Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 24 January 2020

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 24 January 2020 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
24 Jan 2020		 Same period 2019 Same period 2018
Rank 78 68 64
Rank change year-on-year -10 -4 +4
Contract jobs citing QA 2,062 3,497 3,505
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 2.85% 3.51% 3.49%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 28.08% 32.34% 26.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,287 2,384 2,443
UK median daily rate £450 £450 £431
Median daily rate % change year-on-year - +4.41% +3.86%
10th Percentile £300 £300 £300
90th Percentile £615 £600 £606
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £420 £391
% change year-on-year -4.76% +7.35% +4.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 46 38
UK median hourly rate £20.00 £36.00 £21.90
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -44.44% +64.38% -9.39%
10th Percentile £10.38 £10.75 £11.40
90th Percentile £53.75 £47.63 £49.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.50 £29.00 £28.50
% change year-on-year -25.86% +1.75% +14.00%

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 7,344 10,814 13,110
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.17% 10.86% 13.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,523 6,774 8,602
UK median daily rate £450 £450 £445
Median daily rate % change year-on-year - +1.12% +4.71%
10th Percentile £215 £256 £258
90th Percentile £638 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £425 £400
% change year-on-year -2.94% +6.25% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 317 371 360
UK median hourly rate £23.35 £20.25 £20.60
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year +15.34% -1.72% -9.79%
10th Percentile £12.93 £11.00 £11.25
90th Percentile £53.75 £48.25 £50.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.50 £20.25 £22.35
% change year-on-year +21.02% -9.40% -10.62%

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 24 January 2020.

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 24 January 2020.

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 24 January 2020. 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 -9 1,895 £450 - 1,045
UK excluding London -6 1,099 £400 -4.76% 803
London -15 903 £500 +5.26% 310
South East +6 440 £406 -9.72% 200
North of England -2 235 £398 -0.63% 236
South West -5 123 £425 - 88
Midlands +7 116 £400 +0.63% 134
North West -16 103 £379 -6.91% 113
Scotland -9 87 £375 - 44
Yorkshire +22 75 £440 +10.00% 79
East of England -14 67 £400 -1.23% 76
East Midlands +32 65 £350 -12.50% 60
North East +6 59 £375 -6.25% 44
West Midlands -24 51 £450 +13.92% 74
Wales -4 29 £450 +22.45% 17
Northern Ireland -20 5 £300 -9.09% 7
Channel Islands - 2 £400 - 1

For the 6 months to 24 January 2020, 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.

1 937 (45.44%) Agile Software Development
2 624 (30.26%) Test Automation
3 405 (19.64%) Finance
4 361 (17.51%) SQL
5 349 (16.93%) Scrum
6 339 (16.44%) Java
7 335 (16.25%) JIRA
7 335 (16.25%) DevOps
8 318 (15.42%) Selenium
9 298 (14.45%) Azure
10 291 (14.11%) JavaScript
11 272 (13.19%) BDD
12 269 (13.05%) C#
13 242 (11.74%) Microsoft
13 242 (11.74%) Analytical Skills
14 216 (10.48%) Problem-Solving
15 215 (10.43%) .NET
16 204 (9.89%) Jenkins
17 201 (9.75%) Git (software)
18 200 (9.70%) Project Management
19 199 (9.65%) Continuous Integration
19 199 (9.65%) TDD
20 197 (9.55%) Security Cleared
21 196 (9.51%) Cucumber
22 187 (9.07%) Python
23 186 (9.02%) AWS
24 185 (8.97%) SDLC
25 183 (8.87%) Windows
26 178 (8.63%) Degree
27 174 (8.44%) Oracle

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
1 157 (7.61%) Confluence
2 70 (3.39%) SharePoint
3 25 (1.21%) CMS
4 23 (1.12%) Apache
5 22 (1.07%) Apache Spark
6 17 (0.82%) IIS
7 16 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
8 13 (0.63%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 13 (0.63%) Umbraco
8 13 (0.63%) WebSphere
9 12 (0.58%) Tomcat
10 11 (0.53%) JBoss
11 8 (0.39%) OpenStack
12 7 (0.34%) nginx
13 6 (0.29%) SAS
14 5 (0.24%) Drupal
14 5 (0.24%) MS Exchange
14 5 (0.24%) OpenEdge
14 5 (0.24%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.24%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 102 (4.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (3.30%) Microsoft Office
3 36 (1.75%) Microsoft Project
4 34 (1.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 25 (1.21%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.92%) Photoshop
7 9 (0.44%) Adobe Illustrator
7 9 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
8 8 (0.39%) Sketch
9 7 (0.34%) Zeplin
10 4 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 4 (0.19%) InVision
11 3 (0.15%) Adobe Captivate
12 2 (0.097%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.097%) Lectora
13 1 (0.048%) Acrobat
13 1 (0.048%) InfoPath
13 1 (0.048%) Marvel
Business Applications
1 34 (1.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 11 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
3 10 (0.48%) SAP Hybris
4 9 (0.44%) Magento
5 8 (0.39%) BusinessWorks
6 7 (0.34%) Oracle Retail
6 7 (0.34%) Salesforce.com CRM
6 7 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
7 6 (0.29%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.29%) Misys Opics
8 5 (0.24%) NetSuite
8 5 (0.24%) Oracle EBS R12
8 5 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
8 5 (0.24%) Shopify
8 5 (0.24%) thinkFolio
9 4 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.19%) SimCorp Dimension
10 3 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
10 3 (0.15%) Oracle iProcurement
Cloud Services
1 298 (14.45%) Azure
2 186 (9.02%) AWS
3 88 (4.27%) Power Platform
4 75 (3.64%) GitHub
5 55 (2.67%) Office 365
5 55 (2.67%) SaaS
6 46 (2.23%) PaaS
7 37 (1.79%) GCP
7 37 (1.79%) Serverless
8 24 (1.16%) Cloud Computing
8 24 (1.16%) Dynamics 365
8 24 (1.16%) Google Analytics
8 24 (1.16%) IaaS
9 23 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
10 21 (1.02%) BrowserStack
11 18 (0.87%) AWS Lambda
12 17 (0.82%) Azure Functions
13 15 (0.73%) Sauce Labs
14 13 (0.63%) Data Lake Analytics
14 13 (0.63%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 47 (2.28%) DNS
2 33 (1.60%) Internet
3 30 (1.45%) WAN
4 29 (1.41%) TCP/IP
5 27 (1.31%) HTTP
6 25 (1.21%) VPN
7 24 (1.16%) Firewall
8 23 (1.12%) 4G
9 20 (0.97%) LAN
9 20 (0.97%) Wireshark
10 19 (0.92%) Ethernet
11 14 (0.68%) MPLS
12 13 (0.63%) BGP
12 13 (0.63%) EIGRP
13 12 (0.58%) WLAN
14 11 (0.53%) Unified Communications
15 10 (0.48%) Wireless
16 9 (0.44%) ADSL
16 9 (0.44%) DHCP
16 9 (0.44%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 144 (6.98%) SQL Server
2 84 (4.07%) Power BI
3 67 (3.25%) Data Warehouse
4 61 (2.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 60 (2.91%) Big Data
6 59 (2.86%) Relational Database
7 43 (2.09%) MySQL
8 34 (1.65%) Oracle Database
9 30 (1.45%) NoSQL
10 27 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
11 26 (1.26%) MongoDB
11 26 (1.26%) Redis
11 26 (1.26%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 25 (1.21%) Data Lake
13 23 (1.12%) RDBMS
14 22 (1.07%) PostgreSQL
15 20 (0.97%) Hadoop
16 17 (0.82%) Data Mining
17 14 (0.68%) Blockchain
18 13 (0.63%) DB2
Development Applications
1 335 (16.25%) JIRA
2 318 (15.42%) Selenium
3 204 (9.89%) Jenkins
4 201 (9.75%) Git (software)
5 196 (9.51%) Cucumber
6 86 (4.17%) SpecFlow
7 78 (3.78%) JMeter
8 77 (3.73%) WebDriver
9 63 (3.06%) Postman
10 58 (2.81%) Gatling
11 56 (2.72%) Visual Studio
12 54 (2.62%) SoapUI
13 42 (2.04%) Visual Studio Team System
14 33 (1.60%) TeamCity
15 32 (1.55%) Team Foundation Server
16 29 (1.41%) Bitbucket
16 29 (1.41%) JUnit
17 28 (1.36%) Octopus Deploy
18 25 (1.21%) REST Assured
19 23 (1.12%) Jasmine
General
1 405 (19.64%) Finance
2 125 (6.06%) Public Sector
3 115 (5.58%) Telecoms
4 107 (5.19%) Banking
5 76 (3.69%) Retail
6 70 (3.39%) Marketing
7 58 (2.81%) Manufacturing
8 42 (2.04%) Legal
9 26 (1.26%) Front Office
10 24 (1.16%) Games
11 21 (1.02%) Electronics
12 20 (0.97%) Law
12 20 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
13 19 (0.92%) Back Office
14 17 (0.82%) Investment Banking
15 16 (0.78%) Retail Banking
16 15 (0.73%) Publishing
17 14 (0.68%) German Language
18 10 (0.48%) Financial Institution
19 9 (0.44%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 365 (17.70%) Developer
2 349 (16.93%) Analyst
3 182 (8.83%) Tester
4 145 (7.03%) QA Engineer
5 131 (6.35%) Test Analyst
6 94 (4.56%) QA Analyst
7 93 (4.51%) Test Engineer
8 89 (4.32%) Project Manager
9 88 (4.27%) Architect
10 83 (4.03%) Test Manager
11 81 (3.93%) Business Analyst
12 80 (3.88%) QA Tester
13 74 (3.59%) Automation Tester
14 67 (3.25%) Consultant
15 62 (3.01%) QA Test Analyst
16 51 (2.47%) DevOps Engineer
17 49 (2.38%) .NET Developer
17 49 (2.38%) Java Developer
18 44 (2.13%) C# Developer
19 43 (2.09%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 215 (10.43%) .NET
2 158 (7.66%) HTML
3 132 (6.40%) CSS
4 121 (5.87%) XML
5 117 (5.67%) AngularJS
6 111 (5.38%) Web Services
7 89 (4.32%) React
8 87 (4.22%) JSON
9 85 (4.12%) Gherkin
9 85 (4.12%) Node.js
10 82 (3.98%) RESTful
11 81 (3.93%) REST
12 69 (3.35%) ASP.NET
13 58 (2.81%) SOAP
14 46 (2.23%) HTML5
15 45 (2.18%) .NET Framework
15 45 (2.18%) Spring
16 39 (1.89%) Redux
17 31 (1.50%) ASP.NET Web API
18 28 (1.36%) ASP.NET MVC
Miscellaneous
1 242 (11.74%) Analytical Skills
2 129 (6.26%) User Experience
3 69 (3.35%) Mobile App
4 53 (2.57%) Self-Motivation
5 51 (2.47%) Management Information System
6 35 (1.70%) Greenfield Project
7 34 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
8 32 (1.55%) Public Cloud
9 26 (1.26%) Algorithms
9 26 (1.26%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 20 (0.97%) Data Centre
11 18 (0.87%) Derivative
12 17 (0.82%) Virtual Team
13 16 (0.78%) Blog
14 15 (0.73%) Cloud Native
14 15 (0.73%) e-Learning
15 14 (0.68%) Wiki
16 13 (0.63%) Equities
16 13 (0.63%) Life Science
17 12 (0.58%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 183 (8.87%) Windows
2 162 (7.86%) Linux
3 74 (3.59%) Apple iOS
4 69 (3.35%) Android
5 68 (3.30%) Windows 10
6 64 (3.10%) Unix
7 41 (1.99%) Windows Server
8 32 (1.55%) Windows 7
9 15 (0.73%) Ubuntu
10 9 (0.44%) Windows 8
10 9 (0.44%) Windows Server 2008
11 8 (0.39%) Windows Server 2012
12 6 (0.29%) CentOS
12 6 (0.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 6 (0.29%) VMS
13 3 (0.15%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.097%) AIX
14 2 (0.097%) Embedded Linux
14 2 (0.097%) Mac OS X
14 2 (0.097%) Windows Vista
Processes & Methodologies
1 937 (45.44%) Agile Software Development
2 624 (30.26%) Test Automation
3 349 (16.93%) Scrum
4 335 (16.25%) DevOps
5 272 (13.19%) BDD
6 216 (10.48%) Problem-Solving
7 200 (9.70%) Project Management
8 199 (9.65%) Continuous Integration
8 199 (9.65%) TDD
9 185 (8.97%) SDLC
10 156 (7.57%) Test Strategy
11 147 (7.13%) Analytics
12 146 (7.08%) Business Intelligence
13 138 (6.69%) Test Scripting
14 126 (6.11%) Migration
15 124 (6.01%) User Acceptance Testing
16 118 (5.72%) Continuous Improvement
17 117 (5.67%) Microservices
18 114 (5.53%) Regression Testing
19 113 (5.48%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 361 (17.51%) SQL
2 339 (16.44%) Java
3 291 (14.11%) JavaScript
4 269 (13.05%) C#
5 187 (9.07%) Python
6 97 (4.70%) PowerShell
7 67 (3.25%) C
8 58 (2.81%) Bash Shell
9 54 (2.62%) Ruby
10 41 (1.99%) TypeScript
11 38 (1.84%) Scala
12 36 (1.75%) C++
13 32 (1.55%) T-SQL
13 32 (1.55%) VBA
14 26 (1.26%) PL/SQL
15 25 (1.21%) Perl
15 25 (1.21%) PHP
16 21 (1.02%) R
17 20 (0.97%) Groovy
18 19 (0.92%) Java 8
Qualifications
1 197 (9.55%) Security Cleared
2 178 (8.63%) Degree
3 153 (7.42%) SC Cleared
4 106 (5.14%) ISTQB
5 91 (4.41%) ISEB
6 47 (2.28%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 31 (1.50%) BPSS Clearance
8 27 (1.31%) Computer Science Degree
9 23 (1.12%) DV Cleared
10 19 (0.92%) PMP
11 18 (0.87%) PMI Certification
12 17 (0.82%) Master's Degree
12 17 (0.82%) Microsoft Certification
13 16 (0.78%) Cisco Certification
14 15 (0.73%) CCNA
15 13 (0.63%) BC Cleared
16 12 (0.58%) CCNP
16 12 (0.58%) DBS Check
16 12 (0.58%) ISEB Practitioner
17 11 (0.53%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (2.18%) PMO
2 37 (1.79%) Data Quality
3 31 (1.50%) SLA
4 18 (0.87%) GDPR
5 9 (0.44%) GxP
5 9 (0.44%) WCAG
6 7 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.29%) Def Stans
7 6 (0.29%) ISO 9001
8 5 (0.24%) MiFID
8 5 (0.24%) PCI DSS
8 5 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 4 (0.19%) EMIR
9 4 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 3 (0.15%) Disclosure Scotland
10 3 (0.15%) Government Security Classifications
10 3 (0.15%) NCSC
10 3 (0.15%) P3O
11 2 (0.097%) DO-178B
11 2 (0.097%) Section 508
System Software
1 122 (5.92%) Docker
2 37 (1.79%) Active Directory
2 37 (1.79%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (1.02%) Microsoft App-V
4 14 (0.68%) vSphere
5 10 (0.48%) Firmware
6 8 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (0.34%) Hyper-V
8 5 (0.24%) XenApp
9 4 (0.19%) LXC
9 4 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
9 4 (0.19%) VMware Workstation
10 3 (0.15%) HDFS
11 2 (0.097%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 2 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.097%) XenDesktop
12 1 (0.048%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.048%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 76 (3.69%) Ansible
2 62 (3.01%) Kubernetes
3 61 (2.96%) Terraform
4 47 (2.28%) Puppet
5 29 (1.41%) SCCM
6 28 (1.36%) Opscode Chef
7 26 (1.26%) HP ALM
8 23 (1.12%) HP Quality Center
9 16 (0.78%) Docker Swarm
10 14 (0.68%) Salt
11 12 (0.58%) AppDNA
12 11 (0.53%) Nagios
13 10 (0.48%) Packer
14 8 (0.39%) Control-M
15 7 (0.34%) ThinApp
16 6 (0.29%) Grafana
16 6 (0.29%) Kibana
16 6 (0.29%) Prometheus
17 4 (0.19%) HP SiteScope
17 4 (0.19%) logstash
Vendors
1 242 (11.74%) Microsoft
2 174 (8.44%) Oracle
3 82 (3.98%) SAP
4 61 (2.96%) Google
5 52 (2.52%) HP
6 49 (2.38%) VMware
7 48 (2.33%) Salesforce.com
8 33 (1.60%) Adobe
9 30 (1.45%) Citrix
9 30 (1.45%) Tableau
10 27 (1.31%) Cisco
11 26 (1.26%) hybris
12 20 (0.97%) Atlassian
13 18 (0.87%) IBM
14 16 (0.78%) Samsung
15 15 (0.73%) Workday
16 14 (0.68%) Juniper
16 14 (0.68%) MuleSoft
16 14 (0.68%) Splunk
16 14 (0.68%) Teradata
1,122 QA job vacancies Nationwide