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 30 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 34 65 112
Rank change year-on-year +31 +47 +40
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,424 1,014 693
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.36% 3.69% 2.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.29% 4.06% 2.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,476 620 357
10th Percentile £346 £355 £325
25th Percentile £413 £424 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £480
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +9.38% -13.51%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £585
90th Percentile £700 £700 £663
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £493
% change year-on-year -4.76% +6.60% -10.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 76 125
10th Percentile £17.75 £20.50 £28.71
25th Percentile £28.50 £40.06 £51.25
Median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year - -3.85% +4.00%
75th Percentile £75.25 £67.13 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.78 £76.25 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £60.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -8.33% -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 38,532 24,959 29,249
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.26% 90.75% 85.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,105 15,999 19,151
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -2.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,433 1,365 1,791
10th Percentile £15.05 £14.22 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.88 £17.75
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -39.40% -2.35%
75th Percentile £68.75 £51.65 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.10 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%

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 30 July 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 30 July 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 30 July 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 +45 1,168 £525 - 485
South East +4 318 £505 +1.00% 259
Midlands +30 309 £475 +5.56% 123
North of England +36 301 £450 -9.09% 163
West Midlands +27 225 £473 +8.11% 71
North West +16 162 £450 -17.20% 92
East of England +1 137 £488 -2.50% 107
Yorkshire +33 128 £455 +4.60% 36
South West -10 124 £523 -9.13% 114
East Midlands +25 79 £509 +10.89% 52
North East -39 15 £425 -15.00% 37
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 72 (2.97%) Confluence
2 62 (2.56%) Apache Airflow
3 47 (1.94%) SAS
4 42 (1.73%) SharePoint
5 39 (1.61%) Apache Spark
6 28 (1.16%) Apache
7 13 (0.54%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
9 8 (0.33%) CMS
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
9 8 (0.33%) SharePoint 2013
10 6 (0.25%) ArcGIS
11 5 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 5 (0.21%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.17%) FactoryTalk
12 4 (0.17%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.12%) IIS
13 3 (0.12%) JBoss
13 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 173 (7.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (1.36%) MS Visio
3 31 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
4 25 (1.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 25 (1.03%) Spreadsheet
5 10 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
6 7 (0.29%) AutoCAD
7 6 (0.25%) Simulink
8 4 (0.17%) Chatbot
9 3 (0.12%) CATIA
10 2 (0.083%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.083%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.083%) Navisworks
10 2 (0.083%) ProjectWise
10 2 (0.083%) Revit
10 2 (0.083%) Sketch
11 1 (0.041%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.041%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.041%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.041%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 110 (4.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (1.24%) Oracle EBS
3 17 (0.70%) Workday HCM
4 12 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
4 12 (0.50%) Teamcenter
5 11 (0.45%) iTrent
5 11 (0.45%) NetSuite
5 11 (0.45%) SAP ERP
6 10 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
6 10 (0.41%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 10 (0.41%) SAP MDG
7 9 (0.37%) Aladdin
7 9 (0.37%) Oracle Assets
7 9 (0.37%) Sage X3
8 8 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
8 8 (0.33%) Oracle General Ledger
8 8 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
9 7 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
9 7 (0.29%) SAP HCM
9 7 (0.29%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 544 (22.44%) Azure
2 285 (11.76%) AWS
3 255 (10.52%) Power Platform
4 133 (5.49%) Azure DevOps
4 133 (5.49%) GCP
5 116 (4.79%) GitHub
6 84 (3.47%) Snowflake
7 69 (2.85%) Azure Data Factory
7 69 (2.85%) GitHub Actions
8 64 (2.64%) Entra ID
9 53 (2.19%) Serverless
10 45 (1.86%) Microsoft 365
11 44 (1.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 42 (1.73%) SaaS
13 41 (1.69%) Amazon S3
13 41 (1.69%) OCI
14 40 (1.65%) dbt
15 37 (1.53%) SuccessFactors
16 31 (1.28%) Azure Monitor
17 27 (1.11%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 110 (4.54%) Firewall
2 63 (2.60%) Network Security
3 57 (2.35%) DNS
4 45 (1.86%) VLAN
5 44 (1.82%) VPN
6 38 (1.57%) TCP/IP
7 36 (1.49%) WAN
8 29 (1.20%) BGP
9 25 (1.03%) DHCP
10 23 (0.95%) Internet
11 22 (0.91%) SAN
12 21 (0.87%) LAN
12 21 (0.87%) OSPF
12 21 (0.87%) Wireless
13 20 (0.83%) SD-WAN
14 15 (0.62%) Wi-Fi
15 14 (0.58%) Ethernet
16 12 (0.50%) Cisco ISE
16 12 (0.50%) NAS
17 9 (0.37%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 236 (9.74%) Power BI
2 145 (5.98%) Data Warehouse
3 97 (4.00%) Metadata
4 78 (3.22%) Data Lake
5 73 (3.01%) SQL Server
6 71 (2.93%) Tableau
7 68 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
8 63 (2.60%) Relational Database
9 38 (1.57%) Big Data
10 29 (1.20%) Oracle Database
11 28 (1.16%) Delta Lake
11 28 (1.16%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 27 (1.11%) BigQuery
12 27 (1.11%) Power Query
12 27 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 26 (1.07%) NoSQL
14 23 (0.95%) Oracle Reports
15 21 (0.87%) MongoDB
16 20 (0.83%) Amazon Redshift
16 20 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 221 (9.12%) JIRA
2 150 (6.19%) Git
3 84 (3.47%) Jenkins
4 66 (2.72%) GitLab
5 54 (2.23%) Selenium
6 40 (1.65%) JMeter
7 37 (1.53%) Cucumber
7 37 (1.53%) JUnit
7 37 (1.53%) Postman
8 30 (1.24%) WebDriver
9 20 (0.83%) Rational DOORS
10 18 (0.74%) Eclipse
11 14 (0.58%) Visual Studio
12 12 (0.50%) Gatling
13 11 (0.45%) MLflow
13 11 (0.45%) Rational Rhapsody
14 10 (0.41%) ERwin
14 10 (0.41%) REST Assured
15 9 (0.37%) Maven
15 9 (0.37%) Oracle Forms
General
1 723 (29.83%) Finance
2 706 (29.13%) Social Skills
3 468 (19.31%) Analytical Skills
4 193 (7.96%) Public Sector
5 183 (7.55%) Banking
6 135 (5.57%) Documentation Skills
7 85 (3.51%) Manufacturing
8 84 (3.47%) Retail
9 55 (2.27%) Aerospace
10 50 (2.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 46 (1.90%) Pharmaceutical
12 45 (1.86%) Organisational Skills
13 43 (1.77%) Telecoms
14 38 (1.57%) Marketing
15 37 (1.53%) Automotive
15 37 (1.53%) Front Office
16 36 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
17 35 (1.44%) Military
18 34 (1.40%) Law
18 34 (1.40%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 431 (17.78%) Analyst
2 248 (10.23%) Senior
3 242 (9.98%) Lead
4 206 (8.50%) Data Engineer
5 201 (8.29%) Business Analyst
6 173 (7.14%) Consultant
7 139 (5.73%) Developer
8 133 (5.49%) Architect
9 125 (5.16%) Data Analyst
10 91 (3.75%) Test Engineer
11 72 (2.97%) Tester
12 69 (2.85%) Project Manager
13 54 (2.23%) Network Engineer
14 49 (2.02%) Systems Engineer
15 47 (1.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 45 (1.86%) Senior Data Engineer
17 40 (1.65%) Administrator
18 39 (1.61%) Migration Engineer
18 39 (1.61%) Technical Analyst
19 38 (1.57%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 117 (4.83%) REST
2 73 (3.01%) JSON
3 69 (2.85%) Kafka
4 61 (2.52%) PySpark
5 52 (2.15%) XML
6 47 (1.94%) Oracle Fusion
7 41 (1.69%) Spring
8 40 (1.65%) .NET
9 38 (1.57%) Middleware
10 37 (1.53%) pytest
11 34 (1.40%) Playwright
12 30 (1.24%) Pandas
13 29 (1.20%) RESTful
13 29 (1.20%) SOAP
13 29 (1.20%) Web Services
14 28 (1.16%) Node.js
14 28 (1.16%) OAuth
15 25 (1.03%) WireMock
16 22 (0.91%) Lightning Web Components
16 22 (0.91%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 132 (5.45%) Data Structures
1 132 (5.45%) Onboarding
2 122 (5.03%) Legacy Systems
3 102 (4.21%) Cloud Native
4 94 (3.88%) Product Ownership
5 66 (2.72%) Data Centre
6 64 (2.64%) Management Information System
7 49 (2.02%) Distributed Systems
8 45 (1.86%) Analytical Mindset
9 40 (1.65%) SCADA
10 39 (1.61%) AI Agents
11 36 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
12 34 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
13 33 (1.36%) Hybrid Cloud
14 32 (1.32%) Life Science
15 30 (1.24%) Reference Data
16 29 (1.20%) Operational Technology
17 28 (1.16%) Public Cloud
17 28 (1.16%) Virtual Team
18 27 (1.11%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 137 (5.65%) Windows
2 86 (3.55%) Linux
3 38 (1.57%) Windows Server
4 22 (0.91%) Unix
5 18 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (0.45%) Android
7 10 (0.41%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.25%) VMS
9 5 (0.21%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.21%) Windows 10
10 4 (0.17%) SUSE
11 3 (0.12%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.083%) HPUX
12 2 (0.083%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.083%) zOS
13 1 (0.041%) Debian
13 1 (0.041%) Mac OS X
13 1 (0.041%) Solaris
13 1 (0.041%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 674 (27.81%) Migration
2 465 (19.18%) Agile
3 452 (18.65%) Stakeholder Management
4 422 (17.41%) CI/CD
5 411 (16.96%) Analytics
6 409 (16.87%) Data Migration
7 392 (16.17%) User Acceptance Testing
8 389 (16.05%) Data Validation
9 381 (15.72%) Data Modelling
10 373 (15.39%) Problem-Solving
11 319 (13.16%) AI
12 305 (12.58%) DevOps
13 303 (12.50%) ETL
14 293 (12.09%) Test Automation
15 292 (12.05%) Continuous Improvement
16 269 (11.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 268 (11.06%) Business Intelligence
18 253 (10.44%) Data Governance
19 252 (10.40%) Data Pipeline
20 240 (9.90%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 594 (24.50%) SQL
2 441 (18.19%) Python
3 109 (4.50%) Java
4 74 (3.05%) PowerShell
5 50 (2.06%) C#
6 44 (1.82%) Bash
7 39 (1.61%) JavaScript
8 33 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 32 (1.32%) C++
10 28 (1.16%) Bicep
11 27 (1.11%) Apex Code
11 27 (1.11%) TypeScript
12 26 (1.07%) PL/SQL
13 23 (0.95%) C
13 23 (0.95%) VBA
14 22 (0.91%) R
15 15 (0.62%) MATLAB
16 14 (0.58%) Ada
16 14 (0.58%) T-SQL
17 12 (0.50%) Scala
Qualifications
1 440 (18.15%) Security Cleared
2 315 (13.00%) SC Cleared
3 164 (6.77%) Degree
4 61 (2.52%) DV Cleared
5 48 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
6 36 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
7 34 (1.40%) Computer Science Degree
8 28 (1.16%) CCNP
9 23 (0.95%) PMI Certification
10 19 (0.78%) ACCA
10 19 (0.78%) PMP
11 18 (0.74%) CIMA
11 18 (0.74%) Microsoft Certification
12 17 (0.70%) Azure Certification
12 17 (0.70%) ISTQB
13 16 (0.66%) CISSP
14 13 (0.54%) AWS Certification
15 12 (0.50%) CCNA
15 12 (0.50%) Master's Degree
16 9 (0.37%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 463 (19.10%) Data Quality
2 294 (12.13%) QA
3 102 (4.21%) GDPR
4 52 (2.15%) NIST
5 44 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 39 (1.61%) Accessibility
7 33 (1.36%) PMO
8 28 (1.16%) SLA
9 20 (0.83%) GxP
10 15 (0.62%) GRC
11 13 (0.54%) HL7
11 13 (0.54%) IFRS
11 13 (0.54%) NCSC
12 12 (0.50%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 12 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
12 12 (0.50%) Def Stans
12 12 (0.50%) NIST 800
13 11 (0.45%) ISO 20022
13 11 (0.45%) WCAG
14 10 (0.41%) Solvency II
System Software
1 106 (4.37%) Docker
2 79 (3.26%) Active Directory
3 58 (2.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (1.11%) Virtual Machines
5 21 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
6 17 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
7 14 (0.58%) Firmware
8 13 (0.54%) vSphere
9 12 (0.50%) VMware NSX
10 10 (0.41%) Hyper-V
11 4 (0.17%) NFS
12 3 (0.12%) KVM
12 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.083%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.083%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.083%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.041%) Ceph
14 1 (0.041%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.041%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 145 (5.98%) Kubernetes
2 116 (4.79%) Terraform
3 54 (2.23%) Ansible
4 49 (2.02%) Prometheus
5 48 (1.98%) Grafana
6 25 (1.03%) Microsoft Intune
7 22 (0.91%) FortiGate
8 19 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.54%) SCCM
10 11 (0.45%) vCenter Server
11 8 (0.33%) VxRail
12 6 (0.25%) HP ALM
13 5 (0.21%) CASB
13 5 (0.21%) Istio
13 5 (0.21%) vRealize
14 4 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
14 4 (0.17%) Nessus
14 4 (0.17%) Puppet
14 4 (0.17%) systemd
14 4 (0.17%) vMotion
Vendors
1 356 (14.69%) Microsoft
2 219 (9.03%) SAP
3 209 (8.62%) Oracle
4 141 (5.82%) Databricks
5 83 (3.42%) Salesforce
6 69 (2.85%) VMware
7 58 (2.39%) ServiceNow
8 54 (2.23%) Cisco
9 48 (1.98%) Workday
10 38 (1.57%) Google
11 36 (1.49%) Splunk
12 34 (1.40%) Informatica
13 29 (1.20%) Fortinet
14 28 (1.16%) Juniper
15 26 (1.07%) Zscaler
16 25 (1.03%) IBM
16 25 (1.03%) Palo Alto
17 23 (0.95%) MuleSoft
17 23 (0.95%) Sage
18 20 (0.83%) IFS