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

6 months to
20 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 86 47 85
Rank change year-on-year -39 +38 -71
Permanent jobs citing QA 266 364 382
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 2.07% 4.66% 3.05%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 25.33% 25.38% 23.12%
Number of salaries quoted 125 128 233
10th Percentile £26,000 £29,400 £30,000
25th Percentile £31,650 £41,188 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £63,813 £65,000
90th Percentile £80,750 £82,875 £81,250
England median annual salary £57,500 £60,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year -4.17% +4.35% -4.17%

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 1,050 1,434 1,652
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 8.16% 18.35% 13.20%
Number of salaries quoted 584 560 1,223
10th Percentile £28,521 £30,000 £26,750
25th Percentile £35,000 £37,500 £33,875
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £50,000 £50,000
75th Percentile £65,640 £66,000 £63,750
90th Percentile £80,000 £81,325 £83,750
England median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +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 20 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 20 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 -19 142 £50,000 -4.76% 107
Yorkshire -19 97 £55,000 +26.44% 48
North East -53 27 £55,000 - 17
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 4 (1.50%) CMS
1 4 (1.50%) WordPress
2 2 (0.75%) Confluence
2 2 (0.75%) nginx
3 1 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.38%) IIS
3 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 8 (3.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.88%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.88%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (1.50%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (1.13%) AutoCAD
5 1 (0.38%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 9 (3.38%) SAP ERP
2 5 (1.88%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.88%) Shopify
3 2 (0.75%) Academy Housing
4 1 (0.38%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 33 (12.41%) Azure
2 19 (7.14%) Power Platform
3 18 (6.77%) AWS
3 18 (6.77%) SaaS
4 8 (3.01%) GCP
4 8 (3.01%) Microsoft 365
5 5 (1.88%) Amazon S3
5 5 (1.88%) AWS CloudFormation
5 5 (1.88%) AWS Lambda
5 5 (1.88%) Google Analytics
5 5 (1.88%) Microsoft Copilot
5 5 (1.88%) Serverless
6 4 (1.50%) Amazon ECR
6 4 (1.50%) Amazon ECS
6 4 (1.50%) Apigee
6 4 (1.50%) AWS Step Functions
7 3 (1.13%) Datadog
7 3 (1.13%) dbt
7 3 (1.13%) PaaS
8 2 (0.75%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.88%) Broadband
1 5 (1.88%) HTTP
2 4 (1.50%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.38%) SAN
3 1 (0.38%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (4.51%) Power BI
2 5 (1.88%) DynamoDB
2 5 (1.88%) Relational Database
3 4 (1.50%) SQL Server
4 3 (1.13%) Geospatial Data
4 3 (1.13%) GIS
4 3 (1.13%) Looker
4 3 (1.13%) Metadata
4 3 (1.13%) QGIS
4 3 (1.13%) Spatial Data
5 2 (0.75%) BigQuery
5 2 (0.75%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.75%) MongoDB
5 2 (0.75%) PostHog
5 2 (0.75%) Redis
5 2 (0.75%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 1 (0.38%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (0.38%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.38%) SAP Data Services
6 1 (0.38%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 11 (4.14%) Jenkins
2 9 (3.38%) GitLab
3 7 (2.63%) Cypress.io
4 6 (2.26%) JIRA
4 6 (2.26%) Postman
4 6 (2.26%) SonarQube
5 5 (1.88%) Cucumber
5 5 (1.88%) Maven
6 4 (1.50%) Git
6 4 (1.50%) JMeter
6 4 (1.50%) Selenium
6 4 (1.50%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.75%) Appium
7 2 (0.75%) Locust
7 2 (0.75%) SpecFlow
8 1 (0.38%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.38%) Protractor
8 1 (0.38%) SoapUI
8 1 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.38%) TestRail
General
1 88 (33.08%) Social Skills
2 48 (18.05%) Finance
2 48 (18.05%) Manufacturing
3 30 (11.28%) Analytical Skills
4 24 (9.02%) Influencing Skills
4 24 (9.02%) Organisational Skills
5 19 (7.14%) Public Sector
6 13 (4.89%) Marketing
7 12 (4.51%) Law
7 12 (4.51%) Legal
8 7 (2.63%) Games
8 7 (2.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 7 (2.63%) Pharmaceutical
9 5 (1.88%) Retail
10 4 (1.50%) Banking
10 4 (1.50%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.13%) Advertising
11 3 (1.13%) Electronics
11 3 (1.13%) Military
11 3 (1.13%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 38 (14.29%) Lead
2 32 (12.03%) QA Manager
3 30 (11.28%) Senior
4 23 (8.65%) QA Engineer
5 21 (7.89%) Quality Manager
6 16 (6.02%) Developer
7 14 (5.26%) Analyst
8 12 (4.51%) QA Leader
9 11 (4.14%) Automation Engineer
9 11 (4.14%) QA Automation Engineer
10 10 (3.76%) Project Manager
11 9 (3.38%) Team Leader
12 8 (3.01%) Portfolio Manager
12 8 (3.01%) Senior Manager
12 8 (3.01%) Senior Portfolio Manager
13 7 (2.63%) Administrator
13 7 (2.63%) QA Officer
13 7 (2.63%) QA Team Leader
13 7 (2.63%) Software Engineer
14 6 (2.26%) Quality Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (4.51%) .NET
2 9 (3.38%) React
3 8 (3.01%) AngularJS
3 8 (3.01%) CSS
3 8 (3.01%) HTML
3 8 (3.01%) Spring
3 8 (3.01%) Spring Boot
4 7 (2.63%) RESTful
5 6 (2.26%) Gherkin
5 6 (2.26%) Jest
6 5 (1.88%) Node.js
7 4 (1.50%) Playwright
7 4 (1.50%) Qt
7 4 (1.50%) STL
8 3 (1.13%) Next.js
8 3 (1.13%) QML
9 2 (0.75%) .NET Core
9 2 (0.75%) Flutter
9 2 (0.75%) Loki
9 2 (0.75%) MassTransit
Miscellaneous
1 10 (3.76%) Product Ownership
1 10 (3.76%) Self-Motivation
1 10 (3.76%) Social Media
2 9 (3.38%) Analytical Mindset
3 8 (3.01%) Cloud Native
3 8 (3.01%) Driving Licence
3 8 (3.01%) Onboarding
3 8 (3.01%) PMI
4 6 (2.26%) AI Agents
4 6 (2.26%) CCTV
4 6 (2.26%) NHS
5 5 (1.88%) Client/Server
6 4 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
7 3 (1.13%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.13%) Mobile App
7 3 (1.13%) Renewable Energy
8 2 (0.75%) Derivative
8 2 (0.75%) EPoS
8 2 (0.75%) IoT
9 1 (0.38%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 14 (5.26%) Windows
2 5 (1.88%) Linux
2 5 (1.88%) Unix
3 4 (1.50%) Android
3 4 (1.50%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 68 (25.56%) Mentoring
2 67 (25.19%) Agile
3 54 (20.30%) Continuous Improvement
4 43 (16.17%) Problem-Solving
5 41 (15.41%) CI/CD
6 40 (15.04%) Test Automation
7 37 (13.91%) DevOps
8 31 (11.65%) Stakeholder Management
9 30 (11.28%) Process Improvement
10 23 (8.65%) Project Management
10 23 (8.65%) Software Engineering
11 21 (7.89%) Quality Management
12 19 (7.14%) Coaching
13 16 (6.02%) Change Management
13 16 (6.02%) QMS
13 16 (6.02%) Scrum
13 16 (6.02%) User Experience
14 15 (5.64%) Analytics
14 15 (5.64%) Collaborative Working
15 14 (5.26%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 19 (7.14%) C#
2 18 (6.77%) Java
3 15 (5.64%) Python
4 13 (4.89%) TypeScript
5 12 (4.51%) SQL
6 10 (3.76%) JavaScript
7 6 (2.26%) Bash
8 4 (1.50%) C++
8 4 (1.50%) Go
8 4 (1.50%) Groovy
8 4 (1.50%) PowerShell
9 2 (0.75%) PHP
10 1 (0.38%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 24 (9.02%) Degree
2 17 (6.39%) PMI Certification
3 10 (3.76%) BPSS Clearance
4 9 (3.38%) PMP
5 7 (2.63%) DBS Check
6 5 (1.88%) IRCA
6 5 (1.88%) Security Cleared
7 4 (1.50%) HND
7 4 (1.50%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 3 (1.13%) CCEA
8 3 (1.13%) Citrix Certification
8 3 (1.13%) PRINCE2 Certification
8 3 (1.13%) SC Cleared
9 2 (0.75%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.38%) CISA
10 1 (0.38%) CISM
10 1 (0.38%) CISSP
10 1 (0.38%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (0.38%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (6.39%) Accessibility
2 10 (3.76%) GDPR
3 8 (3.01%) P3O
4 5 (1.88%) ISO 9001
4 5 (1.88%) PCI DSS
5 4 (1.50%) PMO
6 3 (1.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.75%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.75%) GRC
7 2 (0.75%) NIST
7 2 (0.75%) SOC 2
7 2 (0.75%) WCAG
8 1 (0.38%) FINRA
System Software
1 13 (4.89%) Docker
2 1 (0.38%) Firmware
2 1 (0.38%) Squid
Systems Management
1 9 (3.38%) Kubernetes
2 7 (2.63%) Grafana
2 7 (2.63%) Terraform
3 4 (1.50%) HP Fortify
4 3 (1.13%) Ansible
5 2 (0.75%) Progress Chef
5 2 (0.75%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.75%) Puppet
6 1 (0.38%) Kibana
Vendors
1 29 (10.90%) Microsoft
2 13 (4.89%) SAP
3 9 (3.38%) Google
4 4 (1.50%) Siemens
5 3 (1.13%) ESRI
6 2 (0.75%) Foundry
6 2 (0.75%) Intapp
7 1 (0.38%) Aderant
7 1 (0.38%) AppDynamics
7 1 (0.38%) iManage
7 1 (0.38%) New Relic
7 1 (0.38%) Nimble Storage
7 1 (0.38%) Oracle
7 1 (0.38%) Planon
7 1 (0.38%) ServiceNow
7 1 (0.38%) Splunk
7 1 (0.38%) Veracode