QA Engineer Contracts

Quality Assurance Engineer
UK

The median Quality Assurance Engineer daily rate in the UK is £450 according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months to 2 June 2024.

The first table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics including a comparison to same period in the previous 2 years.

 6 months to
2 Jun 2024		 Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 498 491 614
Rank change year-on-year -7 +123 +1
Contract jobs requiring a QA Engineer 81 193 228
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.19% 0.34% 0.26%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.20% 0.36% 0.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 58 173 180
10th Percentile £294 £350 £374
25th Percentile £363 £434 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £580 £500
Median % change year-on-year -22.41% +16.00% +25.00%
75th Percentile £500 £688 £575
90th Percentile £540 £798 £607
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £436 £475
% change year-on-year -2.47% -8.26% +18.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 3 1
10th Percentile £24.98 £44.00 -
25th Percentile £31.75 £44.38 -
Median hourly rate £44.61 £50.00 £45.20
Median % change year-on-year -10.79% +10.62% +77.25%
75th Percentile £59.02 £55.00 -
90th Percentile £66.73 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.46 - £45.20

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

The following table is for comparison with the above and includes summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 40,001 53,325 83,708
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.83% 94.58% 95.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,880 37,256 59,003
10th Percentile £280 £313 £315
25th Percentile £409 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% +2.86% +7.69%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.50% +5.26% +9.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,851 1,473 1,957
10th Percentile £12.86 £14.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.30 £19.06 £15.90
Median hourly rate £37.50 £45.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% +80.00% +14.34%
75th Percentile £61.60 £65.75 £49.41
90th Percentile £73.75 £76.45 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £42.50 £20.00
% change year-on-year -5.88% +112.50% +5.26%

QA Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured QA Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for QA Engineer in the UK

QA Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing QA Engineer.

Daily rate trend for QA Engineer in the UK

QA Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA Engineer over the 6 months to 2 June 2024.

Daily rate histogram for QA Engineer in the UK

QA Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing QA Engineer.

Hourly rate trend for QA Engineer in the UK

QA Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing QA Engineer over the 6 months to 2 June 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for QA Engineer in the UK

QA Engineer
Top 15 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing QA Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 2 June 2024. 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
England +5 73 £440 -26.67% 66
London +21 53 £450 -28.29% 18
UK excluding London +31 22 £425 -2.47% 54
Work from Home +78 16 £444 -6.58% 33
North of England +22 9 £500 -6.80% 3
North West +21 7 £500 +150.00% 2
South West +13 5 £61 -83.96% 12
Midlands +20 3 £363 +29.46% 5
South East +9 2 - - 13
Wales - 2 £499 - 1
West Midlands - 2 £328 - 4
Scotland +33 1 - - 1
Yorkshire +17 1 £425 -22.73%
East Midlands +4 1 £363 +29.46% 1
North East +4 1 - - 1

QA Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 2 June 2024, QA Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring QA Engineer in the job title.

1 81 (100.00%) QA
2 51 (62.96%) Test Automation
3 33 (40.74%) Agile
4 18 (22.22%) Python
4 18 (22.22%) Jenkins
4 18 (22.22%) CI/CD
5 17 (20.99%) Java
5 17 (20.99%) JIRA
6 16 (19.75%) Software Testing
6 16 (19.75%) Git
7 15 (18.52%) Data Protection Act
7 15 (18.52%) Selenium
7 15 (18.52%) Test Scripting
7 15 (18.52%) Data Protection
7 15 (18.52%) Regression Testing
7 15 (18.52%) Social Skills
8 14 (17.28%) Scrum
9 13 (16.05%) Cucumber
9 13 (16.05%) Postman
9 13 (16.05%) Scenario Testing
10 12 (14.81%) SQL
11 11 (13.58%) JavaScript
11 11 (13.58%) BDD
11 11 (13.58%) Performance Testing
11 11 (13.58%) API Testing
11 11 (13.58%) Problem-Solving
12 10 (12.35%) Analytical Skills
12 10 (12.35%) Appium
12 10 (12.35%) Non-Functional Testing
12 10 (12.35%) Apple iOS

QA Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 8 (9.88%) Confluence
2 1 (1.23%) CMS
Applications
1 2 (2.47%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 4 (4.94%) Endur
2 1 (1.23%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 8 (9.88%) AWS
2 7 (8.64%) Azure
3 6 (7.41%) BrowserStack
3 6 (7.41%) GitHub
4 4 (4.94%) Azure DevOps
4 4 (4.94%) GitHub Actions
4 4 (4.94%) SaaS
5 3 (3.70%) Sauce Labs
5 3 (3.70%) Serverless
6 2 (2.47%) AWS CloudFormation
6 2 (2.47%) AWS Lambda
6 2 (2.47%) GCP
7 1 (1.23%) Dynamics 365
7 1 (1.23%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.94%) 5G
1 4 (4.94%) Wi-Fi
2 2 (2.47%) Internet
3 1 (1.23%) HTTP
3 1 (1.23%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.23%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 18 (22.22%) Jenkins
2 17 (20.99%) JIRA
3 16 (19.75%) Git
4 15 (18.52%) Selenium
5 13 (16.05%) Cucumber
5 13 (16.05%) Postman
6 10 (12.35%) Appium
7 8 (9.88%) Cypress.io
8 7 (8.64%) SpecFlow
9 6 (7.41%) JMeter
10 5 (6.17%) Bitbucket
10 5 (6.17%) Team Foundation Server
11 4 (4.94%) GitLab
11 4 (4.94%) XCTest
12 3 (3.70%) REST Assured
12 3 (3.70%) TeamCity
12 3 (3.70%) TestRail
13 2 (2.47%) FitNesse
13 2 (2.47%) SoapUI
13 2 (2.47%) WebDriver
General
1 15 (18.52%) Social Skills
2 10 (12.35%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (6.17%) Finance
4 4 (4.94%) Back Office
4 4 (4.94%) Banking
5 3 (3.70%) Presentation Skills
5 3 (3.70%) Telecoms
6 1 (1.23%) Aerospace
6 1 (1.23%) Automotive
6 1 (1.23%) Financial Institution
6 1 (1.23%) Games
6 1 (1.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.23%) Investment Banking
6 1 (1.23%) Legal
6 1 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
6 1 (1.23%) Public Sector
6 1 (1.23%) Wholesale Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (9.88%) Playwright
2 7 (8.64%) JSON
2 7 (8.64%) XML
3 4 (4.94%) Gherkin
3 4 (4.94%) React Native
3 4 (4.94%) WebdriverIO
4 3 (3.70%) Jest
4 3 (3.70%) Middleware
4 3 (3.70%) Node.js
4 3 (3.70%) REST
4 3 (3.70%) SOAP
5 2 (2.47%) .NET
5 2 (2.47%) AngularJS
5 2 (2.47%) CSS
5 2 (2.47%) HTML
5 2 (2.47%) pytest
5 2 (2.47%) SwiftUI
6 1 (1.23%) Next.js
6 1 (1.23%) Puppeteer
6 1 (1.23%) React
Miscellaneous
1 15 (18.52%) Data Protection Act
2 7 (8.64%) Product Ownership
3 4 (4.94%) Mobile App
4 2 (2.47%) Derivative
5 1 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
5 1 (1.23%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 1 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (1.23%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (1.23%) Public Cloud
5 1 (1.23%) Replication
5 1 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
5 1 (1.23%) Social Media
5 1 (1.23%) Team-Oriented Environment
5 1 (1.23%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 10 (12.35%) Apple iOS
2 8 (9.88%) Android
3 2 (2.47%) Mac OS
3 2 (2.47%) Unix
4 1 (1.23%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 51 (62.96%) Test Automation
2 33 (40.74%) Agile
3 18 (22.22%) CI/CD
4 16 (19.75%) Software Testing
5 15 (18.52%) Data Protection
5 15 (18.52%) Regression Testing
5 15 (18.52%) Test Scripting
6 14 (17.28%) Scrum
7 13 (16.05%) Scenario Testing
8 11 (13.58%) API Testing
8 11 (13.58%) BDD
8 11 (13.58%) Performance Testing
8 11 (13.58%) Problem-Solving
9 10 (12.35%) Non-Functional Testing
10 8 (9.88%) Functional Testing
10 8 (9.88%) QA Automation
10 8 (9.88%) Test Strategy
11 7 (8.64%) DevOps
12 6 (7.41%) Continuous Improvement
12 6 (7.41%) SDET
Programming Languages
1 18 (22.22%) Python
2 17 (20.99%) Java
3 12 (14.81%) SQL
4 11 (13.58%) JavaScript
5 7 (8.64%) Swift
6 6 (7.41%) TypeScript
7 5 (6.17%) C#
7 5 (6.17%) C++
8 4 (4.94%) Bash
9 3 (3.70%) C
9 3 (3.70%) Kotlin
10 2 (2.47%) Perl
10 2 (2.47%) PowerShell
10 2 (2.47%) Ruby
11 1 (1.23%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 6 (7.41%) Degree
2 4 (4.94%) Computer Science Degree
2 4 (4.94%) SC Cleared
2 4 (4.94%) Security Cleared
3 2 (2.47%) ISTQB
3 2 (2.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (100.00%) QA
2 6 (7.41%) Software Quality Assurance
3 4 (4.94%) Accessibility
4 3 (3.70%) ISO 9001
Systems Management
1 2 (2.47%) Opsgenie
2 1 (1.23%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 3 (3.70%) Oracle
1 3 (3.70%) Perfecto Mobile
2 2 (2.47%) CA Agile Central
2 2 (2.47%) Microsoft
2 2 (2.47%) PagerDuty
3 1 (1.23%) Apple
3 1 (1.23%) BT
3 1 (1.23%) Dynatrace
3 1 (1.23%) OpenLink
3 1 (1.23%) Splunk
3 1 (1.23%) Tealium
75 QA Engineer jobs Nationwide