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 11 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 96 55
Rank change year-on-year +48 -41 +26
Permanent jobs citing QA 667 287 457
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 2.78% 3.01% 3.48%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 31.85% 26.80% 26.22%
Number of salaries quoted 426 118 161
10th Percentile £29,875 £31,250 £25,000
25th Percentile £34,063 £41,250 £28,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £55,000 £42,500
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +29.41% -22.73%
75th Percentile £57,500 £73,750 £57,500
90th Percentile £69,375 £84,125 £72,500
England median annual salary £50,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year -13.04% +4.55% -12.00%

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 2,094 1,071 1,743
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 8.72% 11.24% 13.26%
Number of salaries quoted 1,441 455 740
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,000 £25,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £32,500 £32,188
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £50,000 £47,250
Median % change year-on-year - +5.82% -5.50%
75th Percentile £67,500 £65,000 £60,991
90th Percentile £83,750 £76,250 £77,500
England median annual salary £55,000 £56,000 £58,500
% change year-on-year -1.79% -4.27% -2.50%

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 11 October 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 11 October 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 +44 383 £45,000 -27.42% 236
Yorkshire +22 142 £40,000 -27.27% 147
North East +14 142 £52,500 +23.53% 72
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 (1.50%) Apache Airflow
2 8 (1.20%) SharePoint
3 7 (1.05%) Apache
3 7 (1.05%) Apache Spark
3 7 (1.05%) Jupyter
4 5 (0.75%) CMS
5 4 (0.60%) WebLogic
5 4 (0.60%) WordPress
6 3 (0.45%) Confluence
6 3 (0.45%) IIS
7 1 (0.15%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.15%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.15%) SAS
Applications
1 28 (4.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 25 (3.75%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (1.65%) Revit
4 7 (1.05%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.90%) AutoCAD
6 5 (0.75%) Navisworks
7 4 (0.60%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 1 (0.15%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 4 (0.60%) Sage 200
1 4 (0.60%) SAP Business One
1 4 (0.60%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.45%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 66 (9.90%) AWS
2 59 (8.85%) Azure
3 28 (4.20%) Azure DevOps
3 28 (4.20%) Microsoft 365
4 25 (3.75%) Power Platform
5 18 (2.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 18 (2.70%) Amazon S3
5 18 (2.70%) Serverless
6 14 (2.10%) AWS Lambda
6 14 (2.10%) GitHub
6 14 (2.10%) SaaS
7 13 (1.95%) Amazon EC2
8 10 (1.50%) Amazon ECR
8 10 (1.50%) GCP
8 10 (1.50%) GitHub Actions
8 10 (1.50%) Power Automate
9 7 (1.05%) Amazon ECS
9 7 (1.05%) Amazon EKS
9 7 (1.05%) AWS Fargate
9 7 (1.05%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.35%) DNS
2 7 (1.05%) SSL
2 7 (1.05%) TCP/IP
3 6 (0.90%) Internet
3 6 (0.90%) Remote Desktop
3 6 (0.90%) VPN
4 3 (0.45%) HTTPS
4 3 (0.45%) Structured Cabling
5 2 (0.30%) Broadband
5 2 (0.30%) HTTP
5 2 (0.30%) LAN
5 2 (0.30%) SMS
5 2 (0.30%) VoIP
5 2 (0.30%) WAN
6 1 (0.15%) ADSL
6 1 (0.15%) DHCP
6 1 (0.15%) Intranet
6 1 (0.15%) ISDN
6 1 (0.15%) RIP
6 1 (0.15%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (2.55%) Power BI
2 15 (2.25%) SQL Server
3 8 (1.20%) MongoDB
3 8 (1.20%) Relational Database
4 7 (1.05%) DynamoDB
4 7 (1.05%) MySQL
5 6 (0.90%) Amazon Athena
5 6 (0.90%) DocumentDB
6 5 (0.75%) Data Warehouse
6 5 (0.75%) PostgreSQL
7 4 (0.60%) BigQuery
7 4 (0.60%) Redis
8 3 (0.45%) Big Data
8 3 (0.45%) Data Lake
8 3 (0.45%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.30%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.30%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (0.30%) EDMS
9 2 (0.30%) EDRMS
9 2 (0.30%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 35 (5.25%) Git
2 23 (3.45%) GitLab
3 22 (3.30%) JIRA
4 17 (2.55%) Cypress.io
5 10 (1.50%) Postman
6 9 (1.35%) Selenium
7 8 (1.20%) Jenkins
8 5 (0.75%) JUnit
9 4 (0.60%) JMeter
9 4 (0.60%) REST Assured
10 3 (0.45%) Claude Code
10 3 (0.45%) RStudio
11 1 (0.15%) Android Studio
11 1 (0.15%) Appium
11 1 (0.15%) Bitbucket
11 1 (0.15%) Cucumber
11 1 (0.15%) Gradle
11 1 (0.15%) Rational DOORS
11 1 (0.15%) SonarQube
11 1 (0.15%) Xcode
General
1 153 (22.94%) Social Skills
2 111 (16.64%) Manufacturing
3 70 (10.49%) Analytical Skills
4 60 (9.00%) Finance
4 60 (9.00%) Public Sector
5 59 (8.85%) Pharmaceutical
6 36 (5.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 28 (4.20%) Legal
8 25 (3.75%) Aerospace
8 25 (3.75%) Law
9 23 (3.45%) Organisational Skills
10 17 (2.55%) Marketing
11 16 (2.40%) Retail
12 11 (1.65%) Banking
12 11 (1.65%) Electronics
12 11 (1.65%) Swedish Language
13 10 (1.50%) Local Government
14 8 (1.20%) Games
15 7 (1.05%) Automotive
16 6 (0.90%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 98 (14.69%) QA Engineer
2 86 (12.89%) Senior
3 69 (10.34%) Quality Engineer
4 67 (10.04%) Analyst
5 64 (9.60%) Lead
6 63 (9.45%) QA Officer
7 56 (8.40%) QA Manager
8 51 (7.65%) Developer
9 49 (7.35%) Quality Manager
10 32 (4.80%) Automation Engineer
10 32 (4.80%) QA Automation Engineer
11 28 (4.20%) QA Leader
12 26 (3.90%) Tester
13 22 (3.30%) Test Engineer
14 20 (3.00%) QA Tester
15 16 (2.40%) Software Developer
16 15 (2.25%) IT Support
16 15 (2.25%) Senior Developer
17 14 (2.10%) Senior QA Tester
17 14 (2.10%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (6.45%) .NET
2 39 (5.85%) HTML
3 37 (5.55%) CSS
4 33 (4.95%) Node.js
5 26 (3.90%) Playwright
6 23 (3.45%) REST
7 17 (2.55%) RESTful
8 15 (2.25%) Terraform
9 10 (1.50%) .NET Framework
10 9 (1.35%) AngularJS
10 9 (1.35%) ASP.NET Web API
10 9 (1.35%) OAuth
11 8 (1.20%) React
12 7 (1.05%) .NET Core
12 7 (1.05%) Jest
12 7 (1.05%) Kafka
12 7 (1.05%) Middleware
12 7 (1.05%) Spring
12 7 (1.05%) Spring Boot
12 7 (1.05%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 35 (5.25%) Product Ownership
2 20 (3.00%) Life Science
3 16 (2.40%) Cloud Native
4 14 (2.10%) Management Information System
5 13 (1.95%) Driving Licence
6 12 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
7 10 (1.50%) Data Centre
8 9 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
8 9 (1.35%) Onboarding
9 7 (1.05%) Security Posture
10 6 (0.90%) AI Agents
10 6 (0.90%) Blog
10 6 (0.90%) Cyber Kill Chain
10 6 (0.90%) Mobile App
11 5 (0.75%) Legacy Systems
11 5 (0.75%) PMI
11 5 (0.75%) Self-Motivation
12 3 (0.45%) CCTV
12 3 (0.45%) Renewable Energy
12 3 (0.45%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 23 (3.45%) Windows
2 13 (1.95%) Linux
3 8 (1.20%) Android
4 7 (1.05%) Apple iOS
5 6 (0.90%) macOS
5 6 (0.90%) Unix
6 5 (0.75%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.30%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 155 (23.24%) Agile
2 144 (21.59%) Continuous Improvement
3 116 (17.39%) CI/CD
4 114 (17.09%) Test Automation
5 107 (16.04%) Problem-Solving
6 78 (11.69%) Mentoring
7 73 (10.94%) DevOps
8 67 (10.04%) Validation
9 59 (8.85%) Software Testing
10 48 (7.20%) Stakeholder Management
11 45 (6.75%) Software Engineering
12 42 (6.30%) Customer Service
12 42 (6.30%) Decision-Making
13 40 (6.00%) Collaborative Working
14 39 (5.85%) AI
14 39 (5.85%) SDLC
15 36 (5.40%) Coaching
15 36 (5.40%) Scrum
15 36 (5.40%) Test Strategy
16 35 (5.25%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 70 (10.49%) JavaScript
2 66 (9.90%) SQL
3 50 (7.50%) C#
4 33 (4.95%) Python
5 31 (4.65%) TypeScript
6 29 (4.35%) Java
7 9 (1.35%) Bash
8 5 (0.75%) Kotlin
8 5 (0.75%) PHP
8 5 (0.75%) PowerShell
8 5 (0.75%) R
9 4 (0.60%) Go
10 3 (0.45%) C++
11 2 (0.30%) VB.NET
12 1 (0.15%) Objective-C
12 1 (0.15%) Scala
12 1 (0.15%) Swift
12 1 (0.15%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.15%) VBA
Qualifications
1 79 (11.84%) Degree
2 70 (10.49%) Security Cleared
3 57 (8.55%) SC Cleared
4 17 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (2.40%) Microsoft Certification
6 12 (1.80%) AWS Certification
6 12 (1.80%) MCSE
7 9 (1.35%) DV Cleared
7 9 (1.35%) RIBA
8 8 (1.20%) CREST Certified
8 8 (1.20%) Postgraduate
9 7 (1.05%) DBS Check
9 7 (1.05%) HNC
10 6 (0.90%) HND
11 5 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
11 5 (0.75%) PMI Certification
12 4 (0.60%) PMP
13 2 (0.30%) APMP
13 2 (0.30%) CHECK Team Member
13 2 (0.30%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (4.95%) ISO 9001
2 26 (3.90%) Accessibility
3 13 (1.95%) Data Quality
4 12 (1.80%) GMP
4 12 (1.80%) PMO
5 10 (1.50%) GDPR
6 5 (0.75%) ISO 19650
7 3 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 2 (0.30%) ECSS
8 2 (0.30%) Good Clinical Practice
8 2 (0.30%) P3O
9 1 (0.15%) AQAP
9 1 (0.15%) GRC
9 1 (0.15%) NCSC
9 1 (0.15%) NIST
9 1 (0.15%) SLA
9 1 (0.15%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 30 (4.50%) Docker
2 4 (0.60%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 16 (2.40%) Kubernetes
2 4 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
3 2 (0.30%) Kibana
4 1 (0.15%) Cisco CUCM
4 1 (0.15%) Fluentd
4 1 (0.15%) Grafana
Vendors
1 63 (9.45%) Microsoft
2 18 (2.70%) ServiceNow
3 17 (2.55%) SAP
4 11 (1.65%) Autodesk
5 7 (1.05%) Dynatrace
6 6 (0.90%) Confluent
6 6 (0.90%) Databricks
6 6 (0.90%) Sage
7 5 (0.75%) Salesforce
8 4 (0.60%) Aderant
9 3 (0.45%) Google
9 3 (0.45%) iManage
9 3 (0.45%) Intapp
9 3 (0.45%) Splunk
9 3 (0.45%) YouTube
10 2 (0.30%) Alteryx
10 2 (0.30%) Apple
10 2 (0.30%) Draytek
10 2 (0.30%) F5
10 2 (0.30%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud