QA Contract Job Trends

Quality Assurance (QA)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring QA skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 3 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 61 65
Rank change year-on-year +13 +4 +3
Contract jobs citing QA 2,296 1,270 1,251
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.19% 3.83% 3.29%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 23.69% 22.16% 24.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,347 863 722
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £388 £378 £392
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.52%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £657 £650 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 234 43 74
10th Percentile £13.01 £12.28 £11.88
25th Percentile £15.39 £13.50 £12.59
Median hourly rate £29.00 £27.54 £14.99
Median % change year-on-year +5.30% +83.72% -70.02%
75th Percentile £48.75 £45.36 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.00 £73.36
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £15.12 £14.98
% change year-on-year +98.41% +0.93% -70.04%

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 9,690 5,732 5,108
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.66% 17.30% 13.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,089 3,672 2,975
10th Percentile £325 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.80% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £605 £606 £625
90th Percentile £710 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +1.68% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 669 272 247
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.60 £12.90
25th Percentile £16.60 £16.82 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.40 £31.49 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.87% +14.51% -22.68%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.31 £62.37
90th Percentile £74.25 £80.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.40 £27.54 £27.50
% change year-on-year +17.63% +0.15% -28.66%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing QA relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

QA job vacancy trend 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 3 October 2026.

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 3 October 2026.

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 3 October 2026. 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 +16 2,005 £475 - 3,341
UK excluding London +20 1,154 £450 - 2,375
London +9 903 £500 - 1,456
Work from Home +5 575 £475 +5.56% 1,695
North of England +5 279 £453 +3.54% 567
South East +16 266 £425 -15.00% 503
Midlands +23 230 £450 +2.56% 343
West Midlands +32 191 £450 -9.96% 240
East of England +21 157 £450 -10.00% 197
South West +9 131 £525 +10.53% 212
Yorkshire +7 113 £475 +1.06% 171
North West -20 107 £463 +11.45% 294
Scotland 0 87 £420 -9.19% 319
North East -13 59 £400 -20.00% 110
East Midlands -12 38 £420 +7.01% 103
Wales +1 21 £413 +17.86% 130
Northern Ireland -3 7 £450 +50.00% 138

QA
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 137 (5.97%) Confluence
2 53 (2.31%) CMS
3 43 (1.87%) SharePoint
4 16 (0.70%) Apache Spark
4 16 (0.70%) IIS
5 13 (0.57%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 13 (0.57%) Apache
5 13 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (0.39%) SAS
7 8 (0.35%) Sitecore CMS
8 7 (0.30%) Oracle Workflow
9 6 (0.26%) Traefik
10 5 (0.22%) Headless CMS
10 5 (0.22%) OpenStack
10 5 (0.22%) Tuxedo
10 5 (0.22%) WordPress
11 4 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
11 4 (0.17%) Umbraco
12 3 (0.13%) Moodle
12 3 (0.13%) WebLogic
Applications
1 83 (3.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 39 (1.70%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.91%) MS Visio
5 18 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
7 9 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.26%) Revit
9 5 (0.22%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.22%) Navisworks
10 4 (0.17%) ProjectWise
11 3 (0.13%) CATIA
11 3 (0.13%) Mingle
12 2 (0.087%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.087%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.087%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.087%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.087%) Productboard
12 2 (0.087%) Windchill
13 1 (0.044%) Notion
Business Applications
1 31 (1.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
3 10 (0.44%) Shopify
4 7 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
4 7 (0.30%) SAP GRC
4 7 (0.30%) Workday HCM
5 4 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 4 (0.17%) Maximo
5 4 (0.17%) NEC Housing
5 4 (0.17%) Primavera
5 4 (0.17%) ResourceLink
5 4 (0.17%) SAP MM
5 4 (0.17%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.13%) Infor CloudSuite
6 3 (0.13%) iTrent
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
6 3 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 3 (0.13%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.087%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 471 (20.51%) Azure
2 412 (17.94%) AWS
3 225 (9.80%) GitHub
4 204 (8.89%) Azure DevOps
5 130 (5.66%) GitHub Actions
6 111 (4.83%) GCP
6 111 (4.83%) Power Platform
7 82 (3.57%) Serverless
8 58 (2.53%) AWS Lambda
9 53 (2.31%) SaaS
10 50 (2.18%) Amazon S3
11 46 (2.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 42 (1.83%) Dynamics 365
13 37 (1.61%) GitHub Copilot
14 36 (1.57%) OpenShift
15 34 (1.48%) Snowflake
16 31 (1.35%) Amazon EKS
16 31 (1.35%) Azure Monitor
16 31 (1.35%) Microsoft 365
17 28 (1.22%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.13%) Firewall
2 25 (1.09%) Broadband
3 22 (0.96%) Internet
4 20 (0.87%) DNS
5 19 (0.83%) Wi-Fi
6 16 (0.70%) 5G
6 16 (0.70%) TCP/IP
7 15 (0.65%) 4G
7 15 (0.65%) HTTP
7 15 (0.65%) VLAN
8 14 (0.61%) WAN
9 12 (0.52%) Network Security
10 11 (0.48%) LAN
10 11 (0.48%) VPN
11 10 (0.44%) DHCP
12 8 (0.35%) SD-WAN
12 8 (0.35%) Unified Communications
13 7 (0.30%) IPv4
13 7 (0.30%) IPv6
13 7 (0.30%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (4.88%) SQL Server
2 97 (4.22%) Power BI
3 80 (3.48%) Relational Database
4 79 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
5 63 (2.74%) Data Warehouse
6 55 (2.40%) MongoDB
7 47 (2.05%) MySQL
7 47 (2.05%) NoSQL
8 44 (1.92%) Metadata
9 41 (1.79%) Oracle Database
10 31 (1.35%) Oracle Reports
10 31 (1.35%) Tableau
11 23 (1.00%) Data Lake
12 20 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 16 (0.70%) Big Data
13 16 (0.70%) GIS
14 15 (0.65%) RDBMS
14 15 (0.65%) Redis
15 14 (0.61%) BigQuery
15 14 (0.61%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 307 (13.37%) JIRA
2 255 (11.11%) Git
3 181 (7.88%) Jenkins
4 176 (7.67%) Selenium
5 150 (6.53%) GitLab
6 96 (4.18%) Cucumber
7 86 (3.75%) Postman
8 78 (3.40%) Cypress.io
9 73 (3.18%) JUnit
10 55 (2.40%) Zephyr
11 50 (2.18%) SonarQube
12 48 (2.09%) JMeter
13 47 (2.05%) REST Assured
14 45 (1.96%) Gatling
15 34 (1.48%) Maven
16 30 (1.31%) WebDriver
17 27 (1.18%) Gradle
18 26 (1.13%) TestNG
19 24 (1.05%) Appium
20 23 (1.00%) Bitbucket
General
1 701 (30.53%) Social Skills
2 426 (18.55%) Finance
3 366 (15.94%) Analytical Skills
4 298 (12.98%) Public Sector
5 173 (7.53%) Banking
6 86 (3.75%) Manufacturing
7 75 (3.27%) Retail
8 64 (2.79%) Marketing
9 63 (2.74%) Organisational Skills
10 57 (2.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 44 (1.92%) Telecoms
12 42 (1.83%) Influencing Skills
13 41 (1.79%) Aerospace
14 40 (1.74%) Legal
15 30 (1.31%) Documentation Skills
15 30 (1.31%) Military
16 25 (1.09%) Law
17 20 (0.87%) Investment Banking
18 18 (0.78%) Automotive
18 18 (0.78%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 306 (13.33%) Developer
2 293 (12.76%) Lead
3 275 (11.98%) Senior
4 259 (11.28%) QA Engineer
5 252 (10.98%) Analyst
6 135 (5.88%) Quality Engineer
7 119 (5.18%) Test Engineer
8 118 (5.14%) Tester
9 104 (4.53%) Business Analyst
10 103 (4.49%) Test Manager
11 83 (3.61%) QA Leader
12 79 (3.44%) Data Engineer
13 77 (3.35%) Java Developer
14 67 (2.92%) Test Leader
15 61 (2.66%) Consultant
16 59 (2.57%) Senior Analyst
17 54 (2.35%) QA Tester
17 54 (2.35%) Test Analyst
18 52 (2.26%) Architect
19 48 (2.09%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 216 (9.41%) REST
2 151 (6.58%) Playwright
3 150 (6.53%) RESTful
4 127 (5.53%) Spring
5 110 (4.79%) Spring Boot
6 106 (4.62%) Terraform
7 99 (4.31%) .NET
8 96 (4.18%) React
9 88 (3.83%) HTML
10 87 (3.79%) Kafka
11 78 (3.40%) CSS
12 76 (3.31%) AngularJS
13 61 (2.66%) Node.js
14 59 (2.57%) SOAP
15 53 (2.31%) Middleware
15 53 (2.31%) pytest
16 42 (1.83%) .NET Framework
17 41 (1.79%) JSON
18 39 (1.70%) Gherkin
18 39 (1.70%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 215 (9.36%) Product Ownership
2 138 (6.01%) Cloud Native
3 83 (3.61%) Onboarding
4 70 (3.05%) Enterprise Software
5 69 (3.01%) Management Information System
6 56 (2.44%) Distributed Systems
7 54 (2.35%) Mobile App
8 49 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
9 47 (2.05%) AI Agents
10 43 (1.87%) Data Structures
11 41 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
12 34 (1.48%) Data Centre
13 32 (1.39%) Low-Code
14 28 (1.22%) NHS
15 25 (1.09%) Virtual Team
16 24 (1.05%) CMDB
17 19 (0.83%) Educational Technology
18 17 (0.74%) Analytical Mindset
19 15 (0.65%) Operational Technology
20 14 (0.61%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 91 (3.96%) Windows
2 76 (3.31%) Linux
3 50 (2.18%) Apple iOS
4 45 (1.96%) Android
5 35 (1.52%) Unix
6 24 (1.05%) Windows Server
7 16 (0.70%) VMS
8 7 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.22%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.087%) AIX
10 2 (0.087%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.087%) zOS
11 1 (0.044%) CentOS
11 1 (0.044%) Debian
11 1 (0.044%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.044%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.044%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.044%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 891 (38.81%) Agile
2 647 (28.18%) Test Automation
3 601 (26.18%) CI/CD
4 557 (24.26%) DevOps
5 481 (20.95%) Stakeholder Management
6 468 (20.38%) Continuous Improvement
7 391 (17.03%) Problem-Solving
8 377 (16.42%) Validation
9 343 (14.94%) AI
10 341 (14.85%) Scrum
11 329 (14.33%) Test Strategy
12 275 (11.98%) User Acceptance Testing
13 251 (10.93%) Migration
14 214 (9.32%) Microservices
15 213 (9.28%) SDLC
16 202 (8.80%) End-to-End Testing
17 191 (8.32%) Software Engineering
18 185 (8.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 182 (7.93%) Defect Management
20 174 (7.58%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 417 (18.16%) SQL
2 326 (14.20%) Python
3 301 (13.11%) Java
4 192 (8.36%) JavaScript
5 119 (5.18%) C#
6 106 (4.62%) TypeScript
7 56 (2.44%) Bash
8 36 (1.57%) PowerShell
9 34 (1.48%) PL/SQL
10 30 (1.31%) Kotlin
11 27 (1.18%) T-SQL
12 24 (1.05%) Scala
13 21 (0.91%) Swift
14 19 (0.83%) Shell Script
15 17 (0.74%) Objective-C
15 17 (0.74%) VB
16 15 (0.65%) C
16 15 (0.65%) VBA
17 14 (0.61%) Bicep
17 14 (0.61%) R
Qualifications
1 544 (23.69%) Security Cleared
2 421 (18.34%) SC Cleared
3 147 (6.40%) Degree
4 114 (4.97%) BPSS Clearance
5 72 (3.14%) ISTQB
6 66 (2.87%) DV Cleared
7 45 (1.96%) Computer Science Degree
8 23 (1.00%) PMP
9 21 (0.91%) AWS Certification
10 19 (0.83%) PMI Certification
11 18 (0.78%) Azure Certification
12 16 (0.70%) Master's Degree
13 14 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
14 10 (0.44%) DBS Check
14 10 (0.44%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 10 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
15 9 (0.39%) Cisco Certification
15 9 (0.39%) IIBA
15 9 (0.39%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 8 (0.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 164 (7.14%) Data Quality
2 135 (5.88%) Accessibility
3 39 (1.70%) WCAG
4 35 (1.52%) GDPR
5 29 (1.26%) PMO
6 25 (1.09%) GRC
7 15 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 13 (0.57%) NIST
9 12 (0.52%) ISO 9001
10 10 (0.44%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 10 (0.44%) GxP
11 9 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
11 9 (0.39%) SLA
11 9 (0.39%) Software Quality Assurance
12 8 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
12 8 (0.35%) ISO 19650
13 7 (0.30%) IFRS
13 7 (0.30%) NCSC
14 6 (0.26%) ISO 20022
15 4 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 17025
System Software
1 202 (8.80%) Docker
2 24 (1.05%) Active Directory
3 19 (0.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (0.44%) IAG
6 7 (0.30%) Firmware
7 4 (0.17%) ACF2
7 4 (0.17%) RACF
7 4 (0.17%) VirtualBox
8 3 (0.13%) KVM
8 3 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
9 2 (0.087%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.044%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.044%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.044%) QEMU
10 1 (0.044%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.044%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.044%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 232 (10.10%) Kubernetes
2 64 (2.79%) Ansible
3 57 (2.48%) Grafana
4 38 (1.66%) Prometheus
5 31 (1.35%) Argo
6 11 (0.48%) HP ALM
6 11 (0.48%) SCCM
7 8 (0.35%) Microsoft Clustering
7 8 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.30%) HP Quality Center
8 7 (0.30%) Istio
8 7 (0.30%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
9 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
10 5 (0.22%) Puppet
11 4 (0.17%) Progress Chef
11 4 (0.17%) SCOM
12 3 (0.13%) FortiGate
13 2 (0.087%) Control-M
13 2 (0.087%) ITRS Geneos
13 2 (0.087%) Kibana
Vendors
1 253 (11.02%) Microsoft
2 166 (7.23%) Oracle
3 118 (5.14%) Salesforce
4 76 (3.31%) SAP
5 61 (2.66%) ServiceNow
6 51 (2.22%) Google
7 46 (2.00%) Databricks
8 34 (1.48%) Dynatrace
8 34 (1.48%) Splunk
9 31 (1.35%) Red Hat
10 25 (1.09%) Citrix
11 22 (0.96%) Adobe
11 22 (0.96%) VMware
12 21 (0.91%) Cisco
13 18 (0.78%) Informatica
14 16 (0.70%) IBM
14 16 (0.70%) Sitecore
14 16 (0.70%) Talend
14 16 (0.70%) Workday
15 14 (0.61%) HP