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

6 months to
2 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 85 61
Rank change year-on-year +46 -24 -6
Permanent jobs citing QA 223 117 196
As % of all permanent jobs in the Thames Valley 3.42% 3.28% 3.74%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 32.04% 21.43% 28.36%
Number of salaries quoted 137 26 111
10th Percentile £40,250 £27,500 £31,000
25th Percentile £50,000 £40,656 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £54,250 £48,925
Median % change year-on-year +10.60% +10.88% -3.12%
75th Percentile £70,750 £67,813 £55,750
90th Percentile £78,750 £73,750 £65,000
South East median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £48,925
% change year-on-year +5.00% +2.20% -11.05%

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 696 546 691
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 10.69% 15.29% 13.18%
Number of salaries quoted 445 236 385
10th Percentile £35,000 £26,000 £29,850
25th Percentile £45,000 £39,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £56,500 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year +1.77% +18.95% -4.98%
75th Percentile £73,750 £75,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £83,750 £83,750 £80,750
South East median annual salary £52,500 £55,000 £47,500
% change year-on-year -4.55% +15.79% -5.00%

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 2 August 2026.

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 2 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
Berkshire +49 104 £60,000 +9.09% 23
Buckinghamshire +13 74 £50,000 +81.82% 16
Oxfordshire +6 45 £62,500 +8.70% 24
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 5 (2.24%) SharePoint
2 2 (0.90%) CMS
2 2 (0.90%) Moodle
2 2 (0.90%) WordPress
3 1 (0.45%) ArchestrA
3 1 (0.45%) Confluence
3 1 (0.45%) JBoss
3 1 (0.45%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.45%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 2 (0.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.45%) Mathcad
2 1 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.45%) OrCAD
Cloud Services
1 51 (22.87%) Azure
2 36 (16.14%) AWS
3 18 (8.07%) SaaS
4 13 (5.83%) GCP
5 9 (4.04%) GitHub
6 7 (3.14%) Azure DevOps
7 6 (2.69%) Amazon EKS
7 6 (2.69%) Serverless
8 5 (2.24%) Amazon EC2
8 5 (2.24%) Amazon S3
8 5 (2.24%) AWS Lambda
8 5 (2.24%) Figma
8 5 (2.24%) Microsoft 365
9 3 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 2 (0.90%) Adobe Creative Cloud
10 2 (0.90%) AWS CodePipeline
11 1 (0.45%) Amazon ECS
11 1 (0.45%) Azure Machine Learning
11 1 (0.45%) iPaaS
11 1 (0.45%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.35%) DHCP
1 3 (1.35%) DNS
1 3 (1.35%) Firewall
2 1 (0.45%) Broadband
2 1 (0.45%) RS-485
2 1 (0.45%) SD-WAN
2 1 (0.45%) Software-Defined Networking
2 1 (0.45%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (0.90%) PostgreSQL
1 2 (0.90%) SQL Server Reporting Services
2 1 (0.45%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (0.45%) IBM InfoSphere
2 1 (0.45%) MongoDB
2 1 (0.45%) Power BI
2 1 (0.45%) Power Query
2 1 (0.45%) Redis
2 1 (0.45%) Relational Database
2 1 (0.45%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 18 (8.07%) Git
1 18 (8.07%) JIRA
2 9 (4.04%) Cucumber
3 8 (3.59%) Jenkins
4 6 (2.69%) GitLab
4 6 (2.69%) Zephyr
5 5 (2.24%) SonarQube
6 4 (1.79%) Artifactory
6 4 (1.79%) Postman
7 2 (0.90%) Polyspace
7 2 (0.90%) Selenium
7 2 (0.90%) VectorCAST
8 1 (0.45%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.45%) JMeter
8 1 (0.45%) JUnit
8 1 (0.45%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.45%) NUnit
General
1 76 (34.08%) Social Skills
2 36 (16.14%) Analytical Skills
3 26 (11.66%) Influencing Skills
4 21 (9.42%) Pharmaceutical
5 19 (8.52%) Legal
5 19 (8.52%) Manufacturing
6 6 (2.69%) Electronics
6 6 (2.69%) Finance
6 6 (2.69%) Organisational Skills
7 3 (1.35%) Public Sector
8 2 (0.90%) Aerospace
8 2 (0.90%) Banking
8 2 (0.90%) Games
8 2 (0.90%) Health Technology
8 2 (0.90%) Law
8 2 (0.90%) Marketing
8 2 (0.90%) Multimedia
8 2 (0.90%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.45%) Local Government
9 1 (0.45%) Military
Job Titles
1 52 (23.32%) Lead
2 33 (14.80%) QA Leader
3 25 (11.21%) QA Engineer
4 21 (9.42%) QA Manager
5 19 (8.52%) Software Engineer
6 18 (8.07%) Quality Manager
6 18 (8.07%) Senior
7 17 (7.62%) Test Engineer
8 16 (7.17%) Quality Engineer
9 15 (6.73%) Performance Engineer
10 14 (6.28%) Performance Test Engineer
11 12 (5.38%) Team Leader
12 11 (4.93%) Engineering Manager
13 10 (4.48%) Analyst
13 10 (4.48%) Auditor
13 10 (4.48%) QA Team Leader
14 8 (3.59%) DevOps Engineer
14 8 (3.59%) Python Engineer
14 8 (3.59%) Tester
15 7 (3.14%) Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (8.97%) REST
2 16 (7.17%) .NET
3 13 (5.83%) JSON
4 11 (4.93%) React
5 9 (4.04%) Playwright
6 8 (3.59%) RabbitMQ
6 8 (3.59%) SOAP
7 7 (3.14%) Blazor
7 7 (3.14%) Middleware
7 7 (3.14%) XML
8 6 (2.69%) Web Services
9 5 (2.24%) .NET Framework
9 5 (2.24%) Django
9 5 (2.24%) Elastic Stack
9 5 (2.24%) Node.js
9 5 (2.24%) RESTful
9 5 (2.24%) Twisted
9 5 (2.24%) WebSockets
10 4 (1.79%) OAuth2
10 4 (1.79%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 25 (11.21%) Product Ownership
2 19 (8.52%) Distributed Systems
3 17 (7.62%) Life Science
3 17 (7.62%) Pharmacovigilance
4 9 (4.04%) Self-Motivation
5 5 (2.24%) Client/Server
5 5 (2.24%) Cloud Native
5 5 (2.24%) Video Conferencing
6 4 (1.79%) Onboarding
7 3 (1.35%) Driving Licence
7 3 (1.35%) Private Cloud
7 3 (1.35%) Public Cloud
7 3 (1.35%) Renewable Energy
7 3 (1.35%) Virtual Team
8 2 (0.90%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.90%) e-Learning
8 2 (0.90%) Embedded Systems
8 2 (0.90%) SCORM
8 2 (0.90%) Security Posture
8 2 (0.90%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 18 (8.07%) Linux
2 5 (2.24%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 69 (30.94%) Continuous Improvement
2 56 (25.11%) Problem-Solving
3 45 (20.18%) Test Automation
4 43 (19.28%) Agile
5 38 (17.04%) Software Engineering
6 35 (15.70%) CAPA
7 32 (14.35%) CI/CD
7 32 (14.35%) DevOps
8 25 (11.21%) Roadmaps
9 24 (10.76%) Computer Science
10 19 (8.52%) Software Testing
11 18 (8.07%) Code Quality
11 18 (8.07%) Customer Service
12 16 (7.17%) Containerisation
12 16 (7.17%) TDD
13 15 (6.73%) AI
13 15 (6.73%) Change Management
13 15 (6.73%) Full-Stack Development
13 15 (6.73%) Infrastructure as Code
13 15 (6.73%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 33 (14.80%) Python
2 17 (7.62%) C#
3 15 (6.73%) Java
3 15 (6.73%) SQL
3 15 (6.73%) TypeScript
4 13 (5.83%) JavaScript
5 10 (4.48%) C
6 9 (4.04%) C++
7 5 (2.24%) Bash
7 5 (2.24%) Groovy
7 5 (2.24%) Rust
8 3 (1.35%) Perl
8 3 (1.35%) PowerShell
9 1 (0.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 1 (0.45%) Embedded C
9 1 (0.45%) Go
9 1 (0.45%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 74 (33.18%) Degree
2 26 (11.66%) Computer Science Degree
3 8 (3.59%) ISTQB
4 7 (3.14%) DBS Check
4 7 (3.14%) Master's Degree
4 7 (3.14%) Security Cleared
5 4 (1.79%) PhD
5 4 (1.79%) SC Cleared
6 3 (1.35%) Postgraduate
7 2 (0.90%) CHECK Team Leader
7 2 (0.90%) CHECK Team Member
7 2 (0.90%) CREST Certified
7 2 (0.90%) CSQA
7 2 (0.90%) Cyber Scheme
7 2 (0.90%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (17.49%) Accessibility
2 32 (14.35%) Good Clinical Practice
3 22 (9.87%) GxP
4 8 (3.59%) 21 CFR Part 11
4 8 (3.59%) GLP
4 8 (3.59%) GMP
5 3 (1.35%) SOC 2
5 3 (1.35%) Software Quality Assurance
6 2 (0.90%) Def Stans
6 2 (0.90%) IEC 61508
6 2 (0.90%) ISO 26262
6 2 (0.90%) NCSC
6 2 (0.90%) WCAG
7 1 (0.45%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.45%) ISO 9001
7 1 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 1 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.45%) SLA
System Software
1 16 (7.17%) Docker
2 8 (3.59%) Hyper-V
2 8 (3.59%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (2.24%) KVM
3 5 (2.24%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (1.35%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 16 (7.17%) Terraform
2 15 (6.73%) Kubernetes
3 9 (4.04%) Ansible
4 4 (1.79%) Packer
5 3 (1.35%) Grafana
5 3 (1.35%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.45%) Functional Safety
Vendors
1 22 (9.87%) Microsoft
2 8 (3.59%) VMware
3 5 (2.24%) IBM
3 5 (2.24%) ServiceNow
4 4 (1.79%) AppDynamics
5 2 (0.90%) Adobe
6 1 (0.45%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.45%) Cisco
6 1 (0.45%) EMC
6 1 (0.45%) Fortinet
6 1 (0.45%) Google
6 1 (0.45%) Informatica