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 21 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 63 65 63
Rank change year-on-year +2 -2 +12
Contract jobs citing QA 1,408 1,156 1,470
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.83% 3.40% 3.36%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 22.22% 24.03% 23.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 908 695 1,057
10th Percentile £313 £295 £350
25th Percentile £400 £375 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -9.52% +0.96%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £644
90th Percentile £675 £723 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +5.56% -5.26% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 30 40
10th Percentile £12.26 £13.26 £19.23
25th Percentile £13.50 £15.00 £24.25
Median hourly rate £19.50 £19.92 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.08% -50.21% +53.85%
75th Percentile £63.45 £33.38 £73.16
90th Percentile £73.75 £65.90 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.50 £15.41 £48.75
% change year-on-year +26.58% -68.40% +103.13%

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 6,337 4,810 6,365
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.25% 14.17% 14.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,093 2,829 4,250
10th Percentile £313 £262 £313
25th Percentile £406 £378 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £623 £645
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.63% -5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 319 185 231
10th Percentile £14.20 £15.00 £14.18
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £19.74
Median hourly rate £25.15 £28.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.18% -20.00% +55.61%
75th Percentile £60.31 £62.24 £64.50
90th Percentile £73.75 £72.40 £83.11
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.50 £27.35 £35.50
% change year-on-year -25.05% -22.96% +75.40%

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 21 December 2025.

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 21 December 2025.

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 21 December 2025. 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 +4 1,221 £500 +2.56% 609
London +5 638 £500 - 164
UK excluding London -2 601 £475 +5.56% 584
Work from Home +3 358 £459 -7.33% 288
North of England +2 172 £428 +3.64% 137
South East +12 150 £500 +11.11% 211
Midlands -24 97 £500 +6.67% 73
North West -11 79 £402 -2.55% 68
West Midlands -23 73 £500 +3.09% 43
South West -10 72 £488 - 65
Yorkshire -5 64 £450 +3.45% 47
East of England -6 50 £528 +25.71% 66
Scotland +5 48 £533 +40.13% 39
North East +8 30 £500 +14.29% 22
East Midlands -11 25 £438 -4.63% 30
Wales -9 17 £425 -20.00% 14
Northern Ireland -6 6 - - 1

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 85 (6.04%) Confluence
2 37 (2.63%) SharePoint
3 20 (1.42%) CMS
4 18 (1.28%) Apache
5 14 (0.99%) IIS
6 11 (0.78%) SugarCRM
7 10 (0.71%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 10 (0.71%) Anypoint
8 9 (0.64%) Apache Spark
9 7 (0.50%) Apache Airflow
9 7 (0.50%) WebSphere
10 6 (0.43%) Mule
10 6 (0.43%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 5 (0.36%) MQSeries
12 4 (0.28%) Drupal
12 4 (0.28%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.28%) SAS
12 4 (0.28%) WebLogic
13 2 (0.14%) Jupyter
Applications
1 72 (5.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 39 (2.77%) Microsoft Office
3 24 (1.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 23 (1.63%) Microsoft Project
5 16 (1.14%) MS Visio
6 6 (0.43%) Trello
7 4 (0.28%) Autodesk Inventor
7 4 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.28%) Simulink
7 4 (0.28%) Stateflow
8 3 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.14%) Autodesk Smoke
10 1 (0.071%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.071%) Notion
10 1 (0.071%) Revit
10 1 (0.071%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 28 (1.99%) SAP S/4HANA
2 12 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
4 7 (0.50%) Payment Gateway
5 6 (0.43%) Oracle Cash Management
5 6 (0.43%) Oracle General Ledger
5 6 (0.43%) Oracle Receivables
5 6 (0.43%) SAP ERP
6 5 (0.36%) Temenos T24
7 4 (0.28%) Maximo
7 4 (0.28%) NetSuite
7 4 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 4 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.28%) Workday HCM
8 3 (0.21%) Algo Collateral
8 3 (0.21%) Oracle EBS R12
8 3 (0.21%) SAP PM
8 3 (0.21%) SAP QM
8 3 (0.21%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 327 (23.22%) Azure
2 269 (19.11%) AWS
3 104 (7.39%) Azure DevOps
4 96 (6.82%) GCP
5 87 (6.18%) GitHub
6 85 (6.04%) Power Platform
7 65 (4.62%) GitHub Actions
8 57 (4.05%) Serverless
9 39 (2.77%) AWS Lambda
10 38 (2.70%) SaaS
11 37 (2.63%) Amazon S3
12 30 (2.13%) Dynamics 365
13 23 (1.63%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 21 (1.49%) Amazon EC2
14 21 (1.49%) Amazon ECS
14 21 (1.49%) Power Automate
15 20 (1.42%) AWS CloudFormation
16 18 (1.28%) OCI
17 17 (1.21%) Snowflake
18 16 (1.14%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 19 (1.35%) Firewall
2 17 (1.21%) HTTP
3 14 (0.99%) Internet
4 7 (0.50%) Wireless
5 6 (0.43%) 5G
5 6 (0.43%) Broadband
6 5 (0.36%) OpenLDAP
6 5 (0.36%) SMS
6 5 (0.36%) WAN
7 4 (0.28%) LAN
7 4 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
8 3 (0.21%) HTTPS
8 3 (0.21%) Network Security
8 3 (0.21%) Structured Cabling
8 3 (0.21%) VPN
8 3 (0.21%) WebEx
9 2 (0.14%) DNS
9 2 (0.14%) SSL
10 1 (0.071%) DSL
10 1 (0.071%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 77 (5.47%) Power BI
2 65 (4.62%) SQL Server
3 54 (3.84%) Relational Database
4 49 (3.48%) PostgreSQL
5 43 (3.05%) MongoDB
5 43 (3.05%) MySQL
6 38 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
7 29 (2.06%) NoSQL
8 26 (1.85%) Tableau
9 23 (1.63%) BigQuery
10 21 (1.49%) Oracle Database
11 17 (1.21%) Metadata
12 16 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
12 16 (1.14%) Data Lake
13 12 (0.85%) Big Data
13 12 (0.85%) Looker
13 12 (0.85%) Redis
14 11 (0.78%) Azure SQL Database
15 8 (0.57%) RDBMS
16 7 (0.50%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 255 (18.11%) JIRA
2 128 (9.09%) Git
3 125 (8.88%) GitLab
4 115 (8.17%) Jenkins
5 104 (7.39%) Selenium
6 72 (5.11%) Cucumber
7 71 (5.04%) Postman
8 66 (4.69%) Cypress.io
9 42 (2.98%) REST Assured
10 36 (2.56%) JMeter
11 32 (2.27%) JUnit
12 21 (1.49%) Appium
13 17 (1.21%) Gatling
13 17 (1.21%) SonarQube
14 15 (1.07%) WebDriver
15 14 (0.99%) TestNG
16 13 (0.92%) TestRail
17 12 (0.85%) CircleCI
18 11 (0.78%) Bitbucket
19 10 (0.71%) webpack
General
1 586 (41.62%) Social Skills
2 382 (27.13%) Finance
3 239 (16.97%) Analytical Skills
4 155 (11.01%) Banking
5 153 (10.87%) Public Sector
6 58 (4.12%) Documentation Skills
7 40 (2.84%) Marketing
8 37 (2.63%) Telecoms
9 35 (2.49%) Legal
10 32 (2.27%) Manufacturing
11 29 (2.06%) Organisational Skills
12 28 (1.99%) Investment Banking
12 28 (1.99%) Presentation Skills
13 27 (1.92%) Front Office
14 26 (1.85%) Retail
15 21 (1.49%) Back Office
16 20 (1.42%) Aerospace
16 20 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 18 (1.28%) Financial Institution
18 15 (1.07%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 188 (13.35%) Developer
2 176 (12.50%) Analyst
3 166 (11.79%) Senior
4 155 (11.01%) Lead
5 97 (6.89%) QA Engineer
6 84 (5.97%) Business Analyst
7 83 (5.89%) Tester
8 69 (4.90%) Test Engineer
9 62 (4.40%) Project Manager
10 60 (4.26%) Architect
11 52 (3.69%) Consultant
12 50 (3.55%) Test Manager
13 45 (3.20%) Java Developer
14 37 (2.63%) Test Analyst
15 36 (2.56%) Test Leader
16 35 (2.49%) DevOps Engineer
17 34 (2.41%) QA Leader
18 33 (2.34%) QA Tester
19 31 (2.20%) Test Automation Engineer
20 30 (2.13%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 147 (10.44%) REST
2 89 (6.32%) .NET
3 77 (5.47%) Playwright
4 72 (5.11%) RESTful
5 66 (4.69%) React
6 63 (4.47%) Spring
7 62 (4.40%) Spring Boot
8 52 (3.69%) Node.js
9 51 (3.62%) HTML
10 47 (3.34%) SOAP
11 46 (3.27%) CSS
12 40 (2.84%) AngularJS
13 34 (2.41%) Kafka
14 31 (2.20%) XML
15 29 (2.06%) JSON
16 27 (1.92%) .NET Framework
16 27 (1.92%) JMS
17 26 (1.85%) Oracle Fusion
18 22 (1.56%) Web Services
19 21 (1.49%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 139 (9.87%) Product Ownership
2 61 (4.33%) Cloud Native
3 53 (3.76%) Onboarding
4 48 (3.41%) Mobile App
5 29 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
6 28 (1.99%) Analytical Mindset
6 28 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
6 28 (1.99%) SWIFT Messaging Network
7 27 (1.92%) Distributed Systems
7 27 (1.92%) Management Information System
8 25 (1.78%) Data Structures
9 24 (1.70%) Enterprise Software
9 24 (1.70%) PMI
10 18 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
11 15 (1.07%) Algorithms
12 14 (0.99%) Synthetic Data
13 13 (0.92%) Data Centre
13 13 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
13 13 (0.92%) Reinsurance
13 13 (0.92%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 64 (4.55%) Windows
2 44 (3.13%) Linux
3 24 (1.70%) Android
4 21 (1.49%) Apple iOS
5 17 (1.21%) Windows Server
6 15 (1.07%) Unix
7 5 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (0.28%) VMS
9 3 (0.21%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.14%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.14%) Solaris
10 2 (0.14%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.071%) CentOS
11 1 (0.071%) Mac OS X
11 1 (0.071%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 650 (46.16%) Agile
2 410 (29.12%) CI/CD
3 397 (28.20%) DevOps
4 383 (27.20%) Test Automation
5 374 (26.56%) Problem-Solving
6 231 (16.41%) Stakeholder Management
7 207 (14.70%) Continuous Improvement
8 204 (14.49%) Scrum
9 183 (13.00%) Validation
10 179 (12.71%) User Acceptance Testing
11 165 (11.72%) Test Strategy
12 154 (10.94%) Migration
13 142 (10.09%) Microservices
14 136 (9.66%) Test Scripting
15 134 (9.52%) SDLC
15 134 (9.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 134 (9.52%) User Experience
16 120 (8.52%) Project Management
17 108 (7.67%) Software Testing
18 105 (7.46%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 263 (18.68%) SQL
2 195 (13.85%) Java
3 184 (13.07%) Python
4 119 (8.45%) JavaScript
5 103 (7.32%) C#
6 86 (6.11%) TypeScript
7 38 (2.70%) PL/SQL
8 28 (1.99%) PHP
9 25 (1.78%) PowerShell
10 21 (1.49%) T-SQL
11 19 (1.35%) Go
12 16 (1.14%) Kotlin
13 15 (1.07%) Bash
13 15 (1.07%) C++
14 13 (0.92%) C
15 12 (0.85%) Ruby
15 12 (0.85%) VBA
16 9 (0.64%) VB
17 8 (0.57%) R
18 7 (0.50%) Scala
Qualifications
1 240 (17.05%) Security Cleared
2 198 (14.06%) SC Cleared
3 154 (10.94%) Degree
4 60 (4.26%) PMI Certification
5 56 (3.98%) Computer Science Degree
6 47 (3.34%) PMP
7 41 (2.91%) ISTQB
8 36 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
9 33 (2.34%) Master's Degree
10 18 (1.28%) CISSP
10 18 (1.28%) DV Cleared
11 17 (1.21%) AWS Certification
12 15 (1.07%) Oracle Certification
13 12 (0.85%) CBAP
14 11 (0.78%) Azure Certification
14 11 (0.78%) CISM
15 10 (0.71%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 10 (0.71%) OCA
16 8 (0.57%) Postgraduate
17 7 (0.50%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 103 (7.32%) Accessibility
2 74 (5.26%) Data Quality
3 48 (3.41%) GDPR
4 35 (2.49%) PMO
5 25 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 23 (1.63%) WCAG
7 19 (1.35%) PSD2
8 17 (1.21%) NIST
9 16 (1.14%) PCI DSS
10 15 (1.07%) SEPA
11 13 (0.92%) ISO 20022
11 13 (0.92%) SLA
12 10 (0.71%) COBIT
12 10 (0.71%) Software Quality Assurance
13 8 (0.57%) GxP
13 8 (0.57%) ISO 9001
13 8 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.50%) IFRS
15 6 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
15 6 (0.43%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 111 (7.88%) Docker
2 7 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (0.43%) Active Directory
4 5 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.071%) Firmware
6 1 (0.071%) GridGain
6 1 (0.071%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.071%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.071%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 116 (8.24%) Kubernetes
2 76 (5.40%) Terraform
3 42 (2.98%) Ansible
4 33 (2.34%) Grafana
5 15 (1.07%) Prometheus
6 10 (0.71%) Argo
7 8 (0.57%) HP ALM
8 5 (0.36%) Control-M
8 5 (0.36%) Nmap
8 5 (0.36%) Puppet
9 4 (0.28%) CloudHub
9 4 (0.28%) Consul
9 4 (0.28%) Rsyslog
9 4 (0.28%) SCOM
9 4 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (0.21%) Kibana
10 3 (0.21%) PingFederate
10 3 (0.21%) Progress Chef
10 3 (0.21%) RSA Archer
11 2 (0.14%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
Vendors
1 155 (11.01%) Microsoft
2 120 (8.52%) Oracle
3 76 (5.40%) SAP
4 59 (4.19%) ServiceNow
5 55 (3.91%) Salesforce
6 36 (2.56%) Google
7 24 (1.70%) Citrix
8 19 (1.35%) Databricks
8 19 (1.35%) Splunk
9 18 (1.28%) Red Hat
10 17 (1.21%) MuleSoft
11 15 (1.07%) HP
11 15 (1.07%) IBM
12 14 (0.99%) Adobe
13 12 (0.85%) Workday
14 9 (0.64%) Blue Prism
14 9 (0.64%) UiPath
15 8 (0.57%) Dynatrace
15 8 (0.57%) Pega
15 8 (0.57%) VMware