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 20 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 72 56
Rank change year-on-year +18 -16 -35
Permanent jobs citing QA 140 95 251
As % of all permanent jobs in the Thames Valley 2.96% 3.42% 4.11%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 27.78% 24.87% 27.08%
Number of salaries quoted 73 30 128
10th Percentile £28,200 £46,125 £31,000
25th Percentile £47,500 £50,000 £39,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year - +20.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £75,000 £64,688 £58,188
90th Percentile £95,000 £78,125 £69,125
South East median annual salary £55,000 £50,000 £47,500
% change year-on-year +10.00% +5.26% -17.39%

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 504 382 927
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 10.64% 13.76% 15.18%
Number of salaries quoted 272 206 558
10th Percentile £28,500 £39,000 £26,500
25th Percentile £39,280 £51,500 £36,063
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £65,000 £49,000
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% +32.65% -2.00%
75th Percentile £70,000 £83,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £88,625 £90,000 £79,125
South East median annual salary £55,000 £55,000 £47,000
% change year-on-year - +17.02% -7.84%

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 20 March 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 20 March 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 +35 74 £61,250 +2.08% 27
Buckinghamshire -20 46 £56,750 +3.18% 14
Oxfordshire +4 20 £77,500 +24.00% 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 (1.43%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (2.14%) Photoshop
2 2 (1.43%) Adobe After Effects
2 2 (1.43%) Adobe Captivate
2 2 (1.43%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (1.43%) Adobe Illustrator
2 2 (1.43%) Adobe Premiere
2 2 (1.43%) Elementor
Business Applications
1 25 (17.86%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.71%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 35 (25.00%) Azure
2 27 (19.29%) AWS
3 25 (17.86%) Azure DevOps
3 25 (17.86%) GCP
4 20 (14.29%) SaaS
5 12 (8.57%) GitHub
6 5 (3.57%) Amazon S3
6 5 (3.57%) Amazon SQS
6 5 (3.57%) AWS CloudFormation
6 5 (3.57%) AWS Lambda
6 5 (3.57%) Azure Service Bus
6 5 (3.57%) Figma
6 5 (3.57%) Serverless
7 4 (2.86%) iPaaS
8 3 (2.14%) Power Platform
9 2 (1.43%) Adobe Creative Cloud
9 2 (1.43%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.14%) MQTT
1 3 (2.14%) TCP/IP
2 1 (0.71%) 4G
2 1 (0.71%) 5G
2 1 (0.71%) Broadband
2 1 (0.71%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (4.29%) Data Warehouse
1 6 (4.29%) MySQL
2 5 (3.57%) DynamoDB
2 5 (3.57%) NoSQL
3 4 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (2.86%) SQL Server
4 3 (2.14%) Relational Database
5 2 (1.43%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (0.71%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.71%) Power BI
6 1 (0.71%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 29 (20.71%) JIRA
2 22 (15.71%) eCATT
3 9 (6.43%) Git
4 5 (3.57%) git-flow
4 5 (3.57%) Selenium
5 3 (2.14%) Postman
6 2 (1.43%) Claude Code
6 2 (1.43%) Cucumber
6 2 (1.43%) Cypress.io
6 2 (1.43%) GitLab
6 2 (1.43%) NUnit
6 2 (1.43%) SoapUI
6 2 (1.43%) WebDriver
6 2 (1.43%) Zephyr
General
1 38 (27.14%) Social Skills
2 31 (22.14%) Marketing
3 30 (21.43%) Finance
4 28 (20.00%) Manufacturing
5 20 (14.29%) Presentation Skills
6 19 (13.57%) Influencing Skills
7 9 (6.43%) Analytical Skills
8 6 (4.29%) Public Sector
9 4 (2.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (2.86%) Law
9 4 (2.86%) Pharmaceutical
9 4 (2.86%) Telecoms
10 2 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
10 2 (1.43%) Games
10 2 (1.43%) Health Technology
10 2 (1.43%) Multimedia
10 2 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (1.43%) Tech for Good
11 1 (0.71%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.71%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 25 (17.86%) Analyst
2 20 (14.29%) Software Engineer
3 17 (12.14%) Lead
3 17 (12.14%) Senior
4 12 (8.57%) QA Manager
5 11 (7.86%) Head of Engineering
6 10 (7.14%) QA Engineer
7 9 (6.43%) Developer
8 8 (5.71%) Architect
8 8 (5.71%) Quality Manager
8 8 (5.71%) Senior Developer
9 6 (4.29%) Full-Stack Developer
9 6 (4.29%) QA Leader
10 5 (3.57%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 5 (3.57%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
10 5 (3.57%) Senior Full-Stack Developer
10 5 (3.57%) Support Analyst
10 5 (3.57%) Support Specialist
11 4 (2.86%) Applications Support
11 4 (2.86%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (10.00%) .NET
2 13 (9.29%) React
2 13 (9.29%) REST
3 9 (6.43%) SOAP
4 7 (5.00%) Middleware
5 6 (4.29%) CSS
5 6 (4.29%) HTML
6 5 (3.57%) AWS CDK
6 5 (3.57%) Django
6 5 (3.57%) Kafka
6 5 (3.57%) Material-UI
6 5 (3.57%) RabbitMQ
6 5 (3.57%) Twisted
6 5 (3.57%) Web Services
6 5 (3.57%) WebSockets
7 4 (2.86%) JSON
7 4 (2.86%) XML
8 3 (2.14%) .NET Framework
8 3 (2.14%) Playwright
8 3 (2.14%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 14 (10.00%) Product Ownership
2 13 (9.29%) Distributed Systems
3 11 (7.86%) Cloud Native
3 11 (7.86%) Self-Motivation
4 9 (6.43%) Client/Server
5 5 (3.57%) Life Science
5 5 (3.57%) Video Conferencing
6 4 (2.86%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (2.14%) LIMS
7 3 (2.14%) Low-Code
7 3 (2.14%) Operational Technology
8 2 (1.43%) e-Learning
8 2 (1.43%) Graphic Design
8 2 (1.43%) Learning Management System
8 2 (1.43%) N-Tier
8 2 (1.43%) Renewable Energy
8 2 (1.43%) Team-Oriented Environment
8 2 (1.43%) Video\Live Streaming
8 2 (1.43%) Virtual Team
9 1 (0.71%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 16 (11.43%) Linux
2 2 (1.43%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 44 (31.43%) Continuous Improvement
2 36 (25.71%) Problem-Solving
3 31 (22.14%) Agile
4 27 (19.29%) Software Engineering
4 27 (19.29%) Test Management
5 25 (17.86%) Source to Pay
6 24 (17.14%) Defect Management
6 24 (17.14%) Test Automation
7 23 (16.43%) ERP
8 22 (15.71%) Computer Science
8 22 (15.71%) Risk Management
9 20 (14.29%) Visualisation
10 17 (12.14%) Code Quality
11 14 (10.00%) CI/CD
12 13 (9.29%) DevOps
12 13 (9.29%) Full-Stack Development
12 13 (9.29%) Roadmaps
12 13 (9.29%) Software Testing
13 11 (7.86%) Migration
13 11 (7.86%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 25 (17.86%) Python
2 19 (13.57%) SQL
3 14 (10.00%) C#
3 14 (10.00%) TypeScript
4 12 (8.57%) Java
5 11 (7.86%) C
6 10 (7.14%) C++
7 9 (6.43%) JavaScript
7 9 (6.43%) Rust
8 3 (2.14%) Go
9 2 (1.43%) PHP
Qualifications
1 29 (20.71%) Degree
2 19 (13.57%) Computer Science Degree
3 6 (4.29%) DBS Check
4 5 (3.57%) Security Cleared
5 4 (2.86%) Master's Degree
6 3 (2.14%) SC Cleared
7 2 (1.43%) AWS Certification
7 2 (1.43%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 2 (1.43%) Azure Certification
7 2 (1.43%) ISTQB
7 2 (1.43%) Microsoft Certification
7 2 (1.43%) TOGAF Certification
8 1 (0.71%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (3.57%) Accessibility
2 3 (2.14%) 21 CFR Part 11
2 3 (2.14%) GxP
3 1 (0.71%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.71%) GDPR
3 1 (0.71%) SLA
System Software
1 9 (6.43%) Hyper-V
1 9 (6.43%) KVM
1 9 (6.43%) VMware Infrastructure
2 6 (4.29%) Docker
3 5 (3.57%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 22 (15.71%) HP ALM
2 2 (1.43%) Netcool
2 2 (1.43%) Netcool/OMNIbus
3 1 (0.71%) Terraform
Vendors
1 25 (17.86%) SAP
2 22 (15.71%) HP
3 9 (6.43%) VMware
4 4 (2.86%) Microsoft
5 3 (2.14%) Agilent
6 2 (1.43%) Adobe
6 2 (1.43%) Blue Prism
6 2 (1.43%) Google
6 2 (1.43%) IBM
6 2 (1.43%) Oracle
6 2 (1.43%) Pega
6 2 (1.43%) ServiceNow
6 2 (1.43%) UiPath
7 1 (0.71%) Foundry
7 1 (0.71%) Palantir
7 1 (0.71%) Salesforce