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

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 75 114
Rank change year-on-year +34 +39 +35
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,966 798 716
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.79% 3.28% 1.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.66% 3.60% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,213 481 360
10th Percentile £320 £350 £320
25th Percentile £400 £415 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £540 £500
Median % change year-on-year -8.89% +8.00% -9.91%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £588
90th Percentile £700 £715 £688
UK median daily rate £484 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -7.81% +5.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 123 56 163
10th Percentile £17.33 £20.61 £26.88
25th Percentile £38.00 £37.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.77 £61.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.50% -6.93% -2.40%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £73.25
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £76.86
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +13.64% -8.33% -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 34,728 22,194 31,472
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.62% 91.24% 86.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,149 14,504 20,626
10th Percentile £322 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £507 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -1.65% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,129 949 2,251
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.38 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.22 £15.97
Median hourly rate £45.78 £29.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +57.86% -20.55% +0.29%
75th Percentile £67.84 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.40 £28.18 £36.02
% change year-on-year +50.46% -21.77% +0.06%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +58 957 £500 -9.09% 308
North of England +42 270 £430 -4.44% 134
Midlands +26 233 £481 +1.29% 96
South East -11 221 £500 - 193
West Midlands +26 169 £475 - 57
North West +29 163 £420 -4.00% 81
East of England +7 116 £500 +11.11% 93
South West -3 113 £475 -17.39% 100
Yorkshire +19 97 £451 +8.03% 39
East Midlands +7 60 £525 +4.06% 39
North East -14 13 £450 -28.00% 15
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 82 (4.17%) Confluence
2 39 (1.98%) Apache Airflow
3 35 (1.78%) Apache Spark
4 33 (1.68%) SAS
5 17 (0.86%) Apache
6 13 (0.66%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.46%) Appian
7 9 (0.46%) Jupyter
8 8 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
9 7 (0.36%) ArcGIS
9 7 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
10 4 (0.20%) CMS
10 4 (0.20%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 4 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Self-Service HR
11 3 (0.15%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.10%) CICS
12 2 (0.10%) Documentum
12 2 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2013
12 2 (0.10%) Umbraco
Applications
1 136 (6.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (1.48%) MS Visio
3 25 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
4 19 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 17 (0.86%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
7 4 (0.20%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.15%) CATIA
8 3 (0.15%) LaTeX
8 3 (0.15%) Notion
8 3 (0.15%) Simulink
9 2 (0.10%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.10%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.10%) Sketch
10 1 (0.051%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.051%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.051%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.051%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.051%) UXPin
10 1 (0.051%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 96 (4.88%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (1.53%) Oracle EBS
3 14 (0.71%) Oracle General Ledger
3 14 (0.71%) Teamcenter
4 13 (0.66%) Oracle Payables
4 13 (0.66%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.61%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
7 9 (0.46%) SAP ERP
8 8 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.41%) NetSuite
8 8 (0.41%) Oracle EBS R12
8 8 (0.41%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.41%) Payment Gateway
9 7 (0.36%) Aladdin
10 6 (0.31%) Oracle Financials
10 6 (0.31%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.31%) SAP Business One
11 5 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
11 5 (0.25%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 388 (19.74%) Azure
2 235 (11.95%) AWS
3 193 (9.82%) Power Platform
4 99 (5.04%) GCP
5 94 (4.78%) Azure DevOps
6 87 (4.43%) GitHub
7 54 (2.75%) Azure Data Factory
7 54 (2.75%) Snowflake
8 50 (2.54%) Entra ID
8 50 (2.54%) SaaS
9 49 (2.49%) Serverless
10 45 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
11 43 (2.19%) OCI
12 39 (1.98%) Amazon S3
13 34 (1.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 31 (1.58%) dbt
15 28 (1.42%) Microsoft 365
16 23 (1.17%) AWS Lambda
17 21 (1.07%) SuccessFactors
18 20 (1.02%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 83 (4.22%) Firewall
2 56 (2.85%) Network Security
3 37 (1.88%) VLAN
4 31 (1.58%) TCP/IP
5 30 (1.53%) DNS
6 26 (1.32%) VPN
7 24 (1.22%) WAN
8 18 (0.92%) Ethernet
9 17 (0.86%) LAN
10 16 (0.81%) SAN
11 14 (0.71%) Wireless
12 13 (0.66%) SD-WAN
13 12 (0.61%) BGP
13 12 (0.61%) NAS
13 12 (0.61%) OSPF
13 12 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
14 11 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
15 10 (0.51%) DHCP
15 10 (0.51%) TACACS
16 9 (0.46%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 181 (9.21%) Power BI
2 111 (5.65%) Data Warehouse
3 82 (4.17%) Metadata
4 70 (3.56%) Tableau
5 65 (3.31%) SQL Server
6 55 (2.80%) Data Lake
7 44 (2.24%) PostgreSQL
8 36 (1.83%) Relational Database
9 28 (1.42%) Amazon Redshift
10 27 (1.37%) NoSQL
11 24 (1.22%) Big Data
11 24 (1.22%) Oracle Reports
12 23 (1.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 22 (1.12%) Delta Lake
14 21 (1.07%) BigQuery
14 21 (1.07%) Oracle Database
15 19 (0.97%) Power Query
16 17 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
17 16 (0.81%) Amazon Athena
17 16 (0.81%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 188 (9.56%) JIRA
2 106 (5.39%) Git
3 77 (3.92%) Jenkins
4 51 (2.59%) Selenium
5 48 (2.44%) GitLab
6 44 (2.24%) Postman
7 38 (1.93%) JMeter
8 30 (1.53%) JUnit
9 28 (1.42%) Cucumber
10 25 (1.27%) Rational DOORS
10 25 (1.27%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.76%) MLflow
12 14 (0.71%) Eclipse
12 14 (0.71%) Visual Studio
13 13 (0.66%) Rational Rhapsody
14 11 (0.56%) Gatling
14 11 (0.56%) REST Assured
15 10 (0.51%) Bitbucket
15 10 (0.51%) Gradle
15 10 (0.51%) Maven
General
1 608 (30.93%) Social Skills
2 596 (30.32%) Finance
3 372 (18.92%) Analytical Skills
4 162 (8.24%) Banking
5 161 (8.19%) Public Sector
6 107 (5.44%) Documentation Skills
7 60 (3.05%) Manufacturing
8 50 (2.54%) Aerospace
9 44 (2.24%) Retail
10 41 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
11 40 (2.03%) Organisational Skills
12 33 (1.68%) Legal
13 32 (1.63%) Marketing
13 32 (1.63%) Pharmaceutical
14 31 (1.58%) Front Office
15 29 (1.48%) General Ledger
15 29 (1.48%) Military
16 28 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
17 27 (1.37%) Financial Institution
17 27 (1.37%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 364 (18.51%) Analyst
2 207 (10.53%) Lead
3 173 (8.80%) Senior
4 157 (7.99%) Business Analyst
5 156 (7.93%) Data Engineer
6 131 (6.66%) Consultant
7 122 (6.21%) Architect
8 109 (5.54%) Developer
9 103 (5.24%) Data Analyst
10 75 (3.81%) Project Manager
11 51 (2.59%) Tester
12 47 (2.39%) Test Engineer
13 43 (2.19%) Software Engineer
14 40 (2.03%) Network Engineer
15 39 (1.98%) Test Manager
16 38 (1.93%) Senior Analyst
17 37 (1.88%) Security Engineer
17 37 (1.88%) Systems Engineer
18 33 (1.68%) Migration Engineer
18 33 (1.68%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 99 (5.04%) REST
2 69 (3.51%) JSON
3 67 (3.41%) Kafka
4 50 (2.54%) Oracle Fusion
5 48 (2.44%) Middleware
6 44 (2.24%) OAuth
7 42 (2.14%) XML
8 40 (2.03%) PySpark
9 35 (1.78%) Swagger
10 33 (1.68%) .NET
11 31 (1.58%) SOAP
12 30 (1.53%) RESTful
13 29 (1.48%) Node.js
13 29 (1.48%) Pandas
14 28 (1.42%) Spring
14 28 (1.42%) Web Services
15 26 (1.32%) PyTorch
16 25 (1.27%) Playwright
17 23 (1.17%) OAuth2
17 23 (1.17%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 117 (5.95%) Legacy Systems
2 102 (5.19%) Data Structures
3 96 (4.88%) Onboarding
4 83 (4.22%) Product Ownership
5 65 (3.31%) Cloud Native
6 61 (3.10%) Data Centre
7 48 (2.44%) Management Information System
8 34 (1.73%) Analytical Mindset
8 34 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
9 30 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
10 26 (1.32%) Replication
11 25 (1.27%) Public Cloud
12 24 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
13 22 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
13 22 (1.12%) SCADA
14 21 (1.07%) Algorithms
14 21 (1.07%) Derivative
14 21 (1.07%) Reference Data
15 20 (1.02%) Operational Technology
16 19 (0.97%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 93 (4.73%) Windows
2 77 (3.92%) Linux
3 26 (1.32%) Unix
4 11 (0.56%) Android
4 11 (0.56%) Windows Server
5 9 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.25%) VMS
6 5 (0.25%) zOS
7 4 (0.20%) Mac OS
7 4 (0.20%) SUSE
8 3 (0.15%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.10%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.051%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.051%) Debian
10 1 (0.051%) HPUX
10 1 (0.051%) pSOS
10 1 (0.051%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 547 (27.82%) Migration
2 382 (19.43%) Agile
3 355 (18.06%) Problem-Solving
4 342 (17.40%) Stakeholder Management
5 337 (17.14%) Data Migration
5 337 (17.14%) Data Validation
6 305 (15.51%) Data Modelling
7 304 (15.46%) CI/CD
8 297 (15.11%) User Acceptance Testing
9 291 (14.80%) Analytics
10 271 (13.78%) ETL
11 240 (12.21%) DevOps
12 224 (11.39%) Business Intelligence
13 220 (11.19%) Test Automation
14 207 (10.53%) AI
15 204 (10.38%) Continuous Improvement
16 201 (10.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 193 (9.82%) Data Governance
18 173 (8.80%) Data Analysis
18 173 (8.80%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 477 (24.26%) SQL
2 343 (17.45%) Python
3 101 (5.14%) Java
4 53 (2.70%) C#
5 44 (2.24%) C++
6 43 (2.19%) PowerShell
7 40 (2.03%) JavaScript
8 39 (1.98%) C
9 36 (1.83%) Bash
10 27 (1.37%) Bicep
10 27 (1.37%) R
11 26 (1.32%) TypeScript
12 25 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 25 (1.27%) PL/SQL
13 20 (1.02%) Ada
13 20 (1.02%) Apex Code
14 17 (0.86%) Scala
15 14 (0.71%) MATLAB
16 12 (0.61%) VBA
17 9 (0.46%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 371 (18.87%) Security Cleared
2 265 (13.48%) SC Cleared
3 154 (7.83%) Degree
4 46 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
5 40 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 35 (1.78%) DV Cleared
7 34 (1.73%) PMI Certification
8 28 (1.42%) PMP
9 27 (1.37%) Master's Degree
10 24 (1.22%) Cisco Certification
11 19 (0.97%) CCNP
12 16 (0.81%) CISSP
12 16 (0.81%) ISTQB
13 15 (0.76%) CBAP
14 13 (0.66%) ACCA
14 13 (0.66%) Microsoft Certification
15 12 (0.61%) AWS Certification
15 12 (0.61%) Azure Certification
16 11 (0.56%) CIMA
17 9 (0.46%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 340 (17.29%) Data Quality
2 236 (12.00%) QA
3 104 (5.29%) GDPR
4 65 (3.31%) NIST
5 55 (2.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 25 (1.27%) IFRS
7 24 (1.22%) Accessibility
7 24 (1.22%) SLA
8 22 (1.12%) PMO
9 20 (1.02%) IFRS 17
10 18 (0.92%) GRC
11 17 (0.86%) Def Stans
12 14 (0.71%) HL7
13 13 (0.66%) MiFID
13 13 (0.66%) PCI DSS
14 12 (0.61%) GxP
14 12 (0.61%) NCSC
14 12 (0.61%) NIST 800
15 11 (0.56%) ISO 20022
15 11 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 78 (3.97%) Docker
2 41 (2.09%) Active Directory
3 37 (1.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.02%) Firmware
5 17 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
6 12 (0.61%) Hyper-V
6 12 (0.61%) VMware NSX
7 10 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
7 10 (0.51%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.36%) vSphere
9 5 (0.25%) NFS
10 4 (0.20%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 2 (0.10%) BitLocker
11 2 (0.10%) Ceph
11 2 (0.10%) KVM
11 2 (0.10%) OpenAM
11 2 (0.10%) OpenDJ
11 2 (0.10%) OpenIDM
11 2 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 120 (6.10%) Kubernetes
2 83 (4.22%) Terraform
3 42 (2.14%) Prometheus
4 40 (2.03%) Grafana
5 38 (1.93%) Ansible
6 28 (1.42%) Single Sign-On
7 15 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (0.56%) FortiGate
8 11 (0.56%) Kibana
9 10 (0.51%) Puppet
10 8 (0.41%) SCCM
11 6 (0.31%) Nessus
11 6 (0.31%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.25%) CASB
12 5 (0.25%) vMotion
13 4 (0.20%) Argo
13 4 (0.20%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.20%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.20%) Istio
13 4 (0.20%) VxRail
Vendors
1 270 (13.73%) Microsoft
2 171 (8.70%) SAP
3 166 (8.44%) Oracle
4 89 (4.53%) Databricks
5 67 (3.41%) Salesforce
6 60 (3.05%) ServiceNow
7 46 (2.34%) VMware
8 44 (2.24%) Cisco
9 41 (2.09%) Splunk
10 32 (1.63%) Google
11 29 (1.48%) Informatica
12 27 (1.37%) Workday
13 25 (1.27%) Palo Alto
13 25 (1.27%) Sage
14 23 (1.17%) MuleSoft
15 21 (1.07%) CyberArk
15 21 (1.07%) IBM
15 21 (1.07%) IFS
16 16 (0.81%) Fortinet
17 15 (0.76%) CheckPoint