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

6 months to
10 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 58 66 58
Rank change year-on-year +8 -8 +20
Contract jobs citing QA 1,749 1,053 1,468
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.66% 3.58% 3.41%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.87% 22.81% 23.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,079 710 989
10th Percentile £313 £281 £313
25th Percentile £400 £385 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £475 £504
Median % change year-on-year +2.11% -5.75% +0.80%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £611
90th Percentile £669 £696 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £460 £500
% change year-on-year +3.26% -8.00% +6.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 24 74
10th Percentile £12.91 £16.25 £10.82
25th Percentile £15.25 £20.94 £12.25
Median hourly rate £30.58 £42.50 £15.38
Median % change year-on-year -28.05% +176.33% -31.60%
75th Percentile £68.13 £72.81 £31.87
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £72.31
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £57.75 £13.76
% change year-on-year -47.05% +319.69% +5.85%

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 7,999 4,617 6,158
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.74% 15.71% 14.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,167 2,955 3,910
10th Percentile £340 £266 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £402
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £511
Median % change year-on-year - -2.20% -2.62%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £483
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.66% +0.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 467 172 382
10th Percentile £14.38 £18.10 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.24 £13.18
Median hourly rate £35.00 £35.00 £21.06
Median % change year-on-year - +66.21% -39.84%
75th Percentile £66.13 £65.15 £45.00
90th Percentile £79.80 £82.94 £68.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £51.25 £18.11
% change year-on-year -21.95% +182.99% -44.28%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 0 1,501 £488 +1.30% 777
UK excluding London +6 782 £475 +3.26% 592
London +15 775 £500 +0.76% 273
Work from Home +13 481 £484 -2.15% 341
North of England -21 179 £476 -4.80% 145
South East -18 172 £475 +9.38% 187
Midlands -12 162 £425 +2.66% 102
West Midlands -11 116 £450 +2.27% 59
South West +12 112 £488 -2.50% 56
North West -12 89 £444 -4.11% 89
Scotland +13 75 £429 +7.19% 38
East of England +12 68 £488 -4.88% 66
Yorkshire -31 66 £525 +1.72% 37
East Midlands -15 47 £393 -4.03% 43
North East -9 24 £450 -2.17% 20
Northern Ireland +12 17 £475 -0.78% 8
Wales -6 12 £450 -14.29% 9

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 91 (5.20%) Confluence
2 32 (1.83%) SharePoint
3 22 (1.26%) CMS
3 22 (1.26%) IIS
4 12 (0.69%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 11 (0.63%) Apache
6 8 (0.46%) Apache Spark
7 7 (0.40%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 5 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
8 5 (0.29%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.23%) nginx
9 4 (0.23%) SAS
10 3 (0.17%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.17%) Moodle
10 3 (0.17%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.17%) Umbraco
11 2 (0.11%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.11%) Luigi
11 2 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 71 (4.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (2.52%) Microsoft Office
3 33 (1.89%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (1.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 20 (1.14%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.23%) Photoshop
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%) Chatbot
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%) CPLEX
9 1 (0.057%) Mingle
9 1 (0.057%) Navisworks
9 1 (0.057%) Revit
Business Applications
1 29 (1.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 19 (1.09%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.51%) Oracle EBS
4 8 (0.46%) Shopify
5 7 (0.40%) Workday HCM
6 4 (0.23%) Adobe Campaign
6 4 (0.23%) Infor CloudSuite
6 4 (0.23%) Maximo
6 4 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
6 4 (0.23%) Oracle EBS R12
6 4 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
7 3 (0.17%) Aladdin
7 3 (0.17%) NEC Housing
7 3 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
7 3 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 3 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
8 2 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
8 2 (0.11%) Oracle Cash Management
8 2 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
8 2 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 395 (22.58%) Azure
2 265 (15.15%) AWS
3 171 (9.78%) Azure DevOps
4 132 (7.55%) GitHub
5 113 (6.46%) Power Platform
6 82 (4.69%) GitHub Actions
7 77 (4.40%) GCP
8 47 (2.69%) Serverless
9 37 (2.12%) Dynamics 365
9 37 (2.12%) OpenShift
10 33 (1.89%) SaaS
11 28 (1.60%) AWS Lambda
12 27 (1.54%) Amazon S3
12 27 (1.54%) Snowflake
13 24 (1.37%) Azure Data Factory
14 22 (1.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 22 (1.26%) Amazon ECS
14 22 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
15 18 (1.03%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 18 (1.03%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.43%) Firewall
2 19 (1.09%) WAN
3 17 (0.97%) LAN
4 16 (0.91%) Internet
4 16 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
5 15 (0.86%) Network Security
5 15 (0.86%) Wireless
6 12 (0.69%) HTTP
6 12 (0.69%) VPN
7 10 (0.57%) SD-WAN
8 7 (0.40%) Unified Communications
8 7 (0.40%) VLAN
9 6 (0.34%) Cisco Nexus
9 6 (0.34%) DNS
9 6 (0.34%) IPsec
10 4 (0.23%) MPLS
10 4 (0.23%) SMS
10 4 (0.23%) WebEx
11 3 (0.17%) DSL
11 3 (0.17%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 105 (6.00%) SQL Server
2 100 (5.72%) Power BI
3 65 (3.72%) Data Warehouse
4 52 (2.97%) Relational Database
5 50 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
6 49 (2.80%) MySQL
7 41 (2.34%) Tableau
8 37 (2.12%) Oracle Database
9 33 (1.89%) Metadata
10 32 (1.83%) NoSQL
11 30 (1.72%) Data Lake
12 27 (1.54%) Oracle Reports
13 19 (1.09%) Azure SQL Database
13 19 (1.09%) MongoDB
14 18 (1.03%) Big Data
14 18 (1.03%) BigQuery
15 15 (0.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 13 (0.74%) Redis
17 12 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
17 12 (0.69%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 295 (16.87%) JIRA
2 152 (8.69%) Git
3 125 (7.15%) Selenium
4 115 (6.58%) Jenkins
5 104 (5.95%) GitLab
6 82 (4.69%) Postman
7 63 (3.60%) Cucumber
8 58 (3.32%) Cypress.io
9 41 (2.34%) JUnit
10 40 (2.29%) REST Assured
11 36 (2.06%) JMeter
12 35 (2.00%) SonarQube
13 34 (1.94%) Zephyr
14 24 (1.37%) WebDriver
15 19 (1.09%) Gatling
16 18 (1.03%) TestNG
16 18 (1.03%) TestRail
17 17 (0.97%) Appium
18 13 (0.74%) Gradle
18 13 (0.74%) Maven
General
1 580 (33.16%) Social Skills
2 417 (23.84%) Finance
3 264 (15.09%) Analytical Skills
4 205 (11.72%) Public Sector
5 143 (8.18%) Banking
6 53 (3.03%) Retail
7 39 (2.23%) Organisational Skills
8 37 (2.12%) Marketing
9 35 (2.00%) Manufacturing
10 31 (1.77%) Documentation Skills
11 26 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
12 24 (1.37%) Military
13 23 (1.32%) Aerospace
14 22 (1.26%) Legal
15 21 (1.20%) Investment Banking
16 20 (1.14%) Telecoms
17 16 (0.91%) Front Office
18 15 (0.86%) Corporate Banking
18 15 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 14 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 221 (12.64%) Analyst
2 210 (12.01%) Developer
3 199 (11.38%) Lead
3 199 (11.38%) Senior
4 136 (7.78%) QA Engineer
5 115 (6.58%) Business Analyst
6 97 (5.55%) Tester
7 79 (4.52%) Project Manager
8 78 (4.46%) Test Manager
9 70 (4.00%) Test Engineer
10 65 (3.72%) Architect
11 53 (3.03%) Quality Engineer
12 52 (2.97%) Data Engineer
13 51 (2.92%) Data Analyst
14 50 (2.86%) Java Developer
15 49 (2.80%) Test Leader
16 47 (2.69%) Senior Analyst
17 41 (2.34%) C# Developer
17 41 (2.34%) Software Engineer
18 38 (2.17%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (7.38%) REST
2 112 (6.40%) .NET
3 99 (5.66%) Playwright
4 77 (4.40%) RESTful
5 71 (4.06%) Spring
6 68 (3.89%) Spring Boot
7 65 (3.72%) React
8 51 (2.92%) .NET Framework
9 50 (2.86%) AngularJS
9 50 (2.86%) Kafka
10 47 (2.69%) HTML
11 46 (2.63%) Node.js
12 45 (2.57%) CSS
13 38 (2.17%) JSON
14 25 (1.43%) Quarkus
15 24 (1.37%) Gherkin
16 23 (1.32%) Middleware
17 19 (1.09%) OpenID
17 19 (1.09%) Oracle Fusion
17 19 (1.09%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 160 (9.15%) Product Ownership
2 73 (4.17%) Cloud Native
3 49 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
4 43 (2.46%) Onboarding
5 39 (2.23%) Distributed Systems
6 38 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
7 35 (2.00%) Mobile App
8 32 (1.83%) Data Structures
9 28 (1.60%) Management Information System
10 27 (1.54%) PMI
11 25 (1.43%) Virtual Team
12 24 (1.37%) Data Centre
13 21 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
13 21 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
14 19 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
15 17 (0.97%) Derivative
16 16 (0.91%) SWIFT Messaging Network
17 14 (0.80%) AI Agents
18 13 (0.74%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 13 (0.74%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 90 (5.15%) Windows
2 54 (3.09%) Linux
3 28 (1.60%) Windows Server
4 22 (1.26%) Android
5 21 (1.20%) Apple iOS
6 13 (0.74%) Unix
7 6 (0.34%) Mac OS
8 3 (0.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.17%) VMS
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.057%) Debian
10 1 (0.057%) Robot Operating System
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
1 656 (37.51%) Agile
2 449 (25.67%) DevOps
3 444 (25.39%) Test Automation
4 427 (24.41%) CI/CD
5 308 (17.61%) Problem-Solving
6 301 (17.21%) Stakeholder Management
7 289 (16.52%) Validation
8 285 (16.30%) Continuous Improvement
9 257 (14.69%) User Acceptance Testing
10 235 (13.44%) Scrum
11 206 (11.78%) Migration
12 205 (11.72%) Test Strategy
13 167 (9.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 161 (9.21%) AI
15 152 (8.69%) SDLC
16 149 (8.52%) ETL
17 144 (8.23%) Project Management
17 144 (8.23%) Test Scripting
18 143 (8.18%) Analytics
19 141 (8.06%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 358 (20.47%) SQL
2 232 (13.26%) Python
3 214 (12.24%) Java
4 134 (7.66%) JavaScript
5 130 (7.43%) C#
6 105 (6.00%) TypeScript
7 51 (2.92%) PL/SQL
8 47 (2.69%) T-SQL
9 32 (1.83%) PowerShell
10 23 (1.32%) Kotlin
11 22 (1.26%) Bash
12 17 (0.97%) C++
13 16 (0.91%) VBA
14 15 (0.86%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 15 (0.86%) PHP
14 15 (0.86%) Ruby
14 15 (0.86%) Scala
14 15 (0.86%) VB
15 13 (0.74%) Bicep
16 11 (0.63%) C
Qualifications
1 384 (21.96%) Security Cleared
2 283 (16.18%) SC Cleared
3 162 (9.26%) Degree
4 67 (3.83%) ISTQB
5 54 (3.09%) BPSS Clearance
5 54 (3.09%) PMI Certification
6 49 (2.80%) PMP
7 47 (2.69%) Computer Science Degree
8 42 (2.40%) DV Cleared
9 27 (1.54%) Master's Degree
10 11 (0.63%) AWS Certification
10 11 (0.63%) CBAP
10 11 (0.63%) CHECK Team Member
10 11 (0.63%) CREST Certified
10 11 (0.63%) Cyber Scheme
11 10 (0.57%) Cisco Certification
11 10 (0.57%) Postgraduate
11 10 (0.57%) SAFe Agilist
12 9 (0.51%) ISEB
12 9 (0.51%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 121 (6.92%) Data Quality
2 85 (4.86%) Accessibility
3 45 (2.57%) GDPR
4 44 (2.52%) PMO
5 26 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 22 (1.26%) PCI DSS
6 22 (1.26%) WCAG
7 16 (0.91%) NIST
8 15 (0.86%) IFRS
9 14 (0.80%) IFRS 17
10 13 (0.74%) SLA
11 12 (0.69%) GRC
12 11 (0.63%) Disclosure Scotland
13 10 (0.57%) Basel III
13 10 (0.57%) GxP
13 10 (0.57%) ISO 20022
13 10 (0.57%) PSD2
13 10 (0.57%) SEPA
14 7 (0.40%) COBIT
14 7 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 103 (5.89%) Docker
2 14 (0.80%) Active Directory
3 10 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 3 (0.17%) Firmware
5 3 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.11%) GridGain
6 2 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.11%) VMware Infrastructure
7 1 (0.057%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.057%) KVM
7 1 (0.057%) QEMU
7 1 (0.057%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
7 1 (0.057%) Varnish
7 1 (0.057%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 142 (8.12%) Kubernetes
2 75 (4.29%) Terraform
3 39 (2.23%) Grafana
4 33 (1.89%) Ansible
5 28 (1.60%) Argo
6 23 (1.32%) Prometheus
7 20 (1.14%) HP ALM
8 12 (0.69%) Nmap
9 10 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.40%) HP Quality Center
10 7 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
10 7 (0.40%) Puppet
11 6 (0.34%) Kibana
12 3 (0.17%) Progress Chef
13 2 (0.11%) SCCM
14 1 (0.057%) Cisco Prime
14 1 (0.057%) Iperf
14 1 (0.057%) Microsoft Intune
14 1 (0.057%) Tivoli
14 1 (0.057%) vMotion
Vendors
1 190 (10.86%) Microsoft
2 167 (9.55%) Oracle
3 101 (5.77%) SAP
4 85 (4.86%) Salesforce
5 52 (2.97%) ServiceNow
6 47 (2.69%) Citrix
7 42 (2.40%) Google
8 28 (1.60%) Databricks
8 28 (1.60%) Red Hat
9 27 (1.54%) Adobe
10 23 (1.32%) HP
11 21 (1.20%) Informatica
12 15 (0.86%) Workday
13 14 (0.80%) Cisco
13 14 (0.80%) IBM
13 14 (0.80%) MuleSoft
13 14 (0.80%) Splunk
14 12 (0.69%) Talend
15 10 (0.57%) Infor
16 8 (0.46%) Pega