Validation Contract Job Trends in England

Validation
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Validation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 83 126
Rank change year-on-year +40 +43 +9
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,880 732 679
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.77% 2.99% 1.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.59% 3.28% 2.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,163 441 358
10th Percentile £325 £356 £313
25th Percentile £400 £419 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £525 £503
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% +4.43% -8.59%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £600
90th Percentile £700 £715 £725
UK median daily rate £481 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -8.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 103 47 148
10th Percentile £26.66 £27.90 £23.90
25th Percentile £53.13 £48.75 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.55% -3.75% -3.23%
75th Percentile £76.13 £65.00 £75.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.10 £88.75
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -4.17% -4.04%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

Validation falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 33,651 22,305 32,263
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.36% 91.07% 86.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,531 14,664 21,253
10th Percentile £313 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,083 886 2,215
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.80 £12.85
25th Percentile £20.27 £18.51 £15.75
Median hourly rate £41.86 £31.64 £34.21
Median % change year-on-year +32.29% -7.51% -6.66%
75th Percentile £67.13 £63.75 £58.69
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.38 £71.75
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £33.78
% change year-on-year +25.00% -11.18% -5.92%

Validation
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Validation relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Validation job vacancy trend in England

Validation
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Validation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Validation

Validation
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Validation in England over the 6 months to 18 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Validation in England

Validation
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Validation.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Validation

Validation
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Validation in England over the 6 months to 18 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Validation in England

Validation
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Validation within the England region over the 6 months to 18 April 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
London +69 885 £501 -9.00% 275
North of England +36 254 £433 -8.95% 126
South East +3 219 £500 - 204
Midlands +34 217 £492 +2.23% 110
West Midlands +30 164 £487 +1.12% 76
North West +27 148 £416 -6.25% 60
South West +5 127 £475 -17.39% 78
East of England +10 117 £486 +7.89% 83
Yorkshire +16 95 £453 +7.86% 51
East Midlands 0 50 £525 +4.06% 34
North East -4 14 £450 -37.93% 17
Validation
UK

Validation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 77 (4.10%) Confluence
2 40 (2.13%) SAS
3 37 (1.97%) Apache Airflow
4 34 (1.81%) Apache Spark
5 17 (0.90%) Apache
6 13 (0.69%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.48%) Appian
7 9 (0.48%) Jupyter
7 9 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
8 8 (0.43%) ArcGIS
9 7 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
10 6 (0.32%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 5 (0.27%) Anypoint
11 5 (0.27%) CMS
12 4 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 4 (0.21%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.16%) CICS
13 3 (0.16%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 2 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
14 2 (0.11%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 117 (6.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (1.49%) MS Visio
3 26 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
4 18 (0.96%) Spreadsheet
5 16 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.43%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.16%) LaTeX
8 3 (0.16%) Notion
9 2 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.11%) CATIA
9 2 (0.11%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.11%) Sketch
10 1 (0.053%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.053%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.053%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.053%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.053%) UXPin
10 1 (0.053%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 94 (5.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.76%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.80%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.74%) Workday HCM
5 13 (0.69%) Oracle Payables
6 12 (0.64%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 10 (0.53%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.53%) SAP FI
7 10 (0.53%) Teamcenter
8 9 (0.48%) Oracle Receivables
9 8 (0.43%) Dynamics CRM
9 8 (0.43%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 7 (0.37%) Aladdin
10 7 (0.37%) NetSuite
10 7 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
10 7 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
10 7 (0.37%) SAP MM
11 6 (0.32%) Oracle Financials
11 6 (0.32%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 6 (0.32%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 432 (22.98%) Azure
2 226 (12.02%) AWS
3 177 (9.41%) Power Platform
4 126 (6.70%) Azure DevOps
5 94 (5.00%) GCP
6 89 (4.73%) GitHub
7 52 (2.77%) Serverless
8 51 (2.71%) Azure Data Factory
9 50 (2.66%) Entra ID
10 49 (2.61%) GitHub Actions
11 47 (2.50%) OCI
12 44 (2.34%) SaaS
13 41 (2.18%) Amazon S3
14 38 (2.02%) Snowflake
15 34 (1.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 26 (1.38%) dbt
17 25 (1.33%) AWS Lambda
17 25 (1.33%) OpenShift
18 24 (1.28%) Microsoft 365
19 23 (1.22%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 78 (4.15%) Firewall
2 53 (2.82%) Network Security
3 34 (1.81%) TCP/IP
4 30 (1.60%) VLAN
5 25 (1.33%) DNS
6 22 (1.17%) VPN
7 21 (1.12%) Ethernet
7 21 (1.12%) WAN
8 15 (0.80%) SAN
9 14 (0.74%) LAN
10 13 (0.69%) NAS
11 12 (0.64%) BGP
11 12 (0.64%) HTTP
11 12 (0.64%) OSPF
11 12 (0.64%) SD-WAN
12 11 (0.59%) Wireless
13 10 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
14 9 (0.48%) TACACS
14 9 (0.48%) Wi-Fi
15 8 (0.43%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 165 (8.78%) Power BI
2 98 (5.21%) Data Warehouse
3 93 (4.95%) Metadata
4 66 (3.51%) Tableau
5 60 (3.19%) SQL Server
6 43 (2.29%) Data Lake
7 41 (2.18%) PostgreSQL
8 28 (1.49%) Oracle Reports
9 26 (1.38%) Amazon Redshift
10 25 (1.33%) Oracle Database
10 25 (1.33%) Relational Database
10 25 (1.33%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 24 (1.28%) Delta Lake
12 23 (1.22%) NoSQL
13 22 (1.17%) Big Data
13 22 (1.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 21 (1.12%) Azure SQL Database
15 18 (0.96%) Pinecone
16 17 (0.90%) Amazon Athena
17 16 (0.85%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 183 (9.73%) JIRA
2 110 (5.85%) Git
3 79 (4.20%) Jenkins
4 60 (3.19%) Selenium
5 50 (2.66%) GitLab
6 41 (2.18%) Postman
7 36 (1.91%) JUnit
8 33 (1.76%) Cucumber
9 28 (1.49%) Oracle APEX
10 27 (1.44%) JMeter
11 23 (1.22%) Rational DOORS
11 23 (1.22%) WebDriver
12 18 (0.96%) Visual Studio
13 15 (0.80%) MLflow
14 14 (0.74%) Eclipse
15 13 (0.69%) REST Assured
16 11 (0.59%) Bitbucket
16 11 (0.59%) TestRail
17 10 (0.53%) Rational Rhapsody
17 10 (0.53%) SpecFlow
General
1 626 (33.30%) Social Skills
2 570 (30.32%) Finance
3 371 (19.73%) Analytical Skills
4 166 (8.83%) Public Sector
5 158 (8.40%) Banking
6 107 (5.69%) Documentation Skills
7 50 (2.66%) Manufacturing
8 48 (2.55%) Presentation Skills
9 46 (2.45%) Aerospace
10 38 (2.02%) Organisational Skills
11 35 (1.86%) Retail
12 33 (1.76%) Marketing
13 31 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
13 31 (1.65%) Pharmaceutical
14 30 (1.60%) Financial Institution
14 30 (1.60%) Front Office
15 29 (1.54%) Legal
15 29 (1.54%) Military
16 27 (1.44%) General Ledger
17 26 (1.38%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 350 (18.62%) Analyst
2 189 (10.05%) Lead
3 187 (9.95%) Senior
4 162 (8.62%) Business Analyst
5 137 (7.29%) Data Engineer
6 130 (6.91%) Developer
7 129 (6.86%) Consultant
8 117 (6.22%) Architect
9 93 (4.95%) Data Analyst
10 71 (3.78%) Project Manager
11 55 (2.93%) Tester
12 41 (2.18%) Senior Developer
13 40 (2.13%) Senior Analyst
13 40 (2.13%) Software Engineer
14 38 (2.02%) Test Engineer
15 37 (1.97%) SAP Consultant
16 36 (1.91%) Test Manager
17 35 (1.86%) Network Engineer
17 35 (1.86%) Test Analyst
18 34 (1.81%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 120 (6.38%) REST
2 78 (4.15%) JSON
3 62 (3.30%) Kafka
4 61 (3.24%) Oracle Fusion
5 50 (2.66%) Middleware
6 49 (2.61%) OAuth
7 48 (2.55%) XML
8 42 (2.23%) Node.js
9 40 (2.13%) PySpark
10 35 (1.86%) .NET
11 34 (1.81%) SOAP
12 32 (1.70%) Swagger
13 30 (1.60%) Playwright
13 30 (1.60%) Web Services
14 29 (1.54%) PyTorch
15 28 (1.49%) Pandas
15 28 (1.49%) RESTful
16 26 (1.38%) JWT
16 26 (1.38%) pytest
16 26 (1.38%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 111 (5.90%) Legacy Systems
2 96 (5.11%) Data Structures
3 83 (4.41%) Onboarding
4 78 (4.15%) Product Ownership
5 48 (2.55%) Cloud Native
6 46 (2.45%) Data Centre
7 42 (2.23%) Management Information System
8 32 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
9 30 (1.60%) Analytical Mindset
10 28 (1.49%) Replication
11 27 (1.44%) Data Protection Act
12 24 (1.28%) Public Cloud
13 23 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
14 22 (1.17%) Algorithms
14 22 (1.17%) Greenfield Project
15 19 (1.01%) Virtual Team
16 18 (0.96%) Derivative
16 18 (0.96%) Reference Data
17 16 (0.85%) Credit Risk
17 16 (0.85%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 96 (5.11%) Windows
2 77 (4.10%) Linux
3 24 (1.28%) Unix
4 12 (0.64%) Android
5 10 (0.53%) Windows Server
6 6 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.32%) zOS
7 4 (0.21%) Mac OS
7 4 (0.21%) SUSE
7 4 (0.21%) VMS
8 3 (0.16%) Apple iOS
8 3 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
9 2 (0.11%) Debian
9 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.053%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.053%) pSOS
10 1 (0.053%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 485 (25.80%) Migration
2 422 (22.45%) Agile
3 373 (19.84%) Problem-Solving
4 341 (18.14%) Stakeholder Management
5 323 (17.18%) Data Validation
6 309 (16.44%) CI/CD
7 305 (16.22%) Analytics
8 295 (15.69%) Data Migration
9 274 (14.57%) DevOps
10 267 (14.20%) Data Modelling
10 267 (14.20%) User Acceptance Testing
11 255 (13.56%) ETL
12 221 (11.76%) Test Automation
13 214 (11.38%) Business Intelligence
14 205 (10.90%) Continuous Improvement
15 203 (10.80%) AI
16 196 (10.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 183 (9.73%) Data Governance
18 168 (8.94%) Data Pipeline
19 160 (8.51%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 481 (25.59%) SQL
2 352 (18.72%) Python
3 101 (5.37%) Java
4 84 (4.47%) JavaScript
5 65 (3.46%) C#
6 53 (2.82%) PL/SQL
7 48 (2.55%) C++
8 42 (2.23%) PowerShell
9 38 (2.02%) C
10 30 (1.60%) Bash
10 30 (1.60%) R
10 30 (1.60%) TypeScript
11 24 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 22 (1.17%) Bicep
13 19 (1.01%) Ada
14 17 (0.90%) Scala
15 13 (0.69%) VBA
16 12 (0.64%) Apex Code
16 12 (0.64%) Groovy
16 12 (0.64%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 393 (20.90%) Security Cleared
2 284 (15.11%) SC Cleared
3 160 (8.51%) Degree
4 51 (2.71%) BPSS Clearance
5 48 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
6 34 (1.81%) DV Cleared
7 31 (1.65%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.49%) PMI Certification
9 26 (1.38%) PMP
10 25 (1.33%) ISTQB
11 20 (1.06%) Cisco Certification
12 17 (0.90%) CCNP
13 15 (0.80%) Microsoft Certification
14 13 (0.69%) Azure Certification
14 13 (0.69%) CBAP
14 13 (0.69%) CISSP
15 12 (0.64%) AWS Certification
16 9 (0.48%) ACCA
16 9 (0.48%) CCNA
17 8 (0.43%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 307 (16.33%) Data Quality
2 234 (12.45%) QA
3 109 (5.80%) GDPR
4 68 (3.62%) NIST
5 57 (3.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 26 (1.38%) Accessibility
7 23 (1.22%) SLA
8 22 (1.17%) IFRS
9 20 (1.06%) PMO
10 19 (1.01%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.96%) GRC
12 16 (0.85%) Def Stans
13 15 (0.80%) HL7
14 14 (0.74%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.64%) COBIT
15 12 (0.64%) GxP
15 12 (0.64%) NCSC
16 11 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 10 (0.53%) ISO 20022
17 10 (0.53%) MiFID
System Software
1 77 (4.10%) Docker
2 39 (2.07%) Active Directory
3 37 (1.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (1.22%) Firmware
5 13 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.59%) VMware NSX
7 10 (0.53%) Hyper-V
8 9 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
8 9 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.27%) NFS
9 5 (0.27%) vSphere
10 4 (0.21%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 3 (0.16%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.16%) Embedded Firmware
12 2 (0.11%) Ceph
12 2 (0.11%) KVM
12 2 (0.11%) Lustre
12 2 (0.11%) OpenAM
12 2 (0.11%) OpenIDM
12 2 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 111 (5.90%) Kubernetes
2 85 (4.52%) Terraform
3 30 (1.60%) Prometheus
4 29 (1.54%) Grafana
4 29 (1.54%) Single Sign-On
5 28 (1.49%) Ansible
6 14 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
7 9 (0.48%) Kibana
7 9 (0.48%) Puppet
8 8 (0.43%) FortiGate
9 7 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 7 (0.37%) SCCM
10 6 (0.32%) Nessus
11 5 (0.27%) CASB
11 5 (0.27%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.21%) EMC NetWorker
12 4 (0.21%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.21%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.21%) vMotion
12 4 (0.21%) VxRail
Vendors
1 246 (13.09%) Microsoft
2 201 (10.69%) Oracle
3 162 (8.62%) SAP
4 88 (4.68%) Databricks
5 73 (3.88%) ServiceNow
6 54 (2.87%) Salesforce
7 43 (2.29%) Splunk
8 42 (2.23%) VMware
9 40 (2.13%) Cisco
10 35 (1.86%) Google
11 30 (1.60%) Informatica
11 30 (1.60%) Workday
12 29 (1.54%) MuleSoft
13 27 (1.44%) Sage
14 23 (1.22%) Palo Alto
15 20 (1.06%) CyberArk
16 18 (0.96%) IBM
17 16 (0.85%) OpenAI
18 15 (0.80%) IFS
19 14 (0.74%) CheckPoint