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

6 months to
17 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 60 63 63
Rank change year-on-year +3 0 +15
Contract jobs citing QA 1,440 1,173 1,468
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.91% 3.41% 3.35%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 22.64% 24.14% 23.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 933 704 1,052
10th Percentile £309 £294 £350
25th Percentile £400 £370 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £475 £523
Median % change year-on-year +1.05% -9.09% +0.48%
75th Percentile £580 £588 £641
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 58 34 42
10th Percentile £12.27 £13.26 £19.25
25th Percentile £13.50 £14.80 £24.25
Median hourly rate £19.19 £19.92 £36.77
Median % change year-on-year -3.67% -45.84% +41.42%
75th Percentile £63.40 £28.75 £68.31
90th Percentile £73.75 £64.27 £77.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.69 £15.41 £48.75
% change year-on-year +14.83% -68.40% +98.98%

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 6,360 4,860 6,375
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.29% 14.13% 14.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,106 2,862 4,244
10th Percentile £313 £261 £313
25th Percentile £406 £379 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £646
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.63% -5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 317 189 230
10th Percentile £13.97 £14.72 £14.18
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.19 £19.31
Median hourly rate £25.15 £27.50 £35.25
Median % change year-on-year -8.55% -21.99% +56.03%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.24 £64.88
90th Percentile £73.75 £70.00 £83.12
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.50 £27.00 £35.50
% change year-on-year -24.07% -23.94% +69.05%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 +8 1,248 £491 +0.72% 780
London +8 648 £500 - 205
UK excluding London -9 618 £475 +5.56% 755
Work from Home +2 366 £450 -9.18% 664
North of England +5 181 £430 +4.24% 168
South East +14 150 £500 +17.65% 263
Midlands -19 101 £500 +6.38% 96
North West -5 86 £404 -2.18% 86
South West -5 73 £475 -2.56% 70
West Midlands -28 73 £504 +1.82% 59
Yorkshire -4 66 £450 - 60
East of England +3 54 £512 +23.37% 97
Scotland +7 49 £525 +38.16% 75
North East +8 30 £500 +14.29% 22
East Midlands -11 29 £438 -4.63% 36
Wales -9 17 £425 -20.00% 10
Northern Ireland -3 8 - - 2

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 92 (6.39%) Confluence
2 37 (2.57%) SharePoint
3 21 (1.46%) Apache
4 20 (1.39%) CMS
5 15 (1.04%) IIS
6 11 (0.76%) Apache Spark
6 11 (0.76%) SugarCRM
7 10 (0.69%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 10 (0.69%) Anypoint
8 7 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
8 7 (0.49%) WebSphere
9 6 (0.42%) Mule
10 5 (0.35%) MQSeries
10 5 (0.35%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 5 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.28%) Drupal
11 4 (0.28%) OpenStack
11 4 (0.28%) SAS
11 4 (0.28%) WebLogic
12 2 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 78 (5.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 39 (2.71%) Microsoft Office
3 24 (1.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 23 (1.60%) Microsoft Project
5 21 (1.46%) MS Visio
6 6 (0.42%) Trello
7 4 (0.28%) Autodesk Inventor
7 4 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.28%) Simulink
7 4 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.28%) Stateflow
8 2 (0.14%) Autodesk Smoke
9 1 (0.069%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.069%) Notion
9 1 (0.069%) Revit
9 1 (0.069%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 29 (2.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 12 (0.83%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.63%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.49%) Oracle Payables
4 7 (0.49%) Payment Gateway
5 6 (0.42%) Oracle Cash Management
5 6 (0.42%) Oracle General Ledger
5 6 (0.42%) Oracle Receivables
5 6 (0.42%) SAP ERP
6 5 (0.35%) Temenos T24
7 4 (0.28%) Maximo
7 4 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 4 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
7 4 (0.28%) Workday HCM
8 3 (0.21%) Algo Collateral
8 3 (0.21%) Endur
8 3 (0.21%) NetSuite
8 3 (0.21%) SAP PM
8 3 (0.21%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 328 (22.78%) Azure
2 281 (19.51%) AWS
3 105 (7.29%) Azure DevOps
4 97 (6.74%) GCP
5 93 (6.46%) GitHub
6 83 (5.76%) Power Platform
7 64 (4.44%) GitHub Actions
8 61 (4.24%) Serverless
9 43 (2.99%) AWS Lambda
10 40 (2.78%) Amazon S3
11 38 (2.64%) SaaS
12 30 (2.08%) Dynamics 365
13 23 (1.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 22 (1.53%) Amazon EC2
14 22 (1.53%) Amazon ECS
15 21 (1.46%) AWS CloudFormation
15 21 (1.46%) Power Automate
16 17 (1.18%) OCI
17 16 (1.11%) Google Analytics
17 16 (1.11%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.46%) Firewall
2 18 (1.25%) HTTP
3 14 (0.97%) Internet
4 7 (0.49%) Wireless
5 6 (0.42%) 5G
5 6 (0.42%) Broadband
6 5 (0.35%) OpenLDAP
6 5 (0.35%) SMS
6 5 (0.35%) WAN
7 4 (0.28%) LAN
7 4 (0.28%) Structured Cabling
7 4 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
8 3 (0.21%) DNS
8 3 (0.21%) HTTPS
8 3 (0.21%) Network Security
8 3 (0.21%) VPN
8 3 (0.21%) WebEx
9 2 (0.14%) SSL
9 2 (0.14%) TCP/IP
10 1 (0.069%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (5.21%) Power BI
2 71 (4.93%) SQL Server
3 55 (3.82%) Relational Database
4 53 (3.68%) PostgreSQL
5 47 (3.26%) MySQL
6 43 (2.99%) MongoDB
7 38 (2.64%) Data Warehouse
8 32 (2.22%) NoSQL
9 25 (1.74%) Tableau
10 24 (1.67%) Oracle Database
11 23 (1.60%) BigQuery
12 18 (1.25%) Metadata
13 17 (1.18%) Amazon RDS
14 15 (1.04%) Data Lake
15 12 (0.83%) Big Data
15 12 (0.83%) Looker
15 12 (0.83%) Redis
16 11 (0.76%) Azure SQL Database
17 9 (0.63%) RDBMS
18 7 (0.49%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 274 (19.03%) JIRA
2 135 (9.38%) Git
3 131 (9.10%) GitLab
4 125 (8.68%) Jenkins
5 107 (7.43%) Selenium
6 80 (5.56%) Cucumber
7 70 (4.86%) Postman
8 68 (4.72%) Cypress.io
9 41 (2.85%) REST Assured
10 38 (2.64%) JUnit
11 35 (2.43%) JMeter
12 21 (1.46%) Appium
13 17 (1.18%) SonarQube
14 16 (1.11%) Gatling
15 15 (1.04%) WebDriver
16 14 (0.97%) Bitbucket
16 14 (0.97%) TestNG
16 14 (0.97%) TestRail
17 11 (0.76%) CircleCI
17 11 (0.76%) Zephyr
General
1 601 (41.74%) Social Skills
2 386 (26.81%) Finance
3 252 (17.50%) Analytical Skills
4 156 (10.83%) Banking
5 152 (10.56%) Public Sector
6 56 (3.89%) Documentation Skills
7 40 (2.78%) Marketing
8 37 (2.57%) Legal
8 37 (2.57%) Telecoms
9 33 (2.29%) Manufacturing
10 28 (1.94%) Presentation Skills
11 27 (1.88%) Investment Banking
11 27 (1.88%) Organisational Skills
12 25 (1.74%) Front Office
13 23 (1.60%) Retail
14 22 (1.53%) Back Office
15 21 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 18 (1.25%) Aerospace
17 17 (1.18%) Financial Institution
17 17 (1.18%) Law
Job Titles
1 199 (13.82%) Developer
2 181 (12.57%) Analyst
3 169 (11.74%) Senior
4 154 (10.69%) Lead
5 100 (6.94%) QA Engineer
6 86 (5.97%) Business Analyst
7 85 (5.90%) Tester
8 70 (4.86%) Test Engineer
9 61 (4.24%) Project Manager
10 57 (3.96%) Architect
11 53 (3.68%) Consultant
12 52 (3.61%) Java Developer
13 49 (3.40%) Test Manager
14 39 (2.71%) Test Analyst
15 38 (2.64%) DevOps Engineer
16 36 (2.50%) Test Leader
17 35 (2.43%) QA Tester
18 34 (2.36%) QA Leader
19 32 (2.22%) Automation Engineer
20 31 (2.15%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 150 (10.42%) REST
2 91 (6.32%) .NET
3 79 (5.49%) Playwright
3 79 (5.49%) RESTful
4 74 (5.14%) React
5 71 (4.93%) Spring
5 71 (4.93%) Spring Boot
6 52 (3.61%) Node.js
7 50 (3.47%) HTML
8 48 (3.33%) SOAP
9 46 (3.19%) CSS
10 42 (2.92%) Kafka
11 40 (2.78%) AngularJS
12 32 (2.22%) XML
13 30 (2.08%) JSON
14 29 (2.01%) .NET Framework
15 27 (1.88%) JMS
16 25 (1.74%) Oracle Fusion
17 22 (1.53%) Web Services
18 21 (1.46%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 145 (10.07%) Product Ownership
2 61 (4.24%) Cloud Native
3 56 (3.89%) Onboarding
4 50 (3.47%) Mobile App
5 29 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
5 29 (2.01%) Legacy Systems
6 28 (1.94%) Analytical Mindset
6 28 (1.94%) Management Information System
7 27 (1.88%) Distributed Systems
7 27 (1.88%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 25 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
9 24 (1.67%) Data Structures
9 24 (1.67%) PMI
10 18 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
11 16 (1.11%) Algorithms
12 14 (0.97%) Data Centre
12 14 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
12 14 (0.97%) Synthetic Data
13 13 (0.90%) Reinsurance
13 13 (0.90%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 72 (5.00%) Windows
2 48 (3.33%) Linux
3 24 (1.67%) Android
4 23 (1.60%) Apple iOS
5 18 (1.25%) Unix
6 17 (1.18%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 6 (0.42%) Ubuntu
9 4 (0.28%) CentOS
9 4 (0.28%) VMS
10 3 (0.21%) Debian
11 2 (0.14%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.14%) Solaris
11 2 (0.14%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.069%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.069%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 667 (46.32%) Agile
2 423 (29.38%) CI/CD
3 402 (27.92%) DevOps
4 391 (27.15%) Test Automation
5 386 (26.81%) Problem-Solving
6 229 (15.90%) Stakeholder Management
7 211 (14.65%) Scrum
8 205 (14.24%) Continuous Improvement
9 186 (12.92%) User Acceptance Testing
10 185 (12.85%) Validation
11 167 (11.60%) Test Strategy
12 164 (11.39%) Migration
13 151 (10.49%) Microservices
14 142 (9.86%) SDLC
15 137 (9.51%) Test Scripting
16 134 (9.31%) User Experience
17 133 (9.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 116 (8.06%) Project Management
19 110 (7.64%) AI
19 110 (7.64%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 276 (19.17%) SQL
2 206 (14.31%) Java
3 197 (13.68%) Python
4 125 (8.68%) JavaScript
5 104 (7.22%) C#
6 90 (6.25%) TypeScript
7 41 (2.85%) PL/SQL
8 29 (2.01%) PHP
9 25 (1.74%) PowerShell
10 24 (1.67%) T-SQL
11 21 (1.46%) Go
12 19 (1.32%) Bash
13 17 (1.18%) Kotlin
14 16 (1.11%) C++
15 13 (0.90%) C
16 12 (0.83%) Ruby
16 12 (0.83%) VBA
17 9 (0.63%) VB
18 8 (0.56%) R
18 8 (0.56%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 243 (16.88%) Security Cleared
2 202 (14.03%) SC Cleared
3 157 (10.90%) Degree
4 58 (4.03%) PMI Certification
5 56 (3.89%) Computer Science Degree
6 44 (3.06%) PMP
7 42 (2.92%) ISTQB
8 39 (2.71%) BPSS Clearance
9 35 (2.43%) Master's Degree
10 20 (1.39%) AWS Certification
11 18 (1.25%) CISSP
12 16 (1.11%) DV Cleared
12 16 (1.11%) Oracle Certification
13 13 (0.90%) CBAP
14 11 (0.76%) Azure Certification
14 11 (0.76%) CISM
14 11 (0.76%) OCA
15 10 (0.69%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 8 (0.56%) Postgraduate
17 7 (0.49%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 108 (7.50%) Accessibility
2 71 (4.93%) Data Quality
3 48 (3.33%) GDPR
4 34 (2.36%) PMO
5 24 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 23 (1.60%) WCAG
7 19 (1.32%) PSD2
8 16 (1.11%) NIST
8 16 (1.11%) PCI DSS
9 15 (1.04%) SEPA
10 13 (0.90%) ISO 20022
10 13 (0.90%) SLA
11 12 (0.83%) Software Quality Assurance
12 9 (0.63%) COBIT
13 8 (0.56%) GxP
13 8 (0.56%) ISO 9001
13 8 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.49%) IFRS
15 6 (0.42%) EU AI Act
15 6 (0.42%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 115 (7.99%) Docker
2 9 (0.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (0.42%) Active Directory
4 5 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.14%) VirtualBox
7 1 (0.069%) Firmware
7 1 (0.069%) GridGain
7 1 (0.069%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.069%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.069%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 118 (8.19%) Kubernetes
2 75 (5.21%) Terraform
3 47 (3.26%) Ansible
4 33 (2.29%) Grafana
5 16 (1.11%) Prometheus
6 10 (0.69%) Argo
6 10 (0.69%) HP ALM
7 9 (0.63%) Puppet
8 7 (0.49%) Progress Chef
9 5 (0.35%) Control-M
9 5 (0.35%) Nmap
10 4 (0.28%) CloudHub
10 4 (0.28%) Consul
10 4 (0.28%) Rsyslog
10 4 (0.28%) SCOM
10 4 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
11 3 (0.21%) Kibana
11 3 (0.21%) Nagios
11 3 (0.21%) RSA Archer
11 3 (0.21%) Salt
Vendors
1 159 (11.04%) Microsoft
2 122 (8.47%) Oracle
3 76 (5.28%) SAP
4 61 (4.24%) ServiceNow
5 55 (3.82%) Salesforce
6 36 (2.50%) Google
7 25 (1.74%) Citrix
8 20 (1.39%) Splunk
9 19 (1.32%) Databricks
10 18 (1.25%) Red Hat
11 17 (1.18%) HP
11 17 (1.18%) MuleSoft
12 15 (1.04%) IBM
13 14 (0.97%) Adobe
13 14 (0.97%) Workday
14 10 (0.69%) VMware
15 9 (0.63%) Blue Prism
15 9 (0.63%) UiPath
16 8 (0.56%) Dynatrace
16 8 (0.56%) Pega