Senior QA Engineer Contracts

Senior Quality Assurance Engineer
UK

The median Senior Quality Assurance Engineer daily rate in the UK is £425, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 506 578 698
Rank change year-on-year +72 +120 +126
Contract jobs requiring a Senior QA Engineer 14 4 20
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.048% 0.009% 0.034%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.052% 0.010% 0.035%
Number of daily rates quoted 9 4 19
10th Percentile £363 £294 £345
25th Percentile £400 £370 £368
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £438 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -12.50% +2.56%
75th Percentile £488 £481 £625
90th Percentile £534 £493 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £431 £425 £500
% change year-on-year +1.47% -15.00% +13.64%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 27,084 40,415 56,464
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.78% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,692 26,309 39,470
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,035 2,664 1,570
10th Percentile £14.07 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%

Senior QA Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Senior QA Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Senior QA Engineer in the UK

Senior QA Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Senior QA Engineer.

Daily rate trend for Senior QA Engineer in the UK

Senior QA Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Senior QA Engineer over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Senior QA Engineer in the UK

Senior QA Engineer
Top 10 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Senior QA Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 1 May 2025. 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 +66 13 £431 -1.43% 25
UK excluding London +71 9 £431 +1.47% 18
London +40 5 £425 -5.56% 11
South East - 4 - - 3
Midlands - 3 £438 - 1
Work from Home - 2 £438 - 28
East of England - 2 - - 5
East Midlands - 2 £476 -
West Midlands - 1 £425 - 1
Scotland - 1 £400 - 3

Senior QA Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Senior QA Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Senior QA Engineer in the job title.

1 14 (100.00%) QA
2 9 (64.29%) Test Automation
3 8 (57.14%) SQL
4 7 (50.00%) Finance
4 7 (50.00%) Test Strategy
5 6 (42.86%) CI/CD
5 6 (42.86%) Agile
5 6 (42.86%) Azure
6 5 (35.71%) Python
6 5 (35.71%) End-to-End Testing
6 5 (35.71%) User Stories
7 4 (28.57%) TypeScript
7 4 (28.57%) Product Ownership
7 4 (28.57%) Postman
7 4 (28.57%) Social Skills
7 4 (28.57%) C#
7 4 (28.57%) Manual Testing
7 4 (28.57%) JIRA
8 3 (21.43%) Cypress.io
8 3 (21.43%) Confluence
8 3 (21.43%) Java
8 3 (21.43%) JavaScript
8 3 (21.43%) .NET
8 3 (21.43%) SAP
8 3 (21.43%) Scrum
8 3 (21.43%) Validation
8 3 (21.43%) TestRail
8 3 (21.43%) Problem-Solving
8 3 (21.43%) Analytical Skills
8 3 (21.43%) Root Cause Analysis

Senior QA Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 3 (21.43%) Confluence
Applications
1 2 (14.29%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (7.14%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 6 (42.86%) Azure
2 2 (14.29%) Azure DevOps
2 2 (14.29%) Power Platform
2 2 (14.29%) Snowflake
3 1 (7.14%) Azure Data Factory
3 1 (7.14%) Azure Monitor
3 1 (7.14%) Azure Synapse Analytics
3 1 (7.14%) GitHub
3 1 (7.14%) GitHub Actions
3 1 (7.14%) IaaS
3 1 (7.14%) PaaS
3 1 (7.14%) PowerApps
3 1 (7.14%) SaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (14.29%) SQL Server
2 1 (7.14%) Azure SQL Database
2 1 (7.14%) BusinessObjects
2 1 (7.14%) Crystal Reports
2 1 (7.14%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (7.14%) Delta Lake
2 1 (7.14%) MS Access
2 1 (7.14%) Power BI
2 1 (7.14%) SAP Data Services
2 1 (7.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 4 (28.57%) JIRA
1 4 (28.57%) Postman
2 3 (21.43%) Cypress.io
2 3 (21.43%) TestRail
3 2 (14.29%) JMeter
3 2 (14.29%) Selenium
4 1 (7.14%) Cucumber
4 1 (7.14%) Git
4 1 (7.14%) Jenkins
4 1 (7.14%) Subversion
4 1 (7.14%) TeamCity
4 1 (7.14%) WebDriver
General
1 7 (50.00%) Finance
2 4 (28.57%) Social Skills
3 3 (21.43%) Analytical Skills
4 1 (7.14%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (21.43%) .NET
2 1 (7.14%) Pandas
2 1 (7.14%) PySpark
2 1 (7.14%) pytest
2 1 (7.14%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 4 (28.57%) Product Ownership
2 2 (14.29%) Educational Technology
3 1 (7.14%) Client/Server
3 1 (7.14%) Mobile App
Processes & Methodologies
1 9 (64.29%) Test Automation
2 7 (50.00%) Test Strategy
3 6 (42.86%) Agile
3 6 (42.86%) CI/CD
4 5 (35.71%) End-to-End Testing
4 5 (35.71%) User Stories
5 4 (28.57%) Manual Testing
6 3 (21.43%) Problem-Solving
6 3 (21.43%) Root Cause Analysis
6 3 (21.43%) Scrum
6 3 (21.43%) Validation
7 2 (14.29%) Code Quality
7 2 (14.29%) Conversational UI
7 2 (14.29%) DevOps
7 2 (14.29%) Exploratory Testing
7 2 (14.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 2 (14.29%) LLM
7 2 (14.29%) Non-Functional Testing
7 2 (14.29%) Product Requirements
7 2 (14.29%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 8 (57.14%) SQL
2 5 (35.71%) Python
3 4 (28.57%) C#
3 4 (28.57%) TypeScript
4 3 (21.43%) Java
4 3 (21.43%) JavaScript
5 1 (7.14%) C++
5 1 (7.14%) Shell Script
5 1 (7.14%) VBA
5 1 (7.14%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1 (7.14%) ISEB
1 1 (7.14%) ISTQB
1 1 (7.14%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (100.00%) QA
2 2 (14.29%) Software Quality Assurance
3 1 (7.14%) Data Quality
3 1 (7.14%) PCI DSS
Vendors
1 3 (21.43%) SAP
2 1 (7.14%) Databricks
2 1 (7.14%) Informatica
2 1 (7.14%) Microsoft