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

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 93 51
Rank change year-on-year +42 -42 +32
Permanent jobs citing QA 622 305 515
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 2.67% 3.25% 3.63%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 31.64% 27.09% 28.92%
Number of salaries quoted 407 131 223
10th Percentile £28,100 £34,755 £25,000
25th Percentile £31,750 £42,063 £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 £56,250
90th Percentile £75,000 £86,250 £70,000
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 1,966 1,126 1,781
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 8.44% 12.00% 12.56%
Number of salaries quoted 1,436 515 916
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,250 £25,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £32,625 £32,438
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £49,000 £46,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% +6.52% -8.00%
75th Percentile £67,500 £63,750 £60,991
90th Percentile £85,000 £74,258 £77,500
England median annual salary £57,500 £56,500 £57,500
% change year-on-year +1.77% -1.74% -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 9 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 9 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 +30 372 £45,000 -18.18% 163
Yorkshire +6 128 £40,000 -27.27% 97
North East +15 122 £55,000 +22.22% 56
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%) CMS
2 7 (1.13%) Jupyter
2 7 (1.13%) SharePoint
3 6 (0.96%) WordPress
4 3 (0.48%) IIS
5 2 (0.32%) Confluence
5 2 (0.32%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.16%) Apache Superset
6 1 (0.16%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 31 (4.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (4.50%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (1.45%) MS Visio
4 8 (1.29%) Revit
5 6 (0.96%) AutoCAD
5 6 (0.96%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.48%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 5 (0.80%) 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%) Shopify
3 3 (0.48%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 64 (10.29%) AWS
2 60 (9.65%) Azure
3 36 (5.79%) Power Platform
4 31 (4.98%) Microsoft 365
5 28 (4.50%) Azure DevOps
6 17 (2.73%) SaaS
6 17 (2.73%) Serverless
7 15 (2.41%) Amazon S3
8 13 (2.09%) GCP
9 12 (1.93%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 12 (1.93%) Amazon EC2
10 11 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
11 9 (1.45%) GitHub
11 9 (1.45%) Power Automate
12 8 (1.29%) Amazon ECR
12 8 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
13 6 (0.96%) Amazon EMR
13 6 (0.96%) dbt
13 6 (0.96%) GitHub Actions
14 5 (0.80%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.80%) DNS
1 5 (0.80%) Remote Desktop
2 4 (0.64%) SSL
3 3 (0.48%) HTTP
3 3 (0.48%) HTTPS
3 3 (0.48%) Internet
3 3 (0.48%) Structured Cabling
3 3 (0.48%) TCP/IP
3 3 (0.48%) VPN
4 2 (0.32%) Broadband
4 2 (0.32%) VoIP
5 1 (0.16%) ADSL
5 1 (0.16%) Firewall
5 1 (0.16%) Intranet
5 1 (0.16%) ISDN
5 1 (0.16%) LAN
5 1 (0.16%) Network Security
5 1 (0.16%) RIP
5 1 (0.16%) VDSL
5 1 (0.16%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (4.82%) Power BI
2 15 (2.41%) SQL Server
3 7 (1.13%) DynamoDB
3 7 (1.13%) MySQL
4 6 (0.96%) Amazon Athena
4 6 (0.96%) Relational Database
5 5 (0.80%) BigQuery
5 5 (0.80%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.64%) Azure SQL Database
6 4 (0.64%) Data Lake
6 4 (0.64%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (0.64%) DocumentDB
6 4 (0.64%) PostgreSQL
7 3 (0.48%) Big Data
7 3 (0.48%) Redis
7 3 (0.48%) Tableau
8 2 (0.32%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.32%) Data Mining
8 2 (0.32%) EDRMS
8 2 (0.32%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 35 (5.63%) Git
2 24 (3.86%) JIRA
3 21 (3.38%) GitLab
4 10 (1.61%) Cypress.io
5 8 (1.29%) Jenkins
6 5 (0.80%) Cucumber
6 5 (0.80%) Postman
7 4 (0.64%) Selenium
7 4 (0.64%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.48%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.48%) JUnit
8 3 (0.48%) NUnit
8 3 (0.48%) RStudio
9 2 (0.32%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.32%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.32%) JMeter
9 2 (0.32%) REST Assured
9 2 (0.32%) SpecFlow
9 2 (0.32%) TestRail
10 1 (0.16%) Gradle
General
1 174 (27.97%) Social Skills
2 111 (17.85%) Manufacturing
3 83 (13.34%) Analytical Skills
4 67 (10.77%) Finance
5 62 (9.97%) Pharmaceutical
6 44 (7.07%) Public Sector
7 30 (4.82%) Legal
8 25 (4.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 24 (3.86%) Organisational Skills
10 23 (3.70%) Law
11 21 (3.38%) Aerospace
12 19 (3.05%) Marketing
13 13 (2.09%) Retail
14 12 (1.93%) Swedish Language
15 10 (1.61%) Local Government
16 9 (1.45%) Banking
17 8 (1.29%) Automotive
17 8 (1.29%) Games
17 8 (1.29%) Telecoms
18 7 (1.13%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 73 (11.74%) QA Engineer
2 69 (11.09%) Analyst
3 62 (9.97%) Senior
4 61 (9.81%) Quality Engineer
5 60 (9.65%) QA Officer
6 52 (8.36%) QA Manager
7 51 (8.20%) Lead
8 47 (7.56%) Developer
9 40 (6.43%) Quality Manager
10 19 (3.05%) Business Analyst
10 19 (3.05%) QA Leader
11 18 (2.89%) Head of QA
11 18 (2.89%) Software Engineer
11 18 (2.89%) Test Engineer
12 17 (2.73%) Service Analyst
12 17 (2.73%) Service Desk Analyst
12 17 (2.73%) Tester
13 14 (2.25%) Automation Engineer
14 13 (2.09%) Senior Developer
14 13 (2.09%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (7.07%) .NET
2 32 (5.14%) HTML
3 29 (4.66%) CSS
4 21 (3.38%) REST
5 20 (3.22%) Playwright
6 19 (3.05%) Node.js
7 17 (2.73%) Terraform
8 13 (2.09%) RESTful
9 10 (1.61%) .NET Framework
10 9 (1.45%) AngularJS
10 9 (1.45%) ASP.NET Web API
10 9 (1.45%) OAuth
10 9 (1.45%) React
11 8 (1.29%) ASP.NET
11 8 (1.29%) Entity Framework
12 7 (1.13%) .NET Core
12 7 (1.13%) JSON
12 7 (1.13%) OAuth2
12 7 (1.13%) Vue
13 6 (0.96%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 25 (4.02%) Product Ownership
2 18 (2.89%) Life Science
3 17 (2.73%) Analytical Mindset
4 15 (2.41%) Cloud Native
5 13 (2.09%) Distributed Systems
6 11 (1.77%) Management Information System
7 10 (1.61%) Onboarding
8 8 (1.29%) Driving Licence
9 7 (1.13%) Data Centre
10 6 (0.96%) AI Agents
10 6 (0.96%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (0.96%) Mobile App
11 5 (0.80%) PMI
11 5 (0.80%) Self-Motivation
12 4 (0.64%) Animation
12 4 (0.64%) Online Games
12 4 (0.64%) Security Posture
13 3 (0.48%) Blog
13 3 (0.48%) Photography
13 3 (0.48%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 18 (2.89%) Windows
2 12 (1.93%) Linux
3 5 (0.80%) Android
3 5 (0.80%) Apple iOS
3 5 (0.80%) Mac OS
3 5 (0.80%) Unix
3 5 (0.80%) Windows 10
4 3 (0.48%) VME
5 2 (0.32%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 139 (22.35%) Continuous Improvement
2 131 (21.06%) Agile
3 100 (16.08%) CI/CD
4 92 (14.79%) Problem-Solving
5 84 (13.50%) Test Automation
6 72 (11.58%) DevOps
6 72 (11.58%) Mentoring
7 58 (9.32%) Validation
8 51 (8.20%) Software Engineering
9 50 (8.04%) Decision-Making
10 48 (7.72%) Stakeholder Management
11 46 (7.40%) Software Testing
12 43 (6.91%) Analytics
13 41 (6.59%) AI
14 39 (6.27%) Coaching
14 39 (6.27%) Customer Service
15 38 (6.11%) Quality Management
16 34 (5.47%) Root Cause Analysis
17 31 (4.98%) Microservices
18 30 (4.82%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 63 (10.13%) SQL
2 52 (8.36%) JavaScript
3 49 (7.88%) C#
4 40 (6.43%) Python
5 27 (4.34%) Java
5 27 (4.34%) TypeScript
6 9 (1.45%) Bash
7 6 (0.96%) PHP
8 5 (0.80%) Go
8 5 (0.80%) R
9 4 (0.64%) PowerShell
10 3 (0.48%) C++
10 3 (0.48%) COBOL
10 3 (0.48%) Groovy
11 2 (0.32%) Bicep
11 2 (0.32%) Kotlin
11 2 (0.32%) VB.NET
12 1 (0.16%) C
12 1 (0.16%) Perl
12 1 (0.16%) Swift
Qualifications
1 77 (12.38%) Degree
2 46 (7.40%) Security Cleared
3 39 (6.27%) SC Cleared
4 18 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (2.73%) Microsoft Certification
6 16 (2.57%) IRCA
7 15 (2.41%) AWS Certification
7 15 (2.41%) MCSE
8 9 (1.45%) RIBA
9 8 (1.29%) Computer Science Degree
9 8 (1.29%) Postgraduate
10 7 (1.13%) DBS Check
11 6 (0.96%) HNC
11 6 (0.96%) PMI Certification
12 5 (0.80%) CREST Certified
12 5 (0.80%) HND
12 5 (0.80%) PMP
13 4 (0.64%) ISTQB
14 3 (0.48%) DV Cleared
14 3 (0.48%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (6.27%) ISO 9001
2 25 (4.02%) GDPR
3 23 (3.70%) Accessibility
4 14 (2.25%) Data Quality
5 13 (2.09%) GMP
6 8 (1.29%) PMO
7 4 (0.64%) Software Quality Assurance
8 3 (0.48%) ISO 19650
8 3 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.48%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.48%) WCAG
9 2 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.32%) ISO 14001
10 1 (0.16%) AQAP
10 1 (0.16%) ECSS
10 1 (0.16%) GRC
10 1 (0.16%) NCSC
10 1 (0.16%) NEBOSH
10 1 (0.16%) NIST
System Software
1 29 (4.66%) Docker
2 3 (0.48%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 16 (2.57%) Kubernetes
2 4 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (0.48%) Ansible
3 3 (0.48%) Packer
4 2 (0.32%) Grafana
5 1 (0.16%) Cisco CUCM
5 1 (0.16%) Fluentd
5 1 (0.16%) Kibana
Vendors
1 68 (10.93%) Microsoft
2 22 (3.54%) SAP
3 21 (3.38%) ServiceNow
4 9 (1.45%) Google
5 8 (1.29%) Aderant
5 8 (1.29%) Autodesk
5 8 (1.29%) iManage
5 8 (1.29%) Intapp
6 5 (0.80%) Databricks
6 5 (0.80%) Dynatrace
6 5 (0.80%) Sage
7 4 (0.64%) Confluent
8 3 (0.48%) Adobe
8 3 (0.48%) AppDynamics
8 3 (0.48%) IBM
8 3 (0.48%) Planon
8 3 (0.48%) Salesforce
8 3 (0.48%) Splunk
8 3 (0.48%) YouTube
9 2 (0.32%) F5