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

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 65 59
Rank change year-on-year +4 -6 +17
Contract jobs citing QA 1,806 1,059 1,439
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.66% 3.65% 3.34%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.90% 22.67% 24.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,118 738 946
10th Percentile £321 £281 £313
25th Percentile £398 £384 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £509
Median % change year-on-year - -6.59% +0.44%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £606
90th Percentile £669 £688 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £500
% change year-on-year - -10.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 130 25 91
10th Percentile £13.17 £15.05 £10.82
25th Percentile £15.72 £18.54 £12.24
Median hourly rate £30.58 £50.00 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year -38.84% +257.14% -37.74%
75th Percentile £67.50 £72.50 £26.25
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £71.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £56.75 £13.52
% change year-on-year -46.11% +319.75% -24.89%

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 8,248 4,671 5,967
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.70% 16.09% 13.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,289 2,979 3,746
10th Percentile £342 £268 £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 £614 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 488 188 416
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.13 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.88 £13.23
Median hourly rate £36.04 £32.50 £23.30
Median % change year-on-year +10.88% +39.51% -38.70%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £80.83 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £32.81 £19.18
% change year-on-year +21.91% +71.06% -48.85%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 1,547 £477 +0.42% 913
UK excluding London +10 829 £450 - 670
London +9 782 £500 +0.50% 329
Work from Home +8 508 £488 +2.09% 393
South East +5 188 £450 -4.00% 183
North of England -27 178 £463 -2.63% 173
Midlands -8 169 £425 +13.33% 107
West Midlands -12 124 £425 - 66
South West +27 118 £488 -2.50% 85
North West -23 82 £444 +3.38% 95
East of England +13 81 £475 -0.73% 62
Scotland +14 80 £400 -11.11% 36
Yorkshire -37 70 £514 +0.29% 52
East Midlands -11 46 £394 +5.70% 41
North East -13 26 £413 -8.33% 28
Northern Ireland +12 19 £475 +46.15% 22
Wales -15 11 £450 -14.29% 17

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 94 (5.20%) Confluence
2 31 (1.72%) SharePoint
3 27 (1.50%) CMS
4 19 (1.05%) IIS
5 14 (0.78%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 14 (0.78%) Apache Spark
6 10 (0.55%) Apache
7 6 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
7 6 (0.33%) SAS
8 5 (0.28%) Umbraco
9 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.22%) nginx
9 4 (0.22%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
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%) Luigi
11 2 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 57 (3.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.77%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (1.44%) Microsoft Project
4 24 (1.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (1.16%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.22%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.17%) CATIA
8 3 (0.17%) Simulink
9 2 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.11%) EPLAN
10 1 (0.055%) Adobe After Effects
10 1 (0.055%) Adobe Premiere
10 1 (0.055%) Autodesk Smoke
10 1 (0.055%) Camtasia
10 1 (0.055%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.055%) Navisworks
10 1 (0.055%) Notion
Business Applications
1 28 (1.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 17 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.44%) Shopify
4 7 (0.39%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.28%) Maximo
6 5 (0.28%) NEC Housing
7 4 (0.22%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.22%) Infor CloudSuite
7 4 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.17%) Actimize
8 3 (0.17%) Aladdin
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle EBS R12
8 3 (0.17%) Primavera
9 2 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.11%) NetSuite
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.11%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.11%) SAP Retail
9 2 (0.11%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 404 (22.37%) Azure
2 289 (16.00%) AWS
3 170 (9.41%) Azure DevOps
4 149 (8.25%) GitHub
5 106 (5.87%) Power Platform
6 98 (5.43%) GitHub Actions
7 78 (4.32%) GCP
8 47 (2.60%) Serverless
9 37 (2.05%) Dynamics 365
10 36 (1.99%) SaaS
11 34 (1.88%) OpenShift
12 31 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
13 30 (1.66%) Snowflake
14 29 (1.61%) Amazon S3
15 26 (1.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 25 (1.38%) Azure Data Factory
17 20 (1.11%) Amazon EKS
17 20 (1.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 19 (1.05%) Amazon ECS
18 19 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.33%) Firewall
2 21 (1.16%) LAN
3 20 (1.11%) WAN
4 19 (1.05%) Internet
4 19 (1.05%) Network Security
4 19 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
5 13 (0.72%) VPN
6 12 (0.66%) Wireless
7 11 (0.61%) DNS
7 11 (0.61%) SD-WAN
7 11 (0.61%) Unified Communications
7 11 (0.61%) VLAN
8 10 (0.55%) HTTP
9 8 (0.44%) IPsec
10 7 (0.39%) SMS
11 6 (0.33%) Cisco Nexus
11 6 (0.33%) TCP/IP
12 5 (0.28%) DHCP
13 4 (0.22%) MPLS
14 2 (0.11%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 107 (5.92%) SQL Server
2 91 (5.04%) Power BI
3 72 (3.99%) Data Warehouse
4 60 (3.32%) PostgreSQL
5 49 (2.71%) Relational Database
6 44 (2.44%) MySQL
7 40 (2.21%) NoSQL
8 38 (2.10%) Tableau
9 34 (1.88%) Oracle Database
10 33 (1.83%) Data Lake
11 32 (1.77%) Metadata
11 32 (1.77%) Oracle Reports
12 26 (1.44%) MongoDB
13 24 (1.33%) Big Data
14 19 (1.05%) Azure SQL Database
14 19 (1.05%) DynamoDB
15 17 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 15 (0.83%) BigQuery
17 14 (0.78%) Amazon Redshift
18 13 (0.72%) Redis
Development Applications
1 293 (16.22%) JIRA
2 161 (8.91%) Git
3 141 (7.81%) Selenium
4 128 (7.09%) Jenkins
5 102 (5.65%) GitLab
6 84 (4.65%) Postman
7 65 (3.60%) Cucumber
8 60 (3.32%) Cypress.io
9 52 (2.88%) JUnit
10 48 (2.66%) REST Assured
11 44 (2.44%) Zephyr
12 35 (1.94%) JMeter
12 35 (1.94%) SonarQube
13 31 (1.72%) WebDriver
14 22 (1.22%) Gatling
14 22 (1.22%) TestRail
15 17 (0.94%) Gradle
15 17 (0.94%) TestNG
16 15 (0.83%) Appium
16 15 (0.83%) Maven
General
1 556 (30.79%) Social Skills
2 410 (22.70%) Finance
3 249 (13.79%) Analytical Skills
4 199 (11.02%) Public Sector
5 147 (8.14%) Banking
6 57 (3.16%) Retail
7 49 (2.71%) Manufacturing
8 48 (2.66%) Marketing
9 45 (2.49%) Organisational Skills
10 36 (1.99%) Aerospace
11 29 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
12 25 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
13 22 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 22 (1.22%) Military
14 21 (1.16%) Investment Banking
15 19 (1.05%) Legal
16 16 (0.89%) Front Office
16 16 (0.89%) Pharmaceutical
17 14 (0.78%) Automotive
17 14 (0.78%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 219 (12.13%) Developer
2 216 (11.96%) Analyst
3 211 (11.68%) Lead
4 206 (11.41%) Senior
5 159 (8.80%) QA Engineer
6 115 (6.37%) Business Analyst
7 100 (5.54%) Tester
8 85 (4.71%) Test Manager
9 71 (3.93%) Architect
10 66 (3.65%) Quality Engineer
11 65 (3.60%) Project Manager
11 65 (3.60%) Test Engineer
12 59 (3.27%) Data Engineer
13 56 (3.10%) Java Developer
14 52 (2.88%) Test Leader
15 51 (2.82%) Data Analyst
16 49 (2.71%) Senior Analyst
17 43 (2.38%) Software Engineer
18 41 (2.27%) QA Tester
19 40 (2.21%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 134 (7.42%) REST
2 115 (6.37%) .NET
3 98 (5.43%) Playwright
4 97 (5.37%) RESTful
5 74 (4.10%) Spring
6 69 (3.82%) Spring Boot
7 67 (3.71%) React
8 59 (3.27%) HTML
9 54 (2.99%) CSS
10 51 (2.82%) .NET Framework
10 51 (2.82%) AngularJS
10 51 (2.82%) Kafka
11 48 (2.66%) Node.js
12 39 (2.16%) JSON
13 25 (1.38%) Middleware
14 24 (1.33%) Gherkin
14 24 (1.33%) Quarkus
15 23 (1.27%) OAuth
15 23 (1.27%) OpenID
16 22 (1.22%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 148 (8.19%) Product Ownership
2 75 (4.15%) Cloud Native
3 50 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
4 47 (2.60%) Onboarding
5 42 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
6 41 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
7 37 (2.05%) Mobile App
8 28 (1.55%) Data Structures
8 28 (1.55%) Management Information System
9 27 (1.50%) Virtual Team
10 23 (1.27%) Data Centre
11 22 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
11 22 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
12 21 (1.16%) PMI
13 18 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
14 14 (0.78%) AI Agents
14 14 (0.78%) Legacy Code
15 13 (0.72%) Derivative
15 13 (0.72%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 13 (0.72%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 84 (4.65%) Windows
2 58 (3.21%) Linux
3 28 (1.55%) Windows Server
4 27 (1.50%) Android
4 27 (1.50%) Apple iOS
5 19 (1.05%) Unix
6 6 (0.33%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.055%) Debian
9 1 (0.055%) Solaris
9 1 (0.055%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.055%) VMS
9 1 (0.055%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.055%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 664 (36.77%) Agile
2 456 (25.25%) Test Automation
3 444 (24.58%) DevOps
4 429 (23.75%) CI/CD
5 298 (16.50%) Validation
6 295 (16.33%) Stakeholder Management
7 283 (15.67%) Continuous Improvement
8 272 (15.06%) Problem-Solving
9 250 (13.84%) User Acceptance Testing
10 237 (13.12%) Scrum
11 230 (12.74%) Test Strategy
12 219 (12.13%) Migration
13 174 (9.63%) AI
14 168 (9.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 155 (8.58%) ETL
16 144 (7.97%) Decision-Making
17 141 (7.81%) SDLC
18 139 (7.70%) Analytics
19 138 (7.64%) Test Management
20 137 (7.59%) Test Scripting
Programming Languages
1 365 (20.21%) SQL
2 240 (13.29%) Python
3 223 (12.35%) Java
4 132 (7.31%) C#
4 132 (7.31%) JavaScript
5 87 (4.82%) TypeScript
6 42 (2.33%) PL/SQL
6 42 (2.33%) T-SQL
7 32 (1.77%) Kotlin
8 31 (1.72%) PowerShell
9 22 (1.22%) Bash
10 19 (1.05%) Scala
11 17 (0.94%) Swift
12 16 (0.89%) Bicep
13 15 (0.83%) C++
13 15 (0.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 14 (0.78%) PHP
14 14 (0.78%) VB
15 12 (0.66%) C
15 12 (0.66%) VBA
Qualifications
1 400 (22.15%) Security Cleared
2 290 (16.06%) SC Cleared
3 144 (7.97%) Degree
4 73 (4.04%) ISTQB
5 61 (3.38%) BPSS Clearance
6 54 (2.99%) DV Cleared
7 42 (2.33%) PMI Certification
8 39 (2.16%) Computer Science Degree
8 39 (2.16%) PMP
9 20 (1.11%) Master's Degree
10 12 (0.66%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 11 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
12 10 (0.55%) AWS Certification
13 9 (0.50%) CBAP
14 8 (0.44%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 8 (0.44%) SAFe Agilist
15 7 (0.39%) Azure Certification
15 7 (0.39%) CHECK Team Member
15 7 (0.39%) CREST Certified
15 7 (0.39%) Cyber Scheme
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 132 (7.31%) Data Quality
2 83 (4.60%) Accessibility
3 41 (2.27%) PMO
4 34 (1.88%) GDPR
5 21 (1.16%) WCAG
6 20 (1.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 17 (0.94%) IFRS
7 17 (0.94%) NIST
8 16 (0.89%) GRC
8 16 (0.89%) PCI DSS
9 15 (0.83%) IFRS 17
10 13 (0.72%) SLA
11 11 (0.61%) Disclosure Scotland
11 11 (0.61%) GxP
12 7 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.39%) Basel III
12 7 (0.39%) ISO 20022
12 7 (0.39%) SEPA
13 6 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 6 (0.33%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 111 (6.15%) Docker
2 16 (0.89%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (0.33%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
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%) VirtualBox
7 2 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.055%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.055%) KVM
8 1 (0.055%) QEMU
8 1 (0.055%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
8 1 (0.055%) Varnish
8 1 (0.055%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 150 (8.31%) Kubernetes
2 72 (3.99%) Terraform
3 37 (2.05%) Grafana
4 30 (1.66%) Ansible
5 28 (1.55%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.44%) Argo
7 18 (1.00%) HP ALM
8 9 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (0.44%) HP Quality Center
9 8 (0.44%) Nmap
10 7 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
11 6 (0.33%) Puppet
12 4 (0.22%) Kibana
12 4 (0.22%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 3 (0.17%) Progress Chef
14 2 (0.11%) ITRS Geneos
14 2 (0.11%) SCCM
15 1 (0.055%) Cisco Prime
15 1 (0.055%) Microsoft Intune
15 1 (0.055%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 183 (10.13%) Microsoft
2 157 (8.69%) Oracle
3 98 (5.43%) Salesforce
4 91 (5.04%) SAP
5 48 (2.66%) ServiceNow
6 37 (2.05%) Citrix
6 37 (2.05%) Google
7 34 (1.88%) Databricks
8 31 (1.72%) Adobe
9 29 (1.61%) Red Hat
10 23 (1.27%) Informatica
11 21 (1.16%) HP
12 20 (1.11%) Cisco
13 17 (0.94%) MuleSoft
14 13 (0.72%) Talend
15 12 (0.66%) Workday
16 11 (0.61%) VMware
17 10 (0.55%) IBM
17 10 (0.55%) Infor
17 10 (0.55%) Splunk