QA Tester Contracts in the UK excluding London

Quality Assurance Tester
UK > UK excluding London

The median Quality Assurance Tester daily rate in the UK excluding London is £380, 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 312 390 417
Rank change year-on-year +78 +27 +61
Contract jobs requiring a QA Tester 24 9 45
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.19% 0.043% 0.19%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.20% 0.047% 0.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 21 7 34
10th Percentile £263 £262 £300
25th Percentile £313 £334 £346
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £380 £380 £425
Median % change year-on-year - -10.59% +21.43%
75th Percentile £438 £477 £443
90th Percentile £505 £559 £534
UK median daily rate £390 £459 £563
% change year-on-year -14.99% -18.44% +40.63%

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 Tester
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Job vacancy trend for QA Tester in the UK excluding London

QA Tester
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Daily rate trend for QA Tester in the UK excluding London

QA Tester
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

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

Daily rate histogram for QA Tester in the UK excluding London

QA Tester
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Hourly rate trend for QA Tester in the UK excluding London

QA Tester
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 Tester 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 +31 14 £371 +2.40% 2
Yorkshire +16 9 £281 -13.46% 1
South East - 5 £400 - 5
North East - 4 £390 -
Midlands +23 3 £489 +71.58% 1
West Midlands +16 3 £489 +157.37%
South West +44 1 £325 -38.97%
North West +17 1 £380 -5.00% 1
Northern Ireland -9 1 £325 -
QA Tester
UK

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

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, QA Tester 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 Tester in the job title.

1 24 (100.00%) QA
2 19 (79.17%) Test Automation
3 17 (70.83%) Agile
4 13 (54.17%) Social Skills
5 10 (41.67%) Manual Testing
6 9 (37.50%) JIRA
7 8 (33.33%) Selenium
7 8 (33.33%) Test Scripting
7 8 (33.33%) API Testing
8 7 (29.17%) DevOps
8 7 (29.17%) Postman
8 7 (29.17%) Security Cleared
8 7 (29.17%) Test Strategy
8 7 (29.17%) Non-Functional Testing
9 6 (25.00%) Cypress.io
9 6 (25.00%) Azure
9 6 (25.00%) Security Testing
9 6 (25.00%) Azure DevOps
9 6 (25.00%) Accessibility
10 5 (20.83%) Problem-Solving
10 5 (20.83%) Public Sector
10 5 (20.83%) SC Cleared
10 5 (20.83%) Cucumber
10 5 (20.83%) Software Testing
10 5 (20.83%) Finance
10 5 (20.83%) Project Management
10 5 (20.83%) Java
11 4 (16.67%) Scrum
11 4 (16.67%) SoapUI
11 4 (16.67%) User Stories

QA Tester 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 1 (4.17%) Confluence
1 1 (4.17%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (8.33%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (4.17%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 6 (25.00%) Azure
1 6 (25.00%) Azure DevOps
2 4 (16.67%) AWS
3 1 (4.17%) Bloomreach
3 1 (4.17%) GitHub
3 1 (4.17%) SaaS
Development Applications
1 9 (37.50%) JIRA
2 8 (33.33%) Selenium
3 7 (29.17%) Postman
4 6 (25.00%) Cypress.io
5 5 (20.83%) Cucumber
6 4 (16.67%) SoapUI
7 2 (8.33%) JUnit
8 1 (4.17%) Git
8 1 (4.17%) IntelliJ
8 1 (4.17%) JMeter
8 1 (4.17%) Maven
8 1 (4.17%) REST Assured
8 1 (4.17%) TestRail
8 1 (4.17%) WebDriver
General
1 13 (54.17%) Social Skills
2 5 (20.83%) Finance
2 5 (20.83%) Public Sector
3 3 (12.50%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (8.33%) Documentation Skills
4 2 (8.33%) Organisational Skills
5 1 (4.17%) Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (8.33%) WireMock
2 1 (4.17%) .NET
2 1 (4.17%) Gherkin
2 1 (4.17%) Node.js
2 1 (4.17%) React
2 1 (4.17%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 1 (4.17%) Equities
1 1 (4.17%) Mobile App
1 1 (4.17%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 1 (4.17%) Android
1 1 (4.17%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (79.17%) Test Automation
2 17 (70.83%) Agile
3 10 (41.67%) Manual Testing
4 8 (33.33%) API Testing
4 8 (33.33%) Test Scripting
5 7 (29.17%) DevOps
5 7 (29.17%) Non-Functional Testing
5 7 (29.17%) Test Strategy
6 6 (25.00%) Security Testing
7 5 (20.83%) Problem-Solving
7 5 (20.83%) Project Management
7 5 (20.83%) Software Testing
8 4 (16.67%) Agile Project Management
8 4 (16.67%) Collaborative Working
8 4 (16.67%) OWASP
8 4 (16.67%) Scrum
8 4 (16.67%) User Stories
9 3 (12.50%) BDD
9 3 (12.50%) Performance Testing
9 3 (12.50%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 5 (20.83%) Java
2 2 (8.33%) JavaScript
2 2 (8.33%) SQL
3 1 (4.17%) C#
Qualifications
1 7 (29.17%) Security Cleared
2 5 (20.83%) SC Cleared
3 2 (8.33%) DV Cleared
4 1 (4.17%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (4.17%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (100.00%) QA
2 6 (25.00%) Accessibility
System Software
1 2 (8.33%) Docker
Vendors
1 2 (8.33%) Microsoft
2 1 (4.17%) Salesforce