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 9 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 63 63
Rank change year-on-year +13 0 +6
Contract jobs citing QA 2,233 1,252 1,270
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.10% 3.82% 3.33%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 23.32% 22.45% 24.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,329 862 761
10th Percentile £313 £281 £300
25th Percentile £400 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year - -2.56% -7.14%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £578
90th Percentile £668 £663 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% -0.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 220 46 82
10th Percentile £12.85 £12.28 £11.66
25th Percentile £15.33 £13.50 £12.24
Median hourly rate £31.46 £23.45 £14.98
Median % change year-on-year +34.14% +56.56% -66.16%
75th Percentile £48.75 £46.43 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £71.49
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.46 £15.21 £14.98
% change year-on-year +106.91% +1.50% -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 9,575 5,577 5,097
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.58% 17.03% 13.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,067 3,567 3,075
10th Percentile £325 £295 £286
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £508
Median % change year-on-year - -1.48% -3.33%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £628
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £480
% change year-on-year +3.16% -1.04% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 604 262 261
10th Percentile £13.86 £13.60 £12.24
25th Percentile £17.00 £16.92 £14.99
Median hourly rate £33.00 £30.00 £26.68
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% +12.44% -23.77%
75th Percentile £67.91 £60.94 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £82.94 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.98 £26.50 £25.60
% change year-on-year +28.23% +3.52% -25.80%

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 9 September 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 9 September 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 9 September 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 +15 1,941 £480 +1.05% 2,123
UK excluding London +15 1,088 £450 - 1,279
London +12 908 £500 - 1,087
Work from Home +6 584 £475 - 862
North of England +6 267 £475 +6.74% 306
South East +3 248 £428 -10.00% 303
Midlands +13 218 £450 +5.88% 190
West Midlands +22 177 £450 -2.17% 130
East of England +18 135 £475 -5.00% 159
South West +11 130 £495 +16.47% 142
North West -13 107 £492 +16.59% 160
Yorkshire +5 103 £500 +11.11% 91
Scotland -1 80 £400 -11.06% 129
North East -8 57 £400 -13.04% 56
East Midlands -8 40 £420 +12.00% 60
Wales -8 18 £400 +6.67% 27
Northern Ireland -1 11 £450 +10.43% 49

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
1 124 (5.55%) Confluence
2 47 (2.10%) CMS
3 38 (1.70%) SharePoint
4 20 (0.90%) IIS
5 16 (0.72%) Apache Spark
6 13 (0.58%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 12 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
8 10 (0.45%) Apache
9 8 (0.36%) SAS
9 8 (0.36%) Sitecore CMS
10 7 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
11 5 (0.22%) Tuxedo
11 5 (0.22%) WordPress
12 4 (0.18%) Headless CMS
12 4 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.18%) Umbraco
13 3 (0.13%) Apache Solr
13 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Exchange
13 3 (0.13%) Moodle
13 3 (0.13%) WebLogic
Applications
1 76 (3.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.52%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 22 (0.99%) MS Visio
5 14 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
6 13 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.22%) Navisworks
8 5 (0.22%) Revit
9 4 (0.18%) AutoCAD
9 4 (0.18%) Simulink
10 3 (0.13%) CATIA
10 3 (0.13%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.13%) Photoshop
10 3 (0.13%) ProjectWise
11 2 (0.090%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.090%) Mingle
12 1 (0.045%) Adobe Illustrator
12 1 (0.045%) Gliffy
12 1 (0.045%) Trello
Business Applications
1 33 (1.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (1.07%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.45%) Shopify
4 9 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
5 7 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.31%) SAP GRC
5 7 (0.31%) Workday HCM
6 6 (0.27%) Aladdin
7 5 (0.22%) Infor CloudSuite
7 5 (0.22%) NEC Housing
8 4 (0.18%) iTrent
8 4 (0.18%) Maximo
8 4 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
8 4 (0.18%) Primavera
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
9 3 (0.13%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.13%) SAP MM
9 3 (0.13%) Teamcenter
10 2 (0.090%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 460 (20.60%) Azure
2 386 (17.29%) AWS
3 213 (9.54%) GitHub
4 196 (8.78%) Azure DevOps
5 116 (5.19%) GitHub Actions
6 110 (4.93%) Power Platform
7 105 (4.70%) GCP
8 74 (3.31%) Serverless
9 51 (2.28%) AWS Lambda
9 51 (2.28%) SaaS
10 46 (2.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 42 (1.88%) OpenShift
12 38 (1.70%) Amazon S3
13 35 (1.57%) Snowflake
14 34 (1.52%) Dynamics 365
15 33 (1.48%) Azure Monitor
15 33 (1.48%) GitHub Copilot
16 32 (1.43%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 26 (1.16%) Power Automate
18 25 (1.12%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.12%) Firewall
2 22 (0.99%) Internet
3 17 (0.76%) DNS
4 15 (0.67%) HTTP
5 14 (0.63%) Broadband
5 14 (0.63%) Network Security
5 14 (0.63%) TCP/IP
5 14 (0.63%) VLAN
5 14 (0.63%) WAN
6 13 (0.58%) LAN
7 12 (0.54%) VPN
8 11 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
9 9 (0.40%) DHCP
9 9 (0.40%) SD-WAN
9 9 (0.40%) Unified Communications
10 8 (0.36%) 5G
11 7 (0.31%) 4G
11 7 (0.31%) IPsec
12 6 (0.27%) SMS
12 6 (0.27%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (4.84%) SQL Server
2 98 (4.39%) Power BI
3 77 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
3 77 (3.45%) Relational Database
4 70 (3.13%) Data Warehouse
5 49 (2.19%) MongoDB
6 48 (2.15%) NoSQL
7 45 (2.02%) Metadata
8 44 (1.97%) Oracle Database
9 41 (1.84%) MySQL
10 37 (1.66%) Tableau
11 33 (1.48%) Oracle Reports
12 30 (1.34%) Data Lake
13 22 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (0.90%) Big Data
15 18 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
16 15 (0.67%) BigQuery
16 15 (0.67%) GIS
16 15 (0.67%) RDBMS
17 14 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 307 (13.75%) JIRA
2 225 (10.08%) Git
3 166 (7.43%) Selenium
4 161 (7.21%) Jenkins
5 125 (5.60%) GitLab
6 85 (3.81%) Postman
7 75 (3.36%) Cucumber
7 75 (3.36%) Cypress.io
8 62 (2.78%) JUnit
9 54 (2.42%) SonarQube
10 52 (2.33%) Zephyr
11 45 (2.02%) JMeter
12 42 (1.88%) REST Assured
13 35 (1.57%) Gatling
14 30 (1.34%) Maven
15 28 (1.25%) WebDriver
16 23 (1.03%) Appium
16 23 (1.03%) Gradle
17 22 (0.99%) TestRail
18 20 (0.90%) Bitbucket
General
1 676 (30.27%) Social Skills
2 434 (19.44%) Finance
3 362 (16.21%) Analytical Skills
4 280 (12.54%) Public Sector
5 161 (7.21%) Banking
6 77 (3.45%) Manufacturing
7 74 (3.31%) Retail
8 65 (2.91%) Marketing
9 63 (2.82%) Organisational Skills
10 49 (2.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 42 (1.88%) Aerospace
12 37 (1.66%) Influencing Skills
13 36 (1.61%) Telecoms
14 32 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
14 32 (1.43%) Legal
15 24 (1.07%) Law
16 23 (1.03%) Military
17 21 (0.94%) Pharmaceutical
18 19 (0.85%) Local Government
19 18 (0.81%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 292 (13.08%) Developer
2 285 (12.76%) Lead
3 266 (11.91%) Analyst
4 265 (11.87%) Senior
5 236 (10.57%) QA Engineer
6 119 (5.33%) Quality Engineer
7 117 (5.24%) Business Analyst
8 115 (5.15%) Tester
9 107 (4.79%) Test Manager
10 93 (4.16%) Test Engineer
11 74 (3.31%) Java Developer
12 72 (3.22%) Test Leader
13 71 (3.18%) Data Engineer
14 67 (3.00%) QA Leader
15 60 (2.69%) Architect
16 58 (2.60%) Senior Analyst
17 56 (2.51%) Consultant
18 54 (2.42%) QA Tester
19 53 (2.37%) Test Analyst
20 51 (2.28%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 186 (8.33%) REST
2 137 (6.14%) RESTful
3 133 (5.96%) Playwright
4 111 (4.97%) Spring
5 102 (4.57%) .NET
5 102 (4.57%) Spring Boot
6 97 (4.34%) Terraform
7 85 (3.81%) HTML
8 83 (3.72%) React
9 78 (3.49%) Kafka
10 75 (3.36%) AngularJS
10 75 (3.36%) CSS
11 63 (2.82%) Node.js
12 58 (2.60%) Middleware
13 48 (2.15%) SOAP
14 47 (2.10%) pytest
15 44 (1.97%) .NET Framework
16 39 (1.75%) JSON
17 36 (1.61%) XML
18 34 (1.52%) Quarkus
Miscellaneous
1 205 (9.18%) Product Ownership
2 129 (5.78%) Cloud Native
3 72 (3.22%) Onboarding
4 60 (2.69%) Management Information System
5 57 (2.55%) Enterprise Software
6 54 (2.42%) Distributed Systems
6 54 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
7 51 (2.28%) Mobile App
8 44 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
9 41 (1.84%) Data Structures
10 37 (1.66%) AI Agents
11 36 (1.61%) Data Centre
12 27 (1.21%) NHS
13 26 (1.16%) Low-Code
14 23 (1.03%) Virtual Team
15 22 (0.99%) CMDB
16 18 (0.81%) Educational Technology
17 17 (0.76%) Analytical Mindset
18 15 (0.67%) Operational Technology
18 15 (0.67%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 94 (4.21%) Windows
2 65 (2.91%) Linux
3 49 (2.19%) Apple iOS
4 44 (1.97%) Android
5 32 (1.43%) Unix
6 29 (1.30%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.36%) VMS
8 7 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.22%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.090%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.090%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.090%) zOS
11 1 (0.045%) AIX
11 1 (0.045%) CentOS
11 1 (0.045%) Debian
11 1 (0.045%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.045%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.045%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.045%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.045%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 857 (38.38%) Agile
2 618 (27.68%) Test Automation
3 552 (24.72%) CI/CD
4 549 (24.59%) DevOps
5 442 (19.79%) Stakeholder Management
6 430 (19.26%) Continuous Improvement
7 389 (17.42%) Problem-Solving
8 380 (17.02%) Validation
9 329 (14.73%) Scrum
10 320 (14.33%) Test Strategy
11 305 (13.66%) AI
12 288 (12.90%) User Acceptance Testing
13 261 (11.69%) Migration
14 201 (9.00%) SDLC
15 196 (8.78%) End-to-End Testing
16 195 (8.73%) Microservices
17 191 (8.55%) Software Engineering
18 188 (8.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 179 (8.02%) Decision-Making
20 168 (7.52%) Defect Management
Programming Languages
1 419 (18.76%) SQL
2 298 (13.35%) Python
3 275 (12.32%) Java
4 174 (7.79%) JavaScript
5 112 (5.02%) C#
6 88 (3.94%) TypeScript
7 52 (2.33%) Bash
8 42 (1.88%) PowerShell
9 33 (1.48%) PL/SQL
10 28 (1.25%) Kotlin
11 27 (1.21%) T-SQL
12 22 (0.99%) Scala
13 19 (0.85%) Swift
14 17 (0.76%) C
15 16 (0.72%) Apex Code
15 16 (0.72%) C++
15 16 (0.72%) Objective-C
15 16 (0.72%) Shell Script
15 16 (0.72%) VB
16 15 (0.67%) R
Qualifications
1 536 (24.00%) Security Cleared
2 418 (18.72%) SC Cleared
3 142 (6.36%) Degree
4 95 (4.25%) BPSS Clearance
5 73 (3.27%) ISTQB
6 60 (2.69%) DV Cleared
7 40 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
8 24 (1.07%) PMP
9 23 (1.03%) PMI Certification
10 16 (0.72%) AWS Certification
11 15 (0.67%) Azure Certification
12 13 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
13 12 (0.54%) Master's Degree
14 11 (0.49%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 10 (0.45%) Cisco Certification
15 10 (0.45%) ITIL Certification
16 9 (0.40%) IIBA
16 9 (0.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 8 (0.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 8 (0.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 164 (7.34%) Data Quality
2 118 (5.28%) Accessibility
3 35 (1.57%) GDPR
4 32 (1.43%) WCAG
5 30 (1.34%) PMO
6 26 (1.16%) GRC
7 16 (0.72%) GxP
8 14 (0.63%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 13 (0.58%) NIST
10 10 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 9 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
11 9 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
11 9 (0.40%) SLA
12 8 (0.36%) IFRS
12 8 (0.36%) Software Quality Assurance
13 7 (0.31%) ISO 19650
13 7 (0.31%) NCSC
14 6 (0.27%) ISO 9001
15 5 (0.22%) GMP
15 5 (0.22%) IFRS 17
System Software
1 175 (7.84%) Docker
2 23 (1.03%) Active Directory
3 18 (0.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.45%) IAG
4 10 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.27%) Firmware
6 4 (0.18%) ACF2
6 4 (0.18%) RACF
6 4 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.13%) KVM
7 3 (0.13%) VirtualBox
8 2 (0.090%) GridGain
8 2 (0.090%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.045%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.045%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.045%) QEMU
9 1 (0.045%) Varnish
9 1 (0.045%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.045%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.045%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 215 (9.63%) Kubernetes
2 60 (2.69%) Ansible
3 49 (2.19%) Grafana
4 36 (1.61%) Argo
5 34 (1.52%) Prometheus
6 12 (0.54%) HP ALM
7 9 (0.40%) SCCM
7 9 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.36%) HP Quality Center
8 8 (0.36%) Microsoft Clustering
9 7 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
9 7 (0.31%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 6 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
10 6 (0.27%) Puppet
11 5 (0.22%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.18%) SCOM
13 3 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 2 (0.090%) ITRS Geneos
14 2 (0.090%) Kibana
15 1 (0.045%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 246 (11.02%) Microsoft
2 170 (7.61%) Oracle
3 119 (5.33%) Salesforce
4 85 (3.81%) SAP
5 61 (2.73%) ServiceNow
6 46 (2.06%) Google
7 39 (1.75%) Databricks
8 37 (1.66%) Red Hat
9 27 (1.21%) Citrix
9 27 (1.21%) Dynatrace
10 25 (1.12%) Adobe
10 25 (1.12%) Informatica
11 23 (1.03%) Splunk
12 22 (0.99%) Cisco
12 22 (0.99%) VMware
13 17 (0.76%) IBM
13 17 (0.76%) Sitecore
14 15 (0.67%) HP
14 15 (0.67%) MuleSoft
14 15 (0.67%) Talend