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

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 73 112
Rank change year-on-year +37 +39 +41
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,104 842 731
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.02% 3.50% 1.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.90% 3.83% 2.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,283 520 369
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £408 £418 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -13.04%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £598
90th Percentile £701 £716 £675
UK median daily rate £492 £525 £524
% change year-on-year -6.29% +0.24% -5.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 141 55 166
10th Percentile £17.75 £17.19 £26.88
25th Percentile £30.27 £36.99 £51.56
Median hourly rate £63.14 £57.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.32% -3.75% -4.00%
75th Percentile £74.25 £68.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £76.50 £76.86
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £57.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% -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 35,679 21,999 31,507
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.05% 91.35% 85.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,608 14,249 20,517
10th Percentile £325 £304 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,238 979 2,317
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.83
25th Percentile £20.76 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £28.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +66.67% -24.00% +1.35%
75th Percentile £68.00 £59.60 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.93 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.53 £36.50
% change year-on-year +59.68% -24.58% +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 5 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 5 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 5 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 1,003 £513 -6.82% 403
North of England +44 286 £439 -2.50% 179
Midlands +39 261 £500 +11.11% 142
South East -5 242 £500 - 235
West Midlands +26 186 £490 +21.43% 91
North West +33 165 £423 -3.43% 94
South West +1 130 £500 -13.04% 121
East of England +9 126 £475 +5.56% 109
Yorkshire +22 109 £460 +2.22% 63
East Midlands +16 70 £525 +15.51% 51
North East -18 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 73 (3.47%) Confluence
2 54 (2.57%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (1.95%) Apache Spark
3 41 (1.95%) SAS
4 25 (1.19%) SharePoint
5 21 (1.00%) Apache
6 13 (0.62%) Jupyter
7 9 (0.43%) Appian
8 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
9 7 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
10 6 (0.29%) ArcGIS
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 (6.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (1.43%) MS Visio
3 23 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
4 21 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 20 (0.95%) 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 (5.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.33%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.71%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 13 (0.62%) Oracle Payables
6 12 (0.57%) Oracle General Ledger
6 12 (0.57%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.48%) Oracle Assets
8 8 (0.38%) Aladdin
8 8 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
8 8 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
8 8 (0.38%) SAP ERP
9 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
9 7 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
9 7 (0.33%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
10 6 (0.29%) NetSuite
10 6 (0.29%) SAP Business One
10 6 (0.29%) SAP SD
11 5 (0.24%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 427 (20.29%) Azure
2 261 (12.40%) AWS
3 201 (9.55%) Power Platform
4 114 (5.42%) GCP
5 105 (4.99%) GitHub
6 104 (4.94%) Azure DevOps
7 66 (3.14%) Snowflake
8 60 (2.85%) GitHub Actions
9 58 (2.76%) Azure Data Factory
10 54 (2.57%) Entra ID
11 48 (2.28%) SaaS
11 48 (2.28%) Serverless
12 40 (1.90%) Amazon S3
13 39 (1.85%) OCI
14 35 (1.66%) Microsoft 365
15 34 (1.62%) dbt
16 33 (1.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 25 (1.19%) Salesforce Service Cloud
18 23 (1.09%) SuccessFactors
19 22 (1.05%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 84 (3.99%) Firewall
2 56 (2.66%) Network Security
3 37 (1.76%) VLAN
4 35 (1.66%) DNS
5 31 (1.47%) TCP/IP
6 28 (1.33%) VPN
6 28 (1.33%) WAN
7 19 (0.90%) Ethernet
7 19 (0.90%) SAN
8 18 (0.86%) LAN
9 16 (0.76%) BGP
9 16 (0.76%) SD-WAN
10 15 (0.71%) OSPF
10 15 (0.71%) Wireless
11 14 (0.67%) Internet
12 13 (0.62%) DHCP
12 13 (0.62%) Wi-Fi
13 12 (0.57%) NAS
14 11 (0.52%) Cisco ISE
15 10 (0.48%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (8.79%) Power BI
2 113 (5.37%) Data Warehouse
3 74 (3.52%) SQL Server
4 71 (3.37%) Metadata
5 63 (2.99%) Tableau
6 62 (2.95%) Data Lake
7 52 (2.47%) PostgreSQL
8 38 (1.81%) Relational Database
9 30 (1.43%) Big Data
10 28 (1.33%) Amazon Redshift
10 28 (1.33%) Oracle Database
11 26 (1.24%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 25 (1.19%) NoSQL
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 16 (0.76%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 196 (9.32%) JIRA
2 111 (5.28%) Git
3 86 (4.09%) Jenkins
4 60 (2.85%) GitLab
5 51 (2.42%) Selenium
6 44 (2.09%) Postman
7 40 (1.90%) JMeter
8 35 (1.66%) JUnit
9 34 (1.62%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.43%) WebDriver
11 26 (1.24%) 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
1 637 (30.28%) Finance
2 627 (29.80%) Social Skills
3 381 (18.11%) Analytical Skills
4 178 (8.46%) Banking
5 172 (8.17%) Public Sector
6 116 (5.51%) Documentation Skills
7 66 (3.14%) Manufacturing
8 56 (2.66%) Aerospace
9 46 (2.19%) Retail
10 40 (1.90%) Organisational Skills
11 38 (1.81%) Pharmaceutical
11 38 (1.81%) Presentation Skills
12 34 (1.62%) Front Office
12 34 (1.62%) Marketing
13 33 (1.57%) General Ledger
14 32 (1.52%) Legal
15 31 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
16 30 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 29 (1.38%) Telecoms
18 28 (1.33%) Law
Job Titles
1 362 (17.21%) Analyst
2 219 (10.41%) Lead
3 194 (9.22%) Senior
4 169 (8.03%) Business Analyst
5 165 (7.84%) Data Engineer
6 145 (6.89%) Consultant
7 130 (6.18%) Architect
8 116 (5.51%) Developer
9 103 (4.90%) Data Analyst
10 74 (3.52%) Project Manager
11 60 (2.85%) Test Engineer
12 57 (2.71%) Tester
13 44 (2.09%) Software Engineer
13 44 (2.09%) Test Manager
14 39 (1.85%) Network Engineer
15 38 (1.81%) Security Engineer
15 38 (1.81%) Systems Engineer
16 36 (1.71%) Migration Engineer
16 36 (1.71%) Senior Analyst
17 34 (1.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (5.28%) REST
2 70 (3.33%) JSON
3 67 (3.18%) Kafka
4 52 (2.47%) Oracle Fusion
5 46 (2.19%) XML
6 43 (2.04%) OAuth
7 41 (1.95%) 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 (1.47%) 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
1 121 (5.75%) Legacy Systems
2 101 (4.80%) Data Structures
3 100 (4.75%) Onboarding
4 87 (4.13%) Product Ownership
5 75 (3.56%) Cloud Native
6 61 (2.90%) Data Centre
7 48 (2.28%) Management Information System
8 43 (2.04%) Distributed Systems
9 40 (1.90%) Analytical Mindset
10 31 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
11 28 (1.33%) SCADA
12 27 (1.28%) Public Cloud
13 26 (1.24%) AI Agents
13 26 (1.24%) Algorithms
13 26 (1.24%) Life Science
13 26 (1.24%) Replication
14 24 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
14 24 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
15 22 (1.05%) Operational Technology
15 22 (1.05%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 113 (5.37%) Windows
2 81 (3.85%) Linux
3 27 (1.28%) 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
9 2 (0.095%) HPUX
9 2 (0.095%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.095%) VxWorks
9 2 (0.095%) zOS
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
1 577 (27.42%) Migration
2 397 (18.87%) Agile
3 365 (17.35%) Stakeholder Management
4 355 (16.87%) Data Validation
5 353 (16.78%) Problem-Solving
6 352 (16.73%) Data Migration
7 346 (16.44%) CI/CD
8 331 (15.73%) User Acceptance Testing
9 318 (15.11%) Data Modelling
10 317 (15.07%) Analytics
11 276 (13.12%) ETL
12 265 (12.60%) DevOps
13 255 (12.12%) AI
14 245 (11.64%) Test Automation
15 224 (10.65%) Business Intelligence
16 218 (10.36%) Continuous Improvement
17 213 (10.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 197 (9.36%) Data Analysis
19 196 (9.32%) Data Governance
20 189 (8.98%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 500 (23.76%) SQL
2 365 (17.35%) Python
3 107 (5.09%) Java
4 55 (2.61%) 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 (1.28%) 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 (18.58%) Security Cleared
2 284 (13.50%) SC Cleared
3 159 (7.56%) Degree
4 53 (2.52%) BPSS Clearance
5 46 (2.19%) 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%) PMP
10 21 (1.00%) Master's Degree
11 19 (0.90%) CCNP
12 17 (0.81%) ACCA
13 16 (0.76%) CISSP
13 16 (0.76%) ISTQB
14 15 (0.71%) CIMA
15 14 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
16 12 (0.57%) Azure Certification
17 11 (0.52%) AWS Certification
18 9 (0.43%) CCNA
19 8 (0.38%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 363 (17.25%) Data Quality
2 247 (11.74%) QA
3 104 (4.94%) GDPR
4 62 (2.95%) NIST
5 52 (2.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 31 (1.47%) Accessibility
7 27 (1.28%) IFRS
8 25 (1.19%) PMO
8 25 (1.19%) SLA
9 18 (0.86%) GRC
9 18 (0.86%) IFRS 17
10 17 (0.81%) Def Stans
10 17 (0.81%) GxP
11 14 (0.67%) HL7
12 13 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
12 13 (0.62%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 12 (0.57%) NIST 800
14 11 (0.52%) ISO 20022
14 11 (0.52%) Solvency II
System Software
1 89 (4.23%) Docker
2 47 (2.23%) Active Directory
3 43 (2.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.95%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (0.86%) Firmware
6 14 (0.67%) Hyper-V
7 12 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (0.57%) VMware NSX
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 (0.095%) BitLocker
11 2 (0.095%) KVM
11 2 (0.095%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.095%) VirtualBox
11 2 (0.095%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.048%) OpenSSH
12 1 (0.048%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.048%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 132 (6.27%) Kubernetes
2 92 (4.37%) Terraform
3 48 (2.28%) Prometheus
4 44 (2.09%) Grafana
5 38 (1.81%) 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
1 286 (13.59%) Microsoft
2 190 (9.03%) SAP
3 181 (8.60%) Oracle
4 101 (4.80%) Databricks
5 73 (3.47%) Salesforce
6 59 (2.80%) ServiceNow
7 52 (2.47%) VMware
8 43 (2.04%) Cisco
9 42 (2.00%) Splunk
10 33 (1.57%) Google
11 30 (1.43%) Informatica
12 29 (1.38%) Workday
13 26 (1.24%) Sage
14 23 (1.09%) MuleSoft
14 23 (1.09%) Palo Alto
15 21 (1.00%) IFS
16 19 (0.90%) CyberArk
16 19 (0.90%) IBM
17 18 (0.86%) Fortinet
18 16 (0.76%) OpenAI