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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 38 56 36
Rank change year-on-year +18 -20 +37
Contract jobs citing QA 32 10 35
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the East Midlands 4.11% 1.28% 4.01%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 23.36% 10.20% 28.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 27 9 23
10th Percentile £156 £312 £254
25th Percentile £296 £319 £343
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £375 £425 £420
Median % change year-on-year -11.76% +1.19% -0.59%
75th Percentile £448 £565 £513
90th Percentile £475 £805 £615
England median daily rate £475 £488 £525
% change year-on-year -2.56% -7.14% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 2
Median hourly rate £15.12 - £70.00
England median hourly rate £15.96 £13.26 £50.00
% change year-on-year +20.36% -73.48% +40.85%

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 137 98 121
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the East Midlands 17.59% 12.52% 13.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 107 55 82
10th Percentile £292 £263 £263
25th Percentile £358 £325 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £413 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -17.50% +11.11% +10.77%
75th Percentile £469 £600 £547
90th Percentile £530 £740 £638
England median daily rate £500 £525 £539
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.60% +2.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 7 9
10th Percentile £15.12 - £10.77
25th Percentile £17.69 £12.75 £16.66
Median hourly rate £20.83 £13.50 £20.51
Median % change year-on-year +54.30% -34.18% +4.30%
75th Percentile £25.11 £28.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £29.88 £47.35 £70.00
England median hourly rate £32.50 £30.56 £36.75
% change year-on-year +6.35% -16.84% +61.54%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend in the East Midlands

Job postings citing QA as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the East Midlands.

Job vacancy trend for QA 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 16 September 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 16 September 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
Northamptonshire -7 12 £375 -11.76% 9
Nottinghamshire +4 9 £438 +29.63% 16
Derbyshire +8 5 £171 -62.42% 9
Leicestershire +3 5 £132 -63.50% 16
QA
England

QA
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the East Midlands by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 1 (3.13%) CICS
1 1 (3.13%) Mule
Applications
1 3 (9.38%) Chatbot
2 1 (3.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (3.13%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (6.25%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 7 (21.88%) Azure
2 6 (18.75%) AWS
3 5 (15.63%) GCP
4 3 (9.38%) SaaS
5 2 (6.25%) BrowserStack
5 2 (6.25%) Power Platform
6 1 (3.13%) Azure DevOps
6 1 (3.13%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 2 (6.25%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (9.38%) SQL Server
2 2 (6.25%) Power BI
3 1 (3.13%) DB2
3 1 (3.13%) MongoDB
3 1 (3.13%) MySQL
3 1 (3.13%) NoSQL
3 1 (3.13%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (3.13%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 5 (15.63%) Postman
1 5 (15.63%) Selenium
2 3 (9.38%) JMeter
2 3 (9.38%) SoapUI
3 2 (6.25%) Cypress.io
3 2 (6.25%) Jenkins
3 2 (6.25%) JIRA
3 2 (6.25%) JUnit
3 2 (6.25%) Mockito
3 2 (6.25%) SonarQube
3 2 (6.25%) TeamCity
4 1 (3.13%) Cucumber
4 1 (3.13%) Eclipse
4 1 (3.13%) Git
4 1 (3.13%) IntelliJ
4 1 (3.13%) Maven
4 1 (3.13%) Ranorex
4 1 (3.13%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (3.13%) Visual Studio
4 1 (3.13%) WebDriver
General
1 16 (50.00%) Social Skills
2 10 (31.25%) Analytical Skills
3 6 (18.75%) Finance
4 4 (12.50%) Public Sector
5 3 (9.38%) Banking
6 2 (6.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (3.13%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (3.13%) Retail
Job Titles
1 8 (25.00%) Analyst
2 6 (18.75%) Lead
3 5 (15.63%) Developer
3 5 (15.63%) Senior
4 4 (12.50%) Business Analyst
4 4 (12.50%) Desktop Engineer
4 4 (12.50%) Desktop Support
4 4 (12.50%) Desktop Support Engineer
4 4 (12.50%) Support Engineer
4 4 (12.50%) Test Leader
4 4 (12.50%) Windows Engineer
4 4 (12.50%) Windows Support Engineer
5 3 (9.38%) Customer Analyst
5 3 (9.38%) Java Developer
5 3 (9.38%) Tester
6 2 (6.25%) 1st Line Support
6 2 (6.25%) 1st Line Support Engineer
6 2 (6.25%) QA Tester
6 2 (6.25%) Senior Developer
6 2 (6.25%) Senior QA Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (15.63%) REST
2 4 (12.50%) .NET
2 4 (12.50%) LDAP
3 3 (9.38%) Hibernate
3 3 (9.38%) Spring
4 2 (6.25%) JMS
4 2 (6.25%) JSON
4 2 (6.25%) XML
5 1 (3.13%) J2EE
5 1 (3.13%) JDBC
5 1 (3.13%) Kafka
5 1 (3.13%) Lightning Web Components
5 1 (3.13%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 6 (18.75%) Product Ownership
2 4 (12.50%) Legacy Systems
3 2 (6.25%) Distributed Computing
3 2 (6.25%) Greenfield Project
4 1 (3.13%) Distributed Applications
4 1 (3.13%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (3.13%) Mainframe
4 1 (3.13%) Management Information System
4 1 (3.13%) Mobile App
4 1 (3.13%) Onboarding
4 1 (3.13%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 4 (12.50%) Windows
2 2 (6.25%) Unix
3 1 (3.13%) Android
3 1 (3.13%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (43.75%) Agile
2 10 (31.25%) Problem-Solving
2 10 (31.25%) Scrum
3 9 (28.13%) Test Automation
4 8 (25.00%) CI/CD
5 7 (21.88%) SDLC
6 6 (18.75%) DevOps
6 6 (18.75%) Migration
7 5 (15.63%) Continuous Improvement
7 5 (15.63%) Cybersecurity
7 5 (15.63%) Project Management
7 5 (15.63%) Test Strategy
8 4 (12.50%) API Testing
8 4 (12.50%) Biometrics
8 4 (12.50%) Facial Recognition
8 4 (12.50%) Identity Access Management
8 4 (12.50%) Multi-Factor Authentication
8 4 (12.50%) Time Management
8 4 (12.50%) User Acceptance Testing
8 4 (12.50%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 10 (31.25%) SQL
2 5 (15.63%) Java
3 3 (9.38%) C#
4 2 (6.25%) PHP
4 2 (6.25%) PL/SQL
5 1 (3.13%) Apex Code
5 1 (3.13%) COBOL
5 1 (3.13%) JavaScript
5 1 (3.13%) JCL
5 1 (3.13%) PowerShell
5 1 (3.13%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 7 (21.88%) Security Cleared
2 4 (12.50%) SC Cleared
3 2 (6.25%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (3.13%) CISA
4 1 (3.13%) CISM
4 1 (3.13%) CISSP
4 1 (3.13%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (3.13%) Degree
4 1 (3.13%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (3.13%) COBIT
1 1 (3.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 1 (3.13%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
1 1 (3.13%) NIST
1 1 (3.13%) NIST 800
1 1 (3.13%) PMO
1 1 (3.13%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 4 (12.50%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 1 (3.13%) Kubernetes
1 1 (3.13%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 8 (25.00%) Oracle
2 7 (21.88%) Microsoft
3 2 (6.25%) Nintex
4 1 (3.13%) Alteryx
4 1 (3.13%) Google
4 1 (3.13%) Rapid7
4 1 (3.13%) Salesforce
4 1 (3.13%) Solace
4 1 (3.13%) Teradata