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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 80 42 47
Rank change year-on-year -38 +5 +6
Contract jobs citing QA 37 37 49
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 2.06% 4.03% 3.37%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 13.03% 26.62% 22.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 24 34 40
10th Percentile £360 £353 £413
25th Percentile £402 £400 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £438 £525
Median % change year-on-year +11.30% -16.57% +16.67%
75th Percentile £596 £641 £694
90th Percentile £675 £716 £699
North West median daily rate £440 £438 £500
% change year-on-year +0.46% -12.40% +3.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 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 £40.00 £48.13 £19.29
% change year-on-year -16.89% +149.57% -14.29%

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 284 139 222
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 15.83% 15.14% 15.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 181 107 136
10th Percentile £340 £365 £369
25th Percentile £393 £402 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
75th Percentile £569 £599 £608
90th Percentile £625 £700 £694
North West median daily rate £475 £472 £500
% change year-on-year +0.74% -5.70% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 3 12
10th Percentile £27.67 £22.46 £12.84
25th Percentile £50.00 £37.01 £13.19
Median hourly rate £60.50 £62.50 £37.13
Median % change year-on-year -3.20% +68.32% +23.78%
75th Percentile £76.00 £76.25 £68.78
90th Percentile £86.50 £83.75 £72.14
North West median hourly rate £60.50 £47.25 £12.00
% change year-on-year +28.04% +293.75% -68.00%

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 10 June 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 10 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
Bolton - 1 - -
Stockport - 1 £725 -
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 3 (8.11%) SAS
2 1 (2.70%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (2.70%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (2.70%) NetSuite
1 1 (2.70%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 11 (29.73%) AWS
2 8 (21.62%) Azure
3 3 (8.11%) GCP
3 3 (8.11%) Serverless
4 2 (5.41%) Azure DevOps
4 2 (5.41%) GitHub
4 2 (5.41%) Power Platform
4 2 (5.41%) SaaS
5 1 (2.70%) Amazon Bedrock
5 1 (2.70%) Amazon EKS
5 1 (2.70%) Azure Functions
5 1 (2.70%) Azure Service Bus
5 1 (2.70%) Datadog
5 1 (2.70%) GitHub Actions
5 1 (2.70%) GitHub Copilot
5 1 (2.70%) Siteimprove
5 1 (2.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (18.92%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (13.51%) Oracle Database
2 5 (13.51%) Oracle Database 12c
3 4 (10.81%) MySQL
3 4 (10.81%) NoSQL
4 2 (5.41%) Base SAS
4 2 (5.41%) Power BI
4 2 (5.41%) SAS Visual Analytics
5 1 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (2.70%) Looker
5 1 (2.70%) Metadata
5 1 (2.70%) MongoDB
5 1 (2.70%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 1 (2.70%) SQL Server
5 1 (2.70%) Star Schema
5 1 (2.70%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 6 (16.22%) JIRA
2 4 (10.81%) Git
2 4 (10.81%) Postman
2 4 (10.81%) Selenium
3 2 (5.41%) Cypress.io
3 2 (5.41%) REST Assured
3 2 (5.41%) SonarQube
4 1 (2.70%) Cucumber
4 1 (2.70%) GitLab
4 1 (2.70%) Jenkins
4 1 (2.70%) Robot Framework
4 1 (2.70%) TestRail
General
1 7 (18.92%) Finance
1 7 (18.92%) Public Sector
2 6 (16.22%) Social Skills
3 2 (5.41%) Analytical Skills
4 1 (2.70%) Banking
4 1 (2.70%) Billing
4 1 (2.70%) Digital Health
4 1 (2.70%) Influencing Skills
4 1 (2.70%) Marketing
4 1 (2.70%) Pharmaceutical
4 1 (2.70%) Presentation Skills
4 1 (2.70%) Publishing
4 1 (2.70%) Retail
Job Titles
1 9 (24.32%) Developer
2 5 (13.51%) DBA
2 5 (13.51%) Oracle DBA
3 4 (10.81%) Analyst
3 4 (10.81%) Java Developer
3 4 (10.81%) Lead
3 4 (10.81%) PostgreSQL DBA
3 4 (10.81%) Software Developer
4 3 (8.11%) Administrator
4 3 (8.11%) Lead Developer
4 3 (8.11%) SAS Engineer
4 3 (8.11%) Senior
5 2 (5.41%) Angular Developer
5 2 (5.41%) Full-Stack Developer
5 2 (5.41%) Java Software Developer
5 2 (5.41%) Lead Java Developer
5 2 (5.41%) QA Engineer
5 2 (5.41%) Senior Developer
5 2 (5.41%) Software Engineer
5 2 (5.41%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (21.62%) AngularJS
2 7 (18.92%) React
3 6 (16.22%) RESTful
4 5 (13.51%) Spring
4 5 (13.51%) Spring Boot
5 4 (10.81%) CSS
5 4 (10.81%) HTML
5 4 (10.81%) Node.js
6 3 (8.11%) Playwright
7 1 (2.70%) .NET Core
7 1 (2.70%) Angular 2
7 1 (2.70%) CSS3
7 1 (2.70%) Entity Framework
7 1 (2.70%) Gherkin
7 1 (2.70%) Kafka
7 1 (2.70%) Nunjucks
7 1 (2.70%) pytest
7 1 (2.70%) RabbitMQ
7 1 (2.70%) REST
7 1 (2.70%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 4 (10.81%) Cloud Native
1 4 (10.81%) Product Ownership
2 2 (5.41%) Data Protection Act
2 2 (5.41%) Onboarding
3 1 (2.70%) Analytical Mindset
3 1 (2.70%) Distributed Architecture
3 1 (2.70%) Distributed Systems
3 1 (2.70%) Life Science
3 1 (2.70%) Mobile App
3 1 (2.70%) NHS
3 1 (2.70%) Online Banking
3 1 (2.70%) Reference Data
3 1 (2.70%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1 (2.70%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (51.35%) Agile
2 12 (32.43%) CI/CD
3 11 (29.73%) Test Automation
4 10 (27.03%) DevOps
5 9 (24.32%) Microservices
6 8 (21.62%) Validation
7 7 (18.92%) Code Quality
7 7 (18.92%) Mentoring
7 7 (18.92%) Software Engineering
8 6 (16.22%) Continuous Improvement
8 6 (16.22%) Full-Stack Development
8 6 (16.22%) Migration
9 5 (13.51%) Coaching
9 5 (13.51%) Decision-Making
9 5 (13.51%) High Availability
9 5 (13.51%) Scrum
9 5 (13.51%) Stakeholder Management
9 5 (13.51%) User Experience
10 4 (10.81%) Problem-Solving
10 4 (10.81%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 16 (43.24%) SQL
2 8 (21.62%) Java
3 7 (18.92%) JavaScript
4 4 (10.81%) Python
5 3 (8.11%) TypeScript
6 2 (5.41%) PROC SQL
7 1 (2.70%) C#
7 1 (2.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9 (24.32%) Security Cleared
2 7 (18.92%) SC Cleared
3 3 (8.11%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (2.70%) CCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (10.81%) Accessibility
2 3 (8.11%) Data Quality
3 2 (5.41%) WCAG
System Software
1 3 (8.11%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (13.51%) Oracle RMAN
2 3 (8.11%) Kubernetes
3 2 (5.41%) Terraform
4 1 (2.70%) Grafana
4 1 (2.70%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 6 (16.22%) Oracle
2 1 (2.70%) Microsoft
2 1 (2.70%) OpenAI
2 1 (2.70%) Salesforce
2 1 (2.70%) SAP
2 1 (2.70%) Workday