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 7 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 62 65
Rank change year-on-year +13 +3 +3
Contract jobs citing QA 2,312 1,279 1,227
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.21% 3.87% 3.26%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 23.79% 22.27% 24.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,352 869 708
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £388 £380 £389
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.52%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £656 £650 £701
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 239 43 73
10th Percentile £13.25 £12.28 £11.89
25th Percentile £15.25 £13.50 £13.26
Median hourly rate £28.00 £27.54 £15.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.67% +83.60% -70.00%
75th Percentile £48.75 £45.36 £28.75
90th Percentile £69.80 £72.00 £73.58
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.96 £15.12 £14.98
% change year-on-year +84.92% +0.93% -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 9,720 5,742 5,040
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.70% 17.39% 13.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,096 3,672 2,921
10th Percentile £325 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.50% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £610 £604 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +1.58% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 677 277 243
10th Percentile £13.83 £13.60 £13.26
25th Percentile £16.60 £16.50 £15.86
Median hourly rate £31.46 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.87% +9.09% -22.82%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.00 £62.63
90th Percentile £74.25 £77.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.40 £25.08 £27.50
% change year-on-year +29.19% -8.82% -26.67%

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 7 October 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 7 October 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 7 October 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 +17 2,023 £475 - 3,391
UK excluding London +23 1,173 £450 - 1,995
London +6 904 £500 - 1,610
Work from Home +1 578 £475 +5.03% 1,310
North of England +9 284 £453 +5.35% 511
South East +15 262 £425 -15.00% 511
Midlands +29 237 £450 +1.12% 307
West Midlands +30 198 £450 -9.98% 218
East of England +24 158 £438 -12.50% 193
South West +8 138 £525 +10.53% 173
North West -8 112 £475 +14.46% 267
Yorkshire +8 111 £474 +3.04% 153
Scotland +3 89 £420 -12.73% 171
North East -7 61 £400 -20.00% 93
East Midlands -14 38 £415 +1.22% 88
Wales +3 22 £413 +17.86% 64
Northern Ireland -1 7 £450 +50.00% 88

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
1 138 (5.97%) Confluence
2 54 (2.34%) CMS
3 42 (1.82%) SharePoint
4 16 (0.69%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.65%) IIS
6 13 (0.56%) Apache
6 13 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
7 12 (0.52%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 9 (0.39%) SAS
9 8 (0.35%) Sitecore CMS
10 7 (0.30%) Oracle Workflow
10 7 (0.30%) Traefik
11 5 (0.22%) Headless CMS
11 5 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 5 (0.22%) Tuxedo
11 5 (0.22%) WordPress
12 4 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
12 4 (0.17%) Umbraco
13 3 (0.13%) Moodle
13 3 (0.13%) WebLogic
Applications
1 85 (3.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 40 (1.73%) Microsoft Office
3 24 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 22 (0.95%) MS Visio
5 18 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.48%) Microsoft Project
7 9 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.26%) Revit
9 5 (0.22%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.22%) Navisworks
10 4 (0.17%) ProjectWise
11 3 (0.13%) CATIA
11 3 (0.13%) Mingle
11 3 (0.13%) Productboard
12 2 (0.087%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.087%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.087%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.087%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.087%) Windchill
13 1 (0.043%) Trello
Business Applications
1 29 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.21%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
3 10 (0.43%) Shopify
4 7 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
4 7 (0.30%) SAP GRC
4 7 (0.30%) Workday HCM
5 5 (0.22%) NEC Housing
6 4 (0.17%) Aladdin
6 4 (0.17%) Maximo
6 4 (0.17%) Primavera
6 4 (0.17%) ResourceLink
6 4 (0.17%) SAP MM
6 4 (0.17%) Teamcenter
7 3 (0.13%) Infor CloudSuite
7 3 (0.13%) iTrent
7 3 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
7 3 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
7 3 (0.13%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.087%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 477 (20.63%) Azure
2 416 (17.99%) AWS
3 226 (9.78%) GitHub
4 210 (9.08%) Azure DevOps
5 132 (5.71%) GitHub Actions
6 114 (4.93%) GCP
7 112 (4.84%) Power Platform
8 82 (3.55%) Serverless
9 58 (2.51%) AWS Lambda
10 55 (2.38%) SaaS
11 50 (2.16%) Amazon S3
12 45 (1.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 43 (1.86%) Dynamics 365
14 36 (1.56%) OpenShift
15 35 (1.51%) GitHub Copilot
16 34 (1.47%) Snowflake
17 32 (1.38%) Amazon EKS
17 32 (1.38%) Microsoft 365
18 30 (1.30%) Azure Monitor
19 29 (1.25%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.17%) Broadband
2 26 (1.12%) Firewall
3 21 (0.91%) Internet
4 20 (0.87%) DNS
4 20 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
5 17 (0.74%) 5G
6 16 (0.69%) 4G
6 16 (0.69%) TCP/IP
7 15 (0.65%) HTTP
7 15 (0.65%) VLAN
8 14 (0.61%) WAN
9 12 (0.52%) Network Security
10 11 (0.48%) LAN
10 11 (0.48%) VPN
11 10 (0.43%) DHCP
12 8 (0.35%) IPv4
12 8 (0.35%) IPv6
12 8 (0.35%) SD-WAN
12 8 (0.35%) Unified Communications
12 8 (0.35%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (4.84%) SQL Server
2 98 (4.24%) Power BI
3 81 (3.50%) PostgreSQL
3 81 (3.50%) Relational Database
4 62 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
5 55 (2.38%) MongoDB
6 48 (2.08%) MySQL
7 47 (2.03%) NoSQL
8 44 (1.90%) Metadata
9 39 (1.69%) Oracle Database
10 31 (1.34%) Oracle Reports
11 30 (1.30%) Tableau
12 23 (0.99%) Data Lake
13 20 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 16 (0.69%) Big Data
14 16 (0.69%) GIS
15 15 (0.65%) Power Query
15 15 (0.65%) RDBMS
15 15 (0.65%) Redis
16 14 (0.61%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 306 (13.24%) JIRA
2 261 (11.29%) Git
3 186 (8.04%) Jenkins
4 179 (7.74%) Selenium
5 151 (6.53%) GitLab
6 99 (4.28%) Cucumber
7 87 (3.76%) Postman
8 78 (3.37%) Cypress.io
9 74 (3.20%) JUnit
10 54 (2.34%) Zephyr
11 50 (2.16%) JMeter
11 50 (2.16%) SonarQube
12 47 (2.03%) REST Assured
13 46 (1.99%) Gatling
14 33 (1.43%) Maven
15 30 (1.30%) WebDriver
16 27 (1.17%) TestNG
17 26 (1.12%) Gradle
18 24 (1.04%) Appium
19 23 (0.99%) TestRail
General
1 704 (30.45%) Social Skills
2 424 (18.34%) Finance
3 369 (15.96%) Analytical Skills
4 300 (12.98%) Public Sector
5 170 (7.35%) Banking
6 88 (3.81%) Manufacturing
7 76 (3.29%) Retail
8 65 (2.81%) Organisational Skills
9 64 (2.77%) Marketing
10 57 (2.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 48 (2.08%) Telecoms
12 44 (1.90%) Aerospace
12 44 (1.90%) Influencing Skills
13 40 (1.73%) Legal
14 32 (1.38%) Military
15 29 (1.25%) Documentation Skills
16 25 (1.08%) Law
17 19 (0.82%) Investment Banking
17 19 (0.82%) Local Government
17 19 (0.82%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 308 (13.32%) Developer
2 295 (12.76%) Lead
3 278 (12.02%) Senior
4 261 (11.29%) QA Engineer
5 252 (10.90%) Analyst
6 135 (5.84%) Quality Engineer
7 123 (5.32%) Test Engineer
8 117 (5.06%) Tester
9 103 (4.46%) Business Analyst
10 102 (4.41%) Test Manager
11 85 (3.68%) QA Leader
12 79 (3.42%) Data Engineer
13 77 (3.33%) Java Developer
14 70 (3.03%) Test Leader
15 61 (2.64%) Consultant
16 59 (2.55%) Senior Analyst
17 54 (2.34%) QA Tester
17 54 (2.34%) Test Analyst
18 51 (2.21%) Architect
19 49 (2.12%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 223 (9.65%) REST
2 155 (6.70%) Playwright
3 153 (6.62%) RESTful
4 128 (5.54%) Spring
5 111 (4.80%) Spring Boot
6 107 (4.63%) Terraform
7 99 (4.28%) React
8 98 (4.24%) .NET
9 91 (3.94%) HTML
10 86 (3.72%) Kafka
11 81 (3.50%) CSS
12 76 (3.29%) AngularJS
13 66 (2.85%) Node.js
14 59 (2.55%) SOAP
15 53 (2.29%) Middleware
15 53 (2.29%) pytest
16 41 (1.77%) .NET Framework
16 41 (1.77%) JSON
17 39 (1.69%) Gherkin
17 39 (1.69%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 220 (9.52%) Product Ownership
2 140 (6.06%) Cloud Native
3 85 (3.68%) Onboarding
4 73 (3.16%) Management Information System
5 71 (3.07%) Enterprise Software
6 56 (2.42%) Distributed Systems
7 52 (2.25%) Mobile App
8 48 (2.08%) AI Agents
8 48 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
9 43 (1.86%) Data Structures
10 40 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
11 34 (1.47%) Data Centre
12 32 (1.38%) Low-Code
13 28 (1.21%) NHS
14 24 (1.04%) CMDB
14 24 (1.04%) Virtual Team
15 19 (0.82%) Educational Technology
16 17 (0.74%) Analytical Mindset
17 15 (0.65%) Operational Technology
18 14 (0.61%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 89 (3.85%) Windows
2 79 (3.42%) Linux
3 49 (2.12%) Apple iOS
4 45 (1.95%) Android
5 36 (1.56%) Unix
6 24 (1.04%) Windows Server
7 17 (0.74%) VMS
8 7 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.22%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.087%) AIX
10 2 (0.087%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.087%) zOS
11 1 (0.043%) CentOS
11 1 (0.043%) Debian
11 1 (0.043%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.043%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.043%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.043%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.043%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 900 (38.93%) Agile
2 659 (28.50%) Test Automation
3 610 (26.38%) CI/CD
4 563 (24.35%) DevOps
5 485 (20.98%) Stakeholder Management
6 476 (20.59%) Continuous Improvement
7 397 (17.17%) Problem-Solving
8 378 (16.35%) Validation
9 345 (14.92%) Scrum
10 344 (14.88%) AI
11 333 (14.40%) Test Strategy
12 275 (11.89%) User Acceptance Testing
13 252 (10.90%) Migration
14 219 (9.47%) SDLC
15 216 (9.34%) Microservices
16 206 (8.91%) End-to-End Testing
17 193 (8.35%) Software Engineering
18 188 (8.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 182 (7.87%) Defect Management
20 178 (7.70%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 414 (17.91%) SQL
2 329 (14.23%) Python
3 305 (13.19%) Java
4 195 (8.43%) JavaScript
5 122 (5.28%) C#
6 115 (4.97%) TypeScript
7 56 (2.42%) Bash
8 35 (1.51%) PowerShell
9 34 (1.47%) PL/SQL
10 30 (1.30%) Kotlin
11 26 (1.12%) T-SQL
12 24 (1.04%) Scala
13 21 (0.91%) Swift
14 20 (0.87%) Shell Script
15 17 (0.74%) Objective-C
16 16 (0.69%) VB
17 15 (0.65%) C
18 14 (0.61%) R
18 14 (0.61%) VBA
19 13 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 547 (23.66%) Security Cleared
2 423 (18.30%) SC Cleared
3 149 (6.44%) Degree
4 114 (4.93%) BPSS Clearance
5 74 (3.20%) ISTQB
6 68 (2.94%) DV Cleared
7 47 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
8 24 (1.04%) PMP
9 22 (0.95%) AWS Certification
10 20 (0.87%) Azure Certification
10 20 (0.87%) PMI Certification
11 16 (0.69%) Master's Degree
12 14 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
13 10 (0.43%) DBS Check
13 10 (0.43%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 10 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
14 9 (0.39%) Cisco Certification
14 9 (0.39%) IIBA
14 9 (0.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 9 (0.39%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 164 (7.09%) Data Quality
2 139 (6.01%) Accessibility
3 38 (1.64%) WCAG
4 35 (1.51%) GDPR
5 28 (1.21%) PMO
6 27 (1.17%) GRC
7 17 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.65%) NIST
9 12 (0.52%) ISO 9001
10 11 (0.48%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 11 (0.48%) GxP
11 9 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
11 9 (0.39%) SLA
12 8 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
12 8 (0.35%) ISO 19650
12 8 (0.35%) Software Quality Assurance
13 7 (0.30%) IFRS
13 7 (0.30%) NCSC
14 6 (0.26%) ISO 20022
15 5 (0.22%) GMP
System Software
1 209 (9.04%) Docker
2 24 (1.04%) Active Directory
3 19 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (0.43%) IAG
6 6 (0.26%) Firmware
7 4 (0.17%) ACF2
7 4 (0.17%) RACF
7 4 (0.17%) VirtualBox
8 3 (0.13%) KVM
8 3 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
9 2 (0.087%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.043%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.043%) QEMU
10 1 (0.043%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.043%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.043%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.043%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 239 (10.34%) Kubernetes
2 64 (2.77%) Ansible
3 58 (2.51%) Grafana
4 37 (1.60%) Prometheus
5 31 (1.34%) Argo
6 11 (0.48%) HP ALM
7 10 (0.43%) SCCM
8 8 (0.35%) Microsoft Clustering
8 8 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.30%) HP Quality Center
9 7 (0.30%) Istio
9 7 (0.30%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
11 5 (0.22%) Puppet
12 4 (0.17%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.17%) SCOM
13 3 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 2 (0.087%) Control-M
14 2 (0.087%) ITRS Geneos
14 2 (0.087%) Kibana
Vendors
1 257 (11.12%) Microsoft
2 164 (7.09%) Oracle
3 116 (5.02%) Salesforce
4 75 (3.24%) SAP
5 62 (2.68%) ServiceNow
6 51 (2.21%) Google
7 46 (1.99%) Databricks
8 34 (1.47%) Dynatrace
8 34 (1.47%) Splunk
9 31 (1.34%) Red Hat
10 24 (1.04%) Citrix
11 22 (0.95%) VMware
12 21 (0.91%) Adobe
12 21 (0.91%) Cisco
13 19 (0.82%) Informatica
14 16 (0.69%) Sitecore
14 16 (0.69%) Talend
14 16 (0.69%) Workday
15 15 (0.65%) IBM
15 15 (0.65%) MuleSoft