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

6 months to
23 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 95 129
Rank change year-on-year +49 +34 +5
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,708 685 680
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.57% 2.77% 1.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.29% 3.06% 2.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,062 416 371
10th Percentile £350 £363 £319
25th Percentile £406 £423 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £491 £548 £525
Median % change year-on-year -10.32% +4.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £593 £638 £613
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £487 £540 £531
% change year-on-year -9.81% +1.65% -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 94 42 144
10th Percentile £33.45 £25.36 £23.55
25th Percentile £60.00 £47.50 £50.94
Median hourly rate £65.00 £59.13 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.94% -1.46% -4.00%
75th Percentile £72.25 £65.75 £75.18
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.23 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +12.55% -3.75% -4.08%

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 32,274 22,410 32,751
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.33% 90.76% 86.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,683 14,625 21,650
10th Percentile £313 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.05% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,981 836 2,152
10th Percentile £15.38 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.86 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.00 £33.26 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.25% +2.32% -13.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.69
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.35 £71.87
UK median hourly rate £31.50 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -3.08% - -7.14%

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 23 March 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 23 March 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 23 March 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 +67 792 £510 -7.27% 276
North of England +32 231 £433 -8.95% 160
South East -5 197 £500 - 230
Midlands +40 183 £486 +2.24% 121
North West +33 150 £418 -7.11% 81
West Midlands +23 144 £486 -1.65% 76
South West +9 136 £475 -17.39% 92
East of England +22 118 £492 +9.38% 110
Yorkshire -6 72 £462 +9.93% 54
East Midlands -5 37 £550 +49.46% 45
North East -7 12 £450 -37.93% 25
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 72 (4.22%) Confluence
2 33 (1.93%) SAS
3 32 (1.87%) Apache Spark
4 31 (1.81%) Apache Airflow
5 16 (0.94%) Apache
6 15 (0.88%) SharePoint
7 11 (0.64%) Microsoft Exchange
8 9 (0.53%) Appian
9 8 (0.47%) Jupyter
10 6 (0.35%) ArcGIS
10 6 (0.35%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 6 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
11 5 (0.29%) Anypoint
11 5 (0.29%) CMS
12 4 (0.23%) Smallworld
13 3 (0.18%) CICS
13 3 (0.18%) GeoServer
13 3 (0.18%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
Applications
1 86 (5.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 23 (1.35%) MS Visio
3 21 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
4 13 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 13 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
5 12 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (0.47%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.23%) Notion
8 3 (0.18%) LaTeX
9 2 (0.12%) CATIA
9 2 (0.12%) Sketch
10 1 (0.059%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.059%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.059%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.059%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.059%) Simulink
10 1 (0.059%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 84 (4.92%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (1.76%) Oracle EBS
3 13 (0.76%) Oracle General Ledger
3 13 (0.76%) Oracle Payables
3 13 (0.76%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 13 (0.76%) Workday HCM
4 10 (0.59%) Oracle Receivables
5 9 (0.53%) Oracle Assets
5 9 (0.53%) SAP FI
6 8 (0.47%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.47%) Dynamics CRM
6 8 (0.47%) OpenText VIM for SAP
7 7 (0.41%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.41%) Oracle EBS R12
7 7 (0.41%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 7 (0.41%) SAP MDG
7 7 (0.41%) SAP MM
8 6 (0.35%) Oracle Financials
8 6 (0.35%) Sage X3
8 6 (0.35%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 405 (23.71%) Azure
2 204 (11.94%) AWS
3 147 (8.61%) Power Platform
4 134 (7.85%) Azure DevOps
5 82 (4.80%) GitHub
6 78 (4.57%) GCP
7 53 (3.10%) Azure Data Factory
8 51 (2.99%) Entra ID
9 50 (2.93%) Serverless
10 49 (2.87%) GitHub Actions
11 46 (2.69%) SaaS
12 44 (2.58%) OCI
13 36 (2.11%) Amazon S3
14 35 (2.05%) Snowflake
15 29 (1.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 27 (1.58%) OpenShift
17 25 (1.46%) AWS Lambda
18 23 (1.35%) Microsoft 365
19 21 (1.23%) SuccessFactors
20 20 (1.17%) Boomi
Communications & Networking
1 61 (3.57%) Firewall
2 45 (2.63%) Network Security
3 33 (1.93%) TCP/IP
4 21 (1.23%) DNS
4 21 (1.23%) Ethernet
5 18 (1.05%) VPN
6 15 (0.88%) SAN
6 15 (0.88%) VLAN
6 15 (0.88%) WAN
7 13 (0.76%) NAS
8 11 (0.64%) HTTP
9 9 (0.53%) SD-WAN
9 9 (0.53%) Wireless
10 8 (0.47%) BGP
10 8 (0.47%) Internet
10 8 (0.47%) LAN
10 8 (0.47%) OSPF
11 7 (0.41%) Cisco ISE
11 7 (0.41%) MPLS
11 7 (0.41%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 136 (7.96%) Power BI
2 89 (5.21%) Data Warehouse
3 85 (4.98%) Metadata
4 55 (3.22%) SQL Server
5 50 (2.93%) Tableau
6 41 (2.40%) Data Lake
7 37 (2.17%) PostgreSQL
8 29 (1.70%) Oracle Reports
9 25 (1.46%) Amazon Redshift
10 24 (1.41%) NoSQL
11 23 (1.35%) Delta Lake
12 22 (1.29%) Relational Database
13 20 (1.17%) Azure SQL Database
13 20 (1.17%) Big Data
13 20 (1.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 19 (1.11%) Oracle Database
14 19 (1.11%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 18 (1.05%) Pinecone
16 14 (0.82%) Star Schema
17 13 (0.76%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 174 (10.19%) JIRA
2 101 (5.91%) Git
3 81 (4.74%) Jenkins
4 58 (3.40%) Selenium
5 48 (2.81%) GitLab
6 40 (2.34%) Postman
7 36 (2.11%) JUnit
8 33 (1.93%) Cucumber
9 32 (1.87%) Rational DOORS
10 29 (1.70%) Oracle APEX
11 27 (1.58%) JMeter
12 20 (1.17%) Visual Studio
12 20 (1.17%) WebDriver
13 18 (1.05%) MLflow
14 14 (0.82%) Eclipse
15 12 (0.70%) REST Assured
16 11 (0.64%) Bitbucket
17 10 (0.59%) Rational Rhapsody
17 10 (0.59%) TestRail
18 9 (0.53%) Cypress.io
General
1 600 (35.13%) Social Skills
2 519 (30.39%) Finance
3 343 (20.08%) Analytical Skills
4 154 (9.02%) Public Sector
5 146 (8.55%) Banking
6 88 (5.15%) Documentation Skills
7 47 (2.75%) Presentation Skills
8 45 (2.63%) Manufacturing
9 43 (2.52%) Aerospace
10 32 (1.87%) Electronics
11 31 (1.81%) Pharmaceutical
12 29 (1.70%) Marketing
13 27 (1.58%) Influencing Skills
13 27 (1.58%) Military
14 26 (1.52%) Financial Institution
14 26 (1.52%) Front Office
14 26 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
14 26 (1.52%) Retail
15 23 (1.35%) Legal
15 23 (1.35%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 310 (18.15%) Analyst
2 176 (10.30%) Senior
3 175 (10.25%) Lead
4 142 (8.31%) Business Analyst
5 122 (7.14%) Consultant
6 118 (6.91%) Developer
7 117 (6.85%) Data Engineer
8 112 (6.56%) Architect
9 80 (4.68%) Data Analyst
10 69 (4.04%) Project Manager
11 52 (3.04%) Tester
12 47 (2.75%) Software Engineer
13 41 (2.40%) SAP Consultant
14 37 (2.17%) Senior Analyst
14 37 (2.17%) Senior Developer
15 34 (1.99%) Test Analyst
16 33 (1.93%) Embedded Engineer
17 32 (1.87%) Security Engineer
17 32 (1.87%) Test Engineer
17 32 (1.87%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 116 (6.79%) REST
2 73 (4.27%) JSON
3 58 (3.40%) Oracle Fusion
4 55 (3.22%) Kafka
5 53 (3.10%) XML
6 48 (2.81%) OAuth
7 45 (2.63%) Middleware
8 40 (2.34%) SOAP
9 37 (2.17%) .NET
10 36 (2.11%) Node.js
10 36 (2.11%) PySpark
11 31 (1.81%) PyTorch
11 31 (1.81%) Swagger
11 31 (1.81%) Web Services
12 29 (1.70%) RESTful
13 28 (1.64%) Playwright
14 27 (1.58%) pytest
14 27 (1.58%) TensorFlow
15 24 (1.41%) JWT
15 24 (1.41%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 105 (6.15%) Legacy Systems
2 84 (4.92%) Data Structures
3 71 (4.16%) Product Ownership
4 61 (3.57%) Onboarding
5 42 (2.46%) Cloud Native
5 42 (2.46%) Management Information System
6 35 (2.05%) Data Centre
7 33 (1.93%) Analytical Mindset
8 29 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
9 26 (1.52%) Replication
10 22 (1.29%) Algorithms
10 22 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
11 18 (1.05%) Derivative
11 18 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
11 18 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
11 18 (1.05%) Public Cloud
12 16 (0.94%) Virtual Team
13 15 (0.88%) Credit Risk
14 14 (0.82%) AI Agents
14 14 (0.82%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 88 (5.15%) Windows
2 71 (4.16%) Linux
3 26 (1.52%) Unix
4 9 (0.53%) Android
5 7 (0.41%) Windows Server
6 6 (0.35%) zOS
7 5 (0.29%) Mac OS
8 3 (0.18%) Embedded Linux
9 2 (0.12%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.12%) Debian
9 2 (0.12%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.059%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.059%) FreeRTOS
10 1 (0.059%) pSOS
10 1 (0.059%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 418 (24.47%) Migration
2 407 (23.83%) Agile
3 358 (20.96%) Problem-Solving
4 313 (18.33%) Stakeholder Management
5 293 (17.15%) Data Validation
6 291 (17.04%) CI/CD
7 275 (16.10%) Analytics
8 274 (16.04%) DevOps
9 256 (14.99%) Data Migration
10 234 (13.70%) Data Modelling
11 225 (13.17%) ETL
12 222 (13.00%) User Acceptance Testing
13 206 (12.06%) Test Automation
14 198 (11.59%) AI
15 192 (11.24%) Continuous Improvement
16 182 (10.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 178 (10.42%) Business Intelligence
18 165 (9.66%) Data Governance
19 145 (8.49%) Workshop Facilitation
20 142 (8.31%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 427 (25.00%) SQL
2 314 (18.38%) Python
3 88 (5.15%) Java
4 87 (5.09%) JavaScript
5 64 (3.75%) C#
6 50 (2.93%) PL/SQL
7 46 (2.69%) C++
8 40 (2.34%) C
8 40 (2.34%) PowerShell
9 28 (1.64%) TypeScript
10 27 (1.58%) Bash
11 22 (1.29%) Bicep
11 22 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 22 (1.29%) R
12 21 (1.23%) Ada
13 17 (1.00%) Groovy
14 16 (0.94%) T-SQL
15 14 (0.82%) Scala
16 12 (0.70%) VBA
17 10 (0.59%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 369 (21.60%) Security Cleared
2 266 (15.57%) SC Cleared
3 154 (9.02%) Degree
4 52 (3.04%) Computer Science Degree
5 49 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
6 38 (2.22%) DV Cleared
7 33 (1.93%) Master's Degree
8 27 (1.58%) PMI Certification
9 25 (1.46%) PMP
10 24 (1.41%) ISTQB
11 15 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
11 15 (0.88%) CISSP
12 14 (0.82%) Microsoft Certification
13 13 (0.76%) AWS Certification
13 13 (0.76%) CBAP
14 12 (0.70%) CCNP
15 9 (0.53%) Azure Certification
16 8 (0.47%) CCNA
16 8 (0.47%) Oracle Certification
17 7 (0.41%) IIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 266 (15.57%) Data Quality
2 218 (12.76%) QA
3 96 (5.62%) GDPR
4 71 (4.16%) NIST
5 57 (3.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 24 (1.41%) Accessibility
7 22 (1.29%) IFRS
8 20 (1.17%) Def Stans
9 19 (1.11%) IFRS 17
10 18 (1.05%) SLA
11 17 (1.00%) GRC
12 16 (0.94%) PMO
13 14 (0.82%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.76%) NCSC
15 12 (0.70%) COBIT
16 11 (0.64%) GxP
16 11 (0.64%) MiFID
16 11 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 10 (0.59%) HL7
17 10 (0.59%) MISRA
System Software
1 74 (4.33%) Docker
2 41 (2.40%) Active Directory
3 31 (1.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (1.23%) Firmware
5 10 (0.59%) VMware NSX
6 8 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
8 6 (0.35%) Hyper-V
9 5 (0.29%) NFS
10 4 (0.23%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 4 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
11 3 (0.18%) Embedded Firmware
11 3 (0.18%) vSphere
12 2 (0.12%) Ceph
12 2 (0.12%) KVM
12 2 (0.12%) Lustre
12 2 (0.12%) OpenAM
12 2 (0.12%) OpenDJ
12 2 (0.12%) OpenIDM
12 2 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 110 (6.44%) Kubernetes
2 77 (4.51%) Terraform
3 29 (1.70%) Single Sign-On
4 28 (1.64%) Ansible
4 28 (1.64%) Prometheus
5 25 (1.46%) Grafana
6 11 (0.64%) Kibana
6 11 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
6 11 (0.64%) Puppet
7 9 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 6 (0.35%) Nessus
8 6 (0.35%) SCCM
9 5 (0.29%) CASB
10 4 (0.23%) EMC NetWorker
10 4 (0.23%) EMC VPLEX
10 4 (0.23%) FortiGate
10 4 (0.23%) vMotion
11 3 (0.18%) NetBackup
11 3 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
11 3 (0.18%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 224 (13.11%) Microsoft
2 183 (10.71%) Oracle
3 148 (8.67%) SAP
4 80 (4.68%) Databricks
5 71 (4.16%) ServiceNow
6 40 (2.34%) Salesforce
6 40 (2.34%) Splunk
7 38 (2.22%) VMware
8 34 (1.99%) Google
9 32 (1.87%) Cisco
10 29 (1.70%) Informatica
11 28 (1.64%) MuleSoft
11 28 (1.64%) Sage
12 27 (1.58%) Workday
13 21 (1.23%) IBM
14 19 (1.11%) Palo Alto
15 17 (1.00%) CyberArk
16 15 (0.88%) Murex
16 15 (0.88%) OpenAI
17 13 (0.76%) Bloomberg