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

6 months to
1 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 81 44 85
Rank change year-on-year -37 +41 -71
Permanent jobs citing QA 256 402 365
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 2.18% 4.69% 3.17%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 26.36% 26.33% 23.87%
Number of salaries quoted 124 133 234
10th Percentile £26,000 £27,050 £30,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £40,000 £41,563
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £70,000 £63,110 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £82,250 £81,250
England median annual salary £56,250 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -6.25% - -

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 971 1,527 1,529
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 8.26% 17.82% 13.27%
Number of salaries quoted 536 579 1,157
10th Percentile £28,000 £30,000 £26,750
25th Percentile £32,875 £37,500 £34,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £50,000 £49,136
Median % change year-on-year - +1.76% -1.73%
75th Percentile £65,000 £65,000 £63,750
90th Percentile £80,000 £81,250 £82,548
England median annual salary £58,500 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -2.50% +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 1 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 1 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 -21 130 £57,500 +12.75% 85
Yorkshire -13 101 £52,500 +20.69% 60
North East -46 25 £55,000 -5.17% 22
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 2 (0.78%) CMS
1 2 (0.78%) Confluence
1 2 (0.78%) IIS
1 2 (0.78%) nginx
1 2 (0.78%) WordPress
2 1 (0.39%) HCL Notes
2 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 1 (0.39%) SharePoint
Applications
1 10 (3.91%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (2.73%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (2.73%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (1.17%) AutoCAD
4 2 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 9 (3.52%) SAP ERP
2 7 (2.73%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (2.73%) Shopify
3 2 (0.78%) Academy Housing
4 1 (0.39%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.39%) Oracle BPM
4 1 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 36 (14.06%) Azure
2 22 (8.59%) Power Platform
3 17 (6.64%) AWS
3 17 (6.64%) SaaS
4 8 (3.13%) Microsoft 365
5 7 (2.73%) Microsoft Copilot
6 6 (2.34%) GCP
7 5 (1.95%) Amazon S3
7 5 (1.95%) AWS CloudFormation
7 5 (1.95%) AWS Lambda
7 5 (1.95%) Serverless
8 4 (1.56%) Amazon ECR
8 4 (1.56%) Amazon ECS
8 4 (1.56%) Apigee
8 4 (1.56%) AWS Step Functions
9 3 (1.17%) Datadog
9 3 (1.17%) Google Ads
9 3 (1.17%) PaaS
10 2 (0.78%) Azure Data Factory
10 2 (0.78%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.95%) Broadband
1 5 (1.95%) HTTP
2 4 (1.56%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.39%) SAN
3 1 (0.39%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (5.47%) Power BI
2 6 (2.34%) SQL Server
3 5 (1.95%) DynamoDB
4 4 (1.56%) Relational Database
5 3 (1.17%) Geospatial Data
5 3 (1.17%) GIS
5 3 (1.17%) Looker
5 3 (1.17%) Metadata
5 3 (1.17%) QGIS
5 3 (1.17%) Spatial Data
5 3 (1.17%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 2 (0.78%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.78%) MongoDB
6 2 (0.78%) PostHog
6 2 (0.78%) Redis
6 2 (0.78%) Tableau
7 1 (0.39%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.39%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.39%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 11 (4.30%) Jenkins
2 9 (3.52%) GitLab
3 7 (2.73%) Cypress.io
3 7 (2.73%) JIRA
4 6 (2.34%) SonarQube
5 5 (1.95%) Cucumber
5 5 (1.95%) JMeter
5 5 (1.95%) Maven
5 5 (1.95%) Postman
5 5 (1.95%) Selenium
6 4 (1.56%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.78%) Appium
7 2 (0.78%) Git
7 2 (0.78%) Locust
7 2 (0.78%) SpecFlow
8 1 (0.39%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.39%) Protractor
8 1 (0.39%) SoapUI
8 1 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.39%) TestRail
General
1 83 (32.42%) Social Skills
2 46 (17.97%) Finance
2 46 (17.97%) Manufacturing
3 26 (10.16%) Analytical Skills
4 24 (9.38%) Influencing Skills
5 23 (8.98%) Public Sector
6 22 (8.59%) Organisational Skills
7 12 (4.69%) Law
7 12 (4.69%) Legal
7 12 (4.69%) Marketing
8 7 (2.73%) Games
9 6 (2.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 5 (1.95%) Retail
11 4 (1.56%) Advertising
11 4 (1.56%) Banking
11 4 (1.56%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (1.56%) Electronics
11 4 (1.56%) Military
11 4 (1.56%) Pharmaceutical
11 4 (1.56%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 36 (14.06%) Lead
2 34 (13.28%) Senior
3 32 (12.50%) QA Manager
4 21 (8.20%) Quality Manager
5 20 (7.81%) QA Engineer
6 18 (7.03%) Developer
7 16 (6.25%) Analyst
8 13 (5.08%) Project Manager
9 12 (4.69%) QA Leader
10 11 (4.30%) Automation Engineer
10 11 (4.30%) QA Automation Engineer
11 9 (3.52%) Team Leader
12 8 (3.13%) Portfolio Manager
12 8 (3.13%) Senior Developer
12 8 (3.13%) Senior Manager
12 8 (3.13%) Senior Portfolio Manager
13 7 (2.73%) QA Team Leader
14 6 (2.34%) Lead Developer
14 6 (2.34%) Software Engineer
15 5 (1.95%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (5.08%) .NET
2 8 (3.13%) AngularJS
2 8 (3.13%) React
3 7 (2.73%) RESTful
3 7 (2.73%) Spring
3 7 (2.73%) Spring Boot
4 6 (2.34%) Gherkin
4 6 (2.34%) Jest
5 5 (1.95%) CSS
5 5 (1.95%) HTML
5 5 (1.95%) Node.js
5 5 (1.95%) Playwright
6 4 (1.56%) Qt
6 4 (1.56%) STL
7 3 (1.17%) Next.js
7 3 (1.17%) QML
8 2 (0.78%) .NET Core
8 2 (0.78%) Entity Framework
8 2 (0.78%) Loki
8 2 (0.78%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 10 (3.91%) Product Ownership
1 10 (3.91%) Self-Motivation
1 10 (3.91%) Social Media
2 8 (3.13%) Cloud Native
2 8 (3.13%) Driving Licence
2 8 (3.13%) Onboarding
2 8 (3.13%) PMI
3 6 (2.34%) AI Agents
3 6 (2.34%) CCTV
3 6 (2.34%) NHS
4 5 (1.95%) Client/Server
5 4 (1.56%) Analytical Mindset
5 4 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
5 4 (1.56%) IoT
6 3 (1.17%) Management Information System
6 3 (1.17%) Mobile App
6 3 (1.17%) Renewable Energy
7 2 (0.78%) Derivative
7 2 (0.78%) EPoS
8 1 (0.39%) FMCG
Operating Systems
1 15 (5.86%) Windows
2 5 (1.95%) Linux
2 5 (1.95%) Unix
3 4 (1.56%) Android
3 4 (1.56%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (27.34%) Mentoring
2 67 (26.17%) Agile
3 49 (19.14%) Continuous Improvement
4 43 (16.80%) Problem-Solving
5 42 (16.41%) DevOps
6 39 (15.23%) CI/CD
6 39 (15.23%) Test Automation
7 33 (12.89%) Process Improvement
8 28 (10.94%) Stakeholder Management
9 24 (9.38%) Project Management
9 24 (9.38%) Software Engineering
10 23 (8.98%) Coaching
11 20 (7.81%) Project Delivery
12 17 (6.64%) Collaborative Working
13 16 (6.25%) Business Intelligence
14 15 (5.86%) Data Analysis
14 15 (5.86%) Quality Management
14 15 (5.86%) Roadmaps
14 15 (5.86%) User Experience
15 13 (5.08%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 20 (7.81%) C#
2 16 (6.25%) Java
3 13 (5.08%) Python
3 13 (5.08%) SQL
3 13 (5.08%) TypeScript
4 9 (3.52%) JavaScript
5 6 (2.34%) Bash
6 5 (1.95%) C++
6 5 (1.95%) Go
7 4 (1.56%) Groovy
7 4 (1.56%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.78%) Elixir
8 2 (0.78%) PHP
8 2 (0.78%) Ruby
8 2 (0.78%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 26 (10.16%) Degree
2 17 (6.64%) PMI Certification
3 12 (4.69%) BPSS Clearance
4 9 (3.52%) PMP
4 9 (3.52%) Security Cleared
5 7 (2.73%) DBS Check
5 7 (2.73%) SC Cleared
6 4 (1.56%) HND
6 4 (1.56%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 3 (1.17%) CCEA
7 3 (1.17%) Citrix Certification
7 3 (1.17%) DV Cleared
7 3 (1.17%) PRINCE2 Certification
8 1 (0.39%) CISA
8 1 (0.39%) CISM
8 1 (0.39%) CISSP
8 1 (0.39%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.39%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (7.81%) Accessibility
2 8 (3.13%) P3O
3 5 (1.95%) GDPR
3 5 (1.95%) PCI DSS
4 4 (1.56%) Data Quality
4 4 (1.56%) PMO
5 3 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.78%) Cyber Essentials
6 2 (0.78%) GRC
6 2 (0.78%) NIST
6 2 (0.78%) SOC 2
6 2 (0.78%) WCAG
7 1 (0.39%) FINRA
7 1 (0.39%) ISO 14001
7 1 (0.39%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 12 (4.69%) Docker
2 2 (0.78%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.39%) Firmware
3 1 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 9 (3.52%) Kubernetes
2 7 (2.73%) Grafana
3 6 (2.34%) Terraform
4 4 (1.56%) HP Fortify
5 3 (1.17%) Ansible
6 2 (0.78%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.78%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.78%) Puppet
7 1 (0.39%) Kibana
Vendors
1 35 (13.67%) Microsoft
2 14 (5.47%) SAP
3 7 (2.73%) Google
4 4 (1.56%) Siemens
5 3 (1.17%) ESRI
6 2 (0.78%) Foundry
6 2 (0.78%) Oracle
7 1 (0.39%) AppDynamics
7 1 (0.39%) Intapp
7 1 (0.39%) Lotus
7 1 (0.39%) New Relic
7 1 (0.39%) Nimble Storage
7 1 (0.39%) Planon
7 1 (0.39%) ServiceNow
7 1 (0.39%) Splunk
7 1 (0.39%) Veracode