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 2 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 69 45 42
Rank change year-on-year -24 -3 +6
Contract jobs citing QA 43 35 57
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 2.55% 3.78% 3.78%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 15.81% 25.36% 23.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 28 32 48
10th Percentile £313 £323 £425
25th Percentile £374 £389 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.52% -3.00% +17.65%
75th Percentile £574 £663 £694
90th Percentile £675 £716 £711
North West median daily rate £440 £463 £500
% change year-on-year -4.86% -7.50% +17.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 2
10th Percentile - - £18.73
25th Percentile £40.00 - £26.86
Median hourly rate £50.50 £12.76 £41.66
Median % change year-on-year +295.77% -69.37% +128.25%
75th Percentile £65.13 - £57.70
90th Percentile £68.05 - £66.58
North West median hourly rate £40.31 £48.13 £20.46
% change year-on-year -16.25% +135.24% +12.11%

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 272 138 243
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 16.10% 14.92% 16.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 182 105 150
10th Percentile £340 £360 £374
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £516
Median % change year-on-year - -3.15% +5.90%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £638
90th Percentile £648 £708 £713
North West median daily rate £488 £475 £514
% change year-on-year +2.63% -7.54% +8.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 6 12
10th Percentile £40.00 £14.41 £12.84
25th Percentile £51.25 £16.11 £13.19
Median hourly rate £60.50 £22.63 £37.13
Median % change year-on-year +167.40% -39.07% +19.59%
75th Percentile £74.88 £55.06 £68.78
90th Percentile £86.00 £76.25 £72.14
North West median hourly rate £56.25 £30.38 £12.84
% change year-on-year +85.15% +136.60% -67.58%

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 2 May 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 2 May 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 2 May 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 - - 6
Stockport - 1 £725 - 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 1 (2.33%) Confluence
1 1 (2.33%) SAS
Applications
1 4 (9.30%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (2.33%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (2.33%) BambooHR
1 1 (2.33%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 11 (25.58%) AWS
1 11 (25.58%) Azure
2 7 (16.28%) GCP
2 7 (16.28%) Power Platform
3 5 (11.63%) Google Analytics
3 5 (11.63%) Google Tag Manager
4 3 (6.98%) Serverless
5 2 (4.65%) GitHub
6 1 (2.33%) Amazon Bedrock
6 1 (2.33%) Amazon EKS
6 1 (2.33%) Azure Data Factory
6 1 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
6 1 (2.33%) Azure Functions
6 1 (2.33%) Azure Logic Apps
6 1 (2.33%) Azure Service Bus
6 1 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (2.33%) GitHub Copilot
6 1 (2.33%) OCI
6 1 (2.33%) Siteimprove
6 1 (2.33%) SuccessFactors
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (16.28%) PostgreSQL
2 6 (13.95%) Oracle Database
2 6 (13.95%) Power BI
3 5 (11.63%) Oracle Database 12c
4 4 (9.30%) BigQuery
4 4 (9.30%) Looker
4 4 (9.30%) MySQL
4 4 (9.30%) NoSQL
5 2 (4.65%) SQL Server
6 1 (2.33%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (2.33%) Metadata
6 1 (2.33%) MongoDB
6 1 (2.33%) RDBMS
6 1 (2.33%) Relational Database
6 1 (2.33%) SAS Enterprise Guide
6 1 (2.33%) Star Schema
6 1 (2.33%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 4 (9.30%) Git
1 4 (9.30%) JIRA
2 3 (6.98%) GitLab
3 2 (4.65%) Cypress.io
3 2 (4.65%) Selenium
3 2 (4.65%) SonarQube
4 1 (2.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
4 1 (2.33%) Cucumber
4 1 (2.33%) fastlane
4 1 (2.33%) Gradle
4 1 (2.33%) IntelliJ
4 1 (2.33%) Jenkins
4 1 (2.33%) Postman
4 1 (2.33%) Robot Framework
4 1 (2.33%) XCTest
General
1 15 (34.88%) Social Skills
2 9 (20.93%) Public Sector
3 8 (18.60%) Finance
4 5 (11.63%) Banking
5 3 (6.98%) Presentation Skills
6 2 (4.65%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (4.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (4.65%) Legal
6 2 (4.65%) Publishing
6 2 (4.65%) Retail
7 1 (2.33%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (2.33%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (2.33%) Law
Job Titles
1 11 (25.58%) Developer
2 9 (20.93%) Analyst
3 5 (11.63%) DBA
3 5 (11.63%) Lead
3 5 (11.63%) Oracle DBA
3 5 (11.63%) Senior
4 4 (9.30%) Java Developer
4 4 (9.30%) PostgreSQL DBA
4 4 (9.30%) Software Developer
5 3 (6.98%) Lead Developer
5 3 (6.98%) Performance Analyst
5 3 (6.98%) Project Manager
5 3 (6.98%) Software Engineer
5 3 (6.98%) Test Manager
6 2 (4.65%) Full-Stack Developer
6 2 (4.65%) Lead Java Developer
6 2 (4.65%) Senior Analyst
6 2 (4.65%) Senior Developer
6 2 (4.65%) Test Analyst
6 2 (4.65%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (18.60%) AngularJS
2 7 (16.28%) React
3 6 (13.95%) RESTful
3 6 (13.95%) Spring
3 6 (13.95%) Spring Boot
4 4 (9.30%) CSS
4 4 (9.30%) HTML
4 4 (9.30%) Node.js
5 3 (6.98%) REST
6 2 (4.65%) GraphQL
7 1 (2.33%) .NET Core
7 1 (2.33%) Angular 2
7 1 (2.33%) CSS3
7 1 (2.33%) Gherkin
7 1 (2.33%) Kafka
7 1 (2.33%) Nunjucks
7 1 (2.33%) OpenTelemetry
7 1 (2.33%) Playwright
7 1 (2.33%) SwiftUI
7 1 (2.33%) UIKit
Miscellaneous
1 4 (9.30%) Cloud Native
1 4 (9.30%) Product Ownership
2 2 (4.65%) AS400
2 2 (4.65%) iSeries
3 1 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
3 1 (2.33%) Distributed Architecture
3 1 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
3 1 (2.33%) Legacy Applications
3 1 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
3 1 (2.33%) Mainframe
3 1 (2.33%) Management Information System
3 1 (2.33%) Mobile App
3 1 (2.33%) NHS
3 1 (2.33%) Onboarding
3 1 (2.33%) Online Banking
3 1 (2.33%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1 (2.33%) Apple iOS
1 1 (2.33%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (58.14%) Agile
2 11 (25.58%) CI/CD
2 11 (25.58%) Test Automation
2 11 (25.58%) User Experience
3 9 (20.93%) Continuous Improvement
3 9 (20.93%) DevOps
3 9 (20.93%) Microservices
3 9 (20.93%) Stakeholder Management
3 9 (20.93%) Validation
4 8 (18.60%) Mentoring
4 8 (18.60%) Software Engineering
5 7 (16.28%) Analytics
5 7 (16.28%) Business Intelligence
5 7 (16.28%) Code Quality
5 7 (16.28%) Problem-Solving
5 7 (16.28%) Scrum
6 6 (13.95%) Data Analysis
6 6 (13.95%) Decision-Making
6 6 (13.95%) Full-Stack Development
6 6 (13.95%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 15 (34.88%) SQL
2 9 (20.93%) Java
3 7 (16.28%) JavaScript
4 3 (6.98%) TypeScript
5 2 (4.65%) C#
5 2 (4.65%) Python
6 1 (2.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 1 (2.33%) Kotlin
6 1 (2.33%) Objective-C
6 1 (2.33%) PL/SQL
6 1 (2.33%) Swift
Qualifications
1 9 (20.93%) Security Cleared
2 7 (16.28%) SC Cleared
3 2 (4.65%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (2.33%) CCA
4 1 (2.33%) Degree
4 1 (2.33%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (20.93%) Accessibility
2 5 (11.63%) Data Quality
3 2 (4.65%) GDPR
3 2 (4.65%) WCAG
4 1 (2.33%) PERC
System Software
1 3 (6.98%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (11.63%) Oracle RMAN
2 4 (9.30%) Kubernetes
3 2 (4.65%) Grafana
3 2 (4.65%) Terraform
4 1 (2.33%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 7 (16.28%) Oracle
2 6 (13.95%) Microsoft
3 5 (11.63%) Google
4 3 (6.98%) SAP
5 2 (4.65%) Workday
6 1 (2.33%) CA Agile Central
6 1 (2.33%) Facebook
6 1 (2.33%) IBM
6 1 (2.33%) OpenAI