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

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 72 108
Rank change year-on-year +37 +36 +42
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,259 884 760
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.24% 3.55% 2.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.15% 3.89% 2.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,380 546 374
10th Percentile £331 £356 £322
25th Percentile £410 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £537 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.93% +7.45% -13.04%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £588
90th Percentile £705 £709 £672
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -10.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 151 58 177
10th Percentile £17.75 £17.70 £27.55
25th Percentile £31.64 £38.93 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.23% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £75.50 £70.63 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.75 £77.50 £76.86
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £57.63 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.12% -3.96% -5.11%

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 36,727 22,725 32,193
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.21% 91.37% 85.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,194 14,704 20,811
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £729 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.49% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,299 1,073 2,390
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.88 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £27.13 £37.63
Median % change year-on-year +73.27% -27.91% +5.54%
75th Percentile £68.55 £56.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.40 £37.50
% change year-on-year +73.07% -32.27% +7.05%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 1,071 £513 -6.82% 260
North of England +47 312 £447 -0.67% 135
Midlands +35 273 £492 +9.39% 102
South East 0 269 £500 - 250
West Midlands +23 198 £484 +16.72% 58
North West +31 177 £433 -1.14% 66
South West +9 139 £500 -13.04% 106
East of England +12 130 £500 - 73
Yorkshire +17 119 £460 +5.75% 45
East Midlands +20 70 £525 +15.51% 44
North East -19 19 £425 -22.73% 26
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 (3.50%) Confluence
2 59 (2.61%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (1.99%) SAS
4 42 (1.86%) Apache Spark
5 34 (1.51%) SharePoint
6 22 (0.97%) Apache
7 15 (0.66%) Jupyter
8 8 (0.35%) Appian
8 8 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
8 8 (0.35%) SharePoint 2013
9 7 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
10 6 (0.27%) ArcGIS
10 6 (0.27%) CMS
11 5 (0.22%) Tuxedo
12 3 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
12 3 (0.13%) IIS
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.089%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 150 (6.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.42%) MS Visio
3 28 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
4 24 (1.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.93%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
7 5 (0.22%) AutoCAD
7 5 (0.22%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.18%) Simulink
9 3 (0.13%) CATIA
9 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.089%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.089%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.089%) Sketch
11 1 (0.044%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.044%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.044%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.044%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.044%) UXPin
11 1 (0.044%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 111 (4.91%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (1.42%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.66%) Oracle Payables
3 15 (0.66%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.62%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.53%) Oracle General Ledger
5 12 (0.53%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
6 10 (0.44%) SAP ERP
7 8 (0.35%) Aladdin
8 7 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
8 7 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
8 7 (0.31%) Oracle Financials
8 7 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
8 7 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.31%) Sage X3
8 7 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
8 7 (0.31%) Unit4 Business World
9 6 (0.27%) SAP Business One
9 6 (0.27%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 468 (20.72%) Azure
2 279 (12.35%) AWS
3 212 (9.38%) Power Platform
4 121 (5.36%) GCP
5 117 (5.18%) Azure DevOps
6 108 (4.78%) GitHub
7 73 (3.23%) Snowflake
8 60 (2.66%) Entra ID
8 60 (2.66%) GitHub Actions
9 57 (2.52%) Azure Data Factory
10 56 (2.48%) Serverless
11 46 (2.04%) SaaS
12 43 (1.90%) Amazon S3
13 40 (1.77%) OCI
14 38 (1.68%) Microsoft 365
15 36 (1.59%) dbt
16 35 (1.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 29 (1.28%) SuccessFactors
18 28 (1.24%) Salesforce Service Cloud
19 24 (1.06%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 95 (4.21%) Firewall
2 62 (2.74%) Network Security
3 40 (1.77%) VLAN
4 38 (1.68%) WAN
5 37 (1.64%) DNS
6 31 (1.37%) TCP/IP
6 31 (1.37%) VPN
7 26 (1.15%) BGP
8 22 (0.97%) LAN
9 21 (0.93%) SAN
9 21 (0.93%) Wireless
10 20 (0.89%) SD-WAN
11 19 (0.84%) Ethernet
12 18 (0.80%) OSPF
13 16 (0.71%) Internet
14 15 (0.66%) DHCP
14 15 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
15 13 (0.58%) Cisco ISE
16 12 (0.53%) NAS
16 12 (0.53%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 198 (8.76%) Power BI
2 119 (5.27%) Data Warehouse
3 80 (3.54%) Metadata
4 78 (3.45%) SQL Server
5 68 (3.01%) Tableau
6 65 (2.88%) PostgreSQL
7 62 (2.74%) Data Lake
8 51 (2.26%) Relational Database
9 33 (1.46%) Big Data
10 28 (1.24%) Amazon Redshift
10 28 (1.24%) Oracle Database
11 27 (1.20%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 24 (1.06%) BigQuery
12 24 (1.06%) NoSQL
12 24 (1.06%) Oracle Reports
13 23 (1.02%) Power Query
13 23 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 19 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
14 19 (0.84%) Delta Lake
15 17 (0.75%) SAS Visual Analytics
Development Applications
1 216 (9.56%) JIRA
2 130 (5.75%) Git
3 90 (3.98%) Jenkins
4 66 (2.92%) GitLab
5 53 (2.35%) Selenium
6 42 (1.86%) Postman
7 40 (1.77%) JMeter
8 36 (1.59%) JUnit
9 35 (1.55%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.33%) WebDriver
11 25 (1.11%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.80%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.71%) Rational Rhapsody
13 16 (0.71%) Visual Studio
14 14 (0.62%) Gatling
14 14 (0.62%) MLflow
15 10 (0.44%) Gradle
15 10 (0.44%) Maven
15 10 (0.44%) REST Assured
16 8 (0.35%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 679 (30.06%) Finance
2 662 (29.31%) Social Skills
3 412 (18.24%) Analytical Skills
4 188 (8.32%) Public Sector
5 180 (7.97%) Banking
6 127 (5.62%) Documentation Skills
7 66 (2.92%) Manufacturing
8 63 (2.79%) Aerospace
9 55 (2.43%) Retail
10 41 (1.81%) Organisational Skills
11 39 (1.73%) Telecoms
12 38 (1.68%) Pharmaceutical
13 37 (1.64%) Front Office
14 36 (1.59%) General Ledger
14 36 (1.59%) Marketing
15 35 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
16 34 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 32 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
18 31 (1.37%) Law
18 31 (1.37%) Legal
Job Titles
1 383 (16.95%) Analyst
2 234 (10.36%) Senior
3 226 (10.00%) Lead
4 179 (7.92%) Business Analyst
5 170 (7.53%) Data Engineer
6 164 (7.26%) Consultant
7 136 (6.02%) Architect
8 134 (5.93%) Developer
9 116 (5.14%) Data Analyst
10 76 (3.36%) Project Manager
11 73 (3.23%) Test Engineer
12 59 (2.61%) Tester
13 47 (2.08%) Test Manager
14 46 (2.04%) Network Engineer
15 44 (1.95%) Systems Engineer
16 43 (1.90%) Software Engineer
17 41 (1.81%) Security Engineer
18 39 (1.73%) Senior Analyst
18 39 (1.73%) Senior Data Engineer
19 37 (1.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 120 (5.31%) REST
2 68 (3.01%) Kafka
3 67 (2.97%) JSON
4 53 (2.35%) Oracle Fusion
5 46 (2.04%) XML
6 43 (1.90%) OAuth
6 43 (1.90%) PySpark
7 42 (1.86%) Middleware
8 37 (1.64%) .NET
9 36 (1.59%) Spring
10 34 (1.51%) RESTful
10 34 (1.51%) Swagger
11 33 (1.46%) SOAP
12 32 (1.42%) Pandas
12 32 (1.42%) Web Services
13 31 (1.37%) pytest
14 29 (1.28%) Node.js
14 29 (1.28%) Playwright
15 25 (1.11%) JWT
15 25 (1.11%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 128 (5.67%) Legacy Systems
2 107 (4.74%) Data Structures
3 104 (4.60%) Onboarding
4 89 (3.94%) Product Ownership
5 84 (3.72%) Cloud Native
6 65 (2.88%) Data Centre
7 51 (2.26%) Management Information System
8 50 (2.21%) Distributed Systems
9 44 (1.95%) Analytical Mindset
10 34 (1.51%) SCADA
11 29 (1.28%) AI Agents
11 29 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
12 28 (1.24%) Distributed Architecture
13 27 (1.20%) Public Cloud
14 26 (1.15%) Algorithms
14 26 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
14 26 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
14 26 (1.15%) Life Science
14 26 (1.15%) Replication
15 24 (1.06%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 120 (5.31%) Windows
2 83 (3.67%) Linux
3 26 (1.15%) Unix
4 20 (0.89%) Windows Server
5 14 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (0.58%) Android
7 6 (0.27%) VMS
7 6 (0.27%) Windows 10
8 4 (0.18%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.18%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.18%) SUSE
8 4 (0.18%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.089%) HPUX
10 2 (0.089%) VxWorks
10 2 (0.089%) zOS
11 1 (0.044%) Debian
11 1 (0.044%) Mac OS X
11 1 (0.044%) Solaris
11 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 620 (27.45%) Migration
2 431 (19.08%) Agile
3 394 (17.44%) Stakeholder Management
4 384 (17.00%) Data Validation
5 381 (16.87%) CI/CD
6 372 (16.47%) Data Migration
7 366 (16.20%) Problem-Solving
8 362 (16.02%) User Acceptance Testing
9 347 (15.36%) Analytics
10 341 (15.10%) Data Modelling
11 285 (12.62%) ETL
12 284 (12.57%) AI
13 279 (12.35%) DevOps
14 271 (12.00%) Test Automation
15 239 (10.58%) Continuous Improvement
16 235 (10.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 234 (10.36%) Business Intelligence
18 212 (9.38%) Data Governance
19 211 (9.34%) Data Analysis
20 204 (9.03%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 547 (24.21%) SQL
2 393 (17.40%) Python
3 112 (4.96%) Java
4 59 (2.61%) PowerShell
5 51 (2.26%) C#
6 39 (1.73%) C++
7 38 (1.68%) C
8 37 (1.64%) Bash
8 37 (1.64%) JavaScript
9 29 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 28 (1.24%) TypeScript
11 27 (1.20%) Apex Code
12 26 (1.15%) Bicep
13 25 (1.11%) PL/SQL
14 23 (1.02%) R
15 21 (0.93%) Ada
16 17 (0.75%) MATLAB
16 17 (0.75%) Scala
17 16 (0.71%) VBA
18 14 (0.62%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 417 (18.46%) Security Cleared
2 301 (13.32%) SC Cleared
3 163 (7.22%) Degree
4 52 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
5 47 (2.08%) DV Cleared
6 40 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
7 31 (1.37%) PMI Certification
8 30 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
9 24 (1.06%) PMP
10 23 (1.02%) CCNP
11 19 (0.84%) CISSP
11 19 (0.84%) Master's Degree
12 17 (0.75%) ACCA
12 17 (0.75%) ISTQB
13 15 (0.66%) Azure Certification
13 15 (0.66%) CIMA
14 14 (0.62%) Microsoft Certification
15 13 (0.58%) AWS Certification
16 12 (0.53%) CCNA
17 8 (0.35%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 388 (17.18%) Data Quality
2 258 (11.42%) QA
3 105 (4.65%) GDPR
4 61 (2.70%) NIST
5 53 (2.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 33 (1.46%) Accessibility
7 29 (1.28%) PMO
8 27 (1.20%) IFRS
9 26 (1.15%) SLA
10 18 (0.80%) IFRS 17
11 16 (0.71%) Def Stans
11 16 (0.71%) GRC
12 15 (0.66%) GxP
13 14 (0.62%) HL7
14 13 (0.58%) Solvency II
15 12 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
15 12 (0.53%) NIST 800
16 11 (0.49%) ISO 20022
16 11 (0.49%) PCI DSS
16 11 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 99 (4.38%) Docker
2 56 (2.48%) Active Directory
3 50 (2.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.06%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (0.71%) Firmware
5 16 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (0.62%) Hyper-V
6 14 (0.62%) VMware NSX
7 9 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (0.35%) vSphere
9 5 (0.22%) KVM
9 5 (0.22%) NFS
10 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 2 (0.089%) BitLocker
11 2 (0.089%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.089%) VirtualBox
11 2 (0.089%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.044%) etcd
12 1 (0.044%) OpenSSH
12 1 (0.044%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 141 (6.24%) Kubernetes
2 104 (4.60%) Terraform
3 49 (2.17%) Prometheus
4 44 (1.95%) Ansible
4 44 (1.95%) Grafana
5 26 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
6 20 (0.89%) FortiGate
7 19 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
8 9 (0.40%) vCenter Server
9 7 (0.31%) Kibana
9 7 (0.31%) SCCM
10 6 (0.27%) Nessus
10 6 (0.27%) Puppet
10 6 (0.27%) VxRail
11 5 (0.22%) vMotion
12 4 (0.18%) Argo
12 4 (0.18%) CASB
12 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.18%) Istio
Vendors
1 296 (13.10%) Microsoft
2 201 (8.90%) SAP
3 198 (8.76%) Oracle
4 106 (4.69%) Databricks
5 81 (3.59%) Salesforce
6 63 (2.79%) ServiceNow
7 60 (2.66%) VMware
8 50 (2.21%) Cisco
9 40 (1.77%) Splunk
10 35 (1.55%) Workday
11 33 (1.46%) Google
12 30 (1.33%) Informatica
13 26 (1.15%) Palo Alto
13 26 (1.15%) Sage
14 24 (1.06%) MuleSoft
15 23 (1.02%) Fortinet
16 21 (0.93%) IFS
17 20 (0.89%) IBM
18 19 (0.84%) CyberArk
19 17 (0.75%) CheckPoint