QA Contracts in the South East

Quality Assurance (QA)
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the South East requiring QA skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited QA over the 6 months leading up to 14 August 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Aug 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 57 83 98
Rank change year-on-year +26 +15 -24
Contract jobs citing QA 116 109 116
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South East 3.30% 2.22% 2.07%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 17.74% 17.78% 14.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 78 48 70
10th Percentile £316 £249 £263
25th Percentile £401 £325 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £413 £475
Median % change year-on-year +15.15% -13.16% -
75th Percentile £525 £575 £574
90th Percentile £590 £649 £604
England median daily rate £475 £499 £525
% change year-on-year -4.81% -4.95% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 13 10
10th Percentile - - £18.50
25th Percentile £15.12 £10.42 £26.94
Median hourly rate £15.29 £10.82 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.31% -78.36% +127.27%
75th Percentile £53.50 £19.50 -
90th Percentile £53.65 £61.50 £63.86
England median hourly rate £15.96 £14.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year +14.00% -72.00% +83.49%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
South East

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 South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 654 613 787
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 18.58% 12.46% 14.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 404 313 490
10th Percentile £200 £237 £240
25th Percentile £375 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £617
90th Percentile £650 £688 £713
England median daily rate £500 £525 £536
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.05% +2.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 55 47
10th Percentile £15.12 £10.82 £15.21
25th Percentile £15.34 £18.06 £17.88
Median hourly rate £24.91 £36.17 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year -31.14% -26.19% +145.00%
75th Percentile £67.50 £62.96 £54.06
90th Percentile £87.71 £70.00 £69.48
England median hourly rate £31.64 £27.50 £38.46
% change year-on-year +15.05% -28.50% +56.98%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Job postings citing QA as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Job vacancy trend for QA in the South East

QA
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the South East

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing QA in the South East.

Daily rate trend for QA in the South East

QA
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA in the South East over the 6 months to 14 August 2025.

Daily rate histogram for QA in the South East

QA
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing QA in the South East.

Hourly rate trend for QA in the South East

QA
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing QA in the South East over the 6 months to 14 August 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for QA in the South East

QA
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing QA within the South East region over the 6 months to 14 August 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
Thames Valley +8 70 £469 +0.81% 109
Berkshire 0 50 £500 -9.09% 42
Hampshire +33 28 £500 +21.21% 41
Buckinghamshire +18 16 £395 +47.94% 26
Kent -1 5 £625 - 22
Surrey -3 5 £289 -17.43% 24
West Sussex +4 4 £550 +22.22% 18
East Sussex +1 4 £450 - 11
Oxfordshire -9 4 £153 -61.75% 43
Middlesex - 1 - - 12
QA
England

QA
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South East 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 6 (5.17%) Confluence
2 3 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 2 (1.72%) CMS
4 1 (0.86%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (0.86%) Anypoint
4 1 (0.86%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 1 (0.86%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (0.86%) Red Hat Fuse
4 1 (0.86%) WebLogic
Applications
1 8 (6.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.72%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.86%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (0.86%) MadCap Flare
3 1 (0.86%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.86%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.86%) Oracle EBS
1 1 (0.86%) Oracle EBS R12
1 1 (0.86%) Oracle ERP
1 1 (0.86%) Remedy AR System
1 1 (0.86%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.86%) SAP QM
1 1 (0.86%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 15 (12.93%) Azure
2 14 (12.07%) AWS
3 9 (7.76%) Azure DevOps
4 4 (3.45%) AWS Lambda
4 4 (3.45%) Figma
4 4 (3.45%) GitHub
4 4 (3.45%) Serverless
5 3 (2.59%) OCI
5 3 (2.59%) Power Platform
6 2 (1.72%) Amazon S3
6 2 (1.72%) GitHub Actions
7 1 (0.86%) Amazon EC2
7 1 (0.86%) Dynamics 365
7 1 (0.86%) OpenShift
7 1 (0.86%) Veeva
Communications & Networking
1 4 (3.45%) Firewall
2 3 (2.59%) Broadband
3 2 (1.72%) 5G
3 2 (1.72%) DHCP
3 2 (1.72%) DNS
3 2 (1.72%) HTTPS
3 2 (1.72%) Internet
4 1 (0.86%) 3GPP
4 1 (0.86%) HTTP
4 1 (0.86%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.86%) SSL
4 1 (0.86%) VPN
4 1 (0.86%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (5.17%) NoSQL
2 4 (3.45%) Relational Database
2 4 (3.45%) SQL Server
3 3 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (2.59%) Power BI
4 2 (1.72%) BigQuery
4 2 (1.72%) Oracle Reports
5 1 (0.86%) Crystal Reports
5 1 (0.86%) Data Mart
5 1 (0.86%) DTS
5 1 (0.86%) DynamoDB
5 1 (0.86%) EDMS
5 1 (0.86%) Hadoop
5 1 (0.86%) Impala
5 1 (0.86%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.86%) MySQL
5 1 (0.86%) Oracle BI EE
5 1 (0.86%) Oracle Database
5 1 (0.86%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 16 (13.79%) JIRA
2 7 (6.03%) Selenium
3 5 (4.31%) Git
4 3 (2.59%) Subversion
5 2 (1.72%) Jenkins
5 2 (1.72%) MSI
5 2 (1.72%) QARun
5 2 (1.72%) WinRunner
6 1 (0.86%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.86%) Cucumber
6 1 (0.86%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.86%) git-flow
6 1 (0.86%) GitLab
6 1 (0.86%) HP UFT
6 1 (0.86%) Katalon Studio
6 1 (0.86%) Maven
6 1 (0.86%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.86%) Team Foundation Server
6 1 (0.86%) WebDriver
General
1 55 (47.41%) Social Skills
2 24 (20.69%) Analytical Skills
3 10 (8.62%) Finance
4 9 (7.76%) Telecoms
5 7 (6.03%) Public Sector
6 5 (4.31%) Organisational Skills
6 5 (4.31%) Retail
7 3 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (2.59%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.72%) Automotive
8 2 (1.72%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (0.86%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.86%) Agriculture
9 1 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.86%) Law
9 1 (0.86%) Legal
9 1 (0.86%) Marketing
9 1 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 20 (17.24%) Analyst
2 14 (12.07%) Developer
3 12 (10.34%) Tester
4 11 (9.48%) Senior
5 8 (6.90%) Business Analyst
5 8 (6.90%) DevOps Engineer
5 8 (6.90%) QA Tester
6 7 (6.03%) Consultant
6 7 (6.03%) Project Manager
6 7 (6.03%) Test Analyst
7 6 (5.17%) AWS Engineer
7 6 (5.17%) Cloud Engineer
7 6 (5.17%) Data Analyst
7 6 (5.17%) Desktop Engineer
7 6 (5.17%) Release Manager
7 6 (5.17%) Senior Developer
8 5 (4.31%) Data Business Analyst
8 5 (4.31%) Support Engineer
9 4 (3.45%) Integration Engineer
9 4 (3.45%) Senior Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (6.90%) .NET
2 7 (6.03%) RESTful
3 6 (5.17%) .NET Core
3 6 (5.17%) REST
4 4 (3.45%) ASP.NET
4 4 (3.45%) ASP.NET Core
5 2 (1.72%) AngularJS
5 2 (1.72%) Blazor
5 2 (1.72%) CSS
5 2 (1.72%) HTML
5 2 (1.72%) JSON
5 2 (1.72%) Node.js
5 2 (1.72%) Playwright
5 2 (1.72%) SOAP
5 2 (1.72%) Spring
5 2 (1.72%) Spring Boot
6 1 (0.86%) OAuth
6 1 (0.86%) Razor View Engine
6 1 (0.86%) React
6 1 (0.86%) WebAssembly
Miscellaneous
1 8 (6.90%) Cloud Native
1 8 (6.90%) Product Ownership
2 6 (5.17%) Algorithms
3 2 (1.72%) Management Information System
3 2 (1.72%) Mobile App
3 2 (1.72%) Onboarding
4 1 (0.86%) AI Agents
4 1 (0.86%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (0.86%) CMDB
4 1 (0.86%) Data Centre
4 1 (0.86%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (0.86%) Data Structures
4 1 (0.86%) Distributed Applications
4 1 (0.86%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (0.86%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (0.86%) Life Science
4 1 (0.86%) Mainframe
4 1 (0.86%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 12 (10.34%) Windows
2 6 (5.17%) Linux
3 4 (3.45%) Unix
4 3 (2.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (1.72%) Mac OS
5 2 (1.72%) Solaris
6 1 (0.86%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.86%) VMS
6 1 (0.86%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.86%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.86%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (38.79%) Agile
2 37 (31.90%) Problem-Solving
3 35 (30.17%) Test Automation
4 33 (28.45%) DevOps
5 21 (18.10%) CI/CD
5 21 (18.10%) Stakeholder Management
6 18 (15.52%) Validation
7 16 (13.79%) Scenario Testing
8 15 (12.93%) Test Scripting
9 13 (11.21%) Project Management
9 13 (11.21%) Test Strategy
9 13 (11.21%) Waterfall
10 12 (10.34%) End-to-End Testing
11 11 (9.48%) ITIL
11 11 (9.48%) Time Management
11 11 (9.48%) User Acceptance Testing
11 11 (9.48%) User Stories
12 10 (8.62%) Continuous Improvement
13 9 (7.76%) Defect Management
13 9 (7.76%) Exploratory Testing
Programming Languages
1 19 (16.38%) Python
2 14 (12.07%) SQL
3 11 (9.48%) C#
4 8 (6.90%) Java
5 3 (2.59%) Bash
5 3 (2.59%) Perl
6 2 (1.72%) JavaScript
6 2 (1.72%) VB
7 1 (0.86%) C
7 1 (0.86%) COBOL
7 1 (0.86%) Go
7 1 (0.86%) Korn
7 1 (0.86%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.86%) PowerShell
7 1 (0.86%) Rust
7 1 (0.86%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 34 (29.31%) Security Cleared
2 23 (19.83%) SC Cleared
3 12 (10.34%) Degree
4 9 (7.76%) PMP
5 7 (6.03%) PMI Certification
6 6 (5.17%) AWS Certification
6 6 (5.17%) DV Cleared
7 4 (3.45%) Master's Degree
8 2 (1.72%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.86%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.86%) CompTIA Security+
9 1 (0.86%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.86%) HNC
9 1 (0.86%) OCP
9 1 (0.86%) Oracle Certification
9 1 (0.86%) PgMP
9 1 (0.86%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (2.59%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.72%) GDPR
3 1 (0.86%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.86%) GLP
3 1 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.86%) PMO
3 1 (0.86%) SLA
System Software
1 7 (6.03%) VMware Infrastructure
2 5 (4.31%) Docker
3 2 (1.72%) Microsoft App-V
3 2 (1.72%) VMware ESXi
3 2 (1.72%) vSphere
4 1 (0.86%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 6 (5.17%) Ansible
2 5 (4.31%) Kubernetes
3 4 (3.45%) HP ALM
3 4 (3.45%) HP Quality Center
4 3 (2.59%) Rsyslog
4 3 (2.59%) SCOM
5 2 (1.72%) Amdocs OSS
5 2 (1.72%) Red Hat Satellite
5 2 (1.72%) SELinux
5 2 (1.72%) Terraform
6 1 (0.86%) Cilium
6 1 (0.86%) CloudHub
6 1 (0.86%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
6 1 (0.86%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 1 (0.86%) Oracle RMAN
6 1 (0.86%) Proxmox
6 1 (0.86%) Rundeck
6 1 (0.86%) Salt
6 1 (0.86%) SCCM
Vendors
1 9 (7.76%) Salesforce
2 7 (6.03%) Oracle
2 7 (6.03%) VMware
3 6 (5.17%) HP
4 5 (4.31%) Microsoft
5 4 (3.45%) Remedy
6 3 (2.59%) Red Hat
6 3 (2.59%) SAP
7 2 (1.72%) Adobe
7 2 (1.72%) CheckPoint
7 2 (1.72%) Cramer
7 2 (1.72%) Dell
7 2 (1.72%) Infoblox
7 2 (1.72%) Palantir
7 2 (1.72%) SolarWinds
7 2 (1.72%) Symantec
7 2 (1.72%) Veritas
8 1 (0.86%) Conga
8 1 (0.86%) MuleSoft
8 1 (0.86%) NVIDIA