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

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 60 86 51
Rank change year-on-year +26 -35 -30
Permanent jobs citing QA 135 91 223
As % of all permanent jobs in the Thames Valley 3.20% 2.71% 4.44%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 24.55% 22.09% 29.81%
Number of salaries quoted 59 44 103
10th Percentile £27,450 £32,750 £31,250
25th Percentile £39,625 £45,000 £40,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,500 £60,000 £52,293
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% +14.74% -4.92%
75th Percentile £70,625 £67,000 £63,875
90th Percentile £95,000 £80,000 £80,000
South East median annual salary £50,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year - - -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 550 412 748
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 13.02% 12.26% 14.90%
Number of salaries quoted 246 221 440
10th Percentile £27,894 £34,750 £28,000
25th Percentile £39,070 £51,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £65,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% +18.18% +6.95%
75th Percentile £67,688 £83,750 £67,500
90th Percentile £88,125 £90,000 £85,000
South East median annual salary £52,500 £59,136 £50,000
% change year-on-year -11.22% +18.27% -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 30 January 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 30 January 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
Buckinghamshire +41 61 £60,000 +4.35% 16
Berkshire -5 60 £55,500 +8.29% 35
Oxfordshire +18 14 £42,500 -32.00% 20
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 (1.48%) FactoryTalk
1 2 (1.48%) WinCC
1 2 (1.48%) WordPress
2 1 (0.74%) ArchestrA
2 1 (0.74%) Confluence
Applications
1 3 (2.22%) Photoshop
2 2 (1.48%) Adobe After Effects
2 2 (1.48%) Adobe Captivate
2 2 (1.48%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (1.48%) Adobe Illustrator
2 2 (1.48%) Adobe Premiere
2 2 (1.48%) Elementor
Business Applications
1 25 (18.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (1.48%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.74%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 23 (17.04%) Azure
1 23 (17.04%) Azure DevOps
2 16 (11.85%) AWS
3 15 (11.11%) GCP
4 14 (10.37%) SaaS
5 7 (5.19%) GitHub
6 5 (3.70%) Amazon S3
6 5 (3.70%) Amazon SQS
6 5 (3.70%) AWS CloudFormation
6 5 (3.70%) AWS Lambda
6 5 (3.70%) Azure Service Bus
6 5 (3.70%) Power Platform
6 5 (3.70%) Serverless
7 4 (2.96%) iPaaS
8 2 (1.48%) Adobe Creative Cloud
8 2 (1.48%) GitHub Copilot
9 1 (0.74%) Figma
9 1 (0.74%) Miro
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.22%) MQTT
1 3 (2.22%) TCP/IP
2 2 (1.48%) Firewall
2 2 (1.48%) Modbus
3 1 (0.74%) 4G
3 1 (0.74%) 5G
3 1 (0.74%) Profibus
3 1 (0.74%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (4.44%) Data Warehouse
1 6 (4.44%) MySQL
2 5 (3.70%) DynamoDB
2 5 (3.70%) NoSQL
3 4 (2.96%) SQL Server
4 3 (2.22%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (2.22%) Power BI
4 3 (2.22%) Relational Database
5 2 (1.48%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (0.74%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 44 (32.59%) JIRA
2 23 (17.04%) Git
3 22 (16.30%) eCATT
4 19 (14.07%) Jenkins
5 9 (6.67%) Selenium
6 5 (3.70%) git-flow
7 4 (2.96%) Cypress.io
7 4 (2.96%) WebDriver
8 3 (2.22%) Postman
9 2 (1.48%) Claude Code
9 2 (1.48%) Cucumber
9 2 (1.48%) GitLab
9 2 (1.48%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.74%) NUnit
General
1 54 (40.00%) Social Skills
2 30 (22.22%) Finance
2 30 (22.22%) Marketing
3 28 (20.74%) Manufacturing
4 21 (15.56%) Organisational Skills
5 20 (14.81%) Presentation Skills
6 19 (14.07%) Influencing Skills
7 13 (9.63%) Analytical Skills
8 9 (6.67%) Public Sector
9 7 (5.19%) Law
10 6 (4.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (2.96%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (2.22%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (2.22%) Telecoms
13 2 (1.48%) Multimedia
14 1 (0.74%) Aerospace
14 1 (0.74%) Automotive
14 1 (0.74%) Electronics
14 1 (0.74%) Financial Institution
14 1 (0.74%) Health Technology
Job Titles
1 32 (23.70%) Lead
2 23 (17.04%) Analyst
3 20 (14.81%) Senior
4 11 (8.15%) Developer
4 11 (8.15%) Head of Engineering
5 10 (7.41%) Software Engineer
6 9 (6.67%) Senior Developer
7 7 (5.19%) Applications Support
7 7 (5.19%) Architect
8 6 (4.44%) Full-Stack Developer
8 6 (4.44%) Support Specialist
9 5 (3.70%) QA Engineer
9 5 (3.70%) Senior Full-Stack Developer
9 5 (3.70%) Support Engineer
10 4 (2.96%) Applications Architect
10 4 (2.96%) Applications Engineer
10 4 (2.96%) Applications Support Engineer
10 4 (2.96%) Integration Architect
10 4 (2.96%) QA Manager
10 4 (2.96%) Quality Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (10.37%) .NET
2 9 (6.67%) React
2 9 (6.67%) SOAP
3 7 (5.19%) Middleware
3 7 (5.19%) REST
4 6 (4.44%) CSS
4 6 (4.44%) HTML
5 5 (3.70%) AWS CDK
5 5 (3.70%) Kafka
5 5 (3.70%) Material-UI
5 5 (3.70%) RabbitMQ
6 4 (2.96%) JSON
6 4 (2.96%) Playwright
6 4 (2.96%) XML
7 3 (2.22%) ASP.NET
7 3 (2.22%) RESTful
8 2 (1.48%) .NET Framework
8 2 (1.48%) Bootstrap
8 2 (1.48%) pytest
9 1 (0.74%) ASP.NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 11 (8.15%) Self-Motivation
2 10 (7.41%) Cloud Native
3 8 (5.93%) Distributed Systems
4 5 (3.70%) Life Science
4 5 (3.70%) Operational Technology
4 5 (3.70%) Product Ownership
5 4 (2.96%) Client/Server
5 4 (2.96%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (2.96%) Team-Oriented Environment
6 3 (2.22%) Driving Licence
6 3 (2.22%) LIMS
6 3 (2.22%) Renewable Energy
7 2 (1.48%) e-Learning
7 2 (1.48%) Graphic Design
7 2 (1.48%) Learning Management System
7 2 (1.48%) Low-Code
7 2 (1.48%) N-Tier
7 2 (1.48%) SCADA
7 2 (1.48%) Virtual Team
8 1 (0.74%) GNSS
Operating Systems
1 5 (3.70%) Linux
2 4 (2.96%) Windows
3 2 (1.48%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.74%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (40.00%) Continuous Improvement
2 35 (25.93%) Agile
3 34 (25.19%) Problem-Solving
4 27 (20.00%) Test Management
5 25 (18.52%) Source to Pay
6 23 (17.04%) Change Management
6 23 (17.04%) ERP
7 22 (16.30%) Defect Management
7 22 (16.30%) Risk Management
7 22 (16.30%) Technical Leadership
7 22 (16.30%) Visualisation
8 21 (15.56%) Process Improvement
8 21 (15.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 20 (14.81%) Computer Science
10 19 (14.07%) Change Control
10 19 (14.07%) Configuration Management
10 19 (14.07%) Customer Requirements
10 19 (14.07%) Data-Driven Decision Making
10 19 (14.07%) Programme Management
10 19 (14.07%) Strategic Thinking
Programming Languages
1 18 (13.33%) SQL
2 16 (11.85%) C#
2 16 (11.85%) Java
2 16 (11.85%) Python
3 9 (6.67%) TypeScript
4 6 (4.44%) C
5 5 (3.70%) C++
6 4 (2.96%) JavaScript
6 4 (2.96%) Rust
7 2 (1.48%) Go
7 2 (1.48%) PHP
8 1 (0.74%) Ladder Logic
Qualifications
1 44 (32.59%) Degree
2 29 (21.48%) Security Cleared
3 15 (11.11%) Computer Science Degree
4 7 (5.19%) SC Cleared
5 3 (2.22%) Master's Degree
6 2 (1.48%) AWS Certification
6 2 (1.48%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 2 (1.48%) Azure Certification
6 2 (1.48%) Microsoft Certification
6 2 (1.48%) TOGAF Certification
7 1 (0.74%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (14.07%) Def Stans
2 10 (7.41%) Accessibility
3 4 (2.96%) SLA
4 3 (2.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
4 3 (2.22%) GDPR
4 3 (2.22%) GxP
5 2 (1.48%) IEC 61508
6 1 (0.74%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.74%) IEC 61131
6 1 (0.74%) WCAG
System Software
1 6 (4.44%) Hyper-V
1 6 (4.44%) VMware Infrastructure
2 4 (2.96%) KVM
3 1 (0.74%) Docker
Systems Management
1 22 (16.30%) HP ALM
2 1 (0.74%) Netcool
2 1 (0.74%) Netcool/OMNIbus
Vendors
1 25 (18.52%) SAP
2 22 (16.30%) HP
3 6 (4.44%) VMware
4 4 (2.96%) Microsoft
5 3 (2.22%) Agilent
6 2 (1.48%) Adobe
6 2 (1.48%) Cognos
6 2 (1.48%) Google
6 2 (1.48%) Oracle
6 2 (1.48%) Rockwell
6 2 (1.48%) Siemens
7 1 (0.74%) Blue Prism
7 1 (0.74%) Foundry
7 1 (0.74%) IBM
7 1 (0.74%) Palantir
7 1 (0.74%) Pega
7 1 (0.74%) Salesforce
7 1 (0.74%) UiPath