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

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 76 119
Rank change year-on-year +34 +43 +27
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,918 759 716
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.76% 3.11% 1.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.61% 3.41% 2.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,187 460 364
10th Percentile £324 £350 £313
25th Percentile £400 £419 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £531 £500
Median % change year-on-year -8.60% +6.25% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £600
90th Percentile £700 £725 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -9.52% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 52 160
10th Percentile £17.75 £25.16 £24.24
25th Percentile £43.61 £40.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £61.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -6.50% -1.60%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £75.16
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £78.18
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.77 £60.00
% change year-on-year +14.50% -5.38% -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 34,177 22,233 31,934
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.83% 91.20% 86.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,833 14,556 20,949
10th Percentile £318 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,126 928 2,245
10th Percentile £15.36 £14.65 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £45.46 £30.00 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +51.53% -16.77% -2.97%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.83
% change year-on-year +43.29% -19.06% -0.47%

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 4 May 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 4 May 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 4 May 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 +65 923 £500 -9.09% 358
North of England +44 261 £425 -8.11% 121
Midlands +32 226 £481 +1.26% 95
South East -6 222 £490 -2.00% 248
West Midlands +30 166 £475 - 57
North West +28 160 £420 -4.00% 72
East of England +11 117 £475 +5.56% 99
South West -5 111 £475 -17.39% 107
Yorkshire +22 91 £452 +7.56% 39
East Midlands +3 56 £525 +14.38% 38
North East -13 13 £450 -28.00% 12
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 (4.12%) Confluence
2 38 (1.98%) Apache Spark
3 37 (1.93%) Apache Airflow
4 33 (1.72%) SAS
5 17 (0.89%) Apache
6 12 (0.63%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.47%) Appian
7 9 (0.47%) Jupyter
7 9 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
8 8 (0.42%) ArcGIS
9 6 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.26%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 4 (0.21%) CMS
11 4 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 3 (0.16%) CICS
12 3 (0.16%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.16%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.10%) Documentum
13 2 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2013
13 2 (0.10%) Umbraco
Applications
1 131 (6.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (1.46%) MS Visio
3 25 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
4 17 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 17 (0.89%) 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 (0.10%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.10%) EPLAN
8 2 (0.10%) Sketch
9 1 (0.052%) Autodesk Inventor
9 1 (0.052%) CANalyzer
9 1 (0.052%) MicroStation
9 1 (0.052%) OrCAD
9 1 (0.052%) UXPin
9 1 (0.052%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 91 (4.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (1.67%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.78%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.73%) Teamcenter
5 13 (0.68%) Oracle Payables
6 12 (0.63%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.63%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.52%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.47%) Oracle Receivables
9 8 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
9 8 (0.42%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.42%) SAP ERP
10 7 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
11 6 (0.31%) Aladdin
11 6 (0.31%) NetSuite
11 6 (0.31%) Oracle Financials
11 6 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 6 (0.31%) Sage X3
12 5 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
12 5 (0.26%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 408 (21.27%) Azure
2 229 (11.94%) AWS
3 193 (10.06%) Power Platform
4 109 (5.68%) Azure DevOps
5 98 (5.11%) GCP
6 82 (4.28%) GitHub
7 55 (2.87%) Azure Data Factory
8 50 (2.61%) Serverless
9 49 (2.55%) Entra ID
10 47 (2.45%) Snowflake
11 45 (2.35%) SaaS
12 44 (2.29%) OCI
13 41 (2.14%) GitHub Actions
14 39 (2.03%) Amazon S3
15 36 (1.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 29 (1.51%) Microsoft 365
17 26 (1.36%) dbt
18 23 (1.20%) AWS Lambda
19 22 (1.15%) SuccessFactors
20 20 (1.04%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 77 (4.01%) Firewall
2 54 (2.82%) Network Security
3 36 (1.88%) VLAN
4 33 (1.72%) TCP/IP
5 25 (1.30%) DNS
6 24 (1.25%) VPN
7 23 (1.20%) WAN
8 21 (1.09%) Ethernet
9 16 (0.83%) LAN
9 16 (0.83%) SAN
10 14 (0.73%) Wireless
11 13 (0.68%) BGP
11 13 (0.68%) OSPF
11 13 (0.68%) SD-WAN
12 12 (0.63%) Cisco ISE
12 12 (0.63%) NAS
13 11 (0.57%) TACACS
13 11 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
14 8 (0.42%) HTTP
14 8 (0.42%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 181 (9.44%) Power BI
2 108 (5.63%) Data Warehouse
3 87 (4.54%) Metadata
4 71 (3.70%) Tableau
5 63 (3.28%) SQL Server
6 49 (2.55%) Data Lake
7 39 (2.03%) PostgreSQL
8 33 (1.72%) Relational Database
9 28 (1.46%) Amazon Redshift
10 26 (1.36%) Big Data
10 26 (1.36%) Oracle Reports
11 25 (1.30%) NoSQL
12 23 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 22 (1.15%) Delta Lake
14 20 (1.04%) Oracle Database
15 19 (0.99%) Azure SQL Database
15 19 (0.99%) BigQuery
16 18 (0.94%) Pinecone
16 18 (0.94%) Power Query
17 16 (0.83%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 188 (9.80%) JIRA
2 110 (5.74%) Git
3 70 (3.65%) Jenkins
4 54 (2.82%) Selenium
5 45 (2.35%) GitLab
6 39 (2.03%) Postman
7 31 (1.62%) JUnit
8 30 (1.56%) JMeter
9 29 (1.51%) Cucumber
10 26 (1.36%) WebDriver
11 23 (1.20%) Rational DOORS
12 17 (0.89%) Visual Studio
13 16 (0.83%) Eclipse
14 15 (0.78%) MLflow
15 11 (0.57%) Bitbucket
15 11 (0.57%) REST Assured
16 10 (0.52%) Oracle APEX
16 10 (0.52%) Rational Rhapsody
17 9 (0.47%) Gatling
17 9 (0.47%) SpecFlow
General
1 610 (31.80%) Social Skills
2 592 (30.87%) Finance
3 383 (19.97%) Analytical Skills
4 167 (8.71%) Banking
5 155 (8.08%) Public Sector
6 104 (5.42%) Documentation Skills
7 56 (2.92%) Manufacturing
8 47 (2.45%) Presentation Skills
9 46 (2.40%) Aerospace
10 42 (2.19%) Organisational Skills
11 39 (2.03%) Retail
12 34 (1.77%) Marketing
13 32 (1.67%) Pharmaceutical
14 31 (1.62%) Legal
15 30 (1.56%) Front Office
15 30 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
16 29 (1.51%) Financial Institution
16 29 (1.51%) General Ledger
16 29 (1.51%) Military
17 26 (1.36%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 365 (19.03%) Analyst
2 193 (10.06%) Lead
3 174 (9.07%) Senior
4 160 (8.34%) Business Analyst
5 150 (7.82%) Data Engineer
6 124 (6.47%) Consultant
7 117 (6.10%) Architect
8 109 (5.68%) Developer
9 102 (5.32%) Data Analyst
10 75 (3.91%) Project Manager
11 51 (2.66%) Tester
12 44 (2.29%) Software Engineer
13 42 (2.19%) Senior Analyst
13 42 (2.19%) Test Engineer
14 41 (2.14%) Network Engineer
15 38 (1.98%) Test Manager
16 36 (1.88%) Security Engineer
17 35 (1.82%) Systems Engineer
18 33 (1.72%) Test Analyst
19 32 (1.67%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 105 (5.47%) REST
2 68 (3.55%) JSON
3 66 (3.44%) Kafka
4 56 (2.92%) Oracle Fusion
5 47 (2.45%) Middleware
6 43 (2.24%) OAuth
7 41 (2.14%) XML
8 39 (2.03%) PySpark
9 38 (1.98%) Node.js
10 34 (1.77%) Swagger
11 32 (1.67%) SOAP
11 32 (1.67%) Web Services
12 31 (1.62%) .NET
13 29 (1.51%) Pandas
13 29 (1.51%) PyTorch
14 26 (1.36%) Playwright
14 26 (1.36%) RESTful
14 26 (1.36%) TensorFlow
15 25 (1.30%) OpenAPI
15 25 (1.30%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 112 (5.84%) Legacy Systems
2 102 (5.32%) Data Structures
3 88 (4.59%) Onboarding
4 77 (4.01%) Product Ownership
5 55 (2.87%) Cloud Native
6 54 (2.82%) Data Centre
7 46 (2.40%) Management Information System
8 36 (1.88%) Analytical Mindset
8 36 (1.88%) Distributed Systems
9 28 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
10 24 (1.25%) Hybrid Cloud
10 24 (1.25%) Replication
11 23 (1.20%) Algorithms
11 23 (1.20%) Public Cloud
12 21 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
13 20 (1.04%) Derivative
13 20 (1.04%) Reference Data
14 19 (0.99%) Credit Risk
14 19 (0.99%) Virtual Team
15 16 (0.83%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 93 (4.85%) Windows
2 77 (4.01%) Linux
3 25 (1.30%) Unix
4 11 (0.57%) Android
5 9 (0.47%) Windows Server
6 7 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.31%) zOS
8 4 (0.21%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.21%) SUSE
8 4 (0.21%) VMS
9 3 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
9 3 (0.16%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.10%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.10%) Debian
11 1 (0.052%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.052%) HPUX
11 1 (0.052%) pSOS
11 1 (0.052%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 521 (27.16%) Migration
2 396 (20.65%) Agile
3 364 (18.98%) Problem-Solving
4 333 (17.36%) Stakeholder Management
5 331 (17.26%) Data Validation
6 316 (16.48%) Data Migration
7 295 (15.38%) Analytics
8 292 (15.22%) CI/CD
9 289 (15.07%) Data Modelling
10 282 (14.70%) User Acceptance Testing
11 265 (13.82%) ETL
12 250 (13.03%) DevOps
13 229 (11.94%) Business Intelligence
14 219 (11.42%) Test Automation
15 209 (10.90%) AI
16 198 (10.32%) Continuous Improvement
17 193 (10.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 188 (9.80%) Data Governance
19 174 (9.07%) Data Analysis
20 172 (8.97%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 480 (25.03%) SQL
2 347 (18.09%) Python
3 99 (5.16%) Java
4 59 (3.08%) C#
5 52 (2.71%) JavaScript
6 51 (2.66%) C++
7 40 (2.09%) C
8 38 (1.98%) PowerShell
9 35 (1.82%) PL/SQL
10 32 (1.67%) R
11 30 (1.56%) Bash
12 25 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 25 (1.30%) TypeScript
13 22 (1.15%) Bicep
14 20 (1.04%) Ada
15 17 (0.89%) Scala
16 14 (0.73%) Apex Code
17 12 (0.63%) VBA
18 11 (0.57%) MATLAB
19 10 (0.52%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 365 (19.03%) Security Cleared
2 261 (13.61%) SC Cleared
3 157 (8.19%) Degree
4 47 (2.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 46 (2.40%) BPSS Clearance
6 32 (1.67%) DV Cleared
6 32 (1.67%) PMI Certification
7 30 (1.56%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.46%) PMP
9 22 (1.15%) Cisco Certification
10 21 (1.09%) ISTQB
11 18 (0.94%) CCNP
12 15 (0.78%) CISSP
13 14 (0.73%) CBAP
14 12 (0.63%) Azure Certification
14 12 (0.63%) Microsoft Certification
15 11 (0.57%) AWS Certification
16 9 (0.47%) ACCA
16 9 (0.47%) CCNA
17 7 (0.36%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 328 (17.10%) Data Quality
2 237 (12.36%) QA
3 106 (5.53%) GDPR
4 62 (3.23%) NIST
5 54 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 24 (1.25%) IFRS
7 23 (1.20%) Accessibility
7 23 (1.20%) SLA
8 20 (1.04%) IFRS 17
9 19 (0.99%) PMO
10 18 (0.94%) GRC
11 16 (0.83%) Def Stans
12 14 (0.73%) HL7
13 13 (0.68%) GxP
13 13 (0.68%) MiFID
13 13 (0.68%) PCI DSS
14 11 (0.57%) ISO 20022
14 11 (0.57%) NCSC
14 11 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 10 (0.52%) Solvency II
System Software
1 75 (3.91%) Docker
2 38 (1.98%) Active Directory
3 34 (1.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.25%) Firmware
5 14 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.57%) VMware NSX
7 10 (0.52%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.52%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (0.31%) 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 (0.10%) Ceph
13 2 (0.10%) KVM
13 2 (0.10%) Lustre
13 2 (0.10%) OpenAM
13 2 (0.10%) OpenIDM
13 2 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 112 (5.84%) Kubernetes
2 79 (4.12%) Terraform
3 35 (1.82%) Prometheus
4 34 (1.77%) Ansible
5 33 (1.72%) Grafana
6 29 (1.51%) Single Sign-On
7 15 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (0.63%) FortiGate
9 10 (0.52%) Kibana
10 9 (0.47%) Puppet
11 8 (0.42%) SCCM
12 6 (0.31%) Nessus
13 5 (0.26%) CASB
13 5 (0.26%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.26%) vMotion
14 4 (0.21%) EMC NetWorker
14 4 (0.21%) EMC VPLEX
14 4 (0.21%) Failover Clustering
14 4 (0.21%) Istio
14 4 (0.21%) VxRail
Vendors
1 261 (13.61%) Microsoft
2 170 (8.86%) Oracle
3 163 (8.50%) SAP
4 87 (4.54%) Databricks
5 65 (3.39%) ServiceNow
6 59 (3.08%) Salesforce
7 45 (2.35%) Cisco
8 42 (2.19%) VMware
9 38 (1.98%) Splunk
10 33 (1.72%) Google
11 31 (1.62%) Informatica
12 26 (1.36%) Palo Alto
12 26 (1.36%) Sage
13 25 (1.30%) Workday
14 23 (1.20%) MuleSoft
15 22 (1.15%) IBM
16 21 (1.09%) CyberArk
17 17 (0.89%) CheckPoint
18 16 (0.83%) IFS
18 16 (0.83%) OpenAI