QA Contract Job Trends

Quality Assurance (QA)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring QA skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 63 63 68
Rank change year-on-year 0 +5 +5
Contract jobs citing QA 1,271 1,290 1,541
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.86% 3.35% 3.13%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 22.55% 24.98% 22.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 881 760 1,110
10th Percentile £285 £300 £349
25th Percentile £375 £397 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £478 £523
Median % change year-on-year -0.52% -8.61% -0.48%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £650
90th Percentile £663 £700 £764
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +1.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 80 41
10th Percentile £12.28 £11.86 £10.92
25th Percentile £13.50 £12.24 £21.25
Median hourly rate £19.37 £14.98 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.27% -68.46% +82.69%
75th Percentile £40.18 £28.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £71.68 £72.09 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.12 £14.98 £50.00
% change year-on-year +0.93% -70.04% +25.00%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 5,637 5,165 6,978
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.11% 13.41% 14.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,615 3,071 4,726
10th Percentile £300 £280 £313
25th Percentile £400 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -
75th Percentile £609 £628 £650
90th Percentile £713 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 268 261 251
10th Percentile £13.60 £12.36 £14.03
25th Percentile £16.92 £15.00 £18.60
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £35.63
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -22.82% +54.91%
75th Percentile £60.00 £58.75 £64.13
90th Percentile £80.83 £70.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.86 £26.59 £36.75
% change year-on-year +4.78% -27.65% +75.00%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing QA as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for QA in the UK

QA
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing QA.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing QA

QA
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA over the 6 months to 18 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for QA in the UK

QA
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing QA.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing QA

QA
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing QA over the 6 months to 18 September 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for QA in the UK

QA
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing QA within the UK over the 6 months to 18 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
England +3 1,058 £475 -2.56% 1,180
London +4 551 £500 +2.25% 456
UK excluding London -5 538 £450 -5.26% 939
Work from Home +12 388 £475 - 539
North of England +1 140 £430 -4.44% 193
South East +23 113 £450 +2.86% 311
Midlands -5 98 £435 -4.40% 169
North West -6 67 £422 +2.30% 122
West Midlands -16 66 £484 -5.66% 105
South West +4 63 £475 -6.28% 102
Scotland -3 58 £450 +3.45% 60
East of England +24 57 £500 +33.33% 71
Yorkshire -16 56 £460 -16.36% 51
East Midlands +19 32 £375 -11.76% 59
North East +7 18 £460 +13.58% 26
Northern Ireland - 14 £425 - 27
Wales -21 8 £375 -28.23% 25

QA
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 72 (5.66%) Confluence
2 32 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 23 (1.81%) Apache
4 17 (1.34%) IIS
5 16 (1.26%) WebSphere
6 14 (1.10%) CMS
7 11 (0.87%) Apache Spark
8 10 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
8 10 (0.79%) Oracle Workflow
9 9 (0.71%) SugarCRM
10 6 (0.47%) Anypoint
10 6 (0.47%) Mule
10 6 (0.47%) WebLogic
11 5 (0.39%) CICS
11 5 (0.39%) Drupal
12 4 (0.31%) Jupyter
12 4 (0.31%) Moodle
13 3 (0.24%) MQSeries
13 3 (0.24%) Sitecore CMS
13 3 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 67 (5.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 26 (2.05%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.81%) MS Visio
4 16 (1.26%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 6 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
6 6 (0.47%) Trello
7 5 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.31%) Simulink
8 4 (0.31%) Stateflow
9 3 (0.24%) Revit
9 3 (0.24%) Sketch
10 2 (0.16%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.16%) Autodesk Inventor
10 2 (0.16%) MicroStation
10 2 (0.16%) Navisworks
11 1 (0.079%) Adobe Illustrator
11 1 (0.079%) EViews
11 1 (0.079%) MadCap Flare
11 1 (0.079%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 27 (2.12%) SAP S/4HANA
2 13 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.71%) Maximo
3 9 (0.71%) Oracle BPM
4 7 (0.55%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.55%) Temenos T24
5 5 (0.39%) ION Anvil
6 4 (0.31%) Unit4 Business World
7 3 (0.24%) Endur
7 3 (0.24%) NEC Housing
7 3 (0.24%) Oracle Cash Management
7 3 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.24%) Oracle EBS R12
7 3 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
7 3 (0.24%) SAP ERP
7 3 (0.24%) SAP MDG
7 3 (0.24%) SAP QM
8 2 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
8 2 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
8 2 (0.16%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 257 (20.22%) AWS
2 255 (20.06%) Azure
3 87 (6.85%) GCP
4 84 (6.61%) GitHub
5 71 (5.59%) Azure DevOps
6 64 (5.04%) Power Platform
7 50 (3.93%) GitHub Actions
8 46 (3.62%) Serverless
9 35 (2.75%) AWS Lambda
10 28 (2.20%) Amazon S3
11 27 (2.12%) SaaS
12 25 (1.97%) Dynamics 365
13 20 (1.57%) Amazon EC2
14 19 (1.49%) Power Automate
15 17 (1.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 17 (1.34%) Amazon SQS
16 16 (1.26%) Amazon ECS
16 16 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
17 13 (1.02%) Microsoft 365
18 12 (0.94%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.34%) HTTP
1 17 (1.34%) Internet
2 16 (1.26%) Firewall
3 7 (0.55%) WAN
4 6 (0.47%) LAN
5 5 (0.39%) OpenLDAP
5 5 (0.39%) TCP/IP
6 4 (0.31%) Network Security
6 4 (0.31%) SSL
7 3 (0.24%) Broadband
7 3 (0.24%) HTTPS
7 3 (0.24%) Structured Cabling
7 3 (0.24%) Wireless
8 2 (0.16%) 5G
8 2 (0.16%) DNS
8 2 (0.16%) MPLS
8 2 (0.16%) Remote Desktop
8 2 (0.16%) VPN
8 2 (0.16%) Wi-Fi
9 1 (0.079%) DSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 70 (5.51%) SQL Server
2 60 (4.72%) PostgreSQL
3 50 (3.93%) Power BI
4 43 (3.38%) Relational Database
5 39 (3.07%) NoSQL
6 38 (2.99%) MySQL
7 36 (2.83%) MongoDB
8 29 (2.28%) Data Warehouse
9 20 (1.57%) BigQuery
10 19 (1.49%) Metadata
10 19 (1.49%) Oracle Database
11 18 (1.42%) Amazon RDS
12 17 (1.34%) DB2
13 15 (1.18%) Tableau
14 11 (0.87%) DynamoDB
14 11 (0.87%) Redis
15 10 (0.79%) Big Data
16 8 (0.63%) Oracle Reports
17 7 (0.55%) Hadoop
17 7 (0.55%) Looker
Development Applications
1 219 (17.23%) JIRA
2 133 (10.46%) Git
3 102 (8.03%) Selenium
4 101 (7.95%) Jenkins
5 68 (5.35%) GitLab
6 62 (4.88%) Cucumber
7 60 (4.72%) Postman
8 51 (4.01%) Cypress.io
9 39 (3.07%) JUnit
10 32 (2.52%) REST Assured
11 27 (2.12%) JMeter
12 21 (1.65%) Appium
13 18 (1.42%) Maven
14 17 (1.34%) WebDriver
15 16 (1.26%) SonarQube
16 14 (1.10%) TestNG
17 13 (1.02%) SpecFlow
17 13 (1.02%) TestRail
18 12 (0.94%) Sonatype Nexus
19 11 (0.87%) Zephyr
General
1 494 (38.87%) Social Skills
2 298 (23.45%) Finance
3 239 (18.80%) Analytical Skills
4 129 (10.15%) Banking
5 120 (9.44%) Public Sector
6 36 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (2.60%) Telecoms
8 28 (2.20%) Back Office
8 28 (2.20%) Marketing
9 27 (2.12%) Organisational Skills
10 25 (1.97%) Investment Banking
11 24 (1.89%) Legal
11 24 (1.89%) Retail
12 21 (1.65%) Front Office
12 21 (1.65%) Presentation Skills
13 18 (1.42%) Manufacturing
14 16 (1.26%) Aerospace
14 16 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 16 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
15 15 (1.18%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 186 (14.63%) Developer
2 178 (14.00%) Analyst
3 121 (9.52%) Senior
4 116 (9.13%) Lead
5 91 (7.16%) Business Analyst
6 86 (6.77%) QA Engineer
7 84 (6.61%) Tester
8 53 (4.17%) Consultant
9 45 (3.54%) Architect
10 44 (3.46%) QA Tester
11 43 (3.38%) Project Manager
12 41 (3.23%) Java Developer
13 39 (3.07%) Test Manager
14 38 (2.99%) DevOps Engineer
15 37 (2.91%) Test Engineer
16 34 (2.68%) Test Analyst
17 31 (2.44%) Automation Tester
18 28 (2.20%) Automation Engineer
18 28 (2.20%) QA Leader
19 25 (1.97%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 99 (7.79%) REST
2 75 (5.90%) .NET
3 73 (5.74%) React
4 72 (5.66%) RESTful
5 58 (4.56%) Spring
6 55 (4.33%) HTML
6 55 (4.33%) Spring Boot
7 48 (3.78%) CSS
7 48 (3.78%) Playwright
8 42 (3.30%) Node.js
9 39 (3.07%) SOAP
10 37 (2.91%) Web Services
11 36 (2.83%) AngularJS
12 30 (2.36%) Kafka
13 28 (2.20%) XML
14 22 (1.73%) JSON
15 21 (1.65%) pytest
16 19 (1.49%) .NET Framework
17 18 (1.42%) Jest
18 17 (1.34%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 103 (8.10%) Product Ownership
2 46 (3.62%) Onboarding
3 35 (2.75%) Cloud Native
4 34 (2.68%) Mobile App
5 33 (2.60%) Management Information System
6 27 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
7 26 (2.05%) Data Protection Act
8 25 (1.97%) Virtual Team
9 23 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
10 20 (1.57%) Analytical Mindset
11 19 (1.49%) Data Structures
12 17 (1.34%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 16 (1.26%) Algorithms
13 16 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
14 13 (1.02%) Data Centre
14 13 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
15 12 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
16 11 (0.87%) Derivative
17 10 (0.79%) Fixed Income
17 10 (0.79%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 86 (6.77%) Windows
2 35 (2.75%) Linux
3 25 (1.97%) Apple iOS
4 20 (1.57%) Android
5 19 (1.49%) Unix
6 9 (0.71%) Windows Server
7 7 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 6 (0.47%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.47%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.31%) CentOS
10 3 (0.24%) Debian
10 3 (0.24%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.16%) VMS
11 2 (0.16%) zOS
12 1 (0.079%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.079%) Solaris
12 1 (0.079%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.079%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 536 (42.17%) Agile
2 331 (26.04%) Test Automation
3 326 (25.65%) Problem-Solving
4 321 (25.26%) CI/CD
5 316 (24.86%) DevOps
6 161 (12.67%) Scrum
7 159 (12.51%) Stakeholder Management
8 150 (11.80%) User Acceptance Testing
9 146 (11.49%) Continuous Improvement
10 137 (10.78%) Validation
11 135 (10.62%) Test Strategy
12 130 (10.23%) Microservices
13 128 (10.07%) Migration
14 119 (9.36%) Test Scripting
15 114 (8.97%) SDLC
16 101 (7.95%) User Experience
17 97 (7.63%) Project Management
18 96 (7.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 90 (7.08%) Sprint Planning
20 88 (6.92%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 222 (17.47%) SQL
2 182 (14.32%) Java
3 177 (13.93%) Python
4 125 (9.83%) JavaScript
5 91 (7.16%) C#
6 63 (4.96%) TypeScript
7 25 (1.97%) PL/SQL
8 21 (1.65%) Bash
8 21 (1.65%) PHP
9 18 (1.42%) PowerShell
10 15 (1.18%) C++
10 15 (1.18%) Go
10 15 (1.18%) T-SQL
11 14 (1.10%) Shell Script
12 13 (1.02%) VB
12 13 (1.02%) VBA
13 12 (0.94%) Kotlin
13 12 (0.94%) Perl
14 9 (0.71%) C
15 8 (0.63%) Scala
Qualifications
1 212 (16.68%) Security Cleared
2 173 (13.61%) SC Cleared
3 113 (8.89%) Degree
4 49 (3.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 42 (3.30%) Computer Science Degree
6 35 (2.75%) ISTQB
7 30 (2.36%) PMP
8 29 (2.28%) PMI Certification
9 25 (1.97%) AWS Certification
10 20 (1.57%) Master's Degree
11 18 (1.42%) CISSP
11 18 (1.42%) DV Cleared
12 12 (0.94%) Azure Certification
13 10 (0.79%) CISM
14 9 (0.71%) Oracle Certification
15 7 (0.55%) CBAP
15 7 (0.55%) CEH
15 7 (0.55%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 6 (0.47%) CISA
16 6 (0.47%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 87 (6.85%) Accessibility
2 56 (4.41%) Data Quality
3 22 (1.73%) WCAG
4 21 (1.65%) PMO
5 18 (1.42%) GDPR
6 14 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 13 (1.02%) SLA
7 13 (1.02%) Software Quality Assurance
8 11 (0.87%) SEPA
9 9 (0.71%) ISO 20022
9 9 (0.71%) PSD2
10 7 (0.55%) NIST
11 6 (0.47%) PCI DSS
12 5 (0.39%) COBIT
12 5 (0.39%) GxP
12 5 (0.39%) ISO 9001
13 4 (0.31%) IFRS
13 4 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 3 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
14 3 (0.24%) P3O
System Software
1 94 (7.40%) Docker
2 12 (0.94%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
4 2 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.16%) VirtualBox
5 1 (0.079%) GridGain
5 1 (0.079%) LXC
5 1 (0.079%) Oracle RAC
5 1 (0.079%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
5 1 (0.079%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 92 (7.24%) Kubernetes
2 54 (4.25%) Terraform
3 35 (2.75%) Ansible
4 16 (1.26%) Grafana
5 13 (1.02%) Prometheus
6 10 (0.79%) Progress Chef
6 10 (0.79%) Puppet
6 10 (0.79%) SCCM
7 6 (0.47%) HP ALM
8 5 (0.39%) HP Quality Center
9 4 (0.31%) Rsyslog
9 4 (0.31%) Salt
9 4 (0.31%) SCOM
10 3 (0.24%) Argo
10 3 (0.24%) Control-M
10 3 (0.24%) Istio
10 3 (0.24%) Nagios
10 3 (0.24%) RSA Archer
11 2 (0.16%) PingFederate
11 2 (0.16%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 153 (12.04%) Microsoft
2 102 (8.03%) Oracle
3 54 (4.25%) SAP
4 45 (3.54%) ServiceNow
5 37 (2.91%) Salesforce
6 26 (2.05%) Google
7 20 (1.57%) Databricks
8 15 (1.18%) Citrix
8 15 (1.18%) IBM
9 13 (1.02%) HP
10 12 (0.94%) UiPath
11 11 (0.87%) Informatica
12 10 (0.79%) Blue Prism
12 10 (0.79%) MuleSoft
12 10 (0.79%) Splunk
12 10 (0.79%) Workday
13 9 (0.71%) VMware
14 8 (0.63%) Temenos
15 7 (0.55%) Dell
15 7 (0.55%) Red Hat