Software Quality Assurance Job Trends

Software Quality Assurance
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Software Quality Assurance skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 643 685 691
Rank change year-on-year +42 +6 +244
Permanent jobs citing Software Quality Assurance 10 14 30
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.017% 0.026% 0.054%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 0.13% 0.16% 0.37%
Number of salaries quoted 8 1 12
10th Percentile - - £33,261
25th Percentile £33,750 - £40,106
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £37,500 £45,000 £51,500
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% -12.62% +0.98%
75th Percentile £53,750 - £58,785
90th Percentile £59,750 - £82,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £37,500 £45,000 £57,547
% change year-on-year -16.67% -21.80% +17.44%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK

Software Quality Assurance 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.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 7,842 8,646 8,085
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 13.07% 16.16% 14.52%
Number of salaries quoted 4,375 3,830 5,921
10th Percentile £30,370 £31,925 £30,318
25th Percentile £41,250 £43,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,500 £60,000 £57,965
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% +3.51% +0.81%
75th Percentile £78,750 £78,750 £76,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -

Software Quality Assurance
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Software Quality Assurance relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Software Quality Assurance job vacancy trend in the UK

Software Quality Assurance
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Software Quality Assurance.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Software Quality Assurance

Software Quality Assurance
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Software Quality Assurance over the 6 months to 14 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Software Quality Assurance in the UK

Software Quality Assurance
Top 5 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Software Quality Assurance within the UK over the 6 months to 14 January 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 +60 8 £37,500 -16.67% 117
UK excluding London +53 6 £37,500 -16.67% 123
South East +37 6 £37,500 - 28
Work from Home - 5 £52,500 - 7
London +51 1 £72,500 - 5

Software Quality Assurance
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:

Applications
1 7 (70.00%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 7 (70.00%) Azure
1 7 (70.00%) Azure DevOps
2 1 (10.00%) AWS
2 1 (10.00%) AWS Lambda
2 1 (10.00%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (20.00%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (10.00%) Amazon Redshift
1 1 (10.00%) Data Warehouse
1 1 (10.00%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 3 (30.00%) JIRA
2 1 (10.00%) Zephyr
General
1 2 (20.00%) Billing
1 2 (20.00%) Telecoms
2 1 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
2 1 (10.00%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 7 (70.00%) Analyst
1 7 (70.00%) Test Analyst
2 3 (30.00%) Senior
3 2 (20.00%) BSS Engineer
3 2 (20.00%) OSS Engineer
3 2 (20.00%) QA Engineer
3 2 (20.00%) Senior BSS Engineer
3 2 (20.00%) Senior OSS Engineer
3 2 (20.00%) Senior QA Engineer
4 1 (10.00%) ETL Tester
4 1 (10.00%) Senior Tester
4 1 (10.00%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (20.00%) JSON
1 2 (20.00%) REST
1 2 (20.00%) Web Services
1 2 (20.00%) WSDL
1 2 (20.00%) XML
1 2 (20.00%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 7 (70.00%) Product Ownership
2 2 (20.00%) Linux Command Line
3 1 (10.00%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 7 (70.00%) Windows
2 2 (20.00%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (100.00%) Code Quality
2 8 (80.00%) Agile
2 8 (80.00%) Software Testing
3 7 (70.00%) CI/CD
3 7 (70.00%) DevOps
3 7 (70.00%) Logistics
3 7 (70.00%) Mentoring
3 7 (70.00%) Problem-Solving
3 7 (70.00%) Scrum
4 3 (30.00%) Test Automation
5 2 (20.00%) API Testing
5 2 (20.00%) Black-Box Testing
5 2 (20.00%) Compatibility Testing
5 2 (20.00%) Monetization
5 2 (20.00%) Use Case
5 2 (20.00%) White-Box Testing
6 1 (10.00%) Data Ingestion
6 1 (10.00%) ETL
6 1 (10.00%) Migration
6 1 (10.00%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 8 (80.00%) SQL
2 3 (30.00%) Python
3 2 (20.00%) Java
Qualifications
1 7 (70.00%) ISEB
1 7 (70.00%) ISTQB
2 1 (10.00%) SC Cleared
2 1 (10.00%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (100.00%) QA
Systems Management
1 2 (20.00%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 7 (70.00%) Microsoft