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

6 months to
14 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 65 58
Rank change year-on-year +4 -7 +15
Contract jobs citing QA 1,827 1,081 1,447
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.65% 3.65% 3.31%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.80% 22.63% 24.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,135 755 941
10th Percentile £322 £284 £313
25th Percentile £398 £384 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -0.99%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £668 £675 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £460 £500
% change year-on-year -2.17% -8.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 135 28 100
10th Percentile £13.02 £13.49 £10.86
25th Percentile £16.07 £15.25 £12.24
Median hourly rate £30.58 £32.50 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.91% +132.14% -37.74%
75th Percentile £67.50 £69.50 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £71.94
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £53.00 £13.52
% change year-on-year -42.30% +292.01% -28.84%

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 8,379 4,777 5,995
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.73% 16.15% 13.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,367 3,041 3,738
10th Percentile £343 £275 £281
25th Percentile £413 £400 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £508
Median % change year-on-year - -1.53% -3.29%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £717 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 495 197 433
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.12 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.84 £21.25 £13.19
Median hourly rate £36.00 £31.76 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +13.35% +33.45% -36.53%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £83.28 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £32.50 £19.18
% change year-on-year +23.08% +69.49% -48.87%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 +4 1,560 £480 +1.05% 691
UK excluding London +9 845 £450 -2.17% 557
London +5 780 £500 - 230
Work from Home +5 526 £488 - 282
South East +9 195 £450 -5.26% 188
North of England -17 181 £459 -6.38% 134
Midlands -7 173 £425 +13.33% 91
West Midlands -5 128 £442 +3.88% 46
South West +25 114 £486 -2.75% 72
Scotland +7 84 £360 -22.16% 13
East of England +7 83 £475 +0.85% 53
North West -19 82 £444 +3.38% 68
Yorkshire -28 65 £525 +1.01% 44
East Midlands -14 46 £393 +7.19% 45
North East -10 34 £413 -9.34% 24
Northern Ireland +9 20 £463 +42.31% 12
Wales -12 11 £450 -14.29% 13

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 (5.15%) Confluence
2 32 (1.75%) SharePoint
3 28 (1.53%) CMS
4 18 (0.99%) IIS
5 15 (0.82%) Apache Spark
6 13 (0.71%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 7 (0.38%) Apache
7 7 (0.38%) SAS
8 6 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
9 5 (0.27%) Tuxedo
9 5 (0.27%) Umbraco
10 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.22%) nginx
10 4 (0.22%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 3 (0.16%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.16%) Moodle
11 3 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.16%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.11%) Apache Solr
12 2 (0.11%) Luigi
Applications
1 57 (3.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 31 (1.70%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
4 24 (1.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (1.15%) MS Visio
6 6 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.22%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.16%) CATIA
8 3 (0.16%) Simulink
9 2 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.11%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.11%) EPLAN
10 1 (0.055%) Adobe Premiere
10 1 (0.055%) Camtasia
10 1 (0.055%) Mingle
10 1 (0.055%) Navisworks
10 1 (0.055%) Notion
10 1 (0.055%) Revit
Business Applications
1 28 (1.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 17 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.44%) Shopify
4 7 (0.38%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.33%) Maximo
5 6 (0.33%) NEC Housing
5 6 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.27%) Infor CloudSuite
7 4 (0.22%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.22%) Primavera
7 4 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.16%) Actimize
8 3 (0.16%) Aladdin
8 3 (0.16%) Oracle EBS R12
9 2 (0.11%) iTrent
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 2 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.11%) SAP EWM
9 2 (0.11%) SAP Retail
Cloud Services
1 389 (21.29%) Azure
2 289 (15.82%) AWS
3 163 (8.92%) Azure DevOps
4 148 (8.10%) GitHub
5 105 (5.75%) Power Platform
6 95 (5.20%) GitHub Actions
7 73 (4.00%) GCP
8 45 (2.46%) Serverless
9 43 (2.35%) OpenShift
10 37 (2.03%) Dynamics 365
11 32 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
11 32 (1.75%) SaaS
12 30 (1.64%) Amazon S3
13 29 (1.59%) Snowflake
14 26 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 22 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
16 20 (1.09%) Amazon EKS
16 20 (1.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 19 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
17 19 (1.04%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.37%) Firewall
2 19 (1.04%) Network Security
2 19 (1.04%) WAN
3 18 (0.99%) Internet
3 18 (0.99%) LAN
4 16 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
5 13 (0.71%) VPN
6 11 (0.60%) DNS
6 11 (0.60%) SD-WAN
6 11 (0.60%) Unified Communications
6 11 (0.60%) VLAN
6 11 (0.60%) Wireless
7 9 (0.49%) HTTP
8 8 (0.44%) IPsec
9 7 (0.38%) SMS
10 6 (0.33%) Cisco Nexus
10 6 (0.33%) TCP/IP
11 5 (0.27%) DHCP
12 4 (0.22%) MPLS
13 3 (0.16%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 104 (5.69%) SQL Server
2 91 (4.98%) Power BI
3 71 (3.89%) Data Warehouse
4 65 (3.56%) PostgreSQL
5 55 (3.01%) Relational Database
6 43 (2.35%) MySQL
7 41 (2.24%) NoSQL
8 37 (2.03%) Tableau
9 36 (1.97%) Metadata
10 34 (1.86%) Oracle Database
11 32 (1.75%) Data Lake
11 32 (1.75%) Oracle Reports
12 27 (1.48%) MongoDB
13 24 (1.31%) Big Data
14 19 (1.04%) DynamoDB
15 17 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
15 17 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 15 (0.82%) BigQuery
17 14 (0.77%) Amazon Redshift
17 14 (0.77%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 287 (15.71%) JIRA
2 172 (9.41%) Git
3 134 (7.33%) Selenium
4 126 (6.90%) Jenkins
5 97 (5.31%) GitLab
6 80 (4.38%) Postman
7 59 (3.23%) Cucumber
8 56 (3.07%) Cypress.io
9 53 (2.90%) JUnit
10 45 (2.46%) REST Assured
11 44 (2.41%) Zephyr
12 43 (2.35%) SonarQube
13 35 (1.92%) JMeter
14 30 (1.64%) WebDriver
15 23 (1.26%) Gatling
16 20 (1.09%) Maven
17 18 (0.99%) Gradle
18 17 (0.93%) TestRail
19 16 (0.88%) TestNG
20 15 (0.82%) Appium
General
1 551 (30.16%) Social Skills
2 419 (22.93%) Finance
3 256 (14.01%) Analytical Skills
4 209 (11.44%) Public Sector
5 141 (7.72%) Banking
6 60 (3.28%) Retail
7 50 (2.74%) Manufacturing
7 50 (2.74%) Marketing
8 46 (2.52%) Organisational Skills
9 38 (2.08%) Aerospace
10 28 (1.53%) Documentation Skills
11 24 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
12 22 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 22 (1.20%) Investment Banking
13 20 (1.09%) Legal
13 20 (1.09%) Military
14 16 (0.88%) Pharmaceutical
15 15 (0.82%) Automotive
15 15 (0.82%) Front Office
16 14 (0.77%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 230 (12.59%) Developer
2 221 (12.10%) Analyst
3 210 (11.49%) Lead
3 210 (11.49%) Senior
4 165 (9.03%) QA Engineer
5 114 (6.24%) Business Analyst
6 100 (5.47%) Tester
7 88 (4.82%) Test Manager
8 71 (3.89%) Architect
9 68 (3.72%) Quality Engineer
10 65 (3.56%) Java Developer
11 63 (3.45%) Test Engineer
12 62 (3.39%) Project Manager
13 60 (3.28%) Data Engineer
14 53 (2.90%) Test Leader
15 52 (2.85%) Data Analyst
15 52 (2.85%) Senior Analyst
16 45 (2.46%) Software Engineer
17 43 (2.35%) Consultant
18 42 (2.30%) QA Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 126 (6.90%) REST
2 108 (5.91%) .NET
3 102 (5.58%) RESTful
4 97 (5.31%) Playwright
5 85 (4.65%) Spring
6 81 (4.43%) Spring Boot
7 70 (3.83%) React
8 64 (3.50%) HTML
9 60 (3.28%) AngularJS
10 58 (3.17%) CSS
11 53 (2.90%) Kafka
12 51 (2.79%) .NET Framework
13 47 (2.57%) Node.js
14 36 (1.97%) JSON
15 33 (1.81%) Quarkus
16 28 (1.53%) Middleware
17 24 (1.31%) pytest
18 23 (1.26%) ASP.NET
18 23 (1.26%) Gherkin
18 23 (1.26%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 154 (8.43%) Product Ownership
2 77 (4.21%) Cloud Native
3 52 (2.85%) Onboarding
4 51 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
5 45 (2.46%) Distributed Systems
6 41 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
7 38 (2.08%) Mobile App
8 32 (1.75%) Management Information System
9 29 (1.59%) Data Structures
10 26 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
10 26 (1.42%) Virtual Team
11 23 (1.26%) Data Centre
12 19 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
12 19 (1.04%) PMI
13 18 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
14 17 (0.93%) AI Agents
15 15 (0.82%) NHS
16 14 (0.77%) Legacy Code
17 13 (0.71%) Derivative
17 13 (0.71%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 82 (4.49%) Windows
2 56 (3.07%) Linux
3 29 (1.59%) Windows Server
4 28 (1.53%) Android
5 27 (1.48%) Apple iOS
6 19 (1.04%) Unix
7 6 (0.33%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.055%) Debian
10 1 (0.055%) Solaris
10 1 (0.055%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.055%) VMS
10 1 (0.055%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.055%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 689 (37.71%) Agile
2 464 (25.40%) Test Automation
3 438 (23.97%) DevOps
4 424 (23.21%) CI/CD
5 304 (16.64%) Stakeholder Management
6 302 (16.53%) Validation
7 286 (15.65%) Continuous Improvement
8 279 (15.27%) Problem-Solving
9 262 (14.34%) User Acceptance Testing
10 248 (13.57%) Scrum
11 234 (12.81%) Test Strategy
12 228 (12.48%) Migration
13 178 (9.74%) AI
14 163 (8.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 152 (8.32%) ETL
16 149 (8.16%) Decision-Making
17 148 (8.10%) SDLC
18 143 (7.83%) Analytics
19 142 (7.77%) Data Migration
20 139 (7.61%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 373 (20.42%) SQL
2 234 (12.81%) Java
3 230 (12.59%) Python
4 129 (7.06%) JavaScript
5 128 (7.01%) C#
6 82 (4.49%) TypeScript
7 42 (2.30%) T-SQL
8 40 (2.19%) PL/SQL
9 32 (1.75%) Kotlin
10 27 (1.48%) PowerShell
11 24 (1.31%) Bash
12 20 (1.09%) Scala
13 18 (0.99%) VB
14 16 (0.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 16 (0.88%) Swift
15 15 (0.82%) C
16 14 (0.77%) Bicep
16 14 (0.77%) C++
17 12 (0.66%) VBA
18 10 (0.55%) PHP
Qualifications
1 410 (22.44%) Security Cleared
2 301 (16.48%) SC Cleared
3 134 (7.33%) Degree
4 73 (4.00%) ISTQB
5 66 (3.61%) BPSS Clearance
6 51 (2.79%) DV Cleared
7 40 (2.19%) PMI Certification
8 37 (2.03%) PMP
9 31 (1.70%) Computer Science Degree
10 18 (0.99%) Master's Degree
11 14 (0.77%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.60%) Cisco Certification
13 9 (0.49%) AWS Certification
13 9 (0.49%) CBAP
14 8 (0.44%) Azure Certification
15 7 (0.38%) APMP
15 7 (0.38%) CCNP
15 7 (0.38%) SAFe Agilist
16 6 (0.33%) Cyber Scheme
16 6 (0.33%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 132 (7.22%) Data Quality
2 82 (4.49%) Accessibility
3 40 (2.19%) PMO
4 33 (1.81%) GDPR
5 21 (1.15%) WCAG
6 17 (0.93%) IFRS
6 17 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.88%) GRC
7 16 (0.88%) NIST
8 15 (0.82%) IFRS 17
8 15 (0.82%) PCI DSS
9 13 (0.71%) SLA
10 11 (0.60%) Disclosure Scotland
10 11 (0.60%) GxP
11 8 (0.44%) ISO 20022
12 7 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.38%) SEPA
13 6 (0.33%) PSD2
13 6 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 6 (0.33%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 110 (6.02%) Docker
2 16 (0.88%) Active Directory
3 12 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.38%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (0.22%) Firmware
7 3 (0.16%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 2 (0.11%) GridGain
8 2 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.11%) VirtualBox
8 2 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.055%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.055%) KVM
9 1 (0.055%) QEMU
9 1 (0.055%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
9 1 (0.055%) Varnish
9 1 (0.055%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 155 (8.48%) Kubernetes
2 70 (3.83%) Terraform
3 36 (1.97%) Grafana
4 35 (1.92%) Argo
5 29 (1.59%) Ansible
6 28 (1.53%) Prometheus
7 18 (0.99%) HP ALM
8 10 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (0.44%) HP Quality Center
10 7 (0.38%) Nmap
10 7 (0.38%) Oracle RMAN
11 6 (0.33%) Puppet
12 5 (0.27%) Kibana
12 5 (0.27%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 3 (0.16%) Progress Chef
14 2 (0.11%) FortiGate
14 2 (0.11%) ITRS Geneos
14 2 (0.11%) SCCM
14 2 (0.11%) Tivoli
15 1 (0.055%) Istio
Vendors
1 185 (10.13%) Microsoft
2 167 (9.14%) Oracle
3 100 (5.47%) Salesforce
4 91 (4.98%) SAP
5 46 (2.52%) ServiceNow
6 37 (2.03%) Citrix
7 36 (1.97%) Google
8 35 (1.92%) Red Hat
9 33 (1.81%) Databricks
10 30 (1.64%) Adobe
11 24 (1.31%) Informatica
12 21 (1.15%) Cisco
12 21 (1.15%) HP
13 17 (0.93%) MuleSoft
14 14 (0.77%) Talend
15 12 (0.66%) VMware
15 12 (0.66%) Workday
16 11 (0.60%) Infor
17 10 (0.55%) IBM
17 10 (0.55%) Pega