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

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 66 59
Rank change year-on-year +4 -7 +16
Contract jobs citing QA 1,787 1,055 1,440
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.64% 3.65% 3.36%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.80% 22.72% 24.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,106 734 950
10th Percentile £321 £280 £310
25th Percentile £394 £378 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £506
Median % change year-on-year - -6.17% +0.25%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £606
90th Percentile £669 £688 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £500
% change year-on-year - -10.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 127 24 92
10th Percentile £13.20 £15.04 £10.82
25th Percentile £15.82 £17.73 £12.24
Median hourly rate £30.58 £51.25 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.33% +266.07% -37.74%
75th Percentile £67.50 £72.81 £26.87
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £71.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £56.75 £13.52
% change year-on-year -46.11% +319.75% -24.89%

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 8,198 4,644 5,964
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.69% 16.05% 13.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,257 2,965 3,756
10th Percentile £342 £263 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
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% - -2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 485 185 409
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.13 £10.99
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.00 £13.18
Median hourly rate £36.07 £32.50 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.98% +41.30% -39.07%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £82.15 £81.65 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £32.81 £18.97
% change year-on-year +21.91% +72.96% -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 5 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 5 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 5 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 +9 1,536 £477 +0.42% 996
UK excluding London +7 816 £450 - 715
London +12 779 £500 +0.25% 367
Work from Home +6 503 £488 +1.56% 587
South East -2 185 £450 -2.70% 181
North of England -26 174 £463 -2.63% 186
Midlands -2 170 £425 +13.33% 124
West Midlands -7 125 £425 - 67
South West +26 116 £486 -2.75% 90
East of England +12 80 £475 -0.73% 68
North West -21 79 £447 +4.20% 101
Scotland +15 78 £400 -8.51% 38
Yorkshire -26 69 £514 +0.29% 60
East Midlands -11 46 £394 +5.00% 57
North East -15 26 £413 -8.33% 27
Northern Ireland +10 17 £475 +46.15% 26
Wales -16 10 £450 -14.29% 17

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 94 (5.26%) Confluence
2 31 (1.73%) SharePoint
3 27 (1.51%) CMS
4 19 (1.06%) IIS
5 14 (0.78%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 14 (0.78%) Apache Spark
6 10 (0.56%) Apache
7 6 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
8 5 (0.28%) SAS
8 5 (0.28%) Umbraco
9 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.22%) nginx
9 4 (0.22%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 3 (0.17%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.17%) Moodle
10 3 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.17%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.11%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.11%) Luigi
11 2 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 57 (3.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.79%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
4 24 (1.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (1.18%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.22%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.17%) CATIA
8 3 (0.17%) Simulink
9 2 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.11%) EPLAN
10 1 (0.056%) Adobe After Effects
10 1 (0.056%) Adobe Premiere
10 1 (0.056%) Autodesk Smoke
10 1 (0.056%) Camtasia
10 1 (0.056%) Chatbot
10 1 (0.056%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.056%) Navisworks
10 1 (0.056%) Notion
Business Applications
1 28 (1.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 17 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.45%) Shopify
4 7 (0.39%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.28%) Maximo
6 5 (0.28%) NEC Housing
7 4 (0.22%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.22%) Infor CloudSuite
7 4 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.17%) Actimize
8 3 (0.17%) Aladdin
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle EBS R12
8 3 (0.17%) Primavera
9 2 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.11%) NetSuite
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.11%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.11%) SAP Retail
9 2 (0.11%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 400 (22.38%) Azure
2 285 (15.95%) AWS
3 168 (9.40%) Azure DevOps
4 149 (8.34%) GitHub
5 106 (5.93%) Power Platform
6 98 (5.48%) GitHub Actions
7 76 (4.25%) GCP
8 47 (2.63%) Serverless
9 37 (2.07%) Dynamics 365
10 36 (2.01%) SaaS
11 34 (1.90%) OpenShift
12 31 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 30 (1.68%) Snowflake
14 29 (1.62%) Amazon S3
15 26 (1.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 25 (1.40%) Azure Data Factory
17 20 (1.12%) Amazon EKS
17 20 (1.12%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 19 (1.06%) Amazon ECS
18 19 (1.06%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.34%) Firewall
2 21 (1.18%) LAN
3 20 (1.12%) WAN
4 19 (1.06%) Internet
4 19 (1.06%) Network Security
4 19 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
5 13 (0.73%) VPN
6 12 (0.67%) Wireless
7 11 (0.62%) DNS
7 11 (0.62%) SD-WAN
7 11 (0.62%) Unified Communications
7 11 (0.62%) VLAN
8 10 (0.56%) HTTP
9 8 (0.45%) IPsec
10 7 (0.39%) SMS
11 6 (0.34%) Cisco Nexus
11 6 (0.34%) TCP/IP
12 5 (0.28%) DHCP
13 4 (0.22%) MPLS
14 2 (0.11%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 106 (5.93%) SQL Server
2 91 (5.09%) Power BI
3 72 (4.03%) Data Warehouse
4 59 (3.30%) PostgreSQL
5 48 (2.69%) Relational Database
6 43 (2.41%) MySQL
7 40 (2.24%) NoSQL
8 38 (2.13%) Tableau
9 34 (1.90%) Oracle Database
10 33 (1.85%) Data Lake
11 32 (1.79%) Metadata
11 32 (1.79%) Oracle Reports
12 24 (1.34%) Big Data
12 24 (1.34%) MongoDB
13 19 (1.06%) Azure SQL Database
14 18 (1.01%) DynamoDB
15 17 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 15 (0.84%) BigQuery
17 14 (0.78%) Amazon Redshift
18 13 (0.73%) Redis
Development Applications
1 292 (16.34%) JIRA
2 159 (8.90%) Git
3 139 (7.78%) Selenium
4 122 (6.83%) Jenkins
5 101 (5.65%) GitLab
6 82 (4.59%) Postman
7 65 (3.64%) Cucumber
8 59 (3.30%) Cypress.io
9 51 (2.85%) JUnit
10 46 (2.57%) REST Assured
11 44 (2.46%) Zephyr
12 35 (1.96%) JMeter
12 35 (1.96%) SonarQube
13 31 (1.73%) WebDriver
14 22 (1.23%) Gatling
14 22 (1.23%) TestRail
15 17 (0.95%) TestNG
16 16 (0.90%) Gradle
17 15 (0.84%) Appium
18 14 (0.78%) SpecFlow
General
1 549 (30.72%) Social Skills
2 406 (22.72%) Finance
3 246 (13.77%) Analytical Skills
4 197 (11.02%) Public Sector
5 146 (8.17%) Banking
6 57 (3.19%) Retail
7 48 (2.69%) Marketing
8 46 (2.57%) Manufacturing
9 45 (2.52%) Organisational Skills
10 34 (1.90%) Aerospace
11 29 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
12 25 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
13 22 (1.23%) Military
14 21 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 21 (1.18%) Investment Banking
15 19 (1.06%) Legal
16 16 (0.90%) Front Office
16 16 (0.90%) Pharmaceutical
17 14 (0.78%) Automotive
17 14 (0.78%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 215 (12.03%) Developer
2 214 (11.98%) Analyst
3 208 (11.64%) Lead
4 203 (11.36%) Senior
5 155 (8.67%) QA Engineer
6 113 (6.32%) Business Analyst
7 99 (5.54%) Tester
8 85 (4.76%) Test Manager
9 71 (3.97%) Architect
10 64 (3.58%) Project Manager
10 64 (3.58%) Quality Engineer
10 64 (3.58%) Test Engineer
11 59 (3.30%) Data Engineer
12 53 (2.97%) Java Developer
13 52 (2.91%) Test Leader
14 51 (2.85%) Data Analyst
15 49 (2.74%) Senior Analyst
16 43 (2.41%) Software Engineer
17 41 (2.29%) QA Tester
18 40 (2.24%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (7.27%) REST
2 114 (6.38%) .NET
3 96 (5.37%) Playwright
4 95 (5.32%) RESTful
5 71 (3.97%) Spring
6 66 (3.69%) Spring Boot
7 64 (3.58%) React
8 57 (3.19%) HTML
9 52 (2.91%) CSS
10 50 (2.80%) .NET Framework
10 50 (2.80%) Kafka
11 49 (2.74%) AngularJS
12 45 (2.52%) Node.js
13 38 (2.13%) JSON
14 25 (1.40%) Middleware
15 24 (1.34%) Gherkin
15 24 (1.34%) Quarkus
16 23 (1.29%) OpenID
17 22 (1.23%) OAuth
17 22 (1.23%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 145 (8.11%) Product Ownership
2 75 (4.20%) Cloud Native
3 50 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
4 47 (2.63%) Onboarding
5 41 (2.29%) Distributed Systems
6 40 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
7 36 (2.01%) Mobile App
8 28 (1.57%) Data Structures
8 28 (1.57%) Management Information System
9 27 (1.51%) Virtual Team
10 23 (1.29%) Data Centre
11 21 (1.18%) Analytical Mindset
11 21 (1.18%) PMI
12 20 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
13 18 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
14 14 (0.78%) AI Agents
14 14 (0.78%) Legacy Code
15 13 (0.73%) Derivative
15 13 (0.73%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 13 (0.73%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 84 (4.70%) Windows
2 58 (3.25%) Linux
3 28 (1.57%) Windows Server
4 27 (1.51%) Apple iOS
5 26 (1.45%) Android
6 19 (1.06%) Unix
7 6 (0.34%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.28%) 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 (0.056%) Debian
10 1 (0.056%) Solaris
10 1 (0.056%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.056%) VMS
10 1 (0.056%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.056%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 654 (36.60%) Agile
2 451 (25.24%) Test Automation
3 436 (24.40%) DevOps
4 420 (23.50%) CI/CD
5 296 (16.56%) Validation
6 290 (16.23%) Stakeholder Management
7 278 (15.56%) Continuous Improvement
8 270 (15.11%) Problem-Solving
9 248 (13.88%) User Acceptance Testing
10 232 (12.98%) Scrum
11 229 (12.81%) Test Strategy
12 219 (12.26%) Migration
13 172 (9.63%) AI
14 167 (9.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 155 (8.67%) ETL
16 143 (8.00%) Decision-Making
17 141 (7.89%) SDLC
18 138 (7.72%) Analytics
19 137 (7.67%) Test Management
20 136 (7.61%) Test Scripting
Programming Languages
1 362 (20.26%) SQL
2 237 (13.26%) Python
3 218 (12.20%) Java
4 132 (7.39%) C#
5 128 (7.16%) JavaScript
6 87 (4.87%) TypeScript
7 42 (2.35%) PL/SQL
7 42 (2.35%) T-SQL
8 31 (1.73%) Kotlin
8 31 (1.73%) PowerShell
9 22 (1.23%) Bash
10 19 (1.06%) Scala
11 17 (0.95%) Swift
12 16 (0.90%) Bicep
13 15 (0.84%) C++
13 15 (0.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 14 (0.78%) PHP
14 14 (0.78%) VB
15 12 (0.67%) C
15 12 (0.67%) VBA
Qualifications
1 395 (22.10%) Security Cleared
2 286 (16.00%) SC Cleared
3 142 (7.95%) Degree
4 73 (4.09%) ISTQB
5 61 (3.41%) BPSS Clearance
6 53 (2.97%) DV Cleared
7 41 (2.29%) PMI Certification
8 38 (2.13%) PMP
9 37 (2.07%) Computer Science Degree
10 19 (1.06%) Master's Degree
11 12 (0.67%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.62%) Cisco Certification
13 10 (0.56%) AWS Certification
14 9 (0.50%) CBAP
15 8 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 8 (0.45%) SAFe Agilist
16 7 (0.39%) Azure Certification
16 7 (0.39%) CHECK Team Member
16 7 (0.39%) CREST Certified
16 7 (0.39%) Cyber Scheme
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 132 (7.39%) Data Quality
2 81 (4.53%) Accessibility
3 41 (2.29%) PMO
4 33 (1.85%) GDPR
5 21 (1.18%) WCAG
6 19 (1.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 17 (0.95%) IFRS
8 16 (0.90%) GRC
8 16 (0.90%) NIST
8 16 (0.90%) PCI DSS
9 15 (0.84%) IFRS 17
10 13 (0.73%) SLA
11 11 (0.62%) Disclosure Scotland
11 11 (0.62%) GxP
12 7 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.39%) Basel III
12 7 (0.39%) ISO 20022
12 7 (0.39%) SEPA
13 6 (0.34%) PSD2
13 6 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 109 (6.10%) Docker
2 16 (0.90%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 3 (0.17%) Firmware
7 2 (0.11%) GridGain
7 2 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.11%) VirtualBox
7 2 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.056%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.056%) KVM
8 1 (0.056%) QEMU
8 1 (0.056%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
8 1 (0.056%) Varnish
8 1 (0.056%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 149 (8.34%) Kubernetes
2 72 (4.03%) Terraform
3 35 (1.96%) Grafana
4 29 (1.62%) Ansible
5 26 (1.45%) Argo
5 26 (1.45%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.01%) HP ALM
7 9 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.45%) HP Quality Center
8 8 (0.45%) Nmap
9 7 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
10 6 (0.34%) Puppet
11 4 (0.22%) Kibana
11 4 (0.22%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 3 (0.17%) Progress Chef
13 2 (0.11%) ITRS Geneos
13 2 (0.11%) SCCM
14 1 (0.056%) Cisco Prime
14 1 (0.056%) Microsoft Intune
14 1 (0.056%) Salt
Vendors
1 182 (10.18%) Microsoft
2 155 (8.67%) Oracle
3 94 (5.26%) Salesforce
4 90 (5.04%) SAP
5 48 (2.69%) ServiceNow
6 37 (2.07%) Citrix
6 37 (2.07%) Google
7 34 (1.90%) Databricks
8 31 (1.73%) Adobe
9 29 (1.62%) Red Hat
10 23 (1.29%) Informatica
11 21 (1.18%) HP
12 20 (1.12%) Cisco
13 13 (0.73%) MuleSoft
13 13 (0.73%) Talend
14 12 (0.67%) Workday
15 11 (0.62%) VMware
16 10 (0.56%) IBM
16 10 (0.56%) Infor
16 10 (0.56%) Splunk