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 28 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 72 70
Rank change year-on-year -5 -2 -57
Permanent jobs citing QA 442 364 556
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 2.24% 4.70% 3.18%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 27.00% 29.07% 24.14%
Number of salaries quoted 257 104 360
10th Percentile £28,500 £40,300 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,650 £46,250 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £55,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +15.79% -9.52%
75th Percentile £65,640 £76,250 £60,000
90th Percentile £77,500 £86,250 £70,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year -4.35% +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 1,637 1,252 2,303
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 8.28% 16.15% 13.18%
Number of salaries quoted 1,122 547 1,622
10th Percentile £30,000 £25,500 £26,250
25th Percentile £38,825 £33,375 £34,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £51,560 £52,500 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year -1.79% +10.53% -5.00%
75th Percentile £66,813 £67,500 £62,500
90th Percentile £83,750 £82,500 £82,500
England median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +4.35% +9.52% -8.70%

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 28 May 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 28 May 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 +13 249 £45,000 -18.18% 89
Yorkshire +16 123 £40,000 -36.00% 57
North East -38 70 £45,000 -22.08% 18
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 (2.26%) CMS
1 10 (2.26%) WordPress
2 9 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (0.90%) Apache
3 4 (0.90%) IIS
3 4 (0.90%) Jupyter
4 2 (0.45%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.45%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.23%) Confluence
5 1 (0.23%) nginx
5 1 (0.23%) WebLogic
Applications
1 22 (4.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (3.85%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (2.04%) MS Visio
4 7 (1.58%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 7 (1.58%) SAP ERP
2 5 (1.13%) SAP PM
3 4 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.68%) Shopify
5 2 (0.45%) Academy Housing
6 1 (0.23%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.23%) Sage 200
6 1 (0.23%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 44 (9.95%) Azure
2 39 (8.82%) AWS
3 32 (7.24%) Power Platform
4 21 (4.75%) Microsoft 365
5 12 (2.71%) Azure DevOps
6 11 (2.49%) GCP
6 11 (2.49%) SaaS
7 9 (2.04%) Amazon S3
7 9 (2.04%) Google Analytics
7 9 (2.04%) Serverless
8 8 (1.81%) Amazon EC2
9 6 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
9 6 (1.36%) dbt
10 5 (1.13%) Azure Monitor
10 5 (1.13%) Entra ID
10 5 (1.13%) GitHub
10 5 (1.13%) Power Automate
11 4 (0.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 4 (0.90%) Amazon EMR
11 4 (0.90%) Apigee
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.58%) Broadband
2 6 (1.36%) HTTP
3 3 (0.68%) HTTPS
4 2 (0.45%) TCP/IP
4 2 (0.45%) VoIP
5 1 (0.23%) ADSL
5 1 (0.23%) Firewall
5 1 (0.23%) ISDN
5 1 (0.23%) LAN
5 1 (0.23%) Structured Cabling
5 1 (0.23%) VDSL
5 1 (0.23%) WAN
5 1 (0.23%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (6.33%) Power BI
2 11 (2.49%) SQL Server
3 7 (1.58%) BigQuery
4 6 (1.36%) DynamoDB
4 6 (1.36%) MySQL
4 6 (1.36%) Relational Database
5 4 (0.90%) Amazon Athena
5 4 (0.90%) Azure SQL Database
6 2 (0.45%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.45%) Data Mining
6 2 (0.45%) Looker
6 2 (0.45%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.45%) Redis
6 2 (0.45%) Tableau
7 1 (0.23%) Big Data
7 1 (0.23%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.23%) Metadata
7 1 (0.23%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.23%) PostHog
Development Applications
1 28 (6.33%) Git
2 19 (4.30%) GitLab
2 19 (4.30%) JIRA
3 12 (2.71%) Jenkins
4 8 (1.81%) Cypress.io
4 8 (1.81%) Postman
5 7 (1.58%) SonarQube
6 5 (1.13%) Cucumber
7 3 (0.68%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.68%) Selenium
7 3 (0.68%) TestRail
8 2 (0.45%) JMeter
8 2 (0.45%) JUnit
8 2 (0.45%) Maven
8 2 (0.45%) NUnit
8 2 (0.45%) SpecFlow
8 2 (0.45%) Visual Studio
9 1 (0.23%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.23%) TestComplete
9 1 (0.23%) Zephyr
General
1 147 (33.26%) Social Skills
2 70 (15.84%) Analytical Skills
2 70 (15.84%) Finance
2 70 (15.84%) Manufacturing
3 36 (8.14%) Pharmaceutical
4 26 (5.88%) Organisational Skills
4 26 (5.88%) Public Sector
5 21 (4.75%) Marketing
6 17 (3.85%) Legal
7 16 (3.62%) Influencing Skills
8 15 (3.39%) Law
9 9 (2.04%) Banking
9 9 (2.04%) Games
10 8 (1.81%) Aerospace
10 8 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (1.58%) Retail
12 6 (1.36%) Telecoms
13 5 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
13 5 (1.13%) Military
14 4 (0.90%) French Language
Job Titles
1 52 (11.76%) QA Manager
2 43 (9.73%) Senior
3 39 (8.82%) Quality Manager
4 33 (7.47%) Analyst
4 33 (7.47%) Head of QA
5 32 (7.24%) Lead
6 29 (6.56%) QA Officer
7 27 (6.11%) Developer
7 27 (6.11%) QA Engineer
8 17 (3.85%) Software Engineer
9 15 (3.39%) Quality Engineer
9 15 (3.39%) Tester
10 14 (3.17%) Administrator
10 14 (3.17%) Business Analyst
10 14 (3.17%) Test Engineer
11 12 (2.71%) QA Tester
12 11 (2.49%) QA Leader
12 11 (2.49%) Technical Assistant
13 10 (2.26%) Software Developer
14 9 (2.04%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (5.20%) HTML
2 22 (4.98%) .NET
2 22 (4.98%) CSS
3 13 (2.94%) REST
4 10 (2.26%) Playwright
5 9 (2.04%) RESTful
6 8 (1.81%) .NET Framework
6 8 (1.81%) Entity Framework
6 8 (1.81%) React
7 7 (1.58%) .NET Core
7 7 (1.58%) ASP.NET
7 7 (1.58%) ASP.NET Web API
7 7 (1.58%) JSON
8 5 (1.13%) AngularJS
8 5 (1.13%) CSS3
8 5 (1.13%) HTML5
8 5 (1.13%) JWT
8 5 (1.13%) OAuth2
8 5 (1.13%) Spring Boot
8 5 (1.13%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 35 (7.92%) Analytical Mindset
2 12 (2.71%) Onboarding
3 10 (2.26%) Product Ownership
4 9 (2.04%) PMI
5 8 (1.81%) Cloud Native
6 7 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
6 7 (1.58%) Life Science
6 7 (1.58%) Management Information System
7 6 (1.36%) AI Agents
7 6 (1.36%) Social Media
8 5 (1.13%) CCTV
8 5 (1.13%) Driving Licence
8 5 (1.13%) Mobile App
8 5 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
9 4 (0.90%) Online Games
10 3 (0.68%) Animation
10 3 (0.68%) Client/Server
10 3 (0.68%) Legacy Applications
10 3 (0.68%) Mainframe
10 3 (0.68%) Photography
Operating Systems
1 10 (2.26%) Windows
2 7 (1.58%) Android
2 7 (1.58%) Apple iOS
3 3 (0.68%) Linux
3 3 (0.68%) VME
3 3 (0.68%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 94 (21.27%) Continuous Improvement
2 83 (18.78%) Agile
3 61 (13.80%) Problem-Solving
4 60 (13.57%) CI/CD
4 60 (13.57%) Mentoring
5 55 (12.44%) Analytics
6 51 (11.54%) Test Automation
7 47 (10.63%) DevOps
8 45 (10.18%) Quality Management
9 41 (9.28%) Stakeholder Management
10 39 (8.82%) Actionable Insight
10 39 (8.82%) PRINCE2
11 37 (8.37%) Change Management
11 37 (8.37%) Root Cause Analysis
11 37 (8.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 33 (7.47%) Coaching
13 32 (7.24%) AI
13 32 (7.24%) Service Delivery
14 31 (7.01%) Customer Experience
15 30 (6.79%) Anti-Money Laundering
Programming Languages
1 39 (8.82%) SQL
2 32 (7.24%) C#
3 30 (6.79%) Python
4 24 (5.43%) Java
5 23 (5.20%) JavaScript
6 15 (3.39%) TypeScript
7 8 (1.81%) Go
8 6 (1.36%) Bash
8 6 (1.36%) PHP
9 5 (1.13%) Groovy
10 3 (0.68%) C++
10 3 (0.68%) COBOL
11 2 (0.45%) Bicep
11 2 (0.45%) VB.NET
12 1 (0.23%) C
12 1 (0.23%) Objective-C
12 1 (0.23%) Perl
12 1 (0.23%) PowerShell
12 1 (0.23%) R
12 1 (0.23%) Swift
Qualifications
1 42 (9.50%) Degree
2 30 (6.79%) IRCA
3 12 (2.71%) BPSS Clearance
4 11 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
4 11 (2.49%) PMI Certification
5 10 (2.26%) Security Cleared
6 8 (1.81%) AWS Certification
6 8 (1.81%) MCSE
6 8 (1.81%) SC Cleared
7 7 (1.58%) DBS Check
8 6 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (1.13%) ISTQB
10 3 (0.68%) CCEA
10 3 (0.68%) Citrix Certification
10 3 (0.68%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 3 (0.68%) PMP
11 2 (0.45%) CHECK Team Member
11 2 (0.45%) CREST Certified
12 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 1 (0.23%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (8.37%) GDPR
2 32 (7.24%) ISO 9001
3 11 (2.49%) Accessibility
3 11 (2.49%) Data Quality
4 8 (1.81%) P3O
5 5 (1.13%) PCI DSS
5 5 (1.13%) PMO
6 4 (0.90%) GMP
6 4 (0.90%) Software Quality Assurance
7 3 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (0.68%) WCAG
8 2 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 2 (0.45%) ISO 14001
8 2 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.23%) GRC
9 1 (0.23%) NEBOSH
9 1 (0.23%) NIST
9 1 (0.23%) SLA
9 1 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 20 (4.52%) Docker
2 1 (0.23%) Active Directory
2 1 (0.23%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 11 (2.49%) Terraform
2 7 (1.58%) Kubernetes
3 3 (0.68%) Ansible
3 3 (0.68%) Grafana
3 3 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (0.68%) Packer
4 2 (0.45%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 43 (9.73%) Microsoft
2 17 (3.85%) SAP
3 13 (2.94%) Google
4 12 (2.71%) ServiceNow
5 10 (2.26%) Intapp
6 9 (2.04%) Aderant
6 9 (2.04%) iManage
7 4 (0.90%) Planon
7 4 (0.90%) Siemens
8 3 (0.68%) Adobe
8 3 (0.68%) AppDynamics
8 3 (0.68%) IBM
8 3 (0.68%) Splunk
9 2 (0.45%) Apple
9 2 (0.45%) DevExpress
9 2 (0.45%) Draytek
9 2 (0.45%) Foundry
10 1 (0.23%) CheckPoint
10 1 (0.23%) Sage
10 1 (0.23%) Veracode