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

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 103 125
Rank change year-on-year +50 +22 +7
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,554 647 688
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.39% 2.51% 1.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.04% 2.79% 2.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 952 367 392
10th Percentile £350 £346 £315
25th Percentile £403 £413 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £499 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.05% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £615
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £492 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -6.29% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 34 141
10th Percentile £34.35 £25.56 £24.25
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% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.44 £75.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.18 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +3.92%

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 30,862 23,227 32,534
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.27% 90.15% 87.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,776 14,571 21,606
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £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 1,913 757 2,031
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £28.00 £35.00 £34.21
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +2.31% -2.26%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £59.94
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.35 £71.90
UK median hourly rate £26.61 £32.66 £33.07
% change year-on-year -18.53% -1.24% -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 26 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 26 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 26 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 +67 730 £513 -6.82% 147
North of England +31 210 £420 -4.00% 106
South East +13 182 £501 +0.25% 145
Midlands +29 147 £492 +0.61% 109
North West +27 139 £400 -3.03% 63
South West +13 130 £475 -17.39% 67
West Midlands +20 121 £493 -0.51% 74
East of England +29 103 £475 +11.76% 79
Yorkshire -9 63 £465 +2.48% 31
East Midlands -11 24 £450 +22.62% 34
North East -6 11 £463 -43.94% 13
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 62 (3.99%) Confluence
2 31 (1.99%) Apache Spark
2 31 (1.99%) SAS
3 25 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
4 24 (1.54%) SharePoint
5 16 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
6 15 (0.97%) Apache
7 9 (0.58%) Appian
7 9 (0.58%) CMS
8 8 (0.51%) Skype for Business
9 6 (0.39%) Exchange Server 2013
9 6 (0.39%) Jupyter
9 6 (0.39%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 4 (0.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.26%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.26%) Mattermost
10 4 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.19%) Smallworld
11 3 (0.19%) WebLogic
Applications
1 78 (5.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (1.93%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (1.42%) MS Visio
4 15 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.51%) Chatbot
5 8 (0.51%) Microsoft Project
6 6 (0.39%) Sketch
6 6 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.26%) Notion
8 3 (0.19%) LaTeX
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 (4.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 21 (1.35%) Oracle EBS
3 11 (0.71%) Oracle General Ledger
3 11 (0.71%) Oracle Payables
3 11 (0.71%) Workday HCM
4 10 (0.64%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 9 (0.58%) 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 Subledger Accounting
7 7 (0.45%) SAP MDG
7 7 (0.45%) SAP MM
8 6 (0.39%) Oracle Financials
8 6 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.39%) SAP EHS
8 6 (0.39%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 359 (23.10%) Azure
2 181 (11.65%) AWS
3 127 (8.17%) Power Platform
4 119 (7.66%) Azure DevOps
5 72 (4.63%) GCP
6 67 (4.31%) GitHub
7 55 (3.54%) Entra ID
8 47 (3.02%) Serverless
9 46 (2.96%) SaaS
10 44 (2.83%) Azure Data Factory
11 38 (2.45%) GitHub Actions
12 34 (2.19%) OCI
13 32 (2.06%) Snowflake
14 28 (1.80%) OpenShift
15 27 (1.74%) Amazon S3
16 23 (1.48%) AWS Lambda
17 22 (1.42%) Microsoft 365
18 20 (1.29%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 18 (1.16%) Boomi
20 17 (1.09%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 52 (3.35%) Firewall
2 33 (2.12%) TCP/IP
3 27 (1.74%) Network Security
4 23 (1.48%) Ethernet
5 18 (1.16%) DNS
6 16 (1.03%) VPN
7 15 (0.97%) VLAN
8 11 (0.71%) WAN
8 11 (0.71%) Wireless
9 10 (0.64%) BGP
9 10 (0.64%) MPLS
9 10 (0.64%) OSPF
9 10 (0.64%) SAN
10 9 (0.58%) HTTP
11 8 (0.51%) LAN
11 8 (0.51%) NAS
11 8 (0.51%) Skype
12 7 (0.45%) TACACS
13 6 (0.39%) Internet
13 6 (0.39%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (7.59%) Power BI
2 70 (4.50%) Metadata
3 67 (4.31%) Data Warehouse
4 42 (2.70%) Tableau
5 41 (2.64%) SQL Server
6 37 (2.38%) Data Lake
7 23 (1.48%) NoSQL
8 22 (1.42%) Amazon Redshift
9 21 (1.35%) Oracle Reports
9 21 (1.35%) PostgreSQL
10 18 (1.16%) Delta Lake
10 18 (1.16%) Oracle Database
10 18 (1.16%) Pinecone
11 17 (1.09%) Relational Database
11 17 (1.09%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 17 (1.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 16 (1.03%) Big Data
13 15 (0.97%) Elasticsearch
14 13 (0.84%) Amazon Athena
14 13 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 154 (9.91%) JIRA
2 86 (5.53%) Git
3 71 (4.57%) Jenkins
4 51 (3.28%) Selenium
5 45 (2.90%) GitLab
6 39 (2.51%) Postman
7 32 (2.06%) Oracle APEX
8 30 (1.93%) Rational DOORS
9 27 (1.74%) JUnit
10 25 (1.61%) Cucumber
10 25 (1.61%) JMeter
11 22 (1.42%) Visual Studio
12 17 (1.09%) MLflow
13 16 (1.03%) Eclipse
14 11 (0.71%) REST Assured
14 11 (0.71%) WebDriver
15 9 (0.58%) Bitbucket
15 9 (0.58%) TestRail
16 8 (0.51%) Gatling
16 8 (0.51%) Zephyr
General
1 580 (37.32%) Social Skills
2 461 (29.67%) Finance
3 330 (21.24%) Analytical Skills
4 139 (8.94%) Banking
5 135 (8.69%) Public Sector
6 80 (5.15%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (3.35%) Presentation Skills
8 40 (2.57%) Manufacturing
9 37 (2.38%) Aerospace
10 32 (2.06%) Influencing Skills
11 30 (1.93%) Electronics
11 30 (1.93%) Marketing
11 30 (1.93%) Military
12 29 (1.87%) Front Office
13 26 (1.67%) Telecoms
14 24 (1.54%) Investment Banking
14 24 (1.54%) Pharmaceutical
15 22 (1.42%) Financial Institution
15 22 (1.42%) Legal
15 22 (1.42%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 303 (19.50%) Analyst
2 156 (10.04%) Senior
3 148 (9.52%) Lead
4 134 (8.62%) Business Analyst
5 113 (7.27%) Developer
6 108 (6.95%) Consultant
7 107 (6.89%) Architect
8 85 (5.47%) Data Engineer
9 78 (5.02%) Data Analyst
10 52 (3.35%) Software Engineer
11 49 (3.15%) Project Manager
12 45 (2.90%) Tester
13 38 (2.45%) Senior Analyst
14 34 (2.19%) Senior Developer
14 34 (2.19%) Test Analyst
15 33 (2.12%) SAP Consultant
15 33 (2.12%) Solutions Architect
16 31 (1.99%) Test Manager
17 30 (1.93%) Embedded Engineer
18 29 (1.87%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (6.44%) REST
2 64 (4.12%) JSON
3 49 (3.15%) Oracle Fusion
3 49 (3.15%) XML
4 47 (3.02%) OAuth
5 45 (2.90%) Kafka
6 43 (2.77%) Middleware
7 38 (2.45%) SOAP
8 36 (2.32%) .NET
8 36 (2.32%) Node.js
8 36 (2.32%) PyTorch
9 32 (2.06%) TensorFlow
9 32 (2.06%) Web Services
10 31 (1.99%) PySpark
11 30 (1.93%) Swagger
12 29 (1.87%) RESTful
13 27 (1.74%) Playwright
14 26 (1.67%) pytest
15 24 (1.54%) OpenAPI
15 24 (1.54%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 95 (6.11%) Legacy Systems
2 65 (4.18%) Data Structures
3 60 (3.86%) Product Ownership
4 51 (3.28%) Onboarding
5 45 (2.90%) Cloud Native
6 41 (2.64%) Management Information System
7 30 (1.93%) Analytical Mindset
8 26 (1.67%) Algorithms
9 25 (1.61%) Data Centre
9 25 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
10 21 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
11 20 (1.29%) Derivative
12 19 (1.22%) Replication
13 18 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
14 17 (1.09%) Credit Risk
14 17 (1.09%) Hybrid Cloud
14 17 (1.09%) Security Posture
15 16 (1.03%) FPGA
16 14 (0.90%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 13 (0.84%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 90 (5.79%) Windows
2 85 (5.47%) Linux
3 33 (2.12%) Unix
4 9 (0.58%) Android
5 6 (0.39%) Windows Server
5 6 (0.39%) 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
1 403 (25.93%) Agile
2 356 (22.91%) Migration
3 355 (22.84%) Problem-Solving
4 285 (18.34%) Stakeholder Management
5 253 (16.28%) CI/CD
5 253 (16.28%) DevOps
6 247 (15.89%) Data Validation
7 239 (15.38%) Analytics
8 210 (13.51%) Data Modelling
9 202 (13.00%) Data Migration
10 197 (12.68%) Test Automation
11 189 (12.16%) ETL
12 185 (11.90%) AI
13 180 (11.58%) User Acceptance Testing
14 159 (10.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 157 (10.10%) Business Intelligence
15 157 (10.10%) Continuous Improvement
16 137 (8.82%) Data Governance
17 134 (8.62%) Data Analysis
18 125 (8.04%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 382 (24.58%) SQL
2 320 (20.59%) Python
3 94 (6.05%) JavaScript
4 84 (5.41%) Java
5 64 (4.12%) C#
6 52 (3.35%) PL/SQL
7 50 (3.22%) C++
8 40 (2.57%) C
9 39 (2.51%) Bash
9 39 (2.51%) PowerShell
10 28 (1.80%) TypeScript
11 24 (1.54%) R
12 19 (1.22%) Ada
12 19 (1.22%) Bicep
13 18 (1.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 17 (1.09%) Groovy
15 13 (0.84%) T-SQL
16 12 (0.77%) Scala
16 12 (0.77%) VBA
17 9 (0.58%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 349 (22.46%) Security Cleared
2 257 (16.54%) SC Cleared
3 157 (10.10%) Degree
4 56 (3.60%) Computer Science Degree
5 44 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
6 39 (2.51%) DV Cleared
7 37 (2.38%) Master's Degree
8 27 (1.74%) PMI Certification
9 26 (1.67%) ISTQB
10 21 (1.35%) PMP
11 17 (1.09%) AWS Certification
12 16 (1.03%) CBAP
13 14 (0.90%) Cisco Certification
13 14 (0.90%) CISSP
14 11 (0.71%) Microsoft Certification
15 10 (0.64%) Azure Certification
15 10 (0.64%) CCNP
15 10 (0.64%) Oracle Certification
16 8 (0.51%) CCIE
16 8 (0.51%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 214 (13.77%) Data Quality
2 192 (12.36%) QA
3 82 (5.28%) GDPR
4 66 (4.25%) NIST
5 45 (2.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 30 (1.93%) Accessibility
7 21 (1.35%) IFRS
8 18 (1.16%) IFRS 17
9 17 (1.09%) Def Stans
10 14 (0.90%) PCI DSS
11 13 (0.84%) NCSC
12 12 (0.77%) COBIT
12 12 (0.77%) EU AI Act
13 10 (0.64%) GRC
13 10 (0.64%) MiFID
13 10 (0.64%) MISRA
13 10 (0.64%) PMO
14 9 (0.58%) DO-178B
14 9 (0.58%) GMP
14 9 (0.58%) GxP
System Software
1 71 (4.57%) Docker
2 40 (2.57%) Active Directory
3 29 (1.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.29%) 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
1 100 (6.44%) Kubernetes
2 71 (4.57%) Terraform
3 37 (2.38%) Ansible
4 22 (1.42%) Single Sign-On
5 21 (1.35%) Prometheus
6 18 (1.16%) Grafana
7 16 (1.03%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (0.97%) Kibana
9 14 (0.90%) Puppet
10 11 (0.71%) SCCM
11 10 (0.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 10 (0.64%) Nessus
12 8 (0.51%) Nmap
13 5 (0.32%) CASB
13 5 (0.32%) SCOM
14 4 (0.26%) EMC VPLEX
14 4 (0.26%) HP SiteScope
14 4 (0.26%) Iperf
14 4 (0.26%) vMotion
15 3 (0.19%) CloudHub
Vendors
1 210 (13.51%) Microsoft
2 160 (10.30%) Oracle
3 123 (7.92%) SAP
4 66 (4.25%) Databricks
5 64 (4.12%) ServiceNow
6 48 (3.09%) Splunk
7 39 (2.51%) Salesforce
8 38 (2.45%) Cisco
9 35 (2.25%) VMware
10 32 (2.06%) Google
11 29 (1.87%) Workday
12 25 (1.61%) MuleSoft
13 23 (1.48%) Sage
14 21 (1.35%) IBM
14 21 (1.35%) Informatica
15 20 (1.29%) Palo Alto
16 19 (1.22%) Murex
17 14 (0.90%) Bloomberg
17 14 (0.90%) CyberArk
18 13 (0.84%) CheckPoint