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

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 66 59
Rank change year-on-year +4 -7 +16
Contract jobs citing QA 1,774 1,048 1,439
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.63% 3.64% 3.36%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.75% 22.64% 24.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,096 726 953
10th Percentile £318 £280 £310
25th Percentile £394 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £509
Median % change year-on-year - -6.59% +0.69%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £610
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 126 24 92
10th Percentile £13.20 £15.04 £10.82
25th Percentile £15.72 £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 8,158 4,629 5,967
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.67% 16.06% 13.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,220 2,959 3,762
10th Percentile £340 £263 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £509
Median % change year-on-year - -1.72% -3.10%
75th Percentile £600 £616 £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 483 183 408
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.13 £10.99
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.75 £13.18
Median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £22.75
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% +42.86% -39.33%
75th Percentile £67.50 £66.56 £48.75
90th Percentile £82.20 £80.00 £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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +7 1,527 £477 +0.42% 966
UK excluding London +9 808 £450 - 715
London +12 776 £500 - 359
Work from Home +6 500 £488 +2.63% 549
South East -1 183 £450 -2.70% 194
North of England -30 173 £463 - 175
Midlands -10 169 £425 +13.33% 115
West Midlands -9 124 £425 - 70
South West +23 114 £488 -2.50% 89
East of England +10 80 £475 -0.73% 68
North West -18 78 £447 +4.20% 98
Scotland +8 77 £400 -8.57% 42
Yorkshire -36 69 £514 +0.54% 54
East Midlands -12 46 £394 +5.00% 45
North East -14 26 £413 -1.79% 25
Northern Ireland +11 17 £475 +46.15% 28
Wales -15 9 £450 -5.26% 19

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 (5.30%) Confluence
2 30 (1.69%) SharePoint
3 27 (1.52%) CMS
4 19 (1.07%) IIS
5 14 (0.79%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 14 (0.79%) Apache Spark
6 10 (0.56%) Apache
7 6 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
8 5 (0.28%) Umbraco
9 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.23%) nginx
9 4 (0.23%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 4 (0.23%) SAS
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%) Apache Solr
11 2 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 57 (3.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 31 (1.75%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (1.47%) Microsoft Project
4 24 (1.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (1.18%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.23%) 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 (1.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 17 (0.96%) 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 (0.23%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.23%) Infor CloudSuite
7 4 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.17%) Aladdin
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle EBS R12
9 2 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.11%) iTrent
9 2 (0.11%) NetSuite
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 2 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.11%) SAP Retail
9 2 (0.11%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 400 (22.55%) Azure
2 283 (15.95%) AWS
3 169 (9.53%) Azure DevOps
4 148 (8.34%) GitHub
5 106 (5.98%) Power Platform
6 96 (5.41%) GitHub Actions
7 76 (4.28%) GCP
8 47 (2.65%) Serverless
9 38 (2.14%) Dynamics 365
10 36 (2.03%) SaaS
11 34 (1.92%) OpenShift
12 30 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
12 30 (1.69%) Snowflake
13 29 (1.63%) Amazon S3
14 26 (1.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 25 (1.41%) Azure Data Factory
16 20 (1.13%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 19 (1.07%) Amazon ECS
17 19 (1.07%) Amazon EKS
17 19 (1.07%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.35%) Firewall
2 21 (1.18%) LAN
3 20 (1.13%) WAN
4 19 (1.07%) Internet
4 19 (1.07%) Network Security
4 19 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
5 14 (0.79%) VPN
6 12 (0.68%) Wireless
7 11 (0.62%) DNS
7 11 (0.62%) HTTP
7 11 (0.62%) SD-WAN
7 11 (0.62%) Unified Communications
8 10 (0.56%) VLAN
9 8 (0.45%) IPsec
10 7 (0.39%) SMS
11 6 (0.34%) Cisco Nexus
11 6 (0.34%) TCP/IP
12 4 (0.23%) DHCP
12 4 (0.23%) MPLS
13 2 (0.11%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 105 (5.92%) SQL Server
2 91 (5.13%) Power BI
3 71 (4.00%) Data Warehouse
4 57 (3.21%) PostgreSQL
5 48 (2.71%) Relational Database
6 43 (2.42%) MySQL
7 40 (2.25%) NoSQL
8 38 (2.14%) Tableau
9 34 (1.92%) Oracle Database
10 33 (1.86%) Data Lake
11 32 (1.80%) Metadata
11 32 (1.80%) Oracle Reports
12 24 (1.35%) Big Data
12 24 (1.35%) MongoDB
13 19 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
14 18 (1.01%) DynamoDB
15 17 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 15 (0.85%) BigQuery
17 14 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
18 13 (0.73%) Redis
Development Applications
1 289 (16.29%) JIRA
2 160 (9.02%) Git
3 137 (7.72%) Selenium
4 122 (6.88%) Jenkins
5 101 (5.69%) GitLab
6 81 (4.57%) Postman
7 62 (3.49%) Cucumber
8 59 (3.33%) Cypress.io
9 50 (2.82%) JUnit
10 46 (2.59%) REST Assured
11 43 (2.42%) Zephyr
12 35 (1.97%) JMeter
12 35 (1.97%) SonarQube
13 30 (1.69%) WebDriver
14 22 (1.24%) Gatling
14 22 (1.24%) TestRail
15 17 (0.96%) TestNG
16 16 (0.90%) Gradle
17 15 (0.85%) Appium
18 14 (0.79%) SpecFlow
General
1 550 (31.00%) Social Skills
2 403 (22.72%) Finance
3 245 (13.81%) Analytical Skills
4 197 (11.10%) Public Sector
5 146 (8.23%) Banking
6 57 (3.21%) Retail
7 48 (2.71%) Marketing
8 45 (2.54%) Manufacturing
9 44 (2.48%) Organisational Skills
10 33 (1.86%) Aerospace
11 28 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
12 25 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
13 22 (1.24%) Military
14 21 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 21 (1.18%) Investment Banking
15 18 (1.01%) Legal
16 16 (0.90%) Front Office
16 16 (0.90%) Pharmaceutical
17 14 (0.79%) Automotive
17 14 (0.79%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 214 (12.06%) Developer
2 212 (11.95%) Analyst
3 206 (11.61%) Lead
4 202 (11.39%) Senior
5 151 (8.51%) QA Engineer
6 112 (6.31%) Business Analyst
7 99 (5.58%) Tester
8 83 (4.68%) Test Manager
9 72 (4.06%) Architect
10 64 (3.61%) Project Manager
11 63 (3.55%) Quality Engineer
11 63 (3.55%) Test Engineer
12 59 (3.33%) Data Engineer
13 52 (2.93%) Java Developer
13 52 (2.93%) Test Leader
14 50 (2.82%) Data Analyst
15 49 (2.76%) Senior Analyst
16 42 (2.37%) QA Tester
16 42 (2.37%) Software Engineer
17 40 (2.25%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (7.33%) REST
2 113 (6.37%) .NET
3 94 (5.30%) Playwright
4 93 (5.24%) RESTful
5 71 (4.00%) Spring
6 65 (3.66%) Spring Boot
7 64 (3.61%) React
8 56 (3.16%) HTML
9 51 (2.87%) CSS
10 50 (2.82%) .NET Framework
10 50 (2.82%) Kafka
11 48 (2.71%) AngularJS
12 45 (2.54%) Node.js
13 39 (2.20%) JSON
14 25 (1.41%) Middleware
15 24 (1.35%) Gherkin
15 24 (1.35%) Quarkus
16 23 (1.30%) OpenID
17 22 (1.24%) OAuth
17 22 (1.24%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 144 (8.12%) Product Ownership
2 75 (4.23%) Cloud Native
3 50 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
4 46 (2.59%) Onboarding
5 41 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
6 39 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
7 36 (2.03%) Mobile App
8 29 (1.63%) Data Structures
9 28 (1.58%) Management Information System
10 27 (1.52%) Virtual Team
11 23 (1.30%) Data Centre
12 21 (1.18%) Analytical Mindset
12 21 (1.18%) PMI
13 20 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
14 17 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
15 14 (0.79%) Legacy Code
16 13 (0.73%) AI Agents
16 13 (0.73%) Derivative
16 13 (0.73%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 13 (0.73%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 84 (4.74%) Windows
2 57 (3.21%) Linux
3 28 (1.58%) Windows Server
4 27 (1.52%) Apple iOS
5 26 (1.47%) Android
6 18 (1.01%) 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
1 650 (36.64%) Agile
2 449 (25.31%) Test Automation
3 437 (24.63%) DevOps
4 420 (23.68%) CI/CD
5 294 (16.57%) Validation
6 291 (16.40%) Stakeholder Management
7 279 (15.73%) Continuous Improvement
8 270 (15.22%) Problem-Solving
9 245 (13.81%) User Acceptance Testing
10 230 (12.97%) Scrum
11 228 (12.85%) Test Strategy
12 218 (12.29%) Migration
13 168 (9.47%) AI
14 166 (9.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 154 (8.68%) ETL
16 143 (8.06%) Decision-Making
17 140 (7.89%) SDLC
18 137 (7.72%) Analytics
18 137 (7.72%) Test Scripting
19 136 (7.67%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 359 (20.24%) SQL
2 237 (13.36%) Python
3 216 (12.18%) Java
4 131 (7.38%) C#
5 128 (7.22%) JavaScript
6 87 (4.90%) TypeScript
7 42 (2.37%) PL/SQL
8 41 (2.31%) T-SQL
9 32 (1.80%) PowerShell
10 31 (1.75%) Kotlin
11 23 (1.30%) Bash
12 19 (1.07%) Scala
13 17 (0.96%) Swift
14 16 (0.90%) Bicep
15 15 (0.85%) C++
15 15 (0.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 14 (0.79%) PHP
16 14 (0.79%) VB
17 12 (0.68%) C
17 12 (0.68%) VBA
Qualifications
1 391 (22.04%) Security Cleared
2 284 (16.01%) SC Cleared
3 142 (8.00%) Degree
4 72 (4.06%) ISTQB
5 61 (3.44%) BPSS Clearance
6 53 (2.99%) DV Cleared
7 41 (2.31%) PMI Certification
8 38 (2.14%) PMP
9 37 (2.09%) Computer Science Degree
10 19 (1.07%) Master's Degree
11 12 (0.68%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.62%) Cisco Certification
13 10 (0.56%) AWS Certification
14 9 (0.51%) CBAP
15 8 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 8 (0.45%) SAFe Agilist
16 7 (0.39%) APMP
16 7 (0.39%) CHECK Team Member
16 7 (0.39%) CREST Certified
16 7 (0.39%) Cyber Scheme
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 131 (7.38%) Data Quality
2 80 (4.51%) Accessibility
3 40 (2.25%) PMO
4 33 (1.86%) GDPR
5 21 (1.18%) WCAG
6 18 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.90%) IFRS
7 16 (0.90%) PCI DSS
8 15 (0.85%) NIST
9 14 (0.79%) GRC
9 14 (0.79%) 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%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 110 (6.20%) Docker
2 16 (0.90%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (0.28%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 3 (0.17%) Firmware
6 2 (0.11%) GridGain
6 2 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.056%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.056%) KVM
7 1 (0.056%) QEMU
7 1 (0.056%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
7 1 (0.056%) Varnish
7 1 (0.056%) VirtualBox
7 1 (0.056%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 149 (8.40%) Kubernetes
2 72 (4.06%) Terraform
3 36 (2.03%) Grafana
4 29 (1.63%) Ansible
5 27 (1.52%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.47%) Argo
7 18 (1.01%) HP ALM
8 9 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (0.45%) HP Quality Center
9 8 (0.45%) Nmap
10 7 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
10 7 (0.39%) Puppet
11 5 (0.28%) Kibana
12 4 (0.23%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.23%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
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%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 182 (10.26%) Microsoft
2 155 (8.74%) Oracle
3 92 (5.19%) Salesforce
4 90 (5.07%) SAP
5 46 (2.59%) ServiceNow
6 37 (2.09%) Citrix
6 37 (2.09%) Google
7 34 (1.92%) Databricks
8 31 (1.75%) Adobe
9 29 (1.63%) Red Hat
10 23 (1.30%) Informatica
11 21 (1.18%) HP
12 20 (1.13%) Cisco
13 13 (0.73%) MuleSoft
13 13 (0.73%) Talend
14 12 (0.68%) Workday
15 11 (0.62%) Splunk
16 10 (0.56%) IBM
16 10 (0.56%) Infor
16 10 (0.56%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud