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 3 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 86 128
Rank change year-on-year +42 +42 +8
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,809 683 672
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.72% 2.82% 1.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.49% 3.10% 2.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,127 411 356
10th Percentile £329 £361 £317
25th Percentile £403 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £612
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £486 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -7.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 100 42 142
10th Percentile £32.85 £26.53 £23.35
25th Percentile £59.61 £48.13 £51.56
Median hourly rate £65.00 £61.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.69% +2.50% -4.00%
75th Percentile £77.31 £65.75 £75.25
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.23 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £59.13 £60.00
% change year-on-year +9.94% -1.46% -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 32,977 22,016 32,582
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.99% 90.82% 86.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,149 14,501 21,512
10th Percentile £313 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -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 2,015 852 2,158
10th Percentile £15.38 £15.00 £12.92
25th Percentile £19.34 £19.96 £15.78
Median hourly rate £37.50 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.38% - -13.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.64 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £35.77 £31.76 £32.50
% change year-on-year +12.61% -2.28% -10.41%

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 3 April 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 3 April 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 3 April 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 +65 846 £500 -9.09% 268
North of England +40 247 £450 -2.70% 152
South East -5 205 £500 - 215
Midlands +36 200 £492 +3.58% 118
West Midlands +26 155 £491 +2.03% 77
North West +27 153 £418 -5.80% 74
South West +5 131 £475 -17.39% 89
East of England +13 124 £492 +9.38% 96
Yorkshire +8 85 £462 +9.93% 51
East Midlands +2 42 £500 +35.87% 41
North East -6 12 £450 -37.93% 27
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 (4.04%) Confluence
2 39 (2.16%) SAS
3 35 (1.93%) Apache Airflow
4 32 (1.77%) Apache Spark
5 17 (0.94%) Apache
6 15 (0.83%) SharePoint
7 11 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
8 9 (0.50%) Appian
9 8 (0.44%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.39%) ArcGIS
11 6 (0.33%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 6 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
12 5 (0.28%) Anypoint
12 5 (0.28%) CMS
13 4 (0.22%) WebLogic
14 3 (0.17%) CICS
14 3 (0.17%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 3 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 2 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
15 2 (0.11%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 108 (5.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 27 (1.49%) MS Visio
3 23 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
4 18 (1.00%) Spreadsheet
5 17 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.22%) Notion
9 3 (0.17%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.11%) CATIA
10 2 (0.11%) Sketch
11 1 (0.055%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.055%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.055%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.055%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.055%) UXPin
11 1 (0.055%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 87 (4.81%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (1.71%) Oracle EBS
3 14 (0.77%) Oracle General Ledger
4 13 (0.72%) Workday HCM
5 12 (0.66%) Oracle Payables
5 12 (0.66%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 9 (0.50%) Oracle Assets
6 9 (0.50%) Oracle Receivables
6 9 (0.50%) SAP FI
7 8 (0.44%) Dynamics CRM
7 8 (0.44%) OpenText VIM for SAP
8 7 (0.39%) Aladdin
8 7 (0.39%) NetSuite
8 7 (0.39%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.39%) SAP MM
8 7 (0.39%) Teamcenter
9 6 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
9 6 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
9 6 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 6 (0.33%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 428 (23.66%) Azure
2 222 (12.27%) AWS
3 161 (8.90%) Power Platform
4 131 (7.24%) Azure DevOps
5 85 (4.70%) GCP
6 84 (4.64%) GitHub
7 54 (2.99%) Entra ID
8 53 (2.93%) Azure Data Factory
9 49 (2.71%) SaaS
9 49 (2.71%) Serverless
10 46 (2.54%) GitHub Actions
11 44 (2.43%) OCI
12 40 (2.21%) Amazon S3
13 36 (1.99%) Snowflake
14 32 (1.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 27 (1.49%) OpenShift
16 25 (1.38%) AWS Lambda
16 25 (1.38%) dbt
17 24 (1.33%) Microsoft 365
18 22 (1.22%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 73 (4.04%) Firewall
2 50 (2.76%) Network Security
3 34 (1.88%) TCP/IP
4 25 (1.38%) DNS
4 25 (1.38%) VLAN
5 21 (1.16%) Ethernet
5 21 (1.16%) VPN
6 17 (0.94%) WAN
7 15 (0.83%) SAN
8 13 (0.72%) NAS
9 11 (0.61%) BGP
9 11 (0.61%) HTTP
9 11 (0.61%) LAN
9 11 (0.61%) OSPF
10 10 (0.55%) Wireless
11 9 (0.50%) SD-WAN
12 8 (0.44%) Cisco ISE
12 8 (0.44%) Internet
13 7 (0.39%) MPLS
13 7 (0.39%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 149 (8.24%) Power BI
2 95 (5.25%) Data Warehouse
3 92 (5.09%) Metadata
4 58 (3.21%) SQL Server
5 56 (3.10%) Tableau
6 41 (2.27%) Data Lake
7 40 (2.21%) PostgreSQL
8 30 (1.66%) Oracle Reports
9 27 (1.49%) Amazon Redshift
10 25 (1.38%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 23 (1.27%) Big Data
11 23 (1.27%) Delta Lake
11 23 (1.27%) Oracle Database
11 23 (1.27%) Relational Database
11 23 (1.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 21 (1.16%) NoSQL
13 20 (1.11%) Azure SQL Database
14 18 (1.00%) Pinecone
15 17 (0.94%) Amazon Athena
16 16 (0.88%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 172 (9.51%) JIRA
2 108 (5.97%) Git
3 80 (4.42%) Jenkins
4 62 (3.43%) Selenium
5 49 (2.71%) GitLab
6 42 (2.32%) Postman
7 37 (2.05%) JUnit
8 34 (1.88%) Cucumber
9 28 (1.55%) JMeter
9 28 (1.55%) Oracle APEX
10 27 (1.49%) Rational DOORS
11 22 (1.22%) WebDriver
12 19 (1.05%) Visual Studio
13 15 (0.83%) MLflow
14 14 (0.77%) Eclipse
15 13 (0.72%) REST Assured
16 12 (0.66%) Bitbucket
17 10 (0.55%) Rational Rhapsody
17 10 (0.55%) TestRail
18 9 (0.50%) Gatling
General
1 609 (33.67%) Social Skills
2 543 (30.02%) Finance
3 354 (19.57%) Analytical Skills
4 160 (8.84%) Public Sector
5 152 (8.40%) Banking
6 101 (5.58%) Documentation Skills
7 49 (2.71%) Manufacturing
8 48 (2.65%) Aerospace
9 47 (2.60%) Presentation Skills
10 33 (1.82%) Organisational Skills
11 32 (1.77%) Electronics
11 32 (1.77%) Marketing
11 32 (1.77%) Pharmaceutical
12 29 (1.60%) Military
13 28 (1.55%) Financial Institution
13 28 (1.55%) Front Office
13 28 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
13 28 (1.55%) Retail
14 27 (1.49%) Telecoms
15 26 (1.44%) Legal
Job Titles
1 336 (18.57%) Analyst
2 185 (10.23%) Lead
3 182 (10.06%) Senior
4 156 (8.62%) Business Analyst
5 131 (7.24%) Data Engineer
6 125 (6.91%) Developer
7 117 (6.47%) Consultant
8 113 (6.25%) Architect
9 86 (4.75%) Data Analyst
10 71 (3.92%) Project Manager
11 53 (2.93%) Tester
12 42 (2.32%) Software Engineer
13 39 (2.16%) Senior Analyst
13 39 (2.16%) Senior Developer
14 38 (2.10%) Test Engineer
15 37 (2.05%) SAP Consultant
16 35 (1.93%) Test Analyst
17 34 (1.88%) Systems Engineer
17 34 (1.88%) Test Manager
18 33 (1.82%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 119 (6.58%) REST
2 77 (4.26%) JSON
3 60 (3.32%) Kafka
4 58 (3.21%) Oracle Fusion
5 50 (2.76%) OAuth
5 50 (2.76%) XML
6 46 (2.54%) Middleware
7 38 (2.10%) Node.js
8 37 (2.05%) .NET
8 37 (2.05%) PySpark
8 37 (2.05%) SOAP
9 32 (1.77%) Swagger
10 30 (1.66%) Playwright
10 30 (1.66%) Web Services
11 28 (1.55%) pytest
11 28 (1.55%) PyTorch
12 27 (1.49%) RESTful
13 26 (1.44%) TensorFlow
14 25 (1.38%) JWT
14 25 (1.38%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 107 (5.91%) Legacy Systems
2 90 (4.98%) Data Structures
3 74 (4.09%) Onboarding
4 72 (3.98%) Product Ownership
5 46 (2.54%) Cloud Native
6 44 (2.43%) Management Information System
7 38 (2.10%) Data Centre
8 33 (1.82%) Analytical Mindset
9 29 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
10 28 (1.55%) Replication
11 24 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
12 22 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
13 20 (1.11%) Algorithms
13 20 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
14 19 (1.05%) Public Cloud
14 19 (1.05%) Virtual Team
15 18 (1.00%) Reference Data
16 17 (0.94%) Derivative
17 15 (0.83%) Credit Risk
18 14 (0.77%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 95 (5.25%) Windows
2 76 (4.20%) Linux
3 25 (1.38%) Unix
4 11 (0.61%) Android
5 9 (0.50%) Windows Server
6 6 (0.33%) zOS
7 4 (0.22%) Mac OS
7 4 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 4 (0.22%) SUSE
7 4 (0.22%) VMS
8 3 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
9 2 (0.11%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.11%) Debian
9 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.055%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.055%) pSOS
10 1 (0.055%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 451 (24.93%) Migration
2 408 (22.55%) Agile
3 363 (20.07%) Problem-Solving
4 324 (17.91%) Stakeholder Management
5 314 (17.36%) Data Validation
6 305 (16.86%) CI/CD
7 294 (16.25%) Analytics
8 279 (15.42%) DevOps
9 270 (14.93%) Data Migration
10 254 (14.04%) Data Modelling
11 248 (13.71%) ETL
12 236 (13.05%) User Acceptance Testing
13 217 (12.00%) Test Automation
14 200 (11.06%) Continuous Improvement
15 194 (10.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 193 (10.67%) Business Intelligence
17 190 (10.50%) AI
18 175 (9.67%) Data Governance
19 159 (8.79%) Data Pipeline
20 152 (8.40%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 457 (25.26%) SQL
2 332 (18.35%) Python
3 95 (5.25%) Java
4 85 (4.70%) JavaScript
5 68 (3.76%) C#
6 51 (2.82%) PL/SQL
7 46 (2.54%) C++
8 42 (2.32%) PowerShell
9 37 (2.05%) C
10 28 (1.55%) TypeScript
11 27 (1.49%) Bash
12 26 (1.44%) R
13 24 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 22 (1.22%) Bicep
15 21 (1.16%) Ada
16 17 (0.94%) T-SQL
17 16 (0.88%) Groovy
18 14 (0.77%) Scala
19 13 (0.72%) VBA
20 10 (0.55%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 385 (21.28%) Security Cleared
2 275 (15.20%) SC Cleared
3 162 (8.96%) Degree
4 52 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 48 (2.65%) Computer Science Degree
6 38 (2.10%) DV Cleared
7 30 (1.66%) Master's Degree
8 29 (1.60%) PMI Certification
9 27 (1.49%) PMP
10 25 (1.38%) ISTQB
11 16 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
12 15 (0.83%) CISSP
12 15 (0.83%) Microsoft Certification
13 13 (0.72%) CBAP
13 13 (0.72%) CCNP
14 12 (0.66%) AWS Certification
14 12 (0.66%) Azure Certification
15 8 (0.44%) CCNA
15 8 (0.44%) IIBA
15 8 (0.44%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 295 (16.31%) Data Quality
2 226 (12.49%) QA
3 102 (5.64%) GDPR
4 73 (4.04%) NIST
5 62 (3.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 27 (1.49%) Accessibility
7 22 (1.22%) IFRS
7 22 (1.22%) SLA
8 19 (1.05%) IFRS 17
9 18 (1.00%) GRC
9 18 (1.00%) PMO
10 17 (0.94%) Def Stans
11 14 (0.77%) NCSC
11 14 (0.77%) PCI DSS
12 12 (0.66%) COBIT
12 12 (0.66%) HL7
13 11 (0.61%) GxP
13 11 (0.61%) MiFID
13 11 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 10 (0.55%) NIST 800
System Software
1 78 (4.31%) Docker
2 40 (2.21%) Active Directory
3 37 (2.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.38%) Firmware
5 11 (0.61%) VMware NSX
6 10 (0.55%) Hyper-V
6 10 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
6 10 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (0.33%) vSphere
9 5 (0.28%) NFS
10 4 (0.22%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 3 (0.17%) Embedded Firmware
12 2 (0.11%) Ceph
12 2 (0.11%) KVM
12 2 (0.11%) Lustre
12 2 (0.11%) OpenAM
12 2 (0.11%) OpenDJ
12 2 (0.11%) OpenIDM
12 2 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 112 (6.19%) Kubernetes
2 81 (4.48%) Terraform
3 30 (1.66%) Single Sign-On
4 29 (1.60%) Ansible
4 29 (1.60%) Prometheus
5 28 (1.55%) Grafana
6 13 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
7 10 (0.55%) Kibana
7 10 (0.55%) Puppet
8 8 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 7 (0.39%) SCCM
10 6 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 6 (0.33%) Nessus
11 5 (0.28%) CASB
11 5 (0.28%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.22%) EMC NetWorker
12 4 (0.22%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.22%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.22%) vMotion
12 4 (0.22%) VxRail
Vendors
1 239 (13.21%) Microsoft
2 192 (10.61%) Oracle
3 154 (8.51%) SAP
4 86 (4.75%) Databricks
5 72 (3.98%) ServiceNow
6 50 (2.76%) Salesforce
7 43 (2.38%) Splunk
7 43 (2.38%) VMware
8 37 (2.05%) Google
9 35 (1.93%) Cisco
10 30 (1.66%) Informatica
11 29 (1.60%) MuleSoft
12 28 (1.55%) Workday
13 27 (1.49%) Sage
14 21 (1.16%) Palo Alto
15 20 (1.11%) CyberArk
16 17 (0.94%) IBM
17 15 (0.83%) OpenAI
18 13 (0.72%) Dell
18 13 (0.72%) Murex