Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 21 January 2021

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for QA skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited QA over the 6 months to 21 January 2021 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Quality Assurance (QA)
UK
6 months to
21 Jan 2021		 Same period 2020 Same period 2019
Rank 73 78 68
Rank change year-on-year +5 -10 -4
Contract jobs citing QA 1,309 2,101 3,476
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.12% 2.88% 3.52%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 29.16% 28.27% 32.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,156 1,371 2,426
Median daily rate £468 £450 £450
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +3.89% - +5.88%
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
90th Percentile £605 £613 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £410 £420
% change year-on-year +3.66% -2.38% +8.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 63 44
Median hourly rate £20.00 £23.00 £36.00
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -13.04% -36.11% +64.38%
10th Percentile £11.85 £10.51 £10.75
90th Percentile £40.50 £53.75 £47.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.09 £23.00 £29.00
% change year-on-year -17.01% -20.69% +7.41%

QA is in the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills.

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK
Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 4,489 7,431 10,701
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.71% 10.19% 10.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,906 4,757 6,844
Median daily rate £473 £450 £450
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +5.00% - +2.86%
10th Percentile £263 £225 £255
90th Percentile £650 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £415 £425
% change year-on-year +5.42% -2.35% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 222 311 349
Median hourly rate £21.05 £20.21 £20.00
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year +4.18% +1.03% -
10th Percentile £10.76 £12.00 £11.00
90th Percentile £52.50 £53.75 £47.50
Median hourly rate £21.05 £21.42 £20.04
% change year-on-year -1.70% +6.87% -2.26%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing QA as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing QA.

Daily rate trend for QA in the UK

QA
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA over the 6 months to 21 January 2021.

Daily rate histogram for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing QA.

Hourly rate trend for QA in the UK

QA
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing QA over the 6 months to 21 January 2021.

Hourly rate histogram for QA in the UK

QA
Top 18 Contract 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 21 January 2021. 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
Job
Vacancies
England +1 1,049 £450 -0.55% 531
London +6 591 £475 -5.00% 180
UK excluding London +2 502 £425 +3.66% 383
Work from Home +3 358 £475 -9.52% 96
North of England +11 128 £438 +6.71% 102
South East -22 122 £433 +4.85% 97
Midlands +46 105 £382 -4.50% 61
West Midlands +66 86 £380 -13.14% 32
North West +41 77 £450 +12.50% 56
Scotland +34 68 £400 - 28
East of England +32 34 £450 +12.50% 40
Yorkshire +9 33 £421 -4.26% 31
South West +13 28 £475 +11.76% 45
East Midlands -6 19 £450 +28.57% 29
North East -3 18 £425 +4.94% 15
Wales +11 16 £509 +24.79% 8
Northern Ireland +7 1 £431 +43.67% 2
Isle of Man - 1 - -

For the 6 months to 21 January 2021, IT contractor jobs citing QA also mentioned the following skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads with a requirement for QA.

1 543 (41.48%) Agile Software Development
2 363 (27.73%) Test Automation
3 294 (22.46%) Java
4 285 (21.77%) SQL
5 244 (18.64%) DevOps
6 223 (17.04%) Azure
7 213 (16.27%) Finance
8 187 (14.29%) Security Cleared
9 185 (14.13%) Scrum
10 183 (13.98%) Selenium
11 177 (13.52%) Python
12 175 (13.37%) JIRA
13 168 (12.83%) BDD
13 168 (12.83%) TDD
14 167 (12.76%) SC Cleared
15 163 (12.45%) JavaScript
16 147 (11.23%) Problem-Solving
17 143 (10.92%) AWS
18 135 (10.31%) Git (software)
19 134 (10.24%) Microsoft
20 133 (10.16%) Jenkins
21 131 (10.01%) Public Sector
22 123 (9.40%) Analytical Skills
22 123 (9.40%) ETL
23 119 (9.09%) SDLC
24 117 (8.94%) Microservices
25 110 (8.40%) Oracle
26 108 (8.25%) Continuous Integration
27 106 (8.10%) .NET
28 104 (7.94%) C#

QA
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same job type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 81 (6.19%) Confluence
2 33 (2.52%) Apache
3 32 (2.44%) SharePoint
4 29 (2.22%) CMS
5 26 (1.99%) Apache Spark
6 18 (1.38%) WebLogic
7 13 (0.99%) IIS
8 11 (0.84%) MS Exchange
8 11 (0.84%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 10 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
9 10 (0.76%) WebSphere
10 9 (0.69%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 9 (0.69%) Tomcat
11 8 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
11 8 (0.61%) Appian
11 8 (0.61%) JBoss
12 5 (0.38%) Apache Synapse
12 5 (0.38%) CICS
12 5 (0.38%) nginx
12 5 (0.38%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 34 (2.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (2.22%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
5 9 (0.69%) MS Visio
6 7 (0.53%) Figma
7 3 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.23%) Sketch
8 2 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.15%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.15%) Revit
8 2 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.076%) Adobe After Effects
9 1 (0.076%) Adobe Illustrator
9 1 (0.076%) Adobe Premiere
9 1 (0.076%) Fusion 360
9 1 (0.076%) InVision
9 1 (0.076%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.076%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 12 (0.92%) Magento
2 10 (0.76%) SAP FI-CA
2 10 (0.76%) SAP PSCD
3 9 (0.69%) Oracle ERP
4 7 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
5 6 (0.46%) BASE24
5 6 (0.46%) Maximo
6 4 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
6 4 (0.31%) Shopify
7 3 (0.23%) NetSuite
7 3 (0.23%) Oracle Applications
7 3 (0.23%) SAP Hybris
7 3 (0.23%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 2 (0.15%) Dynamics NAV
8 2 (0.15%) OpenText Process Suite
8 2 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.15%) Oracle EBS R12
8 2 (0.15%) Oracle Manufacturing
8 2 (0.15%) StreamServe
8 2 (0.15%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 223 (17.04%) Azure
2 143 (10.92%) AWS
3 51 (3.90%) Power Platform
4 46 (3.51%) GitHub
5 44 (3.36%) GCP
6 30 (2.29%) SaaS
7 24 (1.83%) Amazon S3
8 23 (1.76%) Azure Data Factory
8 23 (1.76%) Office 365
9 20 (1.53%) Serverless
10 18 (1.38%) Slack
11 16 (1.22%) AWS Lambda
12 13 (0.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 12 (0.92%) Azure Active Directory
13 12 (0.92%) Dynamics 365
14 10 (0.76%) Amazon ECS
15 9 (0.69%) Amazon EC2
15 9 (0.69%) AWS CloudFormation
15 9 (0.69%) PaaS
16 8 (0.61%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 37 (2.83%) HTTP
2 22 (1.68%) TCP/IP
3 19 (1.45%) FTP
4 18 (1.38%) DNS
4 18 (1.38%) Firewall
5 17 (1.30%) Internet
6 16 (1.22%) SNMP
7 13 (0.99%) Network Security
7 13 (0.99%) WAN
8 11 (0.84%) ATM
8 11 (0.84%) SSL
9 10 (0.76%) LAN
10 9 (0.69%) VPN
11 8 (0.61%) Ethernet
11 8 (0.61%) VoIP
12 6 (0.46%) BGP
12 6 (0.46%) MPLS
12 6 (0.46%) OSPF
12 6 (0.46%) PPP
12 6 (0.46%) RIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 103 (7.87%) Data Warehouse
2 71 (5.42%) SQL Server
3 64 (4.89%) MySQL
4 61 (4.66%) Big Data
5 50 (3.82%) Power BI
6 45 (3.44%) Data Lake
7 41 (3.13%) Azure SQL Database
8 34 (2.60%) Relational Database
9 28 (2.14%) NoSQL
10 26 (1.99%) BigQuery
11 25 (1.91%) Cloud Spanner
12 24 (1.83%) Bigtable
12 24 (1.83%) PostgreSQL
13 22 (1.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 19 (1.45%) Data Mart
15 18 (1.38%) Oracle Database
15 18 (1.38%) Tableau
16 17 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
17 16 (1.22%) Amazon Athena
17 16 (1.22%) Redis
Development Applications
1 183 (13.98%) Selenium
2 175 (13.37%) JIRA
3 135 (10.31%) Git (software)
4 133 (10.16%) Jenkins
5 96 (7.33%) Cucumber
6 70 (5.35%) JMeter
7 65 (4.97%) Maven
8 57 (4.35%) Postman
9 46 (3.51%) SoapUI
10 35 (2.67%) LoadRunner
11 30 (2.29%) SpecFlow
12 25 (1.91%) REST Assured
13 22 (1.68%) GitLab
13 22 (1.68%) WebDriver
14 20 (1.53%) Cypress.io
15 19 (1.45%) Ant
16 18 (1.38%) Appium
17 16 (1.22%) JUnit
17 16 (1.22%) Subversion
18 15 (1.15%) HP UFT
General
1 213 (16.27%) Finance
2 131 (10.01%) Public Sector
3 65 (4.97%) Banking
4 38 (2.90%) Marketing
5 35 (2.67%) Retail
6 29 (2.22%) Telecoms
7 23 (1.76%) Legal
7 23 (1.76%) Manufacturing
8 22 (1.68%) Front Office
9 18 (1.38%) Advertising
9 18 (1.38%) Financial Institution
10 16 (1.22%) Investment Banking
11 15 (1.15%) Law
12 14 (1.07%) Pharmaceutical
12 14 (1.07%) Publishing
13 11 (0.84%) Retail Banking
14 7 (0.53%) Automotive
14 7 (0.53%) Electronics
15 6 (0.46%) Games
16 5 (0.38%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 219 (16.73%) Developer
2 204 (15.58%) Analyst
3 122 (9.32%) QA Engineer
4 108 (8.25%) Tester
5 83 (6.34%) Data Engineer
6 69 (5.27%) QA Tester
7 67 (5.12%) Test Engineer
8 66 (5.04%) Architect
9 63 (4.81%) Business Analyst
10 55 (4.20%) QA Automation Engineer
11 48 (3.67%) Automation Engineer
11 48 (3.67%) Test Analyst
12 42 (3.21%) Consultant
13 41 (3.13%) QA Analyst
14 40 (3.06%) Azure Engineer
15 39 (2.98%) DevOps Engineer
16 37 (2.83%) Java Engineer
17 33 (2.52%) AWS Engineer
17 33 (2.52%) Test Manager
18 32 (2.44%) Automation Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (8.10%) .NET
2 96 (7.33%) HTML
3 82 (6.26%) REST
4 75 (5.73%) Web Services
4 75 (5.73%) XML
5 69 (5.27%) CSS
6 59 (4.51%) JSON
7 55 (4.20%) SOAP
8 53 (4.05%) React
9 49 (3.74%) Node.js
10 48 (3.67%) RESTful
11 47 (3.59%) AngularJS
12 36 (2.75%) HTML5
13 35 (2.67%) Spring
14 29 (2.22%) Gherkin
15 26 (1.99%) Kafka
16 24 (1.83%) Spring Boot
17 22 (1.68%) .NET Core
17 22 (1.68%) FIX Protocol
18 19 (1.45%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 123 (9.40%) Analytical Skills
2 84 (6.42%) User Experience
3 48 (3.67%) Greenfield Project
4 41 (3.13%) Management Information System
5 37 (2.83%) Mobile App
6 28 (2.14%) Virtual Team
7 26 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
7 26 (1.99%) Self-Motivation
8 21 (1.60%) Data Structures
9 14 (1.07%) Public Cloud
10 12 (0.92%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 12 (0.92%) Linux Command Line
11 11 (0.84%) Fixed Income
11 11 (0.84%) NHS
12 9 (0.69%) Cyberthreat
13 8 (0.61%) Acoustics
13 8 (0.61%) Equities
13 8 (0.61%) Smart Meter
14 7 (0.53%) Algorithms
14 7 (0.53%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 97 (7.41%) Linux
2 78 (5.96%) Windows
3 60 (4.58%) Unix
4 45 (3.44%) Apple iOS
5 40 (3.06%) Android
6 15 (1.15%) Windows 10
7 8 (0.61%) AIX
8 5 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.31%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.31%) Ubuntu
9 4 (0.31%) Windows 7
9 4 (0.31%) Windows Mobile
9 4 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
10 3 (0.23%) CentOS
10 3 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.15%) Windows Server
12 1 (0.076%) Solaris
12 1 (0.076%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.076%) Windows Vista
Processes & Methodologies
1 543 (41.48%) Agile Software Development
2 363 (27.73%) Test Automation
3 244 (18.64%) DevOps
4 185 (14.13%) Scrum
5 168 (12.83%) BDD
5 168 (12.83%) TDD
6 147 (11.23%) Problem-Solving
7 123 (9.40%) ETL
8 119 (9.09%) SDLC
9 117 (8.94%) Microservices
10 108 (8.25%) Continuous Integration
11 103 (7.87%) Business Intelligence
12 91 (6.95%) Project Management
13 90 (6.88%) Test Strategy
14 88 (6.72%) Open Source
15 87 (6.65%) Performance Testing
16 82 (6.26%) Migration
16 82 (6.26%) Test Scripting
17 80 (6.11%) User Acceptance Testing
18 77 (5.88%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 294 (22.46%) Java
2 285 (21.77%) SQL
3 177 (13.52%) Python
4 163 (12.45%) JavaScript
5 104 (7.94%) C#
6 53 (4.05%) C++
7 43 (3.28%) C
8 39 (2.98%) PowerShell
9 35 (2.67%) Ruby
10 32 (2.44%) Java 8
11 30 (2.29%) Bash Shell
12 28 (2.14%) TypeScript
13 24 (1.83%) PL/SQL
14 22 (1.68%) Perl
14 22 (1.68%) PHP
14 22 (1.68%) Scala
15 18 (1.38%) Shell Script
15 18 (1.38%) T-SQL
16 17 (1.30%) VB
17 13 (0.99%) Apple Swift
Qualifications
1 187 (14.29%) Security Cleared
2 167 (12.76%) SC Cleared
3 69 (5.27%) Degree
3 69 (5.27%) ISTQB
4 54 (4.13%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 53 (4.05%) ISEB
6 28 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
7 23 (1.76%) Cisco Certification
8 21 (1.60%) Computer Science Degree
9 20 (1.53%) CCNP
10 18 (1.38%) CCNA
11 16 (1.22%) AWS Certification
12 10 (0.76%) BC Cleared
13 9 (0.69%) Master's Degree
14 8 (0.61%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 7 (0.53%) DBS Check
15 7 (0.53%) DV Cleared
16 6 (0.46%) CCDP
16 6 (0.46%) CCIP
16 6 (0.46%) ISEB Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 22 (1.68%) PMO
3 21 (1.60%) NIST
4 19 (1.45%) Data Quality
4 19 (1.45%) SLA
5 10 (0.76%) GDPR
6 8 (0.61%) PCI DSS
7 5 (0.38%) Section 508
8 4 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
8 4 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 17025
8 4 (0.31%) WAI
9 3 (0.23%) GxP
9 3 (0.23%) WCAG
10 2 (0.15%) COREP
10 2 (0.15%) CRD IV
10 2 (0.15%) ISO 13485
10 2 (0.15%) ISO 8583
10 2 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 12207
10 2 (0.15%) MiFID
11 1 (0.076%) PMBOK
System Software
1 76 (5.81%) Docker
2 22 (1.68%) Active Directory
3 6 (0.46%) HDFS
3 6 (0.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.38%) Time Sharing Option
4 5 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.31%) Hyper-V
5 4 (0.31%) KVM
6 3 (0.23%) Xen
7 2 (0.15%) Firmware
7 2 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
7 2 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.15%) Varnish
7 2 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.076%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.076%) vSphere
8 1 (0.076%) XenApp
8 1 (0.076%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 50 (3.82%) Terraform
2 41 (3.13%) Kubernetes
2 41 (3.13%) Opscode Chef
3 25 (1.91%) Ansible
4 23 (1.76%) HP ALM
5 19 (1.45%) Puppet
6 14 (1.07%) HP Fortify
7 11 (0.84%) Kibana
8 10 (0.76%) HP Quality Center
8 10 (0.76%) Netcool
9 8 (0.61%) Grafana
10 7 (0.53%) SCCM
11 6 (0.46%) Nagios
12 5 (0.38%) Rundeck
13 4 (0.31%) EnCase
13 4 (0.31%) FTK
13 4 (0.31%) Prometheus
14 3 (0.23%) Fluentd
14 3 (0.23%) OpenView
14 3 (0.23%) WebInspect
Vendors
1 134 (10.24%) Microsoft
2 110 (8.40%) Oracle
3 49 (3.74%) SAP
4 45 (3.44%) Google
5 40 (3.06%) Salesforce.com
6 38 (2.90%) Databricks
6 38 (2.90%) HP
7 29 (2.22%) Cisco
8 23 (1.76%) Splunk
9 18 (1.38%) Adobe
10 16 (1.22%) IBM
11 15 (1.15%) Micro Focus
12 14 (1.07%) Black Duck
12 14 (1.07%) CheckPoint
12 14 (1.07%) Qualys
12 14 (1.07%) Sonatype
13 13 (0.99%) Apple
13 13 (0.99%) Informatica
14 11 (0.84%) ArcSight
15 9 (0.69%) Juniper
596 QA job vacancies Nationwide