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

6 months to
10 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 71 115
Rank change year-on-year +30 +44 +31
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,958 789 717
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.80% 3.22% 1.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.66% 3.53% 2.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,203 472 362
10th Percentile £325 £350 £319
25th Percentile £400 £414 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £531 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.76% +6.25% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £600
90th Percentile £700 £725 £700
UK median daily rate £484 £525 £505
% change year-on-year -7.81% +3.96% -8.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 127 56 164
10th Percentile £17.75 £25.20 £25.04
25th Percentile £40.00 £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 £72.00 £65.00 £74.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £76.96
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.77 £60.50
% change year-on-year +14.50% -6.17% -3.28%

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 34,606 22,325 31,829
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.80% 91.23% 86.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,091 14,613 20,852
10th Percentile £319 £308 £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 £501 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.75% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,151 936 2,252
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.56 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £46.80 £29.15 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.55% -20.14% -2.14%
75th Percentile £67.84 £63.29 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £28.75 £36.50
% change year-on-year +46.09% -21.23% +1.39%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +63 947 £500 -9.09% 290
North of England +39 268 £425 -5.56% 124
Midlands +26 231 £481 +1.32% 90
South East -10 223 £500 - 203
West Midlands +23 169 £475 - 53
North West +27 164 £418 -4.46% 74
East of England +13 122 £475 +5.56% 83
South West -11 109 £475 -17.39% 86
Yorkshire +15 94 £453 +8.63% 37
East Midlands +4 58 £525 +4.06% 37
North East -11 13 £450 -28.00% 14
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 (4.19%) Confluence
2 39 (1.99%) Apache Airflow
2 39 (1.99%) Apache Spark
3 33 (1.69%) SAS
4 18 (0.92%) Apache
5 13 (0.66%) SharePoint
6 9 (0.46%) Appian
6 9 (0.46%) Jupyter
6 9 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
7 8 (0.41%) ArcGIS
8 6 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
9 5 (0.26%) CMS
9 5 (0.26%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 4 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 3 (0.15%) CICS
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Self-Service HR
11 3 (0.15%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.10%) Documentum
12 2 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2013
12 2 (0.10%) Umbraco
Applications
1 134 (6.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (1.48%) MS Visio
3 25 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
4 18 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 17 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.61%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.41%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.15%) CATIA
8 3 (0.15%) LaTeX
8 3 (0.15%) Notion
9 2 (0.10%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.10%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.10%) Simulink
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 (4.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (1.63%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.77%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.72%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.72%) Teamcenter
5 13 (0.66%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.61%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.46%) Oracle Receivables
9 8 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
9 8 (0.41%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.41%) SAP ERP
10 7 (0.36%) NetSuite
10 7 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
11 6 (0.31%) Aladdin
11 6 (0.31%) Oracle Financials
11 6 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 6 (0.31%) Sage X3
11 6 (0.31%) SAP Business One
12 5 (0.26%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 401 (20.48%) Azure
2 236 (12.05%) AWS
3 199 (10.16%) Power Platform
4 102 (5.21%) Azure DevOps
5 100 (5.11%) GCP
6 82 (4.19%) GitHub
7 56 (2.86%) Azure Data Factory
8 51 (2.60%) Snowflake
9 50 (2.55%) Serverless
10 49 (2.50%) Entra ID
10 49 (2.50%) SaaS
11 44 (2.25%) OCI
12 41 (2.09%) GitHub Actions
13 39 (1.99%) Amazon S3
14 35 (1.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 30 (1.53%) Microsoft 365
16 29 (1.48%) dbt
17 23 (1.17%) AWS Lambda
18 22 (1.12%) SuccessFactors
19 20 (1.02%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 78 (3.98%) Firewall
2 54 (2.76%) Network Security
3 36 (1.84%) VLAN
4 35 (1.79%) TCP/IP
5 25 (1.28%) DNS
6 24 (1.23%) VPN
7 23 (1.17%) Ethernet
7 23 (1.17%) WAN
8 16 (0.82%) LAN
8 16 (0.82%) SAN
9 14 (0.72%) Wireless
10 13 (0.66%) BGP
10 13 (0.66%) OSPF
10 13 (0.66%) SD-WAN
11 12 (0.61%) Cisco ISE
11 12 (0.61%) NAS
12 11 (0.56%) TACACS
12 11 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
13 8 (0.41%) Internet
14 7 (0.36%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 187 (9.55%) Power BI
2 110 (5.62%) Data Warehouse
3 87 (4.44%) Metadata
4 73 (3.73%) Tableau
5 64 (3.27%) SQL Server
6 53 (2.71%) Data Lake
7 42 (2.15%) PostgreSQL
8 37 (1.89%) Relational Database
9 28 (1.43%) Amazon Redshift
10 27 (1.38%) Big Data
11 26 (1.33%) NoSQL
11 26 (1.33%) Oracle Reports
12 24 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 22 (1.12%) Delta Lake
14 21 (1.07%) Oracle Database
15 20 (1.02%) BigQuery
16 19 (0.97%) Azure SQL Database
17 18 (0.92%) Pinecone
17 18 (0.92%) Power Query
18 16 (0.82%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 191 (9.75%) JIRA
2 108 (5.52%) Git
3 74 (3.78%) Jenkins
4 51 (2.60%) Selenium
5 48 (2.45%) GitLab
6 39 (1.99%) Postman
7 34 (1.74%) JMeter
8 30 (1.53%) JUnit
9 26 (1.33%) Cucumber
10 25 (1.28%) Rational DOORS
10 25 (1.28%) WebDriver
11 19 (0.97%) Eclipse
11 19 (0.97%) Visual Studio
12 15 (0.77%) MLflow
13 12 (0.61%) Rational Rhapsody
14 11 (0.56%) Bitbucket
14 11 (0.56%) REST Assured
15 10 (0.51%) Gatling
16 9 (0.46%) Gradle
16 9 (0.46%) Maven
General
1 616 (31.46%) Social Skills
2 602 (30.75%) Finance
3 384 (19.61%) Analytical Skills
4 170 (8.68%) Banking
5 158 (8.07%) Public Sector
6 105 (5.36%) Documentation Skills
7 57 (2.91%) Manufacturing
8 48 (2.45%) Aerospace
8 48 (2.45%) Presentation Skills
9 43 (2.20%) Organisational Skills
10 40 (2.04%) Retail
11 32 (1.63%) Marketing
11 32 (1.63%) Military
11 32 (1.63%) Pharmaceutical
12 31 (1.58%) Legal
13 30 (1.53%) General Ledger
14 29 (1.48%) Front Office
15 28 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
16 27 (1.38%) Financial Institution
17 26 (1.33%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 366 (18.69%) Analyst
2 207 (10.57%) Lead
3 170 (8.68%) Senior
4 159 (8.12%) Business Analyst
5 157 (8.02%) Data Engineer
6 127 (6.49%) Consultant
7 122 (6.23%) Architect
8 107 (5.46%) Developer
9 103 (5.26%) Data Analyst
10 73 (3.73%) Project Manager
11 53 (2.71%) Tester
12 46 (2.35%) Software Engineer
13 41 (2.09%) Network Engineer
13 41 (2.09%) Test Engineer
14 39 (1.99%) Senior Analyst
15 38 (1.94%) Systems Engineer
15 38 (1.94%) Test Manager
16 36 (1.84%) Security Engineer
17 33 (1.69%) Solutions Architect
17 33 (1.69%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 103 (5.26%) REST
2 70 (3.58%) Kafka
3 66 (3.37%) JSON
4 56 (2.86%) Oracle Fusion
5 46 (2.35%) Middleware
6 44 (2.25%) OAuth
7 39 (1.99%) Node.js
7 39 (1.99%) PySpark
8 38 (1.94%) XML
9 35 (1.79%) Swagger
9 35 (1.79%) Web Services
10 32 (1.63%) SOAP
11 31 (1.58%) .NET
12 29 (1.48%) Pandas
12 29 (1.48%) PyTorch
13 27 (1.38%) RESTful
13 27 (1.38%) Spring
14 26 (1.33%) TensorFlow
15 24 (1.23%) Playwright
16 23 (1.17%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 113 (5.77%) Legacy Systems
2 103 (5.26%) Data Structures
3 92 (4.70%) Onboarding
4 79 (4.03%) Product Ownership
5 61 (3.12%) Cloud Native
6 58 (2.96%) Data Centre
7 47 (2.40%) Management Information System
8 36 (1.84%) Distributed Systems
9 35 (1.79%) Analytical Mindset
10 29 (1.48%) Data Protection Act
11 25 (1.28%) Public Cloud
12 24 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
12 24 (1.23%) Replication
13 23 (1.17%) Algorithms
14 21 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
15 20 (1.02%) SCADA
16 19 (0.97%) Credit Risk
16 19 (0.97%) Derivative
16 19 (0.97%) Virtual Team
17 18 (0.92%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 95 (4.85%) Windows
2 80 (4.09%) Linux
3 25 (1.28%) Unix
4 12 (0.61%) Android
5 9 (0.46%) Windows Server
6 7 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.31%) zOS
8 4 (0.20%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.20%) SUSE
8 4 (0.20%) VMS
9 3 (0.15%) Apple iOS
9 3 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
9 3 (0.15%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.10%) Debian
11 1 (0.051%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.051%) HPUX
11 1 (0.051%) pSOS
11 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 537 (27.43%) Migration
2 396 (20.22%) Agile
3 370 (18.90%) Problem-Solving
4 341 (17.42%) Data Validation
5 332 (16.96%) Stakeholder Management
6 329 (16.80%) Data Migration
7 304 (15.53%) CI/CD
8 299 (15.27%) Data Modelling
9 298 (15.22%) Analytics
10 289 (14.76%) User Acceptance Testing
11 272 (13.89%) ETL
12 248 (12.67%) DevOps
13 234 (11.95%) Business Intelligence
14 221 (11.29%) Test Automation
15 220 (11.24%) AI
16 201 (10.27%) Continuous Improvement
17 194 (9.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 190 (9.70%) Data Governance
19 178 (9.09%) Data Analysis
20 176 (8.99%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 487 (24.87%) SQL
2 352 (17.98%) Python
3 100 (5.11%) Java
4 58 (2.96%) C#
5 53 (2.71%) C++
6 48 (2.45%) JavaScript
7 41 (2.09%) PowerShell
8 40 (2.04%) C
9 35 (1.79%) Bash
10 30 (1.53%) PL/SQL
10 30 (1.53%) R
11 26 (1.33%) TypeScript
12 25 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 22 (1.12%) Bicep
14 20 (1.02%) Ada
15 18 (0.92%) Scala
16 17 (0.87%) Apex Code
17 13 (0.66%) MATLAB
18 12 (0.61%) VBA
19 10 (0.51%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 366 (18.69%) Security Cleared
2 262 (13.38%) SC Cleared
3 158 (8.07%) Degree
4 46 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 45 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
6 33 (1.69%) PMI Certification
7 32 (1.63%) DV Cleared
8 30 (1.53%) Master's Degree
9 28 (1.43%) PMP
10 23 (1.17%) Cisco Certification
11 18 (0.92%) CCNP
12 17 (0.87%) ISTQB
13 15 (0.77%) CBAP
13 15 (0.77%) CISSP
14 13 (0.66%) Azure Certification
15 12 (0.61%) ACCA
15 12 (0.61%) AWS Certification
15 12 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
16 10 (0.51%) CIMA
17 9 (0.46%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 338 (17.26%) Data Quality
2 238 (12.16%) QA
3 108 (5.52%) GDPR
4 63 (3.22%) NIST
5 55 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 25 (1.28%) IFRS
7 24 (1.23%) Accessibility
8 22 (1.12%) SLA
9 21 (1.07%) PMO
10 20 (1.02%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.92%) GRC
12 17 (0.87%) Def Stans
13 14 (0.72%) HL7
13 14 (0.72%) MiFID
14 13 (0.66%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.61%) GxP
15 12 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 11 (0.56%) ISO 20022
16 11 (0.56%) NCSC
16 11 (0.56%) NIST 800
System Software
1 77 (3.93%) Docker
2 39 (1.99%) Active Directory
3 34 (1.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (1.17%) Firmware
5 14 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.56%) VMware NSX
7 10 (0.51%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.51%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (0.31%) vSphere
10 5 (0.26%) NFS
11 4 (0.20%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.15%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.15%) 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
1 118 (6.03%) Kubernetes
2 81 (4.14%) Terraform
3 40 (2.04%) Prometheus
4 38 (1.94%) Ansible
4 38 (1.94%) Grafana
5 28 (1.43%) Single Sign-On
6 14 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
7 12 (0.61%) FortiGate
8 11 (0.56%) Kibana
9 9 (0.46%) Puppet
10 8 (0.41%) SCCM
11 6 (0.31%) Nessus
12 5 (0.26%) CASB
12 5 (0.26%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.26%) vMotion
13 4 (0.20%) EMC NetWorker
13 4 (0.20%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.20%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.20%) Istio
13 4 (0.20%) VxRail
Vendors
1 265 (13.53%) Microsoft
2 170 (8.68%) SAP
3 169 (8.63%) Oracle
4 88 (4.49%) Databricks
5 63 (3.22%) Salesforce
5 63 (3.22%) ServiceNow
6 45 (2.30%) Cisco
7 42 (2.15%) VMware
8 40 (2.04%) Splunk
9 33 (1.69%) Google
10 32 (1.63%) Informatica
11 27 (1.38%) Palo Alto
12 26 (1.33%) Sage
13 24 (1.23%) IBM
14 23 (1.17%) Workday
15 21 (1.07%) CyberArk
15 21 (1.07%) MuleSoft
16 17 (0.87%) CheckPoint
16 17 (0.87%) IFS
17 16 (0.82%) OpenAI