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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 60 62
Rank change year-on-year +11 +2 +6
Contract jobs citing QA 2,280 1,272 1,272
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.16% 3.85% 3.32%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 23.59% 22.39% 24.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,335 871 740
10th Percentile £313 £285 £300
25th Percentile £392 £380 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £668 £650 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% -2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 237 45 75
10th Percentile £12.85 £12.28 £11.88
25th Percentile £15.25 £13.50 £12.30
Median hourly rate £30.00 £19.37 £14.98
Median % change year-on-year +54.92% +29.27% -66.16%
75th Percentile £48.75 £43.21 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £70.25 £73.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £15.12 £14.98
% change year-on-year +98.41% +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 9,667 5,681 5,146
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.62% 17.17% 13.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,089 3,642 3,011
10th Percentile £325 £300 £276
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £504
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -0.79% -4.00%
75th Percentile £601 £606 £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 641 269 249
10th Percentile £13.86 £13.60 £12.69
25th Percentile £16.60 £16.92 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.40 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.98% +9.09% -22.54%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.25 £62.24
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.55 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.40 £27.86 £27.50
% change year-on-year +16.28% +1.31% -23.61%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 +15 1,992 £475 - 3,112
UK excluding London +21 1,141 £450 - 1,909
London +9 898 £500 - 1,458
Work from Home +1 570 £475 +3.26% 1,326
North of England +5 276 £463 +3.47% 470
South East +9 259 £425 -14.31% 436
Midlands +24 228 £450 +2.86% 321
West Midlands +30 189 £450 -9.98% 236
East of England +18 154 £450 -10.00% 185
South West +13 136 £515 +11.35% 189
Yorkshire +6 112 £500 +8.70% 126
North West -9 107 £475 +12.16% 267
Scotland -7 82 £402 -10.67% 167
North East -11 57 £400 -17.95% 79
East Midlands -12 38 £420 +12.00% 85
Wales +3 21 £413 +10.00% 65
Northern Ireland -6 7 £450 +50.00% 100

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
1 135 (5.92%) Confluence
2 51 (2.24%) CMS
3 41 (1.80%) SharePoint
4 16 (0.70%) Apache Spark
4 16 (0.70%) IIS
5 14 (0.61%) 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%) Moodle
11 3 (0.13%) WebLogic
Applications
1 79 (3.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.49%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.92%) MS Visio
5 17 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.48%) Microsoft Project
7 9 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.31%) Revit
9 6 (0.26%) Navisworks
10 5 (0.22%) AutoCAD
11 4 (0.18%) ProjectWise
12 3 (0.13%) CATIA
13 2 (0.088%) Adobe Premiere
13 2 (0.088%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.088%) EPLAN
13 2 (0.088%) Mingle
13 2 (0.088%) Photoshop
13 2 (0.088%) Windchill
14 1 (0.044%) Gliffy
14 1 (0.044%) Trello
Business Applications
1 31 (1.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 9 (0.39%) 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 Retail
Cloud Services
1 464 (20.35%) Azure
2 415 (18.20%) AWS
3 222 (9.74%) GitHub
4 195 (8.55%) Azure DevOps
5 126 (5.53%) GitHub Actions
6 111 (4.87%) GCP
7 110 (4.82%) Power Platform
8 81 (3.55%) Serverless
9 58 (2.54%) AWS Lambda
10 53 (2.32%) SaaS
11 49 (2.15%) Amazon S3
12 47 (2.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 39 (1.71%) Dynamics 365
14 38 (1.67%) GitHub Copilot
15 37 (1.62%) OpenShift
16 35 (1.54%) Snowflake
17 31 (1.36%) Azure Monitor
18 30 (1.32%) Amazon EKS
19 29 (1.27%) Microsoft 365
20 28 (1.23%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.14%) Firewall
2 23 (1.01%) Broadband
2 23 (1.01%) Internet
3 19 (0.83%) 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 (0.61%) VLAN
7 14 (0.61%) WAN
8 13 (0.57%) Network Security
9 12 (0.53%) LAN
9 12 (0.53%) VPN
10 9 (0.39%) DHCP
10 9 (0.39%) SD-WAN
10 9 (0.39%) Unified Communications
11 7 (0.31%) IPsec
11 7 (0.31%) SSH
11 7 (0.31%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (4.91%) SQL Server
2 97 (4.25%) Power BI
3 85 (3.73%) PostgreSQL
4 80 (3.51%) Relational Database
5 65 (2.85%) Data Warehouse
6 54 (2.37%) MongoDB
7 49 (2.15%) MySQL
8 47 (2.06%) 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 (0.83%) 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 (0.61%) Amazon Redshift
17 14 (0.61%) Redis
Development Applications
1 307 (13.46%) JIRA
2 258 (11.32%) Git
3 174 (7.63%) Jenkins
3 174 (7.63%) Selenium
4 146 (6.40%) GitLab
5 90 (3.95%) Cucumber
6 87 (3.82%) Postman
7 79 (3.46%) Cypress.io
8 69 (3.03%) JUnit
9 55 (2.41%) Zephyr
10 50 (2.19%) SonarQube
11 48 (2.11%) JMeter
12 44 (1.93%) REST Assured
13 43 (1.89%) Gatling
14 35 (1.54%) Maven
15 30 (1.32%) WebDriver
16 27 (1.18%) Gradle
17 23 (1.01%) TestNG
18 21 (0.92%) Appium
18 21 (0.92%) TestRail
General
1 691 (30.31%) Social Skills
2 428 (18.77%) Finance
3 359 (15.75%) Analytical Skills
4 286 (12.54%) Public Sector
5 170 (7.46%) Banking
6 84 (3.68%) Manufacturing
7 74 (3.25%) Retail
8 65 (2.85%) Marketing
9 59 (2.59%) Organisational Skills
10 57 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 44 (1.93%) Telecoms
12 42 (1.84%) Influencing Skills
13 40 (1.75%) Aerospace
14 38 (1.67%) Legal
15 31 (1.36%) Documentation Skills
16 28 (1.23%) Military
17 25 (1.10%) Law
18 19 (0.83%) Investment Banking
18 19 (0.83%) Local Government
19 18 (0.79%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 301 (13.20%) Developer
2 288 (12.63%) Lead
3 268 (11.75%) Senior
4 248 (10.88%) Analyst
4 248 (10.88%) QA Engineer
5 131 (5.75%) Quality Engineer
6 123 (5.39%) Tester
7 107 (4.69%) Business Analyst
7 107 (4.69%) Test Engineer
8 104 (4.56%) Test Manager
9 80 (3.51%) QA Leader
10 77 (3.38%) Data Engineer
11 75 (3.29%) Java Developer
12 66 (2.89%) Test Leader
13 57 (2.50%) Consultant
13 57 (2.50%) QA Tester
13 57 (2.50%) Senior Analyst
14 56 (2.46%) Architect
15 54 (2.37%) Test Analyst
16 48 (2.11%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 210 (9.21%) REST
2 146 (6.40%) Playwright
3 144 (6.32%) RESTful
4 127 (5.57%) Spring
5 112 (4.91%) Spring Boot
6 105 (4.61%) Terraform
7 96 (4.21%) .NET
8 94 (4.12%) React
9 86 (3.77%) HTML
10 85 (3.73%) Kafka
11 76 (3.33%) CSS
12 73 (3.20%) AngularJS
13 63 (2.76%) Node.js
14 59 (2.59%) SOAP
15 53 (2.32%) pytest
16 52 (2.28%) Middleware
17 41 (1.80%) .NET Framework
18 40 (1.75%) JSON
19 38 (1.67%) XML
20 37 (1.62%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 210 (9.21%) Product Ownership
2 137 (6.01%) Cloud Native
3 81 (3.55%) Onboarding
4 67 (2.94%) Enterprise Software
5 66 (2.89%) Management Information System
6 58 (2.54%) Distributed Systems
7 53 (2.32%) Mobile App
8 50 (2.19%) Legacy Systems
9 47 (2.06%) AI Agents
10 42 (1.84%) Data Structures
11 40 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
12 36 (1.58%) Data Centre
13 32 (1.40%) Low-Code
14 27 (1.18%) NHS
15 24 (1.05%) 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 (0.61%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 93 (4.08%) Windows
2 75 (3.29%) Linux
3 49 (2.15%) Apple iOS
4 45 (1.97%) Android
5 33 (1.45%) Unix
6 24 (1.05%) 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%) AIX
10 2 (0.088%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.088%) zOS
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
1 879 (38.55%) Agile
2 642 (28.16%) Test Automation
3 594 (26.05%) CI/CD
4 552 (24.21%) DevOps
5 468 (20.53%) Stakeholder Management
6 452 (19.82%) Continuous Improvement
7 389 (17.06%) Problem-Solving
8 374 (16.40%) Validation
9 339 (14.87%) AI
10 336 (14.74%) Scrum
11 326 (14.30%) Test Strategy
12 275 (12.06%) User Acceptance Testing
13 252 (11.05%) Migration
14 212 (9.30%) Microservices
15 208 (9.12%) SDLC
16 200 (8.77%) End-to-End Testing
17 192 (8.42%) Software Engineering
18 180 (7.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 177 (7.76%) Defect Management
20 171 (7.50%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 422 (18.51%) SQL
2 328 (14.39%) Python
3 295 (12.94%) Java
4 190 (8.33%) JavaScript
5 116 (5.09%) C#
6 105 (4.61%) TypeScript
7 54 (2.37%) Bash
8 38 (1.67%) PowerShell
9 35 (1.54%) PL/SQL
10 30 (1.32%) Kotlin
11 27 (1.18%) T-SQL
12 24 (1.05%) Scala
13 20 (0.88%) Swift
14 17 (0.75%) Objective-C
14 17 (0.75%) Shell Script
15 16 (0.70%) C
15 16 (0.70%) VB
16 14 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 14 (0.61%) R
16 14 (0.61%) VBA
Qualifications
1 537 (23.55%) Security Cleared
2 417 (18.29%) SC Cleared
3 147 (6.45%) Degree
4 109 (4.78%) BPSS Clearance
5 74 (3.25%) ISTQB
6 64 (2.81%) DV Cleared
7 43 (1.89%) Computer Science Degree
8 26 (1.14%) PMP
9 20 (0.88%) PMI Certification
10 19 (0.83%) AWS Certification
11 18 (0.79%) Azure Certification
12 15 (0.66%) Master's Degree
13 14 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
14 10 (0.44%) Cisco Certification
14 10 (0.44%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 10 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
15 9 (0.39%) DBS Check
15 9 (0.39%) IIBA
15 9 (0.39%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 8 (0.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 160 (7.02%) Data Quality
2 128 (5.61%) Accessibility
3 38 (1.67%) WCAG
4 37 (1.62%) GDPR
5 27 (1.18%) PMO
6 25 (1.10%) GRC
7 14 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 14 (0.61%) NIST
8 10 (0.44%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 10 (0.44%) GxP
9 9 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
9 9 (0.39%) Disclosure Scotland
9 9 (0.39%) ISO 19650
9 9 (0.39%) ISO 9001
9 9 (0.39%) SLA
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
1 204 (8.95%) Docker
2 24 (1.05%) 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
1 231 (10.13%) Kubernetes
2 62 (2.72%) Ansible
3 56 (2.46%) Grafana
4 39 (1.71%) Prometheus
5 31 (1.36%) 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%) ITRS Geneos
13 2 (0.088%) Kibana
Vendors
1 246 (10.79%) Microsoft
2 172 (7.54%) Oracle
3 117 (5.13%) Salesforce
4 77 (3.38%) SAP
5 61 (2.68%) ServiceNow
6 51 (2.24%) Google
7 46 (2.02%) Databricks
8 34 (1.49%) Dynatrace
9 32 (1.40%) Red Hat
9 32 (1.40%) Splunk
10 26 (1.14%) Citrix
11 23 (1.01%) Adobe
12 22 (0.96%) Cisco
13 20 (0.88%) VMware
14 16 (0.70%) IBM
14 16 (0.70%) Informatica
14 16 (0.70%) Sitecore
14 16 (0.70%) Workday
15 15 (0.66%) HP
15 15 (0.66%) Talend