Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 19 March 2019

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 19 March 2019 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
19 Mar 2019		 Same period 2018 Same period 2017
Rank 67 66 66
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 +2
Contract jobs citing QA 3,280 3,474 3,128
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 3.39% 3.44% 3.36%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 32.07% 27.20% 28.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,199 2,363 2,077
UK median daily rate £450 £433 £420
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +4.05% +2.98% +5.00%
10th Percentile £300 £300 £263
90th Percentile £600 £615 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £420 £400 £373
% change year-on-year +5.00% +7.38% +2.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 40 48
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £28.61 £25.00
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year +1.38% +14.42% +11.11%
10th Percentile £10.50 £14.34 £11.70
90th Percentile £48.70 £58.75 £50.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.00 £40.31 £26.00
% change year-on-year -40.45% +55.02% +13.04%

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 10,229 12,772 10,849
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.57% 12.66% 11.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,394 8,263 7,073
UK median daily rate £450 £445 £425
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +1.12% +4.71% +6.25%
10th Percentile £250 £256 £225
90th Percentile £638 £638 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £420 £400 £400
% change year-on-year +5.00% - +6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 367 358 375
UK median hourly rate £21.76 £22.25 £20.50
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -2.20% +8.54% -15.39%
10th Percentile £11.00 £12.23 £11.00
90th Percentile £48.75 £57.50 £53.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £25.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year -15.99% +25.00% -14.89%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for daily rates quoted in contract jobs citing QA.

Contractor daily rate trend for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Daily Rate Histogram

The daily rate distribution of IT jobs citing QA over the 6 months to 19 March 2019.

Contractor daily rate histogram for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for contractor hourly rates quoted in IT jobs citing QA.

Contractor hourly rate trend for QA in the UK

QA
Contractor Hourly Rate Histogram

The hourly rate distribution of IT jobs citing QA over the 6 months to 19 March 2019.

Contractor hourly rate histogram for QA in the UK

QA
Top 17 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 19 March 2019. 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 -4 3,020 £450 - 1,363
London -1 1,640 £475 - 505
UK excluding London -2 1,573 £420 +5.00% 955
South East -1 575 £450 +9.09% 269
North of England +12 348 £390 -2.63% 241
Midlands -13 166 £400 +6.67% 167
North West +37 161 £403 +3.21% 131
South West -39 152 £440 +17.33% 82
Scotland -12 130 £375 - 57
East of England +19 127 £400 -11.11% 101
West Midlands -14 115 £400 +6.67% 103
North East +18 99 £392 -7.71% 32
Yorkshire -38 91 £388 -8.82% 78
East Midlands +1 49 £400 +6.67% 64
Wales +19 46 £406 +16.49% 26
Northern Ireland +14 32 £325 +3.17% 14
Isle of Man - 1 £600 -

For the 6 months to 19 March 2019, 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 1,632 (49.76%) Agile Software Development
2 1,169 (35.64%) Test Automation
3 744 (22.68%) Java
4 736 (22.44%) Finance
5 681 (20.76%) Scrum
6 649 (19.79%) Selenium
7 608 (18.54%) SQL
8 536 (16.34%) JavaScript
9 532 (16.22%) BDD
10 529 (16.13%) JIRA
11 499 (15.21%) DevOps
12 421 (12.84%) Jenkins
13 411 (12.53%) C#
14 405 (12.35%) TDD
15 397 (12.10%) Cucumber
16 360 (10.98%) Git (software)
17 351 (10.70%) Microsoft
18 347 (10.58%) Test Strategy
19 342 (10.43%) Test Scripting
20 336 (10.24%) Microsoft Azure
21 333 (10.15%) Continuous Integration
22 319 (9.73%) .NET
23 313 (9.54%) Project Management
24 311 (9.48%) User Acceptance Testing
25 309 (9.42%) Oracle
26 305 (9.30%) Analytical Skills
27 300 (9.15%) Problem-Solving
28 293 (8.93%) Banking
29 284 (8.66%) User Stories
30 281 (8.57%) HTML

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
1 279 (8.51%) Confluence
2 117 (3.57%) CMS
3 112 (3.41%) SharePoint
4 58 (1.77%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 50 (1.52%) Elasticsearch
6 48 (1.46%) IIS
7 42 (1.28%) Apache
8 34 (1.04%) WebSphere
9 29 (0.88%) Apache Spark
10 16 (0.49%) Umbraco
11 15 (0.46%) Mule
12 14 (0.43%) SAS
12 14 (0.43%) SharePoint 2013
13 12 (0.37%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 12 (0.37%) SAP Portal
13 12 (0.37%) Tomcat
13 12 (0.37%) WebLogic
13 12 (0.37%) WordPress
14 11 (0.34%) Anypoint
15 9 (0.27%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 167 (5.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (2.68%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (1.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 40 (1.22%) Microsoft Project
5 25 (0.76%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.73%) Photoshop
7 17 (0.52%) Adobe Illustrator
8 8 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
9 7 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.061%) InVision
11 1 (0.030%) Adobe Captivate
11 1 (0.030%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.030%) Chatbot
11 1 (0.030%) Mathematica
11 1 (0.030%) Maya
11 1 (0.030%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 54 (1.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.43%) Dynamics AX
4 10 (0.30%) Oracle Retail
5 9 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
6 8 (0.24%) SAP ERP
6 8 (0.24%) SAP HR
7 7 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.18%) Salesforce.com CRM
8 6 (0.18%) SAP FI
8 6 (0.18%) SAP Oil and Gas
8 6 (0.18%) thinkFolio
9 5 (0.15%) Eloqua
9 5 (0.15%) Loan IQ
9 5 (0.15%) Markit EDM
9 5 (0.15%) SAP GRC
10 4 (0.12%) OPENHousing
10 4 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
10 4 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
10 4 (0.12%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 336 (10.24%) Microsoft Azure
2 275 (8.38%) Amazon AWS
3 93 (2.84%) GitHub
4 85 (2.59%) Office 365
5 68 (2.07%) PaaS
6 65 (1.98%) SaaS
7 58 (1.77%) IaaS
8 51 (1.55%) Dynamics 365
9 48 (1.46%) Google Cloud Platform
10 40 (1.22%) Serverless
11 39 (1.19%) BrowserStack
12 31 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
13 25 (0.76%) Adobe Analytics
13 25 (0.76%) Amazon S3
13 25 (0.76%) AWS Lambda
13 25 (0.76%) Slack
14 23 (0.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 23 (0.70%) Amazon EC2
15 22 (0.67%) Cloud Computing
16 20 (0.61%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 57 (1.74%) Internet
2 56 (1.71%) Firewall
3 36 (1.10%) HTTP
4 34 (1.04%) DNS
5 26 (0.79%) VPN
6 24 (0.73%) TCP/IP
7 18 (0.55%) SSL
7 18 (0.55%) Wireshark
8 13 (0.40%) Reverse Proxy
9 12 (0.37%) SAN
10 11 (0.34%) NAS
10 11 (0.34%) WAN
11 10 (0.30%) Network Security
11 10 (0.30%) VLAN
12 9 (0.27%) MPLS
12 9 (0.27%) Skype
13 8 (0.24%) FTP
14 7 (0.21%) LAN
14 7 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
15 6 (0.18%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 244 (7.44%) SQL Server
2 90 (2.74%) Data Warehouse
3 80 (2.44%) MySQL
4 78 (2.38%) NoSQL
5 75 (2.29%) Relational Database
6 64 (1.95%) MongoDB
7 58 (1.77%) PostgreSQL
8 54 (1.65%) Big Data
8 54 (1.65%) Power BI
9 53 (1.62%) Redis
10 52 (1.59%) Oracle Database
10 52 (1.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 34 (1.04%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 33 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
12 33 (1.01%) Pentaho
13 30 (0.91%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 28 (0.85%) GIS
15 26 (0.79%) Data Lake
15 26 (0.79%) Hadoop
16 24 (0.73%) SQL Server 2014
Development Applications
1 649 (19.79%) Selenium
2 529 (16.13%) JIRA
3 421 (12.84%) Jenkins
4 397 (12.10%) Cucumber
5 360 (10.98%) Git (software)
6 219 (6.68%) WebDriver
7 167 (5.09%) JMeter
8 140 (4.27%) SoapUI
9 118 (3.60%) JUnit
10 111 (3.38%) Visual Studio
11 107 (3.26%) Maven
12 105 (3.20%) SpecFlow
13 88 (2.68%) TeamCity
14 87 (2.65%) Team Foundation Server
15 81 (2.47%) Bitbucket
15 81 (2.47%) Visual Studio Team System
16 76 (2.32%) LoadRunner
17 64 (1.95%) Appium
18 60 (1.83%) HP UFT
19 59 (1.80%) Protractor
General
1 736 (22.44%) Finance
2 293 (8.93%) Banking
3 150 (4.57%) Marketing
4 132 (4.02%) Retail
5 67 (2.04%) Front Office
6 62 (1.89%) Telecoms
7 57 (1.74%) Investment Banking
7 57 (1.74%) Legal
8 52 (1.59%) Publishing
9 47 (1.43%) Back Office
10 40 (1.22%) Financial Institution
11 37 (1.13%) Manufacturing
12 29 (0.88%) Games
13 24 (0.73%) Retail Banking
14 22 (0.67%) Billing
14 22 (0.67%) Law
15 16 (0.49%) Electronics
15 16 (0.49%) French Language
15 16 (0.49%) Pharmaceutical
16 15 (0.46%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 677 (20.64%) Developer
2 574 (17.50%) Analyst
3 358 (10.91%) Tester
4 245 (7.47%) QA Engineer
5 227 (6.92%) Test Analyst
6 212 (6.46%) QA Tester
7 177 (5.40%) Test Engineer
8 157 (4.79%) QA Analyst
9 153 (4.66%) Architect
10 128 (3.90%) Project Manager
11 123 (3.75%) Automation Tester
12 117 (3.57%) Business Analyst
13 115 (3.51%) Test Leader
14 107 (3.26%) Java Developer
15 101 (3.08%) .NET Developer
16 98 (2.99%) Consultant
17 95 (2.90%) DevOps Engineer
18 93 (2.84%) QA Leader
19 92 (2.80%) Senior Developer
19 92 (2.80%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 319 (9.73%) .NET
2 281 (8.57%) HTML
3 263 (8.02%) Web Services
4 259 (7.90%) CSS
5 242 (7.38%) REST
6 227 (6.92%) Node.js
7 187 (5.70%) AngularJS
8 161 (4.91%) RESTful
9 123 (3.75%) React
10 121 (3.69%) HTML5
11 120 (3.66%) Spring
12 108 (3.29%) Sass
13 106 (3.23%) SOAP
14 104 (3.17%) Gherkin
14 104 (3.17%) XML
15 102 (3.11%) jQuery
16 95 (2.90%) JSON
17 91 (2.77%) ASP.NET
18 72 (2.20%) Middleware
19 69 (2.10%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 305 (9.30%) Analytical Skills
2 248 (7.56%) User Experience
3 161 (4.91%) Mobile App
4 97 (2.96%) Self-Motivation
5 93 (2.84%) Management Information System
6 74 (2.26%) Fintech
7 73 (2.23%) Enterprise Software
8 72 (2.20%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 63 (1.92%) Data Structures
9 63 (1.92%) Greenfield Project
10 49 (1.49%) Virtual Team
11 45 (1.37%) Algorithms
12 34 (1.04%) Client/Server
13 31 (0.95%) Public Cloud
13 31 (0.95%) Social Media
14 29 (0.88%) Data Centre
15 22 (0.67%) Mainframe
15 22 (0.67%) NHS
15 22 (0.67%) Private Cloud
15 22 (0.67%) Video on Demand
Operating Systems
1 247 (7.53%) Linux
2 196 (5.98%) Windows
3 155 (4.73%) Unix
4 128 (3.90%) Android
5 120 (3.66%) Apple iOS
6 37 (1.13%) Windows Server
7 31 (0.95%) Windows 10
8 22 (0.67%) Windows 7
9 17 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 15 (0.46%) Windows XP
11 14 (0.43%) Windows 8
11 14 (0.43%) Windows Server 2008
12 13 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
13 12 (0.37%) Mac OS
14 8 (0.24%) Solaris
15 7 (0.21%) CentOS
15 7 (0.21%) VMS
16 5 (0.15%) Oracle Linux
17 3 (0.091%) AIX
17 3 (0.091%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,632 (49.76%) Agile Software Development
2 1,169 (35.64%) Test Automation
3 681 (20.76%) Scrum
4 532 (16.22%) BDD
5 499 (15.21%) DevOps
6 405 (12.35%) TDD
7 347 (10.58%) Test Strategy
8 342 (10.43%) Test Scripting
9 333 (10.15%) Continuous Integration
10 313 (9.54%) Project Management
11 311 (9.48%) User Acceptance Testing
12 300 (9.15%) Problem-Solving
13 284 (8.66%) User Stories
14 274 (8.35%) SDLC
15 272 (8.29%) Software Engineering
16 237 (7.23%) Microservices
17 228 (6.95%) Manual Testing
18 223 (6.80%) Regression Testing
19 211 (6.43%) Acceptance Criteria
20 210 (6.40%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 744 (22.68%) Java
2 608 (18.54%) SQL
3 536 (16.34%) JavaScript
4 411 (12.53%) C#
5 254 (7.74%) Python
6 97 (2.96%) PowerShell
7 70 (2.13%) Scala
8 66 (2.01%) Ruby
8 66 (2.01%) T-SQL
9 63 (1.92%) Java 8
10 60 (1.83%) PL/SQL
11 59 (1.80%) PHP
12 56 (1.71%) Shell Script
13 55 (1.68%) Bash Shell
14 46 (1.40%) C++
15 45 (1.37%) C
16 44 (1.34%) ES6
16 44 (1.34%) VB
17 40 (1.22%) VBA
18 39 (1.19%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 247 (7.53%) Degree
2 214 (6.52%) Security Cleared
3 162 (4.94%) ISTQB
4 150 (4.57%) SC Cleared
5 126 (3.84%) ISEB
6 64 (1.95%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 41 (1.25%) Computer Science Degree
8 40 (1.22%) DV Cleared
9 37 (1.13%) PMI Certification
10 35 (1.07%) PMP
11 30 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
12 28 (0.85%) BPSS Clearance
13 20 (0.61%) DBS Check
14 19 (0.58%) MCSE
14 19 (0.58%) PRINCE2 Certification
15 18 (0.55%) Cisco Certification
16 12 (0.37%) ACCA
16 12 (0.37%) ITIL Certification
16 12 (0.37%) Master's Degree
16 12 (0.37%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 112 (3.41%) Data Quality
2 104 (3.17%) PMO
3 38 (1.16%) SLA
4 33 (1.01%) GDPR
5 32 (0.98%) WCAG
6 23 (0.70%) SEPA
7 22 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 14 (0.43%) PCI DSS
8 14 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 13 (0.40%) MiFID
10 12 (0.37%) ISO 9001
11 9 (0.27%) GxP
12 8 (0.24%) GMP
13 6 (0.18%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 6 (0.18%) PSD2
14 5 (0.15%) IFRS
15 4 (0.12%) COBIT
15 4 (0.12%) TARGET2
16 3 (0.091%) Def Stans
16 3 (0.091%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 207 (6.31%) Docker
2 83 (2.53%) Active Directory
3 38 (1.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.67%) XenApp
5 18 (0.55%) Apache Flume
5 18 (0.55%) Microsoft App-V
6 12 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
7 11 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
8 10 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
9 9 (0.27%) Hyper-V
9 9 (0.27%) XenDesktop
10 8 (0.24%) HDFS
11 6 (0.18%) Firmware
12 5 (0.15%) vSphere
13 4 (0.12%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 3 (0.091%) KVM
14 3 (0.091%) VMware ESXi
14 3 (0.091%) Xen
15 2 (0.061%) Time Sharing Option
15 2 (0.061%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 80 (2.44%) Ansible
2 74 (2.26%) Kubernetes
3 70 (2.13%) Terraform
4 66 (2.01%) Puppet
5 53 (1.62%) HP Quality Center
6 52 (1.59%) HP ALM
7 50 (1.52%) Opscode Chef
8 30 (0.91%) SCCM
9 26 (0.79%) Kibana
10 24 (0.73%) Nagios
11 19 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
12 13 (0.40%) Grafana
13 11 (0.34%) logstash
14 10 (0.30%) Graphite
14 10 (0.30%) Salt
14 10 (0.30%) ZABBIX
15 8 (0.24%) CloudHub
15 8 (0.24%) Data Guard
15 8 (0.24%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
16 7 (0.21%) nmon
Vendors
1 351 (10.70%) Microsoft
2 309 (9.42%) Oracle
3 124 (3.78%) SAP
4 112 (3.41%) HP
5 92 (2.80%) Adobe
6 73 (2.23%) Google
7 55 (1.68%) VMware
8 50 (1.52%) Citrix
9 49 (1.49%) Salesforce.com
10 46 (1.40%) Atlassian
10 46 (1.40%) IBM
11 35 (1.07%) Cisco
12 33 (1.01%) Splunk
13 32 (0.98%) New Relic
14 28 (0.85%) Tableau
15 26 (0.79%) Hortonworks
16 24 (0.73%) Cloudera
16 24 (0.73%) hybris
17 22 (0.67%) Cypress Semiconductor
18 20 (0.61%) CA
1,474 QA job vacancies Nationwide