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

6 months to
2 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 66 111
Rank change year-on-year +28 +45 +37
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,080 835 741
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.99% 3.47% 2.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.87% 3.80% 2.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,274 515 373
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £406 £414 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% +7.50% -13.04%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £600
90th Percentile £713 £721 £675
UK median daily rate £490 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -6.67% - -4.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 143 54 170
10th Percentile £17.75 £17.02 £26.88
25th Percentile £30.27 £36.74 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.63 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.80% -4.75% -3.20%
75th Percentile £74.63 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £76.75 £76.86
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £56.77 £60.00
% change year-on-year +10.09% -5.38% -4.94%

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 35,421 21,987 31,631
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.00% 91.31% 85.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,454 14,284 20,634
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £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 2,213 963 2,325
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £28.60 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.34% -23.73% +0.43%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £27.99 £36.50
% change year-on-year +51.84% -23.32% +0.29%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 +50 990 £513 -6.82% 475
North of England +40 286 £437 -2.83% 182
Midlands +33 255 £492 +9.33% 132
South East -3 239 £500 - 264
West Midlands +25 180 £478 +18.02% 82
North West +31 165 £423 -3.43% 106
South West 0 128 £500 -13.04% 126
East of England +10 127 £475 +5.56% 135
Yorkshire +18 109 £453 +4.14% 54
East Midlands +19 70 £525 +15.51% 50
North East -16 15 £438 -25.53% 24
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 (3.65%) Confluence
2 50 (2.40%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (1.97%) Apache Spark
4 34 (1.63%) SAS
5 23 (1.11%) SharePoint
6 21 (1.01%) Apache
7 13 (0.63%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.43%) Appian
9 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.34%) ArcGIS
10 7 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.19%) CMS
11 4 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 3 (0.14%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.096%) Documentum
13 2 (0.096%) Umbraco
Applications
1 141 (6.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (1.39%) MS Visio
3 23 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
4 20 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 19 (0.91%) Spreadsheet
6 9 (0.43%) 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 (0.096%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.096%) Notion
9 2 (0.096%) 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
1 106 (5.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (1.39%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.72%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.67%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.67%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.58%) Oracle Assets
5 12 (0.58%) Workday HCM
6 8 (0.38%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
6 8 (0.38%) Oracle Receivables
6 8 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.38%) SAP ERP
7 7 (0.34%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
7 7 (0.34%) Sage X3
8 6 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
8 6 (0.29%) SAP Business One
9 5 (0.24%) SAP Payroll
9 5 (0.24%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 421 (20.24%) Azure
2 253 (12.16%) AWS
3 203 (9.76%) Power Platform
4 112 (5.38%) GCP
5 105 (5.05%) Azure DevOps
6 102 (4.90%) GitHub
7 65 (3.13%) Snowflake
8 59 (2.84%) GitHub Actions
9 57 (2.74%) Azure Data Factory
10 53 (2.55%) Entra ID
11 48 (2.31%) SaaS
12 47 (2.26%) Serverless
13 40 (1.92%) Amazon S3
14 39 (1.88%) OCI
15 32 (1.54%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 32 (1.54%) dbt
15 32 (1.54%) Microsoft 365
16 23 (1.11%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 22 (1.06%) SuccessFactors
18 21 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 82 (3.94%) Firewall
2 55 (2.64%) Network Security
3 36 (1.73%) VLAN
4 34 (1.63%) DNS
5 29 (1.39%) TCP/IP
6 28 (1.35%) VPN
7 27 (1.30%) WAN
8 19 (0.91%) Ethernet
9 17 (0.82%) LAN
9 17 (0.82%) SAN
10 15 (0.72%) BGP
10 15 (0.72%) OSPF
10 15 (0.72%) SD-WAN
11 14 (0.67%) Wireless
12 13 (0.63%) Wi-Fi
13 12 (0.58%) DHCP
13 12 (0.58%) Internet
13 12 (0.58%) NAS
14 10 (0.48%) Cisco ISE
15 9 (0.43%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 188 (9.04%) Power BI
2 111 (5.34%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (3.41%) SQL Server
4 70 (3.37%) Metadata
5 65 (3.13%) Tableau
6 63 (3.03%) Data Lake
7 53 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
8 37 (1.78%) Relational Database
9 30 (1.44%) Big Data
10 28 (1.35%) Amazon Redshift
11 25 (1.20%) NoSQL
12 23 (1.11%) BigQuery
13 22 (1.06%) Delta Lake
13 22 (1.06%) Oracle Database
13 22 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 21 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
14 21 (1.01%) Power Query
15 20 (0.96%) Azure SQL Database
15 20 (0.96%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 16 (0.77%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 194 (9.33%) JIRA
2 107 (5.14%) Git
3 83 (3.99%) Jenkins
4 59 (2.84%) GitLab
5 52 (2.50%) Selenium
6 45 (2.16%) Postman
7 40 (1.92%) JMeter
8 35 (1.68%) Cucumber
8 35 (1.68%) JUnit
9 30 (1.44%) WebDriver
10 28 (1.35%) Rational DOORS
11 16 (0.77%) Rational Rhapsody
11 16 (0.77%) Visual Studio
12 15 (0.72%) Eclipse
12 15 (0.72%) MLflow
13 10 (0.48%) Gradle
13 10 (0.48%) Maven
14 9 (0.43%) Gatling
15 8 (0.38%) Bitbucket
15 8 (0.38%) REST Assured
General
1 636 (30.58%) Finance
2 627 (30.14%) Social Skills
3 377 (18.13%) Analytical Skills
4 177 (8.51%) Banking
5 165 (7.93%) Public Sector
6 114 (5.48%) Documentation Skills
7 66 (3.17%) Manufacturing
8 56 (2.69%) Aerospace
9 45 (2.16%) Retail
10 40 (1.92%) Organisational Skills
11 39 (1.88%) Presentation Skills
12 37 (1.78%) Pharmaceutical
13 34 (1.63%) General Ledger
13 34 (1.63%) Marketing
14 32 (1.54%) Front Office
15 31 (1.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 31 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
15 31 (1.49%) Legal
16 28 (1.35%) Local Government
16 28 (1.35%) Military
Job Titles
1 364 (17.50%) Analyst
2 220 (10.58%) Lead
3 189 (9.09%) Senior
4 170 (8.17%) Business Analyst
5 163 (7.84%) Data Engineer
6 140 (6.73%) Consultant
7 130 (6.25%) Architect
8 114 (5.48%) Developer
9 104 (5.00%) Data Analyst
10 74 (3.56%) Project Manager
11 57 (2.74%) Test Engineer
12 56 (2.69%) Tester
13 45 (2.16%) Software Engineer
14 44 (2.12%) Test Manager
15 40 (1.92%) Systems Engineer
16 38 (1.83%) Security Engineer
17 37 (1.78%) Network Engineer
17 37 (1.78%) Senior Analyst
18 36 (1.73%) Migration Engineer
19 35 (1.68%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 110 (5.29%) REST
2 71 (3.41%) JSON
3 67 (3.22%) Kafka
4 51 (2.45%) Oracle Fusion
5 47 (2.26%) XML
6 45 (2.16%) Middleware
7 43 (2.07%) OAuth
8 38 (1.83%) PySpark
9 37 (1.78%) Swagger
10 35 (1.68%) .NET
11 34 (1.63%) RESTful
12 33 (1.59%) SOAP
12 33 (1.59%) Spring
13 32 (1.54%) Pandas
14 29 (1.39%) Node.js
14 29 (1.39%) Web Services
15 27 (1.30%) pytest
16 26 (1.25%) PyTorch
17 25 (1.20%) OAuth2
18 24 (1.15%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 121 (5.82%) Legacy Systems
2 100 (4.81%) Data Structures
3 98 (4.71%) Onboarding
4 84 (4.04%) Product Ownership
5 73 (3.51%) Cloud Native
6 62 (2.98%) Data Centre
7 48 (2.31%) Management Information System
8 42 (2.02%) Distributed Systems
9 40 (1.92%) Analytical Mindset
10 33 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
11 27 (1.30%) Public Cloud
11 27 (1.30%) Replication
11 27 (1.30%) SCADA
12 25 (1.20%) AI Agents
12 25 (1.20%) Life Science
13 24 (1.15%) Algorithms
13 24 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
13 24 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
14 22 (1.06%) Operational Technology
14 22 (1.06%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 109 (5.24%) Windows
2 79 (3.80%) Linux
3 25 (1.20%) Unix
4 16 (0.77%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.58%) Android
5 12 (0.58%) 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 (0.096%) HPUX
9 2 (0.096%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.096%) VxWorks
10 1 (0.048%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.048%) Debian
10 1 (0.048%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.048%) pSOS
10 1 (0.048%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 564 (27.12%) Migration
2 395 (18.99%) Agile
3 359 (17.26%) Stakeholder Management
4 354 (17.02%) Problem-Solving
5 352 (16.92%) Data Validation
6 346 (16.63%) Data Migration
7 329 (15.82%) CI/CD
8 321 (15.43%) User Acceptance Testing
9 317 (15.24%) Data Modelling
10 309 (14.86%) Analytics
11 273 (13.13%) ETL
12 259 (12.45%) DevOps
13 250 (12.02%) AI
14 239 (11.49%) Test Automation
15 226 (10.87%) Business Intelligence
16 217 (10.43%) Continuous Improvement
17 213 (10.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 196 (9.42%) Data Analysis
19 192 (9.23%) Data Governance
20 186 (8.94%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 496 (23.85%) SQL
2 358 (17.21%) Python
3 108 (5.19%) Java
4 54 (2.60%) C#
5 52 (2.50%) PowerShell
6 42 (2.02%) C++
7 38 (1.83%) JavaScript
8 37 (1.78%) Bash
8 37 (1.78%) C
9 28 (1.35%) Bicep
10 27 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 26 (1.25%) PL/SQL
12 25 (1.20%) TypeScript
13 23 (1.11%) Apex Code
13 23 (1.11%) R
14 22 (1.06%) Ada
15 17 (0.82%) Scala
16 16 (0.77%) MATLAB
17 12 (0.58%) VBA
18 10 (0.48%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 384 (18.46%) Security Cleared
2 280 (13.46%) SC Cleared
3 164 (7.88%) Degree
4 52 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 47 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
6 41 (1.97%) DV Cleared
7 31 (1.49%) PMI Certification
8 25 (1.20%) PMP
9 24 (1.15%) Cisco Certification
10 22 (1.06%) Master's Degree
11 19 (0.91%) CCNP
12 17 (0.82%) ACCA
13 16 (0.77%) CISSP
13 16 (0.77%) ISTQB
14 15 (0.72%) CIMA
15 14 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
16 12 (0.58%) Azure Certification
17 11 (0.53%) CBAP
18 10 (0.48%) AWS Certification
19 9 (0.43%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 354 (17.02%) Data Quality
2 245 (11.78%) QA
3 104 (5.00%) GDPR
4 62 (2.98%) NIST
5 51 (2.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 31 (1.49%) Accessibility
7 27 (1.30%) IFRS
8 25 (1.20%) SLA
9 24 (1.15%) PMO
10 18 (0.87%) Def Stans
10 18 (0.87%) GRC
10 18 (0.87%) IFRS 17
11 17 (0.82%) GxP
12 14 (0.67%) HL7
13 13 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
13 13 (0.63%) PCI DSS
13 13 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 12 (0.58%) NIST 800
15 11 (0.53%) ISO 20022
15 11 (0.53%) Solvency II
System Software
1 89 (4.28%) Docker
2 47 (2.26%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.96%) Firmware
4 20 (0.96%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.67%) Hyper-V
6 13 (0.63%) VMware NSX
7 12 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (0.38%) vSphere
9 5 (0.24%) NFS
10 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 2 (0.096%) BitLocker
11 2 (0.096%) Ceph
11 2 (0.096%) KVM
11 2 (0.096%) Lustre
11 2 (0.096%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.096%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.048%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 135 (6.49%) Kubernetes
2 93 (4.47%) Terraform
3 48 (2.31%) Prometheus
4 45 (2.16%) Grafana
5 39 (1.88%) Ansible
6 26 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (0.91%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (0.48%) FortiGate
9 9 (0.43%) Kibana
10 8 (0.38%) Puppet
10 8 (0.38%) SCCM
11 7 (0.34%) 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
1 287 (13.80%) Microsoft
2 186 (8.94%) SAP
3 174 (8.37%) Oracle
4 100 (4.81%) Databricks
5 71 (3.41%) Salesforce
6 56 (2.69%) ServiceNow
7 50 (2.40%) VMware
8 41 (1.97%) Cisco
8 41 (1.97%) Splunk
9 34 (1.63%) Google
10 30 (1.44%) Workday
11 28 (1.35%) Informatica
12 25 (1.20%) Sage
13 24 (1.15%) MuleSoft
14 22 (1.06%) Palo Alto
15 21 (1.01%) IFS
16 20 (0.96%) IBM
17 19 (0.91%) CyberArk
18 17 (0.82%) Fortinet
19 16 (0.77%) OpenAI