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 28 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 60 64 64
Rank change year-on-year +4 0 +13
Contract jobs citing QA 1,449 1,211 1,513
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.01% 3.31% 3.32%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 22.82% 24.18% 23.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 963 710 1,084
10th Percentile £304 £300 £350
25th Percentile £400 £376 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.05% -9.52% -
75th Percentile £578 £580 £650
90th Percentile £662 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +6.11% -5.26% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 55 45
10th Percentile £12.28 £12.10 £21.50
25th Percentile £13.50 £13.26 £25.00
Median hourly rate £17.56 £15.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.03% -70.00% +100.00%
75th Percentile £54.06 £28.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £56.53 £77.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.96 £14.98 £50.00
% change year-on-year +6.54% -70.04% +104.08%

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 6,351 5,008 6,543
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.59% 13.68% 14.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,073 2,923 4,355
10th Percentile £310 £269 £313
25th Percentile £404 £385 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £603 £625 £647
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 314 226 241
10th Percentile £13.60 £13.52 £15.32
25th Percentile £17.58 £17.22 £21.25
Median hourly rate £26.31 £27.18 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.20% -27.53% +56.25%
75th Percentile £61.09 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.96 £70.00 £83.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.82 £26.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -13.89% -40.45% +111.90%

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 2025. 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 +12 1,235 £492 +3.36% 721
London +8 635 £500 - 241
UK excluding London -4 625 £478 +6.11% 643
Work from Home +10 397 £469 -5.40% 297
North of England +4 169 £428 +2.70% 117
South East +22 144 £500 +11.11% 252
Midlands -17 106 £500 +8.11% 104
North West +2 81 £402 -2.48% 77
West Midlands -28 75 £511 +2.20% 80
South West -9 73 £488 - 66
East of England +6 66 £500 +25.00% 73
Scotland 0 57 £525 +34.62% 34
Yorkshire -12 56 £450 - 27
North East +12 33 £500 +21.95% 14
East Midlands +5 31 £430 +3.86% 22
Wales -15 16 £419 -20.31% 12
Northern Ireland +3 10 £300 -42.17% 8

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 84 (5.80%) Confluence
2 40 (2.76%) SharePoint
3 22 (1.52%) Apache
4 21 (1.45%) CMS
5 16 (1.10%) IIS
6 13 (0.90%) Apache Spark
7 11 (0.76%) SugarCRM
8 10 (0.69%) Anypoint
9 9 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
9 9 (0.62%) WebSphere
10 7 (0.48%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.41%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 6 (0.41%) Mule
12 5 (0.35%) MQSeries
12 5 (0.35%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 5 (0.35%) WebLogic
13 4 (0.28%) Drupal
13 4 (0.28%) SAS
14 3 (0.21%) Moodle
14 3 (0.21%) WordPress
Applications
1 71 (4.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (2.28%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.59%) Microsoft Project
4 19 (1.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 17 (1.17%) MS Visio
6 6 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
6 6 (0.41%) Trello
7 5 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.28%) Autodesk Inventor
8 4 (0.28%) Simulink
8 4 (0.28%) Stateflow
9 3 (0.21%) Revit
10 2 (0.14%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.14%) MicroStation
10 2 (0.14%) Navisworks
11 1 (0.069%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.069%) Autodesk Smoke
11 1 (0.069%) Notion
11 1 (0.069%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 29 (2.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (0.69%) Oracle EBS
3 9 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
4 7 (0.48%) Payment Gateway
4 7 (0.48%) Temenos T24
5 6 (0.41%) Maximo
5 6 (0.41%) Oracle Cash Management
5 6 (0.41%) Oracle General Ledger
5 6 (0.41%) Oracle Payables
5 6 (0.41%) Oracle Receivables
5 6 (0.41%) SAP ERP
6 5 (0.35%) OpenText MBPM
6 5 (0.35%) Oracle BPM
7 4 (0.28%) Oracle EBS R12
7 4 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 4 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
7 4 (0.28%) Workday HCM
8 3 (0.21%) Endur
8 3 (0.21%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 317 (21.88%) Azure
2 286 (19.74%) AWS
3 97 (6.69%) Azure DevOps
4 95 (6.56%) GCP
5 88 (6.07%) GitHub
6 79 (5.45%) Power Platform
7 61 (4.21%) GitHub Actions
8 60 (4.14%) Serverless
9 46 (3.17%) AWS Lambda
10 41 (2.83%) Amazon S3
11 34 (2.35%) SaaS
12 25 (1.73%) Dynamics 365
13 24 (1.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 24 (1.66%) Amazon EC2
13 24 (1.66%) Amazon ECS
13 24 (1.66%) AWS CloudFormation
13 24 (1.66%) Power Automate
14 18 (1.24%) Snowflake
15 15 (1.04%) OCI
15 15 (1.04%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.38%) Firewall
2 18 (1.24%) HTTP
2 18 (1.24%) Internet
3 6 (0.41%) 5G
3 6 (0.41%) Broadband
4 5 (0.35%) OpenLDAP
4 5 (0.35%) SMS
5 4 (0.28%) Structured Cabling
5 4 (0.28%) WAN
5 4 (0.28%) Wireless
6 3 (0.21%) HTTPS
6 3 (0.21%) Network Security
6 3 (0.21%) SSL
6 3 (0.21%) TCP/IP
6 3 (0.21%) VPN
7 2 (0.14%) DNS
7 2 (0.14%) Remote Desktop
7 2 (0.14%) WebEx
8 1 (0.069%) MQTT
8 1 (0.069%) VoWiFi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (4.90%) SQL Server
2 68 (4.69%) Power BI
3 60 (4.14%) PostgreSQL
4 54 (3.73%) Relational Database
5 45 (3.11%) MySQL
6 41 (2.83%) MongoDB
7 38 (2.62%) Data Warehouse
8 36 (2.48%) NoSQL
9 22 (1.52%) Amazon RDS
9 22 (1.52%) BigQuery
10 21 (1.45%) Metadata
10 21 (1.45%) Oracle Database
10 21 (1.45%) Tableau
11 13 (0.90%) Data Lake
12 12 (0.83%) Redis
13 11 (0.76%) Big Data
14 10 (0.69%) DB2
14 10 (0.69%) DynamoDB
15 9 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
15 9 (0.62%) Looker
Development Applications
1 250 (17.25%) JIRA
2 135 (9.32%) Git
3 116 (8.01%) GitLab
4 111 (7.66%) Jenkins
5 102 (7.04%) Selenium
6 76 (5.24%) Cucumber
7 63 (4.35%) Cypress.io
7 63 (4.35%) Postman
8 43 (2.97%) JUnit
9 35 (2.42%) JMeter
10 32 (2.21%) REST Assured
11 20 (1.38%) Appium
12 16 (1.10%) SonarQube
13 15 (1.04%) Bitbucket
13 15 (1.04%) Gatling
14 14 (0.97%) WebDriver
15 13 (0.90%) TestNG
16 12 (0.83%) Zephyr
17 10 (0.69%) Maven
17 10 (0.69%) SpecFlow
General
1 589 (40.65%) Social Skills
2 375 (25.88%) Finance
3 262 (18.08%) Analytical Skills
4 157 (10.84%) Public Sector
5 146 (10.08%) Banking
6 61 (4.21%) Documentation Skills
7 42 (2.90%) Marketing
8 40 (2.76%) Legal
9 36 (2.48%) Telecoms
10 32 (2.21%) Manufacturing
11 30 (2.07%) Investment Banking
11 30 (2.07%) Organisational Skills
12 28 (1.93%) Presentation Skills
13 27 (1.86%) Front Office
14 25 (1.73%) Back Office
15 24 (1.66%) Retail
16 20 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 19 (1.31%) Pharmaceutical
18 18 (1.24%) Law
19 17 (1.17%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 212 (14.63%) Developer
2 187 (12.91%) Analyst
3 166 (11.46%) Senior
4 152 (10.49%) Lead
5 92 (6.35%) QA Engineer
6 87 (6.00%) Business Analyst
7 84 (5.80%) Tester
8 65 (4.49%) Test Engineer
9 60 (4.14%) Consultant
9 60 (4.14%) Project Manager
10 55 (3.80%) Java Developer
11 51 (3.52%) Test Manager
12 47 (3.24%) Architect
13 40 (2.76%) Test Analyst
14 38 (2.62%) QA Leader
15 35 (2.42%) QA Tester
16 34 (2.35%) DevOps Engineer
17 33 (2.28%) Java Engineer
17 33 (2.28%) Test Leader
18 29 (2.00%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 144 (9.94%) REST
2 88 (6.07%) .NET
3 83 (5.73%) RESTful
4 77 (5.31%) Playwright
4 77 (5.31%) React
4 77 (5.31%) Spring
5 76 (5.24%) Spring Boot
6 53 (3.66%) HTML
7 50 (3.45%) SOAP
8 47 (3.24%) CSS
8 47 (3.24%) Node.js
9 43 (2.97%) AngularJS
10 40 (2.76%) Kafka
11 31 (2.14%) XML
12 29 (2.00%) .NET Framework
13 28 (1.93%) Web Services
14 27 (1.86%) JMS
14 27 (1.86%) JSON
15 24 (1.66%) Oracle Fusion
16 22 (1.52%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 137 (9.45%) Product Ownership
2 62 (4.28%) Onboarding
3 60 (4.14%) Cloud Native
4 49 (3.38%) Mobile App
5 36 (2.48%) Data Protection Act
6 29 (2.00%) Legacy Systems
7 28 (1.93%) Management Information System
8 27 (1.86%) Distributed Systems
8 27 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
9 25 (1.73%) Analytical Mindset
9 25 (1.73%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 22 (1.52%) Data Structures
11 19 (1.31%) PMI
11 19 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
11 19 (1.31%) Virtual Team
12 18 (1.24%) Algorithms
13 13 (0.90%) Data Centre
13 13 (0.90%) Derivative
13 13 (0.90%) Reinsurance
14 12 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 79 (5.45%) Windows
2 47 (3.24%) Linux
3 23 (1.59%) Android
4 22 (1.52%) Apple iOS
5 21 (1.45%) Unix
6 17 (1.17%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 6 (0.41%) Ubuntu
9 4 (0.28%) CentOS
10 3 (0.21%) Debian
10 3 (0.21%) VMS
10 3 (0.21%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.14%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.14%) Solaris
12 1 (0.069%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.069%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 646 (44.58%) Agile
2 414 (28.57%) CI/CD
3 394 (27.19%) Problem-Solving
4 393 (27.12%) DevOps
5 382 (26.36%) Test Automation
6 210 (14.49%) Stakeholder Management
7 195 (13.46%) Scrum
8 187 (12.91%) Continuous Improvement
9 180 (12.42%) User Acceptance Testing
10 173 (11.94%) Validation
11 166 (11.46%) Test Strategy
12 164 (11.32%) Migration
13 159 (10.97%) Microservices
14 143 (9.87%) SDLC
15 138 (9.52%) Test Scripting
16 126 (8.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 122 (8.42%) User Experience
18 115 (7.94%) Project Management
19 105 (7.25%) AI
19 105 (7.25%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 258 (17.81%) SQL
2 208 (14.35%) Java
3 187 (12.91%) Python
4 123 (8.49%) JavaScript
5 106 (7.32%) C#
6 85 (5.87%) TypeScript
7 37 (2.55%) PL/SQL
8 24 (1.66%) PHP
9 23 (1.59%) PowerShell
9 23 (1.59%) T-SQL
10 20 (1.38%) Go
11 17 (1.17%) C++
12 16 (1.10%) Bash
13 15 (1.04%) Kotlin
14 13 (0.90%) C
15 12 (0.83%) VBA
16 10 (0.69%) Perl
16 10 (0.69%) Ruby
16 10 (0.69%) VB
17 9 (0.62%) R
Qualifications
1 235 (16.22%) Security Cleared
2 197 (13.60%) SC Cleared
3 144 (9.94%) Degree
4 52 (3.59%) PMI Certification
5 46 (3.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 42 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
6 42 (2.90%) PMP
7 40 (2.76%) ISTQB
8 34 (2.35%) Master's Degree
9 19 (1.31%) AWS Certification
9 19 (1.31%) CISSP
10 18 (1.24%) DV Cleared
11 15 (1.04%) Oracle Certification
12 12 (0.83%) Azure Certification
13 11 (0.76%) CBAP
13 11 (0.76%) CISM
14 10 (0.69%) OCA
15 8 (0.55%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 7 (0.48%) CEH
17 6 (0.41%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 112 (7.73%) Accessibility
2 67 (4.62%) Data Quality
3 37 (2.55%) GDPR
4 28 (1.93%) PMO
5 22 (1.52%) WCAG
6 19 (1.31%) PSD2
7 18 (1.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 16 (1.10%) NIST
8 16 (1.10%) SEPA
9 13 (0.90%) ISO 20022
10 12 (0.83%) PCI DSS
10 12 (0.83%) SLA
10 12 (0.83%) Software Quality Assurance
11 9 (0.62%) COBIT
12 8 (0.55%) GxP
12 8 (0.55%) ISO 9001
13 7 (0.48%) IFRS
14 6 (0.41%) EU AI Act
14 6 (0.41%) ISO 8583
15 5 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 113 (7.80%) Docker
2 11 (0.76%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (0.48%) Active Directory
4 4 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
4 4 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
5 2 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
5 2 (0.14%) VirtualBox
6 1 (0.069%) Firmware
6 1 (0.069%) GridGain
6 1 (0.069%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.069%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 116 (8.01%) Kubernetes
2 65 (4.49%) Terraform
3 41 (2.83%) Ansible
4 30 (2.07%) Grafana
5 14 (0.97%) Prometheus
6 10 (0.69%) HP ALM
7 9 (0.62%) Argo
8 7 (0.48%) Puppet
9 6 (0.41%) Progress Chef
10 5 (0.35%) CloudHub
10 5 (0.35%) Control-M
11 4 (0.28%) Consul
11 4 (0.28%) Rsyslog
11 4 (0.28%) SCOM
12 3 (0.21%) Istio
12 3 (0.21%) PingFederate
12 3 (0.21%) RSA Archer
12 3 (0.21%) Salt
12 3 (0.21%) SCCM
12 3 (0.21%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 168 (11.59%) Microsoft
2 121 (8.35%) Oracle
3 72 (4.97%) SAP
4 59 (4.07%) ServiceNow
5 55 (3.80%) Salesforce
6 33 (2.28%) Google
7 22 (1.52%) Citrix
8 20 (1.38%) Databricks
9 19 (1.31%) Splunk
10 17 (1.17%) HP
10 17 (1.17%) IBM
10 17 (1.17%) MuleSoft
11 14 (0.97%) Red Hat
12 13 (0.90%) UiPath
12 13 (0.90%) Workday
13 12 (0.83%) VMware
14 9 (0.62%) Adobe
14 9 (0.62%) Blue Prism
15 8 (0.55%) Dynatrace
15 8 (0.55%) Pega