QA Contract Job Trends in Northern Ireland

Quality Assurance (QA)
UK > Northern Ireland

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Northern Ireland requiring QA skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 28 26 16
Rank change year-on-year -2 -10 +9
Contract jobs citing QA 8 4 12
As % of all contract jobs in Northern Ireland 3.33% 2.26% 8.39%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 14.55% 12.90% 46.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 0 2 7
10th Percentile - £474 £493
25th Percentile - £483 £555
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) - £519 £625
Median % change year-on-year - -17.00% +29.53%
75th Percentile - £558 £638
90th Percentile - £568 -
UK median daily rate £490 £481 £523
% change year-on-year +1.87% -7.94% +1.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £27.52 - -
Median hourly rate £27.54 - -
75th Percentile £27.57 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £19.50 £20.00 £36.77
% change year-on-year -2.50% -45.61% +41.42%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
Northern Ireland

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 Northern Ireland.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 55 31 26
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Northern Ireland 22.92% 17.51% 18.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 25 10 17
10th Percentile £325 £148 £189
25th Percentile £431 £216 £260
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £456 £493
Median % change year-on-year +9.59% -7.36% +7.95%
75th Percentile £575 £586 £638
90th Percentile £668 £626 -
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 8 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £12.31 - -
Median hourly rate £12.96 £24.18 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -46.42% +34.33% -
75th Percentile £13.60 £46.90 -
90th Percentile £25.26 £83.20 -
UK median hourly rate £25.63 £27.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -6.80% -21.43% +55.87%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend in Northern Ireland

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

QA job vacancy trend in Northern Ireland

QA
Daily Rate Trend in Northern Ireland

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Northern Ireland citing QA.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Northern Ireland citing QA

QA
Hourly Rate Trend in Northern Ireland

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Northern Ireland citing QA.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Northern Ireland citing QA

QA
Contract Job Locations in Northern Ireland

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing QA within the Northern Ireland region over the 6 months to 19 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
County Antrim -1 8 - -
QA
UK

QA
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Northern Ireland 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 (12.50%) Apache Spark
Cloud Services
1 5 (62.50%) AWS
2 2 (25.00%) Amazon S3
2 2 (25.00%) AWS Lambda
2 2 (25.00%) Azure
2 2 (25.00%) Serverless
3 1 (12.50%) Amazon EventBridge
3 1 (12.50%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 1 (12.50%) Firewall
1 1 (12.50%) HTTP
1 1 (12.50%) Internet
1 1 (12.50%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (12.50%) Amazon QuickSight
1 1 (12.50%) DB2
1 1 (12.50%) GIS
1 1 (12.50%) Metadata
1 1 (12.50%) MySQL
1 1 (12.50%) NoSQL
1 1 (12.50%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (12.50%) Relational Database
1 1 (12.50%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 3 (37.50%) Selenium
2 2 (25.00%) Cucumber
2 2 (25.00%) GitLab
2 2 (25.00%) SpecFlow
General
1 5 (62.50%) Finance
2 4 (50.00%) Social Skills
3 2 (25.00%) Analytical Skills
3 2 (25.00%) Public Sector
4 1 (12.50%) French Language
4 1 (12.50%) Legal
Job Titles
1 1 (12.50%) Account Manager
1 1 (12.50%) AWS Data Engineer
1 1 (12.50%) AWS Engineer
1 1 (12.50%) Data Engineer
1 1 (12.50%) Project Manager
1 1 (12.50%) Technical Account Manager
1 1 (12.50%) Technical Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (37.50%) GraphQL
1 3 (37.50%) Playwright
1 3 (37.50%) REST
2 1 (12.50%) pytest
2 1 (12.50%) React
Miscellaneous
1 1 (12.50%) Driving Licence
1 1 (12.50%) Enterprise Software
1 1 (12.50%) Management Information System
1 1 (12.50%) Onboarding
1 1 (12.50%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 1 (12.50%) Linux
1 1 (12.50%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (62.50%) CI/CD
2 3 (37.50%) Fintech
2 3 (37.50%) Test Automation
3 2 (25.00%) API Testing
3 2 (25.00%) B2B
3 2 (25.00%) BDD
3 2 (25.00%) Data Pipeline
3 2 (25.00%) ETL
3 2 (25.00%) Load Testing
3 2 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
4 1 (12.50%) Application Security
4 1 (12.50%) Automated Trading
4 1 (12.50%) Business Case
4 1 (12.50%) Cloud Security
4 1 (12.50%) Customer Service
4 1 (12.50%) Data Ingestion
4 1 (12.50%) Data Science
4 1 (12.50%) Decision Intelligence
4 1 (12.50%) Infrastructure as Code
4 1 (12.50%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 3 (37.50%) C#
1 3 (37.50%) Python
2 1 (12.50%) Java
2 1 (12.50%) Perl
2 1 (12.50%) SQL
Qualifications
1 2 (25.00%) Degree
2 1 (12.50%) AWS Certification
2 1 (12.50%) Computer Science Degree
2 1 (12.50%) PMI Certification
2 1 (12.50%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (12.50%) Data Quality
1 1 (12.50%) GDPR
Vendors
1 1 (12.50%) Fujitsu
1 1 (12.50%) Oracle