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 16 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 60 67 59
Rank change year-on-year +7 -8 +13
Contract jobs citing QA 1,835 1,085 1,444
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.65% 3.66% 3.31%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.79% 22.68% 24.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,146 757 939
10th Percentile £315 £283 £310
25th Percentile £394 £384 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -1.67%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £460 £500
% change year-on-year -2.17% -8.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 134 29 101
10th Percentile £13.20 £13.49 £10.86
25th Percentile £16.13 £15.12 £12.24
Median hourly rate £31.02 £30.00 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.40% +114.29% -37.74%
75th Percentile £67.50 £68.50 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £71.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.02 £52.50 £13.52
% change year-on-year -40.91% +288.31% -28.84%

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 8,420 4,784 5,974
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.77% 16.15% 13.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,396 3,044 3,724
10th Percentile £340 £275 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £508
Median % change year-on-year - -1.48% -3.33%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £717 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 502 199 433
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.12 £11.00
25th Percentile £19.22 £21.23 £13.18
Median hourly rate £36.00 £31.76 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +13.35% +33.45% -36.53%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £83.24 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £32.25 £19.17
% change year-on-year +24.03% +68.23% -48.88%

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 16 June 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 16 June 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 16 June 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 +6 1,566 £479 +0.74% 888
UK excluding London +6 850 £450 -2.17% 666
London +7 780 £500 - 339
Work from Home +8 532 £488 -1.52% 392
South East +6 195 £450 -5.26% 202
North of England -18 183 £459 -6.38% 165
Midlands -6 174 £425 +13.33% 113
West Midlands -7 129 £436 +2.53% 57
South West +22 116 £488 -2.50% 85
Scotland +13 83 £360 -22.16% 29
East of England +6 83 £475 +0.85% 52
North West -18 83 £447 +4.20% 89
Yorkshire -31 65 £525 +1.01% 49
East Midlands -12 46 £393 +7.19% 56
North East -9 35 £400 -12.09% 30
Northern Ireland +9 20 £475 +46.15% 21
Wales -9 12 £450 -14.29% 19

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 98 (5.34%) Confluence
2 31 (1.69%) SharePoint
3 29 (1.58%) CMS
4 18 (0.98%) IIS
5 15 (0.82%) Apache Spark
6 13 (0.71%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 7 (0.38%) Apache
7 7 (0.38%) SAS
8 6 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
9 5 (0.27%) Tuxedo
9 5 (0.27%) Umbraco
10 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.22%) nginx
10 4 (0.22%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 3 (0.16%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.16%) Moodle
11 3 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.16%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.11%) Luigi
12 2 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 57 (3.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (1.63%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
4 24 (1.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (1.14%) MS Visio
6 6 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.22%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.16%) CATIA
8 3 (0.16%) Simulink
9 2 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.11%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.11%) EPLAN
10 1 (0.054%) Adobe Premiere
10 1 (0.054%) Camtasia
10 1 (0.054%) Mingle
10 1 (0.054%) Navisworks
10 1 (0.054%) Notion
10 1 (0.054%) Revit
Business Applications
1 28 (1.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 18 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.44%) Shopify
4 7 (0.38%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.33%) Maximo
5 6 (0.33%) NEC Housing
5 6 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.27%) Infor CloudSuite
7 4 (0.22%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.22%) Primavera
7 4 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.16%) Actimize
8 3 (0.16%) Aladdin
8 3 (0.16%) Oracle EBS R12
8 3 (0.16%) SAP FI
9 2 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.11%) iTrent
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 2 (0.11%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 392 (21.36%) Azure
2 292 (15.91%) AWS
3 164 (8.94%) Azure DevOps
4 147 (8.01%) GitHub
5 105 (5.72%) Power Platform
6 94 (5.12%) GitHub Actions
7 73 (3.98%) GCP
8 46 (2.51%) Serverless
9 42 (2.29%) OpenShift
10 37 (2.02%) Dynamics 365
11 32 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
11 32 (1.74%) SaaS
12 30 (1.63%) Amazon S3
13 29 (1.58%) Snowflake
14 25 (1.36%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 22 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
16 20 (1.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 19 (1.04%) Amazon EKS
17 19 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
17 19 (1.04%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.36%) Firewall
2 19 (1.04%) Network Security
2 19 (1.04%) WAN
3 18 (0.98%) Internet
3 18 (0.98%) LAN
4 16 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
5 13 (0.71%) VPN
6 11 (0.60%) DNS
6 11 (0.60%) SD-WAN
6 11 (0.60%) Unified Communications
6 11 (0.60%) VLAN
6 11 (0.60%) Wireless
7 9 (0.49%) HTTP
8 8 (0.44%) IPsec
9 7 (0.38%) SMS
10 6 (0.33%) Cisco Nexus
10 6 (0.33%) TCP/IP
11 5 (0.27%) DHCP
12 4 (0.22%) MPLS
13 3 (0.16%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 105 (5.72%) SQL Server
2 91 (4.96%) Power BI
3 71 (3.87%) Data Warehouse
4 65 (3.54%) PostgreSQL
5 55 (3.00%) Relational Database
6 43 (2.34%) MySQL
7 41 (2.23%) NoSQL
8 37 (2.02%) Tableau
9 36 (1.96%) Metadata
10 34 (1.85%) Oracle Database
11 32 (1.74%) Data Lake
11 32 (1.74%) Oracle Reports
12 28 (1.53%) MongoDB
13 23 (1.25%) Big Data
14 19 (1.04%) DynamoDB
15 17 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
15 17 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 15 (0.82%) BigQuery
17 14 (0.76%) Amazon Redshift
17 14 (0.76%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 291 (15.86%) JIRA
2 171 (9.32%) Git
3 132 (7.19%) Selenium
4 125 (6.81%) Jenkins
5 97 (5.29%) GitLab
6 79 (4.31%) Postman
7 58 (3.16%) Cucumber
8 57 (3.11%) Cypress.io
9 53 (2.89%) JUnit
10 44 (2.40%) REST Assured
10 44 (2.40%) Zephyr
11 43 (2.34%) SonarQube
12 35 (1.91%) JMeter
13 30 (1.63%) WebDriver
14 23 (1.25%) Gatling
15 20 (1.09%) Maven
16 18 (0.98%) Gradle
17 17 (0.93%) TestRail
18 16 (0.87%) TestNG
19 14 (0.76%) SpecFlow
General
1 551 (30.03%) Social Skills
2 418 (22.78%) Finance
3 258 (14.06%) Analytical Skills
4 214 (11.66%) Public Sector
5 140 (7.63%) Banking
6 61 (3.32%) Retail
7 52 (2.83%) Marketing
8 50 (2.72%) Manufacturing
9 47 (2.56%) Organisational Skills
10 38 (2.07%) Aerospace
11 29 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
12 24 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
13 23 (1.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 22 (1.20%) Investment Banking
15 20 (1.09%) Legal
15 20 (1.09%) Military
16 16 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
17 15 (0.82%) Automotive
17 15 (0.82%) Front Office
18 14 (0.76%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 231 (12.59%) Developer
2 222 (12.10%) Analyst
3 212 (11.55%) Senior
4 211 (11.50%) Lead
5 164 (8.94%) QA Engineer
6 114 (6.21%) Business Analyst
7 100 (5.45%) Tester
8 86 (4.69%) Test Manager
9 70 (3.81%) Architect
10 68 (3.71%) Quality Engineer
11 65 (3.54%) Java Developer
11 65 (3.54%) Test Engineer
12 62 (3.38%) Project Manager
13 60 (3.27%) Data Engineer
14 54 (2.94%) Test Leader
15 53 (2.89%) Senior Analyst
16 52 (2.83%) Data Analyst
17 45 (2.45%) Consultant
18 44 (2.40%) Software Engineer
19 42 (2.29%) QA Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 126 (6.87%) REST
2 108 (5.89%) .NET
3 100 (5.45%) RESTful
4 98 (5.34%) Playwright
5 85 (4.63%) Spring
6 81 (4.41%) Spring Boot
7 69 (3.76%) React
8 65 (3.54%) HTML
9 59 (3.22%) AngularJS
9 59 (3.22%) CSS
10 53 (2.89%) Kafka
11 51 (2.78%) .NET Framework
12 48 (2.62%) Node.js
13 35 (1.91%) JSON
14 33 (1.80%) Quarkus
15 27 (1.47%) Middleware
16 23 (1.25%) ASP.NET
16 23 (1.25%) Gherkin
16 23 (1.25%) OAuth
16 23 (1.25%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 156 (8.50%) Product Ownership
2 77 (4.20%) Cloud Native
3 54 (2.94%) Onboarding
4 51 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
5 45 (2.45%) Distributed Systems
6 41 (2.23%) Data Protection Act
7 38 (2.07%) Mobile App
8 33 (1.80%) Management Information System
9 29 (1.58%) Data Structures
10 26 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
10 26 (1.42%) Virtual Team
11 23 (1.25%) Data Centre
12 20 (1.09%) AI Agents
13 19 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
13 19 (1.04%) PMI
14 18 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
15 15 (0.82%) NHS
16 14 (0.76%) Legacy Code
17 13 (0.71%) Derivative
17 13 (0.71%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 82 (4.47%) Windows
2 55 (3.00%) Linux
3 29 (1.58%) Windows Server
4 28 (1.53%) Android
4 28 (1.53%) Apple iOS
5 19 (1.04%) Unix
6 6 (0.33%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.054%) Debian
9 1 (0.054%) Solaris
9 1 (0.054%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.054%) VMS
9 1 (0.054%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 690 (37.60%) Agile
2 465 (25.34%) Test Automation
3 444 (24.20%) DevOps
4 423 (23.05%) CI/CD
5 305 (16.62%) Stakeholder Management
6 304 (16.57%) Validation
7 294 (16.02%) Continuous Improvement
8 281 (15.31%) Problem-Solving
9 264 (14.39%) User Acceptance Testing
10 245 (13.35%) Scrum
11 236 (12.86%) Test Strategy
12 227 (12.37%) Migration
13 185 (10.08%) AI
14 165 (8.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 154 (8.39%) Decision-Making
16 151 (8.23%) ETL
17 149 (8.12%) SDLC
18 144 (7.85%) Analytics
19 142 (7.74%) Data Migration
20 140 (7.63%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 371 (20.22%) SQL
2 231 (12.59%) Java
3 230 (12.53%) Python
4 129 (7.03%) JavaScript
5 128 (6.98%) C#
6 82 (4.47%) TypeScript
7 42 (2.29%) T-SQL
8 39 (2.13%) PL/SQL
9 31 (1.69%) Kotlin
10 27 (1.47%) PowerShell
11 23 (1.25%) Bash
12 20 (1.09%) Scala
13 18 (0.98%) VB
14 17 (0.93%) Swift
15 16 (0.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 15 (0.82%) C
17 14 (0.76%) Bicep
17 14 (0.76%) C++
18 12 (0.65%) VBA
19 11 (0.60%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 414 (22.56%) Security Cleared
2 305 (16.62%) SC Cleared
3 132 (7.19%) Degree
4 74 (4.03%) ISTQB
5 67 (3.65%) BPSS Clearance
6 52 (2.83%) DV Cleared
7 40 (2.18%) PMI Certification
8 37 (2.02%) PMP
9 31 (1.69%) Computer Science Degree
10 18 (0.98%) Master's Degree
11 14 (0.76%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.60%) Cisco Certification
13 9 (0.49%) AWS Certification
13 9 (0.49%) CBAP
14 8 (0.44%) Azure Certification
15 7 (0.38%) APMP
15 7 (0.38%) CCNP
15 7 (0.38%) SAFe Agilist
16 6 (0.33%) Microsoft Certification
16 6 (0.33%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 133 (7.25%) Data Quality
2 83 (4.52%) Accessibility
3 41 (2.23%) PMO
4 32 (1.74%) GDPR
5 22 (1.20%) WCAG
6 17 (0.93%) IFRS
6 17 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.87%) GRC
7 16 (0.87%) NIST
8 15 (0.82%) IFRS 17
8 15 (0.82%) PCI DSS
9 14 (0.76%) SLA
10 11 (0.60%) Disclosure Scotland
10 11 (0.60%) GxP
11 8 (0.44%) ISO 20022
12 7 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.38%) SEPA
13 6 (0.33%) Basel III
13 6 (0.33%) PSD2
13 6 (0.33%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 110 (5.99%) Docker
2 16 (0.87%) Active Directory
3 12 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.38%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (0.22%) Firmware
7 3 (0.16%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 2 (0.11%) GridGain
8 2 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.11%) VirtualBox
8 2 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.054%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.054%) KVM
9 1 (0.054%) QEMU
9 1 (0.054%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
9 1 (0.054%) Varnish
9 1 (0.054%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 154 (8.39%) Kubernetes
2 69 (3.76%) Terraform
3 35 (1.91%) Grafana
4 34 (1.85%) Argo
5 28 (1.53%) Ansible
6 27 (1.47%) Prometheus
7 18 (0.98%) HP ALM
8 10 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (0.44%) HP Quality Center
10 7 (0.38%) Nmap
10 7 (0.38%) Oracle RMAN
11 6 (0.33%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 5 (0.27%) Kibana
12 5 (0.27%) Puppet
13 3 (0.16%) Progress Chef
14 2 (0.11%) FortiGate
14 2 (0.11%) ITRS Geneos
14 2 (0.11%) SCCM
14 2 (0.11%) Tivoli
15 1 (0.054%) Cisco Prime
Vendors
1 184 (10.03%) Microsoft
2 167 (9.10%) Oracle
3 101 (5.50%) Salesforce
4 92 (5.01%) SAP
5 47 (2.56%) ServiceNow
6 37 (2.02%) Citrix
7 36 (1.96%) Google
8 35 (1.91%) Red Hat
9 33 (1.80%) Databricks
10 31 (1.69%) Adobe
11 24 (1.31%) Informatica
12 21 (1.14%) Cisco
12 21 (1.14%) HP
13 17 (0.93%) MuleSoft
14 14 (0.76%) Talend
15 12 (0.65%) VMware
15 12 (0.65%) Workday
16 11 (0.60%) Infor
17 10 (0.54%) IBM
17 10 (0.54%) Pega