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

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 108 127
Rank change year-on-year +57 +19 +6
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,567 651 693
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.42% 2.53% 1.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.07% 2.81% 2.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 960 369 394
10th Percentile £350 £348 £316
25th Percentile £404 £413 £427
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £618
90th Percentile £700 £728 £725
UK median daily rate £492 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -6.29% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 89 34 143
10th Percentile £34.20 £25.56 £24.78
25th Percentile £60.00 £47.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +3.92%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.44 £75.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.18 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £63.75
% change year-on-year +4.00% -1.96% +1.92%

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 30,906 23,179 32,763
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.22% 90.17% 87.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,822 14,560 21,758
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £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 1,906 762 2,042
10th Percentile £15.22 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £28.50 £35.00 £34.23
Median % change year-on-year -18.57% +2.25% -2.20%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £59.94
90th Percentile £72.52 £75.23 £72.00
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £33.07
% change year-on-year -15.38% -1.71% -5.53%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 +62 735 £513 -6.82% 182
North of England +29 209 £423 -3.43% 110
South East +16 183 £501 +0.25% 186
Midlands +32 154 £490 +0.20% 112
North West +25 136 £401 -2.73% 59
South West +9 130 £475 -17.39% 73
West Midlands +22 128 £492 -0.61% 78
East of England +25 105 £478 +12.47% 84
Yorkshire -10 65 £465 +2.48% 37
East Midlands -8 24 £450 +22.62% 33
North East -10 11 £463 -36.21% 15
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 65 (4.15%) Confluence
2 31 (1.98%) Apache Spark
2 31 (1.98%) SAS
3 25 (1.60%) Apache Airflow
4 24 (1.53%) SharePoint
5 16 (1.02%) Microsoft Exchange
6 15 (0.96%) Apache
7 9 (0.57%) Appian
8 7 (0.45%) CMS
8 7 (0.45%) Skype for Business
9 6 (0.38%) Exchange Server 2013
9 6 (0.38%) Jupyter
9 6 (0.38%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 4 (0.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.26%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.19%) CICS
11 3 (0.19%) Smallworld
11 3 (0.19%) WebLogic
Applications
1 78 (4.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (1.79%) Microsoft Office
3 24 (1.53%) MS Visio
4 15 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.51%) Chatbot
5 8 (0.51%) Microsoft Project
6 6 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.26%) Notion
8 3 (0.19%) LaTeX
8 3 (0.19%) Sketch
9 2 (0.13%) Simulink
10 1 (0.064%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.064%) CATIA
10 1 (0.064%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.064%) Stateflow
10 1 (0.064%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 69 (4.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 22 (1.40%) Oracle EBS
3 11 (0.70%) Oracle General Ledger
3 11 (0.70%) Oracle Payables
3 11 (0.70%) Workday HCM
4 10 (0.64%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 9 (0.57%) SAP FI
6 8 (0.51%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
6 8 (0.51%) Oracle Receivables
7 7 (0.45%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.45%) OpenText VIM for SAP
7 7 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
7 7 (0.45%) Oracle EBS R12
7 7 (0.45%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 7 (0.45%) SAP MDG
7 7 (0.45%) SAP MM
8 6 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
8 6 (0.38%) SAP EHS
8 6 (0.38%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 364 (23.23%) Azure
2 185 (11.81%) AWS
3 132 (8.42%) Power Platform
4 119 (7.59%) Azure DevOps
5 76 (4.85%) GCP
6 69 (4.40%) GitHub
7 55 (3.51%) Entra ID
8 47 (3.00%) Serverless
9 46 (2.94%) SaaS
10 44 (2.81%) Azure Data Factory
11 40 (2.55%) GitHub Actions
12 35 (2.23%) OCI
13 33 (2.11%) Snowflake
14 28 (1.79%) OpenShift
15 27 (1.72%) Amazon S3
16 23 (1.47%) AWS Lambda
17 22 (1.40%) Microsoft 365
18 20 (1.28%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 18 (1.15%) Boomi
20 17 (1.08%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 51 (3.25%) Firewall
2 32 (2.04%) TCP/IP
3 27 (1.72%) Network Security
4 23 (1.47%) Ethernet
5 18 (1.15%) DNS
6 15 (0.96%) VPN
7 14 (0.89%) VLAN
8 11 (0.70%) WAN
8 11 (0.70%) Wireless
9 10 (0.64%) SAN
10 9 (0.57%) BGP
10 9 (0.57%) HTTP
10 9 (0.57%) MPLS
10 9 (0.57%) OSPF
11 8 (0.51%) LAN
11 8 (0.51%) NAS
12 7 (0.45%) Skype
12 7 (0.45%) TACACS
13 6 (0.38%) Cisco ISE
13 6 (0.38%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (7.85%) Power BI
2 71 (4.53%) Metadata
3 68 (4.34%) Data Warehouse
4 42 (2.68%) Tableau
5 40 (2.55%) SQL Server
6 37 (2.36%) Data Lake
7 24 (1.53%) Oracle Reports
7 24 (1.53%) PostgreSQL
8 23 (1.47%) NoSQL
9 22 (1.40%) Amazon Redshift
10 18 (1.15%) Delta Lake
10 18 (1.15%) Pinecone
10 18 (1.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 17 (1.08%) Big Data
11 17 (1.08%) Oracle Database
11 17 (1.08%) Relational Database
11 17 (1.08%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 15 (0.96%) Elasticsearch
13 13 (0.83%) Amazon Athena
13 13 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 160 (10.21%) JIRA
2 92 (5.87%) Git
3 74 (4.72%) Jenkins
4 56 (3.57%) Selenium
5 46 (2.94%) GitLab
6 39 (2.49%) Postman
7 32 (2.04%) Oracle APEX
8 31 (1.98%) JUnit
9 30 (1.91%) Rational DOORS
10 29 (1.85%) Cucumber
11 28 (1.79%) JMeter
12 22 (1.40%) Visual Studio
13 17 (1.08%) MLflow
14 16 (1.02%) Eclipse
15 15 (0.96%) WebDriver
16 11 (0.70%) REST Assured
17 9 (0.57%) Bitbucket
17 9 (0.57%) TestRail
18 8 (0.51%) SpecFlow
18 8 (0.51%) Zephyr
General
1 582 (37.14%) Social Skills
2 463 (29.55%) Finance
3 335 (21.38%) Analytical Skills
4 141 (9.00%) Banking
5 135 (8.62%) Public Sector
6 80 (5.11%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (3.32%) Presentation Skills
8 40 (2.55%) Manufacturing
9 37 (2.36%) Aerospace
10 31 (1.98%) Influencing Skills
11 30 (1.91%) Electronics
11 30 (1.91%) Marketing
11 30 (1.91%) Military
12 29 (1.85%) Front Office
13 25 (1.60%) Telecoms
14 24 (1.53%) Investment Banking
14 24 (1.53%) Organisational Skills
14 24 (1.53%) Pharmaceutical
15 23 (1.47%) Legal
16 22 (1.40%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 306 (19.53%) Analyst
2 158 (10.08%) Senior
3 153 (9.76%) Lead
4 134 (8.55%) Business Analyst
5 114 (7.28%) Developer
6 109 (6.96%) Consultant
7 106 (6.76%) Architect
8 89 (5.68%) Data Engineer
9 80 (5.11%) Data Analyst
10 52 (3.32%) Software Engineer
11 50 (3.19%) Project Manager
12 47 (3.00%) Tester
13 38 (2.43%) Senior Analyst
14 34 (2.17%) Senior Developer
14 34 (2.17%) Test Analyst
15 33 (2.11%) SAP Consultant
16 32 (2.04%) Solutions Architect
17 31 (1.98%) Test Manager
18 30 (1.91%) Embedded Engineer
19 28 (1.79%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (6.38%) REST
2 64 (4.08%) JSON
3 51 (3.25%) Oracle Fusion
4 49 (3.13%) XML
5 47 (3.00%) OAuth
6 45 (2.87%) Kafka
7 43 (2.74%) Middleware
8 38 (2.43%) SOAP
9 36 (2.30%) .NET
9 36 (2.30%) Node.js
9 36 (2.30%) PyTorch
10 32 (2.04%) TensorFlow
10 32 (2.04%) Web Services
11 31 (1.98%) PySpark
12 30 (1.91%) Swagger
13 29 (1.85%) RESTful
14 28 (1.79%) Playwright
15 26 (1.66%) pytest
16 24 (1.53%) OpenAPI
16 24 (1.53%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 95 (6.06%) Legacy Systems
2 65 (4.15%) Data Structures
3 61 (3.89%) Product Ownership
4 51 (3.25%) Onboarding
5 45 (2.87%) Cloud Native
6 40 (2.55%) Management Information System
7 30 (1.91%) Analytical Mindset
8 26 (1.66%) Algorithms
8 26 (1.66%) Data Centre
9 25 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
10 23 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
11 20 (1.28%) Derivative
12 19 (1.21%) Replication
13 18 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
14 17 (1.08%) Credit Risk
14 17 (1.08%) Hybrid Cloud
14 17 (1.08%) Security Posture
15 16 (1.02%) FPGA
16 14 (0.89%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 14 (0.89%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 89 (5.68%) Windows
2 83 (5.30%) Linux
3 33 (2.11%) Unix
4 9 (0.57%) Android
5 6 (0.38%) Windows Server
5 6 (0.38%) zOS
6 5 (0.32%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.19%) Embedded Linux
8 2 (0.13%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.13%) Debian
8 2 (0.13%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.064%) FreeRTOS
9 1 (0.064%) pSOS
9 1 (0.064%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.064%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 404 (25.78%) Agile
2 363 (23.17%) Problem-Solving
3 361 (23.04%) Migration
4 289 (18.44%) Stakeholder Management
5 260 (16.59%) CI/CD
6 254 (16.21%) DevOps
7 253 (16.15%) Data Validation
8 247 (15.76%) Analytics
9 216 (13.78%) Data Modelling
10 205 (13.08%) Data Migration
11 200 (12.76%) Test Automation
12 193 (12.32%) ETL
13 186 (11.87%) AI
14 185 (11.81%) User Acceptance Testing
15 163 (10.40%) Continuous Improvement
16 161 (10.27%) Business Intelligence
17 160 (10.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 140 (8.93%) Data Governance
19 136 (8.68%) Data Analysis
20 132 (8.42%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 389 (24.82%) SQL
2 323 (20.61%) Python
3 93 (5.93%) JavaScript
4 83 (5.30%) Java
5 65 (4.15%) C#
6 51 (3.25%) PL/SQL
7 49 (3.13%) C++
8 39 (2.49%) C
9 38 (2.43%) PowerShell
10 37 (2.36%) Bash
11 29 (1.85%) TypeScript
12 24 (1.53%) R
13 20 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 19 (1.21%) Ada
14 19 (1.21%) Bicep
15 17 (1.08%) Groovy
16 13 (0.83%) T-SQL
17 12 (0.77%) Scala
18 11 (0.70%) VBA
19 9 (0.57%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 352 (22.46%) Security Cleared
2 259 (16.53%) SC Cleared
3 156 (9.96%) Degree
4 56 (3.57%) Computer Science Degree
5 44 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
6 39 (2.49%) DV Cleared
7 37 (2.36%) Master's Degree
8 27 (1.72%) ISTQB
8 27 (1.72%) PMI Certification
9 21 (1.34%) PMP
10 17 (1.08%) AWS Certification
11 16 (1.02%) CBAP
12 15 (0.96%) CISSP
13 13 (0.83%) Cisco Certification
14 12 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
15 10 (0.64%) Azure Certification
15 10 (0.64%) Oracle Certification
16 9 (0.57%) CCNP
17 7 (0.45%) CCIE
17 7 (0.45%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 220 (14.04%) Data Quality
2 194 (12.38%) QA
3 83 (5.30%) GDPR
4 66 (4.21%) NIST
5 45 (2.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 27 (1.72%) Accessibility
7 21 (1.34%) IFRS
8 18 (1.15%) IFRS 17
9 17 (1.08%) Def Stans
10 14 (0.89%) PCI DSS
11 13 (0.83%) NCSC
12 12 (0.77%) COBIT
12 12 (0.77%) EU AI Act
13 11 (0.70%) PMO
14 10 (0.64%) GRC
14 10 (0.64%) MiFID
14 10 (0.64%) MISRA
15 9 (0.57%) DO-178B
15 9 (0.57%) GMP
15 9 (0.57%) GxP
System Software
1 74 (4.72%) Docker
2 39 (2.49%) Active Directory
3 29 (1.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.28%) Firmware
5 12 (0.77%) VMware NSX
6 8 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
6 8 (0.51%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.45%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.26%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 4 (0.26%) NFS
8 4 (0.26%) vSphere
9 3 (0.19%) 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%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 2 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 103 (6.57%) Kubernetes
2 70 (4.47%) Terraform
3 36 (2.30%) Ansible
4 24 (1.53%) Prometheus
5 22 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
6 21 (1.34%) Grafana
7 16 (1.02%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (0.96%) Kibana
9 14 (0.89%) Puppet
10 11 (0.70%) SCCM
11 10 (0.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 10 (0.64%) Nessus
12 7 (0.45%) Nmap
13 5 (0.32%) CASB
14 4 (0.26%) EMC VPLEX
14 4 (0.26%) SCOM
14 4 (0.26%) vMotion
15 3 (0.19%) CloudHub
15 3 (0.19%) OMEGAMON
15 3 (0.19%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 210 (13.40%) Microsoft
2 162 (10.34%) Oracle
3 125 (7.98%) SAP
4 70 (4.47%) Databricks
5 66 (4.21%) ServiceNow
6 47 (3.00%) Splunk
7 39 (2.49%) Salesforce
8 36 (2.30%) Cisco
9 35 (2.23%) VMware
10 32 (2.04%) Google
11 29 (1.85%) Workday
12 25 (1.60%) MuleSoft
13 23 (1.47%) Sage
14 22 (1.40%) Informatica
15 21 (1.34%) IBM
16 19 (1.21%) Murex
16 19 (1.21%) Palo Alto
17 14 (0.89%) Bloomberg
17 14 (0.89%) CyberArk
18 13 (0.83%) Adobe