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 13 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 49 41 54
Rank change year-on-year -8 +13 +17
Contract jobs citing QA 42 43 52
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 3.81% 3.61% 3.22%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 24.00% 28.29% 24.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 32 29 46
10th Percentile £301 £328 £325
25th Percentile £323 - £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £401 £400 £495
Median % change year-on-year +0.25% -19.19% +7.03%
75th Percentile £429 £475 £547
90th Percentile £573 £513 £636
North West median daily rate £413 £400 £500
% change year-on-year +3.13% -20.00% +8.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 0
10th Percentile £65.50 - -
25th Percentile £66.25 - -
Median hourly rate £70.00 - -
75th Percentile £73.13 - -
90th Percentile £73.50 - -
North West median hourly rate £64.20 - £73.79
% change year-on-year - - +134.78%

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 175 152 210
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 15.87% 12.77% 13.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 126 95 136
10th Percentile £311 £336 £325
25th Percentile £350 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £427 £450 £498
Median % change year-on-year -5.11% -9.55% +4.74%
75th Percentile £597 £506 £588
90th Percentile £700 £633 £650
North West median daily rate £450 £450 £500
% change year-on-year - -10.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 5 3
10th Percentile £65.50 £13.63 £19.00
25th Percentile £66.25 £16.06 £23.13
Median hourly rate £70.00 £29.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +141.38% -3.33% +57.89%
75th Percentile £73.13 £29.50 £47.50
90th Percentile £73.50 £29.80 £58.00
North West median hourly rate £63.40 £23.14 £26.65
% change year-on-year +174.04% -13.19% -51.55%

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 13 November 2025.

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 13 November 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
Bolton - 4 £425 - 15
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 2 (4.76%) SharePoint
Applications
1 4 (9.52%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (2.38%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (2.38%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (2.38%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 9 (21.43%) Azure
2 7 (16.67%) GCP
2 7 (16.67%) Power Platform
3 5 (11.90%) AWS
4 4 (9.52%) Google Tag Manager
5 3 (7.14%) Google Analytics
6 2 (4.76%) Power Automate
6 2 (4.76%) PowerApps
7 1 (2.38%) Amazon EC2
7 1 (2.38%) Amazon S3
7 1 (2.38%) AWS CloudFormation
7 1 (2.38%) Azure DevOps
7 1 (2.38%) Dynamics 365
7 1 (2.38%) GitHub
7 1 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
7 1 (2.38%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 1 (2.38%) Lucidchart
7 1 (2.38%) SaaS
7 1 (2.38%) Serverless
7 1 (2.38%) Smartsheet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (11.90%) Power BI
2 4 (9.52%) BigQuery
2 4 (9.52%) Looker
3 2 (4.76%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (2.38%) Amazon Aurora
4 1 (2.38%) DynamoDB
4 1 (2.38%) MySQL
4 1 (2.38%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (2.38%) Redis
Development Applications
1 3 (7.14%) Jenkins
2 2 (4.76%) Cypress.io
2 2 (4.76%) GitLab
2 2 (4.76%) Selenium
3 1 (2.38%) Browser DevTools
3 1 (2.38%) Git
3 1 (2.38%) JIRA
General
1 14 (33.33%) Finance
2 11 (26.19%) Social Skills
3 8 (19.05%) Public Sector
4 5 (11.90%) Manufacturing
5 3 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (7.14%) Back Office
5 3 (7.14%) Banking
5 3 (7.14%) Electronics
6 2 (4.76%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (2.38%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (2.38%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (2.38%) Law
7 1 (2.38%) Legal
7 1 (2.38%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 7 (16.67%) Lead
1 7 (16.67%) Test Engineer
1 7 (16.67%) Test Manager
2 6 (14.29%) Analyst
3 4 (9.52%) Senior
4 3 (7.14%) Data Analyst
4 3 (7.14%) Performance Analyst
5 2 (4.76%) Developer
5 2 (4.76%) Programme Manager
5 2 (4.76%) Programme Test Manager
5 2 (4.76%) Project Manager
5 2 (4.76%) QA Engineer
5 2 (4.76%) Test Leader
5 2 (4.76%) Test Programme Manager
6 1 (2.38%) Java Engineer
6 1 (2.38%) QA Automation Engineer
6 1 (2.38%) QA Leader
6 1 (2.38%) Senior Java Engineer
6 1 (2.38%) Software Engineer
6 1 (2.38%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (4.76%) Node.js
1 2 (4.76%) Playwright
2 1 (2.38%) AWS CDK
2 1 (2.38%) Bootstrap
2 1 (2.38%) HTML
2 1 (2.38%) Kafka
2 1 (2.38%) Laravel
2 1 (2.38%) RabbitMQ
2 1 (2.38%) REST
2 1 (2.38%) Spring
2 1 (2.38%) Spring Boot
2 1 (2.38%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 3 (7.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
1 3 (7.14%) Low-Code
2 1 (2.38%) Cloud Native
2 1 (2.38%) Data Centre
2 1 (2.38%) Distributed Systems
2 1 (2.38%) Greenfield Project
2 1 (2.38%) Life Science
2 1 (2.38%) Product Ownership
2 1 (2.38%) Renewable Energy
2 1 (2.38%) Taxonomies
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (54.76%) Agile
2 16 (38.10%) Continuous Improvement
3 13 (30.95%) Test Automation
4 12 (28.57%) Risk Management
5 10 (23.81%) Project Management
5 10 (23.81%) Waterfall
6 9 (21.43%) DevOps
6 9 (21.43%) Test Strategy
7 8 (19.05%) CI/CD
8 7 (16.67%) Resource Allocation
9 6 (14.29%) Data Analysis
9 6 (14.29%) Digital Transformation Programme
9 6 (14.29%) Migration
9 6 (14.29%) Performance Measurement
9 6 (14.29%) Planning and Forecasting
9 6 (14.29%) Scrum
9 6 (14.29%) Sprint Planning
9 6 (14.29%) Sprint Retrospective
9 6 (14.29%) Test Scripting
9 6 (14.29%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 2 (4.76%) JavaScript
1 2 (4.76%) TypeScript
2 1 (2.38%) Java
2 1 (2.38%) PHP
2 1 (2.38%) SQL
Qualifications
1 3 (7.14%) Degree
1 3 (7.14%) SC Cleared
1 3 (7.14%) Security Cleared
2 2 (4.76%) Azure Certification
2 2 (4.76%) Computer Science Degree
3 1 (2.38%) AWS Certification
3 1 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
3 1 (2.38%) PMI Certification
3 1 (2.38%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (23.81%) Accessibility
2 4 (9.52%) Data Quality
3 1 (2.38%) PMBOK
3 1 (2.38%) PMO
3 1 (2.38%) WCAG
System Software
1 1 (2.38%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (4.76%) Ansible
1 2 (4.76%) Kubernetes
1 2 (4.76%) Terraform
Vendors
1 9 (21.43%) Microsoft
2 5 (11.90%) Google
3 2 (4.76%) Salesforce
3 2 (4.76%) SAP
4 1 (2.38%) CA Agile Central