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

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 105 127
Rank change year-on-year +54 +22 +5
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,517 648 718
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.36% 2.51% 1.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.00% 2.78% 2.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 930 365 406
10th Percentile £350 £353 £317
25th Percentile £404 £410 £434
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £496 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.48% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £613
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £492 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -6.29% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 80 34 148
10th Percentile £32.86 £25.56 £28.77
25th Percentile £55.95 £47.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +3.96%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.44 £75.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.18 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +3.92%

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 30,350 23,294 33,147
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.25% 90.10% 87.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,414 14,536 22,024
10th Percentile £313 £309 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £617 £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 1,891 752 2,034
10th Percentile £15.22 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £27.21 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.26% - -
75th Percentile £63.32 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.48 £72.68
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £32.81 £35.00
% change year-on-year -21.46% -6.26% -

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 22 February 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 22 February 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 22 February 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 +69 720 £513 -6.82% 207
North of England +28 208 £420 -4.00% 122
South East +14 177 £501 +0.25% 203
Midlands +26 141 £481 -1.48% 124
North West +28 137 £400 -3.03% 80
South West +11 124 £475 -17.39% 83
West Midlands +9 117 £492 +0.41% 84
East of England +27 96 £478 +19.50% 82
Yorkshire -9 61 £464 -4.87% 34
East Midlands -12 23 £450 +22.62% 38
North East -12 12 £450 -45.45% 9
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 61 (4.02%) Confluence
2 30 (1.98%) Apache Spark
3 29 (1.91%) SAS
4 25 (1.65%) Apache Airflow
4 25 (1.65%) SharePoint
5 17 (1.12%) Microsoft Exchange
6 15 (0.99%) Apache
7 9 (0.59%) Appian
7 9 (0.59%) CMS
7 9 (0.59%) Skype for Business
8 7 (0.46%) Exchange Server 2013
9 6 (0.40%) Jupyter
9 6 (0.40%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 4 (0.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.26%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.26%) Mattermost
11 3 (0.20%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.20%) GeoServer
11 3 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 3 (0.20%) Smallworld
Applications
1 77 (5.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (2.18%) Microsoft Office
3 24 (1.58%) MS Visio
4 16 (1.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.53%) Chatbot
5 8 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
6 6 (0.40%) Sketch
6 6 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.26%) Notion
8 3 (0.20%) LaTeX
9 2 (0.13%) Simulink
10 1 (0.066%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.066%) CATIA
10 1 (0.066%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.066%) Siemens NX
10 1 (0.066%) Stateflow
10 1 (0.066%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 63 (4.15%) SAP S/4HANA
2 20 (1.32%) Oracle EBS
3 11 (0.73%) Oracle General Ledger
3 11 (0.73%) Oracle Payables
3 11 (0.73%) Workday HCM
4 9 (0.59%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 8 (0.53%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.53%) Oracle Receivables
5 8 (0.53%) SAP FI
6 7 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
6 7 (0.46%) NetSuite
6 7 (0.46%) Oracle Assets
6 7 (0.46%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 7 (0.46%) SAP EHS
6 7 (0.46%) SAP MDG
6 7 (0.46%) SAP MM
7 6 (0.40%) OpenText VIM for SAP
7 6 (0.40%) Oracle Financials
7 6 (0.40%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 356 (23.47%) Azure
2 178 (11.73%) AWS
3 123 (8.11%) Power Platform
4 120 (7.91%) Azure DevOps
5 70 (4.61%) GCP
6 64 (4.22%) GitHub
7 54 (3.56%) Entra ID
8 46 (3.03%) SaaS
8 46 (3.03%) Serverless
9 42 (2.77%) Azure Data Factory
10 36 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
11 33 (2.18%) OCI
12 32 (2.11%) Snowflake
13 28 (1.85%) OpenShift
14 27 (1.78%) Amazon S3
15 23 (1.52%) AWS Lambda
15 23 (1.52%) Microsoft 365
16 19 (1.25%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 18 (1.19%) Boomi
18 17 (1.12%) Amazon GuardDuty
Communications & Networking
1 50 (3.30%) Firewall
2 27 (1.78%) Network Security
3 26 (1.71%) TCP/IP
4 18 (1.19%) DNS
5 16 (1.05%) Ethernet
5 16 (1.05%) VPN
6 15 (0.99%) VLAN
7 11 (0.73%) WAN
7 11 (0.73%) Wireless
8 10 (0.66%) BGP
8 10 (0.66%) MPLS
8 10 (0.66%) OSPF
9 9 (0.59%) SAN
9 9 (0.59%) Skype
10 8 (0.53%) HTTP
10 8 (0.53%) LAN
11 7 (0.46%) NAS
11 7 (0.46%) TACACS
12 6 (0.40%) Cisco ASA
12 6 (0.40%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (7.51%) Power BI
2 68 (4.48%) Metadata
3 63 (4.15%) Data Warehouse
4 41 (2.70%) SQL Server
4 41 (2.70%) Tableau
5 36 (2.37%) Data Lake
6 23 (1.52%) NoSQL
7 22 (1.45%) Amazon Redshift
8 21 (1.38%) PostgreSQL
9 20 (1.32%) Oracle Reports
10 18 (1.19%) Delta Lake
10 18 (1.19%) Oracle Database
11 17 (1.12%) Pinecone
11 17 (1.12%) Relational Database
11 17 (1.12%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 16 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 15 (0.99%) Big Data
13 15 (0.99%) Elasticsearch
14 13 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
14 13 (0.86%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 157 (10.35%) JIRA
2 83 (5.47%) Git
3 70 (4.61%) Jenkins
4 52 (3.43%) Selenium
5 45 (2.97%) GitLab
6 41 (2.70%) Postman
7 32 (2.11%) Oracle APEX
8 28 (1.85%) Rational DOORS
9 27 (1.78%) JUnit
10 26 (1.71%) Cucumber
11 25 (1.65%) JMeter
12 17 (1.12%) MLflow
13 14 (0.92%) Visual Studio
14 11 (0.73%) REST Assured
14 11 (0.73%) TestRail
14 11 (0.73%) WebDriver
15 10 (0.66%) Zephyr
16 9 (0.59%) Bitbucket
17 8 (0.53%) Eclipse
18 7 (0.46%) Toad
General
1 565 (37.24%) Social Skills
2 449 (29.60%) Finance
3 321 (21.16%) Analytical Skills
4 134 (8.83%) Banking
5 130 (8.57%) Public Sector
6 78 (5.14%) Documentation Skills
7 45 (2.97%) Presentation Skills
8 36 (2.37%) Manufacturing
9 35 (2.31%) Aerospace
10 31 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
11 30 (1.98%) Electronics
12 29 (1.91%) Front Office
13 28 (1.85%) Marketing
14 27 (1.78%) Telecoms
15 25 (1.65%) Investment Banking
16 24 (1.58%) Pharmaceutical
17 23 (1.52%) Military
18 22 (1.45%) Financial Institution
18 22 (1.45%) Organisational Skills
19 21 (1.38%) Legal
Job Titles
1 302 (19.91%) Analyst
2 154 (10.15%) Senior
3 142 (9.36%) Lead
4 131 (8.64%) Business Analyst
5 109 (7.19%) Developer
6 106 (6.99%) Consultant
7 104 (6.86%) Architect
8 82 (5.41%) Data Engineer
9 77 (5.08%) Data Analyst
10 47 (3.10%) Project Manager
10 47 (3.10%) Tester
11 46 (3.03%) Software Engineer
12 38 (2.50%) Senior Analyst
13 35 (2.31%) Test Analyst
14 34 (2.24%) Senior Developer
15 33 (2.18%) Solutions Architect
16 32 (2.11%) SAP Consultant
17 31 (2.04%) Test Manager
18 30 (1.98%) Embedded Engineer
19 27 (1.78%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (6.46%) REST
2 63 (4.15%) JSON
3 48 (3.16%) XML
4 47 (3.10%) OAuth
4 47 (3.10%) Oracle Fusion
5 45 (2.97%) Kafka
6 42 (2.77%) Middleware
7 38 (2.50%) SOAP
8 34 (2.24%) .NET
9 33 (2.18%) PyTorch
10 30 (1.98%) PySpark
11 29 (1.91%) RESTful
11 29 (1.91%) Swagger
11 29 (1.91%) TensorFlow
12 28 (1.85%) Node.js
13 26 (1.71%) pytest
14 25 (1.65%) Pandas
14 25 (1.65%) Playwright
14 25 (1.65%) Web Services
15 23 (1.52%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 93 (6.13%) Legacy Systems
2 63 (4.15%) Data Structures
3 56 (3.69%) Product Ownership
4 50 (3.30%) Onboarding
5 44 (2.90%) Cloud Native
6 41 (2.70%) Management Information System
7 29 (1.91%) Analytical Mindset
8 26 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
9 24 (1.58%) Data Centre
10 23 (1.52%) Algorithms
11 21 (1.38%) Distributed Systems
12 20 (1.32%) Derivative
13 19 (1.25%) Replication
14 18 (1.19%) FPGA
15 17 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
15 17 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
16 16 (1.05%) Security Posture
17 14 (0.92%) Credit Risk
17 14 (0.92%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 13 (0.86%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 81 (5.34%) Windows
2 79 (5.21%) Linux
3 34 (2.24%) Unix
4 9 (0.59%) Android
5 6 (0.40%) Windows Server
5 6 (0.40%) zOS
6 5 (0.33%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
8 2 (0.13%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.13%) Debian
8 2 (0.13%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.066%) FreeRTOS
9 1 (0.066%) pSOS
9 1 (0.066%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.066%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 390 (25.71%) Agile
2 352 (23.20%) Problem-Solving
3 344 (22.68%) Migration
4 280 (18.46%) Stakeholder Management
5 252 (16.61%) DevOps
6 245 (16.15%) Data Validation
7 237 (15.62%) CI/CD
8 235 (15.49%) Analytics
9 205 (13.51%) Data Modelling
10 198 (13.05%) Test Automation
11 194 (12.79%) Data Migration
12 184 (12.13%) ETL
13 182 (12.00%) AI
14 178 (11.73%) User Acceptance Testing
15 154 (10.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 153 (10.09%) Business Intelligence
16 153 (10.09%) Continuous Improvement
17 135 (8.90%) Data Governance
18 133 (8.77%) Data Analysis
19 123 (8.11%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 378 (24.92%) SQL
2 314 (20.70%) Python
3 87 (5.74%) JavaScript
4 83 (5.47%) Java
5 56 (3.69%) C#
6 51 (3.36%) PL/SQL
7 42 (2.77%) C++
8 41 (2.70%) Bash
9 40 (2.64%) C
10 39 (2.57%) PowerShell
11 27 (1.78%) TypeScript
12 24 (1.58%) R
13 19 (1.25%) Ada
13 19 (1.25%) Bicep
14 17 (1.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 17 (1.12%) Groovy
15 12 (0.79%) Scala
15 12 (0.79%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.73%) VBA
17 10 (0.66%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 334 (22.02%) Security Cleared
2 246 (16.22%) SC Cleared
3 153 (10.09%) Degree
4 55 (3.63%) Computer Science Degree
5 42 (2.77%) BPSS Clearance
6 37 (2.44%) Master's Degree
7 36 (2.37%) DV Cleared
8 28 (1.85%) PMI Certification
9 25 (1.65%) ISTQB
10 22 (1.45%) PMP
11 17 (1.12%) AWS Certification
12 16 (1.05%) CBAP
13 13 (0.86%) CISSP
14 12 (0.79%) Cisco Certification
15 11 (0.73%) Microsoft Certification
16 10 (0.66%) Azure Certification
16 10 (0.66%) CCNP
16 10 (0.66%) Oracle Certification
17 8 (0.53%) CCIE
17 8 (0.53%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 207 (13.65%) Data Quality
2 191 (12.59%) QA
3 79 (5.21%) GDPR
4 63 (4.15%) NIST
5 41 (2.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 30 (1.98%) Accessibility
7 20 (1.32%) IFRS
8 18 (1.19%) IFRS 17
9 17 (1.12%) Def Stans
10 15 (0.99%) PCI DSS
11 12 (0.79%) COBIT
11 12 (0.79%) EU AI Act
11 12 (0.79%) NCSC
12 10 (0.66%) GRC
12 10 (0.66%) MiFID
12 10 (0.66%) MISRA
13 9 (0.59%) DO-178B
13 9 (0.59%) GMP
13 9 (0.59%) GxP
13 9 (0.59%) PMO
System Software
1 68 (4.48%) Docker
2 40 (2.64%) Active Directory
3 28 (1.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.32%) Firmware
5 11 (0.73%) VMware NSX
6 8 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (0.46%) Hyper-V
7 7 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.26%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 4 (0.26%) NFS
8 4 (0.26%) vSphere
9 3 (0.20%) Embedded Firmware
10 2 (0.13%) Ceph
10 2 (0.13%) KVM
10 2 (0.13%) Lustre
10 2 (0.13%) OpenAM
10 2 (0.13%) OpenDJ
10 2 (0.13%) OpenIDM
10 2 (0.13%) QEMU
10 2 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 100 (6.59%) Kubernetes
2 71 (4.68%) Terraform
3 37 (2.44%) Ansible
4 22 (1.45%) Prometheus
4 22 (1.45%) Single Sign-On
5 19 (1.25%) Grafana
6 17 (1.12%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (0.99%) Kibana
8 14 (0.92%) Puppet
9 12 (0.79%) SCCM
10 10 (0.66%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 10 (0.66%) Nessus
11 8 (0.53%) Nmap
12 5 (0.33%) CASB
12 5 (0.33%) SCOM
13 4 (0.26%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.26%) HP SiteScope
13 4 (0.26%) Iperf
13 4 (0.26%) vMotion
14 3 (0.20%) CloudHub
Vendors
1 201 (13.25%) Microsoft
2 157 (10.35%) Oracle
3 117 (7.71%) SAP
4 63 (4.15%) Databricks
5 62 (4.09%) ServiceNow
6 48 (3.16%) Splunk
7 38 (2.50%) Cisco
7 38 (2.50%) Salesforce
8 34 (2.24%) VMware
9 33 (2.18%) Google
10 28 (1.85%) Workday
11 25 (1.65%) MuleSoft
12 21 (1.38%) IBM
12 21 (1.38%) Informatica
12 21 (1.38%) Sage
13 19 (1.25%) Murex
13 19 (1.25%) Palo Alto
14 14 (0.92%) Bloomberg
14 14 (0.92%) CyberArk
15 13 (0.86%) CheckPoint