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

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 67 113
Rank change year-on-year +32 +46 +36
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,402 994 751
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.36% 3.65% 2.08%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.28% 4.03% 2.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,460 606 378
10th Percentile £331 £351 £340
25th Percentile £413 £423 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.91%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £588
90th Percentile £712 £700 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 159 75 154
10th Percentile £17.75 £20.50 £28.00
25th Percentile £31.64 £36.99 £47.87
Median hourly rate £62.50 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £75.50 £67.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £83.80 £76.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% -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 38,249 24,669 31,010
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.41% 90.67% 85.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,059 15,837 20,183
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £735 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,360 1,307 2,114
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.26 £13.18
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.88 £16.30
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -8.14%
75th Percentile £68.75 £53.75 £63.67
90th Percentile £83.00 £71.33 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -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 17 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 17 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 17 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 +43 1,159 £513 -3.76% 261
North of England +36 308 £450 -5.26% 118
South East +3 304 £504 +0.75% 175
Midlands +43 303 £475 +5.56% 91
West Midlands +32 221 £475 +14.46% 44
North West +23 170 £450 -14.29% 61
East of England +5 136 £510 +0.49% 69
Yorkshire +34 127 £460 +9.52% 35
South West -15 125 £520 -9.57% 66
East Midlands +19 77 £517 +13.75% 47
North East -28 17 £425 -22.73% 22
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 (3.16%) Confluence
2 64 (2.66%) Apache Airflow
3 49 (2.04%) SAS
4 44 (1.83%) SharePoint
5 39 (1.62%) Apache Spark
6 27 (1.12%) Apache
7 12 (0.50%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
9 8 (0.33%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.29%) CMS
11 6 (0.25%) ArcGIS
12 5 (0.21%) Tuxedo
13 4 (0.17%) Appian
14 3 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
14 3 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
14 3 (0.12%) IIS
14 3 (0.12%) JBoss
14 3 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
14 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 167 (6.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.42%) MS Visio
3 31 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
4 25 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 25 (1.04%) Spreadsheet
5 8 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
6 6 (0.25%) AutoCAD
7 5 (0.21%) 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%) Sketch
11 1 (0.042%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.042%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.042%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.042%) Navisworks
11 1 (0.042%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.042%) ProjectWise
11 1 (0.042%) Revit
Business Applications
1 114 (4.75%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (1.33%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.62%) Workday HCM
4 14 (0.58%) Teamcenter
5 12 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
6 11 (0.46%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 11 (0.46%) SAP ERP
7 10 (0.42%) NetSuite
8 9 (0.37%) Aladdin
8 9 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
8 9 (0.37%) iTrent
8 9 (0.37%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.37%) SAP MDG
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle General Ledger
9 8 (0.33%) Sage X3
9 8 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
10 7 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.29%) SAP HCM
10 7 (0.29%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 518 (21.57%) Azure
2 279 (11.62%) AWS
3 243 (10.12%) Power Platform
4 131 (5.45%) Azure DevOps
5 122 (5.08%) GCP
6 113 (4.70%) GitHub
7 80 (3.33%) Snowflake
8 66 (2.75%) Azure Data Factory
9 65 (2.71%) GitHub Actions
10 61 (2.54%) Entra ID
11 56 (2.33%) Serverless
12 46 (1.92%) Amazon S3
13 44 (1.83%) SaaS
14 43 (1.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 43 (1.79%) dbt
14 43 (1.79%) Microsoft 365
15 42 (1.75%) OCI
16 33 (1.37%) SuccessFactors
17 28 (1.17%) Salesforce Service Cloud
18 26 (1.08%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 106 (4.41%) Firewall
2 61 (2.54%) Network Security
3 48 (2.00%) DNS
4 44 (1.83%) VLAN
5 38 (1.58%) VPN
6 36 (1.50%) WAN
7 31 (1.29%) TCP/IP
8 29 (1.21%) BGP
9 24 (1.00%) Wireless
10 23 (0.96%) SAN
11 22 (0.92%) LAN
12 21 (0.87%) OSPF
13 20 (0.83%) SD-WAN
14 19 (0.79%) Internet
15 18 (0.75%) DHCP
16 16 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
17 14 (0.58%) Ethernet
18 13 (0.54%) NAS
19 12 (0.50%) Cisco ISE
20 9 (0.37%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 225 (9.37%) Power BI
2 138 (5.75%) Data Warehouse
3 92 (3.83%) Metadata
4 77 (3.21%) SQL Server
5 76 (3.16%) Data Lake
6 68 (2.83%) PostgreSQL
6 68 (2.83%) Tableau
7 58 (2.41%) Relational Database
8 37 (1.54%) Big Data
9 29 (1.21%) Oracle Database
10 28 (1.17%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 27 (1.12%) BigQuery
12 26 (1.08%) Amazon Redshift
12 26 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 25 (1.04%) Delta Lake
13 25 (1.04%) NoSQL
13 25 (1.04%) Power Query
14 22 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
15 19 (0.79%) Amazon Athena
15 19 (0.79%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 220 (9.16%) JIRA
2 144 (6.00%) Git
3 85 (3.54%) Jenkins
4 63 (2.62%) GitLab
5 55 (2.29%) Selenium
6 39 (1.62%) JMeter
7 38 (1.58%) Postman
8 37 (1.54%) Cucumber
9 36 (1.50%) JUnit
10 30 (1.25%) WebDriver
11 25 (1.04%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.75%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.67%) Rational Rhapsody
14 15 (0.62%) Visual Studio
15 12 (0.50%) Gatling
15 12 (0.50%) MLflow
16 10 (0.42%) Maven
17 9 (0.37%) Oracle Forms
17 9 (0.37%) REST Assured
18 8 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 723 (30.10%) Finance
2 706 (29.39%) Social Skills
3 460 (19.15%) Analytical Skills
4 190 (7.91%) Banking
4 190 (7.91%) Public Sector
5 140 (5.83%) Documentation Skills
6 84 (3.50%) Manufacturing
7 76 (3.16%) Retail
8 63 (2.62%) Aerospace
9 46 (1.92%) Telecoms
10 45 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 44 (1.83%) Pharmaceutical
12 42 (1.75%) Organisational Skills
13 37 (1.54%) Front Office
13 37 (1.54%) Marketing
14 35 (1.46%) Automotive
15 33 (1.37%) Billing
15 33 (1.37%) Law
16 32 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
17 31 (1.29%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 428 (17.82%) Analyst
2 243 (10.12%) Lead
3 238 (9.91%) Senior
4 203 (8.45%) Business Analyst
5 198 (8.24%) Data Engineer
6 169 (7.04%) Consultant
7 137 (5.70%) Developer
8 136 (5.66%) Architect
9 125 (5.20%) Data Analyst
10 87 (3.62%) Test Engineer
11 71 (2.96%) Project Manager
12 70 (2.91%) Tester
13 53 (2.21%) Network Engineer
14 45 (1.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 43 (1.79%) Senior Data Engineer
15 43 (1.79%) Systems Engineer
16 42 (1.75%) Security Engineer
17 39 (1.62%) Migration Engineer
18 38 (1.58%) Software Engineer
18 38 (1.58%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (4.70%) REST
2 71 (2.96%) JSON
3 69 (2.87%) Kafka
4 53 (2.21%) PySpark
5 49 (2.04%) Oracle Fusion
6 47 (1.96%) XML
7 42 (1.75%) Spring
8 41 (1.71%) Middleware
9 38 (1.58%) .NET
10 34 (1.42%) OAuth
10 34 (1.42%) pytest
11 30 (1.25%) Playwright
11 30 (1.25%) RESTful
11 30 (1.25%) SOAP
12 29 (1.21%) Pandas
12 29 (1.21%) Web Services
13 28 (1.17%) Node.js
14 25 (1.04%) Swagger
14 25 (1.04%) WireMock
15 23 (0.96%) Lightning Web Components
Miscellaneous
1 125 (5.20%) Data Structures
2 123 (5.12%) Legacy Systems
3 122 (5.08%) Onboarding
4 100 (4.16%) Cloud Native
5 97 (4.04%) Product Ownership
6 68 (2.83%) Data Centre
7 53 (2.21%) Management Information System
8 48 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
9 47 (1.96%) Analytical Mindset
10 39 (1.62%) SCADA
11 35 (1.46%) AI Agents
11 35 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
12 33 (1.37%) Life Science
13 29 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
13 29 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
14 28 (1.17%) Operational Technology
14 28 (1.17%) Public Cloud
14 28 (1.17%) Virtual Team
15 27 (1.12%) Distributed Architecture
16 26 (1.08%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 129 (5.37%) Windows
2 79 (3.29%) Linux
3 31 (1.29%) Windows Server
4 21 (0.87%) Unix
5 18 (0.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.42%) Android
7 9 (0.37%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.25%) VMS
8 6 (0.25%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.21%) Apple iOS
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 (0.042%) Debian
13 1 (0.042%) Mac OS X
13 1 (0.042%) Solaris
13 1 (0.042%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 668 (27.81%) Migration
2 466 (19.40%) Agile
3 444 (18.48%) Stakeholder Management
4 404 (16.82%) CI/CD
5 403 (16.78%) Analytics
5 403 (16.78%) Data Migration
6 396 (16.49%) Data Validation
7 388 (16.15%) User Acceptance Testing
8 377 (15.70%) Problem-Solving
9 368 (15.32%) Data Modelling
10 305 (12.70%) ETL
11 300 (12.49%) AI
12 297 (12.36%) DevOps
13 291 (12.11%) Test Automation
14 280 (11.66%) Continuous Improvement
15 267 (11.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 263 (10.95%) Business Intelligence
17 244 (10.16%) Data Governance
18 239 (9.95%) Data Pipeline
19 235 (9.78%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 574 (23.90%) SQL
2 422 (17.57%) Python
3 107 (4.45%) Java
4 68 (2.83%) PowerShell
5 51 (2.12%) C#
6 39 (1.62%) C++
7 38 (1.58%) Bash
8 37 (1.54%) JavaScript
9 32 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 30 (1.25%) C
11 28 (1.17%) Apex Code
12 26 (1.08%) Bicep
12 26 (1.08%) TypeScript
13 25 (1.04%) PL/SQL
14 23 (0.96%) VBA
15 22 (0.92%) R
16 21 (0.87%) Ada
17 15 (0.62%) MATLAB
18 14 (0.58%) T-SQL
19 11 (0.46%) Scala
Qualifications
1 437 (18.19%) Security Cleared
2 309 (12.86%) SC Cleared
3 163 (6.79%) Degree
4 59 (2.46%) DV Cleared
5 52 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
6 36 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
7 35 (1.46%) Cisco Certification
8 27 (1.12%) CCNP
9 25 (1.04%) PMI Certification
10 21 (0.87%) PMP
11 18 (0.75%) ACCA
11 18 (0.75%) CISSP
12 17 (0.71%) CIMA
12 17 (0.71%) Microsoft Certification
13 16 (0.67%) Azure Certification
14 15 (0.62%) ISTQB
15 14 (0.58%) Master's Degree
16 13 (0.54%) AWS Certification
17 12 (0.50%) CCNA
18 10 (0.42%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 445 (18.53%) Data Quality
2 281 (11.70%) QA
3 109 (4.54%) GDPR
4 56 (2.33%) NIST
5 50 (2.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 38 (1.58%) Accessibility
7 36 (1.50%) PMO
8 29 (1.21%) SLA
9 21 (0.87%) GxP
10 17 (0.71%) Def Stans
10 17 (0.71%) GRC
11 15 (0.62%) IFRS
12 13 (0.54%) HL7
12 13 (0.54%) ISO 20022
12 13 (0.54%) NCSC
13 12 (0.50%) NIST 800
13 12 (0.50%) Solvency II
14 11 (0.46%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 11 (0.46%) PCI DSS
14 11 (0.46%) WCAG
System Software
1 101 (4.20%) Docker
2 69 (2.87%) Active Directory
3 58 (2.41%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (1.12%) Virtual Machines
5 20 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
6 18 (0.75%) Virtual Desktop
7 14 (0.58%) Firmware
8 13 (0.54%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.54%) vSphere
9 12 (0.50%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.21%) NFS
11 3 (0.12%) KVM
11 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.083%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.083%) VirtualBox
12 2 (0.083%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.042%) Ceph
13 1 (0.042%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.042%) OpenSSH
13 1 (0.042%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 147 (6.12%) Kubernetes
2 112 (4.66%) Terraform
3 50 (2.08%) Prometheus
4 48 (2.00%) Grafana
5 47 (1.96%) Ansible
6 23 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
7 22 (0.92%) FortiGate
8 19 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (0.42%) vCenter Server
10 9 (0.37%) SCCM
11 7 (0.29%) VxRail
12 6 (0.25%) HP ALM
12 6 (0.25%) Nessus
13 5 (0.21%) CASB
13 5 (0.21%) vMotion
14 4 (0.17%) Argo
14 4 (0.17%) EMC VPLEX
14 4 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
14 4 (0.17%) Istio
14 4 (0.17%) vRealize
Vendors
1 335 (13.95%) Microsoft
2 218 (9.08%) SAP
3 205 (8.53%) Oracle
4 126 (5.25%) Databricks
5 85 (3.54%) Salesforce
6 69 (2.87%) VMware
7 56 (2.33%) Cisco
7 56 (2.33%) ServiceNow
8 46 (1.92%) Workday
9 38 (1.58%) Splunk
10 34 (1.42%) Informatica
11 32 (1.33%) Google
12 30 (1.25%) Fortinet
13 28 (1.17%) Palo Alto
14 27 (1.12%) Juniper
15 25 (1.04%) IBM
16 24 (1.00%) Sage
17 23 (0.96%) Zscaler
18 22 (0.92%) MuleSoft
19 20 (0.83%) IFS