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

6 months to
9 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 58 74 59
Rank change year-on-year +16 -15 -38
Permanent jobs citing QA 136 88 259
As % of all permanent jobs in the Thames Valley 2.66% 3.20% 4.00%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 26.77% 22.28% 27.61%
Number of salaries quoted 92 30 136
10th Percentile £33,250 £45,900 £31,125
25th Percentile £48,438 £49,063 £39,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £48,750
Median % change year-on-year - +23.08% -11.36%
75th Percentile £75,625 £63,750 £57,500
90th Percentile £94,500 £68,675 £67,500
South East median annual salary £55,000 £50,000 £47,500
% change year-on-year +10.00% +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 508 395 938
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 9.92% 14.38% 14.49%
Number of salaries quoted 295 210 567
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £26,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £51,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £56,500 £64,750 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year -12.74% +36.32% -4.95%
75th Percentile £73,750 £83,750 £67,500
90th Percentile £88,750 £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 9 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 9 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 +31 56 £60,000 +14.29% 31
Buckinghamshire -22 52 £58,500 +6.36% 11
Oxfordshire +14 28 £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 (1.47%) WordPress
2 1 (0.74%) CMS
Applications
1 2 (1.47%) Adobe After Effects
1 2 (1.47%) Adobe Captivate
1 2 (1.47%) Adobe Creative Suite
1 2 (1.47%) Adobe Illustrator
1 2 (1.47%) Adobe Premiere
1 2 (1.47%) Elementor
1 2 (1.47%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.74%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 39 (28.68%) Azure
2 35 (25.74%) AWS
3 23 (16.91%) GCP
4 18 (13.24%) SaaS
5 10 (7.35%) GitHub
6 8 (5.88%) Amazon S3
6 8 (5.88%) AWS Lambda
6 8 (5.88%) Serverless
7 5 (3.68%) Amazon EC2
7 5 (3.68%) Amazon EKS
7 5 (3.68%) Figma
7 5 (3.68%) iPaaS
8 4 (2.94%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (2.21%) Amazon SQS
9 3 (2.21%) AWS CloudFormation
9 3 (2.21%) Azure Service Bus
9 3 (2.21%) Power Platform
10 2 (1.47%) Adobe Creative Cloud
10 2 (1.47%) AWS CodePipeline
10 2 (1.47%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.47%) MQTT
1 2 (1.47%) TCP/IP
2 1 (0.74%) 4G
2 1 (0.74%) 5G
2 1 (0.74%) Broadband
2 1 (0.74%) DHCP
2 1 (0.74%) DNS
2 1 (0.74%) Firewall
2 1 (0.74%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
1 4 (2.94%) MySQL
1 4 (2.94%) PostgreSQL
1 4 (2.94%) SQL Server
2 3 (2.21%) DynamoDB
2 3 (2.21%) NoSQL
3 2 (1.47%) Azure SQL Database
3 2 (1.47%) Relational Database
4 1 (0.74%) MongoDB
4 1 (0.74%) Power BI
4 1 (0.74%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 17 (12.50%) Git
2 16 (11.76%) JIRA
3 7 (5.15%) GitLab
3 7 (5.15%) Jenkins
4 6 (4.41%) Cucumber
5 5 (3.68%) SonarQube
6 4 (2.94%) Artifactory
6 4 (2.94%) Zephyr
7 3 (2.21%) Cypress.io
7 3 (2.21%) git-flow
7 3 (2.21%) Selenium
8 2 (1.47%) Claude Code
8 2 (1.47%) Polyspace
8 2 (1.47%) VectorCAST
8 2 (1.47%) WebDriver
9 1 (0.74%) NUnit
9 1 (0.74%) Postman
9 1 (0.74%) SoapUI
General
1 44 (32.35%) Social Skills
2 14 (10.29%) Analytical Skills
3 7 (5.15%) Public Sector
4 6 (4.41%) Manufacturing
4 6 (4.41%) Marketing
5 4 (2.94%) Finance
5 4 (2.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 4 (2.94%) Law
5 4 (2.94%) Pharmaceutical
6 3 (2.21%) Telecoms
7 2 (1.47%) Aerospace
7 2 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (1.47%) Games
7 2 (1.47%) Health Technology
7 2 (1.47%) Multimedia
7 2 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
7 2 (1.47%) Tech for Good
8 1 (0.74%) Automotive
8 1 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.74%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 21 (15.44%) Software Engineer
2 14 (10.29%) QA Engineer
3 13 (9.56%) Lead
3 13 (9.56%) QA Manager
4 12 (8.82%) Senior
5 11 (8.09%) Analyst
5 11 (8.09%) Head of Engineering
6 10 (7.35%) Architect
7 9 (6.62%) Developer
7 9 (6.62%) Quality Manager
8 7 (5.15%) QA Leader
8 7 (5.15%) Support Analyst
9 6 (4.41%) Applications Architect
9 6 (4.41%) DevOps Engineer
9 6 (4.41%) Full-Stack Engineer
9 6 (4.41%) Integration Architect
9 6 (4.41%) Senior Developer
9 6 (4.41%) Test Engineer
10 5 (3.68%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
10 5 (3.68%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (13.97%) REST
2 13 (9.56%) .NET
3 11 (8.09%) JSON
3 11 (8.09%) React
4 9 (6.62%) SOAP
5 8 (5.88%) Middleware
5 8 (5.88%) RabbitMQ
6 6 (4.41%) Playwright
6 6 (4.41%) XML
7 5 (3.68%) Django
7 5 (3.68%) HTML
7 5 (3.68%) Twisted
7 5 (3.68%) Web Services
7 5 (3.68%) WebSockets
8 4 (2.94%) CSS
8 4 (2.94%) Elastic Stack
8 4 (2.94%) Kafka
8 4 (2.94%) RESTful
8 4 (2.94%) YAML
9 3 (2.21%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 20 (14.71%) Distributed Systems
2 15 (11.03%) Product Ownership
3 13 (9.56%) Self-Motivation
4 10 (7.35%) Cloud Native
5 9 (6.62%) Client/Server
6 6 (4.41%) Life Science
7 5 (3.68%) Video Conferencing
8 4 (2.94%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (2.21%) Low-Code
9 3 (2.21%) Renewable Energy
9 3 (2.21%) Virtual Team
10 2 (1.47%) Embedded Systems
10 2 (1.47%) Graphic Design
10 2 (1.47%) Learning Management System
10 2 (1.47%) LIMS
10 2 (1.47%) N-Tier
10 2 (1.47%) Operational Technology
10 2 (1.47%) Robotics
10 2 (1.47%) Security Posture
10 2 (1.47%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 21 (15.44%) Linux
2 4 (2.94%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 41 (30.15%) Problem-Solving
2 37 (27.21%) Agile
3 34 (25.00%) Test Automation
4 33 (24.26%) Software Engineering
5 31 (22.79%) Continuous Improvement
6 28 (20.59%) Computer Science
7 22 (16.18%) CI/CD
8 21 (15.44%) DevOps
9 18 (13.24%) Software Testing
10 17 (12.50%) Code Quality
11 13 (9.56%) Full-Stack Development
11 13 (9.56%) Microservices
12 12 (8.82%) Infrastructure as Code
12 12 (8.82%) Test Strategy
13 11 (8.09%) Data Modelling
13 11 (8.09%) End-to-End Testing
13 11 (8.09%) Migration
13 11 (8.09%) Scrum
13 11 (8.09%) System Testing
14 10 (7.35%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 36 (26.47%) Python
2 21 (15.44%) SQL
3 20 (14.71%) Java
4 16 (11.76%) C#
5 14 (10.29%) TypeScript
6 11 (8.09%) C
6 11 (8.09%) C++
6 11 (8.09%) JavaScript
7 9 (6.62%) Rust
8 5 (3.68%) Groovy
9 3 (2.21%) Bash
9 3 (2.21%) Perl
10 2 (1.47%) Go
11 1 (0.74%) PHP
11 1 (0.74%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.74%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 39 (28.68%) Degree
2 25 (18.38%) Computer Science Degree
3 10 (7.35%) Security Cleared
4 7 (5.15%) DBS Check
5 6 (4.41%) SC Cleared
6 5 (3.68%) ISTQB
7 4 (2.94%) Master's Degree
8 2 (1.47%) AWS Certification
8 2 (1.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 2 (1.47%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.47%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (1.47%) PhD
8 2 (1.47%) TOGAF Certification
9 1 (0.74%) CHECK Team Leader
9 1 (0.74%) CHECK Team Member
9 1 (0.74%) CREST Certified
9 1 (0.74%) CSQA
9 1 (0.74%) Cyber Scheme
9 1 (0.74%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (5.15%) Accessibility
2 3 (2.21%) GxP
3 2 (1.47%) 21 CFR Part 11
3 2 (1.47%) Def Stans
3 2 (1.47%) IEC 61508
3 2 (1.47%) ISO 26262
4 1 (0.74%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.74%) GDPR
4 1 (0.74%) Good Clinical Practice
4 1 (0.74%) NCSC
4 1 (0.74%) SLA
4 1 (0.74%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.74%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 10 (7.35%) Hyper-V
1 10 (7.35%) VMware Infrastructure
2 9 (6.62%) Docker
2 9 (6.62%) KVM
3 5 (3.68%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.74%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 8 (5.88%) Terraform
2 7 (5.15%) Kubernetes
3 6 (4.41%) Ansible
4 4 (2.94%) Packer
5 2 (1.47%) Netcool
5 2 (1.47%) Netcool/OMNIbus
6 1 (0.74%) Functional Safety
6 1 (0.74%) Grafana
6 1 (0.74%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 10 (7.35%) VMware
2 6 (4.41%) IBM
2 6 (4.41%) Microsoft
3 4 (2.94%) AppDynamics
4 3 (2.21%) Google
4 3 (2.21%) ServiceNow
5 2 (1.47%) Adobe
5 2 (1.47%) Agilent
5 2 (1.47%) Blue Prism
5 2 (1.47%) Oracle
5 2 (1.47%) Pega
5 2 (1.47%) UiPath
6 1 (0.74%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.74%) Foundry
6 1 (0.74%) Palantir
6 1 (0.74%) Salesforce