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 13 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 100 55 80
Rank change year-on-year -45 +25 -35
Permanent jobs citing QA 288 454 298
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 3.06% 3.50% 3.59%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 27.02% 26.46% 25.08%
Number of salaries quoted 119 161 219
10th Percentile £31,250 £25,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £27,250 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £42,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +29.41% -22.73% +4.76%
75th Percentile £73,750 £57,500 £68,750
90th Percentile £84,000 £73,500 £82,750
England median annual salary £57,500 £55,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year +4.55% -12.00% +4.17%

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 1,066 1,716 1,188
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 11.31% 13.21% 14.31%
Number of salaries quoted 453 725 903
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,000 £28,550
25th Percentile £32,750 £31,500 £38,039
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £46,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.70% -8.00% -
75th Percentile £65,000 £60,991 £65,568
90th Percentile £76,250 £77,500 £81,135
England median annual salary £56,000 £59,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year -5.88% -0.83% +5.26%

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 13 October 2025.

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 13 October 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
North West -31 207 £61,500 +53.75% 99
Yorkshire -44 58 £55,000 +22.22% 31
North East -9 23 £42,500 +6.25% 26
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 41 (14.24%) Confluence
2 3 (1.04%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (1.04%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.04%) SAS
3 2 (0.69%) HCL Notes
3 2 (0.69%) IIS
3 2 (0.69%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 2 (0.69%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.35%) CMS
4 1 (0.35%) WordPress
Applications
1 13 (4.51%) Microsoft Project
2 11 (3.82%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (2.43%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (2.08%) MS Visio
4 6 (2.08%) Trello
5 4 (1.39%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.69%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 7 (2.43%) Dynamics CRM
1 7 (2.43%) Shopify
2 2 (0.69%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.35%) Q-Pulse
Cloud Services
1 152 (52.78%) Azure
2 146 (50.69%) AWS
3 49 (17.01%) GCP
4 19 (6.60%) Power Platform
5 10 (3.47%) GitHub
6 9 (3.13%) SaaS
7 7 (2.43%) Microsoft Copilot
8 5 (1.74%) Entra ID
8 5 (1.74%) GitHub Actions
8 5 (1.74%) Google Ads
8 5 (1.74%) Microsoft 365
9 3 (1.04%) Azure DevOps
10 2 (0.69%) AWS Lambda
10 2 (0.69%) Serverless
10 2 (0.69%) Yarn
11 1 (0.35%) Amazon ECS
11 1 (0.35%) Amazon EKS
11 1 (0.35%) Amazon EventBridge
11 1 (0.35%) Google Sheets
11 1 (0.35%) Sentry
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.04%) Network Security
1 3 (1.04%) PuTTY
2 2 (0.69%) Modbus
2 2 (0.69%) MQTT
3 1 (0.35%) Broadband
3 1 (0.35%) Internet
3 1 (0.35%) WPA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (42.01%) SQL Server
2 14 (4.86%) Power BI
3 12 (4.17%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (3.47%) NoSQL
5 7 (2.43%) MongoDB
6 5 (1.74%) Metadata
6 5 (1.74%) MySQL
6 5 (1.74%) Relational Database
6 5 (1.74%) Tableau
7 3 (1.04%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (1.04%) Apache Hive
7 3 (1.04%) BigQuery
7 3 (1.04%) BusinessObjects
7 3 (1.04%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.04%) Elasticsearch
7 3 (1.04%) Hadoop
7 3 (1.04%) Impala
7 3 (1.04%) Metadata Repository
7 3 (1.04%) QlikView
7 3 (1.04%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 132 (45.83%) JIRA
2 120 (41.67%) Selenium
3 118 (40.97%) GitLab
4 114 (39.58%) Cucumber
5 113 (39.24%) Bitbucket
5 113 (39.24%) Maven
5 113 (39.24%) SonarQube
5 113 (39.24%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (3.13%) Git
6 9 (3.13%) Jenkins
7 5 (1.74%) Cypress.io
7 5 (1.74%) Postman
8 3 (1.04%) Appium
8 3 (1.04%) JMeter
8 3 (1.04%) WaveMaker
9 2 (0.69%) CircleCI
9 2 (0.69%) Gatling
9 2 (0.69%) LoadRunner
9 2 (0.69%) Storybook
9 2 (0.69%) webpack
General
1 150 (52.08%) Finance
2 117 (40.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 116 (40.28%) Banking
4 76 (26.39%) Retail
5 72 (25.00%) Corporate Banking
5 72 (25.00%) Investment Banking
6 59 (20.49%) Social Skills
7 38 (13.19%) Analytical Skills
8 31 (10.76%) Manufacturing
9 14 (4.86%) Public Sector
10 10 (3.47%) Legal
10 10 (3.47%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (3.13%) Influencing Skills
11 9 (3.13%) Marketing
12 7 (2.43%) Law
13 5 (1.74%) Financial Institution
13 5 (1.74%) Mandarin Language
14 4 (1.39%) Advertising
14 4 (1.39%) Military
15 3 (1.04%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 116 (40.28%) Software Engineer
2 31 (10.76%) Developer
3 29 (10.07%) Senior
4 23 (7.99%) Lead
5 16 (5.56%) Project Manager
6 15 (5.21%) QA Manager
6 15 (5.21%) Quality Manager
7 12 (4.17%) Lead Developer
8 11 (3.82%) Analyst
9 9 (3.13%) Backend Developer
9 9 (3.13%) Senior Developer
9 9 (3.13%) Software Developer
10 8 (2.78%) Tester
11 7 (2.43%) Lead Software Developer
12 6 (2.08%) Consultant
12 6 (2.08%) QA Engineer
12 6 (2.08%) QA Tester
12 6 (2.08%) Senior Backend Developer
13 5 (1.74%) Architect
13 5 (1.74%) Support Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (44.44%) React
2 117 (40.63%) HTML
3 116 (40.28%) CSS
3 116 (40.28%) Kafka
3 116 (40.28%) Redux
4 115 (39.93%) Spring
4 115 (39.93%) Spring Boot
5 112 (38.89%) JPA
6 79 (27.43%) RESTful
7 77 (26.74%) REST
8 75 (26.04%) Jest
9 74 (25.69%) CSS3
9 74 (25.69%) HTML5
10 73 (25.35%) Sass
11 40 (13.89%) Hibernate
12 19 (6.60%) .NET
13 16 (5.56%) Node.js
14 6 (2.08%) AngularJS
15 5 (1.74%) Bootstrap
16 4 (1.39%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 120 (41.67%) Product Ownership
2 113 (39.24%) Enterprise Software
3 10 (3.47%) IoT
4 9 (3.13%) Self-Motivation
5 8 (2.78%) Social Media
6 5 (1.74%) Onboarding
7 4 (1.39%) AI Agents
7 4 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
7 4 (1.39%) Cloud Native
7 4 (1.39%) NHS
7 4 (1.39%) Renewable Energy
8 3 (1.04%) Data Protection Act
8 3 (1.04%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (1.04%) Management Information System
8 3 (1.04%) Mobile App
9 2 (0.69%) Biopharmaceutical
9 2 (0.69%) Industry 4.0
9 2 (0.69%) Operational Technology
9 2 (0.69%) SCADA
9 2 (0.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 12 (4.17%) Windows
2 3 (1.04%) Linux
2 3 (1.04%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 169 (58.68%) Agile
2 144 (50.00%) DevOps
3 142 (49.31%) CI/CD
4 135 (46.88%) Software Engineering
5 133 (46.18%) Test Automation
6 122 (42.36%) Microservices
6 122 (42.36%) SDLC
7 120 (41.67%) Mentoring
8 118 (40.97%) Front End Development
9 117 (40.63%) Containerisation
10 114 (39.58%) Performance Optimisation
11 113 (39.24%) Full-Stack Development
12 87 (30.21%) User Experience
13 72 (25.00%) Migration
13 72 (25.00%) Responsive Web Design
13 72 (25.00%) Strategic Thinking
14 65 (22.57%) Continuous Improvement
15 50 (17.36%) Clean Code
16 46 (15.97%) Problem-Solving
17 43 (14.93%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 137 (47.57%) SQL
2 135 (46.88%) JavaScript
3 134 (46.53%) Java
4 82 (28.47%) TypeScript
5 18 (6.25%) C#
6 14 (4.86%) Python
7 9 (3.13%) Go
8 8 (2.78%) Elixir
8 8 (2.78%) Ruby
9 6 (2.08%) Bash
10 3 (1.04%) C++
10 3 (1.04%) PHP
10 3 (1.04%) PowerShell
10 3 (1.04%) PROC SQL
10 3 (1.04%) R
10 3 (1.04%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.35%) C
11 1 (0.35%) Dart
Qualifications
1 37 (12.85%) Degree
2 15 (5.21%) Security Cleared
3 14 (4.86%) SC Cleared
4 12 (4.17%) PMI Certification
4 12 (4.17%) PMP
5 10 (3.47%) DBS Check
6 5 (1.74%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.74%) HND
7 4 (1.39%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 3 (1.04%) Azure Certification
8 3 (1.04%) PRINCE2 Certification
9 2 (0.69%) Chartered Engineer
9 2 (0.69%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (0.69%) HNC
9 2 (0.69%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.35%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 1 (0.35%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 1 (0.35%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.35%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 91 (31.60%) Accessibility
2 9 (3.13%) Data Quality
3 5 (1.74%) GDPR
3 5 (1.74%) PMO
4 3 (1.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (1.04%) NCSC
4 3 (1.04%) NIST
4 3 (1.04%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.35%) GLP
5 1 (0.35%) GMP
5 1 (0.35%) Good Clinical Practice
5 1 (0.35%) GxP
5 1 (0.35%) ISO 14001
5 1 (0.35%) ISO 9001
5 1 (0.35%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 120 (41.67%) Docker
2 5 (1.74%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.04%) Apache Flume
3 3 (1.04%) HDFS
4 2 (0.69%) Squid
Systems Management
1 117 (40.63%) Kubernetes
2 5 (1.74%) Kibana
2 5 (1.74%) Terraform
3 4 (1.39%) Grafana
4 3 (1.04%) Ansible
4 3 (1.04%) logstash
4 3 (1.04%) Oozie
5 2 (0.69%) Functional Safety
5 2 (0.69%) Progress Chef
5 2 (0.69%) Puppet
6 1 (0.35%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 112 (38.89%) Solace
2 29 (10.07%) Microsoft
3 8 (2.78%) Google
4 5 (1.74%) Oracle
4 5 (1.74%) SAP
5 3 (1.04%) Databricks
5 3 (1.04%) Informatica
5 3 (1.04%) MicroStrategy
6 2 (0.69%) AVEVA
6 2 (0.69%) ESRI
6 2 (0.69%) Lotus
6 2 (0.69%) New Relic
6 2 (0.69%) Rockwell
6 2 (0.69%) ServiceNow
6 2 (0.69%) Siemens
7 1 (0.35%) AppDynamics
7 1 (0.35%) Sage
7 1 (0.35%) Salesforce