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 8 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 62 57
Rank change year-on-year +1 -5 +22
Contract jobs citing QA 1,692 1,070 1,487
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.70% 3.66% 3.39%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.53% 23.96% 23.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,058 717 1,029
10th Percentile £314 £263 £313
25th Percentile £400 £370 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £475 £513
Median % change year-on-year +3.79% -7.32% -0.49%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £619
90th Percentile £675 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £460 £500
% change year-on-year +3.26% -8.00% +7.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 98 23 72
10th Percentile £12.85 £15.93 £10.82
25th Percentile £14.02 £20.63 £12.25
Median hourly rate £30.58 £50.00 £15.57
Median % change year-on-year -38.84% +221.23% -30.78%
75th Percentile £68.44 £73.13 £28.52
90th Percentile £70.75 £75.00 £66.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £57.75 £14.00
% change year-on-year -47.05% +312.50% -24.32%

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 7,860 4,465 6,271
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.18% 15.28% 14.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,091 2,889 4,004
10th Percentile £338 £263 £300
25th Percentile £413 £391 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £625
90th Percentile £700 £717 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 432 175 374
10th Percentile £14.05 £17.69 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.14 £13.18
Median hourly rate £30.58 £32.00 £20.80
Median % change year-on-year -4.44% +53.83% -47.99%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £81.00 £83.10 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.92 £32.00 £18.00
% change year-on-year +2.88% +77.78% -52.00%

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 8 April 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 8 April 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 8 April 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 -1 1,470 £494 +1.91% 841
London +3 760 £500 - 274
UK excluding London 0 749 £475 +3.26% 673
Work from Home +6 457 £500 +0.91% 364
North of England -18 174 £475 -5.00% 174
South East -11 168 £500 +11.11% 187
Midlands -8 160 £450 +9.22% 105
South West +17 117 £508 +1.50% 84
West Midlands -17 113 £483 +9.04% 68
North West -5 87 £425 -16.26% 93
Yorkshire -28 61 £525 +3.96% 50
East of England +3 59 £475 -7.27% 70
Scotland +3 57 £525 +34.79% 43
East Midlands -9 48 £401 +2.62% 37
North East -7 26 £500 +17.65% 32
Northern Ireland +6 16 £475 +16.56% 6
Wales -13 12 £445 -15.24% 21

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 96 (5.67%) Confluence
2 34 (2.01%) SharePoint
3 25 (1.48%) CMS
4 21 (1.24%) IIS
5 14 (0.83%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 13 (0.77%) Apache
7 9 (0.53%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 6 (0.35%) Apache Spark
8 6 (0.35%) SAS
9 5 (0.30%) Anypoint
9 5 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
9 5 (0.30%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.24%) nginx
11 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.18%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.12%) Apache Solr
12 2 (0.12%) Apache Synapse
12 2 (0.12%) Documentum
12 2 (0.12%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.12%) Luigi
Applications
1 66 (3.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (2.42%) Microsoft Office
3 30 (1.77%) Microsoft Project
4 26 (1.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 16 (0.95%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.24%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.18%) Simulink
7 3 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.12%) Autodesk Smoke
8 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.059%) Adobe After Effects
9 1 (0.059%) Adobe Premiere
9 1 (0.059%) Camtasia
9 1 (0.059%) CPLEX
9 1 (0.059%) Mingle
9 1 (0.059%) Navisworks
9 1 (0.059%) Notion
9 1 (0.059%) Revit
Business Applications
1 27 (1.60%) SAP S/4HANA
2 14 (0.83%) Dynamics CRM
3 12 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
4 9 (0.53%) Workday HCM
5 8 (0.47%) Shopify
6 7 (0.41%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.35%) Oracle Payables
8 4 (0.24%) Adobe Campaign
8 4 (0.24%) Maximo
8 4 (0.24%) Oracle Cash Management
8 4 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
8 4 (0.24%) Oracle Receivables
8 4 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
9 3 (0.18%) Aladdin
9 3 (0.18%) Algo Collateral
9 3 (0.18%) NEC Housing
9 3 (0.18%) NetSuite
9 3 (0.18%) Oracle EBS R12
9 3 (0.18%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 388 (22.93%) Azure
2 270 (15.96%) AWS
3 170 (10.05%) Azure DevOps
4 128 (7.57%) GitHub
5 107 (6.32%) Power Platform
6 83 (4.91%) GitHub Actions
7 78 (4.61%) GCP
8 56 (3.31%) Serverless
9 37 (2.19%) OpenShift
10 34 (2.01%) Amazon S3
10 34 (2.01%) AWS Lambda
10 34 (2.01%) Dynamics 365
10 34 (2.01%) SaaS
11 26 (1.54%) Amazon ECS
12 25 (1.48%) AWS CloudFormation
13 24 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 23 (1.36%) Azure Data Factory
15 21 (1.24%) OCI
16 19 (1.12%) Snowflake
17 18 (1.06%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.18%) Firewall
2 16 (0.95%) Internet
3 13 (0.77%) Wireless
4 12 (0.71%) HTTP
4 12 (0.71%) WAN
5 11 (0.65%) LAN
5 11 (0.65%) Wi-Fi
6 8 (0.47%) Network Security
7 6 (0.35%) DNS
7 6 (0.35%) VPN
8 5 (0.30%) SD-WAN
8 5 (0.30%) SMS
9 4 (0.24%) 5G
9 4 (0.24%) Broadband
9 4 (0.24%) WebEx
10 3 (0.18%) DSL
10 3 (0.18%) Unified Communications
11 2 (0.12%) IPsec
11 2 (0.12%) NFC
11 2 (0.12%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 94 (5.56%) SQL Server
2 91 (5.38%) Power BI
3 57 (3.37%) Data Warehouse
4 49 (2.90%) Relational Database
5 47 (2.78%) PostgreSQL
6 43 (2.54%) MySQL
7 38 (2.25%) NoSQL
8 36 (2.13%) Oracle Database
9 35 (2.07%) Tableau
10 28 (1.65%) Metadata
11 23 (1.36%) Data Lake
12 22 (1.30%) MongoDB
12 22 (1.30%) Oracle Reports
13 17 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
14 16 (0.95%) Azure SQL Database
14 16 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 15 (0.89%) Big Data
15 15 (0.89%) BigQuery
16 14 (0.83%) DynamoDB
17 12 (0.71%) Redis
Development Applications
1 305 (18.03%) JIRA
2 143 (8.45%) Git
3 127 (7.51%) Selenium
4 120 (7.09%) Jenkins
5 109 (6.44%) GitLab
6 89 (5.26%) Postman
7 65 (3.84%) Cypress.io
8 62 (3.66%) Cucumber
9 51 (3.01%) REST Assured
10 44 (2.60%) JUnit
11 32 (1.89%) JMeter
12 31 (1.83%) Zephyr
13 28 (1.65%) SonarQube
14 20 (1.18%) TestRail
14 20 (1.18%) WebDriver
15 18 (1.06%) Gatling
16 17 (1.00%) Appium
17 16 (0.95%) TestNG
17 16 (0.95%) Visual Studio
18 15 (0.89%) Gradle
General
1 602 (35.58%) Social Skills
2 401 (23.70%) Finance
3 269 (15.90%) Analytical Skills
4 198 (11.70%) Public Sector
5 151 (8.92%) Banking
6 46 (2.72%) Retail
7 45 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
8 41 (2.42%) Organisational Skills
9 38 (2.25%) Manufacturing
10 35 (2.07%) Marketing
11 26 (1.54%) Front Office
12 25 (1.48%) Legal
13 24 (1.42%) Investment Banking
14 22 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
15 21 (1.24%) Aerospace
16 19 (1.12%) Military
16 19 (1.12%) Telecoms
17 17 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 17 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
18 16 (0.95%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 215 (12.71%) Analyst
2 209 (12.35%) Developer
3 198 (11.70%) Lead
4 195 (11.52%) Senior
5 118 (6.97%) Business Analyst
6 114 (6.74%) QA Engineer
7 94 (5.56%) Tester
8 84 (4.96%) Project Manager
9 82 (4.85%) Test Manager
10 73 (4.31%) Test Engineer
11 68 (4.02%) Architect
12 61 (3.61%) Java Developer
13 51 (3.01%) Test Leader
14 50 (2.96%) Data Analyst
15 44 (2.60%) Consultant
16 43 (2.54%) Senior Analyst
17 41 (2.42%) Data Engineer
18 40 (2.36%) QA Leader
19 38 (2.25%) C# Developer
20 37 (2.19%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 140 (8.27%) REST
2 110 (6.50%) .NET
3 102 (6.03%) Playwright
4 81 (4.79%) RESTful
5 78 (4.61%) Spring
6 74 (4.37%) Spring Boot
7 66 (3.90%) React
8 50 (2.96%) .NET Framework
9 49 (2.90%) Kafka
10 47 (2.78%) Node.js
11 45 (2.66%) AngularJS
12 42 (2.48%) HTML
13 41 (2.42%) CSS
14 39 (2.30%) JSON
15 24 (1.42%) Gherkin
15 24 (1.42%) Oracle Fusion
16 21 (1.24%) Middleware
16 21 (1.24%) pytest
16 21 (1.24%) Quarkus
16 21 (1.24%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 166 (9.81%) Product Ownership
2 76 (4.49%) Cloud Native
3 46 (2.72%) Onboarding
4 44 (2.60%) Mobile App
5 43 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
6 37 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
7 35 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
8 33 (1.95%) PMI
9 28 (1.65%) Data Structures
10 27 (1.60%) Management Information System
11 24 (1.42%) Virtual Team
12 22 (1.30%) Analytical Mindset
12 22 (1.30%) Enterprise Software
12 22 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
13 19 (1.12%) SWIFT Messaging Network
14 18 (1.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 17 (1.00%) Data Centre
15 17 (1.00%) Derivative
16 16 (0.95%) NHS
17 15 (0.89%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 89 (5.26%) Windows
2 50 (2.96%) Linux
3 30 (1.77%) Windows Server
4 23 (1.36%) Android
5 19 (1.12%) Apple iOS
6 15 (0.89%) Unix
7 4 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.18%) VMS
9 2 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.12%) Solaris
10 1 (0.059%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.059%) Robot Operating System
10 1 (0.059%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.059%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 663 (39.18%) Agile
2 444 (26.24%) DevOps
3 443 (26.18%) Test Automation
4 424 (25.06%) CI/CD
5 351 (20.74%) Problem-Solving
6 311 (18.38%) Stakeholder Management
7 276 (16.31%) Continuous Improvement
8 273 (16.13%) Validation
9 253 (14.95%) User Acceptance Testing
10 241 (14.24%) Scrum
11 206 (12.17%) Test Strategy
12 196 (11.58%) Migration
13 173 (10.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 147 (8.69%) Test Scripting
15 146 (8.63%) SDLC
16 143 (8.45%) AI
17 142 (8.39%) Regression Testing
18 140 (8.27%) ETL
18 140 (8.27%) Project Management
19 137 (8.10%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 350 (20.69%) SQL
2 222 (13.12%) Java
3 216 (12.77%) Python
4 132 (7.80%) C#
5 130 (7.68%) JavaScript
6 106 (6.26%) TypeScript
7 48 (2.84%) PL/SQL
8 45 (2.66%) T-SQL
9 34 (2.01%) PowerShell
10 21 (1.24%) Kotlin
11 16 (0.95%) Bash
11 16 (0.95%) VBA
12 15 (0.89%) Ruby
12 15 (0.89%) VB
13 14 (0.83%) C++
14 13 (0.77%) Bicep
14 13 (0.77%) Scala
15 12 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 11 (0.65%) PHP
17 10 (0.59%) C
Qualifications
1 356 (21.04%) Security Cleared
2 258 (15.25%) SC Cleared
3 167 (9.87%) Degree
4 72 (4.26%) ISTQB
5 64 (3.78%) PMI Certification
6 55 (3.25%) PMP
7 52 (3.07%) Computer Science Degree
8 50 (2.96%) BPSS Clearance
9 43 (2.54%) DV Cleared
10 33 (1.95%) Master's Degree
11 14 (0.83%) CBAP
12 12 (0.71%) AWS Certification
12 12 (0.71%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 11 (0.65%) CHECK Team Member
13 11 (0.65%) CREST Certified
13 11 (0.65%) Cyber Scheme
13 11 (0.65%) SAFe Agilist
14 10 (0.59%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 10 (0.59%) MBA
14 10 (0.59%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 119 (7.03%) Data Quality
2 84 (4.96%) Accessibility
3 50 (2.96%) GDPR
4 42 (2.48%) PMO
5 29 (1.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 26 (1.54%) PCI DSS
7 21 (1.24%) WCAG
8 20 (1.18%) NIST
9 16 (0.95%) IFRS
9 16 (0.95%) IFRS 17
10 15 (0.89%) PSD2
11 14 (0.83%) SLA
12 12 (0.71%) GxP
12 12 (0.71%) SEPA
13 11 (0.65%) GRC
13 11 (0.65%) ISO 20022
14 10 (0.59%) Basel III
14 10 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 8 (0.47%) COBIT
15 8 (0.47%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 112 (6.62%) Docker
2 12 (0.71%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.24%) Firmware
5 4 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 2 (0.12%) GridGain
7 2 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.059%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.059%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.059%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
8 1 (0.059%) Varnish
8 1 (0.059%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 136 (8.04%) Kubernetes
2 82 (4.85%) Terraform
3 37 (2.19%) Grafana
4 33 (1.95%) Ansible
5 27 (1.60%) Argo
6 21 (1.24%) HP ALM
7 20 (1.18%) Prometheus
8 12 (0.71%) Nmap
9 10 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
11 6 (0.35%) HP Quality Center
11 6 (0.35%) Kibana
11 6 (0.35%) Puppet
12 4 (0.24%) CloudHub
13 3 (0.18%) Consul
13 3 (0.18%) Progress Chef
14 2 (0.12%) SCCM
15 1 (0.059%) logstash
15 1 (0.059%) Rundeck
15 1 (0.059%) SELinux
Vendors
1 170 (10.05%) Microsoft
2 157 (9.28%) Oracle
3 99 (5.85%) SAP
4 83 (4.91%) Salesforce
5 54 (3.19%) ServiceNow
6 46 (2.72%) Citrix
7 41 (2.42%) Google
8 29 (1.71%) Adobe
8 29 (1.71%) Red Hat
9 27 (1.60%) Databricks
10 24 (1.42%) HP
11 18 (1.06%) Informatica
12 17 (1.00%) MuleSoft
12 17 (1.00%) Workday
13 15 (0.89%) Splunk
14 14 (0.83%) IBM
15 11 (0.65%) Talend
16 9 (0.53%) Guidewire
17 8 (0.47%) Braze
17 8 (0.47%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud