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 15 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 43 46 54
Rank change year-on-year +3 +8 +16
Contract jobs citing QA 48 43 48
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 4.15% 3.97% 3.11%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 24.62% 30.71% 22.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 34 32 42
10th Percentile £300 £314 £353
25th Percentile £313 £394 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £385 £406 £498
Median % change year-on-year -5.23% -18.34% +7.57%
75th Percentile £466 £483 £560
90th Percentile £584 £571 £634
North West median daily rate £405 £413 £498
% change year-on-year -1.82% -17.09% +17.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 0
10th Percentile £61.10 - -
25th Percentile £65.00 - -
Median hourly rate £70.00 - -
75th Percentile £72.50 - -
90th Percentile £73.25 - -
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 195 140 210
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 16.85% 12.94% 13.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 139 90 133
10th Percentile £311 £331 £325
25th Percentile £353 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -10.00% +2.56%
75th Percentile £581 £522 £588
90th Percentile £676 £650 £695
North West median daily rate £450 £450 £500
% change year-on-year - -10.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 6 2
10th Percentile £53.50 £14.03 £21.13
25th Percentile £53.75 £16.11 £28.44
Median hourly rate £61.00 £22.63 £40.75
Median % change year-on-year +169.61% -44.48% +114.47%
75th Percentile £70.00 £29.38 £52.94
90th Percentile £72.75 £29.75 £60.18
North West median hourly rate £56.25 £23.14 £28.30
% change year-on-year +143.14% -18.25% -45.50%

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 15 December 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 15 December 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 - 17
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 (4.17%) SharePoint
Applications
1 8 (16.67%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (2.08%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (2.08%) BambooHR
1 1 (2.08%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (2.08%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 14 (29.17%) Azure
2 13 (27.08%) Power Platform
3 11 (22.92%) GCP
4 9 (18.75%) Google Tag Manager
5 8 (16.67%) Google Analytics
6 5 (10.42%) AWS
7 2 (4.17%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (4.17%) Power Automate
7 2 (4.17%) PowerApps
8 1 (2.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 1 (2.08%) AWS CloudFormation
8 1 (2.08%) AWS Lambda
8 1 (2.08%) Azure Data Factory
8 1 (2.08%) Azure Logic Apps
8 1 (2.08%) Dynamics 365
8 1 (2.08%) GitHub Actions
8 1 (2.08%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 1 (2.08%) OCI
8 1 (2.08%) Serverless
8 1 (2.08%) Smartsheet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (20.83%) Power BI
2 8 (16.67%) BigQuery
2 8 (16.67%) Looker
3 2 (4.17%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (2.08%) Amazon Aurora
4 1 (2.08%) DynamoDB
4 1 (2.08%) MySQL
4 1 (2.08%) Oracle Database
4 1 (2.08%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (2.08%) RDBMS
4 1 (2.08%) Redis
4 1 (2.08%) Relational Database
4 1 (2.08%) SQL Server
4 1 (2.08%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 4 (8.33%) GitLab
2 3 (6.25%) Jenkins
3 2 (4.17%) Cypress.io
3 2 (4.17%) Selenium
4 1 (2.08%) Atlassian Bamboo
4 1 (2.08%) Browser DevTools
4 1 (2.08%) fastlane
4 1 (2.08%) Git
4 1 (2.08%) Gradle
4 1 (2.08%) IntelliJ
4 1 (2.08%) JIRA
4 1 (2.08%) XCTest
General
1 19 (39.58%) Social Skills
2 11 (22.92%) Public Sector
3 10 (20.83%) Finance
4 5 (10.42%) Manufacturing
5 4 (8.33%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (8.33%) Banking
6 3 (6.25%) Electronics
7 2 (4.17%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (4.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (4.17%) Law
7 2 (4.17%) Legal
7 2 (4.17%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (2.08%) Back Office
8 1 (2.08%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (2.08%) Publishing
8 1 (2.08%) Retail
8 1 (2.08%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 12 (25.00%) Analyst
2 7 (14.58%) Test Engineer
3 6 (12.50%) Lead
3 6 (12.50%) Performance Analyst
3 6 (12.50%) Senior
4 5 (10.42%) Data Analyst
5 4 (8.33%) Developer
5 4 (8.33%) Test Manager
6 3 (6.25%) Test Leader
7 2 (4.17%) Java Engineer
7 2 (4.17%) Java Software Engineer
7 2 (4.17%) Manual Tester
7 2 (4.17%) Programme Manager
7 2 (4.17%) Project Manager
7 2 (4.17%) QA Engineer
7 2 (4.17%) Senior Analyst
7 2 (4.17%) Senior Performance Analyst
7 2 (4.17%) Software Engineer
7 2 (4.17%) Test Programme Manager
7 2 (4.17%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (6.25%) REST
2 2 (4.17%) GraphQL
2 2 (4.17%) Node.js
2 2 (4.17%) Playwright
2 2 (4.17%) Spring
2 2 (4.17%) Spring Boot
3 1 (2.08%) AWS CDK
3 1 (2.08%) Bootstrap
3 1 (2.08%) HTML
3 1 (2.08%) JSON
3 1 (2.08%) JSON Schema
3 1 (2.08%) Kafka
3 1 (2.08%) Laravel
3 1 (2.08%) OpenTelemetry
3 1 (2.08%) RabbitMQ
3 1 (2.08%) SwiftUI
3 1 (2.08%) UIKit
3 1 (2.08%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 3 (6.25%) Low-Code
2 2 (4.17%) AS400
2 2 (4.17%) iSeries
2 2 (4.17%) Product Ownership
2 2 (4.17%) Synthetic Data
3 1 (2.08%) Cloud Native
3 1 (2.08%) Data Centre
3 1 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
3 1 (2.08%) Greenfield Project
3 1 (2.08%) Legacy Applications
3 1 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
3 1 (2.08%) Life Science
3 1 (2.08%) Mainframe
3 1 (2.08%) Management Information System
3 1 (2.08%) Renewable Energy
3 1 (2.08%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 1 (2.08%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (58.33%) Agile
2 14 (29.17%) Test Automation
3 13 (27.08%) Continuous Improvement
4 11 (22.92%) Data Analysis
5 10 (20.83%) Analytics
5 10 (20.83%) Business Intelligence
5 10 (20.83%) DevOps
5 10 (20.83%) Performance Measurement
5 10 (20.83%) User Experience
6 9 (18.75%) CI/CD
6 9 (18.75%) Digital Transformation Programme
6 9 (18.75%) Waterfall
7 8 (16.67%) Project Management
7 8 (16.67%) Risk Management
7 8 (16.67%) User Acceptance Testing
7 8 (16.67%) User Research
7 8 (16.67%) Validation
8 7 (14.58%) Data Privacy
8 7 (14.58%) Stakeholder Management
8 7 (14.58%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 5 (10.42%) SQL
2 2 (4.17%) Java
2 2 (4.17%) JavaScript
2 2 (4.17%) TypeScript
3 1 (2.08%) C#
3 1 (2.08%) Kotlin
3 1 (2.08%) Objective-C
3 1 (2.08%) PHP
3 1 (2.08%) PL/SQL
3 1 (2.08%) Swift
Qualifications
1 4 (8.33%) Degree
2 3 (6.25%) SC Cleared
2 3 (6.25%) Security Cleared
3 2 (4.17%) Azure Certification
3 2 (4.17%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (2.08%) AWS Certification
4 1 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (2.08%) ISTQB
4 1 (2.08%) PMI Certification
4 1 (2.08%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (31.25%) Accessibility
2 8 (16.67%) Data Quality
3 2 (4.17%) GDPR
4 1 (2.08%) PERC
4 1 (2.08%) PMBOK
4 1 (2.08%) PMO
4 1 (2.08%) WCAG
System Software
1 1 (2.08%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (6.25%) Kubernetes
2 2 (4.17%) Ansible
2 2 (4.17%) Terraform
3 1 (2.08%) Grafana
Vendors
1 13 (27.08%) Microsoft
2 10 (20.83%) Google
3 2 (4.17%) Salesforce
3 2 (4.17%) SAP
4 1 (2.08%) CA Agile Central
4 1 (2.08%) Facebook
4 1 (2.08%) IBM
4 1 (2.08%) Oracle
4 1 (2.08%) Workday