Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 28 September 2021

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for QA skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited QA over the 6 months to 28 September 2021 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Quality Assurance (QA)
UK
6 months to
28 Sep 2021		 Same period 2020 Same period 2019
Rank 80 79 77
Rank change year-on-year -1 -2 -4
Contract jobs citing QA 2,451 901 2,631
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.02% 3.06% 3.02%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 24.15% 26.41% 26.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,680 597 1,674
10th Percentile £313 £300 £308
25th Percentile £388 £374 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £450 £450
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% - -
75th Percentile £575 £550 £538
90th Percentile £650 £622 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £450 £425
% change year-on-year -2.78% +5.88% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 22 58
10th Percentile £13.04 £11.18 £9.65
25th Percentile £14.61 £13.52 £14.04
Median hourly rate £20.50 £18.50 £24.13
Median % change year-on-year +10.81% -23.32% -32.52%
75th Percentile £29.25 £29.00 £42.62
90th Percentile £59.55 £39.45 £53.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.00 £19.00 £24.13
% change year-on-year +5.26% -21.24% +10.93%

QA is in the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills.

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK
Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 10,149 3,412 9,807
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.52% 11.59% 11.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,838 2,135 6,192
10th Percentile £265 £269 £250
25th Percentile £381 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £468 £450
Median % change year-on-year +6.95% +3.89% -
75th Percentile £594 £564 £550
90th Percentile £686 £638 £633
UK excluding London median daily rate £435 £438 £425
% change year-on-year -0.57% +2.94% +3.03%
Number of hourly rates quoted 331 148 402
10th Percentile £11.17 £10.92 £10.81
25th Percentile £13.00 £15.44 £14.34
Median hourly rate £20.00 £22.25 £20.50
Median % change year-on-year -10.11% +8.54% +3.84%
75th Percentile £45.63 £45.00 £44.87
90th Percentile £62.34 £55.00 £53.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.50 £22.50 £22.00
% change year-on-year -22.22% +2.27% +10.00%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing QA as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing QA.

Daily rate trend for QA in the UK

QA
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA over the 6 months to 28 September 2021.

Daily rate histogram for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing QA.

Hourly rate trend for QA in the UK

QA
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing QA over the 6 months to 28 September 2021.

Hourly rate histogram for QA in the UK

QA
Top 17 Contract 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 28 September 2021. 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
Job
Vacancies
England -4 2,002 £480 +6.67% 812
London 0 1,159 £520 +9.47% 279
UK excluding London -11 800 £438 -2.78% 587
Work from Home -9 697 £500 +15.07% 167
South East +11 240 £453 +3.43% 126
North of England -11 208 £450 - 173
Midlands -21 133 £411 +8.22% 108
North West -13 112 £428 -5.00% 97
West Midlands -23 80 £425 +18.06% 61
Yorkshire +8 74 £450 -5.26% 41
Scotland -61 69 £400 -11.11% 39
South West +4 61 £430 +27.12% 53
East of England -26 58 £450 -8.63% 66
East Midlands -15 53 £375 -14.77% 47
North East -3 22 £600 +24.03% 35
Wales -16 21 £431 -13.75% 17
Northern Ireland -1 10 £475 +10.21% 8

For the 6 months to 28 September 2021, IT contractor jobs citing QA also mentioned the following skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads with a requirement for QA.

1 1,019 (41.57%) Agile Software Development
2 681 (27.78%) Test Automation
3 652 (26.60%) Social Skills
4 470 (19.18%) Finance
5 464 (18.93%) SQL
6 413 (16.85%) Java
7 404 (16.48%) DevOps
8 400 (16.32%) Scrum
9 377 (15.38%) Azure
10 345 (14.08%) JIRA
11 303 (12.36%) Problem-Solving
12 298 (12.16%) Analytical Skills
13 292 (11.91%) JavaScript
14 266 (10.85%) Python
15 263 (10.73%) Selenium
16 258 (10.53%) Microsoft
17 250 (10.20%) AWS
18 246 (10.04%) Project Management
19 238 (9.71%) Oracle
20 233 (9.51%) TDD
20 233 (9.51%) Microservices
21 231 (9.42%) User Acceptance Testing
22 227 (9.26%) Cucumber
23 223 (9.10%) Git (software)
24 221 (9.02%) BDD
25 212 (8.65%) Jenkins
26 211 (8.61%) Software Engineering
27 209 (8.53%) Stakeholder Management
28 205 (8.36%) Public Sector
29 203 (8.28%) Software Testing

QA
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same job type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 153 (6.24%) Confluence
2 57 (2.33%) SharePoint
3 42 (1.71%) Apache Spark
3 42 (1.71%) CMS
4 39 (1.59%) Apache
5 26 (1.06%) IIS
6 21 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
7 16 (0.65%) Elasticsearch
8 14 (0.57%) Sitecore CMS
9 11 (0.45%) Headless CMS
9 11 (0.45%) WebLogic
10 10 (0.41%) SAS
11 9 (0.37%) Tomcat
12 7 (0.29%) JBoss
12 7 (0.29%) nginx
13 5 (0.20%) Drupal
13 5 (0.20%) MS Exchange
13 5 (0.20%) WebSphere
14 4 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 4 (0.16%) Documentum
Applications
1 127 (5.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 74 (3.02%) Microsoft Office
3 56 (2.28%) MS Visio
4 34 (1.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 27 (1.10%) Microsoft Project
6 13 (0.53%) Sketch
7 11 (0.45%) InVision
8 9 (0.37%) Figma
9 8 (0.33%) Photoshop
9 8 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
10 6 (0.24%) Adobe Premiere
11 5 (0.20%) AutoCAD
12 4 (0.16%) Open Workbench
12 4 (0.16%) Revit
13 3 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.12%) InDesign
13 3 (0.12%) ProjectWise
14 2 (0.082%) Mingle
14 2 (0.082%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 20 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
2 14 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
4 11 (0.45%) SAP HCM
5 10 (0.41%) Salesforce.com CRM
6 9 (0.37%) SAP FI-CA
6 9 (0.37%) SAP PSCD
7 8 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
8 6 (0.24%) Relativity
9 5 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.20%) Oracle EBS R12
9 5 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
10 4 (0.16%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.16%) Endur
10 4 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
10 4 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
10 4 (0.16%) SAP CO
10 4 (0.16%) SAP FI
10 4 (0.16%) SAP FI/CO
10 4 (0.16%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 377 (15.38%) Azure
2 250 (10.20%) AWS
3 118 (4.81%) GitHub
4 93 (3.79%) SaaS
5 92 (3.75%) Serverless
6 90 (3.67%) Power Platform
7 53 (2.16%) GCP
8 49 (2.00%) AWS Lambda
8 49 (2.00%) PaaS
9 45 (1.84%) Datadog
10 42 (1.71%) Microsoft 365
11 39 (1.59%) IaaS
12 36 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
12 36 (1.47%) Amazon S3
12 36 (1.47%) Azure Active Directory
13 30 (1.22%) GitHub Actions
14 28 (1.14%) Dynamics 365
15 27 (1.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 27 (1.10%) BrowserStack
16 24 (0.98%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 34 (1.39%) Firewall
2 33 (1.35%) WAN
3 32 (1.31%) HTTP
4 31 (1.26%) Internet
5 30 (1.22%) DNS
6 17 (0.69%) LAN
6 17 (0.69%) SSL
7 16 (0.65%) Network Security
8 15 (0.61%) VPN
9 14 (0.57%) FTP
9 14 (0.57%) TCP/IP
10 13 (0.53%) SAN
11 12 (0.49%) 2G
12 11 (0.45%) 4G
12 11 (0.45%) RNC
12 11 (0.45%) SNMP
12 11 (0.45%) Unified Communications
13 10 (0.41%) 3G
14 9 (0.37%) MGW
14 9 (0.37%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 143 (5.83%) SQL Server
2 75 (3.06%) Power BI
3 65 (2.65%) Data Warehouse
4 60 (2.45%) NoSQL
5 53 (2.16%) Hadoop
6 52 (2.12%) Oracle Reports
7 51 (2.08%) Big Data
8 48 (1.96%) Oracle Database
8 48 (1.96%) Tableau
9 47 (1.92%) MongoDB
10 45 (1.84%) Relational Database
11 41 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
12 36 (1.47%) MySQL
13 35 (1.43%) Data Lake
13 35 (1.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 33 (1.35%) Metadata
15 26 (1.06%) Azure SQL Database
16 23 (0.94%) Apache Hive
17 19 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
18 17 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 345 (14.08%) JIRA
2 263 (10.73%) Selenium
3 227 (9.26%) Cucumber
4 223 (9.10%) Git (software)
5 212 (8.65%) Jenkins
6 111 (4.53%) Postman
7 68 (2.77%) JMeter
7 68 (2.77%) Maven
8 62 (2.53%) Cypress.io
9 61 (2.49%) Gatling
10 55 (2.24%) Appium
11 54 (2.20%) JUnit
12 50 (2.04%) GitLab
12 50 (2.04%) SoapUI
13 49 (2.00%) SpecFlow
14 47 (1.92%) Protractor
15 46 (1.88%) REST Assured
16 40 (1.63%) WebDriver
17 35 (1.43%) TeamCity
17 35 (1.43%) Visual Studio
General
1 652 (26.60%) Social Skills
2 470 (19.18%) Finance
3 298 (12.16%) Analytical Skills
4 205 (8.36%) Public Sector
5 180 (7.34%) Banking
6 95 (3.88%) Retail
7 87 (3.55%) Influencing Skills
8 74 (3.02%) Marketing
9 62 (2.53%) Telecoms
10 61 (2.49%) Presentation Skills
11 56 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
12 48 (1.96%) Legal
13 45 (1.84%) Investment Banking
14 43 (1.75%) Manufacturing
15 36 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
16 30 (1.22%) Front Office
17 28 (1.14%) Law
18 25 (1.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 22 (0.90%) Local Government
20 19 (0.78%) Games
Job Titles
1 428 (17.46%) Developer
2 421 (17.18%) Analyst
3 187 (7.63%) Tester
4 172 (7.02%) Business Analyst
5 155 (6.32%) QA Engineer
6 146 (5.96%) Architect
7 116 (4.73%) Consultant
8 106 (4.32%) Test Engineer
9 95 (3.88%) Test Analyst
10 84 (3.43%) QA Tester
11 79 (3.22%) Project Manager
12 71 (2.90%) Automation Tester
13 70 (2.86%) Java Developer
14 66 (2.69%) Data Analyst
15 65 (2.65%) Test Manager
16 63 (2.57%) QA Analyst
17 59 (2.41%) Software Engineer
18 58 (2.37%) Test Leader
19 56 (2.28%) Solutions Architect
20 53 (2.16%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 171 (6.98%) .NET
2 159 (6.49%) REST
3 139 (5.67%) HTML
4 137 (5.59%) RESTful
5 136 (5.55%) Node.js
6 131 (5.34%) CSS
6 131 (5.34%) React
7 122 (4.98%) Web Services
8 100 (4.08%) Spring
9 98 (4.00%) JSON
10 97 (3.96%) XML
11 92 (3.75%) AngularJS
12 78 (3.18%) Gherkin
12 78 (3.18%) GraphQL
13 62 (2.53%) Kafka
14 60 (2.45%) SOAP
15 58 (2.37%) Spring Boot
16 45 (1.84%) HTML5
17 38 (1.55%) .NET Framework
17 38 (1.55%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 137 (5.59%) User Experience
2 85 (3.47%) Management Information System
3 79 (3.22%) Self-Motivation
4 68 (2.77%) Mobile App
5 59 (2.41%) Virtual Team
6 50 (2.04%) Data Structures
7 47 (1.92%) Greenfield Project
8 42 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
9 38 (1.55%) Data Centre
10 35 (1.43%) Cloud Native
11 31 (1.26%) Public Cloud
12 30 (1.22%) NHS
13 28 (1.14%) Legacy Systems
14 25 (1.02%) Algorithms
14 25 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
15 17 (0.69%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 17 (0.69%) Hybrid Cloud
16 16 (0.65%) Linux Command Line
17 13 (0.53%) N-Tier
18 12 (0.49%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 151 (6.16%) Windows
2 134 (5.47%) Linux
3 101 (4.12%) Unix
4 72 (2.94%) Apple iOS
5 70 (2.86%) Android
6 20 (0.82%) Windows 10
7 18 (0.73%) Windows Server
8 9 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
9 8 (0.33%) Mac OS
10 7 (0.29%) VMS
10 7 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
11 5 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 5 (0.20%) Solaris
11 5 (0.20%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.12%) AIX
12 3 (0.12%) CentOS
12 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
13 1 (0.041%) SUSE
13 1 (0.041%) Windows NT
13 1 (0.041%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,019 (41.57%) Agile Software Development
2 681 (27.78%) Test Automation
3 404 (16.48%) DevOps
4 400 (16.32%) Scrum
5 303 (12.36%) Problem-Solving
6 246 (10.04%) Project Management
7 233 (9.51%) Microservices
7 233 (9.51%) TDD
8 231 (9.42%) User Acceptance Testing
9 221 (9.02%) BDD
10 211 (8.61%) Software Engineering
11 209 (8.53%) Stakeholder Management
12 203 (8.28%) Software Testing
13 199 (8.12%) Continuous Integration
13 199 (8.12%) SDLC
14 190 (7.75%) Test Strategy
15 182 (7.43%) Continuous Improvement
16 179 (7.30%) Test Scripting
17 178 (7.26%) Analytics
18 145 (5.92%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 464 (18.93%) SQL
2 413 (16.85%) Java
3 292 (11.91%) JavaScript
4 266 (10.85%) Python
5 199 (8.12%) C#
6 69 (2.82%) Scala
7 65 (2.65%) Ruby
8 58 (2.37%) TypeScript
9 55 (2.24%) C++
9 55 (2.24%) PowerShell
10 45 (1.84%) PL/SQL
11 44 (1.80%) R
12 39 (1.59%) T-SQL
13 38 (1.55%) Bash Shell
14 36 (1.47%) VBA
15 35 (1.43%) C
16 30 (1.22%) VB
17 29 (1.18%) Shell Script
18 27 (1.10%) Java 8
19 21 (0.86%) PHP
Qualifications
1 203 (8.28%) Security Cleared
2 191 (7.79%) Degree
3 164 (6.69%) SC Cleared
4 101 (4.12%) ISTQB
5 71 (2.90%) ISEB
6 62 (2.53%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 48 (1.96%) Computer Science Degree
8 42 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
9 25 (1.02%) DV Cleared
9 25 (1.02%) PMP
10 21 (0.86%) CISSP
10 21 (0.86%) PMI Certification
11 19 (0.78%) Cisco Certification
11 19 (0.78%) Master's Degree
12 16 (0.65%) CCNP
13 11 (0.45%) CISM
13 11 (0.45%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 9 (0.37%) MBCS
14 9 (0.37%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 8 (0.33%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (3.39%) Data Quality
2 70 (2.86%) Accessibility
3 62 (2.53%) PMO
4 29 (1.18%) GDPR
5 25 (1.02%) WCAG
6 23 (0.94%) SLA
7 18 (0.73%) MiFID
7 18 (0.73%) NIST
8 17 (0.69%) Disclosure Scotland
9 16 (0.65%) GRC
10 12 (0.49%) EMIR
10 12 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 8 (0.33%) FATCA
12 7 (0.29%) GMP
13 6 (0.24%) ISO 9000
14 5 (0.20%) GLP
14 5 (0.20%) GxP
14 5 (0.20%) IFRS
14 5 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 4 (0.16%) HL7
System Software
1 184 (7.51%) Docker
2 46 (1.88%) Active Directory
3 24 (0.98%) Virtual Machines
4 13 (0.53%) VMware Infrastructure
5 11 (0.45%) HDFS
6 7 (0.29%) vSphere
7 5 (0.20%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.16%) NFS
9 3 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.041%) Firmware
10 1 (0.041%) GeoWebCache
10 1 (0.041%) PowerHA
10 1 (0.041%) Varnish
10 1 (0.041%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.041%) VirtualBox
10 1 (0.041%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 136 (5.55%) Kubernetes
2 63 (2.57%) Terraform
3 47 (1.92%) Ansible
4 34 (1.39%) Grafana
5 22 (0.90%) Prometheus
6 21 (0.86%) HP ALM
7 17 (0.69%) HP Quality Center
7 17 (0.69%) ZABBIX
8 11 (0.45%) Puppet
9 10 (0.41%) Rancher
10 9 (0.37%) Kibana
11 8 (0.33%) Packer
11 8 (0.33%) SCCM
12 7 (0.29%) Control-M
13 6 (0.24%) logstash
13 6 (0.24%) Nessus
13 6 (0.24%) Opscode Chef
14 5 (0.20%) Core Impact
14 5 (0.20%) Istio
14 5 (0.20%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 258 (10.53%) Microsoft
2 238 (9.71%) Oracle
3 104 (4.24%) SAP
4 97 (3.96%) Salesforce.com
5 43 (1.75%) Atlassian
6 42 (1.71%) Splunk
7 41 (1.67%) Google
8 35 (1.43%) IBM
9 32 (1.31%) ServiceNow
10 30 (1.22%) Cisco
10 30 (1.22%) Informatica
11 28 (1.14%) Adobe
12 27 (1.10%) Red Hat
13 25 (1.02%) VMware
14 24 (0.98%) HP
15 21 (0.86%) Databricks
16 20 (0.82%) CA
17 18 (0.73%) New Relic
18 17 (0.69%) Citrix
18 17 (0.69%) Cloudera
917 QA job vacancies Nationwide