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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 82 54
Rank change year-on-year +40 -28 +10
Permanent jobs citing QA 235 144 174
As % of all permanent jobs in the Thames Valley 3.28% 3.65% 3.59%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 30.48% 21.62% 31.13%
Number of salaries quoted 149 34 91
10th Percentile £39,250 £29,050 £31,250
25th Percentile £45,000 £39,625 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £49,500 £48,925
Median % change year-on-year +21.21% +1.18% -3.88%
75th Percentile £70,000 £63,438 £55,750
90th Percentile £85,000 £69,625 £76,250
South East median annual salary £50,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -4.76%

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 771 666 559
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 10.75% 16.88% 11.53%
Number of salaries quoted 513 248 266
10th Percentile £35,000 £26,250 £31,250
25th Percentile £43,125 £39,625 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year - +10.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £72,500 £69,880 £72,188
90th Percentile £86,250 £83,750 £83,750
South East median annual salary £52,500 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.55% +10.00% -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 14 September 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 14 September 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 +46 100 £60,000 +18.81% 63
Buckinghamshire +4 75 £50,000 +3.63% 41
Oxfordshire +9 60 £57,500 -4.17% 40
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 6 (2.55%) SharePoint
2 5 (2.13%) Moodle
2 5 (2.13%) WordPress
3 4 (1.70%) Confluence
4 2 (0.85%) CMS
5 1 (0.43%) ArchestrA
5 1 (0.43%) JBoss
5 1 (0.43%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.43%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 2 (0.85%) Adobe After Effects
1 2 (0.85%) Adobe Illustrator
1 2 (0.85%) Adobe Premiere
1 2 (0.85%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.85%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.85%) Photoshop
2 1 (0.43%) Mathcad
2 1 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.43%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.43%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 3 (1.28%) SAP ERP
1 3 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.85%) Adobe Campaign
Cloud Services
1 44 (18.72%) Azure
2 33 (14.04%) AWS
3 14 (5.96%) SaaS
4 9 (3.83%) GitHub
5 8 (3.40%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (2.98%) Serverless
7 6 (2.55%) Amazon EKS
7 6 (2.55%) Amazon S3
7 6 (2.55%) AWS Lambda
7 6 (2.55%) GCP
8 5 (2.13%) Adobe Creative Cloud
8 5 (2.13%) Amazon EC2
8 5 (2.13%) Microsoft 365
9 3 (1.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 3 (1.28%) GitHub Actions
10 2 (0.85%) AWS CodePipeline
10 2 (0.85%) Figma
11 1 (0.43%) Azure Machine Learning
11 1 (0.43%) iPaaS
11 1 (0.43%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.28%) DHCP
1 3 (1.28%) DNS
1 3 (1.28%) Firewall
2 2 (0.85%) 5G
3 1 (0.43%) 3G
3 1 (0.43%) 4G
3 1 (0.43%) Broadband
3 1 (0.43%) Diameter Protocol
3 1 (0.43%) RS-485
3 1 (0.43%) SD-WAN
3 1 (0.43%) Software-Defined Networking
3 1 (0.43%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (0.85%) Data Warehouse
1 2 (0.85%) PostgreSQL
1 2 (0.85%) SQL Server Reporting Services
2 1 (0.43%) Amazon Athena
2 1 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (0.43%) Amazon Redshift
2 1 (0.43%) IBM InfoSphere
2 1 (0.43%) Metadata
2 1 (0.43%) MongoDB
2 1 (0.43%) Power BI
2 1 (0.43%) Power Query
2 1 (0.43%) Redis
2 1 (0.43%) Relational Database
2 1 (0.43%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 18 (7.66%) Git
1 18 (7.66%) JIRA
2 9 (3.83%) Cucumber
2 9 (3.83%) GitLab
3 8 (3.40%) Jenkins
4 6 (2.55%) Zephyr
5 5 (2.13%) SonarQube
6 4 (1.70%) Artifactory
6 4 (1.70%) Postman
7 3 (1.28%) Selenium
8 2 (0.85%) Polyspace
8 2 (0.85%) VectorCAST
9 1 (0.43%) Cypress.io
9 1 (0.43%) JMeter
9 1 (0.43%) JUnit
9 1 (0.43%) LoadRunner
General
1 88 (37.45%) Social Skills
2 39 (16.60%) Analytical Skills
3 31 (13.19%) Influencing Skills
4 26 (11.06%) Pharmaceutical
5 21 (8.94%) Manufacturing
6 19 (8.09%) Legal
7 17 (7.23%) Finance
8 9 (3.83%) Electronics
9 8 (3.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 8 (3.40%) Organisational Skills
10 5 (2.13%) Marketing
10 5 (2.13%) Multimedia
11 4 (1.70%) Banking
11 4 (1.70%) Telecoms
12 3 (1.28%) Aerospace
12 3 (1.28%) Law
12 3 (1.28%) Public Sector
12 3 (1.28%) Publishing
13 2 (0.85%) Games
13 2 (0.85%) Military
Job Titles
1 44 (18.72%) Lead
2 34 (14.47%) QA Engineer
3 27 (11.49%) QA Leader
4 25 (10.64%) Quality Engineer
4 25 (10.64%) Senior
5 22 (9.36%) QA Manager
6 21 (8.94%) Quality Manager
7 14 (5.96%) Test Engineer
8 12 (5.11%) Performance Engineer
9 11 (4.68%) Developer
9 11 (4.68%) Engineering Manager
9 11 (4.68%) Performance Test Engineer
10 10 (4.26%) Analyst
10 10 (4.26%) Auditor
10 10 (4.26%) QA Team Leader
10 10 (4.26%) Software Engineer
10 10 (4.26%) Team Leader
11 8 (3.40%) DevOps Engineer
12 7 (2.98%) Architect
12 7 (2.98%) Senior QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (7.23%) REST
2 15 (6.38%) .NET
2 15 (6.38%) Terraform
3 13 (5.53%) JSON
4 11 (4.68%) React
5 9 (3.83%) Playwright
6 8 (3.40%) Node.js
6 8 (3.40%) RabbitMQ
6 8 (3.40%) SOAP
7 7 (2.98%) HTML
7 7 (2.98%) Middleware
7 7 (2.98%) XML
8 6 (2.55%) Blazor
8 6 (2.55%) CSS
9 5 (2.13%) Elastic Stack
9 5 (2.13%) RESTful
10 4 (1.70%) .NET Framework
10 4 (1.70%) JWT
10 4 (1.70%) Swagger
10 4 (1.70%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 22 (9.36%) Life Science
1 22 (9.36%) Pharmacovigilance
1 22 (9.36%) Product Ownership
2 15 (6.38%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (3.83%) Robotics
4 6 (2.55%) Self-Motivation
5 5 (2.13%) Animation
5 5 (2.13%) Cloud Native
5 5 (2.13%) e-Learning
5 5 (2.13%) Learning Management System
5 5 (2.13%) SCORM
6 4 (1.70%) Driving Licence
6 4 (1.70%) Management Information System
6 4 (1.70%) Onboarding
7 3 (1.28%) Linux Command Line
7 3 (1.28%) Private Cloud
7 3 (1.28%) Public Cloud
7 3 (1.28%) Renewable Energy
7 3 (1.28%) Virtual Team
7 3 (1.28%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 14 (5.96%) Linux
2 4 (1.70%) Windows
3 3 (1.28%) Debian
3 3 (1.28%) Robot Operating System
3 3 (1.28%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (33.62%) Continuous Improvement
2 56 (23.83%) Problem-Solving
3 47 (20.00%) Test Automation
4 46 (19.57%) Agile
5 40 (17.02%) CAPA
6 34 (14.47%) CI/CD
6 34 (14.47%) Software Engineering
7 33 (14.04%) DevOps
8 28 (11.91%) Roadmaps
9 24 (10.21%) Computer Science
10 23 (9.79%) Change Management
10 23 (9.79%) Software Testing
11 22 (9.36%) Customer Service
12 21 (8.94%) AI
13 19 (8.09%) Budgeting and Resource Allocation
13 19 (8.09%) Resource Allocation
14 18 (7.66%) Test Strategy
15 16 (6.81%) Containerisation
15 16 (6.81%) Mentoring
16 15 (6.38%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 28 (11.91%) Python
2 16 (6.81%) C#
2 16 (6.81%) Java
2 16 (6.81%) SQL
3 11 (4.68%) TypeScript
4 9 (3.83%) JavaScript
5 8 (3.40%) Bash
6 6 (2.55%) C
7 5 (2.13%) Groovy
8 4 (1.70%) C++
9 3 (1.28%) Perl
9 3 (1.28%) PowerShell
10 1 (0.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.43%) Embedded C
10 1 (0.43%) Go
10 1 (0.43%) Rust
10 1 (0.43%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 78 (33.19%) Degree
2 24 (10.21%) Computer Science Degree
3 8 (3.40%) ISTQB
4 7 (2.98%) Security Cleared
5 6 (2.55%) Master's Degree
6 5 (2.13%) DBS Check
7 4 (1.70%) PMI Certification
7 4 (1.70%) PMP
7 4 (1.70%) SC Cleared
8 3 (1.28%) PhD
8 3 (1.28%) Postgraduate
8 3 (1.28%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 2 (0.85%) CHECK Team Leader
9 2 (0.85%) CHECK Team Member
9 2 (0.85%) CREST Certified
9 2 (0.85%) CSQA
9 2 (0.85%) Cyber Scheme
9 2 (0.85%) OSCP
10 1 (0.43%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.43%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (20.43%) Accessibility
2 37 (15.74%) Good Clinical Practice
3 27 (11.49%) GxP
4 8 (3.40%) 21 CFR Part 11
4 8 (3.40%) GLP
4 8 (3.40%) GMP
5 3 (1.28%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.28%) SOC 2
5 3 (1.28%) Software Quality Assurance
5 3 (1.28%) WCAG
6 2 (0.85%) Def Stans
6 2 (0.85%) IEC 61508
6 2 (0.85%) ISO 26262
6 2 (0.85%) NCSC
7 1 (0.43%) ISO 9001
7 1 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 1 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.43%) SLA
System Software
1 16 (6.81%) Docker
2 4 (1.70%) Hyper-V
2 4 (1.70%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (1.28%) Active Directory
4 2 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.43%) KVM
Systems Management
1 15 (6.38%) Kubernetes
2 9 (3.83%) Ansible
3 4 (1.70%) Packer
4 3 (1.28%) Grafana
4 3 (1.28%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.43%) Functional Safety
Vendors
1 22 (9.36%) Microsoft
2 7 (2.98%) Adobe
3 5 (2.13%) IBM
3 5 (2.13%) ServiceNow
4 4 (1.70%) AppDynamics
4 4 (1.70%) VMware
5 3 (1.28%) NVIDIA
5 3 (1.28%) SAP
5 3 (1.28%) UiPath
6 1 (0.43%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.43%) Broadcom
6 1 (0.43%) Cisco
6 1 (0.43%) EMC
6 1 (0.43%) Ericsson
6 1 (0.43%) Fortinet
6 1 (0.43%) Google
6 1 (0.43%) Informatica
6 1 (0.43%) Nokia