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 12 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 67 59
Rank change year-on-year +6 -8 +16
Contract jobs citing QA 1,827 1,071 1,449
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.66% 3.64% 3.32%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.84% 22.60% 24.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,132 746 943
10th Percentile £322 £285 £313
25th Percentile £395 £384 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -1.57%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £668 £675 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £460 £500
% change year-on-year -2.17% -8.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 135 27 102
10th Percentile £13.02 £13.49 £10.86
25th Percentile £16.07 £15.21 £12.24
Median hourly rate £30.58 £35.00 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.63% +150.00% -37.74%
75th Percentile £67.50 £70.50 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £71.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £53.00 £13.52
% change year-on-year -42.30% +292.01% -28.84%

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 8,367 4,738 5,995
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.74% 16.10% 13.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,363 3,010 3,749
10th Percentile £344 £275 £281
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £509
Median % change year-on-year - -1.77% -3.05%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £717 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 495 194 430
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.12 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.56 £21.31 £13.18
Median hourly rate £36.07 £32.50 £23.30
Median % change year-on-year +10.98% +39.51% -39.82%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £83.35 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £32.50 £19.17
% change year-on-year +23.08% +69.54% -50.27%

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 12 June 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 12 June 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 12 June 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 +6 1,560 £479 +0.74% 660
UK excluding London +13 846 £450 -2.17% 538
London +11 780 £500 - 218
Work from Home +4 526 £488 +1.56% 264
South East +1 194 £450 -4.00% 187
North of England -16 183 £463 -6.57% 124
Midlands -8 172 £425 +13.33% 89
West Midlands -5 127 £442 +3.88% 47
South West +25 115 £488 -2.50% 71
Scotland +18 84 £360 -22.16% 14
East of England +14 83 £475 -0.78% 49
North West -12 81 £440 -1.57% 62
Yorkshire -30 68 £520 -0.05% 39
East Midlands -13 46 £393 +6.39% 42
North East -13 34 £413 -1.79% 25
Northern Ireland +9 20 £463 +42.31% 12
Wales -12 11 £450 -14.29% 11

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 92 (5.04%) Confluence
2 32 (1.75%) SharePoint
3 28 (1.53%) CMS
4 18 (0.99%) IIS
5 15 (0.82%) Apache Spark
6 14 (0.77%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 7 (0.38%) Apache
7 7 (0.38%) SAS
8 6 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
9 5 (0.27%) Tuxedo
9 5 (0.27%) Umbraco
10 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.22%) nginx
10 4 (0.22%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 3 (0.16%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.16%) Moodle
11 3 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.16%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.11%) Apache Solr
12 2 (0.11%) Luigi
Applications
1 56 (3.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (1.64%) Microsoft Office
3 25 (1.37%) Microsoft Project
4 23 (1.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (1.15%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.22%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.16%) CATIA
8 3 (0.16%) Simulink
9 2 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.11%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.11%) EPLAN
10 1 (0.055%) Adobe Premiere
10 1 (0.055%) Camtasia
10 1 (0.055%) Mingle
10 1 (0.055%) Navisworks
10 1 (0.055%) Notion
10 1 (0.055%) Revit
Business Applications
1 27 (1.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 17 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.44%) Shopify
4 7 (0.38%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.33%) Maximo
5 6 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.27%) Infor CloudSuite
6 5 (0.27%) NEC Housing
7 4 (0.22%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.22%) Primavera
7 4 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.16%) Actimize
8 3 (0.16%) Aladdin
8 3 (0.16%) Oracle EBS R12
9 2 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.11%) iTrent
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 2 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.11%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 394 (21.57%) Azure
2 295 (16.15%) AWS
3 163 (8.92%) Azure DevOps
4 148 (8.10%) GitHub
5 104 (5.69%) Power Platform
6 95 (5.20%) GitHub Actions
7 77 (4.21%) GCP
8 48 (2.63%) Serverless
9 43 (2.35%) OpenShift
10 36 (1.97%) Dynamics 365
11 35 (1.92%) SaaS
12 32 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
13 30 (1.64%) Amazon S3
14 29 (1.59%) Snowflake
15 26 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 22 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
17 20 (1.09%) Amazon EKS
18 19 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
18 19 (1.04%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 19 (1.04%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.37%) Firewall
2 20 (1.09%) WAN
3 19 (1.04%) LAN
3 19 (1.04%) Network Security
4 18 (0.99%) Internet
5 17 (0.93%) Wi-Fi
6 13 (0.71%) VPN
7 11 (0.60%) DNS
7 11 (0.60%) SD-WAN
7 11 (0.60%) Unified Communications
7 11 (0.60%) VLAN
7 11 (0.60%) Wireless
8 9 (0.49%) HTTP
9 8 (0.44%) IPsec
10 7 (0.38%) SMS
11 6 (0.33%) Cisco Nexus
11 6 (0.33%) TCP/IP
12 5 (0.27%) DHCP
13 4 (0.22%) MPLS
14 3 (0.16%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 109 (5.97%) SQL Server
2 90 (4.93%) Power BI
3 70 (3.83%) Data Warehouse
4 64 (3.50%) PostgreSQL
5 54 (2.96%) Relational Database
6 46 (2.52%) MySQL
7 41 (2.24%) NoSQL
8 37 (2.03%) Tableau
9 36 (1.97%) Metadata
10 33 (1.81%) Oracle Database
11 32 (1.75%) Data Lake
11 32 (1.75%) Oracle Reports
12 27 (1.48%) MongoDB
13 24 (1.31%) Big Data
14 19 (1.04%) DynamoDB
15 18 (0.99%) Azure SQL Database
16 17 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 15 (0.82%) BigQuery
18 14 (0.77%) Amazon Redshift
18 14 (0.77%) Redis
Development Applications
1 289 (15.82%) JIRA
2 174 (9.52%) Git
3 139 (7.61%) Selenium
4 129 (7.06%) Jenkins
5 98 (5.36%) GitLab
6 85 (4.65%) Postman
7 64 (3.50%) Cucumber
8 56 (3.07%) Cypress.io
9 53 (2.90%) JUnit
10 49 (2.68%) REST Assured
11 44 (2.41%) Zephyr
12 43 (2.35%) SonarQube
13 35 (1.92%) JMeter
14 31 (1.70%) WebDriver
15 23 (1.26%) Gatling
16 21 (1.15%) TestRail
17 19 (1.04%) Maven
18 18 (0.99%) Gradle
19 17 (0.93%) TestNG
20 15 (0.82%) Appium
General
1 551 (30.16%) Social Skills
2 414 (22.66%) Finance
3 254 (13.90%) Analytical Skills
4 207 (11.33%) Public Sector
5 143 (7.83%) Banking
6 60 (3.28%) Retail
7 50 (2.74%) Marketing
8 49 (2.68%) Manufacturing
9 45 (2.46%) Organisational Skills
10 36 (1.97%) Aerospace
11 28 (1.53%) Documentation Skills
12 25 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
13 22 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 22 (1.20%) Investment Banking
14 21 (1.15%) Military
15 19 (1.04%) Legal
16 16 (0.88%) Pharmaceutical
17 15 (0.82%) Automotive
17 15 (0.82%) Front Office
18 14 (0.77%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 229 (12.53%) Developer
2 222 (12.15%) Analyst
3 213 (11.66%) Lead
4 211 (11.55%) Senior
5 164 (8.98%) QA Engineer
6 115 (6.29%) Business Analyst
7 100 (5.47%) Tester
8 85 (4.65%) Test Manager
9 69 (3.78%) Architect
10 67 (3.67%) Quality Engineer
11 66 (3.61%) Test Engineer
12 64 (3.50%) Java Developer
13 61 (3.34%) Project Manager
14 59 (3.23%) Data Engineer
15 53 (2.90%) Senior Analyst
16 52 (2.85%) Data Analyst
16 52 (2.85%) Test Leader
17 45 (2.46%) Software Engineer
18 43 (2.35%) Consultant
19 42 (2.30%) QA Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (7.12%) REST
2 113 (6.19%) .NET
3 102 (5.58%) RESTful
4 97 (5.31%) Playwright
5 83 (4.54%) Spring
6 79 (4.32%) Spring Boot
7 70 (3.83%) React
8 64 (3.50%) HTML
9 60 (3.28%) AngularJS
10 58 (3.17%) CSS
11 53 (2.90%) Kafka
12 51 (2.79%) .NET Framework
13 50 (2.74%) Node.js
14 36 (1.97%) JSON
15 33 (1.81%) Quarkus
16 26 (1.42%) Middleware
17 24 (1.31%) Gherkin
17 24 (1.31%) pytest
18 23 (1.26%) ASP.NET
18 23 (1.26%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 151 (8.26%) Product Ownership
2 76 (4.16%) Cloud Native
3 50 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
3 50 (2.74%) Onboarding
4 46 (2.52%) Distributed Systems
5 41 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
6 38 (2.08%) Mobile App
7 30 (1.64%) Management Information System
8 29 (1.59%) Data Structures
9 26 (1.42%) Virtual Team
10 25 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
11 23 (1.26%) Data Centre
12 19 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
12 19 (1.04%) PMI
13 18 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
14 17 (0.93%) AI Agents
15 15 (0.82%) NHS
16 14 (0.77%) Legacy Code
17 13 (0.71%) Derivative
17 13 (0.71%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 82 (4.49%) Windows
2 56 (3.07%) Linux
3 29 (1.59%) Windows Server
4 28 (1.53%) Android
5 27 (1.48%) Apple iOS
6 19 (1.04%) Unix
7 6 (0.33%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.055%) Debian
10 1 (0.055%) Solaris
10 1 (0.055%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.055%) VMS
10 1 (0.055%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.055%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 687 (37.60%) Agile
2 464 (25.40%) Test Automation
3 439 (24.03%) DevOps
4 426 (23.32%) CI/CD
5 301 (16.48%) Stakeholder Management
6 298 (16.31%) Validation
7 284 (15.54%) Continuous Improvement
8 278 (15.22%) Problem-Solving
9 261 (14.29%) User Acceptance Testing
10 248 (13.57%) Scrum
11 235 (12.86%) Test Strategy
12 223 (12.21%) Migration
13 177 (9.69%) AI
14 167 (9.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 154 (8.43%) ETL
16 148 (8.10%) Decision-Making
17 147 (8.05%) SDLC
18 140 (7.66%) Analytics
18 140 (7.66%) Data Migration
19 137 (7.50%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 374 (20.47%) SQL
2 237 (12.97%) Java
3 233 (12.75%) Python
4 133 (7.28%) JavaScript
5 129 (7.06%) C#
6 85 (4.65%) TypeScript
7 42 (2.30%) T-SQL
8 40 (2.19%) PL/SQL
9 32 (1.75%) Kotlin
10 27 (1.48%) PowerShell
11 24 (1.31%) Bash
12 20 (1.09%) Scala
13 18 (0.99%) VB
14 16 (0.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 16 (0.88%) Swift
15 15 (0.82%) Bicep
15 15 (0.82%) C
16 14 (0.77%) C++
16 14 (0.77%) PHP
17 11 (0.60%) VBA
Qualifications
1 408 (22.33%) Security Cleared
2 298 (16.31%) SC Cleared
3 134 (7.33%) Degree
4 73 (4.00%) ISTQB
5 65 (3.56%) BPSS Clearance
6 51 (2.79%) DV Cleared
7 40 (2.19%) PMI Certification
8 37 (2.03%) PMP
9 31 (1.70%) Computer Science Degree
10 19 (1.04%) Master's Degree
11 14 (0.77%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.60%) Cisco Certification
13 9 (0.49%) AWS Certification
13 9 (0.49%) CBAP
14 8 (0.44%) Azure Certification
15 7 (0.38%) APMP
15 7 (0.38%) CCNP
15 7 (0.38%) SAFe Agilist
16 6 (0.33%) Cyber Scheme
16 6 (0.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 130 (7.12%) Data Quality
2 82 (4.49%) Accessibility
3 40 (2.19%) PMO
4 32 (1.75%) GDPR
5 21 (1.15%) WCAG
6 17 (0.93%) IFRS
6 17 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.88%) GRC
7 16 (0.88%) NIST
8 15 (0.82%) IFRS 17
8 15 (0.82%) PCI DSS
9 14 (0.77%) SLA
10 11 (0.60%) Disclosure Scotland
10 11 (0.60%) GxP
11 8 (0.44%) ISO 20022
12 7 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.38%) SEPA
13 6 (0.33%) Basel III
13 6 (0.33%) PSD2
13 6 (0.33%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 110 (6.02%) Docker
2 16 (0.88%) Active Directory
3 12 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.38%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (0.22%) Firmware
7 3 (0.16%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 2 (0.11%) GridGain
8 2 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.11%) VirtualBox
8 2 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.055%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.055%) KVM
9 1 (0.055%) QEMU
9 1 (0.055%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
9 1 (0.055%) Varnish
9 1 (0.055%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 154 (8.43%) Kubernetes
2 71 (3.89%) Terraform
3 36 (1.97%) Grafana
4 35 (1.92%) Argo
5 29 (1.59%) Ansible
6 28 (1.53%) Prometheus
7 18 (0.99%) HP ALM
8 10 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (0.44%) HP Quality Center
10 7 (0.38%) Nmap
10 7 (0.38%) Oracle RMAN
11 6 (0.33%) Puppet
12 5 (0.27%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 4 (0.22%) Kibana
14 3 (0.16%) Progress Chef
15 2 (0.11%) FortiGate
15 2 (0.11%) ITRS Geneos
15 2 (0.11%) SCCM
16 1 (0.055%) Cisco Prime
16 1 (0.055%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 185 (10.13%) Microsoft
2 165 (9.03%) Oracle
3 100 (5.47%) Salesforce
4 90 (4.93%) SAP
5 50 (2.74%) ServiceNow
6 37 (2.03%) Citrix
7 36 (1.97%) Google
8 35 (1.92%) Red Hat
9 33 (1.81%) Databricks
10 31 (1.70%) Adobe
11 23 (1.26%) Informatica
12 21 (1.15%) Cisco
12 21 (1.15%) HP
13 17 (0.93%) MuleSoft
14 13 (0.71%) Talend
15 12 (0.66%) VMware
15 12 (0.66%) Workday
16 11 (0.60%) Infor
17 10 (0.55%) IBM
17 10 (0.55%) Pega