QA Engineer Contracts in England

Quality Assurance Engineer
UK > England

The median Quality Assurance Engineer daily rate in England is £450, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 406 469 477
Rank change year-on-year +63 +8 +145
Contract jobs requiring a QA Engineer 79 73 177
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.32% 0.20% 0.35%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.35% 0.21% 0.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 52 53 159
10th Percentile £370 £300 £300
25th Percentile £400 £363 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £438 £600
Median % change year-on-year +2.86% -27.08% +20.00%
75th Percentile £575 £500 £717
90th Percentile £798 £525 £810
UK median daily rate £444 £440 £575
% change year-on-year +0.85% -23.48% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 2
10th Percentile - £24.98 -
25th Percentile - £31.75 £45.00
Median hourly rate £35.00 £44.61 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.53% -10.79% +10.62%
75th Percentile - £59.02 £55.00
90th Percentile - £66.73 -
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £44.61 £50.00
% change year-on-year -21.53% -10.79% +10.62%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in England. 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 England with a recognized job title 22,549 34,488 47,741
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.59% 92.73% 94.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,007 22,894 33,903
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £409 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £638 £643 £663
90th Percentile £750 £750 £763
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 900 2,432 1,409
10th Percentile £14.20 £13.00 £14.35
25th Percentile £18.51 £16.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £30.62 £36.31 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.67% -19.32% +100.00%
75th Percentile £63.75 £61.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £76.60
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
% change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%

QA Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings that featured QA Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for QA Engineer in England

QA Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing QA Engineer in England.

Daily rate trend for QA Engineer in England

QA Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA Engineer in England over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for QA Engineer in England

QA Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing QA Engineer in England.

Hourly rate trend for QA Engineer in England

QA Engineer
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing QA Engineer within the England region over the 6 months to 1 May 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
London +35 50 £475 +8.57% 88
North of England +18 9 £406 -18.75% 41
Midlands +27 6 £453 +20.67% 26
South East +49 5 - - 39
North West +14 5 £400 -20.00% 20
South West +45 4 £475 +673.99% 24
East of England +33 4 £450 -5.26% 34
Yorkshire +11 4 £550 +29.41% 14
East Midlands - 4 £469 - 9
West Midlands +15 2 £425 +13.33% 16
QA Engineer
UK

QA Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, QA Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the England region featuring QA Engineer in the job title.

1 79 (100.00%) QA
2 58 (73.42%) Test Automation
3 33 (41.77%) Python
4 32 (40.51%) CI/CD
5 30 (37.97%) Agile
6 25 (31.65%) Java
7 24 (30.38%) Test Strategy
7 24 (30.38%) Social Skills
8 23 (29.11%) Problem-Solving
8 23 (29.11%) Finance
9 21 (26.58%) Selenium
10 20 (25.32%) Manual Testing
11 19 (24.05%) Azure
11 19 (24.05%) SQL
12 17 (21.52%) AWS
12 17 (21.52%) Postman
13 15 (18.99%) Test Scripting
14 14 (17.72%) JIRA
14 14 (17.72%) JavaScript
14 14 (17.72%) JMeter
14 14 (17.72%) Scrum
14 14 (17.72%) API Testing
14 14 (17.72%) Analytical Skills
15 13 (16.46%) DevOps
15 13 (16.46%) Cypress.io
15 13 (16.46%) End-to-End Testing
16 12 (15.19%) Performance Testing
16 12 (15.19%) QA Automation
17 11 (13.92%) Software Testing
17 11 (13.92%) Validation

QA Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England 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 6 (7.59%) Confluence
2 1 (1.27%) CMS
2 1 (1.27%) Umbraco
2 1 (1.27%) WordPress
Applications
1 4 (5.06%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (1.27%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (1.27%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (1.27%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 19 (24.05%) Azure
2 17 (21.52%) AWS
3 9 (11.39%) Azure DevOps
4 6 (7.59%) GCP
5 5 (6.33%) Dynamics 365
6 4 (5.06%) BrowserStack
6 4 (5.06%) GitHub
6 4 (5.06%) Sauce Labs
6 4 (5.06%) Snowflake
7 3 (3.80%) GitHub Actions
7 3 (3.80%) SaaS
8 2 (2.53%) Tricentis Tosca
9 1 (1.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 1 (1.27%) Amazon SQS
9 1 (1.27%) AWS CloudFormation
9 1 (1.27%) AWS Lambda
9 1 (1.27%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (1.27%) Azure Monitor
9 1 (1.27%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 1 (1.27%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.53%) Wireless
2 1 (1.27%) Network Security
2 1 (1.27%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (7.59%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (3.80%) MySQL
2 3 (3.80%) NoSQL
3 2 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
3 2 (2.53%) SQL Server
4 1 (1.27%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (1.27%) BusinessObjects
4 1 (1.27%) Crystal Reports
4 1 (1.27%) Delta Lake
4 1 (1.27%) DynamoDB
4 1 (1.27%) MS Access
4 1 (1.27%) Power BI
4 1 (1.27%) Relational Database
4 1 (1.27%) SAP Data Services
4 1 (1.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 21 (26.58%) Selenium
2 17 (21.52%) Postman
3 14 (17.72%) JIRA
3 14 (17.72%) JMeter
4 13 (16.46%) Cypress.io
5 10 (12.66%) LoadRunner
6 9 (11.39%) JUnit
7 7 (8.86%) Cucumber
7 7 (8.86%) Jenkins
8 6 (7.59%) Appium
8 6 (7.59%) Git
9 5 (6.33%) REST Assured
10 4 (5.06%) GitLab
10 4 (5.06%) TestNG
10 4 (5.06%) TestRail
11 3 (3.80%) SpecFlow
12 2 (2.53%) SoapUI
12 2 (2.53%) WebDriver
12 2 (2.53%) Xcode
12 2 (2.53%) XCUITest
General
1 24 (30.38%) Social Skills
2 23 (29.11%) Finance
3 14 (17.72%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (11.39%) Banking
5 4 (5.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 4 (5.06%) Telecoms
6 3 (3.80%) Manufacturing
6 3 (3.80%) Public Sector
7 2 (2.53%) Electronics
8 1 (1.27%) Back Office
8 1 (1.27%) Front Office
8 1 (1.27%) Games
8 1 (1.27%) Investment Banking
8 1 (1.27%) Marketing
8 1 (1.27%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (1.27%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (11.39%) Playwright
2 8 (10.13%) FIX Protocol
3 4 (5.06%) .NET
3 4 (5.06%) pytest
4 3 (3.80%) Kafka
4 3 (3.80%) Node.js
4 3 (3.80%) SOAP
4 3 (3.80%) Web Services
5 2 (2.53%) REST
5 2 (2.53%) RESTful
6 1 (1.27%) Gherkin
6 1 (1.27%) Jest
6 1 (1.27%) Pandas
6 1 (1.27%) PySpark
6 1 (1.27%) React
6 1 (1.27%) React Native
6 1 (1.27%) Spring Boot
6 1 (1.27%) WebdriverIO
6 1 (1.27%) WebSockets
6 1 (1.27%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 11 (13.92%) Product Ownership
2 8 (10.13%) SWIFT Messaging Network
3 3 (3.80%) Educational Technology
3 3 (3.80%) Mobile App
4 2 (2.53%) Data Structures
4 2 (2.53%) Distributed Systems
5 1 (1.27%) Data Centre
5 1 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (1.27%) Derivative
5 1 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
5 1 (1.27%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 10 (12.66%) Linux
2 9 (11.39%) Windows
3 4 (5.06%) Android
3 4 (5.06%) Apple iOS
4 1 (1.27%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 58 (73.42%) Test Automation
2 32 (40.51%) CI/CD
3 30 (37.97%) Agile
4 24 (30.38%) Test Strategy
5 23 (29.11%) Problem-Solving
6 20 (25.32%) Manual Testing
7 15 (18.99%) Test Scripting
8 14 (17.72%) API Testing
8 14 (17.72%) Scrum
9 13 (16.46%) DevOps
9 13 (16.46%) End-to-End Testing
10 12 (15.19%) Performance Testing
10 12 (15.19%) QA Automation
11 11 (13.92%) Regression Testing
11 11 (13.92%) Software Testing
11 11 (13.92%) Validation
12 10 (12.66%) Non-Functional Testing
12 10 (12.66%) SDLC
13 9 (11.39%) Data Pipeline
13 9 (11.39%) User Stories
Programming Languages
1 33 (41.77%) Python
2 25 (31.65%) Java
3 19 (24.05%) SQL
4 14 (17.72%) JavaScript
5 10 (12.66%) Bash
5 10 (12.66%) C#
6 8 (10.13%) TypeScript
6 8 (10.13%) VB
7 3 (3.80%) PowerShell
8 2 (2.53%) Swift
9 1 (1.27%) Scala
Qualifications
1 6 (7.59%) Degree
2 5 (6.33%) Computer Science Degree
3 4 (5.06%) ISTQB
3 4 (5.06%) SC Cleared
3 4 (5.06%) Security Cleared
4 1 (1.27%) AWS Certification
4 1 (1.27%) AWS Certified Developer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (100.00%) QA
2 6 (7.59%) Data Quality
3 5 (6.33%) Software Quality Assurance
4 3 (3.80%) Accessibility
5 2 (2.53%) WCAG
6 1 (1.27%) GxP
6 1 (1.27%) ISO 9001
6 1 (1.27%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 3 (3.80%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (2.53%) Kubernetes
2 1 (1.27%) Kibana
Vendors
1 5 (6.33%) Microsoft
2 4 (5.06%) Databricks
2 4 (5.06%) Informatica
2 4 (5.06%) SAP
3 3 (3.80%) Oracle
3 3 (3.80%) Talend
4 1 (1.27%) ESRI
4 1 (1.27%) Google
4 1 (1.27%) Rapid7
4 1 (1.27%) Salesforce
4 1 (1.27%) Splunk