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

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 61 60
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 +11
Contract jobs citing QA 1,853 1,130 1,438
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.65% 3.77% 3.30%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.66% 23.15% 24.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,159 790 933
10th Percentile £322 £280 £307
25th Percentile £394 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -1.96%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £663 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £455 £500
% change year-on-year -1.10% -9.00% +4.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 139 32 105
10th Percentile £12.91 £13.47 £10.86
25th Percentile £16.07 £15.12 £12.24
Median hourly rate £31.46 £30.00 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.87% +114.29% -37.78%
75th Percentile £67.50 £62.13 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £71.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.46 £19.37 £13.52
% change year-on-year +62.46% +43.23% -38.55%

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 8,555 4,881 5,972
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.85% 16.29% 13.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,496 3,114 3,711
10th Percentile £340 £271 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 515 202 438
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.12 £11.00
25th Percentile £19.33 £19.60 £13.18
Median hourly rate £36.07 £31.70 £23.05
Median % change year-on-year +13.79% +37.56% -38.55%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £83.39 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £31.70 £19.00
% change year-on-year +26.18% +66.84% -49.33%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 +2 1,583 £480 +1.05% 648
UK excluding London +4 860 £450 -1.10% 568
London +6 787 £500 +1.01% 212
Work from Home +10 537 £481 +1.32% 242
South East +7 198 £450 -2.70% 180
North of England -17 188 £459 -3.42% 136
Midlands -10 173 £425 +13.33% 105
West Midlands -13 127 £447 +5.18% 50
South West +17 119 £491 -1.75% 69
North West -20 85 £433 -3.24% 68
Scotland +6 83 £350 -23.29% 22
East of England +2 83 £475 -0.73% 45
Yorkshire -31 67 £525 +1.01% 44
East Midlands -13 46 £398 +8.41% 55
North East -10 36 £400 -11.11% 25
Northern Ireland +5 19 £475 +46.15% 22
Wales -9 12 £450 +5.88% 10

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
1 102 (5.50%) Confluence
2 29 (1.57%) CMS
3 28 (1.51%) SharePoint
4 18 (0.97%) IIS
5 15 (0.81%) Apache Spark
6 11 (0.59%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 7 (0.38%) Apache
7 7 (0.38%) SAS
8 6 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
9 5 (0.27%) Tuxedo
9 5 (0.27%) Umbraco
10 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.22%) nginx
11 3 (0.16%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.16%) Moodle
11 3 (0.16%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 3 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.16%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.11%) Apache Solr
12 2 (0.11%) Luigi
Applications
1 55 (2.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 27 (1.46%) Microsoft Office
2 27 (1.46%) Microsoft Project
3 20 (1.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 17 (0.92%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.22%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.22%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.16%) CATIA
7 3 (0.16%) CPLEX
7 3 (0.16%) Simulink
8 2 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.11%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.11%) EPLAN
9 1 (0.054%) Adobe After Effects
9 1 (0.054%) Adobe Premiere
9 1 (0.054%) Camtasia
9 1 (0.054%) Navisworks
9 1 (0.054%) Notion
9 1 (0.054%) Revit
Business Applications
1 28 (1.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 17 (0.92%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.43%) Shopify
4 7 (0.38%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.32%) Maximo
5 6 (0.32%) NEC Housing
5 6 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
6 5 (0.27%) Infor CloudSuite
6 5 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
7 4 (0.22%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.22%) Primavera
8 3 (0.16%) Actimize
8 3 (0.16%) Aladdin
8 3 (0.16%) IntelliMatch
8 3 (0.16%) Oracle EBS R12
8 3 (0.16%) SAP FI
9 2 (0.11%) iTrent
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 2 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 407 (21.96%) Azure
2 305 (16.46%) AWS
3 171 (9.23%) Azure DevOps
4 146 (7.88%) GitHub
5 105 (5.67%) Power Platform
6 91 (4.91%) GitHub Actions
7 74 (3.99%) GCP
8 45 (2.43%) Serverless
9 38 (2.05%) OpenShift
10 35 (1.89%) Dynamics 365
11 34 (1.83%) SaaS
12 30 (1.62%) AWS Lambda
13 28 (1.51%) Amazon S3
14 27 (1.46%) Snowflake
15 25 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 22 (1.19%) Azure Data Factory
17 21 (1.13%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 21 (1.13%) Salesforce Service Cloud
18 19 (1.03%) AWS CloudFormation
19 18 (0.97%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.40%) Firewall
2 19 (1.03%) Network Security
2 19 (1.03%) WAN
3 17 (0.92%) Internet
3 17 (0.92%) LAN
4 15 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
5 13 (0.70%) VPN
6 12 (0.65%) DNS
7 11 (0.59%) SD-WAN
7 11 (0.59%) Unified Communications
7 11 (0.59%) VLAN
7 11 (0.59%) Wireless
8 9 (0.49%) HTTP
9 8 (0.43%) IPsec
10 7 (0.38%) SMS
11 6 (0.32%) Cisco Nexus
11 6 (0.32%) TCP/IP
12 5 (0.27%) DHCP
13 4 (0.22%) BGP
13 4 (0.22%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (5.83%) SQL Server
2 89 (4.80%) Power BI
3 71 (3.83%) Data Warehouse
4 67 (3.62%) PostgreSQL
5 59 (3.18%) Relational Database
6 43 (2.32%) MySQL
6 43 (2.32%) NoSQL
7 38 (2.05%) Metadata
8 36 (1.94%) Tableau
9 34 (1.83%) Oracle Database
10 32 (1.73%) Oracle Reports
11 31 (1.67%) Data Lake
11 31 (1.67%) MongoDB
12 22 (1.19%) Big Data
13 19 (1.03%) DynamoDB
14 17 (0.92%) Azure SQL Database
14 17 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 15 (0.81%) BigQuery
16 14 (0.76%) Amazon Redshift
16 14 (0.76%) Redis
Development Applications
1 292 (15.76%) JIRA
2 174 (9.39%) Git
3 133 (7.18%) Selenium
4 131 (7.07%) Jenkins
5 96 (5.18%) GitLab
6 82 (4.43%) Postman
7 60 (3.24%) Cucumber
8 59 (3.18%) Cypress.io
9 57 (3.08%) JUnit
10 45 (2.43%) REST Assured
10 45 (2.43%) Zephyr
11 44 (2.37%) SonarQube
12 35 (1.89%) JMeter
13 28 (1.51%) WebDriver
14 22 (1.19%) Gatling
14 22 (1.19%) Maven
15 19 (1.03%) Gradle
16 18 (0.97%) TestNG
16 18 (0.97%) TestRail
17 14 (0.76%) Appium
General
1 551 (29.74%) Social Skills
2 413 (22.29%) Finance
3 257 (13.87%) Analytical Skills
4 224 (12.09%) Public Sector
5 141 (7.61%) Banking
6 60 (3.24%) Retail
7 55 (2.97%) Marketing
8 53 (2.86%) Manufacturing
9 48 (2.59%) Organisational Skills
10 37 (2.00%) Aerospace
11 30 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
12 24 (1.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 24 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
13 23 (1.24%) Legal
14 21 (1.13%) Military
15 20 (1.08%) Investment Banking
16 17 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
17 16 (0.86%) Automotive
17 16 (0.86%) Front Office
17 16 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 242 (13.06%) Developer
2 220 (11.87%) Analyst
3 217 (11.71%) Senior
4 213 (11.49%) Lead
5 166 (8.96%) QA Engineer
6 112 (6.04%) Business Analyst
7 103 (5.56%) Tester
8 87 (4.70%) Test Manager
9 68 (3.67%) Java Developer
9 68 (3.67%) Quality Engineer
10 67 (3.62%) Architect
10 67 (3.62%) Test Engineer
11 59 (3.18%) Data Engineer
12 55 (2.97%) Project Manager
13 54 (2.91%) Senior Analyst
14 53 (2.86%) Test Leader
15 51 (2.75%) Consultant
16 50 (2.70%) Data Analyst
17 46 (2.48%) Software Engineer
18 43 (2.32%) QA Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (6.91%) REST
2 109 (5.88%) .NET
3 106 (5.72%) RESTful
4 101 (5.45%) Playwright
5 91 (4.91%) Spring
6 88 (4.75%) Spring Boot
7 74 (3.99%) React
8 66 (3.56%) HTML
9 62 (3.35%) AngularJS
10 60 (3.24%) CSS
11 56 (3.02%) Kafka
12 51 (2.75%) .NET Framework
13 47 (2.54%) Node.js
14 37 (2.00%) JSON
15 34 (1.83%) Quarkus
16 27 (1.46%) Middleware
17 24 (1.30%) pytest
18 23 (1.24%) ASP.NET
18 23 (1.24%) Gherkin
18 23 (1.24%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 162 (8.74%) Product Ownership
2 83 (4.48%) Cloud Native
3 56 (3.02%) Onboarding
4 51 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
5 46 (2.48%) Distributed Systems
6 40 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
7 39 (2.10%) Mobile App
8 37 (2.00%) Management Information System
9 30 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
10 29 (1.57%) Data Structures
11 25 (1.35%) Virtual Team
12 24 (1.30%) Data Centre
13 23 (1.24%) AI Agents
14 18 (0.97%) Analytical Mindset
14 18 (0.97%) PMI
15 17 (0.92%) NHS
15 17 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
16 14 (0.76%) Derivative
17 13 (0.70%) Distributed Architecture
17 13 (0.70%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 86 (4.64%) Windows
2 53 (2.86%) Linux
3 30 (1.62%) Apple iOS
4 29 (1.57%) Windows Server
5 27 (1.46%) Android
6 19 (1.03%) Unix
7 6 (0.32%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.054%) Debian
10 1 (0.054%) Solaris
10 1 (0.054%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.054%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 698 (37.67%) Agile
2 473 (25.53%) Test Automation
3 455 (24.55%) DevOps
4 431 (23.26%) CI/CD
5 309 (16.68%) Validation
6 303 (16.35%) Stakeholder Management
7 298 (16.08%) Continuous Improvement
8 282 (15.22%) Problem-Solving
9 267 (14.41%) User Acceptance Testing
10 243 (13.11%) Test Strategy
11 242 (13.06%) Scrum
12 232 (12.52%) Migration
13 198 (10.69%) AI
14 169 (9.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 154 (8.31%) Decision-Making
16 150 (8.09%) SDLC
17 148 (7.99%) ETL
18 145 (7.83%) Analytics
19 144 (7.77%) Data Migration
20 141 (7.61%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 375 (20.24%) SQL
2 240 (12.95%) Java
3 227 (12.25%) Python
4 137 (7.39%) JavaScript
5 130 (7.02%) C#
6 84 (4.53%) TypeScript
7 42 (2.27%) T-SQL
8 39 (2.10%) PL/SQL
9 30 (1.62%) Kotlin
10 27 (1.46%) PowerShell
11 22 (1.19%) Bash
12 20 (1.08%) Scala
13 18 (0.97%) VB
14 17 (0.92%) Swift
15 16 (0.86%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 15 (0.81%) Bicep
16 15 (0.81%) C
17 14 (0.76%) VBA
18 13 (0.70%) C++
19 11 (0.59%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 421 (22.72%) Security Cleared
2 314 (16.95%) SC Cleared
3 134 (7.23%) Degree
4 76 (4.10%) ISTQB
5 66 (3.56%) BPSS Clearance
6 49 (2.64%) DV Cleared
7 36 (1.94%) PMI Certification
8 34 (1.83%) PMP
9 32 (1.73%) Computer Science Degree
10 18 (0.97%) Master's Degree
11 14 (0.76%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.59%) Azure Certification
12 11 (0.59%) Cisco Certification
13 9 (0.49%) AWS Certification
13 9 (0.49%) CBAP
14 7 (0.38%) CCNP
14 7 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
14 7 (0.38%) SAFe Agilist
15 6 (0.32%) CREST Certified
15 6 (0.32%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 125 (6.75%) Data Quality
2 85 (4.59%) Accessibility
3 34 (1.83%) PMO
4 33 (1.78%) GDPR
5 22 (1.19%) WCAG
6 17 (0.92%) GRC
6 17 (0.92%) IFRS
6 17 (0.92%) NIST
7 16 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.81%) IFRS 17
8 15 (0.81%) PCI DSS
9 14 (0.76%) SLA
10 11 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
10 11 (0.59%) GxP
11 8 (0.43%) ISO 20022
12 7 (0.38%) NCSC
12 7 (0.38%) SEPA
13 6 (0.32%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 6 (0.32%) PSD2
14 5 (0.27%) GMP
System Software
1 108 (5.83%) Docker
2 17 (0.92%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.38%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.27%) Firmware
5 5 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (0.16%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 2 (0.11%) GridGain
7 2 (0.11%) IAG
7 2 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.11%) VirtualBox
7 2 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.054%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.054%) KVM
8 1 (0.054%) QEMU
8 1 (0.054%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
8 1 (0.054%) Varnish
8 1 (0.054%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 158 (8.53%) Kubernetes
2 68 (3.67%) Terraform
3 34 (1.83%) Argo
3 34 (1.83%) Grafana
4 30 (1.62%) Ansible
5 27 (1.46%) Prometheus
6 18 (0.97%) HP ALM
7 10 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.43%) HP Quality Center
9 7 (0.38%) Nmap
9 7 (0.38%) Oracle RMAN
10 6 (0.32%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
11 5 (0.27%) Kibana
12 4 (0.22%) Puppet
12 4 (0.22%) SCCM
13 3 (0.16%) FortiGate
13 3 (0.16%) Progress Chef
14 2 (0.11%) ITRS Geneos
14 2 (0.11%) Tivoli
15 1 (0.054%) Cisco Prime
Vendors
1 189 (10.20%) Microsoft
2 167 (9.01%) Oracle
3 103 (5.56%) Salesforce
4 90 (4.86%) SAP
5 49 (2.64%) ServiceNow
6 37 (2.00%) Citrix
6 37 (2.00%) Google
7 36 (1.94%) Red Hat
8 33 (1.78%) Databricks
9 29 (1.57%) Adobe
10 25 (1.35%) Informatica
11 21 (1.13%) Cisco
12 20 (1.08%) HP
13 18 (0.97%) MuleSoft
14 14 (0.76%) Talend
15 12 (0.65%) Atlassian
15 12 (0.65%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
15 12 (0.65%) Splunk
15 12 (0.65%) VMware
15 12 (0.65%) Workday