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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 53 48 50
Rank change year-on-year -5 +2 +23
Contract jobs citing QA 32 39 61
As % of all contract jobs advertised in Manchester 3.16% 3.28% 3.68%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.62% 26.35% 25.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 28 25 52
10th Percentile £309 - £308
25th Percentile £344 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £402 £413 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.55% -17.50% +5.26%
75th Percentile £431 £438 £554
90th Percentile £565 £500 £634
North West median daily rate £422 £413 £500
% change year-on-year +2.30% -17.50% +8.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £71.25 - £21.25
Median hourly rate £72.50 - £22.50
75th Percentile £73.75 - £23.75
90th Percentile - - -
North West median hourly rate £63.40 £18.11 £73.79
% change year-on-year +250.08% -75.46% +32.13%

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 148 148 238
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 14.61% 12.46% 14.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 110 94 157
10th Percentile £311 £380 £338
25th Percentile £362 £401 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £464 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.06% -10.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £595 £569 £600
90th Percentile £717 £668 £650
North West median daily rate £450 £477 £486
% change year-on-year -5.66% -1.85% +2.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 3 5
10th Percentile £63.25 £15.30 £18.47
25th Percentile £66.25 £20.25 £21.25
Median hourly rate £72.50 £29.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +150.00% -3.33% -58.62%
75th Percentile £81.25 £29.75 £39.60
90th Percentile £85.75 £29.90 £54.84
North West median hourly rate £63.40 £19.18 £35.50
% change year-on-year +230.55% -45.97% -48.59%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend in Manchester

Job postings citing QA as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in Manchester.

Job vacancy trend for QA 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 18 September 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 18 September 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 - 1 £425 - 6
QA
North West

QA
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in Manchester by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 2 (6.25%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (9.38%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (3.13%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 7 (21.88%) AWS
1 7 (21.88%) Azure
2 6 (18.75%) GCP
3 4 (12.50%) Power Platform
4 3 (9.38%) Google Tag Manager
5 2 (6.25%) Google Analytics
6 1 (3.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 1 (3.13%) Amazon EC2
6 1 (3.13%) Amazon S3
6 1 (3.13%) AWS CloudFormation
6 1 (3.13%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (3.13%) GitHub
6 1 (3.13%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (3.13%) Lucidchart
6 1 (3.13%) Power Automate
6 1 (3.13%) SaaS
6 1 (3.13%) Serverless
6 1 (3.13%) Smartsheet
6 1 (3.13%) SuccessFactors
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (9.38%) BigQuery
1 3 (9.38%) Looker
1 3 (9.38%) Power BI
2 2 (6.25%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (3.13%) Amazon Aurora
3 1 (3.13%) DynamoDB
3 1 (3.13%) Metadata
3 1 (3.13%) MySQL
3 1 (3.13%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (3.13%) Redis
3 1 (3.13%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 3 (9.38%) GitLab
1 3 (9.38%) Jenkins
2 2 (6.25%) REST Assured
3 1 (3.13%) Browser DevTools
3 1 (3.13%) Cypress.io
3 1 (3.13%) Git
3 1 (3.13%) Selenium
General
1 14 (43.75%) Finance
2 8 (25.00%) Social Skills
3 5 (15.63%) Public Sector
4 3 (9.38%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (9.38%) Back Office
5 2 (6.25%) Influencing Skills
5 2 (6.25%) Manufacturing
6 1 (3.13%) Banking
6 1 (3.13%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 6 (18.75%) Test Manager
2 5 (15.63%) Lead
3 3 (9.38%) Analyst
3 3 (9.38%) QA Engineer
3 3 (9.38%) Test Engineer
4 2 (6.25%) Developer
4 2 (6.25%) Performance Analyst
4 2 (6.25%) Programme Manager
4 2 (6.25%) Programme Test Manager
4 2 (6.25%) Senior
4 2 (6.25%) Test Programme Manager
5 1 (3.13%) AWS Developer
5 1 (3.13%) Backend Developer
5 1 (3.13%) DevOps Developer
5 1 (3.13%) Full-Stack Developer
5 1 (3.13%) Migration Manager
5 1 (3.13%) Power Platform Consultant
5 1 (3.13%) Principal Test Engineer
5 1 (3.13%) Salesforce Specialist
5 1 (3.13%) Senior Backend Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (12.50%) Node.js
1 4 (12.50%) Playwright
2 1 (3.13%) AWS CDK
2 1 (3.13%) Bootstrap
2 1 (3.13%) HTML
2 1 (3.13%) Laravel
2 1 (3.13%) Middleware
2 1 (3.13%) RabbitMQ
2 1 (3.13%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 3 (9.38%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 2 (6.25%) Data Centre
3 1 (3.13%) Life Science
3 1 (3.13%) Product Ownership
3 1 (3.13%) Public Cloud
3 1 (3.13%) Renewable Energy
3 1 (3.13%) Taxonomies
Processes & Methodologies
1 17 (53.13%) Agile
2 14 (43.75%) Continuous Improvement
3 13 (40.63%) Risk Management
4 10 (31.25%) Test Strategy
5 8 (25.00%) CI/CD
5 8 (25.00%) Test Automation
5 8 (25.00%) Waterfall
6 7 (21.88%) Project Management
6 7 (21.88%) Resource Allocation
7 6 (18.75%) DevOps
7 6 (18.75%) Planning and Forecasting
7 6 (18.75%) Scrum
7 6 (18.75%) Sprint Planning
7 6 (18.75%) Sprint Retrospective
8 5 (15.63%) End-to-End Testing
8 5 (15.63%) User Experience
9 4 (12.50%) Analytics
9 4 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
9 4 (12.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 4 (12.50%) Test Planning
Programming Languages
1 4 (12.50%) JavaScript
2 3 (9.38%) Java
3 2 (6.25%) TypeScript
4 1 (3.13%) PHP
4 1 (3.13%) SQL
Qualifications
1 3 (9.38%) Degree
2 2 (6.25%) Azure Certification
2 2 (6.25%) Computer Science Degree
3 1 (3.13%) AWS Certification
3 1 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
3 1 (3.13%) PMI Certification
3 1 (3.13%) PMP
3 1 (3.13%) SC Cleared
3 1 (3.13%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (18.75%) Accessibility
2 4 (12.50%) Data Quality
3 1 (3.13%) PMBOK
3 1 (3.13%) PMO
3 1 (3.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 1 (3.13%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (6.25%) Ansible
1 2 (6.25%) Terraform
2 1 (3.13%) Grafana
2 1 (3.13%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 7 (21.88%) Microsoft
2 4 (12.50%) Google
3 1 (3.13%) Concur
3 1 (3.13%) MuleSoft
3 1 (3.13%) Salesforce
3 1 (3.13%) SAP