QA Engineer Job Trends

Quality Assurance Engineer
UK

The median Quality Assurance Engineer salary in the UK is £53,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 11 March 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 518 546 581
Rank change year-on-year +28 +35 -18
Permanent jobs requiring a QA Engineer 160 114 264
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.22% 0.26% 0.32%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.24% 0.29% 0.33%
Number of salaries quoted 114 91 204
10th Percentile £37,500 £33,500 £36,250
25th Percentile £45,000 £41,500 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £53,000 £57,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% +9.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £63,750 £67,500 £61,250
90th Percentile £70,000 £80,000 £70,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £46,250 £47,500
% change year-on-year +8.11% -2.63% -5.00%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 66,980 39,779 79,178
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.76% 90.72% 94.60%
Number of salaries quoted 42,499 22,997 60,965
10th Percentile £30,000 £32,000 £28,500
25th Percentile £39,000 £43,750 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -4.76%

QA Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'QA Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

QA Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

QA Engineer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for QA Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for QA Engineer job vacancies in the UK

QA Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing QA Engineer over the 6 months to 11 March 2026.

Salary histogram for QA Engineer in the UK

QA Engineer
Top 16 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing QA Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 11 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
England +5 145 £55,000 -4.35% 58
UK excluding London +43 120 £50,000 +8.11% 53
Work from Home +64 81 £57,500 -11.54% 20
London -12 29 £57,500 -11.54% 11
East of England +19 27 £50,000 +39.86% 11
Midlands -4 27 £45,000 -18.18% 9
South East -2 26 £57,500 +21.05% 14
North of England -12 24 £60,000 +41.18% 12
West Midlands +10 19 £45,000 -5.26% 9
North West +1 13 £57,000 +34.12% 5
South West -17 11 £40,000 -3.61% 6
East Midlands -37 8 £35,000 -37.78%
Yorkshire -33 7 £61,500 +108.47% 4
Scotland -11 4 £45,000 - 2
North East - 4 £60,000 - 3
Northern Ireland - 1 £52,500 -

QA Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 11 March 2026, QA Engineer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads featuring QA Engineer in the job title.

1 160 (100.00%) QA
2 88 (55.00%) Test Automation
3 49 (30.63%) QA Automation
4 40 (25.00%) Agile
5 29 (18.13%) Test Strategy
6 28 (17.50%) C#
6 28 (17.50%) Selenium
7 27 (16.88%) API Testing
7 27 (16.88%) CI/CD
8 26 (16.25%) SQL
9 25 (15.63%) Playwright
10 23 (14.38%) Fintech
10 23 (14.38%) JavaScript
10 23 (14.38%) Python
11 22 (13.75%) Java
12 21 (13.13%) Manual Testing
13 20 (12.50%) Postman
14 18 (11.25%) BDD
15 17 (10.63%) Cypress.io
16 16 (10.00%) Software Testing
17 15 (9.38%) DevOps
17 15 (9.38%) Functional Testing
18 14 (8.75%) AI
18 14 (8.75%) Continuous Improvement
18 14 (8.75%) JIRA
18 14 (8.75%) Test Scripting
19 13 (8.13%) Non-Functional Testing
19 13 (8.13%) Regression Testing
20 12 (7.50%) Coaching
20 12 (7.50%) Cucumber

QA Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 1 (0.63%) Confluence
1 1 (0.63%) SharePoint
1 1 (0.63%) WordPress
Cloud Services
1 11 (6.88%) Azure
2 8 (5.00%) Azure DevOps
2 8 (5.00%) SaaS
3 6 (3.75%) AWS
4 2 (1.25%) BrowserStack
4 2 (1.25%) SAP Commerce Cloud
5 1 (0.63%) Amazon EventBridge
5 1 (0.63%) Amazon S3
5 1 (0.63%) AWS Lambda
5 1 (0.63%) AWS Step Functions
5 1 (0.63%) GCP
5 1 (0.63%) GitHub
5 1 (0.63%) Microsoft 365
5 1 (0.63%) Sauce Labs
5 1 (0.63%) Sentry
5 1 (0.63%) Serverless
5 1 (0.63%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.25%) HTTP
1 2 (1.25%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (2.50%) Relational Database
2 2 (1.25%) CockroachDB
3 1 (0.63%) Amazon Athena
3 1 (0.63%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (0.63%) MySQL
3 1 (0.63%) ZAP BI
Development Applications
1 28 (17.50%) Selenium
2 20 (12.50%) Postman
3 17 (10.63%) Cypress.io
4 14 (8.75%) JIRA
5 12 (7.50%) Cucumber
6 8 (5.00%) Git
6 8 (5.00%) SoapUI
6 8 (5.00%) SpecFlow
7 7 (4.38%) Appium
8 6 (3.75%) WebDriver
8 6 (3.75%) XCUITest
9 5 (3.13%) GitLab
9 5 (3.13%) Jenkins
9 5 (3.13%) JMeter
10 4 (2.50%) JUnit
10 4 (2.50%) REST Assured
11 2 (1.25%) LoadRunner
11 2 (1.25%) TestNG
12 1 (0.63%) NUnit
12 1 (0.63%) Visual Studio
General
1 24 (15.00%) Finance
2 11 (6.88%) Manufacturing
3 10 (6.25%) Social Skills
4 6 (3.75%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (3.75%) Games
5 4 (2.50%) Electronics
5 4 (2.50%) Health Technology
5 4 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (1.88%) Billing
6 3 (1.88%) Public Sector
6 3 (1.88%) Tech for Good
6 3 (1.88%) Telecoms
7 2 (1.25%) Law
7 2 (1.25%) Legal
8 1 (0.63%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.63%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.63%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (15.63%) Playwright
2 10 (6.25%) XML
3 8 (5.00%) .NET
4 7 (4.38%) JSON
4 7 (4.38%) pytest
4 7 (4.38%) REST
5 4 (2.50%) SOAP
6 3 (1.88%) Web Services
7 2 (1.25%) CSS
7 2 (1.25%) Elastic Stack
7 2 (1.25%) HTML
7 2 (1.25%) WSDL
7 2 (1.25%) XSLT
8 1 (0.63%) CakePHP
8 1 (0.63%) Kafka
8 1 (0.63%) Laravel
8 1 (0.63%) RabbitMQ
8 1 (0.63%) React
8 1 (0.63%) Swagger
8 1 (0.63%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 12 (7.50%) Product Ownership
2 8 (5.00%) Mobile App
3 4 (2.50%) IoT
4 3 (1.88%) Onboarding
4 3 (1.88%) Virtual Team
5 2 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (1.25%) Linux Command Line
6 1 (0.63%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (0.63%) Augmented Reality
6 1 (0.63%) Blockchain
6 1 (0.63%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (0.63%) Hedge funds
6 1 (0.63%) N-Tier
6 1 (0.63%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (0.63%) Team-Oriented Environment
6 1 (0.63%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 10 (6.25%) Android
1 10 (6.25%) Apple iOS
2 5 (3.13%) Linux
3 1 (0.63%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 88 (55.00%) Test Automation
2 49 (30.63%) QA Automation
3 40 (25.00%) Agile
4 29 (18.13%) Test Strategy
5 27 (16.88%) API Testing
5 27 (16.88%) CI/CD
6 23 (14.38%) Fintech
7 21 (13.13%) Manual Testing
8 18 (11.25%) BDD
9 16 (10.00%) Software Testing
10 15 (9.38%) DevOps
10 15 (9.38%) Functional Testing
11 14 (8.75%) AI
11 14 (8.75%) Continuous Improvement
11 14 (8.75%) Test Scripting
12 13 (8.13%) Non-Functional Testing
12 13 (8.13%) Regression Testing
13 12 (7.50%) Coaching
13 12 (7.50%) Mentoring
14 11 (6.88%) Scenario Testing
Programming Languages
1 28 (17.50%) C#
2 26 (16.25%) SQL
3 23 (14.38%) JavaScript
3 23 (14.38%) Python
4 22 (13.75%) Java
5 12 (7.50%) TypeScript
6 6 (3.75%) PHP
7 4 (2.50%) Go
8 1 (0.63%) JCL
8 1 (0.63%) Kotlin
8 1 (0.63%) Scala
8 1 (0.63%) Swift
Qualifications
1 10 (6.25%) Degree
1 10 (6.25%) ISTQB
1 10 (6.25%) Security Cleared
2 5 (3.13%) Computer Science Degree
2 5 (3.13%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
3 1 (0.63%) Master's Degree
3 1 (0.63%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 160 (100.00%) QA
2 10 (6.25%) Accessibility
3 4 (2.50%) Software Quality Assurance
4 2 (1.25%) GDPR
4 2 (1.25%) ISO 9001
5 1 (0.63%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.63%) MiFID
5 1 (0.63%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 2 (1.25%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 2 (1.25%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.63%) Grafana
2 1 (0.63%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 4 (2.50%) Splunk
2 3 (1.88%) ServiceNow
3 2 (1.25%) Microsoft
3 2 (1.25%) Oracle
4 1 (0.63%) AppDynamics
4 1 (0.63%) SAP
4 1 (0.63%) Veracode