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 1 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 59 66 63
Rank change year-on-year +7 -3 +13
Contract jobs citing QA 1,423 1,195 1,519
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.98% 3.32% 3.33%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 22.78% 24.13% 23.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 950 702 1,092
10th Percentile £306 £300 £350
25th Percentile £400 £374 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.37% -9.52% -
75th Percentile £583 £580 £646
90th Percentile £671 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +5.56% -5.26% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 52 45
10th Percentile £12.26 £12.02 £21.50
25th Percentile £13.48 £13.26 £25.00
Median hourly rate £16.24 £15.20 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.82% -69.60% +101.17%
75th Percentile £52.63 £28.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £61.05 £77.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.73 £14.99 £50.00
% change year-on-year +4.94% -70.02% +108.33%

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 6,246 4,952 6,579
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.48% 13.76% 14.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,021 2,891 4,391
10th Percentile £310 £265 £313
25th Percentile £404 £382 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £645
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 309 219 242
10th Percentile £13.58 £13.52 £14.61
25th Percentile £17.48 £17.56 £20.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £26.50 £35.79
Median % change year-on-year -5.09% -25.96% +52.30%
75th Percentile £60.00 £54.68 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.88 £70.00 £82.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.14 £25.60 £36.75
% change year-on-year -13.52% -30.34% +75.00%

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 1 December 2025.

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 1 December 2025.

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 1 December 2025. 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 +9 1,220 £492 +2.50% 703
London +9 628 £500 - 199
UK excluding London -6 614 £475 +5.56% 616
Work from Home +9 386 £459 -4.93% 546
North of England +7 170 £430 +3.30% 155
South East +21 141 £500 +21.21% 214
Midlands -19 105 £500 +8.11% 91
North West +3 83 £404 -2.12% 94
West Midlands -20 75 £511 +2.20% 65
South West -8 72 £488 - 64
East of England +8 64 £500 +25.00% 72
Yorkshire -10 56 £450 - 39
Scotland +8 55 £513 +34.87% 30
North East +10 32 £500 +21.95% 22
East Midlands +4 30 £430 +3.86% 26
Wales -15 16 £419 -20.31% 9
Northern Ireland -2 7 - - 6

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 84 (5.90%) Confluence
2 38 (2.67%) SharePoint
3 22 (1.55%) Apache
4 20 (1.41%) CMS
5 16 (1.12%) IIS
6 13 (0.91%) Apache Spark
7 11 (0.77%) SugarCRM
8 10 (0.70%) Anypoint
9 9 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
9 9 (0.63%) WebSphere
10 6 (0.42%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 6 (0.42%) Mule
10 6 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
11 5 (0.35%) MQSeries
11 5 (0.35%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 4 (0.28%) Drupal
12 4 (0.28%) SAS
12 4 (0.28%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.21%) OpenStack
14 2 (0.14%) Jupyter
Applications
1 68 (4.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (2.11%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.62%) Microsoft Project
4 17 (1.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 16 (1.12%) MS Visio
6 6 (0.42%) Trello
7 5 (0.35%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
8 4 (0.28%) Autodesk Inventor
8 4 (0.28%) Simulink
8 4 (0.28%) Stateflow
9 3 (0.21%) Revit
10 2 (0.14%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.14%) MicroStation
10 2 (0.14%) Navisworks
11 1 (0.070%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.070%) Autodesk Smoke
11 1 (0.070%) Notion
11 1 (0.070%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 29 (2.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (0.63%) Oracle EBS
3 7 (0.49%) Payment Gateway
3 7 (0.49%) Temenos T24
4 6 (0.42%) Maximo
4 6 (0.42%) Oracle Cash Management
4 6 (0.42%) Oracle General Ledger
4 6 (0.42%) Oracle Payables
4 6 (0.42%) Oracle Receivables
4 6 (0.42%) SAP ERP
5 4 (0.28%) OpenText MBPM
5 4 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
5 4 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 4 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
5 4 (0.28%) Workday HCM
6 3 (0.21%) Endur
6 3 (0.21%) SAP PM
6 3 (0.21%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 317 (22.28%) Azure
2 278 (19.54%) AWS
3 99 (6.96%) Azure DevOps
4 96 (6.75%) GCP
5 87 (6.11%) GitHub
6 80 (5.62%) Power Platform
7 61 (4.29%) GitHub Actions
8 57 (4.01%) Serverless
9 43 (3.02%) AWS Lambda
10 39 (2.74%) Amazon S3
11 34 (2.39%) SaaS
12 25 (1.76%) Dynamics 365
13 24 (1.69%) Power Automate
14 22 (1.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 22 (1.55%) Amazon EC2
15 21 (1.48%) Amazon ECS
15 21 (1.48%) AWS CloudFormation
16 17 (1.19%) Snowflake
17 15 (1.05%) PowerApps
18 14 (0.98%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 19 (1.34%) Firewall
2 17 (1.19%) HTTP
2 17 (1.19%) Internet
3 6 (0.42%) 5G
3 6 (0.42%) Broadband
4 5 (0.35%) OpenLDAP
4 5 (0.35%) SMS
5 4 (0.28%) Structured Cabling
5 4 (0.28%) WAN
5 4 (0.28%) Wireless
6 3 (0.21%) HTTPS
6 3 (0.21%) Network Security
6 3 (0.21%) VPN
7 2 (0.14%) DNS
7 2 (0.14%) Remote Desktop
7 2 (0.14%) SSL
7 2 (0.14%) TCP/IP
7 2 (0.14%) WebEx
8 1 (0.070%) MQTT
8 1 (0.070%) VoWiFi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (4.85%) Power BI
2 68 (4.78%) SQL Server
3 56 (3.94%) PostgreSQL
4 53 (3.72%) Relational Database
5 43 (3.02%) MySQL
6 41 (2.88%) MongoDB
7 38 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
8 37 (2.60%) NoSQL
9 23 (1.62%) BigQuery
9 23 (1.62%) Tableau
10 20 (1.41%) Metadata
10 20 (1.41%) Oracle Database
11 19 (1.34%) Amazon RDS
12 14 (0.98%) Data Lake
13 12 (0.84%) Redis
14 11 (0.77%) Big Data
15 10 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
15 10 (0.70%) Looker
16 9 (0.63%) DB2
17 8 (0.56%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 251 (17.64%) JIRA
2 130 (9.14%) Git
3 115 (8.08%) GitLab
4 111 (7.80%) Jenkins
5 103 (7.24%) Selenium
6 73 (5.13%) Cucumber
7 64 (4.50%) Cypress.io
7 64 (4.50%) Postman
8 40 (2.81%) JUnit
9 36 (2.53%) JMeter
10 32 (2.25%) REST Assured
11 20 (1.41%) Appium
12 16 (1.12%) Gatling
13 15 (1.05%) Bitbucket
13 15 (1.05%) SonarQube
14 14 (0.98%) WebDriver
15 13 (0.91%) TestNG
16 12 (0.84%) Zephyr
17 10 (0.70%) TestRail
17 10 (0.70%) webpack
General
1 584 (41.04%) Social Skills
2 374 (26.28%) Finance
3 256 (17.99%) Analytical Skills
4 152 (10.68%) Public Sector
5 149 (10.47%) Banking
6 59 (4.15%) Documentation Skills
7 41 (2.88%) Marketing
8 40 (2.81%) Legal
9 36 (2.53%) Telecoms
10 33 (2.32%) Manufacturing
11 30 (2.11%) Investment Banking
12 29 (2.04%) Organisational Skills
13 28 (1.97%) Presentation Skills
14 27 (1.90%) Front Office
15 26 (1.83%) Retail
16 25 (1.76%) Back Office
17 19 (1.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 18 (1.26%) Pharmaceutical
19 17 (1.19%) Aerospace
19 17 (1.19%) Law
Job Titles
1 201 (14.13%) Developer
2 186 (13.07%) Analyst
3 165 (11.60%) Senior
4 152 (10.68%) Lead
5 93 (6.54%) QA Engineer
6 86 (6.04%) Business Analyst
7 84 (5.90%) Tester
8 65 (4.57%) Test Engineer
9 60 (4.22%) Project Manager
10 57 (4.01%) Consultant
11 53 (3.72%) Java Developer
12 51 (3.58%) Test Manager
13 48 (3.37%) Architect
14 41 (2.88%) Test Analyst
15 38 (2.67%) QA Leader
16 34 (2.39%) QA Tester
16 34 (2.39%) Test Leader
17 33 (2.32%) DevOps Engineer
18 31 (2.18%) Java Engineer
19 28 (1.97%) Automation Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 145 (10.19%) REST
2 88 (6.18%) .NET
3 82 (5.76%) RESTful
4 77 (5.41%) Playwright
5 74 (5.20%) React
5 74 (5.20%) Spring Boot
6 72 (5.06%) Spring
7 52 (3.65%) HTML
8 51 (3.58%) SOAP
9 47 (3.30%) CSS
10 43 (3.02%) Node.js
11 41 (2.88%) AngularJS
12 40 (2.81%) Kafka
13 31 (2.18%) XML
14 29 (2.04%) .NET Framework
15 28 (1.97%) Web Services
16 27 (1.90%) JMS
17 26 (1.83%) JSON
18 24 (1.69%) Oracle Fusion
19 20 (1.41%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 139 (9.77%) Product Ownership
2 59 (4.15%) Cloud Native
3 58 (4.08%) Onboarding
4 49 (3.44%) Mobile App
5 35 (2.46%) Data Protection Act
6 28 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
7 27 (1.90%) Management Information System
8 26 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
8 26 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
9 25 (1.76%) Analytical Mindset
9 25 (1.76%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 22 (1.55%) Data Structures
11 19 (1.34%) PMI
11 19 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
12 17 (1.19%) Algorithms
12 17 (1.19%) Virtual Team
13 13 (0.91%) Data Centre
13 13 (0.91%) Derivative
13 13 (0.91%) Reinsurance
14 12 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 75 (5.27%) Windows
2 46 (3.23%) Linux
3 23 (1.62%) Android
4 22 (1.55%) Apple iOS
5 19 (1.34%) Unix
6 17 (1.19%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 6 (0.42%) Ubuntu
9 4 (0.28%) CentOS
10 3 (0.21%) Debian
10 3 (0.21%) VMS
10 3 (0.21%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.14%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.14%) Solaris
12 1 (0.070%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.070%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 641 (45.05%) Agile
2 411 (28.88%) CI/CD
3 393 (27.62%) DevOps
4 390 (27.41%) Problem-Solving
5 375 (26.35%) Test Automation
6 211 (14.83%) Stakeholder Management
7 196 (13.77%) Scrum
8 186 (13.07%) Continuous Improvement
9 181 (12.72%) User Acceptance Testing
10 169 (11.88%) Validation
11 166 (11.67%) Test Strategy
12 162 (11.38%) Migration
13 158 (11.10%) Microservices
14 142 (9.98%) SDLC
15 140 (9.84%) Test Scripting
16 126 (8.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 120 (8.43%) User Experience
18 113 (7.94%) Project Management
19 105 (7.38%) Software Testing
20 104 (7.31%) AI
Programming Languages
1 258 (18.13%) SQL
2 201 (14.13%) Java
3 181 (12.72%) Python
4 122 (8.57%) JavaScript
5 105 (7.38%) C#
6 81 (5.69%) TypeScript
7 36 (2.53%) PL/SQL
8 24 (1.69%) PHP
9 23 (1.62%) T-SQL
10 20 (1.41%) Go
10 20 (1.41%) PowerShell
11 17 (1.19%) C++
12 16 (1.12%) Bash
13 15 (1.05%) Kotlin
14 13 (0.91%) C
15 12 (0.84%) VBA
16 10 (0.70%) Ruby
16 10 (0.70%) VB
17 8 (0.56%) Perl
17 8 (0.56%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 230 (16.16%) Security Cleared
2 193 (13.56%) SC Cleared
3 144 (10.12%) Degree
4 52 (3.65%) PMI Certification
5 49 (3.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 42 (2.95%) PMP
7 41 (2.88%) ISTQB
8 39 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
9 33 (2.32%) Master's Degree
10 19 (1.34%) AWS Certification
10 19 (1.34%) CISSP
11 17 (1.19%) DV Cleared
12 15 (1.05%) Oracle Certification
13 11 (0.77%) Azure Certification
13 11 (0.77%) CBAP
13 11 (0.77%) CISM
14 10 (0.70%) OCA
15 8 (0.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 7 (0.49%) CEH
17 6 (0.42%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 109 (7.66%) Accessibility
2 64 (4.50%) Data Quality
3 39 (2.74%) GDPR
4 27 (1.90%) PMO
5 23 (1.62%) WCAG
6 19 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 19 (1.34%) PSD2
7 16 (1.12%) NIST
7 16 (1.12%) SEPA
8 13 (0.91%) ISO 20022
8 13 (0.91%) PCI DSS
9 12 (0.84%) SLA
9 12 (0.84%) Software Quality Assurance
10 9 (0.63%) COBIT
11 8 (0.56%) GxP
11 8 (0.56%) ISO 9001
12 7 (0.49%) IFRS
13 6 (0.42%) EU AI Act
13 6 (0.42%) ISO 8583
13 6 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 107 (7.52%) Docker
2 10 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (0.49%) Active Directory
4 4 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
4 4 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
5 2 (0.14%) VirtualBox
6 1 (0.070%) Firmware
6 1 (0.070%) GridGain
6 1 (0.070%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.070%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.070%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 113 (7.94%) Kubernetes
2 65 (4.57%) Terraform
3 41 (2.88%) Ansible
4 30 (2.11%) Grafana
5 14 (0.98%) Prometheus
6 10 (0.70%) HP ALM
7 8 (0.56%) Argo
8 7 (0.49%) Puppet
9 6 (0.42%) Progress Chef
10 5 (0.35%) CloudHub
10 5 (0.35%) Control-M
11 4 (0.28%) Consul
11 4 (0.28%) Rsyslog
11 4 (0.28%) SCOM
11 4 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.21%) Nagios
12 3 (0.21%) PingFederate
12 3 (0.21%) RSA Archer
12 3 (0.21%) Salt
13 2 (0.14%) Nmap
Vendors
1 166 (11.67%) Microsoft
2 115 (8.08%) Oracle
3 73 (5.13%) SAP
4 58 (4.08%) ServiceNow
5 55 (3.87%) Salesforce
6 34 (2.39%) Google
7 22 (1.55%) Citrix
8 19 (1.34%) Databricks
8 19 (1.34%) Splunk
9 17 (1.19%) HP
9 17 (1.19%) IBM
9 17 (1.19%) MuleSoft
10 14 (0.98%) Red Hat
10 14 (0.98%) Workday
11 13 (0.91%) UiPath
12 11 (0.77%) VMware
13 9 (0.63%) Adobe
13 9 (0.63%) Blue Prism
14 8 (0.56%) Pega
15 7 (0.49%) Dynatrace