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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 93 51 82
Rank change year-on-year -42 +31 -40
Permanent jobs citing QA 304 518 345
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 3.23% 3.66% 3.71%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 27.22% 29.42% 26.00%
Number of salaries quoted 130 219 246
10th Percentile £32,725 £25,000 £28,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £30,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £41,774 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +31.66% -24.05% +4.76%
75th Percentile £71,250 £56,250 £68,750
90th Percentile £86,250 £70,000 £85,000
England median annual salary £57,500 £52,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year +9.52% -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 1,117 1,761 1,327
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 11.87% 12.44% 14.26%
Number of salaries quoted 501 903 1,000
10th Percentile £26,250 £25,000 £27,000
25th Percentile £32,500 £32,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £48,750 £46,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.98% -8.00% -
75th Percentile £63,150 £60,991 £67,500
90th Percentile £74,258 £77,500 £82,500
England median annual salary £56,000 £57,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year -2.61% -4.17% +7.55%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Job postings citing QA as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

Job vacancy trend for QA 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 September 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 September 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 -28 219 £55,000 +37.50% 123
Yorkshire -38 64 £55,000 +29.41% 59
North East -20 21 £45,000 +7.72% 30
QA
England

QA
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North of England 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 44 (14.47%) Confluence
2 17 (5.59%) IBM Domino
3 3 (0.99%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.99%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.99%) SAS
3 3 (0.99%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.66%) ArcGIS
4 2 (0.66%) CMS
4 2 (0.66%) IBM Notes
4 2 (0.66%) IIS
4 2 (0.66%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 1 (0.33%) Apache Solr
5 1 (0.33%) WordPress
Applications
1 15 (4.93%) Microsoft Excel
1 15 (4.93%) Microsoft Project
2 8 (2.63%) MS Visio
2 8 (2.63%) Trello
3 7 (2.30%) Chatbot
3 7 (2.30%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.66%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.66%) Adobe Illustrator
5 1 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 7 (2.30%) Dynamics CRM
1 7 (2.30%) Shopify
2 2 (0.66%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.33%) Q-Pulse
3 1 (0.33%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 158 (51.97%) Azure
2 150 (49.34%) AWS
3 52 (17.11%) GCP
4 19 (6.25%) Power Platform
5 10 (3.29%) GitHub
6 7 (2.30%) Microsoft Copilot
7 6 (1.97%) SaaS
8 5 (1.64%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (1.64%) Entra ID
8 5 (1.64%) GitHub Actions
8 5 (1.64%) Google Ads
9 3 (0.99%) Serverless
10 2 (0.66%) Amazon EC2
10 2 (0.66%) Amazon S3
10 2 (0.66%) AWS Lambda
10 2 (0.66%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 2 (0.66%) Microsoft 365
10 2 (0.66%) Yarn
11 1 (0.33%) Amazon SQS
11 1 (0.33%) Firebase
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.32%) TCP/IP
1 4 (1.32%) VPN
2 3 (0.99%) Network Security
2 3 (0.99%) PuTTY
3 2 (0.66%) Modbus
3 2 (0.66%) MQTT
4 1 (0.33%) Broadband
4 1 (0.33%) Internet
4 1 (0.33%) WPA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 124 (40.79%) SQL Server
2 18 (5.92%) Power BI
3 14 (4.61%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (4.28%) NoSQL
5 11 (3.62%) MySQL
6 10 (3.29%) MongoDB
7 5 (1.64%) Tableau
8 4 (1.32%) Elasticsearch
8 4 (1.32%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.99%) Apache Hive
9 3 (0.99%) Big Data
9 3 (0.99%) BigQuery
9 3 (0.99%) DynamoDB
9 3 (0.99%) Hadoop
9 3 (0.99%) HBase
9 3 (0.99%) Impala
9 3 (0.99%) Looker
9 3 (0.99%) Neo4j
9 3 (0.99%) Qlik Sense
9 3 (0.99%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 144 (47.37%) JIRA
2 126 (41.45%) Selenium
3 118 (38.82%) Cucumber
3 118 (38.82%) GitLab
4 114 (37.50%) SonarQube
5 113 (37.17%) Bitbucket
5 113 (37.17%) Maven
5 113 (37.17%) Sonatype Nexus
6 11 (3.62%) Git
6 11 (3.62%) Postman
7 8 (2.63%) Jenkins
8 7 (2.30%) JMeter
9 6 (1.97%) Appium
10 5 (1.64%) LoadRunner
11 4 (1.32%) Cypress.io
11 4 (1.32%) Fiddler
11 4 (1.32%) Robot Framework
12 3 (0.99%) WaveMaker
13 2 (0.66%) SoapUI
13 2 (0.66%) webpack
General
1 152 (50.00%) Finance
2 121 (39.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 115 (37.83%) Banking
4 73 (24.01%) Retail
5 72 (23.68%) Corporate Banking
5 72 (23.68%) Investment Banking
6 59 (19.41%) Social Skills
7 52 (17.11%) Analytical Skills
8 33 (10.86%) Manufacturing
9 14 (4.61%) Public Sector
10 9 (2.96%) Marketing
11 8 (2.63%) Financial Institution
11 8 (2.63%) Law
11 8 (2.63%) Mandarin Language
12 7 (2.30%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (1.97%) Telecoms
14 5 (1.64%) Legal
14 5 (1.64%) Presentation Skills
15 4 (1.32%) Advertising
15 4 (1.32%) Cantonese Language
Job Titles
1 115 (37.83%) Software Engineer
2 28 (9.21%) Developer
3 26 (8.55%) Senior
4 22 (7.24%) Lead
4 22 (7.24%) QA Manager
4 22 (7.24%) Quality Manager
5 18 (5.92%) Project Manager
6 16 (5.26%) Analyst
7 13 (4.28%) Tester
8 10 (3.29%) Backend Developer
9 9 (2.96%) QA Tester
9 9 (2.96%) Software Developer
9 9 (2.96%) Test Engineer
10 8 (2.63%) Lead Developer
10 8 (2.63%) Senior Developer
11 7 (2.30%) Consultant
11 7 (2.30%) Head of Engineering
11 7 (2.30%) Lead Software Developer
11 7 (2.30%) QA Engineer
12 6 (1.97%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 134 (44.08%) React
2 119 (39.14%) Redux
3 117 (38.49%) HTML
4 116 (38.16%) CSS
4 116 (38.16%) Kafka
5 114 (37.50%) Spring
5 114 (37.50%) Spring Boot
6 112 (36.84%) JPA
7 78 (25.66%) REST
8 76 (25.00%) RESTful
9 74 (24.34%) CSS3
9 74 (24.34%) HTML5
9 74 (24.34%) Jest
10 73 (24.01%) Sass
11 40 (13.16%) Hibernate
12 20 (6.58%) Node.js
13 17 (5.59%) .NET
14 8 (2.63%) Bootstrap
15 7 (2.30%) AngularJS
16 4 (1.32%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 118 (38.82%) Product Ownership
2 113 (37.17%) Enterprise Software
3 10 (3.29%) IoT
4 8 (2.63%) Social Media
5 5 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
5 5 (1.64%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.32%) Analytical Mindset
6 4 (1.32%) Cloud Native
6 4 (1.32%) Linux Command Line
6 4 (1.32%) Mobile App
6 4 (1.32%) NHS
6 4 (1.32%) Renewable Energy
6 4 (1.32%) Virtual Team
7 3 (0.99%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (0.99%) Management Information System
8 2 (0.66%) ASTM
8 2 (0.66%) Industry 4.0
8 2 (0.66%) Operational Technology
8 2 (0.66%) SCADA
8 2 (0.66%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 18 (5.92%) Windows
2 12 (3.95%) Linux
3 3 (0.99%) Unix
4 1 (0.33%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 181 (59.54%) Agile
2 152 (50.00%) DevOps
3 144 (47.37%) CI/CD
4 141 (46.38%) Test Automation
5 136 (44.74%) Software Engineering
6 124 (40.79%) Microservices
7 123 (40.46%) SDLC
8 120 (39.47%) Containerisation
9 119 (39.14%) Front End Development
10 116 (38.16%) Performance Optimisation
11 113 (37.17%) Full-Stack Development
11 113 (37.17%) Mentoring
12 95 (31.25%) User Experience
13 74 (24.34%) Migration
14 72 (23.68%) Responsive Web Design
14 72 (23.68%) Strategic Thinking
15 69 (22.70%) Problem-Solving
16 60 (19.74%) Continuous Improvement
17 50 (16.45%) Clean Code
18 42 (13.82%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 151 (49.67%) JavaScript
2 138 (45.39%) SQL
3 134 (44.08%) Java
4 88 (28.95%) TypeScript
5 20 (6.58%) C#
5 20 (6.58%) Python
6 10 (3.29%) Bash
7 9 (2.96%) Go
8 8 (2.63%) Elixir
8 8 (2.63%) PowerShell
8 8 (2.63%) Ruby
9 3 (0.99%) C++
9 3 (0.99%) PROC SQL
9 3 (0.99%) R
9 3 (0.99%) T-SQL
10 2 (0.66%) PHP
11 1 (0.33%) C
11 1 (0.33%) Dart
Qualifications
1 52 (17.11%) Degree
2 16 (5.26%) Security Cleared
3 15 (4.93%) DBS Check
4 14 (4.61%) SC Cleared
5 13 (4.28%) PMP
6 11 (3.62%) PMI Certification
7 7 (2.30%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.64%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.64%) ISTQB
9 3 (0.99%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 2 (0.66%) BPSS Clearance
10 2 (0.66%) Chartered Engineer
10 2 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (0.66%) HNC
10 2 (0.66%) HND
10 2 (0.66%) PRINCE2 Certification
11 1 (0.33%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 1 (0.33%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.33%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 87 (28.62%) Accessibility
2 14 (4.61%) Data Quality
3 5 (1.64%) PMO
4 4 (1.32%) GDPR
5 3 (0.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 3 (0.99%) NCSC
5 3 (0.99%) NIST
6 2 (0.66%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.33%) GLP
7 1 (0.33%) GMP
7 1 (0.33%) Good Clinical Practice
7 1 (0.33%) GxP
7 1 (0.33%) ISO 14001
7 1 (0.33%) ISO 9001
7 1 (0.33%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 123 (40.46%) Docker
2 5 (1.64%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.99%) Apache Flume
3 3 (0.99%) HDFS
4 2 (0.66%) Squid
Systems Management
1 119 (39.14%) Kubernetes
2 7 (2.30%) Terraform
3 5 (1.64%) Kibana
4 4 (1.32%) Ansible
4 4 (1.32%) Puppet
5 3 (0.99%) Grafana
5 3 (0.99%) logstash
5 3 (0.99%) Oozie
6 2 (0.66%) Functional Safety
6 2 (0.66%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.33%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.33%) Salt
Vendors
1 112 (36.84%) Solace
2 26 (8.55%) Microsoft
3 7 (2.30%) Oracle
3 7 (2.30%) SAP
4 6 (1.97%) Google
5 5 (1.64%) Salesforce
6 3 (0.99%) Databricks
6 3 (0.99%) Informatica
6 3 (0.99%) MicroStrategy
7 2 (0.66%) Adobe
7 2 (0.66%) AVEVA
7 2 (0.66%) Lotus
7 2 (0.66%) New Relic
7 2 (0.66%) Rockwell
7 2 (0.66%) ServiceNow
7 2 (0.66%) Siemens
8 1 (0.33%) CyberSource
8 1 (0.33%) Sage
8 1 (0.33%) Siebel