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 18 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 81 52 60
Rank change year-on-year -29 +8 +26
Contract jobs citing QA 77 61 64
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 2.49% 3.71% 2.86%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 14.03% 19.37% 23.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 47 42 23
10th Percentile £333 £230 £238
25th Percentile £378 £379 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £450
Median % change year-on-year - - -5.26%
75th Percentile £513 £529 £600
90th Percentile £560 £585 £638
South East median daily rate £425 £450 £438
% change year-on-year -5.56% +2.86% -7.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 2 2
10th Percentile £16.45 - £22.74
25th Percentile £17.59 - £29.09
Median hourly rate £31.25 £15.12 £40.35
Median % change year-on-year +106.68% -62.53% -19.30%
75th Percentile £82.25 - £51.79
90th Percentile - - £58.25
South East median hourly rate £34.50 £15.12 £13.22
% change year-on-year +128.17% +14.37% -73.56%

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 549 315 275
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 17.77% 19.16% 12.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 340 184 116
10th Percentile £363 £250 £253
25th Percentile £439 £400 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -1.91%
75th Percentile £628 £591 £573
90th Percentile £750 £660 £675
South East median daily rate £532 £500 £490
% change year-on-year +6.30% +2.04% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 19 12
10th Percentile £17.50 £14.75 £20.21
25th Percentile £33.70 £15.13 £54.46
Median hourly rate £51.25 £15.25 £62.47
Median % change year-on-year +236.07% -75.59% +24.95%
75th Percentile £77.50 £85.13 £68.17
90th Percentile £83.60 £89.63 £76.77
South East median hourly rate £46.25 £18.42 £53.00
% change year-on-year +151.15% -65.25% +6.00%

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 18 September 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 18 September 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 18 September 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 -14 49 £456 -8.75% 84
Buckinghamshire -19 25 £430 +8.86% 36
Oxfordshire -29 3 £375 +145.10% 33
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 (5.19%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.30%) Confluence
Applications
1 3 (3.90%) Spreadsheet
2 2 (2.60%) Chatbot
2 2 (2.60%) CPLEX
2 2 (2.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (2.60%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (1.30%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (1.30%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (1.30%) Oracle EBS
1 1 (1.30%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 14 (18.18%) Azure
2 13 (16.88%) AWS
3 7 (9.09%) GCP
3 7 (9.09%) GitHub
3 7 (9.09%) Salesforce Service Cloud
4 6 (7.79%) Power Platform
5 5 (6.49%) Azure DevOps
6 4 (5.19%) GitHub Actions
7 3 (3.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 3 (3.90%) Amazon EKS
7 3 (3.90%) AWS CloudFormation
7 3 (3.90%) Datadog
7 3 (3.90%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
8 1 (1.30%) Dynamics 365
8 1 (1.30%) Lucidchart
8 1 (1.30%) Microsoft 365
8 1 (1.30%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 4 (5.19%) WAN
2 3 (3.90%) MPLS
3 2 (2.60%) ADSL
3 2 (2.60%) Ethernet
3 2 (2.60%) Internet
3 2 (2.60%) LAN
3 2 (2.60%) PSTN
4 1 (1.30%) DOCSIS
4 1 (1.30%) GPRS
4 1 (1.30%) GSM
4 1 (1.30%) IPv4
4 1 (1.30%) IPv6
4 1 (1.30%) LTE
4 1 (1.30%) SAN
4 1 (1.30%) UMTS
4 1 (1.30%) VPN
4 1 (1.30%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (1.30%) Wireless
4 1 (1.30%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (9.09%) Data Warehouse
2 5 (6.49%) Power BI
3 4 (5.19%) Big Data
4 3 (3.90%) Spark SQL
4 3 (3.90%) Tableau
5 2 (2.60%) MongoDB
5 2 (2.60%) NoSQL
5 2 (2.60%) Oracle Reports
5 2 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (2.60%) Relational Database
6 1 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (1.30%) BigQuery
6 1 (1.30%) Data Lake
6 1 (1.30%) EDMS
6 1 (1.30%) GIS
6 1 (1.30%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 5 (6.49%) Git
1 5 (6.49%) Jenkins
2 4 (5.19%) GitLab
3 3 (3.90%) JIRA
4 2 (2.60%) Selenium
5 1 (1.30%) Cucumber
5 1 (1.30%) HP UFT
5 1 (1.30%) Postman
5 1 (1.30%) REST Assured
5 1 (1.30%) tSQLt
5 1 (1.30%) WebDriver
General
1 24 (31.17%) Social Skills
2 17 (22.08%) Analytical Skills
3 6 (7.79%) Public Sector
4 3 (3.90%) Finance
4 3 (3.90%) Telecoms
5 2 (2.60%) Manufacturing
5 2 (2.60%) Retail
6 1 (1.30%) Aerospace
6 1 (1.30%) Automotive
6 1 (1.30%) Electronics
6 1 (1.30%) Law
Job Titles
1 11 (14.29%) Analyst
2 9 (11.69%) Developer
2 9 (11.69%) Lead
2 9 (11.69%) Senior
3 8 (10.39%) Test Manager
4 7 (9.09%) QA Engineer
5 6 (7.79%) QA Manager
6 5 (6.49%) Test Engineer
7 4 (5.19%) Business Analyst
7 4 (5.19%) Full-Stack Developer
8 3 (3.90%) Architect
8 3 (3.90%) Audit Manager
8 3 (3.90%) Lead DevOps
8 3 (3.90%) Senior Developer
8 3 (3.90%) ServiceNow Architect
8 3 (3.90%) Solutions Architect
8 3 (3.90%) Technical Analyst
8 3 (3.90%) Technical Business Analyst
8 3 (3.90%) Test Analyst
8 3 (3.90%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (12.99%) REST
2 7 (9.09%) Middleware
3 6 (7.79%) SOAP
4 5 (6.49%) Lightning Web Components
4 5 (6.49%) RESTful
5 4 (5.19%) Terraform
6 3 (3.90%) .NET
6 3 (3.90%) .NET Core
6 3 (3.90%) CSS
6 3 (3.90%) HTML
6 3 (3.90%) JSON
6 3 (3.90%) PySpark
6 3 (3.90%) React
7 2 (2.60%) Django
7 2 (2.60%) Jinja
7 2 (2.60%) Kafka
7 2 (2.60%) NumPy
7 2 (2.60%) Pandas
7 2 (2.60%) pytest
7 2 (2.60%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 7 (9.09%) Product Ownership
2 5 (6.49%) Data Centre
3 4 (5.19%) Cloud Native
3 4 (5.19%) SCADA
4 3 (3.90%) CMDB
4 3 (3.90%) Distributed Systems
5 2 (2.60%) AI Agents
5 2 (2.60%) Algorithms
5 2 (2.60%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (2.60%) Data Structures
5 2 (2.60%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (1.30%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (1.30%) Distributed Architecture
6 1 (1.30%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (1.30%) IVR
6 1 (1.30%) Renewable Energy
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (40.26%) Agile
2 19 (24.68%) Test Automation
3 17 (22.08%) CI/CD
4 16 (20.78%) Continuous Improvement
4 16 (20.78%) DevOps
4 16 (20.78%) Problem-Solving
5 15 (19.48%) Scrum
5 15 (19.48%) Test Strategy
5 15 (19.48%) Validation
6 10 (12.99%) Stakeholder Management
7 8 (10.39%) Analytics
7 8 (10.39%) Data Modelling
7 8 (10.39%) Data Pipeline
7 8 (10.39%) Data Validation
7 8 (10.39%) Release Management
7 8 (10.39%) Sprint Planning
7 8 (10.39%) User Acceptance Testing
8 7 (9.09%) Containerisation
8 7 (9.09%) Defect Management
8 7 (9.09%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 16 (20.78%) SQL
2 6 (7.79%) JavaScript
2 6 (7.79%) Python
3 5 (6.49%) Apex Code
4 4 (5.19%) C#
5 3 (3.90%) Java
5 3 (3.90%) TypeScript
6 1 (1.30%) PowerShell
6 1 (1.30%) T-SQL
6 1 (1.30%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 16 (20.78%) Security Cleared
2 13 (16.88%) SC Cleared
3 4 (5.19%) ISTQB
3 4 (5.19%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
4 3 (3.90%) AWS Certification
4 3 (3.90%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
4 3 (3.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 2 (2.60%) BC Cleared
5 2 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
5 2 (2.60%) Degree
6 1 (1.30%) CCNP
6 1 (1.30%) Cisco Certification
6 1 (1.30%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (9.09%) Data Quality
2 2 (2.60%) SLA
3 1 (1.30%) Disclosure Scotland
3 1 (1.30%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 5 (6.49%) Docker
2 3 (3.90%) Virtual Machines
2 3 (3.90%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.30%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 5 (6.49%) Kubernetes
2 3 (3.90%) Ansible
2 3 (3.90%) Grafana
3 1 (1.30%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 10 (12.99%) Salesforce
2 6 (7.79%) Cisco
2 6 (7.79%) Microsoft
3 5 (6.49%) Databricks
3 5 (6.49%) Oracle
4 4 (5.19%) VMware
5 3 (3.90%) Dynatrace
5 3 (3.90%) MuleSoft
5 3 (3.90%) ServiceNow
5 3 (3.90%) Splunk
6 2 (2.60%) AppDynamics
6 2 (2.60%) BT
6 2 (2.60%) Google
6 2 (2.60%) Openreach
7 1 (1.30%) Autodesk
7 1 (1.30%) CheckPoint
7 1 (1.30%) F5
7 1 (1.30%) Fortinet
7 1 (1.30%) Juniper
7 1 (1.30%) SAP