QA Contract Job Trends in the Thames Valley

Quality Assurance (QA)
South East > Thames Valley

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the Thames Valley requiring QA skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 11 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 48 63
Rank change year-on-year -39 +15 +19
Contract jobs citing QA 82 69 67
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 2.50% 4.14% 2.89%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 13.55% 19.77% 21.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 50 43 28
10th Percentile £325 £321 £249
25th Percentile £387 £403 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% -2.63% +0.53%
75th Percentile £509 £525 £575
90th Percentile £538 £584 £632
South East median daily rate £445 £469 £425
% change year-on-year -5.07% +10.29% -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 5 2
10th Percentile £16.54 - £22.74
25th Percentile £26.91 £15.12 £29.09
Median hourly rate £81.50 £15.29 £40.35
Median % change year-on-year +433.03% -62.11% -19.30%
75th Percentile £82.25 £53.50 £51.79
90th Percentile £82.70 £53.65 £58.25
South East median hourly rate £70.00 £15.29 £10.82
% change year-on-year +357.82% +41.31% -78.36%

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 contract job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills in the Thames Valley.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 605 349 309
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 18.48% 20.95% 13.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 390 189 139
10th Percentile £363 £290 £234
25th Percentile £432 £400 £361
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £543 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year +8.50% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £625 £588 £564
90th Percentile £726 £650 £655
South East median daily rate £525 £500 £475
% change year-on-year +5.00% +5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 29 23
10th Percentile £20.22 £15.12 £22.50
25th Percentile £41.25 £15.13 £26.25
Median hourly rate £69.00 £46.30 £36.17
Median % change year-on-year +49.03% +28.02% -27.67%
75th Percentile £82.25 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £84.80 £89.63 £69.64
South East median hourly rate £52.50 £24.66 £36.17
% change year-on-year +112.90% -31.81% -26.19%

QA
Job Vacancy Trend in the Thames Valley

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing QA relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley.

QA job vacancy trend in the Thames Valley

QA
Daily Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing QA.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing QA

QA
Daily Rate Histogram in the Thames Valley

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA in the Thames Valley over the 6 months to 11 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for QA in the Thames Valley

QA
Hourly Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing QA.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing QA

QA
Hourly Rate Histogram in the Thames Valley

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing QA in the Thames Valley over the 6 months to 11 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for QA in the Thames Valley

QA
Contract Job Locations in the Thames Valley

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing QA within the Thames Valley region over the 6 months to 11 August 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Berkshire -24 55 £450 -10.00% 27
Buckinghamshire -31 24 £430 +8.86% 18
Oxfordshire -26 3 £375 +145.10% 29
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 4 (4.88%) Apache Spark
2 2 (2.44%) Confluence
3 1 (1.22%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
Applications
1 3 (3.66%) CPLEX
2 2 (2.44%) Chatbot
2 2 (2.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (2.44%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (1.22%) MS Visio
3 1 (1.22%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (2.44%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.22%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 19 (23.17%) Azure
2 16 (19.51%) AWS
3 9 (10.98%) GCP
4 8 (9.76%) Power Platform
5 7 (8.54%) Azure DevOps
5 7 (8.54%) GitHub
5 7 (8.54%) Salesforce Service Cloud
6 4 (4.88%) GitHub Actions
7 3 (3.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 3 (3.66%) Amazon EKS
7 3 (3.66%) AWS CloudFormation
7 3 (3.66%) Datadog
7 3 (3.66%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
8 1 (1.22%) Dynamics 365
8 1 (1.22%) Microsoft 365
8 1 (1.22%) OCI
8 1 (1.22%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.88%) LAN
1 4 (4.88%) WAN
1 4 (4.88%) Wireless
2 2 (2.44%) DOCSIS
2 2 (2.44%) IPv4
2 2 (2.44%) IPv6
2 2 (2.44%) MPLS
2 2 (2.44%) Wi-Fi
3 1 (1.22%) ADSL
3 1 (1.22%) Ethernet
3 1 (1.22%) Firewall
3 1 (1.22%) GPRS
3 1 (1.22%) GSM
3 1 (1.22%) Internet
3 1 (1.22%) LTE
3 1 (1.22%) PSTN
3 1 (1.22%) SAN
3 1 (1.22%) UMTS
3 1 (1.22%) VPN
3 1 (1.22%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (13.41%) Data Warehouse
2 7 (8.54%) Power BI
2 7 (8.54%) Tableau
3 4 (4.88%) Big Data
4 3 (3.66%) MongoDB
4 3 (3.66%) NoSQL
4 3 (3.66%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (3.66%) Relational Database
4 3 (3.66%) Spark SQL
5 2 (2.44%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (1.22%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (1.22%) BigQuery
6 1 (1.22%) Data Lake
6 1 (1.22%) Geospatial Data
6 1 (1.22%) GIS
6 1 (1.22%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 8 (9.76%) Git
2 5 (6.10%) Jenkins
2 5 (6.10%) JIRA
3 4 (4.88%) GitLab
4 2 (2.44%) Selenium
5 1 (1.22%) Burp Suite
5 1 (1.22%) Cucumber
5 1 (1.22%) HP UFT
5 1 (1.22%) Metasploit
5 1 (1.22%) Postman
5 1 (1.22%) REST Assured
5 1 (1.22%) tSQLt
5 1 (1.22%) WebDriver
General
1 29 (35.37%) Social Skills
2 23 (28.05%) Analytical Skills
3 9 (10.98%) Public Sector
4 5 (6.10%) Finance
5 2 (2.44%) Aerospace
5 2 (2.44%) Pharmaceutical
5 2 (2.44%) Retail
5 2 (2.44%) Telecoms
6 1 (1.22%) Automotive
6 1 (1.22%) Law
6 1 (1.22%) Legal
6 1 (1.22%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 13 (15.85%) Analyst
2 10 (12.20%) Developer
3 9 (10.98%) Lead
3 9 (10.98%) Senior
4 8 (9.76%) QA Engineer
4 8 (9.76%) Test Manager
5 7 (8.54%) Data Analyst
6 6 (7.32%) QA Manager
7 5 (6.10%) Technical Analyst
7 5 (6.10%) Test Engineer
8 4 (4.88%) Business Analyst
8 4 (4.88%) Full-Stack Developer
8 4 (4.88%) Service Manager
8 4 (4.88%) Tester
9 3 (3.66%) Architect
9 3 (3.66%) Infrastructure Manager
9 3 (3.66%) Infrastructure Test Manager
9 3 (3.66%) Lead DevOps
9 3 (3.66%) ServiceNow Architect
9 3 (3.66%) Technical Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (12.20%) REST
2 8 (9.76%) Middleware
3 6 (7.32%) RESTful
3 6 (7.32%) SOAP
4 5 (6.10%) Lightning Web Components
5 4 (4.88%) JSON
5 4 (4.88%) React
6 3 (3.66%) .NET
6 3 (3.66%) .NET Core
6 3 (3.66%) CSS
6 3 (3.66%) Django
6 3 (3.66%) Flask
6 3 (3.66%) HTML
6 3 (3.66%) Jinja
6 3 (3.66%) Kafka
6 3 (3.66%) NumPy
6 3 (3.66%) Pandas
6 3 (3.66%) pytest
6 3 (3.66%) RabbitMQ
6 3 (3.66%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 9 (10.98%) Product Ownership
2 5 (6.10%) Cloud Native
3 4 (4.88%) Data Centre
3 4 (4.88%) Distributed Systems
3 4 (4.88%) SCADA
4 3 (3.66%) Algorithms
4 3 (3.66%) CMDB
4 3 (3.66%) Data Structures
5 2 (2.44%) AI Agents
5 2 (2.44%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (2.44%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (1.22%) Distributed Architecture
6 1 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (1.22%) IVR
6 1 (1.22%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.22%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 36 (43.90%) Agile
2 20 (24.39%) DevOps
3 19 (23.17%) Problem-Solving
3 19 (23.17%) Test Automation
3 19 (23.17%) Validation
4 18 (21.95%) CI/CD
4 18 (21.95%) Continuous Improvement
5 16 (19.51%) Scrum
6 15 (18.29%) Test Strategy
7 14 (17.07%) Stakeholder Management
8 12 (14.63%) Data Modelling
8 12 (14.63%) Data Validation
9 11 (13.41%) Analytics
9 11 (13.41%) Sprint Planning
10 9 (10.98%) Data Pipeline
10 9 (10.98%) Visualisation
11 8 (9.76%) Containerisation
11 8 (9.76%) Data Governance
11 8 (9.76%) Release Management
12 7 (8.54%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 19 (23.17%) SQL
2 7 (8.54%) Python
3 6 (7.32%) JavaScript
4 5 (6.10%) Apex Code
5 4 (4.88%) C#
6 3 (3.66%) Java
6 3 (3.66%) TypeScript
7 1 (1.22%) Kotlin
7 1 (1.22%) PowerShell
7 1 (1.22%) T-SQL
7 1 (1.22%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 20 (24.39%) Security Cleared
2 14 (17.07%) SC Cleared
3 4 (4.88%) ISTQB
3 4 (4.88%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
4 3 (3.66%) AWS Certification
4 3 (3.66%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
4 3 (3.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
4 3 (3.66%) Degree
5 1 (1.22%) BC Cleared
5 1 (1.22%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.22%) CCNP
5 1 (1.22%) CHECK Team Member
5 1 (1.22%) Cisco Certification
5 1 (1.22%) CREST Certified
5 1 (1.22%) Cyber Scheme
5 1 (1.22%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.22%) PMI Certification
5 1 (1.22%) PMP
5 1 (1.22%) Postgraduate
5 1 (1.22%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (9.76%) Data Quality
2 2 (2.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (1.22%) COBIT
3 1 (1.22%) GDPR
3 1 (1.22%) NIST
3 1 (1.22%) PCI DSS
3 1 (1.22%) PMO
3 1 (1.22%) SLA
3 1 (1.22%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 6 (7.32%) Docker
2 3 (3.66%) Virtual Machines
2 3 (3.66%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.22%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 6 (7.32%) Kubernetes
2 4 (4.88%) Terraform
3 3 (3.66%) Ansible
3 3 (3.66%) Grafana
4 1 (1.22%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (1.22%) Nmap
Vendors
1 11 (13.41%) Salesforce
2 6 (7.32%) Oracle
3 5 (6.10%) Cisco
3 5 (6.10%) Microsoft
4 4 (4.88%) MuleSoft
4 4 (4.88%) ServiceNow
4 4 (4.88%) VMware
5 3 (3.66%) Databricks
5 3 (3.66%) Dynatrace
5 3 (3.66%) Splunk
6 2 (2.44%) AppDynamics
6 2 (2.44%) Foundry
6 2 (2.44%) Google
6 2 (2.44%) Palantir
6 2 (2.44%) SAP
7 1 (1.22%) Arista
7 1 (1.22%) CheckPoint
7 1 (1.22%) Juniper
7 1 (1.22%) Openreach
7 1 (1.22%) Samsung