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

6 months to
25 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 60 63 56
Rank change year-on-year +3 -7 +22
Contract jobs citing QA 1,733 1,065 1,485
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.72% 3.61% 3.40%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.97% 23.30% 23.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,086 712 1,008
10th Percentile £313 £280 £313
25th Percentile £400 £383 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £510
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -6.86% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £611
90th Percentile £675 £690 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £500
% change year-on-year +2.70% -7.50% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 24 74
10th Percentile £12.85 £16.25 £10.82
25th Percentile £13.98 £20.94 £12.25
Median hourly rate £30.58 £42.50 £15.38
Median % change year-on-year -28.05% +176.33% -31.60%
75th Percentile £68.75 £72.81 £27.89
90th Percentile £75.60 £75.00 £68.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £57.75 £14.00
% change year-on-year -47.05% +312.50% +7.69%

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 7,889 4,571 6,271
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.92% 15.49% 14.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,118 2,929 3,969
10th Percentile £334 £265 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% +3.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 448 178 381
10th Percentile £14.00 £18.01 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.17 £13.00
Median hourly rate £33.55 £34.50 £20.47
Median % change year-on-year -2.75% +68.54% -45.77%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £81.00 £83.03 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £46.30 £17.72
% change year-on-year -22.25% +161.29% -49.37%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 0 1,488 £488 +2.02% 701
London +14 772 £500 +0.25% 205
UK excluding London +1 766 £475 +2.70% 625
Work from Home +10 472 £481 -2.78% 561
South East -15 175 £475 +11.76% 190
North of England -18 173 £475 -6.40% 147
Midlands -7 161 £425 +1.31% 94
South West +13 114 £491 -1.75% 71
West Midlands -11 114 £469 +1.96% 63
North West -10 87 £425 -17.48% 81
Scotland +12 66 £498 +24.38% 32
East of England -1 62 £482 -3.70% 84
Yorkshire -37 62 £525 +2.94% 41
East Midlands -14 48 £394 -3.96% 31
North East -9 24 £488 +5.98% 26
Northern Ireland +13 18 £475 -0.78% 11
Wales -6 12 £445 -19.09% 10

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 89 (5.14%) Confluence
2 31 (1.79%) SharePoint
3 23 (1.33%) IIS
4 22 (1.27%) CMS
5 13 (0.75%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 11 (0.63%) Apache
7 9 (0.52%) Apache Spark
7 9 (0.52%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 5 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
8 5 (0.29%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.23%) nginx
10 3 (0.17%) Moodle
10 3 (0.17%) SAS
10 3 (0.17%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.17%) Umbraco
11 2 (0.12%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.12%) Apache Solr
11 2 (0.12%) Jupyter
11 2 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 70 (4.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (2.54%) Microsoft Office
3 33 (1.90%) Microsoft Project
4 30 (1.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 18 (1.04%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.23%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.17%) Simulink
7 3 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.12%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.12%) Autodesk Smoke
8 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
8 2 (0.12%) EPLAN
9 1 (0.058%) Adobe After Effects
9 1 (0.058%) Adobe Premiere
9 1 (0.058%) Camtasia
9 1 (0.058%) CPLEX
9 1 (0.058%) Mingle
9 1 (0.058%) Navisworks
9 1 (0.058%) Revit
Business Applications
1 31 (1.79%) SAP S/4HANA
2 16 (0.92%) Dynamics CRM
3 12 (0.69%) Oracle EBS
4 9 (0.52%) Shopify
5 8 (0.46%) Workday HCM
6 5 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
7 4 (0.23%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.23%) Aladdin
7 4 (0.23%) Infor CloudSuite
7 4 (0.23%) Maximo
8 3 (0.17%) Algo Collateral
8 3 (0.17%) NEC Housing
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle Cash Management
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle EBS R12
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
8 3 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 2 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 396 (22.85%) Azure
2 270 (15.58%) AWS
3 168 (9.69%) Azure DevOps
4 130 (7.50%) GitHub
5 108 (6.23%) Power Platform
6 83 (4.79%) GitHub Actions
7 80 (4.62%) GCP
8 52 (3.00%) Serverless
9 35 (2.02%) Dynamics 365
9 35 (2.02%) OpenShift
10 34 (1.96%) SaaS
11 31 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
12 30 (1.73%) Amazon S3
13 25 (1.44%) Amazon ECS
13 25 (1.44%) AWS CloudFormation
14 23 (1.33%) Azure Data Factory
15 22 (1.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 21 (1.21%) Snowflake
17 20 (1.15%) OCI
18 17 (0.98%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.38%) Firewall
2 17 (0.98%) WAN
3 16 (0.92%) Internet
4 14 (0.81%) LAN
4 14 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
4 14 (0.81%) Wireless
5 12 (0.69%) HTTP
6 10 (0.58%) Network Security
7 9 (0.52%) VPN
8 8 (0.46%) SD-WAN
9 7 (0.40%) DNS
10 5 (0.29%) Unified Communications
11 4 (0.23%) 5G
11 4 (0.23%) Broadband
11 4 (0.23%) Cisco Nexus
11 4 (0.23%) IPsec
11 4 (0.23%) SMS
11 4 (0.23%) VLAN
11 4 (0.23%) WebEx
12 3 (0.17%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 102 (5.89%) SQL Server
2 94 (5.42%) Power BI
3 64 (3.69%) Data Warehouse
4 47 (2.71%) Relational Database
5 45 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
6 43 (2.48%) MySQL
7 38 (2.19%) Oracle Database
7 38 (2.19%) Tableau
8 33 (1.90%) NoSQL
9 30 (1.73%) Metadata
10 26 (1.50%) Data Lake
11 25 (1.44%) Oracle Reports
12 20 (1.15%) MongoDB
13 18 (1.04%) Big Data
14 16 (0.92%) BigQuery
15 15 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
15 15 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 14 (0.81%) DynamoDB
17 13 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
18 11 (0.63%) Redis
Development Applications
1 305 (17.60%) JIRA
2 149 (8.60%) Git
3 129 (7.44%) Selenium
4 119 (6.87%) Jenkins
5 105 (6.06%) GitLab
6 87 (5.02%) Postman
7 65 (3.75%) Cucumber
8 61 (3.52%) Cypress.io
9 47 (2.71%) JUnit
10 43 (2.48%) REST Assured
11 35 (2.02%) JMeter
12 34 (1.96%) SonarQube
13 33 (1.90%) Zephyr
14 24 (1.38%) WebDriver
15 21 (1.21%) TestRail
16 19 (1.10%) TestNG
17 18 (1.04%) Gatling
18 17 (0.98%) Appium
19 15 (0.87%) Gradle
20 14 (0.81%) Maven
General
1 599 (34.56%) Social Skills
2 417 (24.06%) Finance
3 271 (15.64%) Analytical Skills
4 199 (11.48%) Public Sector
5 145 (8.37%) Banking
6 51 (2.94%) Retail
7 39 (2.25%) Organisational Skills
8 36 (2.08%) Manufacturing
9 35 (2.02%) Documentation Skills
9 35 (2.02%) Marketing
10 25 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
11 24 (1.38%) Legal
12 23 (1.33%) Front Office
13 21 (1.21%) Aerospace
13 21 (1.21%) Investment Banking
14 20 (1.15%) Military
14 20 (1.15%) Telecoms
15 18 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
16 16 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 15 (0.87%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 219 (12.64%) Analyst
2 212 (12.23%) Developer
3 202 (11.66%) Lead
4 190 (10.96%) Senior
5 129 (7.44%) QA Engineer
6 114 (6.58%) Business Analyst
7 96 (5.54%) Tester
8 85 (4.90%) Project Manager
9 83 (4.79%) Test Manager
10 70 (4.04%) Test Engineer
11 62 (3.58%) Architect
12 61 (3.52%) Java Developer
13 50 (2.89%) Test Leader
14 48 (2.77%) Data Analyst
15 45 (2.60%) Data Engineer
16 44 (2.54%) Senior Analyst
17 43 (2.48%) C# Developer
18 42 (2.42%) Quality Engineer
19 41 (2.37%) Test Analyst
20 40 (2.31%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 133 (7.67%) REST
2 114 (6.58%) .NET
3 101 (5.83%) Playwright
4 80 (4.62%) RESTful
5 78 (4.50%) Spring
6 74 (4.27%) Spring Boot
7 63 (3.64%) React
8 53 (3.06%) .NET Framework
9 49 (2.83%) AngularJS
10 47 (2.71%) Kafka
10 47 (2.71%) Node.js
11 44 (2.54%) HTML
12 42 (2.42%) CSS
13 38 (2.19%) JSON
14 27 (1.56%) Gherkin
15 23 (1.33%) Oracle Fusion
15 23 (1.33%) Quarkus
16 21 (1.21%) Middleware
17 20 (1.15%) XML
18 18 (1.04%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 163 (9.41%) Product Ownership
2 73 (4.21%) Cloud Native
3 49 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
4 42 (2.42%) Onboarding
5 39 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
6 37 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
7 33 (1.90%) Mobile App
8 32 (1.85%) Data Structures
9 29 (1.67%) Management Information System
9 29 (1.67%) PMI
10 25 (1.44%) Virtual Team
11 23 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
12 21 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
13 20 (1.15%) Data Centre
14 18 (1.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 18 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
15 17 (0.98%) Derivative
15 17 (0.98%) SWIFT Messaging Network
16 15 (0.87%) NHS
17 13 (0.75%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 91 (5.25%) Windows
2 49 (2.83%) Linux
3 30 (1.73%) Windows Server
4 20 (1.15%) Android
5 16 (0.92%) Apple iOS
5 16 (0.92%) Unix
6 4 (0.23%) Mac OS
6 4 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.17%) VMS
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.12%) Solaris
8 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.058%) Debian
9 1 (0.058%) Robot Operating System
9 1 (0.058%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.058%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.058%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.058%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 664 (38.32%) Agile
2 444 (25.62%) DevOps
2 444 (25.62%) Test Automation
3 423 (24.41%) CI/CD
4 328 (18.93%) Problem-Solving
5 310 (17.89%) Stakeholder Management
6 288 (16.62%) Continuous Improvement
6 288 (16.62%) Validation
7 263 (15.18%) User Acceptance Testing
8 241 (13.91%) Scrum
9 211 (12.18%) Migration
10 195 (11.25%) Test Strategy
11 171 (9.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 149 (8.60%) SDLC
12 149 (8.60%) Test Scripting
13 147 (8.48%) Project Management
14 146 (8.42%) ETL
15 142 (8.19%) AI
15 142 (8.19%) Regression Testing
16 140 (8.08%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 355 (20.48%) SQL
2 229 (13.21%) Java
3 220 (12.69%) Python
4 138 (7.96%) C#
5 132 (7.62%) JavaScript
6 106 (6.12%) TypeScript
7 52 (3.00%) PL/SQL
8 48 (2.77%) T-SQL
9 34 (1.96%) PowerShell
10 23 (1.33%) Kotlin
11 20 (1.15%) Bash
12 17 (0.98%) VBA
13 16 (0.92%) C++
13 16 (0.92%) Ruby
13 16 (0.92%) VB
14 13 (0.75%) Bicep
14 13 (0.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 13 (0.75%) Scala
15 11 (0.63%) C
15 11 (0.63%) PHP
Qualifications
1 368 (21.23%) Security Cleared
2 271 (15.64%) SC Cleared
3 168 (9.69%) Degree
4 73 (4.21%) ISTQB
5 58 (3.35%) PMI Certification
6 54 (3.12%) BPSS Clearance
7 53 (3.06%) PMP
8 52 (3.00%) Computer Science Degree
9 41 (2.37%) DV Cleared
10 31 (1.79%) Master's Degree
11 11 (0.63%) AWS Certification
11 11 (0.63%) CHECK Team Member
11 11 (0.63%) CREST Certified
11 11 (0.63%) Cyber Scheme
11 11 (0.63%) SAFe Agilist
12 10 (0.58%) CBAP
12 10 (0.58%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 10 (0.58%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 10 (0.58%) MBA
12 10 (0.58%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 117 (6.75%) Data Quality
2 81 (4.67%) Accessibility
3 48 (2.77%) GDPR
4 44 (2.54%) PMO
5 28 (1.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 22 (1.27%) PCI DSS
7 20 (1.15%) WCAG
8 18 (1.04%) NIST
9 15 (0.87%) IFRS
9 15 (0.87%) IFRS 17
10 13 (0.75%) GRC
10 13 (0.75%) SLA
11 11 (0.63%) GxP
11 11 (0.63%) SEPA
12 10 (0.58%) Basel III
12 10 (0.58%) ISO 20022
12 10 (0.58%) PSD2
13 9 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 8 (0.46%) COBIT
14 8 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 108 (6.23%) Docker
2 14 (0.81%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.23%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 3 (0.17%) Firmware
6 3 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.12%) GridGain
7 2 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.058%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.058%) KVM
8 1 (0.058%) QEMU
8 1 (0.058%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
8 1 (0.058%) Varnish
8 1 (0.058%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 143 (8.25%) Kubernetes
2 80 (4.62%) Terraform
3 38 (2.19%) Grafana
4 35 (2.02%) Ansible
5 26 (1.50%) Argo
6 22 (1.27%) Prometheus
7 19 (1.10%) HP ALM
8 12 (0.69%) Nmap
9 10 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
10 7 (0.40%) Puppet
11 6 (0.35%) HP Quality Center
11 6 (0.35%) Kibana
12 3 (0.17%) Progress Chef
13 2 (0.12%) SCCM
14 1 (0.058%) Cisco Prime
14 1 (0.058%) logstash
14 1 (0.058%) Salt
14 1 (0.058%) SELinux
14 1 (0.058%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 182 (10.50%) Microsoft
2 167 (9.64%) Oracle
3 106 (6.12%) SAP
4 84 (4.85%) Salesforce
5 53 (3.06%) ServiceNow
6 49 (2.83%) Citrix
7 42 (2.42%) Google
8 28 (1.62%) Adobe
9 27 (1.56%) Databricks
9 27 (1.56%) Red Hat
10 22 (1.27%) HP
11 18 (1.04%) Informatica
12 17 (0.98%) Workday
13 14 (0.81%) MuleSoft
13 14 (0.81%) Splunk
14 13 (0.75%) IBM
15 11 (0.63%) Talend
16 10 (0.58%) Cisco
16 10 (0.58%) Infor
17 8 (0.46%) Sage