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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 70 113
Rank change year-on-year +34 +43 +36
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,162 854 741
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.10% 3.50% 1.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.99% 3.84% 2.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,317 527 372
10th Percentile £326 £350 £325
25th Percentile £410 £414 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -13.04%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £588
90th Percentile £705 £719 £672
UK median daily rate £495 £525 £513
% change year-on-year -5.75% +2.44% -7.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 146 55 169
10th Percentile £17.75 £17.19 £26.88
25th Percentile £33.28 £36.99 £51.25
Median hourly rate £62.82 £57.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.77% -3.75% -4.00%
75th Percentile £74.81 £68.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.38 £76.50 £76.86
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £57.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% -5.11%

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 36,103 22,244 31,795
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.13% 91.27% 85.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,869 14,374 20,646
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,268 1,001 2,353
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.81
25th Percentile £20.79 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.25 £28.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +65.79% -24.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £68.00 £58.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.00 £73.75 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £36.50
% change year-on-year +59.85% -24.66% +1.67%

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 9 June 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 9 June 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 9 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
London +54 1,030 £513 -6.82% 268
North of England +45 299 £437 -2.83% 154
Midlands +33 266 £498 +13.71% 132
South East -3 251 £503 +0.65% 232
West Midlands +24 191 £484 +20.10% 75
North West +34 174 £420 -4.00% 83
South West +3 131 £500 -13.04% 110
East of England +7 129 £488 +8.33% 88
Yorkshire +19 110 £458 +1.67% 53
East Midlands +16 70 £525 +16.67% 56
North East -12 18 £438 -25.53% 20
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 75 (3.47%) Confluence
2 57 (2.64%) Apache Airflow
3 44 (2.04%) SAS
4 41 (1.90%) Apache Spark
5 28 (1.30%) SharePoint
6 21 (0.97%) Apache
7 13 (0.60%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.42%) Appian
9 8 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.28%) ArcGIS
12 5 (0.23%) CMS
12 5 (0.23%) SharePoint 2013
13 4 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 3 (0.14%) Anypoint
14 3 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
14 3 (0.14%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
14 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.14%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 141 (6.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 31 (1.43%) MS Visio
3 23 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
4 21 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 20 (0.93%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
7 5 (0.23%) AutoCAD
7 5 (0.23%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.19%) CATIA
8 4 (0.19%) Simulink
9 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.093%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.093%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.093%) Sketch
11 1 (0.046%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.046%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.046%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.046%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.046%) UXPin
11 1 (0.046%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 110 (5.09%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (1.43%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.69%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.65%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.56%) Oracle General Ledger
5 12 (0.56%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.46%) Oracle Assets
7 9 (0.42%) SAP ERP
8 8 (0.37%) Aladdin
8 8 (0.37%) Oracle Financials
8 8 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
9 7 (0.32%) Oracle EBS R12
9 7 (0.32%) Oracle Receivables
9 7 (0.32%) Sage X3
9 7 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
10 6 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
10 6 (0.28%) SAP HCM
10 6 (0.28%) SAP SD
10 6 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 445 (20.58%) Azure
2 273 (12.63%) AWS
3 204 (9.44%) Power Platform
4 118 (5.46%) GCP
5 111 (5.13%) Azure DevOps
6 108 (5.00%) GitHub
7 69 (3.19%) Snowflake
8 60 (2.78%) GitHub Actions
9 58 (2.68%) Azure Data Factory
9 58 (2.68%) Entra ID
10 50 (2.31%) Serverless
11 49 (2.27%) SaaS
12 41 (1.90%) Amazon S3
13 39 (1.80%) OCI
14 36 (1.67%) dbt
14 36 (1.67%) Microsoft 365
15 35 (1.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 27 (1.25%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 24 (1.11%) SuccessFactors
18 23 (1.06%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 85 (3.93%) Firewall
2 58 (2.68%) Network Security
3 38 (1.76%) VLAN
4 37 (1.71%) DNS
5 31 (1.43%) TCP/IP
6 29 (1.34%) VPN
6 29 (1.34%) WAN
7 19 (0.88%) Ethernet
7 19 (0.88%) SAN
8 18 (0.83%) LAN
9 17 (0.79%) BGP
9 17 (0.79%) SD-WAN
10 16 (0.74%) OSPF
11 15 (0.69%) DHCP
11 15 (0.69%) Wireless
12 14 (0.65%) Internet
13 13 (0.60%) Wi-Fi
14 12 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
14 12 (0.56%) NAS
15 11 (0.51%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 188 (8.70%) Power BI
2 115 (5.32%) Data Warehouse
3 78 (3.61%) SQL Server
4 75 (3.47%) Metadata
5 65 (3.01%) Tableau
6 63 (2.91%) Data Lake
7 53 (2.45%) PostgreSQL
8 42 (1.94%) Relational Database
9 30 (1.39%) Big Data
10 28 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
10 28 (1.30%) Oracle Database
11 27 (1.25%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 25 (1.16%) NoSQL
13 23 (1.06%) BigQuery
13 23 (1.06%) Oracle Reports
14 22 (1.02%) Power Query
14 22 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 21 (0.97%) Delta Lake
16 20 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
17 17 (0.79%) SAS Visual Analytics
Development Applications
1 204 (9.44%) JIRA
2 118 (5.46%) Git
3 87 (4.02%) Jenkins
4 61 (2.82%) GitLab
5 53 (2.45%) Selenium
6 46 (2.13%) Postman
7 40 (1.85%) JMeter
8 35 (1.62%) JUnit
9 34 (1.57%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.39%) WebDriver
11 26 (1.20%) Rational DOORS
12 16 (0.74%) Eclipse
12 16 (0.74%) Rational Rhapsody
12 16 (0.74%) Visual Studio
13 15 (0.69%) MLflow
14 10 (0.46%) Gradle
14 10 (0.46%) Maven
14 10 (0.46%) REST Assured
15 9 (0.42%) Gatling
16 8 (0.37%) Bitbucket
General
1 650 (30.06%) Finance
2 642 (29.69%) Social Skills
3 393 (18.18%) Analytical Skills
4 182 (8.42%) Banking
5 180 (8.33%) Public Sector
6 120 (5.55%) Documentation Skills
7 67 (3.10%) Manufacturing
8 58 (2.68%) Aerospace
9 50 (2.31%) Retail
10 40 (1.85%) Organisational Skills
11 38 (1.76%) Pharmaceutical
11 38 (1.76%) Presentation Skills
12 35 (1.62%) Front Office
12 35 (1.62%) Marketing
13 34 (1.57%) General Ledger
14 33 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
14 33 (1.53%) Legal
15 32 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 30 (1.39%) Telecoms
17 29 (1.34%) Law
Job Titles
1 370 (17.11%) Analyst
2 224 (10.36%) Lead
3 202 (9.34%) Senior
4 176 (8.14%) Business Analyst
5 166 (7.68%) Data Engineer
6 150 (6.94%) Consultant
7 136 (6.29%) Architect
8 121 (5.60%) Developer
9 104 (4.81%) Data Analyst
10 75 (3.47%) Project Manager
11 62 (2.87%) Test Engineer
12 57 (2.64%) Tester
13 45 (2.08%) Software Engineer
14 44 (2.04%) Test Manager
15 40 (1.85%) Network Engineer
16 39 (1.80%) Security Engineer
16 39 (1.80%) Systems Engineer
17 38 (1.76%) Senior Analyst
18 36 (1.67%) Migration Engineer
19 35 (1.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (5.18%) REST
2 69 (3.19%) JSON
3 67 (3.10%) Kafka
4 53 (2.45%) Oracle Fusion
5 46 (2.13%) XML
6 44 (2.04%) OAuth
7 41 (1.90%) Middleware
8 40 (1.85%) PySpark
9 37 (1.71%) Swagger
10 36 (1.67%) .NET
11 35 (1.62%) RESTful
12 34 (1.57%) SOAP
13 33 (1.53%) Spring
14 32 (1.48%) Pandas
15 31 (1.43%) Web Services
16 30 (1.39%) pytest
17 29 (1.34%) Node.js
18 26 (1.20%) PyTorch
19 25 (1.16%) OAuth2
20 24 (1.11%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 123 (5.69%) Legacy Systems
2 103 (4.76%) Data Structures
3 101 (4.67%) Onboarding
4 90 (4.16%) Product Ownership
5 80 (3.70%) Cloud Native
6 63 (2.91%) Data Centre
7 49 (2.27%) Management Information System
8 43 (1.99%) Analytical Mindset
8 43 (1.99%) Distributed Systems
9 31 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
10 29 (1.34%) SCADA
11 27 (1.25%) Public Cloud
12 26 (1.20%) AI Agents
12 26 (1.20%) Algorithms
12 26 (1.20%) Life Science
12 26 (1.20%) Replication
13 24 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
13 24 (1.11%) Hybrid Cloud
13 24 (1.11%) Operational Technology
14 23 (1.06%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 115 (5.32%) Windows
2 80 (3.70%) Linux
3 28 (1.30%) Unix
4 19 (0.88%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.56%) Android
5 12 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.28%) VMS
6 6 (0.28%) Windows 10
7 4 (0.19%) Mac OS
7 4 (0.19%) SUSE
8 3 (0.14%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.093%) HPUX
9 2 (0.093%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.093%) VxWorks
9 2 (0.093%) Windows Server 2012
9 2 (0.093%) zOS
10 1 (0.046%) Debian
10 1 (0.046%) pSOS
10 1 (0.046%) Solaris
10 1 (0.046%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 588 (27.20%) Migration
2 412 (19.06%) Agile
3 374 (17.30%) Stakeholder Management
4 362 (16.74%) Data Validation
5 361 (16.70%) Problem-Solving
6 357 (16.51%) CI/CD
6 357 (16.51%) Data Migration
7 340 (15.73%) User Acceptance Testing
8 328 (15.17%) Analytics
9 325 (15.03%) Data Modelling
10 282 (13.04%) ETL
11 276 (12.77%) DevOps
12 262 (12.12%) AI
13 252 (11.66%) Test Automation
14 230 (10.64%) Business Intelligence
15 225 (10.41%) Continuous Improvement
16 223 (10.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 203 (9.39%) Data Governance
18 202 (9.34%) Data Analysis
19 197 (9.11%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 518 (23.96%) SQL
2 375 (17.35%) Python
3 108 (5.00%) Java
4 59 (2.73%) PowerShell
5 53 (2.45%) C#
6 41 (1.90%) C++
7 38 (1.76%) Bash
8 37 (1.71%) C
8 37 (1.71%) JavaScript
9 29 (1.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 28 (1.30%) Bicep
11 25 (1.16%) PL/SQL
11 25 (1.16%) TypeScript
12 24 (1.11%) Apex Code
13 23 (1.06%) R
14 22 (1.02%) Ada
15 17 (0.79%) Scala
16 15 (0.69%) MATLAB
17 14 (0.65%) VBA
18 12 (0.56%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 404 (18.69%) Security Cleared
2 292 (13.51%) SC Cleared
3 162 (7.49%) Degree
4 54 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 48 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
6 45 (2.08%) DV Cleared
7 28 (1.30%) PMI Certification
8 25 (1.16%) Cisco Certification
9 22 (1.02%) PMP
10 21 (0.97%) Master's Degree
11 20 (0.93%) CCNP
12 17 (0.79%) ACCA
13 16 (0.74%) CISSP
13 16 (0.74%) ISTQB
14 15 (0.69%) CIMA
14 15 (0.69%) Microsoft Certification
15 13 (0.60%) Azure Certification
16 12 (0.56%) AWS Certification
17 9 (0.42%) CCNA
18 8 (0.37%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 372 (17.21%) Data Quality
2 253 (11.70%) QA
3 105 (4.86%) GDPR
4 62 (2.87%) NIST
5 52 (2.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 31 (1.43%) Accessibility
7 27 (1.25%) IFRS
8 26 (1.20%) PMO
9 25 (1.16%) SLA
10 19 (0.88%) GRC
11 18 (0.83%) IFRS 17
12 17 (0.79%) Def Stans
12 17 (0.79%) GxP
13 14 (0.65%) HL7
14 13 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
14 13 (0.60%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 12 (0.56%) NIST 800
15 12 (0.56%) Solvency II
16 11 (0.51%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 93 (4.30%) Docker
2 52 (2.41%) Active Directory
3 44 (2.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (0.83%) Firmware
6 14 (0.65%) Hyper-V
7 13 (0.60%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (0.60%) VMware NSX
8 9 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (0.37%) vSphere
10 5 (0.23%) NFS
11 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 2 (0.093%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.093%) KVM
12 2 (0.093%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.093%) VirtualBox
12 2 (0.093%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.046%) etcd
13 1 (0.046%) OpenSSH
13 1 (0.046%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 135 (6.24%) Kubernetes
2 95 (4.39%) Terraform
3 49 (2.27%) Prometheus
4 44 (2.04%) Grafana
5 40 (1.85%) Ansible
6 26 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (0.56%) FortiGate
9 9 (0.42%) Kibana
10 8 (0.37%) Puppet
10 8 (0.37%) SCCM
10 8 (0.37%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.28%) Nessus
12 5 (0.23%) vMotion
12 5 (0.23%) VxRail
13 4 (0.19%) Argo
13 4 (0.19%) CASB
13 4 (0.19%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.19%) Istio
Vendors
1 291 (13.46%) Microsoft
2 192 (8.88%) SAP
3 189 (8.74%) Oracle
4 105 (4.86%) Databricks
5 76 (3.52%) Salesforce
6 60 (2.78%) ServiceNow
7 54 (2.50%) VMware
8 44 (2.04%) Cisco
9 42 (1.94%) Splunk
10 34 (1.57%) Google
11 30 (1.39%) Informatica
11 30 (1.39%) Workday
12 26 (1.20%) Sage
13 24 (1.11%) MuleSoft
13 24 (1.11%) Palo Alto
14 21 (0.97%) IFS
15 20 (0.93%) IBM
16 19 (0.88%) CyberArk
16 19 (0.88%) Fortinet
17 16 (0.74%) CheckPoint