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 28 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 69 107
Rank change year-on-year +34 +38 +40
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,303 908 775
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.30% 3.57% 2.07%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.20% 3.91% 2.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,399 557 382
10th Percentile £339 £354 £320
25th Percentile £413 £421 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -13.04%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £588
90th Percentile £706 £700 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 155 63 182
10th Percentile £17.75 £18.68 £28.00
25th Percentile £29.76 £39.38 £47.87
Median hourly rate £63.14 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.23% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £75.50 £66.00 £71.29
90th Percentile £83.45 £77.00 £76.70
UK median hourly rate £61.25 £58.88 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.03% -1.88% -5.11%

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 37,130 23,233 31,970
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.37% 91.23% 85.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,419 14,972 20,715
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £418 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £729 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £504 £525
% change year-on-year +2.23% -4.05% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,325 1,147 2,335
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +84.31% -33.11% +1.65%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £73.55
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +2.63%

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 28 June 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 28 June 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 28 June 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 +47 1,101 £521 -4.50% 277
North of England +48 306 £450 - 118
Midlands +39 286 £492 +9.33% 100
South East +1 272 £503 +0.50% 245
West Midlands +33 207 £478 +18.52% 53
North West +26 168 £440 -2.22% 58
East of England +7 134 £500 - 57
South West 0 134 £504 -12.39% 97
Yorkshire +29 124 £461 +10.53% 36
East Midlands +26 74 £525 +15.51% 47
North East -22 17 £425 -22.73% 24
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 77 (3.34%) Confluence
2 61 (2.65%) Apache Airflow
3 46 (2.00%) SAS
4 42 (1.82%) Apache Spark
5 39 (1.69%) SharePoint
6 25 (1.09%) Apache
7 14 (0.61%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
9 8 (0.35%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.30%) Appian
10 7 (0.30%) CMS
10 7 (0.30%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.26%) ArcGIS
12 5 (0.22%) Tuxedo
13 3 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
13 3 (0.13%) IIS
13 3 (0.13%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
13 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 162 (7.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.52%) MS Visio
3 29 (1.26%) Microsoft Office
4 27 (1.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 22 (0.96%) Spreadsheet
6 8 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
7 5 (0.22%) AutoCAD
7 5 (0.22%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.17%) Simulink
9 3 (0.13%) CATIA
10 2 (0.087%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.087%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.087%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.087%) Sketch
11 1 (0.043%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.043%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.043%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.043%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.043%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.043%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 112 (4.86%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.43%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
3 15 (0.65%) Teamcenter
4 13 (0.56%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.52%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.48%) Oracle General Ledger
6 11 (0.48%) SAP ERP
7 10 (0.43%) Oracle Assets
8 8 (0.35%) Aladdin
8 8 (0.35%) iTrent
8 8 (0.35%) NetSuite
8 8 (0.35%) Oracle Financials
9 7 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
9 7 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
9 7 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
9 7 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
9 7 (0.30%) Sage X3
9 7 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
10 6 (0.26%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 490 (21.28%) Azure
2 280 (12.16%) AWS
3 225 (9.77%) Power Platform
4 124 (5.38%) Azure DevOps
5 121 (5.25%) GCP
6 109 (4.73%) GitHub
7 76 (3.30%) Snowflake
8 63 (2.74%) Entra ID
9 61 (2.65%) Azure Data Factory
10 60 (2.61%) GitHub Actions
11 55 (2.39%) Serverless
12 42 (1.82%) Amazon S3
12 42 (1.82%) SaaS
13 41 (1.78%) Microsoft 365
14 39 (1.69%) dbt
15 38 (1.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 37 (1.61%) OCI
17 30 (1.30%) SuccessFactors
18 28 (1.22%) Salesforce Service Cloud
19 24 (1.04%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 101 (4.39%) Firewall
2 62 (2.69%) Network Security
3 41 (1.78%) VLAN
4 38 (1.65%) DNS
5 37 (1.61%) WAN
6 33 (1.43%) VPN
7 29 (1.26%) TCP/IP
8 27 (1.17%) BGP
9 23 (1.00%) SAN
10 22 (0.96%) Wireless
11 21 (0.91%) LAN
12 20 (0.87%) SD-WAN
13 19 (0.83%) OSPF
14 17 (0.74%) Ethernet
15 16 (0.69%) DHCP
15 16 (0.69%) Internet
15 16 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
16 14 (0.61%) Cisco ISE
17 12 (0.52%) NAS
17 12 (0.52%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 209 (9.08%) Power BI
2 125 (5.43%) Data Warehouse
3 85 (3.69%) Metadata
4 79 (3.43%) SQL Server
5 69 (3.00%) Tableau
6 68 (2.95%) PostgreSQL
7 66 (2.87%) Data Lake
8 57 (2.48%) Relational Database
9 32 (1.39%) Big Data
10 28 (1.22%) Oracle Database
10 28 (1.22%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 26 (1.13%) Amazon Redshift
11 26 (1.13%) NoSQL
12 25 (1.09%) BigQuery
13 24 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 23 (1.00%) Power Query
15 22 (0.96%) Oracle Reports
16 21 (0.91%) Delta Lake
17 19 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
18 18 (0.78%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 227 (9.86%) JIRA
2 134 (5.82%) Git
3 89 (3.86%) Jenkins
4 66 (2.87%) GitLab
5 54 (2.34%) Selenium
6 43 (1.87%) Postman
7 42 (1.82%) JMeter
8 36 (1.56%) JUnit
9 35 (1.52%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.30%) WebDriver
11 25 (1.09%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.78%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.69%) Rational Rhapsody
13 16 (0.69%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.65%) Gatling
15 13 (0.56%) MLflow
16 10 (0.43%) Maven
16 10 (0.43%) REST Assured
17 9 (0.39%) Gradle
17 9 (0.39%) Oracle Forms
General
1 698 (30.31%) Finance
2 689 (29.92%) Social Skills
3 437 (18.98%) Analytical Skills
4 190 (8.25%) Public Sector
5 183 (7.95%) Banking
6 129 (5.60%) Documentation Skills
7 74 (3.21%) Manufacturing
8 65 (2.82%) Retail
9 63 (2.74%) Aerospace
10 42 (1.82%) Organisational Skills
11 41 (1.78%) Pharmaceutical
12 40 (1.74%) Telecoms
13 38 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 37 (1.61%) Front Office
15 35 (1.52%) General Ledger
15 35 (1.52%) Marketing
16 33 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
17 32 (1.39%) Law
17 32 (1.39%) Legal
18 31 (1.35%) Military
Job Titles
1 399 (17.33%) Analyst
2 236 (10.25%) Senior
3 231 (10.03%) Lead
4 188 (8.16%) Business Analyst
5 176 (7.64%) Data Engineer
6 164 (7.12%) Consultant
7 143 (6.21%) Architect
8 136 (5.91%) Developer
9 119 (5.17%) Data Analyst
10 74 (3.21%) Test Engineer
11 73 (3.17%) Project Manager
12 61 (2.65%) Tester
13 47 (2.04%) Network Engineer
14 45 (1.95%) Test Manager
15 42 (1.82%) Security Engineer
15 42 (1.82%) Systems Engineer
16 41 (1.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 41 (1.78%) Software Engineer
17 40 (1.74%) Senior Data Engineer
18 37 (1.61%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (4.91%) REST
2 70 (3.04%) Kafka
3 68 (2.95%) JSON
4 50 (2.17%) Oracle Fusion
5 46 (2.00%) PySpark
5 46 (2.00%) XML
6 43 (1.87%) Middleware
7 41 (1.78%) OAuth
7 41 (1.78%) Spring
8 38 (1.65%) .NET
9 33 (1.43%) RESTful
10 32 (1.39%) pytest
10 32 (1.39%) SOAP
10 32 (1.39%) Web Services
11 31 (1.35%) Pandas
11 31 (1.35%) Playwright
12 29 (1.26%) Node.js
12 29 (1.26%) Swagger
13 25 (1.09%) WireMock
14 23 (1.00%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 125 (5.43%) Legacy Systems
2 111 (4.82%) Data Structures
3 107 (4.65%) Onboarding
4 91 (3.95%) Product Ownership
5 89 (3.86%) Cloud Native
6 69 (3.00%) Data Centre
7 57 (2.48%) Management Information System
8 49 (2.13%) Analytical Mindset
9 48 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
10 36 (1.56%) SCADA
11 33 (1.43%) AI Agents
12 29 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
13 28 (1.22%) Life Science
13 28 (1.22%) Public Cloud
14 27 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
14 27 (1.17%) Distributed Architecture
15 26 (1.13%) Hybrid Cloud
15 26 (1.13%) Virtual Team
16 25 (1.09%) NHS
16 25 (1.09%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 121 (5.25%) Windows
2 81 (3.52%) Linux
3 23 (1.00%) Unix
4 21 (0.91%) Windows Server
5 16 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (0.48%) Android
7 7 (0.30%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.26%) VMS
8 6 (0.26%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.17%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.17%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.17%) SUSE
10 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.087%) HPUX
11 2 (0.087%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.087%) zOS
12 1 (0.043%) Debian
12 1 (0.043%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.043%) Solaris
12 1 (0.043%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 635 (27.57%) Migration
2 450 (19.54%) Agile
3 410 (17.80%) Stakeholder Management
4 392 (17.02%) Data Validation
5 391 (16.98%) CI/CD
6 377 (16.37%) Data Migration
6 377 (16.37%) Problem-Solving
7 363 (15.76%) Analytics
7 363 (15.76%) User Acceptance Testing
8 348 (15.11%) Data Modelling
9 296 (12.85%) AI
10 291 (12.64%) ETL
11 288 (12.51%) DevOps
12 280 (12.16%) Test Automation
13 249 (10.81%) Continuous Improvement
14 244 (10.59%) Business Intelligence
15 242 (10.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 225 (9.77%) Data Analysis
17 222 (9.64%) Data Governance
18 210 (9.12%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 558 (24.23%) SQL
2 400 (17.37%) Python
3 116 (5.04%) Java
4 61 (2.65%) PowerShell
5 52 (2.26%) C#
6 39 (1.69%) C++
7 37 (1.61%) JavaScript
8 36 (1.56%) Bash
9 34 (1.48%) C
10 31 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 29 (1.26%) TypeScript
12 27 (1.17%) Apex Code
13 25 (1.09%) PL/SQL
14 24 (1.04%) Bicep
15 22 (0.96%) R
16 21 (0.91%) Ada
17 19 (0.83%) Scala
17 19 (0.83%) VBA
18 16 (0.69%) MATLAB
19 14 (0.61%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 421 (18.28%) Security Cleared
2 305 (13.24%) SC Cleared
3 168 (7.29%) Degree
4 53 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
5 49 (2.13%) DV Cleared
6 41 (1.78%) Computer Science Degree
7 32 (1.39%) Cisco Certification
8 29 (1.26%) PMI Certification
9 24 (1.04%) CCNP
10 23 (1.00%) PMP
11 20 (0.87%) CISSP
12 17 (0.74%) ACCA
12 17 (0.74%) Master's Degree
13 16 (0.69%) ISTQB
14 15 (0.65%) Azure Certification
14 15 (0.65%) CIMA
14 15 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
15 13 (0.56%) AWS Certification
16 12 (0.52%) CCNA
17 8 (0.35%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 402 (17.46%) Data Quality
2 269 (11.68%) QA
3 107 (4.65%) GDPR
4 60 (2.61%) NIST
5 54 (2.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 33 (1.43%) Accessibility
7 31 (1.35%) PMO
8 27 (1.17%) SLA
9 23 (1.00%) IFRS
10 18 (0.78%) GxP
11 17 (0.74%) Def Stans
12 16 (0.69%) GRC
13 15 (0.65%) IFRS 17
14 14 (0.61%) HL7
15 13 (0.56%) Solvency II
16 12 (0.52%) NCSC
16 12 (0.52%) NIST 800
17 11 (0.48%) ISO 20022
17 11 (0.48%) PCI DSS
18 10 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 103 (4.47%) Docker
2 60 (2.61%) Active Directory
3 54 (2.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.09%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
6 15 (0.65%) Firmware
7 14 (0.61%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.56%) Hyper-V
9 10 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
9 10 (0.43%) vSphere
10 5 (0.22%) NFS
11 4 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 4 (0.17%) KVM
12 2 (0.087%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.087%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.087%) VirtualBox
12 2 (0.087%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.043%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.043%) OpenSSH
13 1 (0.043%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 146 (6.34%) Kubernetes
2 105 (4.56%) Terraform
3 50 (2.17%) Prometheus
4 46 (2.00%) Ansible
4 46 (2.00%) Grafana
5 26 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
6 21 (0.91%) FortiGate
7 19 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
8 9 (0.39%) vCenter Server
9 8 (0.35%) SCCM
10 6 (0.26%) Kibana
10 6 (0.26%) Nessus
10 6 (0.26%) Puppet
10 6 (0.26%) VxRail
11 5 (0.22%) CASB
11 5 (0.22%) HP ALM
11 5 (0.22%) vMotion
12 4 (0.17%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.17%) Istio
Vendors
1 308 (13.37%) Microsoft
2 207 (8.99%) SAP
3 197 (8.55%) Oracle
4 107 (4.65%) Databricks
5 82 (3.56%) Salesforce
6 65 (2.82%) ServiceNow
6 65 (2.82%) VMware
7 52 (2.26%) Cisco
8 40 (1.74%) Splunk
9 37 (1.61%) Workday
10 33 (1.43%) Google
11 32 (1.39%) Informatica
12 27 (1.17%) Palo Alto
13 24 (1.04%) Fortinet
13 24 (1.04%) Sage
14 23 (1.00%) MuleSoft
15 21 (0.91%) Juniper
16 20 (0.87%) IFS
17 19 (0.83%) IBM
18 18 (0.78%) CyberArk