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

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 75 45 44
Rank change year-on-year -30 -1 +45
Contract jobs citing QA 78 58 105
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 2.62% 4.00% 3.98%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 14.72% 19.46% 25.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 43 35 68
10th Percentile £317 £310 £321
25th Percentile £363 £396 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £463 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% -7.50% +2.56%
75th Percentile £500 £513 £575
90th Percentile £608 £538 -
South East median daily rate £450 £463 £488
% change year-on-year -2.70% -5.13% +4.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 5 1
10th Percentile £26.29 - -
25th Percentile £68.06 £15.12 £18.50
Median hourly rate £81.50 £15.29 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year +433.03% -19.53% -44.93%
75th Percentile £82.25 £53.50 £19.50
90th Percentile £82.70 £53.65 -
South East median hourly rate £65.00 £15.29 £10.82
% change year-on-year +325.11% +41.31% -68.64%

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 530 298 410
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 17.80% 20.55% 15.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 359 166 216
10th Percentile £320 £300 £197
25th Percentile £413 £400 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £619 £597 £567
90th Percentile £700 £650 £600
South East median daily rate £514 £500 £475
% change year-on-year +2.80% +5.26% -4.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 21 25
10th Percentile £19.72 £15.12 £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% +14.58%
75th Percentile £82.81 £62.24 £65.00
90th Percentile £90.60 £67.50 £69.11
South East median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £27.50
% change year-on-year +108.75% -8.55% -12.70%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 -12 50 £450 -10.00% 15
Buckinghamshire -29 28 £460 +8.24% 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 3 (3.85%) Confluence
1 3 (3.85%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
2 2 (2.56%) SharePoint
3 1 (1.28%) Apache
3 1 (1.28%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.28%) CMS
Applications
1 10 (12.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (10.26%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (8.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (2.56%) MS Visio
5 1 (1.28%) CPLEX
5 1 (1.28%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (3.85%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 22 (28.21%) Azure
2 18 (23.08%) AWS
3 10 (12.82%) Azure DevOps
4 7 (8.97%) Power Platform
5 5 (6.41%) Serverless
6 4 (5.13%) OCI
7 3 (3.85%) GCP
8 2 (2.56%) GitHub
9 1 (1.28%) GitHub Actions
9 1 (1.28%) OpenShift
9 1 (1.28%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
9 1 (1.28%) Salesforce Service Cloud
9 1 (1.28%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 9 (11.54%) Wireless
2 6 (7.69%) Firewall
3 4 (5.13%) LAN
3 4 (5.13%) WAN
4 2 (2.56%) DOCSIS
4 2 (2.56%) IPv4
4 2 (2.56%) IPv6
4 2 (2.56%) MPLS
4 2 (2.56%) SAN
4 2 (2.56%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (1.28%) ADSL
5 1 (1.28%) Ethernet
5 1 (1.28%) GPRS
5 1 (1.28%) GSM
5 1 (1.28%) Internet
5 1 (1.28%) LTE
5 1 (1.28%) PSTN
5 1 (1.28%) UMTS
5 1 (1.28%) VPN
5 1 (1.28%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (10.26%) Data Warehouse
2 7 (8.97%) Power BI
2 7 (8.97%) Tableau
3 2 (2.56%) Data Lake
4 1 (1.28%) Amazon Redshift
4 1 (1.28%) Big Data
4 1 (1.28%) BigQuery
4 1 (1.28%) Geospatial Data
4 1 (1.28%) GIS
4 1 (1.28%) MongoDB
4 1 (1.28%) NoSQL
4 1 (1.28%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (1.28%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 8 (10.26%) Git
2 6 (7.69%) Burp Suite
2 6 (7.69%) Jenkins
2 6 (7.69%) JIRA
2 6 (7.69%) Metasploit
3 5 (6.41%) HP UFT
4 3 (3.85%) Selenium
4 3 (3.85%) WebDriver
5 2 (2.56%) Cypress.io
5 2 (2.56%) GitLab
6 1 (1.28%) Artifactory
6 1 (1.28%) Cucumber
6 1 (1.28%) REST Assured
General
1 39 (50.00%) Social Skills
2 27 (34.62%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (17.95%) Public Sector
4 5 (6.41%) Finance
5 3 (3.85%) Aerospace
6 2 (2.56%) Banking
6 2 (2.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (2.56%) Influencing Skills
6 2 (2.56%) Pharmaceutical
6 2 (2.56%) Retail
6 2 (2.56%) Telecoms
7 1 (1.28%) Investment Banking
7 1 (1.28%) Law
7 1 (1.28%) Legal
7 1 (1.28%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 11 (14.10%) Analyst
2 10 (12.82%) Lead
3 8 (10.26%) Tester
4 7 (8.97%) Data Analyst
4 7 (8.97%) QA Engineer
4 7 (8.97%) Test Engineer
5 6 (7.69%) Penetration Tester
5 6 (7.69%) Senior
6 5 (6.41%) QA Manager
6 5 (6.41%) Service Manager
7 4 (5.13%) Developer
7 4 (5.13%) Test Manager
8 3 (3.85%) Architect
8 3 (3.85%) Audit Manager
8 3 (3.85%) Product Owner
8 3 (3.85%) Quality Manager
8 3 (3.85%) ServiceNow Architect
8 3 (3.85%) Solutions Architect
8 3 (3.85%) Technical Analyst
8 3 (3.85%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (8.97%) REST
2 5 (6.41%) Middleware
2 5 (6.41%) React
3 4 (5.13%) JSON
4 3 (3.85%) Node.js
4 3 (3.85%) Oracle Fusion
4 3 (3.85%) RESTful
4 3 (3.85%) SOAP
5 2 (2.56%) .NET
5 2 (2.56%) .NET Core
5 2 (2.56%) CSS
5 2 (2.56%) Flutter
5 2 (2.56%) HTML
5 2 (2.56%) Playwright
5 2 (2.56%) XML
6 1 (1.28%) Apache NiFi
6 1 (1.28%) Jinja
6 1 (1.28%) PySpark
6 1 (1.28%) pytest
6 1 (1.28%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 7 (8.97%) Product Ownership
2 6 (7.69%) Security Posture
3 3 (3.85%) Analytical Mindset
3 3 (3.85%) CMDB
3 3 (3.85%) SCADA
4 2 (2.56%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (2.56%) Distributed Systems
4 2 (2.56%) Self-Motivation
4 2 (2.56%) Team-Oriented Environment
5 1 (1.28%) Algorithms
5 1 (1.28%) Cloud Native
5 1 (1.28%) Data Structures
5 1 (1.28%) Distributed Architecture
5 1 (1.28%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (1.28%) IVR
5 1 (1.28%) Life Science
5 1 (1.28%) Mobile App
5 1 (1.28%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 7 (8.97%) Windows
2 1 (1.28%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 32 (41.03%) Agile
2 26 (33.33%) Problem-Solving
3 21 (26.92%) Test Automation
4 19 (24.36%) Stakeholder Management
5 18 (23.08%) DevOps
6 16 (20.51%) Validation
7 15 (19.23%) CI/CD
8 14 (17.95%) Scrum
9 13 (16.67%) Continuous Improvement
10 12 (15.38%) Data Modelling
10 12 (15.38%) Mentoring
10 12 (15.38%) Test Strategy
11 10 (12.82%) Data Validation
12 9 (11.54%) Analytics
12 9 (11.54%) Information Security
12 9 (11.54%) Security Management
12 9 (11.54%) Sprint Planning
13 8 (10.26%) Defect Management
13 8 (10.26%) Root Cause Analysis
14 7 (8.97%) Functional Testing
Programming Languages
1 14 (17.95%) SQL
2 9 (11.54%) TypeScript
3 8 (10.26%) JavaScript
4 5 (6.41%) VBScript
5 4 (5.13%) C#
5 4 (5.13%) Python
6 3 (3.85%) Java
7 2 (2.56%) Kotlin
8 1 (1.28%) Apex Code
8 1 (1.28%) PowerShell
8 1 (1.28%) Swift
Qualifications
1 27 (34.62%) Security Cleared
2 19 (24.36%) SC Cleared
3 9 (11.54%) Degree
4 6 (7.69%) CHECK Team Member
4 6 (7.69%) CREST Certified
4 6 (7.69%) Cyber Scheme
4 6 (7.69%) Postgraduate
5 3 (3.85%) ISTQB
5 3 (3.85%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
6 2 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (2.56%) DV Cleared
6 2 (2.56%) PMI Certification
6 2 (2.56%) PMP
7 1 (1.28%) BC Cleared
7 1 (1.28%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (1.28%) CCNP
7 1 (1.28%) Cisco Certification
7 1 (1.28%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (11.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (10.26%) Data Quality
3 7 (8.97%) PMO
4 6 (7.69%) GDPR
4 6 (7.69%) PCI DSS
5 3 (3.85%) Accessibility
5 3 (3.85%) Actionable Recommendations
5 3 (3.85%) COBIT
5 3 (3.85%) NIST
6 1 (1.28%) SLA
System Software
1 2 (2.56%) Virtual Machines
1 2 (2.56%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (1.28%) Docker
2 1 (1.28%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 6 (7.69%) Nmap
2 2 (2.56%) Kubernetes
2 2 (2.56%) Terraform
3 1 (1.28%) Ansible
3 1 (1.28%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 5 (6.41%) Oracle
2 4 (5.13%) CheckPoint
2 4 (5.13%) Cisco
2 4 (5.13%) ServiceNow
3 3 (3.85%) Salesforce
3 3 (3.85%) VMware
4 2 (2.56%) Foundry
4 2 (2.56%) Microsoft
4 2 (2.56%) MuleSoft
4 2 (2.56%) Palantir
4 2 (2.56%) SAP
5 1 (1.28%) Apple
5 1 (1.28%) Arista
5 1 (1.28%) F5
5 1 (1.28%) Fortinet
5 1 (1.28%) Juniper
5 1 (1.28%) Openreach
5 1 (1.28%) Planview
5 1 (1.28%) Red Hat
5 1 (1.28%) Samsung