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

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 56 71
Rank change year-on-year 0 +15 -50
Permanent jobs citing QA 145 122 237
As % of all permanent jobs in the Thames Valley 2.67% 4.26% 3.62%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 28.32% 26.87% 25.79%
Number of salaries quoted 97 26 136
10th Percentile £33,250 £45,500 £31,000
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,563 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £48,750
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +17.95% -11.36%
75th Percentile £75,000 £64,688 £57,500
90th Percentile £92,000 £75,375 £65,000
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 512 454 919
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 9.43% 15.87% 14.04%
Number of salaries quoted 290 205 570
10th Percentile £31,188 £30,500 £26,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £50,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £64,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year -10.16% +34.74% -4.95%
75th Percentile £73,438 £83,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £89,000 £78,875
South East median annual salary £55,000 £55,000 £45,625
% change year-on-year - +20.55% -9.06%

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 24 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 24 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 +33 61 £61,250 +28.95% 17
Buckinghamshire -29 54 £60,000 +9.09% 14
Oxfordshire +8 30 £60,000 -4.00% 9
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 (1.38%) WordPress
2 1 (0.69%) ArchestrA
2 1 (0.69%) CMS
2 1 (0.69%) JBoss
2 1 (0.69%) OpenStack
2 1 (0.69%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 2 (1.38%) Adobe After Effects
1 2 (1.38%) Adobe Captivate
1 2 (1.38%) Adobe Creative Suite
1 2 (1.38%) Adobe Illustrator
1 2 (1.38%) Adobe Premiere
1 2 (1.38%) Elementor
1 2 (1.38%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.69%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 42 (28.97%) Azure
2 35 (24.14%) AWS
3 21 (14.48%) GCP
4 19 (13.10%) SaaS
5 8 (5.52%) GitHub
6 7 (4.83%) Serverless
7 6 (4.14%) Amazon EKS
7 6 (4.14%) Amazon S3
7 6 (4.14%) AWS Lambda
8 5 (3.45%) Amazon EC2
8 5 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (3.45%) Figma
8 5 (3.45%) iPaaS
9 3 (2.07%) Power Platform
10 2 (1.38%) Adobe Creative Cloud
10 2 (1.38%) AWS CodePipeline
10 2 (1.38%) GitHub Copilot
11 1 (0.69%) Amazon ECS
11 1 (0.69%) AWS CloudFormation
11 1 (0.69%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.38%) MQTT
1 2 (1.38%) TCP/IP
2 1 (0.69%) 4G
2 1 (0.69%) 5G
2 1 (0.69%) Broadband
2 1 (0.69%) DHCP
2 1 (0.69%) DNS
2 1 (0.69%) Firewall
2 1 (0.69%) Software-Defined Networking
2 1 (0.69%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (2.76%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.38%) Azure SQL Database
3 2 (1.38%) Data Warehouse
3 2 (1.38%) MySQL
3 2 (1.38%) Relational Database
3 2 (1.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 1 (0.69%) DynamoDB
4 1 (0.69%) IBM InfoSphere
4 1 (0.69%) MongoDB
4 1 (0.69%) NoSQL
4 1 (0.69%) Power BI
4 1 (0.69%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 18 (12.41%) Git
2 16 (11.03%) JIRA
3 8 (5.52%) Jenkins
4 7 (4.83%) GitLab
5 5 (3.45%) Cucumber
5 5 (3.45%) SonarQube
6 4 (2.76%) Artifactory
6 4 (2.76%) Zephyr
7 2 (1.38%) Claude Code
7 2 (1.38%) Cypress.io
7 2 (1.38%) Polyspace
7 2 (1.38%) VectorCAST
8 1 (0.69%) git-flow
8 1 (0.69%) JMeter
8 1 (0.69%) JUnit
8 1 (0.69%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.69%) NUnit
8 1 (0.69%) Selenium
8 1 (0.69%) WebDriver
General
1 45 (31.03%) Social Skills
2 18 (12.41%) Analytical Skills
3 7 (4.83%) Public Sector
4 6 (4.14%) Manufacturing
4 6 (4.14%) Marketing
4 6 (4.14%) Pharmaceutical
5 4 (2.76%) Finance
6 3 (2.07%) Health Technology
6 3 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
6 3 (2.07%) Law
7 2 (1.38%) Aerospace
7 2 (1.38%) Banking
7 2 (1.38%) Games
7 2 (1.38%) Multimedia
7 2 (1.38%) Organisational Skills
7 2 (1.38%) Tech for Good
7 2 (1.38%) Telecoms
8 1 (0.69%) Automotive
8 1 (0.69%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 22 (15.17%) Software Engineer
2 17 (11.72%) Lead
3 14 (9.66%) QA Engineer
4 13 (8.97%) QA Manager
5 12 (8.28%) Architect
6 11 (7.59%) Analyst
6 11 (7.59%) Head of Engineering
7 10 (6.90%) Senior
8 9 (6.21%) Quality Manager
8 9 (6.21%) Test Engineer
9 8 (5.52%) Applications Architect
9 8 (5.52%) Tester
10 7 (4.83%) Developer
10 7 (4.83%) Integration Architect
10 7 (4.83%) Performance Engineer
10 7 (4.83%) QA Leader
10 7 (4.83%) Support Analyst
11 6 (4.14%) DevOps Engineer
11 6 (4.14%) Performance Test Engineer
11 6 (4.14%) Software Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (15.86%) REST
2 14 (9.66%) JSON
3 13 (8.97%) .NET
4 12 (8.28%) SOAP
5 11 (7.59%) Middleware
6 9 (6.21%) React
6 9 (6.21%) XML
7 7 (4.83%) RabbitMQ
8 6 (4.14%) Playwright
8 6 (4.14%) Web Services
9 5 (3.45%) Django
9 5 (3.45%) Elastic Stack
9 5 (3.45%) RESTful
9 5 (3.45%) Twisted
9 5 (3.45%) WebSockets
10 4 (2.76%) YAML
11 3 (2.07%) .NET Framework
11 3 (2.07%) HTML
11 3 (2.07%) Kafka
12 2 (1.38%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 22 (15.17%) Distributed Systems
2 16 (11.03%) Product Ownership
3 12 (8.28%) Self-Motivation
4 9 (6.21%) Client/Server
5 8 (5.52%) Cloud Native
5 8 (5.52%) Life Science
6 5 (3.45%) Video Conferencing
7 4 (2.76%) Enterprise Software
8 3 (2.07%) Low-Code
8 3 (2.07%) Operational Technology
8 3 (2.07%) Pharmacovigilance
8 3 (2.07%) Renewable Energy
8 3 (2.07%) Virtual Team
9 2 (1.38%) Analytical Mindset
9 2 (1.38%) Embedded Systems
9 2 (1.38%) Learning Management System
9 2 (1.38%) N-Tier
9 2 (1.38%) Onboarding
9 2 (1.38%) Robotics
9 2 (1.38%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 22 (15.17%) Linux
2 4 (2.76%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (28.97%) Problem-Solving
2 38 (26.21%) Agile
3 35 (24.14%) Software Engineering
3 35 (24.14%) Test Automation
4 34 (23.45%) Continuous Improvement
5 28 (19.31%) Computer Science
6 23 (15.86%) CI/CD
7 22 (15.17%) DevOps
8 19 (13.10%) Software Testing
9 18 (12.41%) Code Quality
10 15 (10.34%) Test Strategy
11 14 (9.66%) End-to-End Testing
12 13 (8.97%) Microservices
13 12 (8.28%) Data Modelling
13 12 (8.28%) Roadmaps
13 12 (8.28%) Scrum
13 12 (8.28%) TDD
14 11 (7.59%) Containerisation
14 11 (7.59%) CRM
14 11 (7.59%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 35 (24.14%) Python
2 24 (16.55%) SQL
3 22 (15.17%) Java
4 14 (9.66%) C#
5 12 (8.28%) TypeScript
6 11 (7.59%) C
6 11 (7.59%) C++
6 11 (7.59%) JavaScript
7 9 (6.21%) Rust
8 5 (3.45%) Groovy
9 3 (2.07%) Bash
9 3 (2.07%) Perl
10 1 (0.69%) Go
10 1 (0.69%) PowerShell
10 1 (0.69%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 41 (28.28%) Degree
2 25 (17.24%) Computer Science Degree
3 10 (6.90%) Security Cleared
4 7 (4.83%) DBS Check
5 6 (4.14%) ISTQB
6 5 (3.45%) SC Cleared
7 4 (2.76%) Master's Degree
8 2 (1.38%) AWS Certification
8 2 (1.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 2 (1.38%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.38%) CHECK Team Leader
8 2 (1.38%) CHECK Team Member
8 2 (1.38%) CREST Certified
8 2 (1.38%) CSQA
8 2 (1.38%) Cyber Scheme
8 2 (1.38%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (1.38%) OSCP
8 2 (1.38%) PhD
8 2 (1.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (5.52%) Accessibility
2 5 (3.45%) GxP
3 3 (2.07%) Good Clinical Practice
4 2 (1.38%) 21 CFR Part 11
4 2 (1.38%) Def Stans
4 2 (1.38%) IEC 61508
4 2 (1.38%) ISO 26262
4 2 (1.38%) NCSC
4 2 (1.38%) Software Quality Assurance
5 1 (0.69%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.69%) GDPR
5 1 (0.69%) SOC 2
System Software
1 11 (7.59%) Docker
2 10 (6.90%) Hyper-V
2 10 (6.90%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (6.21%) KVM
4 5 (3.45%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.69%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 9 (6.21%) Kubernetes
2 8 (5.52%) Terraform
3 7 (4.83%) Ansible
4 4 (2.76%) Packer
5 1 (0.69%) Functional Safety
5 1 (0.69%) Grafana
5 1 (0.69%) Netcool
5 1 (0.69%) Netcool/OMNIbus
5 1 (0.69%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 10 (6.90%) VMware
2 8 (5.52%) Microsoft
3 6 (4.14%) IBM
4 4 (2.76%) AppDynamics
5 3 (2.07%) Google
5 3 (2.07%) ServiceNow
6 2 (1.38%) Adobe
6 2 (1.38%) Agilent
6 2 (1.38%) Oracle
7 1 (0.69%) Atlassian
7 1 (0.69%) Blue Prism
7 1 (0.69%) Foundry
7 1 (0.69%) Informatica
7 1 (0.69%) Palantir
7 1 (0.69%) Pega
7 1 (0.69%) Salesforce
7 1 (0.69%) UiPath