QA Contract Job Trends in Manchester

Quality Assurance (QA)
North West > Manchester

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Manchester requiring QA skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 11 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 78 46 54
Rank change year-on-year -32 +8 -5
Contract jobs citing QA 50 34 41
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 2.55% 3.48% 2.90%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 16.08% 25.00% 20.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 34 30 28
10th Percentile £361 £347 £400
25th Percentile £380 £370 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £402 £463
Median % change year-on-year +20.20% -13.03% +2.78%
75th Percentile £675 £506 £538
90th Percentile £750 £715 £598
North West median daily rate £463 £422 £475
% change year-on-year +9.60% -11.16% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 2
10th Percentile - - £18.73
25th Percentile - - £26.86
Median hourly rate £40.00 £12.76 £41.66
Median % change year-on-year +213.48% -69.37% +85.14%
75th Percentile - - £57.70
90th Percentile - - £66.58
North West median hourly rate £40.16 £37.14 £18.11
% change year-on-year +8.12% +105.08% -19.51%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
Manchester

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 Manchester.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 311 136 200
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 15.88% 13.92% 14.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 191 105 117
10th Percentile £350 £353 £391
25th Percentile £400 £375 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £478 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.93% +0.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £576 £612 £575
90th Percentile £675 £735 £675
North West median daily rate £492 £452 £493
% change year-on-year +8.79% -8.27% +3.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 3 9
10th Percentile £23.13 £22.46 £13.05
25th Percentile £29.96 £37.01 £14.13
Median hourly rate £60.50 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.20% - +108.33%
75th Percentile £75.25 £76.25 £68.88
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.75 £72.50
North West median hourly rate £62.00 £34.57 £11.77
% change year-on-year +79.35% +193.71% -66.85%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend in Manchester

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

QA job vacancy trend in Manchester

QA
Daily Rate Trend in Manchester

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing QA.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing QA

QA
Daily Rate Histogram in Manchester

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA in Manchester over the 6 months to 11 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for QA in Manchester

QA
Hourly Rate Trend in Manchester

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing QA.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing QA

QA
Contract Job Locations in Manchester

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing QA within the Manchester region over the 6 months to 11 July 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
Bury - 7 £750 - 5
Heywood - 2 £375 -
Stockport - 1 £725 - 1
Bolton - 1 - - 1
QA
North West

QA
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Manchester 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 (10.00%) SAS
2 1 (2.00%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (2.00%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (2.00%) NetSuite
1 1 (2.00%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 21 (42.00%) AWS
2 11 (22.00%) Azure
3 9 (18.00%) GitHub
4 6 (12.00%) GitHub Actions
5 5 (10.00%) GCP
6 4 (8.00%) GitHub Copilot
7 3 (6.00%) Anthropic Claude
7 3 (6.00%) Google Gemini
7 3 (6.00%) Serverless
8 2 (4.00%) Amazon S3
8 2 (4.00%) Azure DevOps
8 2 (4.00%) Power Platform
8 2 (4.00%) SaaS
9 1 (2.00%) Amazon EKS
9 1 (2.00%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (2.00%) Azure Functions
9 1 (2.00%) Azure Service Bus
9 1 (2.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 1 (2.00%) Datadog
9 1 (2.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (14.00%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (10.00%) Oracle Database
2 5 (10.00%) Oracle Database 12c
3 4 (8.00%) NoSQL
4 3 (6.00%) MySQL
5 2 (4.00%) Amazon Redshift
5 2 (4.00%) Base SAS
5 2 (4.00%) Data Vault
5 2 (4.00%) Metadata
5 2 (4.00%) Power BI
5 2 (4.00%) SAS Visual Analytics
5 2 (4.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (2.00%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (2.00%) Looker
6 1 (2.00%) MongoDB
6 1 (2.00%) SAS Enterprise Guide
6 1 (2.00%) SQL Server
6 1 (2.00%) Star Schema
6 1 (2.00%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 9 (18.00%) Git
2 6 (12.00%) JIRA
3 5 (10.00%) Postman
3 5 (10.00%) Selenium
4 3 (6.00%) Claude Code
4 3 (6.00%) REST Assured
5 2 (4.00%) Cypress.io
5 2 (4.00%) GitLab
5 2 (4.00%) Jenkins
5 2 (4.00%) SonarQube
6 1 (2.00%) Cucumber
6 1 (2.00%) JUnit
6 1 (2.00%) Robot Framework
6 1 (2.00%) TestNG
6 1 (2.00%) TestRail
General
1 11 (22.00%) Social Skills
2 10 (20.00%) Public Sector
3 8 (16.00%) Finance
4 5 (10.00%) Retail
5 2 (4.00%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (4.00%) Marketing
6 1 (2.00%) Banking
6 1 (2.00%) Billing
6 1 (2.00%) Digital Health
6 1 (2.00%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (2.00%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (2.00%) Military
6 1 (2.00%) Pharmaceutical
6 1 (2.00%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 11 (22.00%) Developer
1 11 (22.00%) Senior
2 5 (10.00%) Analyst
2 5 (10.00%) DBA
2 5 (10.00%) Oracle DBA
3 4 (8.00%) Administrator
3 4 (8.00%) DevOps Engineer
3 4 (8.00%) Java Developer
3 4 (8.00%) Lead
3 4 (8.00%) PostgreSQL DBA
3 4 (8.00%) Principal Engineer
3 4 (8.00%) Senior DevOps
3 4 (8.00%) Senior DevOps Engineer
3 4 (8.00%) Software Developer
4 3 (6.00%) Full-Stack Engineer
4 3 (6.00%) Lead Developer
4 3 (6.00%) Principal DevOps Engineer
4 3 (6.00%) SAS Engineer
4 3 (6.00%) Senior Full-Stack Engineer
5 2 (4.00%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (18.00%) React
2 7 (14.00%) AngularJS
3 6 (12.00%) Node.js
3 6 (12.00%) RESTful
4 4 (8.00%) CSS
4 4 (8.00%) HTML
4 4 (8.00%) REST
4 4 (8.00%) Spring
4 4 (8.00%) Spring Boot
5 3 (6.00%) Next.js
5 3 (6.00%) Playwright
6 2 (4.00%) PySpark
7 1 (2.00%) .NET
7 1 (2.00%) .NET Core
7 1 (2.00%) .NET Framework
7 1 (2.00%) Angular 2
7 1 (2.00%) Nunjucks
7 1 (2.00%) pytest
7 1 (2.00%) Vue
7 1 (2.00%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 6 (12.00%) Cloud Native
2 5 (10.00%) Product Ownership
3 3 (6.00%) Culture of Ownership
3 3 (6.00%) NHS
3 3 (6.00%) Onboarding
4 2 (4.00%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (4.00%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (2.00%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (2.00%) Distributed Architecture
5 1 (2.00%) Life Science
5 1 (2.00%) Marketing Technology
5 1 (2.00%) Online Banking
5 1 (2.00%) Reference Data
5 1 (2.00%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1 (2.00%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 27 (54.00%) Agile
2 21 (42.00%) CI/CD
3 18 (36.00%) DevOps
4 15 (30.00%) Test Automation
5 12 (24.00%) Continuous Improvement
6 11 (22.00%) Microservices
6 11 (22.00%) Software Engineering
7 10 (20.00%) Code Quality
8 9 (18.00%) AI
8 9 (18.00%) Infrastructure as Code
8 9 (18.00%) Mentoring
8 9 (18.00%) Observability
9 8 (16.00%) Full-Stack Development
9 8 (16.00%) SDLC
9 8 (16.00%) Technical Leadership
9 8 (16.00%) Validation
10 7 (14.00%) Containerisation
10 7 (14.00%) Decision-Making
10 7 (14.00%) Migration
10 7 (14.00%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 19 (38.00%) SQL
2 11 (22.00%) Python
3 8 (16.00%) Java
4 6 (12.00%) JavaScript
5 5 (10.00%) TypeScript
6 4 (8.00%) Bash
7 2 (4.00%) PROC SQL
7 2 (4.00%) Scala
8 1 (2.00%) C#
8 1 (2.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9 (18.00%) Security Cleared
2 8 (16.00%) SC Cleared
3 7 (14.00%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (4.00%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (12.00%) Data Quality
2 3 (6.00%) Accessibility
3 1 (2.00%) WCAG
System Software
1 6 (12.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 11 (22.00%) Terraform
2 6 (12.00%) Kubernetes
3 5 (10.00%) Oracle RMAN
4 1 (2.00%) Grafana
4 1 (2.00%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 6 (12.00%) Oracle
2 3 (6.00%) Databricks
2 3 (6.00%) Salesforce
3 2 (4.00%) Informatica
3 2 (4.00%) Microsoft
3 2 (4.00%) ServiceNow
4 1 (2.00%) Adobe
4 1 (2.00%) Marketo
4 1 (2.00%) OpenAI
4 1 (2.00%) Workday