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

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 52 81
Rank change year-on-year -36 +29 -68
Permanent jobs citing QA 270 336 391
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 2.05% 4.44% 3.09%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 25.12% 24.47% 23.26%
Number of salaries quoted 125 124 239
10th Percentile £26,000 £32,500 £27,700
25th Percentile £31,250 £41,250 £36,875
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £68,750 £63,813 £65,000
90th Percentile £80,750 £82,500 £81,500
England median annual salary £57,500 £60,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year -4.17% +4.35% -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 1,075 1,373 1,681
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 8.17% 18.15% 13.29%
Number of salaries quoted 598 556 1,249
10th Percentile £28,750 £30,000 £26,750
25th Percentile £35,000 £37,716 £34,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,500 £52,000 £48,500
Median % change year-on-year -2.88% +7.22% -3.00%
75th Percentile £65,480 £66,250 £63,750
90th Percentile £80,000 £81,250 £83,750
England median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +9.09% -4.35%

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 27 February 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 27 February 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 -9 144 £50,000 -4.76% 64
Yorkshire -18 95 £46,250 +6.32% 30
North East -40 31 £47,500 -13.64% 19
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 4 (1.48%) CMS
1 4 (1.48%) WordPress
2 2 (0.74%) Confluence
2 2 (0.74%) nginx
3 1 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.37%) IIS
3 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 6 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.85%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.48%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (1.11%) AutoCAD
4 3 (1.11%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.37%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 9 (3.33%) SAP ERP
2 3 (1.11%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (1.11%) Shopify
3 2 (0.74%) Academy Housing
4 1 (0.37%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 32 (11.85%) Azure
2 17 (6.30%) AWS
2 17 (6.30%) Power Platform
2 17 (6.30%) SaaS
3 8 (2.96%) Microsoft 365
4 7 (2.59%) GCP
5 5 (1.85%) Amazon S3
5 5 (1.85%) AWS CloudFormation
5 5 (1.85%) AWS Lambda
5 5 (1.85%) Google Analytics
5 5 (1.85%) Serverless
6 4 (1.48%) Amazon ECR
6 4 (1.48%) Amazon ECS
6 4 (1.48%) Apigee
6 4 (1.48%) AWS Step Functions
7 3 (1.11%) Datadog
7 3 (1.11%) dbt
7 3 (1.11%) Microsoft Copilot
7 3 (1.11%) PaaS
8 2 (0.74%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.22%) HTTP
2 5 (1.85%) Broadband
3 4 (1.48%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.37%) SAN
4 1 (0.37%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (3.70%) Power BI
2 5 (1.85%) DynamoDB
3 4 (1.48%) Relational Database
3 4 (1.48%) SQL Server
4 3 (1.11%) Geospatial Data
4 3 (1.11%) GIS
4 3 (1.11%) Metadata
4 3 (1.11%) QGIS
4 3 (1.11%) Spatial Data
5 2 (0.74%) BigQuery
5 2 (0.74%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.74%) MongoDB
5 2 (0.74%) PostHog
5 2 (0.74%) Redis
5 2 (0.74%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 1 (0.37%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.37%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (0.37%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.37%) SAP Data Services
6 1 (0.37%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 12 (4.44%) Jenkins
2 10 (3.70%) GitLab
3 7 (2.59%) Cypress.io
3 7 (2.59%) JIRA
4 6 (2.22%) Postman
4 6 (2.22%) SonarQube
5 5 (1.85%) Cucumber
5 5 (1.85%) Git
5 5 (1.85%) Maven
5 5 (1.85%) Selenium
6 4 (1.48%) JMeter
6 4 (1.48%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.74%) Appium
7 2 (0.74%) Locust
7 2 (0.74%) SpecFlow
8 1 (0.37%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.37%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.37%) Protractor
8 1 (0.37%) SoapUI
8 1 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 93 (34.44%) Social Skills
2 51 (18.89%) Finance
3 50 (18.52%) Manufacturing
4 33 (12.22%) Analytical Skills
5 24 (8.89%) Influencing Skills
6 23 (8.52%) Organisational Skills
7 19 (7.04%) Public Sector
8 12 (4.44%) Law
8 12 (4.44%) Legal
8 12 (4.44%) Marketing
9 8 (2.96%) Pharmaceutical
10 7 (2.59%) Games
10 7 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (1.85%) Retail
12 4 (1.48%) Banking
12 4 (1.48%) Documentation Skills
13 3 (1.11%) Electronics
13 3 (1.11%) Military
14 2 (0.74%) Aerospace
14 2 (0.74%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 38 (14.07%) Lead
2 34 (12.59%) QA Manager
3 29 (10.74%) Senior
4 24 (8.89%) QA Engineer
5 23 (8.52%) Quality Manager
6 16 (5.93%) Developer
7 14 (5.19%) Analyst
8 12 (4.44%) QA Leader
9 10 (3.70%) Automation Engineer
9 10 (3.70%) Head of QA
9 10 (3.70%) QA Automation Engineer
10 9 (3.33%) Team Leader
11 8 (2.96%) Portfolio Manager
11 8 (2.96%) Project Manager
11 8 (2.96%) QA Officer
11 8 (2.96%) Senior Manager
11 8 (2.96%) Senior Portfolio Manager
12 7 (2.59%) Administrator
12 7 (2.59%) QA Team Leader
12 7 (2.59%) Quality Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (4.07%) .NET
2 9 (3.33%) CSS
2 9 (3.33%) HTML
3 8 (2.96%) AngularJS
3 8 (2.96%) React
3 8 (2.96%) Spring
3 8 (2.96%) Spring Boot
4 7 (2.59%) RESTful
5 6 (2.22%) Gherkin
5 6 (2.22%) Jest
6 4 (1.48%) Node.js
6 4 (1.48%) Playwright
6 4 (1.48%) Qt
6 4 (1.48%) STL
7 3 (1.11%) QML
8 2 (0.74%) CSS3
8 2 (0.74%) Entity Framework
8 2 (0.74%) HTML5
8 2 (0.74%) RabbitMQ
8 2 (0.74%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 14 (5.19%) Analytical Mindset
2 10 (3.70%) Self-Motivation
2 10 (3.70%) Social Media
3 9 (3.33%) Product Ownership
4 8 (2.96%) Cloud Native
4 8 (2.96%) Driving Licence
4 8 (2.96%) Onboarding
4 8 (2.96%) PMI
5 6 (2.22%) AI Agents
5 6 (2.22%) CCTV
5 6 (2.22%) NHS
6 5 (1.85%) Client/Server
7 4 (1.48%) Distributed Systems
8 3 (1.11%) Management Information System
8 3 (1.11%) Mobile App
8 3 (1.11%) Renewable Energy
9 2 (0.74%) Derivative
9 2 (0.74%) EPoS
9 2 (0.74%) IoT
10 1 (0.37%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 14 (5.19%) Windows
2 5 (1.85%) Linux
2 5 (1.85%) Unix
3 4 (1.48%) Android
3 4 (1.48%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 66 (24.44%) Agile
2 65 (24.07%) Mentoring
3 60 (22.22%) Continuous Improvement
4 43 (15.93%) Problem-Solving
5 41 (15.19%) CI/CD
6 39 (14.44%) Test Automation
7 37 (13.70%) DevOps
8 31 (11.48%) Stakeholder Management
9 29 (10.74%) Process Improvement
10 26 (9.63%) Quality Management
11 22 (8.15%) Software Engineering
12 21 (7.78%) Change Management
12 21 (7.78%) Project Management
13 19 (7.04%) Analytics
13 19 (7.04%) Coaching
13 19 (7.04%) PRINCE2
13 19 (7.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 18 (6.67%) Root Cause Analysis
15 17 (6.30%) User Experience
16 16 (5.93%) Collaborative Working
Programming Languages
1 18 (6.67%) C#
1 18 (6.67%) Java
2 15 (5.56%) Python
3 12 (4.44%) TypeScript
4 11 (4.07%) SQL
5 10 (3.70%) JavaScript
6 6 (2.22%) Bash
7 4 (1.48%) C++
7 4 (1.48%) Go
7 4 (1.48%) Groovy
7 4 (1.48%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.74%) PHP
9 1 (0.37%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 25 (9.26%) Degree
2 17 (6.30%) PMI Certification
3 10 (3.70%) BPSS Clearance
3 10 (3.70%) IRCA
4 9 (3.33%) PMP
5 7 (2.59%) DBS Check
6 5 (1.85%) Security Cleared
7 4 (1.48%) HND
7 4 (1.48%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 3 (1.11%) CCEA
8 3 (1.11%) Citrix Certification
8 3 (1.11%) PRINCE2 Certification
8 3 (1.11%) SC Cleared
9 2 (0.74%) DV Cleared
9 2 (0.74%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.37%) CISA
10 1 (0.37%) CISM
10 1 (0.37%) CISSP
10 1 (0.37%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (0.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.56%) GDPR
2 14 (5.19%) Accessibility
3 10 (3.70%) ISO 9001
4 8 (2.96%) P3O
5 6 (2.22%) PCI DSS
6 4 (1.48%) PMO
7 3 (1.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.74%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.74%) GRC
8 2 (0.74%) NIST
8 2 (0.74%) SOC 2
8 2 (0.74%) WCAG
9 1 (0.37%) FINRA
System Software
1 12 (4.44%) Docker
2 1 (0.37%) Firmware
2 1 (0.37%) Squid
Systems Management
1 8 (2.96%) Kubernetes
2 7 (2.59%) Grafana
3 6 (2.22%) Terraform
4 4 (1.48%) HP Fortify
5 2 (0.74%) Ansible
5 2 (0.74%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.37%) Kibana
6 1 (0.37%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.37%) Puppet
Vendors
1 27 (10.00%) Microsoft
2 13 (4.81%) SAP
3 7 (2.59%) Google
4 4 (1.48%) Siemens
5 3 (1.11%) ESRI
6 2 (0.74%) Foundry
6 2 (0.74%) Intapp
7 1 (0.37%) Aderant
7 1 (0.37%) AppDynamics
7 1 (0.37%) iManage
7 1 (0.37%) New Relic
7 1 (0.37%) Nimble Storage
7 1 (0.37%) Oracle
7 1 (0.37%) Planon
7 1 (0.37%) ServiceNow
7 1 (0.37%) Splunk
7 1 (0.37%) Veracode