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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 74 118
Rank change year-on-year +33 +44 +27
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,939 781 721
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.79% 3.22% 1.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.64% 3.53% 2.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,195 470 364
10th Percentile £325 £350 £313
25th Percentile £400 £413 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £538 £500
Median % change year-on-year -9.30% +7.50% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £600
90th Percentile £700 £725 £700
UK median daily rate £478 £528 £513
% change year-on-year -9.48% +2.93% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 119 53 163
10th Percentile £17.75 £25.17 £24.78
25th Percentile £40.00 £41.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £61.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -5.74% -1.61%
75th Percentile £72.00 £65.00 £74.50
90th Percentile £82.40 £75.00 £77.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -4.17% -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 34,360 22,106 31,891
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.81% 91.23% 86.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,945 14,454 20,903
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 £614 £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 2,132 926 2,241
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.56 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £46.47 £29.15 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.40% -20.14% -2.14%
75th Percentile £67.84 £63.19 £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 8 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 8 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 8 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 +58 938 £500 -9.09% 288
North of England +41 264 £425 -5.56% 123
Midlands +26 229 £484 +1.97% 87
South East -9 223 £495 -1.00% 202
West Midlands +28 168 £475 - 52
North West +25 161 £420 -4.00% 73
East of England +11 118 £475 +5.56% 80
South West -9 109 £475 -17.39% 83
Yorkshire +22 93 £452 +8.33% 38
East Midlands +8 57 £525 +4.06% 35
North East -9 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 (4.23%) Confluence
2 39 (2.01%) Apache Airflow
2 39 (2.01%) Apache Spark
3 32 (1.65%) SAS
4 18 (0.93%) Apache
5 13 (0.67%) 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 (0.21%) 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
1 132 (6.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (1.50%) MS Visio
3 25 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
4 18 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 17 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.62%) 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%) Sketch
10 1 (0.052%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.052%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.052%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.052%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.052%) Simulink
10 1 (0.052%) UXPin
10 1 (0.052%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 95 (4.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (1.65%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.77%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.72%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.72%) Teamcenter
5 13 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.62%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.52%) 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
1 405 (20.89%) Azure
2 231 (11.91%) AWS
3 197 (10.16%) Power Platform
4 105 (5.42%) Azure DevOps
5 99 (5.11%) GCP
6 84 (4.33%) GitHub
7 56 (2.89%) Azure Data Factory
8 51 (2.63%) Snowflake
9 50 (2.58%) Serverless
10 49 (2.53%) Entra ID
11 48 (2.48%) SaaS
12 44 (2.27%) OCI
13 42 (2.17%) GitHub Actions
14 39 (2.01%) Amazon S3
15 35 (1.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 30 (1.55%) Microsoft 365
17 29 (1.50%) dbt
18 23 (1.19%) AWS Lambda
19 22 (1.13%) SuccessFactors
20 20 (1.03%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 77 (3.97%) Firewall
2 54 (2.78%) Network Security
3 36 (1.86%) VLAN
4 33 (1.70%) TCP/IP
5 25 (1.29%) DNS
6 24 (1.24%) VPN
7 23 (1.19%) WAN
8 21 (1.08%) Ethernet
9 16 (0.83%) LAN
9 16 (0.83%) SAN
10 14 (0.72%) Wireless
11 13 (0.67%) BGP
11 13 (0.67%) OSPF
11 13 (0.67%) SD-WAN
12 12 (0.62%) Cisco ISE
12 12 (0.62%) NAS
13 11 (0.57%) TACACS
13 11 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
14 8 (0.41%) HTTP
14 8 (0.41%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (9.54%) Power BI
2 110 (5.67%) Data Warehouse
3 87 (4.49%) Metadata
4 73 (3.76%) Tableau
5 64 (3.30%) SQL Server
6 52 (2.68%) Data Lake
7 42 (2.17%) PostgreSQL
8 36 (1.86%) Relational Database
9 28 (1.44%) Amazon Redshift
10 27 (1.39%) Big Data
11 26 (1.34%) NoSQL
11 26 (1.34%) Oracle Reports
12 24 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 22 (1.13%) Delta Lake
14 21 (1.08%) Oracle Database
15 20 (1.03%) BigQuery
16 19 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
17 18 (0.93%) Pinecone
17 18 (0.93%) Power Query
18 16 (0.83%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 192 (9.90%) JIRA
2 110 (5.67%) Git
3 73 (3.76%) Jenkins
4 52 (2.68%) Selenium
5 47 (2.42%) GitLab
6 39 (2.01%) Postman
7 33 (1.70%) JMeter
8 30 (1.55%) JUnit
9 28 (1.44%) Cucumber
10 25 (1.29%) WebDriver
11 24 (1.24%) Rational DOORS
12 17 (0.88%) Visual Studio
13 16 (0.83%) Eclipse
14 15 (0.77%) MLflow
15 11 (0.57%) Bitbucket
15 11 (0.57%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.57%) REST Assured
16 10 (0.52%) Gatling
17 9 (0.46%) Gradle
17 9 (0.46%) SpecFlow
General
1 611 (31.51%) Social Skills
2 599 (30.89%) Finance
3 382 (19.70%) Analytical Skills
4 169 (8.72%) Banking
5 156 (8.05%) Public Sector
6 105 (5.42%) Documentation Skills
7 57 (2.94%) Manufacturing
8 48 (2.48%) Presentation Skills
9 47 (2.42%) Aerospace
10 43 (2.22%) Organisational Skills
11 40 (2.06%) Retail
12 32 (1.65%) Marketing
13 31 (1.60%) Legal
14 30 (1.55%) General Ledger
14 30 (1.55%) Pharmaceutical
15 29 (1.50%) Front Office
15 29 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
15 29 (1.50%) Military
16 28 (1.44%) Financial Institution
17 26 (1.34%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 362 (18.67%) Analyst
2 203 (10.47%) Lead
3 172 (8.87%) Senior
4 158 (8.15%) Business Analyst
5 156 (8.05%) Data Engineer
6 126 (6.50%) Consultant
7 118 (6.09%) Architect
8 107 (5.52%) Developer
9 100 (5.16%) Data Analyst
10 73 (3.76%) Project Manager
11 54 (2.78%) Tester
12 43 (2.22%) Software Engineer
13 41 (2.11%) Network Engineer
13 41 (2.11%) Test Engineer
14 39 (2.01%) Senior Analyst
14 39 (2.01%) Test Manager
15 36 (1.86%) Security Engineer
15 36 (1.86%) Systems Engineer
16 31 (1.60%) Solutions Architect
16 31 (1.60%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 104 (5.36%) REST
2 68 (3.51%) Kafka
3 67 (3.46%) JSON
4 56 (2.89%) Oracle Fusion
5 46 (2.37%) Middleware
6 43 (2.22%) OAuth
7 40 (2.06%) XML
8 39 (2.01%) PySpark
9 37 (1.91%) Node.js
10 34 (1.75%) Swagger
11 32 (1.65%) Web Services
12 31 (1.60%) .NET
12 31 (1.60%) SOAP
13 29 (1.50%) Pandas
13 29 (1.50%) PyTorch
14 26 (1.34%) RESTful
14 26 (1.34%) Spring
14 26 (1.34%) TensorFlow
15 25 (1.29%) Playwright
16 23 (1.19%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 113 (5.83%) Legacy Systems
2 103 (5.31%) Data Structures
3 91 (4.69%) Onboarding
4 77 (3.97%) Product Ownership
5 58 (2.99%) Cloud Native
6 55 (2.84%) Data Centre
7 46 (2.37%) Management Information System
8 36 (1.86%) Distributed Systems
9 35 (1.81%) Analytical Mindset
10 29 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
11 25 (1.29%) Public Cloud
12 24 (1.24%) Hybrid Cloud
12 24 (1.24%) Replication
13 23 (1.19%) Algorithms
14 21 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
15 19 (0.98%) Credit Risk
15 19 (0.98%) Derivative
15 19 (0.98%) Reference Data
15 19 (0.98%) Virtual Team
16 18 (0.93%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 93 (4.80%) Windows
2 78 (4.02%) Linux
3 25 (1.29%) Unix
4 11 (0.57%) Android
5 9 (0.46%) 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 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
9 3 (0.15%) 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
1 531 (27.39%) Migration
2 396 (20.42%) Agile
3 368 (18.98%) Problem-Solving
4 338 (17.43%) Data Validation
5 333 (17.17%) Stakeholder Management
6 325 (16.76%) Data Migration
7 297 (15.32%) Analytics
7 297 (15.32%) CI/CD
8 295 (15.21%) Data Modelling
9 289 (14.90%) User Acceptance Testing
10 272 (14.03%) ETL
11 248 (12.79%) DevOps
12 232 (11.96%) Business Intelligence
13 222 (11.45%) Test Automation
14 218 (11.24%) AI
15 199 (10.26%) Continuous Improvement
16 193 (9.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 190 (9.80%) Data Governance
18 176 (9.08%) Data Analysis
18 176 (9.08%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 484 (24.96%) SQL
2 350 (18.05%) Python
3 99 (5.11%) Java
4 58 (2.99%) C#
5 51 (2.63%) C++
6 47 (2.42%) JavaScript
7 40 (2.06%) PowerShell
8 39 (2.01%) C
9 34 (1.75%) Bash
10 32 (1.65%) PL/SQL
11 30 (1.55%) R
12 25 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 25 (1.29%) TypeScript
13 22 (1.13%) Bicep
14 20 (1.03%) Ada
15 17 (0.88%) Scala
16 14 (0.72%) Apex Code
17 12 (0.62%) MATLAB
17 12 (0.62%) VBA
18 10 (0.52%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 365 (18.82%) Security Cleared
2 262 (13.51%) SC Cleared
3 156 (8.05%) Degree
4 46 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
5 45 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
6 33 (1.70%) PMI Certification
7 31 (1.60%) DV Cleared
8 30 (1.55%) Master's Degree
9 28 (1.44%) PMP
10 22 (1.13%) Cisco Certification
11 18 (0.93%) CCNP
11 18 (0.93%) ISTQB
12 15 (0.77%) CBAP
13 14 (0.72%) CISSP
14 12 (0.62%) Azure Certification
15 11 (0.57%) ACCA
15 11 (0.57%) AWS Certification
15 11 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.46%) CCNA
16 9 (0.46%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 336 (17.33%) Data Quality
2 237 (12.22%) QA
3 107 (5.52%) GDPR
4 62 (3.20%) NIST
5 54 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 25 (1.29%) IFRS
7 24 (1.24%) Accessibility
8 22 (1.13%) SLA
9 21 (1.08%) PMO
10 20 (1.03%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.93%) GRC
12 16 (0.83%) Def Stans
13 14 (0.72%) HL7
13 14 (0.72%) MiFID
14 13 (0.67%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.62%) GxP
15 12 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 11 (0.57%) ISO 20022
16 11 (0.57%) NCSC
17 10 (0.52%) Solvency II
System Software
1 76 (3.92%) Docker
2 38 (1.96%) Active Directory
3 34 (1.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (1.19%) Firmware
5 14 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.57%) VMware NSX
7 10 (0.52%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.52%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (0.31%) vSphere
10 5 (0.26%) NFS
11 4 (0.21%) 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
1 115 (5.93%) Kubernetes
2 80 (4.13%) Terraform
3 39 (2.01%) Prometheus
4 37 (1.91%) Grafana
5 36 (1.86%) Ansible
6 28 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (0.62%) FortiGate
9 11 (0.57%) Kibana
10 9 (0.46%) Puppet
11 8 (0.41%) 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
1 262 (13.51%) Microsoft
2 169 (8.72%) Oracle
2 169 (8.72%) SAP
3 88 (4.54%) Databricks
4 64 (3.30%) ServiceNow
5 60 (3.09%) Salesforce
6 45 (2.32%) Cisco
7 42 (2.17%) VMware
8 39 (2.01%) Splunk
9 32 (1.65%) Google
9 32 (1.65%) Informatica
10 26 (1.34%) Palo Alto
10 26 (1.34%) Sage
11 24 (1.24%) Workday
12 23 (1.19%) IBM
13 21 (1.08%) CyberArk
13 21 (1.08%) MuleSoft
14 17 (0.88%) CheckPoint
14 17 (0.88%) IFS
15 16 (0.83%) OpenAI