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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 63 63
Rank change year-on-year +14 0 +6
Contract jobs citing QA 2,274 1,279 1,275
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.14% 3.88% 3.32%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 23.56% 22.49% 24.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,326 880 741
10th Percentile £313 £290 £300
25th Percentile £390 £380 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.52%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £668 £650 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £471
% change year-on-year - -4.36% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 238 43 78
10th Percentile £12.85 £12.28 £11.88
25th Percentile £15.28 £13.50 £12.27
Median hourly rate £31.02 £19.37 £14.98
Median % change year-on-year +60.19% +29.27% -66.16%
75th Percentile £48.75 £40.18 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £71.68 £72.51
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £15.12 £14.98
% change year-on-year +102.25% +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 9,650 5,687 5,153
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.59% 17.23% 13.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,075 3,644 3,020
10th Percentile £325 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £500 £505
Median % change year-on-year +0.24% -0.99% -3.81%
75th Percentile £600 £607 £625
90th Percentile £700 £706 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +2.63% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 637 269 250
10th Percentile £13.90 £13.60 £12.42
25th Percentile £16.60 £16.92 £15.23
Median hourly rate £32.40 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.98% +9.09% -22.54%
75th Percentile £65.00 £61.25 £61.99
90th Percentile £75.40 £80.55 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.40 £27.86 £27.50
% change year-on-year +16.28% +1.31% -25.17%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 +13 1,983 £475 - 2,933
UK excluding London +21 1,135 £450 - 1,803
London +6 892 £500 - 1,370
Work from Home +4 571 £475 - 1,233
North of England +11 276 £463 +3.47% 442
South East +10 258 £425 -13.62% 409
Midlands +16 225 £450 +2.86% 315
West Midlands +28 186 £450 -9.27% 233
East of England +18 155 £450 -10.00% 157
South West +10 135 £525 +10.53% 184
Yorkshire +8 111 £500 +8.70% 115
North West -19 107 £475 +12.16% 249
Scotland -6 82 £402 -10.67% 163
North East -11 58 £400 -17.95% 80
East Midlands -7 38 £420 +12.00% 82
Wales -2 19 £406 +8.33% 64
Northern Ireland -3 7 £450 +50.00% 91

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
1 136 (5.98%) Confluence
2 51 (2.24%) CMS
3 41 (1.80%) SharePoint
4 16 (0.70%) Apache Spark
4 16 (0.70%) IIS
5 14 (0.62%) Apache
6 13 (0.57%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 13 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
7 8 (0.35%) SAS
7 8 (0.35%) Sitecore CMS
8 7 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
8 7 (0.31%) Traefik
9 5 (0.22%) OpenStack
9 5 (0.22%) Tuxedo
9 5 (0.22%) WordPress
10 4 (0.18%) Headless CMS
10 4 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.18%) Umbraco
11 3 (0.13%) Appian
11 3 (0.13%) Moodle
Applications
1 79 (3.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.50%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 20 (0.88%) MS Visio
5 17 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.48%) Microsoft Project
7 9 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.26%) Navisworks
8 6 (0.26%) Revit
9 4 (0.18%) AutoCAD
9 4 (0.18%) ProjectWise
10 3 (0.13%) CATIA
11 2 (0.088%) Adobe Premiere
11 2 (0.088%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.088%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.088%) Mingle
11 2 (0.088%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.088%) Simulink
11 2 (0.088%) Windchill
12 1 (0.044%) Adobe After Effects
Business Applications
1 31 (1.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (1.14%) 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
5 7 (0.31%) Workday HCM
6 4 (0.18%) Aladdin
6 4 (0.18%) Maximo
6 4 (0.18%) NEC Housing
6 4 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
6 4 (0.18%) Primavera
6 4 (0.18%) ResourceLink
7 3 (0.13%) Infor CloudSuite
7 3 (0.13%) iTrent
7 3 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
7 3 (0.13%) SAP FI
7 3 (0.13%) SAP MM
7 3 (0.13%) Teamcenter
8 2 (0.088%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 463 (20.36%) Azure
2 412 (18.12%) AWS
3 221 (9.72%) GitHub
4 195 (8.58%) Azure DevOps
5 125 (5.50%) GitHub Actions
6 110 (4.84%) Power Platform
7 109 (4.79%) GCP
8 82 (3.61%) Serverless
9 58 (2.55%) AWS Lambda
10 53 (2.33%) SaaS
11 50 (2.20%) Amazon S3
12 48 (2.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 39 (1.72%) Dynamics 365
14 38 (1.67%) GitHub Copilot
14 38 (1.67%) OpenShift
15 35 (1.54%) Snowflake
16 31 (1.36%) Azure Monitor
17 30 (1.32%) Amazon EKS
18 29 (1.28%) Microsoft 365
19 28 (1.23%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.14%) Firewall
2 23 (1.01%) Broadband
2 23 (1.01%) Internet
3 19 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
4 18 (0.79%) DNS
5 16 (0.70%) 5G
6 15 (0.66%) 4G
6 15 (0.66%) HTTP
6 15 (0.66%) TCP/IP
7 14 (0.62%) VLAN
7 14 (0.62%) WAN
8 13 (0.57%) Network Security
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%) IPv4
11 7 (0.31%) IPv6
11 7 (0.31%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (4.93%) SQL Server
2 97 (4.27%) Power BI
3 85 (3.74%) PostgreSQL
4 79 (3.47%) Relational Database
5 65 (2.86%) Data Warehouse
6 53 (2.33%) MongoDB
7 49 (2.15%) MySQL
8 48 (2.11%) NoSQL
9 44 (1.93%) Oracle Database
10 41 (1.80%) Metadata
11 33 (1.45%) Oracle Reports
11 33 (1.45%) Tableau
12 23 (1.01%) Data Lake
13 19 (0.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 17 (0.75%) Big Data
15 16 (0.70%) GIS
16 15 (0.66%) Power Query
16 15 (0.66%) RDBMS
17 14 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
17 14 (0.62%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 308 (13.54%) JIRA
2 256 (11.26%) Git
3 175 (7.70%) Selenium
4 173 (7.61%) Jenkins
5 144 (6.33%) GitLab
6 89 (3.91%) Cucumber
7 87 (3.83%) Postman
8 78 (3.43%) Cypress.io
9 69 (3.03%) JUnit
10 55 (2.42%) Zephyr
11 52 (2.29%) SonarQube
12 49 (2.15%) JMeter
13 44 (1.93%) REST Assured
14 43 (1.89%) Gatling
15 35 (1.54%) Maven
16 30 (1.32%) WebDriver
17 27 (1.19%) Gradle
18 23 (1.01%) TestNG
19 21 (0.92%) Appium
19 21 (0.92%) TestRail
General
1 688 (30.26%) Social Skills
2 428 (18.82%) Finance
3 360 (15.83%) Analytical Skills
4 282 (12.40%) Public Sector
5 171 (7.52%) Banking
6 83 (3.65%) Manufacturing
7 71 (3.12%) Retail
8 64 (2.81%) Marketing
9 59 (2.59%) Organisational Skills
10 56 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 44 (1.93%) Telecoms
12 42 (1.85%) Aerospace
13 40 (1.76%) Influencing Skills
14 38 (1.67%) Legal
15 31 (1.36%) Documentation Skills
16 26 (1.14%) Military
17 25 (1.10%) Law
18 19 (0.84%) Investment Banking
18 19 (0.84%) Local Government
19 18 (0.79%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 300 (13.19%) Developer
2 288 (12.66%) Lead
3 267 (11.74%) Senior
4 249 (10.95%) Analyst
4 249 (10.95%) QA Engineer
5 131 (5.76%) Quality Engineer
6 122 (5.36%) Tester
7 107 (4.71%) Business Analyst
7 107 (4.71%) Test Engineer
8 104 (4.57%) Test Manager
9 79 (3.47%) QA Leader
10 76 (3.34%) Data Engineer
11 75 (3.30%) Java Developer
12 67 (2.95%) Test Leader
13 57 (2.51%) Consultant
13 57 (2.51%) Senior Analyst
14 56 (2.46%) QA Tester
15 55 (2.42%) Architect
16 54 (2.37%) Test Analyst
17 48 (2.11%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 209 (9.19%) REST
2 143 (6.29%) Playwright
3 141 (6.20%) RESTful
4 125 (5.50%) Spring
5 110 (4.84%) Spring Boot
6 106 (4.66%) Terraform
7 95 (4.18%) .NET
8 90 (3.96%) React
9 85 (3.74%) HTML
9 85 (3.74%) Kafka
10 75 (3.30%) CSS
11 73 (3.21%) AngularJS
12 63 (2.77%) Node.js
13 59 (2.59%) SOAP
14 54 (2.37%) pytest
15 51 (2.24%) Middleware
16 41 (1.80%) .NET Framework
17 39 (1.72%) JSON
18 37 (1.63%) Gherkin
18 37 (1.63%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 209 (9.19%) Product Ownership
2 135 (5.94%) Cloud Native
3 81 (3.56%) Onboarding
4 68 (2.99%) Enterprise Software
5 65 (2.86%) Management Information System
6 58 (2.55%) Distributed Systems
7 53 (2.33%) Mobile App
8 49 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
9 46 (2.02%) AI Agents
10 42 (1.85%) Data Structures
11 40 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
12 36 (1.58%) Data Centre
13 32 (1.41%) Low-Code
14 26 (1.14%) NHS
15 24 (1.06%) Virtual Team
16 23 (1.01%) CMDB
17 20 (0.88%) Educational Technology
18 16 (0.70%) Analytical Mindset
19 15 (0.66%) Operational Technology
20 14 (0.62%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 93 (4.09%) Windows
2 76 (3.34%) Linux
3 49 (2.15%) Apple iOS
4 45 (1.98%) Android
5 33 (1.45%) Unix
6 24 (1.06%) Windows Server
7 16 (0.70%) 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
1 873 (38.39%) Agile
2 642 (28.23%) Test Automation
3 590 (25.95%) CI/CD
4 551 (24.23%) DevOps
5 462 (20.32%) Stakeholder Management
6 447 (19.66%) Continuous Improvement
7 388 (17.06%) Problem-Solving
8 375 (16.49%) Validation
9 335 (14.73%) Scrum
10 334 (14.69%) AI
11 328 (14.42%) Test Strategy
12 275 (12.09%) User Acceptance Testing
13 253 (11.13%) Migration
14 209 (9.19%) Microservices
15 208 (9.15%) SDLC
16 200 (8.80%) End-to-End Testing
17 194 (8.53%) Software Engineering
18 179 (7.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 178 (7.83%) Defect Management
20 168 (7.39%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 420 (18.47%) SQL
2 326 (14.34%) Python
3 291 (12.80%) Java
4 186 (8.18%) JavaScript
5 116 (5.10%) C#
6 101 (4.44%) TypeScript
7 55 (2.42%) Bash
8 38 (1.67%) PowerShell
9 35 (1.54%) PL/SQL
10 30 (1.32%) Kotlin
11 27 (1.19%) T-SQL
12 24 (1.06%) Scala
13 20 (0.88%) Swift
14 17 (0.75%) C
14 17 (0.75%) Objective-C
14 17 (0.75%) Shell Script
15 16 (0.70%) VB
16 14 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 14 (0.62%) R
16 14 (0.62%) VBA
Qualifications
1 537 (23.61%) Security Cleared
2 417 (18.34%) SC Cleared
3 149 (6.55%) Degree
4 106 (4.66%) BPSS Clearance
5 75 (3.30%) ISTQB
6 64 (2.81%) DV Cleared
7 44 (1.93%) Computer Science Degree
8 26 (1.14%) PMP
9 20 (0.88%) PMI Certification
10 19 (0.84%) AWS Certification
11 18 (0.79%) Azure Certification
12 15 (0.66%) Master's Degree
13 14 (0.62%) Microsoft Certification
14 10 (0.44%) Cisco Certification
14 10 (0.44%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 10 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
15 9 (0.40%) DBS Check
15 9 (0.40%) IIBA
15 9 (0.40%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 8 (0.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 160 (7.04%) Data Quality
2 126 (5.54%) Accessibility
3 38 (1.67%) WCAG
4 36 (1.58%) GDPR
5 27 (1.19%) PMO
6 25 (1.10%) GRC
7 14 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 14 (0.62%) NIST
8 10 (0.44%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 10 (0.44%) GxP
9 9 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
9 9 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
9 9 (0.40%) ISO 9001
9 9 (0.40%) SLA
10 8 (0.35%) ISO 19650
10 8 (0.35%) Software Quality Assurance
11 7 (0.31%) IFRS
11 7 (0.31%) NCSC
12 6 (0.26%) ISO 20022
13 4 (0.18%) GMP
System Software
1 205 (9.01%) Docker
2 24 (1.06%) Active Directory
3 18 (0.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (0.44%) IAG
6 6 (0.26%) Firmware
7 4 (0.18%) ACF2
7 4 (0.18%) RACF
8 3 (0.13%) KVM
8 3 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
8 3 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.13%) VirtualBox
9 2 (0.088%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.044%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.044%) QEMU
10 1 (0.044%) Varnish
10 1 (0.044%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.044%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 232 (10.20%) Kubernetes
2 63 (2.77%) Ansible
3 55 (2.42%) Grafana
4 39 (1.72%) Prometheus
5 32 (1.41%) Argo
6 12 (0.53%) HP ALM
7 11 (0.48%) 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%) Istio
9 7 (0.31%) Microsoft Intune
9 7 (0.31%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 5 (0.22%) Puppet
11 4 (0.18%) Progress Chef
11 4 (0.18%) SCOM
12 3 (0.13%) FortiGate
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle RMAN
13 2 (0.088%) Control-M
13 2 (0.088%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 244 (10.73%) Microsoft
2 172 (7.56%) Oracle
3 115 (5.06%) Salesforce
4 77 (3.39%) SAP
5 61 (2.68%) ServiceNow
6 50 (2.20%) Google
7 46 (2.02%) Databricks
8 34 (1.50%) Dynatrace
9 33 (1.45%) Red Hat
10 30 (1.32%) Splunk
11 26 (1.14%) Citrix
12 23 (1.01%) Adobe
13 22 (0.97%) Cisco
14 20 (0.88%) VMware
15 16 (0.70%) IBM
15 16 (0.70%) Informatica
15 16 (0.70%) Sitecore
15 16 (0.70%) Workday
16 15 (0.66%) HP
16 15 (0.66%) Talend