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 18 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 59 64
Rank change year-on-year +2 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing QA 1,992 1,279 1,357
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.77% 3.93% 3.22%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 22.18% 23.63% 23.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,218 896 862
10th Percentile £313 £281 £306
25th Percentile £393 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £466 £499
Median % change year-on-year +1.88% -6.56% -3.20%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £675 £650 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% -2.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 36 94
10th Percentile £12.81 £12.52 £11.51
25th Percentile £16.13 £13.50 £12.24
Median hourly rate £30.58 £15.96 £14.98
Median % change year-on-year +91.60% +6.54% -40.08%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.63 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £15.12 £14.00
% change year-on-year +102.25% +8.00% -36.36%

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 8,982 5,413 5,816
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.98% 16.63% 13.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,740 3,484 3,594
10th Percentile £338 £280 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £615
90th Percentile £700 £714 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £469 £475
% change year-on-year +6.61% -1.26% -4.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 543 239 395
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.58 £11.22
25th Percentile £19.27 £17.67 £13.69
Median hourly rate £36.07 £30.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +20.23% +24.07% -38.94%
75th Percentile £68.88 £62.25 £51.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £85.35 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £26.93 £24.59
% change year-on-year +43.81% +9.50% -30.73%

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 18 July 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 18 July 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 18 July 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 1,709 £480 +2.24% 588
UK excluding London +6 958 £450 - 473
London +3 817 £498 +0.51% 200
Work from Home +2 569 £475 +3.26% 229
North of England -17 223 £496 +7.83% 137
South East +4 217 £435 -6.05% 152
Midlands -3 189 £425 +6.25% 75
West Midlands -8 143 £430 -0.58% 47
South West +9 125 £495 -1.00% 40
East of England +16 102 £476 -0.68% 49
North West -32 95 £469 +11.08% 78
Scotland +9 87 £339 -24.72% 20
Yorkshire -15 85 £525 +2.69% 41
East Midlands -9 45 £415 +13.08% 27
North East -8 43 £400 -12.09% 20
Northern Ireland +5 19 £475 +46.15% 5
Wales -8 11 £438 +2.94% 12

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
1 118 (5.92%) Confluence
2 39 (1.96%) SharePoint
3 37 (1.86%) CMS
4 20 (1.00%) IIS
5 19 (0.95%) Apache Spark
6 12 (0.60%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 10 (0.50%) Apache
8 9 (0.45%) SAS
9 6 (0.30%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
10 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.25%) Tuxedo
10 5 (0.25%) WordPress
11 4 (0.20%) Umbraco
12 3 (0.15%) Apache Solr
12 3 (0.15%) Moodle
12 3 (0.15%) nginx
12 3 (0.15%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 3 (0.15%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.15%) WebLogic
Applications
1 57 (2.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 27 (1.36%) Microsoft Project
3 23 (1.15%) Microsoft Office
4 20 (1.00%) MS Visio
5 17 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 6 (0.30%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
8 4 (0.20%) Simulink
9 3 (0.15%) CATIA
9 3 (0.15%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.15%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.10%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.10%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.10%) Navisworks
10 2 (0.10%) Revit
11 1 (0.050%) Adobe After Effects
11 1 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
11 1 (0.050%) Adobe Premiere
11 1 (0.050%) Mingle
11 1 (0.050%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 31 (1.56%) SAP S/4HANA
2 21 (1.05%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.40%) Workday HCM
4 7 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.35%) Salesforce CRM
4 7 (0.35%) Shopify
5 6 (0.30%) Maximo
5 6 (0.30%) NEC Housing
6 5 (0.25%) Aladdin
6 5 (0.25%) Infor CloudSuite
7 4 (0.20%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
7 4 (0.20%) Primavera
8 3 (0.15%) Actimize
8 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS R12
8 3 (0.15%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.15%) SAP MM
9 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.10%) IntelliMatch
9 2 (0.10%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 433 (21.74%) Azure
2 330 (16.57%) AWS
3 186 (9.34%) Azure DevOps
4 179 (8.99%) GitHub
5 110 (5.52%) GitHub Actions
6 105 (5.27%) Power Platform
7 88 (4.42%) GCP
8 45 (2.26%) Serverless
9 43 (2.16%) SaaS
10 38 (1.91%) OpenShift
11 33 (1.66%) Dynamics 365
12 29 (1.46%) Snowflake
13 25 (1.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 25 (1.26%) AWS Lambda
13 25 (1.26%) Azure Monitor
13 25 (1.26%) GitHub Copilot
14 24 (1.20%) Amazon S3
15 23 (1.15%) Salesforce Service Cloud
16 22 (1.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 21 (1.05%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.10%) Firewall
2 19 (0.95%) Internet
2 19 (0.95%) Network Security
3 15 (0.75%) WAN
4 14 (0.70%) LAN
5 13 (0.65%) VPN
6 12 (0.60%) Wi-Fi
7 11 (0.55%) HTTP
7 11 (0.55%) Unified Communications
8 10 (0.50%) SD-WAN
8 10 (0.50%) VLAN
9 8 (0.40%) DNS
9 8 (0.40%) IPsec
10 7 (0.35%) SMS
10 7 (0.35%) TCP/IP
10 7 (0.35%) Wireless
11 6 (0.30%) Cisco Nexus
12 5 (0.25%) Broadband
12 5 (0.25%) DHCP
13 4 (0.20%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (5.62%) SQL Server
2 91 (4.57%) Power BI
3 73 (3.66%) Data Warehouse
4 66 (3.31%) PostgreSQL
4 66 (3.31%) Relational Database
5 40 (2.01%) MySQL
6 39 (1.96%) Metadata
6 39 (1.96%) NoSQL
7 37 (1.86%) Oracle Database
7 37 (1.86%) Oracle Reports
8 36 (1.81%) Tableau
9 33 (1.66%) MongoDB
10 29 (1.46%) Data Lake
11 23 (1.15%) Big Data
12 21 (1.05%) Azure SQL Database
12 21 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 16 (0.80%) BigQuery
13 16 (0.80%) RDBMS
14 15 (0.75%) DynamoDB
15 14 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 304 (15.26%) JIRA
2 192 (9.64%) Git
3 150 (7.53%) Selenium
4 139 (6.98%) Jenkins
5 93 (4.67%) GitLab
6 85 (4.27%) Postman
7 69 (3.46%) Cypress.io
8 67 (3.36%) Cucumber
9 61 (3.06%) JUnit
10 52 (2.61%) REST Assured
11 49 (2.46%) Zephyr
12 45 (2.26%) SonarQube
13 35 (1.76%) JMeter
14 31 (1.56%) WebDriver
15 26 (1.31%) Maven
16 24 (1.20%) Gatling
17 23 (1.15%) Gradle
18 21 (1.05%) Appium
19 20 (1.00%) TestNG
19 20 (1.00%) TestRail
General
1 596 (29.92%) Social Skills
2 425 (21.34%) Finance
3 296 (14.86%) Analytical Skills
4 229 (11.50%) Public Sector
5 146 (7.33%) Banking
6 73 (3.66%) Retail
7 69 (3.46%) Manufacturing
8 55 (2.76%) Marketing
9 47 (2.36%) Organisational Skills
10 41 (2.06%) Aerospace
11 29 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 27 (1.36%) Documentation Skills
12 27 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
13 23 (1.15%) Legal
13 23 (1.15%) Telecoms
14 21 (1.05%) Pharmaceutical
15 20 (1.00%) Automotive
16 18 (0.90%) Military
17 17 (0.85%) Investment Banking
17 17 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 263 (13.20%) Developer
2 244 (12.25%) Lead
3 237 (11.90%) Analyst
4 229 (11.50%) Senior
5 189 (9.49%) QA Engineer
6 109 (5.47%) Business Analyst
7 106 (5.32%) Tester
8 89 (4.47%) Test Manager
9 83 (4.17%) Quality Engineer
10 74 (3.71%) Test Engineer
11 72 (3.61%) Java Developer
12 64 (3.21%) Test Leader
13 63 (3.16%) Architect
14 60 (3.01%) Data Engineer
15 53 (2.66%) Senior Analyst
16 52 (2.61%) Consultant
17 51 (2.56%) Project Manager
17 51 (2.56%) Test Analyst
18 50 (2.51%) Data Analyst
19 48 (2.41%) QA Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 146 (7.33%) REST
2 115 (5.77%) .NET
2 115 (5.77%) Playwright
3 109 (5.47%) RESTful
4 90 (4.52%) Spring
5 87 (4.37%) Spring Boot
6 81 (4.07%) React
7 70 (3.51%) HTML
8 65 (3.26%) AngularJS
9 64 (3.21%) CSS
10 54 (2.71%) Node.js
11 52 (2.61%) .NET Framework
11 52 (2.61%) Kafka
12 42 (2.11%) Middleware
13 40 (2.01%) JSON
14 34 (1.71%) SOAP
15 32 (1.61%) Quarkus
16 29 (1.46%) XML
17 26 (1.31%) Gherkin
18 23 (1.15%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 178 (8.94%) Product Ownership
2 91 (4.57%) Cloud Native
3 60 (3.01%) Onboarding
4 56 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
5 50 (2.51%) Data Protection Act
6 47 (2.36%) Management Information System
6 47 (2.36%) Mobile App
7 45 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
8 36 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
9 35 (1.76%) Data Structures
10 28 (1.41%) Data Centre
11 27 (1.36%) AI Agents
12 22 (1.10%) Virtual Team
13 18 (0.90%) NHS
14 17 (0.85%) Self-Motivation
15 16 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
16 15 (0.75%) Life Science
17 14 (0.70%) Replication
18 13 (0.65%) CMDB
18 13 (0.65%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 90 (4.52%) Windows
2 56 (2.81%) Linux
3 36 (1.81%) Apple iOS
4 34 (1.71%) Android
5 32 (1.61%) Windows Server
6 22 (1.10%) Unix
7 6 (0.30%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 2 (0.10%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.10%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.050%) Debian
10 1 (0.050%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.050%) Solaris
10 1 (0.050%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.050%) VMS
10 1 (0.050%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.050%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 761 (38.20%) Agile
2 537 (26.96%) Test Automation
3 498 (25.00%) DevOps
4 489 (24.55%) CI/CD
5 358 (17.97%) Continuous Improvement
6 341 (17.12%) Stakeholder Management
7 337 (16.92%) Validation
8 332 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
9 274 (13.76%) User Acceptance Testing
10 273 (13.70%) Test Strategy
11 272 (13.65%) Scrum
12 252 (12.65%) Migration
13 242 (12.15%) AI
14 184 (9.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 176 (8.84%) Decision-Making
16 165 (8.28%) SDLC
17 160 (8.03%) Software Engineering
18 159 (7.98%) End-to-End Testing
19 158 (7.93%) Analytics
20 156 (7.83%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 388 (19.48%) SQL
2 250 (12.55%) Java
3 249 (12.50%) Python
4 142 (7.13%) JavaScript
5 135 (6.78%) C#
6 82 (4.12%) TypeScript
7 41 (2.06%) T-SQL
8 39 (1.96%) PL/SQL
9 35 (1.76%) Kotlin
9 35 (1.76%) PowerShell
10 34 (1.71%) Bash
11 19 (0.95%) VB
12 18 (0.90%) C++
12 18 (0.90%) Swift
13 17 (0.85%) C
13 17 (0.85%) Scala
14 16 (0.80%) Bicep
14 16 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 15 (0.75%) VBA
16 14 (0.70%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 437 (21.94%) Security Cleared
2 329 (16.52%) SC Cleared
3 130 (6.53%) Degree
4 74 (3.71%) BPSS Clearance
5 71 (3.56%) ISTQB
6 57 (2.86%) DV Cleared
7 35 (1.76%) Computer Science Degree
8 29 (1.46%) PMI Certification
9 28 (1.41%) PMP
10 15 (0.75%) Azure Certification
11 13 (0.65%) AWS Certification
11 13 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
12 12 (0.60%) Master's Degree
13 11 (0.55%) Cisco Certification
14 10 (0.50%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 8 (0.40%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 7 (0.35%) CCNP
16 7 (0.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 5 (0.25%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 5 (0.25%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 143 (7.18%) Data Quality
2 100 (5.02%) Accessibility
3 34 (1.71%) GDPR
4 33 (1.66%) PMO
5 27 (1.36%) WCAG
6 20 (1.00%) GRC
7 17 (0.85%) GxP
8 14 (0.70%) SLA
9 13 (0.65%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 12 (0.60%) NIST
11 11 (0.55%) Disclosure Scotland
11 11 (0.55%) IFRS
12 9 (0.45%) IFRS 17
12 9 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 8 (0.40%) PCI DSS
14 7 (0.35%) GMP
14 7 (0.35%) NCSC
15 6 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
15 6 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
16 5 (0.25%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 128 (6.43%) Docker
2 20 (1.00%) Active Directory
3 12 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.35%) Firmware
4 7 (0.35%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.30%) IAG
5 6 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.10%) ACF2
6 2 (0.10%) GridGain
6 2 (0.10%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.10%) RACF
6 2 (0.10%) VirtualBox
6 2 (0.10%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.050%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.050%) KVM
7 1 (0.050%) QEMU
7 1 (0.050%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
7 1 (0.050%) Varnish
7 1 (0.050%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 180 (9.04%) Kubernetes
2 79 (3.97%) Terraform
3 40 (2.01%) Grafana
4 38 (1.91%) Ansible
5 32 (1.61%) Argo
6 28 (1.41%) Prometheus
7 20 (1.00%) HP ALM
8 12 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
9 10 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
10 8 (0.40%) SCCM
11 7 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
11 7 (0.35%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 6 (0.30%) Puppet
13 5 (0.25%) Kibana
13 5 (0.25%) Progress Chef
14 3 (0.15%) FortiGate
14 3 (0.15%) Nmap
15 2 (0.10%) ITRS Geneos
15 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Intune
15 2 (0.10%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 217 (10.89%) Microsoft
2 177 (8.89%) Oracle
3 103 (5.17%) Salesforce
4 92 (4.62%) SAP
5 47 (2.36%) ServiceNow
6 42 (2.11%) Google
7 40 (2.01%) Databricks
8 37 (1.86%) Citrix
9 36 (1.81%) Red Hat
10 29 (1.46%) Adobe
11 27 (1.36%) Informatica
12 23 (1.15%) HP
13 20 (1.00%) Cisco
14 18 (0.90%) MuleSoft
15 15 (0.75%) Talend
15 15 (0.75%) Workday
16 14 (0.70%) IBM
16 14 (0.70%) Splunk
17 12 (0.60%) Atlassian
17 12 (0.60%) VMware