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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 90 53
Rank change year-on-year +39 -37 +26
Permanent jobs citing QA 615 304 522
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 2.68% 3.27% 3.61%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 31.91% 26.88% 29.03%
Number of salaries quoted 399 130 241
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £25,000
25th Percentile £31,750 £45,000 £30,000
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 £71,250 £57,633
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 1,927 1,131 1,798
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 8.40% 12.15% 12.45%
Number of salaries quoted 1,408 522 999
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,250 £25,000
25th Percentile £38,750 £32,750 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £49,500 £46,968
Median % change year-on-year +1.01% +5.39% -6.07%
75th Percentile £67,500 £63,750 £60,870
90th Percentile £83,825 £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 4 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 4 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 +32 370 £45,000 -18.18% 183
Yorkshire +12 127 £40,000 -27.27% 96
North East +12 118 £52,500 +13.51% 66
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 (1.63%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (1.14%) Apache
2 7 (1.14%) Apache Spark
2 7 (1.14%) CMS
2 7 (1.14%) Jupyter
2 7 (1.14%) SharePoint
3 6 (0.98%) WordPress
4 3 (0.49%) IIS
5 2 (0.33%) Confluence
5 2 (0.33%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.16%) Apache Superset
6 1 (0.16%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 31 (5.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (4.72%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (1.46%) MS Visio
4 7 (1.14%) Revit
5 6 (0.98%) AutoCAD
5 6 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.81%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.33%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 5 (0.81%) SAP PM
2 4 (0.65%) Sage 200
2 4 (0.65%) SAP Business One
2 4 (0.65%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.49%) Shopify
3 3 (0.49%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 64 (10.41%) AWS
2 60 (9.76%) Azure
3 36 (5.85%) Power Platform
4 32 (5.20%) Microsoft 365
5 28 (4.55%) Azure DevOps
6 17 (2.76%) SaaS
7 16 (2.60%) Serverless
8 14 (2.28%) Amazon S3
9 13 (2.11%) GCP
10 12 (1.95%) Amazon EC2
11 11 (1.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 10 (1.63%) AWS Lambda
13 9 (1.46%) GitHub
13 9 (1.46%) Power Automate
14 7 (1.14%) Amazon ECR
14 7 (1.14%) Amazon EKS
15 6 (0.98%) Amazon EMR
15 6 (0.98%) dbt
15 6 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
16 5 (0.81%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.81%) DNS
1 5 (0.81%) Remote Desktop
2 4 (0.65%) SSL
3 3 (0.49%) HTTP
3 3 (0.49%) HTTPS
3 3 (0.49%) Internet
3 3 (0.49%) Structured Cabling
3 3 (0.49%) TCP/IP
3 3 (0.49%) VPN
4 2 (0.33%) Broadband
4 2 (0.33%) 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 (4.88%) Power BI
2 15 (2.44%) SQL Server
3 7 (1.14%) DynamoDB
3 7 (1.14%) MySQL
4 6 (0.98%) Amazon Athena
4 6 (0.98%) Relational Database
5 5 (0.81%) BigQuery
6 4 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
6 4 (0.65%) Data Lake
6 4 (0.65%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (0.65%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.65%) PostgreSQL
7 3 (0.49%) Big Data
7 3 (0.49%) DocumentDB
7 3 (0.49%) Redis
7 3 (0.49%) Tableau
8 2 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.33%) Data Mining
8 2 (0.33%) EDRMS
8 2 (0.33%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 34 (5.53%) Git
2 24 (3.90%) JIRA
3 20 (3.25%) GitLab
4 10 (1.63%) Cypress.io
5 8 (1.30%) Jenkins
6 5 (0.81%) Cucumber
6 5 (0.81%) Postman
7 4 (0.65%) Selenium
7 4 (0.65%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.49%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.49%) JUnit
8 3 (0.49%) NUnit
8 3 (0.49%) RStudio
9 2 (0.33%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.33%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.33%) JMeter
9 2 (0.33%) REST Assured
9 2 (0.33%) SpecFlow
9 2 (0.33%) TestRail
10 1 (0.16%) Gradle
General
1 172 (27.97%) Social Skills
2 109 (17.72%) Manufacturing
3 83 (13.50%) Analytical Skills
4 65 (10.57%) Finance
5 63 (10.24%) Pharmaceutical
6 43 (6.99%) Public Sector
7 30 (4.88%) Legal
8 24 (3.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 23 (3.74%) Law
9 23 (3.74%) Organisational Skills
10 20 (3.25%) Aerospace
11 19 (3.09%) Marketing
12 13 (2.11%) Retail
13 12 (1.95%) Swedish Language
14 10 (1.63%) Local Government
15 9 (1.46%) Banking
16 8 (1.30%) Automotive
16 8 (1.30%) Games
16 8 (1.30%) Telecoms
17 6 (0.98%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 72 (11.71%) QA Engineer
2 68 (11.06%) Analyst
3 62 (10.08%) Senior
4 60 (9.76%) QA Officer
5 59 (9.59%) Quality Engineer
6 52 (8.46%) QA Manager
7 50 (8.13%) Lead
8 46 (7.48%) Developer
9 40 (6.50%) Quality Manager
10 19 (3.09%) Business Analyst
11 18 (2.93%) Head of QA
11 18 (2.93%) QA Leader
11 18 (2.93%) Service Analyst
11 18 (2.93%) Service Desk Analyst
11 18 (2.93%) Software Engineer
11 18 (2.93%) Test Engineer
12 17 (2.76%) Tester
13 13 (2.11%) Automation Engineer
13 13 (2.11%) Senior Developer
14 12 (1.95%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (7.15%) .NET
2 32 (5.20%) HTML
3 29 (4.72%) CSS
4 20 (3.25%) Playwright
4 20 (3.25%) REST
5 18 (2.93%) Node.js
6 16 (2.60%) Terraform
7 12 (1.95%) RESTful
8 10 (1.63%) .NET Framework
9 9 (1.46%) ASP.NET Web API
9 9 (1.46%) OAuth
9 9 (1.46%) React
10 8 (1.30%) AngularJS
10 8 (1.30%) ASP.NET
10 8 (1.30%) Entity Framework
11 7 (1.14%) .NET Core
11 7 (1.14%) JSON
11 7 (1.14%) OAuth2
11 7 (1.14%) Vue
12 6 (0.98%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 24 (3.90%) Product Ownership
2 18 (2.93%) Life Science
3 17 (2.76%) Analytical Mindset
4 14 (2.28%) Cloud Native
5 13 (2.11%) Distributed Systems
6 11 (1.79%) Management Information System
7 10 (1.63%) Onboarding
8 8 (1.30%) Driving Licence
9 6 (0.98%) AI Agents
9 6 (0.98%) Data Centre
9 6 (0.98%) Mobile App
10 5 (0.81%) Enterprise Software
10 5 (0.81%) PMI
10 5 (0.81%) Self-Motivation
11 4 (0.65%) Animation
11 4 (0.65%) Online Games
11 4 (0.65%) Security Posture
12 3 (0.49%) Blog
12 3 (0.49%) Photography
12 3 (0.49%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 18 (2.93%) Windows
2 12 (1.95%) Linux
3 5 (0.81%) Android
3 5 (0.81%) Apple iOS
3 5 (0.81%) Mac OS
3 5 (0.81%) Unix
3 5 (0.81%) Windows 10
4 3 (0.49%) VME
5 2 (0.33%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 137 (22.28%) Continuous Improvement
2 130 (21.14%) Agile
3 99 (16.10%) CI/CD
4 90 (14.63%) Problem-Solving
5 83 (13.50%) Test Automation
6 72 (11.71%) Mentoring
7 71 (11.54%) DevOps
8 56 (9.11%) Validation
9 51 (8.29%) Software Engineering
10 50 (8.13%) Decision-Making
11 48 (7.80%) Stakeholder Management
12 46 (7.48%) Software Testing
13 43 (6.99%) Analytics
14 41 (6.67%) AI
15 40 (6.50%) Customer Service
16 39 (6.34%) Coaching
17 37 (6.02%) Quality Management
18 33 (5.37%) Root Cause Analysis
19 31 (5.04%) Microservices
20 30 (4.88%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 63 (10.24%) SQL
2 51 (8.29%) JavaScript
3 49 (7.97%) C#
4 40 (6.50%) Python
5 27 (4.39%) Java
6 26 (4.23%) TypeScript
7 9 (1.46%) Bash
8 6 (0.98%) PHP
9 5 (0.81%) Go
9 5 (0.81%) R
10 4 (0.65%) PowerShell
11 3 (0.49%) C++
11 3 (0.49%) COBOL
11 3 (0.49%) Groovy
12 2 (0.33%) Bicep
12 2 (0.33%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.33%) VB.NET
13 1 (0.16%) C
13 1 (0.16%) Perl
13 1 (0.16%) Swift
Qualifications
1 76 (12.36%) Degree
2 44 (7.15%) Security Cleared
3 38 (6.18%) SC Cleared
4 18 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
4 18 (2.93%) Microsoft Certification
5 16 (2.60%) AWS Certification
5 16 (2.60%) IRCA
5 16 (2.60%) MCSE
6 9 (1.46%) RIBA
7 8 (1.30%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.30%) Postgraduate
8 7 (1.14%) DBS Check
9 6 (0.98%) HNC
9 6 (0.98%) PMI Certification
10 5 (0.81%) CREST Certified
10 5 (0.81%) HND
10 5 (0.81%) PMP
11 4 (0.65%) ISTQB
12 3 (0.49%) DV Cleared
12 3 (0.49%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (6.02%) ISO 9001
2 25 (4.07%) GDPR
3 23 (3.74%) Accessibility
4 14 (2.28%) Data Quality
5 13 (2.11%) GMP
6 8 (1.30%) PMO
7 4 (0.65%) Software Quality Assurance
8 3 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.49%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.49%) WCAG
9 2 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.33%) ISO 14001
9 2 (0.33%) ISO 19650
10 1 (0.16%) AQAP
10 1 (0.16%) GRC
10 1 (0.16%) NCSC
10 1 (0.16%) NEBOSH
10 1 (0.16%) NIST
10 1 (0.16%) P3O
System Software
1 28 (4.55%) Docker
2 3 (0.49%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 15 (2.44%) Kubernetes
2 4 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (0.49%) Ansible
3 3 (0.49%) Packer
4 2 (0.33%) Grafana
5 1 (0.16%) Cisco CUCM
5 1 (0.16%) Fluentd
5 1 (0.16%) Kibana
Vendors
1 69 (11.22%) Microsoft
2 22 (3.58%) SAP
2 22 (3.58%) ServiceNow
3 9 (1.46%) Google
4 8 (1.30%) Aderant
4 8 (1.30%) iManage
4 8 (1.30%) Intapp
5 7 (1.14%) Autodesk
6 5 (0.81%) Databricks
6 5 (0.81%) Sage
7 4 (0.65%) Dynatrace
8 3 (0.49%) Adobe
8 3 (0.49%) AppDynamics
8 3 (0.49%) Confluent
8 3 (0.49%) IBM
8 3 (0.49%) Planon
8 3 (0.49%) Salesforce
8 3 (0.49%) Splunk
8 3 (0.49%) YouTube
9 2 (0.33%) F5