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

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 37 73 115
Rank change year-on-year +36 +42 +37
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,101 836 733
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.03% 3.48% 2.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.91% 3.82% 2.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,282 515 370
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £410 £414 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -13.04%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £599
90th Percentile £712 £721 £675
UK median daily rate £495 £525 £524
% change year-on-year -5.75% +0.24% -4.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 142 55 167
10th Percentile £17.75 £17.19 £26.88
25th Percentile £30.95 £36.99 £51.88
Median hourly rate £64.07 £57.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.94% -3.75% -4.00%
75th Percentile £74.81 £68.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £76.50 £76.86
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £57.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +8.70% -4.17% -4.76%

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 35,523 21,911 31,466
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.02% 91.34% 85.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,505 14,200 20,503
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.55% -0.36% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £513 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,228 974 2,317
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.83
25th Percentile £20.69 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £28.53 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.77% -23.93% +0.54%
75th Percentile £68.00 £59.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.71 £27.64 £36.50
% change year-on-year +54.50% -24.27% +1.39%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +51 1,007 £513 -6.82% 445
North of England +43 285 £439 -2.50% 175
Midlands +32 260 £500 +11.11% 152
South East -5 239 £500 - 237
West Midlands +24 185 £488 +20.37% 95
North West +32 165 £423 -3.43% 98
South West 0 128 £500 -13.04% 116
East of England +8 126 £475 +5.56% 110
Yorkshire +16 108 £460 +5.75% 59
East Midlands +19 70 £525 +15.51% 57
North East -18 15 £438 -25.53% 20
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 74 (3.52%) Confluence
2 54 (2.57%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (1.95%) Apache Spark
4 40 (1.90%) SAS
5 25 (1.19%) SharePoint
6 21 (1.00%) Apache
7 13 (0.62%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.43%) Appian
9 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.33%) ArcGIS
10 7 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
11 5 (0.24%) CMS
12 4 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 3 (0.14%) Anypoint
13 3 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.14%) SharePoint 2013
13 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.095%) IIS
Applications
1 138 (6.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (1.38%) MS Visio
3 22 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
4 20 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 19 (0.90%) Spreadsheet
6 6 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
7 4 (0.19%) AutoCAD
7 4 (0.19%) CATIA
7 4 (0.19%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.19%) Simulink
8 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
9 2 (0.095%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.095%) 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
1 108 (5.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (1.38%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.71%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.67%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 13 (0.62%) Oracle General Ledger
5 13 (0.62%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.52%) Oracle Assets
7 8 (0.38%) Aladdin
7 8 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
7 8 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.38%) SAP ERP
8 7 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
8 7 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
8 7 (0.33%) Sage X3
9 6 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
9 6 (0.29%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.29%) SAP Business One
9 6 (0.29%) SAP SD
10 5 (0.24%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 427 (20.32%) Azure
2 261 (12.42%) AWS
3 201 (9.57%) Power Platform
4 113 (5.38%) GCP
5 104 (4.95%) Azure DevOps
5 104 (4.95%) GitHub
6 66 (3.14%) Snowflake
7 59 (2.81%) GitHub Actions
8 57 (2.71%) Azure Data Factory
9 54 (2.57%) Entra ID
10 50 (2.38%) SaaS
11 48 (2.28%) Serverless
12 41 (1.95%) Amazon S3
13 38 (1.81%) OCI
14 35 (1.67%) Microsoft 365
15 34 (1.62%) dbt
16 33 (1.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 25 (1.19%) Salesforce Service Cloud
18 24 (1.14%) SuccessFactors
19 22 (1.05%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 83 (3.95%) Firewall
2 56 (2.67%) Network Security
3 37 (1.76%) VLAN
4 34 (1.62%) DNS
5 29 (1.38%) TCP/IP
6 28 (1.33%) VPN
7 27 (1.29%) WAN
8 19 (0.90%) Ethernet
9 18 (0.86%) SAN
10 17 (0.81%) LAN
11 16 (0.76%) BGP
12 15 (0.71%) OSPF
12 15 (0.71%) SD-WAN
13 14 (0.67%) Internet
13 14 (0.67%) Wireless
14 13 (0.62%) Wi-Fi
15 12 (0.57%) DHCP
15 12 (0.57%) NAS
16 11 (0.52%) Cisco ISE
17 10 (0.48%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (8.81%) Power BI
2 113 (5.38%) Data Warehouse
3 74 (3.52%) SQL Server
4 71 (3.38%) Metadata
5 63 (3.00%) Tableau
6 62 (2.95%) Data Lake
7 53 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
8 38 (1.81%) Relational Database
9 30 (1.43%) Big Data
10 29 (1.38%) Amazon Redshift
11 28 (1.33%) Oracle Database
12 25 (1.19%) NoSQL
12 25 (1.19%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 23 (1.09%) Oracle Reports
14 22 (1.05%) BigQuery
15 21 (1.00%) Delta Lake
15 21 (1.00%) Power Query
15 21 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 20 (0.95%) Azure SQL Database
17 17 (0.81%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 195 (9.28%) JIRA
2 111 (5.28%) Git
3 85 (4.05%) Jenkins
4 60 (2.86%) GitLab
5 51 (2.43%) Selenium
6 44 (2.09%) Postman
7 40 (1.90%) JMeter
8 35 (1.67%) JUnit
9 34 (1.62%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.43%) WebDriver
11 27 (1.29%) Rational DOORS
12 16 (0.76%) Eclipse
12 16 (0.76%) Rational Rhapsody
12 16 (0.76%) Visual Studio
13 15 (0.71%) MLflow
14 10 (0.48%) Gradle
14 10 (0.48%) Maven
15 9 (0.43%) Gatling
16 8 (0.38%) Bitbucket
16 8 (0.38%) REST Assured
General
1 638 (30.37%) Finance
2 629 (29.94%) Social Skills
3 380 (18.09%) Analytical Skills
4 179 (8.52%) Banking
5 173 (8.23%) Public Sector
6 116 (5.52%) Documentation Skills
7 66 (3.14%) Manufacturing
8 56 (2.67%) Aerospace
9 46 (2.19%) Retail
10 40 (1.90%) Organisational Skills
11 39 (1.86%) Presentation Skills
12 38 (1.81%) Pharmaceutical
13 35 (1.67%) Marketing
14 34 (1.62%) Front Office
14 34 (1.62%) General Ledger
15 32 (1.52%) Legal
16 31 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
17 30 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 29 (1.38%) Local Government
18 29 (1.38%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 364 (17.33%) Analyst
2 220 (10.47%) Lead
3 196 (9.33%) Senior
4 169 (8.04%) Business Analyst
5 165 (7.85%) Data Engineer
6 143 (6.81%) Consultant
7 131 (6.24%) Architect
8 115 (5.47%) Developer
9 103 (4.90%) Data Analyst
10 72 (3.43%) Project Manager
11 59 (2.81%) Test Engineer
12 56 (2.67%) Tester
13 44 (2.09%) Software Engineer
13 44 (2.09%) Test Manager
14 39 (1.86%) Security Engineer
14 39 (1.86%) Systems Engineer
15 38 (1.81%) Network Engineer
15 38 (1.81%) Senior Analyst
16 36 (1.71%) Migration Engineer
17 34 (1.62%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (5.28%) REST
2 70 (3.33%) JSON
3 68 (3.24%) Kafka
4 48 (2.28%) Oracle Fusion
5 46 (2.19%) XML
6 43 (2.05%) OAuth
7 42 (2.00%) Middleware
8 38 (1.81%) PySpark
9 37 (1.76%) Swagger
10 36 (1.71%) .NET
11 34 (1.62%) RESTful
11 34 (1.62%) SOAP
12 33 (1.57%) Spring
13 32 (1.52%) Pandas
14 31 (1.48%) Web Services
15 30 (1.43%) pytest
16 29 (1.38%) Node.js
17 26 (1.24%) PyTorch
18 25 (1.19%) OAuth2
19 24 (1.14%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 119 (5.66%) Legacy Systems
2 101 (4.81%) Data Structures
2 101 (4.81%) Onboarding
3 86 (4.09%) Product Ownership
4 75 (3.57%) Cloud Native
5 61 (2.90%) Data Centre
6 49 (2.33%) Management Information System
7 43 (2.05%) Distributed Systems
8 40 (1.90%) Analytical Mindset
9 32 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
10 28 (1.33%) SCADA
11 27 (1.29%) Public Cloud
11 27 (1.29%) Replication
12 26 (1.24%) AI Agents
12 26 (1.24%) Algorithms
12 26 (1.24%) Life Science
13 24 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
13 24 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
14 22 (1.05%) Operational Technology
14 22 (1.05%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 113 (5.38%) Windows
2 80 (3.81%) Linux
3 26 (1.24%) Unix
4 17 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.57%) Android
5 12 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.29%) VMS
6 6 (0.29%) Windows 10
7 4 (0.19%) Mac OS
7 4 (0.19%) SUSE
8 3 (0.14%) Apple iOS
8 3 (0.14%) zOS
9 2 (0.095%) HPUX
9 2 (0.095%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.095%) VxWorks
10 1 (0.048%) Debian
10 1 (0.048%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.048%) pSOS
10 1 (0.048%) Solaris
10 1 (0.048%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 572 (27.23%) Migration
2 397 (18.90%) Agile
3 363 (17.28%) Stakeholder Management
4 356 (16.94%) Data Validation
5 353 (16.80%) Problem-Solving
6 346 (16.47%) CI/CD
6 346 (16.47%) Data Migration
7 326 (15.52%) User Acceptance Testing
8 319 (15.18%) Data Modelling
9 318 (15.14%) Analytics
10 275 (13.09%) ETL
11 266 (12.66%) DevOps
12 255 (12.14%) AI
13 244 (11.61%) Test Automation
14 224 (10.66%) Business Intelligence
15 219 (10.42%) Continuous Improvement
16 212 (10.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 198 (9.42%) Data Analysis
18 197 (9.38%) Data Governance
19 189 (9.00%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 501 (23.85%) SQL
2 366 (17.42%) Python
3 107 (5.09%) Java
4 55 (2.62%) PowerShell
5 53 (2.52%) C#
6 42 (2.00%) C++
7 38 (1.81%) JavaScript
8 37 (1.76%) Bash
9 36 (1.71%) C
10 28 (1.33%) Bicep
11 27 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 25 (1.19%) PL/SQL
12 25 (1.19%) TypeScript
13 24 (1.14%) Apex Code
14 23 (1.09%) R
15 22 (1.05%) Ada
16 17 (0.81%) Scala
17 16 (0.76%) MATLAB
18 12 (0.57%) VBA
19 10 (0.48%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 391 (18.61%) Security Cleared
2 285 (13.56%) SC Cleared
3 161 (7.66%) Degree
4 53 (2.52%) BPSS Clearance
5 47 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
6 42 (2.00%) DV Cleared
7 28 (1.33%) PMI Certification
8 24 (1.14%) Cisco Certification
9 22 (1.05%) Master's Degree
9 22 (1.05%) PMP
10 19 (0.90%) CCNP
11 17 (0.81%) ACCA
12 16 (0.76%) CISSP
12 16 (0.76%) ISTQB
13 15 (0.71%) CIMA
14 14 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
15 12 (0.57%) Azure Certification
16 11 (0.52%) AWS Certification
17 9 (0.43%) CCNA
18 8 (0.38%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 361 (17.18%) Data Quality
2 246 (11.71%) QA
3 104 (4.95%) GDPR
4 63 (3.00%) NIST
5 52 (2.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 31 (1.48%) Accessibility
7 27 (1.29%) IFRS
8 25 (1.19%) SLA
9 24 (1.14%) PMO
10 18 (0.86%) GRC
10 18 (0.86%) IFRS 17
11 17 (0.81%) Def Stans
11 17 (0.81%) GxP
12 14 (0.67%) HL7
13 13 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
13 13 (0.62%) PCI DSS
13 13 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 12 (0.57%) NIST 800
15 11 (0.52%) ISO 20022
15 11 (0.52%) Solvency II
System Software
1 89 (4.24%) Docker
2 48 (2.28%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.95%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (0.86%) Firmware
6 14 (0.67%) Hyper-V
7 13 (0.62%) VMware NSX
8 12 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
9 9 (0.43%) vSphere
10 8 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
11 5 (0.24%) NFS
12 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 2 (0.095%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.095%) KVM
13 2 (0.095%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.095%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.048%) OpenSSH
14 1 (0.048%) Oracle RAC
14 1 (0.048%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 1 (0.048%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 131 (6.24%) Kubernetes
2 92 (4.38%) Terraform
3 48 (2.28%) Prometheus
4 45 (2.14%) Grafana
5 37 (1.76%) Ansible
6 26 (1.24%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (0.90%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (0.52%) FortiGate
9 9 (0.43%) Kibana
10 8 (0.38%) Puppet
10 8 (0.38%) SCCM
11 7 (0.33%) 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
1 285 (13.56%) Microsoft
2 189 (9.00%) SAP
3 179 (8.52%) Oracle
4 101 (4.81%) Databricks
5 74 (3.52%) Salesforce
6 59 (2.81%) ServiceNow
7 51 (2.43%) VMware
8 42 (2.00%) Cisco
8 42 (2.00%) Splunk
9 34 (1.62%) Google
10 30 (1.43%) Workday
11 29 (1.38%) Informatica
12 25 (1.19%) Sage
13 24 (1.14%) MuleSoft
14 23 (1.09%) Palo Alto
15 21 (1.00%) IFS
16 20 (0.95%) IBM
17 19 (0.90%) CyberArk
18 18 (0.86%) Fortinet
19 16 (0.76%) OpenAI