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 16 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 61 56
Rank change year-on-year 0 -5 +24
Contract jobs citing QA 1,702 1,084 1,493
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.71% 3.70% 3.41%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.78% 23.99% 23.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,061 722 1,019
10th Percentile £313 £263 £313
25th Percentile £400 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £513
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -7.32% -1.44%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £613
90th Percentile £675 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% +5.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 102 23 73
10th Percentile £12.85 £15.93 £10.82
25th Percentile £14.02 £20.63 £12.25
Median hourly rate £30.58 £50.00 £15.38
Median % change year-on-year -38.84% +225.10% -31.60%
75th Percentile £68.75 £73.13 £28.44
90th Percentile £77.45 £75.00 £65.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £57.75 £13.75
% change year-on-year -47.05% +320.00% +1.85%

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 7,813 4,519 6,289
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.01% 15.43% 14.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,057 2,914 3,995
10th Percentile £336 £263 £300
25th Percentile £413 £399 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £622 £630
90th Percentile £700 £720 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £489
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.81% +2.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 437 173 377
10th Percentile £14.02 £17.86 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.14 £13.00
Median hourly rate £31.50 £32.81 £20.47
Median % change year-on-year -3.99% +60.28% -45.41%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.10 £82.92 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £34.06 £17.46
% change year-on-year +5.71% +95.05% -50.11%

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 16 April 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 16 April 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 16 April 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 -5 1,471 £491 +3.37% 808
London +7 760 £500 - 268
UK excluding London 0 755 £475 +5.56% 637
Work from Home +7 459 £498 +0.51% 368
North of England -20 174 £475 -5.00% 179
South East -16 172 £492 +15.76% 172
Midlands -16 160 £450 +8.70% 99
South West +16 118 £498 -0.50% 68
West Midlands -11 115 £480 +8.47% 65
North West -11 87 £425 -16.26% 97
Yorkshire -32 63 £525 +3.96% 52
Scotland +7 61 £525 +31.25% 44
East of England -3 55 £476 -7.22% 72
East Midlands -16 46 £393 -3.82% 34
North East -8 24 £488 +5.98% 32
Northern Ireland +9 16 £475 +29.69% 6
Wales -14 12 £445 -15.24% 14

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 95 (5.58%) Confluence
2 33 (1.94%) SharePoint
3 24 (1.41%) CMS
4 23 (1.35%) IIS
5 13 (0.76%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 12 (0.71%) Apache
7 9 (0.53%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 6 (0.35%) Apache Spark
8 6 (0.35%) SAS
9 5 (0.29%) Anypoint
9 5 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
9 5 (0.29%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.24%) nginx
11 3 (0.18%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.12%) Apache Solr
12 2 (0.12%) Apache Synapse
12 2 (0.12%) Documentum
12 2 (0.12%) Moodle
12 2 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 69 (4.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 40 (2.35%) Microsoft Office
3 31 (1.82%) Microsoft Project
4 27 (1.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 17 (1.00%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.24%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.18%) Simulink
7 3 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.12%) Autodesk Smoke
8 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.059%) Adobe After Effects
9 1 (0.059%) Adobe Premiere
9 1 (0.059%) Camtasia
9 1 (0.059%) CPLEX
9 1 (0.059%) Mingle
9 1 (0.059%) Navisworks
9 1 (0.059%) Revit
Business Applications
1 29 (1.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 14 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
3 12 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
4 9 (0.53%) Shopify
5 8 (0.47%) Workday HCM
6 5 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
7 4 (0.24%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.24%) Aladdin
7 4 (0.24%) Maximo
8 3 (0.18%) Algo Collateral
8 3 (0.18%) NEC Housing
8 3 (0.18%) NetSuite
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle Cash Management
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle EBS R12
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
8 3 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
8 3 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
9 2 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 387 (22.74%) Azure
2 267 (15.69%) AWS
3 170 (9.99%) Azure DevOps
4 130 (7.64%) GitHub
5 108 (6.35%) Power Platform
6 82 (4.82%) GitHub Actions
7 76 (4.47%) GCP
8 57 (3.35%) Serverless
9 35 (2.06%) OpenShift
10 34 (2.00%) AWS Lambda
10 34 (2.00%) Dynamics 365
11 33 (1.94%) Amazon S3
11 33 (1.94%) SaaS
12 25 (1.47%) Amazon ECS
13 24 (1.41%) AWS CloudFormation
14 23 (1.35%) Azure Data Factory
15 22 (1.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 20 (1.18%) OCI
17 18 (1.06%) Snowflake
18 16 (0.94%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.29%) Firewall
2 17 (1.00%) Internet
3 14 (0.82%) WAN
4 13 (0.76%) Wireless
5 12 (0.71%) LAN
5 12 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
6 11 (0.65%) HTTP
7 9 (0.53%) Network Security
8 7 (0.41%) SD-WAN
8 7 (0.41%) VPN
9 6 (0.35%) DNS
10 4 (0.24%) 5G
10 4 (0.24%) Broadband
10 4 (0.24%) SMS
10 4 (0.24%) Unified Communications
10 4 (0.24%) WebEx
11 3 (0.18%) Cisco Nexus
11 3 (0.18%) DSL
11 3 (0.18%) IPsec
11 3 (0.18%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 100 (5.88%) SQL Server
2 92 (5.41%) Power BI
3 57 (3.35%) Data Warehouse
4 47 (2.76%) PostgreSQL
4 47 (2.76%) Relational Database
5 41 (2.41%) MySQL
6 39 (2.29%) Oracle Database
6 39 (2.29%) Tableau
7 36 (2.12%) NoSQL
8 29 (1.70%) Metadata
9 23 (1.35%) Data Lake
10 22 (1.29%) Oracle Reports
11 21 (1.23%) MongoDB
12 16 (0.94%) Azure SQL Database
13 15 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
13 15 (0.88%) Big Data
13 15 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 14 (0.82%) BigQuery
14 14 (0.82%) DynamoDB
15 11 (0.65%) Redis
Development Applications
1 307 (18.04%) JIRA
2 143 (8.40%) Git
3 132 (7.76%) Selenium
4 121 (7.11%) Jenkins
5 109 (6.40%) GitLab
6 90 (5.29%) Postman
7 67 (3.94%) Cypress.io
8 62 (3.64%) Cucumber
9 52 (3.06%) REST Assured
10 46 (2.70%) JUnit
11 32 (1.88%) JMeter
12 31 (1.82%) Zephyr
13 30 (1.76%) SonarQube
14 21 (1.23%) TestRail
14 21 (1.23%) WebDriver
15 17 (1.00%) Gatling
16 16 (0.94%) Appium
16 16 (0.94%) TestNG
17 15 (0.88%) Gradle
17 15 (0.88%) Visual Studio
General
1 599 (35.19%) Social Skills
2 407 (23.91%) Finance
3 264 (15.51%) Analytical Skills
4 199 (11.69%) Public Sector
5 150 (8.81%) Banking
6 49 (2.88%) Retail
7 41 (2.41%) Manufacturing
8 39 (2.29%) Documentation Skills
8 39 (2.29%) Organisational Skills
9 36 (2.12%) Marketing
10 26 (1.53%) Front Office
11 24 (1.41%) Legal
12 23 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
12 23 (1.35%) Investment Banking
13 22 (1.29%) Aerospace
14 20 (1.18%) Military
15 18 (1.06%) Telecoms
16 16 (0.94%) Pharmaceutical
16 16 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
17 15 (0.88%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 219 (12.87%) Analyst
2 210 (12.34%) Developer
3 201 (11.81%) Lead
4 196 (11.52%) Senior
5 117 (6.87%) Business Analyst
5 117 (6.87%) QA Engineer
6 96 (5.64%) Tester
7 83 (4.88%) Project Manager
8 81 (4.76%) Test Manager
9 72 (4.23%) Test Engineer
10 65 (3.82%) Architect
11 63 (3.70%) Java Developer
12 51 (3.00%) Data Analyst
13 50 (2.94%) Test Leader
14 44 (2.59%) Senior Analyst
15 42 (2.47%) Consultant
15 42 (2.47%) Data Engineer
16 41 (2.41%) C# Developer
17 40 (2.35%) QA Leader
18 39 (2.29%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 139 (8.17%) REST
2 112 (6.58%) .NET
3 102 (5.99%) Playwright
4 80 (4.70%) RESTful
5 78 (4.58%) Spring
6 74 (4.35%) Spring Boot
7 64 (3.76%) React
8 53 (3.11%) .NET Framework
9 47 (2.76%) Kafka
10 46 (2.70%) Node.js
11 45 (2.64%) AngularJS
12 43 (2.53%) HTML
13 41 (2.41%) CSS
14 39 (2.29%) JSON
15 26 (1.53%) Gherkin
16 23 (1.35%) Oracle Fusion
17 21 (1.23%) pytest
17 21 (1.23%) XML
18 20 (1.18%) Middleware
18 20 (1.18%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 163 (9.58%) Product Ownership
2 77 (4.52%) Cloud Native
3 45 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
4 42 (2.47%) Onboarding
5 40 (2.35%) Mobile App
6 38 (2.23%) Data Protection Act
7 35 (2.06%) Distributed Systems
8 30 (1.76%) Data Structures
9 29 (1.70%) PMI
10 28 (1.65%) Management Information System
11 24 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
11 24 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
11 24 (1.41%) Virtual Team
12 21 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
13 18 (1.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 18 (1.06%) SWIFT Messaging Network
14 17 (1.00%) Data Centre
14 17 (1.00%) Derivative
15 16 (0.94%) NHS
16 15 (0.88%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 91 (5.35%) Windows
2 47 (2.76%) Linux
3 29 (1.70%) Windows Server
4 21 (1.23%) Android
5 17 (1.00%) Apple iOS
6 16 (0.94%) Unix
7 4 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.18%) VMS
9 2 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.12%) Solaris
10 1 (0.059%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.059%) Robot Operating System
10 1 (0.059%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.059%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 658 (38.66%) Agile
2 446 (26.20%) DevOps
3 445 (26.15%) Test Automation
4 424 (24.91%) CI/CD
5 335 (19.68%) Problem-Solving
6 305 (17.92%) Stakeholder Management
7 281 (16.51%) Continuous Improvement
8 277 (16.27%) Validation
9 257 (15.10%) User Acceptance Testing
10 236 (13.87%) Scrum
11 205 (12.04%) Test Strategy
12 202 (11.87%) Migration
13 173 (10.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 148 (8.70%) SDLC
14 148 (8.70%) Test Scripting
15 142 (8.34%) AI
15 142 (8.34%) Regression Testing
16 140 (8.23%) Project Management
17 139 (8.17%) ETL
18 133 (7.81%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 355 (20.86%) SQL
2 224 (13.16%) Java
3 219 (12.87%) Python
4 134 (7.87%) C#
5 131 (7.70%) JavaScript
6 104 (6.11%) TypeScript
7 52 (3.06%) PL/SQL
8 48 (2.82%) T-SQL
9 33 (1.94%) PowerShell
10 22 (1.29%) Kotlin
11 18 (1.06%) Bash
12 17 (1.00%) VBA
13 16 (0.94%) C++
13 16 (0.94%) Ruby
13 16 (0.94%) VB
14 13 (0.76%) Bicep
14 13 (0.76%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 12 (0.71%) C
16 11 (0.65%) PHP
16 11 (0.65%) Scala
Qualifications
1 365 (21.45%) Security Cleared
2 265 (15.57%) SC Cleared
3 165 (9.69%) Degree
4 72 (4.23%) ISTQB
5 59 (3.47%) PMI Certification
6 54 (3.17%) PMP
7 51 (3.00%) Computer Science Degree
8 50 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
9 42 (2.47%) DV Cleared
10 31 (1.82%) Master's Degree
11 12 (0.71%) AWS Certification
11 12 (0.71%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 11 (0.65%) CHECK Team Member
12 11 (0.65%) CREST Certified
12 11 (0.65%) Cyber Scheme
12 11 (0.65%) SAFe Agilist
13 10 (0.59%) CBAP
13 10 (0.59%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 10 (0.59%) MBA
13 10 (0.59%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 115 (6.76%) Data Quality
2 80 (4.70%) Accessibility
3 49 (2.88%) GDPR
4 44 (2.59%) PMO
5 29 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 22 (1.29%) PCI DSS
7 21 (1.23%) WCAG
8 19 (1.12%) NIST
9 15 (0.88%) IFRS
9 15 (0.88%) IFRS 17
10 13 (0.76%) GRC
10 13 (0.76%) SLA
11 12 (0.71%) GxP
12 11 (0.65%) SEPA
13 10 (0.59%) Basel III
13 10 (0.59%) ISO 20022
13 10 (0.59%) PSD2
14 9 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 8 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
15 8 (0.47%) COBIT
System Software
1 108 (6.35%) Docker
2 13 (0.76%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.24%) Firmware
5 4 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 3 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.12%) GridGain
7 2 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.059%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.059%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
8 1 (0.059%) Varnish
8 1 (0.059%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 135 (7.93%) Kubernetes
2 81 (4.76%) Terraform
3 36 (2.12%) Grafana
4 33 (1.94%) Ansible
5 24 (1.41%) Argo
6 20 (1.18%) HP ALM
6 20 (1.18%) Prometheus
7 12 (0.71%) Nmap
8 10 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
9 7 (0.41%) Puppet
10 6 (0.35%) HP Quality Center
10 6 (0.35%) Kibana
11 4 (0.24%) CloudHub
12 3 (0.18%) Progress Chef
13 2 (0.12%) SCCM
14 1 (0.059%) logstash
14 1 (0.059%) Microsoft Intune
14 1 (0.059%) Red Hat Satellite
14 1 (0.059%) SELinux
Vendors
1 175 (10.28%) Microsoft
2 163 (9.58%) Oracle
3 103 (6.05%) SAP
4 85 (4.99%) Salesforce
5 54 (3.17%) ServiceNow
6 49 (2.88%) Citrix
7 42 (2.47%) Google
8 28 (1.65%) Adobe
9 26 (1.53%) Databricks
9 26 (1.53%) Red Hat
10 23 (1.35%) HP
11 18 (1.06%) Informatica
12 17 (1.00%) MuleSoft
12 17 (1.00%) Workday
13 14 (0.82%) Splunk
14 13 (0.76%) IBM
15 11 (0.65%) Talend
16 8 (0.47%) Guidewire
16 8 (0.47%) Infor
16 8 (0.47%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud