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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 72 108
Rank change year-on-year +34 +36 +44
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,066 810 742
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.95% 3.40% 2.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.83% 3.72% 2.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,269 500 375
10th Percentile £325 £350 £320
25th Percentile £406 £413 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £539 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.19% +7.75% -12.59%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £593
90th Percentile £705 £715 £675
UK median daily rate £488 £525 £507
% change year-on-year -7.14% +3.55% -7.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 144 52 166
10th Percentile £17.75 £16.67 £26.88
25th Percentile £30.27 £37.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £64.07 £57.63 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +11.18% -4.75% -3.20%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £76.86
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £56.04 £60.00
% change year-on-year +11.53% -6.60% -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 35,433 21,759 31,490
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.85% 91.31% 85.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,494 14,185 20,632
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.25% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £512 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.19% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,215 937 2,283
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.84
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £46.43 £28.18 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.76% -22.79% -2.46%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.28 £27.52 £36.00
% change year-on-year +53.64% -23.57% -1.09%

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 28 May 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 28 May 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 28 May 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 +53 991 £508 -7.59% 294
North of England +38 280 £437 -2.83% 137
Midlands +29 252 £490 +8.89% 93
South East -4 236 £500 - 190
West Midlands +27 178 £475 +14.92% 59
North West +32 163 £420 -4.00% 79
East of England +9 128 £475 +5.56% 87
South West +6 125 £488 -15.22% 94
Yorkshire +18 107 £453 +0.67% 39
East Midlands +19 70 £525 +14.38% 34
North East -20 13 £450 -23.40% 20
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 (3.73%) Confluence
2 47 (2.27%) Apache Airflow
3 39 (1.89%) Apache Spark
4 34 (1.65%) SAS
5 21 (1.02%) SharePoint
6 19 (0.92%) Apache
7 11 (0.53%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.44%) Appian
9 7 (0.34%) ArcGIS
9 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
9 7 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
10 4 (0.19%) CMS
10 4 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 3 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Self-Service HR
11 3 (0.15%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.097%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 2 (0.097%) Documentum
12 2 (0.097%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 144 (6.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (1.45%) MS Visio
3 22 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
4 19 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 19 (0.92%) Spreadsheet
5 11 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.19%) CATIA
6 4 (0.19%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.19%) Simulink
7 3 (0.15%) AutoCAD
7 3 (0.15%) LaTeX
7 3 (0.15%) Notion
8 2 (0.097%) EPLAN
8 2 (0.097%) Sketch
9 1 (0.048%) Autodesk Inventor
9 1 (0.048%) CANalyzer
9 1 (0.048%) MicroStation
9 1 (0.048%) OrCAD
9 1 (0.048%) UXPin
9 1 (0.048%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 100 (4.84%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (1.40%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.73%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.68%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.68%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.68%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.58%) Oracle Assets
5 12 (0.58%) Workday HCM
6 9 (0.44%) NetSuite
7 8 (0.39%) Aladdin
7 8 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
7 8 (0.39%) Oracle Receivables
7 8 (0.39%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.39%) SAP ERP
8 7 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
9 6 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
9 6 (0.29%) Sage X3
9 6 (0.29%) SAP Business One
10 5 (0.24%) Oracle E-Business Tax
10 5 (0.24%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 412 (19.94%) Azure
2 249 (12.05%) AWS
3 205 (9.92%) Power Platform
4 107 (5.18%) GCP
5 105 (5.08%) Azure DevOps
6 96 (4.65%) GitHub
7 64 (3.10%) Snowflake
8 59 (2.86%) Azure Data Factory
9 53 (2.57%) GitHub Actions
10 51 (2.47%) Entra ID
11 50 (2.42%) SaaS
12 46 (2.23%) Serverless
13 40 (1.94%) OCI
14 38 (1.84%) Amazon S3
15 34 (1.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 32 (1.55%) dbt
17 30 (1.45%) Microsoft 365
18 22 (1.06%) Salesforce Service Cloud
19 21 (1.02%) Power Automate
19 21 (1.02%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 81 (3.92%) Firewall
2 54 (2.61%) Network Security
3 36 (1.74%) VLAN
4 30 (1.45%) DNS
5 29 (1.40%) TCP/IP
6 26 (1.26%) VPN
7 25 (1.21%) WAN
8 19 (0.92%) Ethernet
9 17 (0.82%) LAN
9 17 (0.82%) SAN
10 14 (0.68%) SD-WAN
11 13 (0.63%) BGP
11 13 (0.63%) OSPF
11 13 (0.63%) Wireless
12 12 (0.58%) DHCP
12 12 (0.58%) NAS
12 12 (0.58%) Wi-Fi
13 11 (0.53%) Internet
14 10 (0.48%) Cisco ISE
15 9 (0.44%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 191 (9.24%) Power BI
2 115 (5.57%) Data Warehouse
3 75 (3.63%) Metadata
4 70 (3.39%) SQL Server
4 70 (3.39%) Tableau
5 63 (3.05%) Data Lake
6 49 (2.37%) PostgreSQL
7 37 (1.79%) Relational Database
8 29 (1.40%) Amazon Redshift
8 29 (1.40%) Big Data
9 25 (1.21%) NoSQL
10 24 (1.16%) BigQuery
10 24 (1.16%) Oracle Reports
10 24 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 22 (1.06%) Delta Lake
11 22 (1.06%) Oracle Database
12 21 (1.02%) Power Query
13 19 (0.92%) Azure SQL Database
14 18 (0.87%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 16 (0.77%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 191 (9.24%) JIRA
2 106 (5.13%) Git
3 79 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 52 (2.52%) GitLab
5 51 (2.47%) Selenium
6 47 (2.27%) Postman
7 37 (1.79%) JMeter
8 32 (1.55%) Cucumber
9 31 (1.50%) JUnit
10 29 (1.40%) Rational DOORS
11 26 (1.26%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.77%) Rational Rhapsody
12 16 (0.77%) Visual Studio
13 15 (0.73%) Eclipse
13 15 (0.73%) MLflow
14 10 (0.48%) Gatling
14 10 (0.48%) Gradle
14 10 (0.48%) Maven
14 10 (0.48%) REST Assured
15 9 (0.44%) Bitbucket
General
1 633 (30.64%) Finance
2 625 (30.25%) Social Skills
3 376 (18.20%) Analytical Skills
4 172 (8.33%) Banking
5 165 (7.99%) Public Sector
6 112 (5.42%) Documentation Skills
7 66 (3.19%) Manufacturing
8 54 (2.61%) Aerospace
9 46 (2.23%) Retail
10 40 (1.94%) Organisational Skills
11 39 (1.89%) Presentation Skills
12 35 (1.69%) Pharmaceutical
13 34 (1.65%) General Ledger
13 34 (1.65%) Marketing
14 32 (1.55%) Front Office
15 31 (1.50%) Legal
16 30 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
17 29 (1.40%) Military
18 28 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 28 (1.36%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 368 (17.81%) Analyst
2 219 (10.60%) Lead
3 190 (9.20%) Senior
4 168 (8.13%) Business Analyst
5 164 (7.94%) Data Engineer
6 136 (6.58%) Consultant
7 131 (6.34%) Architect
8 113 (5.47%) Developer
9 105 (5.08%) Data Analyst
10 77 (3.73%) Project Manager
11 54 (2.61%) Test Engineer
11 54 (2.61%) Tester
12 45 (2.18%) Software Engineer
13 42 (2.03%) Test Manager
14 41 (1.98%) Senior Analyst
14 41 (1.98%) Systems Engineer
15 38 (1.84%) Security Engineer
16 37 (1.79%) Network Engineer
17 34 (1.65%) Migration Engineer
17 34 (1.65%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (5.37%) REST
2 72 (3.48%) JSON
3 67 (3.24%) Kafka
4 52 (2.52%) Oracle Fusion
5 48 (2.32%) XML
6 46 (2.23%) Middleware
7 43 (2.08%) OAuth
8 37 (1.79%) PySpark
8 37 (1.79%) Swagger
9 35 (1.69%) .NET
10 34 (1.65%) RESTful
11 33 (1.60%) SOAP
12 32 (1.55%) Pandas
13 30 (1.45%) Node.js
13 30 (1.45%) Spring
14 29 (1.40%) Web Services
15 27 (1.31%) pytest
16 26 (1.26%) PyTorch
17 25 (1.21%) OAuth2
18 24 (1.16%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 122 (5.91%) Legacy Systems
2 101 (4.89%) Data Structures
3 99 (4.79%) Onboarding
4 83 (4.02%) Product Ownership
5 69 (3.34%) Cloud Native
6 62 (3.00%) Data Centre
7 49 (2.37%) Management Information System
8 40 (1.94%) Distributed Systems
9 39 (1.89%) Analytical Mindset
10 32 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
11 27 (1.31%) SCADA
12 26 (1.26%) Public Cloud
13 25 (1.21%) Replication
14 24 (1.16%) Algorithms
14 24 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
15 23 (1.11%) AI Agents
15 23 (1.11%) Hybrid Cloud
15 23 (1.11%) Life Science
16 22 (1.06%) Operational Technology
16 22 (1.06%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 105 (5.08%) Windows
2 78 (3.78%) Linux
3 26 (1.26%) Unix
4 14 (0.68%) Windows Server
5 11 (0.53%) Android
6 10 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.29%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.24%) VMS
9 4 (0.19%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.19%) SUSE
9 4 (0.19%) zOS
10 2 (0.097%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.097%) HPUX
10 2 (0.097%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.048%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.048%) Debian
11 1 (0.048%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.048%) pSOS
11 1 (0.048%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.048%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 563 (27.25%) Migration
2 396 (19.17%) Agile
3 355 (17.18%) Problem-Solving
4 352 (17.04%) Stakeholder Management
5 347 (16.80%) Data Validation
6 346 (16.75%) Data Migration
7 321 (15.54%) CI/CD
8 317 (15.34%) Data Modelling
9 316 (15.30%) User Acceptance Testing
10 311 (15.05%) Analytics
11 278 (13.46%) ETL
12 256 (12.39%) DevOps
13 243 (11.76%) AI
14 234 (11.33%) Test Automation
15 230 (11.13%) Business Intelligence
16 219 (10.60%) Continuous Improvement
17 215 (10.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 196 (9.49%) Data Governance
19 192 (9.29%) Data Analysis
20 186 (9.00%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 501 (24.25%) SQL
2 360 (17.42%) Python
3 109 (5.28%) Java
4 55 (2.66%) C#
5 48 (2.32%) PowerShell
6 42 (2.03%) C++
7 39 (1.89%) JavaScript
8 37 (1.79%) C
9 36 (1.74%) Bash
10 28 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 26 (1.26%) Bicep
11 26 (1.26%) PL/SQL
11 26 (1.26%) TypeScript
12 25 (1.21%) R
13 23 (1.11%) Apex Code
14 22 (1.06%) Ada
15 17 (0.82%) Scala
16 16 (0.77%) MATLAB
17 12 (0.58%) VBA
18 11 (0.53%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 381 (18.44%) Security Cleared
2 272 (13.17%) SC Cleared
3 162 (7.84%) Degree
4 48 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
5 46 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
6 41 (1.98%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.55%) PMI Certification
8 26 (1.26%) PMP
9 23 (1.11%) Cisco Certification
10 22 (1.06%) Master's Degree
11 18 (0.87%) CCNP
12 17 (0.82%) ACCA
13 16 (0.77%) CISSP
13 16 (0.77%) ISTQB
14 15 (0.73%) CIMA
15 14 (0.68%) CBAP
15 14 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
16 11 (0.53%) AWS Certification
16 11 (0.53%) Azure Certification
17 9 (0.44%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 350 (16.94%) Data Quality
2 244 (11.81%) QA
3 104 (5.03%) GDPR
4 62 (3.00%) NIST
5 52 (2.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 28 (1.36%) Accessibility
7 27 (1.31%) IFRS
8 24 (1.16%) PMO
8 24 (1.16%) SLA
9 18 (0.87%) Def Stans
9 18 (0.87%) GRC
9 18 (0.87%) IFRS 17
10 16 (0.77%) GxP
11 14 (0.68%) HL7
12 13 (0.63%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 12 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
13 12 (0.58%) MiFID
13 12 (0.58%) NIST 800
14 11 (0.53%) NCSC
System Software
1 84 (4.07%) Docker
2 45 (2.18%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.97%) Firmware
4 20 (0.97%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.68%) Hyper-V
6 13 (0.63%) VMware NSX
7 12 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (0.39%) vSphere
10 5 (0.24%) NFS
11 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 2 (0.097%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.097%) Ceph
12 2 (0.097%) KVM
12 2 (0.097%) Lustre
12 2 (0.097%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.097%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.048%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 130 (6.29%) Kubernetes
2 86 (4.16%) Terraform
3 45 (2.18%) Prometheus
4 43 (2.08%) Grafana
5 39 (1.89%) Ansible
6 27 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (0.48%) FortiGate
8 10 (0.48%) Kibana
9 9 (0.44%) Puppet
10 8 (0.39%) SCCM
11 7 (0.34%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.29%) Nessus
13 5 (0.24%) vMotion
14 4 (0.19%) Argo
14 4 (0.19%) CASB
14 4 (0.19%) EMC VPLEX
14 4 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
14 4 (0.19%) Istio
14 4 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 282 (13.65%) Microsoft
2 181 (8.76%) SAP
3 176 (8.52%) Oracle
4 101 (4.89%) Databricks
5 70 (3.39%) Salesforce
6 57 (2.76%) ServiceNow
7 50 (2.42%) VMware
8 40 (1.94%) Cisco
9 39 (1.89%) Splunk
10 33 (1.60%) Google
11 31 (1.50%) Informatica
12 30 (1.45%) Workday
13 24 (1.16%) Sage
14 23 (1.11%) MuleSoft
15 22 (1.06%) Palo Alto
16 21 (1.02%) IBM
16 21 (1.02%) IFS
17 19 (0.92%) CyberArk
18 16 (0.77%) Fortinet
18 16 (0.77%) OpenAI