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

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 34 69 107
Rank change year-on-year +35 +38 +40
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,286 889 759
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.28% 3.56% 2.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.19% 3.90% 2.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,394 550 373
10th Percentile £332 £356 £320
25th Percentile £410 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £534 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.28% +6.70% -13.04%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £588
90th Percentile £704 £703 £674
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -10.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 155 60 182
10th Percentile £17.75 £18.05 £28.00
25th Percentile £30.27 £37.25 £48.81
Median hourly rate £63.14 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.23% - -4.08%
75th Percentile £75.50 £66.88 £72.25
90th Percentile £83.45 £77.50 £76.86
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £57.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.90% -3.75% -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 36,943 22,820 31,966
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.26% 91.36% 85.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,357 14,745 20,676
10th Percentile £325 £300 £303
25th Percentile £415 £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 £730 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £502 £525
% change year-on-year +2.09% -4.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,312 1,098 2,392
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £27.06 £37.63
Median % change year-on-year +73.67% -28.07% +7.07%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £74.13 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 +48 1,087 £513 -6.82% 311
North of England +43 311 £440 -2.22% 126
Midlands +38 276 £492 +9.36% 106
South East +2 272 £500 - 243
West Midlands +28 201 £481 +18.83% 53
North West +30 175 £425 -5.56% 65
South West 0 138 £500 -13.04% 92
East of England +13 132 £500 - 66
Yorkshire +29 121 £460 +5.85% 38
East Midlands +20 70 £525 +15.51% 53
North East -20 18 £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 79 (3.46%) Confluence
2 60 (2.62%) Apache Airflow
3 46 (2.01%) SAS
4 42 (1.84%) Apache Spark
5 38 (1.66%) SharePoint
6 23 (1.01%) Apache
7 15 (0.66%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
9 8 (0.35%) Appian
9 8 (0.35%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.31%) CMS
10 7 (0.31%) 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
1 156 (6.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.40%) MS Visio
3 30 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
4 26 (1.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.92%) 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
9 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.087%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.087%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.087%) Sketch
11 1 (0.044%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.044%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.044%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.044%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.044%) UXPin
11 1 (0.044%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 114 (4.99%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (1.40%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.66%) Oracle Payables
3 15 (0.66%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.61%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.52%) Oracle General Ledger
5 12 (0.52%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
6 10 (0.44%) SAP ERP
7 8 (0.35%) Aladdin
7 8 (0.35%) Oracle Financials
8 7 (0.31%) iTrent
8 7 (0.31%) NetSuite
8 7 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
8 7 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
8 7 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
8 7 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.31%) Sage X3
8 7 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
9 6 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 480 (21.00%) Azure
2 281 (12.29%) AWS
3 224 (9.80%) Power Platform
4 120 (5.25%) Azure DevOps
5 118 (5.16%) GCP
6 111 (4.86%) GitHub
7 74 (3.24%) Snowflake
8 64 (2.80%) Entra ID
9 60 (2.62%) Azure Data Factory
9 60 (2.62%) GitHub Actions
10 56 (2.45%) Serverless
11 46 (2.01%) SaaS
12 42 (1.84%) Amazon S3
13 40 (1.75%) OCI
14 39 (1.71%) Microsoft 365
15 38 (1.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 38 (1.66%) dbt
16 30 (1.31%) SuccessFactors
17 28 (1.22%) Salesforce Service Cloud
18 24 (1.05%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 100 (4.37%) Firewall
2 63 (2.76%) Network Security
3 41 (1.79%) VLAN
4 38 (1.66%) DNS
4 38 (1.66%) WAN
5 33 (1.44%) VPN
6 31 (1.36%) TCP/IP
7 27 (1.18%) BGP
8 23 (1.01%) SAN
9 22 (0.96%) LAN
9 22 (0.96%) Wireless
10 20 (0.87%) SD-WAN
11 19 (0.83%) Ethernet
11 19 (0.83%) OSPF
12 15 (0.66%) DHCP
12 15 (0.66%) Internet
12 15 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
13 14 (0.61%) Cisco ISE
14 12 (0.52%) NAS
14 12 (0.52%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 209 (9.14%) Power BI
2 123 (5.38%) Data Warehouse
3 82 (3.59%) Metadata
4 81 (3.54%) SQL Server
5 69 (3.02%) Tableau
6 67 (2.93%) PostgreSQL
7 65 (2.84%) Data Lake
8 56 (2.45%) Relational Database
9 32 (1.40%) Big Data
10 28 (1.22%) Oracle Database
10 28 (1.22%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 26 (1.14%) Amazon Redshift
12 25 (1.09%) NoSQL
13 24 (1.05%) BigQuery
13 24 (1.05%) Oracle Reports
13 24 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 23 (1.01%) Power Query
15 19 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
15 19 (0.83%) Delta Lake
16 18 (0.79%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 224 (9.80%) JIRA
2 132 (5.77%) Git
3 90 (3.94%) Jenkins
4 66 (2.89%) GitLab
5 53 (2.32%) Selenium
6 42 (1.84%) Postman
7 40 (1.75%) JMeter
8 36 (1.57%) JUnit
9 35 (1.53%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.31%) WebDriver
11 25 (1.09%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.79%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.70%) Rational Rhapsody
13 16 (0.70%) Visual Studio
14 14 (0.61%) Gatling
14 14 (0.61%) MLflow
15 10 (0.44%) Gradle
15 10 (0.44%) Maven
15 10 (0.44%) REST Assured
16 8 (0.35%) Oracle Forms
General
1 690 (30.18%) Finance
2 680 (29.75%) Social Skills
3 422 (18.46%) Analytical Skills
4 190 (8.31%) Public Sector
5 182 (7.96%) Banking
6 128 (5.60%) Documentation Skills
7 68 (2.97%) Manufacturing
8 64 (2.80%) Aerospace
9 62 (2.71%) Retail
10 41 (1.79%) Organisational Skills
11 39 (1.71%) Telecoms
12 38 (1.66%) Pharmaceutical
13 37 (1.62%) Front Office
14 36 (1.57%) General Ledger
14 36 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 36 (1.57%) Marketing
15 35 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
16 33 (1.44%) Legal
16 33 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
17 32 (1.40%) Military
Job Titles
1 391 (17.10%) Analyst
2 236 (10.32%) Senior
3 228 (9.97%) Lead
4 182 (7.96%) Business Analyst
5 173 (7.57%) Data Engineer
6 165 (7.22%) Consultant
7 140 (6.12%) Architect
8 137 (5.99%) Developer
9 117 (5.12%) Data Analyst
10 75 (3.28%) Project Manager
11 73 (3.19%) Test Engineer
12 59 (2.58%) Tester
13 48 (2.10%) Network Engineer
14 47 (2.06%) Test Manager
15 44 (1.92%) Systems Engineer
16 42 (1.84%) Security Engineer
16 42 (1.84%) Software Engineer
17 41 (1.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 39 (1.71%) Senior Data Engineer
19 38 (1.66%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 120 (5.25%) REST
2 70 (3.06%) Kafka
3 68 (2.97%) JSON
4 54 (2.36%) Oracle Fusion
5 47 (2.06%) XML
6 45 (1.97%) OAuth
6 45 (1.97%) PySpark
7 42 (1.84%) Middleware
8 39 (1.71%) Spring
9 37 (1.62%) .NET
10 34 (1.49%) RESTful
10 34 (1.49%) SOAP
10 34 (1.49%) Swagger
11 33 (1.44%) Web Services
12 31 (1.36%) pytest
13 30 (1.31%) Pandas
13 30 (1.31%) Playwright
14 29 (1.27%) Node.js
15 27 (1.18%) JWT
16 25 (1.09%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 128 (5.60%) Legacy Systems
2 109 (4.77%) Data Structures
3 105 (4.59%) Onboarding
4 89 (3.89%) Product Ownership
5 88 (3.85%) Cloud Native
6 68 (2.97%) Data Centre
7 52 (2.27%) Management Information System
8 49 (2.14%) Distributed Systems
9 47 (2.06%) Analytical Mindset
10 36 (1.57%) SCADA
11 30 (1.31%) AI Agents
12 29 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
13 28 (1.22%) Public Cloud
14 27 (1.18%) Distributed Architecture
14 27 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
14 27 (1.18%) Hybrid Cloud
15 25 (1.09%) Algorithms
15 25 (1.09%) Life Science
15 25 (1.09%) Replication
16 24 (1.05%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 122 (5.34%) Windows
2 86 (3.76%) Linux
3 26 (1.14%) Unix
4 22 (0.96%) Windows Server
5 16 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (0.57%) Android
7 7 (0.31%) 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 (0.044%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.044%) pSOS
12 1 (0.044%) Solaris
12 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 627 (27.43%) Migration
2 443 (19.38%) Agile
3 406 (17.76%) Stakeholder Management
4 391 (17.10%) CI/CD
5 388 (16.97%) Data Validation
6 374 (16.36%) Data Migration
7 372 (16.27%) Problem-Solving
8 363 (15.88%) User Acceptance Testing
9 360 (15.75%) Analytics
10 347 (15.18%) Data Modelling
11 290 (12.69%) ETL
12 288 (12.60%) AI
13 285 (12.47%) DevOps
14 273 (11.94%) Test Automation
15 245 (10.72%) Business Intelligence
16 244 (10.67%) Continuous Improvement
17 240 (10.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 216 (9.45%) Data Governance
19 215 (9.41%) Data Analysis
20 208 (9.10%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 556 (24.32%) SQL
2 396 (17.32%) Python
3 115 (5.03%) Java
4 62 (2.71%) PowerShell
5 51 (2.23%) C#
6 39 (1.71%) C++
7 37 (1.62%) Bash
7 37 (1.62%) C
7 37 (1.62%) JavaScript
8 31 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 28 (1.22%) TypeScript
10 27 (1.18%) Apex Code
11 25 (1.09%) Bicep
11 25 (1.09%) PL/SQL
12 22 (0.96%) R
13 21 (0.92%) Ada
14 18 (0.79%) Scala
14 18 (0.79%) VBA
15 17 (0.74%) MATLAB
16 14 (0.61%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 424 (18.55%) Security Cleared
2 306 (13.39%) SC Cleared
3 168 (7.35%) Degree
4 55 (2.41%) BPSS Clearance
5 51 (2.23%) DV Cleared
6 42 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
7 32 (1.40%) Cisco Certification
8 31 (1.36%) PMI Certification
9 24 (1.05%) CCNP
9 24 (1.05%) PMP
10 20 (0.87%) CISSP
11 19 (0.83%) Master's Degree
12 17 (0.74%) ACCA
12 17 (0.74%) ISTQB
13 16 (0.70%) Azure Certification
14 15 (0.66%) CIMA
14 15 (0.66%) Microsoft Certification
15 13 (0.57%) AWS Certification
16 12 (0.52%) CCNA
17 8 (0.35%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 396 (17.32%) Data Quality
2 262 (11.46%) QA
3 108 (4.72%) GDPR
4 61 (2.67%) NIST
5 53 (2.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 33 (1.44%) Accessibility
7 30 (1.31%) PMO
8 28 (1.22%) SLA
9 27 (1.18%) IFRS
10 18 (0.79%) IFRS 17
11 17 (0.74%) Def Stans
12 16 (0.70%) GRC
13 15 (0.66%) GxP
14 14 (0.61%) HL7
15 13 (0.57%) Solvency II
16 12 (0.52%) NCSC
16 12 (0.52%) NIST 800
17 11 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
17 11 (0.48%) ISO 20022
17 11 (0.48%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 102 (4.46%) Docker
2 59 (2.58%) Active Directory
3 54 (2.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.05%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
6 16 (0.70%) Firmware
7 14 (0.61%) Hyper-V
7 14 (0.61%) VMware NSX
8 10 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 10 (0.44%) vSphere
9 5 (0.22%) KVM
9 5 (0.22%) NFS
10 4 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 2 (0.087%) BitLocker
11 2 (0.087%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.087%) VirtualBox
11 2 (0.087%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.044%) etcd
12 1 (0.044%) OpenSSH
12 1 (0.044%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 145 (6.34%) Kubernetes
2 107 (4.68%) Terraform
3 49 (2.14%) Prometheus
4 47 (2.06%) Ansible
5 44 (1.92%) Grafana
6 27 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (0.92%) FortiGate
8 19 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
9 9 (0.39%) vCenter Server
10 7 (0.31%) Kibana
10 7 (0.31%) SCCM
11 6 (0.26%) Nessus
11 6 (0.26%) Puppet
11 6 (0.26%) VxRail
12 5 (0.22%) CASB
12 5 (0.22%) vMotion
13 4 (0.17%) Argo
13 4 (0.17%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.17%) Istio
Vendors
1 304 (13.30%) Microsoft
2 204 (8.92%) SAP
3 199 (8.71%) Oracle
4 106 (4.64%) Databricks
5 81 (3.54%) Salesforce
6 64 (2.80%) ServiceNow
6 64 (2.80%) VMware
7 52 (2.27%) Cisco
8 40 (1.75%) Splunk
9 35 (1.53%) Workday
10 32 (1.40%) Google
11 31 (1.36%) Informatica
12 27 (1.18%) Palo Alto
13 25 (1.09%) Sage
14 24 (1.05%) Fortinet
14 24 (1.05%) MuleSoft
15 20 (0.87%) IBM
15 20 (0.87%) IFS
15 20 (0.87%) Juniper
16 18 (0.79%) Zscaler