QA Job Trends in the North of England

Quality Assurance (QA)
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the North of England requiring QA skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 12 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 73 63
Rank change year-on-year +7 -10 -48
Permanent jobs citing QA 457 362 626
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 2.32% 4.51% 3.23%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 27.45% 28.53% 25.56%
Number of salaries quoted 288 104 367
10th Percentile £28,500 £38,600 £26,000
25th Percentile £31,375 £46,250 £33,125
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £55,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +22.22% -15.09%
75th Percentile £64,063 £74,375 £60,000
90th Percentile £77,500 £86,250 £70,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -8.33% +14.29% -12.50%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
North of England

QA falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills in the North of England.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 1,665 1,269 2,449
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 8.44% 15.81% 12.62%
Number of salaries quoted 1,178 556 1,657
10th Percentile £30,000 £25,490 £25,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £33,094 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,250 £46,500
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% +12.37% -7.00%
75th Percentile £65,640 £66,250 £62,500
90th Percentile £83,750 £79,375 £82,500
England median annual salary £59,732 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +3.88% +9.52% -8.70%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing QA relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

QA job vacancy trend in the North of England

QA
Salary Trend in the North of England

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing QA.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing QA

QA
Salary Histogram in the North of England

Salary distribution for jobs citing QA in the North of England over the 6 months to 12 June 2026.

Salary histogram for QA in the North of England

QA
Job Locations in the North of England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing QA within the North of England region over the 6 months to 12 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
North West +36 270 £45,000 -16.28% 63
Yorkshire +20 113 £40,000 -39.62% 41
North East -33 74 £47,500 -13.64% 24
QA
England

QA
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of England 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 11 (2.41%) CMS
2 10 (2.19%) Apache Airflow
2 10 (2.19%) WordPress
3 6 (1.31%) SharePoint
4 5 (1.09%) Apache
4 5 (1.09%) Jupyter
5 4 (0.88%) IIS
6 3 (0.66%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.44%) Confluence
8 1 (0.22%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.22%) WebLogic
Applications
1 22 (4.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 20 (4.38%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (1.97%) MS Visio
4 7 (1.53%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 3 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (1.31%) SAP ERP
2 5 (1.09%) SAP PM
3 4 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.66%) Sage 200
4 3 (0.66%) SAP Business One
4 3 (0.66%) Shopify
5 2 (0.44%) Academy Housing
6 1 (0.22%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 43 (9.41%) Azure
2 40 (8.75%) AWS
3 35 (7.66%) Power Platform
4 23 (5.03%) Microsoft 365
5 12 (2.63%) Azure DevOps
6 11 (2.41%) GCP
7 10 (2.19%) SaaS
8 9 (1.97%) Amazon EC2
8 9 (1.97%) Amazon S3
8 9 (1.97%) Google Analytics
9 8 (1.75%) Serverless
10 6 (1.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 6 (1.31%) dbt
10 6 (1.31%) GitHub
11 5 (1.09%) Amazon EMR
11 5 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (1.09%) Azure Monitor
11 5 (1.09%) Entra ID
11 5 (1.09%) Power Automate
12 4 (0.88%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.09%) HTTP
2 3 (0.66%) HTTPS
2 3 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
3 2 (0.44%) Broadband
3 2 (0.44%) VoIP
4 1 (0.22%) ADSL
4 1 (0.22%) Firewall
4 1 (0.22%) ISDN
4 1 (0.22%) LAN
4 1 (0.22%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.22%) VDSL
4 1 (0.22%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (6.78%) Power BI
2 9 (1.97%) SQL Server
3 7 (1.53%) BigQuery
3 7 (1.53%) MySQL
4 6 (1.31%) Relational Database
5 5 (1.09%) Amazon Athena
5 5 (1.09%) DynamoDB
6 4 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
7 3 (0.66%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.66%) Tableau
8 2 (0.44%) Big Data
8 2 (0.44%) Data Mining
8 2 (0.44%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.44%) EDRMS
8 2 (0.44%) Looker
8 2 (0.44%) PostgreSQL
9 1 (0.22%) DocumentDB
9 1 (0.22%) Metadata
9 1 (0.22%) MongoDB
9 1 (0.22%) Redis
Development Applications
1 28 (6.13%) Git
2 23 (5.03%) JIRA
3 19 (4.16%) GitLab
4 10 (2.19%) Jenkins
5 7 (1.53%) Postman
6 6 (1.31%) Cypress.io
7 5 (1.09%) Cucumber
7 5 (1.09%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.66%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.66%) Selenium
9 2 (0.44%) JMeter
9 2 (0.44%) JUnit
9 2 (0.44%) NUnit
9 2 (0.44%) SpecFlow
9 2 (0.44%) TestRail
10 1 (0.22%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.22%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.22%) Gatling
10 1 (0.22%) Locust
10 1 (0.22%) REST Assured
General
1 145 (31.73%) Social Skills
2 72 (15.75%) Analytical Skills
3 69 (15.10%) Finance
4 67 (14.66%) Manufacturing
5 49 (10.72%) Pharmaceutical
6 31 (6.78%) Public Sector
7 22 (4.81%) Marketing
8 20 (4.38%) Legal
8 20 (4.38%) Organisational Skills
9 15 (3.28%) Law
10 10 (2.19%) Aerospace
11 9 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 9 (1.97%) Influencing Skills
12 8 (1.75%) Banking
12 8 (1.75%) Telecoms
13 7 (1.53%) Retail
14 5 (1.09%) Documentation Skills
14 5 (1.09%) Military
14 5 (1.09%) Swedish Language
15 4 (0.88%) Legal Technology
Job Titles
1 50 (10.94%) QA Manager
2 47 (10.28%) Senior
3 40 (8.75%) Quality Manager
4 37 (8.10%) QA Officer
5 36 (7.88%) Analyst
6 33 (7.22%) Head of QA
7 32 (7.00%) Lead
8 30 (6.56%) Developer
9 29 (6.35%) QA Engineer
10 17 (3.72%) Quality Engineer
11 16 (3.50%) Software Engineer
12 15 (3.28%) Business Analyst
12 15 (3.28%) Test Engineer
12 15 (3.28%) Tester
13 14 (3.06%) Administrator
14 13 (2.84%) Senior Manager
15 12 (2.63%) QA Tester
16 11 (2.41%) QA Leader
16 11 (2.41%) Technical Assistant
17 10 (2.19%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (5.25%) .NET
1 24 (5.25%) HTML
2 22 (4.81%) CSS
3 15 (3.28%) REST
4 9 (1.97%) RESTful
5 8 (1.75%) ASP.NET Web API
5 8 (1.75%) Playwright
5 8 (1.75%) React
6 7 (1.53%) .NET Core
6 7 (1.53%) .NET Framework
6 7 (1.53%) ASP.NET
6 7 (1.53%) Entity Framework
6 7 (1.53%) JSON
7 5 (1.09%) CSS3
7 5 (1.09%) HTML5
7 5 (1.09%) JWT
7 5 (1.09%) OAuth
7 5 (1.09%) OAuth2
7 5 (1.09%) Swagger
8 4 (0.88%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 34 (7.44%) Analytical Mindset
2 14 (3.06%) Onboarding
3 12 (2.63%) Product Ownership
4 11 (2.41%) PMI
5 9 (1.97%) Life Science
6 8 (1.75%) Management Information System
7 7 (1.53%) CCTV
7 7 (1.53%) Cloud Native
7 7 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
7 7 (1.53%) Driving Licence
8 6 (1.31%) AI Agents
9 4 (0.88%) Animation
9 4 (0.88%) Mobile App
9 4 (0.88%) Online Games
9 4 (0.88%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (0.66%) Enterprise Software
10 3 (0.66%) FMCG
10 3 (0.66%) Legacy Applications
10 3 (0.66%) Mainframe
10 3 (0.66%) Photography
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.75%) Windows
2 7 (1.53%) Android
2 7 (1.53%) Apple iOS
3 3 (0.66%) Linux
3 3 (0.66%) VME
3 3 (0.66%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 103 (22.54%) Continuous Improvement
2 80 (17.51%) Agile
3 59 (12.91%) Mentoring
4 57 (12.47%) CI/CD
5 56 (12.25%) Analytics
6 53 (11.60%) Problem-Solving
7 49 (10.72%) Test Automation
8 45 (9.85%) DevOps
8 45 (9.85%) Stakeholder Management
9 43 (9.41%) Quality Management
10 41 (8.97%) Actionable Insight
11 40 (8.75%) PRINCE2
12 39 (8.53%) Change Management
13 38 (8.32%) Root Cause Analysis
13 38 (8.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 37 (8.10%) Coaching
15 35 (7.66%) Decision-Making
16 33 (7.22%) AI
16 33 (7.22%) Customer Experience
17 32 (7.00%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 41 (8.97%) SQL
2 32 (7.00%) C#
2 32 (7.00%) Python
3 25 (5.47%) JavaScript
4 23 (5.03%) Java
5 14 (3.06%) TypeScript
6 8 (1.75%) Go
7 6 (1.31%) PHP
8 5 (1.09%) Bash
9 3 (0.66%) COBOL
9 3 (0.66%) Groovy
10 2 (0.44%) Bicep
10 2 (0.44%) C++
10 2 (0.44%) VB.NET
11 1 (0.22%) C
11 1 (0.22%) Objective-C
11 1 (0.22%) Perl
11 1 (0.22%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.22%) R
11 1 (0.22%) Swift
Qualifications
1 49 (10.72%) Degree
2 30 (6.56%) IRCA
3 16 (3.50%) Security Cleared
4 15 (3.28%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (3.06%) SC Cleared
6 12 (2.63%) Microsoft Certification
6 12 (2.63%) PMI Certification
7 9 (1.97%) AWS Certification
7 9 (1.97%) MCSE
8 6 (1.31%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (1.31%) DBS Check
9 4 (0.88%) ISTQB
9 4 (0.88%) PMP
10 3 (0.66%) CCEA
10 3 (0.66%) Citrix Certification
10 3 (0.66%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 3 (0.66%) Postgraduate
10 3 (0.66%) RIBA
11 2 (0.44%) CHECK Team Member
11 2 (0.44%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (8.10%) GDPR
2 36 (7.88%) ISO 9001
3 16 (3.50%) Accessibility
4 11 (2.41%) Data Quality
5 8 (1.75%) P3O
6 7 (1.53%) GMP
6 7 (1.53%) PMO
7 4 (0.88%) PCI DSS
7 4 (0.88%) Software Quality Assurance
8 3 (0.66%) WCAG
9 2 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.44%) ISO 14001
10 1 (0.22%) AQAP
10 1 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.22%) NEBOSH
10 1 (0.22%) SLA
System Software
1 19 (4.16%) Docker
2 1 (0.22%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 13 (2.84%) Terraform
2 7 (1.53%) Kubernetes
3 3 (0.66%) Ansible
3 3 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (0.66%) Packer
4 2 (0.44%) Grafana
Vendors
1 46 (10.07%) Microsoft
2 18 (3.94%) SAP
3 14 (3.06%) ServiceNow
4 13 (2.84%) Google
5 10 (2.19%) Intapp
6 9 (1.97%) Aderant
6 9 (1.97%) iManage
7 4 (0.88%) Planon
7 4 (0.88%) Siemens
8 3 (0.66%) Adobe
8 3 (0.66%) AppDynamics
8 3 (0.66%) IBM
8 3 (0.66%) Sage
8 3 (0.66%) Splunk
9 2 (0.44%) Apple
9 2 (0.44%) DevExpress
9 2 (0.44%) Draytek
9 2 (0.44%) Foundry
10 1 (0.22%) CheckPoint
10 1 (0.22%) Salesforce