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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 68 111
Rank change year-on-year +32 +43 +39
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,162 864 745
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.12% 3.53% 1.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.01% 3.87% 2.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,317 535 375
10th Percentile £326 £350 £325
25th Percentile £410 £414 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -13.04%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £588
90th Percentile £700 £715 £672
UK median daily rate £498 £525 £519
% change year-on-year -5.24% +1.20% -6.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 145 56 170
10th Percentile £17.75 £17.36 £26.88
25th Percentile £33.00 £37.25 £51.25
Median hourly rate £62.50 £58.88 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.16% -1.88% -4.00%
75th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.45 £77.50 £76.86
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £57.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% -5.11%

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 35,948 22,351 32,031
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.10% 91.35% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,764 14,463 20,809
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £407 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,246 1,016 2,371
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.81
25th Percentile £20.75 £18.12 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £28.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +67.86% -25.33% +4.17%
75th Percentile £68.00 £58.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.28 £36.50
% change year-on-year +61.14% -25.26% +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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +49 1,031 £513 -6.82% 275
North of England +40 300 £437 -2.89% 151
Midlands +26 264 £500 +11.11% 121
South East -1 251 £500 - 228
West Midlands +26 189 £490 +21.43% 72
North West +24 172 £420 -4.00% 84
South West +7 131 £500 -13.04% 106
East of England +9 128 £488 +8.33% 89
Yorkshire +21 112 £458 +1.67% 50
East Midlands +16 70 £525 +15.51% 49
North East -8 19 £425 -22.73% 19
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 74 (3.42%) Confluence
2 57 (2.64%) Apache Airflow
3 42 (1.94%) Apache Spark
3 42 (1.94%) SAS
4 27 (1.25%) SharePoint
5 21 (0.97%) Apache
6 14 (0.65%) Jupyter
7 9 (0.42%) Appian
8 8 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
9 7 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
10 6 (0.28%) ArcGIS
11 5 (0.23%) CMS
11 5 (0.23%) SharePoint 2013
12 4 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 4 (0.19%) Tuxedo
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%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.093%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 140 (6.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (1.39%) MS Visio
3 23 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
4 20 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 20 (0.93%) Spreadsheet
5 7 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.23%) AutoCAD
6 5 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.19%) Simulink
8 3 (0.14%) CATIA
8 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
9 2 (0.093%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.093%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.093%) Sketch
10 1 (0.046%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.046%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.046%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.046%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.046%) UXPin
10 1 (0.046%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 110 (5.09%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (1.39%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.69%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.65%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 13 (0.60%) Oracle Payables
6 12 (0.56%) Workday HCM
7 11 (0.51%) Oracle General Ledger
8 9 (0.42%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.42%) SAP ERP
9 8 (0.37%) Aladdin
9 8 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
10 7 (0.32%) Oracle Financials
10 7 (0.32%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.32%) Sage X3
10 7 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
11 6 (0.28%) Oracle EBS R12
11 6 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
11 6 (0.28%) SAP HCM
11 6 (0.28%) SAP SD
11 6 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 444 (20.54%) Azure
2 274 (12.67%) AWS
3 204 (9.44%) Power Platform
4 118 (5.46%) GCP
5 113 (5.23%) Azure DevOps
6 110 (5.09%) GitHub
7 70 (3.24%) Snowflake
8 61 (2.82%) GitHub Actions
9 58 (2.68%) Entra ID
10 57 (2.64%) Azure Data Factory
11 54 (2.50%) Serverless
12 48 (2.22%) SaaS
13 44 (2.04%) Amazon S3
14 40 (1.85%) OCI
15 36 (1.67%) dbt
15 36 (1.67%) Microsoft 365
16 35 (1.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 27 (1.25%) Salesforce Service Cloud
18 26 (1.20%) AWS Lambda
19 24 (1.11%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 84 (3.89%) Firewall
2 58 (2.68%) Network Security
3 37 (1.71%) DNS
3 37 (1.71%) VLAN
4 31 (1.43%) TCP/IP
5 29 (1.34%) VPN
6 28 (1.30%) WAN
7 19 (0.88%) Ethernet
7 19 (0.88%) SAN
8 18 (0.83%) BGP
8 18 (0.83%) LAN
9 16 (0.74%) Internet
9 16 (0.74%) OSPF
9 16 (0.74%) SD-WAN
10 15 (0.69%) DHCP
11 14 (0.65%) Wireless
12 12 (0.56%) NAS
12 12 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
13 11 (0.51%) Cisco ISE
13 11 (0.51%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 189 (8.74%) Power BI
2 115 (5.32%) Data Warehouse
3 77 (3.56%) SQL Server
4 75 (3.47%) Metadata
5 65 (3.01%) Tableau
6 62 (2.87%) Data Lake
7 58 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
8 44 (2.04%) Relational Database
9 31 (1.43%) Big Data
10 28 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
10 28 (1.30%) Oracle Database
11 25 (1.16%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 24 (1.11%) NoSQL
13 23 (1.06%) BigQuery
13 23 (1.06%) Oracle Reports
14 22 (1.02%) Power Query
15 21 (0.97%) Delta Lake
15 21 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 20 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
17 17 (0.79%) SAS Visual Analytics
Development Applications
1 206 (9.53%) JIRA
2 122 (5.64%) Git
3 89 (4.12%) Jenkins
4 64 (2.96%) GitLab
5 53 (2.45%) Selenium
6 46 (2.13%) Postman
7 40 (1.85%) JMeter
8 35 (1.62%) JUnit
9 34 (1.57%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.39%) WebDriver
11 25 (1.16%) Rational DOORS
12 16 (0.74%) Eclipse
12 16 (0.74%) Rational Rhapsody
12 16 (0.74%) Visual Studio
13 15 (0.69%) MLflow
14 13 (0.60%) Gatling
15 10 (0.46%) Gradle
15 10 (0.46%) Maven
15 10 (0.46%) REST Assured
16 8 (0.37%) Bitbucket
General
1 647 (29.93%) Finance
2 638 (29.51%) Social Skills
3 392 (18.13%) Analytical Skills
4 181 (8.37%) Banking
4 181 (8.37%) Public Sector
5 120 (5.55%) Documentation Skills
6 66 (3.05%) Manufacturing
7 58 (2.68%) Aerospace
8 50 (2.31%) Retail
9 41 (1.90%) Organisational Skills
10 38 (1.76%) Pharmaceutical
11 35 (1.62%) Front Office
11 35 (1.62%) Marketing
11 35 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
12 34 (1.57%) Influencing Skills
13 33 (1.53%) General Ledger
13 33 (1.53%) Legal
13 33 (1.53%) Telecoms
14 32 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 31 (1.43%) Law
Job Titles
1 368 (17.02%) Analyst
2 224 (10.36%) Lead
3 208 (9.62%) Senior
4 176 (8.14%) Business Analyst
5 166 (7.68%) Data Engineer
6 150 (6.94%) Consultant
7 133 (6.15%) Architect
8 122 (5.64%) Developer
9 104 (4.81%) Data Analyst
10 76 (3.52%) Project Manager
11 66 (3.05%) Test Engineer
12 58 (2.68%) Tester
13 44 (2.04%) Software Engineer
14 43 (1.99%) Test Manager
15 40 (1.85%) Network Engineer
16 39 (1.80%) Security Engineer
16 39 (1.80%) Systems Engineer
17 38 (1.76%) Senior Analyst
18 35 (1.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 34 (1.57%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 116 (5.37%) REST
2 69 (3.19%) JSON
3 67 (3.10%) Kafka
4 54 (2.50%) Oracle Fusion
5 47 (2.17%) XML
6 44 (2.04%) OAuth
7 40 (1.85%) Middleware
8 39 (1.80%) PySpark
9 37 (1.71%) Swagger
10 36 (1.67%) .NET
10 36 (1.67%) RESTful
11 35 (1.62%) SOAP
12 33 (1.53%) Spring
13 32 (1.48%) Pandas
13 32 (1.48%) pytest
14 31 (1.43%) Web Services
15 29 (1.34%) Node.js
16 28 (1.30%) Playwright
17 26 (1.20%) PyTorch
18 25 (1.16%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 127 (5.87%) Legacy Systems
2 102 (4.72%) Data Structures
3 101 (4.67%) Onboarding
4 89 (4.12%) Product Ownership
5 82 (3.79%) Cloud Native
6 63 (2.91%) Data Centre
7 49 (2.27%) Distributed Systems
8 48 (2.22%) Management Information System
9 43 (1.99%) Analytical Mindset
10 31 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
11 29 (1.34%) SCADA
12 28 (1.30%) Distributed Architecture
13 27 (1.25%) Public Cloud
14 26 (1.20%) AI Agents
14 26 (1.20%) Algorithms
14 26 (1.20%) Life Science
14 26 (1.20%) Replication
15 24 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
15 24 (1.11%) Hybrid Cloud
15 24 (1.11%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 114 (5.27%) Windows
2 79 (3.65%) Linux
3 27 (1.25%) Unix
4 19 (0.88%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.56%) Android
5 12 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.28%) VMS
6 6 (0.28%) Windows 10
7 4 (0.19%) Mac OS
7 4 (0.19%) SUSE
8 3 (0.14%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.093%) HPUX
9 2 (0.093%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.093%) VxWorks
9 2 (0.093%) Windows Server 2012
9 2 (0.093%) zOS
10 1 (0.046%) Debian
10 1 (0.046%) pSOS
10 1 (0.046%) Solaris
10 1 (0.046%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 590 (27.29%) Migration
2 412 (19.06%) Agile
3 375 (17.35%) Stakeholder Management
4 365 (16.88%) Data Validation
5 363 (16.79%) CI/CD
5 363 (16.79%) Data Migration
6 360 (16.65%) Problem-Solving
7 345 (15.96%) User Acceptance Testing
8 330 (15.26%) Analytics
9 325 (15.03%) Data Modelling
10 280 (12.95%) ETL
11 277 (12.81%) DevOps
12 266 (12.30%) AI
13 255 (11.79%) Test Automation
14 229 (10.59%) Business Intelligence
15 223 (10.31%) Continuous Improvement
15 223 (10.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 202 (9.34%) Data Governance
17 201 (9.30%) Data Analysis
18 197 (9.11%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 522 (24.14%) SQL
2 380 (17.58%) Python
3 109 (5.04%) Java
4 59 (2.73%) PowerShell
5 53 (2.45%) C#
6 41 (1.90%) C++
7 38 (1.76%) Bash
7 38 (1.76%) C
8 37 (1.71%) JavaScript
9 29 (1.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 29 (1.34%) TypeScript
10 27 (1.25%) Bicep
11 24 (1.11%) Apex Code
12 23 (1.06%) PL/SQL
12 23 (1.06%) R
13 21 (0.97%) Ada
14 17 (0.79%) Scala
15 15 (0.69%) MATLAB
16 13 (0.60%) VBA
17 12 (0.56%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 406 (18.78%) Security Cleared
2 295 (13.64%) SC Cleared
3 160 (7.40%) Degree
4 54 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 47 (2.17%) DV Cleared
6 45 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
7 28 (1.30%) PMI Certification
8 25 (1.16%) Cisco Certification
9 22 (1.02%) PMP
10 20 (0.93%) CCNP
10 20 (0.93%) Master's Degree
11 17 (0.79%) ACCA
12 16 (0.74%) CISSP
12 16 (0.74%) ISTQB
13 15 (0.69%) CIMA
13 15 (0.69%) Microsoft Certification
14 14 (0.65%) AWS Certification
15 13 (0.60%) Azure Certification
16 9 (0.42%) CCNA
17 8 (0.37%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 371 (17.16%) Data Quality
2 250 (11.56%) QA
3 106 (4.90%) GDPR
4 62 (2.87%) NIST
5 52 (2.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 31 (1.43%) Accessibility
7 27 (1.25%) IFRS
8 26 (1.20%) PMO
9 25 (1.16%) SLA
10 19 (0.88%) GRC
11 18 (0.83%) IFRS 17
12 17 (0.79%) Def Stans
12 17 (0.79%) GxP
13 14 (0.65%) HL7
14 13 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
14 13 (0.60%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 12 (0.56%) NIST 800
15 12 (0.56%) Solvency II
16 11 (0.51%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 98 (4.53%) Docker
2 51 (2.36%) Active Directory
3 44 (2.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (0.83%) Firmware
6 14 (0.65%) Hyper-V
7 13 (0.60%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (0.60%) VMware NSX
8 9 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (0.37%) vSphere
10 5 (0.23%) NFS
11 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 2 (0.093%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.093%) KVM
12 2 (0.093%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.093%) VirtualBox
12 2 (0.093%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.046%) OpenSSH
13 1 (0.046%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.046%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 139 (6.43%) Kubernetes
2 99 (4.58%) Terraform
3 49 (2.27%) Prometheus
4 44 (2.04%) Grafana
5 40 (1.85%) Ansible
6 27 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (0.56%) FortiGate
9 8 (0.37%) Kibana
9 8 (0.37%) SCCM
9 8 (0.37%) vCenter Server
10 7 (0.32%) Puppet
11 6 (0.28%) Nessus
12 5 (0.23%) vMotion
12 5 (0.23%) VxRail
13 4 (0.19%) Argo
13 4 (0.19%) CASB
13 4 (0.19%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.19%) Istio
Vendors
1 287 (13.27%) Microsoft
2 192 (8.88%) SAP
3 187 (8.65%) Oracle
4 105 (4.86%) Databricks
5 76 (3.52%) Salesforce
6 60 (2.78%) ServiceNow
7 54 (2.50%) VMware
8 43 (1.99%) Cisco
9 40 (1.85%) Splunk
10 34 (1.57%) Google
11 31 (1.43%) Workday
12 30 (1.39%) Informatica
13 26 (1.20%) Sage
14 24 (1.11%) Palo Alto
15 23 (1.06%) MuleSoft
16 21 (0.97%) IFS
17 20 (0.93%) IBM
18 19 (0.88%) CyberArk
19 18 (0.83%) Fortinet
20 16 (0.74%) CheckPoint