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 14 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 92 51
Rank change year-on-year +42 -41 +31
Permanent jobs citing QA 621 303 514
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 2.65% 3.23% 3.65%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 31.35% 27.30% 29.27%
Number of salaries quoted 400 129 217
10th Percentile £27,500 £32,700 £25,000
25th Percentile £31,000 £41,250 £30,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £55,000 £41,774
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +31.66% -24.05%
75th Percentile £57,500 £71,250 £53,750
90th Percentile £75,000 £86,250 £68,868
England median annual salary £52,500 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year -8.70% +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 1,981 1,110 1,756
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 8.44% 11.82% 12.46%
Number of salaries quoted 1,422 495 897
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,250 £25,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £32,500 £32,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £48,750 £46,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% +5.98% -8.00%
75th Percentile £67,500 £62,825 £60,991
90th Percentile £85,000 £74,258 £77,500
England median annual salary £57,500 £56,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +2.68% -2.61% -4.17%

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 14 September 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 14 September 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 +38 374 £45,000 -18.18% 269
Yorkshire +19 128 £40,000 -27.27% 121
North East +15 119 £55,000 +22.22% 82
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 10 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (1.13%) Apache
2 7 (1.13%) Apache Spark
2 7 (1.13%) Jupyter
2 7 (1.13%) SharePoint
3 6 (0.97%) CMS
4 5 (0.81%) WordPress
5 3 (0.48%) IIS
6 2 (0.32%) Confluence
6 2 (0.32%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.16%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.16%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 32 (5.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (4.67%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (1.45%) MS Visio
4 8 (1.29%) Revit
5 6 (0.97%) AutoCAD
5 6 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.48%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 5 (0.81%) SAP PM
2 4 (0.64%) Sage 200
2 4 (0.64%) SAP Business One
2 4 (0.64%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.48%) SystmOne
4 2 (0.32%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 68 (10.95%) AWS
2 59 (9.50%) Azure
3 35 (5.64%) Power Platform
4 31 (4.99%) Microsoft 365
5 28 (4.51%) Azure DevOps
6 20 (3.22%) Serverless
7 18 (2.90%) Amazon S3
7 18 (2.90%) SaaS
8 15 (2.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 15 (2.42%) Amazon EC2
9 14 (2.25%) AWS Lambda
10 13 (2.09%) GCP
11 12 (1.93%) GitHub
12 9 (1.45%) GitHub Actions
13 8 (1.29%) Amazon ECR
13 8 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
13 8 (1.29%) Power Automate
14 6 (0.97%) Amazon EMR
14 6 (0.97%) dbt
15 5 (0.81%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 6 (0.97%) DNS
1 6 (0.97%) Remote Desktop
2 5 (0.81%) SSL
3 4 (0.64%) Internet
3 4 (0.64%) TCP/IP
3 4 (0.64%) VPN
4 3 (0.48%) HTTP
4 3 (0.48%) HTTPS
4 3 (0.48%) Structured Cabling
5 2 (0.32%) Broadband
5 2 (0.32%) VoIP
6 1 (0.16%) ADSL
6 1 (0.16%) Firewall
6 1 (0.16%) Intranet
6 1 (0.16%) ISDN
6 1 (0.16%) LAN
6 1 (0.16%) RIP
6 1 (0.16%) VDSL
6 1 (0.16%) WAN
6 1 (0.16%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (4.67%) Power BI
2 15 (2.42%) SQL Server
3 7 (1.13%) DynamoDB
3 7 (1.13%) MySQL
3 7 (1.13%) Relational Database
4 6 (0.97%) Amazon Athena
5 5 (0.81%) BigQuery
5 5 (0.81%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.64%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (0.64%) DocumentDB
6 4 (0.64%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.64%) Redis
7 3 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
7 3 (0.48%) Big Data
7 3 (0.48%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.48%) Tableau
8 2 (0.32%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.32%) Data Mining
8 2 (0.32%) EDRMS
9 1 (0.16%) EDMS
Development Applications
1 35 (5.64%) Git
2 26 (4.19%) JIRA
3 24 (3.86%) GitLab
4 14 (2.25%) Cypress.io
5 11 (1.77%) Jenkins
6 8 (1.29%) Postman
7 6 (0.97%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.81%) JMeter
8 5 (0.81%) Selenium
9 4 (0.64%) JUnit
9 4 (0.64%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.48%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.48%) RStudio
11 2 (0.32%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.32%) Claude Code
11 2 (0.32%) NUnit
11 2 (0.32%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.32%) SpecFlow
11 2 (0.32%) TestRail
12 1 (0.16%) Gradle
General
1 163 (26.25%) Social Skills
2 114 (18.36%) Manufacturing
3 78 (12.56%) Analytical Skills
4 67 (10.79%) Finance
5 62 (9.98%) Pharmaceutical
6 41 (6.60%) Public Sector
7 30 (4.83%) Legal
8 28 (4.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 25 (4.03%) Law
10 23 (3.70%) Aerospace
11 21 (3.38%) Organisational Skills
12 15 (2.42%) Marketing
13 12 (1.93%) Swedish Language
14 11 (1.77%) Retail
15 10 (1.61%) Banking
15 10 (1.61%) Local Government
16 9 (1.45%) Electronics
17 8 (1.29%) Automotive
17 8 (1.29%) Games
17 8 (1.29%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 79 (12.72%) QA Engineer
2 70 (11.27%) Analyst
3 66 (10.63%) Quality Engineer
4 64 (10.31%) Senior
5 62 (9.98%) QA Officer
6 54 (8.70%) Lead
7 52 (8.37%) QA Manager
8 46 (7.41%) Developer
9 40 (6.44%) Quality Manager
10 20 (3.22%) QA Leader
10 20 (3.22%) Test Engineer
11 19 (3.06%) Business Analyst
12 18 (2.90%) Software Engineer
13 17 (2.74%) Service Analyst
13 17 (2.74%) Service Desk Analyst
14 16 (2.58%) Automation Engineer
15 15 (2.42%) QA Automation Engineer
16 13 (2.09%) Head of QA
16 13 (2.09%) Tester
17 12 (1.93%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (6.92%) .NET
2 30 (4.83%) HTML
3 28 (4.51%) CSS
4 22 (3.54%) Playwright
5 20 (3.22%) REST
6 19 (3.06%) Node.js
7 17 (2.74%) Terraform
8 15 (2.42%) RESTful
9 9 (1.45%) .NET Framework
9 9 (1.45%) OAuth
9 9 (1.45%) React
10 8 (1.29%) AngularJS
10 8 (1.29%) ASP.NET Web API
11 7 (1.13%) .NET Core
11 7 (1.13%) ASP.NET
11 7 (1.13%) Entity Framework
11 7 (1.13%) OAuth2
11 7 (1.13%) Vue
12 6 (0.97%) JSON
12 6 (0.97%) MIDP
Miscellaneous
1 29 (4.67%) Product Ownership
2 18 (2.90%) Life Science
3 16 (2.58%) Cloud Native
4 14 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
5 12 (1.93%) Analytical Mindset
6 11 (1.77%) Management Information System
7 9 (1.45%) Driving Licence
7 9 (1.45%) Onboarding
8 7 (1.13%) Data Centre
9 6 (0.97%) AI Agents
9 6 (0.97%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (0.81%) Mobile App
10 5 (0.81%) PMI
10 5 (0.81%) Security Posture
11 4 (0.64%) Blog
11 4 (0.64%) Cyber Kill Chain
11 4 (0.64%) Online Games
12 3 (0.48%) Legacy Systems
12 3 (0.48%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 20 (3.22%) Windows
2 14 (2.25%) Linux
3 6 (0.97%) Mac OS
3 6 (0.97%) Unix
4 5 (0.81%) Android
4 5 (0.81%) Apple iOS
4 5 (0.81%) Windows 10
5 2 (0.32%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.16%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (21.74%) Continuous Improvement
2 134 (21.58%) Agile
3 104 (16.75%) CI/CD
4 91 (14.65%) Problem-Solving
5 89 (14.33%) Test Automation
6 72 (11.59%) DevOps
7 71 (11.43%) Mentoring
8 58 (9.34%) Validation
9 48 (7.73%) Software Engineering
9 48 (7.73%) Software Testing
9 48 (7.73%) Stakeholder Management
10 47 (7.57%) Decision-Making
11 41 (6.60%) Customer Service
12 40 (6.44%) AI
13 36 (5.80%) Analytics
14 34 (5.48%) Coaching
15 33 (5.31%) Root Cause Analysis
15 33 (5.31%) Scrum
16 32 (5.15%) Quality Management
17 31 (4.99%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 66 (10.63%) SQL
2 56 (9.02%) JavaScript
3 50 (8.05%) C#
4 39 (6.28%) Python
5 29 (4.67%) Java
5 29 (4.67%) TypeScript
6 9 (1.45%) Bash
7 5 (0.81%) Go
7 5 (0.81%) PHP
7 5 (0.81%) R
8 4 (0.64%) PowerShell
9 3 (0.48%) C++
9 3 (0.48%) Groovy
9 3 (0.48%) Kotlin
10 2 (0.32%) VB.NET
11 1 (0.16%) Bicep
11 1 (0.16%) COBOL
11 1 (0.16%) Objective-C
11 1 (0.16%) Scala
11 1 (0.16%) Swift
Qualifications
1 77 (12.40%) Degree
2 49 (7.89%) Security Cleared
3 42 (6.76%) SC Cleared
4 18 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (2.74%) Microsoft Certification
6 15 (2.42%) AWS Certification
6 15 (2.42%) MCSE
7 11 (1.77%) IRCA
8 9 (1.45%) RIBA
9 8 (1.29%) Postgraduate
10 7 (1.13%) DBS Check
11 6 (0.97%) Computer Science Degree
11 6 (0.97%) CREST Certified
11 6 (0.97%) HNC
11 6 (0.97%) PMI Certification
12 5 (0.81%) HND
12 5 (0.81%) PMP
13 4 (0.64%) DV Cleared
13 4 (0.64%) ISTQB
14 3 (0.48%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (5.64%) ISO 9001
2 25 (4.03%) Accessibility
3 19 (3.06%) GDPR
4 13 (2.09%) Data Quality
4 13 (2.09%) GMP
5 8 (1.29%) PMO
6 4 (0.64%) Software Quality Assurance
7 3 (0.48%) ISO 19650
7 3 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.48%) WCAG
8 2 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 2 (0.32%) ISO 14001
9 1 (0.16%) AQAP
9 1 (0.16%) ECSS
9 1 (0.16%) GRC
9 1 (0.16%) NCSC
9 1 (0.16%) NEBOSH
9 1 (0.16%) P3O
9 1 (0.16%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 29 (4.67%) Docker
2 3 (0.48%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 16 (2.58%) Kubernetes
2 4 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (0.48%) Ansible
3 3 (0.48%) Grafana
3 3 (0.48%) Packer
4 2 (0.32%) Kibana
5 1 (0.16%) Cisco CUCM
5 1 (0.16%) Fluentd
Vendors
1 68 (10.95%) Microsoft
2 22 (3.54%) SAP
3 21 (3.38%) ServiceNow
4 8 (1.29%) Aderant
4 8 (1.29%) Autodesk
4 8 (1.29%) iManage
4 8 (1.29%) Intapp
5 7 (1.13%) Google
6 6 (0.97%) Sage
7 5 (0.81%) Databricks
7 5 (0.81%) Dynatrace
8 4 (0.64%) Confluent
8 4 (0.64%) IBM
9 3 (0.48%) AppDynamics
9 3 (0.48%) Planon
9 3 (0.48%) Salesforce
9 3 (0.48%) Splunk
9 3 (0.48%) YouTube
10 2 (0.32%) Draytek
10 2 (0.32%) F5