12.76 £15.12 £10.35
25th Percentile £12.82 £17.43 £12.75
Median hourly rate £16.13 £21.75 £21.73
Median % change year-on-year -25.84% +0.09% -66.57%
75th Percentile £24.29 £25.11 £26.15
90th Percentile £25.50 £28.68 £35.00
England median hourly rate £36.00 £32.50 £24.18
% change year-on-year +10.77% +34.41% -41.08%

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 29 June 2026.

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 29 June 2026. 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
Derbyshire -1 11 £475 +180.24% 7
Nottinghamshire -23 11 £638 +55.49% 15
Northamptonshire +4 10 £368 -2.00% 8
Leicestershire -7 9 £360 +64.64% 14
Lincolnshire - 3 - - 12
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 5 (11.11%) Confluence
2 3 (6.67%) CMS
3 2 (4.44%) Umbraco
4 1 (2.22%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (6.67%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (2.22%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (13.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (2.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (2.22%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 6 (13.33%) SuccessFactors
2 4 (8.89%) Power Platform
3 3 (6.67%) GitHub
4 2 (4.44%) Azure
4 2 (4.44%) GitHub Actions
4 2 (4.44%) SaaS
5 1 (2.22%) AWS
5 1 (2.22%) Azure DevOps
5 1 (2.22%) Dynamics 365
5 1 (2.22%) Lucidchart
5 1 (2.22%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 5 (11.11%) Network Security
2 3 (6.67%) HTTP
3 1 (2.22%) HTTPS
3 1 (2.22%) TCP/IP
3 1 (2.22%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (8.89%) Power BI
2 2 (4.44%) Tableau
3 1 (2.22%) Aerospike
3 1 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (2.22%) DynamoDB
3 1 (2.22%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (2.22%) Redis
Development Applications
1 9 (20.00%) JIRA
2 4 (8.89%) Git
3 3 (6.67%) JUnit
3 3 (6.67%) Postman
4 2 (4.44%) Gatling
4 2 (4.44%) GitLab
4 2 (4.44%) Gradle
4 2 (4.44%) JMeter
4 2 (4.44%) Maven
4 2 (4.44%) REST Assured
4 2 (4.44%) TestNG
5 1 (2.22%) Jenkins
5 1 (2.22%) Selenium
General
1 12 (26.67%) Finance
2 8 (17.78%) Social Skills
3 7 (15.56%) Public Sector
3 7 (15.56%) Retail
4 4 (8.89%) Organisational Skills
5 3 (6.67%) Banking
6 2 (4.44%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (4.44%) Corporate Banking
6 2 (4.44%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (4.44%) Manufacturing
6 2 (4.44%) Retail Banking
6 2 (4.44%) Telecoms
7 1 (2.22%) Aerospace
7 1 (2.22%) Legal
Job Titles
1 6 (13.33%) Lead
2 5 (11.11%) Analyst
3 4 (8.89%) Coordinator
3 4 (8.89%) Project Manager
3 4 (8.89%) QA Manager
3 4 (8.89%) Service Manager
4 3 (6.67%) Content Coordinator
4 3 (6.67%) Developer
4 3 (6.67%) Hardware Technician
4 3 (6.67%) Web Content Coordinator
4 3 (6.67%) Workstream Lead
5 2 (4.44%) Banking Project Manager
5 2 (4.44%) Business Analyst
5 2 (4.44%) Consultant
5 2 (4.44%) Designer
5 2 (4.44%) QA Engineer
5 2 (4.44%) Technical Designer
5 2 (4.44%) Test Analyst
6 1 (2.22%) Mechanical Engineer
6 1 (2.22%) SAP Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (11.11%) XML
2 4 (8.89%) Lightning Web Components
3 3 (6.67%) CSS
3 3 (6.67%) HTML
3 3 (6.67%) Middleware
3 3 (6.67%) REST
3 3 (6.67%) Visualforce
4 2 (4.44%) JSON
4 2 (4.44%) OpenAPI
4 2 (4.44%) Playwright
4 2 (4.44%) Swagger
5 1 (2.22%) Jest
5 1 (2.22%) Kafka
5 1 (2.22%) Node.js
5 1 (2.22%) pytest
5 1 (2.22%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 6 (13.33%) Public Cloud
2 5 (11.11%) Data Protection Act
3 4 (8.89%) Product Ownership
4 3 (6.67%) EPoS
4 3 (6.67%) Onboarding
4 3 (6.67%) PMI
5 2 (4.44%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 2 (4.44%) Hedge funds
6 1 (2.22%) Cloud Native
6 1 (2.22%) Contactless
6 1 (2.22%) Device Driver
6 1 (2.22%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (2.22%) Driving Licence
6 1 (2.22%) Embedded Systems
6 1 (2.22%) EMV
Operating Systems
1 2 (4.44%) Windows
2 1 (2.22%) Linux
2 1 (2.22%) Unix
2 1 (2.22%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (31.11%) Validation
2 12 (26.67%) Stakeholder Management
3 9 (20.00%) Agile
3 9 (20.00%) User Acceptance Testing
4 8 (17.78%) Continuous Improvement
4 8 (17.78%) Problem-Solving
5 7 (15.56%) Analytics
5 7 (15.56%) CI/CD
5 7 (15.56%) Workshop Facilitation
6 6 (13.33%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 6 (13.33%) Data Modelling
6 6 (13.33%) DevOps
6 6 (13.33%) Scrum
6 6 (13.33%) Security Operations
6 6 (13.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 6 (13.33%) System Integration Testing
6 6 (13.33%) Test Scripting
7 5 (11.11%) Change Management
7 5 (11.11%) Migration
7 5 (11.11%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 5 (11.11%) Java
2 4 (8.89%) Apex Code
2 4 (8.89%) SOQL
3 3 (6.67%) Python
3 3 (6.67%) SQL
4 1 (2.22%) C++
4 1 (2.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 1 (2.22%) PowerShell
4 1 (2.22%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 3 (6.67%) BPSS Clearance
1 3 (6.67%) Degree
1 3 (6.67%) PMI Certification
1 3 (6.67%) PMP
1 3 (6.67%) Security Cleared
2 2 (4.44%) Master's Degree
2 2 (4.44%) MBA
2 2 (4.44%) SAFe Agilist
2 2 (4.44%) SC Cleared
3 1 (2.22%) Six Sigma Green Belt
3 1 (2.22%) Six Sigma Yellow Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (11.11%) GRC
2 2 (4.44%) Basel III
2 2 (4.44%) Data Quality
3 1 (2.22%) ISO 8583
3 1 (2.22%) PCI DSS
3 1 (2.22%) SLA
System Software
1 6 (13.33%) Active Directory
2 4 (8.89%) Firmware
3 1 (2.22%) BitLocker
3 1 (2.22%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 6 (13.33%) Single Sign-On
2 2 (4.44%) SCCM
Vendors
1 8 (17.78%) SAP
2 4 (8.89%) Databricks
2 4 (8.89%) Salesforce
3 2 (4.44%) Microsoft
4 1 (2.22%) Citrix
4 1 (2.22%) Dell
4 1 (2.22%) HP
4 1 (2.22%) JD Edwards
4 1 (2.22%) Oracle
4 1 (2.22%) ServiceNow