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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 80 58
Rank change year-on-year +37 -22 0
Permanent jobs citing QA 236 140 174
As % of all permanent jobs in the Thames Valley 3.20% 3.65% 3.66%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 29.72% 21.74% 31.75%
Number of salaries quoted 151 35 88
10th Percentile £40,000 £27,250 £31,250
25th Percentile £45,000 £39,625 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £49,000 £48,925
Median % change year-on-year +17.35% +0.15% -11.05%
75th Percentile £65,750 £63,125 £55,750
90th Percentile £85,000 £69,500 £76,250
South East median annual salary £50,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -9.09%

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 794 644 548
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 10.75% 16.80% 11.52%
Number of salaries quoted 532 245 252
10th Percentile £35,000 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £42,500 £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 £69,840 £73,750
90th Percentile £86,250 £83,750 £83,625
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 23 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 23 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 +47 103 £60,000 +18.81% 76
Buckinghamshire 0 72 £50,000 +5.26% 41
Oxfordshire +9 61 £57,500 -4.17% 47
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 8 (3.39%) Confluence
2 6 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 5 (2.12%) Moodle
3 5 (2.12%) WordPress
4 2 (0.85%) CMS
5 1 (0.42%) ArchestrA
5 1 (0.42%) JBoss
5 1 (0.42%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.42%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 3 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.85%) Adobe After Effects
2 2 (0.85%) Adobe Illustrator
2 2 (0.85%) Adobe Premiere
2 2 (0.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.85%) Photoshop
3 1 (0.42%) Mathcad
3 1 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.42%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.42%) OrCAD
3 1 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (1.27%) SAP ERP
1 3 (1.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.85%) Adobe Campaign
Cloud Services
1 40 (16.95%) Azure
2 30 (12.71%) AWS
3 15 (6.36%) SaaS
4 8 (3.39%) GitHub
5 7 (2.97%) Azure DevOps
5 7 (2.97%) Serverless
6 6 (2.54%) Amazon EKS
6 6 (2.54%) Amazon S3
6 6 (2.54%) AWS Lambda
7 5 (2.12%) Adobe Creative Cloud
7 5 (2.12%) Amazon EC2
7 5 (2.12%) Microsoft 365
8 3 (1.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 3 (1.27%) GCP
8 3 (1.27%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (0.85%) AWS CodePipeline
9 2 (0.85%) Power Platform
10 1 (0.42%) Amazon ECS
10 1 (0.42%) Azure Machine Learning
10 1 (0.42%) iPaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.27%) DHCP
1 3 (1.27%) DNS
1 3 (1.27%) Firewall
2 2 (0.85%) 5G
3 1 (0.42%) 3G
3 1 (0.42%) 4G
3 1 (0.42%) Diameter Protocol
3 1 (0.42%) RS-485
3 1 (0.42%) SD-WAN
3 1 (0.42%) Software-Defined Networking
3 1 (0.42%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (0.85%) Data Warehouse
1 2 (0.85%) Power BI
1 2 (0.85%) SQL Server Reporting Services
2 1 (0.42%) Amazon Athena
2 1 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (0.42%) Amazon Redshift
2 1 (0.42%) IBM InfoSphere
2 1 (0.42%) Metadata
2 1 (0.42%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (0.42%) Power Query
2 1 (0.42%) Redis
2 1 (0.42%) Relational Database
2 1 (0.42%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 21 (8.90%) JIRA
2 16 (6.78%) Git
3 9 (3.81%) Cucumber
3 9 (3.81%) GitLab
4 8 (3.39%) Jenkins
5 5 (2.12%) SonarQube
5 5 (2.12%) Zephyr
6 4 (1.69%) Artifactory
6 4 (1.69%) Postman
7 3 (1.27%) Selenium
8 2 (0.85%) Polyspace
8 2 (0.85%) VectorCAST
9 1 (0.42%) Cypress.io
9 1 (0.42%) JMeter
9 1 (0.42%) JUnit
9 1 (0.42%) LoadRunner
General
1 92 (38.98%) Social Skills
2 39 (16.53%) Analytical Skills
3 32 (13.56%) Influencing Skills
4 27 (11.44%) Pharmaceutical
5 21 (8.90%) Finance
5 21 (8.90%) Manufacturing
6 19 (8.05%) Legal
7 9 (3.81%) Electronics
7 9 (3.81%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (3.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 7 (2.97%) Banking
10 5 (2.12%) Marketing
10 5 (2.12%) Multimedia
10 5 (2.12%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.69%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (1.69%) Law
12 3 (1.27%) Aerospace
12 3 (1.27%) Local Government
12 3 (1.27%) Military
12 3 (1.27%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 44 (18.64%) Lead
2 34 (14.41%) QA Engineer
3 27 (11.44%) QA Leader
4 25 (10.59%) Quality Engineer
4 25 (10.59%) Senior
5 20 (8.47%) QA Manager
5 20 (8.47%) Quality Manager
6 13 (5.51%) Test Engineer
7 12 (5.08%) Analyst
7 12 (5.08%) Engineering Manager
8 11 (4.66%) Developer
8 11 (4.66%) Performance Engineer
9 10 (4.24%) Auditor
9 10 (4.24%) Performance Test Engineer
9 10 (4.24%) QA Team Leader
9 10 (4.24%) Team Leader
10 8 (3.39%) DevOps Engineer
10 8 (3.39%) Software Engineer
11 7 (2.97%) Architect
11 7 (2.97%) Senior QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (6.78%) .NET
2 15 (6.36%) Terraform
3 14 (5.93%) REST
4 13 (5.51%) JSON
5 9 (3.81%) Playwright
5 9 (3.81%) React
6 8 (3.39%) Node.js
6 8 (3.39%) RabbitMQ
6 8 (3.39%) SOAP
7 7 (2.97%) HTML
7 7 (2.97%) Middleware
7 7 (2.97%) XML
8 6 (2.54%) Blazor
8 6 (2.54%) CSS
9 5 (2.12%) Elastic Stack
9 5 (2.12%) RESTful
10 4 (1.69%) Gherkin
10 4 (1.69%) OAuth2
10 4 (1.69%) Razor View Engine
10 4 (1.69%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 23 (9.75%) Life Science
1 23 (9.75%) Pharmacovigilance
2 17 (7.20%) Product Ownership
3 14 (5.93%) Distributed Systems
4 9 (3.81%) Robotics
5 5 (2.12%) Animation
5 5 (2.12%) Cloud Native
5 5 (2.12%) Driving Licence
5 5 (2.12%) e-Learning
5 5 (2.12%) Learning Management System
5 5 (2.12%) SCORM
6 4 (1.69%) Management Information System
6 4 (1.69%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (1.27%) Linux Command Line
7 3 (1.27%) Private Cloud
7 3 (1.27%) Public Cloud
7 3 (1.27%) Renewable Energy
7 3 (1.27%) Virtual Team
7 3 (1.27%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 12 (5.08%) Linux
2 5 (2.12%) Windows
3 3 (1.27%) Debian
3 3 (1.27%) Robot Operating System
3 3 (1.27%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.42%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (33.90%) Continuous Improvement
2 55 (23.31%) Problem-Solving
3 49 (20.76%) Agile
4 43 (18.22%) Test Automation
5 41 (17.37%) CAPA
6 34 (14.41%) CI/CD
7 32 (13.56%) Software Engineering
8 31 (13.14%) DevOps
9 30 (12.71%) Roadmaps
10 23 (9.75%) Change Management
10 23 (9.75%) Computer Science
10 23 (9.75%) Customer Service
10 23 (9.75%) Software Testing
11 21 (8.90%) AI
12 20 (8.47%) Budgeting and Resource Allocation
12 20 (8.47%) Resource Allocation
13 18 (7.63%) Test Strategy
14 17 (7.20%) Mentoring
14 17 (7.20%) Risk Management
15 15 (6.36%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 25 (10.59%) Python
2 17 (7.20%) C#
3 16 (6.78%) Java
3 16 (6.78%) SQL
4 10 (4.24%) TypeScript
5 9 (3.81%) Bash
6 8 (3.39%) JavaScript
7 5 (2.12%) C
7 5 (2.12%) Groovy
8 4 (1.69%) C++
9 3 (1.27%) Perl
9 3 (1.27%) PowerShell
10 1 (0.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.42%) Embedded C
10 1 (0.42%) Rust
10 1 (0.42%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 77 (32.63%) Degree
2 23 (9.75%) Computer Science Degree
3 8 (3.39%) ISTQB
4 7 (2.97%) Security Cleared
5 6 (2.54%) Master's Degree
6 5 (2.12%) DBS Check
7 4 (1.69%) PMI Certification
7 4 (1.69%) PMP
7 4 (1.69%) SC Cleared
8 3 (1.27%) PhD
8 3 (1.27%) Postgraduate
8 3 (1.27%) 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 (0.42%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.42%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (20.34%) Accessibility
2 38 (16.10%) Good Clinical Practice
3 28 (11.86%) GxP
4 8 (3.39%) 21 CFR Part 11
4 8 (3.39%) GLP
4 8 (3.39%) GMP
5 3 (1.27%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.27%) SOC 2
5 3 (1.27%) Software Quality Assurance
5 3 (1.27%) 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 (0.42%) ISO 9001
7 1 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 1 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.42%) SLA
System Software
1 14 (5.93%) Docker
2 3 (1.27%) Active Directory
2 3 (1.27%) Hyper-V
2 3 (1.27%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 15 (6.36%) Kubernetes
2 9 (3.81%) Ansible
3 4 (1.69%) Packer
4 3 (1.27%) Grafana
4 3 (1.27%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.42%) Functional Safety
Vendors
1 23 (9.75%) Microsoft
2 7 (2.97%) Adobe
3 5 (2.12%) IBM
4 4 (1.69%) AppDynamics
4 4 (1.69%) ServiceNow
5 3 (1.27%) NVIDIA
5 3 (1.27%) SAP
5 3 (1.27%) UiPath
5 3 (1.27%) VMware
6 1 (0.42%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.42%) Broadcom
6 1 (0.42%) Cisco
6 1 (0.42%) Databricks
6 1 (0.42%) EMC
6 1 (0.42%) Ericsson
6 1 (0.42%) Fortinet
6 1 (0.42%) Google
6 1 (0.42%) Informatica
6 1 (0.42%) Nokia