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 29 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 44 47
Rank change year-on-year -33 +3 +46
Contract jobs citing QA 77 57 105
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 2.55% 3.91% 4.00%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 14.45% 19.32% 25.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 41 35 69
10th Percentile £313 £310 £323
25th Percentile £363 £396 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £463 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% -7.50% +2.56%
75th Percentile £500 £500 £575
90th Percentile £625 £533 -
South East median daily rate £450 £463 £488
% change year-on-year -2.70% -5.13% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 4 1
10th Percentile £26.29 £15.17 -
25th Percentile £68.06 £15.25 £18.50
Median hourly rate £81.50 £33.90 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year +140.45% +78.39% -
75th Percentile £82.25 £53.56 £19.50
90th Percentile £82.70 £53.68 -
South East median hourly rate £65.00 £33.90 £10.82
% change year-on-year +91.77% +213.26% -43.05%

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 533 295 419
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 17.65% 20.25% 15.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 360 165 225
10th Percentile £320 £278 £196
25th Percentile £413 £400 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.50% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £611 £599 £575
90th Percentile £700 £650 £600
South East median daily rate £515 £500 £475
% change year-on-year +3.00% +5.26% -3.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 19 25
10th Percentile £19.72 £14.75 £18.20
25th Percentile £41.25 £15.13 £22.50
Median hourly rate £53.75 £46.30 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.09% +68.36% +25.00%
75th Percentile £82.81 £63.93 £65.00
90th Percentile £90.60 £71.50 £69.11
South East median hourly rate £52.50 £46.30 £27.50
% change year-on-year +13.39% +68.36% +1.85%

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 29 May 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 29 May 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 29 May 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 -23 51 £450 -10.00% 21
Buckinghamshire -26 26 £488 +14.71% 27
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 3 (3.90%) Confluence
1 3 (3.90%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
2 2 (2.60%) SharePoint
3 1 (1.30%) Apache
3 1 (1.30%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.30%) CMS
Applications
1 12 (15.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (12.99%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (11.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (2.60%) MS Visio
5 1 (1.30%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 3 (3.90%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 22 (28.57%) Azure
2 18 (23.38%) AWS
3 10 (12.99%) Azure DevOps
4 7 (9.09%) Power Platform
5 5 (6.49%) Serverless
6 4 (5.19%) OCI
7 3 (3.90%) GCP
8 2 (2.60%) GitHub
9 1 (1.30%) GitHub Actions
9 1 (1.30%) OpenShift
9 1 (1.30%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
9 1 (1.30%) Salesforce Service Cloud
9 1 (1.30%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 11 (14.29%) Wireless
2 8 (10.39%) Firewall
3 4 (5.19%) LAN
3 4 (5.19%) WAN
4 2 (2.60%) DOCSIS
4 2 (2.60%) IPv4
4 2 (2.60%) IPv6
4 2 (2.60%) MPLS
4 2 (2.60%) SAN
4 2 (2.60%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (1.30%) ADSL
5 1 (1.30%) Ethernet
5 1 (1.30%) GPRS
5 1 (1.30%) GSM
5 1 (1.30%) Internet
5 1 (1.30%) LTE
5 1 (1.30%) PSTN
5 1 (1.30%) UMTS
5 1 (1.30%) VPN
5 1 (1.30%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (10.39%) Data Warehouse
2 7 (9.09%) Power BI
2 7 (9.09%) Tableau
3 2 (2.60%) Data Lake
4 1 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
4 1 (1.30%) Big Data
4 1 (1.30%) BigQuery
4 1 (1.30%) Geospatial Data
4 1 (1.30%) GIS
4 1 (1.30%) MongoDB
4 1 (1.30%) NoSQL
4 1 (1.30%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (1.30%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 8 (10.39%) Burp Suite
1 8 (10.39%) Git
1 8 (10.39%) Metasploit
2 6 (7.79%) Jenkins
2 6 (7.79%) JIRA
3 5 (6.49%) HP UFT
4 3 (3.90%) Selenium
4 3 (3.90%) WebDriver
5 2 (2.60%) Cypress.io
5 2 (2.60%) GitLab
6 1 (1.30%) Artifactory
6 1 (1.30%) Cucumber
6 1 (1.30%) REST Assured
General
1 42 (54.55%) Social Skills
2 27 (35.06%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (18.18%) Public Sector
4 6 (7.79%) Finance
5 3 (3.90%) Aerospace
6 2 (2.60%) Banking
6 2 (2.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (2.60%) Influencing Skills
6 2 (2.60%) Pharmaceutical
6 2 (2.60%) Telecoms
7 1 (1.30%) Investment Banking
7 1 (1.30%) Law
7 1 (1.30%) Legal
7 1 (1.30%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (1.30%) Retail
Job Titles
1 11 (14.29%) Analyst
2 10 (12.99%) Lead
2 10 (12.99%) Tester
3 8 (10.39%) Penetration Tester
4 7 (9.09%) Data Analyst
4 7 (9.09%) Test Engineer
5 6 (7.79%) QA Engineer
5 6 (7.79%) Senior
6 5 (6.49%) Service Manager
7 4 (5.19%) Developer
7 4 (5.19%) Product Owner
7 4 (5.19%) QA Manager
8 3 (3.90%) Architect
8 3 (3.90%) Audit Manager
8 3 (3.90%) Full-Stack Developer
8 3 (3.90%) Quality Manager
8 3 (3.90%) ServiceNow Architect
8 3 (3.90%) Solutions Architect
8 3 (3.90%) Technical Analyst
8 3 (3.90%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (9.09%) REST
2 5 (6.49%) Middleware
2 5 (6.49%) React
3 4 (5.19%) JSON
4 3 (3.90%) Node.js
4 3 (3.90%) Oracle Fusion
4 3 (3.90%) RESTful
4 3 (3.90%) SOAP
5 2 (2.60%) .NET
5 2 (2.60%) .NET Core
5 2 (2.60%) CSS
5 2 (2.60%) Flutter
5 2 (2.60%) HTML
5 2 (2.60%) Playwright
5 2 (2.60%) XML
6 1 (1.30%) Apache NiFi
6 1 (1.30%) Jinja
6 1 (1.30%) PySpark
6 1 (1.30%) pytest
6 1 (1.30%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 8 (10.39%) Product Ownership
1 8 (10.39%) Security Posture
2 3 (3.90%) Analytical Mindset
2 3 (3.90%) CMDB
2 3 (3.90%) SCADA
3 2 (2.60%) Data Protection Act
3 2 (2.60%) Distributed Systems
3 2 (2.60%) Self-Motivation
3 2 (2.60%) Team-Oriented Environment
4 1 (1.30%) Algorithms
4 1 (1.30%) Cloud Native
4 1 (1.30%) Data Structures
4 1 (1.30%) Distributed Architecture
4 1 (1.30%) Greenfield Project
4 1 (1.30%) IVR
4 1 (1.30%) Life Science
4 1 (1.30%) Mobile App
4 1 (1.30%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 9 (11.69%) Windows
2 1 (1.30%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (42.86%) Agile
2 26 (33.77%) Problem-Solving
3 19 (24.68%) Stakeholder Management
3 19 (24.68%) Test Automation
4 18 (23.38%) DevOps
5 16 (20.78%) Validation
6 15 (19.48%) Scrum
7 13 (16.88%) CI/CD
8 12 (15.58%) Continuous Improvement
8 12 (15.58%) Data Modelling
8 12 (15.58%) Mentoring
9 11 (14.29%) Information Security
9 11 (14.29%) Security Management
10 10 (12.99%) Data Validation
10 10 (12.99%) Sprint Planning
10 10 (12.99%) Test Strategy
11 9 (11.69%) Cloud Security
11 9 (11.69%) Commercial Awareness
11 9 (11.69%) Customer Service
11 9 (11.69%) Line Management
Programming Languages
1 12 (15.58%) SQL
2 9 (11.69%) TypeScript
3 8 (10.39%) JavaScript
4 5 (6.49%) VBScript
5 4 (5.19%) C#
5 4 (5.19%) Python
6 3 (3.90%) Java
7 2 (2.60%) Kotlin
8 1 (1.30%) Apex Code
8 1 (1.30%) PowerShell
8 1 (1.30%) Swift
Qualifications
1 27 (35.06%) Security Cleared
2 19 (24.68%) SC Cleared
3 11 (14.29%) Degree
4 8 (10.39%) CHECK Team Member
4 8 (10.39%) CREST Certified
4 8 (10.39%) Cyber Scheme
4 8 (10.39%) Postgraduate
5 2 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (2.60%) DV Cleared
5 2 (2.60%) PMI Certification
5 2 (2.60%) PMP
6 1 (1.30%) BC Cleared
6 1 (1.30%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (1.30%) CCNP
6 1 (1.30%) Cisco Certification
6 1 (1.30%) ISTQB
6 1 (1.30%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
6 1 (1.30%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (14.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (11.69%) PMO
3 8 (10.39%) Data Quality
3 8 (10.39%) GDPR
3 8 (10.39%) PCI DSS
4 3 (3.90%) Accessibility
4 3 (3.90%) Actionable Recommendations
4 3 (3.90%) COBIT
4 3 (3.90%) NIST
5 1 (1.30%) SLA
System Software
1 1 (1.30%) Docker
1 1 (1.30%) Virtual Desktop
1 1 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
1 1 (1.30%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 8 (10.39%) Nmap
2 2 (2.60%) Kubernetes
2 2 (2.60%) Terraform
3 1 (1.30%) Ansible
3 1 (1.30%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 5 (6.49%) Oracle
2 4 (5.19%) CheckPoint
2 4 (5.19%) ServiceNow
3 3 (3.90%) Cisco
3 3 (3.90%) Salesforce
4 2 (2.60%) Foundry
4 2 (2.60%) Microsoft
4 2 (2.60%) MuleSoft
4 2 (2.60%) Palantir
4 2 (2.60%) SAP
5 1 (1.30%) Apple
5 1 (1.30%) Arista
5 1 (1.30%) BT
5 1 (1.30%) ESRI
5 1 (1.30%) F5
5 1 (1.30%) Fortinet
5 1 (1.30%) Juniper
5 1 (1.30%) Openreach
5 1 (1.30%) Planview
5 1 (1.30%) Red Hat