QA Contract Job Trends in the North West

Quality Assurance (QA)
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring QA skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 72 64 70
Rank change year-on-year -8 +6 -4
Contract jobs citing QA 105 68 53
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 2.74% 3.08% 2.20%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 18.29% 20.67% 15.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 66 55 33
10th Percentile £313 £327 -
25th Percentile £373 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £425 £425
Median % change year-on-year +17.65% - -15.00%
75th Percentile £600 £495 £506
90th Percentile £744 £600 £555
England median daily rate £485 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.11% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 3 1
10th Percentile £13.08 £17.64 -
25th Percentile £17.69 £24.95 -
Median hourly rate £25.38 £37.14 £18.11
Median % change year-on-year -31.66% +105.08% -75.46%
75th Percentile £43.94 £61.20 -
90th Percentile £55.08 £75.63 -
England median hourly rate £32.20 £15.96 £13.75
% change year-on-year +101.74% +16.07% -71.79%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
North West

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 the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 574 329 343
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 14.99% 14.91% 14.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 371 230 194
10th Percentile £313 £313 £363
25th Percentile £388 £395 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £464 £500
Median % change year-on-year +6.41% -7.15% +2.88%
75th Percentile £599 £588 £587
90th Percentile £687 £688 £674
England median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 12 36
10th Percentile £21.08 £13.50 -
25th Percentile £29.96 £25.50 -
Median hourly rate £63.25 £49.82 £10.95
Median % change year-on-year +26.96% +354.98% -68.94%
75th Percentile £75.75 £74.44 £18.10
90th Percentile £85.00 £85.07 £38.66
England median hourly rate £38.72 £31.64 £27.50
% change year-on-year +22.38% +15.05% -21.99%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing QA relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

QA job vacancy trend in the North West

QA
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing QA.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing QA

QA
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA in the North West over the 6 months to 17 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for QA in the North West

QA
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing QA.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing QA

QA
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing QA in the North West over the 6 months to 17 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for QA in the North West

QA
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing QA within the North West region over the 6 months to 17 August 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
Manchester -11 57 £513 +22.39% 70
Merseyside -4 15 £300 +4.35% 11
Lancashire +1 13 £575 +8.49% 23
Cheshire -13 10 £500 +16.28% 20
Cumbria -17 3 - - 3
QA
England

QA
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 (4.76%) SAS
1 5 (4.76%) SharePoint
2 3 (2.86%) Confluence
Applications
1 2 (1.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (1.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.95%) NetSuite
2 1 (0.95%) SAP MM
2 1 (0.95%) SAP SD
2 1 (0.95%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 29 (27.62%) AWS
2 23 (21.90%) Azure
3 16 (15.24%) GitHub
4 10 (9.52%) Azure DevOps
4 10 (9.52%) GitHub Actions
5 6 (5.71%) GCP
6 5 (4.76%) Serverless
7 4 (3.81%) AtomSphere
7 4 (3.81%) Boomi
7 4 (3.81%) GitHub Copilot
8 3 (2.86%) Amazon S3
8 3 (2.86%) Anthropic Claude
8 3 (2.86%) Google Gemini
8 3 (2.86%) Microsoft 365
8 3 (2.86%) Microsoft Copilot
8 3 (2.86%) OneDrive
8 3 (2.86%) Power Platform
8 3 (2.86%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
8 3 (2.86%) Salesforce Service Cloud
9 2 (1.90%) SaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (6.67%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (4.76%) Oracle Database
2 5 (4.76%) Oracle Database 12c
3 4 (3.81%) NoSQL
4 3 (2.86%) MySQL
4 3 (2.86%) Power BI
5 2 (1.90%) Amazon Redshift
5 2 (1.90%) Base SAS
5 2 (1.90%) Data Vault
5 2 (1.90%) Metadata
5 2 (1.90%) SAS Visual Analytics
5 2 (1.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.95%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.95%) DynamoDB
6 1 (0.95%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.95%) SAS Enterprise Guide
6 1 (0.95%) SQL Server
6 1 (0.95%) Star Schema
6 1 (0.95%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 15 (14.29%) JIRA
2 11 (10.48%) Git
3 10 (9.52%) Postman
4 6 (5.71%) Jenkins
5 5 (4.76%) Zephyr
6 4 (3.81%) Selenium
6 4 (3.81%) TestRail
7 3 (2.86%) Claude Code
7 3 (2.86%) GitLab
7 3 (2.86%) Ranorex
7 3 (2.86%) REST Assured
7 3 (2.86%) SpecFlow
8 2 (1.90%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.95%) Appium
9 1 (0.95%) Balsamiq
9 1 (0.95%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.95%) Cypress.io
9 1 (0.95%) Robot Framework
9 1 (0.95%) TestNG
9 1 (0.95%) XCUITest
General
1 24 (22.86%) Social Skills
2 21 (20.00%) Finance
3 12 (11.43%) Public Sector
4 9 (8.57%) Retail
5 8 (7.62%) Analytical Skills
6 6 (5.71%) Banking
7 4 (3.81%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.90%) Aerospace
8 2 (1.90%) French Language
8 2 (1.90%) Marketing
9 1 (0.95%) Automotive
9 1 (0.95%) Billing
9 1 (0.95%) Digital Health
9 1 (0.95%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.95%) Military
9 1 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.95%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 25 (23.81%) Senior
2 20 (19.05%) QA Engineer
3 14 (13.33%) Quality Engineer
4 13 (12.38%) Developer
4 13 (12.38%) Lead
5 10 (9.52%) Analyst
6 6 (5.71%) DevOps Engineer
6 6 (5.71%) Principal Engineer
6 6 (5.71%) Senior DevOps
6 6 (5.71%) Senior DevOps Engineer
6 6 (5.71%) Senior QA Engineer
6 6 (5.71%) Test Leader
6 6 (5.71%) Test Manager
7 5 (4.76%) DBA
7 5 (4.76%) Mobile Engineer
7 5 (4.76%) Oracle DBA
7 5 (4.76%) Principal DevOps Engineer
8 4 (3.81%) Administrator
8 4 (3.81%) Software Developer
8 4 (3.81%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (8.57%) React
2 8 (7.62%) REST
3 7 (6.67%) Playwright
4 6 (5.71%) AngularJS
4 6 (5.71%) Node.js
4 6 (5.71%) Spring
4 6 (5.71%) Spring Boot
5 5 (4.76%) RESTful
6 4 (3.81%) Gherkin
6 4 (3.81%) Middleware
7 3 (2.86%) CSS
7 3 (2.86%) HTML
7 3 (2.86%) Next.js
8 2 (1.90%) PySpark
9 1 (0.95%) .NET
9 1 (0.95%) Entity Framework
9 1 (0.95%) Nunjucks
9 1 (0.95%) OpenAPI
9 1 (0.95%) RabbitMQ
9 1 (0.95%) SAP Basis
Miscellaneous
1 11 (10.48%) Cloud Native
2 9 (8.57%) Product Ownership
3 5 (4.76%) Enterprise Software
4 4 (3.81%) NHS
4 4 (3.81%) Onboarding
5 3 (2.86%) Culture of Ownership
5 3 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
5 3 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
5 3 (2.86%) Low-Code
6 2 (1.90%) Analytical Mindset
6 2 (1.90%) AS400
6 2 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (1.90%) iSeries
7 1 (0.95%) Life Science
7 1 (0.95%) Management Information System
7 1 (0.95%) Mobile App
7 1 (0.95%) Online Banking
7 1 (0.95%) PMI
7 1 (0.95%) Reference Data
7 1 (0.95%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 5 (4.76%) Android
1 5 (4.76%) Apple iOS
2 1 (0.95%) Linux
2 1 (0.95%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (38.10%) Agile
2 33 (31.43%) CI/CD
3 32 (30.48%) Continuous Improvement
4 31 (29.52%) DevOps
5 26 (24.76%) Test Automation
6 23 (21.90%) Stakeholder Management
7 18 (17.14%) AI
8 15 (14.29%) Mentoring
8 15 (14.29%) Microservices
9 14 (13.33%) Scrum
9 14 (13.33%) Software Engineering
10 13 (12.38%) Code Quality
10 13 (12.38%) Observability
10 13 (12.38%) Test Strategy
11 12 (11.43%) User Acceptance Testing
11 12 (11.43%) Validation
12 11 (10.48%) Decision-Making
12 11 (10.48%) Infrastructure as Code
12 11 (10.48%) Migration
12 11 (10.48%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 20 (19.05%) SQL
2 15 (14.29%) Python
3 10 (9.52%) Java
4 7 (6.67%) JavaScript
4 7 (6.67%) TypeScript
5 6 (5.71%) Bash
6 4 (3.81%) C#
7 2 (1.90%) PROC SQL
7 2 (1.90%) Scala
8 1 (0.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 15 (14.29%) Security Cleared
2 11 (10.48%) SC Cleared
3 9 (8.57%) BPSS Clearance
4 6 (5.71%) Degree
5 2 (1.90%) HNC
5 2 (1.90%) PMI Certification
6 1 (0.95%) IIBA
6 1 (0.95%) PMP
6 1 (0.95%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (5.71%) Data Quality
2 5 (4.76%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.95%) GRC
3 1 (0.95%) IFRS
3 1 (0.95%) IFRS 17
3 1 (0.95%) SLA
3 1 (0.95%) Software Quality Assurance
3 1 (0.95%) WCAG
System Software
1 9 (8.57%) Docker
Systems Management
1 14 (13.33%) Terraform
2 8 (7.62%) Kubernetes
3 5 (4.76%) Oracle RMAN
4 1 (0.95%) Grafana
4 1 (0.95%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (0.95%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 10 (9.52%) Salesforce
2 6 (5.71%) Oracle
3 5 (4.76%) Microsoft
4 3 (2.86%) Databricks
4 3 (2.86%) SAP
4 3 (2.86%) ServiceNow
5 2 (1.90%) DocuSign
5 2 (1.90%) IBM
5 2 (1.90%) Informatica
6 1 (0.95%) Adobe
6 1 (0.95%) Marketo
6 1 (0.95%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.95%) Sage
6 1 (0.95%) Siemens
6 1 (0.95%) Tagetik