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

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 64 65
Rank change year-on-year +13 +1 +6
Contract jobs citing QA 2,171 1,247 1,264
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.05% 3.84% 3.30%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 23.12% 22.60% 24.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,300 860 770
10th Percentile £313 £285 £300
25th Percentile £398 £381 £399
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year - -2.56% -7.14%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £577
90th Percentile £668 £663 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% -1.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 212 44 80
10th Percentile £12.85 £12.97 £11.64
25th Percentile £15.33 £13.50 £12.24
Median hourly rate £31.73 £23.45 £14.98
Median % change year-on-year +35.29% +56.56% -66.16%
75th Percentile £48.75 £44.28 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £71.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.46 £15.21 £14.98
% change year-on-year +106.91% +1.50% -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 9,389 5,517 5,159
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.51% 16.97% 13.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,964 3,538 3,136
10th Percentile £325 £288 £285
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £511
Median % change year-on-year - -2.07% -2.74%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £482
% change year-on-year +3.16% -1.35% -3.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 584 258 281
10th Percentile £13.86 £13.60 £11.80
25th Percentile £17.12 £16.61 £14.50
Median hourly rate £35.41 £30.00 £25.60
Median % change year-on-year +18.03% +17.19% -25.80%
75th Percentile £68.75 £60.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.85 £82.97 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.07 £25.83 £24.59
% change year-on-year +39.67% +5.02% -27.55%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +14 1,887 £481 +1.26% 2,249
UK excluding London +15 1,058 £450 - 1,354
London +12 882 £500 - 1,159
Work from Home +6 574 £475 - 917
North of England +6 264 £475 +6.26% 341
South East +2 244 £430 -11.79% 320
Midlands +12 210 £447 +5.18% 187
West Midlands +15 169 £447 -2.83% 127
East of England +15 128 £475 -5.00% 149
South West +11 126 £495 +16.47% 157
North West -13 106 £492 +16.17% 181
Yorkshire -1 103 £500 +6.38% 96
Scotland -2 77 £380 -15.56% 127
North East -6 55 £400 -13.04% 66
East Midlands -12 40 £420 +12.00% 60
Wales -6 17 £400 -22.71% 25
Northern Ireland -1 11 £450 +10.43% 69

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
1 121 (5.57%) Confluence
2 48 (2.21%) CMS
3 36 (1.66%) SharePoint
4 20 (0.92%) IIS
5 16 (0.74%) Apache Spark
6 13 (0.60%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 12 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
8 10 (0.46%) Apache
9 8 (0.37%) SAS
9 8 (0.37%) Sitecore CMS
10 7 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
11 5 (0.23%) Tuxedo
11 5 (0.23%) WordPress
12 4 (0.18%) Headless CMS
12 4 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.18%) Umbraco
13 3 (0.14%) Apache Solr
13 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
13 3 (0.14%) Moodle
13 3 (0.14%) WebLogic
Applications
1 75 (3.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (1.52%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 22 (1.01%) MS Visio
5 14 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
6 13 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.41%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.23%) Navisworks
8 5 (0.23%) Revit
9 4 (0.18%) AutoCAD
9 4 (0.18%) Simulink
10 3 (0.14%) CATIA
10 3 (0.14%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.14%) ProjectWise
11 2 (0.092%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.092%) Mingle
11 2 (0.092%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.046%) Gliffy
12 1 (0.046%) Trello
12 1 (0.046%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 33 (1.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (1.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.46%) Shopify
4 9 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
5 7 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.32%) SAP GRC
5 7 (0.32%) Workday HCM
6 6 (0.28%) Aladdin
7 5 (0.23%) Infor CloudSuite
7 5 (0.23%) NEC Housing
8 4 (0.18%) iTrent
8 4 (0.18%) Maximo
8 4 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
8 4 (0.18%) Primavera
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
9 3 (0.14%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.14%) SAP MM
9 3 (0.14%) Teamcenter
10 2 (0.092%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 451 (20.77%) Azure
2 376 (17.32%) AWS
3 208 (9.58%) GitHub
4 192 (8.84%) Azure DevOps
5 113 (5.20%) GitHub Actions
6 108 (4.97%) Power Platform
7 103 (4.74%) GCP
8 69 (3.18%) Serverless
9 49 (2.26%) SaaS
10 46 (2.12%) AWS Lambda
11 43 (1.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 42 (1.93%) OpenShift
13 35 (1.61%) Snowflake
14 34 (1.57%) Dynamics 365
15 33 (1.52%) Amazon S3
16 32 (1.47%) GitHub Copilot
17 31 (1.43%) Azure Monitor
17 31 (1.43%) Salesforce Service Cloud
18 25 (1.15%) Power Automate
19 24 (1.11%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.15%) Firewall
2 22 (1.01%) Internet
3 17 (0.78%) DNS
4 15 (0.69%) HTTP
5 14 (0.64%) Broadband
5 14 (0.64%) Network Security
5 14 (0.64%) TCP/IP
5 14 (0.64%) VLAN
5 14 (0.64%) WAN
6 13 (0.60%) LAN
7 12 (0.55%) VPN
8 11 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
9 9 (0.41%) DHCP
9 9 (0.41%) SD-WAN
9 9 (0.41%) Unified Communications
10 8 (0.37%) 5G
11 7 (0.32%) 4G
11 7 (0.32%) IPsec
11 7 (0.32%) SMS
12 6 (0.28%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 105 (4.84%) SQL Server
2 97 (4.47%) Power BI
3 76 (3.50%) Relational Database
4 73 (3.36%) PostgreSQL
5 68 (3.13%) Data Warehouse
6 47 (2.16%) NoSQL
7 45 (2.07%) Metadata
7 45 (2.07%) MongoDB
8 43 (1.98%) Oracle Database
9 39 (1.80%) MySQL
10 37 (1.70%) Tableau
11 33 (1.52%) Oracle Reports
12 30 (1.38%) Data Lake
13 21 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (0.92%) Big Data
15 18 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
16 15 (0.69%) BigQuery
16 15 (0.69%) RDBMS
17 14 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
17 14 (0.64%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 299 (13.77%) JIRA
2 216 (9.95%) Git
3 160 (7.37%) Selenium
4 154 (7.09%) Jenkins
5 121 (5.57%) GitLab
6 83 (3.82%) Postman
7 74 (3.41%) Cypress.io
8 69 (3.18%) Cucumber
9 57 (2.63%) JUnit
10 54 (2.49%) SonarQube
11 52 (2.40%) Zephyr
12 43 (1.98%) JMeter
13 41 (1.89%) REST Assured
14 34 (1.57%) Gatling
15 28 (1.29%) Maven
15 28 (1.29%) WebDriver
16 22 (1.01%) Gradle
16 22 (1.01%) TestRail
17 21 (0.97%) Appium
18 20 (0.92%) Bitbucket
General
1 658 (30.31%) Social Skills
2 424 (19.53%) Finance
3 354 (16.31%) Analytical Skills
4 273 (12.57%) Public Sector
5 154 (7.09%) Banking
6 75 (3.45%) Manufacturing
7 74 (3.41%) Retail
8 64 (2.95%) Marketing
9 59 (2.72%) Organisational Skills
10 46 (2.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 42 (1.93%) Aerospace
12 36 (1.66%) Influencing Skills
13 33 (1.52%) Telecoms
14 32 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
15 31 (1.43%) Legal
16 24 (1.11%) Law
17 22 (1.01%) Pharmaceutical
18 21 (0.97%) Military
19 19 (0.88%) Local Government
20 18 (0.83%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 285 (13.13%) Developer
2 280 (12.90%) Lead
3 262 (12.07%) Analyst
4 259 (11.93%) Senior
5 227 (10.46%) QA Engineer
6 115 (5.30%) Business Analyst
6 115 (5.30%) Quality Engineer
7 110 (5.07%) Tester
8 99 (4.56%) Test Manager
9 89 (4.10%) Test Engineer
10 72 (3.32%) Java Developer
11 70 (3.22%) Data Engineer
11 70 (3.22%) Test Leader
12 66 (3.04%) QA Leader
13 57 (2.63%) Architect
14 56 (2.58%) Senior Analyst
15 55 (2.53%) Consultant
16 53 (2.44%) Test Analyst
17 51 (2.35%) Data Analyst
18 50 (2.30%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 178 (8.20%) REST
2 131 (6.03%) RESTful
3 130 (5.99%) Playwright
4 106 (4.88%) Spring
5 100 (4.61%) .NET
6 98 (4.51%) Spring Boot
7 95 (4.38%) Terraform
8 84 (3.87%) HTML
9 81 (3.73%) React
10 74 (3.41%) CSS
11 73 (3.36%) AngularJS
12 72 (3.32%) Kafka
13 62 (2.86%) Node.js
14 57 (2.63%) Middleware
15 47 (2.16%) SOAP
16 45 (2.07%) pytest
17 43 (1.98%) .NET Framework
18 39 (1.80%) JSON
19 34 (1.57%) Quarkus
19 34 (1.57%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 196 (9.03%) Product Ownership
2 123 (5.67%) Cloud Native
3 69 (3.18%) Onboarding
4 60 (2.76%) Management Information System
5 56 (2.58%) Enterprise Software
6 53 (2.44%) Distributed Systems
6 53 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
7 50 (2.30%) Mobile App
8 44 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
9 41 (1.89%) Data Structures
10 36 (1.66%) Data Centre
11 34 (1.57%) AI Agents
12 27 (1.24%) NHS
13 25 (1.15%) Low-Code
14 22 (1.01%) CMDB
15 20 (0.92%) Virtual Team
16 19 (0.88%) Educational Technology
17 17 (0.78%) Analytical Mindset
18 15 (0.69%) Self-Motivation
19 14 (0.64%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 93 (4.28%) Windows
2 64 (2.95%) Linux
3 49 (2.26%) Apple iOS
4 44 (2.03%) Android
5 32 (1.47%) Unix
6 29 (1.34%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.37%) VMS
8 7 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.23%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.092%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.046%) AIX
11 1 (0.046%) CentOS
11 1 (0.046%) Debian
11 1 (0.046%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.046%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.046%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.046%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.046%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 835 (38.46%) Agile
2 597 (27.50%) Test Automation
3 537 (24.74%) DevOps
4 536 (24.69%) CI/CD
5 425 (19.58%) Stakeholder Management
6 419 (19.30%) Continuous Improvement
7 380 (17.50%) Problem-Solving
8 377 (17.37%) Validation
9 316 (14.56%) Scrum
10 307 (14.14%) Test Strategy
11 299 (13.77%) AI
12 284 (13.08%) User Acceptance Testing
13 259 (11.93%) Migration
14 192 (8.84%) SDLC
15 191 (8.80%) End-to-End Testing
16 189 (8.71%) Microservices
17 186 (8.57%) Software Engineering
17 186 (8.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 176 (8.11%) Decision-Making
19 164 (7.55%) Defect Management
Programming Languages
1 411 (18.93%) SQL
2 290 (13.36%) Python
3 264 (12.16%) Java
4 165 (7.60%) JavaScript
5 109 (5.02%) C#
6 81 (3.73%) TypeScript
7 51 (2.35%) Bash
8 42 (1.93%) PowerShell
9 33 (1.52%) PL/SQL
10 27 (1.24%) Kotlin
10 27 (1.24%) T-SQL
11 21 (0.97%) Scala
12 19 (0.88%) Swift
13 17 (0.78%) C
14 16 (0.74%) Apex Code
14 16 (0.74%) Objective-C
14 16 (0.74%) Shell Script
14 16 (0.74%) VB
15 15 (0.69%) C++
15 15 (0.69%) R
Qualifications
1 513 (23.63%) Security Cleared
2 396 (18.24%) SC Cleared
3 137 (6.31%) Degree
4 89 (4.10%) BPSS Clearance
5 72 (3.32%) ISTQB
6 58 (2.67%) DV Cleared
7 38 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
8 24 (1.11%) PMP
9 23 (1.06%) PMI Certification
10 14 (0.64%) AWS Certification
10 14 (0.64%) Azure Certification
11 13 (0.60%) Microsoft Certification
12 11 (0.51%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.51%) Master's Degree
13 10 (0.46%) Cisco Certification
13 10 (0.46%) ITIL Certification
14 9 (0.41%) IIBA
14 9 (0.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 8 (0.37%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 8 (0.37%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 161 (7.42%) Data Quality
2 112 (5.16%) Accessibility
3 34 (1.57%) GDPR
4 32 (1.47%) WCAG
5 30 (1.38%) PMO
6 26 (1.20%) GRC
7 16 (0.74%) GxP
8 14 (0.64%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 13 (0.60%) NIST
10 10 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 9 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
11 9 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
11 9 (0.41%) SLA
12 8 (0.37%) IFRS
12 8 (0.37%) Software Quality Assurance
13 7 (0.32%) ISO 19650
13 7 (0.32%) NCSC
14 6 (0.28%) ISO 9001
15 5 (0.23%) GMP
15 5 (0.23%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 167 (7.69%) Docker
2 23 (1.06%) Active Directory
3 18 (0.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.46%) IAG
4 10 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.28%) Firmware
6 4 (0.18%) ACF2
6 4 (0.18%) RACF
6 4 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.14%) KVM
7 3 (0.14%) VirtualBox
8 2 (0.092%) GridGain
8 2 (0.092%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.046%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.046%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.046%) QEMU
9 1 (0.046%) Varnish
9 1 (0.046%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.046%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.046%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 207 (9.53%) Kubernetes
2 60 (2.76%) Ansible
3 48 (2.21%) Grafana
4 36 (1.66%) Argo
5 33 (1.52%) Prometheus
6 12 (0.55%) HP ALM
7 9 (0.41%) SCCM
7 9 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.37%) HP Quality Center
8 8 (0.37%) Microsoft Clustering
9 7 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
9 7 (0.32%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 6 (0.28%) Microsoft Intune
10 6 (0.28%) Puppet
11 5 (0.23%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.18%) SCOM
13 3 (0.14%) FortiGate
14 2 (0.092%) ITRS Geneos
14 2 (0.092%) Kibana
15 1 (0.046%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 243 (11.19%) Microsoft
2 168 (7.74%) Oracle
3 116 (5.34%) Salesforce
4 85 (3.92%) SAP
5 59 (2.72%) ServiceNow
6 46 (2.12%) Google
7 39 (1.80%) Databricks
8 37 (1.70%) Red Hat
9 27 (1.24%) Citrix
10 26 (1.20%) Dynatrace
11 25 (1.15%) Informatica
12 24 (1.11%) Adobe
13 23 (1.06%) Splunk
14 22 (1.01%) Cisco
14 22 (1.01%) VMware
15 17 (0.78%) Sitecore
16 16 (0.74%) IBM
17 15 (0.69%) HP
17 15 (0.69%) MuleSoft
18 14 (0.64%) Workday