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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 70 106
Rank change year-on-year +35 +36 +43
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,310 909 768
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.28% 3.56% 2.07%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.18% 3.91% 2.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,403 558 379
10th Percentile £343 £354 £320
25th Percentile £413 £420 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -12.28%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £591
90th Percentile £705 £700 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 156 63 179
10th Percentile £17.75 £18.68 £27.78
25th Percentile £29.06 £39.38 £47.83
Median hourly rate £62.82 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.70% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £75.25 £66.00 £70.33
90th Percentile £83.38 £77.00 £75.25
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £58.88 £60.00
% change year-on-year +1.91% -1.88% -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 37,351 23,260 31,773
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.35% 91.20% 85.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,546 14,980 20,587
10th Percentile £325 £300 £305
25th Percentile £418 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £730 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £504 £525
% change year-on-year +2.18% -4.00% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,338 1,158 2,330
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.23 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.32% -33.83% +1.65%
75th Percentile £68.38 £55.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £72.93
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +4.17%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 +50 1,104 £514 -4.86% 266
North of England +42 307 £450 - 118
Midlands +37 287 £492 +9.33% 99
South East -1 273 £504 +0.75% 235
West Midlands +35 208 £478 +18.52% 55
North West +25 168 £440 -2.22% 57
East of England +9 134 £500 - 56
South West +4 134 £504 -12.39% 84
Yorkshire +28 125 £461 +10.53% 38
East Midlands +22 74 £525 +15.51% 44
North East -20 17 £425 -22.73% 23
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 78 (3.38%) Confluence
2 61 (2.64%) Apache Airflow
3 47 (2.03%) SAS
4 41 (1.77%) Apache Spark
5 40 (1.73%) SharePoint
6 23 (1.00%) Apache
7 14 (0.61%) Jupyter
8 10 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
9 8 (0.35%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.30%) Appian
10 7 (0.30%) CMS
10 7 (0.30%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.26%) ArcGIS
12 5 (0.22%) Tuxedo
13 3 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
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
Applications
1 163 (7.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.52%) MS Visio
3 31 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
4 27 (1.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 22 (0.95%) Spreadsheet
6 8 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
7 5 (0.22%) AutoCAD
7 5 (0.22%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.17%) Simulink
9 3 (0.13%) CATIA
10 2 (0.087%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.087%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.087%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.087%) Sketch
11 1 (0.043%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.043%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.043%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.043%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.043%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.043%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 112 (4.85%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.43%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
3 15 (0.65%) Teamcenter
4 13 (0.56%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.52%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.48%) Oracle General Ledger
6 11 (0.48%) SAP ERP
7 10 (0.43%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.39%) iTrent
8 9 (0.39%) NetSuite
9 8 (0.35%) Aladdin
9 8 (0.35%) Oracle Financials
10 7 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
10 7 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
10 7 (0.30%) Sage X3
10 7 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
11 6 (0.26%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 493 (21.34%) Azure
2 279 (12.08%) AWS
3 227 (9.83%) Power Platform
4 125 (5.41%) Azure DevOps
5 121 (5.24%) GCP
6 108 (4.68%) GitHub
7 75 (3.25%) Snowflake
8 63 (2.73%) Entra ID
9 61 (2.64%) Azure Data Factory
10 60 (2.60%) GitHub Actions
11 55 (2.38%) Serverless
12 42 (1.82%) Amazon S3
12 42 (1.82%) Microsoft 365
12 42 (1.82%) SaaS
13 39 (1.69%) dbt
14 38 (1.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 37 (1.60%) OCI
16 30 (1.30%) SuccessFactors
17 28 (1.21%) Salesforce Service Cloud
18 24 (1.04%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 100 (4.33%) Firewall
2 62 (2.68%) Network Security
3 41 (1.77%) VLAN
4 39 (1.69%) DNS
5 37 (1.60%) WAN
6 33 (1.43%) VPN
7 29 (1.26%) TCP/IP
8 27 (1.17%) BGP
9 23 (1.00%) SAN
10 22 (0.95%) LAN
10 22 (0.95%) Wireless
11 20 (0.87%) SD-WAN
12 19 (0.82%) OSPF
13 17 (0.74%) Ethernet
14 16 (0.69%) DHCP
14 16 (0.69%) Internet
14 16 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
15 14 (0.61%) Cisco ISE
16 12 (0.52%) NAS
16 12 (0.52%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 211 (9.13%) Power BI
2 125 (5.41%) Data Warehouse
3 85 (3.68%) Metadata
4 80 (3.46%) SQL Server
5 68 (2.94%) PostgreSQL
5 68 (2.94%) Tableau
6 67 (2.90%) Data Lake
7 57 (2.47%) Relational Database
8 31 (1.34%) Big Data
9 29 (1.26%) Oracle Database
9 29 (1.26%) SAS Enterprise Guide
10 26 (1.13%) Amazon Redshift
10 26 (1.13%) NoSQL
11 25 (1.08%) BigQuery
12 24 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 23 (1.00%) Power Query
14 22 (0.95%) Oracle Reports
15 21 (0.91%) Delta Lake
16 19 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
17 18 (0.78%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 227 (9.83%) JIRA
2 132 (5.71%) Git
3 89 (3.85%) Jenkins
4 66 (2.86%) GitLab
5 54 (2.34%) Selenium
6 43 (1.86%) Postman
7 42 (1.82%) JMeter
8 36 (1.56%) JUnit
9 35 (1.52%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.30%) WebDriver
11 25 (1.08%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.78%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.69%) Rational Rhapsody
13 16 (0.69%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.65%) Gatling
15 13 (0.56%) MLflow
16 10 (0.43%) Maven
16 10 (0.43%) REST Assured
17 9 (0.39%) Gradle
17 9 (0.39%) Oracle Forms
General
1 701 (30.35%) Finance
2 689 (29.83%) Social Skills
3 438 (18.96%) Analytical Skills
4 191 (8.27%) Public Sector
5 182 (7.88%) Banking
6 129 (5.58%) Documentation Skills
7 74 (3.20%) Manufacturing
8 65 (2.81%) Retail
9 63 (2.73%) Aerospace
10 42 (1.82%) Organisational Skills
11 41 (1.77%) Pharmaceutical
12 40 (1.73%) Telecoms
13 38 (1.65%) Front Office
13 38 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 35 (1.52%) General Ledger
14 35 (1.52%) Marketing
15 32 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
15 32 (1.39%) Law
15 32 (1.39%) Legal
16 31 (1.34%) Military
Job Titles
1 400 (17.32%) Analyst
2 235 (10.17%) Senior
3 231 (10.00%) Lead
4 188 (8.14%) Business Analyst
5 177 (7.66%) Data Engineer
6 165 (7.14%) Consultant
7 143 (6.19%) Architect
8 135 (5.84%) Developer
9 119 (5.15%) Data Analyst
10 75 (3.25%) Test Engineer
11 72 (3.12%) Project Manager
12 62 (2.68%) Tester
13 47 (2.03%) Network Engineer
14 45 (1.95%) Test Manager
15 42 (1.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 42 (1.82%) Security Engineer
15 42 (1.82%) Systems Engineer
16 41 (1.77%) Software Engineer
17 40 (1.73%) Senior Data Engineer
18 38 (1.65%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (4.85%) REST
2 70 (3.03%) Kafka
3 69 (2.99%) JSON
4 50 (2.16%) Oracle Fusion
5 47 (2.03%) XML
6 46 (1.99%) PySpark
7 43 (1.86%) Middleware
8 41 (1.77%) OAuth
8 41 (1.77%) Spring
9 38 (1.65%) .NET
10 33 (1.43%) RESTful
11 32 (1.39%) pytest
11 32 (1.39%) Web Services
12 31 (1.34%) Pandas
12 31 (1.34%) Playwright
12 31 (1.34%) SOAP
13 29 (1.26%) Node.js
13 29 (1.26%) Swagger
14 25 (1.08%) WireMock
15 23 (1.00%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 125 (5.41%) Legacy Systems
2 116 (5.02%) Data Structures
3 107 (4.63%) Onboarding
4 92 (3.98%) Product Ownership
5 90 (3.90%) Cloud Native
6 69 (2.99%) Data Centre
7 55 (2.38%) Management Information System
8 49 (2.12%) Analytical Mindset
9 48 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
10 36 (1.56%) SCADA
11 33 (1.43%) AI Agents
12 29 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
13 28 (1.21%) Life Science
13 28 (1.21%) Public Cloud
14 27 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
14 27 (1.17%) Distributed Architecture
15 26 (1.13%) Hybrid Cloud
16 25 (1.08%) NHS
16 25 (1.08%) Replication
16 25 (1.08%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 124 (5.37%) Windows
2 81 (3.51%) Linux
3 23 (1.00%) Unix
3 23 (1.00%) Windows Server
4 16 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 11 (0.48%) Android
6 7 (0.30%) Ubuntu
7 6 (0.26%) VMS
7 6 (0.26%) Windows 10
8 4 (0.17%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.17%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.17%) SUSE
9 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.087%) HPUX
10 2 (0.087%) VxWorks
10 2 (0.087%) zOS
11 1 (0.043%) Debian
11 1 (0.043%) Mac OS X
11 1 (0.043%) Solaris
11 1 (0.043%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 638 (27.62%) Migration
2 449 (19.44%) Agile
3 409 (17.71%) Stakeholder Management
4 396 (17.14%) Data Validation
5 391 (16.93%) CI/CD
6 380 (16.45%) Data Migration
6 380 (16.45%) Problem-Solving
7 366 (15.84%) Analytics
7 366 (15.84%) User Acceptance Testing
8 348 (15.06%) Data Modelling
9 296 (12.81%) AI
10 291 (12.60%) ETL
11 290 (12.55%) DevOps
12 278 (12.03%) Test Automation
13 250 (10.82%) Continuous Improvement
14 246 (10.65%) Business Intelligence
15 242 (10.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 226 (9.78%) Data Analysis
17 223 (9.65%) Data Governance
18 211 (9.13%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 557 (24.11%) SQL
2 400 (17.32%) Python
3 115 (4.98%) Java
4 61 (2.64%) PowerShell
5 52 (2.25%) C#
6 39 (1.69%) C++
7 37 (1.60%) JavaScript
8 36 (1.56%) Bash
9 34 (1.47%) C
10 31 (1.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 29 (1.26%) TypeScript
12 27 (1.17%) Apex Code
13 25 (1.08%) PL/SQL
14 24 (1.04%) Bicep
15 21 (0.91%) Ada
15 21 (0.91%) R
16 19 (0.82%) Scala
16 19 (0.82%) VBA
17 16 (0.69%) MATLAB
18 14 (0.61%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 423 (18.31%) Security Cleared
2 306 (13.25%) SC Cleared
3 170 (7.36%) Degree
4 53 (2.29%) BPSS Clearance
5 51 (2.21%) DV Cleared
6 41 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
7 32 (1.39%) Cisco Certification
8 29 (1.26%) PMI Certification
9 24 (1.04%) CCNP
10 23 (1.00%) PMP
11 20 (0.87%) CISSP
12 17 (0.74%) ACCA
12 17 (0.74%) Master's Degree
13 16 (0.69%) ISTQB
14 15 (0.65%) Azure Certification
14 15 (0.65%) CIMA
14 15 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
15 13 (0.56%) AWS Certification
16 12 (0.52%) CCNA
17 8 (0.35%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 406 (17.58%) Data Quality
2 271 (11.73%) QA
3 107 (4.63%) GDPR
4 59 (2.55%) NIST
5 53 (2.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 34 (1.47%) Accessibility
7 31 (1.34%) PMO
8 27 (1.17%) SLA
9 23 (1.00%) IFRS
10 18 (0.78%) GxP
11 17 (0.74%) Def Stans
12 16 (0.69%) GRC
13 15 (0.65%) IFRS 17
14 14 (0.61%) HL7
15 13 (0.56%) Solvency II
16 12 (0.52%) NCSC
16 12 (0.52%) NIST 800
17 11 (0.48%) ISO 20022
17 11 (0.48%) PCI DSS
18 10 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 103 (4.46%) Docker
2 62 (2.68%) Active Directory
3 55 (2.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 26 (1.13%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (0.82%) VMware ESXi
6 16 (0.69%) Firmware
7 14 (0.61%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.56%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.48%) vSphere
11 5 (0.22%) NFS
12 4 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 4 (0.17%) KVM
13 2 (0.087%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.087%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.087%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.087%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.043%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.043%) OpenSSH
14 1 (0.043%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 147 (6.36%) Kubernetes
2 105 (4.55%) Terraform
3 50 (2.16%) Prometheus
4 46 (1.99%) Ansible
4 46 (1.99%) Grafana
5 26 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
6 21 (0.91%) FortiGate
7 20 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
8 9 (0.39%) vCenter Server
9 8 (0.35%) SCCM
10 6 (0.26%) Kibana
10 6 (0.26%) Nessus
10 6 (0.26%) Puppet
10 6 (0.26%) VxRail
11 5 (0.22%) CASB
11 5 (0.22%) HP ALM
11 5 (0.22%) vMotion
12 4 (0.17%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.17%) Istio
Vendors
1 312 (13.51%) Microsoft
2 207 (8.96%) SAP
3 198 (8.57%) Oracle
4 106 (4.59%) Databricks
5 82 (3.55%) Salesforce
6 66 (2.86%) VMware
7 64 (2.77%) ServiceNow
8 52 (2.25%) Cisco
9 40 (1.73%) Splunk
10 37 (1.60%) Workday
11 34 (1.47%) Google
12 32 (1.39%) Informatica
13 27 (1.17%) Palo Alto
14 24 (1.04%) Fortinet
14 24 (1.04%) Sage
15 23 (1.00%) MuleSoft
16 21 (0.91%) Juniper
17 20 (0.87%) IBM
17 20 (0.87%) IFS
18 18 (0.78%) Zscaler