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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 64 57
Rank change year-on-year +2 -7 +18
Contract jobs citing QA 1,804 1,076 1,450
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.65% 3.66% 3.32%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.78% 22.73% 24.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,116 749 945
10th Percentile £321 £281 £313
25th Percentile £397 £384 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £509
Median % change year-on-year - -6.68% +0.20%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £601
90th Percentile £669 £675 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £460 £500
% change year-on-year -2.17% -8.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 128 27 101
10th Percentile £12.91 £13.49 £10.86
25th Percentile £15.33 £15.21 £12.24
Median hourly rate £30.58 £35.00 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.63% +150.00% -37.74%
75th Percentile £63.13 £70.50 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £71.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £53.00 £13.52
% change year-on-year -42.30% +292.01% -28.84%

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 8,281 4,734 5,997
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.73% 16.12% 13.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,303 3,009 3,752
10th Percentile £344 £275 £281
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £717 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 487 196 428
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.12 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.50 £13.18
Median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £23.30
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% +39.51% -39.82%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £82.04 £83.08 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.79 £32.50 £19.17
% change year-on-year +13.18% +69.54% -50.27%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 +3 1,542 £477 +0.42% 719
UK excluding London +9 830 £450 -2.17% 566
London +8 777 £500 +0.25% 232
Work from Home +3 512 £488 -1.52% 405
South East +5 190 £450 -5.26% 181
North of England -28 175 £463 -2.63% 142
Midlands -12 171 £425 +13.33% 91
West Midlands -6 126 £436 +2.53% 49
South West +28 114 £491 -1.75% 66
Scotland +13 82 £380 -16.71% 18
East of England +12 81 £475 -0.73% 59
North West -22 80 £440 +0.46% 75
Yorkshire -31 69 £520 -0.05% 45
East Midlands -17 46 £393 +6.39% 42
North East -9 26 £413 -1.79% 24
Northern Ireland +10 20 £463 +42.31% 13
Wales -10 11 £450 -14.29% 14

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 92 (5.10%) Confluence
2 31 (1.72%) SharePoint
3 28 (1.55%) CMS
4 18 (1.00%) IIS
5 15 (0.83%) Apache Spark
6 14 (0.78%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 7 (0.39%) Apache
7 7 (0.39%) SAS
8 6 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
9 5 (0.28%) Umbraco
10 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.22%) nginx
10 4 (0.22%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 4 (0.22%) Tuxedo
11 3 (0.17%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.17%) Moodle
11 3 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.17%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.11%) Luigi
12 2 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 57 (3.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.77%) Microsoft Office
3 25 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
4 24 (1.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (1.16%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.22%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.17%) CATIA
8 3 (0.17%) Simulink
9 2 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.11%) EPLAN
10 1 (0.055%) Adobe After Effects
10 1 (0.055%) Adobe Premiere
10 1 (0.055%) Camtasia
10 1 (0.055%) Mingle
10 1 (0.055%) Navisworks
10 1 (0.055%) Notion
10 1 (0.055%) Revit
Business Applications
1 28 (1.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 17 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.44%) Shopify
4 7 (0.39%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.33%) Maximo
5 6 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.28%) Infor CloudSuite
6 5 (0.28%) NEC Housing
7 4 (0.22%) Adobe Campaign
7 4 (0.22%) Primavera
7 4 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.17%) Actimize
8 3 (0.17%) Aladdin
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle EBS R12
9 2 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.11%) iTrent
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
9 2 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 2 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.11%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 398 (22.06%) Azure
2 293 (16.24%) AWS
3 166 (9.20%) Azure DevOps
4 148 (8.20%) GitHub
5 105 (5.82%) Power Platform
6 95 (5.27%) GitHub Actions
7 79 (4.38%) GCP
8 48 (2.66%) Serverless
9 36 (2.00%) Dynamics 365
9 36 (2.00%) SaaS
10 34 (1.88%) OpenShift
11 32 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
12 30 (1.66%) Amazon S3
13 29 (1.61%) Snowflake
14 26 (1.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 23 (1.27%) Azure Data Factory
16 20 (1.11%) Amazon EKS
16 20 (1.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 19 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
17 19 (1.05%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.33%) Firewall
2 20 (1.11%) LAN
3 19 (1.05%) Network Security
3 19 (1.05%) WAN
4 18 (1.00%) Internet
4 18 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
5 13 (0.72%) VPN
6 12 (0.67%) Wireless
7 11 (0.61%) DNS
7 11 (0.61%) SD-WAN
7 11 (0.61%) Unified Communications
7 11 (0.61%) VLAN
8 9 (0.50%) HTTP
9 8 (0.44%) IPsec
10 7 (0.39%) SMS
11 6 (0.33%) Cisco Nexus
11 6 (0.33%) TCP/IP
12 5 (0.28%) DHCP
13 4 (0.22%) MPLS
14 2 (0.11%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (5.99%) SQL Server
2 91 (5.04%) Power BI
3 71 (3.94%) Data Warehouse
4 63 (3.49%) PostgreSQL
5 53 (2.94%) Relational Database
6 47 (2.61%) MySQL
7 40 (2.22%) NoSQL
8 37 (2.05%) Tableau
9 33 (1.83%) Data Lake
9 33 (1.83%) Metadata
10 32 (1.77%) Oracle Database
10 32 (1.77%) Oracle Reports
11 24 (1.33%) Big Data
11 24 (1.33%) MongoDB
12 19 (1.05%) Azure SQL Database
12 19 (1.05%) DynamoDB
13 17 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 16 (0.89%) BigQuery
15 14 (0.78%) Amazon Redshift
15 14 (0.78%) Redis
Development Applications
1 291 (16.13%) JIRA
2 172 (9.53%) Git
3 140 (7.76%) Selenium
4 129 (7.15%) Jenkins
5 98 (5.43%) GitLab
6 85 (4.71%) Postman
7 65 (3.60%) Cucumber
8 56 (3.10%) Cypress.io
9 52 (2.88%) JUnit
10 50 (2.77%) REST Assured
11 44 (2.44%) Zephyr
12 35 (1.94%) JMeter
12 35 (1.94%) SonarQube
13 31 (1.72%) WebDriver
14 23 (1.27%) Gatling
15 22 (1.22%) TestRail
16 17 (0.94%) Maven
16 17 (0.94%) TestNG
17 16 (0.89%) Gradle
18 15 (0.83%) Appium
General
1 549 (30.43%) Social Skills
2 413 (22.89%) Finance
3 249 (13.80%) Analytical Skills
4 203 (11.25%) Public Sector
5 145 (8.04%) Banking
6 60 (3.33%) Retail
7 50 (2.77%) Marketing
8 49 (2.72%) Manufacturing
9 46 (2.55%) Organisational Skills
10 35 (1.94%) Aerospace
11 28 (1.55%) Documentation Skills
12 25 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
13 23 (1.27%) Investment Banking
14 22 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 22 (1.22%) Military
15 18 (1.00%) Legal
16 16 (0.89%) Pharmaceutical
17 15 (0.83%) Front Office
18 14 (0.78%) Automotive
18 14 (0.78%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 220 (12.20%) Developer
2 219 (12.14%) Analyst
3 211 (11.70%) Lead
4 207 (11.47%) Senior
5 162 (8.98%) QA Engineer
6 115 (6.37%) Business Analyst
7 100 (5.54%) Tester
8 86 (4.77%) Test Manager
9 69 (3.82%) Architect
10 67 (3.71%) Quality Engineer
11 64 (3.55%) Test Engineer
12 62 (3.44%) Project Manager
13 59 (3.27%) Data Engineer
14 58 (3.22%) Java Developer
15 53 (2.94%) Test Leader
16 52 (2.88%) Data Analyst
17 50 (2.77%) Senior Analyst
18 42 (2.33%) QA Tester
19 41 (2.27%) Consultant
19 41 (2.27%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (7.21%) REST
2 112 (6.21%) .NET
3 99 (5.49%) RESTful
4 95 (5.27%) Playwright
5 78 (4.32%) Spring
6 73 (4.05%) Spring Boot
7 69 (3.82%) React
8 63 (3.49%) HTML
9 57 (3.16%) CSS
10 52 (2.88%) Kafka
11 51 (2.83%) AngularJS
12 50 (2.77%) .NET Framework
13 49 (2.72%) Node.js
14 36 (2.00%) JSON
15 25 (1.39%) Middleware
16 24 (1.33%) Gherkin
16 24 (1.33%) Quarkus
17 23 (1.27%) OAuth
17 23 (1.27%) OpenID
17 23 (1.27%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 149 (8.26%) Product Ownership
2 73 (4.05%) Cloud Native
3 52 (2.88%) Legacy Systems
4 48 (2.66%) Onboarding
5 45 (2.49%) Distributed Systems
6 41 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
7 38 (2.11%) Mobile App
8 29 (1.61%) Management Information System
9 27 (1.50%) Data Structures
9 27 (1.50%) Virtual Team
10 23 (1.27%) Data Centre
10 23 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
11 21 (1.16%) Analytical Mindset
12 19 (1.05%) PMI
13 18 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
14 16 (0.89%) AI Agents
15 14 (0.78%) Legacy Code
16 13 (0.72%) Derivative
16 13 (0.72%) Distributed Architecture
16 13 (0.72%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 81 (4.49%) Windows
2 57 (3.16%) Linux
3 28 (1.55%) Android
3 28 (1.55%) Windows Server
4 27 (1.50%) Apple iOS
5 19 (1.05%) Unix
6 6 (0.33%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.055%) Debian
9 1 (0.055%) Solaris
9 1 (0.055%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.055%) VMS
9 1 (0.055%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.055%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 668 (37.03%) Agile
2 452 (25.06%) Test Automation
3 439 (24.33%) DevOps
4 425 (23.56%) CI/CD
5 298 (16.52%) Validation
6 296 (16.41%) Stakeholder Management
7 275 (15.24%) Continuous Improvement
8 270 (14.97%) Problem-Solving
9 260 (14.41%) User Acceptance Testing
10 235 (13.03%) Scrum
10 235 (13.03%) Test Strategy
11 222 (12.31%) Migration
12 173 (9.59%) AI
13 166 (9.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 156 (8.65%) ETL
15 146 (8.09%) Decision-Making
16 139 (7.71%) Analytics
16 139 (7.71%) SDLC
17 138 (7.65%) Test Management
18 137 (7.59%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 369 (20.45%) SQL
2 236 (13.08%) Python
3 225 (12.47%) Java
4 133 (7.37%) JavaScript
5 129 (7.15%) C#
6 85 (4.71%) TypeScript
7 41 (2.27%) T-SQL
8 39 (2.16%) PL/SQL
9 32 (1.77%) Kotlin
10 28 (1.55%) PowerShell
11 24 (1.33%) Bash
12 20 (1.11%) Scala
13 17 (0.94%) VB
14 16 (0.89%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 16 (0.89%) Swift
15 15 (0.83%) Bicep
15 15 (0.83%) C
15 15 (0.83%) C++
15 15 (0.83%) PHP
16 11 (0.61%) VBA
Qualifications
1 400 (22.17%) Security Cleared
2 291 (16.13%) SC Cleared
3 136 (7.54%) Degree
4 73 (4.05%) ISTQB
5 62 (3.44%) BPSS Clearance
6 51 (2.83%) DV Cleared
7 40 (2.22%) PMI Certification
8 37 (2.05%) PMP
9 32 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
10 19 (1.05%) Master's Degree
11 14 (0.78%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
13 9 (0.50%) AWS Certification
13 9 (0.50%) CBAP
14 8 (0.44%) Azure Certification
15 7 (0.39%) APMP
15 7 (0.39%) CHECK Team Member
15 7 (0.39%) CREST Certified
15 7 (0.39%) Cyber Scheme
15 7 (0.39%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 132 (7.32%) Data Quality
2 81 (4.49%) Accessibility
3 41 (2.27%) PMO
4 33 (1.83%) GDPR
5 20 (1.11%) WCAG
6 19 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 17 (0.94%) IFRS
8 16 (0.89%) GRC
8 16 (0.89%) NIST
8 16 (0.89%) PCI DSS
9 15 (0.83%) IFRS 17
10 13 (0.72%) SLA
11 11 (0.61%) Disclosure Scotland
11 11 (0.61%) GxP
12 7 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.39%) ISO 20022
12 7 (0.39%) SEPA
13 6 (0.33%) Basel III
13 6 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 6 (0.33%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 112 (6.21%) Docker
2 16 (0.89%) Active Directory
3 12 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.39%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (0.22%) Firmware
7 3 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 2 (0.11%) GridGain
8 2 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.11%) VirtualBox
8 2 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.055%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.055%) KVM
9 1 (0.055%) QEMU
9 1 (0.055%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
9 1 (0.055%) Varnish
9 1 (0.055%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 146 (8.09%) Kubernetes
2 69 (3.82%) Terraform
3 36 (2.00%) Grafana
4 28 (1.55%) Ansible
4 28 (1.55%) Prometheus
5 26 (1.44%) Argo
6 18 (1.00%) HP ALM
7 10 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (0.44%) HP Quality Center
8 8 (0.44%) Nmap
9 7 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
10 6 (0.33%) Puppet
11 5 (0.28%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 4 (0.22%) Kibana
13 3 (0.17%) Progress Chef
14 2 (0.11%) ITRS Geneos
14 2 (0.11%) SCCM
15 1 (0.055%) Cisco Prime
15 1 (0.055%) Microsoft Intune
15 1 (0.055%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 183 (10.14%) Microsoft
2 162 (8.98%) Oracle
3 100 (5.54%) Salesforce
4 92 (5.10%) SAP
5 48 (2.66%) ServiceNow
6 36 (2.00%) Citrix
6 36 (2.00%) Google
7 34 (1.88%) Databricks
8 32 (1.77%) Adobe
9 26 (1.44%) Red Hat
10 23 (1.27%) Informatica
11 21 (1.16%) Cisco
11 21 (1.16%) HP
12 16 (0.89%) MuleSoft
13 13 (0.72%) Talend
14 12 (0.67%) VMware
14 12 (0.67%) Workday
15 11 (0.61%) Infor
16 10 (0.55%) IBM
16 10 (0.55%) Pega