QA Engineer Contracts in the UK excluding London

Quality Assurance Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Quality Assurance Engineer daily rate in the UK excluding London is £431, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 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
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 305 377 409
Rank change year-on-year +72 +32 +51
Contract jobs requiring a QA Engineer 31 22 53
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.24% 0.11% 0.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.26% 0.11% 0.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 20 18 43
10th Percentile £395 £57 £231
25th Percentile £400 £363 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £431 £483 £440
Median % change year-on-year -10.62% +9.66% -4.86%
75th Percentile £491 £500 £550
90th Percentile £541 £504 £586
UK median daily rate £444 £440 £575
% change year-on-year +0.85% -23.48% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 0
Median hourly rate - £20.46 -
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £44.61 £50.00
% change year-on-year -21.53% -10.79% +10.62%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. 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 UK excluding London with a recognized job title 11,767 19,240 22,667
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.17% 92.63% 94.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,552 11,748 15,893
10th Percentile £213 £213 £225
25th Percentile £363 £363 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £598 £595
90th Percentile £650 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 829 2,243 1,165
10th Percentile £14.00 £12.50 £13.45
25th Percentile £17.61 £15.75 £18.09
Median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%
75th Percentile £64.50 £61.30 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
% change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%

QA Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings that featured QA Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for QA Engineer in the UK excluding London

QA Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing QA Engineer in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for QA Engineer in the UK excluding London

QA Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for QA Engineer in the UK excluding London

QA Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing QA Engineer in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for QA Engineer in the UK excluding London

QA Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 1 May 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
North of England +18 9 £406 -18.75% 41
Midlands +27 6 £453 +20.67% 26
South East +49 5 - - 39
North West +14 5 £400 -20.00% 20
South West +45 4 £475 +673.99% 24
East of England +33 4 £450 -5.26% 34
Scotland +16 4 £400 - 11
Yorkshire +11 4 £550 +29.41% 14
East Midlands - 4 £469 - 9
West Midlands +15 2 £425 +13.33% 16
QA Engineer
UK

QA Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 1 May 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 UK excluding London region featuring QA Engineer in the job title.

1 31 (100.00%) QA
2 26 (83.87%) Test Automation
3 17 (54.84%) Agile
4 15 (48.39%) Social Skills
5 14 (45.16%) CI/CD
5 14 (45.16%) Test Strategy
6 12 (38.71%) Selenium
6 12 (38.71%) Java
6 12 (38.71%) SQL
7 11 (35.48%) Azure
8 10 (32.26%) JavaScript
8 10 (32.26%) JIRA
8 10 (32.26%) Postman
9 9 (29.03%) End-to-End Testing
9 9 (29.03%) Problem-Solving
9 9 (29.03%) Finance
9 9 (29.03%) Cypress.io
10 8 (25.81%) Manual Testing
10 8 (25.81%) Root Cause Analysis
10 8 (25.81%) User Stories
10 8 (25.81%) API Testing
11 7 (22.58%) DevOps
11 7 (22.58%) AWS
11 7 (22.58%) Validation
11 7 (22.58%) Scrum
11 7 (22.58%) Performance Testing
11 7 (22.58%) C#
12 6 (19.35%) .NET
12 6 (19.35%) SaaS
12 6 (19.35%) Cucumber

QA Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 5 (16.13%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (3.23%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (3.23%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (3.23%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 11 (35.48%) Azure
2 7 (22.58%) AWS
3 6 (19.35%) SaaS
4 5 (16.13%) Azure DevOps
5 3 (9.68%) GCP
5 3 (9.68%) IaaS
5 3 (9.68%) PaaS
5 3 (9.68%) Power Platform
5 3 (9.68%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 2 (6.45%) Wireless
2 1 (3.23%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (12.90%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (6.45%) MySQL
2 2 (6.45%) NoSQL
3 1 (3.23%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 12 (38.71%) Selenium
2 10 (32.26%) JIRA
2 10 (32.26%) Postman
3 9 (29.03%) Cypress.io
4 6 (19.35%) Cucumber
5 5 (16.13%) Jenkins
5 5 (16.13%) WebDriver
6 4 (12.90%) Git
6 4 (12.90%) TestRail
7 3 (9.68%) JMeter
7 3 (9.68%) Subversion
7 3 (9.68%) TeamCity
8 2 (6.45%) REST Assured
9 1 (3.23%) GitLab
9 1 (3.23%) JBehave
9 1 (3.23%) JUnit
9 1 (3.23%) Mocha
9 1 (3.23%) MSTest
9 1 (3.23%) NUnit
9 1 (3.23%) SoapUI
General
1 15 (48.39%) Social Skills
2 9 (29.03%) Finance
3 5 (16.13%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (12.90%) Public Sector
5 2 (6.45%) Telecoms
6 1 (3.23%) Electronics
6 1 (3.23%) Games
6 1 (3.23%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (19.35%) .NET
2 4 (12.90%) Playwright
3 2 (6.45%) Node.js
3 2 (6.45%) SOAP
4 1 (3.23%) Gherkin
4 1 (3.23%) JSON
4 1 (3.23%) REST
4 1 (3.23%) Web Services
4 1 (3.23%) WebdriverIO
4 1 (3.23%) WebSockets
4 1 (3.23%) XML
4 1 (3.23%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 6 (19.35%) Product Ownership
2 3 (9.68%) Client/Server
2 3 (9.68%) Mobile App
3 1 (3.23%) Data Centre
3 1 (3.23%) Data Structures
3 1 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
3 1 (3.23%) Educational Technology
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (83.87%) Test Automation
2 17 (54.84%) Agile
3 14 (45.16%) CI/CD
3 14 (45.16%) Test Strategy
4 9 (29.03%) End-to-End Testing
4 9 (29.03%) Problem-Solving
5 8 (25.81%) API Testing
5 8 (25.81%) Manual Testing
5 8 (25.81%) Root Cause Analysis
5 8 (25.81%) User Stories
6 7 (22.58%) DevOps
6 7 (22.58%) Performance Testing
6 7 (22.58%) Scrum
6 7 (22.58%) Validation
7 6 (19.35%) SDLC
8 5 (16.13%) BDD
9 4 (12.90%) Kanban
9 4 (12.90%) Microservices
9 4 (12.90%) TDD
9 4 (12.90%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 12 (38.71%) Java
1 12 (38.71%) SQL
2 10 (32.26%) JavaScript
3 7 (22.58%) C#
4 5 (16.13%) Python
5 4 (12.90%) TypeScript
6 3 (9.68%) C++
6 3 (9.68%) Shell Script
6 3 (9.68%) VBA
6 3 (9.68%) VBScript
7 2 (6.45%) PowerShell
8 1 (3.23%) Bash
8 1 (3.23%) Scala
Qualifications
1 3 (9.68%) ISEB
1 3 (9.68%) ISTQB
1 3 (9.68%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
2 2 (6.45%) Degree
3 1 (3.23%) Computer Science Degree
3 1 (3.23%) SC Cleared
3 1 (3.23%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (100.00%) QA
2 3 (9.68%) Software Quality Assurance
3 2 (6.45%) Data Quality
4 1 (3.23%) Accessibility
4 1 (3.23%) ISO 9001
4 1 (3.23%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 1 (3.23%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (3.23%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 2 (6.45%) Databricks
1 2 (6.45%) Informatica
1 2 (6.45%) Oracle
1 2 (6.45%) SAP
1 2 (6.45%) Talend
2 1 (3.23%) ESRI
2 1 (3.23%) Rapid7
2 1 (3.23%) Salesforce
2 1 (3.23%) Splunk