Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 19 July 2019

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 19 July 2019 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
19 Jul 2019		 Same period 2018 Same period 2017
Rank 73 78 67
Rank change year-on-year +5 -11 +11
Contract jobs citing QA 2,907 3,259 3,065
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 3.12% 3.15% 3.22%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 30.03% 27.11% 27.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,886 2,178 2,044
UK median daily rate £450 £450 £425
Median daily rate % change year-on-year - +5.88% +6.25%
10th Percentile £308 £300 £270
90th Percentile £600 £613 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £400 £375
% change year-on-year +6.25% +6.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 39 48
UK median hourly rate £25.50 £25.50 £19.25
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year - +32.47% -1.86%
10th Percentile £9.65 £10.90 £11.49
90th Percentile £54.65 £60.00 £47.23
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.88 £21.63 £18.00
% change year-on-year +5.78% +20.14% +8.68%

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 9,679 12,022 11,229
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.39% 11.62% 11.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,994 7,675 7,272
UK median daily rate £450 £450 £440
Median daily rate % change year-on-year - +2.27% +7.32%
10th Percentile £240 £250 £250
90th Percentile £638 £638 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £420 £400 £400
% change year-on-year +5.00% - +6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 417 394 370
UK median hourly rate £22.75 £23.25 £20.00
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -2.15% +16.25% -10.34%
10th Percentile £11.00 £11.53 £11.00
90th Percentile £53.00 £53.45 £52.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.12 £22.50 £19.00
% change year-on-year +11.64% +18.42% -15.56%

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 19 July 2019.

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 19 July 2019.

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 19 July 2019. 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 +3 2,695 £450 - 1,190
London +2 1,431 £475 - 365
UK excluding London +3 1,423 £425 +6.25% 895
South East +8 511 £450 +5.88% 259
North of England +14 322 £410 -3.53% 254
South West +5 165 £404 +7.67% 108
Midlands -14 135 £408 +4.49% 126
North West -3 127 £450 +9.09% 144
East of England -5 126 £425 +6.25% 79
Scotland -10 118 £375 -3.54% 45
Yorkshire +10 113 £338 -22.19% 71
North East +50 84 £400 +14.29% 39
West Midlands -28 84 £400 +3.90% 74
East Midlands +2 47 £404 +6.25% 50
Wales -9 41 £425 +28.79% 21
Northern Ireland -1 7 £420 +34.40% 4
Channel Islands - 4 £600 -

For the 6 months to 19 July 2019, 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 1,340 (46.10%) Agile Software Development
2 1,025 (35.26%) Test Automation
3 633 (21.78%) Java
4 611 (21.02%) Finance
5 549 (18.89%) Scrum
6 548 (18.85%) Selenium
7 497 (17.10%) SQL
8 475 (16.34%) JavaScript
9 445 (15.31%) DevOps
10 431 (14.83%) JIRA
11 428 (14.72%) BDD
12 389 (13.38%) C#
13 362 (12.45%) TDD
14 343 (11.80%) Microsoft Azure
15 315 (10.84%) Jenkins
16 313 (10.77%) Microsoft
17 308 (10.60%) Cucumber
18 302 (10.39%) Test Strategy
19 299 (10.29%) SDLC
20 291 (10.01%) .NET
21 285 (9.80%) Problem-Solving
22 284 (9.77%) Git (software)
23 282 (9.70%) User Acceptance Testing
24 272 (9.36%) Degree
25 267 (9.18%) Oracle
26 256 (8.81%) Analytical Skills
27 254 (8.74%) Continuous Integration
28 253 (8.70%) Test Scripting
29 248 (8.53%) HTML
30 244 (8.39%) CSS

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
1 220 (7.57%) Confluence
2 96 (3.30%) CMS
3 89 (3.06%) SharePoint
4 59 (2.03%) Apache
5 45 (1.55%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 40 (1.38%) IIS
7 29 (1.00%) WebSphere
8 23 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
9 20 (0.69%) Umbraco
10 18 (0.62%) Skype for Business
10 18 (0.62%) Tomcat
11 17 (0.58%) SharePoint 2013
12 16 (0.55%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 13 (0.45%) Apache Spark
13 13 (0.45%) WebLogic
14 11 (0.38%) MS Exchange
15 10 (0.34%) Drupal
15 10 (0.34%) JBoss
15 10 (0.34%) WebSphere Application Server
16 9 (0.31%) SharePoint 2010
Applications
1 133 (4.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 76 (2.61%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (1.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 36 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
5 20 (0.69%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.62%) Photoshop
6 18 (0.62%) Sketch
7 15 (0.52%) Adobe Illustrator
8 14 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
9 6 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.17%) InVision
11 4 (0.14%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.069%) Weka
13 1 (0.034%) Adobe XD
13 1 (0.034%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.034%) Camtasia
13 1 (0.034%) CATIA
13 1 (0.034%) Chatbot
13 1 (0.034%) InDesign
13 1 (0.034%) Marvel
Business Applications
1 39 (1.34%) Dynamics CRM
2 21 (0.72%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.52%) Oracle ERP
4 12 (0.41%) SAP FI
5 11 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
6 10 (0.34%) BusinessWorks
7 9 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.28%) Oracle General Ledger
8 8 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 8 (0.28%) Salesforce.com CRM
8 8 (0.28%) SAP Oil and Gas
9 6 (0.21%) Eloqua
9 6 (0.21%) Markit EDM
9 6 (0.21%) SAP Hybris
9 6 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 5 (0.17%) Actimize
10 5 (0.17%) Magento
10 5 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
10 5 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
11 4 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 343 (11.80%) Microsoft Azure
2 227 (7.81%) Amazon AWS
3 78 (2.68%) PaaS
4 71 (2.44%) SaaS
5 63 (2.17%) GitHub
6 62 (2.13%) Office 365
7 59 (2.03%) Power Platform
8 54 (1.86%) Google Cloud Platform
9 51 (1.75%) IaaS
10 32 (1.10%) Serverless
11 29 (1.00%) Dynamics 365
12 27 (0.93%) Google Analytics
13 26 (0.89%) BrowserStack
13 26 (0.89%) Sauce Labs
14 24 (0.83%) Adobe Analytics
15 23 (0.79%) SuccessFactors
16 19 (0.65%) Cloud Computing
17 17 (0.58%) AWS Lambda
17 17 (0.58%) Azure Active Directory
18 15 (0.52%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 46 (1.58%) Firewall
2 42 (1.44%) Internet
3 38 (1.31%) HTTP
4 31 (1.07%) DNS
5 22 (0.76%) Skype
6 21 (0.72%) WAN
7 20 (0.69%) VPN
8 19 (0.65%) TCP/IP
9 18 (0.62%) Unified Communications
10 13 (0.45%) LAN
10 13 (0.45%) MPLS
11 12 (0.41%) Intranet
12 11 (0.38%) Ethernet
13 9 (0.31%) Network Security
14 8 (0.28%) BGP
14 8 (0.28%) OSPF
14 8 (0.28%) SAN
15 7 (0.24%) FTP
15 7 (0.24%) SNMP
15 7 (0.24%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 205 (7.05%) SQL Server
2 96 (3.30%) Data Warehouse
3 82 (2.82%) MySQL
4 61 (2.10%) NoSQL
5 58 (2.00%) Relational Database
6 53 (1.82%) Redis
7 52 (1.79%) Power BI
8 45 (1.55%) Big Data
9 44 (1.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 43 (1.48%) Oracle Reports
11 42 (1.44%) MongoDB
12 35 (1.20%) Oracle Database
13 28 (0.96%) PostgreSQL
14 22 (0.76%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 19 (0.65%) Data Lake
15 19 (0.65%) SQL Server 2014
16 18 (0.62%) RDBMS
16 18 (0.62%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 17 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
18 16 (0.55%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 548 (18.85%) Selenium
2 431 (14.83%) JIRA
3 315 (10.84%) Jenkins
4 308 (10.60%) Cucumber
5 284 (9.77%) Git (software)
6 177 (6.09%) JMeter
7 148 (5.09%) WebDriver
8 112 (3.85%) SpecFlow
9 98 (3.37%) SoapUI
10 91 (3.13%) JUnit
11 82 (2.82%) TeamCity
11 82 (2.82%) Visual Studio Team System
12 77 (2.65%) Visual Studio
13 65 (2.24%) Team Foundation Server
14 63 (2.17%) Bitbucket
14 63 (2.17%) Maven
15 59 (2.03%) LoadRunner
16 56 (1.93%) Gatling
17 42 (1.44%) Appium
18 41 (1.41%) gulp
General
1 611 (21.02%) Finance
2 227 (7.81%) Banking
3 138 (4.75%) Marketing
4 116 (3.99%) Retail
5 72 (2.48%) Telecoms
6 62 (2.13%) Legal
7 49 (1.69%) Investment Banking
8 48 (1.65%) Financial Institution
9 46 (1.58%) Manufacturing
10 43 (1.48%) Front Office
11 26 (0.89%) Law
12 22 (0.76%) Electronics
13 20 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
14 18 (0.62%) French Language
15 17 (0.58%) Billing
15 17 (0.58%) Games
15 17 (0.58%) Publishing
15 17 (0.58%) Retail Banking
16 13 (0.45%) Advertising
17 11 (0.38%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 578 (19.88%) Developer
2 523 (17.99%) Analyst
3 310 (10.66%) Tester
4 224 (7.71%) QA Engineer
5 197 (6.78%) Test Analyst
6 174 (5.99%) QA Tester
7 143 (4.92%) Test Engineer
8 140 (4.82%) Business Analyst
9 125 (4.30%) QA Analyst
10 111 (3.82%) Architect
11 105 (3.61%) Test Manager
12 104 (3.58%) Project Manager
13 101 (3.47%) QA Leader
14 96 (3.30%) Automation Tester
15 92 (3.16%) .NET Developer
16 91 (3.13%) Test Leader
17 87 (2.99%) Java Developer
18 76 (2.61%) Senior Developer
19 69 (2.37%) QA Automation Engineer
20 66 (2.27%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 291 (10.01%) .NET
2 248 (8.53%) HTML
3 244 (8.39%) CSS
4 229 (7.88%) Web Services
5 191 (6.57%) AngularJS
6 169 (5.81%) REST
7 168 (5.78%) Node.js
8 147 (5.06%) RESTful
9 139 (4.78%) XML
10 116 (3.99%) Gherkin
11 111 (3.82%) jQuery
12 99 (3.41%) Spring
13 96 (3.30%) React
14 94 (3.23%) ASP.NET
15 88 (3.03%) JSON
15 88 (3.03%) SOAP
16 78 (2.68%) HTML5
17 67 (2.30%) Sass
18 60 (2.06%) .NET Framework
19 59 (2.03%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 256 (8.81%) Analytical Skills
2 198 (6.81%) User Experience
3 136 (4.68%) Mobile App
4 78 (2.68%) Greenfield Project
5 70 (2.41%) Self-Motivation
6 68 (2.34%) Management Information System
7 56 (1.93%) Data Structures
8 51 (1.75%) Virtual Team
9 45 (1.55%) Algorithms
10 42 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
10 42 (1.44%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 28 (0.96%) Data Centre
11 28 (0.96%) Social Media
12 26 (0.89%) Client/Server
12 26 (0.89%) Public Cloud
13 24 (0.83%) Equities
14 20 (0.69%) Fixed Income
14 20 (0.69%) NHS
15 18 (0.62%) Linux Command Line
16 15 (0.52%) Video on Demand
Operating Systems
1 243 (8.36%) Windows
2 226 (7.77%) Linux
3 104 (3.58%) Unix
4 89 (3.06%) Android
5 77 (2.65%) Apple iOS
6 56 (1.93%) Windows 10
7 42 (1.44%) Windows 7
8 34 (1.17%) Windows Server
9 20 (0.69%) Windows 8
10 14 (0.48%) VMS
10 14 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
11 13 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 13 (0.45%) Windows Server 2008
12 8 (0.28%) CentOS
12 8 (0.28%) Embedded Linux
12 8 (0.28%) Mac OS
13 7 (0.24%) Windows XP
14 6 (0.21%) Mac OS X
15 4 (0.14%) Solaris
16 3 (0.10%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,340 (46.10%) Agile Software Development
2 1,025 (35.26%) Test Automation
3 549 (18.89%) Scrum
4 445 (15.31%) DevOps
5 428 (14.72%) BDD
6 362 (12.45%) TDD
7 302 (10.39%) Test Strategy
8 299 (10.29%) SDLC
9 285 (9.80%) Problem-Solving
10 282 (9.70%) User Acceptance Testing
11 254 (8.74%) Continuous Integration
12 253 (8.70%) Test Scripting
13 228 (7.84%) Project Management
14 225 (7.74%) Continuous Improvement
15 222 (7.64%) User Stories
16 218 (7.50%) Regression Testing
17 216 (7.43%) Software Engineering
18 196 (6.74%) Migration
19 189 (6.50%) Manual Testing
20 181 (6.23%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 633 (21.78%) Java
2 497 (17.10%) SQL
3 475 (16.34%) JavaScript
4 389 (13.38%) C#
5 205 (7.05%) Python
6 83 (2.86%) PowerShell
7 81 (2.79%) Java 8
8 65 (2.24%) PHP
9 60 (2.06%) PL/SQL
10 53 (1.82%) C++
11 49 (1.69%) Ruby
12 45 (1.55%) T-SQL
13 44 (1.51%) Scala
14 40 (1.38%) Bash Shell
14 40 (1.38%) C
14 40 (1.38%) VBA
15 39 (1.34%) TypeScript
16 36 (1.24%) VB
17 35 (1.20%) ES6
18 33 (1.14%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 272 (9.36%) Degree
2 199 (6.85%) Security Cleared
3 160 (5.50%) ISTQB
4 145 (4.99%) SC Cleared
5 112 (3.85%) ISEB
6 65 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
7 61 (2.10%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 37 (1.27%) BPSS Clearance
9 32 (1.10%) DV Cleared
10 29 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
11 24 (0.83%) PMI Certification
12 22 (0.76%) DBS Check
13 21 (0.72%) PMP
14 17 (0.58%) ACCA
14 17 (0.58%) MCSE
15 16 (0.55%) Master's Degree
16 13 (0.45%) PRINCE2 Certification
17 11 (0.38%) Cisco Certification
18 10 (0.34%) HND
18 10 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (3.06%) PMO
2 61 (2.10%) Data Quality
3 34 (1.17%) SLA
4 20 (0.69%) GDPR
5 17 (0.58%) WCAG
6 14 (0.48%) MiFID
6 14 (0.48%) SEPA
7 12 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
8 11 (0.38%) ISO 9001
8 11 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 9 (0.31%) GxP
10 7 (0.24%) GMP
11 6 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.17%) COBIT
12 5 (0.17%) EMIR
12 5 (0.17%) PSD2
13 4 (0.14%) PCI DSS
14 3 (0.10%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 3 (0.10%) ISO 13485
14 3 (0.10%) PMBOK
System Software
1 181 (6.23%) Docker
2 99 (3.41%) Active Directory
3 34 (1.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (0.93%) Microsoft App-V
5 17 (0.58%) Hyper-V
6 15 (0.52%) XenApp
7 11 (0.38%) Firmware
8 8 (0.28%) Virtual Servers
9 7 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (0.24%) vSphere
10 6 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
11 5 (0.17%) KVM
11 5 (0.17%) VMware Workstation
12 4 (0.14%) LXC
13 3 (0.10%) Apache Flume
13 3 (0.10%) HDFS
13 3 (0.10%) Xen
14 2 (0.069%) OpenAM
15 1 (0.034%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 1 (0.034%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 74 (2.55%) Kubernetes
2 60 (2.06%) Ansible
3 58 (2.00%) Terraform
4 49 (1.69%) Puppet
5 38 (1.31%) SCCM
6 36 (1.24%) Opscode Chef
7 27 (0.93%) HP Quality Center
8 26 (0.89%) HP ALM
9 18 (0.62%) Control-M
10 11 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.31%) Nagios
12 8 (0.28%) Kibana
13 7 (0.24%) SCOM
14 6 (0.21%) logstash
15 5 (0.17%) Microsoft Clustering
16 4 (0.14%) Microsoft Intune
17 3 (0.10%) CA Wily
17 3 (0.10%) Failover Clustering
17 3 (0.10%) Nessus
17 3 (0.10%) WSUS
Vendors
1 313 (10.77%) Microsoft
2 267 (9.18%) Oracle
3 117 (4.02%) SAP
4 86 (2.96%) Adobe
5 75 (2.58%) HP
6 69 (2.37%) Google
7 61 (2.10%) Salesforce.com
8 55 (1.89%) IBM
9 53 (1.82%) Atlassian
10 44 (1.51%) VMware
11 42 (1.44%) Citrix
12 29 (1.00%) Cadence
13 26 (0.89%) Informatica
14 25 (0.86%) Cypress Semiconductor
14 25 (0.86%) Tableau
15 23 (0.79%) Cisco
15 23 (0.79%) TIBCO
16 22 (0.76%) Xamarin
17 17 (0.58%) hybris
18 15 (0.52%) New Relic
1,268 QA job vacancies Nationwide