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 23 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 55 44
Rank change year-on-year 0 -11 +8
Contract jobs citing QA 62 30 37
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 3.12% 3.00% 3.22%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 19.62% 20.27% 26.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 39 26 23
10th Percentile £358 £311 -
25th Percentile £375 £362 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £402 £413
Median % change year-on-year +18.16% -2.55% -15.38%
75th Percentile £623 £435 £459
90th Percentile £763 £575 £500
North West median daily rate £475 £424 £413
% change year-on-year +12.16% +2.67% -17.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 0
10th Percentile £14.75 - -
25th Percentile £21.88 £71.25 -
Median hourly rate £35.00 £72.50 -
Median % change year-on-year -51.72% - -
75th Percentile £49.38 £73.75 -
90th Percentile £57.25 - -
North West median hourly rate £61.25 £63.40 £18.11
% change year-on-year -3.39% +250.08% -75.46%

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 316 148 140
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 15.90% 14.81% 12.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 183 109 87
10th Percentile £315 £313 £375
25th Percentile £400 £365 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £463 £450
Median % change year-on-year +8.11% +2.78% -10.00%
75th Percentile £575 £597 £544
90th Percentile £690 £703 £650
North West median daily rate £488 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +8.33% -5.26% -2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 3 3
10th Percentile £21.08 £63.25 £15.30
25th Percentile £28.50 £66.25 £20.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £72.50 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.14% +150.00% +10.48%
75th Percentile £70.00 £81.25 £29.75
90th Percentile £76.00 £85.75 £29.90
North West median hourly rate £64.09 £63.40 £24.09
% change year-on-year +1.09% +163.18% -31.17%

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 23 September 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in Manchester

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing QA in Manchester over the 6 months to 23 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for QA in Manchester

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 23 September 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 - 9 £750 - 1
Heywood - 3 £375 -
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 (8.06%) SAS
2 3 (4.84%) Confluence
3 2 (3.23%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (1.61%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 23 (37.10%) AWS
2 17 (27.42%) Azure
3 12 (19.35%) GitHub
4 8 (12.90%) AtomSphere
4 8 (12.90%) Boomi
4 8 (12.90%) GitHub Actions
5 6 (9.68%) GCP
6 4 (6.45%) Amazon S3
6 4 (6.45%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (4.84%) Anthropic Claude
7 3 (4.84%) GitHub Copilot
7 3 (4.84%) Google Gemini
7 3 (4.84%) Serverless
8 2 (3.23%) Amazon ECS
8 2 (3.23%) Kong
8 2 (3.23%) Microsoft 365
8 2 (3.23%) Microsoft Copilot
8 2 (3.23%) OneDrive
8 2 (3.23%) Power Platform
8 2 (3.23%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.61%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (4.84%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (3.23%) Amazon Redshift
2 2 (3.23%) Base SAS
2 2 (3.23%) Data Vault
2 2 (3.23%) Metadata
2 2 (3.23%) NoSQL
2 2 (3.23%) Oracle Database
2 2 (3.23%) Oracle Database 12c
2 2 (3.23%) Power BI
2 2 (3.23%) SAS Visual Analytics
2 2 (3.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 1 (1.61%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (1.61%) Looker
3 1 (1.61%) MySQL
3 1 (1.61%) SAS Enterprise Guide
3 1 (1.61%) Star Schema
3 1 (1.61%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 8 (12.90%) Git
2 7 (11.29%) JIRA
3 6 (9.68%) Selenium
4 5 (8.06%) Postman
4 5 (8.06%) REST Assured
5 4 (6.45%) Claude Code
5 4 (6.45%) Jenkins
6 3 (4.84%) Cucumber
6 3 (4.84%) Cypress.io
6 3 (4.84%) GitLab
6 3 (4.84%) JUnit
6 3 (4.84%) TestNG
7 2 (3.23%) MSI
7 2 (3.23%) Zephyr
8 1 (1.61%) Robot Framework
8 1 (1.61%) SonarQube
8 1 (1.61%) TestRail
8 1 (1.61%) WebDriver
General
1 23 (37.10%) Social Skills
2 12 (19.35%) Public Sector
3 11 (17.74%) Finance
4 7 (11.29%) Retail
5 3 (4.84%) Banking
5 3 (4.84%) Military
6 2 (3.23%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (3.23%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (3.23%) Marketing
7 1 (1.61%) Billing
7 1 (1.61%) Digital Health
7 1 (1.61%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 11 (17.74%) Senior
2 10 (16.13%) Developer
3 7 (11.29%) Analyst
4 6 (9.68%) DevOps Engineer
4 6 (9.68%) Principal Engineer
4 6 (9.68%) Senior DevOps
4 6 (9.68%) Senior DevOps Engineer
5 5 (8.06%) Lead
5 5 (8.06%) Platform Engineer
5 5 (8.06%) Principal DevOps Engineer
6 4 (6.45%) Administrator
6 4 (6.45%) Full-Stack Engineer
7 3 (4.84%) Java Developer
7 3 (4.84%) Java Engineer
7 3 (4.84%) Lead Developer
7 3 (4.84%) SAS Engineer
7 3 (4.84%) Senior Full-Stack Engineer
7 3 (4.84%) ServiceNow Developer
7 3 (4.84%) Test Analyst
7 3 (4.84%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (19.35%) Terraform
2 7 (11.29%) REST
3 6 (9.68%) React
4 5 (8.06%) AngularJS
4 5 (8.06%) Spring
4 5 (8.06%) Spring Boot
5 4 (6.45%) Node.js
5 4 (6.45%) Playwright
6 3 (4.84%) HTML
6 3 (4.84%) Next.js
6 3 (4.84%) RESTful
7 2 (3.23%) CSS
7 2 (3.23%) Gherkin
7 2 (3.23%) Microsoft Graph
7 2 (3.23%) PySpark
8 1 (1.61%) JSON
8 1 (1.61%) Nunjucks
8 1 (1.61%) Semantic HTML
8 1 (1.61%) Vue
8 1 (1.61%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 7 (11.29%) Enterprise Software
2 6 (9.68%) Low-Code
3 5 (8.06%) Cloud Native
4 4 (6.45%) NHS
4 4 (6.45%) Product Ownership
5 3 (4.84%) Culture of Ownership
5 3 (4.84%) Onboarding
6 2 (3.23%) AS400
6 2 (3.23%) iSeries
6 2 (3.23%) Legacy Applications
6 2 (3.23%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (3.23%) Virtual Team
7 1 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (1.61%) Distributed Architecture
7 1 (1.61%) Life Science
7 1 (1.61%) Marketing Technology
7 1 (1.61%) Online Banking
7 1 (1.61%) Reference Data
7 1 (1.61%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 3 (4.84%) VMS
2 2 (3.23%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (41.94%) Agile
2 23 (37.10%) Continuous Improvement
3 21 (33.87%) CI/CD
4 20 (32.26%) DevOps
5 19 (30.65%) Test Automation
6 11 (17.74%) AI
6 11 (17.74%) Observability
6 11 (17.74%) Stakeholder Management
7 10 (16.13%) Change Management
7 10 (16.13%) Infrastructure as Code
7 10 (16.13%) Platform Engineering
7 10 (16.13%) Scrum
7 10 (16.13%) Technical Leadership
8 9 (14.52%) Software Engineering
9 8 (12.90%) Containerisation
9 8 (12.90%) Mentoring
9 8 (12.90%) Microservices
9 8 (12.90%) Monorepo
9 8 (12.90%) SDLC
9 8 (12.90%) Translating Business Requirements
Programming Languages
1 14 (22.58%) SQL
2 13 (20.97%) Python
3 10 (16.13%) Java
4 6 (9.68%) Bash
4 6 (9.68%) JavaScript
4 6 (9.68%) TypeScript
5 2 (3.23%) PowerShell
5 2 (3.23%) PROC SQL
5 2 (3.23%) Scala
6 1 (1.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 10 (16.13%) Security Cleared
2 9 (14.52%) BPSS Clearance
3 8 (12.90%) SC Cleared
4 2 (3.23%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (9.68%) Data Quality
2 3 (4.84%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.61%) WCAG
System Software
1 5 (8.06%) Docker
2 2 (3.23%) Active Directory
2 2 (3.23%) Microsoft App-V
3 1 (1.61%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 5 (8.06%) Kubernetes
2 2 (3.23%) Oracle RMAN
2 2 (3.23%) SCCM
3 1 (1.61%) Grafana
3 1 (1.61%) Microsoft Intune
3 1 (1.61%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 9 (14.52%) Salesforce
2 4 (6.45%) Microsoft
3 3 (4.84%) Databricks
3 3 (4.84%) ServiceNow
4 2 (3.23%) Citrix
4 2 (3.23%) DocuSign
4 2 (3.23%) IBM
4 2 (3.23%) Informatica
4 2 (3.23%) Ivanti
4 2 (3.23%) Oracle
5 1 (1.61%) Adobe
5 1 (1.61%) Marketo
5 1 (1.61%) OpenAI