Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 16 August 2018

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 16 August 2018 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
16 Aug 2018		 Same period 2017 Same period 2016
Rank 72 70 79
Rank change year-on-year -2 +9 -17
Contract jobs citing QA 3,299 3,079 3,056
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 3.22% 3.22% 2.80%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 27.45% 27.20% 24.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,203 2,073 2,015
UK median daily rate £450 £425 £405
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +5.88% +4.94% +1.25%
10th Percentile £300 £275 £263
90th Percentile £606 £600 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £375 £380
% change year-on-year +6.67% -1.32% +1.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 52 59
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £18.00 £22.00
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year +66.67% -18.18% -8.33%
10th Percentile £10.80 £10.30 £7.88
90th Percentile £59.25 £40.75 £41.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.25 £18.00 £17.05
% change year-on-year -15.28% +5.60% -49.20%

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 12,019 11,320 12,237
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.75% 11.83% 11.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,634 7,350 7,906
UK median daily rate £450 £447 £413
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +0.61% +8.42% +3.13%
10th Percentile £254 £250 £225
90th Percentile £638 £638 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £405 £395 £375
% change year-on-year +2.53% +5.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 381 363 421
UK median hourly rate £22.20 £21.90 £22.50
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year +1.35% -2.67% +4.47%
10th Percentile £11.11 £11.02 £11.11
90th Percentile £52.50 £50.00 £48.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.00 £20.59 £23.50
% change year-on-year -2.84% -12.40% +9.18%

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 16 August 2018.

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 16 August 2018.

Contractor hourly rate histogram for QA in the UK

QA
Top 16 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 16 August 2018. 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 -7 2,995 £450 +2.86% 1,287
UK excluding London -10 1,633 £400 +6.67% 851
London -1 1,615 £475 - 523
South East -8 554 £403 +3.54% 213
North of England -12 322 £425 +6.25% 216
Midlands -9 195 £400 +6.67% 126
Scotland +20 188 £388 +10.71% 56
East of England +22 167 £400 +8.11% 106
North West -7 165 £425 +9.68% 108
South West -32 134 £373 -0.67% 103
West Midlands +2 127 £385 +18.46% 84
Yorkshire -8 123 £425 - 93
East Midlands -21 66 £406 +1.56% 42
Wales +7 59 £330 -3.51% 22
North East -28 36 £425 - 15
Northern Ireland +42 15 £500 +73.91% 9

For the 6 months to 16 August 2018, 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 1,719 (52.11%) Agile Software Development
2 1,190 (36.07%) Test Automation
3 775 (23.49%) Java
4 709 (21.49%) Selenium
5 700 (21.22%) Finance
6 624 (18.91%) Scrum
7 599 (18.16%) SQL
8 546 (16.55%) JIRA
9 530 (16.07%) BDD
10 509 (15.43%) TDD
11 474 (14.37%) JavaScript
12 444 (13.46%) C#
13 431 (13.06%) DevOps
14 396 (12.00%) Cucumber
15 365 (11.06%) .NET
16 361 (10.94%) SDLC
17 357 (10.82%) Jenkins
18 334 (10.12%) Problem-Solving
19 331 (10.03%) Continuous Integration
20 327 (9.91%) Microsoft
21 326 (9.88%) Web Services
22 321 (9.73%) Project Management
23 309 (9.37%) Git (software)
24 306 (9.28%) Oracle
25 304 (9.21%) HTML
26 296 (8.97%) Analytical Skills
27 281 (8.52%) User Acceptance Testing
28 268 (8.12%) Amazon AWS
29 264 (8.00%) Test Scripting
29 264 (8.00%) Test Strategy

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
1 208 (6.30%) Confluence
2 97 (2.94%) CMS
3 66 (2.00%) SharePoint
4 59 (1.79%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 46 (1.39%) Apache
5 46 (1.39%) Elasticsearch
6 38 (1.15%) Apache Spark
7 33 (1.00%) JBoss
8 28 (0.85%) Tomcat
9 23 (0.70%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 22 (0.67%) Drupal
10 22 (0.67%) WordPress
11 21 (0.64%) IIS
12 19 (0.58%) WebLogic
12 19 (0.58%) WebSphere
13 18 (0.55%) NServiceBus
14 17 (0.52%) SAS
15 16 (0.48%) OpenStack
15 16 (0.48%) Skype for Business
16 15 (0.45%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 124 (3.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 102 (3.09%) Microsoft Office
3 50 (1.52%) Microsoft Project
4 49 (1.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (1.15%) MS Visio
6 11 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.27%) Photoshop
9 8 (0.24%) InfoPath
10 4 (0.12%) InVision
11 3 (0.091%) Adobe Illustrator
11 3 (0.091%) OrCAD
12 2 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.061%) InDesign
13 1 (0.030%) Adobe After Effects
13 1 (0.030%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.030%) Open Workbench
Business Applications
1 33 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
2 11 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
2 11 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
3 10 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
4 8 (0.24%) Eloqua
5 7 (0.21%) Dynamics AX
5 7 (0.21%) SAP Hybris
6 6 (0.18%) Oracle Retail
6 6 (0.18%) SAP FI
7 5 (0.15%) Cognos TM1
7 5 (0.15%) Oracle Cash Management
7 5 (0.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 5 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
8 4 (0.12%) NetSuite
8 4 (0.12%) Salesforce.com CRM
8 4 (0.12%) SAP BPC
8 4 (0.12%) SAP GRC
9 3 (0.091%) Oracle Assets
9 3 (0.091%) Oracle Internet Expenses
9 3 (0.091%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 268 (8.12%) Amazon AWS
2 174 (5.27%) Microsoft Azure
3 86 (2.61%) GitHub
4 60 (1.82%) Office 365
5 52 (1.58%) Amazon EC2
6 38 (1.15%) BrowserStack
6 38 (1.15%) Google Cloud Platform
7 36 (1.09%) SaaS
8 28 (0.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 27 (0.82%) Google Analytics
9 27 (0.82%) Sauce Labs
10 24 (0.73%) Dynamics 365
11 23 (0.70%) PaaS
12 22 (0.67%) AWS CloudFormation
12 22 (0.67%) IaaS
13 21 (0.64%) Amazon S3
13 21 (0.64%) Cloud Computing
13 21 (0.64%) Serverless
14 15 (0.45%) npm
15 14 (0.42%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 66 (2.00%) Internet
2 54 (1.64%) Firewall
3 47 (1.42%) HTTP
4 33 (1.00%) WAN
5 31 (0.94%) SMS
6 30 (0.91%) DNS
7 29 (0.88%) TCP/IP
8 28 (0.85%) LAN
9 20 (0.61%) Skype
10 19 (0.58%) BGP
10 19 (0.58%) FTP
10 19 (0.58%) OSPF
11 18 (0.55%) MPLS
11 18 (0.55%) SSL
11 18 (0.55%) VPN
12 17 (0.52%) Network Security
13 14 (0.42%) AMQP
13 14 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
14 10 (0.30%) HTTPS
14 10 (0.30%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 242 (7.34%) SQL Server
2 147 (4.46%) MySQL
3 106 (3.21%) Relational Database
4 105 (3.18%) Big Data
4 105 (3.18%) PostgreSQL
5 95 (2.88%) Data Warehouse
6 91 (2.76%) MongoDB
7 83 (2.52%) Hadoop
8 64 (1.94%) NoSQL
9 45 (1.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 41 (1.24%) Oracle Database
11 39 (1.18%) Apache Cassandra
12 38 (1.15%) HBase
13 37 (1.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 35 (1.06%) Redis
15 29 (0.88%) SQL Server Analysis Services
16 25 (0.76%) Apache Hive
17 21 (0.64%) BusinessObjects
17 21 (0.64%) Data Lake
18 20 (0.61%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 709 (21.49%) Selenium
2 546 (16.55%) JIRA
3 396 (12.00%) Cucumber
4 357 (10.82%) Jenkins
5 309 (9.37%) Git (software)
6 200 (6.06%) WebDriver
7 181 (5.49%) SoapUI
8 162 (4.91%) SpecFlow
9 111 (3.36%) JMeter
10 107 (3.24%) Team Foundation Server
11 97 (2.94%) TeamCity
12 92 (2.79%) Maven
13 87 (2.64%) Visual Studio
14 83 (2.52%) Subversion
15 64 (1.94%) JUnit
16 61 (1.85%) Appium
17 57 (1.73%) Protractor
18 56 (1.70%) Visual Studio Team System
19 49 (1.49%) LoadRunner
19 49 (1.49%) Zephyr
General
1 700 (21.22%) Finance
2 258 (7.82%) Banking
3 183 (5.55%) Retail
4 112 (3.39%) Marketing
5 74 (2.24%) Investment Banking
6 53 (1.61%) Telecoms
7 52 (1.58%) Legal
8 50 (1.52%) Law
9 44 (1.33%) Financial Institution
10 42 (1.27%) Manufacturing
11 36 (1.09%) Games
11 36 (1.09%) Publishing
12 27 (0.82%) Front Office
13 26 (0.79%) Retail Banking
14 23 (0.70%) Back Office
15 22 (0.67%) Pharmaceutical
16 19 (0.58%) Billing
17 16 (0.48%) Advertising
18 14 (0.42%) Electronics
19 9 (0.27%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 637 (19.31%) Developer
2 579 (17.55%) Analyst
3 349 (10.58%) Tester
4 251 (7.61%) Test Analyst
5 231 (7.00%) QA Engineer
6 195 (5.91%) QA Tester
7 180 (5.46%) Project Manager
8 173 (5.24%) Automation Tester
9 168 (5.09%) QA Analyst
10 150 (4.55%) Architect
11 149 (4.52%) Test Engineer
12 139 (4.21%) Business Analyst
13 119 (3.61%) Java Developer
14 107 (3.24%) Test Manager
15 102 (3.09%) Consultant
16 99 (3.00%) .NET Developer
17 93 (2.82%) QA Automation Engineer
17 93 (2.82%) QA Test Analyst
18 90 (2.73%) QA Automation Tester
19 79 (2.39%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 365 (11.06%) .NET
2 326 (9.88%) Web Services
3 304 (9.21%) HTML
4 238 (7.21%) CSS
5 194 (5.88%) REST
6 164 (4.97%) RESTful
7 149 (4.52%) Node.js
8 147 (4.46%) AngularJS
9 141 (4.27%) XML
10 131 (3.97%) SOAP
11 121 (3.67%) HTML5
12 119 (3.61%) Spring
13 113 (3.43%) Gherkin
14 99 (3.00%) jQuery
15 94 (2.85%) React
16 86 (2.61%) JSON
17 77 (2.33%) CSS3
17 77 (2.33%) Spring Boot
18 73 (2.21%) ASP.NET
19 66 (2.00%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 296 (8.97%) Analytical Skills
2 247 (7.49%) User Experience
3 174 (5.27%) Mobile App
4 126 (3.82%) Management Information System
5 104 (3.15%) Computer Science
6 102 (3.09%) Self-Motivation
7 89 (2.70%) Greenfield Project
8 78 (2.36%) Enterprise Software
9 66 (2.00%) Data Centre
10 60 (1.82%) Virtual Team
11 47 (1.42%) Fintech
12 44 (1.33%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 41 (1.24%) Algorithms
14 33 (1.00%) Equities
15 32 (0.97%) Data Structures
16 28 (0.85%) Linux Command Line
17 27 (0.82%) Hedge funds
17 27 (0.82%) Replication
18 24 (0.73%) Fixed Income
19 23 (0.70%) Video on Demand
Operating Systems
1 247 (7.49%) Linux
2 209 (6.34%) Windows
3 146 (4.43%) Unix
4 115 (3.49%) Apple iOS
5 113 (3.43%) Android
6 42 (1.27%) CentOS
7 37 (1.12%) Windows Server
8 35 (1.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 31 (0.94%) Windows 7
10 30 (0.91%) Windows 10
11 24 (0.73%) Ubuntu
12 15 (0.45%) Windows Server 2008
12 15 (0.45%) Windows Server 2012
13 8 (0.24%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.21%) Windows XP
15 6 (0.18%) Solaris
16 5 (0.15%) Mac OS
16 5 (0.15%) Mesosphere
17 4 (0.12%) Debian
18 3 (0.091%) DC/OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,719 (52.11%) Agile Software Development
2 1,190 (36.07%) Test Automation
3 624 (18.91%) Scrum
4 530 (16.07%) BDD
5 509 (15.43%) TDD
6 431 (13.06%) DevOps
7 361 (10.94%) SDLC
8 334 (10.12%) Problem-Solving
9 331 (10.03%) Continuous Integration
10 321 (9.73%) Project Management
11 281 (8.52%) User Acceptance Testing
12 264 (8.00%) Test Scripting
12 264 (8.00%) Test Strategy
13 246 (7.46%) Software Engineering
14 242 (7.34%) Continuous Improvement
15 233 (7.06%) Kanban
16 214 (6.49%) Stakeholder Management
16 214 (6.49%) User Stories
17 203 (6.15%) Microservices
18 196 (5.94%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 775 (23.49%) Java
2 599 (18.16%) SQL
3 474 (14.37%) JavaScript
4 444 (13.46%) C#
5 221 (6.70%) Python
6 89 (2.70%) Ruby
7 71 (2.15%) Scala
8 66 (2.00%) PHP
9 65 (1.97%) Groovy
10 64 (1.94%) T-SQL
11 63 (1.91%) PowerShell
12 59 (1.79%) Java 8
13 56 (1.70%) Bash Shell
13 56 (1.70%) PL/SQL
14 46 (1.39%) C++
15 45 (1.36%) C
15 45 (1.36%) Shell Script
16 41 (1.24%) TypeScript
17 34 (1.03%) ES6
18 30 (0.91%) Perl
Qualifications
1 232 (7.03%) Degree
2 156 (4.73%) Security Cleared
3 143 (4.33%) ISTQB
4 139 (4.21%) ISEB
5 118 (3.58%) SC Cleared
6 59 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
7 55 (1.67%) PMP
8 48 (1.45%) PMI Certification
9 46 (1.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 34 (1.03%) BPSS Clearance
11 33 (1.00%) PRINCE2 Certification
12 28 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
13 24 (0.73%) DV Cleared
14 19 (0.58%) Master's Degree
14 19 (0.58%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 18 (0.55%) PhD
16 17 (0.52%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
17 16 (0.48%) MCSA
18 11 (0.33%) Siebel Certification
19 10 (0.30%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 105 (3.18%) PMO
2 77 (2.33%) Data Quality
3 45 (1.36%) GDPR
4 26 (0.79%) WCAG
5 24 (0.73%) SLA
6 22 (0.67%) MiFID
7 12 (0.36%) COBIT
7 12 (0.36%) ISO 9001
8 11 (0.33%) PCI DSS
8 11 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 10 (0.30%) GCP
10 7 (0.21%) COSO
10 7 (0.21%) EMIR
10 7 (0.21%) JSP 440
10 7 (0.21%) SEPA
11 6 (0.18%) Dodd-Frank
12 5 (0.15%) Disclosure Scotland
12 5 (0.15%) ISO 14001
13 4 (0.12%) GxP
13 4 (0.12%) SSAE 16
System Software
1 164 (4.97%) Docker
2 51 (1.55%) Active Directory
3 20 (0.61%) Apache Flume
4 18 (0.55%) Microsoft App-V
4 18 (0.55%) VMware Infrastructure
5 15 (0.45%) HDFS
6 14 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.30%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 9 (0.27%) XenDesktop
9 7 (0.21%) XenApp
10 5 (0.15%) vSphere
11 3 (0.091%) Oracle RAC
11 3 (0.091%) VMware ESXi
12 2 (0.061%) KVM
12 2 (0.061%) NFS
12 2 (0.061%) Snort
12 2 (0.061%) Squid
12 2 (0.061%) vCloud
12 2 (0.061%) Virtual Desktop
12 2 (0.061%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 130 (3.94%) Ansible
2 101 (3.06%) Puppet
3 68 (2.06%) Terraform
4 65 (1.97%) Kubernetes
5 58 (1.76%) Opscode Chef
6 43 (1.30%) HP Quality Center
7 32 (0.97%) SCCM
8 26 (0.79%) HP ALM
9 25 (0.76%) Grafana
10 23 (0.70%) Nagios
11 16 (0.48%) Kibana
12 15 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
13 12 (0.36%) Icinga
14 11 (0.33%) Cobbler
14 11 (0.33%) logstash
14 11 (0.33%) Packer
14 11 (0.33%) Prometheus
15 10 (0.30%) WMI
15 10 (0.30%) WSUS
15 10 (0.30%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 327 (9.91%) Microsoft
2 306 (9.28%) Oracle
3 110 (3.33%) SAP
4 86 (2.61%) Adobe
5 81 (2.46%) Atlassian
6 76 (2.30%) Google
7 66 (2.00%) HP
8 55 (1.67%) Cisco
9 54 (1.64%) Salesforce.com
10 51 (1.55%) Sitecore
11 42 (1.27%) Red Hat
12 40 (1.21%) IBM
13 39 (1.18%) VMware
14 36 (1.09%) Citrix
14 36 (1.09%) Splunk
15 29 (0.88%) Tableau
16 27 (0.82%) McAfee
17 25 (0.76%) New Relic
17 25 (0.76%) Siebel
18 24 (0.73%) MuleSoft
1,388 QA job vacancies Nationwide