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 12 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 62 60
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +17
Contract jobs citing QA 1,592 1,065 1,516
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.73% 3.62% 3.39%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.54% 23.94% 23.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,003 687 1,061
10th Percentile £323 £281 £313
25th Percentile £402 £370 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £509
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -6.68% -3.05%
75th Percentile £582 £575 £616
90th Percentile £675 £704 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £463 £481
% change year-on-year +5.41% -3.85% +1.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 20 69
10th Percentile £13.20 £18.17 £10.86
25th Percentile £15.25 £21.25 £12.43
Median hourly rate £30.58 £44.25 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.89% +132.89% -15.50%
75th Percentile £67.50 £73.92 £35.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.29 £70.00 £15.38
% change year-on-year -49.59% +355.14% -33.72%

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 7,392 4,449 6,481
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.31% 15.12% 14.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,756 2,816 4,137
10th Percentile £331 £260 £300
25th Percentile £413 £375 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £480
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.04% +1.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 396 167 391
10th Percentile £15.46 £16.24 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.48 £22.00 £14.00
Median hourly rate £27.94 £31.76 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.03% +27.04% -33.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £46.75
90th Percentile £79.93 £78.43 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £31.76 £24.00
% change year-on-year -3.72% +32.33% -26.15%

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 12 March 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 12 March 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 12 March 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 -1 1,386 £500 +5.26% 892
London +2 724 £500 - 308
UK excluding London 0 705 £488 +5.41% 708
Work from Home +5 429 £500 +1.52% 411
North of England -19 167 £463 -7.50% 182
Midlands -3 161 £473 +15.24% 96
South East -11 161 £500 +8.11% 215
West Midlands -12 115 £490 +10.42% 63
South West +11 96 £538 +11.17% 86
North West -11 87 £402 -23.06% 99
Scotland +12 57 £555 +38.75% 44
Yorkshire -39 54 £525 +5.00% 54
East of England -7 50 £425 -8.11% 90
East Midlands -14 47 £402 -1.71% 33
North East -2 26 £500 +28.21% 31
Northern Ireland +6 16 £475 +16.92% 5
Wales -8 14 £440 -20.00% 11

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 95 (5.97%) Confluence
2 37 (2.32%) SharePoint
3 21 (1.32%) CMS
4 17 (1.07%) IIS
5 15 (0.94%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 14 (0.88%) Apache
7 9 (0.57%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 8 (0.50%) Apache Spark
9 6 (0.38%) SAS
10 5 (0.31%) Anypoint
10 5 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
10 5 (0.31%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.19%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.19%) MQSeries
11 3 (0.19%) SugarCRM
12 2 (0.13%) Documentum
12 2 (0.13%) Luigi
12 2 (0.13%) WebLogic
12 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 62 (3.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 40 (2.51%) Microsoft Office
3 35 (2.20%) Microsoft Project
4 25 (1.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (0.88%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.19%) Autodesk Inventor
6 3 (0.19%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.13%) Adobe Illustrator
7 2 (0.13%) Autodesk Smoke
7 2 (0.13%) Photoshop
7 2 (0.13%) Trello
8 1 (0.063%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.063%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.063%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.063%) Camtasia
8 1 (0.063%) Mingle
8 1 (0.063%) Notion
8 1 (0.063%) Simulink
8 1 (0.063%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 25 (1.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 15 (0.94%) Oracle EBS
3 14 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
4 9 (0.57%) Workday HCM
5 8 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
6 6 (0.38%) Oracle Cash Management
6 6 (0.38%) Oracle Receivables
6 6 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
6 6 (0.38%) Shopify
7 5 (0.31%) Maximo
7 5 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
7 5 (0.31%) Oracle General Ledger
7 5 (0.31%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 4 (0.25%) Adobe Campaign
8 4 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
9 3 (0.19%) Algo Collateral
9 3 (0.19%) NetSuite
9 3 (0.19%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.13%) Advent Geneva
10 2 (0.13%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 362 (22.74%) Azure
2 271 (17.02%) AWS
3 150 (9.42%) Azure DevOps
4 110 (6.91%) GitHub
5 100 (6.28%) Power Platform
6 83 (5.21%) GitHub Actions
7 79 (4.96%) GCP
8 55 (3.45%) Serverless
9 38 (2.39%) Dynamics 365
10 35 (2.20%) SaaS
11 34 (2.14%) Amazon S3
11 34 (2.14%) AWS Lambda
12 29 (1.82%) OpenShift
13 26 (1.63%) Amazon ECS
14 25 (1.57%) AWS CloudFormation
15 22 (1.38%) Azure Data Factory
16 21 (1.32%) OCI
17 20 (1.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 19 (1.19%) Snowflake
19 16 (1.01%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.32%) Firewall
2 14 (0.88%) Internet
2 14 (0.88%) Wireless
3 12 (0.75%) WAN
4 11 (0.69%) HTTP
5 10 (0.63%) LAN
5 10 (0.63%) Wi-Fi
6 6 (0.38%) DNS
6 6 (0.38%) Network Security
7 5 (0.31%) 5G
7 5 (0.31%) SMS
7 5 (0.31%) VPN
8 4 (0.25%) Broadband
8 4 (0.25%) SD-WAN
8 4 (0.25%) WebEx
9 3 (0.19%) DSL
10 2 (0.13%) MPLS
10 2 (0.13%) TCP/IP
10 2 (0.13%) Unified Communications
10 2 (0.13%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 88 (5.53%) SQL Server
2 84 (5.28%) Power BI
3 54 (3.39%) Data Warehouse
4 48 (3.02%) Relational Database
5 40 (2.51%) MySQL
6 38 (2.39%) PostgreSQL
7 32 (2.01%) NoSQL
8 31 (1.95%) Oracle Database
9 26 (1.63%) Tableau
10 23 (1.44%) Metadata
11 22 (1.38%) MongoDB
12 20 (1.26%) Data Lake
13 19 (1.19%) Oracle Reports
14 17 (1.07%) BigQuery
15 16 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
16 15 (0.94%) Big Data
16 15 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 13 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
18 11 (0.69%) GIS
18 11 (0.69%) Redis
Development Applications
1 279 (17.53%) JIRA
2 126 (7.91%) Git
3 125 (7.85%) Selenium
4 124 (7.79%) GitLab
5 121 (7.60%) Jenkins
6 88 (5.53%) Postman
7 76 (4.77%) Cucumber
8 72 (4.52%) Cypress.io
9 57 (3.58%) REST Assured
10 45 (2.83%) JUnit
11 40 (2.51%) JMeter
12 23 (1.44%) Gatling
12 23 (1.44%) Zephyr
13 21 (1.32%) WebDriver
14 18 (1.13%) SonarQube
14 18 (1.13%) TestRail
15 16 (1.01%) Appium
15 16 (1.01%) TestNG
15 16 (1.01%) Visual Studio
16 13 (0.82%) Gradle
General
1 596 (37.44%) Social Skills
2 403 (25.31%) Finance
3 259 (16.27%) Analytical Skills
4 187 (11.75%) Public Sector
5 149 (9.36%) Banking
6 48 (3.02%) Documentation Skills
7 44 (2.76%) Retail
8 39 (2.45%) Manufacturing
9 35 (2.20%) Marketing
9 35 (2.20%) Organisational Skills
10 30 (1.88%) Legal
11 26 (1.63%) Telecoms
12 24 (1.51%) Investment Banking
13 23 (1.44%) Front Office
14 22 (1.38%) Military
15 21 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
16 19 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 18 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
18 17 (1.07%) Aerospace
18 17 (1.07%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 201 (12.63%) Lead
2 196 (12.31%) Senior
3 194 (12.19%) Developer
4 193 (12.12%) Analyst
5 109 (6.85%) QA Engineer
6 102 (6.41%) Business Analyst
7 94 (5.90%) Tester
8 84 (5.28%) Test Engineer
9 81 (5.09%) Project Manager
10 77 (4.84%) Test Manager
11 62 (3.89%) Architect
12 51 (3.20%) Consultant
13 49 (3.08%) Java Developer
13 49 (3.08%) Test Leader
14 47 (2.95%) QA Leader
15 46 (2.89%) Data Analyst
16 38 (2.39%) Senior Analyst
17 37 (2.32%) C# Developer
18 36 (2.26%) Test Analyst
19 34 (2.14%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 159 (9.99%) REST
2 111 (6.97%) Playwright
3 101 (6.34%) .NET
4 71 (4.46%) RESTful
5 68 (4.27%) Spring
6 64 (4.02%) React
6 64 (4.02%) Spring Boot
7 47 (2.95%) Kafka
8 43 (2.70%) .NET Framework
9 41 (2.58%) JSON
9 41 (2.58%) Node.js
10 39 (2.45%) CSS
11 38 (2.39%) AngularJS
12 37 (2.32%) HTML
13 27 (1.70%) Oracle Fusion
13 27 (1.70%) SOAP
13 27 (1.70%) XML
14 25 (1.57%) Gherkin
15 21 (1.32%) WireMock
16 19 (1.19%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 161 (10.11%) Product Ownership
2 74 (4.65%) Cloud Native
3 49 (3.08%) Mobile App
4 47 (2.95%) Onboarding
5 39 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
6 35 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
7 31 (1.95%) PMI
8 30 (1.88%) Distributed Systems
9 26 (1.63%) Data Structures
10 24 (1.51%) Analytical Mindset
10 24 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
11 22 (1.38%) Virtual Team
12 21 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
12 21 (1.32%) Management Information System
13 19 (1.19%) SWIFT Messaging Network
14 17 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 15 (0.94%) Data Centre
15 15 (0.94%) Derivative
15 15 (0.94%) Fixed Income
15 15 (0.94%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 84 (5.28%) Windows
2 49 (3.08%) Linux
3 28 (1.76%) Windows Server
4 21 (1.32%) Android
5 18 (1.13%) Apple iOS
6 16 (1.01%) Unix
7 3 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.19%) VMS
8 2 (0.13%) Solaris
9 1 (0.063%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.063%) Mac OS X
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.063%) Robot Operating System
9 1 (0.063%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.063%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.063%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.063%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 653 (41.02%) Agile
2 435 (27.32%) Test Automation
3 424 (26.63%) CI/CD
4 417 (26.19%) DevOps
5 353 (22.17%) Problem-Solving
6 304 (19.10%) Stakeholder Management
7 264 (16.58%) Continuous Improvement
8 245 (15.39%) Validation
9 229 (14.38%) User Acceptance Testing
10 220 (13.82%) Scrum
11 208 (13.07%) Test Strategy
12 191 (12.00%) Migration
13 169 (10.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 153 (9.61%) Test Scripting
15 144 (9.05%) SDLC
16 142 (8.92%) AI
17 136 (8.54%) Regression Testing
18 133 (8.35%) User Experience
19 132 (8.29%) Project Management
20 125 (7.85%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 322 (20.23%) SQL
2 213 (13.38%) Python
3 212 (13.32%) Java
4 131 (8.23%) C#
5 125 (7.85%) JavaScript
6 111 (6.97%) TypeScript
7 49 (3.08%) PL/SQL
8 43 (2.70%) T-SQL
9 35 (2.20%) PowerShell
10 20 (1.26%) Kotlin
11 18 (1.13%) Bash
12 15 (0.94%) VBA
13 14 (0.88%) C++
13 14 (0.88%) Ruby
13 14 (0.88%) VB
14 12 (0.75%) PHP
14 12 (0.75%) Scala
15 10 (0.63%) Bicep
15 10 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 9 (0.57%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 324 (20.35%) Security Cleared
2 235 (14.76%) SC Cleared
3 166 (10.43%) Degree
4 65 (4.08%) ISTQB
5 61 (3.83%) PMI Certification
6 54 (3.39%) Computer Science Degree
7 50 (3.14%) PMP
8 46 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
9 42 (2.64%) DV Cleared
10 33 (2.07%) Master's Degree
11 15 (0.94%) AWS Certification
12 13 (0.82%) CBAP
12 13 (0.82%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 13 (0.82%) Postgraduate
13 11 (0.69%) CHECK Team Member
13 11 (0.69%) CREST Certified
13 11 (0.69%) Cyber Scheme
14 10 (0.63%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 10 (0.63%) MBA
14 10 (0.63%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 109 (6.85%) Data Quality
2 92 (5.78%) Accessibility
3 52 (3.27%) GDPR
4 41 (2.58%) PMO
5 29 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 25 (1.57%) PCI DSS
7 21 (1.32%) NIST
8 19 (1.19%) WCAG
9 16 (1.01%) IFRS
9 16 (1.01%) IFRS 17
9 16 (1.01%) PSD2
10 14 (0.88%) SLA
11 12 (0.75%) SEPA
12 11 (0.69%) GRC
12 11 (0.69%) ISO 20022
13 10 (0.63%) Basel III
13 10 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 9 (0.57%) GxP
15 8 (0.50%) COBIT
15 8 (0.50%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 105 (6.60%) Docker
2 12 (0.75%) Active Directory
3 6 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
3 6 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (0.25%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 3 (0.19%) Firmware
6 2 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.063%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.063%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
7 1 (0.063%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 130 (8.17%) Kubernetes
2 79 (4.96%) Terraform
3 43 (2.70%) Grafana
4 35 (2.20%) Ansible
5 22 (1.38%) Argo
6 20 (1.26%) Prometheus
7 19 (1.19%) HP ALM
8 12 (0.75%) Nmap
9 9 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.44%) Kibana
11 6 (0.38%) HP Quality Center
12 5 (0.31%) Puppet
13 4 (0.25%) CloudHub
14 3 (0.19%) Consul
14 3 (0.19%) Control-M
14 3 (0.19%) Oracle RMAN
15 2 (0.13%) Progress Chef
16 1 (0.063%) Iperf
16 1 (0.063%) Red Hat Satellite
16 1 (0.063%) SELinux
Vendors
1 161 (10.11%) Microsoft
2 144 (9.05%) Oracle
3 94 (5.90%) SAP
4 73 (4.59%) Salesforce
5 62 (3.89%) ServiceNow
6 43 (2.70%) Citrix
7 36 (2.26%) Google
8 27 (1.70%) Adobe
8 27 (1.70%) Databricks
9 24 (1.51%) Red Hat
10 21 (1.32%) HP
10 21 (1.32%) Splunk
11 16 (1.01%) IBM
11 16 (1.01%) Workday
12 15 (0.94%) MuleSoft
13 11 (0.69%) Talend
14 10 (0.63%) Informatica
15 9 (0.57%) Guidewire
16 8 (0.50%) Sage
16 8 (0.50%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud