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

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 58 77 61
Rank change year-on-year +19 -16 -40
Permanent jobs citing QA 133 90 250
As % of all permanent jobs in the Thames Valley 2.68% 3.27% 3.95%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 26.23% 22.96% 27.11%
Number of salaries quoted 84 31 134
10th Percentile £30,975 £46,000 £31,075
25th Percentile £47,188 £49,375 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year - +20.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £75,625 £64,375 £57,500
90th Percentile £93,500 £77,500 £67,500
South East median annual salary £53,663 £50,000 £47,500
% change year-on-year +7.33% +5.26% -13.64%

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 507 392 922
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 10.22% 14.26% 14.56%
Number of salaries quoted 284 207 561
10th Percentile £28,575 £31,250 £26,500
25th Percentile £39,539 £51,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £65,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% +36.84% -4.95%
75th Percentile £71,563 £83,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £90,000 £80,000
South East median annual salary £55,000 £55,000 £45,000
% change year-on-year - +22.22% -10.00%

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 April 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 April 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 +34 60 £62,500 +11.11% 31
Buckinghamshire -17 48 £55,000 - 11
Oxfordshire +7 25 £60,000 -4.00% 13
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 2 (1.50%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (1.50%) Adobe After Effects
1 2 (1.50%) Adobe Captivate
1 2 (1.50%) Adobe Creative Suite
1 2 (1.50%) Adobe Illustrator
1 2 (1.50%) Adobe Premiere
1 2 (1.50%) Elementor
1 2 (1.50%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 6 (4.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.75%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 37 (27.82%) Azure
2 35 (26.32%) AWS
3 24 (18.05%) GCP
4 19 (14.29%) SaaS
5 11 (8.27%) GitHub
6 9 (6.77%) Amazon S3
6 9 (6.77%) AWS Lambda
6 9 (6.77%) Serverless
7 7 (5.26%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (3.76%) Amazon EC2
8 5 (3.76%) Amazon EKS
8 5 (3.76%) Figma
9 4 (3.01%) Amazon SQS
9 4 (3.01%) AWS CloudFormation
9 4 (3.01%) Azure Service Bus
9 4 (3.01%) iPaaS
10 3 (2.26%) Power Platform
11 2 (1.50%) Adobe Creative Cloud
11 2 (1.50%) AWS CodePipeline
11 2 (1.50%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.50%) MQTT
1 2 (1.50%) TCP/IP
2 1 (0.75%) 4G
2 1 (0.75%) 5G
2 1 (0.75%) Broadband
2 1 (0.75%) DHCP
2 1 (0.75%) DNS
2 1 (0.75%) Firewall
2 1 (0.75%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (3.76%) Data Warehouse
1 5 (3.76%) MySQL
2 4 (3.01%) DynamoDB
2 4 (3.01%) NoSQL
2 4 (3.01%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (3.01%) SQL Server
3 3 (2.26%) Relational Database
4 2 (1.50%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.75%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.75%) Power BI
5 1 (0.75%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 19 (14.29%) JIRA
2 17 (12.78%) Git
3 7 (5.26%) Cucumber
3 7 (5.26%) GitLab
3 7 (5.26%) Jenkins
4 5 (3.76%) SonarQube
5 4 (3.01%) Artifactory
5 4 (3.01%) git-flow
5 4 (3.01%) Selenium
5 4 (3.01%) Zephyr
6 3 (2.26%) Cypress.io
6 3 (2.26%) eCATT
7 2 (1.50%) Claude Code
7 2 (1.50%) Polyspace
7 2 (1.50%) Postman
7 2 (1.50%) SoapUI
7 2 (1.50%) VectorCAST
7 2 (1.50%) WebDriver
8 1 (0.75%) NUnit
General
1 39 (29.32%) Social Skills
2 11 (8.27%) Finance
2 11 (8.27%) Manufacturing
2 11 (8.27%) Marketing
3 9 (6.77%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (5.26%) Public Sector
5 4 (3.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 4 (3.01%) Law
6 3 (2.26%) Influencing Skills
6 3 (2.26%) Pharmaceutical
6 3 (2.26%) Presentation Skills
6 3 (2.26%) Telecoms
7 2 (1.50%) Aerospace
7 2 (1.50%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (1.50%) Games
7 2 (1.50%) Health Technology
7 2 (1.50%) Multimedia
7 2 (1.50%) Organisational Skills
7 2 (1.50%) Tech for Good
8 1 (0.75%) Banking
Job Titles
1 21 (15.79%) Software Engineer
2 15 (11.28%) QA Engineer
2 15 (11.28%) Senior
3 14 (10.53%) Lead
4 12 (9.02%) QA Manager
5 11 (8.27%) Analyst
5 11 (8.27%) Head of Engineering
6 10 (7.52%) Developer
7 8 (6.02%) Architect
7 8 (6.02%) Quality Manager
8 7 (5.26%) Senior Developer
8 7 (5.26%) Support Analyst
9 6 (4.51%) DevOps Engineer
9 6 (4.51%) QA Leader
9 6 (4.51%) Test Engineer
10 5 (3.76%) Automation Engineer
10 5 (3.76%) Full-Stack Developer
10 5 (3.76%) Python Engineer
10 5 (3.76%) QA Automation Engineer
10 5 (3.76%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (12.78%) REST
2 13 (9.77%) .NET
3 12 (9.02%) React
4 9 (6.77%) JSON
5 8 (6.02%) RabbitMQ
5 8 (6.02%) SOAP
6 6 (4.51%) HTML
6 6 (4.51%) Middleware
6 6 (4.51%) Playwright
7 5 (3.76%) CSS
7 5 (3.76%) Django
7 5 (3.76%) Twisted
7 5 (3.76%) Web Services
7 5 (3.76%) WebSockets
8 4 (3.01%) AWS CDK
8 4 (3.01%) Kafka
8 4 (3.01%) Material-UI
8 4 (3.01%) pytest
8 4 (3.01%) XML
8 4 (3.01%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 19 (14.29%) Distributed Systems
2 14 (10.53%) Product Ownership
3 12 (9.02%) Self-Motivation
4 10 (7.52%) Cloud Native
5 9 (6.77%) Client/Server
6 5 (3.76%) Life Science
6 5 (3.76%) Video Conferencing
7 4 (3.01%) Enterprise Software
8 3 (2.26%) Low-Code
8 3 (2.26%) Renewable Energy
8 3 (2.26%) Virtual Team
9 2 (1.50%) e-Learning
9 2 (1.50%) Embedded Systems
9 2 (1.50%) Graphic Design
9 2 (1.50%) Learning Management System
9 2 (1.50%) LIMS
9 2 (1.50%) N-Tier
9 2 (1.50%) Operational Technology
9 2 (1.50%) Robotics
9 2 (1.50%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 21 (15.79%) Linux
2 4 (3.01%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 37 (27.82%) Agile
1 37 (27.82%) Problem-Solving
2 33 (24.81%) Test Automation
3 32 (24.06%) Continuous Improvement
4 30 (22.56%) Software Engineering
5 24 (18.05%) Computer Science
6 22 (16.54%) CI/CD
7 20 (15.04%) DevOps
8 16 (12.03%) Code Quality
9 14 (10.53%) Software Testing
10 13 (9.77%) Full-Stack Development
10 13 (9.77%) Infrastructure as Code
10 13 (9.77%) Microservices
10 13 (9.77%) Test Strategy
11 12 (9.02%) Validation
12 11 (8.27%) Migration
12 11 (8.27%) System Testing
13 10 (7.52%) Collaborative Culture
13 10 (7.52%) Data Modelling
13 10 (7.52%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 35 (26.32%) Python
2 20 (15.04%) SQL
3 17 (12.78%) Java
4 14 (10.53%) C#
4 14 (10.53%) TypeScript
5 11 (8.27%) C
5 11 (8.27%) C++
5 11 (8.27%) JavaScript
6 9 (6.77%) Rust
7 5 (3.76%) Groovy
8 3 (2.26%) Bash
8 3 (2.26%) Go
8 3 (2.26%) Perl
9 2 (1.50%) PHP
10 1 (0.75%) PowerShell
10 1 (0.75%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 33 (24.81%) Degree
2 22 (16.54%) Computer Science Degree
3 10 (7.52%) Security Cleared
4 6 (4.51%) DBS Check
4 6 (4.51%) SC Cleared
5 4 (3.01%) ISTQB
5 4 (3.01%) Master's Degree
6 2 (1.50%) AWS Certification
6 2 (1.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 2 (1.50%) Azure Certification
6 2 (1.50%) Microsoft Certification
6 2 (1.50%) PhD
6 2 (1.50%) TOGAF Certification
7 1 (0.75%) CHECK Team Leader
7 1 (0.75%) CHECK Team Member
7 1 (0.75%) CREST Certified
7 1 (0.75%) Cyber Scheme
7 1 (0.75%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (3.76%) Accessibility
2 2 (1.50%) 21 CFR Part 11
2 2 (1.50%) Def Stans
2 2 (1.50%) GxP
2 2 (1.50%) IEC 61508
2 2 (1.50%) ISO 26262
3 1 (0.75%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.75%) GDPR
3 1 (0.75%) NCSC
3 1 (0.75%) SLA
3 1 (0.75%) SOC 2
System Software
1 10 (7.52%) Hyper-V
1 10 (7.52%) VMware Infrastructure
2 9 (6.77%) KVM
3 8 (6.02%) Docker
4 5 (3.76%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.75%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 8 (6.02%) Terraform
2 6 (4.51%) Ansible
2 6 (4.51%) Kubernetes
3 4 (3.01%) Packer
4 3 (2.26%) HP ALM
5 2 (1.50%) Netcool
5 2 (1.50%) Netcool/OMNIbus
6 1 (0.75%) Functional Safety
6 1 (0.75%) Grafana
6 1 (0.75%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 10 (7.52%) VMware
2 6 (4.51%) IBM
2 6 (4.51%) SAP
3 4 (3.01%) AppDynamics
3 4 (3.01%) Microsoft
4 3 (2.26%) HP
4 3 (2.26%) ServiceNow
5 2 (1.50%) Adobe
5 2 (1.50%) Agilent
5 2 (1.50%) Blue Prism
5 2 (1.50%) Google
5 2 (1.50%) Oracle
5 2 (1.50%) Pega
5 2 (1.50%) UiPath
6 1 (0.75%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.75%) Foundry
6 1 (0.75%) Palantir
6 1 (0.75%) Salesforce