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

6 months to
28 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 87 130
Rank change year-on-year +43 +43 +6
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,780 680 675
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.69% 2.80% 1.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.44% 3.09% 2.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,105 412 363
10th Percentile £350 £361 £319
25th Percentile £404 £422 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £540 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.26% +2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £616
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £487 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -7.24% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 100 44 143
10th Percentile £31.58 £27.08 £23.45
25th Percentile £59.61 £49.38 £50.63
Median hourly rate £65.00 £61.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.69% +2.50% -4.00%
75th Percentile £73.13 £65.25 £75.25
90th Percentile £82.33 £75.18 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £60.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +7.44% +0.83% -4.60%

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 32,731 22,028 32,675
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.21% 90.81% 86.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,968 14,519 21,584
10th Percentile £313 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,997 852 2,159
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.00 £20.30 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.00 £32.66 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.24% -1.05% -12.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.10 £71.75
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +7.69% - -9.72%

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 28 March 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 28 March 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 28 March 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 +68 830 £501 -9.00% 268
North of England +36 237 £443 -6.84% 152
South East -5 205 £500 - 215
Midlands +35 192 £492 +3.58% 118
North West +28 152 £416 -7.56% 74
West Midlands +26 150 £486 -0.38% 77
South West +11 138 £475 -17.39% 89
East of England +19 125 £489 +8.63% 96
Yorkshire +6 76 £461 +9.75% 51
East Midlands -1 40 £525 +42.86% 41
North East -3 12 £450 -37.93% 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 72 (4.04%) Confluence
2 35 (1.97%) Apache Airflow
3 34 (1.91%) SAS
4 32 (1.80%) Apache Spark
5 16 (0.90%) Apache
6 15 (0.84%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.67%) Microsoft Exchange
8 9 (0.51%) Appian
9 8 (0.45%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.39%) ArcGIS
11 6 (0.34%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 6 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
12 5 (0.28%) Anypoint
12 5 (0.28%) CMS
13 3 (0.17%) CICS
13 3 (0.17%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 3 (0.17%) WebLogic
14 2 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
14 2 (0.11%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 103 (5.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 26 (1.46%) MS Visio
3 23 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
4 17 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 17 (0.96%) Spreadsheet
5 12 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (0.45%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.22%) Notion
8 3 (0.17%) LaTeX
9 2 (0.11%) CATIA
9 2 (0.11%) Sketch
10 1 (0.056%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.056%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.056%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.056%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.056%) Simulink
10 1 (0.056%) UXPin
10 1 (0.056%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 87 (4.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (1.80%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.84%) Oracle General Ledger
4 13 (0.73%) Oracle Payables
4 13 (0.73%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 13 (0.73%) Workday HCM
5 10 (0.56%) Oracle Receivables
6 9 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
6 9 (0.51%) SAP FI
7 8 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
7 8 (0.45%) OpenText VIM for SAP
8 7 (0.39%) Aladdin
8 7 (0.39%) NetSuite
8 7 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
8 7 (0.39%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 7 (0.39%) SAP MM
8 7 (0.39%) Teamcenter
9 6 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
9 6 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
9 6 (0.34%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 424 (23.82%) Azure
2 214 (12.02%) AWS
3 157 (8.82%) Power Platform
4 133 (7.47%) Azure DevOps
5 86 (4.83%) GCP
6 83 (4.66%) GitHub
7 55 (3.09%) Entra ID
8 54 (3.03%) Azure Data Factory
9 49 (2.75%) Serverless
10 48 (2.70%) GitHub Actions
10 48 (2.70%) SaaS
11 45 (2.53%) OCI
12 37 (2.08%) Snowflake
13 36 (2.02%) Amazon S3
14 31 (1.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 27 (1.52%) OpenShift
16 24 (1.35%) AWS Lambda
16 24 (1.35%) Microsoft 365
17 22 (1.24%) Boomi
17 22 (1.24%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 70 (3.93%) Firewall
2 49 (2.75%) Network Security
3 34 (1.91%) TCP/IP
4 24 (1.35%) VLAN
5 23 (1.29%) DNS
6 22 (1.24%) VPN
7 21 (1.18%) Ethernet
8 18 (1.01%) WAN
9 15 (0.84%) SAN
10 13 (0.73%) NAS
11 11 (0.62%) BGP
11 11 (0.62%) HTTP
11 11 (0.62%) OSPF
12 10 (0.56%) LAN
12 10 (0.56%) SD-WAN
12 10 (0.56%) Wireless
13 8 (0.45%) Cisco ISE
13 8 (0.45%) Internet
14 7 (0.39%) MPLS
14 7 (0.39%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 145 (8.15%) Power BI
2 95 (5.34%) Data Warehouse
3 91 (5.11%) Metadata
4 57 (3.20%) SQL Server
5 55 (3.09%) Tableau
6 42 (2.36%) Data Lake
7 40 (2.25%) PostgreSQL
8 29 (1.63%) Oracle Reports
9 26 (1.46%) Amazon Redshift
10 25 (1.40%) Delta Lake
11 23 (1.29%) Big Data
11 23 (1.29%) Relational Database
12 22 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 21 (1.18%) NoSQL
14 20 (1.12%) Azure SQL Database
14 20 (1.12%) Oracle Database
14 20 (1.12%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 18 (1.01%) Pinecone
16 16 (0.90%) Star Schema
17 14 (0.79%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 179 (10.06%) JIRA
2 107 (6.01%) Git
3 81 (4.55%) Jenkins
4 60 (3.37%) Selenium
5 47 (2.64%) GitLab
6 40 (2.25%) Postman
7 36 (2.02%) JUnit
8 33 (1.85%) Cucumber
8 33 (1.85%) Rational DOORS
9 28 (1.57%) Oracle APEX
10 27 (1.52%) JMeter
11 21 (1.18%) WebDriver
12 19 (1.07%) Visual Studio
13 18 (1.01%) MLflow
14 14 (0.79%) Eclipse
15 12 (0.67%) Bitbucket
15 12 (0.67%) REST Assured
16 10 (0.56%) Rational Rhapsody
16 10 (0.56%) TestRail
17 9 (0.51%) SpecFlow
General
1 614 (34.49%) Social Skills
2 532 (29.89%) Finance
3 359 (20.17%) Analytical Skills
4 157 (8.82%) Public Sector
5 152 (8.54%) Banking
6 96 (5.39%) Documentation Skills
7 49 (2.75%) Manufacturing
8 48 (2.70%) Presentation Skills
9 47 (2.64%) Aerospace
10 34 (1.91%) Electronics
11 33 (1.85%) Marketing
11 33 (1.85%) Pharmaceutical
12 29 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
12 29 (1.63%) Organisational Skills
13 28 (1.57%) Military
13 28 (1.57%) Retail
14 27 (1.52%) Telecoms
15 26 (1.46%) Financial Institution
15 26 (1.46%) Front Office
16 25 (1.40%) Legal
Job Titles
1 328 (18.43%) Analyst
2 184 (10.34%) Lead
3 180 (10.11%) Senior
4 152 (8.54%) Business Analyst
5 126 (7.08%) Data Engineer
6 123 (6.91%) Developer
7 121 (6.80%) Consultant
8 113 (6.35%) Architect
9 83 (4.66%) Data Analyst
10 68 (3.82%) Project Manager
11 52 (2.92%) Tester
12 45 (2.53%) Software Engineer
13 39 (2.19%) SAP Consultant
14 38 (2.13%) Senior Analyst
14 38 (2.13%) Senior Developer
15 36 (2.02%) Test Engineer
16 35 (1.97%) Test Analyst
17 34 (1.91%) Test Manager
18 33 (1.85%) Embedded Engineer
19 32 (1.80%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 119 (6.69%) REST
2 80 (4.49%) JSON
3 59 (3.31%) Oracle Fusion
4 58 (3.26%) Kafka
5 53 (2.98%) XML
6 49 (2.75%) OAuth
7 46 (2.58%) Middleware
8 39 (2.19%) SOAP
9 37 (2.08%) Node.js
9 37 (2.08%) PySpark
10 35 (1.97%) .NET
11 32 (1.80%) Web Services
12 31 (1.74%) Swagger
13 30 (1.69%) PyTorch
14 28 (1.57%) Playwright
15 27 (1.52%) pytest
15 27 (1.52%) RESTful
16 26 (1.46%) TensorFlow
17 24 (1.35%) JWT
17 24 (1.35%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 105 (5.90%) Legacy Systems
2 90 (5.06%) Data Structures
3 71 (3.99%) Onboarding
3 71 (3.99%) Product Ownership
4 44 (2.47%) Cloud Native
5 43 (2.42%) Management Information System
6 37 (2.08%) Data Centre
7 34 (1.91%) Analytical Mindset
8 29 (1.63%) Distributed Systems
9 28 (1.57%) Replication
10 22 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
11 21 (1.18%) Algorithms
12 20 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
12 20 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
13 19 (1.07%) Public Cloud
14 17 (0.96%) Derivative
14 17 (0.96%) Virtual Team
15 15 (0.84%) Credit Risk
16 14 (0.79%) CMDB
16 14 (0.79%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 91 (5.11%) Windows
2 74 (4.16%) Linux
3 27 (1.52%) Unix
4 11 (0.62%) Android
5 8 (0.45%) Windows Server
6 6 (0.34%) zOS
7 5 (0.28%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (0.22%) SUSE
9 3 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
9 3 (0.17%) VMS
10 2 (0.11%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.11%) Debian
10 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.056%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.056%) FreeRTOS
11 1 (0.056%) pSOS
11 1 (0.056%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 442 (24.83%) Migration
2 410 (23.03%) Agile
3 369 (20.73%) Problem-Solving
4 326 (18.31%) Stakeholder Management
5 305 (17.13%) Data Validation
6 299 (16.80%) CI/CD
7 287 (16.12%) Analytics
8 275 (15.45%) DevOps
9 264 (14.83%) Data Migration
10 252 (14.16%) Data Modelling
11 246 (13.82%) ETL
12 228 (12.81%) User Acceptance Testing
13 209 (11.74%) Test Automation
14 197 (11.07%) Continuous Improvement
15 192 (10.79%) AI
16 191 (10.73%) Business Intelligence
17 190 (10.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 176 (9.89%) Data Governance
19 152 (8.54%) Data Pipeline
20 149 (8.37%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 446 (25.06%) SQL
2 332 (18.65%) Python
3 91 (5.11%) Java
4 87 (4.89%) JavaScript
5 65 (3.65%) C#
6 52 (2.92%) PL/SQL
7 47 (2.64%) C++
8 44 (2.47%) PowerShell
9 41 (2.30%) C
10 28 (1.57%) TypeScript
11 27 (1.52%) Bash
12 26 (1.46%) R
13 24 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 22 (1.24%) Bicep
15 21 (1.18%) Ada
16 17 (0.96%) T-SQL
17 16 (0.90%) Groovy
18 14 (0.79%) Scala
19 13 (0.73%) VBA
20 10 (0.56%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 379 (21.29%) Security Cleared
2 270 (15.17%) SC Cleared
3 159 (8.93%) Degree
4 51 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 48 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
6 37 (2.08%) DV Cleared
7 30 (1.69%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.57%) PMI Certification
9 26 (1.46%) PMP
10 25 (1.40%) ISTQB
11 16 (0.90%) Cisco Certification
12 15 (0.84%) CISSP
12 15 (0.84%) Microsoft Certification
13 13 (0.73%) CBAP
13 13 (0.73%) CCNP
14 12 (0.67%) Azure Certification
15 11 (0.62%) AWS Certification
16 8 (0.45%) CCNA
16 8 (0.45%) IIBA
16 8 (0.45%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 288 (16.18%) Data Quality
2 224 (12.58%) QA
3 102 (5.73%) GDPR
4 72 (4.04%) NIST
5 60 (3.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 25 (1.40%) Accessibility
7 22 (1.24%) IFRS
8 20 (1.12%) Def Stans
9 19 (1.07%) IFRS 17
9 19 (1.07%) SLA
10 16 (0.90%) GRC
10 16 (0.90%) PMO
11 14 (0.79%) NCSC
11 14 (0.79%) PCI DSS
12 12 (0.67%) COBIT
13 11 (0.62%) GxP
13 11 (0.62%) MiFID
13 11 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 10 (0.56%) HL7
14 10 (0.56%) MISRA
System Software
1 76 (4.27%) Docker
2 41 (2.30%) Active Directory
3 35 (1.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (1.52%) Firmware
5 11 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
5 11 (0.62%) VMware NSX
6 10 (0.56%) Hyper-V
7 8 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
8 7 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (0.39%) vSphere
9 5 (0.28%) NFS
10 4 (0.22%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 3 (0.17%) Embedded Firmware
12 2 (0.11%) Ceph
12 2 (0.11%) KVM
12 2 (0.11%) Lustre
12 2 (0.11%) OpenAM
12 2 (0.11%) OpenDJ
12 2 (0.11%) OpenIDM
12 2 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 112 (6.29%) Kubernetes
2 78 (4.38%) Terraform
3 30 (1.69%) Ansible
4 29 (1.63%) Prometheus
4 29 (1.63%) Single Sign-On
5 27 (1.52%) Grafana
6 12 (0.67%) Microsoft Intune
7 11 (0.62%) Kibana
7 11 (0.62%) Puppet
8 9 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 6 (0.34%) FortiGate
9 6 (0.34%) Nessus
9 6 (0.34%) SCCM
10 5 (0.28%) CASB
10 5 (0.28%) vCenter Server
11 4 (0.22%) EMC NetWorker
11 4 (0.22%) EMC VPLEX
11 4 (0.22%) Failover Clustering
11 4 (0.22%) vMotion
11 4 (0.22%) VxRail
Vendors
1 236 (13.26%) Microsoft
2 188 (10.56%) Oracle
3 152 (8.54%) SAP
4 85 (4.78%) Databricks
5 74 (4.16%) ServiceNow
6 46 (2.58%) Salesforce
7 43 (2.42%) VMware
8 42 (2.36%) Splunk
9 38 (2.13%) Google
10 35 (1.97%) Cisco
11 31 (1.74%) Informatica
12 30 (1.69%) MuleSoft
13 28 (1.57%) Workday
14 27 (1.52%) Sage
15 21 (1.18%) IBM
15 21 (1.18%) Palo Alto
16 19 (1.07%) CyberArk
17 15 (0.84%) OpenAI
18 13 (0.73%) Bloomberg
18 13 (0.73%) Murex