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 29 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 83 117
Rank change year-on-year +39 +34 +25
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,899 739 710
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.72% 3.04% 1.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.55% 3.34% 2.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,177 445 369
10th Percentile £321 £353 £313
25th Percentile £400 £419 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £538 £500
Median % change year-on-year -10.51% +7.50% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £600
90th Percentile £700 £715 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £528 £525
% change year-on-year -9.95% +0.48% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 49 153
10th Percentile £17.75 £25.24 £24.19
25th Percentile £50.94 £47.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.75 £61.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.55% -5.33% -1.61%
75th Percentile £71.75 £65.00 £75.16
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £86.40
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -4.17% -4.08%

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 34,200 22,151 32,000
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.97% 91.14% 86.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,858 14,510 20,977
10th Percentile £318 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.48% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £617 £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 2,144 918 2,231
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.74 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £44.00 £30.45 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +44.50% -14.23% -5.33%
75th Percentile £67.31 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £40.66 £29.07 £35.00
% change year-on-year +39.87% -16.94% -6.17%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +61 908 £500 -9.09% 229
North of England +37 254 £435 -8.42% 98
South East -5 223 £490 -2.00% 182
Midlands +31 222 £475 - 81
West Midlands +33 163 £475 - 51
North West +26 154 £413 -5.71% 57
South West -1 119 £475 -17.39% 82
East of England +8 115 £475 +5.56% 72
Yorkshire +14 90 £454 +2.14% 30
East Midlands -2 55 £525 +14.38% 30
North East -7 13 £450 -37.93% 13
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 76 (4.00%) Confluence
2 39 (2.05%) Apache Airflow
3 38 (2.00%) Apache Spark
4 31 (1.63%) SAS
5 17 (0.90%) Apache
6 13 (0.68%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.47%) Appian
7 9 (0.47%) Jupyter
7 9 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
8 8 (0.42%) ArcGIS
9 7 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
10 6 (0.32%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 5 (0.26%) CMS
12 4 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 3 (0.16%) CICS
13 3 (0.16%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.16%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.11%) Documentum
14 2 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 2 (0.11%) WebLogic
Applications
1 127 (6.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (1.58%) MS Visio
3 25 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
4 17 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 17 (0.90%) Spreadsheet
5 12 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (0.42%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.16%) CATIA
7 3 (0.16%) LaTeX
7 3 (0.16%) Notion
8 2 (0.11%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.11%) EPLAN
8 2 (0.11%) Sketch
9 1 (0.053%) Autodesk Inventor
9 1 (0.053%) CANalyzer
9 1 (0.053%) MicroStation
9 1 (0.053%) OrCAD
9 1 (0.053%) UXPin
9 1 (0.053%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 87 (4.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (1.79%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.79%) Oracle General Ledger
4 13 (0.68%) Oracle Payables
5 12 (0.63%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.63%) Teamcenter
5 12 (0.63%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.53%) Oracle Assets
7 9 (0.47%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.42%) Oracle EBS R12
9 7 (0.37%) Aladdin
9 7 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
10 6 (0.32%) NetSuite
10 6 (0.32%) Oracle Financials
10 6 (0.32%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 6 (0.32%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.32%) SAP ERP
11 5 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
11 5 (0.26%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 418 (22.01%) Azure
2 228 (12.01%) AWS
3 191 (10.06%) Power Platform
4 116 (6.11%) Azure DevOps
5 100 (5.27%) GCP
6 81 (4.27%) GitHub
7 54 (2.84%) Azure Data Factory
8 49 (2.58%) Serverless
9 48 (2.53%) Entra ID
10 46 (2.42%) OCI
10 46 (2.42%) Snowflake
11 43 (2.26%) SaaS
12 40 (2.11%) GitHub Actions
13 39 (2.05%) Amazon S3
14 34 (1.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 30 (1.58%) Microsoft 365
16 28 (1.47%) dbt
17 23 (1.21%) AWS Lambda
18 22 (1.16%) SuccessFactors
19 19 (1.00%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 78 (4.11%) Firewall
2 53 (2.79%) Network Security
3 34 (1.79%) VLAN
4 33 (1.74%) TCP/IP
5 24 (1.26%) DNS
5 24 (1.26%) VPN
6 22 (1.16%) WAN
7 21 (1.11%) Ethernet
8 17 (0.90%) SAN
9 15 (0.79%) LAN
10 13 (0.68%) BGP
10 13 (0.68%) NAS
10 13 (0.68%) OSPF
10 13 (0.68%) Wireless
11 12 (0.63%) SD-WAN
12 11 (0.58%) Cisco ISE
13 10 (0.53%) TACACS
13 10 (0.53%) Wi-Fi
14 8 (0.42%) HTTP
14 8 (0.42%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 179 (9.43%) Power BI
2 107 (5.63%) Data Warehouse
3 90 (4.74%) Metadata
4 70 (3.69%) Tableau
5 61 (3.21%) SQL Server
6 46 (2.42%) Data Lake
7 39 (2.05%) PostgreSQL
8 30 (1.58%) Relational Database
9 28 (1.47%) Oracle Reports
10 27 (1.42%) Amazon Redshift
10 27 (1.42%) Big Data
11 25 (1.32%) NoSQL
12 22 (1.16%) Delta Lake
12 22 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 20 (1.05%) Oracle Database
14 18 (0.95%) Azure SQL Database
14 18 (0.95%) BigQuery
14 18 (0.95%) Pinecone
14 18 (0.95%) Power Query
15 16 (0.84%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 184 (9.69%) JIRA
2 110 (5.79%) Git
3 67 (3.53%) Jenkins
4 56 (2.95%) Selenium
5 44 (2.32%) GitLab
6 39 (2.05%) Postman
7 31 (1.63%) Cucumber
7 31 (1.63%) JUnit
8 29 (1.53%) JMeter
9 26 (1.37%) WebDriver
10 23 (1.21%) Rational DOORS
11 19 (1.00%) Oracle APEX
12 17 (0.90%) Visual Studio
13 15 (0.79%) MLflow
14 14 (0.74%) Eclipse
15 13 (0.68%) Bitbucket
16 12 (0.63%) REST Assured
17 10 (0.53%) Rational Rhapsody
17 10 (0.53%) SpecFlow
18 9 (0.47%) Gatling
General
1 625 (32.91%) Social Skills
2 586 (30.86%) Finance
3 383 (20.17%) Analytical Skills
4 166 (8.74%) Banking
5 158 (8.32%) Public Sector
6 106 (5.58%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.74%) Manufacturing
8 47 (2.47%) Presentation Skills
9 46 (2.42%) Aerospace
10 41 (2.16%) Organisational Skills
11 39 (2.05%) Retail
12 35 (1.84%) Marketing
13 32 (1.69%) Pharmaceutical
14 31 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
14 31 (1.63%) Legal
15 30 (1.58%) Financial Institution
15 30 (1.58%) Front Office
16 28 (1.47%) Electronics
16 28 (1.47%) General Ledger
16 28 (1.47%) Military
Job Titles
1 364 (19.17%) Analyst
2 188 (9.90%) Lead
3 180 (9.48%) Senior
4 163 (8.58%) Business Analyst
5 145 (7.64%) Data Engineer
6 122 (6.42%) Consultant
7 120 (6.32%) Architect
8 116 (6.11%) Developer
9 101 (5.32%) Data Analyst
10 72 (3.79%) Project Manager
11 50 (2.63%) Tester
12 43 (2.26%) Senior Analyst
13 42 (2.21%) Software Engineer
14 41 (2.16%) Test Engineer
15 39 (2.05%) Test Manager
16 38 (2.00%) Network Engineer
17 35 (1.84%) Systems Engineer
18 34 (1.79%) Security Engineer
18 34 (1.79%) Test Analyst
19 33 (1.74%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 107 (5.63%) REST
2 67 (3.53%) JSON
2 67 (3.53%) Kafka
3 59 (3.11%) Oracle Fusion
4 48 (2.53%) Middleware
5 40 (2.11%) OAuth
5 40 (2.11%) XML
6 38 (2.00%) Node.js
7 37 (1.95%) PySpark
8 34 (1.79%) Swagger
9 32 (1.69%) .NET
10 30 (1.58%) SOAP
10 30 (1.58%) Web Services
11 29 (1.53%) Pandas
11 29 (1.53%) PyTorch
12 27 (1.42%) Playwright
12 27 (1.42%) RESTful
13 26 (1.37%) OpenAPI
13 26 (1.37%) TensorFlow
14 24 (1.26%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 113 (5.95%) Legacy Systems
2 100 (5.27%) Data Structures
3 85 (4.48%) Onboarding
4 79 (4.16%) Product Ownership
5 52 (2.74%) Data Centre
6 51 (2.69%) Cloud Native
7 46 (2.42%) Management Information System
8 35 (1.84%) Distributed Systems
9 33 (1.74%) Analytical Mindset
10 27 (1.42%) Data Protection Act
11 25 (1.32%) Replication
12 24 (1.26%) Hybrid Cloud
13 23 (1.21%) Public Cloud
14 22 (1.16%) Algorithms
15 21 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
16 20 (1.05%) Reference Data
17 19 (1.00%) Virtual Team
18 18 (0.95%) Derivative
19 17 (0.90%) Credit Risk
20 16 (0.84%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 95 (5.00%) Windows
2 80 (4.21%) Linux
3 27 (1.42%) Unix
4 11 (0.58%) Android
5 9 (0.47%) Windows Server
6 7 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.32%) zOS
8 4 (0.21%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.21%) SUSE
8 4 (0.21%) VMS
9 3 (0.16%) Apple iOS
9 3 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
9 3 (0.16%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.11%) Debian
11 1 (0.053%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.053%) HPUX
11 1 (0.053%) pSOS
11 1 (0.053%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 502 (26.43%) Migration
2 407 (21.43%) Agile
3 366 (19.27%) Problem-Solving
4 336 (17.69%) Stakeholder Management
5 326 (17.17%) Data Validation
6 304 (16.01%) Data Migration
7 299 (15.75%) Analytics
8 289 (15.22%) CI/CD
9 284 (14.96%) Data Modelling
10 274 (14.43%) User Acceptance Testing
11 261 (13.74%) ETL
12 259 (13.64%) DevOps
13 227 (11.95%) Business Intelligence
14 218 (11.48%) Test Automation
15 203 (10.69%) AI
16 197 (10.37%) Continuous Improvement
17 194 (10.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 188 (9.90%) Data Governance
19 170 (8.95%) Data Analysis
19 170 (8.95%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 487 (25.65%) SQL
2 349 (18.38%) Python
3 98 (5.16%) Java
4 62 (3.26%) JavaScript
5 61 (3.21%) C#
6 51 (2.69%) C++
7 44 (2.32%) PL/SQL
8 41 (2.16%) C
9 37 (1.95%) PowerShell
10 31 (1.63%) R
11 29 (1.53%) Bash
12 26 (1.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 26 (1.37%) TypeScript
13 21 (1.11%) Bicep
14 20 (1.05%) Ada
15 17 (0.90%) Scala
16 12 (0.63%) VBA
17 11 (0.58%) Apex Code
17 11 (0.58%) MATLAB
18 10 (0.53%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 370 (19.48%) Security Cleared
2 266 (14.01%) SC Cleared
3 160 (8.43%) Degree
4 48 (2.53%) BPSS Clearance
5 47 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 32 (1.69%) DV Cleared
6 32 (1.69%) PMI Certification
7 30 (1.58%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.47%) PMP
9 23 (1.21%) ISTQB
10 21 (1.11%) Cisco Certification
11 18 (0.95%) CCNP
12 14 (0.74%) CBAP
12 14 (0.74%) CISSP
13 13 (0.68%) Azure Certification
14 12 (0.63%) Microsoft Certification
15 11 (0.58%) AWS Certification
16 9 (0.47%) ACCA
16 9 (0.47%) CCNA
17 7 (0.37%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 323 (17.01%) Data Quality
2 242 (12.74%) QA
3 107 (5.63%) GDPR
4 64 (3.37%) NIST
5 56 (2.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 24 (1.26%) Accessibility
7 22 (1.16%) IFRS
7 22 (1.16%) SLA
8 20 (1.05%) PMO
9 19 (1.00%) IFRS 17
10 18 (0.95%) GRC
11 16 (0.84%) Def Stans
12 14 (0.74%) HL7
13 13 (0.68%) GxP
13 13 (0.68%) PCI DSS
14 12 (0.63%) COBIT
14 12 (0.63%) NCSC
15 11 (0.58%) MiFID
15 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 10 (0.53%) GMP
System Software
1 74 (3.90%) Docker
2 37 (1.95%) Active Directory
3 35 (1.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.32%) Firmware
5 14 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.58%) VMware NSX
7 10 (0.53%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (0.32%) vSphere
10 5 (0.26%) NFS
11 4 (0.21%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.16%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.16%) Embedded Firmware
13 2 (0.11%) Ceph
13 2 (0.11%) KVM
13 2 (0.11%) Lustre
13 2 (0.11%) OpenAM
13 2 (0.11%) OpenIDM
13 2 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 110 (5.79%) Kubernetes
2 81 (4.27%) Terraform
3 34 (1.79%) Prometheus
4 33 (1.74%) Ansible
5 32 (1.69%) Grafana
6 27 (1.42%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (0.53%) FortiGate
8 10 (0.53%) Kibana
9 9 (0.47%) Puppet
10 8 (0.42%) SCCM
11 6 (0.32%) Nessus
12 5 (0.26%) CASB
12 5 (0.26%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.26%) vMotion
13 4 (0.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 4 (0.21%) EMC NetWorker
13 4 (0.21%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.21%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.21%) VxRail
Vendors
1 254 (13.38%) Microsoft
2 182 (9.58%) Oracle
3 156 (8.21%) SAP
4 89 (4.69%) Databricks
5 68 (3.58%) ServiceNow
6 55 (2.90%) Salesforce
7 43 (2.26%) Cisco
7 43 (2.26%) VMware
8 38 (2.00%) Splunk
9 34 (1.79%) Google
10 30 (1.58%) Informatica
11 27 (1.42%) Sage
12 26 (1.37%) Workday
13 25 (1.32%) Palo Alto
14 23 (1.21%) MuleSoft
15 21 (1.11%) IBM
16 20 (1.05%) CyberArk
17 16 (0.84%) CheckPoint
17 16 (0.84%) IFS
17 16 (0.84%) OpenAI