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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 71 112
Rank change year-on-year +33 +41 +36
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,075 818 740
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.96% 3.42% 2.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.84% 3.74% 2.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,273 505 373
10th Percentile £325 £350 £320
25th Percentile £406 £413 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% +7.50% -12.85%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £588
90th Percentile £704 £715 £675
UK median daily rate £488 £525 £513
% change year-on-year -7.14% +2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 144 53 166
10th Percentile £17.75 £16.84 £26.88
25th Percentile £30.27 £36.48 £52.50
Median hourly rate £64.07 £57.50 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +11.42% -4.96% -3.20%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £76.86
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £56.04 £60.00
% change year-on-year +11.53% -6.60% -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 35,508 21,848 31,547
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.90% 91.31% 85.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,529 14,223 20,659
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £622 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £512 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.10% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,216 949 2,294
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.84
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £28.18 £36.84
Median % change year-on-year +66.78% -23.51% -1.29%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.30 £27.59 £36.50
% change year-on-year +53.34% -24.42% +1.04%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +51 991 £513 -6.82% 298
North of England +42 284 £436 -3.11% 143
Midlands +31 251 £490 +8.89% 93
South East -1 240 £500 - 194
West Midlands +28 177 £475 +18.27% 59
North West +34 165 £420 -4.00% 80
East of England +10 128 £475 +5.56% 86
South West +1 127 £500 -13.04% 94
Yorkshire +25 108 £452 +0.39% 43
East Midlands +15 70 £525 +14.38% 34
North East -18 14 £450 -23.40% 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 76 (3.66%) Confluence
2 48 (2.31%) Apache Airflow
3 40 (1.93%) Apache Spark
4 34 (1.64%) SAS
5 22 (1.06%) SharePoint
6 20 (0.96%) Apache
7 12 (0.58%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.43%) Appian
9 7 (0.34%) ArcGIS
9 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
9 7 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
10 4 (0.19%) CMS
10 4 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 3 (0.14%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
11 3 (0.14%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
11 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.096%) Documentum
12 2 (0.096%) Umbraco
Applications
1 143 (6.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (1.45%) MS Visio
3 23 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
4 20 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 19 (0.92%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
7 4 (0.19%) CATIA
7 4 (0.19%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.19%) Simulink
8 3 (0.14%) AutoCAD
8 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
8 3 (0.14%) Notion
9 2 (0.096%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.096%) 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
1 103 (4.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (1.40%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.72%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.67%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.67%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.58%) Oracle Assets
5 12 (0.58%) Workday HCM
6 8 (0.39%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.39%) NetSuite
6 8 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
6 8 (0.39%) Oracle Receivables
6 8 (0.39%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.39%) SAP ERP
7 7 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
8 6 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
8 6 (0.29%) Sage X3
8 6 (0.29%) SAP Business One
9 5 (0.24%) Oracle E-Business Tax
9 5 (0.24%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 414 (19.95%) Azure
2 247 (11.90%) AWS
3 203 (9.78%) Power Platform
4 107 (5.16%) GCP
5 105 (5.06%) Azure DevOps
6 97 (4.67%) GitHub
7 64 (3.08%) Snowflake
8 57 (2.75%) Azure Data Factory
9 54 (2.60%) GitHub Actions
10 53 (2.55%) Entra ID
11 48 (2.31%) SaaS
12 46 (2.22%) Serverless
13 39 (1.88%) OCI
14 38 (1.83%) Amazon S3
15 32 (1.54%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 32 (1.54%) dbt
16 31 (1.49%) Microsoft 365
17 22 (1.06%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 22 (1.06%) SuccessFactors
18 21 (1.01%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 82 (3.95%) Firewall
2 55 (2.65%) Network Security
3 36 (1.73%) VLAN
4 32 (1.54%) DNS
5 29 (1.40%) TCP/IP
6 27 (1.30%) VPN
7 26 (1.25%) WAN
8 19 (0.92%) Ethernet
9 17 (0.82%) LAN
9 17 (0.82%) SAN
10 14 (0.67%) BGP
10 14 (0.67%) OSPF
10 14 (0.67%) SD-WAN
10 14 (0.67%) Wireless
11 13 (0.63%) Wi-Fi
12 12 (0.58%) DHCP
12 12 (0.58%) Internet
12 12 (0.58%) NAS
13 10 (0.48%) Cisco ISE
14 9 (0.43%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 188 (9.06%) Power BI
2 112 (5.40%) Data Warehouse
3 72 (3.47%) Metadata
4 70 (3.37%) SQL Server
5 67 (3.23%) Tableau
6 63 (3.04%) Data Lake
7 49 (2.36%) PostgreSQL
8 37 (1.78%) Relational Database
9 30 (1.45%) Big Data
10 28 (1.35%) Amazon Redshift
11 25 (1.20%) NoSQL
12 24 (1.16%) BigQuery
13 23 (1.11%) Oracle Reports
14 22 (1.06%) Delta Lake
14 22 (1.06%) Oracle Database
14 22 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 21 (1.01%) Power Query
16 19 (0.92%) Azure SQL Database
16 19 (0.92%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 16 (0.77%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 192 (9.25%) JIRA
2 107 (5.16%) Git
3 79 (3.81%) Jenkins
4 53 (2.55%) GitLab
5 50 (2.41%) Selenium
6 46 (2.22%) Postman
7 36 (1.73%) JMeter
8 32 (1.54%) Cucumber
9 31 (1.49%) JUnit
10 29 (1.40%) Rational DOORS
11 26 (1.25%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.77%) Rational Rhapsody
12 16 (0.77%) Visual Studio
13 15 (0.72%) Eclipse
13 15 (0.72%) MLflow
14 10 (0.48%) Gradle
14 10 (0.48%) Maven
15 9 (0.43%) Bitbucket
15 9 (0.43%) Gatling
15 9 (0.43%) REST Assured
General
1 635 (30.60%) Finance
2 627 (30.22%) Social Skills
3 377 (18.17%) Analytical Skills
4 175 (8.43%) Banking
5 163 (7.86%) Public Sector
6 115 (5.54%) Documentation Skills
7 67 (3.23%) Manufacturing
8 55 (2.65%) Aerospace
9 45 (2.17%) Retail
10 39 (1.88%) Presentation Skills
11 38 (1.83%) Organisational Skills
12 36 (1.73%) Pharmaceutical
13 34 (1.64%) General Ledger
13 34 (1.64%) Marketing
14 32 (1.54%) Front Office
15 31 (1.49%) Legal
16 30 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
17 28 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 28 (1.35%) Local Government
17 28 (1.35%) Military
Job Titles
1 367 (17.69%) Analyst
2 221 (10.65%) Lead
3 191 (9.20%) Senior
4 170 (8.19%) Business Analyst
5 162 (7.81%) Data Engineer
6 138 (6.65%) Consultant
7 132 (6.36%) Architect
8 115 (5.54%) Developer
9 104 (5.01%) Data Analyst
10 76 (3.66%) Project Manager
11 55 (2.65%) Test Engineer
12 54 (2.60%) Tester
13 46 (2.22%) Software Engineer
14 43 (2.07%) Test Manager
15 41 (1.98%) Systems Engineer
16 39 (1.88%) Senior Analyst
17 38 (1.83%) Network Engineer
17 38 (1.83%) Security Engineer
18 35 (1.69%) Solutions Architect
19 34 (1.64%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (5.35%) REST
2 72 (3.47%) JSON
3 67 (3.23%) Kafka
4 52 (2.51%) Oracle Fusion
5 48 (2.31%) XML
6 46 (2.22%) Middleware
7 43 (2.07%) OAuth
8 37 (1.78%) PySpark
8 37 (1.78%) Swagger
9 35 (1.69%) .NET
10 34 (1.64%) RESTful
11 33 (1.59%) SOAP
12 32 (1.54%) Pandas
13 30 (1.45%) Node.js
13 30 (1.45%) Spring
14 29 (1.40%) Web Services
15 27 (1.30%) pytest
16 26 (1.25%) PyTorch
17 25 (1.20%) OAuth2
18 24 (1.16%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 121 (5.83%) Legacy Systems
2 101 (4.87%) Data Structures
3 98 (4.72%) Onboarding
4 84 (4.05%) Product Ownership
5 70 (3.37%) Cloud Native
6 62 (2.99%) Data Centre
7 49 (2.36%) Management Information System
8 41 (1.98%) Distributed Systems
9 39 (1.88%) Analytical Mindset
10 32 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
11 27 (1.30%) SCADA
12 26 (1.25%) Public Cloud
12 26 (1.25%) Replication
13 24 (1.16%) Algorithms
13 24 (1.16%) Hybrid Cloud
13 24 (1.16%) Life Science
14 23 (1.11%) AI Agents
14 23 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
15 22 (1.06%) Operational Technology
15 22 (1.06%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 107 (5.16%) Windows
2 79 (3.81%) Linux
3 26 (1.25%) Unix
4 15 (0.72%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.58%) Android
6 11 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.29%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.24%) VMS
9 4 (0.19%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.19%) SUSE
9 4 (0.19%) zOS
10 3 (0.14%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.096%) HPUX
11 2 (0.096%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.096%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.048%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.048%) Debian
12 1 (0.048%) Embedded Linux
12 1 (0.048%) pSOS
12 1 (0.048%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 564 (27.18%) Migration
2 399 (19.23%) Agile
3 358 (17.25%) Problem-Solving
4 353 (17.01%) Stakeholder Management
5 347 (16.72%) Data Migration
6 346 (16.67%) Data Validation
7 323 (15.57%) CI/CD
8 318 (15.33%) Data Modelling
9 317 (15.28%) User Acceptance Testing
10 309 (14.89%) Analytics
11 276 (13.30%) ETL
12 257 (12.39%) DevOps
13 246 (11.86%) AI
14 236 (11.37%) Test Automation
15 227 (10.94%) Business Intelligence
16 218 (10.51%) Continuous Improvement
17 215 (10.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 194 (9.35%) Data Governance
19 192 (9.25%) Data Analysis
20 184 (8.87%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 497 (23.95%) SQL
2 359 (17.30%) Python
3 109 (5.25%) Java
4 55 (2.65%) C#
5 49 (2.36%) PowerShell
6 42 (2.02%) C++
7 38 (1.83%) JavaScript
8 37 (1.78%) Bash
8 37 (1.78%) C
9 27 (1.30%) Bicep
9 27 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 26 (1.25%) PL/SQL
10 26 (1.25%) TypeScript
11 24 (1.16%) R
12 23 (1.11%) Ada
12 23 (1.11%) Apex Code
13 17 (0.82%) Scala
14 16 (0.77%) MATLAB
15 12 (0.58%) VBA
16 10 (0.48%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 380 (18.31%) Security Cleared
2 273 (13.16%) SC Cleared
3 164 (7.90%) Degree
4 50 (2.41%) BPSS Clearance
5 46 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
6 41 (1.98%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.54%) PMI Certification
8 26 (1.25%) PMP
9 24 (1.16%) Cisco Certification
10 22 (1.06%) Master's Degree
11 19 (0.92%) CCNP
12 17 (0.82%) ACCA
13 16 (0.77%) CISSP
13 16 (0.77%) ISTQB
14 15 (0.72%) CIMA
15 14 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
16 13 (0.63%) CBAP
17 11 (0.53%) AWS Certification
17 11 (0.53%) Azure Certification
18 9 (0.43%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 350 (16.87%) Data Quality
2 245 (11.81%) QA
3 104 (5.01%) GDPR
4 62 (2.99%) NIST
5 51 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 30 (1.45%) Accessibility
7 27 (1.30%) IFRS
8 24 (1.16%) PMO
8 24 (1.16%) SLA
9 18 (0.87%) Def Stans
9 18 (0.87%) GRC
9 18 (0.87%) IFRS 17
10 17 (0.82%) GxP
11 14 (0.67%) HL7
12 13 (0.63%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 12 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
13 12 (0.58%) MiFID
13 12 (0.58%) NIST 800
14 11 (0.53%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 85 (4.10%) Docker
2 46 (2.22%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.96%) Firmware
4 20 (0.96%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.67%) Hyper-V
6 13 (0.63%) VMware NSX
7 12 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (0.39%) vSphere
10 5 (0.24%) NFS
11 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 2 (0.096%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.096%) Ceph
12 2 (0.096%) KVM
12 2 (0.096%) Lustre
12 2 (0.096%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.096%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.048%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 130 (6.27%) Kubernetes
2 89 (4.29%) Terraform
3 45 (2.17%) Prometheus
4 43 (2.07%) Grafana
5 41 (1.98%) Ansible
6 26 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (0.48%) FortiGate
8 10 (0.48%) Kibana
9 9 (0.43%) Puppet
10 8 (0.39%) SCCM
11 7 (0.34%) 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
1 286 (13.78%) Microsoft
2 183 (8.82%) SAP
3 175 (8.43%) Oracle
4 99 (4.77%) Databricks
5 68 (3.28%) Salesforce
6 57 (2.75%) ServiceNow
7 50 (2.41%) VMware
8 42 (2.02%) Splunk
9 41 (1.98%) Cisco
10 34 (1.64%) Google
11 30 (1.45%) Workday
12 29 (1.40%) Informatica
13 24 (1.16%) MuleSoft
13 24 (1.16%) Sage
14 22 (1.06%) Palo Alto
15 21 (1.01%) IBM
15 21 (1.01%) IFS
16 19 (0.92%) CyberArk
17 17 (0.82%) Fortinet
18 16 (0.77%) OpenAI