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 13 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 67 58
Rank change year-on-year +6 -9 +20
Contract jobs citing QA 1,710 1,028 1,456
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.62% 3.55% 3.41%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.79% 22.62% 23.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,052 700 985
10th Percentile £313 £280 £313
25th Percentile £400 £384 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £509
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -6.68% +1.80%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £611
90th Percentile £675 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £460 £500
% change year-on-year +3.26% -8.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 22 72
10th Percentile £12.91 £15.61 £10.82
25th Percentile £15.25 £20.31 £12.25
Median hourly rate £30.58 £51.25 £14.69
Median % change year-on-year -40.33% +248.88% -34.67%
75th Percentile £68.13 £73.44 £28.43
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £72.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.27 £62.00 £13.52
% change year-on-year -52.79% +358.58% +4.00%

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 7,849 4,545 6,118
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.63% 15.68% 14.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,068 2,912 3,889
10th Percentile £340 £265 £286
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 £623 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £483
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.66% +0.84%
Number of hourly rates quoted 457 170 381
10th Percentile £14.02 £18.07 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.17 £13.18
Median hourly rate £36.00 £35.00 £21.12
Median % change year-on-year +2.86% +65.76% -39.67%
75th Percentile £67.25 £65.46 £45.00
90th Percentile £81.40 £82.98 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £50.00 £18.27
% change year-on-year -20.00% +173.67% -45.27%

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 13 May 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 13 May 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 13 May 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 +3 1,467 £488 +1.83% 742
UK excluding London +3 764 £475 +3.26% 570
London +14 756 £500 +1.01% 250
Work from Home +8 477 £484 -2.15% 339
North of England -25 172 £481 -3.75% 144
South East -13 170 £475 +9.38% 170
Midlands -9 156 £425 +2.66% 109
South West +18 112 £486 -2.75% 59
West Midlands -14 111 £450 +5.88% 64
North West -13 85 £447 -1.70% 86
Scotland +15 72 £420 +5.00% 35
East of England +12 69 £494 -1.25% 52
Yorkshire -28 64 £525 +1.72% 42
East Midlands -11 46 £393 -3.94% 45
North East -11 23 £450 -2.17% 17
Northern Ireland +13 17 £475 -0.78% 8
Wales -9 10 £475 -9.52% 12

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 90 (5.26%) Confluence
2 31 (1.81%) SharePoint
3 22 (1.29%) IIS
4 20 (1.17%) CMS
5 12 (0.70%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 10 (0.58%) Apache
7 7 (0.41%) Apache Spark
7 7 (0.41%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 5 (0.29%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
9 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.23%) nginx
9 4 (0.23%) SAS
10 3 (0.18%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.18%) Moodle
10 3 (0.18%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.18%) Umbraco
11 2 (0.12%) Apache Solr
11 2 (0.12%) Luigi
11 2 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 68 (3.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 43 (2.51%) Microsoft Office
3 31 (1.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 30 (1.75%) Microsoft Project
5 20 (1.17%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.23%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.18%) Simulink
7 3 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.12%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
8 2 (0.12%) EPLAN
9 1 (0.058%) Adobe After Effects
9 1 (0.058%) Adobe Premiere
9 1 (0.058%) Autodesk Smoke
9 1 (0.058%) Camtasia
9 1 (0.058%) CPLEX
9 1 (0.058%) Mingle
9 1 (0.058%) Navisworks
9 1 (0.058%) Revit
Business Applications
1 28 (1.64%) SAP S/4HANA
2 19 (1.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
4 8 (0.47%) Shopify
5 7 (0.41%) Workday HCM
6 4 (0.23%) Adobe Campaign
6 4 (0.23%) Infor CloudSuite
6 4 (0.23%) Maximo
6 4 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
6 4 (0.23%) Oracle EBS R12
6 4 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
7 3 (0.18%) Aladdin
7 3 (0.18%) NEC Housing
7 3 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
7 3 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 2 (0.12%) Actimize
8 2 (0.12%) Advent Geneva
8 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
8 2 (0.12%) SAP Retail
8 2 (0.12%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 388 (22.69%) Azure
2 259 (15.15%) AWS
3 166 (9.71%) Azure DevOps
4 130 (7.60%) GitHub
5 109 (6.37%) Power Platform
6 81 (4.74%) GitHub Actions
7 75 (4.39%) GCP
8 46 (2.69%) Serverless
9 37 (2.16%) Dynamics 365
10 36 (2.11%) OpenShift
11 32 (1.87%) SaaS
12 27 (1.58%) Amazon S3
12 27 (1.58%) AWS Lambda
13 25 (1.46%) Snowflake
14 24 (1.40%) Azure Data Factory
15 22 (1.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 22 (1.29%) Amazon ECS
15 22 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
16 19 (1.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 18 (1.05%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.52%) Firewall
2 20 (1.17%) WAN
3 18 (1.05%) LAN
4 17 (0.99%) Internet
4 17 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
5 16 (0.94%) Network Security
5 16 (0.94%) Wireless
6 12 (0.70%) VPN
7 11 (0.64%) HTTP
8 10 (0.58%) SD-WAN
9 9 (0.53%) VLAN
10 7 (0.41%) Unified Communications
11 6 (0.35%) Cisco Nexus
11 6 (0.35%) DNS
11 6 (0.35%) IPsec
12 4 (0.23%) MPLS
12 4 (0.23%) SMS
12 4 (0.23%) WebEx
13 3 (0.18%) DSL
13 3 (0.18%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 104 (6.08%) SQL Server
2 96 (5.61%) Power BI
3 64 (3.74%) Data Warehouse
4 50 (2.92%) PostgreSQL
4 50 (2.92%) Relational Database
5 46 (2.69%) MySQL
6 39 (2.28%) Tableau
7 37 (2.16%) Oracle Database
8 33 (1.93%) Metadata
9 32 (1.87%) NoSQL
10 29 (1.70%) Data Lake
11 26 (1.52%) Oracle Reports
12 19 (1.11%) Azure SQL Database
13 18 (1.05%) MongoDB
14 17 (0.99%) Big Data
14 17 (0.99%) BigQuery
15 15 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 13 (0.76%) Redis
17 12 (0.70%) DynamoDB
17 12 (0.70%) GIS
Development Applications
1 291 (17.02%) JIRA
2 149 (8.71%) Git
3 124 (7.25%) Selenium
4 113 (6.61%) Jenkins
5 101 (5.91%) GitLab
6 82 (4.80%) Postman
7 61 (3.57%) Cucumber
8 58 (3.39%) Cypress.io
9 41 (2.40%) JUnit
10 40 (2.34%) REST Assured
11 35 (2.05%) JMeter
12 34 (1.99%) SonarQube
12 34 (1.99%) Zephyr
13 23 (1.35%) WebDriver
14 18 (1.05%) Gatling
14 18 (1.05%) TestNG
14 18 (1.05%) TestRail
15 17 (0.99%) Appium
16 13 (0.76%) Gradle
16 13 (0.76%) Visual Studio
General
1 559 (32.69%) Social Skills
2 406 (23.74%) Finance
3 252 (14.74%) Analytical Skills
4 196 (11.46%) Public Sector
5 139 (8.13%) Banking
6 51 (2.98%) Retail
7 38 (2.22%) Organisational Skills
8 36 (2.11%) Marketing
9 34 (1.99%) Manufacturing
10 29 (1.70%) Documentation Skills
11 25 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
12 24 (1.40%) Aerospace
12 24 (1.40%) Military
13 21 (1.23%) Investment Banking
13 21 (1.23%) Legal
14 20 (1.17%) Telecoms
15 16 (0.94%) Front Office
15 16 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 14 (0.82%) Corporate Banking
17 13 (0.76%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 220 (12.87%) Analyst
2 204 (11.93%) Developer
3 193 (11.29%) Senior
4 191 (11.17%) Lead
5 135 (7.89%) QA Engineer
6 114 (6.67%) Business Analyst
7 94 (5.50%) Tester
8 74 (4.33%) Test Manager
9 73 (4.27%) Project Manager
10 69 (4.04%) Test Engineer
11 66 (3.86%) Architect
12 55 (3.22%) Quality Engineer
13 53 (3.10%) Data Engineer
14 52 (3.04%) Data Analyst
15 49 (2.87%) Java Developer
16 48 (2.81%) Senior Analyst
17 46 (2.69%) Test Leader
18 41 (2.40%) C# Developer
19 39 (2.28%) Software Engineer
19 39 (2.28%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 126 (7.37%) REST
2 111 (6.49%) .NET
3 95 (5.56%) Playwright
4 75 (4.39%) RESTful
5 68 (3.98%) Spring
6 65 (3.80%) Spring Boot
7 60 (3.51%) React
8 50 (2.92%) .NET Framework
9 49 (2.87%) Kafka
10 47 (2.75%) HTML
11 46 (2.69%) AngularJS
12 44 (2.57%) CSS
13 43 (2.51%) Node.js
14 36 (2.11%) JSON
15 24 (1.40%) Middleware
15 24 (1.40%) Quarkus
16 23 (1.35%) Gherkin
17 19 (1.11%) OpenID
17 19 (1.11%) Oracle Fusion
17 19 (1.11%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 149 (8.71%) Product Ownership
2 71 (4.15%) Cloud Native
3 47 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
4 38 (2.22%) Onboarding
5 37 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
5 37 (2.16%) Distributed Systems
6 33 (1.93%) Mobile App
7 30 (1.75%) Data Structures
8 28 (1.64%) Management Information System
9 25 (1.46%) Virtual Team
10 24 (1.40%) Data Centre
11 23 (1.35%) PMI
12 20 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
13 19 (1.11%) Analytical Mindset
13 19 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
14 16 (0.94%) Derivative
14 16 (0.94%) SWIFT Messaging Network
15 14 (0.82%) AI Agents
16 13 (0.76%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 13 (0.76%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 90 (5.26%) Windows
2 53 (3.10%) Linux
3 28 (1.64%) Windows Server
4 21 (1.23%) Android
5 20 (1.17%) Apple iOS
6 13 (0.76%) Unix
7 6 (0.35%) Mac OS
8 3 (0.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.18%) VMS
9 2 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.12%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.058%) Debian
10 1 (0.058%) Solaris
10 1 (0.058%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.058%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.058%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 632 (36.96%) Agile
2 437 (25.56%) DevOps
3 430 (25.15%) Test Automation
4 411 (24.04%) CI/CD
5 295 (17.25%) Problem-Solving
6 290 (16.96%) Stakeholder Management
7 285 (16.67%) Validation
8 275 (16.08%) Continuous Improvement
9 246 (14.39%) User Acceptance Testing
10 227 (13.27%) Scrum
11 202 (11.81%) Test Strategy
12 200 (11.70%) Migration
13 159 (9.30%) AI
14 158 (9.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 148 (8.65%) SDLC
16 147 (8.60%) ETL
17 141 (8.25%) Analytics
18 138 (8.07%) Decision-Making
18 138 (8.07%) Test Scripting
19 136 (7.95%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 353 (20.64%) SQL
2 230 (13.45%) Python
3 207 (12.11%) Java
4 129 (7.54%) C#
4 129 (7.54%) JavaScript
5 97 (5.67%) TypeScript
6 51 (2.98%) PL/SQL
7 47 (2.75%) T-SQL
8 32 (1.87%) PowerShell
9 23 (1.35%) Kotlin
10 22 (1.29%) Bash
11 17 (0.99%) C++
12 16 (0.94%) VBA
13 15 (0.88%) PHP
13 15 (0.88%) Ruby
13 15 (0.88%) Scala
13 15 (0.88%) VB
14 14 (0.82%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 13 (0.76%) Bicep
16 11 (0.64%) C
Qualifications
1 375 (21.93%) Security Cleared
2 273 (15.96%) SC Cleared
3 158 (9.24%) Degree
4 66 (3.86%) ISTQB
5 53 (3.10%) BPSS Clearance
6 48 (2.81%) PMI Certification
7 47 (2.75%) Computer Science Degree
8 46 (2.69%) PMP
9 43 (2.51%) DV Cleared
10 24 (1.40%) Master's Degree
11 11 (0.64%) AWS Certification
11 11 (0.64%) CHECK Team Member
11 11 (0.64%) CREST Certified
11 11 (0.64%) Cyber Scheme
12 10 (0.58%) Cisco Certification
12 10 (0.58%) Postgraduate
13 9 (0.53%) CBAP
13 9 (0.53%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 9 (0.53%) SAFe Agilist
14 8 (0.47%) APMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 121 (7.08%) Data Quality
2 84 (4.91%) Accessibility
3 44 (2.57%) PMO
4 42 (2.46%) GDPR
5 25 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 22 (1.29%) WCAG
7 20 (1.17%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.94%) NIST
9 15 (0.88%) IFRS
10 14 (0.82%) IFRS 17
11 13 (0.76%) SLA
12 12 (0.70%) GRC
13 11 (0.64%) Disclosure Scotland
14 10 (0.58%) GxP
14 10 (0.58%) ISO 20022
14 10 (0.58%) SEPA
15 9 (0.53%) Basel III
16 8 (0.47%) PSD2
17 7 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
18 6 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 103 (6.02%) Docker
2 14 (0.82%) Active Directory
3 12 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 3 (0.18%) Firmware
5 3 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.12%) GridGain
6 2 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.12%) VMware Infrastructure
7 1 (0.058%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.058%) KVM
7 1 (0.058%) QEMU
7 1 (0.058%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
7 1 (0.058%) Varnish
7 1 (0.058%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 141 (8.25%) Kubernetes
2 75 (4.39%) Terraform
3 38 (2.22%) Grafana
4 33 (1.93%) Ansible
5 27 (1.58%) Argo
6 23 (1.35%) Prometheus
7 21 (1.23%) HP ALM
8 12 (0.70%) Nmap
9 10 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.47%) HP Quality Center
11 7 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
11 7 (0.41%) Puppet
12 5 (0.29%) Kibana
13 3 (0.18%) Progress Chef
14 2 (0.12%) SCCM
15 1 (0.058%) Iperf
15 1 (0.058%) logstash
15 1 (0.058%) Microsoft Intune
15 1 (0.058%) Salt
15 1 (0.058%) vMotion
Vendors
1 188 (10.99%) Microsoft
2 166 (9.71%) Oracle
3 98 (5.73%) SAP
4 85 (4.97%) Salesforce
5 52 (3.04%) ServiceNow
6 47 (2.75%) Citrix
7 41 (2.40%) Google
8 28 (1.64%) Adobe
8 28 (1.64%) Databricks
9 27 (1.58%) Red Hat
10 24 (1.40%) HP
11 21 (1.23%) Informatica
12 15 (0.88%) Cisco
12 15 (0.88%) Workday
13 13 (0.76%) MuleSoft
13 13 (0.76%) Splunk
14 12 (0.70%) IBM
14 12 (0.70%) Talend
15 10 (0.58%) Infor
16 8 (0.47%) Pega