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 13 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 61 65
Rank change year-on-year +13 +4 +3
Contract jobs citing QA 2,326 1,282 1,213
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.24% 3.89% 3.23%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 23.79% 22.21% 24.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,356 876 708
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £385 £380 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £657 £654 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £455 £450
% change year-on-year -0.99% +1.00% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 248 44 71
10th Percentile £13.43 £12.28 £12.00
25th Percentile £15.05 £13.50 £13.26
Median hourly rate £27.96 £28.77 £15.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.82% +91.80% -70.00%
75th Percentile £48.75 £47.63 £31.34
90th Percentile £68.18 £71.13 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.96 £15.12 £14.98
% change year-on-year +84.92% +0.93% -70.04%

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 9,779 5,771 5,022
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.81% 17.53% 13.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,117 3,691 2,916
10th Percentile £325 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £398
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £610 £608 £625
90th Percentile £719 £706 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +1.05% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 701 282 239
10th Percentile £13.69 £13.60 £13.26
25th Percentile £16.60 £16.61 £17.56
Median hourly rate £30.27 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.90% +9.09% -23.22%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.00 £62.63
90th Percentile £74.25 £80.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £25.08 £27.50
% change year-on-year +27.62% -8.82% -29.03%

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 13 October 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 13 October 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 13 October 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 +15 2,041 £475 - 2,087
UK excluding London +24 1,186 £450 -0.99% 1,150
London +9 910 £500 - 1,061
Work from Home +2 582 £475 +5.50% 913
North of England +3 286 £453 +5.35% 286
South East +14 265 £425 -15.00% 294
Midlands +26 242 £450 - 185
West Midlands +26 202 £450 -9.27% 130
East of England +21 158 £423 -15.50% 111
South West +14 140 £525 +10.53% 99
Yorkshire +13 113 £470 +4.44% 103
North West -21 113 £475 +14.46% 138
Scotland +4 89 £425 -15.00% 79
North East -12 60 £400 -20.00% 46
East Midlands -8 39 £415 +1.22% 55
Wales 0 23 £413 +17.86% 43
Northern Ireland -3 7 £450 +50.00% 69

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
1 138 (5.93%) Confluence
2 53 (2.28%) CMS
3 43 (1.85%) SharePoint
4 16 (0.69%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.60%) IIS
6 13 (0.56%) Apache
6 13 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
7 12 (0.52%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 9 (0.39%) SAS
8 9 (0.39%) Sitecore CMS
9 7 (0.30%) Traefik
10 5 (0.21%) Headless CMS
10 5 (0.21%) OpenStack
10 5 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.21%) Tuxedo
10 5 (0.21%) WordPress
11 4 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
11 4 (0.17%) Umbraco
12 3 (0.13%) Appian
12 3 (0.13%) WebLogic
Applications
1 83 (3.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 40 (1.72%) Microsoft Office
3 24 (1.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 22 (0.95%) MS Visio
5 18 (0.77%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.47%) Microsoft Project
7 9 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.26%) AutoCAD
8 6 (0.26%) Navisworks
8 6 (0.26%) Revit
9 4 (0.17%) ProjectWise
10 3 (0.13%) CATIA
10 3 (0.13%) Mingle
10 3 (0.13%) Productboard
11 2 (0.086%) Adobe Premiere
11 2 (0.086%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.086%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.086%) Windchill
12 1 (0.043%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.043%) Trello
Business Applications
1 30 (1.29%) Dynamics CRM
2 29 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
4 9 (0.39%) Shopify
5 7 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.30%) SAP GRC
5 7 (0.30%) Workday HCM
6 5 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
6 5 (0.21%) SAP MM
7 4 (0.17%) Aladdin
7 4 (0.17%) Maximo
7 4 (0.17%) NEC Housing
7 4 (0.17%) Primavera
7 4 (0.17%) ResourceLink
7 4 (0.17%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.13%) Infor CloudSuite
8 3 (0.13%) iTrent
8 3 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
8 3 (0.13%) SAP SD
9 2 (0.086%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 482 (20.72%) Azure
2 422 (18.14%) AWS
3 234 (10.06%) GitHub
4 216 (9.29%) Azure DevOps
5 140 (6.02%) GitHub Actions
6 115 (4.94%) Power Platform
7 114 (4.90%) GCP
8 82 (3.53%) Serverless
9 59 (2.54%) AWS Lambda
10 55 (2.36%) SaaS
11 52 (2.24%) Amazon S3
12 46 (1.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 45 (1.93%) Dynamics 365
14 38 (1.63%) GitHub Copilot
15 36 (1.55%) OpenShift
16 33 (1.42%) Snowflake
17 32 (1.38%) Microsoft 365
18 31 (1.33%) Amazon EKS
18 31 (1.33%) Azure Monitor
19 30 (1.29%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.20%) Broadband
2 27 (1.16%) Firewall
3 22 (0.95%) Internet
4 21 (0.90%) DNS
5 20 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
6 18 (0.77%) HTTP
7 17 (0.73%) 5G
8 16 (0.69%) 4G
8 16 (0.69%) TCP/IP
8 16 (0.69%) VLAN
9 14 (0.60%) WAN
10 13 (0.56%) Network Security
11 11 (0.47%) DHCP
11 11 (0.47%) LAN
11 11 (0.47%) VPN
12 8 (0.34%) IPv4
12 8 (0.34%) IPv6
12 8 (0.34%) SD-WAN
12 8 (0.34%) Unified Communications
12 8 (0.34%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (4.73%) SQL Server
2 99 (4.26%) Power BI
3 83 (3.57%) Relational Database
4 82 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
5 63 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
6 58 (2.49%) MongoDB
7 49 (2.11%) MySQL
7 49 (2.11%) NoSQL
8 45 (1.93%) Metadata
9 38 (1.63%) Oracle Database
10 30 (1.29%) Oracle Reports
11 28 (1.20%) Tableau
12 23 (0.99%) Data Lake
13 22 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 16 (0.69%) Big Data
14 16 (0.69%) GIS
14 16 (0.69%) Redis
15 15 (0.64%) Power Query
15 15 (0.64%) RDBMS
16 13 (0.56%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 304 (13.07%) JIRA
2 263 (11.31%) Git
3 189 (8.13%) Jenkins
4 182 (7.82%) Selenium
5 151 (6.49%) GitLab
6 101 (4.34%) Cucumber
7 92 (3.96%) Postman
8 82 (3.53%) Cypress.io
9 78 (3.35%) JUnit
10 55 (2.36%) Zephyr
11 51 (2.19%) JMeter
12 49 (2.11%) Gatling
12 49 (2.11%) SonarQube
13 48 (2.06%) REST Assured
14 35 (1.50%) Maven
15 30 (1.29%) Gradle
16 29 (1.25%) WebDriver
17 28 (1.20%) TestNG
18 25 (1.07%) Appium
19 24 (1.03%) Bitbucket
General
1 714 (30.70%) Social Skills
2 420 (18.06%) Finance
3 374 (16.08%) Analytical Skills
4 300 (12.90%) Public Sector
5 171 (7.35%) Banking
6 88 (3.78%) Manufacturing
7 76 (3.27%) Retail
8 65 (2.79%) Organisational Skills
9 64 (2.75%) Marketing
10 59 (2.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 51 (2.19%) Telecoms
12 45 (1.93%) Aerospace
12 45 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
13 43 (1.85%) Legal
14 31 (1.33%) Documentation Skills
14 31 (1.33%) Military
15 24 (1.03%) Law
16 20 (0.86%) Investment Banking
17 19 (0.82%) Local Government
17 19 (0.82%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 306 (13.16%) Developer
2 293 (12.60%) Lead
3 280 (12.04%) Senior
4 264 (11.35%) QA Engineer
5 251 (10.79%) Analyst
6 139 (5.98%) Quality Engineer
7 122 (5.25%) Test Engineer
8 117 (5.03%) Tester
9 101 (4.34%) Test Manager
10 98 (4.21%) Business Analyst
11 86 (3.70%) QA Leader
12 79 (3.40%) Data Engineer
13 76 (3.27%) Java Developer
14 71 (3.05%) Test Leader
15 61 (2.62%) Consultant
16 59 (2.54%) Senior Analyst
17 57 (2.45%) Test Analyst
18 55 (2.36%) QA Tester
19 49 (2.11%) Architect
19 49 (2.11%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 233 (10.02%) REST
2 158 (6.79%) Playwright
3 157 (6.75%) RESTful
4 125 (5.37%) Spring
5 108 (4.64%) Spring Boot
6 106 (4.56%) Terraform
7 104 (4.47%) React
8 99 (4.26%) .NET
9 91 (3.91%) HTML
10 88 (3.78%) Kafka
11 82 (3.53%) CSS
12 77 (3.31%) AngularJS
13 63 (2.71%) Node.js
14 61 (2.62%) SOAP
15 56 (2.41%) Middleware
16 52 (2.24%) pytest
17 45 (1.93%) JSON
18 42 (1.81%) .NET Framework
19 41 (1.76%) XML
20 40 (1.72%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 226 (9.72%) Product Ownership
2 139 (5.98%) Cloud Native
3 83 (3.57%) Onboarding
4 72 (3.10%) Enterprise Software
4 72 (3.10%) Management Information System
5 61 (2.62%) Mobile App
6 56 (2.41%) Distributed Systems
7 50 (2.15%) AI Agents
7 50 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
8 42 (1.81%) Data Structures
9 41 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
10 36 (1.55%) Data Centre
11 31 (1.33%) Low-Code
12 27 (1.16%) NHS
13 25 (1.07%) Virtual Team
14 24 (1.03%) CMDB
15 19 (0.82%) Educational Technology
16 17 (0.73%) Analytical Mindset
17 16 (0.69%) Operational Technology
18 15 (0.64%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 88 (3.78%) Windows
2 76 (3.27%) Linux
3 56 (2.41%) Apple iOS
4 52 (2.24%) Android
5 34 (1.46%) Unix
6 24 (1.03%) Windows Server
7 17 (0.73%) VMS
8 7 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.21%) macOS
10 2 (0.086%) AIX
10 2 (0.086%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.086%) zOS
11 1 (0.043%) CentOS
11 1 (0.043%) Debian
11 1 (0.043%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.043%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.043%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.043%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.043%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 903 (38.82%) Agile
2 672 (28.89%) Test Automation
3 619 (26.61%) CI/CD
4 563 (24.20%) DevOps
5 495 (21.28%) Stakeholder Management
6 482 (20.72%) Continuous Improvement
7 397 (17.07%) Problem-Solving
8 376 (16.17%) Validation
9 346 (14.88%) Scrum
10 345 (14.83%) AI
11 338 (14.53%) Test Strategy
12 274 (11.78%) User Acceptance Testing
13 253 (10.88%) Migration
14 221 (9.50%) SDLC
15 217 (9.33%) Microservices
16 212 (9.11%) End-to-End Testing
17 190 (8.17%) Software Engineering
18 185 (7.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 184 (7.91%) Defect Management
20 172 (7.39%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 412 (17.71%) SQL
2 330 (14.19%) Python
3 305 (13.11%) Java
4 200 (8.60%) JavaScript
5 126 (5.42%) C#
6 119 (5.12%) TypeScript
7 54 (2.32%) Bash
8 35 (1.50%) PowerShell
9 33 (1.42%) PL/SQL
10 32 (1.38%) Kotlin
11 25 (1.07%) Scala
11 25 (1.07%) T-SQL
12 24 (1.03%) Swift
13 20 (0.86%) Shell Script
14 19 (0.82%) Objective-C
15 15 (0.64%) VB
16 14 (0.60%) R
17 13 (0.56%) C
17 13 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 13 (0.56%) VBA
Qualifications
1 545 (23.43%) Security Cleared
2 422 (18.14%) SC Cleared
3 155 (6.66%) Degree
4 111 (4.77%) BPSS Clearance
5 81 (3.48%) ISTQB
6 69 (2.97%) DV Cleared
7 50 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
8 23 (0.99%) PMP
9 22 (0.95%) AWS Certification
10 21 (0.90%) Azure Certification
10 21 (0.90%) PMI Certification
11 16 (0.69%) Master's Degree
12 14 (0.60%) Microsoft Certification
13 10 (0.43%) DBS Check
13 10 (0.43%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 10 (0.43%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 10 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
14 9 (0.39%) Cisco Certification
14 9 (0.39%) IIBA
14 9 (0.39%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 165 (7.09%) Data Quality
2 139 (5.98%) Accessibility
3 40 (1.72%) WCAG
4 38 (1.63%) GDPR
5 28 (1.20%) PMO
6 25 (1.07%) GRC
7 18 (0.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.64%) NIST
9 12 (0.52%) ISO 9001
10 11 (0.47%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 11 (0.47%) GxP
11 9 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
11 9 (0.39%) ISO 19650
12 8 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
12 8 (0.34%) SLA
12 8 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
13 7 (0.30%) IFRS
13 7 (0.30%) NCSC
14 6 (0.26%) PERC
15 5 (0.21%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 210 (9.03%) Docker
2 23 (0.99%) Active Directory
3 20 (0.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (0.43%) IAG
6 6 (0.26%) Firmware
7 4 (0.17%) ACF2
7 4 (0.17%) RACF
7 4 (0.17%) VirtualBox
8 3 (0.13%) KVM
8 3 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.043%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.043%) QEMU
9 1 (0.043%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.043%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.043%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.043%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 242 (10.40%) Kubernetes
2 63 (2.71%) Ansible
3 58 (2.49%) Grafana
4 36 (1.55%) Prometheus
5 31 (1.33%) Argo
6 11 (0.47%) HP ALM
7 10 (0.43%) SCCM
8 8 (0.34%) Microsoft Clustering
8 8 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.30%) HP Quality Center
9 7 (0.30%) Istio
9 7 (0.30%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.17%) Progress Chef
11 4 (0.17%) Puppet
11 4 (0.17%) SCOM
12 3 (0.13%) FortiGate
13 2 (0.086%) Control-M
13 2 (0.086%) ITRS Geneos
13 2 (0.086%) Kibana
Vendors
1 255 (10.96%) Microsoft
2 163 (7.01%) Oracle
3 116 (4.99%) Salesforce
4 76 (3.27%) SAP
5 60 (2.58%) ServiceNow
6 49 (2.11%) Google
7 47 (2.02%) Databricks
8 35 (1.50%) Dynatrace
8 35 (1.50%) Splunk
9 31 (1.33%) Red Hat
10 23 (0.99%) Citrix
10 23 (0.99%) VMware
11 21 (0.90%) Cisco
12 20 (0.86%) Adobe
13 18 (0.77%) Informatica
14 17 (0.73%) IBM
14 17 (0.73%) Sitecore
14 17 (0.73%) Talend
15 16 (0.69%) Workday
16 15 (0.64%) MuleSoft