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 8 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 60 66
Rank change year-on-year +11 +6 +1
Contract jobs citing QA 2,304 1,285 1,234
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.22% 3.89% 3.26%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 23.80% 22.30% 24.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,341 875 713
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £388 £380 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
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 241 43 73
10th Percentile £13.25 £12.28 £11.89
25th Percentile £15.25 £13.50 £13.26
Median hourly rate £27.96 £27.54 £15.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.53% +83.60% -70.00%
75th Percentile £48.75 £45.36 £28.75
90th Percentile £69.75 £72.00 £73.58
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.96 £15.12 £14.98
% change year-on-year +84.92% +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 9,682 5,763 5,073
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.75% 17.43% 13.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,056 3,679 2,945
10th Percentile £325 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.40% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £610 £605 £625
90th Percentile £713 £706 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +1.42% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 682 278 243
10th Percentile £13.70 £13.60 £13.26
25th Percentile £16.46 £16.61 £15.86
Median hourly rate £30.27 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.90% +9.09% -22.68%
75th Percentile £64.77 £60.94 £62.63
90th Percentile £74.25 £80.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.73 £25.83 £27.50
% change year-on-year +22.87% -6.09% -25.17%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 +17 2,018 £475 - 3,167
UK excluding London +24 1,173 £450 - 1,787
London +6 899 £500 - 1,539
Work from Home +1 575 £475 +5.44% 1,283
North of England +8 286 £457 +6.16% 472
South East +14 260 £425 -15.00% 427
Midlands +27 238 £450 - 274
West Midlands +27 198 £450 -9.27% 188
East of England +19 158 £425 -15.00% 178
South West +10 138 £525 +10.53% 150
Yorkshire +10 113 £475 +3.15% 146
North West -10 112 £475 +14.46% 245
Scotland +8 88 £423 -15.50% 156
North East -9 61 £400 -20.00% 82
East Midlands -7 39 £415 +1.22% 86
Wales +7 22 £413 +17.86% 62
Northern Ireland +2 7 £450 +50.00% 88

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
1 136 (5.90%) Confluence
2 53 (2.30%) CMS
3 42 (1.82%) SharePoint
4 16 (0.69%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.65%) IIS
6 13 (0.56%) Apache
6 13 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
7 12 (0.52%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 9 (0.39%) SAS
8 9 (0.39%) Sitecore CMS
9 7 (0.30%) Oracle Workflow
9 7 (0.30%) 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%) Appian
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 84 (3.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 39 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 22 (0.95%) MS Visio
5 18 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.43%) 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
11 3 (0.13%) Productboard
12 2 (0.087%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.087%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.087%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.087%) Windchill
13 1 (0.043%) Gliffy
13 1 (0.043%) Trello
Business Applications
1 30 (1.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
3 10 (0.43%) 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%) IntelliMatch
Cloud Services
1 473 (20.53%) Azure
2 414 (17.97%) AWS
3 228 (9.90%) GitHub
4 209 (9.07%) Azure DevOps
5 134 (5.82%) GitHub Actions
6 114 (4.95%) GCP
7 111 (4.82%) Power Platform
8 82 (3.56%) Serverless
9 58 (2.52%) AWS Lambda
10 54 (2.34%) SaaS
11 50 (2.17%) Amazon S3
12 45 (1.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 43 (1.87%) Dynamics 365
14 36 (1.56%) OpenShift
15 35 (1.52%) GitHub Copilot
16 34 (1.48%) Snowflake
17 32 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
17 32 (1.39%) Microsoft 365
18 31 (1.35%) Azure Monitor
19 30 (1.30%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.17%) Broadband
1 27 (1.17%) Firewall
2 21 (0.91%) Internet
3 20 (0.87%) DNS
3 20 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
4 17 (0.74%) 5G
5 16 (0.69%) 4G
5 16 (0.69%) TCP/IP
6 15 (0.65%) HTTP
6 15 (0.65%) VLAN
7 14 (0.61%) WAN
8 12 (0.52%) Network Security
9 11 (0.48%) LAN
9 11 (0.48%) VPN
10 10 (0.43%) DHCP
11 8 (0.35%) IPv4
11 8 (0.35%) IPv6
11 8 (0.35%) SD-WAN
11 8 (0.35%) Unified Communications
11 8 (0.35%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 113 (4.90%) SQL Server
2 97 (4.21%) Power BI
3 82 (3.56%) Relational Database
4 81 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
5 62 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
6 55 (2.39%) MongoDB
7 47 (2.04%) MySQL
7 47 (2.04%) NoSQL
8 43 (1.87%) Metadata
9 39 (1.69%) Oracle Database
10 31 (1.35%) Oracle Reports
11 30 (1.30%) Tableau
12 23 (1.00%) Data Lake
13 20 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 16 (0.69%) Big Data
14 16 (0.69%) GIS
14 16 (0.69%) Redis
15 15 (0.65%) Power Query
15 15 (0.65%) RDBMS
16 13 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 302 (13.11%) JIRA
2 261 (11.33%) Git
3 187 (8.12%) Jenkins
4 179 (7.77%) Selenium
5 151 (6.55%) GitLab
6 99 (4.30%) Cucumber
7 86 (3.73%) Postman
8 79 (3.43%) Cypress.io
9 75 (3.26%) JUnit
10 54 (2.34%) Zephyr
11 50 (2.17%) JMeter
11 50 (2.17%) SonarQube
12 47 (2.04%) REST Assured
13 46 (2.00%) Gatling
14 34 (1.48%) Maven
15 30 (1.30%) WebDriver
16 27 (1.17%) Gradle
16 27 (1.17%) TestNG
17 24 (1.04%) Appium
18 23 (1.00%) TestRail
General
1 704 (30.56%) Social Skills
2 423 (18.36%) Finance
3 372 (16.15%) Analytical Skills
4 300 (13.02%) Public Sector
5 171 (7.42%) Banking
6 89 (3.86%) Manufacturing
7 75 (3.26%) Retail
8 63 (2.73%) Organisational Skills
9 62 (2.69%) Marketing
10 57 (2.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 49 (2.13%) Telecoms
12 44 (1.91%) Aerospace
13 43 (1.87%) Influencing Skills
14 40 (1.74%) Legal
15 32 (1.39%) Military
16 30 (1.30%) Documentation Skills
17 25 (1.09%) Law
18 20 (0.87%) Investment Banking
19 19 (0.82%) Pharmaceutical
20 18 (0.78%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 307 (13.32%) Developer
2 292 (12.67%) Lead
3 278 (12.07%) Senior
4 261 (11.33%) QA Engineer
5 250 (10.85%) Analyst
6 136 (5.90%) Quality Engineer
7 123 (5.34%) Test Engineer
8 117 (5.08%) Tester
9 102 (4.43%) Test Manager
10 101 (4.38%) Business Analyst
11 85 (3.69%) QA Leader
12 79 (3.43%) Data Engineer
13 76 (3.30%) Java Developer
14 70 (3.04%) Test Leader
15 61 (2.65%) Consultant
16 59 (2.56%) Senior Analyst
17 54 (2.34%) QA Tester
17 54 (2.34%) Test Analyst
18 51 (2.21%) Architect
19 49 (2.13%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 224 (9.72%) REST
2 154 (6.68%) Playwright
3 152 (6.60%) RESTful
4 126 (5.47%) Spring
5 109 (4.73%) Spring Boot
6 107 (4.64%) Terraform
7 101 (4.38%) React
8 98 (4.25%) .NET
9 91 (3.95%) HTML
10 86 (3.73%) Kafka
11 82 (3.56%) CSS
12 78 (3.39%) AngularJS
13 64 (2.78%) Node.js
14 58 (2.52%) SOAP
15 53 (2.30%) Middleware
15 53 (2.30%) pytest
16 42 (1.82%) .NET Framework
17 41 (1.78%) JSON
18 39 (1.69%) Gherkin
18 39 (1.69%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 221 (9.59%) Product Ownership
2 141 (6.12%) Cloud Native
3 85 (3.69%) Onboarding
4 73 (3.17%) Enterprise Software
4 73 (3.17%) Management Information System
5 56 (2.43%) Distributed Systems
6 52 (2.26%) Mobile App
7 49 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
8 48 (2.08%) AI Agents
9 44 (1.91%) Data Structures
10 40 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
11 35 (1.52%) Data Centre
12 31 (1.35%) Low-Code
13 28 (1.22%) NHS
14 24 (1.04%) CMDB
14 24 (1.04%) Virtual Team
15 19 (0.82%) Educational Technology
16 17 (0.74%) Analytical Mindset
17 15 (0.65%) Operational Technology
17 15 (0.65%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 88 (3.82%) Windows
2 77 (3.34%) Linux
3 49 (2.13%) Apple iOS
4 45 (1.95%) Android
5 35 (1.52%) Unix
6 24 (1.04%) Windows Server
7 17 (0.74%) 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 (0.043%) CentOS
11 1 (0.043%) Debian
11 1 (0.043%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.043%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.043%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.043%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.043%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 893 (38.76%) Agile
2 661 (28.69%) Test Automation
3 609 (26.43%) CI/CD
4 559 (24.26%) DevOps
5 485 (21.05%) Stakeholder Management
6 477 (20.70%) Continuous Improvement
7 397 (17.23%) Problem-Solving
8 376 (16.32%) Validation
9 342 (14.84%) AI
10 341 (14.80%) Scrum
11 332 (14.41%) Test Strategy
12 274 (11.89%) User Acceptance Testing
13 253 (10.98%) Migration
14 220 (9.55%) SDLC
15 215 (9.33%) Microservices
16 205 (8.90%) End-to-End Testing
17 191 (8.29%) Software Engineering
18 186 (8.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 182 (7.90%) Defect Management
20 173 (7.51%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 410 (17.80%) SQL
2 329 (14.28%) Python
3 304 (13.19%) Java
4 196 (8.51%) JavaScript
5 122 (5.30%) C#
6 117 (5.08%) TypeScript
7 55 (2.39%) Bash
8 35 (1.52%) PowerShell
9 34 (1.48%) PL/SQL
10 30 (1.30%) Kotlin
11 26 (1.13%) T-SQL
12 24 (1.04%) Scala
13 21 (0.91%) Swift
14 20 (0.87%) Shell Script
15 17 (0.74%) Objective-C
16 16 (0.69%) VB
17 15 (0.65%) C
18 14 (0.61%) R
18 14 (0.61%) VBA
19 13 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 543 (23.57%) Security Cleared
2 419 (18.19%) SC Cleared
3 148 (6.42%) Degree
4 112 (4.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 74 (3.21%) ISTQB
6 67 (2.91%) DV Cleared
7 48 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
8 22 (0.95%) AWS Certification
8 22 (0.95%) PMP
9 21 (0.91%) Azure Certification
10 19 (0.82%) PMI Certification
11 16 (0.69%) Master's Degree
12 14 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
13 10 (0.43%) DBS Check
13 10 (0.43%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 10 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
14 9 (0.39%) Cisco Certification
14 9 (0.39%) IIBA
14 9 (0.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 9 (0.39%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 162 (7.03%) Data Quality
2 134 (5.82%) Accessibility
3 38 (1.65%) WCAG
4 36 (1.56%) GDPR
5 28 (1.22%) PMO
6 27 (1.17%) GRC
7 18 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.65%) NIST
9 12 (0.52%) ISO 9001
10 11 (0.48%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 11 (0.48%) GxP
11 9 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
12 8 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
12 8 (0.35%) ISO 19650
12 8 (0.35%) SLA
12 8 (0.35%) Software Quality Assurance
13 7 (0.30%) IFRS
13 7 (0.30%) NCSC
14 5 (0.22%) GMP
14 5 (0.22%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 208 (9.03%) Docker
2 24 (1.04%) Active Directory
3 19 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (0.43%) IAG
6 6 (0.26%) 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 (0.043%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.043%) QEMU
10 1 (0.043%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.043%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.043%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.043%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 240 (10.42%) Kubernetes
2 64 (2.78%) Ansible
3 58 (2.52%) Grafana
4 37 (1.61%) Prometheus
5 31 (1.35%) Argo
6 11 (0.48%) HP ALM
7 10 (0.43%) SCCM
8 8 (0.35%) Microsoft Clustering
8 8 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.30%) HP Quality Center
9 7 (0.30%) Istio
9 7 (0.30%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
11 5 (0.22%) Puppet
12 4 (0.17%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.17%) SCOM
13 3 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 2 (0.087%) Control-M
14 2 (0.087%) ITRS Geneos
14 2 (0.087%) Kibana
Vendors
1 255 (11.07%) Microsoft
2 164 (7.12%) Oracle
3 115 (4.99%) Salesforce
4 76 (3.30%) SAP
5 60 (2.60%) ServiceNow
6 51 (2.21%) Google
7 45 (1.95%) Databricks
8 35 (1.52%) Dynatrace
9 34 (1.48%) Splunk
10 31 (1.35%) Red Hat
11 24 (1.04%) Citrix
12 22 (0.95%) VMware
13 21 (0.91%) Cisco
14 20 (0.87%) Adobe
15 18 (0.78%) Informatica
16 17 (0.74%) Sitecore
17 16 (0.69%) IBM
17 16 (0.69%) Talend
17 16 (0.69%) Workday
18 14 (0.61%) MuleSoft