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 26 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 71 110
Rank change year-on-year +36 +39 +36
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,294 902 761
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.29% 3.58% 2.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.19% 3.92% 2.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,396 556 374
10th Percentile £338 £353 £320
25th Percentile £413 £422 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -13.04%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £588
90th Percentile £700 £701 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 154 61 179
10th Percentile £17.75 £18.22 £27.78
25th Percentile £30.27 £37.50 £47.92
Median hourly rate £64.07 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.78% - -4.08%
75th Percentile £75.75 £67.00 £71.50
90th Percentile £83.53 £77.50 £76.86
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £58.88 £60.00
% change year-on-year +6.16% -1.88% -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 37,044 23,037 31,936
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.35% 91.39% 85.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,386 14,872 20,693
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £417 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £729 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £502 £525
% change year-on-year +2.54% -4.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,321 1,118 2,341
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -34.02% +8.48%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £72.90
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%

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 26 June 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 26 June 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 26 June 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 +51 1,097 £517 -6.05% 302
North of England +42 305 £450 - 128
Midlands +34 283 £492 +9.33% 107
South East +1 271 £501 +0.25% 257
West Midlands +33 205 £481 +19.29% 57
North West +24 171 £440 -2.22% 63
East of England +11 134 £500 - 69
South West 0 133 £504 -12.39% 100
Yorkshire +27 120 £460 +10.42% 40
East Midlands +28 73 £525 +15.51% 50
North East -17 17 £425 -22.73% 26
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 78 (3.40%) Confluence
2 60 (2.62%) Apache Airflow
3 46 (2.01%) SAS
4 41 (1.79%) Apache Spark
5 39 (1.70%) SharePoint
6 24 (1.05%) Apache
7 14 (0.61%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
9 8 (0.35%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.31%) Appian
10 7 (0.31%) CMS
10 7 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.26%) ArcGIS
12 5 (0.22%) Tuxedo
13 3 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
13 3 (0.13%) IIS
13 3 (0.13%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
13 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 159 (6.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.53%) MS Visio
3 28 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
4 27 (1.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 22 (0.96%) Spreadsheet
6 8 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
7 5 (0.22%) AutoCAD
7 5 (0.22%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.17%) Simulink
9 3 (0.13%) CATIA
10 2 (0.087%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.087%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.087%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.087%) Sketch
11 1 (0.044%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.044%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.044%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.044%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.044%) UXPin
11 1 (0.044%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 114 (4.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.44%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
3 15 (0.65%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.61%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.52%) Oracle General Ledger
5 12 (0.52%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
6 10 (0.44%) SAP ERP
7 8 (0.35%) Aladdin
7 8 (0.35%) iTrent
7 8 (0.35%) NetSuite
7 8 (0.35%) Oracle Financials
8 7 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
8 7 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
8 7 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
8 7 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.31%) Sage X3
8 7 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
9 6 (0.26%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 487 (21.23%) Azure
2 282 (12.29%) AWS
3 226 (9.85%) Power Platform
4 123 (5.36%) Azure DevOps
5 120 (5.23%) GCP
6 110 (4.80%) GitHub
7 75 (3.27%) Snowflake
8 63 (2.75%) Entra ID
9 61 (2.66%) Azure Data Factory
10 60 (2.62%) GitHub Actions
11 55 (2.40%) Serverless
12 43 (1.87%) SaaS
13 42 (1.83%) Amazon S3
14 41 (1.79%) Microsoft 365
15 38 (1.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 38 (1.66%) dbt
15 38 (1.66%) OCI
16 30 (1.31%) SuccessFactors
17 28 (1.22%) Salesforce Service Cloud
18 24 (1.05%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 100 (4.36%) Firewall
2 62 (2.70%) Network Security
3 41 (1.79%) VLAN
4 38 (1.66%) DNS
5 37 (1.61%) WAN
6 33 (1.44%) VPN
7 29 (1.26%) TCP/IP
8 27 (1.18%) BGP
9 23 (1.00%) SAN
10 22 (0.96%) Wireless
11 21 (0.92%) LAN
12 20 (0.87%) SD-WAN
13 19 (0.83%) OSPF
14 17 (0.74%) Ethernet
15 16 (0.70%) Internet
16 15 (0.65%) DHCP
16 15 (0.65%) Wi-Fi
17 14 (0.61%) Cisco ISE
18 12 (0.52%) NAS
18 12 (0.52%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 210 (9.15%) Power BI
2 125 (5.45%) Data Warehouse
3 83 (3.62%) Metadata
4 80 (3.49%) SQL Server
5 69 (3.01%) Tableau
6 67 (2.92%) PostgreSQL
7 64 (2.79%) Data Lake
8 56 (2.44%) Relational Database
9 32 (1.39%) Big Data
10 28 (1.22%) Oracle Database
10 28 (1.22%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 26 (1.13%) Amazon Redshift
12 25 (1.09%) BigQuery
12 25 (1.09%) NoSQL
13 24 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 23 (1.00%) Power Query
15 22 (0.96%) Oracle Reports
16 21 (0.92%) Delta Lake
17 19 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
18 18 (0.78%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 228 (9.94%) JIRA
2 133 (5.80%) Git
3 89 (3.88%) Jenkins
4 66 (2.88%) GitLab
5 54 (2.35%) Selenium
6 43 (1.87%) Postman
7 41 (1.79%) JMeter
8 36 (1.57%) JUnit
9 35 (1.53%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.31%) WebDriver
11 25 (1.09%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.78%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.70%) Rational Rhapsody
13 16 (0.70%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.65%) Gatling
15 13 (0.57%) MLflow
16 10 (0.44%) Maven
16 10 (0.44%) REST Assured
17 9 (0.39%) Gradle
17 9 (0.39%) Oracle Forms
General
1 695 (30.30%) Finance
2 688 (29.99%) Social Skills
3 438 (19.09%) Analytical Skills
4 189 (8.24%) Public Sector
5 182 (7.93%) Banking
6 129 (5.62%) Documentation Skills
7 73 (3.18%) Manufacturing
8 63 (2.75%) Aerospace
8 63 (2.75%) Retail
9 42 (1.83%) Organisational Skills
10 41 (1.79%) Pharmaceutical
11 40 (1.74%) Telecoms
12 38 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 36 (1.57%) Front Office
13 36 (1.57%) General Ledger
14 35 (1.53%) Marketing
15 33 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
15 33 (1.44%) Legal
16 32 (1.39%) Law
17 31 (1.35%) Military
Job Titles
1 398 (17.35%) Analyst
2 236 (10.29%) Senior
3 229 (9.98%) Lead
4 190 (8.28%) Business Analyst
5 173 (7.54%) Data Engineer
6 165 (7.19%) Consultant
7 141 (6.15%) Architect
8 136 (5.93%) Developer
9 118 (5.14%) Data Analyst
10 74 (3.23%) Project Manager
10 74 (3.23%) Test Engineer
11 60 (2.62%) Tester
12 47 (2.05%) Network Engineer
13 45 (1.96%) Test Manager
14 43 (1.87%) Systems Engineer
15 42 (1.83%) Security Engineer
16 41 (1.79%) Software Engineer
17 40 (1.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 40 (1.74%) Senior Data Engineer
18 38 (1.66%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 115 (5.01%) REST
2 70 (3.05%) JSON
3 68 (2.96%) Kafka
4 51 (2.22%) Oracle Fusion
5 48 (2.09%) XML
6 46 (2.01%) PySpark
7 43 (1.87%) OAuth
8 42 (1.83%) Middleware
9 39 (1.70%) Spring
10 37 (1.61%) .NET
11 34 (1.48%) SOAP
12 33 (1.44%) RESTful
13 32 (1.39%) pytest
13 32 (1.39%) Web Services
14 31 (1.35%) Playwright
14 31 (1.35%) Swagger
15 30 (1.31%) Pandas
16 29 (1.26%) Node.js
17 25 (1.09%) JWT
17 25 (1.09%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 125 (5.45%) Legacy Systems
2 110 (4.80%) Data Structures
3 105 (4.58%) Onboarding
4 91 (3.97%) Product Ownership
5 89 (3.88%) Cloud Native
6 69 (3.01%) Data Centre
7 55 (2.40%) Management Information System
8 51 (2.22%) Analytical Mindset
9 48 (2.09%) Distributed Systems
10 36 (1.57%) SCADA
11 32 (1.39%) AI Agents
12 29 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
13 28 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
13 28 (1.22%) Life Science
14 27 (1.18%) Distributed Architecture
14 27 (1.18%) Hybrid Cloud
14 27 (1.18%) Public Cloud
15 26 (1.13%) Virtual Team
16 25 (1.09%) NHS
16 25 (1.09%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 122 (5.32%) Windows
2 83 (3.62%) Linux
3 23 (1.00%) Unix
4 22 (0.96%) Windows Server
5 16 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (0.48%) Android
7 7 (0.31%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.26%) VMS
8 6 (0.26%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.17%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.17%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.17%) SUSE
10 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.087%) HPUX
11 2 (0.087%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.087%) zOS
12 1 (0.044%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.044%) pSOS
12 1 (0.044%) Solaris
12 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 632 (27.55%) Migration
2 452 (19.70%) Agile
3 411 (17.92%) Stakeholder Management
4 392 (17.09%) Data Validation
5 391 (17.04%) CI/CD
6 379 (16.52%) Problem-Solving
7 376 (16.39%) Data Migration
8 362 (15.78%) User Acceptance Testing
9 358 (15.61%) Analytics
10 346 (15.08%) Data Modelling
11 292 (12.73%) AI
12 289 (12.60%) ETL
13 288 (12.55%) DevOps
14 277 (12.07%) Test Automation
15 250 (10.90%) Continuous Improvement
16 245 (10.68%) Business Intelligence
17 240 (10.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 221 (9.63%) Data Analysis
19 218 (9.50%) Data Governance
20 207 (9.02%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 559 (24.37%) SQL
2 397 (17.31%) Python
3 114 (4.97%) Java
4 62 (2.70%) PowerShell
5 51 (2.22%) C#
6 39 (1.70%) C++
7 37 (1.61%) JavaScript
8 36 (1.57%) Bash
9 34 (1.48%) C
10 31 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 29 (1.26%) TypeScript
12 27 (1.18%) Apex Code
13 26 (1.13%) PL/SQL
14 24 (1.05%) Bicep
15 22 (0.96%) R
16 21 (0.92%) Ada
17 18 (0.78%) Scala
17 18 (0.78%) VBA
18 16 (0.70%) MATLAB
19 14 (0.61%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 420 (18.31%) Security Cleared
2 304 (13.25%) SC Cleared
3 170 (7.41%) Degree
4 55 (2.40%) BPSS Clearance
5 49 (2.14%) DV Cleared
6 42 (1.83%) Computer Science Degree
7 32 (1.39%) Cisco Certification
8 31 (1.35%) PMI Certification
9 24 (1.05%) CCNP
9 24 (1.05%) PMP
10 20 (0.87%) CISSP
11 18 (0.78%) Master's Degree
12 17 (0.74%) ACCA
13 16 (0.70%) ISTQB
14 15 (0.65%) Azure Certification
14 15 (0.65%) CIMA
14 15 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
15 13 (0.57%) AWS Certification
16 12 (0.52%) CCNA
17 9 (0.39%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 399 (17.39%) Data Quality
2 270 (11.77%) QA
3 107 (4.66%) GDPR
4 60 (2.62%) NIST
5 54 (2.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 33 (1.44%) Accessibility
7 31 (1.35%) PMO
8 27 (1.18%) SLA
9 24 (1.05%) IFRS
10 18 (0.78%) GxP
11 17 (0.74%) Def Stans
12 16 (0.70%) GRC
12 16 (0.70%) IFRS 17
13 14 (0.61%) HL7
14 13 (0.57%) Solvency II
15 12 (0.52%) NCSC
15 12 (0.52%) NIST 800
16 11 (0.48%) ISO 20022
16 11 (0.48%) PCI DSS
16 11 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 102 (4.45%) Docker
2 60 (2.62%) Active Directory
3 54 (2.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.05%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
6 15 (0.65%) Firmware
7 14 (0.61%) Hyper-V
7 14 (0.61%) VMware NSX
8 10 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 10 (0.44%) vSphere
9 5 (0.22%) KVM
9 5 (0.22%) NFS
10 4 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 2 (0.087%) BitLocker
11 2 (0.087%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.087%) VirtualBox
11 2 (0.087%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.044%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.044%) OpenSSH
12 1 (0.044%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 144 (6.28%) Kubernetes
2 106 (4.62%) Terraform
3 50 (2.18%) Prometheus
4 47 (2.05%) Ansible
5 46 (2.01%) Grafana
6 26 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (0.92%) FortiGate
8 19 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
9 9 (0.39%) vCenter Server
10 8 (0.35%) SCCM
11 6 (0.26%) Kibana
11 6 (0.26%) Nessus
11 6 (0.26%) Puppet
11 6 (0.26%) VxRail
12 5 (0.22%) CASB
12 5 (0.22%) vMotion
13 4 (0.17%) Argo
13 4 (0.17%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.17%) Istio
Vendors
1 307 (13.38%) Microsoft
2 208 (9.07%) SAP
3 199 (8.67%) Oracle
4 107 (4.66%) Databricks
5 82 (3.57%) Salesforce
6 66 (2.88%) ServiceNow
7 64 (2.79%) VMware
8 52 (2.27%) Cisco
9 40 (1.74%) Splunk
10 38 (1.66%) Workday
11 32 (1.39%) Google
11 32 (1.39%) Informatica
12 27 (1.18%) Palo Alto
13 25 (1.09%) MuleSoft
13 25 (1.09%) Sage
14 24 (1.05%) Fortinet
15 20 (0.87%) IBM
15 20 (0.87%) IFS
15 20 (0.87%) Juniper
16 18 (0.78%) Zscaler