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 22 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 68 111
Rank change year-on-year +33 +43 +38
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,401 1,001 733
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.35% 3.67% 2.07%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.27% 4.05% 2.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,470 612 377
10th Percentile £340 £355 £336
25th Percentile £413 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -13.04%
75th Percentile £600 £631 £588
90th Percentile £700 £700 £672
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 153 74 139
10th Percentile £17.75 £20.50 £28.00
25th Percentile £29.25 £36.74 £49.63
Median hourly rate £62.50 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% - -4.08%
75th Percentile £76.00 £67.00 £68.82
90th Percentile £83.95 £76.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -7.69%

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 38,278 24,745 30,322
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.32% 90.65% 85.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,038 15,865 19,799
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £635 £645
90th Percentile £737 £738 £751
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,361 1,324 1,984
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.23 £13.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.95 £17.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -37.13% -6.98%
75th Percentile £69.50 £53.56 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.16 £74.31
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -10.31%

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 22 July 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 22 July 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 22 July 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 +42 1,166 £513 -2.38% 462
South East +3 312 £505 +1.00% 235
Midlands +35 306 £475 +5.56% 112
North of England +32 300 £450 -5.26% 148
West Midlands +28 225 £472 +7.77% 61
North West +21 163 £450 -14.69% 89
East of England 0 130 £500 - 89
Yorkshire +33 125 £460 +9.52% 36
South West -15 122 £520 -9.57% 86
East Midlands +20 76 £509 +11.99% 51
North East -28 16 £425 -15.00% 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 72 (3.00%) Confluence
2 64 (2.67%) Apache Airflow
3 47 (1.96%) SAS
4 43 (1.79%) SharePoint
5 40 (1.67%) Apache Spark
6 28 (1.17%) Apache
7 12 (0.50%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
9 8 (0.33%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.29%) CMS
11 6 (0.25%) ArcGIS
12 5 (0.21%) Tuxedo
13 4 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 4 (0.17%) WebLogic
14 3 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
14 3 (0.12%) Appian
14 3 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
14 3 (0.12%) IIS
14 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 168 (7.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.42%) MS Visio
3 30 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
4 26 (1.08%) Spreadsheet
5 25 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 8 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
7 6 (0.25%) AutoCAD
8 5 (0.21%) Simulink
9 4 (0.17%) Chatbot
10 3 (0.12%) CATIA
11 2 (0.083%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.083%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.083%) Sketch
12 1 (0.042%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.042%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.042%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.042%) Navisworks
12 1 (0.042%) Oracle Smart View
12 1 (0.042%) ProjectWise
12 1 (0.042%) Revit
Business Applications
1 113 (4.71%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (1.33%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.67%) Workday HCM
4 13 (0.54%) Teamcenter
5 12 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
6 11 (0.46%) NetSuite
6 11 (0.46%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 11 (0.46%) SAP ERP
7 10 (0.42%) Aladdin
7 10 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
8 9 (0.37%) iTrent
8 9 (0.37%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.37%) SAP MDG
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle General Ledger
9 8 (0.33%) Sage X3
9 8 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
10 7 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.29%) SAP HCM
10 7 (0.29%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 529 (22.03%) Azure
2 275 (11.45%) AWS
3 249 (10.37%) Power Platform
4 131 (5.46%) Azure DevOps
5 125 (5.21%) GCP
6 114 (4.75%) GitHub
7 81 (3.37%) Snowflake
8 68 (2.83%) Azure Data Factory
9 66 (2.75%) GitHub Actions
10 63 (2.62%) Entra ID
11 56 (2.33%) Serverless
12 45 (1.87%) Amazon S3
13 44 (1.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 44 (1.83%) dbt
13 44 (1.83%) Microsoft 365
14 43 (1.79%) OCI
15 41 (1.71%) SaaS
16 34 (1.42%) SuccessFactors
17 31 (1.29%) Azure Monitor
18 27 (1.12%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 112 (4.66%) Firewall
2 65 (2.71%) Network Security
3 55 (2.29%) DNS
4 45 (1.87%) VLAN
4 45 (1.87%) VPN
5 38 (1.58%) TCP/IP
6 37 (1.54%) WAN
7 30 (1.25%) BGP
8 25 (1.04%) DHCP
9 23 (0.96%) SAN
10 22 (0.92%) LAN
10 22 (0.92%) OSPF
10 22 (0.92%) Wireless
11 21 (0.87%) SD-WAN
12 20 (0.83%) Internet
13 16 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
14 14 (0.58%) Ethernet
15 13 (0.54%) NAS
16 12 (0.50%) Cisco ISE
17 10 (0.42%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 230 (9.58%) Power BI
2 138 (5.75%) Data Warehouse
3 93 (3.87%) Metadata
4 77 (3.21%) Data Lake
4 77 (3.21%) SQL Server
5 70 (2.92%) Tableau
6 68 (2.83%) PostgreSQL
7 59 (2.46%) Relational Database
8 38 (1.58%) Big Data
9 29 (1.21%) Oracle Database
10 28 (1.17%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 27 (1.12%) BigQuery
11 27 (1.12%) Delta Lake
12 26 (1.08%) Power Query
12 26 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 25 (1.04%) Amazon Redshift
14 24 (1.00%) NoSQL
15 22 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
16 20 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
17 19 (0.79%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 221 (9.20%) JIRA
2 147 (6.12%) Git
3 85 (3.54%) Jenkins
4 64 (2.67%) GitLab
5 55 (2.29%) Selenium
6 40 (1.67%) JMeter
7 37 (1.54%) Cucumber
8 36 (1.50%) JUnit
8 36 (1.50%) Postman
9 30 (1.25%) WebDriver
10 21 (0.87%) Rational DOORS
11 18 (0.75%) Eclipse
12 14 (0.58%) Visual Studio
13 12 (0.50%) Gatling
13 12 (0.50%) Rational Rhapsody
14 11 (0.46%) MLflow
15 9 (0.37%) Maven
15 9 (0.37%) Oracle Forms
15 9 (0.37%) REST Assured
16 8 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 724 (30.15%) Finance
2 697 (29.03%) Social Skills
3 459 (19.12%) Analytical Skills
4 187 (7.79%) Public Sector
5 185 (7.71%) Banking
6 134 (5.58%) Documentation Skills
7 84 (3.50%) Manufacturing
8 80 (3.33%) Retail
9 57 (2.37%) Aerospace
10 47 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 45 (1.87%) Pharmaceutical
11 45 (1.87%) Telecoms
12 43 (1.79%) Organisational Skills
13 37 (1.54%) Front Office
14 36 (1.50%) Marketing
15 35 (1.46%) Automotive
16 33 (1.37%) Billing
17 32 (1.33%) Law
17 32 (1.33%) Legal
17 32 (1.33%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 428 (17.83%) Analyst
2 243 (10.12%) Senior
3 241 (10.04%) Lead
4 202 (8.41%) Business Analyst
5 200 (8.33%) Data Engineer
6 173 (7.21%) Consultant
7 139 (5.79%) Developer
8 132 (5.50%) Architect
9 124 (5.16%) Data Analyst
10 86 (3.58%) Test Engineer
11 71 (2.96%) Tester
12 69 (2.87%) Project Manager
13 55 (2.29%) Network Engineer
14 49 (2.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 44 (1.83%) Senior Data Engineer
15 44 (1.83%) Systems Engineer
16 39 (1.62%) Migration Engineer
16 39 (1.62%) Security Engineer
17 37 (1.54%) Technical Analyst
18 36 (1.50%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (4.66%) REST
2 73 (3.04%) JSON
3 69 (2.87%) Kafka
4 56 (2.33%) PySpark
5 50 (2.08%) XML
6 49 (2.04%) Oracle Fusion
7 42 (1.75%) Spring
8 39 (1.62%) .NET
9 36 (1.50%) Middleware
10 34 (1.42%) pytest
11 31 (1.29%) OAuth
12 30 (1.25%) Playwright
13 29 (1.21%) RESTful
13 29 (1.21%) SOAP
13 29 (1.21%) Web Services
14 28 (1.17%) Pandas
15 27 (1.12%) Node.js
16 25 (1.04%) WireMock
17 22 (0.92%) Spring Boot
17 22 (0.92%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 129 (5.37%) Data Structures
2 128 (5.33%) Onboarding
3 121 (5.04%) Legacy Systems
4 100 (4.16%) Cloud Native
5 99 (4.12%) Product Ownership
6 65 (2.71%) Data Centre
7 57 (2.37%) Management Information System
8 48 (2.00%) Analytical Mindset
8 48 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
9 39 (1.62%) AI Agents
10 38 (1.58%) SCADA
11 36 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
11 36 (1.50%) Hybrid Cloud
12 32 (1.33%) Life Science
13 29 (1.21%) Public Cloud
14 28 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
14 28 (1.17%) Virtual Team
15 27 (1.12%) Distributed Architecture
15 27 (1.12%) NHS
15 27 (1.12%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 137 (5.71%) Windows
2 86 (3.58%) Linux
3 37 (1.54%) Windows Server
4 22 (0.92%) Unix
5 18 (0.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.42%) Android
6 10 (0.42%) Ubuntu
7 6 (0.25%) VMS
7 6 (0.25%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.21%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.17%) SUSE
10 3 (0.12%) Mac OS
10 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.083%) HPUX
11 2 (0.083%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.083%) zOS
12 1 (0.042%) Debian
12 1 (0.042%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.042%) Solaris
12 1 (0.042%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 669 (27.86%) Migration
2 463 (19.28%) Agile
3 446 (18.58%) Stakeholder Management
4 409 (17.03%) CI/CD
5 407 (16.95%) Analytics
6 406 (16.91%) Data Migration
7 393 (16.37%) Data Validation
8 389 (16.20%) User Acceptance Testing
9 371 (15.45%) Data Modelling
10 368 (15.33%) Problem-Solving
11 308 (12.83%) AI
12 307 (12.79%) ETL
13 299 (12.45%) DevOps
14 290 (12.08%) Test Automation
15 279 (11.62%) Continuous Improvement
16 269 (11.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 266 (11.08%) Business Intelligence
18 247 (10.29%) Data Governance
19 243 (10.12%) Data Pipeline
20 234 (9.75%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 578 (24.07%) SQL
2 428 (17.83%) Python
3 109 (4.54%) Java
4 74 (3.08%) PowerShell
5 52 (2.17%) C#
6 45 (1.87%) Bash
7 37 (1.54%) JavaScript
8 33 (1.37%) C++
9 32 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 30 (1.25%) Bicep
11 27 (1.12%) Apex Code
11 27 (1.12%) TypeScript
12 25 (1.04%) PL/SQL
13 24 (1.00%) C
14 23 (0.96%) VBA
15 22 (0.92%) R
16 15 (0.62%) Ada
17 14 (0.58%) MATLAB
17 14 (0.58%) T-SQL
18 12 (0.50%) Scala
Qualifications
1 436 (18.16%) Security Cleared
2 309 (12.87%) SC Cleared
3 166 (6.91%) Degree
4 61 (2.54%) DV Cleared
5 49 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
6 37 (1.54%) Cisco Certification
7 33 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
8 29 (1.21%) CCNP
9 23 (0.96%) PMI Certification
10 19 (0.79%) ISTQB
10 19 (0.79%) PMP
11 18 (0.75%) ACCA
12 17 (0.71%) CIMA
12 17 (0.71%) CISSP
12 17 (0.71%) Microsoft Certification
13 16 (0.67%) Azure Certification
14 13 (0.54%) Master's Degree
15 12 (0.50%) AWS Certification
15 12 (0.50%) CCNA
16 10 (0.42%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 449 (18.70%) Data Quality
2 282 (11.75%) QA
3 106 (4.41%) GDPR
4 54 (2.25%) NIST
5 46 (1.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 38 (1.58%) Accessibility
7 36 (1.50%) PMO
8 29 (1.21%) SLA
9 20 (0.83%) GxP
10 16 (0.67%) GRC
11 15 (0.62%) IFRS
12 14 (0.58%) HL7
13 13 (0.54%) Def Stans
13 13 (0.54%) NCSC
14 12 (0.50%) ISO 20022
14 12 (0.50%) NIST 800
14 12 (0.50%) Solvency II
15 11 (0.46%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 11 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
15 11 (0.46%) WCAG
System Software
1 104 (4.33%) Docker
2 74 (3.08%) Active Directory
3 59 (2.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (1.12%) Virtual Machines
5 21 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
6 19 (0.79%) Virtual Desktop
7 14 (0.58%) Firmware
7 14 (0.58%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.54%) vSphere
9 12 (0.50%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.21%) NFS
11 3 (0.12%) KVM
11 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.083%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.083%) VirtualBox
12 2 (0.083%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.042%) Ceph
13 1 (0.042%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.042%) OpenSSH
13 1 (0.042%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 146 (6.08%) Kubernetes
2 116 (4.83%) Terraform
3 53 (2.21%) Ansible
4 50 (2.08%) Prometheus
5 48 (2.00%) Grafana
6 23 (0.96%) Microsoft Intune
7 22 (0.92%) FortiGate
8 20 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.54%) SCCM
10 11 (0.46%) vCenter Server
11 8 (0.33%) VxRail
12 6 (0.25%) HP ALM
12 6 (0.25%) Nessus
13 5 (0.21%) CASB
13 5 (0.21%) vMotion
13 5 (0.21%) vRealize
14 4 (0.17%) Argo
14 4 (0.17%) Istio
14 4 (0.17%) Puppet
14 4 (0.17%) systemd
Vendors
1 347 (14.45%) Microsoft
2 221 (9.20%) SAP
3 210 (8.75%) Oracle
4 129 (5.37%) Databricks
5 85 (3.54%) Salesforce
6 70 (2.92%) VMware
7 56 (2.33%) Cisco
7 56 (2.33%) ServiceNow
8 47 (1.96%) Workday
9 37 (1.54%) Splunk
10 35 (1.46%) Google
11 34 (1.42%) Informatica
12 30 (1.25%) Fortinet
13 28 (1.17%) Juniper
14 27 (1.12%) Palo Alto
15 25 (1.04%) IBM
16 24 (1.00%) Sage
16 24 (1.00%) Zscaler
17 22 (0.92%) MuleSoft
18 20 (0.83%) IFS