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

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 68 56
Rank change year-on-year +6 -12 -36
Permanent jobs citing QA 120 120 231
As % of all permanent jobs in the Thames Valley 2.77% 3.74% 4.25%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 25.42% 28.24% 28.66%
Number of salaries quoted 64 42 114
10th Percentile £27,750 £33,475 £31,075
25th Percentile £42,656 £45,313 £37,625
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £60,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% +20.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £71,250 £66,500 £62,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £79,750 £80,000
South East median annual salary £53,663 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +7.33% - -13.04%

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 472 425 806
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 10.90% 13.24% 14.82%
Number of salaries quoted 252 213 486
10th Percentile £28,000 £34,750 £26,750
25th Percentile £39,210 £51,250 £34,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £65,000 £52,147
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% +24.65% +4.29%
75th Percentile £68,750 £83,750 £67,500
90th Percentile £92,250 £90,000 £84,375
South East median annual salary £52,500 £57,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -8.70% +15.00% -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 17 February 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 17 February 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 +6 64 £57,500 +9.52% 24
Buckinghamshire -9 40 £59,250 +3.04% 13
Oxfordshire +12 16 £42,500 -32.00% 9
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 (1.67%) WordPress
2 1 (0.83%) Confluence
Applications
1 3 (2.50%) Photoshop
2 2 (1.67%) Adobe After Effects
2 2 (1.67%) Adobe Captivate
2 2 (1.67%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (1.67%) Adobe Illustrator
2 2 (1.67%) Adobe Premiere
2 2 (1.67%) Elementor
Business Applications
1 25 (20.83%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (1.67%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.83%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 26 (21.67%) Azure
2 24 (20.00%) Azure DevOps
3 18 (15.00%) AWS
4 16 (13.33%) GCP
5 15 (12.50%) SaaS
6 7 (5.83%) GitHub
7 5 (4.17%) Amazon S3
7 5 (4.17%) Amazon SQS
7 5 (4.17%) AWS CloudFormation
7 5 (4.17%) AWS Lambda
7 5 (4.17%) Azure Service Bus
7 5 (4.17%) Serverless
8 4 (3.33%) iPaaS
8 4 (3.33%) Power Platform
9 2 (1.67%) Adobe Creative Cloud
9 2 (1.67%) GitHub Copilot
10 1 (0.83%) Figma
10 1 (0.83%) Miro
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.50%) MQTT
1 3 (2.50%) TCP/IP
2 1 (0.83%) 4G
2 1 (0.83%) 5G
2 1 (0.83%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (5.00%) Data Warehouse
1 6 (5.00%) MySQL
2 5 (4.17%) DynamoDB
2 5 (4.17%) NoSQL
3 4 (3.33%) SQL Server
4 3 (2.50%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (2.50%) Relational Database
5 2 (1.67%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (1.67%) Power BI
6 1 (0.83%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 27 (22.50%) JIRA
2 22 (18.33%) eCATT
3 8 (6.67%) Selenium
4 5 (4.17%) git-flow
5 4 (3.33%) Git
6 3 (2.50%) Cypress.io
6 3 (2.50%) Postman
6 3 (2.50%) WebDriver
7 2 (1.67%) Claude Code
7 2 (1.67%) Cucumber
7 2 (1.67%) GitLab
7 2 (1.67%) NUnit
7 2 (1.67%) SoapUI
8 1 (0.83%) Zephyr
General
1 33 (27.50%) Social Skills
2 31 (25.83%) Marketing
3 30 (25.00%) Finance
4 29 (24.17%) Manufacturing
5 20 (16.67%) Presentation Skills
6 19 (15.83%) Influencing Skills
7 11 (9.17%) Analytical Skills
8 8 (6.67%) Public Sector
9 6 (5.00%) Law
10 5 (4.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (3.33%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (3.33%) Pharmaceutical
11 4 (3.33%) Telecoms
12 2 (1.67%) Health Technology
12 2 (1.67%) Multimedia
12 2 (1.67%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (1.67%) Tech for Good
13 1 (0.83%) Aerospace
13 1 (0.83%) Automotive
13 1 (0.83%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 23 (19.17%) Analyst
2 19 (15.83%) Senior
3 12 (10.00%) Lead
3 12 (10.00%) Software Engineer
4 11 (9.17%) Head of Engineering
5 10 (8.33%) Developer
6 8 (6.67%) Architect
6 8 (6.67%) QA Engineer
6 8 (6.67%) Senior Developer
7 6 (5.00%) Full-Stack Developer
7 6 (5.00%) QA Manager
7 6 (5.00%) Support Specialist
8 5 (4.17%) Senior Full-Stack Developer
9 4 (3.33%) Applications Architect
9 4 (3.33%) Applications Support
9 4 (3.33%) Integration Architect
9 4 (3.33%) Solutions Architect
9 4 (3.33%) Team Leader
10 3 (2.50%) Applications Support Analyst
10 3 (2.50%) Compliance Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (12.50%) .NET
2 9 (7.50%) React
2 9 (7.50%) SOAP
3 7 (5.83%) Middleware
3 7 (5.83%) REST
4 6 (5.00%) CSS
4 6 (5.00%) HTML
5 5 (4.17%) AWS CDK
5 5 (4.17%) Kafka
5 5 (4.17%) Material-UI
5 5 (4.17%) RabbitMQ
6 4 (3.33%) JSON
6 4 (3.33%) Playwright
6 4 (3.33%) XML
7 3 (2.50%) .NET Framework
7 3 (2.50%) ASP.NET
7 3 (2.50%) RESTful
8 2 (1.67%) Blazor
8 2 (1.67%) Bootstrap
8 2 (1.67%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 11 (9.17%) Cloud Native
2 10 (8.33%) Self-Motivation
3 9 (7.50%) Distributed Systems
4 6 (5.00%) Product Ownership
5 5 (4.17%) Client/Server
5 5 (4.17%) Life Science
6 4 (3.33%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (2.50%) LIMS
7 3 (2.50%) Operational Technology
7 3 (2.50%) Team-Oriented Environment
8 2 (1.67%) e-Learning
8 2 (1.67%) Graphic Design
8 2 (1.67%) Learning Management System
8 2 (1.67%) Low-Code
8 2 (1.67%) N-Tier
8 2 (1.67%) Renewable Energy
8 2 (1.67%) Virtual Team
9 1 (0.83%) Hedge funds
9 1 (0.83%) Robotics
9 1 (0.83%) Video Editing
Operating Systems
1 7 (5.83%) Linux
2 2 (1.67%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 38 (31.67%) Continuous Improvement
2 36 (30.00%) Agile
3 35 (29.17%) Problem-Solving
4 27 (22.50%) Test Management
5 25 (20.83%) Source to Pay
6 23 (19.17%) Defect Management
6 23 (19.17%) ERP
7 22 (18.33%) Risk Management
7 22 (18.33%) Visualisation
8 20 (16.67%) Computer Science
9 18 (15.00%) CI/CD
9 18 (15.00%) Software Engineering
10 17 (14.17%) Test Automation
11 14 (11.67%) Roadmaps
12 11 (9.17%) DevOps
12 11 (9.17%) Migration
12 11 (9.17%) Test Strategy
13 10 (8.33%) Software Testing
13 10 (8.33%) TDD
13 10 (8.33%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 18 (15.00%) SQL
2 17 (14.17%) Python
3 16 (13.33%) C#
4 15 (12.50%) Java
5 10 (8.33%) TypeScript
6 7 (5.83%) C
6 7 (5.83%) C++
7 5 (4.17%) JavaScript
7 5 (4.17%) Rust
8 2 (1.67%) Go
8 2 (1.67%) PHP
Qualifications
1 26 (21.67%) Degree
2 16 (13.33%) Computer Science Degree
3 9 (7.50%) Security Cleared
4 6 (5.00%) SC Cleared
5 4 (3.33%) Master's Degree
6 2 (1.67%) AWS Certification
6 2 (1.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 2 (1.67%) Azure Certification
6 2 (1.67%) Microsoft Certification
6 2 (1.67%) TOGAF Certification
7 1 (0.83%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.83%) ISTQB
7 1 (0.83%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (7.50%) Accessibility
2 3 (2.50%) 21 CFR Part 11
2 3 (2.50%) GDPR
2 3 (2.50%) GxP
3 1 (0.83%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.83%) SLA
3 1 (0.83%) WCAG
System Software
1 5 (4.17%) Hyper-V
1 5 (4.17%) KVM
1 5 (4.17%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (0.83%) Docker
Systems Management
1 22 (18.33%) HP ALM
2 2 (1.67%) Netcool
2 2 (1.67%) Netcool/OMNIbus
3 1 (0.83%) Terraform
Vendors
1 25 (20.83%) SAP
2 22 (18.33%) HP
3 6 (5.00%) Microsoft
4 5 (4.17%) VMware
5 3 (2.50%) Agilent
6 2 (1.67%) Adobe
6 2 (1.67%) Blue Prism
6 2 (1.67%) Google
6 2 (1.67%) IBM
6 2 (1.67%) Oracle
6 2 (1.67%) Pega
6 2 (1.67%) UiPath
7 1 (0.83%) Cognos
7 1 (0.83%) Foundry
7 1 (0.83%) Palantir
7 1 (0.83%) Salesforce
7 1 (0.83%) ServiceNow