QA Engineer Contracts

Quality Assurance Engineer
UK

The median Quality Assurance Engineer daily rate in the UK is £450 according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months to 3 May 2024.

The first table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics including a comparison to same period in the previous 2 years.

 6 months to
3 May 2024		 Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 508 502 644
Rank change year-on-year -6 +142 -71
Contract jobs requiring a QA Engineer 82 203 217
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.19% 0.34% 0.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.20% 0.36% 0.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 60 183 172
10th Percentile £296 £325 £375
25th Percentile £363 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £575 £500
Median % change year-on-year -21.74% +15.00% +21.21%
75th Percentile £500 £666 £575
90th Percentile £530 £786 £606
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £440 £475
% change year-on-year +9.66% -7.37% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 3 1
10th Percentile £24.98 £44.00 -
25th Percentile £31.75 £44.38 -
Median hourly rate £44.61 £50.00 £45.20
Median % change year-on-year -10.79% +10.62% +0.44%
75th Percentile £59.02 £55.00 -
90th Percentile £66.73 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.46 - £45.20
% change year-on-year - - +0.44%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

The following table is for comparison with the above and includes summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 40,241 56,070 84,738
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.76% 94.64% 95.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,194 39,189 59,507
10th Percentile £277 £313 £313
25th Percentile £409 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% +2.86% +10.53%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.00% +5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,676 1,567 2,091
10th Percentile £12.86 £14.28 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.30 £19.16 £15.52
Median hourly rate £36.50 £45.00 £23.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.89% +91.49% +4.44%
75th Percentile £61.26 £65.75 £48.76
90th Percentile £72.50 £76.00 £63.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.55 £42.37 £19.52
% change year-on-year -6.64% +117.03% +2.74%

QA Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for QA Engineer in the UK

QA Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing QA Engineer.

Daily rate trend for QA Engineer in the UK

QA Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA Engineer over the 6 months to 3 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for QA Engineer in the UK

QA Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing QA Engineer.

Hourly rate trend for QA Engineer in the UK

QA Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing QA Engineer over the 6 months to 3 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for QA Engineer in the UK

QA Engineer
Top 15 Contract Locations

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 over the 6 months to 3 May 2024. 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
England +26 74 £439 -26.88% 63
London +16 54 £439 -30.08% 11
UK excluding London +28 22 £483 +9.66% 59
Work from Home +85 14 £444 -7.55% 31
North of England +19 10 £500 -9.09% 14
North West +23 8 £500 +150.00% 7
South West +23 5 £61 - 11
South East +16 2 £275 - 12
Wales - 2 £499 - 4
Scotland +28 1 - - 4
West Midlands +25 1 £375 -23.08% 5
Midlands +18 1 £375 +38.89% 6
Yorkshire +17 1 £425 -22.73% 5
East of England +14 1 £475 -5.00% 5
North East +6 1 - - 2

QA Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 3 May 2024, 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 featuring QA Engineer in the job title.

1 82 (100.00%) QA
2 55 (67.07%) Test Automation
3 33 (40.24%) Agile
4 23 (28.05%) CI/CD
5 19 (23.17%) Jenkins
5 19 (23.17%) Python
6 18 (21.95%) JIRA
7 17 (20.73%) Cucumber
8 16 (19.51%) Selenium
9 15 (18.29%) Data Protection Act
9 15 (18.29%) Data Protection
9 15 (18.29%) Git
9 15 (18.29%) Java
9 15 (18.29%) Regression Testing
10 14 (17.07%) Scrum
10 14 (17.07%) Test Scripting
10 14 (17.07%) Software Testing
10 14 (17.07%) API Testing
10 14 (17.07%) Scenario Testing
10 14 (17.07%) Postman
11 13 (15.85%) Social Skills
11 13 (15.85%) BDD
12 12 (14.63%) JavaScript
13 11 (13.41%) AWS
13 11 (13.41%) Performance Testing
14 10 (12.20%) SQL
14 10 (12.20%) Appium
14 10 (12.20%) Problem-Solving
15 9 (10.98%) QA Automation
15 9 (10.98%) Functional Testing

QA Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 7 (8.54%) Confluence
2 1 (1.22%) CMS
2 1 (1.22%) SharePoint
2 1 (1.22%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 2 (2.44%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 4 (4.88%) Endur
2 1 (1.22%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 11 (13.41%) AWS
2 8 (9.76%) GitHub
3 6 (7.32%) Azure
3 6 (7.32%) BrowserStack
4 5 (6.10%) Serverless
5 4 (4.88%) AWS CloudFormation
5 4 (4.88%) AWS Lambda
5 4 (4.88%) GitHub Actions
6 3 (3.66%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (3.66%) SaaS
6 3 (3.66%) Sauce Labs
7 2 (2.44%) GCP
8 1 (1.22%) Dynamics 365
8 1 (1.22%) Power Platform
8 1 (1.22%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.88%) 5G
1 4 (4.88%) Wi-Fi
2 3 (3.66%) Internet
3 1 (1.22%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.44%) SQL Server
2 1 (1.22%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 19 (23.17%) Jenkins
2 18 (21.95%) JIRA
3 17 (20.73%) Cucumber
4 16 (19.51%) Selenium
5 15 (18.29%) Git
6 14 (17.07%) Postman
7 10 (12.20%) Appium
8 9 (10.98%) Cypress.io
9 7 (8.54%) SpecFlow
10 5 (6.10%) Bitbucket
10 5 (6.10%) Team Foundation Server
11 4 (4.88%) JMeter
11 4 (4.88%) XCTest
12 3 (3.66%) Gatling
12 3 (3.66%) GitLab
12 3 (3.66%) REST Assured
12 3 (3.66%) TeamCity
12 3 (3.66%) TestRail
12 3 (3.66%) Visual Studio
13 2 (2.44%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 13 (15.85%) Social Skills
2 7 (8.54%) Analytical Skills
3 6 (7.32%) Finance
4 4 (4.88%) Back Office
4 4 (4.88%) Banking
4 4 (4.88%) Presentation Skills
5 1 (1.22%) Aerospace
5 1 (1.22%) Automotive
5 1 (1.22%) Financial Institution
5 1 (1.22%) Games
5 1 (1.22%) Investment Banking
5 1 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
5 1 (1.22%) Telecoms
5 1 (1.22%) Wholesale Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (9.76%) Playwright
2 7 (8.54%) JSON
3 6 (7.32%) Gherkin
3 6 (7.32%) React Native
3 6 (7.32%) XML
4 5 (6.10%) Jest
4 5 (6.10%) Node.js
5 4 (4.88%) REST
6 3 (3.66%) .NET
6 3 (3.66%) WebdriverIO
7 2 (2.44%) AngularJS
7 2 (2.44%) Behat
7 2 (2.44%) CSS
7 2 (2.44%) HTML
7 2 (2.44%) Middleware
7 2 (2.44%) pytest
7 2 (2.44%) SwiftUI
8 1 (1.22%) .NET Framework
8 1 (1.22%) React
8 1 (1.22%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 15 (18.29%) Data Protection Act
2 7 (8.54%) Product Ownership
3 4 (4.88%) Mobile App
4 2 (2.44%) Derivative
5 1 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
5 1 (1.22%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 1 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (1.22%) Private Cloud
5 1 (1.22%) Public Cloud
5 1 (1.22%) Replication
5 1 (1.22%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 8 (9.76%) Apple iOS
2 6 (7.32%) Android
3 2 (2.44%) Mac OS
3 2 (2.44%) Unix
4 1 (1.22%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (67.07%) Test Automation
2 33 (40.24%) Agile
3 23 (28.05%) CI/CD
4 15 (18.29%) Data Protection
4 15 (18.29%) Regression Testing
5 14 (17.07%) API Testing
5 14 (17.07%) Scenario Testing
5 14 (17.07%) Scrum
5 14 (17.07%) Software Testing
5 14 (17.07%) Test Scripting
6 13 (15.85%) BDD
7 11 (13.41%) Performance Testing
8 10 (12.20%) Problem-Solving
9 9 (10.98%) Functional Testing
9 9 (10.98%) Non-Functional Testing
9 9 (10.98%) QA Automation
10 8 (9.76%) Test Strategy
11 7 (8.54%) DevOps
11 7 (8.54%) Integration Testing
11 7 (8.54%) Manual Testing
Programming Languages
1 19 (23.17%) Python
2 15 (18.29%) Java
3 12 (14.63%) JavaScript
4 10 (12.20%) SQL
5 8 (9.76%) TypeScript
6 7 (8.54%) Swift
7 6 (7.32%) C#
8 5 (6.10%) C++
9 4 (4.88%) Bash
10 3 (3.66%) C
10 3 (3.66%) Kotlin
11 2 (2.44%) Perl
11 2 (2.44%) PHP
11 2 (2.44%) PowerShell
11 2 (2.44%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 6 (7.32%) SC Cleared
1 6 (7.32%) Security Cleared
2 5 (6.10%) Degree
3 3 (3.66%) Computer Science Degree
3 3 (3.66%) ISTQB
4 2 (2.44%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 82 (100.00%) QA
2 6 (7.32%) Software Quality Assurance
3 3 (3.66%) Accessibility
3 3 (3.66%) ISO 9001
Systems Management
1 2 (2.44%) Opsgenie
2 1 (1.22%) HP ALM
2 1 (1.22%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 3 (3.66%) Microsoft
1 3 (3.66%) Oracle
1 3 (3.66%) Perfecto Mobile
2 2 (2.44%) CA Agile Central
2 2 (2.44%) PagerDuty
3 1 (1.22%) Apple
3 1 (1.22%) Dynatrace
3 1 (1.22%) OpenLink
3 1 (1.22%) Splunk
81 QA Engineer jobs Nationwide