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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 103 128
Rank change year-on-year +53 +25 +10
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,608 657 686
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.43% 2.59% 1.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.09% 2.86% 2.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 982 379 391
10th Percentile £350 £355 £325
25th Percentile £404 £413 £434
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £540 £530
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% +1.89% -3.64%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £623
90th Percentile £705 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £490 £528 £540
% change year-on-year -7.11% -2.31% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 35 139
10th Percentile £34.35 £25.26 £24.05
25th Percentile £60.00 £44.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +4.00%
75th Percentile £71.13 £64.88 £75.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.15 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -0.08%

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 31,583 22,934 32,620
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.97% 90.41% 87.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,210 14,556 21,603
10th Percentile £313 £308 £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 £618 £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 1,944 784 2,086
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.50 £13.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.24 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.32 £35.00 £33.78
Median % change year-on-year -16.23% +3.63% -5.26%
75th Percentile £63.81 £65.00 £59.33
90th Percentile £73.46 £75.18 £71.90
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £32.50 £32.85
% change year-on-year -13.85% -1.05% -6.16%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 +64 753 £513 -6.82% 274
North of England +27 215 £428 -11.17% 141
South East +9 185 £501 +0.25% 233
Midlands +28 163 £492 +0.61% 140
North West +20 139 £402 -9.41% 72
South West +8 135 £475 -17.39% 100
West Midlands +20 130 £492 -0.61% 104
East of England +28 106 £475 +11.76% 103
Yorkshire -6 68 £464 +2.20% 49
East Midlands -5 31 £513 +39.65% 35
North East -4 11 £463 -36.21% 21
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 65 (4.04%) Confluence
2 32 (1.99%) Apache Spark
2 32 (1.99%) SAS
3 27 (1.68%) Apache Airflow
4 20 (1.24%) SharePoint
5 16 (1.00%) Apache
5 16 (1.00%) Microsoft Exchange
6 9 (0.56%) Appian
7 7 (0.44%) Jupyter
8 6 (0.37%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 6 (0.37%) Skype for Business
9 5 (0.31%) CMS
9 5 (0.31%) Exchange Server 2013
9 5 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
10 4 (0.25%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 3 (0.19%) CICS
11 3 (0.19%) GeoServer
11 3 (0.19%) Mattermost
11 3 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 78 (4.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 27 (1.68%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.43%) MS Visio
4 15 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
6 7 (0.44%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
8 4 (0.25%) Notion
9 3 (0.19%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.12%) Simulink
10 2 (0.12%) Sketch
11 1 (0.062%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.062%) CATIA
11 1 (0.062%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.062%) Stateflow
11 1 (0.062%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 76 (4.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (1.62%) Oracle EBS
3 13 (0.81%) Oracle General Ledger
3 13 (0.81%) Oracle Payables
4 12 (0.75%) Workday HCM
5 11 (0.68%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 9 (0.56%) Oracle Assets
6 9 (0.56%) SAP FI
7 8 (0.50%) Aladdin
7 8 (0.50%) OpenText VIM for SAP
7 8 (0.50%) Oracle EBS R12
7 8 (0.50%) Oracle Receivables
8 7 (0.44%) Dynamics CRM
8 7 (0.44%) NetSuite
8 7 (0.44%) Oracle Financials
8 7 (0.44%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 7 (0.44%) SAP MDG
8 7 (0.44%) SAP MM
9 6 (0.37%) Sage X3
9 6 (0.37%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 370 (23.01%) Azure
2 187 (11.63%) AWS
3 135 (8.40%) Power Platform
4 118 (7.34%) Azure DevOps
5 77 (4.79%) GCP
6 71 (4.42%) GitHub
7 55 (3.42%) Entra ID
8 47 (2.92%) Serverless
9 45 (2.80%) Azure Data Factory
9 45 (2.80%) SaaS
10 41 (2.55%) GitHub Actions
11 38 (2.36%) OCI
12 33 (2.05%) Snowflake
13 27 (1.68%) Amazon S3
13 27 (1.68%) OpenShift
14 23 (1.43%) AWS Lambda
14 23 (1.43%) Microsoft 365
15 21 (1.31%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 20 (1.24%) SuccessFactors
17 18 (1.12%) Boomi
Communications & Networking
1 54 (3.36%) Firewall
2 35 (2.18%) Network Security
3 33 (2.05%) TCP/IP
4 23 (1.43%) Ethernet
5 18 (1.12%) DNS
6 15 (0.93%) VLAN
6 15 (0.93%) VPN
7 14 (0.87%) SAN
8 12 (0.75%) NAS
9 11 (0.68%) WAN
10 10 (0.62%) Wireless
11 9 (0.56%) BGP
11 9 (0.56%) HTTP
11 9 (0.56%) OSPF
12 8 (0.50%) LAN
12 8 (0.50%) MPLS
13 6 (0.37%) Cisco ISE
13 6 (0.37%) Internet
13 6 (0.37%) SSL
13 6 (0.37%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 126 (7.84%) Power BI
2 74 (4.60%) Metadata
3 71 (4.42%) Data Warehouse
4 41 (2.55%) SQL Server
4 41 (2.55%) Tableau
5 38 (2.36%) Data Lake
6 25 (1.55%) Oracle Reports
6 25 (1.55%) PostgreSQL
7 24 (1.49%) NoSQL
8 22 (1.37%) Amazon Redshift
9 19 (1.18%) Delta Lake
10 18 (1.12%) Big Data
10 18 (1.12%) Oracle Database
10 18 (1.12%) Pinecone
10 18 (1.12%) Relational Database
10 18 (1.12%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 17 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 14 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
12 14 (0.87%) Elasticsearch
13 13 (0.81%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 162 (10.07%) JIRA
2 91 (5.66%) Git
3 75 (4.66%) Jenkins
4 56 (3.48%) Selenium
5 46 (2.86%) GitLab
6 40 (2.49%) Postman
7 31 (1.93%) JUnit
7 31 (1.93%) Oracle APEX
8 30 (1.87%) Rational DOORS
9 29 (1.80%) Cucumber
10 28 (1.74%) JMeter
11 22 (1.37%) Visual Studio
12 17 (1.06%) MLflow
13 16 (1.00%) Eclipse
14 15 (0.93%) WebDriver
15 12 (0.75%) REST Assured
16 9 (0.56%) Bitbucket
16 9 (0.56%) TestRail
17 8 (0.50%) Gatling
17 8 (0.50%) SpecFlow
General
1 586 (36.44%) Social Skills
2 483 (30.04%) Finance
3 335 (20.83%) Analytical Skills
4 147 (9.14%) Banking
5 143 (8.89%) Public Sector
6 80 (4.98%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (3.23%) Presentation Skills
8 43 (2.67%) Manufacturing
9 38 (2.36%) Aerospace
10 32 (1.99%) Marketing
11 31 (1.93%) Electronics
11 31 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
12 30 (1.87%) Front Office
12 30 (1.87%) Military
13 25 (1.55%) Organisational Skills
14 24 (1.49%) Investment Banking
14 24 (1.49%) Legal
14 24 (1.49%) Pharmaceutical
15 23 (1.43%) Financial Institution
15 23 (1.43%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 304 (18.91%) Analyst
2 162 (10.07%) Senior
3 160 (9.95%) Lead
4 134 (8.33%) Business Analyst
5 116 (7.21%) Consultant
5 116 (7.21%) Developer
6 106 (6.59%) Architect
7 94 (5.85%) Data Engineer
8 78 (4.85%) Data Analyst
9 52 (3.23%) Project Manager
10 51 (3.17%) Software Engineer
11 49 (3.05%) Tester
12 38 (2.36%) Senior Analyst
13 35 (2.18%) SAP Consultant
14 34 (2.11%) Senior Developer
14 34 (2.11%) Test Analyst
15 32 (1.99%) Solutions Architect
15 32 (1.99%) Test Manager
16 30 (1.87%) Embedded Engineer
17 29 (1.80%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 101 (6.28%) REST
2 64 (3.98%) JSON
3 52 (3.23%) Oracle Fusion
4 48 (2.99%) XML
5 47 (2.92%) OAuth
6 46 (2.86%) Kafka
7 43 (2.67%) Middleware
8 37 (2.30%) .NET
8 37 (2.30%) SOAP
9 36 (2.24%) Node.js
9 36 (2.24%) PyTorch
10 32 (1.99%) PySpark
10 32 (1.99%) TensorFlow
10 32 (1.99%) Web Services
11 31 (1.93%) Swagger
12 29 (1.80%) RESTful
13 28 (1.74%) Playwright
14 27 (1.68%) pytest
15 25 (1.55%) Pandas
16 24 (1.49%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 96 (5.97%) Legacy Systems
2 65 (4.04%) Data Structures
3 64 (3.98%) Product Ownership
4 52 (3.23%) Onboarding
5 45 (2.80%) Cloud Native
6 39 (2.43%) Management Information System
7 32 (1.99%) Data Centre
8 29 (1.80%) Analytical Mindset
9 26 (1.62%) Algorithms
9 26 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
10 24 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
11 22 (1.37%) Replication
12 21 (1.31%) Derivative
13 18 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
13 18 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
14 17 (1.06%) Security Posture
15 16 (1.00%) Credit Risk
16 15 (0.93%) FPGA
17 14 (0.87%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 14 (0.87%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 93 (5.78%) Windows
2 83 (5.16%) Linux
3 32 (1.99%) Unix
4 9 (0.56%) Android
5 6 (0.37%) Windows Server
5 6 (0.37%) zOS
6 5 (0.31%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.19%) Embedded Linux
7 3 (0.19%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.12%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.12%) Debian
9 1 (0.062%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.062%) FreeRTOS
9 1 (0.062%) pSOS
9 1 (0.062%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.062%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 402 (25.00%) Agile
2 371 (23.07%) Migration
3 366 (22.76%) Problem-Solving
4 298 (18.53%) Stakeholder Management
5 264 (16.42%) CI/CD
6 262 (16.29%) Analytics
7 259 (16.11%) Data Validation
8 255 (15.86%) DevOps
9 218 (13.56%) Data Modelling
10 211 (13.12%) Data Migration
11 203 (12.62%) Test Automation
12 199 (12.38%) ETL
13 197 (12.25%) User Acceptance Testing
14 189 (11.75%) AI
15 174 (10.82%) Continuous Improvement
16 166 (10.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 164 (10.20%) Business Intelligence
18 141 (8.77%) Data Governance
19 136 (8.46%) Data Analysis
20 133 (8.27%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 392 (24.38%) SQL
2 326 (20.27%) Python
3 91 (5.66%) JavaScript
4 83 (5.16%) Java
5 64 (3.98%) C#
6 50 (3.11%) PL/SQL
7 49 (3.05%) C++
8 39 (2.43%) C
9 38 (2.36%) PowerShell
10 36 (2.24%) Bash
11 29 (1.80%) TypeScript
12 25 (1.55%) R
13 23 (1.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 19 (1.18%) Ada
14 19 (1.18%) Bicep
15 17 (1.06%) Groovy
16 13 (0.81%) T-SQL
16 13 (0.81%) VBA
17 12 (0.75%) Scala
18 10 (0.62%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 357 (22.20%) Security Cleared
2 261 (16.23%) SC Cleared
3 155 (9.64%) Degree
4 55 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
5 45 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
6 40 (2.49%) DV Cleared
7 34 (2.11%) Master's Degree
8 27 (1.68%) ISTQB
9 26 (1.62%) PMI Certification
10 22 (1.37%) PMP
11 16 (1.00%) AWS Certification
12 15 (0.93%) CISSP
13 13 (0.81%) CBAP
13 13 (0.81%) Cisco Certification
14 12 (0.75%) Microsoft Certification
15 10 (0.62%) Oracle Certification
16 9 (0.56%) Azure Certification
16 9 (0.56%) CCNP
17 7 (0.44%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
17 7 (0.44%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 224 (13.93%) Data Quality
2 203 (12.62%) QA
3 85 (5.29%) GDPR
4 70 (4.35%) NIST
5 49 (3.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 26 (1.62%) Accessibility
7 21 (1.31%) IFRS
8 18 (1.12%) IFRS 17
9 17 (1.06%) Def Stans
10 15 (0.93%) GRC
11 14 (0.87%) PCI DSS
11 14 (0.87%) PMO
12 13 (0.81%) NCSC
13 12 (0.75%) COBIT
13 12 (0.75%) EU AI Act
14 11 (0.68%) MiFID
14 11 (0.68%) SLA
15 10 (0.62%) MISRA
16 9 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
16 9 (0.56%) GMP
System Software
1 74 (4.60%) Docker
2 45 (2.80%) Active Directory
3 32 (1.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (1.31%) Firmware
5 11 (0.68%) VMware NSX
6 8 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
6 8 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.44%) Hyper-V
8 5 (0.31%) NFS
9 4 (0.25%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
9 4 (0.25%) vSphere
10 3 (0.19%) Embedded Firmware
10 3 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
11 2 (0.12%) Ceph
11 2 (0.12%) KVM
11 2 (0.12%) Lustre
11 2 (0.12%) OpenAM
11 2 (0.12%) OpenDJ
11 2 (0.12%) OpenIDM
11 2 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 105 (6.53%) Kubernetes
2 69 (4.29%) Terraform
3 34 (2.11%) Ansible
4 27 (1.68%) Single Sign-On
5 24 (1.49%) Prometheus
6 22 (1.37%) Grafana
7 15 (0.93%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (0.87%) Kibana
9 13 (0.81%) Puppet
10 10 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 10 (0.62%) Nessus
10 10 (0.62%) SCCM
11 7 (0.44%) Nmap
12 5 (0.31%) CASB
13 4 (0.25%) EMC NetWorker
13 4 (0.25%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.25%) SCOM
13 4 (0.25%) vMotion
14 3 (0.19%) CloudHub
14 3 (0.19%) Iperf
Vendors
1 215 (13.37%) Microsoft
2 170 (10.57%) Oracle
3 130 (8.08%) SAP
4 70 (4.35%) Databricks
4 70 (4.35%) ServiceNow
5 46 (2.86%) Splunk
6 39 (2.43%) Salesforce
6 39 (2.43%) VMware
7 36 (2.24%) Cisco
8 33 (2.05%) Google
9 30 (1.87%) Workday
10 27 (1.68%) Sage
11 25 (1.55%) MuleSoft
12 23 (1.43%) Informatica
13 21 (1.31%) IBM
14 19 (1.18%) Murex
14 19 (1.18%) Palo Alto
15 15 (0.93%) CyberArk
16 14 (0.87%) Bloomberg
17 13 (0.81%) Avaloq