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

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 78 118
Rank change year-on-year +36 +40 +23
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,903 745 716
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.72% 3.06% 1.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.55% 3.36% 2.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,179 450 370
10th Percentile £324 £356 £313
25th Percentile £400 £419 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £539 £500
Median % change year-on-year -10.90% +7.75% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £600
90th Percentile £700 £716 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £530 £525
% change year-on-year -10.38% +0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 113 49 155
10th Percentile £17.75 £25.24 £24.21
25th Percentile £51.25 £47.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.75 £62.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.55% -6.85% -
75th Percentile £71.50 £65.00 £75.16
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £84.05
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year +13.04% -4.96% -3.28%

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 34,270 22,183 32,209
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.00% 91.18% 86.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,910 14,537 21,121
10th Percentile £318 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £617 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £521 £525
% change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,134 920 2,242
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.75 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.38 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £30.00 £35.68
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -15.92% -4.85%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.35 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £29.07 £35.00
% change year-on-year +42.95% -16.94% -6.17%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 +63 911 £500 -9.09% 235
North of England +35 256 £435 -8.42% 90
Midlands +35 223 £475 - 77
South East -2 222 £488 -2.50% 202
West Midlands +31 164 £475 - 49
North West +24 155 £416 -4.91% 53
South West -3 117 £475 -17.39% 87
East of England +8 115 £475 +5.56% 74
Yorkshire +15 91 £454 +2.14% 29
East Midlands +5 55 £525 +14.38% 28
North East -9 13 £450 -37.93% 10
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 (3.99%) Confluence
2 39 (2.05%) Apache Airflow
2 39 (2.05%) Apache Spark
3 32 (1.68%) SAS
4 17 (0.89%) Apache
5 13 (0.68%) SharePoint
6 9 (0.47%) Appian
6 9 (0.47%) Jupyter
6 9 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
7 8 (0.42%) ArcGIS
8 7 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
9 6 (0.32%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 4 (0.21%) CMS
10 4 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 3 (0.16%) CICS
11 3 (0.16%) Oracle Self-Service HR
11 3 (0.16%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.11%) Documentum
12 2 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
12 2 (0.11%) Umbraco
Applications
1 128 (6.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (1.52%) MS Visio
3 25 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
4 17 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 17 (0.89%) Spreadsheet
5 12 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (0.42%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.16%) CATIA
7 3 (0.16%) LaTeX
7 3 (0.16%) Notion
8 2 (0.11%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.11%) EPLAN
8 2 (0.11%) Sketch
9 1 (0.053%) Autodesk Inventor
9 1 (0.053%) CANalyzer
9 1 (0.053%) MicroStation
9 1 (0.053%) OrCAD
9 1 (0.053%) UXPin
9 1 (0.053%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 88 (4.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (1.79%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.79%) Oracle General Ledger
4 13 (0.68%) Oracle Payables
5 12 (0.63%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.63%) Teamcenter
5 12 (0.63%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.53%) Oracle Assets
7 9 (0.47%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.42%) Oracle EBS R12
9 7 (0.37%) Aladdin
9 7 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
10 6 (0.32%) NetSuite
10 6 (0.32%) Oracle Financials
10 6 (0.32%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 6 (0.32%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.32%) SAP ERP
11 5 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
11 5 (0.26%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 419 (22.02%) Azure
2 228 (11.98%) AWS
3 196 (10.30%) Power Platform
4 116 (6.10%) Azure DevOps
5 99 (5.20%) GCP
6 81 (4.26%) GitHub
7 55 (2.89%) Azure Data Factory
8 49 (2.57%) Serverless
8 49 (2.57%) Snowflake
9 47 (2.47%) Entra ID
10 46 (2.42%) OCI
11 44 (2.31%) SaaS
12 40 (2.10%) GitHub Actions
13 39 (2.05%) Amazon S3
14 36 (1.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 29 (1.52%) Microsoft 365
16 28 (1.47%) dbt
17 23 (1.21%) AWS Lambda
18 22 (1.16%) SuccessFactors
19 21 (1.10%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 76 (3.99%) Firewall
2 53 (2.79%) Network Security
3 35 (1.84%) VLAN
4 33 (1.73%) TCP/IP
5 24 (1.26%) VPN
6 23 (1.21%) DNS
6 23 (1.21%) WAN
7 21 (1.10%) Ethernet
8 16 (0.84%) LAN
8 16 (0.84%) SAN
9 14 (0.74%) Wireless
10 13 (0.68%) BGP
10 13 (0.68%) OSPF
10 13 (0.68%) SD-WAN
11 12 (0.63%) NAS
12 11 (0.58%) Cisco ISE
12 11 (0.58%) Wi-Fi
13 10 (0.53%) TACACS
14 8 (0.42%) HTTP
14 8 (0.42%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 184 (9.67%) Power BI
2 111 (5.83%) Data Warehouse
3 89 (4.68%) Metadata
4 71 (3.73%) Tableau
5 62 (3.26%) SQL Server
6 49 (2.57%) Data Lake
7 39 (2.05%) PostgreSQL
8 32 (1.68%) Relational Database
9 27 (1.42%) Amazon Redshift
9 27 (1.42%) Big Data
9 27 (1.42%) Oracle Reports
10 25 (1.31%) NoSQL
11 23 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 22 (1.16%) Delta Lake
13 20 (1.05%) Oracle Database
14 18 (0.95%) Azure SQL Database
14 18 (0.95%) BigQuery
14 18 (0.95%) Pinecone
14 18 (0.95%) Power Query
15 16 (0.84%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 184 (9.67%) JIRA
2 112 (5.89%) Git
3 68 (3.57%) Jenkins
4 56 (2.94%) Selenium
5 44 (2.31%) GitLab
6 40 (2.10%) Postman
7 31 (1.63%) Cucumber
7 31 (1.63%) JUnit
8 30 (1.58%) JMeter
9 26 (1.37%) WebDriver
10 23 (1.21%) Rational DOORS
11 18 (0.95%) Oracle APEX
12 17 (0.89%) Visual Studio
13 15 (0.79%) MLflow
14 14 (0.74%) Eclipse
15 13 (0.68%) Bitbucket
16 12 (0.63%) REST Assured
17 10 (0.53%) Rational Rhapsody
17 10 (0.53%) SpecFlow
18 9 (0.47%) Gatling
General
1 621 (32.63%) Social Skills
2 591 (31.06%) Finance
3 385 (20.23%) Analytical Skills
4 167 (8.78%) Banking
5 155 (8.15%) Public Sector
6 104 (5.47%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.73%) Manufacturing
8 47 (2.47%) Presentation Skills
9 46 (2.42%) Aerospace
10 41 (2.15%) Organisational Skills
11 40 (2.10%) Retail
12 34 (1.79%) Marketing
13 32 (1.68%) Pharmaceutical
14 31 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
14 31 (1.63%) Legal
15 30 (1.58%) Front Office
16 29 (1.52%) Financial Institution
16 29 (1.52%) General Ledger
17 28 (1.47%) Electronics
17 28 (1.47%) Military
Job Titles
1 363 (19.08%) Analyst
2 189 (9.93%) Lead
3 182 (9.56%) Senior
4 162 (8.51%) Business Analyst
5 150 (7.88%) Data Engineer
6 122 (6.41%) Consultant
7 119 (6.25%) Architect
8 117 (6.15%) Developer
9 102 (5.36%) Data Analyst
10 72 (3.78%) Project Manager
11 51 (2.68%) Tester
12 43 (2.26%) Senior Analyst
13 41 (2.15%) Software Engineer
13 41 (2.15%) Test Engineer
14 39 (2.05%) Network Engineer
14 39 (2.05%) Test Manager
15 35 (1.84%) Systems Engineer
16 33 (1.73%) Security Engineer
16 33 (1.73%) Technical Analyst
16 33 (1.73%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 107 (5.62%) REST
2 67 (3.52%) JSON
3 66 (3.47%) Kafka
4 58 (3.05%) Oracle Fusion
5 48 (2.52%) Middleware
6 40 (2.10%) OAuth
6 40 (2.10%) XML
7 39 (2.05%) PySpark
8 38 (2.00%) Node.js
9 35 (1.84%) Swagger
10 32 (1.68%) .NET
11 30 (1.58%) SOAP
11 30 (1.58%) Web Services
12 29 (1.52%) Pandas
12 29 (1.52%) PyTorch
13 27 (1.42%) Playwright
13 27 (1.42%) RESTful
14 26 (1.37%) OpenAPI
14 26 (1.37%) TensorFlow
15 24 (1.26%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 112 (5.89%) Legacy Systems
2 101 (5.31%) Data Structures
3 85 (4.47%) Onboarding
4 79 (4.15%) Product Ownership
5 53 (2.79%) Cloud Native
6 52 (2.73%) Data Centre
7 46 (2.42%) Management Information System
8 36 (1.89%) Distributed Systems
9 35 (1.84%) Analytical Mindset
10 28 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
11 24 (1.26%) Hybrid Cloud
11 24 (1.26%) Replication
12 23 (1.21%) Algorithms
12 23 (1.21%) Public Cloud
13 21 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
14 20 (1.05%) Reference Data
15 19 (1.00%) Virtual Team
16 18 (0.95%) Derivative
17 17 (0.89%) Credit Risk
18 16 (0.84%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 93 (4.89%) Windows
2 79 (4.15%) Linux
3 27 (1.42%) Unix
4 11 (0.58%) Android
5 9 (0.47%) Windows Server
6 7 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.32%) zOS
8 4 (0.21%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.21%) SUSE
8 4 (0.21%) VMS
9 3 (0.16%) Apple iOS
9 3 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
9 3 (0.16%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.11%) Debian
11 1 (0.053%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.053%) HPUX
11 1 (0.053%) pSOS
11 1 (0.053%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 507 (26.64%) Migration
2 408 (21.44%) Agile
3 366 (19.23%) Problem-Solving
4 338 (17.76%) Stakeholder Management
5 329 (17.29%) Data Validation
6 308 (16.18%) Data Migration
7 299 (15.71%) Analytics
8 291 (15.29%) CI/CD
8 291 (15.29%) Data Modelling
9 278 (14.61%) User Acceptance Testing
10 267 (14.03%) ETL
11 260 (13.66%) DevOps
12 231 (12.14%) Business Intelligence
13 220 (11.56%) Test Automation
14 207 (10.88%) AI
15 197 (10.35%) Continuous Improvement
16 194 (10.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 190 (9.98%) Data Governance
18 174 (9.14%) Data Pipeline
19 171 (8.99%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 495 (26.01%) SQL
2 352 (18.50%) Python
3 99 (5.20%) Java
4 62 (3.26%) JavaScript
5 61 (3.21%) C#
6 51 (2.68%) C++
7 43 (2.26%) PL/SQL
8 41 (2.15%) C
9 37 (1.94%) PowerShell
10 31 (1.63%) R
11 30 (1.58%) Bash
12 26 (1.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 26 (1.37%) TypeScript
13 21 (1.10%) Bicep
14 20 (1.05%) Ada
15 17 (0.89%) Scala
16 12 (0.63%) VBA
17 11 (0.58%) Apex Code
17 11 (0.58%) MATLAB
18 10 (0.53%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 369 (19.39%) Security Cleared
2 266 (13.98%) SC Cleared
3 157 (8.25%) Degree
4 48 (2.52%) BPSS Clearance
5 47 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 32 (1.68%) PMI Certification
7 31 (1.63%) DV Cleared
8 30 (1.58%) Master's Degree
9 28 (1.47%) PMP
10 22 (1.16%) ISTQB
11 21 (1.10%) Cisco Certification
12 18 (0.95%) CCNP
13 14 (0.74%) CBAP
13 14 (0.74%) CISSP
14 12 (0.63%) Azure Certification
14 12 (0.63%) Microsoft Certification
15 11 (0.58%) AWS Certification
16 9 (0.47%) ACCA
16 9 (0.47%) CCNA
17 7 (0.37%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 326 (17.13%) Data Quality
2 242 (12.72%) QA
3 107 (5.62%) GDPR
4 63 (3.31%) NIST
5 56 (2.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 24 (1.26%) Accessibility
7 23 (1.21%) IFRS
7 23 (1.21%) SLA
8 19 (1.00%) IFRS 17
8 19 (1.00%) PMO
9 18 (0.95%) GRC
10 16 (0.84%) Def Stans
11 13 (0.68%) GxP
11 13 (0.68%) HL7
11 13 (0.68%) PCI DSS
12 12 (0.63%) COBIT
12 12 (0.63%) MiFID
12 12 (0.63%) NCSC
13 11 (0.58%) ISO 20022
13 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 75 (3.94%) Docker
2 36 (1.89%) Active Directory
3 34 (1.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.31%) Firmware
5 14 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.58%) VMware NSX
7 10 (0.53%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (0.32%) vSphere
10 5 (0.26%) NFS
11 4 (0.21%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.16%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.16%) Embedded Firmware
13 2 (0.11%) Ceph
13 2 (0.11%) KVM
13 2 (0.11%) Lustre
13 2 (0.11%) OpenAM
13 2 (0.11%) OpenIDM
13 2 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 112 (5.89%) Kubernetes
2 80 (4.20%) Terraform
3 35 (1.84%) Prometheus
4 34 (1.79%) Ansible
5 33 (1.73%) Grafana
6 27 (1.42%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (0.58%) FortiGate
9 10 (0.53%) Kibana
10 9 (0.47%) Puppet
11 8 (0.42%) SCCM
12 6 (0.32%) Nessus
13 5 (0.26%) CASB
13 5 (0.26%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.26%) vMotion
14 4 (0.21%) EMC NetWorker
14 4 (0.21%) EMC VPLEX
14 4 (0.21%) Failover Clustering
14 4 (0.21%) Istio
14 4 (0.21%) VxRail
Vendors
1 257 (13.50%) Microsoft
2 179 (9.41%) Oracle
3 157 (8.25%) SAP
4 88 (4.62%) Databricks
5 68 (3.57%) ServiceNow
6 56 (2.94%) Salesforce
7 43 (2.26%) Cisco
8 42 (2.21%) VMware
9 38 (2.00%) Splunk
10 34 (1.79%) Google
11 30 (1.58%) Informatica
12 27 (1.42%) Sage
13 26 (1.37%) Workday
14 25 (1.31%) Palo Alto
15 23 (1.21%) MuleSoft
16 21 (1.10%) IBM
17 20 (1.05%) CyberArk
18 16 (0.84%) CheckPoint
18 16 (0.84%) IFS
18 16 (0.84%) OpenAI