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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 34 71 109
Rank change year-on-year +37 +38 +39
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,252 887 760
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.24% 3.58% 2.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.15% 3.91% 2.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,375 551 375
10th Percentile £325 £356 £322
25th Percentile £410 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% +7.50% -13.04%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £588
90th Percentile £710 £715 £672
UK median daily rate £500 £530 £500
% change year-on-year -5.66% +6.00% -10.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 152 58 177
10th Percentile £17.75 £17.70 £27.55
25th Percentile £32.32 £38.93 £48.00
Median hourly rate £62.82 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.70% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £75.25 £70.63 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.68 £77.50 £76.86
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £57.63 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.12% -3.96% -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 36,618 22,657 32,179
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.18% 91.33% 85.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,120 14,657 20,816
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £415 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.23% -1.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £727 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.46% -3.79% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,297 1,070 2,391
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.11 £16.04
Median hourly rate £47.00 £27.40 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +71.53% -26.93% +5.19%
75th Percentile £68.00 £57.19 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £37.18
% change year-on-year +67.72% -29.51% +6.14%

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 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 18 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 18 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 +49 1,066 £513 -6.82% 245
North of England +44 312 £449 -0.33% 131
Midlands +34 272 £492 +9.39% 94
South East +1 267 £500 -0.50% 236
West Midlands +31 198 £481 +15.96% 53
North West +32 178 £440 -0.85% 60
South West +8 138 £500 -13.04% 104
East of England +12 131 £500 - 75
Yorkshire +21 118 £460 +5.75% 46
East Midlands +17 69 £525 +15.51% 41
North East -20 19 £425 -22.73% 27
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 79 (3.51%) Confluence
2 59 (2.62%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (2.00%) SAS
4 42 (1.87%) Apache Spark
5 34 (1.51%) SharePoint
6 22 (0.98%) Apache
7 15 (0.67%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.40%) Appian
8 9 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
9 8 (0.36%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.27%) ArcGIS
11 6 (0.27%) CMS
12 5 (0.22%) Tuxedo
13 3 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
13 3 (0.13%) IIS
13 3 (0.13%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
13 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.089%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 150 (6.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.42%) MS Visio
3 28 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
4 24 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.93%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
7 5 (0.22%) AutoCAD
7 5 (0.22%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.18%) Simulink
9 3 (0.13%) CATIA
9 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.089%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.089%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.089%) Sketch
11 1 (0.044%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.044%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.044%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.044%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.044%) UXPin
11 1 (0.044%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 111 (4.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (1.42%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.67%) Oracle Payables
3 15 (0.67%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.62%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.53%) Oracle General Ledger
5 12 (0.53%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
6 10 (0.44%) SAP ERP
7 8 (0.36%) Aladdin
8 7 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
8 7 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
8 7 (0.31%) Oracle Financials
8 7 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
8 7 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.31%) Sage X3
8 7 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
8 7 (0.31%) Unit4 Business World
9 6 (0.27%) SAP Business One
9 6 (0.27%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 467 (20.74%) Azure
2 280 (12.43%) AWS
3 211 (9.37%) Power Platform
4 121 (5.37%) GCP
5 116 (5.15%) Azure DevOps
6 108 (4.80%) GitHub
7 73 (3.24%) Snowflake
8 61 (2.71%) Entra ID
9 60 (2.66%) GitHub Actions
10 58 (2.58%) Azure Data Factory
11 56 (2.49%) Serverless
12 46 (2.04%) SaaS
13 43 (1.91%) Amazon S3
14 40 (1.78%) OCI
15 39 (1.73%) Microsoft 365
16 36 (1.60%) dbt
17 35 (1.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 29 (1.29%) SuccessFactors
19 28 (1.24%) Salesforce Service Cloud
20 24 (1.07%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 93 (4.13%) Firewall
2 62 (2.75%) Network Security
3 40 (1.78%) VLAN
4 38 (1.69%) DNS
5 37 (1.64%) WAN
6 31 (1.38%) TCP/IP
6 31 (1.38%) VPN
7 25 (1.11%) BGP
8 22 (0.98%) LAN
9 21 (0.93%) Wireless
10 20 (0.89%) SAN
10 20 (0.89%) SD-WAN
11 19 (0.84%) Ethernet
12 18 (0.80%) OSPF
13 17 (0.75%) Internet
14 15 (0.67%) DHCP
14 15 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
15 13 (0.58%) Cisco ISE
16 12 (0.53%) NAS
16 12 (0.53%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 197 (8.75%) Power BI
2 119 (5.28%) Data Warehouse
3 80 (3.55%) Metadata
4 79 (3.51%) SQL Server
5 67 (2.98%) Tableau
6 65 (2.89%) PostgreSQL
7 62 (2.75%) Data Lake
8 51 (2.26%) Relational Database
9 33 (1.47%) Big Data
10 28 (1.24%) Amazon Redshift
10 28 (1.24%) Oracle Database
11 27 (1.20%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 24 (1.07%) BigQuery
12 24 (1.07%) NoSQL
12 24 (1.07%) Oracle Reports
13 23 (1.02%) Power Query
13 23 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 19 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
14 19 (0.84%) Delta Lake
15 17 (0.75%) SAS Visual Analytics
Development Applications
1 215 (9.55%) JIRA
2 130 (5.77%) Git
3 90 (4.00%) Jenkins
4 66 (2.93%) GitLab
5 53 (2.35%) Selenium
6 42 (1.87%) Postman
7 40 (1.78%) JMeter
8 36 (1.60%) JUnit
9 35 (1.55%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.33%) WebDriver
11 25 (1.11%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.80%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.71%) Rational Rhapsody
13 16 (0.71%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.67%) MLflow
15 14 (0.62%) Gatling
16 10 (0.44%) Gradle
16 10 (0.44%) Maven
16 10 (0.44%) REST Assured
17 8 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 678 (30.11%) Finance
2 661 (29.35%) Social Skills
3 409 (18.16%) Analytical Skills
4 186 (8.26%) Public Sector
5 180 (7.99%) Banking
6 127 (5.64%) Documentation Skills
7 66 (2.93%) Manufacturing
8 63 (2.80%) Aerospace
9 55 (2.44%) Retail
10 41 (1.82%) Organisational Skills
11 38 (1.69%) Pharmaceutical
11 38 (1.69%) Telecoms
12 37 (1.64%) Front Office
13 36 (1.60%) Marketing
14 35 (1.55%) General Ledger
14 35 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
15 34 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 33 (1.47%) Legal
17 32 (1.42%) Law
17 32 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 381 (16.92%) Analyst
2 231 (10.26%) Senior
3 226 (10.04%) Lead
4 179 (7.95%) Business Analyst
5 171 (7.59%) Data Engineer
6 162 (7.19%) Consultant
7 135 (5.99%) Architect
8 134 (5.95%) Developer
9 115 (5.11%) Data Analyst
10 76 (3.37%) Project Manager
11 72 (3.20%) Test Engineer
12 58 (2.58%) Tester
13 47 (2.09%) Test Manager
14 46 (2.04%) Network Engineer
15 45 (2.00%) Systems Engineer
16 43 (1.91%) Software Engineer
17 40 (1.78%) Security Engineer
18 39 (1.73%) Senior Data Engineer
19 38 (1.69%) Senior Analyst
20 36 (1.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (5.37%) REST
2 68 (3.02%) Kafka
3 67 (2.98%) JSON
4 53 (2.35%) Oracle Fusion
5 46 (2.04%) XML
6 44 (1.95%) OAuth
7 43 (1.91%) PySpark
8 42 (1.87%) Middleware
9 37 (1.64%) .NET
10 36 (1.60%) Spring
11 35 (1.55%) RESTful
11 35 (1.55%) Swagger
12 33 (1.47%) SOAP
12 33 (1.47%) Web Services
13 32 (1.42%) Pandas
13 32 (1.42%) pytest
14 29 (1.29%) Node.js
14 29 (1.29%) Playwright
15 26 (1.15%) JWT
16 25 (1.11%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 129 (5.73%) Legacy Systems
2 107 (4.75%) Data Structures
3 104 (4.62%) Onboarding
4 90 (4.00%) Product Ownership
5 84 (3.73%) Cloud Native
6 64 (2.84%) Data Centre
7 51 (2.26%) Management Information System
8 50 (2.22%) Distributed Systems
9 44 (1.95%) Analytical Mindset
10 33 (1.47%) SCADA
11 29 (1.29%) AI Agents
11 29 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
12 28 (1.24%) Distributed Architecture
13 27 (1.20%) Public Cloud
14 26 (1.15%) Algorithms
14 26 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
14 26 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
14 26 (1.15%) Life Science
14 26 (1.15%) Replication
15 24 (1.07%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 119 (5.28%) Windows
2 82 (3.64%) Linux
3 26 (1.15%) Unix
4 20 (0.89%) Windows Server
5 14 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (0.58%) Android
7 6 (0.27%) VMS
7 6 (0.27%) Windows 10
8 4 (0.18%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.18%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.18%) SUSE
8 4 (0.18%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.089%) HPUX
10 2 (0.089%) VxWorks
10 2 (0.089%) zOS
11 1 (0.044%) Debian
11 1 (0.044%) Mac OS X
11 1 (0.044%) Solaris
11 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 618 (27.44%) Migration
2 428 (19.01%) Agile
3 394 (17.50%) Stakeholder Management
4 385 (17.10%) Data Validation
5 379 (16.83%) CI/CD
6 371 (16.47%) Data Migration
7 365 (16.21%) Problem-Solving
8 364 (16.16%) User Acceptance Testing
9 345 (15.32%) Analytics
10 341 (15.14%) Data Modelling
11 286 (12.70%) ETL
12 285 (12.66%) AI
13 278 (12.34%) DevOps
14 270 (11.99%) Test Automation
15 238 (10.57%) Continuous Improvement
16 234 (10.39%) Business Intelligence
17 232 (10.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 211 (9.37%) Data Analysis
18 211 (9.37%) Data Governance
19 205 (9.10%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 549 (24.38%) SQL
2 392 (17.41%) Python
3 111 (4.93%) Java
4 60 (2.66%) PowerShell
5 51 (2.26%) C#
6 38 (1.69%) C
6 38 (1.69%) C++
7 37 (1.64%) Bash
7 37 (1.64%) JavaScript
8 29 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 28 (1.24%) TypeScript
10 27 (1.20%) Apex Code
11 26 (1.15%) Bicep
12 25 (1.11%) PL/SQL
13 23 (1.02%) R
14 21 (0.93%) Ada
15 17 (0.75%) Scala
16 16 (0.71%) MATLAB
16 16 (0.71%) VBA
17 14 (0.62%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 418 (18.56%) Security Cleared
2 302 (13.41%) SC Cleared
3 162 (7.19%) Degree
4 52 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
5 47 (2.09%) DV Cleared
6 40 (1.78%) Computer Science Degree
7 31 (1.38%) PMI Certification
8 29 (1.29%) Cisco Certification
9 24 (1.07%) PMP
10 23 (1.02%) CCNP
11 19 (0.84%) Master's Degree
12 18 (0.80%) CISSP
13 17 (0.75%) ACCA
13 17 (0.75%) ISTQB
14 15 (0.67%) Azure Certification
14 15 (0.67%) CIMA
14 15 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
15 13 (0.58%) AWS Certification
16 12 (0.53%) CCNA
17 8 (0.36%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 389 (17.27%) Data Quality
2 256 (11.37%) QA
3 107 (4.75%) GDPR
4 59 (2.62%) NIST
5 52 (2.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 33 (1.47%) Accessibility
7 29 (1.29%) PMO
8 27 (1.20%) IFRS
9 26 (1.15%) SLA
10 18 (0.80%) IFRS 17
11 16 (0.71%) Def Stans
12 15 (0.67%) GRC
12 15 (0.67%) GxP
13 14 (0.62%) HL7
14 13 (0.58%) Solvency II
15 12 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
15 12 (0.53%) NIST 800
16 11 (0.49%) ISO 20022
16 11 (0.49%) NCSC
16 11 (0.49%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 100 (4.44%) Docker
2 56 (2.49%) Active Directory
3 48 (2.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (1.02%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (0.71%) Firmware
6 15 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (0.62%) Hyper-V
7 14 (0.62%) VMware NSX
8 9 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (0.36%) vSphere
10 5 (0.22%) NFS
11 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 4 (0.18%) KVM
12 2 (0.089%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.089%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.089%) VirtualBox
12 2 (0.089%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.044%) etcd
13 1 (0.044%) OpenSSH
13 1 (0.044%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 142 (6.31%) Kubernetes
2 103 (4.57%) Terraform
3 49 (2.18%) Prometheus
4 44 (1.95%) Ansible
4 44 (1.95%) Grafana
5 26 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
6 19 (0.84%) FortiGate
6 19 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
7 9 (0.40%) vCenter Server
8 7 (0.31%) Kibana
8 7 (0.31%) SCCM
9 6 (0.27%) Nessus
9 6 (0.27%) Puppet
9 6 (0.27%) VxRail
10 5 (0.22%) vMotion
11 4 (0.18%) Argo
11 4 (0.18%) CASB
11 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
11 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
11 4 (0.18%) Istio
Vendors
1 295 (13.10%) Microsoft
2 200 (8.88%) SAP
3 197 (8.75%) Oracle
4 106 (4.71%) Databricks
5 80 (3.55%) Salesforce
6 63 (2.80%) ServiceNow
7 58 (2.58%) VMware
8 50 (2.22%) Cisco
9 40 (1.78%) Splunk
10 35 (1.55%) Workday
11 34 (1.51%) Google
12 30 (1.33%) Informatica
13 26 (1.15%) Palo Alto
13 26 (1.15%) Sage
14 24 (1.07%) MuleSoft
15 23 (1.02%) Fortinet
16 21 (0.93%) IFS
17 20 (0.89%) IBM
18 19 (0.84%) CyberArk
19 17 (0.75%) CheckPoint