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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 62 62
Rank change year-on-year +12 0 +7
Contract jobs citing QA 2,263 1,273 1,298
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.13% 3.86% 3.37%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 23.45% 22.55% 25.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,327 882 767
10th Percentile £313 £290 £300
25th Percentile £391 £380 £398
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year - -2.56% -6.70%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £668 £661 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 233 42 79
10th Percentile £12.85 £12.28 £11.88
25th Percentile £15.25 £13.50 £12.30
Median hourly rate £30.58 £17.66 £14.98
Median % change year-on-year +73.14% +17.91% -63.50%
75th Percentile £48.75 £36.73 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.72 £72.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.29 £15.12 £14.98
% change year-on-year +100.33% +0.93% -70.04%

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 9,649 5,645 5,170
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.59% 17.13% 13.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,083 3,621 3,067
10th Percentile £325 £300 £281
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £608 £630
90th Percentile £700 £713 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £475 £480
% change year-on-year +2.95% -1.04% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 631 267 259
10th Percentile £13.88 £13.60 £12.42
25th Percentile £16.60 £16.92 £15.18
Median hourly rate £32.50 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% +9.09% -22.82%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.00 £59.38
90th Percentile £76.00 £81.10 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £27.54 £27.09
% change year-on-year +19.83% +1.66% -29.73%

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 19 September 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 19 September 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 19 September 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 +14 1,975 £475 - 2,901
UK excluding London +18 1,118 £450 - 1,744
London +8 903 £500 - 1,388
Work from Home +1 575 £475 - 1,064
North of England +1 267 £463 +5.71% 421
South East +7 252 £425 -5.56% 414
Midlands +15 225 £450 +4.65% 284
West Midlands +20 185 £450 -8.50% 198
East of England +18 148 £450 -10.00% 189
South West +13 138 £500 +5.26% 191
Yorkshire +6 107 £500 +8.70% 108
North West -24 102 £475 +12.56% 242
Scotland +2 83 £401 -10.83% 143
North East -12 58 £400 -13.04% 73
East Midlands -7 39 £420 +12.00% 86
Wales -1 18 £400 +6.67% 50
Northern Ireland -3 7 £450 +50.00% 71

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
1 129 (5.70%) Confluence
2 51 (2.25%) CMS
3 40 (1.77%) SharePoint
4 16 (0.71%) Apache Spark
4 16 (0.71%) IIS
5 13 (0.57%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 13 (0.57%) Apache
5 13 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.35%) SAS
6 8 (0.35%) Sitecore CMS
7 7 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
8 5 (0.22%) OpenStack
8 5 (0.22%) Tuxedo
8 5 (0.22%) WordPress
9 4 (0.18%) Headless CMS
9 4 (0.18%) Umbraco
10 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.13%) Moodle
10 3 (0.13%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.088%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 81 (3.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.55%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 22 (0.97%) MS Visio
4 17 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
5 12 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
6 9 (0.40%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.27%) Navisworks
7 6 (0.27%) Revit
8 4 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 4 (0.18%) ProjectWise
9 3 (0.13%) CATIA
9 3 (0.13%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.088%) Adobe Premiere
10 2 (0.088%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.088%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.088%) Mingle
10 2 (0.088%) Simulink
10 2 (0.088%) Windchill
11 1 (0.044%) Adobe After Effects
Business Applications
1 32 (1.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (1.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 9 (0.40%) Shopify
5 7 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.31%) SAP GRC
6 6 (0.27%) Workday HCM
7 4 (0.18%) Aladdin
7 4 (0.18%) iTrent
7 4 (0.18%) Maximo
7 4 (0.18%) NEC Housing
7 4 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
7 4 (0.18%) Primavera
7 4 (0.18%) ResourceLink
8 3 (0.13%) Infor CloudSuite
8 3 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
8 3 (0.13%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.13%) SAP MM
8 3 (0.13%) Teamcenter
9 2 (0.088%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 463 (20.46%) Azure
2 400 (17.68%) AWS
3 219 (9.68%) GitHub
4 197 (8.71%) Azure DevOps
5 124 (5.48%) GitHub Actions
6 111 (4.90%) GCP
6 111 (4.90%) Power Platform
7 81 (3.58%) Serverless
8 57 (2.52%) AWS Lambda
9 53 (2.34%) SaaS
10 48 (2.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 43 (1.90%) Amazon S3
12 41 (1.81%) OpenShift
13 37 (1.63%) Dynamics 365
13 37 (1.63%) GitHub Copilot
14 35 (1.55%) Snowflake
15 31 (1.37%) Azure Monitor
16 29 (1.28%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 28 (1.24%) Amazon EKS
18 27 (1.19%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.10%) Firewall
2 24 (1.06%) Internet
3 20 (0.88%) Broadband
4 18 (0.80%) DNS
5 16 (0.71%) HTTP
5 16 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
6 15 (0.66%) TCP/IP
7 14 (0.62%) VLAN
7 14 (0.62%) WAN
8 13 (0.57%) 5G
8 13 (0.57%) Network Security
9 12 (0.53%) 4G
9 12 (0.53%) LAN
9 12 (0.53%) VPN
10 9 (0.40%) DHCP
10 9 (0.40%) SD-WAN
10 9 (0.40%) Unified Communications
11 7 (0.31%) IPsec
11 7 (0.31%) SSH
12 6 (0.27%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 107 (4.73%) SQL Server
2 99 (4.37%) Power BI
3 85 (3.76%) PostgreSQL
4 79 (3.49%) Relational Database
5 67 (2.96%) Data Warehouse
6 52 (2.30%) MongoDB
7 50 (2.21%) NoSQL
8 45 (1.99%) Oracle Database
9 44 (1.94%) MySQL
10 41 (1.81%) Metadata
11 37 (1.63%) Tableau
12 34 (1.50%) Oracle Reports
13 25 (1.10%) Data Lake
14 21 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 19 (0.84%) Big Data
16 16 (0.71%) GIS
17 15 (0.66%) Power Query
17 15 (0.66%) RDBMS
18 14 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
18 14 (0.62%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 308 (13.61%) JIRA
2 246 (10.87%) Git
3 169 (7.47%) Jenkins
4 168 (7.42%) Selenium
5 138 (6.10%) GitLab
6 85 (3.76%) Postman
7 84 (3.71%) Cucumber
8 77 (3.40%) Cypress.io
9 65 (2.87%) JUnit
10 55 (2.43%) Zephyr
11 54 (2.39%) SonarQube
12 47 (2.08%) JMeter
13 42 (1.86%) REST Assured
14 39 (1.72%) Gatling
15 36 (1.59%) Maven
16 29 (1.28%) WebDriver
17 28 (1.24%) Gradle
18 21 (0.93%) Appium
19 20 (0.88%) Bitbucket
19 20 (0.88%) TestRail
General
1 686 (30.31%) Social Skills
2 433 (19.13%) Finance
3 364 (16.08%) Analytical Skills
4 275 (12.15%) Public Sector
5 172 (7.60%) Banking
6 82 (3.62%) Manufacturing
7 74 (3.27%) Retail
8 68 (3.00%) Marketing
9 60 (2.65%) Organisational Skills
10 54 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 45 (1.99%) Aerospace
12 41 (1.81%) Telecoms
13 39 (1.72%) Influencing Skills
14 36 (1.59%) Legal
15 33 (1.46%) Documentation Skills
16 27 (1.19%) Military
17 24 (1.06%) Law
18 19 (0.84%) Investment Banking
19 18 (0.80%) Automotive
19 18 (0.80%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 302 (13.35%) Developer
2 283 (12.51%) Lead
3 267 (11.80%) Senior
4 257 (11.36%) Analyst
5 243 (10.74%) QA Engineer
6 126 (5.57%) Quality Engineer
7 117 (5.17%) Tester
8 110 (4.86%) Business Analyst
9 108 (4.77%) Test Manager
10 101 (4.46%) Test Engineer
11 79 (3.49%) Java Developer
12 76 (3.36%) QA Leader
13 73 (3.23%) Data Engineer
14 66 (2.92%) Test Leader
15 61 (2.70%) Architect
16 59 (2.61%) Consultant
16 59 (2.61%) Senior Analyst
17 56 (2.47%) Test Analyst
18 54 (2.39%) QA Tester
19 47 (2.08%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 205 (9.06%) REST
2 140 (6.19%) Playwright
3 138 (6.10%) RESTful
4 124 (5.48%) Spring
5 111 (4.90%) Spring Boot
6 103 (4.55%) Terraform
7 96 (4.24%) .NET
8 89 (3.93%) React
9 88 (3.89%) HTML
10 85 (3.76%) Kafka
11 78 (3.45%) CSS
12 76 (3.36%) AngularJS
13 65 (2.87%) Node.js
14 54 (2.39%) SOAP
15 53 (2.34%) pytest
16 51 (2.25%) Middleware
17 42 (1.86%) .NET Framework
18 40 (1.77%) JSON
19 36 (1.59%) Gherkin
19 36 (1.59%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 205 (9.06%) Product Ownership
2 136 (6.01%) Cloud Native
3 81 (3.58%) Onboarding
4 65 (2.87%) Enterprise Software
5 62 (2.74%) Management Information System
6 61 (2.70%) Distributed Systems
7 53 (2.34%) Mobile App
8 50 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
9 42 (1.86%) AI Agents
9 42 (1.86%) Data Structures
10 41 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
11 35 (1.55%) Data Centre
12 30 (1.33%) Low-Code
13 26 (1.15%) NHS
14 24 (1.06%) Virtual Team
15 23 (1.02%) CMDB
16 20 (0.88%) Educational Technology
17 17 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
18 16 (0.71%) Operational Technology
19 14 (0.62%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 94 (4.15%) Windows
2 74 (3.27%) Linux
3 49 (2.17%) Apple iOS
4 45 (1.99%) Android
5 33 (1.46%) Unix
6 24 (1.06%) Windows Server
7 15 (0.66%) VMS
8 8 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.22%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.088%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.088%) zOS
11 1 (0.044%) AIX
11 1 (0.044%) CentOS
11 1 (0.044%) Debian
11 1 (0.044%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.044%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.044%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.044%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.044%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 870 (38.44%) Agile
2 628 (27.75%) Test Automation
3 579 (25.59%) CI/CD
4 548 (24.22%) DevOps
5 452 (19.97%) Stakeholder Management
6 445 (19.66%) Continuous Improvement
7 392 (17.32%) Problem-Solving
8 376 (16.62%) Validation
9 332 (14.67%) Scrum
10 328 (14.49%) AI
11 324 (14.32%) Test Strategy
12 276 (12.20%) User Acceptance Testing
13 253 (11.18%) Migration
14 208 (9.19%) Microservices
14 208 (9.19%) SDLC
15 198 (8.75%) End-to-End Testing
16 195 (8.62%) Software Engineering
17 182 (8.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 175 (7.73%) Analytics
19 174 (7.69%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 420 (18.56%) SQL
2 320 (14.14%) Python
3 288 (12.73%) Java
4 184 (8.13%) JavaScript
5 116 (5.13%) C#
6 97 (4.29%) TypeScript
7 55 (2.43%) Bash
8 38 (1.68%) PowerShell
9 36 (1.59%) PL/SQL
10 30 (1.33%) Kotlin
11 28 (1.24%) T-SQL
12 23 (1.02%) Scala
13 20 (0.88%) Swift
14 17 (0.75%) C
14 17 (0.75%) Objective-C
14 17 (0.75%) Shell Script
14 17 (0.75%) VB
15 15 (0.66%) VBA
16 14 (0.62%) Apex Code
16 14 (0.62%) C++
Qualifications
1 536 (23.69%) Security Cleared
2 415 (18.34%) SC Cleared
3 147 (6.50%) Degree
4 98 (4.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 77 (3.40%) ISTQB
6 63 (2.78%) DV Cleared
7 44 (1.94%) Computer Science Degree
8 23 (1.02%) PMP
9 19 (0.84%) AWS Certification
10 18 (0.80%) PMI Certification
11 17 (0.75%) Azure Certification
12 14 (0.62%) Microsoft Certification
13 13 (0.57%) Master's Degree
14 11 (0.49%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 10 (0.44%) Cisco Certification
15 10 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
16 9 (0.40%) IIBA
16 9 (0.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 8 (0.35%) DBS Check
17 8 (0.35%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 163 (7.20%) Data Quality
2 124 (5.48%) Accessibility
3 37 (1.63%) WCAG
4 36 (1.59%) GDPR
5 29 (1.28%) PMO
6 24 (1.06%) GRC
7 13 (0.57%) NIST
8 10 (0.44%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 10 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
8 10 (0.44%) GxP
8 10 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 9 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (0.35%) ISO 19650
10 8 (0.35%) SLA
10 8 (0.35%) Software Quality Assurance
11 7 (0.31%) IFRS
11 7 (0.31%) ISO 9001
11 7 (0.31%) NCSC
12 6 (0.27%) ISO 20022
13 4 (0.18%) GMP
System Software
1 194 (8.57%) Docker
2 24 (1.06%) Active Directory
3 18 (0.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.44%) IAG
4 10 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.27%) Firmware
6 4 (0.18%) ACF2
6 4 (0.18%) RACF
7 3 (0.13%) KVM
7 3 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
7 3 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.13%) VirtualBox
8 2 (0.088%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.044%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.044%) QEMU
9 1 (0.044%) Varnish
9 1 (0.044%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.044%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 226 (9.99%) Kubernetes
2 63 (2.78%) Ansible
3 56 (2.47%) Grafana
4 40 (1.77%) Prometheus
5 34 (1.50%) Argo
6 12 (0.53%) HP ALM
7 11 (0.49%) SCCM
8 8 (0.35%) Microsoft Clustering
8 8 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.31%) HP Quality Center
9 7 (0.31%) Microsoft Intune
9 7 (0.31%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 6 (0.27%) Puppet
11 5 (0.22%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.18%) SCOM
13 3 (0.13%) FortiGate
13 3 (0.13%) Oracle RMAN
14 2 (0.088%) Istio
14 2 (0.088%) ITRS Geneos
14 2 (0.088%) Kibana
Vendors
1 245 (10.83%) Microsoft
2 169 (7.47%) Oracle
3 118 (5.21%) Salesforce
4 82 (3.62%) SAP
5 60 (2.65%) ServiceNow
6 51 (2.25%) Google
7 45 (1.99%) Databricks
8 36 (1.59%) Red Hat
9 32 (1.41%) Dynatrace
10 29 (1.28%) Splunk
11 27 (1.19%) Citrix
12 26 (1.15%) Adobe
13 22 (0.97%) Cisco
14 21 (0.93%) VMware
15 19 (0.84%) Informatica
16 16 (0.71%) IBM
16 16 (0.71%) Sitecore
16 16 (0.71%) Workday
17 15 (0.66%) HP
17 15 (0.66%) Talend