Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 18 December 2018

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for QA skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited QA over the 6 months to 18 December 2018 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Quality Assurance (QA)
UK
6 months to
18 Dec 2018		 Same period 2017 Same period 2016
Rank 65 62 69
Rank change year-on-year -3 +7 -6
Contract jobs citing QA 3,686 3,552 3,258
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 3.52% 3.44% 3.20%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 32.90% 26.99% 28.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,517 2,497 2,187
UK median daily rate £450 £438 £420
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +2.86% +4.17% +5.00%
10th Percentile £300 £295 £263
90th Percentile £600 £613 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £388 £375
% change year-on-year +3.23% +3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 41 62
UK median hourly rate £36.00 £21.90 £21.25
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year +64.38% +3.06% -1.16%
10th Percentile £10.75 £10.00 £8.53
90th Percentile £47.40 £43.75 £39.94
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.50 £25.00 £24.17
% change year-on-year +18.00% +3.43% +7.42%

QA is in the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills.

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK
Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 11,203 13,162 11,607
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.68% 12.74% 11.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,090 8,653 7,562
UK median daily rate £450 £440 £425
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +2.27% +3.53% +4.94%
10th Percentile £250 £256 £225
90th Percentile £625 £638 £602
UK excluding London median daily rate £406 £400 £396
% change year-on-year +1.56% +1.07% +2.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 388 363 410
UK median hourly rate £20.24 £21.00 £22.50
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -3.62% -6.67% -
10th Percentile £11.00 £11.05 £10.50
90th Percentile £47.50 £50.48 £45.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.00 £21.79 £25.00
% change year-on-year -8.21% -12.84% +11.11%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for daily rates quoted in contract jobs citing QA.

Contractor daily rate trend for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Daily Rate Histogram

The daily rate distribution of IT jobs citing QA over the 6 months to 18 December 2018.

Contractor daily rate histogram for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for contractor hourly rates quoted in IT jobs citing QA.

Contractor hourly rate trend for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Hourly Rate Histogram

The hourly rate distribution of IT jobs citing QA over the 6 months to 18 December 2018.

Contractor hourly rate histogram for QA in the UK

QA
Top 17 Contract 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 December 2018. 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
Job
Vacancies
England -8 3,369 £450 - 1,159
London -7 1,815 £475 - 441
UK excluding London +2 1,809 £400 +3.23% 804
South East -5 644 £450 +12.50% 207
North of England +37 366 £400 -5.88% 212
Midlands 0 205 £400 +6.67% 122
North West +43 193 £425 -5.29% 114
South West -23 172 £425 +13.33% 91
Scotland -3 157 £375 +8.70% 52
East of England -1 153 £400 -3.03% 86
West Midlands -14 145 £395 +12.86% 74
Yorkshire -13 113 £400 -5.88% 62
Wales +17 72 £360 +5.26% 31
North East +7 63 £396 -6.76% 36
East Midlands +10 57 £400 +6.67% 48
Northern Ireland +37 38 £400 +25.00% 4
Isle of Man - 1 £600 -

For the 6 months to 18 December 2018, IT contractor jobs citing QA also mentioned the following skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads with a requirement for QA.

1 1,918 (52.03%) Agile Software Development
2 1,353 (36.71%) Test Automation
3 827 (22.44%) Java
4 819 (22.22%) Selenium
5 759 (20.59%) Finance
6 699 (18.96%) Scrum
7 659 (17.88%) SQL
8 629 (17.06%) JIRA
9 625 (16.96%) BDD
10 558 (15.14%) JavaScript
11 506 (13.73%) TDD
12 484 (13.13%) DevOps
13 473 (12.83%) Cucumber
14 463 (12.56%) Jenkins
15 454 (12.32%) C#
16 431 (11.69%) Continuous Integration
17 387 (10.50%) Git (software)
18 384 (10.42%) Test Strategy
18 384 (10.42%) Microsoft
19 367 (9.96%) User Acceptance Testing
20 366 (9.93%) Test Scripting
21 363 (9.85%) Analytical Skills
22 352 (9.55%) .NET
23 346 (9.39%) Project Management
24 343 (9.31%) Oracle
25 342 (9.28%) SDLC
26 329 (8.93%) Problem-Solving
27 314 (8.52%) Banking
28 300 (8.14%) Amazon AWS
29 298 (8.08%) User Experience

QA
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same job type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 277 (7.51%) Confluence
2 97 (2.63%) SharePoint
3 94 (2.55%) CMS
4 66 (1.79%) Elasticsearch
5 47 (1.28%) IIS
6 40 (1.09%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 35 (0.95%) Apache Spark
7 35 (0.95%) WebSphere
8 31 (0.84%) Apache
9 23 (0.62%) WordPress
10 22 (0.60%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.57%) NServiceBus
12 20 (0.54%) Drupal
12 20 (0.54%) SAS
13 19 (0.52%) Mule
14 18 (0.49%) JBoss
15 17 (0.46%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 17 (0.46%) Tomcat
16 14 (0.38%) SharePoint 2013
17 12 (0.33%) SAP Portal
Applications
1 187 (5.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 112 (3.04%) Microsoft Office
3 72 (1.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 49 (1.33%) MS Visio
5 48 (1.30%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.38%) Photoshop
6 14 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.27%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
9 4 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 4 (0.11%) InfoPath
10 3 (0.081%) InVision
11 2 (0.054%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.027%) Adobe Captivate
12 1 (0.027%) HipChat
12 1 (0.027%) Mathematica
12 1 (0.027%) Maya
12 1 (0.027%) Mingle
12 1 (0.027%) Open Workbench
Business Applications
1 51 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 21 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.43%) Dynamics AX
4 15 (0.41%) SAP HR
5 13 (0.35%) Oracle Retail
6 9 (0.24%) Oracle EBS R12
7 8 (0.22%) PeopleSoft HCM
7 8 (0.22%) PeopleSoft HRMS
7 8 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
7 8 (0.22%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.16%) Eloqua
8 6 (0.16%) Magento
8 6 (0.16%) SAP GRC
8 6 (0.16%) SAP Hybris
9 5 (0.14%) Loan IQ
9 5 (0.14%) Primavera
10 4 (0.11%) Fredhopper
10 4 (0.11%) Lawson
10 4 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
10 4 (0.11%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 300 (8.14%) Amazon AWS
2 242 (6.57%) Microsoft Azure
3 121 (3.28%) GitHub
4 69 (1.87%) Office 365
5 60 (1.63%) BrowserStack
5 60 (1.63%) Dynamics 365
6 50 (1.36%) SaaS
7 49 (1.33%) Amazon EC2
8 38 (1.03%) Serverless
9 35 (0.95%) IaaS
10 34 (0.92%) PaaS
11 33 (0.90%) Google Cloud Platform
12 32 (0.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 30 (0.81%) AWS CloudFormation
14 28 (0.76%) Amazon S3
14 28 (0.76%) AWS Lambda
14 28 (0.76%) Google Analytics
14 28 (0.76%) Sauce Labs
15 27 (0.73%) Cloud Computing
15 27 (0.73%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 64 (1.74%) Internet
2 48 (1.30%) Firewall
3 41 (1.11%) HTTP
4 31 (0.84%) DNS
5 24 (0.65%) LAN
6 21 (0.57%) Skype
6 21 (0.57%) WAN
7 20 (0.54%) TCP/IP
8 15 (0.41%) BGP
8 15 (0.41%) Network Security
8 15 (0.41%) OSPF
9 14 (0.38%) Wi-Fi
10 13 (0.35%) Wireshark
11 12 (0.33%) VLAN
11 12 (0.33%) VPN
12 11 (0.30%) MPLS
12 11 (0.30%) VSAN
13 10 (0.27%) HTTPS
13 10 (0.27%) SSL
14 9 (0.24%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 292 (7.92%) SQL Server
2 124 (3.36%) MySQL
3 112 (3.04%) Data Warehouse
4 94 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
5 82 (2.22%) MongoDB
6 81 (2.20%) Relational Database
7 73 (1.98%) Big Data
8 72 (1.95%) NoSQL
9 62 (1.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 59 (1.60%) Hadoop
10 59 (1.60%) Oracle Database
11 50 (1.36%) Power BI
12 49 (1.33%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 40 (1.09%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 28 (0.76%) Microsoft Analysis Services
14 28 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
15 26 (0.71%) Apache Hive
16 24 (0.65%) GIS
16 24 (0.65%) Redis
17 23 (0.62%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 819 (22.22%) Selenium
2 629 (17.06%) JIRA
3 473 (12.83%) Cucumber
4 463 (12.56%) Jenkins
5 387 (10.50%) Git (software)
6 252 (6.84%) WebDriver
7 210 (5.70%) SoapUI
8 183 (4.96%) JMeter
9 129 (3.50%) Maven
10 127 (3.45%) SpecFlow
11 122 (3.31%) Team Foundation Server
12 113 (3.07%) JUnit
13 108 (2.93%) TeamCity
14 96 (2.60%) Visual Studio
15 84 (2.28%) Appium
16 83 (2.25%) Subversion
17 69 (1.87%) Protractor
18 63 (1.71%) LoadRunner
19 58 (1.57%) Gatling
19 58 (1.57%) IntelliJ
General
1 759 (20.59%) Finance
2 314 (8.52%) Banking
3 183 (4.96%) Retail
4 123 (3.34%) Marketing
5 64 (1.74%) Investment Banking
5 64 (1.74%) Publishing
6 52 (1.41%) Front Office
7 51 (1.38%) Legal
7 51 (1.38%) Telecoms
8 45 (1.22%) Law
9 44 (1.19%) Manufacturing
10 39 (1.06%) Back Office
11 32 (0.87%) Retail Banking
12 31 (0.84%) Financial Institution
12 31 (0.84%) Games
13 24 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
14 20 (0.54%) Billing
15 18 (0.49%) Electronics
16 16 (0.43%) Advertising
17 14 (0.38%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 744 (20.18%) Developer
2 614 (16.66%) Analyst
3 416 (11.29%) Tester
4 258 (7.00%) Test Analyst
5 252 (6.84%) QA Engineer
6 238 (6.46%) QA Tester
7 192 (5.21%) Test Engineer
8 176 (4.77%) QA Analyst
9 163 (4.42%) Automation Tester
10 158 (4.29%) Architect
11 138 (3.74%) Business Analyst
12 137 (3.72%) Project Manager
13 136 (3.69%) Consultant
14 129 (3.50%) Java Developer
15 124 (3.36%) Test Leader
16 115 (3.12%) .NET Developer
17 108 (2.93%) Test Manager
18 105 (2.85%) QA Leader
19 97 (2.63%) QA Automation Engineer
20 92 (2.50%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 352 (9.55%) .NET
2 297 (8.06%) HTML
3 288 (7.81%) Web Services
4 278 (7.54%) CSS
5 239 (6.48%) REST
6 238 (6.46%) Node.js
7 187 (5.07%) AngularJS
8 169 (4.58%) RESTful
9 147 (3.99%) SOAP
10 142 (3.85%) React
11 132 (3.58%) Gherkin
12 131 (3.55%) XML
13 126 (3.42%) Spring
14 121 (3.28%) HTML5
15 117 (3.17%) JSON
16 103 (2.79%) Sass
17 95 (2.58%) jQuery
18 73 (1.98%) RabbitMQ
19 69 (1.87%) ASP.NET
20 68 (1.84%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 363 (9.85%) Analytical Skills
2 298 (8.08%) User Experience
3 148 (4.02%) Mobile App
4 106 (2.88%) Management Information System
5 97 (2.63%) Self-Motivation
6 85 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
7 76 (2.06%) Greenfield Project
8 66 (1.79%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 64 (1.74%) Fintech
10 59 (1.60%) Data Structures
11 54 (1.47%) Data Centre
12 53 (1.44%) Algorithms
13 43 (1.17%) Virtual Team
14 33 (0.90%) Video on Demand
15 28 (0.76%) Client/Server
16 25 (0.68%) Linux Command Line
17 24 (0.65%) Equities
17 24 (0.65%) Public Cloud
18 23 (0.62%) PMI
19 22 (0.60%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 239 (6.48%) Linux
2 190 (5.15%) Windows
3 176 (4.77%) Unix
4 103 (2.79%) Android
5 101 (2.74%) Apple iOS
6 39 (1.06%) Windows Server
7 27 (0.73%) Windows 10
8 26 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 22 (0.60%) CentOS
9 22 (0.60%) Windows 7
10 13 (0.35%) Mac OS
11 12 (0.33%) Windows XP
12 11 (0.30%) Solaris
13 10 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
14 9 (0.24%) Ubuntu
14 9 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
15 8 (0.22%) Windows 8
16 7 (0.19%) Mac OS X
17 5 (0.14%) Mesosphere
18 3 (0.081%) DC/OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,918 (52.03%) Agile Software Development
2 1,353 (36.71%) Test Automation
3 699 (18.96%) Scrum
4 625 (16.96%) BDD
5 506 (13.73%) TDD
6 484 (13.13%) DevOps
7 431 (11.69%) Continuous Integration
8 384 (10.42%) Test Strategy
9 367 (9.96%) User Acceptance Testing
10 366 (9.93%) Test Scripting
11 346 (9.39%) Project Management
12 342 (9.28%) SDLC
13 329 (8.93%) Problem-Solving
14 286 (7.76%) User Stories
15 282 (7.65%) Software Engineering
16 251 (6.81%) Microservices
17 242 (6.57%) Regression Testing
18 232 (6.29%) Manual Testing
19 231 (6.27%) API Testing
20 230 (6.24%) Kanban
Programming Languages
1 827 (22.44%) Java
2 659 (17.88%) SQL
3 558 (15.14%) JavaScript
4 454 (12.32%) C#
5 255 (6.92%) Python
6 95 (2.58%) PowerShell
7 87 (2.36%) Scala
8 84 (2.28%) T-SQL
9 81 (2.20%) Ruby
10 74 (2.01%) Groovy
11 73 (1.98%) Bash Shell
12 71 (1.93%) PHP
13 67 (1.82%) PL/SQL
14 58 (1.57%) Shell Script
15 57 (1.55%) Java 8
16 51 (1.38%) C
17 45 (1.22%) TypeScript
18 42 (1.14%) ES6
19 36 (0.98%) Perl
20 35 (0.95%) R
Qualifications
1 231 (6.27%) Degree
2 222 (6.02%) Security Cleared
3 159 (4.31%) SC Cleared
4 153 (4.15%) ISTQB
5 148 (4.02%) ISEB
6 61 (1.65%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 44 (1.19%) PMP
8 40 (1.09%) PMI Certification
9 37 (1.00%) Computer Science Degree
10 36 (0.98%) BPSS Clearance
10 36 (0.98%) DV Cleared
11 24 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
12 20 (0.54%) Master's Degree
13 19 (0.52%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 18 (0.49%) PhD
15 17 (0.46%) PRINCE2 Certification
16 16 (0.43%) Cisco Certification
17 15 (0.41%) DBS Check
17 15 (0.41%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 12 (0.33%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 113 (3.07%) Data Quality
2 110 (2.98%) PMO
3 40 (1.09%) GDPR
4 31 (0.84%) WCAG
5 28 (0.76%) SLA
6 18 (0.49%) SEPA
7 17 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 16 (0.43%) ISO 9001
9 14 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 14 (0.38%) PCI DSS
10 13 (0.35%) MiFID
11 8 (0.22%) GxP
12 7 (0.19%) JSP 440
13 6 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
13 6 (0.16%) GMP
13 6 (0.16%) PSD2
14 5 (0.14%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 5 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
14 5 (0.14%) COBIT
15 4 (0.11%) IFRS
System Software
1 235 (6.38%) Docker
2 48 (1.30%) Active Directory
3 30 (0.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.54%) Apache Flume
4 20 (0.54%) Microsoft App-V
5 18 (0.49%) XenApp
6 17 (0.46%) XenDesktop
7 15 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
8 13 (0.35%) vSphere
9 12 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
10 10 (0.27%) HDFS
10 10 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
11 7 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
12 6 (0.16%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 3 (0.081%) Hyper-V
13 3 (0.081%) vCloud
14 2 (0.054%) Firmware
14 2 (0.054%) Snort
14 2 (0.054%) Squid
14 2 (0.054%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 109 (2.96%) Ansible
2 81 (2.20%) Puppet
3 79 (2.14%) Kubernetes
4 75 (2.03%) Terraform
5 60 (1.63%) HP Quality Center
6 52 (1.41%) HP ALM
7 48 (1.30%) Opscode Chef
8 36 (0.98%) Grafana
9 31 (0.84%) Kibana
10 29 (0.79%) SCCM
11 23 (0.62%) Nagios
12 19 (0.52%) Graphite
13 14 (0.38%) logstash
14 12 (0.33%) Single Sign-On
15 11 (0.30%) Salt
16 9 (0.24%) Oozie
17 8 (0.22%) Data Guard
17 8 (0.22%) Netcool
17 8 (0.22%) WMI
18 7 (0.19%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 384 (10.42%) Microsoft
2 343 (9.31%) Oracle
3 152 (4.12%) SAP
4 108 (2.93%) HP
5 69 (1.87%) Google
6 65 (1.76%) Adobe
7 63 (1.71%) Atlassian
7 63 (1.71%) Salesforce.com
8 55 (1.49%) Cisco
9 54 (1.47%) Citrix
9 54 (1.47%) VMware
10 46 (1.25%) IBM
11 34 (0.92%) Splunk
12 33 (0.90%) Tableau
13 26 (0.71%) New Relic
13 26 (0.71%) Red Hat
13 26 (0.71%) Sitecore
14 24 (0.65%) MuleSoft
15 21 (0.57%) CA
15 21 (0.57%) hybris
1,262 QA job vacancies Nationwide