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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 72 117
Rank change year-on-year +33 +45 +32
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,003 803 718
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.86% 3.32% 1.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.74% 3.63% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,233 489 362
10th Percentile £325 £350 £320
25th Percentile £403 £413 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £498 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.24% +5.00% -9.50%
75th Percentile £588 £630 £588
90th Percentile £700 £705 £688
UK median daily rate £486 £525 £501
% change year-on-year -7.38% +4.90% -9.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 127 56 164
10th Percentile £17.54 £20.61 £26.88
25th Percentile £34.50 £37.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.77 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.50% -6.17% -3.20%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £72.88
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £76.86
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +13.64% -8.33% -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 34,902 22,108 31,434
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.66% 91.30% 86.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,235 14,434 20,613
10th Percentile £325 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £510 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,141 960 2,249
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.42 £12.92
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.22 £16.00
Median hourly rate £46.80 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.78% -21.23% -0.11%
75th Percentile £67.84 £62.24 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year +51.79% -23.29% +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 21 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 21 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 21 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 +59 978 £501 -9.00% 290
North of England +35 271 £435 -0.57% 120
Midlands +31 240 £488 +6.21% 85
South East -7 224 £500 - 206
West Midlands +26 175 £475 +2.70% 57
North West +29 162 £420 -4.00% 74
East of England +8 118 £488 +8.33% 112
South West -2 116 £475 -17.39% 104
Yorkshire +21 99 £451 +8.03% 29
East Midlands +7 61 £525 +15.51% 28
North East -15 13 £450 -23.40% 18
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 82 (4.09%) Confluence
2 41 (2.05%) Apache Airflow
3 36 (1.80%) Apache Spark
4 35 (1.75%) SAS
5 17 (0.85%) Apache
6 14 (0.70%) SharePoint
7 10 (0.50%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.45%) Appian
9 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.35%) ArcGIS
10 7 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.20%) CMS
11 4 (0.20%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 4 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 3 (0.15%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.15%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.100%) CICS
13 2 (0.100%) Documentum
13 2 (0.100%) Exchange Server 2013
13 2 (0.100%) Umbraco
Applications
1 137 (6.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (1.50%) MS Visio
3 25 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
4 19 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 18 (0.90%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
7 4 (0.20%) CATIA
7 4 (0.20%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.15%) LaTeX
8 3 (0.15%) Notion
8 3 (0.15%) Simulink
9 2 (0.100%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.100%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.100%) Sketch
10 1 (0.050%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.050%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.050%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.050%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.050%) UXPin
10 1 (0.050%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 97 (4.84%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (1.55%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.75%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.70%) Oracle General Ledger
5 13 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
5 13 (0.65%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.60%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.50%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.45%) SAP ERP
9 8 (0.40%) Aladdin
9 8 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
9 8 (0.40%) NetSuite
9 8 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.40%) Oracle Receivables
9 8 (0.40%) Payment Gateway
10 6 (0.30%) Oracle Financials
10 6 (0.30%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.30%) SAP Business One
11 5 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
11 5 (0.25%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 394 (19.67%) Azure
2 240 (11.98%) AWS
3 197 (9.84%) Power Platform
4 100 (4.99%) GCP
5 95 (4.74%) Azure DevOps
6 89 (4.44%) GitHub
7 57 (2.85%) Snowflake
8 54 (2.70%) Azure Data Factory
9 51 (2.55%) Entra ID
10 50 (2.50%) SaaS
11 49 (2.45%) Serverless
12 45 (2.25%) GitHub Actions
13 43 (2.15%) OCI
14 39 (1.95%) Amazon S3
15 34 (1.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 31 (1.55%) dbt
17 29 (1.45%) Microsoft 365
18 23 (1.15%) AWS Lambda
19 21 (1.05%) SuccessFactors
20 20 (1.00%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 83 (4.14%) Firewall
2 56 (2.80%) Network Security
3 37 (1.85%) VLAN
4 31 (1.55%) DNS
5 30 (1.50%) TCP/IP
6 26 (1.30%) VPN
7 24 (1.20%) WAN
8 18 (0.90%) Ethernet
9 17 (0.85%) LAN
10 16 (0.80%) SAN
11 14 (0.70%) Wireless
12 13 (0.65%) SD-WAN
13 12 (0.60%) BGP
13 12 (0.60%) NAS
13 12 (0.60%) OSPF
13 12 (0.60%) Wi-Fi
14 11 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
14 11 (0.55%) DHCP
15 10 (0.50%) TACACS
16 9 (0.45%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (9.24%) Power BI
2 111 (5.54%) Data Warehouse
3 81 (4.04%) Metadata
4 71 (3.54%) Tableau
5 66 (3.30%) SQL Server
6 56 (2.80%) Data Lake
7 47 (2.35%) PostgreSQL
8 37 (1.85%) Relational Database
9 27 (1.35%) Amazon Redshift
10 26 (1.30%) NoSQL
11 25 (1.25%) Big Data
12 24 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
13 23 (1.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 22 (1.10%) Delta Lake
15 21 (1.05%) BigQuery
15 21 (1.05%) Oracle Database
16 19 (0.95%) Power Query
17 18 (0.90%) SAS Enterprise Guide
18 17 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
19 16 (0.80%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 191 (9.54%) JIRA
2 108 (5.39%) Git
3 79 (3.94%) Jenkins
4 51 (2.55%) Selenium
5 48 (2.40%) GitLab
6 45 (2.25%) Postman
7 38 (1.90%) JMeter
8 32 (1.60%) JUnit
9 30 (1.50%) Cucumber
10 25 (1.25%) Rational DOORS
10 25 (1.25%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.75%) MLflow
12 14 (0.70%) Eclipse
12 14 (0.70%) Visual Studio
13 13 (0.65%) Rational Rhapsody
14 11 (0.55%) Gatling
14 11 (0.55%) REST Assured
15 10 (0.50%) Bitbucket
15 10 (0.50%) Gradle
15 10 (0.50%) Maven
General
1 614 (30.65%) Social Skills
2 609 (30.40%) Finance
3 382 (19.07%) Analytical Skills
4 168 (8.39%) Banking
5 163 (8.14%) Public Sector
6 107 (5.34%) Documentation Skills
7 62 (3.10%) Manufacturing
8 51 (2.55%) Aerospace
9 46 (2.30%) Retail
10 41 (2.05%) Presentation Skills
11 40 (2.00%) Organisational Skills
12 33 (1.65%) Pharmaceutical
13 32 (1.60%) Marketing
14 31 (1.55%) Front Office
14 31 (1.55%) General Ledger
14 31 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
14 31 (1.55%) Legal
15 28 (1.40%) Local Government
15 28 (1.40%) Military
16 26 (1.30%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 369 (18.42%) Analyst
2 211 (10.53%) Lead
3 178 (8.89%) Senior
4 162 (8.09%) Business Analyst
5 158 (7.89%) Data Engineer
6 132 (6.59%) Consultant
7 126 (6.29%) Architect
8 112 (5.59%) Developer
9 106 (5.29%) Data Analyst
10 75 (3.74%) Project Manager
11 52 (2.60%) Tester
12 50 (2.50%) Test Engineer
13 43 (2.15%) Software Engineer
14 41 (2.05%) Test Manager
15 40 (2.00%) Network Engineer
16 39 (1.95%) Senior Analyst
17 38 (1.90%) Security Engineer
17 38 (1.90%) Systems Engineer
18 33 (1.65%) Migration Engineer
18 33 (1.65%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 102 (5.09%) REST
2 72 (3.59%) JSON
3 69 (3.44%) Kafka
4 52 (2.60%) Oracle Fusion
5 48 (2.40%) Middleware
6 46 (2.30%) OAuth
7 44 (2.20%) XML
8 40 (2.00%) PySpark
9 37 (1.85%) Swagger
10 33 (1.65%) .NET
10 33 (1.65%) RESTful
11 31 (1.55%) SOAP
12 30 (1.50%) Spring
13 29 (1.45%) Node.js
13 29 (1.45%) Pandas
14 28 (1.40%) Web Services
15 26 (1.30%) PyTorch
16 25 (1.25%) OAuth2
16 25 (1.25%) Playwright
17 24 (1.20%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 121 (6.04%) Legacy Systems
2 105 (5.24%) Data Structures
3 97 (4.84%) Onboarding
4 81 (4.04%) Product Ownership
5 67 (3.34%) Cloud Native
6 62 (3.10%) Data Centre
7 49 (2.45%) Management Information System
8 38 (1.90%) Analytical Mindset
9 34 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
10 30 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
11 26 (1.30%) Public Cloud
11 26 (1.30%) Replication
12 24 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
13 23 (1.15%) SCADA
14 22 (1.10%) Algorithms
14 22 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
15 21 (1.05%) Reference Data
16 20 (1.00%) Operational Technology
16 20 (1.00%) Virtual Team
17 19 (0.95%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 97 (4.84%) Windows
2 77 (3.84%) Linux
3 26 (1.30%) Unix
4 12 (0.60%) Windows Server
5 10 (0.50%) Android
6 9 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.25%) VMS
7 5 (0.25%) Windows 10
7 5 (0.25%) zOS
8 4 (0.20%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.20%) SUSE
9 2 (0.100%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.100%) Debian
9 2 (0.100%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.050%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.050%) HPUX
10 1 (0.050%) pSOS
10 1 (0.050%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.050%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 559 (27.91%) Migration
2 386 (19.27%) Agile
3 362 (18.07%) Problem-Solving
4 345 (17.22%) Stakeholder Management
5 343 (17.12%) Data Migration
5 343 (17.12%) Data Validation
6 310 (15.48%) CI/CD
7 308 (15.38%) Data Modelling
8 304 (15.18%) User Acceptance Testing
9 297 (14.83%) Analytics
10 274 (13.68%) ETL
11 248 (12.38%) DevOps
12 228 (11.38%) Business Intelligence
13 222 (11.08%) Test Automation
14 214 (10.68%) AI
15 212 (10.58%) Continuous Improvement
16 207 (10.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 195 (9.74%) Data Governance
18 177 (8.84%) Data Analysis
19 175 (8.74%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 484 (24.16%) SQL
2 347 (17.32%) Python
3 104 (5.19%) Java
4 53 (2.65%) C#
5 45 (2.25%) PowerShell
6 42 (2.10%) C++
7 39 (1.95%) C
7 39 (1.95%) JavaScript
8 36 (1.80%) Bash
9 27 (1.35%) Bicep
9 27 (1.35%) PL/SQL
10 26 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 26 (1.30%) R
10 26 (1.30%) TypeScript
11 20 (1.00%) Ada
11 20 (1.00%) Apex Code
12 18 (0.90%) Scala
13 14 (0.70%) MATLAB
14 12 (0.60%) VBA
15 9 (0.45%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 376 (18.77%) Security Cleared
2 269 (13.43%) SC Cleared
3 160 (7.99%) Degree
4 46 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
5 44 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
6 37 (1.85%) DV Cleared
7 34 (1.70%) PMI Certification
8 28 (1.40%) PMP
9 26 (1.30%) Master's Degree
10 24 (1.20%) Cisco Certification
11 19 (0.95%) CCNP
12 16 (0.80%) CISSP
12 16 (0.80%) ISTQB
13 15 (0.75%) CBAP
14 13 (0.65%) ACCA
14 13 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
15 12 (0.60%) AWS Certification
15 12 (0.60%) Azure Certification
16 11 (0.55%) CIMA
17 9 (0.45%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 346 (17.27%) Data Quality
2 237 (11.83%) QA
3 105 (5.24%) GDPR
4 65 (3.25%) NIST
5 54 (2.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 26 (1.30%) Accessibility
7 25 (1.25%) IFRS
8 24 (1.20%) SLA
9 23 (1.15%) PMO
10 20 (1.00%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.90%) GRC
12 17 (0.85%) Def Stans
13 14 (0.70%) HL7
14 13 (0.65%) GxP
14 13 (0.65%) MiFID
14 13 (0.65%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.60%) NCSC
15 12 (0.60%) NIST 800
16 11 (0.55%) ISO 20022
16 11 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 82 (4.09%) Docker
2 44 (2.20%) Active Directory
3 39 (1.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.00%) Firmware
5 18 (0.90%) Virtual Machines
6 13 (0.65%) Hyper-V
6 13 (0.65%) VMware NSX
7 11 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (0.40%) vSphere
10 5 (0.25%) NFS
11 4 (0.20%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 2 (0.100%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.100%) Ceph
12 2 (0.100%) KVM
12 2 (0.100%) OpenAM
12 2 (0.100%) OpenDJ
12 2 (0.100%) OpenIDM
12 2 (0.100%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.100%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 127 (6.34%) Kubernetes
2 83 (4.14%) Terraform
3 44 (2.20%) Prometheus
4 42 (2.10%) Grafana
5 41 (2.05%) Ansible
6 28 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (0.55%) FortiGate
8 11 (0.55%) Kibana
9 10 (0.50%) Puppet
10 8 (0.40%) SCCM
11 7 (0.35%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.30%) Nessus
13 5 (0.25%) CASB
13 5 (0.25%) vMotion
14 4 (0.20%) Argo
14 4 (0.20%) EMC VPLEX
14 4 (0.20%) Failover Clustering
14 4 (0.20%) Istio
14 4 (0.20%) VxRail
Vendors
1 273 (13.63%) Microsoft
2 172 (8.59%) SAP
3 171 (8.54%) Oracle
4 91 (4.54%) Databricks
5 67 (3.34%) Salesforce
6 60 (3.00%) ServiceNow
7 48 (2.40%) VMware
8 45 (2.25%) Cisco
9 40 (2.00%) Splunk
10 32 (1.60%) Google
11 30 (1.50%) Informatica
12 28 (1.40%) Workday
13 25 (1.25%) Palo Alto
13 25 (1.25%) Sage
14 23 (1.15%) MuleSoft
15 21 (1.05%) CyberArk
15 21 (1.05%) IBM
15 21 (1.05%) IFS
16 16 (0.80%) Fortinet
17 15 (0.75%) CheckPoint