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 1 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 65 58
Rank change year-on-year +2 -7 +18
Contract jobs citing QA 1,764 1,051 1,443
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.60% 3.61% 3.36%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.67% 22.53% 24.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,087 727 957
10th Percentile £314 £280 £310
25th Percentile £393 £384 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £477 £475 £509
Median % change year-on-year +0.42% -6.59% +1.70%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £611
90th Percentile £675 £688 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £453 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +0.67% -10.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 127 23 90
10th Percentile £13.20 £15.12 £10.82
25th Percentile £15.49 £19.27 £12.25
Median hourly rate £30.58 £52.50 £14.49
Median % change year-on-year -41.75% +262.32% -35.56%
75th Percentile £67.50 £73.13 £28.12
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £71.94
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £60.00 £13.52
% change year-on-year -49.03% +343.79% +4.00%

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 8,139 4,664 5,995
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.63% 16.01% 13.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,224 2,986 3,786
10th Percentile £340 £263 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -2.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 483 181 407
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.13 £10.98
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.14 £13.22
Median hourly rate £35.00 £33.11 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.71% +47.16% -40.00%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £81.98 £80.00 £69.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £33.50 £18.97
% change year-on-year +19.42% +76.57% -49.41%

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 1 June 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 1 June 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 1 June 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 +6 1,519 £482 +1.45% 763
UK excluding London +9 801 £453 +0.67% 593
London +12 773 £500 - 268
Work from Home +4 496 £488 -1.52% 302
South East -1 182 £450 -2.70% 167
North of England -23 172 £463 -2.63% 144
Midlands -9 163 £425 +5.07% 98
West Midlands -7 118 £444 +4.53% 52
South West +25 115 £488 -2.50% 68
East of England +10 81 £475 -2.89% 58
North West -27 79 £444 -0.78% 82
Scotland +14 76 £380 -15.50% 34
Yorkshire -31 68 £514 +0.54% 47
East Midlands -15 46 £394 +5.00% 46
North East -13 25 £438 +4.17% 17
Northern Ireland +9 17 £475 +46.15% 25
Wales -11 9 £450 -5.26% 15

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 93 (5.27%) Confluence
2 30 (1.70%) SharePoint
3 26 (1.47%) CMS
4 19 (1.08%) IIS
5 14 (0.79%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 14 (0.79%) Apache Spark
6 10 (0.57%) Apache
7 6 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
8 5 (0.28%) Umbraco
9 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.23%) nginx
9 4 (0.23%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 4 (0.23%) SAS
10 3 (0.17%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.17%) Moodle
10 3 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.17%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.11%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.11%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 58 (3.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (1.87%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (1.47%) Microsoft Project
4 25 (1.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 22 (1.25%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.23%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.17%) CATIA
7 3 (0.17%) Simulink
7 3 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.11%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.11%) EPLAN
9 1 (0.057%) Adobe After Effects
9 1 (0.057%) Adobe Premiere
9 1 (0.057%) Autodesk Smoke
9 1 (0.057%) Camtasia
9 1 (0.057%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.057%) CPLEX
9 1 (0.057%) Navisworks
9 1 (0.057%) Notion
Business Applications
1 28 (1.59%) SAP S/4HANA
2 19 (1.08%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.45%) Shopify
4 7 (0.40%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.28%) Maximo
6 5 (0.28%) NEC Housing
7 4 (0.23%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.23%) Infor CloudSuite
8 3 (0.17%) Aladdin
8 3 (0.17%) NetSuite
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle EBS R12
8 3 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
9 2 (0.11%) Actimize
9 2 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.11%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.11%) SAP Retail
9 2 (0.11%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 398 (22.56%) Azure
2 277 (15.70%) AWS
3 168 (9.52%) Azure DevOps
4 145 (8.22%) GitHub
5 106 (6.01%) Power Platform
6 93 (5.27%) GitHub Actions
7 76 (4.31%) GCP
8 46 (2.61%) Serverless
9 40 (2.27%) Dynamics 365
10 36 (2.04%) OpenShift
11 35 (1.98%) SaaS
12 30 (1.70%) Snowflake
13 29 (1.64%) AWS Lambda
14 28 (1.59%) Amazon S3
15 25 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 25 (1.42%) Azure Data Factory
16 19 (1.08%) AWS CloudFormation
16 19 (1.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 17 (0.96%) Amazon ECS
17 17 (0.96%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.42%) Firewall
2 21 (1.19%) LAN
3 20 (1.13%) WAN
4 19 (1.08%) Network Security
4 19 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
5 18 (1.02%) Internet
6 14 (0.79%) VPN
7 13 (0.74%) Wireless
8 11 (0.62%) DNS
8 11 (0.62%) HTTP
8 11 (0.62%) SD-WAN
8 11 (0.62%) Unified Communications
9 10 (0.57%) VLAN
10 8 (0.45%) IPsec
11 6 (0.34%) Cisco Nexus
11 6 (0.34%) SMS
11 6 (0.34%) TCP/IP
12 4 (0.23%) DHCP
12 4 (0.23%) MPLS
13 2 (0.11%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 106 (6.01%) SQL Server
2 91 (5.16%) Power BI
3 69 (3.91%) Data Warehouse
4 56 (3.17%) PostgreSQL
5 46 (2.61%) Relational Database
6 43 (2.44%) MySQL
7 40 (2.27%) NoSQL
8 37 (2.10%) Tableau
9 34 (1.93%) Oracle Database
10 33 (1.87%) Data Lake
10 33 (1.87%) Metadata
11 31 (1.76%) Oracle Reports
12 24 (1.36%) Big Data
13 23 (1.30%) MongoDB
14 19 (1.08%) Azure SQL Database
15 18 (1.02%) DynamoDB
16 17 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 16 (0.91%) BigQuery
18 14 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
19 13 (0.74%) Redis
Development Applications
1 290 (16.44%) JIRA
2 158 (8.96%) Git
3 133 (7.54%) Selenium
4 124 (7.03%) Jenkins
5 100 (5.67%) GitLab
6 79 (4.48%) Postman
7 61 (3.46%) Cucumber
8 59 (3.34%) Cypress.io
9 47 (2.66%) JUnit
10 46 (2.61%) REST Assured
11 41 (2.32%) Zephyr
12 36 (2.04%) SonarQube
13 34 (1.93%) JMeter
14 26 (1.47%) WebDriver
15 22 (1.25%) Gatling
15 22 (1.25%) TestRail
16 18 (1.02%) TestNG
17 15 (0.85%) Appium
17 15 (0.85%) Gradle
18 14 (0.79%) SpecFlow
General
1 550 (31.18%) Social Skills
2 408 (23.13%) Finance
3 241 (13.66%) Analytical Skills
4 193 (10.94%) Public Sector
5 145 (8.22%) Banking
6 56 (3.17%) Retail
7 44 (2.49%) Manufacturing
7 44 (2.49%) Marketing
7 44 (2.49%) Organisational Skills
8 33 (1.87%) Aerospace
9 27 (1.53%) Documentation Skills
10 25 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.25%) Military
12 21 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 21 (1.19%) Investment Banking
13 17 (0.96%) Legal
14 16 (0.91%) Front Office
14 16 (0.91%) Pharmaceutical
15 14 (0.79%) Automotive
15 14 (0.79%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 214 (12.13%) Analyst
2 211 (11.96%) Developer
3 204 (11.56%) Lead
4 202 (11.45%) Senior
5 151 (8.56%) QA Engineer
6 114 (6.46%) Business Analyst
7 99 (5.61%) Tester
8 80 (4.54%) Test Manager
9 72 (4.08%) Architect
10 64 (3.63%) Test Engineer
11 63 (3.57%) Project Manager
11 63 (3.57%) Quality Engineer
12 58 (3.29%) Data Engineer
13 52 (2.95%) Java Developer
14 51 (2.89%) Data Analyst
15 50 (2.83%) Test Leader
16 49 (2.78%) Senior Analyst
17 43 (2.44%) Software Engineer
18 40 (2.27%) QA Tester
19 39 (2.21%) C# Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 127 (7.20%) REST
2 113 (6.41%) .NET
3 93 (5.27%) Playwright
4 91 (5.16%) RESTful
5 70 (3.97%) Spring
6 65 (3.68%) React
6 65 (3.68%) Spring Boot
7 55 (3.12%) HTML
8 51 (2.89%) .NET Framework
9 50 (2.83%) CSS
9 50 (2.83%) Kafka
10 48 (2.72%) AngularJS
11 45 (2.55%) Node.js
12 39 (2.21%) JSON
13 25 (1.42%) Gherkin
13 25 (1.42%) Middleware
13 25 (1.42%) Quarkus
14 23 (1.30%) OpenID
14 23 (1.30%) pytest
15 22 (1.25%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 144 (8.16%) Product Ownership
2 72 (4.08%) Cloud Native
3 50 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
4 46 (2.61%) Onboarding
5 41 (2.32%) Distributed Systems
6 39 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
7 34 (1.93%) Mobile App
8 29 (1.64%) Data Structures
8 29 (1.64%) Management Information System
9 26 (1.47%) Virtual Team
10 23 (1.30%) Data Centre
11 22 (1.25%) PMI
12 21 (1.19%) Analytical Mindset
13 19 (1.08%) Enterprise Software
14 17 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
15 14 (0.79%) Derivative
15 14 (0.79%) Legacy Code
16 13 (0.74%) AI Agents
16 13 (0.74%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 13 (0.74%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 87 (4.93%) Windows
2 56 (3.17%) Linux
3 30 (1.70%) Windows Server
4 25 (1.42%) Android
4 25 (1.42%) Apple iOS
5 16 (0.91%) Unix
6 6 (0.34%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.11%) VMS
8 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.057%) Debian
9 1 (0.057%) Solaris
9 1 (0.057%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.057%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.057%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 646 (36.62%) Agile
2 445 (25.23%) Test Automation
3 435 (24.66%) DevOps
4 413 (23.41%) CI/CD
5 293 (16.61%) Validation
6 291 (16.50%) Stakeholder Management
7 278 (15.76%) Continuous Improvement
8 271 (15.36%) Problem-Solving
9 247 (14.00%) User Acceptance Testing
10 228 (12.93%) Scrum
11 220 (12.47%) Test Strategy
12 218 (12.36%) Migration
13 170 (9.64%) AI
14 166 (9.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 152 (8.62%) ETL
16 144 (8.16%) Decision-Making
17 141 (7.99%) SDLC
18 137 (7.77%) Analytics
19 135 (7.65%) Test Scripting
20 133 (7.54%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 357 (20.24%) SQL
2 237 (13.44%) Python
3 219 (12.41%) Java
4 132 (7.48%) C#
5 128 (7.26%) JavaScript
6 87 (4.93%) TypeScript
7 43 (2.44%) PL/SQL
7 43 (2.44%) T-SQL
8 33 (1.87%) PowerShell
9 30 (1.70%) Kotlin
10 24 (1.36%) Bash
11 19 (1.08%) Scala
12 16 (0.91%) Bicep
13 15 (0.85%) C++
13 15 (0.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 15 (0.85%) Swift
14 14 (0.79%) PHP
14 14 (0.79%) VB
15 12 (0.68%) VBA
16 11 (0.62%) C
Qualifications
1 381 (21.60%) Security Cleared
2 275 (15.59%) SC Cleared
3 142 (8.05%) Degree
4 68 (3.85%) ISTQB
5 61 (3.46%) BPSS Clearance
6 50 (2.83%) DV Cleared
7 42 (2.38%) PMI Certification
8 39 (2.21%) PMP
9 37 (2.10%) Computer Science Degree
10 19 (1.08%) Master's Degree
11 11 (0.62%) CBAP
11 11 (0.62%) Cisco Certification
12 10 (0.57%) AWS Certification
12 10 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 8 (0.45%) CHECK Team Member
13 8 (0.45%) CREST Certified
13 8 (0.45%) Cyber Scheme
13 8 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 8 (0.45%) SAFe Agilist
14 7 (0.40%) APMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 132 (7.48%) Data Quality
2 79 (4.48%) Accessibility
3 41 (2.32%) PMO
4 34 (1.93%) GDPR
5 21 (1.19%) WCAG
6 19 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 17 (0.96%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.91%) IFRS
9 15 (0.85%) NIST
10 14 (0.79%) GRC
10 14 (0.79%) IFRS 17
11 13 (0.74%) SLA
12 11 (0.62%) Disclosure Scotland
12 11 (0.62%) GxP
13 8 (0.45%) Basel III
14 7 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
14 7 (0.40%) ISO 20022
14 7 (0.40%) SEPA
15 6 (0.34%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 6 (0.34%) PSD2
System Software
1 109 (6.18%) Docker
2 16 (0.91%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (0.23%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 3 (0.17%) Firmware
7 2 (0.11%) GridGain
7 2 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.057%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.057%) KVM
8 1 (0.057%) QEMU
8 1 (0.057%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
8 1 (0.057%) Varnish
8 1 (0.057%) VirtualBox
8 1 (0.057%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 148 (8.39%) Kubernetes
2 71 (4.02%) Terraform
3 35 (1.98%) Grafana
4 30 (1.70%) Ansible
5 27 (1.53%) Argo
6 26 (1.47%) Prometheus
7 18 (1.02%) HP ALM
8 9 (0.51%) Nmap
9 8 (0.45%) HP Quality Center
9 8 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
10 7 (0.40%) Puppet
11 5 (0.28%) Kibana
12 4 (0.23%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.23%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 2 (0.11%) ITRS Geneos
13 2 (0.11%) SCCM
14 1 (0.057%) logstash
14 1 (0.057%) Microsoft Intune
14 1 (0.057%) Salt
Vendors
1 184 (10.43%) Microsoft
2 156 (8.84%) Oracle
3 90 (5.10%) SAP
4 88 (4.99%) Salesforce
5 45 (2.55%) ServiceNow
6 40 (2.27%) Citrix
7 38 (2.15%) Google
8 34 (1.93%) Databricks
9 31 (1.76%) Adobe
10 30 (1.70%) Red Hat
11 22 (1.25%) Informatica
12 21 (1.19%) HP
13 19 (1.08%) Cisco
14 13 (0.74%) MuleSoft
14 13 (0.74%) Workday
15 12 (0.68%) Splunk
15 12 (0.68%) Talend
16 10 (0.57%) IBM
16 10 (0.57%) Infor
17 9 (0.51%) F5