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 4 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 81 47 60
Rank change year-on-year -34 +13 +25
Contract jobs citing QA 82 70 70
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 2.52% 4.21% 2.98%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 13.53% 19.83% 21.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 50 44 31
10th Percentile £325 £325 £255
25th Percentile £387 £409 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £445 £469 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.07% -1.32% +0.53%
75th Percentile £509 £525 £575
90th Percentile £538 £583 £630
South East median daily rate £435 £469 £450
% change year-on-year -7.31% +4.17% -5.26%
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 606 353 326
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 18.61% 21.24% 13.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 386 192 145
10th Percentile £363 £308 £234
25th Percentile £431 £404 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year +7.50% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £625 £588 £564
90th Percentile £725 £650 £665
South East median daily rate £525 £500 £475
% change year-on-year +5.00% +5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 29 24
10th Percentile £18.32 £15.12 £19.70
25th Percentile £33.70 £15.13 £25.31
Median hourly rate £53.75 £46.30 £33.08
Median % change year-on-year +16.09% +39.95% -33.84%
75th Percentile £82.25 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £89.63 £69.38
South East median hourly rate £52.50 £24.66 £28.75
% change year-on-year +112.90% -14.23% -41.32%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 56 £450 -10.00% 19
Buckinghamshire -32 24 £430 +4.24% 16
Oxfordshire -20 2 £375 +145.10% 26
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
2 2 (2.44%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
Applications
1 3 (3.66%) CPLEX
1 3 (3.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (2.44%) Chatbot
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 3 (3.66%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.22%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 20 (24.39%) Azure
2 16 (19.51%) AWS
3 9 (10.98%) GCP
4 8 (9.76%) Azure DevOps
4 8 (9.76%) Power Platform
5 7 (8.54%) GitHub
6 6 (7.32%) Salesforce Service Cloud
7 4 (4.88%) GitHub Actions
8 3 (3.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 3 (3.66%) Amazon EKS
8 3 (3.66%) AWS CloudFormation
8 3 (3.66%) Datadog
8 3 (3.66%) OCI
9 2 (2.44%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
10 1 (1.22%) Dynamics 365
10 1 (1.22%) Microsoft 365
10 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 31 (37.80%) 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
6 1 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 14 (17.07%) 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%) Audit Manager
9 3 (3.66%) Infrastructure Test Manager
9 3 (3.66%) Lead DevOps
9 3 (3.66%) ServiceNow Architect
9 3 (3.66%) Solutions Architect
9 3 (3.66%) Test 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 4 (4.88%) JSON
4 4 (4.88%) Lightning Web Components
4 4 (4.88%) React
5 3 (3.66%) .NET Core
5 3 (3.66%) Django
5 3 (3.66%) FastAPI
5 3 (3.66%) Flask
5 3 (3.66%) Jinja
5 3 (3.66%) Kafka
5 3 (3.66%) NumPy
5 3 (3.66%) OpenAPI
5 3 (3.66%) Pandas
5 3 (3.66%) PySpark
5 3 (3.66%) pytest
5 3 (3.66%) RabbitMQ
5 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 35 (42.68%) Agile
2 21 (25.61%) DevOps
3 20 (24.39%) Validation
4 19 (23.17%) Problem-Solving
4 19 (23.17%) Test Automation
5 18 (21.95%) CI/CD
6 17 (20.73%) Continuous Improvement
7 15 (18.29%) Scrum
7 15 (18.29%) Stakeholder Management
7 15 (18.29%) Test Strategy
8 13 (15.85%) Data Validation
9 12 (14.63%) Data Modelling
10 11 (13.41%) Analytics
11 10 (12.20%) Sprint Planning
12 9 (10.98%) Data Pipeline
12 9 (10.98%) Visualisation
13 8 (9.76%) Containerisation
13 8 (9.76%) Data Governance
13 8 (9.76%) Migration
13 8 (9.76%) Release Management
Programming Languages
1 19 (23.17%) SQL
2 7 (8.54%) Python
3 6 (7.32%) JavaScript
4 4 (4.88%) Apex Code
4 4 (4.88%) C#
5 3 (3.66%) Java
5 3 (3.66%) TypeScript
6 1 (1.22%) Kotlin
6 1 (1.22%) PowerShell
6 1 (1.22%) T-SQL
6 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 3 (3.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (2.44%) COBIT
3 2 (2.44%) NIST
4 1 (1.22%) GDPR
4 1 (1.22%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.22%) PMO
4 1 (1.22%) SLA
4 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 10 (12.20%) Salesforce
2 7 (8.54%) 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
7 1 (1.22%) Arista
7 1 (1.22%) BT
7 1 (1.22%) F5
7 1 (1.22%) Fortinet
7 1 (1.22%) Openreach
7 1 (1.22%) Samsung