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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 66 105
Rank change year-on-year +35 +39 +47
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,659 1,044 730
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.71% 3.78% 2.27%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.75% 4.16% 2.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,572 622 363
10th Percentile £340 £332 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% -7.41%
75th Percentile £600 £632 £589
90th Percentile £710 £700 £658
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -0.05% +0.05% -6.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 179 78 98
10th Percentile £17.17 £20.50 £29.93
25th Percentile £27.10 £41.25 £48.75
Median hourly rate £53.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.69% - -2.61%
75th Percentile £72.75 £67.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £53.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -18.46% - -1.49%

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 39,416 25,077 27,731
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.69% 90.84% 86.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,046 15,915 17,172
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.68% -2.61% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £626 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,836 1,513 1,250
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £20.14
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -2.27%
75th Percentile £67.84 £47.12 £66.58
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 +36 1,303 £525 - 1,746
North of England +39 349 £450 +4.71% 442
South East +2 330 £525 +5.00% 643
Midlands +37 308 £473 +2.27% 345
West Midlands +32 215 £464 +3.02% 237
North West +17 166 £452 +6.29% 254
Yorkshire +48 157 £460 -3.16% 123
South West +15 152 £523 -5.00% 318
East of England -7 143 £450 -11.33% 319
East Midlands +26 89 £490 -2.00% 107
North East -19 31 £425 -11.92% 66
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 77 (2.90%) Confluence
2 65 (2.44%) Apache Airflow
3 56 (2.11%) SharePoint
4 45 (1.69%) SAS
5 42 (1.58%) Apache Spark
6 30 (1.13%) Apache
7 18 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
8 16 (0.60%) CMS
9 11 (0.41%) Jupyter
10 8 (0.30%) Palantir Foundry
10 8 (0.30%) SharePoint 2013
11 7 (0.26%) Sitecore CMS
12 6 (0.23%) OpenStack
12 6 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
12 6 (0.23%) WebLogic
13 5 (0.19%) Tuxedo
14 4 (0.15%) FactoryTalk
14 4 (0.15%) Headless CMS
14 4 (0.15%) JBoss
15 3 (0.11%) IIS
Applications
1 198 (7.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (1.54%) Microsoft Office
3 33 (1.24%) MS Visio
4 32 (1.20%) Spreadsheet
5 31 (1.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.53%) AutoCAD
7 9 (0.34%) Navisworks
7 9 (0.34%) Revit
8 7 (0.26%) ProjectWise
9 6 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
9 6 (0.23%) Simulink
10 3 (0.11%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.075%) CATIA
11 2 (0.075%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.075%) EPLAN
12 1 (0.038%) Gliffy
12 1 (0.038%) LaTeX
12 1 (0.038%) Oracle Smart View
12 1 (0.038%) OrCAD
12 1 (0.038%) Trello
Business Applications
1 104 (3.91%) SAP S/4HANA
2 15 (0.56%) Oracle Payables
3 14 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
4 13 (0.49%) NetSuite
5 12 (0.45%) SAP FI
5 12 (0.45%) SAP MDG
5 12 (0.45%) SAP SD
5 12 (0.45%) Teamcenter
5 12 (0.45%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.38%) Aladdin
6 10 (0.38%) iTrent
6 10 (0.38%) SAP HCM
6 10 (0.38%) SAP MM
7 9 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
7 9 (0.34%) SAP ERP
8 8 (0.30%) Oracle Assets
8 8 (0.30%) Oracle General Ledger
8 8 (0.30%) SAP CO
9 7 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
9 7 (0.26%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 542 (20.38%) Azure
2 315 (11.85%) AWS
3 266 (10.00%) Power Platform
4 152 (5.72%) Azure DevOps
5 147 (5.53%) GCP
6 123 (4.63%) GitHub
7 98 (3.69%) Snowflake
8 86 (3.23%) Entra ID
9 66 (2.48%) Azure Data Factory
10 64 (2.41%) GitHub Actions
11 56 (2.11%) dbt
12 52 (1.96%) Amazon S3
13 51 (1.92%) Microsoft 365
13 51 (1.92%) Serverless
14 49 (1.84%) SaaS
15 36 (1.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 35 (1.32%) SuccessFactors
17 33 (1.24%) Azure Monitor
18 30 (1.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 29 (1.09%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 103 (3.87%) Firewall
2 69 (2.59%) DNS
3 59 (2.22%) VLAN
4 55 (2.07%) Network Security
5 50 (1.88%) VPN
6 42 (1.58%) BGP
6 42 (1.58%) TCP/IP
7 40 (1.50%) WAN
8 31 (1.17%) DHCP
9 24 (0.90%) OSPF
10 22 (0.83%) Internet
10 22 (0.83%) VXLAN
11 21 (0.79%) 5G
11 21 (0.79%) LAN
11 21 (0.79%) Wireless
12 20 (0.75%) Ethernet
12 20 (0.75%) SAN
12 20 (0.75%) SD-WAN
13 19 (0.71%) Ethernet VPN
14 18 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 246 (9.25%) Power BI
2 146 (5.49%) Data Warehouse
3 111 (4.17%) Metadata
4 91 (3.42%) Relational Database
5 75 (2.82%) SQL Server
6 72 (2.71%) Data Lake
7 69 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
8 68 (2.56%) Tableau
9 37 (1.39%) MongoDB
10 36 (1.35%) BigQuery
11 35 (1.32%) Big Data
12 34 (1.28%) Delta Lake
13 33 (1.24%) NoSQL
13 33 (1.24%) Oracle Database
13 33 (1.24%) Power Query
14 30 (1.13%) Redis
15 26 (0.98%) Amazon Athena
15 26 (0.98%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 24 (0.90%) MySQL
17 23 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 234 (8.80%) JIRA
2 201 (7.56%) Git
3 89 (3.35%) Jenkins
4 85 (3.20%) GitLab
5 72 (2.71%) Selenium
6 36 (1.35%) Postman
7 30 (1.13%) JMeter
8 23 (0.86%) Cucumber
9 22 (0.83%) Rational DOORS
10 17 (0.64%) Eclipse
10 17 (0.64%) WebDriver
11 16 (0.60%) JUnit
11 16 (0.60%) Visual Studio
12 12 (0.45%) Cypress.io
13 11 (0.41%) Gatling
13 11 (0.41%) Rational Rhapsody
13 11 (0.41%) REST Assured
13 11 (0.41%) Visual Studio Code
14 10 (0.38%) Robot Framework
14 10 (0.38%) Zephyr
General
1 768 (28.88%) Finance
2 763 (28.69%) Social Skills
3 530 (19.93%) Analytical Skills
4 241 (9.06%) Banking
5 213 (8.01%) Public Sector
6 120 (4.51%) Documentation Skills
7 108 (4.06%) Manufacturing
8 86 (3.23%) Retail
9 67 (2.52%) Automotive
10 63 (2.37%) Telecoms
11 59 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 51 (1.92%) Marketing
13 48 (1.81%) Aerospace
14 46 (1.73%) Organisational Skills
15 43 (1.62%) Legal
16 41 (1.54%) Front Office
16 41 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
16 41 (1.54%) Local Government
16 41 (1.54%) Pharmaceutical
17 36 (1.35%) Law
Job Titles
1 455 (17.11%) Analyst
2 301 (11.32%) Senior
3 248 (9.33%) Lead
4 217 (8.16%) Data Engineer
5 206 (7.75%) Business Analyst
6 198 (7.45%) Consultant
7 165 (6.21%) Developer
8 144 (5.42%) Architect
9 138 (5.19%) Data Analyst
10 105 (3.95%) Test Engineer
11 67 (2.52%) Network Engineer
12 65 (2.44%) Tester
13 56 (2.11%) Systems Engineer
14 55 (2.07%) Administrator
15 53 (1.99%) Senior Data Engineer
16 51 (1.92%) Software Engineer
17 42 (1.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 41 (1.54%) Project Manager
19 40 (1.50%) QA Engineer
19 40 (1.50%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 160 (6.02%) Terraform
2 158 (5.94%) REST
3 79 (2.97%) PySpark
4 78 (2.93%) JSON
5 69 (2.59%) Kafka
6 61 (2.29%) XML
7 56 (2.11%) Middleware
8 52 (1.96%) Playwright
9 44 (1.65%) pytest
10 43 (1.62%) Oracle Fusion
11 40 (1.50%) SOAP
12 39 (1.47%) OAuth
12 39 (1.47%) RESTful
13 38 (1.43%) Web Services
14 37 (1.39%) .NET
15 36 (1.35%) Node.js
16 35 (1.32%) Pandas
17 33 (1.24%) HTML
17 33 (1.24%) Spring
18 30 (1.13%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 156 (5.87%) Onboarding
2 136 (5.11%) Data Structures
3 128 (4.81%) Cloud Native
4 110 (4.14%) Legacy Systems
5 99 (3.72%) Product Ownership
6 96 (3.61%) Management Information System
7 81 (3.05%) Data Centre
8 50 (1.88%) AI Agents
9 48 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
10 44 (1.65%) Distributed Systems
11 42 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
11 42 (1.58%) SCADA
12 40 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
13 38 (1.43%) Algorithms
14 34 (1.28%) Life Science
14 34 (1.28%) Operational Technology
15 33 (1.24%) CMDB
16 31 (1.17%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 31 (1.17%) Reference Data
17 30 (1.13%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 162 (6.09%) Windows
2 104 (3.91%) Linux
3 58 (2.18%) Windows Server
4 31 (1.17%) Unix
5 21 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (0.56%) Android
7 11 (0.41%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.34%) Windows 10
9 8 (0.30%) Apple iOS
10 7 (0.26%) VMS
11 4 (0.15%) SUSE
11 4 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.11%) VxWorks
12 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.075%) CentOS
13 2 (0.075%) HPUX
13 2 (0.075%) Solaris
13 2 (0.075%) Windows 7
14 1 (0.038%) Alpine Linux
14 1 (0.038%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 715 (26.89%) Migration
2 584 (21.96%) Stakeholder Management
3 528 (19.86%) CI/CD
4 505 (18.99%) Agile
5 417 (15.68%) Analytics
6 416 (15.64%) Data Modelling
7 415 (15.61%) User Acceptance Testing
8 411 (15.46%) Data Migration
9 408 (15.34%) Data Validation
10 401 (15.08%) Problem-Solving
11 373 (14.03%) AI
12 362 (13.61%) DevOps
13 359 (13.50%) Test Automation
14 342 (12.86%) Continuous Improvement
15 308 (11.58%) ETL
16 280 (10.53%) Business Intelligence
17 279 (10.49%) Data Analysis
18 276 (10.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 271 (10.19%) Data Pipeline
20 267 (10.04%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 691 (25.99%) SQL
2 556 (20.91%) Python
3 124 (4.66%) Java
4 97 (3.65%) PowerShell
5 66 (2.48%) JavaScript
6 54 (2.03%) Bash
7 52 (1.96%) C#
8 42 (1.58%) C++
9 35 (1.32%) TypeScript
10 30 (1.13%) R
11 29 (1.09%) Apex Code
12 27 (1.02%) PL/SQL
13 26 (0.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 25 (0.94%) Shell Script
15 22 (0.83%) C
16 21 (0.79%) Bicep
17 19 (0.71%) VBA
18 14 (0.53%) Go
18 14 (0.53%) MATLAB
19 13 (0.49%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 520 (19.56%) Security Cleared
2 381 (14.33%) SC Cleared
3 198 (7.45%) Degree
4 83 (3.12%) DV Cleared
5 55 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
6 47 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
7 37 (1.39%) Cisco Certification
8 33 (1.24%) AWS Certification
9 29 (1.09%) ACCA
9 29 (1.09%) CCNP
9 29 (1.09%) CIMA
10 24 (0.90%) PMI Certification
11 23 (0.86%) Azure Certification
12 20 (0.75%) CISSP
12 20 (0.75%) ISTQB
12 20 (0.75%) PMP
13 19 (0.71%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 18 (0.68%) Master's Degree
15 15 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
16 12 (0.45%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 546 (20.53%) Data Quality
2 317 (11.92%) QA
3 81 (3.05%) GDPR
4 45 (1.69%) Accessibility
5 38 (1.43%) SLA
6 36 (1.35%) NIST
7 35 (1.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 31 (1.17%) PMO
9 22 (0.83%) GxP
10 18 (0.68%) WCAG
11 16 (0.60%) GRC
11 16 (0.60%) ISO 20022
12 15 (0.56%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 14 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
14 11 (0.41%) IFRS
14 11 (0.41%) NCSC
15 10 (0.38%) Def Stans
15 10 (0.38%) MiFID
16 9 (0.34%) GMP
17 8 (0.30%) EMIR
System Software
1 101 (3.80%) Docker
2 86 (3.23%) Active Directory
3 65 (2.44%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (1.17%) Virtual Machines
5 25 (0.94%) VMware ESXi
6 22 (0.83%) Firmware
7 20 (0.75%) vSphere
8 17 (0.64%) Virtual Desktop
9 16 (0.60%) Hyper-V
10 13 (0.49%) VMware NSX
11 3 (0.11%) KVM
11 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
11 3 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
11 3 (0.11%) VirtualBox
12 2 (0.075%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.075%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.038%) Embedded Firmware
13 1 (0.038%) etcd
13 1 (0.038%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.038%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 126 (4.74%) Kubernetes
2 86 (3.23%) Ansible
3 38 (1.43%) Grafana
4 31 (1.17%) Prometheus
5 24 (0.90%) FortiGate
5 24 (0.90%) Microsoft Intune
6 17 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (0.60%) SCCM
8 13 (0.49%) vCenter Server
9 11 (0.41%) HP ALM
10 10 (0.38%) VxRail
11 9 (0.34%) Functional Safety
12 8 (0.30%) Argo
12 8 (0.30%) Failover Clustering
12 8 (0.30%) Progress Chef
13 5 (0.19%) Microsoft Clustering
13 5 (0.19%) systemd
13 5 (0.19%) vRealize
14 4 (0.15%) Kustomize
14 4 (0.15%) Podman
Vendors
1 413 (15.53%) Microsoft
2 214 (8.05%) SAP
3 197 (7.41%) Oracle
4 154 (5.79%) Databricks
5 87 (3.27%) Salesforce
6 78 (2.93%) ServiceNow
7 77 (2.90%) Cisco
8 73 (2.75%) VMware
9 58 (2.18%) Google
10 48 (1.81%) Workday
11 41 (1.54%) IBM
12 31 (1.17%) Fortinet
13 30 (1.13%) Zscaler
14 29 (1.09%) Juniper
15 27 (1.02%) Informatica
16 23 (0.86%) Palo Alto
17 22 (0.83%) Splunk
18 17 (0.64%) Red Hat
18 17 (0.64%) Siemens
19 15 (0.56%) MuleSoft