QA Tester Contracts in England

Quality Assurance Tester
UK > England

The median Quality Assurance Tester daily rate in England is £380, 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 452 509 532
Rank change year-on-year +57 +23 +168
Contract jobs requiring a QA Tester 33 33 121
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.14% 0.089% 0.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.15% 0.096% 0.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 23 28 102
10th Percentile £263 £309 £335
25th Percentile £313 £354 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £380 £459 £575
Median % change year-on-year -17.17% -20.22% +53.33%
75th Percentile £449 £555 £666
90th Percentile £501 £575 £810
UK median daily rate £390 £459 £563
% change year-on-year -14.99% -18.44% +40.63%

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 Tester
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Job vacancy trend for QA Tester in England

QA Tester
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

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

Daily rate trend for QA Tester in England

QA Tester
Daily Rate Histogram in England

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

Daily rate histogram for QA Tester in England

QA Tester
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

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

Hourly rate trend for QA Tester in England

QA Tester
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 Tester 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
North of England +31 14 £371 +2.40% 2
London +24 10 £380 -19.36% 3
Yorkshire +16 9 £281 -13.46% 1
South East - 5 £400 - 5
North East - 4 £390 -
Midlands +23 3 £489 +71.58% 1
West Midlands +16 3 £489 +157.37%
South West +44 1 £325 -38.97%
North West +17 1 £380 -5.00% 1
QA Tester
UK

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

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, QA Tester 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 Tester in the job title.

1 33 (100.00%) QA
2 26 (78.79%) Test Automation
3 22 (66.67%) Agile
4 14 (42.42%) Social Skills
5 13 (39.39%) Manual Testing
6 12 (36.36%) JIRA
7 11 (33.33%) Selenium
7 11 (33.33%) Postman
8 10 (30.30%) Test Scripting
8 10 (30.30%) API Testing
9 9 (27.27%) Security Cleared
10 8 (24.24%) Java
10 8 (24.24%) DevOps
10 8 (24.24%) Cypress.io
10 8 (24.24%) AWS
10 8 (24.24%) Test Strategy
11 7 (21.21%) Non-Functional Testing
11 7 (21.21%) SC Cleared
11 7 (21.21%) CI/CD
12 6 (18.18%) Accessibility
12 6 (18.18%) Security Testing
12 6 (18.18%) Finance
12 6 (18.18%) Scrum
12 6 (18.18%) Jenkins
12 6 (18.18%) Azure
12 6 (18.18%) Azure DevOps
12 6 (18.18%) Acceptance Criteria
13 5 (15.15%) Exploratory Testing
13 5 (15.15%) SDLC
13 5 (15.15%) Cucumber

QA Tester 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 3 (9.09%) Confluence
2 1 (3.03%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (6.06%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (3.03%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (3.03%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 8 (24.24%) AWS
2 6 (18.18%) Azure
2 6 (18.18%) Azure DevOps
3 2 (6.06%) GitHub
3 2 (6.06%) SaaS
4 1 (3.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 1 (3.03%) Bloomreach
4 1 (3.03%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 1 (3.03%) PuTTY
1 1 (3.03%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (3.03%) DB2
1 1 (3.03%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (3.03%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 12 (36.36%) JIRA
2 11 (33.33%) Postman
2 11 (33.33%) Selenium
3 8 (24.24%) Cypress.io
4 6 (18.18%) Jenkins
5 5 (15.15%) Cucumber
5 5 (15.15%) SoapUI
6 4 (12.12%) Git
7 3 (9.09%) JMeter
8 2 (6.06%) Gradle
8 2 (6.06%) JUnit
8 2 (6.06%) Maven
8 2 (6.06%) REST Assured
9 1 (3.03%) Ant
9 1 (3.03%) Apache Ivy
9 1 (3.03%) IntelliJ
9 1 (3.03%) TeamCity
9 1 (3.03%) TestRail
9 1 (3.03%) WebDriver
General
1 14 (42.42%) Social Skills
2 6 (18.18%) Finance
3 5 (15.15%) Public Sector
4 4 (12.12%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (6.06%) Documentation Skills
5 2 (6.06%) Organisational Skills
6 1 (3.03%) Banking
6 1 (3.03%) Financial Institution
6 1 (3.03%) Presentation Skills
6 1 (3.03%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (9.09%) WireMock
2 2 (6.06%) .NET
2 2 (6.06%) Kafka
3 1 (3.03%) Gherkin
3 1 (3.03%) Nightwatchjs
3 1 (3.03%) Node.js
3 1 (3.03%) REST
3 1 (3.03%) RESTful
3 1 (3.03%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 2 (6.06%) Mobile App
2 1 (3.03%) Cloud Native
2 1 (3.03%) Hedge funds
2 1 (3.03%) Onboarding
2 1 (3.03%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 2 (6.06%) Android
1 2 (6.06%) Apple iOS
2 1 (3.03%) Linux
2 1 (3.03%) Unix
2 1 (3.03%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (78.79%) Test Automation
2 22 (66.67%) Agile
3 13 (39.39%) Manual Testing
4 10 (30.30%) API Testing
4 10 (30.30%) Test Scripting
5 8 (24.24%) DevOps
5 8 (24.24%) Test Strategy
6 7 (21.21%) CI/CD
6 7 (21.21%) Non-Functional Testing
7 6 (18.18%) Acceptance Criteria
7 6 (18.18%) Scrum
7 6 (18.18%) Security Testing
8 5 (15.15%) BDD
8 5 (15.15%) Exploratory Testing
8 5 (15.15%) Problem-Solving
8 5 (15.15%) Project Management
8 5 (15.15%) SDLC
8 5 (15.15%) Software Testing
8 5 (15.15%) User Stories
9 4 (12.12%) Collaborative Working
Programming Languages
1 8 (24.24%) Java
2 5 (15.15%) JavaScript
3 2 (6.06%) SQL
4 1 (3.03%) C#
4 1 (3.03%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 9 (27.27%) Security Cleared
2 7 (21.21%) SC Cleared
3 2 (6.06%) DV Cleared
4 1 (3.03%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (3.03%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (100.00%) QA
2 6 (18.18%) Accessibility
System Software
1 2 (6.06%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (3.03%) Kibana
Vendors
1 2 (6.06%) Microsoft
2 1 (3.03%) Salesforce
2 1 (3.03%) SAP
2 1 (3.03%) ServiceNow
2 1 (3.03%) Splunk