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 13 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 64 64
Rank change year-on-year +14 0 +5
Contract jobs citing QA 2,225 1,255 1,285
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.09% 3.81% 3.33%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 23.44% 22.29% 24.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,313 865 764
10th Percentile £313 £281 £300
25th Percentile £394 £375 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £480
Median % change year-on-year - -1.04% -8.57%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £659 £663 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £473
% change year-on-year - -4.81% -0.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 223 45 81
10th Percentile £12.85 £12.28 £11.66
25th Percentile £15.25 £13.50 £12.24
Median hourly rate £30.58 £19.37 £14.98
Median % change year-on-year +57.91% +29.27% -68.46%
75th Percentile £48.75 £43.21 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £69.61 £71.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £15.12 £14.98
% change year-on-year +102.25% +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 9,494 5,631 5,161
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.46% 17.11% 13.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,999 3,606 3,096
10th Percentile £325 £300 £282
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £508
Median % change year-on-year - -1.53% -3.29%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £625
90th Percentile £700 £712 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £480
% change year-on-year +3.05% -1.04% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 609 267 262
10th Percentile £13.91 £13.60 £12.37
25th Percentile £16.75 £16.92 £15.00
Median hourly rate £33.00 £30.00 £27.09
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% +10.74% -22.60%
75th Percentile £67.84 £58.75 £58.44
90th Percentile £77.50 £81.10 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.98 £27.53 £26.50
% change year-on-year +23.43% +3.89% -24.29%

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 13 September 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 13 September 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 13 September 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 +16 1,942 £475 - 1,885
UK excluding London +19 1,079 £450 - 1,136
London +8 908 £500 - 919
Work from Home +4 572 £475 - 1,475
North of England +5 260 £463 +5.71% 275
South East +5 248 £425 -5.56% 302
Midlands +16 220 £450 +5.88% 177
West Midlands +20 179 £464 +3.11% 118
East of England +18 137 £450 -10.00% 133
South West +10 129 £495 +16.47% 134
Yorkshire +5 104 £500 +8.70% 74
North West -25 100 £475 +12.56% 146
Scotland -4 78 £402 -10.67% 81
North East -11 56 £400 -13.04% 56
East Midlands -8 40 £415 +10.67% 59
Wales -6 18 £400 +6.67% 26
Northern Ireland -4 8 £450 +10.43% 32

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
1 126 (5.66%) Confluence
2 48 (2.16%) CMS
3 39 (1.75%) SharePoint
4 18 (0.81%) IIS
5 16 (0.72%) Apache Spark
6 13 (0.58%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 13 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (0.45%) Apache
8 8 (0.36%) SAS
8 8 (0.36%) Sitecore CMS
9 7 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.22%) Tuxedo
10 5 (0.22%) WordPress
11 4 (0.18%) Headless CMS
11 4 (0.18%) OpenStack
11 4 (0.18%) Umbraco
12 3 (0.13%) Apache Solr
12 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.13%) Moodle
12 3 (0.13%) WebLogic
Applications
1 79 (3.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.57%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.94%) MS Visio
5 15 (0.67%) Spreadsheet
6 13 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
7 9 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.22%) Navisworks
8 5 (0.22%) Revit
9 4 (0.18%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.13%) CATIA
10 3 (0.13%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.13%) Photoshop
10 3 (0.13%) ProjectWise
10 3 (0.13%) Simulink
11 2 (0.090%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.090%) Mingle
12 1 (0.045%) Adobe Illustrator
12 1 (0.045%) Gliffy
12 1 (0.045%) Trello
Business Applications
1 32 (1.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (1.12%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
3 10 (0.45%) Shopify
4 7 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
4 7 (0.31%) SAP GRC
4 7 (0.31%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.27%) Aladdin
6 5 (0.22%) NEC Housing
7 4 (0.18%) iTrent
7 4 (0.18%) Maximo
7 4 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
7 4 (0.18%) Primavera
7 4 (0.18%) ResourceLink
8 3 (0.13%) Infor CloudSuite
8 3 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
8 3 (0.13%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.13%) SAP MM
8 3 (0.13%) Teamcenter
9 2 (0.090%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 460 (20.67%) Azure
2 384 (17.26%) AWS
3 216 (9.71%) GitHub
4 197 (8.85%) Azure DevOps
5 120 (5.39%) GitHub Actions
6 109 (4.90%) Power Platform
7 107 (4.81%) GCP
8 76 (3.42%) Serverless
9 51 (2.29%) AWS Lambda
9 51 (2.29%) SaaS
10 46 (2.07%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 40 (1.80%) OpenShift
12 37 (1.66%) Amazon S3
13 36 (1.62%) Dynamics 365
13 36 (1.62%) GitHub Copilot
14 35 (1.57%) Snowflake
15 33 (1.48%) Azure Monitor
16 32 (1.44%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 28 (1.26%) Power Automate
18 26 (1.17%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.12%) Firewall
2 23 (1.03%) Internet
3 17 (0.76%) Broadband
3 17 (0.76%) DNS
4 15 (0.67%) HTTP
5 14 (0.63%) TCP/IP
5 14 (0.63%) VLAN
5 14 (0.63%) WAN
5 14 (0.63%) Wi-Fi
6 13 (0.58%) Network Security
7 12 (0.54%) LAN
7 12 (0.54%) VPN
8 10 (0.45%) 5G
9 9 (0.40%) 4G
9 9 (0.40%) DHCP
9 9 (0.40%) SD-WAN
9 9 (0.40%) Unified Communications
10 7 (0.31%) IPsec
11 6 (0.27%) SMS
11 6 (0.27%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (4.94%) SQL Server
2 97 (4.36%) Power BI
3 81 (3.64%) PostgreSQL
4 79 (3.55%) Relational Database
5 69 (3.10%) Data Warehouse
6 52 (2.34%) MongoDB
7 50 (2.25%) NoSQL
8 44 (1.98%) Metadata
9 42 (1.89%) MySQL
10 41 (1.84%) Oracle Database
11 37 (1.66%) Tableau
12 34 (1.53%) Oracle Reports
13 29 (1.30%) Data Lake
14 21 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 20 (0.90%) Big Data
16 17 (0.76%) Azure SQL Database
17 16 (0.72%) GIS
18 15 (0.67%) BigQuery
18 15 (0.67%) Power Query
18 15 (0.67%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 307 (13.80%) JIRA
2 228 (10.25%) Git
3 162 (7.28%) Selenium
4 161 (7.24%) Jenkins
5 128 (5.75%) GitLab
6 84 (3.78%) Postman
7 76 (3.42%) Cucumber
8 75 (3.37%) Cypress.io
9 60 (2.70%) JUnit
10 53 (2.38%) Zephyr
11 51 (2.29%) SonarQube
12 46 (2.07%) JMeter
13 42 (1.89%) REST Assured
14 35 (1.57%) Gatling
15 34 (1.53%) Maven
16 28 (1.26%) WebDriver
17 26 (1.17%) Gradle
18 21 (0.94%) Appium
18 21 (0.94%) TestRail
19 19 (0.85%) TestNG
General
1 673 (30.25%) Social Skills
2 431 (19.37%) Finance
3 365 (16.40%) Analytical Skills
4 283 (12.72%) Public Sector
5 163 (7.33%) Banking
6 79 (3.55%) Manufacturing
7 73 (3.28%) Retail
8 66 (2.97%) Marketing
9 63 (2.83%) Organisational Skills
10 51 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 43 (1.93%) Aerospace
12 39 (1.75%) Telecoms
13 37 (1.66%) Influencing Skills
14 35 (1.57%) Legal
15 32 (1.44%) Documentation Skills
16 26 (1.17%) Military
17 24 (1.08%) Law
18 19 (0.85%) Local Government
18 19 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
19 18 (0.81%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 292 (13.12%) Developer
2 279 (12.54%) Lead
3 266 (11.96%) Senior
4 262 (11.78%) Analyst
5 239 (10.74%) QA Engineer
6 120 (5.39%) Quality Engineer
7 112 (5.03%) Tester
8 111 (4.99%) Business Analyst
9 104 (4.67%) Test Manager
10 97 (4.36%) Test Engineer
11 75 (3.37%) Java Developer
12 70 (3.15%) Data Engineer
12 70 (3.15%) QA Leader
13 68 (3.06%) Test Leader
14 61 (2.74%) Architect
15 58 (2.61%) Senior Analyst
16 56 (2.52%) Consultant
16 56 (2.52%) Test Analyst
17 52 (2.34%) QA Tester
18 50 (2.25%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 193 (8.67%) REST
2 138 (6.20%) RESTful
3 134 (6.02%) Playwright
4 113 (5.08%) Spring
5 104 (4.67%) Spring Boot
6 100 (4.49%) Terraform
7 97 (4.36%) .NET
8 88 (3.96%) HTML
9 85 (3.82%) React
10 81 (3.64%) Kafka
11 77 (3.46%) CSS
12 74 (3.33%) AngularJS
13 64 (2.88%) Node.js
14 54 (2.43%) Middleware
15 50 (2.25%) pytest
16 49 (2.20%) SOAP
17 43 (1.93%) .NET Framework
18 39 (1.75%) JSON
19 37 (1.66%) XML
20 32 (1.44%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 204 (9.17%) Product Ownership
2 132 (5.93%) Cloud Native
3 73 (3.28%) Onboarding
4 60 (2.70%) Management Information System
5 59 (2.65%) Enterprise Software
6 58 (2.61%) Distributed Systems
7 52 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
8 51 (2.29%) Mobile App
9 43 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
10 41 (1.84%) Data Structures
11 39 (1.75%) AI Agents
12 35 (1.57%) Data Centre
13 26 (1.17%) Low-Code
13 26 (1.17%) NHS
14 24 (1.08%) Virtual Team
15 22 (0.99%) CMDB
16 19 (0.85%) Educational Technology
17 17 (0.76%) Analytical Mindset
18 16 (0.72%) Operational Technology
19 14 (0.63%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 91 (4.09%) Windows
2 68 (3.06%) Linux
3 48 (2.16%) Apple iOS
4 45 (2.02%) Android
5 34 (1.53%) Unix
6 27 (1.21%) Windows Server
7 10 (0.45%) VMS
8 6 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.22%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.090%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.090%) zOS
11 1 (0.045%) AIX
11 1 (0.045%) CentOS
11 1 (0.045%) Debian
11 1 (0.045%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.045%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.045%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.045%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.045%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.045%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 860 (38.65%) Agile
2 615 (27.64%) Test Automation
3 554 (24.90%) CI/CD
4 551 (24.76%) DevOps
5 440 (19.78%) Stakeholder Management
6 434 (19.51%) Continuous Improvement
7 389 (17.48%) Problem-Solving
8 371 (16.67%) Validation
9 324 (14.56%) Scrum
10 316 (14.20%) Test Strategy
11 314 (14.11%) AI
12 275 (12.36%) User Acceptance Testing
13 251 (11.28%) Migration
14 200 (8.99%) Microservices
14 200 (8.99%) SDLC
15 193 (8.67%) End-to-End Testing
16 191 (8.58%) Software Engineering
17 182 (8.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 176 (7.91%) Decision-Making
19 170 (7.64%) Defect Management
Programming Languages
1 414 (18.61%) SQL
2 307 (13.80%) Python
3 276 (12.40%) Java
4 177 (7.96%) JavaScript
5 112 (5.03%) C#
6 91 (4.09%) TypeScript
7 51 (2.29%) Bash
8 38 (1.71%) PowerShell
9 35 (1.57%) PL/SQL
10 29 (1.30%) Kotlin
11 27 (1.21%) T-SQL
12 22 (0.99%) Scala
13 19 (0.85%) Swift
14 18 (0.81%) C
15 16 (0.72%) Objective-C
15 16 (0.72%) Shell Script
15 16 (0.72%) VB
16 15 (0.67%) Apex Code
16 15 (0.67%) C++
16 15 (0.67%) R
Qualifications
1 534 (24.00%) Security Cleared
2 412 (18.52%) SC Cleared
3 144 (6.47%) Degree
4 93 (4.18%) BPSS Clearance
5 74 (3.33%) ISTQB
6 62 (2.79%) DV Cleared
7 41 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
8 24 (1.08%) PMP
9 22 (0.99%) PMI Certification
10 17 (0.76%) Azure Certification
11 16 (0.72%) AWS Certification
12 13 (0.58%) Master's Degree
12 13 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
13 11 (0.49%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 10 (0.45%) Cisco Certification
14 10 (0.45%) ITIL Certification
15 9 (0.40%) IIBA
15 9 (0.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 8 (0.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 8 (0.36%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 162 (7.28%) Data Quality
2 119 (5.35%) Accessibility
3 35 (1.57%) GDPR
4 33 (1.48%) WCAG
5 31 (1.39%) PMO
6 24 (1.08%) GRC
7 13 (0.58%) GxP
7 13 (0.58%) NIST
8 12 (0.54%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 10 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 9 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
10 9 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
10 9 (0.40%) Software Quality Assurance
11 8 (0.36%) SLA
12 7 (0.31%) IFRS
12 7 (0.31%) ISO 19650
12 7 (0.31%) ISO 9001
12 7 (0.31%) NCSC
13 5 (0.22%) ISO 20022
14 4 (0.18%) IFRS 17
System Software
1 181 (8.13%) Docker
2 23 (1.03%) Active Directory
3 18 (0.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.45%) IAG
4 10 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.27%) Firmware
6 4 (0.18%) ACF2
6 4 (0.18%) RACF
7 3 (0.13%) KVM
7 3 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.13%) VirtualBox
8 2 (0.090%) GridGain
8 2 (0.090%) Microsoft App-V
8 2 (0.090%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.045%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.045%) QEMU
9 1 (0.045%) Varnish
9 1 (0.045%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.045%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.045%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 215 (9.66%) Kubernetes
2 60 (2.70%) Ansible
3 51 (2.29%) Grafana
4 35 (1.57%) Prometheus
5 34 (1.53%) Argo
6 12 (0.54%) HP ALM
7 10 (0.45%) SCCM
8 8 (0.36%) Microsoft Clustering
9 7 (0.31%) HP Quality Center
9 7 (0.31%) Microsoft Intune
9 7 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.31%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 6 (0.27%) Puppet
11 5 (0.22%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.18%) SCOM
13 3 (0.13%) FortiGate
13 3 (0.13%) Oracle RMAN
14 2 (0.090%) Control-M
14 2 (0.090%) ITRS Geneos
14 2 (0.090%) Kibana
Vendors
1 246 (11.06%) Microsoft
2 167 (7.51%) Oracle
3 118 (5.30%) Salesforce
4 82 (3.69%) SAP
5 60 (2.70%) ServiceNow
6 48 (2.16%) Google
7 38 (1.71%) Databricks
8 35 (1.57%) Red Hat
9 30 (1.35%) Dynatrace
10 26 (1.17%) Adobe
10 26 (1.17%) Splunk
11 25 (1.12%) Citrix
12 23 (1.03%) Informatica
13 22 (0.99%) Cisco
13 22 (0.99%) VMware
14 17 (0.76%) IBM
15 16 (0.72%) Sitecore
16 14 (0.63%) MuleSoft
16 14 (0.63%) Talend
16 14 (0.63%) Workday