Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 22 June 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 22 June 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
22 Jun 2018		 Same period 2017 Same period 2016
Rank 75 68 76
Rank change year-on-year -7 +8 -13
Contract jobs citing QA 3,167 2,950 2,952
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 3.16% 3.23% 2.77%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 25.99% 27.61% 24.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,098 1,946 1,882
UK median daily rate £450 £425 £400
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +5.88% +6.25% +3.23%
10th Percentile £300 £275 £263
90th Percentile £613 £588 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £375 £375
% change year-on-year +6.67% - +5.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 43 54
UK median hourly rate £23.00 £25.00 £22.06
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -8.00% +13.34% -36.98%
10th Percentile £14.68 £12.10 £8.21
90th Percentile £74.00 £50.49 £47.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.36 £25.00 £20.25
% change year-on-year -30.58% +23.46% -44.52%

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 12,187 10,683 12,135
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.16% 11.70% 11.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,795 6,917 7,778
UK median daily rate £450 £438 £405
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +2.86% +8.02% +1.25%
10th Percentile £256 £239 £225
90th Percentile £638 £625 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £390 £375
% change year-on-year +2.56% +4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 380 355 420
UK median hourly rate £23.50 £20.00 £24.63
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year +17.50% -18.78% +14.40%
10th Percentile £12.43 £11.00 £11.75
90th Percentile £52.53 £52.50 £55.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.85 £19.25 £27.00
% change year-on-year +18.68% -28.70% +27.06%

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 22 June 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 22 June 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 22 June 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 -8 2,882 £450 +5.88% 1,219
UK excluding London -8 1,584 £400 +6.67% 794
London -7 1,526 £475 +2.70% 495
South East +5 565 £425 +6.25% 191
North of England -14 326 £425 +13.33% 253
Midlands -18 192 £380 -1.94% 110
Scotland +23 188 £389 +11.07% 41
Yorkshire +4 150 £440 +17.33% 86
East of England +17 137 £413 +11.49% 93
North West -25 136 £400 +6.67% 135
South West -34 121 £375 +3.31% 76
West Midlands -16 116 £385 +7.32% 65
East Midlands -26 73 £378 -5.63% 45
Wales 0 44 £328 -6.43% 22
North East -15 42 £350 +9.38% 32
Northern Ireland +18 13 £313 -10.71% 7

For the 6 months to 22 June 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 1,593 (50.30%) Agile Software Development
2 1,067 (33.69%) Test Automation
3 764 (24.12%) Java
4 699 (22.07%) Finance
5 623 (19.67%) Scrum
6 603 (19.04%) Selenium
7 568 (17.93%) SQL
8 504 (15.91%) BDD
9 498 (15.72%) JIRA
10 491 (15.50%) TDD
11 453 (14.30%) JavaScript
12 434 (13.70%) DevOps
13 433 (13.67%) C#
14 345 (10.89%) .NET
14 345 (10.89%) Continuous Integration
15 344 (10.86%) Cucumber
16 323 (10.20%) Problem-Solving
17 319 (10.07%) Jenkins
18 310 (9.79%) SDLC
19 309 (9.76%) Git (software)
19 309 (9.76%) Project Management
20 302 (9.54%) Analytical Skills
21 300 (9.47%) Microsoft
22 297 (9.38%) HTML
23 278 (8.78%) Web Services
24 270 (8.53%) Banking
25 258 (8.15%) User Acceptance Testing
26 250 (7.89%) Software Engineering
27 244 (7.70%) Amazon AWS
28 235 (7.42%) CSS

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
1 185 (5.84%) Confluence
2 86 (2.72%) CMS
3 60 (1.89%) Apache Spark
4 58 (1.83%) SharePoint
5 57 (1.80%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 52 (1.64%) Elasticsearch
7 38 (1.20%) Apache
8 32 (1.01%) JBoss
9 27 (0.85%) Tomcat
10 22 (0.69%) Cloud Foundry
10 22 (0.69%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 21 (0.66%) IIS
12 18 (0.57%) SAS
12 18 (0.57%) WebSphere
13 16 (0.51%) OpenStack
14 14 (0.44%) Sitecore CMS
15 12 (0.38%) Alfresco
15 12 (0.38%) Apache Solr
15 12 (0.38%) nginx
15 12 (0.38%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 114 (3.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 97 (3.06%) Microsoft Office
3 45 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (1.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 32 (1.01%) MS Visio
6 12 (0.38%) Photoshop
7 10 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
8 6 (0.19%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.19%) InfoPath
9 4 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 4 (0.13%) InVision
9 4 (0.13%) OrCAD
10 3 (0.095%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.063%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.063%) InDesign
11 2 (0.063%) Open Workbench
12 1 (0.032%) Acrobat
12 1 (0.032%) Adobe After Effects
12 1 (0.032%) Maya
12 1 (0.032%) PaintShop Pro
Business Applications
1 41 (1.29%) Dynamics CRM
2 11 (0.35%) Oracle Cash Management
2 11 (0.35%) Oracle Payables
2 11 (0.35%) SAP Hybris
3 9 (0.28%) Dynamics AX
4 8 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
5 7 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
5 7 (0.22%) SAP FI
6 6 (0.19%) Oracle Retail
7 5 (0.16%) Cognos TM1
7 5 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 5 (0.16%) Salesforce.com CRM
7 5 (0.16%) SAP CO
7 5 (0.16%) SAP FI/CO
7 5 (0.16%) SAP SD
8 4 (0.13%) Actimize
8 4 (0.13%) Eloqua
8 4 (0.13%) Magento
8 4 (0.13%) SAP BPC
9 3 (0.095%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 244 (7.70%) Amazon AWS
2 180 (5.68%) Microsoft Azure
3 77 (2.43%) GitHub
4 50 (1.58%) Office 365
5 39 (1.23%) SaaS
6 35 (1.11%) Google Cloud Platform
7 32 (1.01%) Amazon EC2
8 30 (0.95%) PaaS
9 29 (0.92%) BrowserStack
10 28 (0.88%) IaaS
10 28 (0.88%) Serverless
11 26 (0.82%) npm
12 25 (0.79%) Dynamics 365
12 25 (0.79%) Sauce Labs
13 22 (0.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 22 (0.69%) AWS CloudFormation
14 21 (0.66%) Google Analytics
15 20 (0.63%) Amazon S3
16 18 (0.57%) AWS Lambda
17 15 (0.47%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 57 (1.80%) Internet
2 53 (1.67%) Firewall
3 48 (1.52%) HTTP
4 42 (1.33%) SMS
5 28 (0.88%) DNS
6 25 (0.79%) TCP/IP
7 23 (0.73%) WAN
8 17 (0.54%) FTP
8 17 (0.54%) MPLS
9 16 (0.51%) SSL
9 16 (0.51%) VPN
10 15 (0.47%) Network Security
10 15 (0.47%) Skype
11 12 (0.38%) DHCP
11 12 (0.38%) LAN
12 11 (0.35%) Kerberos
13 10 (0.32%) BGP
13 10 (0.32%) OSPF
13 10 (0.32%) Wi-Fi
14 9 (0.28%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 228 (7.20%) SQL Server
2 125 (3.95%) Relational Database
3 122 (3.85%) Big Data
4 112 (3.54%) MySQL
5 100 (3.16%) Data Warehouse
6 91 (2.87%) Hadoop
7 87 (2.75%) PostgreSQL
8 85 (2.68%) MongoDB
9 82 (2.59%) NoSQL
10 57 (1.80%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 46 (1.45%) HBase
12 44 (1.39%) Apache Cassandra
13 43 (1.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 41 (1.29%) Redis
15 35 (1.11%) Oracle Database
16 33 (1.04%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 28 (0.88%) Apache Hive
18 25 (0.79%) Data Lake
19 21 (0.66%) RDBMS
20 20 (0.63%) Siebel EIM
Development Applications
1 603 (19.04%) Selenium
2 498 (15.72%) JIRA
3 344 (10.86%) Cucumber
4 319 (10.07%) Jenkins
5 309 (9.76%) Git (software)
6 181 (5.72%) WebDriver
7 154 (4.86%) SpecFlow
8 133 (4.20%) SoapUI
9 97 (3.06%) JMeter
9 97 (3.06%) Team Foundation Server
10 96 (3.03%) TeamCity
11 92 (2.90%) Maven
12 83 (2.62%) Visual Studio
13 70 (2.21%) JUnit
14 65 (2.05%) Subversion
15 58 (1.83%) Visual Studio Team System
16 52 (1.64%) Protractor
17 42 (1.33%) HP UFT
17 42 (1.33%) LoadRunner
18 40 (1.26%) Zephyr
General
1 699 (22.07%) Finance
2 270 (8.53%) Banking
3 201 (6.35%) Retail
4 89 (2.81%) Marketing
5 79 (2.49%) Investment Banking
6 76 (2.40%) Telecoms
7 63 (1.99%) Law
8 52 (1.64%) Legal
9 46 (1.45%) Financial Institution
9 46 (1.45%) Games
10 43 (1.36%) Manufacturing
11 33 (1.04%) Publishing
12 30 (0.95%) Front Office
13 24 (0.76%) Pharmaceutical
14 23 (0.73%) Retail Banking
15 21 (0.66%) Back Office
16 19 (0.60%) Billing
17 16 (0.51%) Automotive
17 16 (0.51%) Electronics
18 15 (0.47%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 600 (18.95%) Developer
2 586 (18.50%) Analyst
3 306 (9.66%) Tester
4 228 (7.20%) Test Analyst
5 215 (6.79%) QA Engineer
6 187 (5.90%) Project Manager
7 183 (5.78%) QA Tester
8 164 (5.18%) Automation Tester
9 163 (5.15%) Architect
10 159 (5.02%) QA Analyst
11 157 (4.96%) Business Analyst
12 151 (4.77%) Test Engineer
13 113 (3.57%) Consultant
14 109 (3.44%) Java Developer
15 95 (3.00%) DevOps Engineer
16 90 (2.84%) QA Test Analyst
17 88 (2.78%) QA Automation Tester
18 87 (2.75%) QA Automation Engineer
19 78 (2.46%) Test Manager
20 75 (2.37%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 345 (10.89%) .NET
2 297 (9.38%) HTML
3 278 (8.78%) Web Services
4 235 (7.42%) CSS
5 214 (6.76%) REST
6 153 (4.83%) Spring
7 148 (4.67%) AngularJS
8 140 (4.42%) Node.js
9 136 (4.29%) RESTful
10 129 (4.07%) HTML5
11 124 (3.92%) XML
12 105 (3.32%) SOAP
13 100 (3.16%) jQuery
14 98 (3.09%) Gherkin
15 97 (3.06%) JSON
15 97 (3.06%) React
16 88 (2.78%) CSS3
17 78 (2.46%) ASP.NET
18 76 (2.40%) Spring Boot
19 66 (2.08%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 302 (9.54%) Analytical Skills
2 212 (6.69%) User Experience
3 152 (4.80%) Mobile App
4 123 (3.88%) Management Information System
5 109 (3.44%) Self-Motivation
6 90 (2.84%) Computer Science
7 88 (2.78%) Greenfield Project
8 74 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
9 65 (2.05%) Data Centre
10 55 (1.74%) Virtual Team
11 45 (1.42%) Linux Command Line
12 38 (1.20%) Fintech
13 37 (1.17%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 30 (0.95%) Equities
15 29 (0.92%) Derivative
16 27 (0.85%) Fixed Income
17 26 (0.82%) Hedge funds
17 26 (0.82%) iPad
18 23 (0.73%) Data Structures
19 21 (0.66%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 228 (7.20%) Linux
2 191 (6.03%) Windows
3 140 (4.42%) Unix
4 129 (4.07%) Android
5 113 (3.57%) Apple iOS
6 35 (1.11%) Windows Server
7 32 (1.01%) CentOS
7 32 (1.01%) Windows 10
8 31 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 25 (0.79%) Windows 7
10 18 (0.57%) Ubuntu
10 18 (0.57%) Windows Server 2008
11 12 (0.38%) Windows Server 2012
12 8 (0.25%) Debian
13 7 (0.22%) Mac OS X
14 6 (0.19%) AIX
15 5 (0.16%) Mac OS
15 5 (0.16%) Windows Vista
16 4 (0.13%) Solaris
16 4 (0.13%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,593 (50.30%) Agile Software Development
2 1,067 (33.69%) Test Automation
3 623 (19.67%) Scrum
4 504 (15.91%) BDD
5 491 (15.50%) TDD
6 434 (13.70%) DevOps
7 345 (10.89%) Continuous Integration
8 323 (10.20%) Problem-Solving
9 310 (9.79%) SDLC
10 309 (9.76%) Project Management
11 258 (8.15%) User Acceptance Testing
12 250 (7.89%) Software Engineering
13 223 (7.04%) Kanban
14 222 (7.01%) Continuous Improvement
15 220 (6.95%) Microservices
15 220 (6.95%) Test Scripting
16 219 (6.92%) Stakeholder Management
17 218 (6.88%) Test Strategy
18 199 (6.28%) Continuous Delivery
19 198 (6.25%) User Stories
Programming Languages
1 764 (24.12%) Java
2 568 (17.93%) SQL
3 453 (14.30%) JavaScript
4 433 (13.67%) C#
5 234 (7.39%) Python
6 109 (3.44%) Ruby
7 70 (2.21%) Scala
8 64 (2.02%) T-SQL
9 63 (1.99%) PHP
10 59 (1.86%) Java 8
11 54 (1.71%) Shell Script
12 52 (1.64%) PowerShell
13 51 (1.61%) C++
14 50 (1.58%) Bash Shell
15 49 (1.55%) Groovy
16 47 (1.48%) TypeScript
17 46 (1.45%) PL/SQL
18 45 (1.42%) ES6
19 42 (1.33%) C
20 34 (1.07%) Perl
Qualifications
1 223 (7.04%) Degree
2 148 (4.67%) Security Cleared
3 125 (3.95%) ISTQB
4 109 (3.44%) SC Cleared
5 99 (3.13%) ISEB
6 52 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
7 48 (1.52%) PMP
8 44 (1.39%) PMI Certification
9 36 (1.14%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 33 (1.04%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 32 (1.01%) PRINCE2 Certification
12 27 (0.85%) BPSS Clearance
13 26 (0.82%) Microsoft Certification
14 19 (0.60%) DV Cleared
15 17 (0.54%) Master's Degree
16 14 (0.44%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 14 (0.44%) Numerate Degree
17 12 (0.38%) MCSA
17 12 (0.38%) Siebel Certification
18 9 (0.28%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 97 (3.06%) PMO
2 62 (1.96%) Data Quality
3 51 (1.61%) GDPR
4 23 (0.73%) SLA
5 21 (0.66%) WCAG
6 20 (0.63%) MiFID
7 18 (0.57%) COBIT
7 18 (0.57%) PCI DSS
8 14 (0.44%) COSO
9 11 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 10 (0.32%) EMIR
10 10 (0.32%) ISO 9001
11 6 (0.19%) IFRS
11 6 (0.19%) ISO 13485
12 5 (0.16%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 5 (0.16%) Dodd-Frank
12 5 (0.16%) IEC 62304
12 5 (0.16%) ISO 14001
12 5 (0.16%) SEPA
13 4 (0.13%) GxP
System Software
1 158 (4.99%) Docker
2 48 (1.52%) Active Directory
3 20 (0.63%) HDFS
4 17 (0.54%) VMware Infrastructure
5 15 (0.47%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 14 (0.44%) Microsoft App-V
7 13 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
8 12 (0.38%) Apache Flume
9 7 (0.22%) XenApp
10 6 (0.19%) Hyper-V
11 4 (0.13%) XenDesktop
12 3 (0.095%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.095%) XenServer
13 2 (0.063%) KVM
13 2 (0.063%) NFS
13 2 (0.063%) OpenDJ
13 2 (0.063%) OpenIDM
13 2 (0.063%) vCloud
13 2 (0.063%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.063%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 122 (3.85%) Ansible
2 92 (2.90%) Puppet
3 72 (2.27%) Kubernetes
4 68 (2.15%) Opscode Chef
5 54 (1.71%) Terraform
6 39 (1.23%) HP Quality Center
7 30 (0.95%) HP ALM
8 25 (0.79%) SCCM
9 18 (0.57%) Kibana
10 17 (0.54%) Grafana
10 17 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
11 16 (0.51%) Nagios
12 13 (0.41%) Hadoop YARN
12 13 (0.41%) logstash
13 11 (0.35%) ZABBIX
14 9 (0.28%) Icinga
14 9 (0.28%) ITRS Geneos
14 9 (0.28%) Packer
15 8 (0.25%) Consul
15 8 (0.25%) Docker Swarm
Vendors
1 300 (9.47%) Microsoft
2 233 (7.36%) Oracle
3 115 (3.63%) SAP
4 86 (2.72%) Adobe
4 86 (2.72%) Atlassian
5 65 (2.05%) Google
5 65 (2.05%) HP
6 54 (1.71%) Salesforce.com
7 47 (1.48%) Splunk
8 38 (1.20%) Cisco
9 36 (1.14%) Sitecore
10 34 (1.07%) AppDynamics
10 34 (1.07%) VMware
11 33 (1.04%) Red Hat
12 30 (0.95%) Tableau
13 28 (0.88%) Citrix
13 28 (0.88%) IBM
13 28 (0.88%) Siebel
14 24 (0.76%) hybris
14 24 (0.76%) New Relic
1,300 QA job vacancies Nationwide