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

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 59 62 57
Rank change year-on-year +3 -5 +21
Contract jobs citing QA 1,637 1,044 1,499
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.74% 3.58% 3.39%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.53% 23.58% 23.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,038 692 1,041
10th Percentile £320 £280 £313
25th Percentile £400 £370 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £475 £510
Median % change year-on-year +4.21% -6.86% -2.86%
75th Percentile £580 £575 £625
90th Percentile £675 £709 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £488
% change year-on-year +2.70% -5.13% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 23 68
10th Percentile £13.20 £15.93 £10.86
25th Percentile £14.94 £21.25 £12.25
Median hourly rate £30.58 £50.00 £17.18
Median % change year-on-year -38.84% +191.08% -23.60%
75th Percentile £67.50 £73.13 £34.06
90th Percentile £71.25 £75.00 £68.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £62.00 £14.00
% change year-on-year -50.68% +342.86% -37.53%

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 7,604 4,428 6,343
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.35% 15.20% 14.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,912 2,862 4,040
10th Percentile £340 £263 £300
25th Percentile £413 £378 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £625
90th Percentile £700 £720 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £483
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.66% +1.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 408 177 372
10th Percentile £15.29 £17.26 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.14 £13.33
Median hourly rate £28.80 £31.76 £22.01
Median % change year-on-year -9.34% +44.30% -44.98%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £45.00
90th Percentile £81.30 £78.56 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £31.76 £18.61
% change year-on-year -3.72% +70.66% -48.66%

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 24 March 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 24 March 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 24 March 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 +1 1,422 £498 +4.52% 836
London +5 744 £500 - 266
UK excluding London -1 728 £475 +2.70% 670
Work from Home +3 440 £500 +0.96% 352
North of England -14 172 £463 -7.50% 174
Midlands 0 161 £460 +12.47% 99
South East -19 159 £500 +8.11% 185
West Midlands -6 113 £490 +15.29% 62
South West +14 105 £515 +4.30% 88
North West -10 91 £402 -13.08% 93
Scotland +16 61 £550 +37.50% 47
Yorkshire -33 57 £525 +5.00% 51
East of England -3 54 £440 -6.63% 72
East Midlands -10 49 £402 +2.88% 37
North East -8 24 £500 +28.21% 31
Northern Ireland +5 17 £475 +6.15% 5
Wales -10 13 £440 -18.14% 17

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 97 (5.93%) Confluence
2 33 (2.02%) SharePoint
3 22 (1.34%) CMS
4 20 (1.22%) IIS
5 14 (0.86%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 14 (0.86%) Apache
6 9 (0.55%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
7 6 (0.37%) Apache Spark
7 6 (0.37%) SAS
8 5 (0.31%) Anypoint
8 5 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
8 5 (0.31%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.18%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.12%) Apache Solr
10 2 (0.12%) Documentum
10 2 (0.12%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.12%) Luigi
10 2 (0.12%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.12%) nginx
Applications
1 64 (3.91%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (2.50%) Microsoft Office
3 31 (1.89%) Microsoft Project
4 25 (1.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 16 (0.98%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.18%) Photoshop
6 3 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
7 2 (0.12%) Autodesk Smoke
7 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.12%) Simulink
8 1 (0.061%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.061%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.061%) Autodesk Inventor
8 1 (0.061%) Camtasia
8 1 (0.061%) CPLEX
8 1 (0.061%) Mingle
8 1 (0.061%) Notion
8 1 (0.061%) Trello
Business Applications
1 26 (1.59%) SAP S/4HANA
2 14 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
3 13 (0.79%) Oracle EBS
4 10 (0.61%) Workday HCM
5 7 (0.43%) Oracle Payables
5 7 (0.43%) Shopify
6 6 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
7 5 (0.31%) Maximo
7 5 (0.31%) Oracle Cash Management
7 5 (0.31%) Oracle General Ledger
7 5 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
8 4 (0.24%) Adobe Campaign
8 4 (0.24%) Oracle EBS R12
8 4 (0.24%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 4 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
9 3 (0.18%) Aladdin
9 3 (0.18%) Algo Collateral
9 3 (0.18%) NetSuite
9 3 (0.18%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.12%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 381 (23.27%) Azure
2 268 (16.37%) AWS
3 166 (10.14%) Azure DevOps
4 124 (7.57%) GitHub
5 103 (6.29%) Power Platform
6 84 (5.13%) GitHub Actions
7 76 (4.64%) GCP
8 58 (3.54%) Serverless
9 38 (2.32%) Dynamics 365
10 36 (2.20%) AWS Lambda
11 35 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 33 (2.02%) SaaS
13 30 (1.83%) OpenShift
14 27 (1.65%) Amazon ECS
14 27 (1.65%) AWS CloudFormation
15 24 (1.47%) Azure Data Factory
16 21 (1.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 21 (1.28%) OCI
17 19 (1.16%) Snowflake
18 17 (1.04%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.22%) Firewall
2 14 (0.86%) Internet
2 14 (0.86%) Wireless
3 12 (0.73%) HTTP
3 12 (0.73%) WAN
4 10 (0.61%) LAN
4 10 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
5 7 (0.43%) Network Security
6 6 (0.37%) DNS
7 5 (0.31%) 5G
7 5 (0.31%) SMS
7 5 (0.31%) VPN
8 4 (0.24%) Broadband
8 4 (0.24%) SD-WAN
8 4 (0.24%) WebEx
9 3 (0.18%) DSL
10 2 (0.12%) MPLS
10 2 (0.12%) NFC
10 2 (0.12%) TCP/IP
10 2 (0.12%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (5.68%) SQL Server
2 87 (5.31%) Power BI
3 54 (3.30%) Data Warehouse
4 49 (2.99%) Relational Database
5 41 (2.50%) PostgreSQL
6 40 (2.44%) MySQL
7 35 (2.14%) NoSQL
8 31 (1.89%) Oracle Database
9 28 (1.71%) Tableau
10 27 (1.65%) Metadata
11 24 (1.47%) Data Lake
11 24 (1.47%) MongoDB
12 19 (1.16%) Oracle Reports
13 17 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
13 17 (1.04%) Azure SQL Database
13 17 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 14 (0.86%) BigQuery
15 13 (0.79%) Big Data
16 12 (0.73%) DynamoDB
17 11 (0.67%) Redis
Development Applications
1 293 (17.90%) JIRA
2 132 (8.06%) Git
3 123 (7.51%) GitLab
3 123 (7.51%) Jenkins
4 119 (7.27%) Selenium
5 79 (4.83%) Postman
6 70 (4.28%) Cucumber
7 66 (4.03%) Cypress.io
8 51 (3.12%) REST Assured
9 45 (2.75%) JUnit
10 35 (2.14%) JMeter
11 25 (1.53%) Zephyr
12 22 (1.34%) Gatling
13 20 (1.22%) SonarQube
13 20 (1.22%) TestRail
14 19 (1.16%) WebDriver
15 17 (1.04%) Appium
16 16 (0.98%) Visual Studio
17 15 (0.92%) TestNG
18 13 (0.79%) Gradle
General
1 594 (36.29%) Social Skills
2 418 (25.53%) Finance
3 267 (16.31%) Analytical Skills
4 195 (11.91%) Public Sector
5 151 (9.22%) Banking
6 48 (2.93%) Documentation Skills
7 45 (2.75%) Retail
8 40 (2.44%) Organisational Skills
9 38 (2.32%) Manufacturing
10 32 (1.95%) Marketing
11 31 (1.89%) Legal
12 26 (1.59%) Front Office
13 24 (1.47%) Investment Banking
14 20 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
14 20 (1.22%) Military
14 20 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
14 20 (1.22%) Telecoms
15 19 (1.16%) Aerospace
15 19 (1.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 16 (0.98%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 211 (12.89%) Analyst
2 200 (12.22%) Developer
2 200 (12.22%) Lead
3 199 (12.16%) Senior
4 112 (6.84%) QA Engineer
5 110 (6.72%) Business Analyst
6 90 (5.50%) Tester
7 81 (4.95%) Test Engineer
8 80 (4.89%) Project Manager
9 79 (4.83%) Test Manager
10 68 (4.15%) Architect
11 55 (3.36%) Test Leader
12 51 (3.12%) Java Developer
13 49 (2.99%) Consultant
14 48 (2.93%) Data Analyst
15 44 (2.69%) QA Leader
16 41 (2.50%) Data Engineer
16 41 (2.50%) Senior Analyst
17 40 (2.44%) Test Analyst
18 37 (2.26%) C# Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (9.04%) REST
2 110 (6.72%) Playwright
3 106 (6.48%) .NET
4 75 (4.58%) RESTful
5 72 (4.40%) Spring
6 68 (4.15%) Spring Boot
7 67 (4.09%) React
8 50 (3.05%) Kafka
9 49 (2.99%) .NET Framework
10 46 (2.81%) Node.js
11 39 (2.38%) AngularJS
12 38 (2.32%) CSS
13 37 (2.26%) HTML
13 37 (2.26%) JSON
14 25 (1.53%) Oracle Fusion
14 25 (1.53%) XML
15 24 (1.47%) Gherkin
16 22 (1.34%) SOAP
17 21 (1.28%) Middleware
18 20 (1.22%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 166 (10.14%) Product Ownership
2 77 (4.70%) Cloud Native
3 46 (2.81%) Mobile App
4 43 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
4 43 (2.63%) Onboarding
5 38 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
6 34 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
7 33 (2.02%) PMI
8 27 (1.65%) Data Structures
9 25 (1.53%) Management Information System
10 24 (1.47%) Virtual Team
11 23 (1.41%) Analytical Mindset
12 22 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
13 21 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
14 19 (1.16%) SWIFT Messaging Network
15 16 (0.98%) Fixed Income
15 16 (0.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 15 (0.92%) Algorithms
16 15 (0.92%) Derivative
16 15 (0.92%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 86 (5.25%) Windows
2 48 (2.93%) Linux
3 30 (1.83%) Windows Server
4 21 (1.28%) Android
5 18 (1.10%) Apple iOS
6 16 (0.98%) Unix
7 3 (0.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.18%) VMS
8 2 (0.12%) Solaris
9 1 (0.061%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.061%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.061%) Robot Operating System
9 1 (0.061%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.061%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.061%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.061%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 646 (39.46%) Agile
2 441 (26.94%) Test Automation
3 433 (26.45%) DevOps
4 416 (25.41%) CI/CD
5 359 (21.93%) Problem-Solving
6 304 (18.57%) Stakeholder Management
7 271 (16.55%) Continuous Improvement
8 257 (15.70%) Validation
9 242 (14.78%) User Acceptance Testing
10 224 (13.68%) Scrum
11 209 (12.77%) Test Strategy
12 196 (11.97%) Migration
13 179 (10.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 145 (8.86%) Regression Testing
15 144 (8.80%) Test Scripting
16 141 (8.61%) AI
16 141 (8.61%) SDLC
17 136 (8.31%) Project Management
18 134 (8.19%) ETL
19 133 (8.12%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 332 (20.28%) SQL
2 218 (13.32%) Java
3 212 (12.95%) Python
4 131 (8.00%) C#
5 124 (7.57%) JavaScript
6 110 (6.72%) TypeScript
7 47 (2.87%) PL/SQL
8 43 (2.63%) T-SQL
9 37 (2.26%) PowerShell
10 20 (1.22%) Kotlin
11 18 (1.10%) Bash
12 15 (0.92%) Ruby
12 15 (0.92%) VBA
13 14 (0.86%) VB
14 13 (0.79%) Scala
15 12 (0.73%) C++
16 11 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 10 (0.61%) Bicep
17 10 (0.61%) PHP
17 10 (0.61%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 335 (20.46%) Security Cleared
2 240 (14.66%) SC Cleared
3 165 (10.08%) Degree
4 69 (4.22%) ISTQB
5 66 (4.03%) PMI Certification
6 53 (3.24%) PMP
7 51 (3.12%) Computer Science Degree
8 45 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
9 42 (2.57%) DV Cleared
10 33 (2.02%) Master's Degree
11 14 (0.86%) AWS Certification
11 14 (0.86%) CBAP
12 13 (0.79%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 11 (0.67%) CHECK Team Member
13 11 (0.67%) CREST Certified
13 11 (0.67%) Cyber Scheme
13 11 (0.67%) Postgraduate
13 11 (0.67%) SAFe Agilist
14 10 (0.61%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 10 (0.61%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 113 (6.90%) Data Quality
2 91 (5.56%) Accessibility
3 48 (2.93%) GDPR
4 43 (2.63%) PMO
5 29 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 26 (1.59%) PCI DSS
7 20 (1.22%) NIST
8 19 (1.16%) WCAG
9 16 (0.98%) IFRS
9 16 (0.98%) IFRS 17
10 15 (0.92%) PSD2
11 13 (0.79%) SLA
12 12 (0.73%) GxP
12 12 (0.73%) SEPA
13 11 (0.67%) GRC
13 11 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 10 (0.61%) Basel III
14 10 (0.61%) ISO 20022
15 8 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
15 8 (0.49%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 107 (6.54%) Docker
2 12 (0.73%) Active Directory
3 6 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
3 6 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 3 (0.18%) Firmware
6 2 (0.12%) GridGain
6 2 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.061%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.061%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
7 1 (0.061%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 133 (8.12%) Kubernetes
2 82 (5.01%) Terraform
3 44 (2.69%) Grafana
4 36 (2.20%) Ansible
5 21 (1.28%) Argo
5 21 (1.28%) HP ALM
5 21 (1.28%) Prometheus
6 12 (0.73%) Nmap
7 10 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.43%) Kibana
9 6 (0.37%) HP Quality Center
9 6 (0.37%) Puppet
10 4 (0.24%) CloudHub
10 4 (0.24%) Oracle RMAN
11 3 (0.18%) Consul
11 3 (0.18%) Progress Chef
12 2 (0.12%) Control-M
13 1 (0.061%) Cisco Prime
13 1 (0.061%) SCCM
13 1 (0.061%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 170 (10.38%) Microsoft
2 145 (8.86%) Oracle
3 94 (5.74%) SAP
4 78 (4.76%) Salesforce
5 53 (3.24%) ServiceNow
6 44 (2.69%) Citrix
7 37 (2.26%) Google
8 26 (1.59%) Databricks
9 25 (1.53%) Adobe
10 24 (1.47%) Red Hat
11 23 (1.41%) HP
12 19 (1.16%) Splunk
13 18 (1.10%) Informatica
13 18 (1.10%) Workday
14 16 (0.98%) IBM
14 16 (0.98%) MuleSoft
15 11 (0.67%) Talend
16 9 (0.55%) Guidewire
17 8 (0.49%) Bloomberg
17 8 (0.49%) Sage