QA Contracts in the South West

Quality Assurance (QA)
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the South West 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 5 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 65 59 95
Rank change year-on-year -6 +36 +1
Contract jobs citing QA 56 108 64
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South West 3.06% 3.30% 1.82%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 17.50% 20.49% 15.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 33 68 52
10th Percentile £308 £317 £289
25th Percentile £356 £450 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% +7.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £556 £600 £654
90th Percentile £625 £769 £749
England median daily rate £473 £500 £517
% change year-on-year -5.50% -3.29% -1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 23 3
10th Percentile £13.46 - £24.40
25th Percentile £14.47 £12.24 £34.00
Median hourly rate £15.96 £12.62 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.47% -74.76% -7.41%
75th Percentile £38.22 £71.00 -
90th Percentile £69.18 £74.44 -
England median hourly rate £15.96 £14.00 £37.77
% change year-on-year +14.00% -62.93% +16.22%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
South 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 South West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 320 527 421
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 17.49% 16.12% 12.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 190 308 283
10th Percentile £235 £263 £301
25th Percentile £379 £400 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £518 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.45% -5.91% +10.00%
75th Percentile £638 £600 £658
90th Percentile £689 £690 £750
England median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 85 51
10th Percentile £15.48 £12.24 £18.09
25th Percentile £28.66 £28.00 £51.31
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +18.18%
75th Percentile £68.75 £70.00 £83.31
90th Percentile £75.60 - £83.40
England median hourly rate £31.76 £24.18 £40.32
% change year-on-year +31.35% -40.03% +55.08%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

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

Job vacancy trend for QA in the South West

QA
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the South West

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

Daily rate trend for QA in the South West

QA
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA in the South West over the 6 months to 5 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for QA in the South West

QA
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

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

Hourly rate trend for QA in the South West

QA
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing QA in the South West over the 6 months to 5 July 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for QA in the South West

QA
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 within the South West region over the 6 months to 5 July 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 +31 17 £538 -0.92% 19
Bristol +9 16 £375 -37.50% 125
Devon +7 6 £500 +0.76% 42
Dorset 0 6 - - 29
Gloucestershire +23 5 £478 +27.33% 88
Somerset -10 5 £450 +13.21% 61
QA
England

QA
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:

Application Platforms
1 2 (3.57%) Oracle Workflow
1 2 (3.57%) SharePoint
2 1 (1.79%) Apache
Business Applications
1 2 (3.57%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 13 (23.21%) Azure
2 5 (8.93%) Power Automate
3 4 (7.14%) AWS
3 4 (7.14%) Azure DevOps
4 3 (5.36%) GCP
4 3 (5.36%) GitHub
5 2 (3.57%) AWS CloudFormation
5 2 (3.57%) OpenShift
5 2 (3.57%) Power Platform
5 2 (3.57%) PowerApps
5 2 (3.57%) SaaS
5 2 (3.57%) SuccessFactors
6 1 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (1.79%) Azure Pipelines
6 1 (1.79%) BrowserStack
6 1 (1.79%) Dynamics 365
6 1 (1.79%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (1.79%) Pulumi
6 1 (1.79%) Sauce Labs
6 1 (1.79%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 3 (5.36%) HTTP
2 2 (3.57%) Wireless
3 1 (1.79%) Firewall
3 1 (1.79%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (5.36%) Relational Database
2 2 (3.57%) Data Warehouse
2 2 (3.57%) Geospatial Data
2 2 (3.57%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 5 (8.93%) JIRA
1 5 (8.93%) Selenium
2 3 (5.36%) Cypress.io
2 3 (5.36%) Git
3 2 (3.57%) AdminStudio
3 2 (3.57%) GitLab
3 2 (3.57%) InstallShield
3 2 (3.57%) Visual Studio
3 2 (3.57%) WiX
4 1 (1.79%) Appium
4 1 (1.79%) Artifactory
4 1 (1.79%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.79%) MSI
4 1 (1.79%) Snyk
4 1 (1.79%) SonarQube
4 1 (1.79%) TestRail
General
1 21 (37.50%) Social Skills
2 11 (19.64%) Finance
3 10 (17.86%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (12.50%) Public Sector
5 6 (10.71%) Legal
6 5 (8.93%) Law
6 5 (8.93%) Retail
7 3 (5.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (5.36%) Local Government
8 2 (3.57%) Electronics
8 2 (3.57%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (3.57%) Manufacturing
8 2 (3.57%) Military
8 2 (3.57%) Multimedia
9 1 (1.79%) Aerospace
9 1 (1.79%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (1.79%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (1.79%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 9 (16.07%) Developer
2 8 (14.29%) QA Officer
3 7 (12.50%) QA Engineer
4 4 (7.14%) Senior
5 3 (5.36%) Applications Packager
5 3 (5.36%) Manual Tester
5 3 (5.36%) Tester
6 2 (3.57%) Analyst
6 2 (3.57%) Applications Developer
6 2 (3.57%) Desktop Engineer
6 2 (3.57%) Desktop Migration Engineer
6 2 (3.57%) DevOps Engineer
6 2 (3.57%) Migration Engineer
6 2 (3.57%) Power Apps Developer
6 2 (3.57%) SAP Trainer
6 2 (3.57%) Test Analyst
6 2 (3.57%) Trainer
6 2 (3.57%) Windows Engineer
7 1 (1.79%) Automation Engineer
7 1 (1.79%) Senior ServiceNow Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (10.71%) AngularJS
2 5 (8.93%) CSS
2 5 (8.93%) HTML
3 3 (5.36%) JMS
3 3 (5.36%) jQuery
3 3 (5.36%) React
3 3 (5.36%) RESTful
3 3 (5.36%) SOAP
3 3 (5.36%) XML
3 3 (5.36%) XSD
4 2 (3.57%) Playwright
4 2 (3.57%) REST
4 2 (3.57%) Software Packaging
5 1 (1.79%) Apache NiFi
5 1 (1.79%) Django
5 1 (1.79%) Metaflow
5 1 (1.79%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 5 (8.93%) Renewable Energy
2 3 (5.36%) Algorithms
3 2 (3.57%) e-Learning
4 1 (1.79%) Data Centre
4 1 (1.79%) Distributed Systems
4 1 (1.79%) EPoS
4 1 (1.79%) Mobile App
4 1 (1.79%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 6 (10.71%) Windows
2 1 (1.79%) Android
2 1 (1.79%) Apple iOS
2 1 (1.79%) Linux
2 1 (1.79%) Windows 10
2 1 (1.79%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (33.93%) Agile
2 12 (21.43%) Problem-Solving
2 12 (21.43%) Test Automation
3 10 (17.86%) Software Engineering
4 9 (16.07%) CI/CD
4 9 (16.07%) Continuous Improvement
4 9 (16.07%) DevOps
5 8 (14.29%) Software Testing
5 8 (14.29%) User Experience
6 7 (12.50%) Project Delivery
6 7 (12.50%) Scrum
6 7 (12.50%) Test Scripting
6 7 (12.50%) Workflow
7 5 (8.93%) Impact Assessments
7 5 (8.93%) Visualisation
7 5 (8.93%) Web Development
8 4 (7.14%) Containerisation
8 4 (7.14%) Manual Testing
8 4 (7.14%) User Acceptance Testing
8 4 (7.14%) UX Design
Programming Languages
1 7 (12.50%) Python
2 5 (8.93%) JavaScript
2 5 (8.93%) SQL
3 3 (5.36%) PowerShell
4 2 (3.57%) Bash
4 2 (3.57%) Perl
4 2 (3.57%) Shell Script
5 1 (1.79%) Groovy
5 1 (1.79%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 24 (42.86%) Security Cleared
2 17 (30.36%) SC Cleared
3 9 (16.07%) DV Cleared
4 6 (10.71%) ISTQB
5 4 (7.14%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 3 (5.36%) Degree
7 2 (3.57%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (1.79%) Azure Certification
8 1 (1.79%) HNC
8 1 (1.79%) ISEB
8 1 (1.79%) Master's Degree
8 1 (1.79%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (5.36%) ISO 9001
2 2 (3.57%) Data Quality
3 1 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 20000
3 1 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 1 (1.79%) Docker
1 1 (1.79%) Microsoft App-V
1 1 (1.79%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 4 (7.14%) Kubernetes
2 3 (5.36%) Ansible
2 3 (5.36%) SCCM
2 3 (5.36%) Terraform
3 1 (1.79%) Grafana
3 1 (1.79%) Microsoft Intune
3 1 (1.79%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 7 (12.50%) Microsoft
2 6 (10.71%) ServiceNow
3 3 (5.36%) Blue Prism
4 2 (3.57%) Ariba
4 2 (3.57%) IBM
4 2 (3.57%) Oracle
4 2 (3.57%) Red Hat
4 2 (3.57%) SAP
5 1 (1.79%) ESRI
5 1 (1.79%) Rapid7
5 1 (1.79%) VMware