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 24 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 59 63 57
Rank change year-on-year +4 -6 +21
Contract jobs citing QA 1,726 1,070 1,486
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.71% 3.62% 3.40%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.96% 23.43% 23.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,078 714 1,010
10th Percentile £313 £275 £313
25th Percentile £400 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £510
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -6.86% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £611
90th Percentile £675 £694 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £500
% change year-on-year +2.70% -7.50% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 24 75
10th Percentile £12.85 £16.25 £10.82
25th Percentile £14.02 £20.94 £12.25
Median hourly rate £30.58 £42.50 £15.38
Median % change year-on-year -28.05% +176.33% -31.60%
75th Percentile £68.75 £72.81 £28.60
90th Percentile £74.80 £75.00 £68.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £57.75 £14.00
% change year-on-year -47.05% +312.50% +7.69%

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 7,858 4,567 6,285
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.91% 15.46% 14.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,090 2,927 3,974
10th Percentile £336 £263 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £622 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 447 177 383
10th Percentile £14.01 £17.98 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.14 £13.09
Median hourly rate £32.50 £34.50 £20.50
Median % change year-on-year -5.80% +68.29% -47.16%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £81.00 £83.06 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £46.30 £17.72
% change year-on-year -22.25% +161.29% -49.37%

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 24 April 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 24 April 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 24 April 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 -1 1,484 £488 +1.83% 691
London +10 771 £500 - 203
UK excluding London +3 764 £475 +2.70% 619
Work from Home +6 466 £490 -1.06% 444
South East -14 173 £475 +11.76% 190
North of England -16 173 £475 -5.00% 145
Midlands -6 161 £425 - 92
South West +21 114 £491 -1.75% 68
West Midlands -12 114 £469 +1.96% 63
North West -9 87 £425 -12.37% 81
Scotland +14 66 £498 +24.38% 30
East of England +5 62 £482 -3.70% 84
Yorkshire -29 62 £525 +2.94% 39
East Midlands -17 48 £394 -3.85% 29
North East -6 24 £488 +5.98% 26
Northern Ireland +12 18 £475 -0.78% 12
Wales -10 12 £445 -19.09% 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 88 (5.10%) Confluence
2 31 (1.80%) SharePoint
3 22 (1.27%) CMS
3 22 (1.27%) IIS
4 13 (0.75%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 11 (0.64%) Apache
6 9 (0.52%) Apache Spark
6 9 (0.52%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
7 5 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
7 5 (0.29%) OpenStack
8 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
8 4 (0.23%) nginx
9 3 (0.17%) Moodle
9 3 (0.17%) SAS
9 3 (0.17%) Tomcat
9 3 (0.17%) Umbraco
10 2 (0.12%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.12%) Apache Synapse
10 2 (0.12%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 69 (4.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (2.55%) Microsoft Office
3 33 (1.91%) Microsoft Project
4 30 (1.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 18 (1.04%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.23%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.17%) Simulink
7 3 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.12%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.12%) Autodesk Smoke
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%) Camtasia
9 1 (0.058%) CPLEX
9 1 (0.058%) Mingle
9 1 (0.058%) Navisworks
9 1 (0.058%) Revit
Business Applications
1 30 (1.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 16 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 12 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
4 9 (0.52%) Shopify
5 8 (0.46%) Workday HCM
6 5 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
7 4 (0.23%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.23%) Aladdin
7 4 (0.23%) Infor CloudSuite
7 4 (0.23%) Maximo
8 3 (0.17%) Algo Collateral
8 3 (0.17%) NEC Housing
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle Cash Management
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle EBS R12
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
8 3 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
8 3 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
9 2 (0.12%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 394 (22.83%) Azure
2 269 (15.59%) AWS
3 167 (9.68%) Azure DevOps
4 130 (7.53%) GitHub
5 108 (6.26%) Power Platform
6 82 (4.75%) GitHub Actions
7 78 (4.52%) GCP
8 53 (3.07%) Serverless
9 35 (2.03%) Dynamics 365
9 35 (2.03%) OpenShift
10 34 (1.97%) SaaS
11 32 (1.85%) AWS Lambda
12 30 (1.74%) Amazon S3
13 25 (1.45%) Amazon ECS
14 24 (1.39%) AWS CloudFormation
15 23 (1.33%) Azure Data Factory
16 22 (1.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 22 (1.27%) Snowflake
17 20 (1.16%) OCI
18 17 (0.98%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.33%) Firewall
2 17 (0.98%) WAN
3 16 (0.93%) Internet
4 14 (0.81%) LAN
4 14 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
4 14 (0.81%) Wireless
5 12 (0.70%) HTTP
6 10 (0.58%) Network Security
7 9 (0.52%) VPN
8 8 (0.46%) SD-WAN
9 7 (0.41%) DNS
10 5 (0.29%) Unified Communications
11 4 (0.23%) 5G
11 4 (0.23%) Broadband
11 4 (0.23%) Cisco Nexus
11 4 (0.23%) IPsec
11 4 (0.23%) SMS
11 4 (0.23%) VLAN
11 4 (0.23%) WebEx
12 3 (0.17%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 100 (5.79%) SQL Server
2 94 (5.45%) Power BI
3 64 (3.71%) Data Warehouse
4 47 (2.72%) Relational Database
5 45 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
6 43 (2.49%) MySQL
7 38 (2.20%) Tableau
8 37 (2.14%) Oracle Database
9 33 (1.91%) NoSQL
10 29 (1.68%) Metadata
11 26 (1.51%) Data Lake
12 25 (1.45%) Oracle Reports
13 20 (1.16%) MongoDB
14 18 (1.04%) Big Data
15 15 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
15 15 (0.87%) BigQuery
15 15 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 14 (0.81%) DynamoDB
17 13 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
18 11 (0.64%) Redis
Development Applications
1 305 (17.67%) JIRA
2 149 (8.63%) Git
3 128 (7.42%) Selenium
4 118 (6.84%) Jenkins
5 105 (6.08%) GitLab
6 87 (5.04%) Postman
7 64 (3.71%) Cucumber
8 60 (3.48%) Cypress.io
9 46 (2.67%) JUnit
10 43 (2.49%) REST Assured
11 35 (2.03%) JMeter
12 33 (1.91%) SonarQube
12 33 (1.91%) Zephyr
13 24 (1.39%) WebDriver
14 21 (1.22%) TestRail
15 18 (1.04%) Gatling
15 18 (1.04%) TestNG
16 17 (0.98%) Appium
17 15 (0.87%) Gradle
18 14 (0.81%) Maven
General
1 600 (34.76%) Social Skills
2 414 (23.99%) Finance
3 271 (15.70%) Analytical Skills
4 198 (11.47%) Public Sector
5 144 (8.34%) Banking
6 51 (2.95%) Retail
7 39 (2.26%) Organisational Skills
8 36 (2.09%) Manufacturing
9 35 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
9 35 (2.03%) Marketing
10 25 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
10 25 (1.45%) Legal
11 23 (1.33%) Front Office
12 21 (1.22%) Aerospace
12 21 (1.22%) Investment Banking
13 20 (1.16%) Military
13 20 (1.16%) Telecoms
14 18 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
15 16 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 15 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 219 (12.69%) Analyst
2 210 (12.17%) Developer
3 200 (11.59%) Lead
4 190 (11.01%) Senior
5 128 (7.42%) QA Engineer
6 114 (6.60%) Business Analyst
7 94 (5.45%) Tester
8 85 (4.92%) Project Manager
9 83 (4.81%) Test Manager
10 71 (4.11%) Test Engineer
11 62 (3.59%) Architect
12 61 (3.53%) Java Developer
13 50 (2.90%) Test Leader
14 48 (2.78%) Data Analyst
15 45 (2.61%) Data Engineer
16 43 (2.49%) Senior Analyst
17 42 (2.43%) C# Developer
18 41 (2.38%) Quality Engineer
18 41 (2.38%) Test Analyst
19 40 (2.32%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 132 (7.65%) REST
2 112 (6.49%) .NET
3 101 (5.85%) Playwright
4 79 (4.58%) RESTful
5 78 (4.52%) Spring
6 74 (4.29%) Spring Boot
7 62 (3.59%) React
8 52 (3.01%) .NET Framework
9 49 (2.84%) AngularJS
10 47 (2.72%) Node.js
11 46 (2.67%) Kafka
12 43 (2.49%) HTML
13 41 (2.38%) CSS
14 37 (2.14%) JSON
15 27 (1.56%) Gherkin
16 23 (1.33%) Oracle Fusion
16 23 (1.33%) Quarkus
17 21 (1.22%) Middleware
18 20 (1.16%) XML
19 18 (1.04%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 162 (9.39%) Product Ownership
2 73 (4.23%) Cloud Native
3 48 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
4 41 (2.38%) Onboarding
5 39 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
6 37 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
7 34 (1.97%) Mobile App
8 32 (1.85%) Data Structures
9 29 (1.68%) Management Information System
9 29 (1.68%) PMI
10 25 (1.45%) Virtual Team
11 23 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
12 21 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
13 20 (1.16%) Data Centre
14 18 (1.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 18 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
15 17 (0.98%) Derivative
15 17 (0.98%) SWIFT Messaging Network
16 14 (0.81%) NHS
17 13 (0.75%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 89 (5.16%) Windows
2 48 (2.78%) Linux
3 30 (1.74%) Windows Server
4 20 (1.16%) Android
5 16 (0.93%) Apple iOS
5 16 (0.93%) Unix
6 4 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.17%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.17%) VMS
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.12%) Solaris
8 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.058%) Debian
9 1 (0.058%) Robot Operating System
9 1 (0.058%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.058%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.058%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.058%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 663 (38.41%) Agile
2 443 (25.67%) DevOps
2 443 (25.67%) Test Automation
3 421 (24.39%) CI/CD
4 328 (19.00%) Problem-Solving
5 309 (17.90%) Stakeholder Management
6 287 (16.63%) Continuous Improvement
7 284 (16.45%) Validation
8 262 (15.18%) User Acceptance Testing
9 240 (13.90%) Scrum
10 210 (12.17%) Migration
11 195 (11.30%) Test Strategy
12 171 (9.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 149 (8.63%) SDLC
14 147 (8.52%) Test Scripting
15 146 (8.46%) Project Management
16 145 (8.40%) ETL
17 143 (8.29%) Regression Testing
18 141 (8.17%) AI
19 140 (8.11%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 354 (20.51%) SQL
2 228 (13.21%) Java
3 220 (12.75%) Python
4 136 (7.88%) C#
5 130 (7.53%) JavaScript
6 105 (6.08%) TypeScript
7 51 (2.95%) PL/SQL
8 47 (2.72%) T-SQL
9 34 (1.97%) PowerShell
10 23 (1.33%) Kotlin
11 20 (1.16%) Bash
12 16 (0.93%) C++
12 16 (0.93%) Ruby
12 16 (0.93%) VBA
13 15 (0.87%) VB
14 13 (0.75%) Bicep
14 13 (0.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 12 (0.70%) Scala
16 11 (0.64%) C
16 11 (0.64%) PHP
Qualifications
1 366 (21.21%) Security Cleared
2 269 (15.59%) SC Cleared
3 169 (9.79%) Degree
4 74 (4.29%) ISTQB
5 58 (3.36%) PMI Certification
6 53 (3.07%) BPSS Clearance
6 53 (3.07%) PMP
7 52 (3.01%) Computer Science Degree
8 41 (2.38%) DV Cleared
9 31 (1.80%) Master's Degree
10 11 (0.64%) AWS Certification
10 11 (0.64%) CHECK Team Member
10 11 (0.64%) CREST Certified
10 11 (0.64%) Cyber Scheme
10 11 (0.64%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 11 (0.64%) SAFe Agilist
11 10 (0.58%) CBAP
11 10 (0.58%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 10 (0.58%) MBA
11 10 (0.58%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 116 (6.72%) Data Quality
2 80 (4.63%) Accessibility
3 48 (2.78%) GDPR
4 44 (2.55%) PMO
5 28 (1.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 22 (1.27%) PCI DSS
7 20 (1.16%) WCAG
8 18 (1.04%) NIST
9 15 (0.87%) IFRS
9 15 (0.87%) IFRS 17
10 13 (0.75%) GRC
10 13 (0.75%) SLA
11 11 (0.64%) GxP
11 11 (0.64%) SEPA
12 10 (0.58%) Basel III
12 10 (0.58%) ISO 20022
12 10 (0.58%) PSD2
13 9 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 8 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
14 8 (0.46%) COBIT
System Software
1 107 (6.20%) Docker
2 14 (0.81%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.23%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 3 (0.17%) Firmware
6 3 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.12%) GridGain
7 2 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.058%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.058%) KVM
8 1 (0.058%) QEMU
8 1 (0.058%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
8 1 (0.058%) Varnish
8 1 (0.058%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 142 (8.23%) Kubernetes
2 79 (4.58%) Terraform
3 37 (2.14%) Grafana
4 34 (1.97%) Ansible
5 26 (1.51%) Argo
6 22 (1.27%) Prometheus
7 20 (1.16%) HP ALM
8 12 (0.70%) Nmap
9 10 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
10 7 (0.41%) Puppet
11 6 (0.35%) HP Quality Center
11 6 (0.35%) Kibana
12 3 (0.17%) Progress Chef
13 2 (0.12%) SCCM
14 1 (0.058%) Cisco Prime
14 1 (0.058%) Microsoft Intune
14 1 (0.058%) Red Hat Satellite
14 1 (0.058%) SELinux
14 1 (0.058%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 183 (10.60%) Microsoft
2 166 (9.62%) Oracle
3 104 (6.03%) SAP
4 84 (4.87%) Salesforce
5 53 (3.07%) ServiceNow
6 48 (2.78%) Citrix
7 41 (2.38%) Google
8 28 (1.62%) Adobe
9 27 (1.56%) Databricks
9 27 (1.56%) Red Hat
10 23 (1.33%) HP
11 18 (1.04%) Informatica
12 17 (0.98%) Workday
13 14 (0.81%) MuleSoft
13 14 (0.81%) Splunk
14 13 (0.75%) IBM
15 11 (0.64%) Talend
16 10 (0.58%) Cisco
16 10 (0.58%) Infor
17 8 (0.46%) Sage