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

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 69 112
Rank change year-on-year +34 +43 +37
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,408 1,001 726
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.37% 3.66% 2.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.29% 4.04% 2.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,471 613 371
10th Percentile £341 £355 £340
25th Percentile £413 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -13.04%
75th Percentile £600 £633 £588
90th Percentile £701 £700 £672
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 155 75 138
10th Percentile £17.75 £20.50 £28.00
25th Percentile £28.88 £36.99 £51.25
Median hourly rate £62.50 £60.00 £63.75
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -5.88% +1.92%
75th Percentile £76.00 £67.00 £69.72
90th Percentile £83.90 £76.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £58.75 £61.25
% change year-on-year -6.38% -4.08% -5.77%

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 38,297 24,783 30,176
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.34% 90.63% 85.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,016 15,884 19,726
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £634 £645
90th Percentile £737 £738 £753
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,362 1,330 1,950
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.29 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.99 £17.25
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -37.13% -6.43%
75th Percentile £69.75 £53.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.23 £71.46 £74.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £39.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -36.33% -7.06%

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 23 July 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 23 July 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 23 July 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 1,167 £513 -2.38% 404
South East +1 310 £510 +2.00% 216
Midlands +38 309 £475 +5.56% 108
North of England +37 303 £450 -5.26% 140
West Midlands +29 226 £468 +6.86% 60
North West +20 165 £450 -14.69% 82
East of England 0 132 £500 - 84
Yorkshire +32 127 £453 +8.57% 34
South West -12 123 £521 -9.35% 99
East Midlands +22 78 £505 +11.00% 48
North East -31 15 £425 -15.00% 25
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 74 (3.07%) Confluence
2 65 (2.70%) Apache Airflow
3 47 (1.95%) SAS
4 43 (1.79%) SharePoint
5 40 (1.66%) Apache Spark
6 29 (1.20%) Apache
7 13 (0.54%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
9 8 (0.33%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.29%) CMS
11 6 (0.25%) ArcGIS
12 5 (0.21%) Tuxedo
13 4 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 4 (0.17%) WebLogic
14 3 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
14 3 (0.12%) Appian
14 3 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
14 3 (0.12%) IIS
14 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 171 (7.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.41%) MS Visio
3 31 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
4 26 (1.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 26 (1.08%) Spreadsheet
5 10 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
6 7 (0.29%) AutoCAD
7 5 (0.21%) Simulink
8 4 (0.17%) Chatbot
9 3 (0.12%) CATIA
10 2 (0.083%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.083%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.083%) Navisworks
10 2 (0.083%) ProjectWise
10 2 (0.083%) Revit
10 2 (0.083%) Sketch
11 1 (0.042%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.042%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.042%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.042%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 114 (4.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (1.25%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.66%) Workday HCM
4 13 (0.54%) Teamcenter
5 12 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
6 11 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
6 11 (0.46%) NetSuite
6 11 (0.46%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 11 (0.46%) SAP ERP
7 10 (0.42%) Aladdin
8 9 (0.37%) iTrent
8 9 (0.37%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.37%) Sage X3
8 9 (0.37%) SAP MDG
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle General Ledger
9 8 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
10 7 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.29%) SAP HCM
10 7 (0.29%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 533 (22.13%) Azure
2 275 (11.42%) AWS
3 251 (10.42%) Power Platform
4 131 (5.44%) Azure DevOps
5 125 (5.19%) GCP
6 116 (4.82%) GitHub
7 81 (3.36%) Snowflake
8 72 (2.99%) Azure Data Factory
9 67 (2.78%) GitHub Actions
10 63 (2.62%) Entra ID
11 56 (2.33%) Serverless
12 45 (1.87%) Amazon S3
13 44 (1.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 44 (1.83%) dbt
13 44 (1.83%) Microsoft 365
14 42 (1.74%) SaaS
15 41 (1.70%) OCI
16 34 (1.41%) SuccessFactors
17 31 (1.29%) Azure Monitor
18 27 (1.12%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 110 (4.57%) Firewall
2 64 (2.66%) Network Security
3 55 (2.28%) DNS
4 45 (1.87%) VLAN
4 45 (1.87%) VPN
5 38 (1.58%) TCP/IP
6 36 (1.50%) WAN
7 30 (1.25%) BGP
8 25 (1.04%) DHCP
9 23 (0.96%) SAN
10 22 (0.91%) OSPF
10 22 (0.91%) Wireless
11 21 (0.87%) LAN
12 20 (0.83%) Internet
12 20 (0.83%) SD-WAN
13 15 (0.62%) Wi-Fi
14 14 (0.58%) Ethernet
15 13 (0.54%) NAS
16 12 (0.50%) Cisco ISE
17 10 (0.42%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 232 (9.63%) Power BI
2 139 (5.77%) Data Warehouse
3 96 (3.99%) Metadata
4 77 (3.20%) Data Lake
4 77 (3.20%) SQL Server
5 71 (2.95%) Tableau
6 68 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
7 60 (2.49%) Relational Database
8 38 (1.58%) Big Data
9 30 (1.25%) Oracle Database
10 28 (1.16%) Delta Lake
10 28 (1.16%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 27 (1.12%) BigQuery
12 26 (1.08%) Power Query
12 26 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 25 (1.04%) Amazon Redshift
13 25 (1.04%) NoSQL
14 22 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
15 20 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
16 19 (0.79%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 222 (9.22%) JIRA
2 147 (6.10%) Git
3 85 (3.53%) Jenkins
4 64 (2.66%) GitLab
5 55 (2.28%) Selenium
6 40 (1.66%) JMeter
7 37 (1.54%) Cucumber
7 37 (1.54%) Postman
8 36 (1.50%) JUnit
9 30 (1.25%) WebDriver
10 21 (0.87%) Rational DOORS
11 18 (0.75%) Eclipse
12 14 (0.58%) Visual Studio
13 12 (0.50%) Gatling
13 12 (0.50%) Rational Rhapsody
14 11 (0.46%) MLflow
15 10 (0.42%) ERwin
16 9 (0.37%) Maven
16 9 (0.37%) Oracle Forms
16 9 (0.37%) REST Assured
General
1 728 (30.23%) Finance
2 699 (29.03%) Social Skills
3 461 (19.14%) Analytical Skills
4 188 (7.81%) Public Sector
5 185 (7.68%) Banking
6 134 (5.56%) Documentation Skills
7 85 (3.53%) Manufacturing
8 81 (3.36%) Retail
9 58 (2.41%) Aerospace
10 47 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 45 (1.87%) Pharmaceutical
11 45 (1.87%) Telecoms
12 43 (1.79%) Organisational Skills
13 37 (1.54%) Automotive
14 36 (1.50%) Front Office
14 36 (1.50%) Marketing
15 32 (1.33%) Billing
15 32 (1.33%) Law
15 32 (1.33%) Legal
15 32 (1.33%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 426 (17.69%) Analyst
2 242 (10.05%) Senior
3 241 (10.01%) Lead
4 203 (8.43%) Data Engineer
5 201 (8.35%) Business Analyst
6 173 (7.18%) Consultant
7 139 (5.77%) Developer
8 131 (5.44%) Architect
9 125 (5.19%) Data Analyst
10 86 (3.57%) Test Engineer
11 72 (2.99%) Tester
12 69 (2.87%) Project Manager
13 54 (2.24%) Network Engineer
14 49 (2.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 44 (1.83%) Senior Data Engineer
15 44 (1.83%) Systems Engineer
16 39 (1.62%) Migration Engineer
17 38 (1.58%) Security Engineer
18 37 (1.54%) Technical Analyst
19 36 (1.50%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 115 (4.78%) REST
2 73 (3.03%) JSON
3 69 (2.87%) Kafka
4 57 (2.37%) PySpark
5 51 (2.12%) XML
6 47 (1.95%) Oracle Fusion
7 42 (1.74%) Spring
8 39 (1.62%) .NET
9 37 (1.54%) Middleware
10 35 (1.45%) pytest
11 31 (1.29%) OAuth
12 30 (1.25%) Pandas
12 30 (1.25%) Playwright
13 29 (1.20%) RESTful
13 29 (1.20%) SOAP
13 29 (1.20%) Web Services
14 27 (1.12%) Node.js
15 25 (1.04%) WireMock
16 22 (0.91%) Spring Boot
16 22 (0.91%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 132 (5.48%) Data Structures
2 128 (5.32%) Onboarding
3 122 (5.07%) Legacy Systems
4 100 (4.15%) Cloud Native
5 99 (4.11%) Product Ownership
6 66 (2.74%) Data Centre
7 59 (2.45%) Management Information System
8 48 (1.99%) Distributed Systems
9 47 (1.95%) Analytical Mindset
10 39 (1.62%) AI Agents
11 38 (1.58%) SCADA
12 36 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
12 36 (1.50%) Hybrid Cloud
13 31 (1.29%) Life Science
14 30 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
14 30 (1.25%) Reference Data
15 29 (1.20%) Public Cloud
16 28 (1.16%) Virtual Team
17 27 (1.12%) Distributed Architecture
17 27 (1.12%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 136 (5.65%) Windows
2 86 (3.57%) Linux
3 37 (1.54%) Windows Server
4 22 (0.91%) Unix
5 18 (0.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.42%) Android
6 10 (0.42%) Ubuntu
7 6 (0.25%) VMS
7 6 (0.25%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.21%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.17%) SUSE
10 3 (0.12%) Mac OS
10 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.083%) HPUX
11 2 (0.083%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.083%) zOS
12 1 (0.042%) Debian
12 1 (0.042%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.042%) Solaris
12 1 (0.042%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 672 (27.91%) Migration
2 462 (19.19%) Agile
3 447 (18.56%) Stakeholder Management
4 412 (17.11%) Analytics
5 411 (17.07%) CI/CD
6 407 (16.90%) Data Migration
7 392 (16.28%) Data Validation
8 389 (16.15%) User Acceptance Testing
9 375 (15.57%) Data Modelling
10 371 (15.41%) Problem-Solving
11 310 (12.87%) AI
12 306 (12.71%) ETL
13 300 (12.46%) DevOps
14 290 (12.04%) Test Automation
15 282 (11.71%) Continuous Improvement
16 269 (11.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 268 (11.13%) Business Intelligence
18 249 (10.34%) Data Governance
19 246 (10.22%) Data Pipeline
20 237 (9.84%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 586 (24.34%) SQL
2 434 (18.02%) Python
3 109 (4.53%) Java
4 75 (3.11%) PowerShell
5 52 (2.16%) C#
6 45 (1.87%) Bash
7 37 (1.54%) JavaScript
8 33 (1.37%) C++
9 32 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 30 (1.25%) Bicep
11 27 (1.12%) Apex Code
11 27 (1.12%) TypeScript
12 25 (1.04%) PL/SQL
13 24 (1.00%) C
14 23 (0.96%) VBA
15 22 (0.91%) R
16 15 (0.62%) Ada
17 14 (0.58%) MATLAB
17 14 (0.58%) T-SQL
18 12 (0.50%) Scala
Qualifications
1 437 (18.15%) Security Cleared
2 310 (12.87%) SC Cleared
3 170 (7.06%) Degree
4 61 (2.53%) DV Cleared
5 50 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
6 37 (1.54%) Cisco Certification
7 34 (1.41%) Computer Science Degree
8 29 (1.20%) CCNP
9 23 (0.96%) PMI Certification
10 19 (0.79%) ISTQB
10 19 (0.79%) PMP
11 18 (0.75%) ACCA
11 18 (0.75%) Microsoft Certification
12 17 (0.71%) CIMA
12 17 (0.71%) CISSP
13 16 (0.66%) Azure Certification
14 13 (0.54%) Master's Degree
15 12 (0.50%) AWS Certification
15 12 (0.50%) CCNA
16 10 (0.42%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 455 (18.90%) Data Quality
2 281 (11.67%) QA
3 106 (4.40%) GDPR
4 52 (2.16%) NIST
5 44 (1.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 38 (1.58%) Accessibility
7 36 (1.50%) PMO
8 29 (1.20%) SLA
9 19 (0.79%) GxP
10 16 (0.66%) GRC
11 14 (0.58%) HL7
11 14 (0.58%) IFRS
12 13 (0.54%) Def Stans
12 13 (0.54%) NCSC
13 12 (0.50%) ISO 20022
13 12 (0.50%) NIST 800
13 12 (0.50%) Solvency II
14 11 (0.46%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 11 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
14 11 (0.46%) WCAG
System Software
1 104 (4.32%) Docker
2 75 (3.11%) Active Directory
3 58 (2.41%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (1.12%) Virtual Machines
5 21 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
6 18 (0.75%) Virtual Desktop
7 14 (0.58%) Firmware
8 13 (0.54%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.54%) vSphere
9 12 (0.50%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.21%) NFS
11 3 (0.12%) KVM
11 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.083%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.083%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.083%) VirtualBox
12 2 (0.083%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.042%) Ceph
13 1 (0.042%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.042%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 146 (6.06%) Kubernetes
2 117 (4.86%) Terraform
3 53 (2.20%) Ansible
4 50 (2.08%) Prometheus
5 48 (1.99%) Grafana
6 23 (0.96%) Microsoft Intune
7 22 (0.91%) FortiGate
8 21 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.54%) SCCM
10 11 (0.46%) vCenter Server
11 8 (0.33%) VxRail
12 6 (0.25%) HP ALM
13 5 (0.21%) CASB
13 5 (0.21%) vMotion
13 5 (0.21%) vRealize
14 4 (0.17%) EMC VPLEX
14 4 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
14 4 (0.17%) Nessus
14 4 (0.17%) Puppet
14 4 (0.17%) systemd
Vendors
1 350 (14.53%) Microsoft
2 221 (9.18%) SAP
3 208 (8.64%) Oracle
4 133 (5.52%) Databricks
5 84 (3.49%) Salesforce
6 69 (2.87%) VMware
7 57 (2.37%) ServiceNow
8 55 (2.28%) Cisco
9 47 (1.95%) Workday
10 38 (1.58%) Splunk
11 35 (1.45%) Google
12 34 (1.41%) Informatica
13 29 (1.20%) Fortinet
14 28 (1.16%) Juniper
15 27 (1.12%) Palo Alto
16 25 (1.04%) IBM
16 25 (1.04%) Sage
17 24 (1.00%) Zscaler
18 22 (0.91%) MuleSoft
19 20 (0.83%) IFS