Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 17 October 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 17 October 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
17 Oct 2019		 Same period 2018 Same period 2017
Rank 74 71 69
Rank change year-on-year -3 -2 +6
Contract jobs citing QA 2,557 3,594 3,260
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 3.01% 3.48% 3.28%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 28.98% 31.74% 26.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,635 2,445 2,282
UK median daily rate £450 £450 £430
Median daily rate % change year-on-year - +4.65% +3.68%
10th Percentile £305 £300 £298
90th Percentile £613 £600 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £405 £388
% change year-on-year +4.94% +4.52% +0.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 45 48
UK median hourly rate £30.25 £35.00 £21.90
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -13.57% +59.82% +18.59%
10th Percentile £9.65 £10.70 £10.21
90th Percentile £54.63 £47.60 £41.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.75 £29.00 £17.50
% change year-on-year +16.38% +65.71% +25.00%

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 8,823 11,323 12,311
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.37% 10.97% 12.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,497 7,173 8,054
UK median daily rate £450 £450 £440
Median daily rate % change year-on-year - +2.27% +6.02%
10th Percentile £225 £250 £256
90th Percentile £633 £625 £637
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £402 £400
% change year-on-year +5.76% +0.46% +6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 400 398 367
UK median hourly rate £21.42 £21.76 £20.00
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -1.59% +8.80% -12.42%
10th Percentile £11.11 £11.21 £10.63
90th Percentile £56.25 £50.00 £47.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.67 £21.88 £20.00
% change year-on-year +8.18% +9.40% -20.00%

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 17 October 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 17 October 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 17 October 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 2,371 £450 - 1,015
UK excluding London +6 1,386 £425 +4.94% 781
London -18 1,121 £475 - 297
South East +11 561 £433 +1.35% 182
North of England +19 319 £405 -7.43% 244
South West -9 146 £425 +9.68% 85
Yorkshire +35 125 £375 -11.76% 81
Midlands -10 119 £400 +1.27% 122
North West -12 118 £429 -4.78% 122
East of England -7 99 £413 +0.30% 86
Scotland -21 97 £375 -1.32% 40
North East +35 77 £375 -15.49% 41
West Midlands -26 61 £400 +3.23% 79
East Midlands +31 55 £373 -9.70% 41
Wales 0 47 £413 +14.58% 12
Channel Islands - 4 £600 -
Northern Ireland -14 1 £500 - 11

For the 6 months to 17 October 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 1,154 (45.13%) Agile Software Development
2 880 (34.42%) Test Automation
3 492 (19.24%) Finance
4 491 (19.20%) Selenium
5 456 (17.83%) Java
6 433 (16.93%) SQL
7 421 (16.46%) Scrum
8 384 (15.02%) DevOps
9 365 (14.27%) JavaScript
10 349 (13.65%) JIRA
11 340 (13.30%) BDD
12 334 (13.06%) Azure
13 326 (12.75%) C#
14 288 (11.26%) Microsoft
15 270 (10.56%) TDD
16 269 (10.52%) Test Strategy
17 261 (10.21%) Cucumber
18 253 (9.89%) Windows
19 244 (9.54%) Oracle
20 241 (9.43%) Jenkins
21 239 (9.35%) Degree
22 232 (9.07%) Analytical Skills
23 229 (8.96%) SDLC
24 227 (8.88%) .NET
25 224 (8.76%) Project Management
26 219 (8.56%) Security Cleared
27 217 (8.49%) Git (software)
28 216 (8.45%) Problem-Solving
29 213 (8.33%) User Acceptance Testing
30 212 (8.29%) AWS

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
1 155 (6.06%) Confluence
2 88 (3.44%) SharePoint
3 38 (1.49%) CMS
4 30 (1.17%) IIS
5 28 (1.10%) Apache
6 23 (0.90%) Elasticsearch
7 19 (0.74%) Apache Spark
7 19 (0.74%) Tomcat
8 16 (0.63%) Skype for Business
8 16 (0.63%) Umbraco
9 14 (0.55%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 14 (0.55%) SharePoint 2013
10 10 (0.39%) JBoss
10 10 (0.39%) MS Exchange
10 10 (0.39%) WebSphere
11 8 (0.31%) Drupal
12 7 (0.27%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 7 (0.27%) SAS
12 7 (0.27%) WebLogic
13 6 (0.23%) SharePoint 2010
Applications
1 118 (4.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 82 (3.21%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
4 35 (1.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 31 (1.21%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.86%) Photoshop
7 14 (0.55%) Adobe Illustrator
8 11 (0.43%) Sketch
9 9 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
10 7 (0.27%) InVision
11 5 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 4 (0.16%) InfoPath
13 2 (0.078%) Marvel
13 2 (0.078%) Weka
13 2 (0.078%) Zeplin
14 1 (0.039%) Adobe XD
14 1 (0.039%) Camtasia
14 1 (0.039%) CATIA
14 1 (0.039%) InDesign
14 1 (0.039%) Stata
Business Applications
1 41 (1.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 14 (0.55%) BusinessWorks
2 14 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
4 9 (0.35%) Oracle General Ledger
5 8 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
5 8 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
6 7 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
6 7 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
7 6 (0.23%) Magento
7 6 (0.23%) Misys Opics
7 6 (0.23%) Salesforce.com CRM
7 6 (0.23%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 5 (0.20%) Actimize
8 5 (0.20%) Oracle iProcurement
8 5 (0.20%) SAP FI
8 5 (0.20%) SAP Hybris
8 5 (0.20%) SAP Oil and Gas
9 4 (0.16%) Oracle EBS R12
9 4 (0.16%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 334 (13.06%) Azure
2 212 (8.29%) AWS
3 86 (3.36%) Power Platform
4 73 (2.85%) GitHub
5 70 (2.74%) SaaS
6 69 (2.70%) PaaS
7 58 (2.27%) Office 365
8 42 (1.64%) GCP
8 42 (1.64%) Serverless
9 36 (1.41%) BrowserStack
10 32 (1.25%) Google Analytics
11 31 (1.21%) IaaS
12 29 (1.13%) Dynamics 365
13 28 (1.10%) Sauce Labs
14 20 (0.78%) AWS Lambda
15 19 (0.74%) SuccessFactors
16 18 (0.70%) AWS CloudFormation
16 18 (0.70%) Cloud Computing
17 16 (0.63%) Azure Functions
18 14 (0.55%) Apigee
Communications & Networking
1 39 (1.53%) Internet
1 39 (1.53%) WAN
2 37 (1.45%) DNS
3 32 (1.25%) Firewall
4 27 (1.06%) HTTP
4 27 (1.06%) TCP/IP
5 24 (0.94%) LAN
6 23 (0.90%) VPN
7 22 (0.86%) Unified Communications
8 21 (0.82%) Ethernet
9 20 (0.78%) 4G
10 19 (0.74%) Skype
11 17 (0.66%) MPLS
12 16 (0.63%) BGP
13 13 (0.51%) EIGRP
14 12 (0.47%) SAN
15 11 (0.43%) Intranet
15 11 (0.43%) Network Security
15 11 (0.43%) OSPF
15 11 (0.43%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 166 (6.49%) SQL Server
2 95 (3.72%) Data Warehouse
3 80 (3.13%) Power BI
4 70 (2.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 67 (2.62%) MySQL
6 56 (2.19%) Big Data
7 50 (1.96%) Oracle Reports
8 47 (1.84%) Oracle Database
9 41 (1.60%) Relational Database
10 36 (1.41%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 35 (1.37%) MongoDB
12 32 (1.25%) NoSQL
13 28 (1.10%) PostgreSQL
14 26 (1.02%) Redis
15 19 (0.74%) Data Mining
16 17 (0.66%) Hadoop
16 17 (0.66%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 16 (0.63%) Data Lake
18 15 (0.59%) Oracle Database 10g
19 14 (0.55%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 491 (19.20%) Selenium
2 349 (13.65%) JIRA
3 261 (10.21%) Cucumber
4 241 (9.43%) Jenkins
5 217 (8.49%) Git (software)
6 153 (5.98%) JMeter
7 117 (4.58%) WebDriver
8 96 (3.75%) SpecFlow
9 88 (3.44%) Gatling
10 82 (3.21%) SoapUI
11 75 (2.93%) Visual Studio Team System
12 55 (2.15%) TeamCity
13 52 (2.03%) Visual Studio
14 47 (1.84%) Team Foundation Server
15 46 (1.80%) JUnit
16 41 (1.60%) Maven
17 39 (1.53%) Protractor
18 34 (1.33%) Jasmine
18 34 (1.33%) MSI
19 30 (1.17%) Appium
General
1 492 (19.24%) Finance
2 162 (6.34%) Banking
3 127 (4.97%) Public Sector
4 119 (4.65%) Retail
5 108 (4.22%) Telecoms
6 69 (2.70%) Marketing
7 63 (2.46%) Manufacturing
8 62 (2.42%) Legal
9 34 (1.33%) Investment Banking
10 27 (1.06%) Front Office
11 25 (0.98%) Games
11 25 (0.98%) Law
12 24 (0.94%) Pharmaceutical
13 19 (0.74%) Electronics
14 16 (0.63%) Financial Institution
14 16 (0.63%) Publishing
15 13 (0.51%) Back Office
15 13 (0.51%) Retail Banking
16 12 (0.47%) Local Government
17 10 (0.39%) Billing
Job Titles
1 466 (18.22%) Analyst
2 425 (16.62%) Developer
3 264 (10.32%) Tester
4 187 (7.31%) Test Analyst
5 184 (7.20%) QA Engineer
6 138 (5.40%) QA Tester
7 121 (4.73%) Test Engineer
8 117 (4.58%) Architect
9 116 (4.54%) Business Analyst
10 114 (4.46%) QA Analyst
11 108 (4.22%) Test Manager
12 98 (3.83%) Automation Tester
13 94 (3.68%) Project Manager
14 79 (3.09%) Consultant
15 73 (2.85%) QA Leader
16 67 (2.62%) .NET Developer
17 63 (2.46%) QA Test Analyst
18 61 (2.39%) Test Leader
19 59 (2.31%) Full Stack Developer
20 54 (2.11%) C# Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 227 (8.88%) .NET
2 184 (7.20%) HTML
3 169 (6.61%) CSS
4 163 (6.37%) Web Services
5 140 (5.48%) AngularJS
6 130 (5.08%) XML
7 125 (4.89%) Gherkin
8 124 (4.85%) Node.js
9 103 (4.03%) RESTful
10 93 (3.64%) REST
11 81 (3.17%) JSON
11 81 (3.17%) React
12 75 (2.93%) ASP.NET
13 67 (2.62%) Spring
14 62 (2.42%) SOAP
15 57 (2.23%) jQuery
16 45 (1.76%) .NET Core
17 44 (1.72%) .NET Framework
18 42 (1.64%) HTML5
19 35 (1.37%) ASP.NET Web API
Miscellaneous
1 232 (9.07%) Analytical Skills
2 157 (6.14%) User Experience
3 79 (3.09%) Mobile App
4 62 (2.42%) Management Information System
5 61 (2.39%) Self-Motivation
6 47 (1.84%) Greenfield Project
7 40 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
8 35 (1.37%) Data Centre
9 32 (1.25%) Public Cloud
10 31 (1.21%) Algorithms
10 31 (1.21%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 23 (0.90%) Equities
12 21 (0.82%) Blog
13 19 (0.74%) Cloud Native
13 19 (0.74%) Data Structures
13 19 (0.74%) Derivative
14 15 (0.59%) Client/Server
15 14 (0.55%) Embedded Systems
15 14 (0.55%) Virtual Team
16 12 (0.47%) Smart Meter
Operating Systems
1 253 (9.89%) Windows
2 170 (6.65%) Linux
3 92 (3.60%) Unix
4 69 (2.70%) Android
4 69 (2.70%) Windows 10
5 64 (2.50%) Apple iOS
6 50 (1.96%) Windows 7
7 49 (1.92%) Windows Server
8 21 (0.82%) Windows 8
9 14 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
9 14 (0.55%) Windows Server 2012
10 11 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 9 (0.35%) CentOS
11 9 (0.35%) VMS
12 7 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
13 6 (0.23%) Mac OS X
13 6 (0.23%) Solaris
14 4 (0.16%) Ubuntu
15 3 (0.12%) Mac OS
16 2 (0.078%) Windows Vista
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,154 (45.13%) Agile Software Development
2 880 (34.42%) Test Automation
3 421 (16.46%) Scrum
4 384 (15.02%) DevOps
5 340 (13.30%) BDD
6 270 (10.56%) TDD
7 269 (10.52%) Test Strategy
8 229 (8.96%) SDLC
9 224 (8.76%) Project Management
10 216 (8.45%) Problem-Solving
11 213 (8.33%) User Acceptance Testing
12 210 (8.21%) Test Scripting
13 200 (7.82%) Continuous Integration
14 197 (7.70%) Regression Testing
15 184 (7.20%) Performance Testing
16 174 (6.80%) Analytics
17 171 (6.69%) Continuous Improvement
18 169 (6.61%) Migration
19 164 (6.41%) Manual Testing
20 161 (6.30%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 456 (17.83%) Java
2 433 (16.93%) SQL
3 365 (14.27%) JavaScript
4 326 (12.75%) C#
5 184 (7.20%) Python
6 100 (3.91%) PowerShell
7 69 (2.70%) C
8 50 (1.96%) Ruby
9 48 (1.88%) C++
10 47 (1.84%) PHP
11 46 (1.80%) PL/SQL
12 45 (1.76%) Java 8
13 36 (1.41%) Bash Shell
13 36 (1.41%) Scala
13 36 (1.41%) VBA
14 31 (1.21%) T-SQL
15 30 (1.17%) TypeScript
16 26 (1.02%) Perl
17 22 (0.86%) R
18 19 (0.74%) VB
Qualifications
1 239 (9.35%) Degree
2 219 (8.56%) Security Cleared
3 163 (6.37%) SC Cleared
4 134 (5.24%) ISTQB
5 107 (4.18%) ISEB
6 65 (2.54%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 53 (2.07%) Computer Science Degree
8 40 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
9 35 (1.37%) DV Cleared
10 29 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
11 24 (0.94%) PMP
12 23 (0.90%) PMI Certification
13 18 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
14 17 (0.66%) DBS Check
14 17 (0.66%) Master's Degree
15 16 (0.63%) ACCA
15 16 (0.63%) BC Cleared
15 16 (0.63%) CCNA
15 16 (0.63%) MCSE
16 12 (0.47%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (2.50%) PMO
2 47 (1.84%) Data Quality
3 46 (1.80%) SLA
4 17 (0.66%) GDPR
5 9 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
5 9 (0.35%) ISO 9001
5 9 (0.35%) SEPA
6 8 (0.31%) MiFID
7 6 (0.23%) Def Stans
7 6 (0.23%) GxP
7 6 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.20%) PSD2
9 4 (0.16%) EMIR
9 4 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 4 (0.16%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.12%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.12%) ISO 9000
10 3 (0.12%) WCAG
11 2 (0.078%) COSHH
11 2 (0.078%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 154 (6.02%) Docker
2 68 (2.66%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (1.25%) Microsoft App-V
5 20 (0.78%) vSphere
6 17 (0.66%) Hyper-V
7 15 (0.59%) Firmware
8 13 (0.51%) XenApp
9 9 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
9 9 (0.35%) VMware Workstation
10 7 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
11 6 (0.23%) LXC
12 5 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
13 2 (0.078%) OpenAM
13 2 (0.078%) XenDesktop
14 1 (0.039%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 1 (0.039%) HDFS
14 1 (0.039%) KVM
14 1 (0.039%) Oracle RAC
14 1 (0.039%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 58 (2.27%) Kubernetes
2 55 (2.15%) Ansible
2 55 (2.15%) Terraform
3 37 (1.45%) SCCM
4 35 (1.37%) Puppet
5 30 (1.17%) HP ALM
5 30 (1.17%) Opscode Chef
6 26 (1.02%) HP Quality Center
7 9 (0.35%) Control-M
8 8 (0.31%) Kibana
8 8 (0.31%) Salt
8 8 (0.31%) ThinApp
9 7 (0.27%) logstash
10 6 (0.23%) Nagios
11 5 (0.20%) Grafana
11 5 (0.20%) Packer
11 5 (0.20%) WSUS
12 4 (0.16%) AppDNA
13 3 (0.12%) Data Guard
13 3 (0.12%) Matomo
Vendors
1 288 (11.26%) Microsoft
2 244 (9.54%) Oracle
3 110 (4.30%) SAP
4 73 (2.85%) Google
5 66 (2.58%) HP
6 64 (2.50%) VMware
7 57 (2.23%) Salesforce.com
8 39 (1.53%) Adobe
9 38 (1.49%) Cisco
10 37 (1.45%) IBM
11 36 (1.41%) Citrix
12 34 (1.33%) Atlassian
13 29 (1.13%) Tableau
14 24 (0.94%) Cypress Semiconductor
15 18 (0.70%) Juniper
15 18 (0.70%) TIBCO
16 15 (0.59%) hybris
16 15 (0.59%) Informatica
16 15 (0.59%) NetApp
17 14 (0.55%) Cadence
1,086 QA job vacancies Nationwide