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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 37 73 113
Rank change year-on-year +36 +40 +42
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,097 835 741
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.03% 3.49% 2.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.91% 3.82% 2.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,280 514 373
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £409 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% +7.50% -13.04%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £600
90th Percentile £713 £722 £675
UK median daily rate £492 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -6.29% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 144 55 170
10th Percentile £17.75 £17.19 £26.88
25th Percentile £30.27 £36.99 £52.50
Median hourly rate £64.07 £57.75 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.94% -4.55% -3.20%
75th Percentile £74.44 £68.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £76.50 £76.86
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £57.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +8.70% -4.17% -4.76%

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 35,462 21,869 31,644
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.04% 91.35% 85.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,467 14,201 20,640
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £513 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,230 965 2,327
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.85
25th Percentile £20.69 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £28.60 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.34% -23.73% +0.54%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.91 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.69 £27.85 £36.50
% change year-on-year +53.27% -23.70% +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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +51 1,002 £513 -6.82% 435
North of England +39 285 £437 -2.83% 182
Midlands +33 259 £500 +11.11% 138
South East -6 240 £500 - 245
West Midlands +23 184 £484 +19.60% 87
North West +33 165 £423 -3.43% 104
South West 0 128 £500 -13.04% 112
East of England +10 127 £475 +5.56% 111
Yorkshire +17 108 £455 +4.60% 58
East Midlands +17 70 £525 +15.51% 51
North East -20 15 £438 -25.53% 22
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 75 (3.58%) Confluence
2 52 (2.48%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (1.96%) Apache Spark
4 38 (1.81%) SAS
5 24 (1.14%) SharePoint
6 21 (1.00%) Apache
7 13 (0.62%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.43%) Appian
9 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.33%) ArcGIS
10 7 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
11 5 (0.24%) CMS
12 4 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 3 (0.14%) Anypoint
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 (0.095%) Documentum
14 2 (0.095%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 140 (6.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (1.38%) MS Visio
3 22 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
4 20 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 19 (0.91%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
7 4 (0.19%) AutoCAD
7 4 (0.19%) CATIA
7 4 (0.19%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.19%) Simulink
8 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
9 2 (0.095%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.095%) Sketch
10 1 (0.048%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.048%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.048%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.048%) Notion
10 1 (0.048%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.048%) UXPin
10 1 (0.048%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 107 (5.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (1.38%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.72%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.67%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 13 (0.62%) Oracle General Ledger
6 12 (0.57%) Workday HCM
7 11 (0.52%) Oracle Assets
8 8 (0.38%) Aladdin
8 8 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
8 8 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
8 8 (0.38%) SAP ERP
9 7 (0.33%) NetSuite
9 7 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
9 7 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
9 7 (0.33%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
10 6 (0.29%) SAP Business One
11 5 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
11 5 (0.24%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 428 (20.41%) Azure
2 258 (12.30%) AWS
3 203 (9.68%) Power Platform
4 113 (5.39%) GCP
5 105 (5.01%) Azure DevOps
6 103 (4.91%) GitHub
7 66 (3.15%) Snowflake
8 59 (2.81%) GitHub Actions
9 58 (2.77%) Azure Data Factory
10 54 (2.58%) Entra ID
11 49 (2.34%) SaaS
11 49 (2.34%) Serverless
12 41 (1.96%) Amazon S3
13 39 (1.86%) OCI
14 34 (1.62%) dbt
15 33 (1.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 33 (1.57%) Microsoft 365
16 24 (1.14%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 22 (1.05%) AWS Lambda
17 22 (1.05%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 82 (3.91%) Firewall
2 55 (2.62%) Network Security
3 36 (1.72%) VLAN
4 34 (1.62%) DNS
5 29 (1.38%) TCP/IP
6 28 (1.34%) VPN
7 27 (1.29%) WAN
8 19 (0.91%) Ethernet
9 18 (0.86%) SAN
10 17 (0.81%) LAN
11 16 (0.76%) BGP
12 15 (0.72%) OSPF
12 15 (0.72%) SD-WAN
13 14 (0.67%) Internet
13 14 (0.67%) Wireless
14 13 (0.62%) Wi-Fi
15 12 (0.57%) DHCP
15 12 (0.57%) NAS
16 10 (0.48%) Cisco ISE
17 9 (0.43%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 187 (8.92%) Power BI
2 113 (5.39%) Data Warehouse
3 74 (3.53%) SQL Server
4 71 (3.39%) Metadata
5 64 (3.05%) Tableau
6 63 (3.00%) Data Lake
7 53 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
8 38 (1.81%) Relational Database
9 30 (1.43%) Big Data
10 29 (1.38%) Amazon Redshift
11 26 (1.24%) Oracle Database
12 25 (1.19%) NoSQL
13 23 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
13 23 (1.10%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 22 (1.05%) BigQuery
14 22 (1.05%) Delta Lake
14 22 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 21 (1.00%) Power Query
16 20 (0.95%) Azure SQL Database
17 17 (0.81%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 198 (9.44%) JIRA
2 111 (5.29%) Git
3 84 (4.01%) Jenkins
4 59 (2.81%) GitLab
5 52 (2.48%) Selenium
6 45 (2.15%) Postman
7 40 (1.91%) JMeter
8 35 (1.67%) Cucumber
8 35 (1.67%) JUnit
9 30 (1.43%) WebDriver
10 27 (1.29%) Rational DOORS
11 16 (0.76%) Rational Rhapsody
11 16 (0.76%) Visual Studio
12 15 (0.72%) Eclipse
12 15 (0.72%) MLflow
13 10 (0.48%) Gradle
13 10 (0.48%) Maven
14 9 (0.43%) Gatling
15 8 (0.38%) Bitbucket
15 8 (0.38%) REST Assured
General
1 638 (30.42%) Finance
2 628 (29.95%) Social Skills
3 382 (18.22%) Analytical Skills
4 177 (8.44%) Banking
5 170 (8.11%) Public Sector
6 115 (5.48%) Documentation Skills
7 66 (3.15%) Manufacturing
8 56 (2.67%) Aerospace
9 46 (2.19%) Retail
10 40 (1.91%) Organisational Skills
11 39 (1.86%) Presentation Skills
12 37 (1.76%) Pharmaceutical
13 35 (1.67%) Marketing
14 34 (1.62%) Front Office
14 34 (1.62%) General Ledger
15 32 (1.53%) Legal
16 31 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
17 30 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 29 (1.38%) Local Government
18 29 (1.38%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 364 (17.36%) Analyst
2 221 (10.54%) Lead
3 195 (9.30%) Senior
4 169 (8.06%) Business Analyst
5 166 (7.92%) Data Engineer
6 142 (6.77%) Consultant
7 131 (6.25%) Architect
8 115 (5.48%) Developer
9 104 (4.96%) Data Analyst
10 73 (3.48%) Project Manager
11 59 (2.81%) Test Engineer
12 56 (2.67%) Tester
13 45 (2.15%) Software Engineer
14 44 (2.10%) Test Manager
15 39 (1.86%) Systems Engineer
16 38 (1.81%) Security Engineer
16 38 (1.81%) Senior Analyst
17 37 (1.76%) Network Engineer
18 36 (1.72%) Migration Engineer
19 34 (1.62%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 110 (5.25%) REST
2 71 (3.39%) JSON
3 67 (3.20%) Kafka
4 49 (2.34%) Oracle Fusion
5 47 (2.24%) XML
6 43 (2.05%) Middleware
6 43 (2.05%) OAuth
7 39 (1.86%) PySpark
8 37 (1.76%) Swagger
9 36 (1.72%) .NET
10 34 (1.62%) RESTful
11 33 (1.57%) SOAP
11 33 (1.57%) Spring
12 32 (1.53%) Pandas
13 30 (1.43%) pytest
13 30 (1.43%) Web Services
14 29 (1.38%) Node.js
15 26 (1.24%) PyTorch
16 25 (1.19%) OAuth2
17 24 (1.14%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 120 (5.72%) Legacy Systems
2 102 (4.86%) Data Structures
3 101 (4.82%) Onboarding
4 85 (4.05%) Product Ownership
5 75 (3.58%) Cloud Native
6 61 (2.91%) Data Centre
7 49 (2.34%) Management Information System
8 42 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
9 40 (1.91%) Analytical Mindset
10 32 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
11 28 (1.34%) SCADA
12 27 (1.29%) Public Cloud
12 27 (1.29%) Replication
13 26 (1.24%) Algorithms
14 25 (1.19%) AI Agents
14 25 (1.19%) Life Science
15 24 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
15 24 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
16 22 (1.05%) Distributed Architecture
16 22 (1.05%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 112 (5.34%) Windows
2 79 (3.77%) Linux
3 26 (1.24%) Unix
4 17 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.57%) Android
5 12 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.29%) VMS
6 6 (0.29%) Windows 10
7 4 (0.19%) Mac OS
7 4 (0.19%) SUSE
8 3 (0.14%) Apple iOS
8 3 (0.14%) zOS
9 2 (0.095%) HPUX
9 2 (0.095%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.095%) VxWorks
10 1 (0.048%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.048%) Debian
10 1 (0.048%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.048%) pSOS
10 1 (0.048%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 569 (27.13%) Migration
2 396 (18.88%) Agile
3 360 (17.17%) Stakeholder Management
4 356 (16.98%) Data Validation
5 355 (16.93%) Problem-Solving
6 346 (16.50%) Data Migration
7 344 (16.40%) CI/CD
8 323 (15.40%) User Acceptance Testing
9 320 (15.26%) Data Modelling
10 316 (15.07%) Analytics
11 276 (13.16%) ETL
12 266 (12.68%) DevOps
13 254 (12.11%) AI
14 245 (11.68%) Test Automation
15 225 (10.73%) Business Intelligence
16 219 (10.44%) Continuous Improvement
17 213 (10.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 197 (9.39%) Data Analysis
19 196 (9.35%) Data Governance
20 189 (9.01%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 503 (23.99%) SQL
2 369 (17.60%) Python
3 108 (5.15%) Java
4 55 (2.62%) PowerShell
5 54 (2.58%) C#
6 42 (2.00%) C++
7 38 (1.81%) JavaScript
8 37 (1.76%) Bash
8 37 (1.76%) C
9 28 (1.34%) Bicep
10 27 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 26 (1.24%) PL/SQL
12 25 (1.19%) TypeScript
13 23 (1.10%) Apex Code
13 23 (1.10%) R
14 22 (1.05%) Ada
15 17 (0.81%) Scala
16 16 (0.76%) MATLAB
17 12 (0.57%) VBA
18 10 (0.48%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 390 (18.60%) Security Cleared
2 285 (13.59%) SC Cleared
3 162 (7.73%) Degree
4 53 (2.53%) BPSS Clearance
5 47 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
6 41 (1.96%) DV Cleared
7 29 (1.38%) PMI Certification
8 24 (1.14%) Cisco Certification
9 23 (1.10%) PMP
10 22 (1.05%) Master's Degree
11 19 (0.91%) CCNP
12 17 (0.81%) ACCA
13 16 (0.76%) CISSP
13 16 (0.76%) ISTQB
14 15 (0.72%) CIMA
15 14 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
16 12 (0.57%) Azure Certification
17 11 (0.52%) AWS Certification
18 9 (0.43%) CBAP
18 9 (0.43%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (17.12%) Data Quality
2 246 (11.73%) QA
3 105 (5.01%) GDPR
4 63 (3.00%) NIST
5 52 (2.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 31 (1.48%) Accessibility
7 27 (1.29%) IFRS
8 25 (1.19%) SLA
9 24 (1.14%) PMO
10 18 (0.86%) Def Stans
10 18 (0.86%) GRC
10 18 (0.86%) IFRS 17
11 17 (0.81%) GxP
12 14 (0.67%) HL7
13 13 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
13 13 (0.62%) PCI DSS
13 13 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 12 (0.57%) NIST 800
15 11 (0.52%) ISO 20022
15 11 (0.52%) Solvency II
System Software
1 90 (4.29%) Docker
2 48 (2.29%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.95%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (0.91%) Firmware
6 14 (0.67%) Hyper-V
7 13 (0.62%) VMware NSX
8 12 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
9 9 (0.43%) vSphere
10 8 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
11 5 (0.24%) NFS
12 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 2 (0.095%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.095%) KVM
13 2 (0.095%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.095%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.048%) OpenSSH
14 1 (0.048%) Oracle RAC
14 1 (0.048%) SRDF
14 1 (0.048%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 131 (6.25%) Kubernetes
2 91 (4.34%) Terraform
3 48 (2.29%) Prometheus
4 45 (2.15%) Grafana
5 37 (1.76%) Ansible
6 26 (1.24%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (0.91%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (0.48%) FortiGate
9 9 (0.43%) Kibana
10 8 (0.38%) Puppet
10 8 (0.38%) SCCM
11 7 (0.33%) 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
1 286 (13.64%) Microsoft
2 188 (8.97%) SAP
3 178 (8.49%) Oracle
4 102 (4.86%) Databricks
5 72 (3.43%) Salesforce
6 58 (2.77%) ServiceNow
7 51 (2.43%) VMware
8 42 (2.00%) Splunk
9 41 (1.96%) Cisco
10 34 (1.62%) Google
11 30 (1.43%) Workday
12 29 (1.38%) Informatica
13 25 (1.19%) Sage
14 24 (1.14%) MuleSoft
15 22 (1.05%) Palo Alto
16 21 (1.00%) IFS
17 20 (0.95%) IBM
18 19 (0.91%) CyberArk
19 17 (0.81%) Fortinet
20 16 (0.76%) OpenAI