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 9 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 62 65
Rank change year-on-year +14 +3 +2
Contract jobs citing QA 2,298 1,286 1,243
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.22% 3.88% 3.27%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 23.76% 22.21% 24.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,339 871 720
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £387 £380 £389
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £660 £650 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 242 43 72
10th Percentile £13.25 £12.28 £11.93
25th Percentile £15.25 £13.50 £13.26
Median hourly rate £27.96 £27.54 £15.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.53% +83.60% -70.00%
75th Percentile £48.75 £45.36 £30.05
90th Percentile £67.50 £72.00 £73.79
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.96 £15.12 £14.98
% change year-on-year +84.92% +0.93% -70.04%

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 9,673 5,790 5,100
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.75% 17.46% 13.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,054 3,692 2,959
10th Percentile £325 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £398
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.35% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £610 £605 £625
90th Percentile £713 £706 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +1.26% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 682 283 243
10th Percentile £13.69 £13.60 £13.26
25th Percentile £16.46 £16.71 £15.99
Median hourly rate £30.14 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.45% +9.09% -22.68%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.00 £62.63
90th Percentile £74.25 £79.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.46 £25.11 £27.75
% change year-on-year +25.28% -9.50% -24.49%

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 9 October 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 9 October 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 9 October 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 +15 2,015 £475 - 3,354
UK excluding London +25 1,172 £450 - 1,877
London +9 898 £500 - 1,642
Work from Home +1 572 £475 +5.56% 1,311
North of England +10 286 £453 +3.54% 488
South East +17 259 £425 -15.00% 456
Midlands +28 239 £450 - 289
West Midlands +28 199 £450 -9.27% 195
East of England +21 156 £425 -15.00% 188
South West +15 139 £525 +10.53% 164
Yorkshire +14 113 £470 +2.17% 156
North West -15 112 £475 +14.46% 250
Scotland +3 88 £420 -16.00% 155
North East -12 61 £400 -20.00% 83
East Midlands -14 39 £415 +1.22% 94
Wales +4 22 £413 +17.86% 67
Northern Ireland -1 7 £450 +50.00% 89

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
1 137 (5.96%) Confluence
2 53 (2.31%) CMS
3 42 (1.83%) SharePoint
4 16 (0.70%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.65%) IIS
6 13 (0.57%) Apache
6 13 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
7 12 (0.52%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 9 (0.39%) SAS
8 9 (0.39%) Sitecore CMS
9 7 (0.30%) Traefik
10 5 (0.22%) Headless CMS
10 5 (0.22%) OpenStack
10 5 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.22%) Tuxedo
10 5 (0.22%) WordPress
11 4 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
11 4 (0.17%) Umbraco
12 3 (0.13%) Appian
12 3 (0.13%) WebLogic
Applications
1 83 (3.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 39 (1.70%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 22 (0.96%) MS Visio
5 18 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
7 9 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.26%) Revit
9 5 (0.22%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.22%) Navisworks
10 4 (0.17%) ProjectWise
11 3 (0.13%) CATIA
11 3 (0.13%) Mingle
11 3 (0.13%) Productboard
12 2 (0.087%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.087%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.087%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.087%) Windchill
13 1 (0.044%) Gliffy
13 1 (0.044%) Trello
Business Applications
1 30 (1.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
3 10 (0.44%) Shopify
4 7 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
4 7 (0.30%) SAP GRC
4 7 (0.30%) Workday HCM
5 4 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 4 (0.17%) Maximo
5 4 (0.17%) NEC Housing
5 4 (0.17%) Primavera
5 4 (0.17%) ResourceLink
5 4 (0.17%) SAP MM
6 3 (0.13%) Infor CloudSuite
6 3 (0.13%) iTrent
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
6 3 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 3 (0.13%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.087%) IntelliMatch
7 2 (0.087%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 474 (20.63%) Azure
2 417 (18.15%) AWS
3 229 (9.97%) GitHub
4 210 (9.14%) Azure DevOps
5 135 (5.87%) GitHub Actions
6 112 (4.87%) GCP
7 110 (4.79%) Power Platform
8 81 (3.52%) Serverless
9 58 (2.52%) AWS Lambda
10 55 (2.39%) SaaS
11 51 (2.22%) Amazon S3
12 45 (1.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 44 (1.91%) Dynamics 365
14 37 (1.61%) GitHub Copilot
15 36 (1.57%) OpenShift
16 33 (1.44%) Snowflake
17 32 (1.39%) Microsoft 365
18 31 (1.35%) Amazon EKS
18 31 (1.35%) Azure Monitor
19 30 (1.31%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.17%) Broadband
2 26 (1.13%) Firewall
3 21 (0.91%) Internet
4 20 (0.87%) DNS
4 20 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
5 17 (0.74%) 5G
6 16 (0.70%) 4G
6 16 (0.70%) TCP/IP
7 15 (0.65%) HTTP
7 15 (0.65%) VLAN
8 14 (0.61%) WAN
9 13 (0.57%) Network Security
10 11 (0.48%) LAN
10 11 (0.48%) VPN
11 10 (0.44%) DHCP
12 8 (0.35%) IPv4
12 8 (0.35%) IPv6
12 8 (0.35%) SD-WAN
12 8 (0.35%) Unified Communications
12 8 (0.35%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (4.83%) SQL Server
2 95 (4.13%) Power BI
3 82 (3.57%) Relational Database
4 80 (3.48%) PostgreSQL
5 62 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
6 57 (2.48%) MongoDB
7 48 (2.09%) NoSQL
8 47 (2.05%) MySQL
9 43 (1.87%) Metadata
10 39 (1.70%) Oracle Database
11 30 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
12 27 (1.17%) Tableau
13 23 (1.00%) Data Lake
14 21 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 16 (0.70%) Big Data
15 16 (0.70%) GIS
15 16 (0.70%) Redis
16 15 (0.65%) Power Query
16 15 (0.65%) RDBMS
17 13 (0.57%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 301 (13.10%) JIRA
2 262 (11.40%) Git
3 187 (8.14%) Jenkins
4 183 (7.96%) Selenium
5 150 (6.53%) GitLab
6 101 (4.40%) Cucumber
7 90 (3.92%) Postman
8 82 (3.57%) Cypress.io
9 75 (3.26%) JUnit
10 55 (2.39%) Zephyr
11 49 (2.13%) JMeter
11 49 (2.13%) SonarQube
12 48 (2.09%) Gatling
13 46 (2.00%) REST Assured
14 34 (1.48%) Maven
15 30 (1.31%) WebDriver
16 27 (1.17%) Gradle
16 27 (1.17%) TestNG
17 25 (1.09%) Appium
18 23 (1.00%) Bitbucket
General
1 704 (30.64%) Social Skills
2 417 (18.15%) Finance
3 367 (15.97%) Analytical Skills
4 298 (12.97%) Public Sector
5 170 (7.40%) Banking
6 88 (3.83%) Manufacturing
7 75 (3.26%) Retail
8 64 (2.79%) Organisational Skills
9 61 (2.65%) Marketing
10 57 (2.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 49 (2.13%) Telecoms
12 44 (1.91%) Aerospace
12 44 (1.91%) Influencing Skills
13 41 (1.78%) Legal
14 31 (1.35%) Military
15 30 (1.31%) Documentation Skills
16 24 (1.04%) Law
17 20 (0.87%) Investment Banking
18 19 (0.83%) Local Government
18 19 (0.83%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 305 (13.27%) Developer
2 293 (12.75%) Lead
3 276 (12.01%) Senior
4 265 (11.53%) QA Engineer
5 246 (10.70%) Analyst
6 140 (6.09%) Quality Engineer
7 123 (5.35%) Test Engineer
8 116 (5.05%) Tester
9 99 (4.31%) Test Manager
10 98 (4.26%) Business Analyst
11 87 (3.79%) QA Leader
12 79 (3.44%) Data Engineer
13 76 (3.31%) Java Developer
14 70 (3.05%) Test Leader
15 60 (2.61%) Consultant
16 58 (2.52%) Senior Analyst
17 55 (2.39%) Test Analyst
18 54 (2.35%) QA Tester
19 49 (2.13%) Architect
20 48 (2.09%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 223 (9.70%) REST
2 158 (6.88%) Playwright
3 154 (6.70%) RESTful
4 124 (5.40%) Spring
5 107 (4.66%) Spring Boot
6 105 (4.57%) Terraform
7 102 (4.44%) React
8 100 (4.35%) .NET
9 91 (3.96%) HTML
10 87 (3.79%) Kafka
11 82 (3.57%) CSS
12 77 (3.35%) AngularJS
13 63 (2.74%) Node.js
14 60 (2.61%) SOAP
15 55 (2.39%) Middleware
16 52 (2.26%) pytest
17 43 (1.87%) .NET Framework
17 43 (1.87%) JSON
18 41 (1.78%) Gherkin
19 39 (1.70%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 221 (9.62%) Product Ownership
2 139 (6.05%) Cloud Native
3 84 (3.66%) Onboarding
4 73 (3.18%) Enterprise Software
4 73 (3.18%) Management Information System
5 56 (2.44%) Distributed Systems
6 52 (2.26%) Mobile App
7 48 (2.09%) AI Agents
7 48 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
8 43 (1.87%) Data Structures
9 40 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
10 35 (1.52%) Data Centre
11 31 (1.35%) Low-Code
12 27 (1.17%) NHS
13 24 (1.04%) CMDB
13 24 (1.04%) Virtual Team
14 19 (0.83%) Educational Technology
15 17 (0.74%) Analytical Mindset
16 15 (0.65%) Operational Technology
16 15 (0.65%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 88 (3.83%) Windows
2 76 (3.31%) Linux
3 50 (2.18%) Apple iOS
4 46 (2.00%) Android
5 34 (1.48%) Unix
6 24 (1.04%) Windows Server
7 17 (0.74%) VMS
8 7 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.22%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.087%) AIX
10 2 (0.087%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.087%) zOS
11 1 (0.044%) CentOS
11 1 (0.044%) Debian
11 1 (0.044%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.044%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.044%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.044%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 892 (38.82%) Agile
2 666 (28.98%) Test Automation
3 609 (26.50%) CI/CD
4 558 (24.28%) DevOps
5 488 (21.24%) Stakeholder Management
6 472 (20.54%) Continuous Improvement
7 393 (17.10%) Problem-Solving
8 372 (16.19%) Validation
9 344 (14.97%) Scrum
10 341 (14.84%) AI
11 333 (14.49%) Test Strategy
12 271 (11.79%) User Acceptance Testing
13 251 (10.92%) Migration
14 218 (9.49%) SDLC
15 216 (9.40%) Microservices
16 206 (8.96%) End-to-End Testing
17 188 (8.18%) Software Engineering
18 182 (7.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 181 (7.88%) Defect Management
20 171 (7.44%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 410 (17.84%) SQL
2 326 (14.19%) Python
3 304 (13.23%) Java
4 198 (8.62%) JavaScript
5 126 (5.48%) C#
6 117 (5.09%) TypeScript
7 54 (2.35%) Bash
8 35 (1.52%) PowerShell
9 34 (1.48%) PL/SQL
10 31 (1.35%) Kotlin
11 26 (1.13%) T-SQL
12 25 (1.09%) Scala
13 22 (0.96%) Swift
14 20 (0.87%) Shell Script
15 17 (0.74%) Objective-C
16 16 (0.70%) VB
17 14 (0.61%) R
17 14 (0.61%) VBA
18 13 (0.57%) C
18 13 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 541 (23.54%) Security Cleared
2 419 (18.23%) SC Cleared
3 150 (6.53%) Degree
4 112 (4.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 78 (3.39%) ISTQB
6 67 (2.92%) DV Cleared
7 49 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
8 22 (0.96%) AWS Certification
8 22 (0.96%) PMP
9 21 (0.91%) Azure Certification
10 20 (0.87%) PMI Certification
11 16 (0.70%) Master's Degree
12 14 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
13 10 (0.44%) DBS Check
13 10 (0.44%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 10 (0.44%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 10 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
14 9 (0.39%) Cisco Certification
14 9 (0.39%) IIBA
14 9 (0.39%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 161 (7.01%) Data Quality
2 137 (5.96%) Accessibility
3 40 (1.74%) WCAG
4 36 (1.57%) GDPR
5 27 (1.17%) PMO
6 26 (1.13%) GRC
7 18 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.65%) NIST
9 12 (0.52%) ISO 9001
10 11 (0.48%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 11 (0.48%) GxP
11 9 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
12 8 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
12 8 (0.35%) ISO 19650
12 8 (0.35%) SLA
12 8 (0.35%) Software Quality Assurance
13 7 (0.30%) IFRS
13 7 (0.30%) NCSC
14 5 (0.22%) GMP
14 5 (0.22%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 208 (9.05%) Docker
2 23 (1.00%) Active Directory
3 19 (0.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (0.44%) IAG
6 6 (0.26%) Firmware
7 4 (0.17%) ACF2
7 4 (0.17%) RACF
7 4 (0.17%) VirtualBox
8 3 (0.13%) KVM
8 3 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.044%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.044%) QEMU
9 1 (0.044%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.044%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.044%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 241 (10.49%) Kubernetes
2 63 (2.74%) Ansible
3 57 (2.48%) Grafana
4 36 (1.57%) Prometheus
5 31 (1.35%) Argo
6 11 (0.48%) HP ALM
7 10 (0.44%) SCCM
8 8 (0.35%) Microsoft Clustering
8 8 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.30%) HP Quality Center
9 7 (0.30%) Istio
9 7 (0.30%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.17%) Progress Chef
11 4 (0.17%) Puppet
11 4 (0.17%) SCOM
12 3 (0.13%) FortiGate
13 2 (0.087%) Control-M
13 2 (0.087%) ITRS Geneos
13 2 (0.087%) Kibana
Vendors
1 252 (10.97%) Microsoft
2 164 (7.14%) Oracle
3 114 (4.96%) Salesforce
4 75 (3.26%) SAP
5 61 (2.65%) ServiceNow
6 49 (2.13%) Google
7 45 (1.96%) Databricks
8 35 (1.52%) Dynatrace
8 35 (1.52%) Splunk
9 31 (1.35%) Red Hat
10 24 (1.04%) Citrix
11 22 (0.96%) VMware
12 21 (0.91%) Cisco
13 20 (0.87%) Adobe
14 18 (0.78%) Informatica
15 17 (0.74%) IBM
15 17 (0.74%) Sitecore
15 17 (0.74%) Talend
16 16 (0.70%) Workday
17 15 (0.65%) MuleSoft