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

6 months to
31 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 73 114
Rank change year-on-year +35 +41 +36
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,101 836 737
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.00% 3.45% 2.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.88% 3.78% 2.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,285 515 370
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% +7.45% -13.00%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £600
90th Percentile £710 £715 £675
UK median daily rate £490 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -6.67% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 145 54 168
10th Percentile £17.75 £17.02 £26.88
25th Percentile £30.27 £36.74 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.63 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.80% -4.75% -3.20%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £76.75 £76.86
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £56.77 £60.00
% change year-on-year +10.09% -5.38% -4.94%

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 35,715 22,116 31,552
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.05% 91.31% 85.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,658 14,376 20,600
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.05% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £513 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,231 961 2,308
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.84
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £28.75 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.48% -23.33% -
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year +51.79% -23.29% -0.73%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 +49 1,003 £513 -6.82% 295
North of England +39 286 £435 -3.33% 134
Midlands +33 257 £495 +9.94% 94
South East -6 242 £500 - 192
West Midlands +27 182 £481 +19.26% 61
North West +29 166 £420 -4.00% 75
East of England +11 129 £475 +5.56% 85
South West -2 128 £500 -13.04% 91
Yorkshire +18 108 £452 +3.85% 40
East Midlands +18 70 £525 +15.51% 33
North East -13 15 £438 -25.53% 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 78 (3.71%) Confluence
2 50 (2.38%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (1.95%) Apache Spark
4 35 (1.67%) SAS
5 23 (1.09%) SharePoint
6 21 (1.00%) Apache
7 13 (0.62%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.43%) Appian
9 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.33%) ArcGIS
10 7 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.19%) CMS
11 4 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 3 (0.14%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.095%) Documentum
13 2 (0.095%) Umbraco
Applications
1 144 (6.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (1.43%) MS Visio
3 23 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
4 20 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 19 (0.90%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
7 4 (0.19%) AutoCAD
7 4 (0.19%) CATIA
7 4 (0.19%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.19%) Simulink
8 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
8 3 (0.14%) Notion
9 2 (0.095%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.095%) Sketch
10 1 (0.048%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.048%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.048%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.048%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.048%) UXPin
10 1 (0.048%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 106 (5.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (1.38%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.71%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.67%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.67%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.57%) Oracle Assets
5 12 (0.57%) Workday HCM
6 8 (0.38%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.38%) NetSuite
6 8 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
6 8 (0.38%) Oracle Receivables
6 8 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.38%) SAP ERP
7 7 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
7 7 (0.33%) Sage X3
8 6 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
8 6 (0.29%) SAP Business One
9 5 (0.24%) SAP Payroll
9 5 (0.24%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 420 (19.99%) Azure
2 254 (12.09%) AWS
3 204 (9.71%) Power Platform
4 111 (5.28%) GCP
5 105 (5.00%) Azure DevOps
6 100 (4.76%) GitHub
7 65 (3.09%) Snowflake
8 57 (2.71%) Azure Data Factory
8 57 (2.71%) GitHub Actions
9 55 (2.62%) Entra ID
10 48 (2.28%) SaaS
11 47 (2.24%) Serverless
12 40 (1.90%) Amazon S3
13 39 (1.86%) OCI
14 32 (1.52%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 32 (1.52%) dbt
14 32 (1.52%) Microsoft 365
15 23 (1.09%) Salesforce Service Cloud
16 22 (1.05%) SuccessFactors
17 21 (1.00%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 82 (3.90%) Firewall
2 55 (2.62%) Network Security
3 36 (1.71%) VLAN
4 34 (1.62%) DNS
5 29 (1.38%) TCP/IP
6 28 (1.33%) VPN
7 27 (1.29%) WAN
8 19 (0.90%) Ethernet
9 17 (0.81%) LAN
9 17 (0.81%) SAN
10 15 (0.71%) BGP
10 15 (0.71%) OSPF
10 15 (0.71%) SD-WAN
11 14 (0.67%) Wireless
12 13 (0.62%) Wi-Fi
13 12 (0.57%) DHCP
13 12 (0.57%) Internet
13 12 (0.57%) NAS
14 10 (0.48%) Cisco ISE
15 9 (0.43%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 189 (9.00%) Power BI
2 112 (5.33%) Data Warehouse
3 72 (3.43%) Metadata
4 71 (3.38%) SQL Server
5 67 (3.19%) Tableau
6 63 (3.00%) Data Lake
7 52 (2.48%) PostgreSQL
8 37 (1.76%) Relational Database
9 30 (1.43%) Big Data
10 28 (1.33%) Amazon Redshift
11 25 (1.19%) NoSQL
12 24 (1.14%) BigQuery
13 23 (1.09%) Oracle Reports
14 22 (1.05%) Delta Lake
14 22 (1.05%) Oracle Database
14 22 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 21 (1.00%) Power Query
16 20 (0.95%) Azure SQL Database
16 20 (0.95%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 16 (0.76%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 196 (9.33%) JIRA
2 108 (5.14%) Git
3 83 (3.95%) Jenkins
4 58 (2.76%) GitLab
5 52 (2.48%) Selenium
6 45 (2.14%) Postman
7 39 (1.86%) JMeter
8 34 (1.62%) Cucumber
8 34 (1.62%) JUnit
9 29 (1.38%) Rational DOORS
9 29 (1.38%) WebDriver
10 16 (0.76%) Rational Rhapsody
10 16 (0.76%) Visual Studio
11 15 (0.71%) Eclipse
11 15 (0.71%) MLflow
12 10 (0.48%) Gradle
12 10 (0.48%) Maven
13 9 (0.43%) Bitbucket
13 9 (0.43%) Gatling
13 9 (0.43%) REST Assured
General
1 645 (30.70%) Finance
2 634 (30.18%) Social Skills
3 381 (18.13%) Analytical Skills
4 179 (8.52%) Banking
5 168 (8.00%) Public Sector
6 116 (5.52%) Documentation Skills
7 67 (3.19%) Manufacturing
8 56 (2.67%) Aerospace
9 45 (2.14%) Retail
10 40 (1.90%) Organisational Skills
11 39 (1.86%) Presentation Skills
12 36 (1.71%) Pharmaceutical
13 34 (1.62%) General Ledger
13 34 (1.62%) Marketing
14 32 (1.52%) Front Office
15 31 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 31 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
15 31 (1.48%) Legal
16 29 (1.38%) Local Government
17 28 (1.33%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 370 (17.61%) Analyst
2 225 (10.71%) Lead
3 193 (9.19%) Senior
4 172 (8.19%) Business Analyst
5 163 (7.76%) Data Engineer
6 141 (6.71%) Consultant
7 133 (6.33%) Architect
8 115 (5.47%) Developer
9 105 (5.00%) Data Analyst
10 77 (3.66%) Project Manager
11 57 (2.71%) Test Engineer
12 55 (2.62%) Tester
13 46 (2.19%) Software Engineer
14 43 (2.05%) Test Manager
15 41 (1.95%) Systems Engineer
16 39 (1.86%) Senior Analyst
17 38 (1.81%) Network Engineer
17 38 (1.81%) Security Engineer
18 36 (1.71%) Migration Engineer
19 35 (1.67%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 110 (5.24%) REST
2 71 (3.38%) JSON
3 67 (3.19%) Kafka
4 53 (2.52%) Oracle Fusion
5 47 (2.24%) XML
6 46 (2.19%) Middleware
7 43 (2.05%) OAuth
8 38 (1.81%) PySpark
9 37 (1.76%) Swagger
10 35 (1.67%) .NET
11 34 (1.62%) RESTful
12 33 (1.57%) SOAP
13 32 (1.52%) Pandas
13 32 (1.52%) Spring
14 30 (1.43%) Node.js
15 29 (1.38%) Web Services
16 27 (1.29%) pytest
17 26 (1.24%) PyTorch
18 25 (1.19%) OAuth2
19 24 (1.14%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 121 (5.76%) Legacy Systems
2 102 (4.85%) Data Structures
3 99 (4.71%) Onboarding
4 84 (4.00%) Product Ownership
5 73 (3.47%) Cloud Native
6 63 (3.00%) Data Centre
7 49 (2.33%) Management Information System
8 42 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
9 40 (1.90%) Analytical Mindset
10 32 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
11 27 (1.29%) Public Cloud
11 27 (1.29%) Replication
11 27 (1.29%) SCADA
12 25 (1.19%) AI Agents
13 24 (1.14%) Algorithms
13 24 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
13 24 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
13 24 (1.14%) Life Science
14 22 (1.05%) Operational Technology
14 22 (1.05%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 109 (5.19%) Windows
2 81 (3.86%) Linux
3 26 (1.24%) Unix
4 16 (0.76%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.57%) Android
5 12 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.29%) VMS
6 6 (0.29%) Windows 10
7 4 (0.19%) Mac OS
7 4 (0.19%) SUSE
7 4 (0.19%) zOS
8 3 (0.14%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.095%) HPUX
9 2 (0.095%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.095%) VxWorks
10 1 (0.048%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.048%) Debian
10 1 (0.048%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.048%) pSOS
10 1 (0.048%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 571 (27.18%) Migration
2 402 (19.13%) Agile
3 360 (17.13%) Problem-Solving
3 360 (17.13%) Stakeholder Management
4 352 (16.75%) Data Validation
5 349 (16.61%) Data Migration
6 329 (15.66%) CI/CD
7 323 (15.37%) User Acceptance Testing
8 321 (15.28%) Data Modelling
9 311 (14.80%) Analytics
10 276 (13.14%) ETL
11 261 (12.42%) DevOps
12 253 (12.04%) AI
13 239 (11.38%) Test Automation
14 228 (10.85%) Business Intelligence
15 220 (10.47%) Continuous Improvement
16 217 (10.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 196 (9.33%) Data Analysis
17 196 (9.33%) Data Governance
18 186 (8.85%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 501 (23.85%) SQL
2 362 (17.23%) Python
3 109 (5.19%) Java
4 54 (2.57%) C#
5 52 (2.48%) PowerShell
6 42 (2.00%) C++
7 39 (1.86%) Bash
8 38 (1.81%) JavaScript
9 37 (1.76%) C
10 28 (1.33%) Bicep
11 27 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 26 (1.24%) PL/SQL
12 26 (1.24%) TypeScript
13 24 (1.14%) R
14 23 (1.09%) Ada
14 23 (1.09%) Apex Code
15 17 (0.81%) Scala
16 16 (0.76%) MATLAB
17 12 (0.57%) VBA
18 10 (0.48%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 386 (18.37%) Security Cleared
2 279 (13.28%) SC Cleared
3 167 (7.95%) Degree
4 52 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
5 48 (2.28%) Computer Science Degree
6 41 (1.95%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.52%) PMI Certification
8 26 (1.24%) PMP
9 24 (1.14%) Cisco Certification
10 22 (1.05%) Master's Degree
11 19 (0.90%) CCNP
12 17 (0.81%) ACCA
13 16 (0.76%) CISSP
13 16 (0.76%) ISTQB
14 15 (0.71%) CIMA
15 14 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
16 13 (0.62%) CBAP
17 12 (0.57%) AWS Certification
17 12 (0.57%) Azure Certification
18 9 (0.43%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 356 (16.94%) Data Quality
2 247 (11.76%) QA
3 104 (4.95%) GDPR
4 62 (2.95%) NIST
5 51 (2.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 30 (1.43%) Accessibility
7 27 (1.29%) IFRS
8 25 (1.19%) PMO
8 25 (1.19%) SLA
9 18 (0.86%) Def Stans
9 18 (0.86%) GRC
9 18 (0.86%) IFRS 17
10 17 (0.81%) GxP
11 14 (0.67%) HL7
12 13 (0.62%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 12 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
13 12 (0.57%) MiFID
13 12 (0.57%) NIST 800
14 11 (0.52%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 90 (4.28%) Docker
2 47 (2.24%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.95%) Firmware
4 20 (0.95%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.67%) Hyper-V
6 13 (0.62%) VMware NSX
7 12 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (0.38%) vSphere
10 5 (0.24%) NFS
11 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 2 (0.095%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.095%) Ceph
12 2 (0.095%) KVM
12 2 (0.095%) Lustre
12 2 (0.095%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.095%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.095%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.048%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 135 (6.43%) Kubernetes
2 94 (4.47%) Terraform
3 48 (2.28%) Prometheus
4 45 (2.14%) Grafana
5 42 (2.00%) Ansible
6 26 (1.24%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (0.90%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (0.48%) FortiGate
8 10 (0.48%) Kibana
9 9 (0.43%) Puppet
10 8 (0.38%) SCCM
11 7 (0.33%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.29%) Nessus
13 5 (0.24%) vMotion
14 4 (0.19%) Argo
14 4 (0.19%) CASB
14 4 (0.19%) EMC VPLEX
14 4 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
14 4 (0.19%) Istio
14 4 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 287 (13.66%) Microsoft
2 187 (8.90%) SAP
3 176 (8.38%) Oracle
4 100 (4.76%) Databricks
5 72 (3.43%) Salesforce
6 58 (2.76%) ServiceNow
7 50 (2.38%) VMware
8 42 (2.00%) Splunk
9 41 (1.95%) Cisco
10 34 (1.62%) Google
11 30 (1.43%) Workday
12 29 (1.38%) Informatica
13 25 (1.19%) Sage
14 24 (1.14%) MuleSoft
15 22 (1.05%) Palo Alto
16 21 (1.00%) IBM
16 21 (1.00%) IFS
17 19 (0.90%) CyberArk
18 17 (0.81%) Fortinet
19 16 (0.76%) OpenAI