Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 20 April 2018

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 20 April 2018 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
20 Apr 2018		 Same period 2017 Same period 2016
Rank 70 67 69
Rank change year-on-year -3 +2 -6
Contract jobs citing QA 3,353 3,096 3,124
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 3.31% 3.34% 2.93%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 26.11% 28.77% 25.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,241 2,038 1,983
UK median daily rate £438 £420 £400
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +4.17% +5.00% +6.67%
10th Percentile £299 £263 £260
90th Percentile £613 £575 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £373 £365
% change year-on-year +7.38% +2.05% +4.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 48 52
UK median hourly rate £23.00 £25.00 £22.67
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -8.00% +10.29% -31.31%
10th Percentile £14.08 £14.95 £15.00
90th Percentile £71.00 £58.32 £52.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £26.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year +7.69% +15.56% -31.82%

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 12,842 10,760 12,302
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.69% 11.60% 11.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,283 7,012 7,825
UK median daily rate £450 £430 £400
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +4.65% +7.50% -
10th Percentile £260 £238 £225
90th Percentile £638 £625 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £400 £375
% change year-on-year - +6.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 365 358 416
UK median hourly rate £23.50 £22.50 £24.00
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year +4.44% -6.25% +11.37%
10th Percentile £12.25 £11.00 £12.14
90th Percentile £57.50 £53.98 £53.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.78 £22.45 £25.00
% change year-on-year +10.38% -10.20% +13.71%

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 20 April 2018.

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 20 April 2018.

Contractor hourly rate histogram for QA in the UK

QA
Top 16 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 20 April 2018. 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 -7 3,095 £450 +5.88% 1,277
London -8 1,675 £475 +5.56% 508
UK excluding London -8 1,625 £400 +7.38% 858
South East +2 615 £413 +3.13% 229
North of England -20 326 £400 +9.97% 203
Midlands -20 193 £375 - 139
Scotland +21 168 £385 +21.26% 57
South West -16 164 £375 +7.14% 73
Yorkshire +7 149 £425 +13.33% 73
North West -35 130 £380 +1.33% 115
West Midlands -4 118 £375 -1.64% 82
East of England -12 111 £450 +21.62% 124
East Midlands -15 74 £375 - 57
North East 0 52 £363 +3.57% 15
Wales -17 30 £315 -7.35% 22
Northern Ireland -2 24 £320 +16.36% 9

For the 6 months to 20 April 2018, 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 1,679 (50.07%) Agile Software Development
2 1,076 (32.09%) Test Automation
3 840 (25.05%) Java
4 778 (23.20%) Finance
5 665 (19.83%) Scrum
6 614 (18.31%) SQL
7 590 (17.60%) Selenium
8 541 (16.13%) JIRA
9 526 (15.69%) TDD
10 516 (15.39%) BDD
11 436 (13.00%) JavaScript
12 414 (12.35%) DevOps
13 412 (12.29%) C#
14 393 (11.72%) Cucumber
15 391 (11.66%) Continuous Integration
16 361 (10.77%) Project Management
17 356 (10.62%) Git (software)
18 338 (10.08%) Banking
18 338 (10.08%) Jenkins
19 325 (9.69%) SDLC
19 325 (9.69%) .NET
20 314 (9.36%) Problem-Solving
21 311 (9.28%) Analytical Skills
22 296 (8.83%) Microsoft
23 286 (8.53%) User Acceptance Testing
24 280 (8.35%) Web Services
25 265 (7.90%) Degree
26 258 (7.69%) Software Engineering
27 256 (7.63%) Stakeholder Management
28 249 (7.43%) Python

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
1 196 (5.85%) Confluence
2 84 (2.51%) CMS
3 68 (2.03%) Apache Spark
4 66 (1.97%) SharePoint
5 65 (1.94%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 56 (1.67%) Elasticsearch
7 52 (1.55%) Apache
8 33 (0.98%) IIS
9 32 (0.95%) Cloud Foundry
10 30 (0.89%) JBoss
11 28 (0.84%) Tomcat
12 27 (0.81%) WebSphere
13 24 (0.72%) SAS
14 22 (0.66%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 20 (0.60%) nginx
16 15 (0.45%) Umbraco
17 14 (0.42%) Apache Solr
17 14 (0.42%) Sitecore CMS
18 12 (0.36%) OpenStack
19 11 (0.33%) EPiServer
Applications
1 125 (3.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 99 (2.95%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (1.58%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (1.16%) MS Visio
5 34 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.21%) Photoshop
8 6 (0.18%) InfoPath
8 6 (0.18%) OmniGraffle
9 4 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 4 (0.12%) OrCAD
10 3 (0.089%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.089%) InDesign
11 2 (0.060%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.060%) InVision
11 2 (0.060%) SPSS
12 1 (0.030%) Acrobat
12 1 (0.030%) Camtasia
12 1 (0.030%) PaintShop Pro
12 1 (0.030%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 37 (1.10%) Dynamics CRM
2 13 (0.39%) Oracle Cash Management
3 11 (0.33%) SAP BPC
4 10 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
4 10 (0.30%) SAP Hybris
5 9 (0.27%) Actimize
5 9 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.21%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.21%) Salesforce.com CRM
7 6 (0.18%) Oracle Payroll
7 6 (0.18%) Oracle Retail
7 6 (0.18%) SAP SD
7 6 (0.18%) Summit
8 5 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
8 5 (0.15%) SAP FI
9 4 (0.12%) Adobe Campaign
9 4 (0.12%) Magento
9 4 (0.12%) SAP CO
9 4 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
9 4 (0.12%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 237 (7.07%) Amazon AWS
2 153 (4.56%) Microsoft Azure
3 73 (2.18%) GitHub
4 51 (1.52%) SaaS
5 40 (1.19%) Office 365
6 37 (1.10%) npm
7 32 (0.95%) IaaS
8 31 (0.92%) PaaS
8 31 (0.92%) Sauce Labs
9 30 (0.89%) BrowserStack
9 30 (0.89%) Google Cloud Platform
10 24 (0.72%) Serverless
11 22 (0.66%) Amazon EC2
11 22 (0.66%) Google Analytics
12 18 (0.54%) Dynamics 365
13 16 (0.48%) Amazon S3
14 15 (0.45%) Force.com
15 14 (0.42%) AWS Lambda
16 13 (0.39%) AWS CloudFormation
16 13 (0.39%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 76 (2.27%) Internet
2 69 (2.06%) Firewall
3 46 (1.37%) HTTP
4 44 (1.31%) SMS
5 24 (0.72%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.57%) DNS
7 17 (0.51%) FTP
8 14 (0.42%) SSL
9 13 (0.39%) Network Security
10 12 (0.36%) LTE
10 12 (0.36%) SAN
11 11 (0.33%) DHCP
11 11 (0.33%) Kerberos
11 11 (0.33%) Skype
11 11 (0.33%) WAN
12 10 (0.30%) MPLS
13 9 (0.27%) VPN
14 8 (0.24%) LAN
15 6 (0.18%) 3G
15 6 (0.18%) GSM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 198 (5.91%) SQL Server
2 146 (4.35%) Relational Database
3 122 (3.64%) Big Data
4 105 (3.13%) NoSQL
5 101 (3.01%) MySQL
6 86 (2.56%) Data Warehouse
6 86 (2.56%) Hadoop
7 79 (2.36%) MongoDB
8 54 (1.61%) PostgreSQL
9 49 (1.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 39 (1.16%) Redis
11 36 (1.07%) HBase
12 32 (0.95%) Oracle Database
12 32 (0.95%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 31 (0.92%) Apache Cassandra
14 26 (0.78%) Power BI
14 26 (0.78%) RDBMS
14 26 (0.78%) SQL Server Analysis Services
15 25 (0.75%) Apache Hive
16 21 (0.63%) Amazon DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 590 (17.60%) Selenium
2 541 (16.13%) JIRA
3 393 (11.72%) Cucumber
4 356 (10.62%) Git (software)
5 338 (10.08%) Jenkins
6 180 (5.37%) WebDriver
7 145 (4.32%) SoapUI
8 143 (4.26%) SpecFlow
9 116 (3.46%) TeamCity
10 112 (3.34%) JUnit
11 109 (3.25%) Maven
12 106 (3.16%) JMeter
13 102 (3.04%) Team Foundation Server
14 76 (2.27%) Visual Studio
15 63 (1.88%) Appium
16 60 (1.79%) Subversion
17 53 (1.58%) HP UFT
18 46 (1.37%) Gatling
18 46 (1.37%) Visual Studio Team System
19 44 (1.31%) Zephyr
General
1 778 (23.20%) Finance
2 338 (10.08%) Banking
3 204 (6.08%) Retail
4 109 (3.25%) Investment Banking
5 95 (2.83%) Marketing
6 92 (2.74%) Telecoms
7 65 (1.94%) Games
8 63 (1.88%) Law
9 59 (1.76%) Legal
10 51 (1.52%) Financial Institution
11 46 (1.37%) Publishing
12 44 (1.31%) Manufacturing
13 38 (1.13%) Front Office
14 27 (0.81%) Back Office
14 27 (0.81%) Billing
15 26 (0.78%) Retail Banking
16 24 (0.72%) Automotive
16 24 (0.72%) Pharmaceutical
17 23 (0.69%) Electronics
18 16 (0.48%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 623 (18.58%) Analyst
2 616 (18.37%) Developer
3 351 (10.47%) Tester
4 254 (7.58%) Test Analyst
5 238 (7.10%) QA Engineer
6 220 (6.56%) Project Manager
7 206 (6.14%) QA Tester
8 203 (6.05%) Architect
9 172 (5.13%) Business Analyst
10 167 (4.98%) Test Engineer
11 163 (4.86%) Automation Tester
12 159 (4.74%) QA Analyst
13 121 (3.61%) Consultant
14 119 (3.55%) Java Developer
15 105 (3.13%) QA Automation Engineer
16 101 (3.01%) DevOps Engineer
17 100 (2.98%) QA Test Analyst
18 91 (2.71%) Test Automation Engineer
19 80 (2.39%) Java Engineer
20 77 (2.30%) QA Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 325 (9.69%) .NET
2 280 (8.35%) Web Services
3 243 (7.25%) REST
4 241 (7.19%) HTML
5 216 (6.44%) CSS
6 165 (4.92%) RESTful
7 159 (4.74%) Spring
8 158 (4.71%) SOAP
9 146 (4.35%) XML
10 143 (4.26%) Node.js
11 126 (3.76%) AngularJS
12 106 (3.16%) JSON
13 104 (3.10%) HTML5
14 99 (2.95%) Gherkin
15 85 (2.54%) ASP.NET
15 85 (2.54%) React
16 80 (2.39%) jQuery
17 78 (2.33%) CSS3
18 70 (2.09%) Spring Boot
19 59 (1.76%) ASP.NET Web API
Miscellaneous
1 311 (9.28%) Analytical Skills
2 214 (6.38%) User Experience
3 169 (5.04%) Mobile App
4 113 (3.37%) Computer Science
5 110 (3.28%) Management Information System
6 106 (3.16%) Self-Motivation
7 104 (3.10%) Greenfield Project
8 101 (3.01%) Enterprise Software
9 71 (2.12%) Data Centre
10 70 (2.09%) Virtual Team
11 56 (1.67%) Linux Command Line
12 54 (1.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 32 (0.95%) Derivative
14 31 (0.92%) Data Structures
15 28 (0.84%) Equities
16 27 (0.81%) iPad
17 26 (0.78%) Fintech
18 25 (0.75%) Fixed Income
19 20 (0.60%) Mainframe
20 19 (0.57%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 230 (6.86%) Linux
2 193 (5.76%) Windows
3 179 (5.34%) Unix
4 142 (4.24%) Android
5 123 (3.67%) Apple iOS
6 35 (1.04%) Windows Server
7 31 (0.92%) Windows 10
8 27 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 23 (0.69%) Windows 7
10 20 (0.60%) CentOS
11 18 (0.54%) Mac OS X
12 12 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
13 10 (0.30%) AIX
14 9 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.18%) Debian
16 5 (0.15%) Solaris
16 5 (0.15%) Windows Vista
17 4 (0.12%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.12%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,679 (50.07%) Agile Software Development
2 1,076 (32.09%) Test Automation
3 665 (19.83%) Scrum
4 526 (15.69%) TDD
5 516 (15.39%) BDD
6 414 (12.35%) DevOps
7 391 (11.66%) Continuous Integration
8 361 (10.77%) Project Management
9 325 (9.69%) SDLC
10 314 (9.36%) Problem-Solving
11 286 (8.53%) User Acceptance Testing
12 258 (7.69%) Software Engineering
13 256 (7.63%) Stakeholder Management
14 241 (7.19%) Continuous Delivery
15 236 (7.04%) Kanban
16 231 (6.89%) Test Scripting
17 226 (6.74%) Microservices
18 223 (6.65%) E-Commerce
19 209 (6.23%) User Stories
20 205 (6.11%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 840 (25.05%) Java
2 614 (18.31%) SQL
3 436 (13.00%) JavaScript
4 412 (12.29%) C#
5 249 (7.43%) Python
6 154 (4.59%) Ruby
7 87 (2.59%) Scala
8 65 (1.94%) Shell Script
9 63 (1.88%) C++
10 62 (1.85%) PowerShell
11 61 (1.82%) Groovy
12 58 (1.73%) Java 8
12 58 (1.73%) PHP
13 52 (1.55%) T-SQL
14 46 (1.37%) C
15 45 (1.34%) PL/SQL
16 44 (1.31%) TypeScript
17 43 (1.28%) Perl
18 42 (1.25%) ES6
19 41 (1.22%) Bash Shell
Qualifications
1 265 (7.90%) Degree
2 160 (4.77%) Security Cleared
3 115 (3.43%) SC Cleared
4 106 (3.16%) ISTQB
5 80 (2.39%) ISEB
6 70 (2.09%) Computer Science Degree
7 55 (1.64%) PMP
8 52 (1.55%) PMI Certification
9 49 (1.46%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
10 41 (1.22%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 28 (0.84%) PRINCE2 Certification
12 26 (0.78%) BPSS Clearance
13 18 (0.54%) DV Cleared
14 17 (0.51%) Master's Degree
15 16 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
15 16 (0.48%) Numerate Degree
16 10 (0.30%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 10 (0.30%) Siebel Certification
17 9 (0.27%) MCSD
18 8 (0.24%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 121 (3.61%) PMO
2 47 (1.40%) GDPR
3 44 (1.31%) Data Quality
4 26 (0.78%) WCAG
5 19 (0.57%) PCI DSS
5 19 (0.57%) SLA
6 18 (0.54%) MiFID
7 11 (0.33%) ISO 9001
8 10 (0.30%) COBIT
8 10 (0.30%) COSO
9 8 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
9 8 (0.24%) EMIR
9 8 (0.24%) SEPA
10 7 (0.21%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 7 (0.21%) IFRS
10 7 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 7 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 6 (0.18%) GMP
11 6 (0.18%) IEC 62304
11 6 (0.18%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 157 (4.68%) Docker
2 42 (1.25%) Active Directory
3 20 (0.60%) HDFS
4 16 (0.48%) VMware Infrastructure
5 15 (0.45%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 10 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
7 8 (0.24%) Hyper-V
8 5 (0.15%) Firmware
8 5 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
9 4 (0.12%) XenApp
10 3 (0.089%) vCloud
10 3 (0.089%) XenServer
11 2 (0.060%) BitLocker
11 2 (0.060%) NFS
11 2 (0.060%) OpenDJ
11 2 (0.060%) OpenIDM
11 2 (0.060%) Oracle RAC
11 2 (0.060%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.030%) Apache Flume
12 1 (0.030%) RHEV
Systems Management
1 91 (2.71%) Ansible
2 81 (2.42%) Puppet
3 70 (2.09%) Kubernetes
4 58 (1.73%) Opscode Chef
5 54 (1.61%) HP Quality Center
6 52 (1.55%) HP ALM
7 46 (1.37%) Terraform
8 25 (0.75%) Grafana
9 22 (0.66%) SCCM
10 19 (0.57%) Kibana
11 16 (0.48%) Docker Swarm
11 16 (0.48%) logstash
11 16 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
12 13 (0.39%) Hadoop YARN
13 12 (0.36%) ITRS Geneos
14 9 (0.27%) Nagios
15 8 (0.24%) StatsD
15 8 (0.24%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
16 6 (0.18%) Host Intrusion Detection System
16 6 (0.18%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 296 (8.83%) Microsoft
2 198 (5.91%) Oracle
3 128 (3.82%) SAP
4 94 (2.80%) Adobe
5 89 (2.65%) HP
6 87 (2.59%) Atlassian
7 85 (2.54%) Salesforce.com
8 60 (1.79%) Splunk
9 54 (1.61%) Google
10 52 (1.55%) AppDynamics
11 36 (1.07%) MuleSoft
12 32 (0.95%) VMware
13 31 (0.92%) Cisco
14 30 (0.89%) Red Hat
15 29 (0.86%) Citrix
15 29 (0.86%) IBM
16 27 (0.81%) Tableau
17 26 (0.78%) hybris
17 26 (0.78%) Sitecore
18 21 (0.63%) New Relic
1,389 QA job vacancies Nationwide