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 21 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 105 130
Rank change year-on-year +52 +25 +2
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,530 646 723
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.38% 2.50% 1.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.01% 2.77% 2.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 937 365 408
10th Percentile £350 £353 £318
25th Percentile £404 £410 £434
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £498 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.24% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £613
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £492 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -6.29% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 34 149
10th Percentile £33.00 £25.56 £29.41
25th Percentile £55.95 £47.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +3.92%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.44 £75.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.18 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +3.92%

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 30,524 23,282 33,155
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.36% 90.06% 87.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,511 14,543 22,029
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,903 748 2,025
10th Percentile £15.22 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.28 £21.25 £16.30
Median hourly rate £26.61 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.99% - -
75th Percentile £63.05 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.00 £75.08 £73.35
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.71% -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 21 February 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 21 February 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 21 February 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 +64 728 £515 -6.36% 204
North of England +32 208 £420 -4.00% 120
South East +12 178 £501 +0.25% 204
Midlands +24 142 £481 -1.46% 123
North West +25 137 £400 -3.03% 80
South West +11 125 £475 -17.39% 83
West Midlands +18 118 £492 +0.41% 82
East of England +25 97 £478 +19.50% 83
Yorkshire -10 61 £464 -4.87% 32
East Midlands -9 23 £450 +22.62% 39
North East -11 12 £450 -45.45% 8
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 62 (4.05%) Confluence
2 30 (1.96%) Apache Spark
3 29 (1.90%) SAS
4 25 (1.63%) Apache Airflow
4 25 (1.63%) SharePoint
5 17 (1.11%) Microsoft Exchange
6 15 (0.98%) Apache
7 9 (0.59%) Appian
7 9 (0.59%) CMS
7 9 (0.59%) Skype for Business
8 7 (0.46%) Exchange Server 2013
9 6 (0.39%) Jupyter
9 6 (0.39%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 4 (0.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.26%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.26%) Mattermost
11 3 (0.20%) GeoServer
11 3 (0.20%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 3 (0.20%) Smallworld
Applications
1 77 (5.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (2.16%) Microsoft Office
3 24 (1.57%) MS Visio
4 16 (1.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.52%) Chatbot
5 8 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
6 6 (0.39%) Sketch
6 6 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.26%) Notion
8 3 (0.20%) LaTeX
9 2 (0.13%) Simulink
10 1 (0.065%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.065%) CATIA
10 1 (0.065%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.065%) Siemens NX
10 1 (0.065%) Stateflow
10 1 (0.065%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 65 (4.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 20 (1.31%) Oracle EBS
3 11 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
3 11 (0.72%) Oracle Payables
3 11 (0.72%) Workday HCM
4 9 (0.59%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 8 (0.52%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.52%) Oracle Receivables
5 8 (0.52%) SAP FI
6 7 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
6 7 (0.46%) NetSuite
6 7 (0.46%) Oracle Assets
6 7 (0.46%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 7 (0.46%) SAP EHS
6 7 (0.46%) SAP MDG
6 7 (0.46%) SAP MM
7 6 (0.39%) OpenText VIM for SAP
7 6 (0.39%) Oracle Financials
7 6 (0.39%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 359 (23.46%) Azure
2 179 (11.70%) AWS
3 123 (8.04%) Power Platform
4 121 (7.91%) Azure DevOps
5 72 (4.71%) GCP
6 66 (4.31%) GitHub
7 55 (3.59%) Entra ID
8 47 (3.07%) SaaS
9 46 (3.01%) Serverless
10 42 (2.75%) Azure Data Factory
11 37 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
12 33 (2.16%) OCI
13 32 (2.09%) Snowflake
14 29 (1.90%) OpenShift
15 27 (1.76%) Amazon S3
16 23 (1.50%) AWS Lambda
16 23 (1.50%) Microsoft 365
17 19 (1.24%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 18 (1.18%) Boomi
19 17 (1.11%) Amazon GuardDuty
Communications & Networking
1 52 (3.40%) Firewall
2 27 (1.76%) Network Security
3 26 (1.70%) TCP/IP
4 18 (1.18%) DNS
5 16 (1.05%) Ethernet
5 16 (1.05%) VLAN
5 16 (1.05%) VPN
6 12 (0.78%) BGP
6 12 (0.78%) WAN
6 12 (0.78%) Wireless
7 11 (0.72%) MPLS
7 11 (0.72%) OSPF
8 9 (0.59%) LAN
8 9 (0.59%) SAN
8 9 (0.59%) Skype
9 8 (0.52%) HTTP
9 8 (0.52%) TACACS
10 7 (0.46%) NAS
11 6 (0.39%) Cisco ASA
11 6 (0.39%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (7.45%) Power BI
2 68 (4.44%) Metadata
3 63 (4.12%) Data Warehouse
4 41 (2.68%) SQL Server
4 41 (2.68%) Tableau
5 36 (2.35%) Data Lake
6 25 (1.63%) NoSQL
7 22 (1.44%) Amazon Redshift
8 21 (1.37%) PostgreSQL
9 20 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
10 18 (1.18%) Delta Lake
10 18 (1.18%) Oracle Database
10 18 (1.18%) Pinecone
11 17 (1.11%) Relational Database
11 17 (1.11%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 16 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 15 (0.98%) Big Data
13 15 (0.98%) Elasticsearch
14 13 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
14 13 (0.85%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 159 (10.39%) JIRA
2 85 (5.56%) Git
3 70 (4.58%) Jenkins
4 52 (3.40%) Selenium
5 45 (2.94%) GitLab
6 41 (2.68%) Postman
7 32 (2.09%) Oracle APEX
8 28 (1.83%) Rational DOORS
9 27 (1.76%) JUnit
10 26 (1.70%) Cucumber
11 25 (1.63%) JMeter
12 17 (1.11%) MLflow
13 14 (0.92%) Visual Studio
14 11 (0.72%) REST Assured
14 11 (0.72%) TestRail
14 11 (0.72%) WebDriver
15 10 (0.65%) Zephyr
16 9 (0.59%) Bitbucket
17 8 (0.52%) Eclipse
18 7 (0.46%) Toad
General
1 571 (37.32%) Social Skills
2 454 (29.67%) Finance
3 324 (21.18%) Analytical Skills
4 134 (8.76%) Banking
5 132 (8.63%) Public Sector
6 80 (5.23%) Documentation Skills
7 45 (2.94%) Presentation Skills
8 36 (2.35%) Manufacturing
9 35 (2.29%) Aerospace
10 31 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
11 30 (1.96%) Electronics
12 29 (1.90%) Front Office
13 28 (1.83%) Marketing
14 27 (1.76%) Telecoms
15 25 (1.63%) Investment Banking
15 25 (1.63%) Pharmaceutical
16 23 (1.50%) Military
17 22 (1.44%) Financial Institution
17 22 (1.44%) Legal
17 22 (1.44%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 303 (19.80%) Analyst
2 154 (10.07%) Senior
3 143 (9.35%) Lead
4 132 (8.63%) Business Analyst
5 110 (7.19%) Developer
6 106 (6.93%) Consultant
7 104 (6.80%) Architect
8 82 (5.36%) Data Engineer
9 77 (5.03%) Data Analyst
10 48 (3.14%) Tester
11 47 (3.07%) Project Manager
12 46 (3.01%) Software Engineer
13 38 (2.48%) Senior Analyst
14 35 (2.29%) Test Analyst
15 34 (2.22%) Senior Developer
16 33 (2.16%) Solutions Architect
17 32 (2.09%) SAP Consultant
17 32 (2.09%) Test Manager
18 30 (1.96%) Embedded Engineer
19 27 (1.76%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (6.41%) REST
2 64 (4.18%) JSON
3 48 (3.14%) XML
4 47 (3.07%) OAuth
4 47 (3.07%) Oracle Fusion
5 45 (2.94%) Kafka
6 42 (2.75%) Middleware
7 38 (2.48%) SOAP
8 34 (2.22%) .NET
9 33 (2.16%) PyTorch
10 31 (2.03%) RESTful
11 30 (1.96%) PySpark
12 29 (1.90%) Swagger
12 29 (1.90%) TensorFlow
13 28 (1.83%) Node.js
14 26 (1.70%) pytest
15 25 (1.63%) Pandas
15 25 (1.63%) Playwright
15 25 (1.63%) Web Services
16 23 (1.50%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 96 (6.27%) Legacy Systems
2 66 (4.31%) Data Structures
3 57 (3.73%) Product Ownership
4 52 (3.40%) Onboarding
5 44 (2.88%) Cloud Native
6 41 (2.68%) Management Information System
7 29 (1.90%) Analytical Mindset
8 28 (1.83%) Data Protection Act
9 25 (1.63%) Data Centre
10 23 (1.50%) Algorithms
11 21 (1.37%) Distributed Systems
12 20 (1.31%) Derivative
13 19 (1.24%) Replication
14 18 (1.18%) FPGA
14 18 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
14 18 (1.18%) Hybrid Cloud
15 16 (1.05%) Security Posture
16 14 (0.92%) Credit Risk
16 14 (0.92%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 13 (0.85%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 83 (5.42%) Linux
1 83 (5.42%) Windows
2 34 (2.22%) Unix
3 10 (0.65%) Android
4 6 (0.39%) Windows Server
4 6 (0.39%) zOS
5 5 (0.33%) Mac OS
6 3 (0.20%) Apple iOS
6 3 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
7 2 (0.13%) Debian
7 2 (0.13%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.065%) FreeRTOS
8 1 (0.065%) pSOS
8 1 (0.065%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.065%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 393 (25.69%) Agile
2 355 (23.20%) Problem-Solving
3 349 (22.81%) Migration
4 281 (18.37%) Stakeholder Management
5 253 (16.54%) DevOps
6 249 (16.27%) Data Validation
7 239 (15.62%) CI/CD
8 235 (15.36%) Analytics
9 205 (13.40%) Data Modelling
10 198 (12.94%) Test Automation
11 197 (12.88%) Data Migration
12 185 (12.09%) AI
12 185 (12.09%) ETL
13 178 (11.63%) User Acceptance Testing
14 155 (10.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 153 (10.00%) Business Intelligence
15 153 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
16 136 (8.89%) Data Governance
17 135 (8.82%) Data Analysis
18 123 (8.04%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 380 (24.84%) SQL
2 320 (20.92%) Python
3 88 (5.75%) JavaScript
4 84 (5.49%) Java
5 56 (3.66%) C#
6 51 (3.33%) PL/SQL
7 42 (2.75%) Bash
7 42 (2.75%) C++
8 41 (2.68%) C
9 39 (2.55%) PowerShell
10 27 (1.76%) TypeScript
11 24 (1.57%) R
12 19 (1.24%) Ada
12 19 (1.24%) Bicep
13 17 (1.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 17 (1.11%) Groovy
14 13 (0.85%) Shell Script
15 12 (0.78%) Scala
15 12 (0.78%) T-SQL
15 12 (0.78%) VBA
Qualifications
1 334 (21.83%) Security Cleared
2 246 (16.08%) SC Cleared
3 153 (10.00%) Degree
4 55 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
5 42 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
6 37 (2.42%) Master's Degree
7 36 (2.35%) DV Cleared
8 28 (1.83%) PMI Certification
9 26 (1.70%) ISTQB
10 22 (1.44%) PMP
11 18 (1.18%) AWS Certification
12 16 (1.05%) CBAP
13 13 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
13 13 (0.85%) CISSP
14 11 (0.72%) Microsoft Certification
15 10 (0.65%) Azure Certification
15 10 (0.65%) CCNP
15 10 (0.65%) Oracle Certification
16 9 (0.59%) CCIE
17 8 (0.52%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 209 (13.66%) Data Quality
2 193 (12.61%) QA
3 80 (5.23%) GDPR
4 64 (4.18%) NIST
5 42 (2.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 30 (1.96%) Accessibility
7 20 (1.31%) IFRS
8 18 (1.18%) IFRS 17
9 17 (1.11%) Def Stans
10 15 (0.98%) PCI DSS
11 13 (0.85%) EU AI Act
12 12 (0.78%) COBIT
12 12 (0.78%) NCSC
13 10 (0.65%) GRC
13 10 (0.65%) MiFID
13 10 (0.65%) MISRA
14 9 (0.59%) DO-178B
14 9 (0.59%) GMP
14 9 (0.59%) GxP
14 9 (0.59%) PMO
System Software
1 69 (4.51%) Docker
2 40 (2.61%) Active Directory
3 29 (1.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.31%) Firmware
5 12 (0.78%) VMware NSX
6 8 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (0.46%) Hyper-V
7 7 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.26%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 4 (0.26%) NFS
8 4 (0.26%) vSphere
9 3 (0.20%) Embedded Firmware
9 3 (0.20%) KVM
10 2 (0.13%) Ceph
10 2 (0.13%) Lustre
10 2 (0.13%) OpenAM
10 2 (0.13%) OpenDJ
10 2 (0.13%) OpenIDM
10 2 (0.13%) QEMU
10 2 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 101 (6.60%) Kubernetes
2 74 (4.84%) Terraform
3 39 (2.55%) Ansible
4 23 (1.50%) Prometheus
5 22 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
6 20 (1.31%) Grafana
7 17 (1.11%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (0.98%) Kibana
9 14 (0.92%) Puppet
10 12 (0.78%) SCCM
11 10 (0.65%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 10 (0.65%) Nessus
12 8 (0.52%) Nmap
13 5 (0.33%) CASB
13 5 (0.33%) SCOM
14 4 (0.26%) EMC VPLEX
14 4 (0.26%) HP SiteScope
14 4 (0.26%) Iperf
14 4 (0.26%) vMotion
15 3 (0.20%) CloudHub
Vendors
1 201 (13.14%) Microsoft
2 158 (10.33%) Oracle
3 121 (7.91%) SAP
4 63 (4.12%) Databricks
5 62 (4.05%) ServiceNow
6 48 (3.14%) Splunk
7 39 (2.55%) Cisco
8 38 (2.48%) Salesforce
9 35 (2.29%) Google
9 35 (2.29%) VMware
10 29 (1.90%) Workday
11 26 (1.70%) MuleSoft
12 21 (1.37%) IBM
12 21 (1.37%) Informatica
12 21 (1.37%) Sage
13 20 (1.31%) Palo Alto
14 19 (1.24%) Murex
15 14 (0.92%) Bloomberg
15 14 (0.92%) CyberArk
16 13 (0.85%) CheckPoint