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 29 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 68 59
Rank change year-on-year +5 -9 +16
Contract jobs citing QA 1,757 1,030 1,447
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.59% 3.58% 3.38%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.60% 22.44% 24.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,079 717 970
10th Percentile £315 £277 £310
25th Percentile £396 £384 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.58% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £606
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 124 21 85
10th Percentile £13.20 £15.12 £10.82
25th Percentile £15.33 £20.00 £12.25
Median hourly rate £30.58 £52.50 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.75% +275.00% -37.74%
75th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £72.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £62.00 £13.52
% change year-on-year -50.68% +358.58% -12.77%

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 8,134 4,590 6,025
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.63% 15.96% 14.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,220 2,950 3,830
10th Percentile £340 £263 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £509
Median % change year-on-year - -1.72% -3.10%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £472 £475
% change year-on-year +5.93% -0.63% -2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 483 174 398
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.17 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.06 £13.18
Median hourly rate £36.00 £32.66 £21.38
Median % change year-on-year +10.24% +52.75% -38.92%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £45.00
90th Percentile £81.98 £80.00 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £32.81 £18.27
% change year-on-year +21.91% +79.58% -47.80%

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 29 May 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 29 May 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 29 May 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 +5 1,514 £488 +2.63% 747
UK excluding London +7 794 £453 +0.67% 562
London +13 776 £500 - 266
Work from Home +8 491 £489 -1.26% 300
South East -3 179 £450 -2.70% 166
North of England -30 167 £465 -0.75% 142
Midlands -8 165 £425 +5.07% 94
West Midlands -7 119 £444 +4.53% 54
South West +23 115 £488 -2.50% 66
East of England +15 81 £475 -0.73% 54
North West -19 78 £440 -1.57% 78
Scotland +14 76 £380 -10.53% 34
Yorkshire -27 67 £514 +0.78% 48
East Midlands -12 47 £393 +4.90% 40
North East -17 22 £438 +4.17% 19
Northern Ireland +10 17 £475 +16.56% 12
Wales -13 8 £450 -5.26% 12

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 (5.29%) Confluence
2 30 (1.71%) SharePoint
3 25 (1.42%) CMS
4 19 (1.08%) IIS
5 14 (0.80%) Apache Spark
6 13 (0.74%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 10 (0.57%) Apache
8 6 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
9 5 (0.28%) Umbraco
10 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.23%) nginx
10 4 (0.23%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 4 (0.23%) SAS
11 3 (0.17%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.17%) Moodle
11 3 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.17%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.11%) Apache Solr
12 2 (0.11%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 60 (3.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.94%) Microsoft Office
3 27 (1.54%) Microsoft Project
4 26 (1.48%) 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 (0.46%) Shopify
4 7 (0.40%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.28%) NEC Housing
7 4 (0.23%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.23%) Infor CloudSuite
7 4 (0.23%) Maximo
8 3 (0.17%) Aladdin
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle EBS R12
8 3 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
9 2 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.11%) iTrent
9 2 (0.11%) NetSuite
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 2 (0.11%) SAP Retail
9 2 (0.11%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 396 (22.54%) Azure
2 275 (15.65%) AWS
3 169 (9.62%) Azure DevOps
4 142 (8.08%) GitHub
5 106 (6.03%) Power Platform
6 90 (5.12%) GitHub Actions
7 74 (4.21%) GCP
8 46 (2.62%) Serverless
9 40 (2.28%) Dynamics 365
10 35 (1.99%) OpenShift
11 33 (1.88%) SaaS
12 30 (1.71%) Snowflake
13 29 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
14 28 (1.59%) Amazon S3
15 25 (1.42%) Azure Data Factory
16 24 (1.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 19 (1.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 18 (1.02%) AWS CloudFormation
19 17 (0.97%) Amazon ECS
20 16 (0.91%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.48%) Firewall
2 20 (1.14%) LAN
3 19 (1.08%) Network Security
3 19 (1.08%) WAN
3 19 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
4 18 (1.02%) Internet
5 14 (0.80%) VPN
5 14 (0.80%) Wireless
6 11 (0.63%) DNS
6 11 (0.63%) HTTP
6 11 (0.63%) SD-WAN
7 10 (0.57%) Unified Communications
7 10 (0.57%) VLAN
8 8 (0.46%) IPsec
9 6 (0.34%) Cisco Nexus
9 6 (0.34%) SMS
9 6 (0.34%) TCP/IP
10 4 (0.23%) DHCP
10 4 (0.23%) MPLS
11 3 (0.17%) DSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 105 (5.98%) SQL Server
2 91 (5.18%) Power BI
3 69 (3.93%) Data Warehouse
4 54 (3.07%) PostgreSQL
5 45 (2.56%) Relational Database
6 43 (2.45%) MySQL
7 40 (2.28%) NoSQL
8 37 (2.11%) Tableau
9 35 (1.99%) Oracle Database
10 33 (1.88%) Data Lake
10 33 (1.88%) Metadata
11 31 (1.76%) Oracle Reports
12 24 (1.37%) Big Data
13 22 (1.25%) MongoDB
14 19 (1.08%) Azure SQL Database
15 18 (1.02%) DynamoDB
16 17 (0.97%) BigQuery
16 17 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 14 (0.80%) Amazon Redshift
18 13 (0.74%) Redis
Development Applications
1 290 (16.51%) JIRA
2 158 (8.99%) Git
3 133 (7.57%) Selenium
4 124 (7.06%) Jenkins
5 98 (5.58%) GitLab
6 79 (4.50%) Postman
7 61 (3.47%) Cucumber
8 59 (3.36%) Cypress.io
9 47 (2.68%) REST Assured
10 46 (2.62%) JUnit
11 41 (2.33%) Zephyr
12 35 (1.99%) SonarQube
13 33 (1.88%) JMeter
14 25 (1.42%) WebDriver
15 22 (1.25%) Gatling
16 21 (1.20%) TestRail
17 18 (1.02%) TestNG
18 15 (0.85%) Appium
18 15 (0.85%) Gradle
19 14 (0.80%) SpecFlow
General
1 547 (31.13%) Social Skills
2 410 (23.34%) Finance
3 236 (13.43%) Analytical Skills
4 191 (10.87%) Public Sector
5 147 (8.37%) Banking
6 56 (3.19%) Retail
7 44 (2.50%) Manufacturing
8 43 (2.45%) Organisational Skills
9 42 (2.39%) Marketing
10 33 (1.88%) Aerospace
11 29 (1.65%) Documentation Skills
12 25 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
13 22 (1.25%) Military
14 21 (1.20%) Investment Banking
15 18 (1.02%) Legal
16 17 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 16 (0.91%) Front Office
18 15 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
18 15 (0.85%) Telecoms
19 14 (0.80%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 213 (12.12%) Analyst
2 209 (11.90%) Developer
3 203 (11.55%) Lead
4 200 (11.38%) Senior
5 148 (8.42%) QA Engineer
6 115 (6.55%) Business Analyst
7 99 (5.63%) Tester
8 80 (4.55%) Test Manager
9 72 (4.10%) Architect
10 64 (3.64%) Project Manager
11 63 (3.59%) Test Engineer
12 61 (3.47%) Quality Engineer
13 58 (3.30%) Data Engineer
14 51 (2.90%) Data Analyst
14 51 (2.90%) Java Developer
14 51 (2.90%) Test Leader
15 48 (2.73%) Senior Analyst
16 43 (2.45%) Software Engineer
17 40 (2.28%) QA Tester
18 38 (2.16%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 127 (7.23%) REST
2 112 (6.37%) .NET
3 93 (5.29%) Playwright
4 89 (5.07%) RESTful
5 67 (3.81%) Spring
6 64 (3.64%) React
7 63 (3.59%) Spring Boot
8 53 (3.02%) HTML
9 50 (2.85%) .NET Framework
10 49 (2.79%) Kafka
11 48 (2.73%) CSS
12 46 (2.62%) AngularJS
12 46 (2.62%) Node.js
13 39 (2.22%) JSON
14 26 (1.48%) Gherkin
15 25 (1.42%) Middleware
16 24 (1.37%) Quarkus
17 23 (1.31%) pytest
18 22 (1.25%) OpenID
19 21 (1.20%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 147 (8.37%) Product Ownership
2 69 (3.93%) Cloud Native
3 52 (2.96%) Legacy Systems
4 43 (2.45%) Onboarding
5 41 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
6 38 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
7 33 (1.88%) Mobile App
8 30 (1.71%) Data Structures
9 28 (1.59%) Management Information System
10 26 (1.48%) Virtual Team
11 23 (1.31%) Data Centre
12 22 (1.25%) PMI
13 21 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
14 19 (1.08%) Enterprise Software
15 17 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
16 15 (0.85%) Derivative
17 14 (0.80%) Legacy Code
18 13 (0.74%) AI Agents
18 13 (0.74%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 13 (0.74%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 87 (4.95%) Windows
2 55 (3.13%) Linux
3 29 (1.65%) Windows Server
4 24 (1.37%) Android
5 23 (1.31%) Apple iOS
6 16 (0.91%) Unix
7 6 (0.34%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.11%) VMS
9 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.057%) Debian
10 1 (0.057%) Solaris
10 1 (0.057%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.057%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.057%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 646 (36.77%) Agile
2 440 (25.04%) Test Automation
3 431 (24.53%) DevOps
4 407 (23.16%) CI/CD
5 293 (16.68%) Validation
6 290 (16.51%) Stakeholder Management
7 280 (15.94%) Continuous Improvement
8 269 (15.31%) Problem-Solving
9 250 (14.23%) User Acceptance Testing
10 228 (12.98%) Scrum
11 219 (12.46%) Migration
12 218 (12.41%) Test Strategy
13 169 (9.62%) AI
14 163 (9.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 153 (8.71%) ETL
16 142 (8.08%) Decision-Making
17 139 (7.91%) SDLC
18 135 (7.68%) Analytics
18 135 (7.68%) Data Modelling
18 135 (7.68%) Test Scripting
Programming Languages
1 358 (20.38%) SQL
2 237 (13.49%) Python
3 219 (12.46%) Java
4 131 (7.46%) C#
5 128 (7.29%) JavaScript
6 88 (5.01%) TypeScript
7 43 (2.45%) PL/SQL
7 43 (2.45%) T-SQL
8 32 (1.82%) PowerShell
9 29 (1.65%) Kotlin
10 23 (1.31%) Bash
11 19 (1.08%) Scala
12 16 (0.91%) Bicep
13 15 (0.85%) C++
13 15 (0.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 14 (0.80%) PHP
14 14 (0.80%) Swift
14 14 (0.80%) VB
15 12 (0.68%) VBA
16 11 (0.63%) C
Qualifications
1 382 (21.74%) Security Cleared
2 275 (15.65%) SC Cleared
3 144 (8.20%) Degree
4 68 (3.87%) ISTQB
5 59 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
6 50 (2.85%) DV Cleared
7 42 (2.39%) PMI Certification
8 40 (2.28%) PMP
9 36 (2.05%) Computer Science Degree
10 19 (1.08%) Master's Degree
11 11 (0.63%) CBAP
11 11 (0.63%) Cisco Certification
12 10 (0.57%) AWS Certification
12 10 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 9 (0.51%) CHECK Team Member
13 9 (0.51%) CREST Certified
13 9 (0.51%) Cyber Scheme
13 9 (0.51%) SAFe Agilist
14 8 (0.46%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 8 (0.46%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 131 (7.46%) Data Quality
2 78 (4.44%) Accessibility
3 42 (2.39%) PMO
4 36 (2.05%) GDPR
5 21 (1.20%) WCAG
6 20 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 17 (0.97%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.91%) IFRS
9 15 (0.85%) NIST
10 14 (0.80%) GRC
10 14 (0.80%) IFRS 17
11 13 (0.74%) SLA
12 11 (0.63%) Disclosure Scotland
12 11 (0.63%) GxP
13 9 (0.51%) 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
16 5 (0.28%) GMP
System Software
1 106 (6.03%) Docker
2 16 (0.91%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.63%) 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
1 143 (8.14%) Kubernetes
2 69 (3.93%) Terraform
3 34 (1.94%) Grafana
4 30 (1.71%) Ansible
5 26 (1.48%) Argo
6 25 (1.42%) Prometheus
7 18 (1.02%) HP ALM
8 10 (0.57%) Nmap
9 8 (0.46%) HP Quality Center
9 8 (0.46%) 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
13 3 (0.17%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
14 2 (0.11%) SCCM
15 1 (0.057%) Cisco Prime
15 1 (0.057%) ITRS Geneos
15 1 (0.057%) Microsoft Intune
15 1 (0.057%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 183 (10.42%) Microsoft
2 157 (8.94%) Oracle
3 90 (5.12%) SAP
4 87 (4.95%) Salesforce
5 46 (2.62%) ServiceNow
6 40 (2.28%) Citrix
7 36 (2.05%) Google
8 33 (1.88%) Databricks
9 30 (1.71%) Adobe
10 28 (1.59%) Red Hat
11 22 (1.25%) Informatica
12 21 (1.20%) 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