The Datum Report

Occupation 3115 · Associate professional occupations

Quality assurance technicians

Half of full-time quality assurance technicians in the UK earn more than £33,972 a year, and half earn less.

Quality assurance technicians perform a variety of technical inspections and testing and monitoring tasks to detect processing, manufacturing and other defects.

How people enter it

Entrants normally possess a degree, GCSEs/S grades, a BTEC/ SQA award or A levels/H grades. Training is typically received on-the-job, supplemented by training courses where instruction in specific techniques is required. Various industry-specific qualifications encompass aspects of quality control.

What the work involves

• sets up scientific, electronic, or other technical equipment to perform functional and inspection tests
• analyses and interprets the results of tests undertaken and writes up reports upon completion
• supervises the work of routine inspection staff and notes any defects reported
• assists quality control engineers in undertaking production audits
• liaises with production engineers and staff to maintain the quality of output and to develop quality management systems.
• establishes product specifications
• maintains equipment and systems used

Also called

Quality analyst · Quality assurance coordinator · Quality control technician · Quality officer · Quality technician · Test technician

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for quality assurance technicians, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 10 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Building and civil engineering technicians · Electrical and electronics technicians · Engineering technicians · Laboratory technicians · Planning, process and production technicians · Science, engineering and production technicians n.e.c.