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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 70 118
Rank change year-on-year +35 +48 +30
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,437 1,008 682
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.36% 3.65% 2.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.28% 4.02% 2.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,491 612 347
10th Percentile £341 £356 £325
25th Percentile £413 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £482
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +8.92% -13.15%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £585
90th Percentile £701 £700 £665
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £498
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.53% -9.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 78 125
10th Percentile £17.75 £20.50 £29.86
25th Percentile £28.69 £37.67 £51.25
Median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year - -3.85% +3.96%
75th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.68 £75.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £60.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -8.33% -7.69% -

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 38,823 25,045 28,976
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.31% 90.74% 85.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,257 16,045 18,963
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £523 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,475 1,380 1,752
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.87 £17.80
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.03
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -40.16% -1.11%
75th Percentile £68.75 £51.65 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%

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 1 August 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 1 August 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 1 August 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 +45 1,170 £523 -0.48% 658
South East +11 322 £510 +2.00% 303
Midlands +34 312 £475 +5.56% 156
North of England +45 306 £450 -9.09% 201
West Midlands +29 227 £472 +10.94% 95
North West +24 162 £450 -21.40% 118
East of England +1 138 £488 -2.50% 136
Yorkshire +44 132 £451 +3.56% 43
South West -14 123 £524 -8.91% 151
East Midlands +21 80 £505 +9.91% 61
North East -32 16 £425 -15.00% 43
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 72 (2.95%) Confluence
2 64 (2.63%) Apache Airflow
3 47 (1.93%) SAS
4 42 (1.72%) SharePoint
5 38 (1.56%) Apache Spark
6 29 (1.19%) Apache
7 13 (0.53%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
9 8 (0.33%) CMS
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
9 8 (0.33%) SharePoint 2013
10 6 (0.25%) ArcGIS
11 5 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 5 (0.21%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.16%) FactoryTalk
12 4 (0.16%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.12%) IIS
13 3 (0.12%) JBoss
13 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 173 (7.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (1.35%) MS Visio
3 31 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
4 25 (1.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 25 (1.03%) Spreadsheet
5 9 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (0.33%) AutoCAD
7 6 (0.25%) Simulink
8 4 (0.16%) Chatbot
9 3 (0.12%) CATIA
9 3 (0.12%) Navisworks
9 3 (0.12%) Revit
10 2 (0.082%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.082%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.082%) ProjectWise
10 2 (0.082%) Sketch
11 1 (0.041%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.041%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.041%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.041%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 110 (4.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (1.23%) Oracle EBS
3 18 (0.74%) Workday HCM
4 12 (0.49%) Oracle Payables
5 11 (0.45%) iTrent
5 11 (0.45%) NetSuite
5 11 (0.45%) SAP ERP
5 11 (0.45%) Teamcenter
6 10 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
6 10 (0.41%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 10 (0.41%) SAP MDG
7 9 (0.37%) Aladdin
7 9 (0.37%) Oracle Assets
7 9 (0.37%) Sage X3
8 8 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
8 8 (0.33%) Oracle General Ledger
8 8 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
9 7 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
9 7 (0.29%) SAP HCM
9 7 (0.29%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 546 (22.40%) Azure
2 287 (11.78%) AWS
3 258 (10.59%) Power Platform
4 136 (5.58%) GCP
5 133 (5.46%) Azure DevOps
6 117 (4.80%) GitHub
7 86 (3.53%) Snowflake
8 70 (2.87%) Azure Data Factory
9 69 (2.83%) GitHub Actions
10 63 (2.59%) Entra ID
11 54 (2.22%) Serverless
12 44 (1.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 44 (1.81%) Microsoft 365
13 43 (1.76%) dbt
14 42 (1.72%) SaaS
15 41 (1.68%) Amazon S3
15 41 (1.68%) OCI
16 37 (1.52%) SuccessFactors
17 30 (1.23%) Azure Monitor
18 27 (1.11%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 108 (4.43%) Firewall
2 64 (2.63%) Network Security
3 57 (2.34%) DNS
4 46 (1.89%) VLAN
5 45 (1.85%) VPN
6 39 (1.60%) TCP/IP
7 36 (1.48%) WAN
8 29 (1.19%) BGP
9 26 (1.07%) DHCP
10 23 (0.94%) Internet
11 21 (0.86%) LAN
11 21 (0.86%) OSPF
11 21 (0.86%) SAN
11 21 (0.86%) Wireless
12 20 (0.82%) SD-WAN
13 15 (0.62%) Wi-Fi
14 14 (0.57%) Ethernet
15 12 (0.49%) Cisco ISE
16 11 (0.45%) NAS
17 9 (0.37%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 239 (9.81%) Power BI
2 147 (6.03%) Data Warehouse
3 100 (4.10%) Metadata
4 79 (3.24%) Data Lake
5 73 (3.00%) Tableau
6 72 (2.95%) SQL Server
7 68 (2.79%) PostgreSQL
8 64 (2.63%) Relational Database
9 38 (1.56%) Big Data
10 30 (1.23%) BigQuery
11 28 (1.15%) Oracle Database
11 28 (1.15%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 27 (1.11%) Delta Lake
12 27 (1.11%) NoSQL
12 27 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 26 (1.07%) Power Query
14 24 (0.98%) Oracle Reports
15 22 (0.90%) MongoDB
16 21 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
16 21 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 221 (9.07%) JIRA
2 155 (6.36%) Git
3 86 (3.53%) Jenkins
4 66 (2.71%) GitLab
5 55 (2.26%) Selenium
6 40 (1.64%) JMeter
7 37 (1.52%) Cucumber
7 37 (1.52%) JUnit
7 37 (1.52%) Postman
8 30 (1.23%) WebDriver
9 21 (0.86%) Rational DOORS
10 18 (0.74%) Eclipse
11 14 (0.57%) Visual Studio
12 12 (0.49%) Gatling
13 11 (0.45%) MLflow
13 11 (0.45%) Rational Rhapsody
14 10 (0.41%) ERwin
14 10 (0.41%) Maven
14 10 (0.41%) REST Assured
15 9 (0.37%) Oracle Forms
General
1 722 (29.63%) Finance
2 709 (29.09%) Social Skills
3 473 (19.41%) Analytical Skills
4 195 (8.00%) Public Sector
5 181 (7.43%) Banking
6 132 (5.42%) Documentation Skills
7 86 (3.53%) Manufacturing
7 86 (3.53%) Retail
8 57 (2.34%) Aerospace
9 51 (2.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 46 (1.89%) Pharmaceutical
11 45 (1.85%) Organisational Skills
12 43 (1.76%) Telecoms
13 39 (1.60%) Automotive
13 39 (1.60%) Marketing
14 37 (1.52%) Front Office
15 35 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
16 34 (1.40%) Local Government
16 34 (1.40%) Military
17 33 (1.35%) Law
Job Titles
1 429 (17.60%) Analyst
2 249 (10.22%) Senior
3 246 (10.09%) Lead
4 209 (8.58%) Data Engineer
5 199 (8.17%) Business Analyst
6 179 (7.35%) Consultant
7 138 (5.66%) Developer
8 132 (5.42%) Architect
9 126 (5.17%) Data Analyst
10 93 (3.82%) Test Engineer
11 70 (2.87%) Tester
12 68 (2.79%) Project Manager
13 55 (2.26%) Network Engineer
14 50 (2.05%) Systems Engineer
15 48 (1.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 45 (1.85%) Senior Data Engineer
17 40 (1.64%) Administrator
18 39 (1.60%) Migration Engineer
18 39 (1.60%) Technical Analyst
19 38 (1.56%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 120 (4.92%) REST
2 73 (3.00%) JSON
3 68 (2.79%) Kafka
4 62 (2.54%) PySpark
5 53 (2.17%) XML
6 48 (1.97%) Oracle Fusion
7 41 (1.68%) Spring
8 40 (1.64%) .NET
9 38 (1.56%) Middleware
9 38 (1.56%) pytest
10 34 (1.40%) Playwright
11 30 (1.23%) Pandas
11 30 (1.23%) SOAP
12 29 (1.19%) RESTful
12 29 (1.19%) Web Services
13 28 (1.15%) Node.js
14 27 (1.11%) OAuth
15 25 (1.03%) WireMock
16 22 (0.90%) Lightning Web Components
16 22 (0.90%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 134 (5.50%) Onboarding
2 132 (5.42%) Data Structures
3 120 (4.92%) Legacy Systems
4 103 (4.23%) Cloud Native
5 95 (3.90%) Product Ownership
6 65 (2.67%) Data Centre
6 65 (2.67%) Management Information System
7 49 (2.01%) Distributed Systems
8 44 (1.81%) Analytical Mindset
9 40 (1.64%) AI Agents
9 40 (1.64%) SCADA
10 36 (1.48%) Data Protection Act
11 34 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
11 34 (1.40%) Hybrid Cloud
12 32 (1.31%) Life Science
13 30 (1.23%) Reference Data
14 29 (1.19%) Operational Technology
14 29 (1.19%) Public Cloud
15 28 (1.15%) Virtual Team
16 27 (1.11%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 132 (5.42%) Windows
2 86 (3.53%) Linux
3 38 (1.56%) Windows Server
4 22 (0.90%) Unix
5 18 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (0.45%) Android
6 11 (0.45%) Ubuntu
7 6 (0.25%) VMS
8 5 (0.21%) Apple iOS
8 5 (0.21%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.16%) SUSE
10 3 (0.12%) Mac OS
10 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.082%) HPUX
11 2 (0.082%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.082%) zOS
12 1 (0.041%) Debian
12 1 (0.041%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.041%) Solaris
12 1 (0.041%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 675 (27.70%) Migration
2 468 (19.20%) Agile
3 459 (18.83%) Stakeholder Management
4 428 (17.56%) CI/CD
5 417 (17.11%) Analytics
6 412 (16.91%) Data Migration
7 394 (16.17%) User Acceptance Testing
8 390 (16.00%) Data Validation
9 388 (15.92%) Data Modelling
10 380 (15.59%) Problem-Solving
11 320 (13.13%) AI
12 307 (12.60%) DevOps
13 305 (12.52%) ETL
14 297 (12.19%) Test Automation
15 296 (12.15%) Continuous Improvement
16 271 (11.12%) Business Intelligence
16 271 (11.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 258 (10.59%) Data Governance
18 257 (10.55%) Data Pipeline
19 242 (9.93%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 601 (24.66%) SQL
2 449 (18.42%) Python
3 110 (4.51%) Java
4 71 (2.91%) PowerShell
5 49 (2.01%) C#
6 44 (1.81%) Bash
7 40 (1.64%) JavaScript
8 33 (1.35%) C++
8 33 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 27 (1.11%) Apex Code
10 26 (1.07%) TypeScript
11 25 (1.03%) Bicep
11 25 (1.03%) PL/SQL
12 23 (0.94%) VBA
13 22 (0.90%) C
13 22 (0.90%) R
14 15 (0.62%) MATLAB
15 13 (0.53%) Ada
15 13 (0.53%) T-SQL
16 12 (0.49%) Scala
Qualifications
1 442 (18.14%) Security Cleared
2 316 (12.97%) SC Cleared
3 167 (6.85%) Degree
4 63 (2.59%) DV Cleared
5 48 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
6 37 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
7 35 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
8 29 (1.19%) CCNP
9 23 (0.94%) PMI Certification
10 20 (0.82%) ACCA
11 19 (0.78%) CIMA
11 19 (0.78%) PMP
12 18 (0.74%) ISTQB
12 18 (0.74%) Microsoft Certification
13 16 (0.66%) Azure Certification
13 16 (0.66%) CISSP
14 14 (0.57%) Master's Degree
15 13 (0.53%) AWS Certification
16 12 (0.49%) CCNA
17 10 (0.41%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 469 (19.24%) Data Quality
2 296 (12.15%) QA
3 102 (4.19%) GDPR
4 51 (2.09%) NIST
5 44 (1.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 39 (1.60%) Accessibility
7 32 (1.31%) PMO
8 28 (1.15%) SLA
9 20 (0.82%) GxP
10 15 (0.62%) GRC
11 13 (0.53%) HL7
11 13 (0.53%) IFRS
11 13 (0.53%) NCSC
12 12 (0.49%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 12 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
12 12 (0.49%) Def Stans
12 12 (0.49%) ISO 20022
12 12 (0.49%) NIST 800
13 11 (0.45%) WCAG
14 10 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 107 (4.39%) Docker
2 78 (3.20%) Active Directory
3 56 (2.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (1.11%) Virtual Machines
5 21 (0.86%) VMware ESXi
6 17 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
7 14 (0.57%) Firmware
8 13 (0.53%) vSphere
9 11 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 9 (0.37%) Hyper-V
11 3 (0.12%) KVM
11 3 (0.12%) NFS
11 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
11 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.082%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.082%) VirtualBox
12 2 (0.082%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.041%) Ceph
13 1 (0.041%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.041%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 144 (5.91%) Kubernetes
2 115 (4.72%) Terraform
3 55 (2.26%) Ansible
4 48 (1.97%) Prometheus
5 47 (1.93%) Grafana
6 25 (1.03%) Microsoft Intune
7 22 (0.90%) FortiGate
8 19 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.53%) SCCM
10 11 (0.45%) vCenter Server
11 8 (0.33%) VxRail
12 6 (0.25%) HP ALM
13 5 (0.21%) CASB
13 5 (0.21%) systemd
13 5 (0.21%) vRealize
14 4 (0.16%) Argo
14 4 (0.16%) Failover Clustering
14 4 (0.16%) Istio
14 4 (0.16%) Nessus
14 4 (0.16%) Puppet
Vendors
1 357 (14.65%) Microsoft
2 218 (8.95%) SAP
3 209 (8.58%) Oracle
4 142 (5.83%) Databricks
5 85 (3.49%) Salesforce
6 67 (2.75%) VMware
7 57 (2.34%) ServiceNow
8 54 (2.22%) Cisco
9 49 (2.01%) Workday
10 40 (1.64%) Google
11 35 (1.44%) Informatica
12 34 (1.40%) Splunk
13 29 (1.19%) Fortinet
13 29 (1.19%) Juniper
14 26 (1.07%) IBM
14 26 (1.07%) Zscaler
15 25 (1.03%) Palo Alto
16 23 (0.94%) MuleSoft
16 23 (0.94%) Sage
17 20 (0.82%) IFS