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 6 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 62 64
Rank change year-on-year +13 +2 +4
Contract jobs citing QA 2,294 1,273 1,228
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.20% 3.88% 3.26%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 23.76% 22.32% 24.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,343 866 709
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £388 £380 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.52%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £657 £650 £701
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 238 43 73
10th Percentile £13.25 £12.28 £11.89
25th Percentile £15.28 £13.50 £13.26
Median hourly rate £28.00 £27.54 £15.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.67% +83.60% -70.00%
75th Percentile £48.75 £45.36 £28.75
90th Percentile £69.83 £72.00 £73.58
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.98 £15.12 £14.98
% change year-on-year +91.67% +0.93% -70.04%

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 9,656 5,704 5,047
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.67% 17.38% 13.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,056 3,649 2,927
10th Percentile £325 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £610 £604 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +1.42% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 672 276 244
10th Percentile £13.86 £13.60 £13.26
25th Percentile £16.60 £16.50 £15.67
Median hourly rate £32.20 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.33% +9.09% -22.82%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.31 £62.59
90th Percentile £74.25 £77.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.40 £25.15 £27.50
% change year-on-year +28.81% -8.55% -28.66%

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 +16 2,006 £475 - 3,407
UK excluding London +20 1,165 £450 - 2,150
London +7 894 £500 - 1,530
Work from Home +1 574 £475 +5.03% 1,482
North of England +6 282 £453 +5.35% 546
South East +13 262 £425 -15.00% 518
Midlands +24 233 £450 +1.12% 338
West Midlands +26 195 £450 -9.98% 236
East of England +17 158 £438 -12.50% 190
South West +12 137 £525 +10.53% 198
Yorkshire +7 111 £474 +3.04% 162
North West -14 111 £475 +14.46% 277
Scotland +3 88 £420 -9.19% 217
North East -5 60 £400 -20.00% 110
East Midlands -5 37 £415 +1.22% 101
Wales 0 22 £413 +17.86% 71
Northern Ireland -1 7 £450 +50.00% 95

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
1 137 (5.97%) Confluence
2 54 (2.35%) CMS
3 42 (1.83%) SharePoint
4 16 (0.70%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.65%) IIS
6 13 (0.57%) Apache
6 13 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
7 12 (0.52%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 9 (0.39%) SAS
9 8 (0.35%) Sitecore CMS
10 7 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.26%) Traefik
12 5 (0.22%) Headless CMS
12 5 (0.22%) OpenStack
12 5 (0.22%) Tuxedo
12 5 (0.22%) WordPress
13 4 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
13 4 (0.17%) Umbraco
14 3 (0.13%) Moodle
14 3 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 83 (3.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 39 (1.70%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 22 (0.96%) MS Visio
5 18 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
7 9 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.26%) Revit
9 5 (0.22%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.22%) Navisworks
10 4 (0.17%) ProjectWise
11 3 (0.13%) CATIA
11 3 (0.13%) Mingle
12 2 (0.087%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.087%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.087%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.087%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.087%) Productboard
12 2 (0.087%) Windchill
13 1 (0.044%) Notion
Business Applications
1 29 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 9 (0.39%) Shopify
5 7 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.31%) SAP GRC
5 7 (0.31%) Workday HCM
6 4 (0.17%) Aladdin
6 4 (0.17%) Maximo
6 4 (0.17%) NEC Housing
6 4 (0.17%) Primavera
6 4 (0.17%) ResourceLink
6 4 (0.17%) SAP MM
6 4 (0.17%) Teamcenter
7 3 (0.13%) Infor CloudSuite
7 3 (0.13%) iTrent
7 3 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
7 3 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
7 3 (0.13%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.087%) Actimize
Cloud Services
1 469 (20.44%) Azure
2 414 (18.05%) AWS
3 224 (9.76%) GitHub
4 203 (8.85%) Azure DevOps
5 131 (5.71%) GitHub Actions
6 113 (4.93%) GCP
7 111 (4.84%) Power Platform
8 82 (3.57%) Serverless
9 58 (2.53%) AWS Lambda
10 54 (2.35%) SaaS
11 50 (2.18%) Amazon S3
12 45 (1.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 42 (1.83%) Dynamics 365
14 36 (1.57%) OpenShift
15 35 (1.53%) GitHub Copilot
16 34 (1.48%) Snowflake
17 32 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
18 31 (1.35%) Microsoft 365
19 30 (1.31%) Azure Monitor
20 29 (1.26%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.18%) Broadband
2 26 (1.13%) Firewall
3 21 (0.92%) Internet
4 20 (0.87%) DNS
4 20 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
5 17 (0.74%) 5G
6 16 (0.70%) 4G
6 16 (0.70%) TCP/IP
7 15 (0.65%) HTTP
7 15 (0.65%) VLAN
8 14 (0.61%) WAN
9 12 (0.52%) Network Security
10 11 (0.48%) LAN
10 11 (0.48%) VPN
11 10 (0.44%) DHCP
12 8 (0.35%) IPv4
12 8 (0.35%) IPv6
12 8 (0.35%) SD-WAN
12 8 (0.35%) Unified Communications
12 8 (0.35%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (4.84%) SQL Server
2 97 (4.23%) Power BI
3 81 (3.53%) Relational Database
4 80 (3.49%) PostgreSQL
5 62 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
6 54 (2.35%) MongoDB
7 47 (2.05%) MySQL
8 46 (2.01%) NoSQL
9 44 (1.92%) Metadata
10 39 (1.70%) Oracle Database
11 31 (1.35%) Oracle Reports
12 30 (1.31%) Tableau
13 23 (1.00%) Data Lake
14 20 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 16 (0.70%) Big Data
15 16 (0.70%) GIS
16 15 (0.65%) Power Query
16 15 (0.65%) RDBMS
16 15 (0.65%) Redis
17 14 (0.61%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 303 (13.21%) JIRA
2 258 (11.25%) Git
3 182 (7.93%) Jenkins
4 176 (7.67%) Selenium
5 151 (6.58%) GitLab
6 98 (4.27%) Cucumber
7 85 (3.71%) Postman
8 76 (3.31%) Cypress.io
9 73 (3.18%) JUnit
10 54 (2.35%) Zephyr
11 50 (2.18%) JMeter
11 50 (2.18%) SonarQube
12 47 (2.05%) REST Assured
13 46 (2.01%) Gatling
14 33 (1.44%) Maven
15 30 (1.31%) WebDriver
16 26 (1.13%) Gradle
16 26 (1.13%) TestNG
17 24 (1.05%) Appium
18 23 (1.00%) TestRail
General
1 700 (30.51%) Social Skills
2 422 (18.40%) Finance
3 367 (16.00%) Analytical Skills
4 297 (12.95%) Public Sector
5 170 (7.41%) Banking
6 88 (3.84%) Manufacturing
7 74 (3.23%) Retail
8 64 (2.79%) Marketing
8 64 (2.79%) Organisational Skills
9 57 (2.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 47 (2.05%) Telecoms
11 43 (1.87%) Influencing Skills
12 42 (1.83%) Aerospace
13 40 (1.74%) Legal
14 32 (1.39%) Military
15 29 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
16 25 (1.09%) Law
17 19 (0.83%) Investment Banking
17 19 (0.83%) Pharmaceutical
18 18 (0.78%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 305 (13.30%) Developer
2 289 (12.60%) Lead
3 278 (12.12%) Senior
4 258 (11.25%) QA Engineer
5 250 (10.90%) Analyst
6 135 (5.88%) Quality Engineer
7 121 (5.27%) Test Engineer
8 117 (5.10%) Tester
9 103 (4.49%) Business Analyst
10 102 (4.45%) Test Manager
11 84 (3.66%) QA Leader
12 79 (3.44%) Data Engineer
13 77 (3.36%) Java Developer
14 66 (2.88%) Test Leader
15 61 (2.66%) Consultant
16 59 (2.57%) Senior Analyst
17 54 (2.35%) QA Tester
17 54 (2.35%) Test Analyst
18 51 (2.22%) Architect
19 49 (2.14%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 220 (9.59%) REST
2 151 (6.58%) RESTful
3 150 (6.54%) Playwright
4 128 (5.58%) Spring
5 111 (4.84%) Spring Boot
6 107 (4.66%) Terraform
7 98 (4.27%) .NET
7 98 (4.27%) React
8 90 (3.92%) HTML
9 86 (3.75%) Kafka
10 80 (3.49%) CSS
11 76 (3.31%) AngularJS
12 64 (2.79%) Node.js
13 59 (2.57%) SOAP
14 53 (2.31%) Middleware
14 53 (2.31%) pytest
15 41 (1.79%) .NET Framework
15 41 (1.79%) JSON
16 39 (1.70%) Gherkin
16 39 (1.70%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 213 (9.29%) Product Ownership
2 139 (6.06%) Cloud Native
3 85 (3.71%) Onboarding
4 71 (3.10%) Management Information System
5 70 (3.05%) Enterprise Software
6 55 (2.40%) Distributed Systems
7 52 (2.27%) Mobile App
8 48 (2.09%) AI Agents
8 48 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
9 43 (1.87%) Data Structures
10 40 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
11 34 (1.48%) Data Centre
12 32 (1.39%) Low-Code
13 28 (1.22%) NHS
14 24 (1.05%) CMDB
14 24 (1.05%) Virtual Team
15 19 (0.83%) Educational Technology
16 17 (0.74%) Analytical Mindset
17 15 (0.65%) Operational Technology
18 14 (0.61%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 89 (3.88%) Windows
2 79 (3.44%) Linux
3 49 (2.14%) Apple iOS
4 45 (1.96%) Android
5 35 (1.53%) Unix
6 24 (1.05%) Windows Server
7 17 (0.74%) VMS
8 7 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.22%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.087%) AIX
10 2 (0.087%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.087%) zOS
11 1 (0.044%) CentOS
11 1 (0.044%) Debian
11 1 (0.044%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.044%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.044%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.044%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 890 (38.80%) Agile
2 651 (28.38%) Test Automation
3 601 (26.20%) CI/CD
4 554 (24.15%) DevOps
5 478 (20.84%) Stakeholder Management
6 467 (20.36%) Continuous Improvement
7 393 (17.13%) Problem-Solving
8 376 (16.39%) Validation
9 344 (15.00%) AI
10 341 (14.86%) Scrum
11 329 (14.34%) Test Strategy
12 269 (11.73%) User Acceptance Testing
13 252 (10.99%) Migration
14 214 (9.33%) Microservices
14 214 (9.33%) SDLC
15 202 (8.81%) End-to-End Testing
16 191 (8.33%) Software Engineering
17 188 (8.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 179 (7.80%) Defect Management
19 175 (7.63%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 413 (18.00%) SQL
2 327 (14.25%) Python
3 304 (13.25%) Java
4 193 (8.41%) JavaScript
5 118 (5.14%) C#
6 109 (4.75%) TypeScript
7 56 (2.44%) Bash
8 35 (1.53%) PowerShell
9 33 (1.44%) PL/SQL
10 30 (1.31%) Kotlin
11 26 (1.13%) T-SQL
12 24 (1.05%) Scala
13 21 (0.92%) Swift
14 19 (0.83%) Shell Script
15 17 (0.74%) Objective-C
16 16 (0.70%) VB
17 15 (0.65%) C
18 14 (0.61%) R
18 14 (0.61%) VBA
19 13 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 543 (23.67%) Security Cleared
2 420 (18.31%) SC Cleared
3 146 (6.36%) Degree
4 114 (4.97%) BPSS Clearance
5 72 (3.14%) ISTQB
6 67 (2.92%) DV Cleared
7 45 (1.96%) Computer Science Degree
8 23 (1.00%) PMP
9 22 (0.96%) AWS Certification
10 19 (0.83%) PMI Certification
11 18 (0.78%) Azure Certification
12 16 (0.70%) Master's Degree
13 14 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
14 10 (0.44%) DBS Check
14 10 (0.44%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 10 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
15 9 (0.39%) Cisco Certification
15 9 (0.39%) IIBA
15 9 (0.39%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 8 (0.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 164 (7.15%) Data Quality
2 137 (5.97%) Accessibility
3 38 (1.66%) WCAG
4 35 (1.53%) GDPR
5 28 (1.22%) PMO
6 26 (1.13%) GRC
7 17 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (0.65%) NIST
9 12 (0.52%) ISO 9001
10 11 (0.48%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 11 (0.48%) GxP
11 9 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
11 9 (0.39%) SLA
12 8 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
12 8 (0.35%) ISO 19650
12 8 (0.35%) Software Quality Assurance
13 7 (0.31%) IFRS
13 7 (0.31%) NCSC
14 6 (0.26%) ISO 20022
15 5 (0.22%) GMP
System Software
1 206 (8.98%) Docker
2 24 (1.05%) Active Directory
3 19 (0.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (0.44%) IAG
6 6 (0.26%) Firmware
7 4 (0.17%) ACF2
7 4 (0.17%) RACF
7 4 (0.17%) VirtualBox
8 3 (0.13%) KVM
8 3 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
9 2 (0.087%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.044%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.044%) QEMU
10 1 (0.044%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.044%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.044%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 237 (10.33%) Kubernetes
2 64 (2.79%) Ansible
3 58 (2.53%) Grafana
4 37 (1.61%) Prometheus
5 31 (1.35%) Argo
6 11 (0.48%) HP ALM
7 10 (0.44%) SCCM
8 8 (0.35%) Microsoft Clustering
8 8 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.31%) HP Quality Center
9 7 (0.31%) Istio
9 7 (0.31%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
11 5 (0.22%) Puppet
12 4 (0.17%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.17%) SCOM
13 3 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 2 (0.087%) Control-M
14 2 (0.087%) ITRS Geneos
14 2 (0.087%) Kibana
Vendors
1 252 (10.99%) Microsoft
2 163 (7.11%) Oracle
3 114 (4.97%) Salesforce
4 74 (3.23%) SAP
5 62 (2.70%) ServiceNow
6 51 (2.22%) Google
7 46 (2.01%) Databricks
8 34 (1.48%) Dynatrace
8 34 (1.48%) Splunk
9 31 (1.35%) Red Hat
10 24 (1.05%) Citrix
11 22 (0.96%) VMware
12 21 (0.92%) Adobe
12 21 (0.92%) Cisco
13 19 (0.83%) Informatica
14 16 (0.70%) Sitecore
14 16 (0.70%) Talend
14 16 (0.70%) Workday
15 15 (0.65%) IBM
16 13 (0.57%) HP