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

6 months to
7 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 76 119
Rank change year-on-year +34 +43 +30
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,944 772 721
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.77% 3.17% 1.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.63% 3.47% 2.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,200 467 365
10th Percentile £325 £350 £313
25th Percentile £400 £417 £405
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 £475 £525 £520
% change year-on-year -9.52% +0.96% -5.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 119 53 163
10th Percentile £17.65 £25.17 £24.78
25th Percentile £38.00 £41.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -7.26% -0.40%
75th Percentile £70.75 £65.00 £75.08
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £77.00
UK median hourly rate £63.75 £57.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year +10.87% -4.96% -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 34,525 22,234 32,111
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.79% 91.21% 86.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,016 14,552 21,077
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 £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,153 931 2,253
10th Percentile £15.35 £14.66 £12.94
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £30.00 £36.34
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -17.43% -2.19%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.96
% change year-on-year +43.29% -19.35% -0.11%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 +56 941 £500 -9.09% 313
North of England +44 265 £425 -8.11% 122
Midlands +27 228 £481 +1.32% 88
South East -2 223 £490 -2.00% 228
West Midlands +31 168 £475 - 54
North West +26 162 £418 -4.46% 70
East of England +11 118 £475 +5.56% 91
South West -6 110 £475 -17.39% 90
Yorkshire +19 93 £452 +7.56% 40
East Midlands +3 56 £525 +4.06% 34
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 (4.22%) 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
1 133 (6.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (1.49%) MS Visio
3 25 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
4 18 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 17 (0.87%) 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 (0.051%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.051%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.051%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.051%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.051%) Simulink
10 1 (0.051%) UXPin
10 1 (0.051%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 95 (4.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (1.65%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.77%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.72%) Teamcenter
5 13 (0.67%) Oracle Payables
6 12 (0.62%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.62%) 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%) Payment Gateway
11 6 (0.31%) Aladdin
11 6 (0.31%) NetSuite
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
1 409 (21.04%) Azure
2 232 (11.93%) AWS
3 197 (10.13%) Power Platform
4 108 (5.56%) Azure DevOps
5 99 (5.09%) GCP
6 84 (4.32%) GitHub
7 56 (2.88%) Azure Data Factory
8 51 (2.62%) Snowflake
9 50 (2.57%) Serverless
10 49 (2.52%) Entra ID
11 47 (2.42%) SaaS
12 44 (2.26%) OCI
13 42 (2.16%) GitHub Actions
14 39 (2.01%) Amazon S3
15 35 (1.80%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 30 (1.54%) Microsoft 365
17 29 (1.49%) dbt
18 23 (1.18%) AWS Lambda
19 22 (1.13%) SuccessFactors
20 20 (1.03%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 77 (3.96%) Firewall
2 54 (2.78%) Network Security
3 36 (1.85%) VLAN
4 33 (1.70%) TCP/IP
5 25 (1.29%) DNS
6 24 (1.23%) VPN
7 23 (1.18%) WAN
8 21 (1.08%) Ethernet
9 16 (0.82%) LAN
9 16 (0.82%) 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 (9.52%) Power BI
2 110 (5.66%) Data Warehouse
3 87 (4.48%) Metadata
4 73 (3.76%) Tableau
5 64 (3.29%) SQL Server
6 52 (2.67%) Data Lake
7 42 (2.16%) PostgreSQL
8 36 (1.85%) 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 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 22 (1.13%) Delta Lake
14 20 (1.03%) BigQuery
14 20 (1.03%) Oracle Database
15 19 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
16 18 (0.93%) Pinecone
16 18 (0.93%) Power Query
17 16 (0.82%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 193 (9.93%) JIRA
2 110 (5.66%) Git
3 73 (3.76%) Jenkins
4 53 (2.73%) Selenium
5 47 (2.42%) GitLab
6 40 (2.06%) Postman
7 33 (1.70%) JMeter
8 30 (1.54%) JUnit
9 28 (1.44%) Cucumber
10 25 (1.29%) WebDriver
11 23 (1.18%) Rational DOORS
12 17 (0.87%) Visual Studio
13 16 (0.82%) Eclipse
14 15 (0.77%) MLflow
15 12 (0.62%) REST Assured
16 11 (0.57%) Bitbucket
17 10 (0.51%) Gatling
17 10 (0.51%) Rational Rhapsody
18 9 (0.46%) Gradle
18 9 (0.46%) SpecFlow
General
1 614 (31.58%) Social Skills
2 602 (30.97%) Finance
3 384 (19.75%) Analytical Skills
4 169 (8.69%) Banking
5 157 (8.08%) Public Sector
6 106 (5.45%) Documentation Skills
7 57 (2.93%) Manufacturing
8 48 (2.47%) Presentation Skills
9 47 (2.42%) Aerospace
10 43 (2.21%) Organisational Skills
11 40 (2.06%) Retail
12 34 (1.75%) Marketing
13 32 (1.65%) Pharmaceutical
14 31 (1.59%) Legal
15 30 (1.54%) General Ledger
16 29 (1.49%) Front Office
16 29 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
17 28 (1.44%) Financial Institution
17 28 (1.44%) Military
18 26 (1.34%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 363 (18.67%) Analyst
2 203 (10.44%) Lead
3 174 (8.95%) Senior
4 159 (8.18%) Business Analyst
5 156 (8.02%) Data Engineer
6 125 (6.43%) Consultant
7 119 (6.12%) Architect
8 109 (5.61%) Developer
9 100 (5.14%) Data Analyst
10 74 (3.81%) Project Manager
11 54 (2.78%) Tester
12 43 (2.21%) 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 (1.85%) Security Engineer
16 35 (1.80%) Systems Engineer
17 32 (1.65%) Technical Analyst
18 31 (1.59%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (5.45%) REST
2 68 (3.50%) JSON
2 68 (3.50%) Kafka
3 56 (2.88%) Oracle Fusion
4 47 (2.42%) Middleware
5 44 (2.26%) OAuth
6 41 (2.11%) XML
7 39 (2.01%) PySpark
8 37 (1.90%) Node.js
9 35 (1.80%) Swagger
10 32 (1.65%) SOAP
10 32 (1.65%) Web Services
11 31 (1.59%) .NET
12 29 (1.49%) Pandas
12 29 (1.49%) PyTorch
13 26 (1.34%) Playwright
13 26 (1.34%) RESTful
13 26 (1.34%) Spring
13 26 (1.34%) TensorFlow
14 24 (1.23%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 114 (5.86%) Legacy Systems
2 103 (5.30%) Data Structures
3 91 (4.68%) Onboarding
4 77 (3.96%) Product Ownership
5 58 (2.98%) Cloud Native
6 55 (2.83%) Data Centre
7 47 (2.42%) Management Information System
8 36 (1.85%) Distributed Systems
9 35 (1.80%) Analytical Mindset
10 29 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
11 25 (1.29%) Public Cloud
12 24 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
12 24 (1.23%) Replication
13 23 (1.18%) 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 (4.78%) Windows
2 78 (4.01%) 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 (0.051%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.051%) HPUX
11 1 (0.051%) pSOS
11 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 530 (27.26%) Migration
2 400 (20.58%) Agile
3 370 (19.03%) Problem-Solving
4 337 (17.34%) Data Validation
5 334 (17.18%) Stakeholder Management
6 323 (16.62%) Data Migration
7 298 (15.33%) CI/CD
8 297 (15.28%) Analytics
9 295 (15.17%) Data Modelling
10 289 (14.87%) User Acceptance Testing
11 270 (13.89%) ETL
12 252 (12.96%) DevOps
13 232 (11.93%) Business Intelligence
14 223 (11.47%) Test Automation
15 217 (11.16%) AI
16 200 (10.29%) Continuous Improvement
17 194 (9.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 190 (9.77%) Data Governance
19 176 (9.05%) Data Analysis
19 176 (9.05%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 486 (25.00%) SQL
2 351 (18.06%) Python
3 99 (5.09%) Java
4 58 (2.98%) C#
5 51 (2.62%) C++
6 49 (2.52%) JavaScript
7 40 (2.06%) PowerShell
8 39 (2.01%) C
9 33 (1.70%) Bash
9 33 (1.70%) PL/SQL
10 32 (1.65%) R
11 25 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 25 (1.29%) TypeScript
12 22 (1.13%) Bicep
13 20 (1.03%) Ada
14 17 (0.87%) Scala
15 14 (0.72%) Apex Code
16 12 (0.62%) MATLAB
16 12 (0.62%) VBA
17 10 (0.51%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 367 (18.88%) Security Cleared
2 265 (13.63%) SC Cleared
3 158 (8.13%) Degree
4 47 (2.42%) Computer Science Degree
5 45 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
6 33 (1.70%) PMI Certification
7 31 (1.59%) DV Cleared
8 30 (1.54%) Master's Degree
9 28 (1.44%) PMP
10 22 (1.13%) Cisco Certification
11 19 (0.98%) ISTQB
12 18 (0.93%) CCNP
13 15 (0.77%) CBAP
13 15 (0.77%) CISSP
14 12 (0.62%) Azure Certification
14 12 (0.62%) Microsoft Certification
15 11 (0.57%) ACCA
15 11 (0.57%) AWS Certification
16 9 (0.46%) CCNA
16 9 (0.46%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 335 (17.23%) Data Quality
2 238 (12.24%) QA
3 108 (5.56%) GDPR
4 62 (3.19%) NIST
5 54 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 24 (1.23%) Accessibility
6 24 (1.23%) IFRS
7 22 (1.13%) SLA
8 21 (1.08%) PMO
9 20 (1.03%) IFRS 17
10 18 (0.93%) GRC
11 16 (0.82%) Def Stans
12 14 (0.72%) HL7
12 14 (0.72%) MiFID
13 13 (0.67%) PCI DSS
14 12 (0.62%) GxP
15 11 (0.57%) ISO 20022
15 11 (0.57%) NCSC
15 11 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 10 (0.51%) NIST 800
System Software
1 76 (3.91%) Docker
2 38 (1.95%) Active Directory
3 34 (1.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (1.18%) Firmware
5 14 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.57%) 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 (0.21%) 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 (5.92%) Kubernetes
2 80 (4.12%) Terraform
3 39 (2.01%) Prometheus
4 37 (1.90%) Grafana
5 36 (1.85%) 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
1 264 (13.58%) Microsoft
2 169 (8.69%) Oracle
3 168 (8.64%) SAP
4 88 (4.53%) Databricks
5 64 (3.29%) ServiceNow
6 59 (3.03%) Salesforce
7 45 (2.31%) Cisco
8 42 (2.16%) VMware
9 39 (2.01%) Splunk
10 32 (1.65%) Google
10 32 (1.65%) Informatica
11 26 (1.34%) Palo Alto
11 26 (1.34%) Sage
12 25 (1.29%) Workday
13 23 (1.18%) MuleSoft
14 22 (1.13%) IBM
15 21 (1.08%) CyberArk
16 17 (0.87%) CheckPoint
16 17 (0.87%) IFS
17 16 (0.82%) OpenAI