Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 16 August 2017

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for QA skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited QA over the 6 months to 16 August 2017 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Quality Assurance (QA)
UK
6 months to
16 Aug 2017		 Same period 2016 Same period 2015
Rank 70 78 61
Rank change year-on-year +8 -17 0
Contract jobs citing QA 3075 3056 3488
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 3.22% 2.80% 3.10%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 27.27% 25.01% 26.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 2071 2015 2294
UK median daily rate £425 £405 £400
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +4.94% +1.25% +5.26%
10th Percentile £275 £263 £260
90th Percentile £600 £575 £550
UK excluding London median daily rate £375 £380 £375
% change year-on-year -1.32% +1.33% +7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 59 55
UK median hourly rate £18.00 £22.00 £24.00
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -18.18% -8.33% +20.00%
10th Percentile £10.30 £7.88 £12.50
90th Percentile £40.75 £41.75 £84.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.00 £17.05 £33.55
% change year-on-year +5.60% -49.20% +75.42%

QA is in the quality assurance and compliance skills category. The next table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance and compliance skills.

Contract Quality Assurance & Compliance Skills
UK
Contract job vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance and compliance skills 11276 12219 13139
As % of all contract IT job vacancies advertised in the UK 11.79% 11.21% 11.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 7328 7895 8348
UK median daily rate £446 £413 £400
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +8.06% +3.13% -
10th Percentile £250 £225 £225
90th Percentile £638 £600 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £395 £375 £375
% change year-on-year +5.33% - +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 363 420 404
UK median hourly rate £21.90 £22.50 £21.54
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -2.67% +4.47% +7.69%
10th Percentile £11.02 £11.10 £11.00
90th Percentile £50.00 £48.75 £56.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.59 £23.25 £21.53
% change year-on-year -11.46% +8.01% +7.63%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing QA as a percentage of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for daily rates quoted in contract jobs citing QA.

Contractor daily rate trend for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Daily Rate Histogram

The daily rate distribution of IT jobs citing QA over the 6 months to 16 August 2017.

Contractor daily rate histogram for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for contractor hourly rates quoted in IT jobs citing QA.

Contractor hourly rate trend for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Hourly Rate Histogram

The hourly rate distribution of IT jobs citing QA over the 6 months to 16 August 2017.

Contractor hourly rate histogram for QA in the UK

QA
Top 16 Contract 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 16 August 2017. 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
Job
Vacancies
England +12 2914 £438 +6.38% 591
London +6 1540 £475 +7.95% 287
UK excluding London +16 1496 £375 -1.32% 327
South East +34 534 £388 -2.02% 99
North of England +23 315 £400 +6.67% 93
South West +13 206 £375 -8.54% 34
Midlands +1 197 £375 - 44
North West +6 155 £388 +1.84% 57
East of England -15 113 £370 -14.20% 33
Yorkshire +33 111 £425 +16.04% 32
Scotland +1 98 £350 -3.31% 19
West Midlands +2 97 £325 -7.14% 29
East Midlands -4 92 £400 -0.12% 15
North East +39 59 £425 +26.87% 4
Wales +3 34 £342 -19.05% 5
Northern Ireland -53 3 £288 -25.81%

For the 6 months to 16 August 2017, IT contractor jobs citing QA also mentioned the following skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the number co-occurrences and its proportion to all contract ads with a requirement for QA.

1 1351 (43.93%) Agile Software Development
2 991 (32.23%) Test Automation
3 730 (23.74%) Java
4 652 (21.20%) Finance
5 595 (19.35%) SQL
6 536 (17.43%) TDD
7 502 (16.33%) Scrum
8 483 (15.71%) Selenium
9 439 (14.28%) JIRA
10 435 (14.15%) JavaScript
11 409 (13.30%) BDD
12 394 (12.81%) Continuous Integration
13 377 (12.26%) Git (software)
14 336 (10.93%) Jenkins
15 335 (10.89%) Project Management
16 322 (10.47%) Cucumber
17 309 (10.05%) Web Services
18 296 (9.63%) .NET
19 295 (9.59%) Analytical Skills
20 294 (9.56%) SDLC
21 288 (9.37%) C#
22 283 (9.20%) Microsoft
23 279 (9.07%) Banking
24 271 (8.81%) HTML
25 262 (8.52%) Software Engineering
26 259 (8.42%) Linux
27 257 (8.36%) Degree
28 247 (8.03%) User Acceptance Testing
29 242 (7.87%) Oracle
30 227 (7.38%) DevOps

QA
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same job type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 135 (4.39%) Confluence
2 70 (2.28%) Apache Spark
3 61 (1.98%) CMS
3 61 (1.98%) SharePoint
4 45 (1.46%) Apache
4 45 (1.46%) WebSphere
5 44 (1.43%) JBoss
6 39 (1.27%) Elasticsearch
6 39 (1.27%) Tomcat
7 26 (0.85%) WebLogic
8 23 (0.75%) WebSphere Application Server
9 20 (0.65%) SAS
9 20 (0.65%) Sitecore CMS
10 18 (0.59%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 16 (0.52%) Apache Solr
12 15 (0.49%) nginx
13 13 (0.42%) Drupal
13 13 (0.42%) IIS
13 13 (0.42%) Mule
14 12 (0.39%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 124 (4.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 92 (2.99%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (2.41%) Microsoft Project
4 66 (2.15%) MS Visio
5 63 (2.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 8 (0.26%) Photoshop
7 5 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
8 4 (0.13%) HipChat
8 4 (0.13%) SPSS
8 4 (0.13%) Stata
9 3 (0.098%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.065%) Acrobat
10 2 (0.065%) InDesign
10 2 (0.065%) InVision
10 2 (0.065%) RoboHelp
11 1 (0.033%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.033%) GIMP
11 1 (0.033%) InfoPath
11 1 (0.033%) Mingle
11 1 (0.033%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 37 (1.20%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.55%) Dynamics AX
3 16 (0.52%) Markit EDM
4 14 (0.46%) SAP Hybris
5 10 (0.33%) Maximo
5 10 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
5 10 (0.33%) Salesforce.com CRM
6 8 (0.26%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.20%) Oracle EBS R12
7 6 (0.20%) SAP WM
7 6 (0.20%) thinkFolio
7 6 (0.20%) Unica
8 5 (0.16%) Actimize
8 5 (0.16%) CA PPM
8 5 (0.16%) Magento
8 5 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
8 5 (0.16%) SimCorp Dimension
8 5 (0.16%) Workday HCM
9 4 (0.13%) NetSuite
10 3 (0.098%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 201 (6.54%) Amazon AWS
2 108 (3.51%) Microsoft Azure
3 71 (2.31%) GitHub
4 38 (1.24%) PaaS
5 31 (1.01%) IaaS
6 30 (0.98%) SaaS
7 24 (0.78%) Office 365
8 23 (0.75%) Amazon EC2
9 18 (0.59%) OpenShift
9 18 (0.59%) SuccessFactors
10 17 (0.55%) BrowserStack
11 15 (0.49%) Google Cloud Platform
12 14 (0.46%) Slack
13 13 (0.42%) Sauce Labs
14 10 (0.33%) Cloud Computing
15 9 (0.29%) Amazon S3
15 9 (0.29%) AWS Lambda
16 8 (0.26%) Adobe Analytics
16 8 (0.26%) AWS CloudFormation
16 8 (0.26%) Force.com
Communications & Networking
1 102 (3.32%) Internet
2 93 (3.02%) HTTP
3 71 (2.31%) Firewall
4 22 (0.72%) DNS
5 20 (0.65%) WAN
6 19 (0.62%) LAN
6 19 (0.62%) SMS
7 18 (0.59%) TCP/IP
7 18 (0.59%) Wireless
8 16 (0.52%) FTP
8 16 (0.52%) Network Security
9 13 (0.42%) SAN
10 12 (0.39%) LDAP
11 11 (0.36%) Broadband
11 11 (0.36%) LTE
12 10 (0.33%) NAS
12 10 (0.33%) VPN
13 9 (0.29%) Ethernet
13 9 (0.29%) IPv4
13 9 (0.29%) IPv6
Database & Business Intelligence
1 204 (6.63%) SQL Server
2 134 (4.36%) Big Data
3 124 (4.03%) MongoDB
4 114 (3.71%) Relational Database
5 100 (3.25%) Hadoop
6 99 (3.22%) NoSQL
7 85 (2.76%) Data Warehouse
8 69 (2.24%) MySQL
9 50 (1.63%) Oracle Database
10 46 (1.50%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 42 (1.37%) RDBMS
11 42 (1.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 33 (1.07%) PostgreSQL
13 31 (1.01%) Apache Hive
14 29 (0.94%) Redis
15 28 (0.91%) Apache Cassandra
16 26 (0.85%) HBase
17 25 (0.81%) DB2
18 22 (0.72%) Amazon DynamoDB
18 22 (0.72%) QlikView
Development Applications
1 483 (15.71%) Selenium
2 439 (14.28%) JIRA
3 377 (12.26%) Git (software)
4 336 (10.93%) Jenkins
5 322 (10.47%) Cucumber
6 154 (5.01%) WebDriver
7 114 (3.71%) TeamCity
8 98 (3.19%) SoapUI
9 97 (3.15%) JUnit
10 96 (3.12%) SpecFlow
11 90 (2.93%) Team Foundation Server
12 73 (2.37%) JMeter
13 66 (2.15%) Maven
14 63 (2.05%) Octopus Deploy
15 60 (1.95%) Visual Studio
16 58 (1.89%) IntelliJ
17 54 (1.76%) Grunt
17 54 (1.76%) gulp
17 54 (1.76%) Subversion
18 53 (1.72%) Protractor
General
1 652 (21.20%) Finance
2 279 (9.07%) Banking
3 173 (5.63%) Retail
4 97 (3.15%) Investment Banking
5 87 (2.83%) Marketing
6 70 (2.28%) Front Office
7 64 (2.08%) Telecoms
8 58 (1.89%) Legal
9 50 (1.63%) Financial Institution
9 50 (1.63%) Games
10 46 (1.50%) Publishing
11 41 (1.33%) Manufacturing
12 37 (1.20%) Pharmaceutical
13 35 (1.14%) Back Office
14 20 (0.65%) Retail Banking
15 17 (0.55%) Advertising
15 17 (0.55%) Corporate Banking
15 17 (0.55%) Electronics
16 15 (0.49%) Law
17 14 (0.46%) Billing
Job Titles
1 606 (19.71%) Developer
2 564 (18.34%) Analyst
3 365 (11.87%) Tester
4 209 (6.80%) QA Engineer
5 199 (6.47%) QA Tester
6 196 (6.37%) Test Analyst
7 187 (6.08%) Business Analyst
8 166 (5.40%) Project Manager
9 164 (5.33%) Automation Tester
10 156 (5.07%) Architect
11 150 (4.88%) Java Developer
12 134 (4.36%) QA Analyst
13 129 (4.20%) Test Engineer
14 109 (3.54%) Test Manager
15 101 (3.28%) .NET Developer
16 86 (2.80%) Consultant
17 83 (2.70%) QA Test Analyst
18 78 (2.54%) C# Developer
19 76 (2.47%) QA Automation Engineer
20 72 (2.34%) QA Automation Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 309 (10.05%) Web Services
2 296 (9.63%) .NET
3 271 (8.81%) HTML
4 222 (7.22%) CSS
5 212 (6.89%) REST
6 173 (5.63%) XML
7 160 (5.20%) AngularJS
8 155 (5.04%) SOAP
9 139 (4.52%) JSON
10 138 (4.49%) RESTful
11 105 (3.41%) HTML5
11 105 (3.41%) Spring
12 98 (3.19%) Node.js
13 96 (3.12%) React
14 87 (2.83%) Gherkin
15 82 (2.67%) ASP.NET
16 68 (2.21%) J2EE
17 67 (2.18%) jQuery
18 58 (1.89%) Sass
19 51 (1.66%) ASP.NET MVC
Miscellaneous
1 295 (9.59%) Analytical Skills
2 180 (5.85%) User Experience
3 146 (4.75%) Mobile App
4 114 (3.71%) Management Information System
5 108 (3.51%) Computer Science
6 76 (2.47%) Virtual Team
7 70 (2.28%) Greenfield Project
8 68 (2.21%) Derivative
9 61 (1.98%) Equities
10 50 (1.63%) Fixed Income
11 47 (1.53%) Enterprise Software
12 46 (1.50%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 39 (1.27%) Data Centre
13 39 (1.27%) iPad
14 36 (1.17%) Fintech
15 30 (0.98%) Public Cloud
16 28 (0.91%) OTC Derivatives
17 27 (0.88%) Data Structures
18 26 (0.85%) Reference Data
19 22 (0.72%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 259 (8.42%) Linux
2 192 (6.24%) Windows
3 151 (4.91%) Unix
4 97 (3.15%) Android
5 92 (2.99%) Apple iOS
6 34 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 34 (1.11%) Windows Server
7 27 (0.88%) Windows 10
8 20 (0.65%) Solaris
9 18 (0.59%) Windows 7
10 16 (0.52%) AIX
11 14 (0.46%) Mac OS X
11 14 (0.46%) Windows Server 2012
12 13 (0.42%) Ubuntu
12 13 (0.42%) Windows Server 2008
13 12 (0.39%) CentOS
14 7 (0.23%) Mac OS
15 3 (0.098%) Windows 8
15 3 (0.098%) Windows Mobile
15 3 (0.098%) Windows Vista
Processes & Methodologies
1 1351 (43.93%) Agile Software Development
2 991 (32.23%) Test Automation
3 536 (17.43%) TDD
4 502 (16.33%) Scrum
5 409 (13.30%) BDD
6 394 (12.81%) Continuous Integration
7 335 (10.89%) Project Management
8 294 (9.56%) SDLC
9 262 (8.52%) Software Engineering
10 247 (8.03%) User Acceptance Testing
11 227 (7.38%) DevOps
12 218 (7.09%) Test Scripting
13 215 (6.99%) Kanban
13 215 (6.99%) Stakeholder Management
14 209 (6.80%) Unit Testing
15 206 (6.70%) E-Commerce
15 206 (6.70%) Test Strategy
16 201 (6.54%) User Stories
17 197 (6.41%) Mentoring
18 190 (6.18%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 730 (23.74%) Java
2 595 (19.35%) SQL
3 435 (14.15%) JavaScript
4 288 (9.37%) C#
5 221 (7.19%) Python
6 137 (4.46%) Scala
7 128 (4.16%) Ruby
8 94 (3.06%) Groovy
9 81 (2.63%) C++
10 71 (2.31%) Shell Script
11 65 (2.11%) PL/SQL
12 54 (1.76%) PowerShell
13 50 (1.63%) Perl
14 45 (1.46%) PHP
15 42 (1.37%) C
16 40 (1.30%) Bash Shell
17 37 (1.20%) T-SQL
18 30 (0.98%) Apple Swift
18 30 (0.98%) ES6
19 24 (0.78%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 257 (8.36%) Degree
2 174 (5.66%) Security Cleared
3 125 (4.07%) ISTQB
4 113 (3.67%) ISEB
5 105 (3.41%) SC Cleared
6 59 (1.92%) PMI Certification
7 49 (1.59%) PMP
8 48 (1.56%) Computer Science Degree
9 40 (1.30%) BPSS Clearance
10 39 (1.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 37 (1.20%) PRINCE2 Certification
12 30 (0.98%) DV Cleared
13 27 (0.88%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 23 (0.75%) CISSP
15 16 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
16 13 (0.42%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
17 11 (0.36%) CCNP
17 11 (0.36%) ITIL Certification
18 10 (0.33%) ISEB Practitioner
19 9 (0.29%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 112 (3.64%) PMO
2 77 (2.50%) Data Quality
3 64 (2.08%) MiFID
4 29 (0.94%) Disclosure Scotland
5 23 (0.75%) SLA
6 18 (0.59%) ISO 9001
6 18 (0.59%) WCAG
7 17 (0.55%) EMIR
8 14 (0.46%) GDPR
9 11 (0.36%) GxP
10 10 (0.33%) GMP
11 9 (0.29%) Dodd-Frank
12 8 (0.26%) COBIT
13 5 (0.16%) AIFMD
13 5 (0.16%) EFQM
13 5 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 5 (0.16%) WAI
14 4 (0.13%) ISO 14001
14 4 (0.13%) SEPA
15 3 (0.098%) 21 CFR Part 11
System Software
1 93 (3.02%) Docker
2 36 (1.17%) Active Directory
3 27 (0.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (0.39%) HDFS
5 10 (0.33%) Apache Flume
5 10 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.29%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 8 (0.26%) Xen
8 7 (0.23%) Microsoft App-V
8 7 (0.23%) VirtualBox
9 6 (0.20%) Firmware
10 5 (0.16%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.16%) vSphere
11 4 (0.13%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 4 (0.13%) NFS
11 4 (0.13%) Oracle Clusterware
11 4 (0.13%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
12 2 (0.065%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.065%) Platform Symphony
Systems Management
1 55 (1.79%) Opscode Chef
2 54 (1.76%) Puppet
3 51 (1.66%) HP Quality Center
4 36 (1.17%) Kubernetes
5 30 (0.98%) Ansible
6 19 (0.62%) SCCM
7 18 (0.59%) Nagios
8 17 (0.55%) Kibana
9 16 (0.52%) Grafana
9 16 (0.52%) Terraform
10 14 (0.46%) HP SiteScope
11 13 (0.42%) Graphite
11 13 (0.42%) logstash
12 10 (0.33%) Rancher
12 10 (0.33%) ZABBIX
13 9 (0.29%) Netcool
13 9 (0.29%) SCOM
13 9 (0.29%) WMI
14 8 (0.26%) Oozie
15 7 (0.23%) HockeyApp
Vendors
1 283 (9.20%) Microsoft
2 242 (7.87%) Oracle
3 128 (4.16%) SAP
4 84 (2.73%) HP
5 62 (2.02%) IBM
6 45 (1.46%) Atlassian
7 44 (1.43%) hybris
8 43 (1.40%) New Relic
8 43 (1.40%) Red Hat
9 40 (1.30%) Salesforce.com
10 36 (1.17%) VMware
11 33 (1.07%) Splunk
12 32 (1.04%) ATG
13 31 (1.01%) Google
14 30 (0.98%) Sitecore
15 29 (0.94%) Informatica
16 27 (0.88%) Sybase
17 26 (0.85%) Adobe
18 24 (0.78%) Cloudera
19 23 (0.75%) Cisco
621 QA job vacancies Nationwide