QA Job Trends in the Thames Valley

Quality Assurance (QA)
South East > Thames Valley

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the Thames Valley requiring QA skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 7 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 69 78 43
Rank change year-on-year +9 -35 +1
Permanent jobs citing QA 130 137 182
As % of all permanent jobs in the Thames Valley 3.69% 3.16% 5.46%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 20.87% 29.40% 32.27%
Number of salaries quoted 45 68 76
10th Percentile £26,250 £31,250 £36,250
25th Percentile £35,000 £43,875 £42,438
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £49,000 £50,000 £59,000
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -15.25% +2.61%
75th Percentile £60,000 £63,270 £75,415
90th Percentile £68,250 £77,500 £83,750
South East median annual salary £45,000 £50,000 £58,000
% change year-on-year -10.00% -13.79% +0.87%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
Thames Valley

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 Thames Valley.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 623 466 564
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 17.66% 10.75% 16.93%
Number of salaries quoted 272 222 299
10th Percentile £27,000 £31,250 £30,500
25th Percentile £38,500 £41,263 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% +6.95%
75th Percentile £68,750 £79,688 £68,750
90th Percentile £82,500 £83,750 £85,000
South East median annual salary £54,500 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -0.91% +4.76% -

QA
Job Vacancy Trend in the Thames Valley

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing QA relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley.

QA job vacancy trend in the Thames Valley

QA
Salary Trend in the Thames Valley

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing QA.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing QA

QA
Salary Histogram in the Thames Valley

Salary distribution for jobs citing QA in the Thames Valley over the 6 months to 7 November 2025.

Salary histogram for QA in the Thames Valley

QA
Job Locations in the Thames Valley

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing QA within the Thames Valley region over the 6 months to 7 November 2025. 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
Berkshire 0 70 £55,000 +10.00% 213
Buckinghamshire +35 43 £37,500 -28.57% 14
Oxfordshire +7 17 £53,750 +19.44% 29
QA
South East

QA
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the Thames Valley 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 3 (2.31%) WinCC
2 2 (1.54%) Confluence
2 2 (1.54%) FactoryTalk
2 2 (1.54%) WordPress
3 1 (0.77%) ArchestrA
Applications
1 3 (2.31%) Photoshop
2 2 (1.54%) Adobe After Effects
2 2 (1.54%) Adobe Captivate
2 2 (1.54%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (1.54%) Adobe Illustrator
2 2 (1.54%) Adobe Premiere
2 2 (1.54%) Elementor
2 2 (1.54%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.77%) AutoCAD
3 1 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.77%) Revit
Business Applications
1 25 (19.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (1.54%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 27 (20.77%) Azure
2 23 (17.69%) AWS
3 22 (16.92%) Azure DevOps
4 21 (16.15%) GCP
5 4 (3.08%) Amazon S3
5 4 (3.08%) Amazon SQS
5 4 (3.08%) AWS CloudFormation
5 4 (3.08%) AWS Lambda
5 4 (3.08%) Azure Service Bus
5 4 (3.08%) GitHub
5 4 (3.08%) SaaS
5 4 (3.08%) Serverless
6 3 (2.31%) Snowflake
7 2 (1.54%) Adobe Creative Cloud
7 2 (1.54%) Power Platform
8 1 (0.77%) Azure Data Factory
8 1 (0.77%) Cloudflare
8 1 (0.77%) Figma
8 1 (0.77%) Google Drive
8 1 (0.77%) Miro
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.31%) Firewall
1 3 (2.31%) Modbus
2 1 (0.77%) MQTT
2 1 (0.77%) Profibus
2 1 (0.77%) RFID
2 1 (0.77%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (5.38%) Data Warehouse
2 5 (3.85%) MySQL
3 4 (3.08%) Data Lake
3 4 (3.08%) DynamoDB
3 4 (3.08%) NoSQL
3 4 (3.08%) Relational Database
4 3 (2.31%) Metadata
4 3 (2.31%) SQL Server
5 2 (1.54%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (1.54%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (1.54%) Power BI
6 1 (0.77%) Delta Lake
6 1 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 46 (35.38%) JIRA
2 37 (28.46%) Git
3 22 (16.92%) eCATT
3 22 (16.92%) Jenkins
4 9 (6.92%) Selenium
5 5 (3.85%) Postman
6 4 (3.08%) git-flow
7 3 (2.31%) Cucumber
7 3 (2.31%) Cypress.io
7 3 (2.31%) SoapUI
7 3 (2.31%) WebDriver
8 2 (1.54%) NUnit
9 1 (0.77%) MLflow
9 1 (0.77%) TeamCity
General
1 64 (49.23%) Social Skills
2 42 (32.31%) Marketing
3 30 (23.08%) Finance
4 28 (21.54%) Manufacturing
5 25 (19.23%) Organisational Skills
6 21 (16.15%) Law
7 20 (15.38%) Influencing Skills
7 20 (15.38%) Presentation Skills
8 6 (4.62%) Public Sector
9 5 (3.85%) Analytical Skills
10 3 (2.31%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (2.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (2.31%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (1.54%) Banking
11 2 (1.54%) Multimedia
11 2 (1.54%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.77%) Advertising
12 1 (0.77%) Aerospace
12 1 (0.77%) Games
12 1 (0.77%) Retail
Job Titles
1 38 (29.23%) Senior
2 36 (27.69%) Lead
3 24 (18.46%) Developer
4 23 (17.69%) Analyst
4 23 (17.69%) Senior Developer
5 18 (13.85%) Full-Stack Developer
5 18 (13.85%) Senior Full-Stack Developer
6 14 (10.77%) Full-Stack Web Developer
6 14 (10.77%) Senior Web Developer
6 14 (10.77%) Web Developer
7 6 (4.62%) Applications Engineer
7 6 (4.62%) QA Engineer
7 6 (4.62%) Support Engineer
8 5 (3.85%) Applications Support
8 5 (3.85%) Applications Support Engineer
8 5 (3.85%) Quality Engineer
8 5 (3.85%) Software Engineer
8 5 (3.85%) Support Specialist
9 4 (3.08%) Junior
9 4 (3.08%) QA Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (17.69%) React
2 21 (16.15%) HTML
3 20 (15.38%) CSS
4 14 (10.77%) Node.js
4 14 (10.77%) RESTful
5 8 (6.15%) .NET
6 5 (3.85%) Material-UI
6 5 (3.85%) SOAP
7 4 (3.08%) ASP.NET
7 4 (3.08%) AWS CDK
7 4 (3.08%) Kafka
7 4 (3.08%) Playwright
7 4 (3.08%) pytest
7 4 (3.08%) RabbitMQ
8 3 (2.31%) REST
9 2 (1.54%) ASP.NET Core
9 2 (1.54%) Bootstrap
9 2 (1.54%) FastAPI
9 2 (1.54%) pydantic
9 2 (1.54%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 7 (5.38%) Cloud Native
1 7 (5.38%) Self-Motivation
2 6 (4.62%) Product Ownership
3 4 (3.08%) Driving Licence
3 4 (3.08%) Operational Technology
4 3 (2.31%) Renewable Energy
4 3 (2.31%) SCADA
4 3 (2.31%) Team-Oriented Environment
5 2 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
5 2 (1.54%) e-Learning
5 2 (1.54%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (1.54%) Graphic Design
5 2 (1.54%) Learning Management System
5 2 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (1.54%) N-Tier
6 1 (0.77%) Biopharmaceutical
6 1 (0.77%) GNSS
6 1 (0.77%) Lidar
6 1 (0.77%) LIMS
6 1 (0.77%) Self-Driving Car
Operating Systems
1 5 (3.85%) Windows
2 3 (2.31%) Windows Server
3 2 (1.54%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (0.77%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (40.77%) Continuous Improvement
2 44 (33.85%) Agile
3 37 (28.46%) Problem-Solving
4 29 (22.31%) CI/CD
4 29 (22.31%) Test Automation
5 28 (21.54%) Process Improvement
6 26 (20.00%) Change Management
7 25 (19.23%) Source to Pay
7 25 (19.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 25 (19.23%) Test Management
8 24 (18.46%) DevOps
9 23 (17.69%) Strategic Thinking
9 23 (17.69%) Technical Leadership
10 22 (16.92%) Change Control
10 22 (16.92%) Customer Requirements
10 22 (16.92%) Data-Driven Decision Making
10 22 (16.92%) Defect Management
10 22 (16.92%) Programme Management
10 22 (16.92%) Risk Management
10 22 (16.92%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 19 (14.62%) SQL
2 16 (12.31%) JavaScript
3 12 (9.23%) C#
3 12 (9.23%) Python
4 8 (6.15%) Java
5 7 (5.38%) TypeScript
6 3 (2.31%) Go
6 3 (2.31%) PHP
7 2 (1.54%) C
8 1 (0.77%) C++
8 1 (0.77%) Ladder Logic
Qualifications
1 36 (27.69%) Degree
2 31 (23.85%) Security Cleared
3 6 (4.62%) Computer Science Degree
3 6 (4.62%) SC Cleared
4 2 (1.54%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (0.77%) DV Cleared
5 1 (0.77%) ISTQB
5 1 (0.77%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 1 (0.77%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (16.92%) Def Stans
2 11 (8.46%) Accessibility
3 6 (4.62%) SLA
4 3 (2.31%) Data Quality
4 3 (2.31%) IEC 61508
5 2 (1.54%) GDPR
5 2 (1.54%) IEC 61131
6 1 (0.77%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 1 (0.77%) GxP
6 1 (0.77%) WCAG
System Software
1 15 (11.54%) Docker
2 3 (2.31%) Hyper-V
2 3 (2.31%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.77%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 22 (16.92%) HP ALM
2 14 (10.77%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.77%) Netcool
3 1 (0.77%) Netcool/OMNIbus
3 1 (0.77%) Terraform
Vendors
1 25 (19.23%) SAP
2 22 (16.92%) HP
3 7 (5.38%) Microsoft
4 3 (2.31%) Rockwell
4 3 (2.31%) Siemens
4 3 (2.31%) VMware
5 2 (1.54%) Adobe
5 2 (1.54%) Cognos
6 1 (0.77%) Agilent
6 1 (0.77%) Blue Prism
6 1 (0.77%) Databricks
6 1 (0.77%) Google
6 1 (0.77%) IBM
6 1 (0.77%) Pega
6 1 (0.77%) Rollbar
6 1 (0.77%) UiPath