Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 23 October 2018

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for QA skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited QA over the 6 months to 23 October 2018 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Quality Assurance (QA)
UK
6 months to
23 Oct 2018		 Same period 2017 Same period 2016
Rank 67 69 73
Rank change year-on-year +2 +4 -12
Contract jobs citing QA 3,604 3,277 3,222
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 3.48% 3.27% 3.06%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 32.08% 26.47% 26.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,449 2,298 2,164
UK median daily rate £450 £430 £413
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +4.65% +4.12% +3.25%
10th Percentile £300 £297 £263
90th Percentile £600 £601 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £405 £388 £388
% change year-on-year +4.52% - +3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 43 65
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £21.90 £18.94
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year +59.82% +15.66% -8.75%
10th Percentile £10.80 £10.06 £7.88
90th Percentile £47.40 £40.75 £42.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £21.25 £14.00
% change year-on-year +36.47% +51.79% -41.67%

QA is in the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills.

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK
Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 11,236 12,378 12,079
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.86% 12.35% 11.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,102 8,114 7,800
UK median daily rate £450 £438 £415
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +2.86% +5.42% +3.75%
10th Percentile £250 £256 £225
90th Percentile £625 £630 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £400 £380
% change year-on-year - +5.26% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 401 363 445
UK median hourly rate £22.00 £20.00 £22.84
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year +10.00% -12.42% +5.96%
10th Percentile £11.11 £10.60 £10.50
90th Percentile £48.75 £47.50 £47.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.76 £20.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year +8.80% -20.00% +16.01%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing QA as a percentage of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for daily rates quoted in contract jobs citing QA.

Contractor daily rate trend for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Daily Rate Histogram

The daily rate distribution of IT jobs citing QA over the 6 months to 23 October 2018.

Contractor daily rate histogram for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for contractor hourly rates quoted in IT jobs citing QA.

Contractor hourly rate trend for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Hourly Rate Histogram

The hourly rate distribution of IT jobs citing QA over the 6 months to 23 October 2018.

Contractor hourly rate histogram for QA in the UK

QA
Top 16 Contract 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 23 October 2018. 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
Job
Vacancies
England 0 3,288 £450 +2.27% 1,279
London -2 1,815 £475 - 505
UK excluding London -1 1,741 £405 +4.52% 871
South East -1 595 £441 +13.87% 222
North of England +16 349 £438 +2.94% 226
Midlands -9 190 £395 +5.33% 134
North West +32 185 £450 +1.12% 125
Scotland +13 181 £380 +12.59% 53
East of England +14 165 £410 +2.50% 99
South West -19 162 £391 +4.33% 94
West Midlands -1 133 £388 +10.71% 77
Yorkshire +1 115 £425 - 72
Wales +26 78 £360 -4.00% 26
East Midlands -8 54 £413 +3.13% 57
North East +1 52 £438 +2.94% 29
Northern Ireland +48 21 £500 +61.29% 18

For the 6 months to 23 October 2018, IT contractor jobs citing QA also mentioned the following skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads with a requirement for QA.

1 1,879 (52.14%) Agile Software Development
2 1,321 (36.65%) Test Automation
3 836 (23.20%) Java
4 806 (22.36%) Selenium
5 725 (20.12%) Finance
6 644 (17.87%) Scrum
7 639 (17.73%) SQL
8 615 (17.06%) JIRA
9 599 (16.62%) BDD
10 555 (15.40%) JavaScript
11 512 (14.21%) TDD
12 486 (13.49%) Cucumber
13 465 (12.90%) DevOps
14 459 (12.74%) C#
15 429 (11.90%) Continuous Integration
16 426 (11.82%) Jenkins
17 374 (10.38%) .NET
18 369 (10.24%) Git (software)
19 367 (10.18%) Microsoft
20 364 (10.10%) Analytical Skills
21 353 (9.79%) SDLC
22 349 (9.68%) Problem-Solving
23 339 (9.41%) User Acceptance Testing
24 338 (9.38%) Test Strategy
24 338 (9.38%) Project Management
25 330 (9.16%) HTML
26 318 (8.82%) Oracle
27 300 (8.32%) Test Scripting
28 298 (8.27%) Web Services
28 298 (8.27%) Banking

QA
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same job type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 262 (7.27%) Confluence
2 95 (2.64%) CMS
3 77 (2.14%) SharePoint
4 52 (1.44%) Elasticsearch
5 40 (1.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 39 (1.08%) IIS
7 36 (1.00%) Apache
8 34 (0.94%) Apache Spark
9 33 (0.92%) WebSphere
10 26 (0.72%) JBoss
11 22 (0.61%) Drupal
11 22 (0.61%) Tomcat
11 22 (0.61%) WebLogic
12 21 (0.58%) NServiceBus
13 20 (0.55%) WordPress
14 18 (0.50%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 18 (0.50%) SAS
15 15 (0.42%) SharePoint 2013
16 14 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
17 13 (0.36%) Jetty
Applications
1 173 (4.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 111 (3.08%) Microsoft Office
3 69 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 49 (1.36%) Microsoft Project
5 43 (1.19%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.36%) Photoshop
8 5 (0.14%) InfoPath
9 4 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 4 (0.11%) InVision
10 3 (0.083%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.055%) Open Workbench
12 1 (0.028%) Adobe After Effects
12 1 (0.028%) Adobe Captivate
12 1 (0.028%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.028%) HipChat
12 1 (0.028%) Maya
12 1 (0.028%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 48 (1.33%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.50%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.44%) Dynamics AX
4 14 (0.39%) SAP HR
5 11 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
6 10 (0.28%) Oracle Retail
7 9 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
7 9 (0.25%) Oracle EBS R12
8 8 (0.22%) PeopleSoft HCM
8 8 (0.22%) PeopleSoft HRMS
8 8 (0.22%) SAP Hybris
9 7 (0.19%) SAP ERP
10 6 (0.17%) Eloqua
10 6 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
10 6 (0.17%) Primavera
10 6 (0.17%) SAP GRC
11 5 (0.14%) Cognos TM1
11 5 (0.14%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 5 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
11 5 (0.14%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 296 (8.21%) Amazon AWS
2 221 (6.13%) Microsoft Azure
3 100 (2.77%) GitHub
4 63 (1.75%) Amazon EC2
5 61 (1.69%) BrowserStack
6 60 (1.66%) Office 365
7 45 (1.25%) Dynamics 365
8 41 (1.14%) SaaS
9 40 (1.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 36 (1.00%) AWS CloudFormation
11 35 (0.97%) Amazon S3
12 31 (0.86%) Google Analytics
12 31 (0.86%) Sauce Labs
13 30 (0.83%) IaaS
13 30 (0.83%) PaaS
14 29 (0.80%) Slack
15 28 (0.78%) Google Cloud Platform
16 27 (0.75%) Serverless
17 23 (0.64%) Cloud Computing
18 22 (0.61%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 59 (1.64%) Internet
2 49 (1.36%) Firewall
3 48 (1.33%) HTTP
4 38 (1.05%) DNS
5 32 (0.89%) LAN
5 32 (0.89%) WAN
6 25 (0.69%) Skype
7 20 (0.55%) BGP
7 20 (0.55%) OSPF
8 19 (0.53%) TCP/IP
9 17 (0.47%) MPLS
10 16 (0.44%) Network Security
10 16 (0.44%) SMS
10 16 (0.44%) VLAN
10 16 (0.44%) VPN
11 15 (0.42%) SSL
11 15 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
12 13 (0.36%) AMQP
13 12 (0.33%) FTP
13 12 (0.33%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 281 (7.80%) SQL Server
2 135 (3.75%) MySQL
3 118 (3.27%) Data Warehouse
4 110 (3.05%) PostgreSQL
5 103 (2.86%) MongoDB
6 83 (2.30%) Big Data
7 76 (2.11%) Relational Database
8 74 (2.05%) Hadoop
9 65 (1.80%) NoSQL
10 57 (1.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 55 (1.53%) Oracle Database
12 47 (1.30%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 42 (1.17%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 35 (0.97%) Power BI
15 33 (0.92%) Redis
16 32 (0.89%) Data Lake
17 29 (0.80%) Apache Hive
18 27 (0.75%) Apache Cassandra
19 25 (0.69%) HBase
20 24 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 806 (22.36%) Selenium
2 615 (17.06%) JIRA
3 486 (13.49%) Cucumber
4 426 (11.82%) Jenkins
5 369 (10.24%) Git (software)
6 257 (7.13%) WebDriver
7 182 (5.05%) SoapUI
8 156 (4.33%) JMeter
9 154 (4.27%) SpecFlow
10 119 (3.30%) Maven
11 104 (2.89%) Team Foundation Server
12 103 (2.86%) JUnit
13 102 (2.83%) Subversion
14 101 (2.80%) TeamCity
15 96 (2.66%) Visual Studio
16 82 (2.28%) Appium
17 77 (2.14%) Protractor
18 55 (1.53%) LoadRunner
19 54 (1.50%) Gatling
20 51 (1.42%) HP UFT
General
1 725 (20.12%) Finance
2 298 (8.27%) Banking
3 183 (5.08%) Retail
4 108 (3.00%) Marketing
5 62 (1.72%) Investment Banking
6 58 (1.61%) Legal
7 56 (1.55%) Law
8 49 (1.36%) Publishing
9 44 (1.22%) Telecoms
10 43 (1.19%) Front Office
11 37 (1.03%) Manufacturing
12 33 (0.92%) Retail Banking
13 31 (0.86%) Financial Institution
14 29 (0.80%) Games
15 24 (0.67%) Back Office
15 24 (0.67%) Pharmaceutical
16 18 (0.50%) Billing
17 17 (0.47%) Advertising
18 14 (0.39%) Electronics
19 11 (0.31%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 718 (19.92%) Developer
2 604 (16.76%) Analyst
3 381 (10.57%) Tester
4 249 (6.91%) Test Analyst
5 248 (6.88%) QA Engineer
6 210 (5.83%) QA Tester
7 185 (5.13%) QA Analyst
8 182 (5.05%) Test Engineer
9 175 (4.86%) Automation Tester
10 141 (3.91%) Architect
11 140 (3.88%) Project Manager
12 137 (3.80%) Consultant
13 135 (3.75%) Java Developer
14 134 (3.72%) Business Analyst
15 122 (3.39%) Test Manager
16 117 (3.25%) .NET Developer
17 107 (2.97%) Test Leader
18 101 (2.80%) QA Test Analyst
19 96 (2.66%) QA Leader
20 95 (2.64%) QA Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 374 (10.38%) .NET
2 330 (9.16%) HTML
3 298 (8.27%) Web Services
4 291 (8.07%) CSS
5 213 (5.91%) REST
6 207 (5.74%) Node.js
7 181 (5.02%) AngularJS
8 175 (4.86%) RESTful
9 149 (4.13%) XML
10 140 (3.88%) HTML5
11 136 (3.77%) Gherkin
11 136 (3.77%) SOAP
12 120 (3.33%) Spring
13 108 (3.00%) JSON
14 107 (2.97%) jQuery
14 107 (2.97%) React
15 89 (2.47%) Sass
16 77 (2.14%) Spring Boot
17 74 (2.05%) RabbitMQ
18 73 (2.03%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 364 (10.10%) Analytical Skills
2 280 (7.77%) User Experience
3 167 (4.63%) Mobile App
4 114 (3.16%) Management Information System
5 98 (2.72%) Computer Science
6 86 (2.39%) Self-Motivation
7 78 (2.16%) Enterprise Software
8 76 (2.11%) Greenfield Project
9 69 (1.91%) Data Centre
10 55 (1.53%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 54 (1.50%) Fintech
12 45 (1.25%) Algorithms
13 42 (1.17%) Data Structures
13 42 (1.17%) Virtual Team
14 35 (0.97%) Equities
15 33 (0.92%) Video on Demand
16 27 (0.75%) Linux Command Line
17 26 (0.72%) Video\Live Streaming
18 24 (0.67%) Client/Server
19 22 (0.61%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 244 (6.77%) Linux
2 194 (5.38%) Windows
3 164 (4.55%) Unix
4 103 (2.86%) Apple iOS
5 100 (2.77%) Android
6 38 (1.05%) CentOS
7 37 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 37 (1.03%) Windows Server
8 29 (0.80%) Windows 10
9 25 (0.69%) Windows 7
10 20 (0.55%) Ubuntu
11 13 (0.36%) Mac OS
12 12 (0.33%) Windows Server 2008
12 12 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.25%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.19%) Solaris
15 5 (0.14%) Mesosphere
15 5 (0.14%) Windows XP
16 3 (0.083%) DC/OS
16 3 (0.083%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,879 (52.14%) Agile Software Development
2 1,321 (36.65%) Test Automation
3 644 (17.87%) Scrum
4 599 (16.62%) BDD
5 512 (14.21%) TDD
6 465 (12.90%) DevOps
7 429 (11.90%) Continuous Integration
8 353 (9.79%) SDLC
9 349 (9.68%) Problem-Solving
10 339 (9.41%) User Acceptance Testing
11 338 (9.38%) Project Management
11 338 (9.38%) Test Strategy
12 300 (8.32%) Test Scripting
13 254 (7.05%) Software Engineering
13 254 (7.05%) User Stories
14 243 (6.74%) Kanban
15 240 (6.66%) Microservices
16 228 (6.33%) API Testing
17 227 (6.30%) Continuous Improvement
18 224 (6.22%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 836 (23.20%) Java
2 639 (17.73%) SQL
3 555 (15.40%) JavaScript
4 459 (12.74%) C#
5 248 (6.88%) Python
6 96 (2.66%) Ruby
7 92 (2.55%) Scala
8 88 (2.44%) T-SQL
9 84 (2.33%) PowerShell
10 82 (2.28%) Bash Shell
11 80 (2.22%) Groovy
12 70 (1.94%) PHP
13 64 (1.78%) PL/SQL
14 62 (1.72%) Java 8
15 53 (1.47%) C
16 50 (1.39%) Shell Script
17 44 (1.22%) TypeScript
18 36 (1.00%) ES6
18 36 (1.00%) Perl
19 34 (0.94%) C++
Qualifications
1 228 (6.33%) Degree
2 189 (5.24%) Security Cleared
3 150 (4.16%) ISTQB
4 147 (4.08%) ISEB
5 144 (4.00%) SC Cleared
6 49 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
6 49 (1.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 39 (1.08%) BPSS Clearance
7 39 (1.08%) PMP
8 35 (0.97%) PMI Certification
9 29 (0.80%) Microsoft Certification
10 26 (0.72%) DV Cleared
11 24 (0.67%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 20 (0.55%) PhD
13 18 (0.50%) Master's Degree
14 17 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 16 (0.44%) DBS Check
15 16 (0.44%) PRINCE2 Certification
16 13 (0.36%) Cisco Certification
16 13 (0.36%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 106 (2.94%) PMO
2 100 (2.77%) Data Quality
3 44 (1.22%) GDPR
4 29 (0.80%) WCAG
5 20 (0.55%) SLA
6 17 (0.47%) MiFID
7 15 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 13 (0.36%) ISO 9001
9 12 (0.33%) PCI DSS
10 11 (0.31%) COBIT
11 7 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 7 (0.19%) JSP 440
12 6 (0.17%) Disclosure Scotland
12 6 (0.17%) EMIR
13 5 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
13 5 (0.14%) Dodd-Frank
13 5 (0.14%) GxP
13 5 (0.14%) SEPA
14 4 (0.11%) COSO
14 4 (0.11%) ISO 14001
System Software
1 217 (6.02%) Docker
2 49 (1.36%) Active Directory
3 24 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.58%) Apache Flume
5 20 (0.55%) Microsoft App-V
6 18 (0.50%) XenDesktop
7 17 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
8 14 (0.39%) vSphere
9 10 (0.28%) XenApp
10 9 (0.25%) HDFS
11 7 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
12 5 (0.14%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 5 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
12 5 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
13 4 (0.11%) vCloud
14 3 (0.083%) KVM
15 2 (0.055%) NFS
15 2 (0.055%) Snort
15 2 (0.055%) Squid
16 1 (0.028%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 141 (3.91%) Ansible
2 104 (2.89%) Puppet
3 82 (2.28%) Terraform
4 76 (2.11%) Kubernetes
5 66 (1.83%) Opscode Chef
6 50 (1.39%) HP Quality Center
7 40 (1.11%) Grafana
8 31 (0.86%) HP ALM
8 31 (0.86%) SCCM
9 29 (0.80%) Kibana
9 29 (0.80%) Nagios
10 19 (0.53%) Graphite
11 14 (0.39%) logstash
11 14 (0.39%) Salt
11 14 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
12 12 (0.33%) Cobbler
12 12 (0.33%) Consul
12 12 (0.33%) Icinga
13 11 (0.31%) Oozie
13 11 (0.31%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 367 (10.18%) Microsoft
2 318 (8.82%) Oracle
3 132 (3.66%) SAP
4 81 (2.25%) HP
5 74 (2.05%) Google
6 73 (2.03%) Atlassian
7 69 (1.91%) Adobe
8 59 (1.64%) Salesforce.com
9 54 (1.50%) Cisco
10 52 (1.44%) Citrix
11 48 (1.33%) VMware
12 47 (1.30%) IBM
13 41 (1.14%) Splunk
14 37 (1.03%) Red Hat
14 37 (1.03%) Sitecore
15 34 (0.94%) Tableau
16 30 (0.83%) New Relic
17 23 (0.64%) Dynatrace
18 22 (0.61%) Informatica
18 22 (0.61%) McAfee
1,389 QA job vacancies Nationwide