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 19 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 60 67 64
Rank change year-on-year +7 -3 +11
Contract jobs citing QA 1,437 1,165 1,549
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.02% 3.21% 3.35%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 22.80% 24.00% 23.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 963 673 1,104
10th Percentile £300 £300 £350
25th Percentile £396 £370 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -9.52% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £650
90th Percentile £657 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £425 £475
% change year-on-year +11.76% -10.53% -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 61 47
10th Percentile £12.28 £12.00 £21.40
25th Percentile £13.50 £13.26 £25.00
Median hourly rate £17.56 £14.98 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.19% -70.04% +92.31%
75th Percentile £53.19 £28.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £62.56 £77.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.73 £14.98 £50.00
% change year-on-year +5.01% -70.04% +33.87%

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 6,302 4,855 6,656
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.65% 13.40% 14.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,045 2,834 4,449
10th Percentile £305 £269 £312
25th Percentile £402 £385 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £604 £625 £644
90th Percentile £700 £730 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £471 £500
% change year-on-year +3.61% -5.90% +4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 320 218 248
10th Percentile £13.59 £13.26 £14.46
25th Percentile £16.95 £15.79 £20.07
Median hourly rate £25.63 £27.50 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year -6.80% -25.17% +50.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £53.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.87 £70.00 £80.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.14 £26.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -16.45% -40.45% +111.90%

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 19 November 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 19 November 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 19 November 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 1,227 £493 +3.68% 1,458
UK excluding London -1 632 £475 +11.76% 983
London +11 624 £500 - 576
Work from Home +16 395 £460 -6.03% 858
North of England +6 169 £429 +5.93% 275
South East +22 134 £500 +17.65% 291
Midlands -16 112 £492 +6.38% 137
North West -5 80 £413 +3.13% 170
South West -1 78 £475 -2.56% 116
West Midlands -23 76 £508 +6.95% 94
East of England +8 70 £500 +33.33% 88
Scotland +4 57 £525 +38.16% 60
Yorkshire -14 57 £450 - 71
East Midlands +5 36 £410 -9.89% 43
North East +19 33 £500 +37.93% 35
Wales -13 16 £419 -20.31% 23
Northern Ireland 0 12 £300 -42.17% 21

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 83 (5.78%) Confluence
2 37 (2.57%) SharePoint
3 26 (1.81%) Apache
4 19 (1.32%) CMS
5 18 (1.25%) IIS
6 13 (0.90%) Apache Spark
7 12 (0.84%) WebSphere
8 11 (0.77%) SugarCRM
9 10 (0.70%) Anypoint
9 10 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
10 9 (0.63%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.42%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 6 (0.42%) Mule
11 6 (0.42%) WebLogic
12 5 (0.35%) Drupal
12 5 (0.35%) MQSeries
13 4 (0.28%) Moodle
13 4 (0.28%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
13 4 (0.28%) SAS
14 3 (0.21%) WordPress
Applications
1 67 (4.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 27 (1.88%) Microsoft Office
3 20 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
4 17 (1.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 17 (1.18%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
5 6 (0.42%) Trello
6 4 (0.28%) Autodesk Inventor
6 4 (0.28%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.28%) Simulink
6 4 (0.28%) Stateflow
7 3 (0.21%) Revit
8 2 (0.14%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.14%) MicroStation
8 2 (0.14%) Navisworks
9 1 (0.070%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.070%) Autodesk Smoke
9 1 (0.070%) Notion
9 1 (0.070%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 28 (1.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.77%) Maximo
3 9 (0.63%) Oracle EBS
4 8 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
5 7 (0.49%) Payment Gateway
5 7 (0.49%) Temenos T24
6 6 (0.42%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.35%) OpenText MBPM
7 5 (0.35%) Oracle BPM
8 4 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
8 4 (0.28%) Oracle General Ledger
8 4 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
8 4 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
8 4 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
8 4 (0.28%) Workday HCM
9 3 (0.21%) Algo Collateral
9 3 (0.21%) Oracle EBS R12
9 3 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 3 (0.21%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 308 (21.43%) Azure
2 284 (19.76%) AWS
3 97 (6.75%) GCP
4 94 (6.54%) Azure DevOps
5 90 (6.26%) GitHub
6 74 (5.15%) Power Platform
7 58 (4.04%) GitHub Actions
8 54 (3.76%) Serverless
9 43 (2.99%) AWS Lambda
10 38 (2.64%) Amazon S3
11 31 (2.16%) SaaS
12 26 (1.81%) Amazon EC2
13 24 (1.67%) AWS CloudFormation
14 22 (1.53%) Dynamics 365
14 22 (1.53%) Power Automate
15 21 (1.46%) Amazon ECS
16 20 (1.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 18 (1.25%) Snowflake
18 13 (0.90%) PowerApps
19 12 (0.84%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.39%) Internet
2 19 (1.32%) Firewall
2 19 (1.32%) HTTP
3 6 (0.42%) 5G
3 6 (0.42%) Broadband
4 5 (0.35%) OpenLDAP
4 5 (0.35%) SMS
5 4 (0.28%) SSL
5 4 (0.28%) Structured Cabling
5 4 (0.28%) TCP/IP
6 3 (0.21%) DNS
6 3 (0.21%) HTTPS
6 3 (0.21%) Network Security
6 3 (0.21%) WAN
7 2 (0.14%) Remote Desktop
7 2 (0.14%) VPN
7 2 (0.14%) Wireless
8 1 (0.070%) Cisco IPT
8 1 (0.070%) TETRA
8 1 (0.070%) VoWiFi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 70 (4.87%) SQL Server
2 63 (4.38%) Power BI
3 62 (4.31%) PostgreSQL
4 50 (3.48%) Relational Database
5 45 (3.13%) MySQL
6 43 (2.99%) MongoDB
7 40 (2.78%) NoSQL
8 38 (2.64%) Data Warehouse
9 25 (1.74%) Amazon RDS
10 22 (1.53%) BigQuery
10 22 (1.53%) Metadata
10 22 (1.53%) Tableau
11 21 (1.46%) Oracle Database
12 14 (0.97%) DB2
13 13 (0.90%) Data Lake
14 12 (0.84%) Redis
15 11 (0.77%) Big Data
16 10 (0.70%) DynamoDB
17 9 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
17 9 (0.63%) Looker
Development Applications
1 241 (16.77%) JIRA
2 141 (9.81%) Git
3 111 (7.72%) Jenkins
4 110 (7.65%) GitLab
5 105 (7.31%) Selenium
6 77 (5.36%) Cucumber
7 63 (4.38%) Postman
8 62 (4.31%) Cypress.io
9 45 (3.13%) JUnit
10 33 (2.30%) REST Assured
11 32 (2.23%) JMeter
12 20 (1.39%) Appium
13 18 (1.25%) SonarQube
14 16 (1.11%) WebDriver
15 15 (1.04%) Bitbucket
15 15 (1.04%) Gatling
16 14 (0.97%) TestNG
17 13 (0.90%) Zephyr
18 12 (0.84%) Maven
18 12 (0.84%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 569 (39.60%) Social Skills
2 363 (25.26%) Finance
3 259 (18.02%) Analytical Skills
4 147 (10.23%) Public Sector
5 146 (10.16%) Banking
6 63 (4.38%) Documentation Skills
7 41 (2.85%) Marketing
8 37 (2.57%) Telecoms
9 36 (2.51%) Legal
10 32 (2.23%) Organisational Skills
11 31 (2.16%) Investment Banking
11 31 (2.16%) Manufacturing
12 28 (1.95%) Front Office
12 28 (1.95%) Presentation Skills
13 25 (1.74%) Back Office
13 25 (1.74%) Retail
14 19 (1.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 18 (1.25%) Law
15 18 (1.25%) Pharmaceutical
16 17 (1.18%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 209 (14.54%) Developer
2 187 (13.01%) Analyst
3 157 (10.93%) Senior
4 150 (10.44%) Lead
5 91 (6.33%) Business Analyst
6 87 (6.05%) QA Engineer
7 86 (5.98%) Tester
8 61 (4.24%) Consultant
9 58 (4.04%) Test Engineer
10 53 (3.69%) Project Manager
10 53 (3.69%) Test Manager
11 52 (3.62%) Java Developer
12 46 (3.20%) Architect
13 40 (2.78%) QA Tester
14 39 (2.71%) QA Leader
15 37 (2.57%) DevOps Engineer
15 37 (2.57%) Test Analyst
16 34 (2.37%) Java Engineer
17 31 (2.16%) Software Engineer
17 31 (2.16%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 143 (9.95%) REST
2 82 (5.71%) RESTful
3 80 (5.57%) .NET
3 80 (5.57%) React
4 74 (5.15%) Playwright
4 74 (5.15%) Spring
4 74 (5.15%) Spring Boot
5 57 (3.97%) HTML
6 55 (3.83%) SOAP
7 50 (3.48%) CSS
8 49 (3.41%) Node.js
9 42 (2.92%) AngularJS
10 38 (2.64%) Kafka
11 36 (2.51%) Web Services
12 35 (2.44%) XML
13 26 (1.81%) JSON
14 25 (1.74%) .NET Framework
15 23 (1.60%) Jest
15 23 (1.60%) JMS
16 18 (1.25%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 140 (9.74%) Product Ownership
2 60 (4.18%) Onboarding
3 55 (3.83%) Cloud Native
4 48 (3.34%) Mobile App
5 36 (2.51%) Data Protection Act
6 28 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
6 28 (1.95%) Management Information System
7 26 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
8 24 (1.67%) Analytical Mindset
9 23 (1.60%) Algorithms
9 23 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
10 22 (1.53%) Data Structures
10 22 (1.53%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 19 (1.32%) Virtual Team
12 18 (1.25%) PMI
13 16 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
14 13 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
14 13 (0.90%) Reinsurance
15 12 (0.84%) Derivative
15 12 (0.84%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 79 (5.50%) Windows
2 48 (3.34%) Linux
3 25 (1.74%) Unix
4 23 (1.60%) Android
4 23 (1.60%) Apple iOS
5 15 (1.04%) Windows Server
6 8 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.42%) Ubuntu
8 4 (0.28%) CentOS
9 3 (0.21%) Debian
9 3 (0.21%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.14%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.14%) Solaris
10 2 (0.14%) VMS
11 1 (0.070%) Mac OS X
11 1 (0.070%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 632 (43.98%) Agile
2 400 (27.84%) CI/CD
3 384 (26.72%) DevOps
3 384 (26.72%) Problem-Solving
4 381 (26.51%) Test Automation
5 195 (13.57%) Stakeholder Management
6 192 (13.36%) Scrum
7 184 (12.80%) Continuous Improvement
8 175 (12.18%) User Acceptance Testing
9 167 (11.62%) Test Strategy
10 165 (11.48%) Validation
11 157 (10.93%) Migration
12 151 (10.51%) Microservices
13 141 (9.81%) SDLC
13 141 (9.81%) Test Scripting
14 125 (8.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 117 (8.14%) User Experience
16 110 (7.65%) Software Engineering
17 107 (7.45%) Project Management
18 104 (7.24%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 257 (17.88%) SQL
2 208 (14.47%) Java
3 195 (13.57%) Python
4 131 (9.12%) JavaScript
5 95 (6.61%) C#
6 80 (5.57%) TypeScript
7 31 (2.16%) PL/SQL
8 23 (1.60%) PHP
9 21 (1.46%) PowerShell
10 19 (1.32%) Go
10 19 (1.32%) T-SQL
11 16 (1.11%) C++
11 16 (1.11%) Kotlin
12 15 (1.04%) Bash
13 13 (0.90%) C
13 13 (0.90%) Perl
13 13 (0.90%) Shell Script
14 11 (0.77%) VB
14 11 (0.77%) VBA
15 10 (0.70%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 235 (16.35%) Security Cleared
2 198 (13.78%) SC Cleared
3 137 (9.53%) Degree
4 47 (3.27%) PMI Certification
5 45 (3.13%) Computer Science Degree
6 42 (2.92%) BPSS Clearance
7 41 (2.85%) ISTQB
8 37 (2.57%) PMP
9 30 (2.09%) Master's Degree
10 20 (1.39%) AWS Certification
11 19 (1.32%) CISSP
11 19 (1.32%) DV Cleared
12 13 (0.90%) Oracle Certification
13 12 (0.84%) Azure Certification
14 11 (0.77%) CBAP
14 11 (0.77%) CISM
14 11 (0.77%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 8 (0.56%) OCA
16 7 (0.49%) CEH
16 7 (0.49%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 108 (7.52%) Accessibility
2 67 (4.66%) Data Quality
3 32 (2.23%) GDPR
4 24 (1.67%) PMO
5 22 (1.53%) WCAG
6 18 (1.25%) PSD2
7 16 (1.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (1.04%) NIST
8 15 (1.04%) SEPA
9 13 (0.90%) Software Quality Assurance
10 12 (0.84%) ISO 20022
10 12 (0.84%) SLA
11 10 (0.70%) PCI DSS
12 8 (0.56%) COBIT
12 8 (0.56%) ISO 9001
13 7 (0.49%) GxP
14 6 (0.42%) ISO 8583
15 5 (0.35%) GRC
15 5 (0.35%) IFRS
15 5 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 107 (7.45%) Docker
2 11 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
3 10 (0.70%) Active Directory
4 3 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
4 3 (0.21%) 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
1 115 (8.00%) Kubernetes
2 56 (3.90%) Terraform
3 38 (2.64%) Ansible
4 25 (1.74%) Grafana
5 13 (0.90%) Prometheus
6 10 (0.70%) Argo
6 10 (0.70%) HP ALM
7 6 (0.42%) Progress Chef
7 6 (0.42%) Puppet
8 5 (0.35%) CloudHub
8 5 (0.35%) Control-M
9 4 (0.28%) Consul
9 4 (0.28%) HP Quality Center
9 4 (0.28%) Rsyslog
9 4 (0.28%) SCOM
10 3 (0.21%) Nagios
10 3 (0.21%) PingFederate
10 3 (0.21%) RSA Archer
10 3 (0.21%) Salt
10 3 (0.21%) SCCM
Vendors
1 160 (11.13%) Microsoft
2 113 (7.86%) Oracle
3 68 (4.73%) SAP
4 55 (3.83%) ServiceNow
5 53 (3.69%) Salesforce
6 32 (2.23%) Google
7 20 (1.39%) IBM
8 19 (1.32%) Databricks
9 17 (1.18%) HP
9 17 (1.18%) MuleSoft
9 17 (1.18%) Splunk
10 15 (1.04%) Red Hat
11 14 (0.97%) Citrix
12 13 (0.90%) UiPath
12 13 (0.90%) Workday
13 12 (0.84%) VMware
14 9 (0.63%) Adobe
14 9 (0.63%) Blue Prism
15 8 (0.56%) Guidewire
15 8 (0.56%) Pega