QA Engineer Contract Job Trends in the South West

Quality Assurance Engineer
England > South West

The median Quality Assurance Engineer daily rate in the South West is £600, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 27 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 116 - 151
Rank change year-on-year - - +18
Contract jobs requiring a QA Engineer 5 0 5
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South West 0.25% - 0.15%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.28% - 0.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 5 0 5
10th Percentile £453 - -
25th Percentile £475 - £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 - £383
Median % change year-on-year - - -5.85%
75th Percentile £625 - £419
90th Percentile - - £441
England median daily rate £463 £445 £440
% change year-on-year +3.93% +1.14% -12.00%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
South West

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the South West. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the South West with a recognized job title 1,765 2,389 3,127
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 89.37% 92.70% 95.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,006 1,419 2,134
10th Percentile £225 £238 £300
25th Percentile £363 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £513 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.95% -4.65% +2.38%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £713
England median daily rate £510 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -2.86% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 236 249 287
10th Percentile £13.75 £14.41 £18.34
25th Percentile £18.22 £40.00 £44.63
Median hourly rate £25.15 £67.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -62.74% +12.50% +5.52%
75th Percentile £63.75 £72.50 £70.66
90th Percentile £68.00 £74.44 £83.40
England median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -44.11% - +73.08%

QA Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Job postings that featured QA Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the South West.

Job vacancy trend for QA Engineer in the South West

QA Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for QA Engineer job vacancies in the South West.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for QA Engineer job vacancies in the South West

QA Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA Engineer in the South West over the 6 months to 27 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for QA Engineer in the South West

QA Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for QA Engineer job vacancies in the South West.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for QA Engineer job vacancies in the South West

QA Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the South West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing QA Engineer within the South West region over the 6 months to 27 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
Wiltshire - 3 £600 -
Devon - 1 £500 -
Somerset - 1 £450 -
QA Engineer
England

QA Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South West

For the 6 months to 27 September 2025, QA Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the South West region featuring QA Engineer in the job title.

1 5 (100.00%) QA
1 5 (100.00%) Social Skills
2 4 (80.00%) Selenium
2 4 (80.00%) Test Automation
2 4 (80.00%) CI/CD
3 3 (60.00%) Containerisation
3 3 (60.00%) SC Cleared
3 3 (60.00%) Security Cleared
3 3 (60.00%) Python
3 3 (60.00%) Agile
3 3 (60.00%) Problem-Solving
3 3 (60.00%) Azure
3 3 (60.00%) AWS
3 3 (60.00%) GCP
4 2 (40.00%) DevOps
4 2 (40.00%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (40.00%) AWS CloudFormation
4 2 (40.00%) Kubernetes
4 2 (40.00%) Infrastructure as Code
4 2 (40.00%) Playwright
4 2 (40.00%) Terraform
4 2 (40.00%) Software Testing
4 2 (40.00%) ISTQB
4 2 (40.00%) Cypress.io
4 2 (40.00%) Bash
4 2 (40.00%) Platform Engineering
5 1 (20.00%) Distributed Systems
5 1 (20.00%) JavaScript
5 1 (20.00%) BDD
5 1 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement

QA Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South West 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:

Cloud Services
1 3 (60.00%) AWS
1 3 (60.00%) Azure
1 3 (60.00%) GCP
2 2 (40.00%) AWS CloudFormation
3 1 (20.00%) BrowserStack
3 1 (20.00%) GitHub
3 1 (20.00%) GitHub Actions
3 1 (20.00%) OpenShift
3 1 (20.00%) Pulumi
3 1 (20.00%) SaaS
3 1 (20.00%) Sauce Labs
Development Applications
1 4 (80.00%) Selenium
2 2 (40.00%) Cypress.io
3 1 (20.00%) Appium
3 1 (20.00%) GitLab
3 1 (20.00%) Jenkins
3 1 (20.00%) JIRA
3 1 (20.00%) Snyk
3 1 (20.00%) SonarQube
3 1 (20.00%) TestRail
General
1 5 (100.00%) Social Skills
2 2 (40.00%) Analytical Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (40.00%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 1 (20.00%) Distributed Systems
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (80.00%) CI/CD
1 4 (80.00%) Test Automation
2 3 (60.00%) Agile
2 3 (60.00%) Containerisation
2 3 (60.00%) Problem-Solving
3 2 (40.00%) DevOps
3 2 (40.00%) Infrastructure as Code
3 2 (40.00%) Platform Engineering
3 2 (40.00%) Software Testing
4 1 (20.00%) BDD
4 1 (20.00%) Collaborative Working
4 1 (20.00%) Configuration Management
4 1 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
4 1 (20.00%) Risk Analytics
4 1 (20.00%) Root Cause Analysis
4 1 (20.00%) Security Testing
4 1 (20.00%) Software Engineering
4 1 (20.00%) Static Code Analysis
4 1 (20.00%) TDD
4 1 (20.00%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 3 (60.00%) Python
2 2 (40.00%) Bash
3 1 (20.00%) Groovy
3 1 (20.00%) JavaScript
3 1 (20.00%) PowerShell
3 1 (20.00%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 3 (60.00%) SC Cleared
1 3 (60.00%) Security Cleared
2 2 (40.00%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (100.00%) QA
2 1 (20.00%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 1 (20.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (40.00%) Kubernetes
1 2 (40.00%) Terraform
2 1 (20.00%) Ansible
2 1 (20.00%) Grafana
2 1 (20.00%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 1 (20.00%) ESRI
1 1 (20.00%) Rapid7