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 7 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 60 99 56
Rank change year-on-year +39 -43 +24
Permanent jobs citing QA 540 315 494
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 2.47% 3.29% 3.27%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 29.13% 25.10% 25.65%
Number of salaries quoted 352 128 281
10th Percentile £30,000 £35,000 £25,750
25th Percentile £32,500 £45,000 £31,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £55,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +22.22% -18.18%
75th Percentile £60,000 £71,250 £62,200
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 1,854 1,255 1,926
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 8.47% 13.12% 12.77%
Number of salaries quoted 1,345 593 1,193
10th Percentile £30,000 £25,480 £25,500
25th Percentile £38,984 £32,750 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £50,000 £47,683
Median % change year-on-year - +4.86% -4.63%
75th Percentile £67,000 £64,100 £62,500
90th Percentile £83,750 £76,250 £80,000
England median annual salary £57,500 £56,785 £55,000
% change year-on-year +1.26% +3.25% -7.65%

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 7 August 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 7 August 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 +36 320 £45,000 -18.18% 142
Yorkshire +31 110 £40,000 -34.69% 57
North East -2 110 £52,500 +10.53% 49
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 11 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (1.30%) CMS
2 7 (1.30%) SharePoint
3 6 (1.11%) Apache Spark
3 6 (1.11%) WordPress
4 5 (0.93%) Apache
4 5 (0.93%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.56%) IIS
6 2 (0.37%) Confluence
6 2 (0.37%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.19%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 30 (5.56%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (4.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (1.85%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.37%) Navisworks
7 1 (0.19%) Revit
Business Applications
1 5 (0.93%) SAP PM
2 4 (0.74%) Sage 200
2 4 (0.74%) SAP Business One
2 4 (0.74%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.56%) Shopify
4 1 (0.19%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 65 (12.04%) AWS
2 59 (10.93%) Azure
3 37 (6.85%) Power Platform
4 31 (5.74%) Microsoft 365
5 25 (4.63%) Azure DevOps
6 16 (2.96%) GCP
6 16 (2.96%) Serverless
7 13 (2.41%) Amazon S3
8 12 (2.22%) SaaS
9 11 (2.04%) Amazon EC2
10 10 (1.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 10 (1.85%) AWS Lambda
10 10 (1.85%) GitHub
11 9 (1.67%) Power Automate
12 7 (1.30%) Amazon EKS
12 7 (1.30%) dbt
13 6 (1.11%) Amazon ECR
13 6 (1.11%) GitHub Actions
14 5 (0.93%) Azure Monitor
14 5 (0.93%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.74%) HTTP
2 3 (0.56%) HTTPS
2 3 (0.56%) Structured Cabling
3 2 (0.37%) Broadband
3 2 (0.37%) VoIP
4 1 (0.19%) ADSL
4 1 (0.19%) DNS
4 1 (0.19%) Firewall
4 1 (0.19%) ISDN
4 1 (0.19%) LAN
4 1 (0.19%) Network Security
4 1 (0.19%) Remote Desktop
4 1 (0.19%) RIP
4 1 (0.19%) VDSL
4 1 (0.19%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (5.74%) Power BI
2 16 (2.96%) SQL Server
3 8 (1.48%) BigQuery
3 8 (1.48%) MySQL
4 7 (1.30%) Relational Database
5 6 (1.11%) DynamoDB
6 5 (0.93%) Amazon Athena
7 4 (0.74%) Azure SQL Database
7 4 (0.74%) MongoDB
8 3 (0.56%) Data Lake
8 3 (0.56%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (0.56%) DocumentDB
8 3 (0.56%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (0.56%) Redis
8 3 (0.56%) Tableau
9 2 (0.37%) Big Data
9 2 (0.37%) Data Mining
9 2 (0.37%) EDRMS
9 2 (0.37%) Looker
9 2 (0.37%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 37 (6.85%) Git
2 24 (4.44%) JIRA
3 20 (3.70%) GitLab
4 9 (1.67%) Jenkins
5 8 (1.48%) Cypress.io
6 6 (1.11%) Postman
7 5 (0.93%) Cucumber
8 4 (0.74%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.56%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.56%) JUnit
9 3 (0.56%) NUnit
10 2 (0.37%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.37%) JMeter
10 2 (0.37%) Selenium
10 2 (0.37%) SpecFlow
10 2 (0.37%) TestRail
11 1 (0.19%) Gatling
11 1 (0.19%) Locust
11 1 (0.19%) REST Assured
11 1 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 172 (31.85%) Social Skills
2 93 (17.22%) Manufacturing
3 89 (16.48%) Analytical Skills
4 66 (12.22%) Pharmaceutical
5 62 (11.48%) Finance
6 35 (6.48%) Public Sector
7 29 (5.37%) Legal
8 19 (3.52%) Law
8 19 (3.52%) Organisational Skills
9 17 (3.15%) Marketing
10 13 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 12 (2.22%) Aerospace
11 12 (2.22%) Swedish Language
12 11 (2.04%) Retail
13 8 (1.48%) Games
13 8 (1.48%) Telecoms
14 7 (1.30%) Banking
15 5 (0.93%) Automotive
15 5 (0.93%) Legal Technology
15 5 (0.93%) Military
Job Titles
1 58 (10.74%) Analyst
2 53 (9.81%) QA Manager
3 52 (9.63%) Senior
4 47 (8.70%) QA Engineer
4 47 (8.70%) QA Officer
5 43 (7.96%) Developer
5 43 (7.96%) Quality Manager
6 33 (6.11%) Head of QA
7 32 (5.93%) Quality Engineer
8 31 (5.74%) Lead
9 20 (3.70%) Business Analyst
10 19 (3.52%) Software Engineer
11 18 (3.33%) Service Analyst
11 18 (3.33%) Service Desk Analyst
12 17 (3.15%) Test Engineer
13 15 (2.78%) Tester
14 12 (2.22%) Software Developer
15 11 (2.04%) Administrator
15 11 (2.04%) QA Tester
15 11 (2.04%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (7.41%) .NET
2 30 (5.56%) HTML
3 27 (5.00%) CSS
4 17 (3.15%) REST
5 15 (2.78%) Playwright
6 14 (2.59%) Node.js
7 11 (2.04%) RESTful
8 10 (1.85%) .NET Framework
9 9 (1.67%) ASP.NET Web API
10 8 (1.48%) AngularJS
10 8 (1.48%) ASP.NET
10 8 (1.48%) Entity Framework
10 8 (1.48%) OAuth
10 8 (1.48%) React
11 7 (1.30%) .NET Core
11 7 (1.30%) JSON
11 7 (1.30%) OAuth2
11 7 (1.30%) Vue
12 6 (1.11%) JWT
13 5 (0.93%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 32 (5.93%) Analytical Mindset
2 21 (3.89%) Product Ownership
3 16 (2.96%) Life Science
4 10 (1.85%) Cloud Native
4 10 (1.85%) Distributed Systems
4 10 (1.85%) Onboarding
5 9 (1.67%) Management Information System
6 6 (1.11%) AI Agents
6 6 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
7 5 (0.93%) PMI
7 5 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (0.74%) Animation
8 4 (0.74%) Driving Licence
8 4 (0.74%) Mobile App
8 4 (0.74%) Online Games
9 3 (0.56%) CCTV
9 3 (0.56%) FMCG
9 3 (0.56%) Legacy Applications
9 3 (0.56%) Mainframe
9 3 (0.56%) Photography
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.04%) Windows
2 5 (0.93%) Windows 10
3 4 (0.74%) Android
3 4 (0.74%) Apple iOS
3 4 (0.74%) Linux
4 3 (0.56%) VME
5 1 (0.19%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.19%) Unix
5 1 (0.19%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 129 (23.89%) Continuous Improvement
2 115 (21.30%) Agile
3 92 (17.04%) CI/CD
4 78 (14.44%) Problem-Solving
5 71 (13.15%) Test Automation
6 64 (11.85%) DevOps
7 60 (11.11%) Mentoring
8 56 (10.37%) Analytics
9 50 (9.26%) Quality Management
10 49 (9.07%) Validation
11 47 (8.70%) Software Engineering
12 45 (8.33%) Change Management
12 45 (8.33%) Stakeholder Management
13 44 (8.15%) Decision-Making
14 42 (7.78%) PRINCE2
14 42 (7.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 41 (7.59%) Root Cause Analysis
16 40 (7.41%) Actionable Insight
16 40 (7.41%) Software Testing
17 38 (7.04%) Customer Experience
Programming Languages
1 62 (11.48%) SQL
2 46 (8.52%) C#
2 46 (8.52%) JavaScript
3 39 (7.22%) Python
4 26 (4.81%) Java
5 23 (4.26%) TypeScript
6 6 (1.11%) Bash
6 6 (1.11%) Go
6 6 (1.11%) PHP
7 3 (0.56%) COBOL
7 3 (0.56%) Groovy
7 3 (0.56%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.37%) Bicep
8 2 (0.37%) C++
8 2 (0.37%) R
8 2 (0.37%) VB.NET
9 1 (0.19%) C
9 1 (0.19%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.19%) Objective-C
9 1 (0.19%) Perl
Qualifications
1 63 (11.67%) Degree
2 32 (5.93%) Security Cleared
3 31 (5.74%) IRCA
4 29 (5.37%) SC Cleared
5 19 (3.52%) Microsoft Certification
6 16 (2.96%) AWS Certification
6 16 (2.96%) MCSE
7 10 (1.85%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (1.48%) Postgraduate
9 7 (1.30%) DBS Check
10 6 (1.11%) PMI Certification
11 5 (0.93%) ISTQB
11 5 (0.93%) PMP
12 4 (0.74%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 3 (0.56%) RIBA
14 2 (0.37%) CHECK Team Member
14 2 (0.37%) CREST Certified
15 1 (0.19%) Master's Degree
15 1 (0.19%) NVQ Level 5
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (7.41%) ISO 9001
2 39 (7.22%) GDPR
3 22 (4.07%) Accessibility
4 13 (2.41%) GMP
5 11 (2.04%) Data Quality
6 7 (1.30%) PMO
7 4 (0.74%) PCI DSS
7 4 (0.74%) Software Quality Assurance
8 3 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.56%) WCAG
9 2 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.37%) ISO 14001
9 2 (0.37%) ISO 19650
10 1 (0.19%) AQAP
10 1 (0.19%) NCSC
10 1 (0.19%) NEBOSH
10 1 (0.19%) NIST
10 1 (0.19%) SLA
System Software
1 28 (5.19%) Docker
2 3 (0.56%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 17 (3.15%) Terraform
2 14 (2.59%) Kubernetes
3 5 (0.93%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (0.56%) Ansible
4 3 (0.56%) Packer
5 2 (0.37%) Grafana
6 1 (0.19%) Fluentd
6 1 (0.19%) Kibana
Vendors
1 67 (12.41%) Microsoft
2 22 (4.07%) ServiceNow
3 13 (2.41%) SAP
4 11 (2.04%) Google
5 9 (1.67%) Aderant
5 9 (1.67%) iManage
5 9 (1.67%) Intapp
6 5 (0.93%) Databricks
6 5 (0.93%) Sage
7 4 (0.74%) Dynatrace
8 3 (0.56%) Adobe
8 3 (0.56%) AppDynamics
8 3 (0.56%) Confluent
8 3 (0.56%) IBM
8 3 (0.56%) Planon
8 3 (0.56%) Salesforce
8 3 (0.56%) Splunk
9 2 (0.37%) DevExpress
9 2 (0.37%) Draytek
9 2 (0.37%) F5