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

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 95 52
Rank change year-on-year +43 -43 +33
Permanent jobs citing QA 614 307 528
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 2.69% 3.22% 3.56%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 32.20% 26.11% 28.31%
Number of salaries quoted 396 134 256
10th Percentile £29,063 £35,000 £25,000
25th Percentile £31,875 £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 £57,813 £71,250 £57,912
90th Percentile £75,000 £85,875 £68,750
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 1,907 1,176 1,865
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North of England 8.35% 12.33% 12.59%
Number of salaries quoted 1,395 563 1,063
10th Percentile £30,000 £25,850 £25,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £32,500 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £50,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £67,500 £63,750 £60,870
90th Percentile £83,900 £74,852 £76,250
England median annual salary £57,500 £55,309 £55,000
% change year-on-year +3.96% +0.56% -8.33%

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 29 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 29 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 +30 369 £45,000 -18.18% 173
Yorkshire +12 127 £40,000 -27.27% 83
North East +17 118 £52,500 +10.53% 62
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 (1.79%) Apache Airflow
2 8 (1.30%) CMS
3 7 (1.14%) Apache
3 7 (1.14%) Apache Spark
3 7 (1.14%) Jupyter
3 7 (1.14%) SharePoint
3 7 (1.14%) 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 (5.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (4.72%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (1.47%) MS Visio
4 7 (1.14%) Revit
5 6 (0.98%) AutoCAD
5 6 (0.98%) Spreadsheet
6 5 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
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 66 (10.75%) AWS
2 62 (10.10%) Azure
3 36 (5.86%) Power Platform
4 32 (5.21%) Microsoft 365
5 28 (4.56%) Azure DevOps
6 17 (2.77%) SaaS
7 16 (2.61%) Serverless
8 15 (2.44%) GCP
9 14 (2.28%) Amazon S3
10 12 (1.95%) Amazon EC2
11 11 (1.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 10 (1.63%) AWS Lambda
12 10 (1.63%) GitHub
13 9 (1.47%) Power Automate
14 7 (1.14%) Amazon ECR
14 7 (1.14%) Amazon EKS
14 7 (1.14%) dbt
15 6 (0.98%) Amazon EMR
15 6 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
16 5 (0.81%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.65%) DNS
1 4 (0.65%) Remote Desktop
2 3 (0.49%) HTTP
2 3 (0.49%) HTTPS
2 3 (0.49%) SSL
2 3 (0.49%) Structured Cabling
3 2 (0.33%) Broadband
3 2 (0.33%) Internet
3 2 (0.33%) TCP/IP
3 2 (0.33%) VoIP
3 2 (0.33%) VPN
4 1 (0.16%) ADSL
4 1 (0.16%) Firewall
4 1 (0.16%) Intranet
4 1 (0.16%) ISDN
4 1 (0.16%) LAN
4 1 (0.16%) Network Security
4 1 (0.16%) RIP
4 1 (0.16%) VDSL
4 1 (0.16%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (4.89%) Power BI
2 16 (2.61%) SQL Server
3 8 (1.30%) MySQL
4 7 (1.14%) DynamoDB
5 6 (0.98%) Amazon Athena
5 6 (0.98%) BigQuery
5 6 (0.98%) Relational Database
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 36 (5.86%) Git
2 24 (3.91%) JIRA
3 20 (3.26%) 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
1 176 (28.66%) Social Skills
2 113 (18.40%) Manufacturing
3 88 (14.33%) Analytical Skills
4 67 (10.91%) Finance
5 64 (10.42%) Pharmaceutical
6 42 (6.84%) Public Sector
7 29 (4.72%) Legal
8 23 (3.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 23 (3.75%) Organisational Skills
9 21 (3.42%) Law
10 20 (3.26%) Marketing
11 19 (3.09%) Aerospace
12 14 (2.28%) Retail
13 12 (1.95%) Swedish Language
14 10 (1.63%) Local Government
15 9 (1.47%) Automotive
15 9 (1.47%) Banking
16 8 (1.30%) Games
16 8 (1.30%) Telecoms
17 6 (0.98%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 66 (10.75%) QA Engineer
2 64 (10.42%) Analyst
3 62 (10.10%) Senior
4 59 (9.61%) QA Officer
5 54 (8.79%) Quality Engineer
6 52 (8.47%) QA Manager
7 48 (7.82%) Lead
8 46 (7.49%) Developer
9 40 (6.51%) Quality Manager
10 23 (3.75%) Head of QA
11 19 (3.09%) Business Analyst
12 18 (2.93%) Service Analyst
12 18 (2.93%) Service Desk Analyst
12 18 (2.93%) Software Engineer
12 18 (2.93%) Test Engineer
13 17 (2.77%) Tester
14 16 (2.61%) QA Leader
15 13 (2.12%) Administrator
15 13 (2.12%) Senior Developer
16 12 (1.95%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (7.17%) .NET
2 32 (5.21%) HTML
3 29 (4.72%) CSS
4 20 (3.26%) Playwright
4 20 (3.26%) REST
5 17 (2.77%) Terraform
6 16 (2.61%) Node.js
7 12 (1.95%) RESTful
8 10 (1.63%) .NET Framework
8 10 (1.63%) React
9 9 (1.47%) ASP.NET Web API
9 9 (1.47%) OAuth
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 (3.91%) Product Ownership
2 23 (3.75%) Analytical Mindset
3 18 (2.93%) Life Science
4 14 (2.28%) Cloud Native
5 13 (2.12%) Distributed Systems
6 11 (1.79%) Management Information System
6 11 (1.79%) Onboarding
7 7 (1.14%) Driving Licence
8 6 (0.98%) AI Agents
8 6 (0.98%) Data Centre
8 6 (0.98%) Mobile App
9 5 (0.81%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (0.81%) PMI
9 5 (0.81%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (0.65%) Animation
10 4 (0.65%) Online Games
11 3 (0.49%) Blog
11 3 (0.49%) FMCG
11 3 (0.49%) Photography
11 3 (0.49%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 16 (2.61%) Windows
2 10 (1.63%) Linux
3 5 (0.81%) Android
3 5 (0.81%) Apple iOS
3 5 (0.81%) Windows 10
4 4 (0.65%) Mac OS
4 4 (0.65%) Unix
5 3 (0.49%) VME
6 2 (0.33%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 137 (22.31%) Continuous Improvement
2 131 (21.34%) Agile
3 99 (16.12%) CI/CD
4 89 (14.50%) Problem-Solving
5 82 (13.36%) Test Automation
6 72 (11.73%) Mentoring
7 70 (11.40%) DevOps
8 56 (9.12%) Validation
9 50 (8.14%) Decision-Making
9 50 (8.14%) Software Engineering
10 49 (7.98%) Analytics
11 47 (7.65%) Stakeholder Management
12 46 (7.49%) Software Testing
13 43 (7.00%) AI
14 42 (6.84%) Quality Management
15 39 (6.35%) Coaching
15 39 (6.35%) Customer Service
16 38 (6.19%) Root Cause Analysis
17 34 (5.54%) Change Management
17 34 (5.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 65 (10.59%) SQL
2 51 (8.31%) C#
3 50 (8.14%) JavaScript
4 43 (7.00%) Python
5 29 (4.72%) Java
6 26 (4.23%) TypeScript
7 9 (1.47%) Bash
8 6 (0.98%) Go
8 6 (0.98%) PHP
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 77 (12.54%) Degree
2 41 (6.68%) Security Cleared
3 35 (5.70%) SC Cleared
4 21 (3.42%) IRCA
5 19 (3.09%) BPSS Clearance
6 18 (2.93%) Microsoft Certification
7 16 (2.61%) AWS Certification
7 16 (2.61%) MCSE
8 9 (1.47%) RIBA
9 8 (1.30%) Computer Science Degree
9 8 (1.30%) Postgraduate
10 7 (1.14%) DBS Check
11 6 (0.98%) HNC
11 6 (0.98%) PMI Certification
12 5 (0.81%) HND
12 5 (0.81%) PMP
13 4 (0.65%) CREST Certified
13 4 (0.65%) ISTQB
14 3 (0.49%) DV Cleared
14 3 (0.49%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (6.68%) ISO 9001
2 30 (4.89%) GDPR
3 23 (3.75%) Accessibility
4 15 (2.44%) Data Quality
5 13 (2.12%) GMP
6 7 (1.14%) 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
System Software
1 29 (4.72%) 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 70 (11.40%) Microsoft
2 22 (3.58%) SAP
2 22 (3.58%) ServiceNow
3 11 (1.79%) 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