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

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 61 55
Rank change year-on-year -1 -6 +24
Contract jobs citing QA 1,701 1,068 1,489
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.71% 3.66% 3.38%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.55% 23.84% 23.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,066 714 1,029
10th Percentile £313 £263 £313
25th Percentile £400 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £481 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.23% -6.10% -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 99 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 £15.38
Median % change year-on-year -38.84% +225.10% -31.60%
75th Percentile £68.75 £73.13 £28.52
90th Percentile £73.60 £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 7,892 4,479 6,292
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.21% 15.33% 14.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,118 2,893 4,018
10th Percentile £337 £263 £300
25th Percentile £413 £399 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £630
90th Percentile £700 £720 £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 434 175 374
10th Percentile £14.32 £17.69 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.14 £13.18
Median hourly rate £31.25 £31.76 £20.55
Median % change year-on-year -1.61% +54.53% -48.62%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.18 £82.88 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.50 £32.00 £17.86
% change year-on-year +10.94% +79.17% -52.37%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 1,476 £492 +0.92% 841
London +6 759 £500 - 274
UK excluding London +2 758 £475 +3.26% 673
Work from Home +6 463 £498 -0.50% 364
North of England -19 176 £475 -5.00% 174
South East -13 170 £492 +10.94% 187
Midlands -10 161 £450 +9.22% 105
South West +21 118 £498 -0.50% 84
West Midlands -14 115 £485 +9.60% 68
North West -4 88 £425 -16.26% 93
Yorkshire -26 63 £525 +3.96% 50
East of England +2 61 £488 -4.83% 70
Scotland +8 58 £525 +34.79% 43
East Midlands -11 47 £400 +2.37% 37
North East -7 25 £488 +5.98% 32
Northern Ireland +8 16 £475 +29.69% 6
Wales -14 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 95 (5.58%) Confluence
2 33 (1.94%) SharePoint
3 24 (1.41%) CMS
4 21 (1.23%) IIS
5 13 (0.76%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 13 (0.76%) Apache
6 9 (0.53%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
7 6 (0.35%) Apache Spark
7 6 (0.35%) SAS
8 5 (0.29%) Anypoint
8 5 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
8 5 (0.29%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.24%) nginx
10 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.18%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.12%) Apache Solr
11 2 (0.12%) Documentum
11 2 (0.12%) Jupyter
11 2 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 2 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 65 (3.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (2.41%) Microsoft Office
3 30 (1.76%) Microsoft Project
4 26 (1.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 16 (0.94%) 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 29 (1.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 14 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
3 12 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
4 8 (0.47%) Shopify
4 8 (0.47%) Workday HCM
5 7 (0.41%) Payment Gateway
6 5 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
7 4 (0.24%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.24%) Maximo
7 4 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.18%) Aladdin
8 3 (0.18%) Algo Collateral
8 3 (0.18%) NEC Housing
8 3 (0.18%) NetSuite
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle Cash Management
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle EBS R12
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
8 3 (0.18%) SAP ERP
9 2 (0.12%) Actimize
Cloud Services
1 388 (22.81%) Azure
2 269 (15.81%) AWS
3 170 (9.99%) Azure DevOps
4 130 (7.64%) GitHub
5 107 (6.29%) Power Platform
6 83 (4.88%) GitHub Actions
7 80 (4.70%) GCP
8 58 (3.41%) Serverless
9 37 (2.18%) OpenShift
10 35 (2.06%) AWS Lambda
10 35 (2.06%) SaaS
11 34 (2.00%) Amazon S3
11 34 (2.00%) Dynamics 365
12 26 (1.53%) Amazon ECS
13 25 (1.47%) AWS CloudFormation
14 23 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 23 (1.35%) Azure Data Factory
15 21 (1.23%) OCI
16 19 (1.12%) Snowflake
17 18 (1.06%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.23%) Firewall
2 16 (0.94%) Internet
3 13 (0.76%) 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 (0.29%) SD-WAN
9 4 (0.24%) 5G
9 4 (0.24%) Broadband
9 4 (0.24%) SMS
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%) TCP/IP
11 2 (0.12%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 96 (5.64%) SQL Server
2 91 (5.35%) Power BI
3 58 (3.41%) Data Warehouse
4 50 (2.94%) Relational Database
5 48 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
6 43 (2.53%) MySQL
7 38 (2.23%) NoSQL
8 37 (2.18%) Tableau
9 36 (2.12%) Oracle Database
10 28 (1.65%) Metadata
11 23 (1.35%) Data Lake
11 23 (1.35%) Oracle Reports
12 21 (1.23%) MongoDB
13 16 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
13 16 (0.94%) Azure SQL Database
14 15 (0.88%) Big Data
14 15 (0.88%) BigQuery
14 15 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 14 (0.82%) DynamoDB
16 12 (0.71%) Redis
Development Applications
1 306 (17.99%) JIRA
2 146 (8.58%) Git
3 129 (7.58%) Selenium
4 121 (7.11%) Jenkins
5 111 (6.53%) GitLab
6 89 (5.23%) Postman
7 65 (3.82%) Cypress.io
8 61 (3.59%) Cucumber
9 52 (3.06%) REST Assured
10 46 (2.70%) JUnit
11 33 (1.94%) JMeter
12 31 (1.82%) SonarQube
12 31 (1.82%) Zephyr
13 21 (1.23%) WebDriver
14 20 (1.18%) TestRail
15 18 (1.06%) Gatling
16 17 (1.00%) Appium
17 16 (0.94%) TestNG
18 15 (0.88%) Gradle
18 15 (0.88%) Visual Studio
General
1 604 (35.51%) Social Skills
2 404 (23.75%) Finance
3 273 (16.05%) Analytical Skills
4 204 (11.99%) Public Sector
5 150 (8.82%) Banking
6 46 (2.70%) Retail
7 43 (2.53%) Documentation Skills
8 40 (2.35%) Organisational Skills
9 39 (2.29%) Manufacturing
10 35 (2.06%) Marketing
11 25 (1.47%) Front Office
11 25 (1.47%) Legal
12 23 (1.35%) Investment Banking
13 22 (1.29%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
14 20 (1.18%) Military
15 19 (1.12%) Telecoms
16 17 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
17 16 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 16 (0.94%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 220 (12.93%) Analyst
2 211 (12.40%) Developer
3 199 (11.70%) Lead
4 196 (11.52%) Senior
5 121 (7.11%) Business Analyst
6 117 (6.88%) QA Engineer
7 95 (5.58%) Tester
8 84 (4.94%) Project Manager
9 83 (4.88%) Test Manager
10 73 (4.29%) Test Engineer
11 69 (4.06%) Architect
12 62 (3.64%) Java Developer
13 51 (3.00%) Data Analyst
13 51 (3.00%) Test Leader
14 44 (2.59%) Senior Analyst
15 43 (2.53%) Consultant
16 41 (2.41%) Data Engineer
16 41 (2.41%) QA Leader
17 38 (2.23%) C# Developer
18 37 (2.18%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 142 (8.35%) REST
2 109 (6.41%) .NET
3 102 (6.00%) Playwright
4 81 (4.76%) RESTful
5 80 (4.70%) Spring
6 76 (4.47%) Spring Boot
7 66 (3.88%) React
8 50 (2.94%) .NET Framework
9 48 (2.82%) Kafka
9 48 (2.82%) Node.js
10 46 (2.70%) AngularJS
11 42 (2.47%) HTML
12 41 (2.41%) CSS
13 39 (2.29%) JSON
14 25 (1.47%) Gherkin
15 23 (1.35%) Oracle Fusion
16 22 (1.29%) pytest
17 21 (1.23%) Middleware
17 21 (1.23%) Quarkus
17 21 (1.23%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 167 (9.82%) Product Ownership
2 79 (4.64%) Cloud Native
3 45 (2.65%) Onboarding
4 44 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
5 42 (2.47%) Mobile App
6 37 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
7 35 (2.06%) Distributed Systems
8 33 (1.94%) PMI
9 30 (1.76%) Data Structures
10 28 (1.65%) Management Information System
11 24 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
11 24 (1.41%) Virtual Team
12 22 (1.29%) Analytical Mindset
12 22 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
13 19 (1.12%) SWIFT Messaging Network
14 18 (1.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 17 (1.00%) Derivative
16 16 (0.94%) Data Centre
16 16 (0.94%) NHS
17 15 (0.88%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 89 (5.23%) Windows
2 50 (2.94%) Linux
3 29 (1.70%) Windows Server
4 22 (1.29%) Android
5 18 (1.06%) Apple iOS
6 16 (0.94%) 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
1 665 (39.09%) Agile
2 450 (26.46%) DevOps
3 445 (26.16%) Test Automation
4 431 (25.34%) CI/CD
5 352 (20.69%) Problem-Solving
6 310 (18.22%) Stakeholder Management
7 284 (16.70%) Continuous Improvement
8 274 (16.11%) Validation
9 259 (15.23%) User Acceptance Testing
10 241 (14.17%) Scrum
11 204 (11.99%) Test Strategy
12 200 (11.76%) Migration
13 176 (10.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 148 (8.70%) SDLC
15 144 (8.47%) Test Scripting
16 143 (8.41%) Regression Testing
17 142 (8.35%) AI
18 140 (8.23%) ETL
18 140 (8.23%) Project Management
19 136 (8.00%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 352 (20.69%) SQL
2 226 (13.29%) Java
3 221 (12.99%) Python
4 131 (7.70%) JavaScript
5 130 (7.64%) C#
6 105 (6.17%) TypeScript
7 48 (2.82%) PL/SQL
8 45 (2.65%) T-SQL
9 34 (2.00%) PowerShell
10 22 (1.29%) Kotlin
11 17 (1.00%) Bash
12 16 (0.94%) C++
12 16 (0.94%) VBA
13 15 (0.88%) Ruby
13 15 (0.88%) VB
14 13 (0.76%) Bicep
14 13 (0.76%) Scala
15 12 (0.71%) C
15 12 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 11 (0.65%) PHP
Qualifications
1 365 (21.46%) Security Cleared
2 264 (15.52%) SC Cleared
3 165 (9.70%) Degree
4 71 (4.17%) ISTQB
5 63 (3.70%) PMI Certification
6 54 (3.17%) PMP
7 51 (3.00%) Computer Science Degree
8 50 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
9 43 (2.53%) DV Cleared
10 33 (1.94%) Master's Degree
11 14 (0.82%) 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
1 118 (6.94%) Data Quality
2 80 (4.70%) Accessibility
3 49 (2.88%) GDPR
4 43 (2.53%) PMO
5 29 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 26 (1.53%) PCI DSS
7 21 (1.23%) WCAG
8 20 (1.18%) NIST
9 16 (0.94%) IFRS
9 16 (0.94%) IFRS 17
10 15 (0.88%) PSD2
11 13 (0.76%) GRC
11 13 (0.76%) SLA
12 12 (0.71%) GxP
12 12 (0.71%) SEPA
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 (6.58%) Docker
2 13 (0.76%) 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
6 3 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.12%) GridGain
7 2 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.059%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.059%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
8 1 (0.059%) Varnish
8 1 (0.059%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 136 (8.00%) Kubernetes
2 83 (4.88%) Terraform
3 36 (2.12%) Grafana
4 34 (2.00%) Ansible
5 26 (1.53%) Argo
6 20 (1.18%) HP ALM
6 20 (1.18%) Prometheus
7 12 (0.71%) Nmap
8 10 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
9 7 (0.41%) Puppet
10 6 (0.35%) HP Quality Center
10 6 (0.35%) Kibana
11 4 (0.24%) CloudHub
12 3 (0.18%) Consul
12 3 (0.18%) Progress Chef
13 2 (0.12%) SCCM
14 1 (0.059%) Cisco Prime
14 1 (0.059%) Microsoft Intune
14 1 (0.059%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 174 (10.23%) Microsoft
2 159 (9.35%) Oracle
3 102 (6.00%) SAP
4 85 (5.00%) Salesforce
5 54 (3.17%) ServiceNow
6 46 (2.70%) Citrix
7 43 (2.53%) Google
8 29 (1.70%) Red Hat
9 28 (1.65%) Adobe
10 26 (1.53%) Databricks
11 23 (1.35%) HP
12 17 (1.00%) Informatica
12 17 (1.00%) MuleSoft
12 17 (1.00%) Workday
13 15 (0.88%) Splunk
14 14 (0.82%) IBM
15 10 (0.59%) Talend
16 9 (0.53%) Guidewire
17 8 (0.47%) Infor
17 8 (0.47%) Sage