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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 70 109
Rank change year-on-year +35 +39 +33
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,408 962 770
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.39% 3.57% 2.07%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.30% 3.93% 2.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,464 593 384
10th Percentile £340 £351 £322
25th Percentile £413 £423 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -11.50%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £589
90th Percentile £704 £700 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 67 172
10th Percentile £17.75 £19.59 £26.99
25th Percentile £30.27 £39.38 £47.83
Median hourly rate £62.50 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.75 £68.78
90th Percentile £83.75 £76.00 £75.25
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £58.88 £60.00
% change year-on-year +1.91% -1.88% -6.42%

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 38,237 24,502 31,943
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.52% 90.81% 85.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,096 15,746 20,754
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £733 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,381 1,253 2,276
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.98 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -6.07%
75th Percentile £68.75 £54.01 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.37 £70.16 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -6.25%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +44 1,159 £517 -6.05% 363
North of England +36 311 £450 - 127
Midlands +35 300 £488 +11.43% 116
South East +5 300 £515 +3.00% 219
West Midlands +30 219 £475 +17.28% 56
North West +26 168 £450 -4.10% 64
East of England +9 134 £500 +5.26% 73
South West -8 131 £514 -10.65% 78
Yorkshire +33 130 £461 +10.53% 44
East Midlands +25 76 £525 +15.51% 60
North East -22 16 £425 -22.73% 19
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 80 (3.32%) Confluence
2 62 (2.57%) Apache Airflow
3 48 (1.99%) SAS
4 44 (1.83%) SharePoint
5 39 (1.62%) Apache Spark
6 25 (1.04%) Apache
7 13 (0.54%) Jupyter
8 10 (0.42%) 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%) Appian
12 5 (0.21%) Tuxedo
13 3 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
13 3 (0.12%) IIS
13 3 (0.12%) JBoss
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
13 3 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
13 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 169 (7.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 37 (1.54%) MS Visio
3 31 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
4 27 (1.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 23 (0.96%) Spreadsheet
6 8 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
7 5 (0.21%) AutoCAD
7 5 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.21%) Simulink
8 3 (0.12%) CATIA
9 2 (0.083%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.083%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.083%) Sketch
10 1 (0.042%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.042%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.042%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.042%) LaTeX
10 1 (0.042%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.042%) UXPin
10 1 (0.042%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 116 (4.82%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.37%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.66%) Oracle Payables
4 15 (0.62%) Teamcenter
5 14 (0.58%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 13 (0.54%) Workday HCM
7 12 (0.50%) Oracle General Ledger
8 11 (0.46%) Oracle Assets
8 11 (0.46%) SAP ERP
9 10 (0.42%) iTrent
9 10 (0.42%) NetSuite
10 9 (0.37%) Aladdin
10 9 (0.37%) Oracle Financials
11 8 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
11 8 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
11 8 (0.33%) SAP MDG
12 7 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
12 7 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
12 7 (0.29%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 513 (21.30%) Azure
2 281 (11.67%) AWS
3 240 (9.97%) Power Platform
4 134 (5.56%) Azure DevOps
5 123 (5.11%) GCP
6 109 (4.53%) GitHub
7 78 (3.24%) Snowflake
8 63 (2.62%) GitHub Actions
9 62 (2.57%) Azure Data Factory
9 62 (2.57%) Entra ID
10 57 (2.37%) Serverless
11 44 (1.83%) Amazon S3
12 43 (1.79%) Microsoft 365
12 43 (1.79%) OCI
12 43 (1.79%) SaaS
13 41 (1.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 41 (1.70%) dbt
14 32 (1.33%) SuccessFactors
15 28 (1.16%) Salesforce Service Cloud
16 26 (1.08%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 105 (4.36%) Firewall
2 63 (2.62%) Network Security
3 47 (1.95%) DNS
4 41 (1.70%) VLAN
5 36 (1.50%) WAN
6 34 (1.41%) VPN
7 29 (1.20%) TCP/IP
8 27 (1.12%) BGP
9 23 (0.96%) Wireless
10 22 (0.91%) LAN
10 22 (0.91%) SAN
11 20 (0.83%) SD-WAN
12 19 (0.79%) OSPF
13 18 (0.75%) Internet
14 16 (0.66%) DHCP
14 16 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
15 15 (0.62%) Ethernet
16 13 (0.54%) Cisco ISE
17 12 (0.50%) NAS
18 10 (0.42%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 224 (9.30%) Power BI
2 130 (5.40%) Data Warehouse
3 89 (3.70%) Metadata
4 78 (3.24%) SQL Server
5 72 (2.99%) Data Lake
6 71 (2.95%) Tableau
7 69 (2.87%) PostgreSQL
8 57 (2.37%) Relational Database
9 34 (1.41%) Big Data
10 30 (1.25%) Oracle Database
11 29 (1.20%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 26 (1.08%) Amazon Redshift
12 26 (1.08%) NoSQL
13 25 (1.04%) BigQuery
13 25 (1.04%) Delta Lake
13 25 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 23 (0.96%) Power Query
15 22 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
16 19 (0.79%) Amazon Athena
17 18 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 231 (9.59%) JIRA
2 139 (5.77%) Git
3 90 (3.74%) Jenkins
4 67 (2.78%) GitLab
5 56 (2.33%) Selenium
6 44 (1.83%) Postman
7 43 (1.79%) JMeter
8 37 (1.54%) Cucumber
9 36 (1.50%) JUnit
10 30 (1.25%) WebDriver
11 26 (1.08%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.75%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.66%) Gatling
13 16 (0.66%) Rational Rhapsody
13 16 (0.66%) Visual Studio
14 12 (0.50%) MLflow
15 10 (0.42%) Maven
15 10 (0.42%) REST Assured
16 9 (0.37%) Oracle Forms
17 8 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 723 (30.02%) Finance
2 718 (29.82%) Social Skills
3 455 (18.90%) Analytical Skills
4 195 (8.10%) Public Sector
5 192 (7.97%) Banking
6 137 (5.69%) Documentation Skills
7 83 (3.45%) Manufacturing
8 68 (2.82%) Retail
9 65 (2.70%) Aerospace
10 46 (1.91%) Telecoms
11 45 (1.87%) Pharmaceutical
12 43 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 43 (1.79%) Organisational Skills
13 38 (1.58%) Front Office
14 37 (1.54%) Marketing
15 35 (1.45%) General Ledger
16 33 (1.37%) Law
16 33 (1.37%) Legal
17 32 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
18 31 (1.29%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 422 (17.52%) Analyst
2 244 (10.13%) Lead
3 238 (9.88%) Senior
4 201 (8.35%) Business Analyst
5 196 (8.14%) Data Engineer
6 170 (7.06%) Consultant
7 141 (5.86%) Architect
8 137 (5.69%) Developer
9 123 (5.11%) Data Analyst
10 85 (3.53%) Test Engineer
11 71 (2.95%) Project Manager
12 62 (2.57%) Tester
13 49 (2.03%) Network Engineer
14 45 (1.87%) Senior Data Engineer
15 44 (1.83%) Security Engineer
15 44 (1.83%) Test Manager
16 43 (1.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 42 (1.74%) Systems Engineer
18 41 (1.70%) Software Engineer
19 39 (1.62%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (4.65%) REST
2 72 (2.99%) JSON
3 71 (2.95%) Kafka
4 52 (2.16%) Oracle Fusion
5 51 (2.12%) PySpark
6 49 (2.03%) XML
7 43 (1.79%) Middleware
8 42 (1.74%) Spring
9 39 (1.62%) .NET
10 38 (1.58%) OAuth
11 34 (1.41%) Playwright
11 34 (1.41%) pytest
12 32 (1.33%) RESTful
13 31 (1.29%) Web Services
14 30 (1.25%) Node.js
14 30 (1.25%) Pandas
14 30 (1.25%) SOAP
15 25 (1.04%) Swagger
15 25 (1.04%) WireMock
16 23 (0.96%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 127 (5.27%) Legacy Systems
2 119 (4.94%) Onboarding
3 118 (4.90%) Data Structures
4 101 (4.19%) Cloud Native
5 97 (4.03%) Product Ownership
6 68 (2.82%) Data Centre
7 54 (2.24%) Management Information System
8 47 (1.95%) Analytical Mindset
8 47 (1.95%) Distributed Systems
9 39 (1.62%) SCADA
10 34 (1.41%) AI Agents
11 33 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
11 33 (1.37%) Life Science
12 30 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
13 27 (1.12%) Distributed Architecture
13 27 (1.12%) NHS
13 27 (1.12%) Operational Technology
13 27 (1.12%) Public Cloud
13 27 (1.12%) Virtual Team
14 26 (1.08%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 129 (5.36%) Windows
2 79 (3.28%) Linux
3 30 (1.25%) Windows Server
4 21 (0.87%) Unix
5 17 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (0.37%) Android
7 7 (0.29%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.25%) VMS
8 6 (0.25%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.17%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.17%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.17%) SUSE
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%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.042%) pSOS
12 1 (0.042%) Solaris
12 1 (0.042%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 664 (27.57%) Migration
2 465 (19.31%) Agile
3 432 (17.94%) Stakeholder Management
4 410 (17.03%) CI/CD
5 404 (16.78%) Data Validation
6 399 (16.57%) Analytics
7 398 (16.53%) Data Migration
8 388 (16.11%) User Acceptance Testing
9 382 (15.86%) Problem-Solving
10 365 (15.16%) Data Modelling
11 305 (12.67%) AI
12 304 (12.62%) DevOps
13 303 (12.58%) ETL
14 295 (12.25%) Test Automation
15 273 (11.34%) Continuous Improvement
16 266 (11.05%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 262 (10.88%) Business Intelligence
18 236 (9.80%) Data Analysis
18 236 (9.80%) Data Governance
19 232 (9.63%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 571 (23.71%) SQL
2 426 (17.69%) Python
3 118 (4.90%) Java
4 66 (2.74%) PowerShell
5 54 (2.24%) C#
6 41 (1.70%) C++
7 39 (1.62%) Bash
7 39 (1.62%) JavaScript
8 33 (1.37%) C
8 33 (1.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 32 (1.33%) TypeScript
10 28 (1.16%) Apex Code
11 27 (1.12%) Bicep
12 25 (1.04%) PL/SQL
13 24 (1.00%) R
14 23 (0.96%) VBA
15 22 (0.91%) Ada
16 20 (0.83%) Scala
17 17 (0.71%) MATLAB
18 14 (0.58%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 439 (18.23%) Security Cleared
2 316 (13.12%) SC Cleared
3 174 (7.23%) Degree
4 57 (2.37%) DV Cleared
5 54 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
6 39 (1.62%) Computer Science Degree
7 33 (1.37%) Cisco Certification
8 27 (1.12%) PMI Certification
9 25 (1.04%) CCNP
10 22 (0.91%) PMP
11 20 (0.83%) CISSP
12 18 (0.75%) ACCA
13 17 (0.71%) Master's Degree
13 17 (0.71%) Microsoft Certification
14 16 (0.66%) Azure Certification
14 16 (0.66%) CIMA
14 16 (0.66%) ISTQB
15 14 (0.58%) AWS Certification
16 12 (0.50%) CCNA
17 9 (0.37%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 429 (17.82%) Data Quality
2 284 (11.79%) QA
3 110 (4.57%) GDPR
4 59 (2.45%) NIST
5 54 (2.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 36 (1.50%) Accessibility
7 35 (1.45%) PMO
8 28 (1.16%) SLA
9 20 (0.83%) GxP
9 20 (0.83%) IFRS
10 18 (0.75%) GRC
11 17 (0.71%) Def Stans
12 14 (0.58%) HL7
13 13 (0.54%) NCSC
13 13 (0.54%) Solvency II
14 12 (0.50%) IFRS 17
14 12 (0.50%) NIST 800
15 11 (0.46%) ISO 20022
15 11 (0.46%) PCI DSS
16 10 (0.42%) WCAG
System Software
1 102 (4.24%) Docker
2 65 (2.70%) Active Directory
3 59 (2.45%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (1.12%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
6 15 (0.62%) Virtual Desktop
7 14 (0.58%) Firmware
7 14 (0.58%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.54%) vSphere
9 12 (0.50%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.21%) NFS
11 4 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.12%) KVM
12 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.083%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.083%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.083%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.042%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.042%) OpenSSH
14 1 (0.042%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 148 (6.15%) Kubernetes
2 110 (4.57%) Terraform
3 50 (2.08%) Prometheus
4 47 (1.95%) Grafana
5 45 (1.87%) Ansible
6 25 (1.04%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (0.87%) FortiGate
8 20 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (0.42%) SCCM
10 9 (0.37%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.25%) Nessus
11 6 (0.25%) VxRail
12 5 (0.21%) CASB
12 5 (0.21%) HP ALM
12 5 (0.21%) Kibana
12 5 (0.21%) Puppet
12 5 (0.21%) vMotion
13 4 (0.17%) Argo
13 4 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.17%) Istio
Vendors
1 330 (13.70%) Microsoft
2 215 (8.93%) SAP
3 206 (8.55%) Oracle
4 119 (4.94%) Databricks
5 84 (3.49%) Salesforce
6 70 (2.91%) VMware
7 62 (2.57%) ServiceNow
8 54 (2.24%) Cisco
9 42 (1.74%) Workday
10 39 (1.62%) Splunk
11 34 (1.41%) Google
12 32 (1.33%) Informatica
13 27 (1.12%) Fortinet
13 27 (1.12%) Palo Alto
14 26 (1.08%) IBM
15 23 (0.96%) Juniper
16 22 (0.91%) MuleSoft
16 22 (0.91%) Sage
17 20 (0.83%) IFS
18 18 (0.75%) CyberArk