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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 65 58
Rank change year-on-year +3 -7 +16
Contract jobs citing QA 1,774 1,043 1,445
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.63% 3.63% 3.35%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.76% 22.53% 24.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,095 723 958
10th Percentile £315 £280 £310
25th Percentile £393 £382 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £509
Median % change year-on-year - -6.59% +0.69%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £610
90th Percentile £669 £688 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £500
% change year-on-year - -10.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 126 23 91
10th Percentile £13.20 £15.12 £10.82
25th Percentile £15.72 £19.27 £12.25
Median hourly rate £30.58 £52.50 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.75% +275.00% -37.74%
75th Percentile £67.50 £73.13 £27.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £71.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £60.00 £13.52
% change year-on-year -49.03% +343.79% -24.89%

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 8,151 4,630 6,001
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.69% 16.09% 13.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,216 2,966 3,787
10th Percentile £340 £263 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £615 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 486 180 408
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.13 £10.99
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.02 £13.18
Median hourly rate £35.00 £32.66 £22.42
Median % change year-on-year +7.18% +45.65% -40.21%
75th Percentile £67.50 £66.09 £48.75
90th Percentile £82.13 £80.28 £69.22
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £32.96 £18.97
% change year-on-year +21.36% +73.75% -49.41%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +9 1,527 £479 +0.74% 949
UK excluding London +12 808 £450 - 707
London +12 776 £500 - 349
Work from Home +10 500 £488 +2.63% 557
South East -2 183 £450 -2.70% 183
North of England -29 172 £463 -1.33% 181
Midlands -6 169 £425 +6.25% 120
West Midlands -9 124 £425 - 66
South West +23 115 £488 -2.50% 87
East of England +11 80 £475 -0.73% 62
North West -23 78 £447 +2.05% 105
Scotland +17 77 £400 -8.57% 40
Yorkshire -32 69 £514 +0.54% 53
East Midlands -14 46 £394 +5.00% 54
North East -17 25 £425 +1.19% 25
Northern Ireland +9 17 £475 +46.15% 29
Wales -12 9 £450 -5.26% 20

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 94 (5.30%) Confluence
2 30 (1.69%) SharePoint
3 26 (1.47%) CMS
4 19 (1.07%) IIS
5 14 (0.79%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 14 (0.79%) Apache Spark
6 10 (0.56%) Apache
7 6 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
8 5 (0.28%) Umbraco
9 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.23%) nginx
9 4 (0.23%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 4 (0.23%) SAS
10 3 (0.17%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.17%) Moodle
10 3 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.17%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.11%) Apache Solr
11 2 (0.11%) Luigi
11 2 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 58 (3.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.80%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (1.47%) Microsoft Project
4 25 (1.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (1.18%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.23%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.17%) CATIA
8 3 (0.17%) Simulink
9 2 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.11%) EPLAN
10 1 (0.056%) Adobe After Effects
10 1 (0.056%) Adobe Premiere
10 1 (0.056%) Autodesk Smoke
10 1 (0.056%) Camtasia
10 1 (0.056%) Chatbot
10 1 (0.056%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.056%) Navisworks
10 1 (0.056%) Notion
Business Applications
1 28 (1.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 19 (1.07%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.45%) Shopify
4 7 (0.39%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.28%) Maximo
6 5 (0.28%) NEC Housing
7 4 (0.23%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.23%) Infor CloudSuite
8 3 (0.17%) Aladdin
8 3 (0.17%) NetSuite
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle EBS R12
8 3 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
9 2 (0.11%) Actimize
9 2 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.11%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.11%) SAP Retail
9 2 (0.11%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 402 (22.66%) Azure
2 281 (15.84%) AWS
3 170 (9.58%) Azure DevOps
4 147 (8.29%) GitHub
5 106 (5.98%) Power Platform
6 95 (5.36%) GitHub Actions
7 76 (4.28%) GCP
8 46 (2.59%) Serverless
9 40 (2.25%) Dynamics 365
10 36 (2.03%) SaaS
11 34 (1.92%) OpenShift
12 30 (1.69%) Snowflake
13 29 (1.63%) AWS Lambda
14 28 (1.58%) Amazon S3
15 25 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 25 (1.41%) Azure Data Factory
16 20 (1.13%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 19 (1.07%) AWS CloudFormation
18 17 (0.96%) Amazon EKS
18 17 (0.96%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.41%) Firewall
2 21 (1.18%) LAN
3 20 (1.13%) WAN
4 19 (1.07%) Network Security
4 19 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
5 18 (1.01%) Internet
6 14 (0.79%) VPN
7 13 (0.73%) Wireless
8 11 (0.62%) DNS
8 11 (0.62%) HTTP
8 11 (0.62%) SD-WAN
8 11 (0.62%) Unified Communications
9 10 (0.56%) VLAN
10 8 (0.45%) IPsec
11 6 (0.34%) Cisco Nexus
11 6 (0.34%) SMS
11 6 (0.34%) TCP/IP
12 4 (0.23%) DHCP
12 4 (0.23%) MPLS
13 2 (0.11%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 106 (5.98%) SQL Server
2 91 (5.13%) Power BI
3 71 (4.00%) Data Warehouse
4 57 (3.21%) PostgreSQL
5 47 (2.65%) Relational Database
6 43 (2.42%) MySQL
7 40 (2.25%) NoSQL
8 38 (2.14%) Tableau
9 34 (1.92%) Oracle Database
10 33 (1.86%) Data Lake
10 33 (1.86%) Oracle Reports
11 32 (1.80%) Metadata
12 24 (1.35%) Big Data
13 23 (1.30%) MongoDB
14 19 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
15 18 (1.01%) DynamoDB
16 17 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 15 (0.85%) BigQuery
18 14 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
19 13 (0.73%) Redis
Development Applications
1 293 (16.52%) JIRA
2 161 (9.08%) Git
3 137 (7.72%) Selenium
4 123 (6.93%) Jenkins
5 101 (5.69%) GitLab
6 82 (4.62%) Postman
7 63 (3.55%) Cucumber
8 59 (3.33%) Cypress.io
9 51 (2.87%) JUnit
10 47 (2.65%) REST Assured
11 43 (2.42%) Zephyr
12 35 (1.97%) JMeter
12 35 (1.97%) SonarQube
13 30 (1.69%) WebDriver
14 22 (1.24%) Gatling
14 22 (1.24%) TestRail
15 18 (1.01%) TestNG
16 16 (0.90%) Gradle
17 15 (0.85%) Appium
18 14 (0.79%) SpecFlow
General
1 550 (31.00%) Social Skills
2 406 (22.89%) Finance
3 241 (13.59%) Analytical Skills
4 195 (10.99%) Public Sector
5 145 (8.17%) Banking
6 57 (3.21%) Retail
7 47 (2.65%) Marketing
8 45 (2.54%) Manufacturing
9 44 (2.48%) Organisational Skills
10 33 (1.86%) Aerospace
11 28 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
12 25 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
13 22 (1.24%) Military
14 21 (1.18%) Investment Banking
15 20 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 18 (1.01%) Legal
17 16 (0.90%) Front Office
17 16 (0.90%) Pharmaceutical
18 14 (0.79%) Automotive
18 14 (0.79%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 211 (11.89%) Analyst
1 211 (11.89%) Developer
2 205 (11.56%) Lead
3 203 (11.44%) Senior
4 154 (8.68%) QA Engineer
5 111 (6.26%) Business Analyst
6 100 (5.64%) Tester
7 82 (4.62%) Test Manager
8 72 (4.06%) Architect
9 64 (3.61%) Project Manager
9 64 (3.61%) Test Engineer
10 63 (3.55%) Quality Engineer
11 59 (3.33%) Data Engineer
12 52 (2.93%) Java Developer
12 52 (2.93%) Test Leader
13 50 (2.82%) Data Analyst
14 49 (2.76%) Senior Analyst
15 42 (2.37%) QA Tester
15 42 (2.37%) Software Engineer
16 40 (2.25%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (7.22%) REST
2 113 (6.37%) .NET
3 94 (5.30%) Playwright
4 93 (5.24%) RESTful
5 71 (4.00%) Spring
6 65 (3.66%) Spring Boot
7 64 (3.61%) React
8 56 (3.16%) HTML
9 51 (2.87%) .NET Framework
9 51 (2.87%) CSS
10 49 (2.76%) Kafka
11 47 (2.65%) AngularJS
12 44 (2.48%) Node.js
13 39 (2.20%) JSON
14 25 (1.41%) Middleware
15 24 (1.35%) Gherkin
15 24 (1.35%) Quarkus
16 23 (1.30%) OpenID
16 23 (1.30%) pytest
17 22 (1.24%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 143 (8.06%) Product Ownership
2 73 (4.11%) Cloud Native
3 50 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
4 47 (2.65%) Onboarding
5 40 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
6 39 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
7 36 (2.03%) Mobile App
8 29 (1.63%) Data Structures
8 29 (1.63%) Management Information System
9 27 (1.52%) Virtual Team
10 23 (1.30%) Data Centre
11 21 (1.18%) Analytical Mindset
11 21 (1.18%) PMI
12 20 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
13 17 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
14 14 (0.79%) Legacy Code
15 13 (0.73%) AI Agents
15 13 (0.73%) Derivative
15 13 (0.73%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 13 (0.73%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 87 (4.90%) Windows
2 55 (3.10%) Linux
3 30 (1.69%) Windows Server
4 26 (1.47%) Android
4 26 (1.47%) Apple iOS
5 16 (0.90%) Unix
6 6 (0.34%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.28%) 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 (0.056%) Debian
9 1 (0.056%) Solaris
9 1 (0.056%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.056%) VMS
9 1 (0.056%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.056%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 647 (36.47%) Agile
2 448 (25.25%) Test Automation
3 436 (24.58%) DevOps
4 420 (23.68%) CI/CD
5 294 (16.57%) Validation
6 290 (16.35%) Stakeholder Management
7 278 (15.67%) Continuous Improvement
8 269 (15.16%) Problem-Solving
9 245 (13.81%) User Acceptance Testing
10 228 (12.85%) Scrum
11 225 (12.68%) Test Strategy
12 219 (12.34%) Migration
13 168 (9.47%) AI
13 168 (9.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 154 (8.68%) ETL
15 143 (8.06%) Decision-Making
16 140 (7.89%) SDLC
17 137 (7.72%) Test Scripting
18 136 (7.67%) Analytics
18 136 (7.67%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 360 (20.29%) SQL
2 235 (13.25%) Python
3 217 (12.23%) Java
4 132 (7.44%) C#
5 128 (7.22%) JavaScript
6 86 (4.85%) TypeScript
7 43 (2.42%) PL/SQL
7 43 (2.42%) T-SQL
8 32 (1.80%) PowerShell
9 31 (1.75%) Kotlin
10 23 (1.30%) Bash
11 19 (1.07%) Scala
12 16 (0.90%) Bicep
12 16 (0.90%) Swift
13 15 (0.85%) C++
13 15 (0.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 14 (0.79%) PHP
14 14 (0.79%) VB
15 12 (0.68%) VBA
16 11 (0.62%) C
Qualifications
1 389 (21.93%) Security Cleared
2 283 (15.95%) SC Cleared
3 142 (8.00%) Degree
4 71 (4.00%) ISTQB
5 61 (3.44%) BPSS Clearance
6 50 (2.82%) DV Cleared
7 41 (2.31%) PMI Certification
8 39 (2.20%) PMP
9 37 (2.09%) Computer Science Degree
10 19 (1.07%) Master's Degree
11 11 (0.62%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (0.62%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 10 (0.56%) AWS Certification
13 9 (0.51%) CBAP
14 8 (0.45%) CHECK Team Member
14 8 (0.45%) CREST Certified
14 8 (0.45%) Cyber Scheme
14 8 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 8 (0.45%) SAFe Agilist
15 7 (0.39%) APMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 131 (7.38%) Data Quality
2 78 (4.40%) Accessibility
3 41 (2.31%) PMO
4 34 (1.92%) GDPR
5 21 (1.18%) WCAG
6 19 (1.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 17 (0.96%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.90%) IFRS
9 15 (0.85%) NIST
10 14 (0.79%) GRC
10 14 (0.79%) IFRS 17
11 13 (0.73%) SLA
12 11 (0.62%) Disclosure Scotland
12 11 (0.62%) GxP
13 7 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
13 7 (0.39%) Basel III
13 7 (0.39%) ISO 20022
13 7 (0.39%) SEPA
14 6 (0.34%) PSD2
14 6 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 109 (6.14%) Docker
2 16 (0.90%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (0.28%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 3 (0.17%) Firmware
6 2 (0.11%) GridGain
6 2 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.056%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.056%) KVM
7 1 (0.056%) QEMU
7 1 (0.056%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
7 1 (0.056%) Varnish
7 1 (0.056%) VirtualBox
7 1 (0.056%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 147 (8.29%) Kubernetes
2 70 (3.95%) Terraform
3 36 (2.03%) Grafana
4 29 (1.63%) Ansible
5 27 (1.52%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.47%) Argo
7 18 (1.01%) HP ALM
8 9 (0.51%) Nmap
8 9 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (0.45%) HP Quality Center
10 7 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
10 7 (0.39%) Puppet
11 5 (0.28%) Kibana
12 4 (0.23%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.23%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 2 (0.11%) ITRS Geneos
13 2 (0.11%) SCCM
14 1 (0.056%) logstash
14 1 (0.056%) Microsoft Intune
14 1 (0.056%) Salt
Vendors
1 183 (10.32%) Microsoft
2 159 (8.96%) Oracle
3 91 (5.13%) Salesforce
3 91 (5.13%) SAP
4 46 (2.59%) ServiceNow
5 40 (2.25%) Citrix
6 37 (2.09%) Google
7 34 (1.92%) Databricks
8 31 (1.75%) Adobe
9 29 (1.63%) Red Hat
10 23 (1.30%) Informatica
11 21 (1.18%) HP
12 20 (1.13%) Cisco
13 13 (0.73%) MuleSoft
13 13 (0.73%) Talend
13 13 (0.73%) Workday
14 12 (0.68%) Splunk
15 10 (0.56%) IBM
15 10 (0.56%) Infor
16 9 (0.51%) VMware