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

6 months to
27 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 109 126
Rank change year-on-year +56 +17 +5
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,351 604 738
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.15% 2.30% 1.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.72% 2.57% 2.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 822 319 419
10th Percentile £350 £337 £315
25th Percentile £406 £408 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £613 £618 £613
90th Percentile £700 £721 £734
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £538
% change year-on-year -3.85% -3.26% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 39 137
10th Percentile £31.53 £28.45 £31.01
25th Percentile £42.78 £47.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.75 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +12.55% -12.47% +5.29%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £77.50
90th Percentile £74.50 £66.30 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.75 £65.98
% change year-on-year +12.55% -12.47% +5.29%

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 28,613 23,512 33,042
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.89% 89.45% 87.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,292 14,362 22,132
10th Percentile £305 £310 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £642 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,780 759 1,832
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £13.99
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.00 £17.05
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.03% -6.85% +4.92%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £36.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -9.72% +12.50%

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 27 January 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 27 January 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 27 January 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 +81 635 £513 -2.84% 219
North of England +26 181 £419 -7.00% 170
South East +15 162 £500 - 317
North West +20 117 £400 -3.03% 71
South West +14 116 £475 -17.82% 151
Midlands +11 114 £515 +7.01% 159
East of England +19 94 £482 +20.44% 156
West Midlands +13 94 £515 +5.64% 81
Yorkshire -4 51 £487 -0.10% 78
East Midlands -12 20 £475 +58.33% 74
North East -5 15 £463 -36.21% 22
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 52 (3.85%) Confluence
2 31 (2.29%) SAS
3 29 (2.15%) SharePoint
4 28 (2.07%) Apache Spark
5 23 (1.70%) Apache Airflow
6 19 (1.41%) Microsoft Exchange
7 14 (1.04%) Skype for Business
8 12 (0.89%) Apache
9 9 (0.67%) Exchange Server 2013
10 8 (0.59%) CMS
11 7 (0.52%) Appian
11 7 (0.52%) Mattermost
12 6 (0.44%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 4 (0.30%) Anypoint
13 4 (0.30%) Jupyter
13 4 (0.30%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
14 3 (0.22%) ArcGIS
14 3 (0.22%) GeoServer
14 3 (0.22%) Smallworld
Applications
1 71 (5.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 38 (2.81%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.70%) MS Visio
4 13 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.52%) Chatbot
5 7 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
6 6 (0.44%) Sketch
7 4 (0.30%) Notion
7 4 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
8 3 (0.22%) LaTeX
9 2 (0.15%) Simulink
10 1 (0.074%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.074%) CATIA
10 1 (0.074%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.074%) Siemens NX
10 1 (0.074%) Stateflow
10 1 (0.074%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 65 (4.81%) SAP S/4HANA
2 15 (1.11%) Oracle EBS
3 11 (0.81%) Oracle General Ledger
3 11 (0.81%) Oracle Payables
3 11 (0.81%) SAP EHS
4 10 (0.74%) SAP FI
5 9 (0.67%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
6 8 (0.59%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 8 (0.59%) Oracle Receivables
6 8 (0.59%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 7 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
7 7 (0.52%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.52%) OpenText VIM for SAP
7 7 (0.52%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.44%) Markit EDM
8 6 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
8 6 (0.44%) SAP MM
9 5 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
10 4 (0.30%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 315 (23.32%) Azure
2 156 (11.55%) AWS
3 122 (9.03%) Azure DevOps
4 110 (8.14%) Power Platform
5 57 (4.22%) GCP
6 54 (4.00%) GitHub
7 52 (3.85%) Entra ID
8 46 (3.40%) SaaS
9 37 (2.74%) Serverless
10 35 (2.59%) Azure Data Factory
11 30 (2.22%) GitHub Actions
12 29 (2.15%) Snowflake
13 28 (2.07%) OCI
14 27 (2.00%) Microsoft 365
15 24 (1.78%) OpenShift
16 19 (1.41%) Amazon S3
17 18 (1.33%) Dynamics 365
18 17 (1.26%) AWS Lambda
18 17 (1.26%) PaaS
19 16 (1.18%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 37 (2.74%) Firewall
2 26 (1.92%) TCP/IP
3 21 (1.55%) Network Security
4 19 (1.41%) Ethernet
5 18 (1.33%) WAN
6 16 (1.18%) VPN
7 14 (1.04%) Skype
7 14 (1.04%) VLAN
8 13 (0.96%) BGP
9 12 (0.89%) LAN
9 12 (0.89%) MPLS
9 12 (0.89%) OSPF
9 12 (0.89%) Wireless
10 11 (0.81%) DNS
10 11 (0.81%) TACACS
11 9 (0.67%) SD-WAN
12 8 (0.59%) SNMP
13 7 (0.52%) HTTP
14 6 (0.44%) Cisco ISE
14 6 (0.44%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 103 (7.62%) Power BI
2 60 (4.44%) Metadata
3 55 (4.07%) Data Warehouse
4 37 (2.74%) Tableau
5 35 (2.59%) SQL Server
6 28 (2.07%) Data Lake
7 25 (1.85%) NoSQL
8 21 (1.55%) SAS Enterprise Guide
9 18 (1.33%) Relational Database
10 16 (1.18%) Oracle Database
11 15 (1.11%) Oracle Reports
11 15 (1.11%) Pinecone
12 14 (1.04%) Amazon Redshift
12 14 (1.04%) Big Data
12 14 (1.04%) Elasticsearch
13 13 (0.96%) Azure SQL Database
14 12 (0.89%) Delta Lake
14 12 (0.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 11 (0.81%) BigQuery
16 10 (0.74%) Looker
Development Applications
1 145 (10.73%) JIRA
2 66 (4.89%) Jenkins
3 62 (4.59%) Git
4 39 (2.89%) GitLab
5 37 (2.74%) Postman
6 36 (2.66%) Selenium
7 32 (2.37%) Oracle APEX
8 23 (1.70%) Rational DOORS
9 19 (1.41%) Visual Studio
10 15 (1.11%) JMeter
11 13 (0.96%) Eclipse
11 13 (0.96%) TestRail
12 12 (0.89%) Cucumber
13 11 (0.81%) MLflow
14 10 (0.74%) Bitbucket
14 10 (0.74%) JUnit
14 10 (0.74%) Zephyr
15 9 (0.67%) REST Assured
16 7 (0.52%) SpecFlow
17 6 (0.44%) Cypress.io
General
1 515 (38.12%) Social Skills
2 380 (28.13%) Finance
3 290 (21.47%) Analytical Skills
4 127 (9.40%) Public Sector
5 115 (8.51%) Banking
6 70 (5.18%) Documentation Skills
7 49 (3.63%) Presentation Skills
8 29 (2.15%) Aerospace
8 29 (2.15%) Influencing Skills
8 29 (2.15%) Telecoms
9 28 (2.07%) Manufacturing
9 28 (2.07%) Marketing
10 27 (2.00%) Electronics
10 27 (2.00%) Front Office
10 27 (2.00%) Military
11 23 (1.70%) Investment Banking
12 22 (1.63%) Pharmaceutical
13 21 (1.55%) Financial Institution
14 19 (1.41%) Legal
15 17 (1.26%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 267 (19.76%) Analyst
2 142 (10.51%) Senior
3 120 (8.88%) Business Analyst
4 117 (8.66%) Lead
5 104 (7.70%) Consultant
6 102 (7.55%) Developer
7 74 (5.48%) Architect
8 62 (4.59%) Data Analyst
9 56 (4.15%) Data Engineer
10 50 (3.70%) Software Engineer
11 41 (3.03%) Project Manager
12 40 (2.96%) Tester
13 34 (2.52%) Senior Analyst
13 34 (2.52%) Senior Developer
14 33 (2.44%) SAP Consultant
15 32 (2.37%) Test Manager
16 30 (2.22%) Test Analyst
17 26 (1.92%) Data Scientist
17 26 (1.92%) Solutions Architect
18 25 (1.85%) QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 89 (6.59%) REST
2 56 (4.15%) JSON
3 47 (3.48%) Oracle Fusion
3 47 (3.48%) XML
4 41 (3.03%) OAuth
5 38 (2.81%) Middleware
6 37 (2.74%) SOAP
7 31 (2.29%) Node.js
8 27 (2.00%) .NET
8 27 (2.00%) Kafka
8 27 (2.00%) PyTorch
8 27 (2.00%) RESTful
9 26 (1.92%) PySpark
9 26 (1.92%) Swagger
9 26 (1.92%) Web Services
10 24 (1.78%) TensorFlow
11 21 (1.55%) JWT
11 21 (1.55%) Playwright
11 21 (1.55%) SAML
12 20 (1.48%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 76 (5.63%) Legacy Systems
2 55 (4.07%) Data Structures
3 53 (3.92%) Product Ownership
4 49 (3.63%) Onboarding
5 39 (2.89%) Management Information System
6 37 (2.74%) Cloud Native
7 25 (1.85%) Analytical Mindset
7 25 (1.85%) Data Centre
8 24 (1.78%) Algorithms
9 22 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
10 19 (1.41%) Derivative
11 18 (1.33%) FPGA
12 16 (1.18%) Replication
13 14 (1.04%) Credit Risk
14 12 (0.89%) Distributed Systems
14 12 (0.89%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 12 (0.89%) Security Posture
15 11 (0.81%) Enterprise Software
15 11 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
15 11 (0.81%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 86 (6.37%) Linux
2 72 (5.33%) Windows
3 29 (2.15%) Unix
4 11 (0.81%) Android
5 5 (0.37%) Windows Server
5 5 (0.37%) zOS
6 4 (0.30%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.22%) Embedded Linux
8 2 (0.15%) Debian
8 2 (0.15%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.15%) Robot Operating System
9 1 (0.074%) FreeRTOS
9 1 (0.074%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.074%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 385 (28.50%) Agile
2 321 (23.76%) Problem-Solving
3 297 (21.98%) Migration
4 260 (19.25%) DevOps
5 233 (17.25%) Stakeholder Management
6 223 (16.51%) CI/CD
7 216 (15.99%) Data Validation
8 202 (14.95%) Analytics
9 165 (12.21%) Test Automation
10 164 (12.14%) User Acceptance Testing
11 159 (11.77%) Data Modelling
12 155 (11.47%) Data Migration
13 149 (11.03%) AI
14 142 (10.51%) ETL
15 140 (10.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 133 (9.84%) Business Intelligence
17 122 (9.03%) Data Governance
18 118 (8.73%) Continuous Improvement
19 115 (8.51%) Data Analysis
20 110 (8.14%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 347 (25.68%) SQL
2 294 (21.76%) Python
3 93 (6.88%) JavaScript
4 79 (5.85%) Java
5 57 (4.22%) C#
6 50 (3.70%) PL/SQL
7 46 (3.40%) C++
8 44 (3.26%) Bash
9 40 (2.96%) PowerShell
10 36 (2.66%) C
11 24 (1.78%) TypeScript
12 23 (1.70%) R
13 16 (1.18%) Groovy
14 14 (1.04%) Ada
14 14 (1.04%) Shell Script
15 12 (0.89%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 12 (0.89%) Scala
16 10 (0.74%) Bicep
16 10 (0.74%) T-SQL
17 9 (0.67%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 291 (21.54%) Security Cleared
2 212 (15.69%) SC Cleared
3 137 (10.14%) Degree
4 55 (4.07%) Computer Science Degree
5 37 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
6 35 (2.59%) DV Cleared
7 34 (2.52%) Master's Degree
8 26 (1.92%) ISTQB
8 26 (1.92%) PMI Certification
9 20 (1.48%) AWS Certification
10 19 (1.41%) PMP
11 15 (1.11%) CBAP
12 14 (1.04%) Cisco Certification
13 13 (0.96%) Oracle Certification
14 10 (0.74%) Azure Certification
14 10 (0.74%) CCIE
15 9 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
15 9 (0.67%) OCA
16 8 (0.59%) CCNP
16 8 (0.59%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 170 (12.58%) QA
2 168 (12.44%) Data Quality
3 79 (5.85%) GDPR
4 57 (4.22%) NIST
5 37 (2.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 28 (2.07%) Accessibility
7 19 (1.41%) IFRS
8 16 (1.18%) IFRS 17
9 14 (1.04%) Def Stans
10 13 (0.96%) EU AI Act
11 12 (0.89%) PCI DSS
12 11 (0.81%) GxP
12 11 (0.81%) NCSC
13 10 (0.74%) MiFID
13 10 (0.74%) MISRA
14 9 (0.67%) DO-178B
14 9 (0.67%) GRC
15 8 (0.59%) COBIT
15 8 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 7 (0.52%) PMO
System Software
1 55 (4.07%) Docker
2 42 (3.11%) Active Directory
3 23 (1.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (1.55%) Firmware
5 11 (0.81%) VMware NSX
6 7 (0.52%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 4 (0.30%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 4 (0.30%) Embedded Firmware
8 4 (0.30%) vSphere
9 3 (0.22%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.22%) KVM
9 3 (0.22%) QEMU
10 2 (0.15%) Ceph
10 2 (0.15%) Lustre
10 2 (0.15%) OpenAM
10 2 (0.15%) OpenDJ
10 2 (0.15%) OpenIDM
10 2 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 1 (0.074%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 72 (5.33%) Kubernetes
2 61 (4.52%) Terraform
3 46 (3.40%) Ansible
4 21 (1.55%) Single Sign-On
5 15 (1.11%) Microsoft Intune
6 14 (1.04%) Kibana
6 14 (1.04%) Puppet
7 10 (0.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 10 (0.74%) SCCM
8 9 (0.67%) Grafana
9 7 (0.52%) HP SiteScope
9 7 (0.52%) Nmap
9 7 (0.52%) SCOM
10 6 (0.44%) Nessus
11 4 (0.30%) Prometheus
12 3 (0.22%) Argo
12 3 (0.22%) CloudHub
12 3 (0.22%) FortiGate
12 3 (0.22%) Iperf
12 3 (0.22%) Istio
Vendors
1 191 (14.14%) Microsoft
2 145 (10.73%) Oracle
3 105 (7.77%) SAP
4 57 (4.22%) ServiceNow
5 48 (3.55%) Databricks
6 41 (3.03%) Cisco
7 36 (2.66%) Splunk
8 34 (2.52%) Salesforce
9 33 (2.44%) Google
10 28 (2.07%) VMware
11 19 (1.41%) Workday
12 18 (1.33%) IBM
12 18 (1.33%) MuleSoft
12 18 (1.33%) Murex
13 16 (1.18%) Palo Alto
14 14 (1.04%) Informatica
15 13 (0.96%) Sage
16 12 (0.89%) Adobe
16 12 (0.89%) Bloomberg
16 12 (0.89%) Fortinet