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 20 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 62 59
Rank change year-on-year -2 -3 +14
Contract jobs citing QA 1,850 1,122 1,445
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.65% 3.76% 3.29%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.73% 23.08% 24.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,160 785 939
10th Percentile £322 £281 £306
25th Percentile £395 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -1.96%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £663 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £455 £500
% change year-on-year -0.99% -9.10% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 136 30 105
10th Percentile £13.05 £13.50 £10.86
25th Percentile £16.10 £15.16 £12.24
Median hourly rate £31.02 £30.00 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.40% +114.29% -37.74%
75th Percentile £67.50 £66.38 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £71.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.02 £35.93 £13.52
% change year-on-year -13.67% +165.77% -37.12%

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 8,514 4,862 6,002
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.81% 16.28% 13.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,469 3,106 3,738
10th Percentile £340 £275 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £509
Median % change year-on-year - -1.77% -3.05%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 506 199 436
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.12 £11.00
25th Percentile £19.22 £19.73 £13.18
Median hourly rate £36.07 £31.76 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.57% +38.09% -38.67%
75th Percentile £67.84 £67.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £85.35 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £31.76 £18.97
% change year-on-year +25.94% +67.42% -49.41%

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 20 June 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 20 June 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 20 June 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 1,581 £481 +1.18% 673
UK excluding London +5 859 £450 -0.99% 563
London +8 784 £500 +1.01% 240
Work from Home +6 532 £488 +2.63% 268
South East +5 198 £450 -2.70% 187
North of England -26 186 £459 -3.42% 131
Midlands -15 173 £425 +13.33% 96
West Midlands -11 127 £447 +5.18% 47
South West +23 121 £495 -1.00% 77
North West -28 84 £433 -3.24% 70
Scotland +14 83 £355 -23.24% 24
East of England -1 82 £475 -0.73% 42
Yorkshire -36 66 £525 +1.01% 34
East Midlands -10 46 £398 +10.98% 49
North East -10 36 £400 -11.11% 29
Northern Ireland +6 19 £475 +46.15% 16
Wales -8 12 £450 +5.88% 10

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
1 102 (5.51%) Confluence
2 31 (1.68%) CMS
3 28 (1.51%) SharePoint
4 18 (0.97%) IIS
5 15 (0.81%) Apache Spark
6 13 (0.70%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 7 (0.38%) Apache
7 7 (0.38%) SAS
8 6 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
9 5 (0.27%) Tuxedo
9 5 (0.27%) Umbraco
10 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.22%) nginx
11 3 (0.16%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.16%) Moodle
11 3 (0.16%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 3 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.16%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 2 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 55 (2.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 27 (1.46%) Microsoft Office
2 27 (1.46%) Microsoft Project
3 20 (1.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 17 (0.92%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.22%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.22%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.16%) CATIA
7 3 (0.16%) CPLEX
7 3 (0.16%) Simulink
8 2 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.11%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.11%) EPLAN
9 1 (0.054%) Adobe After Effects
9 1 (0.054%) Adobe Premiere
9 1 (0.054%) Camtasia
9 1 (0.054%) Navisworks
9 1 (0.054%) Notion
9 1 (0.054%) Revit
Business Applications
1 28 (1.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 17 (0.92%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.43%) Shopify
4 7 (0.38%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.32%) Maximo
5 6 (0.32%) NEC Housing
5 6 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
6 5 (0.27%) Infor CloudSuite
6 5 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
7 4 (0.22%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.22%) Primavera
8 3 (0.16%) Actimize
8 3 (0.16%) Aladdin
8 3 (0.16%) IntelliMatch
8 3 (0.16%) Oracle EBS R12
8 3 (0.16%) SAP FI
9 2 (0.11%) iTrent
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 2 (0.11%) SAP Retail
Cloud Services
1 402 (21.73%) Azure
2 306 (16.54%) AWS
3 169 (9.14%) Azure DevOps
4 146 (7.89%) GitHub
5 103 (5.57%) Power Platform
6 91 (4.92%) GitHub Actions
7 74 (4.00%) GCP
8 45 (2.43%) Serverless
9 39 (2.11%) OpenShift
10 36 (1.95%) Dynamics 365
11 34 (1.84%) SaaS
12 30 (1.62%) AWS Lambda
13 28 (1.51%) Amazon S3
14 27 (1.46%) Snowflake
15 26 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 22 (1.19%) Azure Data Factory
17 20 (1.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 20 (1.08%) Salesforce Service Cloud
18 19 (1.03%) AWS CloudFormation
19 18 (0.97%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.41%) Firewall
2 19 (1.03%) Network Security
2 19 (1.03%) WAN
3 17 (0.92%) Internet
3 17 (0.92%) LAN
4 15 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
5 13 (0.70%) VPN
6 12 (0.65%) DNS
7 11 (0.59%) SD-WAN
7 11 (0.59%) Unified Communications
7 11 (0.59%) VLAN
7 11 (0.59%) Wireless
8 9 (0.49%) HTTP
9 8 (0.43%) IPsec
10 7 (0.38%) SMS
11 6 (0.32%) Cisco Nexus
11 6 (0.32%) TCP/IP
12 5 (0.27%) DHCP
13 4 (0.22%) BGP
13 4 (0.22%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 107 (5.78%) SQL Server
2 88 (4.76%) Power BI
3 71 (3.84%) Data Warehouse
4 67 (3.62%) PostgreSQL
5 59 (3.19%) Relational Database
6 43 (2.32%) MySQL
6 43 (2.32%) NoSQL
7 37 (2.00%) Metadata
8 36 (1.95%) Tableau
9 34 (1.84%) Oracle Database
10 32 (1.73%) Oracle Reports
11 31 (1.68%) Data Lake
11 31 (1.68%) MongoDB
12 22 (1.19%) Big Data
13 19 (1.03%) DynamoDB
14 17 (0.92%) Azure SQL Database
14 17 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 15 (0.81%) BigQuery
16 14 (0.76%) Amazon Redshift
16 14 (0.76%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 294 (15.89%) JIRA
2 174 (9.41%) Git
3 132 (7.14%) Selenium
4 130 (7.03%) Jenkins
5 97 (5.24%) GitLab
6 80 (4.32%) Postman
7 59 (3.19%) Cucumber
8 58 (3.14%) Cypress.io
9 56 (3.03%) JUnit
10 44 (2.38%) REST Assured
10 44 (2.38%) SonarQube
10 44 (2.38%) Zephyr
11 35 (1.89%) JMeter
12 28 (1.51%) WebDriver
13 22 (1.19%) Gatling
13 22 (1.19%) Maven
14 19 (1.03%) Gradle
15 17 (0.92%) TestNG
15 17 (0.92%) TestRail
16 14 (0.76%) SpecFlow
General
1 551 (29.78%) Social Skills
2 415 (22.43%) Finance
3 254 (13.73%) Analytical Skills
4 223 (12.05%) Public Sector
5 140 (7.57%) Banking
6 60 (3.24%) Retail
7 55 (2.97%) Marketing
8 51 (2.76%) Manufacturing
9 48 (2.59%) Organisational Skills
10 36 (1.95%) Aerospace
11 30 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
12 25 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
13 23 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 21 (1.14%) Legal
14 21 (1.14%) Military
15 20 (1.08%) Investment Banking
16 17 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
17 16 (0.86%) Front Office
18 15 (0.81%) Automotive
18 15 (0.81%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 243 (13.14%) Developer
2 218 (11.78%) Analyst
3 214 (11.57%) Lead
3 214 (11.57%) Senior
4 165 (8.92%) QA Engineer
5 111 (6.00%) Business Analyst
6 102 (5.51%) Tester
7 88 (4.76%) Test Manager
8 68 (3.68%) Architect
8 68 (3.68%) Java Developer
9 67 (3.62%) Test Engineer
10 66 (3.57%) Quality Engineer
11 59 (3.19%) Data Engineer
12 56 (3.03%) Project Manager
13 54 (2.92%) Senior Analyst
14 53 (2.86%) Test Leader
15 50 (2.70%) Consultant
16 49 (2.65%) Data Analyst
17 46 (2.49%) Software Engineer
18 43 (2.32%) QA Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 127 (6.86%) REST
2 109 (5.89%) .NET
3 106 (5.73%) RESTful
4 98 (5.30%) Playwright
5 91 (4.92%) Spring
6 87 (4.70%) Spring Boot
7 74 (4.00%) React
8 66 (3.57%) HTML
9 62 (3.35%) AngularJS
10 60 (3.24%) CSS
11 56 (3.03%) Kafka
12 51 (2.76%) .NET Framework
13 47 (2.54%) Node.js
14 37 (2.00%) JSON
15 34 (1.84%) Quarkus
16 28 (1.51%) Middleware
17 23 (1.24%) ASP.NET
17 23 (1.24%) Gherkin
17 23 (1.24%) pytest
17 23 (1.24%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 161 (8.70%) Product Ownership
2 82 (4.43%) Cloud Native
3 55 (2.97%) Onboarding
4 51 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
5 46 (2.49%) Distributed Systems
6 40 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
7 39 (2.11%) Mobile App
8 34 (1.84%) Management Information System
9 30 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
10 29 (1.57%) Data Structures
11 25 (1.35%) Data Centre
11 25 (1.35%) Virtual Team
12 23 (1.24%) AI Agents
13 18 (0.97%) Analytical Mindset
13 18 (0.97%) PMI
14 17 (0.92%) NHS
14 17 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
15 14 (0.76%) Derivative
16 13 (0.70%) Distributed Architecture
16 13 (0.70%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 86 (4.65%) Windows
2 54 (2.92%) Linux
3 30 (1.62%) Apple iOS
4 29 (1.57%) Windows Server
5 27 (1.46%) Android
6 19 (1.03%) Unix
7 6 (0.32%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.054%) Debian
10 1 (0.054%) Solaris
10 1 (0.054%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.054%) VMS
10 1 (0.054%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 699 (37.78%) Agile
2 470 (25.41%) Test Automation
3 454 (24.54%) DevOps
4 430 (23.24%) CI/CD
5 307 (16.59%) Validation
6 303 (16.38%) Stakeholder Management
7 295 (15.95%) Continuous Improvement
8 281 (15.19%) Problem-Solving
9 269 (14.54%) User Acceptance Testing
10 243 (13.14%) Test Strategy
11 241 (13.03%) Scrum
12 233 (12.59%) Migration
13 198 (10.70%) AI
14 167 (9.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 152 (8.22%) Decision-Making
16 148 (8.00%) ETL
16 148 (8.00%) SDLC
17 144 (7.78%) Data Migration
18 143 (7.73%) Analytics
19 141 (7.62%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 374 (20.22%) SQL
2 238 (12.86%) Java
3 228 (12.32%) Python
4 134 (7.24%) JavaScript
5 129 (6.97%) C#
6 82 (4.43%) TypeScript
7 42 (2.27%) T-SQL
8 39 (2.11%) PL/SQL
9 30 (1.62%) Kotlin
10 27 (1.46%) PowerShell
11 24 (1.30%) Bash
12 20 (1.08%) Scala
13 18 (0.97%) VB
14 17 (0.92%) Swift
15 16 (0.86%) C
15 16 (0.86%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 15 (0.81%) Bicep
17 14 (0.76%) C++
17 14 (0.76%) VBA
18 11 (0.59%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 421 (22.76%) Security Cleared
2 312 (16.86%) SC Cleared
3 134 (7.24%) Degree
4 77 (4.16%) ISTQB
5 64 (3.46%) BPSS Clearance
6 51 (2.76%) DV Cleared
7 36 (1.95%) PMI Certification
8 34 (1.84%) PMP
9 31 (1.68%) Computer Science Degree
10 18 (0.97%) Master's Degree
11 14 (0.76%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.59%) Cisco Certification
13 10 (0.54%) Azure Certification
14 9 (0.49%) AWS Certification
14 9 (0.49%) CBAP
15 7 (0.38%) CCNP
15 7 (0.38%) SAFe Agilist
16 6 (0.32%) Cyber Scheme
16 6 (0.32%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 6 (0.32%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 125 (6.76%) Data Quality
2 85 (4.59%) Accessibility
3 34 (1.84%) PMO
4 33 (1.78%) GDPR
5 22 (1.19%) WCAG
6 17 (0.92%) GRC
6 17 (0.92%) IFRS
6 17 (0.92%) NIST
7 16 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.81%) IFRS 17
8 15 (0.81%) PCI DSS
9 14 (0.76%) SLA
10 11 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
10 11 (0.59%) GxP
11 8 (0.43%) ISO 20022
12 7 (0.38%) NCSC
12 7 (0.38%) SEPA
13 6 (0.32%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 6 (0.32%) PSD2
14 5 (0.27%) GMP
System Software
1 108 (5.84%) Docker
2 16 (0.86%) Active Directory
3 12 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.38%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.27%) Firmware
5 5 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (0.16%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 2 (0.11%) GridGain
7 2 (0.11%) IAG
7 2 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.11%) VirtualBox
7 2 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.054%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.054%) KVM
8 1 (0.054%) QEMU
8 1 (0.054%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
8 1 (0.054%) Varnish
8 1 (0.054%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 158 (8.54%) Kubernetes
2 70 (3.78%) Terraform
3 35 (1.89%) Argo
3 35 (1.89%) Grafana
4 32 (1.73%) Ansible
5 28 (1.51%) Prometheus
6 18 (0.97%) HP ALM
7 10 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.43%) HP Quality Center
9 7 (0.38%) Nmap
9 7 (0.38%) Oracle RMAN
10 6 (0.32%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
11 5 (0.27%) Kibana
11 5 (0.27%) Puppet
12 4 (0.22%) SCCM
13 3 (0.16%) FortiGate
13 3 (0.16%) Progress Chef
14 2 (0.11%) ITRS Geneos
14 2 (0.11%) Tivoli
15 1 (0.054%) Cisco Prime
Vendors
1 190 (10.27%) Microsoft
2 167 (9.03%) Oracle
3 103 (5.57%) Salesforce
4 91 (4.92%) SAP
5 49 (2.65%) ServiceNow
6 38 (2.05%) Google
7 37 (2.00%) Citrix
8 36 (1.95%) Red Hat
9 33 (1.78%) Databricks
10 31 (1.68%) Adobe
11 25 (1.35%) Informatica
12 21 (1.14%) Cisco
12 21 (1.14%) HP
13 18 (0.97%) MuleSoft
14 14 (0.76%) Talend
15 12 (0.65%) Atlassian
15 12 (0.65%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
15 12 (0.65%) Splunk
15 12 (0.65%) VMware
15 12 (0.65%) Workday