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

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 82 128
Rank change year-on-year +38 +46 +6
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,876 731 681
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.74% 2.98% 1.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.56% 3.27% 2.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,159 439 357
10th Percentile £325 £355 £313
25th Percentile £400 £417 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.62% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £600
90th Percentile £700 £721 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -9.52% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 47 149
10th Percentile £25.25 £27.90 £23.99
25th Percentile £51.25 £48.75 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.55% -3.75% -4.00%
75th Percentile £74.38 £65.00 £75.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.10 £88.75
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -4.17% -4.08%

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 33,718 22,322 32,052
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.24% 91.07% 86.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,550 14,669 21,082
10th Percentile £315 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £521 £525
% change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,104 894 2,218
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.84 £12.85
25th Percentile £20.32 £18.51 £15.86
Median hourly rate £41.94 £31.64 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.55% -9.60% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67.25 £64.31 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.18 £72.33
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +25.00% -14.29% -6.67%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 +66 892 £500 -9.09% 277
North of England +38 251 £433 -8.95% 120
South East -5 218 £500 - 216
Midlands +32 210 £475 -2.56% 106
West Midlands +29 156 £475 -2.56% 68
North West +27 146 £416 -6.25% 63
South West +4 127 £475 -17.39% 80
East of England +12 118 £489 +8.63% 93
Yorkshire +12 94 £453 +7.86% 43
East Midlands 0 51 £525 +4.06% 38
North East -5 14 £450 -37.93% 16
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 (4.16%) Confluence
2 37 (1.97%) Apache Airflow
3 34 (1.81%) Apache Spark
4 30 (1.60%) SAS
5 17 (0.91%) Apache
6 13 (0.69%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.48%) Appian
7 9 (0.48%) Jupyter
7 9 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
8 8 (0.43%) ArcGIS
9 7 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
10 6 (0.32%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 5 (0.27%) CMS
12 4 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 4 (0.21%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.16%) CICS
13 3 (0.16%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 2 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
14 2 (0.11%) Oracle Service Bus
14 2 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 121 (6.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (1.55%) MS Visio
3 26 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
4 18 (0.96%) Spreadsheet
5 17 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.43%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.16%) LaTeX
8 3 (0.16%) Notion
9 2 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.11%) CATIA
9 2 (0.11%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.11%) Sketch
10 1 (0.053%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.053%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.053%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.053%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.053%) UXPin
10 1 (0.053%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 95 (5.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.76%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.80%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.75%) Workday HCM
5 13 (0.69%) Oracle Payables
6 12 (0.64%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 10 (0.53%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.53%) SAP FI
7 10 (0.53%) Teamcenter
8 9 (0.48%) Oracle Receivables
9 8 (0.43%) Dynamics CRM
9 8 (0.43%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 7 (0.37%) Aladdin
10 7 (0.37%) NetSuite
10 7 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
10 7 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
10 7 (0.37%) SAP MM
11 6 (0.32%) Oracle Financials
11 6 (0.32%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 6 (0.32%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 433 (23.08%) Azure
2 226 (12.05%) AWS
3 182 (9.70%) Power Platform
4 126 (6.72%) Azure DevOps
5 95 (5.06%) GCP
6 89 (4.74%) GitHub
7 52 (2.77%) Azure Data Factory
7 52 (2.77%) Serverless
8 50 (2.67%) Entra ID
9 49 (2.61%) GitHub Actions
10 47 (2.51%) OCI
11 42 (2.24%) SaaS
12 41 (2.19%) Amazon S3
13 38 (2.03%) Snowflake
14 34 (1.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 26 (1.39%) dbt
15 26 (1.39%) Microsoft 365
16 25 (1.33%) AWS Lambda
17 23 (1.23%) SuccessFactors
18 19 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 78 (4.16%) Firewall
2 53 (2.83%) Network Security
3 34 (1.81%) TCP/IP
4 30 (1.60%) VLAN
5 25 (1.33%) DNS
6 22 (1.17%) VPN
7 21 (1.12%) Ethernet
7 21 (1.12%) WAN
8 15 (0.80%) SAN
9 14 (0.75%) LAN
10 13 (0.69%) HTTP
10 13 (0.69%) NAS
11 12 (0.64%) BGP
11 12 (0.64%) OSPF
11 12 (0.64%) SD-WAN
12 11 (0.59%) Wireless
13 10 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
14 9 (0.48%) TACACS
14 9 (0.48%) Wi-Fi
15 8 (0.43%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 170 (9.06%) Power BI
2 98 (5.22%) Data Warehouse
3 93 (4.96%) Metadata
4 66 (3.52%) Tableau
5 60 (3.20%) SQL Server
6 43 (2.29%) Data Lake
7 41 (2.19%) PostgreSQL
8 28 (1.49%) Oracle Reports
9 26 (1.39%) Amazon Redshift
9 26 (1.39%) Relational Database
10 24 (1.28%) Delta Lake
11 23 (1.23%) Big Data
11 23 (1.23%) NoSQL
12 22 (1.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 21 (1.12%) Azure SQL Database
14 19 (1.01%) Oracle Database
15 18 (0.96%) Pinecone
16 17 (0.91%) Amazon Athena
17 16 (0.85%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 16 (0.85%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 186 (9.91%) JIRA
2 104 (5.54%) Git
3 73 (3.89%) Jenkins
4 55 (2.93%) Selenium
5 45 (2.40%) GitLab
6 41 (2.19%) Postman
7 33 (1.76%) Cucumber
8 31 (1.65%) JUnit
9 28 (1.49%) Oracle APEX
10 27 (1.44%) JMeter
11 23 (1.23%) Rational DOORS
11 23 (1.23%) WebDriver
12 18 (0.96%) Visual Studio
13 15 (0.80%) MLflow
14 14 (0.75%) Eclipse
15 13 (0.69%) REST Assured
16 11 (0.59%) Bitbucket
16 11 (0.59%) TestRail
17 10 (0.53%) Rational Rhapsody
17 10 (0.53%) SpecFlow
General
1 624 (33.26%) Social Skills
2 576 (30.70%) Finance
3 375 (19.99%) Analytical Skills
4 165 (8.80%) Public Sector
5 160 (8.53%) Banking
6 108 (5.76%) Documentation Skills
7 50 (2.67%) Manufacturing
8 48 (2.56%) Presentation Skills
9 46 (2.45%) Aerospace
10 40 (2.13%) Organisational Skills
11 36 (1.92%) Retail
12 34 (1.81%) Marketing
13 31 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
13 31 (1.65%) Pharmaceutical
14 30 (1.60%) Financial Institution
14 30 (1.60%) Front Office
14 30 (1.60%) Legal
15 29 (1.55%) Military
16 27 (1.44%) Electronics
16 27 (1.44%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 356 (18.98%) Analyst
2 188 (10.02%) Lead
3 187 (9.97%) Senior
4 165 (8.80%) Business Analyst
5 138 (7.36%) Data Engineer
6 129 (6.88%) Consultant
7 127 (6.77%) Developer
8 117 (6.24%) Architect
9 95 (5.06%) Data Analyst
10 71 (3.78%) Project Manager
11 55 (2.93%) Tester
12 41 (2.19%) Senior Analyst
12 41 (2.19%) Senior Developer
12 41 (2.19%) Software Engineer
13 37 (1.97%) SAP Consultant
13 37 (1.97%) Test Engineer
14 36 (1.92%) Test Manager
15 35 (1.87%) Network Engineer
15 35 (1.87%) Test Analyst
16 34 (1.81%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 109 (5.81%) REST
2 75 (4.00%) JSON
3 62 (3.30%) Kafka
4 61 (3.25%) Oracle Fusion
5 49 (2.61%) Middleware
5 49 (2.61%) OAuth
6 45 (2.40%) XML
7 42 (2.24%) Node.js
8 40 (2.13%) PySpark
9 35 (1.87%) .NET
10 32 (1.71%) Swagger
11 30 (1.60%) Playwright
11 30 (1.60%) Web Services
12 29 (1.55%) Pandas
12 29 (1.55%) PyTorch
13 28 (1.49%) RESTful
13 28 (1.49%) SOAP
14 26 (1.39%) JWT
14 26 (1.39%) TensorFlow
15 24 (1.28%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 114 (6.08%) Legacy Systems
2 97 (5.17%) Data Structures
3 83 (4.42%) Onboarding
4 79 (4.21%) Product Ownership
5 48 (2.56%) Cloud Native
6 46 (2.45%) Data Centre
7 42 (2.24%) Management Information System
8 32 (1.71%) Distributed Systems
9 31 (1.65%) Analytical Mindset
10 28 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
10 28 (1.49%) Replication
11 24 (1.28%) Public Cloud
12 23 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
13 22 (1.17%) Algorithms
13 22 (1.17%) Greenfield Project
14 19 (1.01%) Virtual Team
15 18 (0.96%) Derivative
15 18 (0.96%) Reference Data
16 16 (0.85%) Credit Risk
16 16 (0.85%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 96 (5.12%) Windows
2 77 (4.10%) Linux
3 24 (1.28%) Unix
4 12 (0.64%) Android
5 10 (0.53%) Windows Server
6 6 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.32%) zOS
7 4 (0.21%) Mac OS
7 4 (0.21%) SUSE
7 4 (0.21%) VMS
8 3 (0.16%) Apple iOS
8 3 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
9 2 (0.11%) Debian
9 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.053%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.053%) pSOS
10 1 (0.053%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 486 (25.91%) Migration
2 416 (22.17%) Agile
3 364 (19.40%) Problem-Solving
4 338 (18.02%) Stakeholder Management
5 325 (17.32%) Data Validation
6 299 (15.94%) Analytics
6 299 (15.94%) Data Migration
7 292 (15.57%) CI/CD
8 271 (14.45%) Data Modelling
8 271 (14.45%) User Acceptance Testing
9 263 (14.02%) DevOps
10 255 (13.59%) ETL
11 219 (11.67%) Business Intelligence
12 214 (11.41%) Test Automation
13 205 (10.93%) Continuous Improvement
14 203 (10.82%) AI
15 197 (10.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 185 (9.86%) Data Governance
17 164 (8.74%) Data Pipeline
18 161 (8.58%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 485 (25.85%) SQL
2 348 (18.55%) Python
3 98 (5.22%) Java
4 80 (4.26%) JavaScript
5 63 (3.36%) C#
6 53 (2.83%) PL/SQL
7 49 (2.61%) C++
8 42 (2.24%) PowerShell
9 39 (2.08%) C
10 30 (1.60%) Bash
10 30 (1.60%) R
10 30 (1.60%) TypeScript
11 24 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 22 (1.17%) Bicep
13 19 (1.01%) Ada
14 17 (0.91%) Scala
15 13 (0.69%) VBA
16 11 (0.59%) Apex Code
17 10 (0.53%) MATLAB
18 9 (0.48%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 382 (20.36%) Security Cleared
2 272 (14.50%) SC Cleared
3 160 (8.53%) Degree
4 50 (2.67%) BPSS Clearance
5 48 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
6 34 (1.81%) DV Cleared
7 31 (1.65%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.49%) PMI Certification
9 26 (1.39%) PMP
10 25 (1.33%) ISTQB
11 20 (1.07%) Cisco Certification
12 17 (0.91%) CCNP
13 15 (0.80%) Microsoft Certification
14 13 (0.69%) Azure Certification
14 13 (0.69%) CBAP
14 13 (0.69%) CISSP
15 12 (0.64%) AWS Certification
16 9 (0.48%) ACCA
16 9 (0.48%) CCNA
17 8 (0.43%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 310 (16.52%) Data Quality
2 231 (12.31%) QA
3 110 (5.86%) GDPR
4 66 (3.52%) NIST
5 57 (3.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 26 (1.39%) Accessibility
7 23 (1.23%) SLA
8 22 (1.17%) IFRS
9 20 (1.07%) PMO
10 19 (1.01%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.96%) GRC
12 16 (0.85%) Def Stans
13 15 (0.80%) HL7
14 14 (0.75%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.64%) COBIT
15 12 (0.64%) GxP
16 11 (0.59%) NCSC
16 11 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 10 (0.53%) ISO 20022
17 10 (0.53%) MiFID
System Software
1 71 (3.78%) Docker
2 39 (2.08%) Active Directory
3 37 (1.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.28%) Firmware
5 13 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.59%) VMware NSX
7 10 (0.53%) Hyper-V
8 9 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
8 9 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.27%) NFS
9 5 (0.27%) vSphere
10 4 (0.21%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 3 (0.16%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.16%) Embedded Firmware
12 2 (0.11%) Ceph
12 2 (0.11%) KVM
12 2 (0.11%) Lustre
12 2 (0.11%) OpenAM
12 2 (0.11%) OpenIDM
12 2 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 105 (5.60%) Kubernetes
2 85 (4.53%) Terraform
3 30 (1.60%) Prometheus
4 29 (1.55%) Grafana
4 29 (1.55%) Single Sign-On
5 28 (1.49%) Ansible
6 14 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
7 9 (0.48%) Kibana
7 9 (0.48%) Puppet
8 8 (0.43%) FortiGate
9 7 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 7 (0.37%) SCCM
10 6 (0.32%) Nessus
11 5 (0.27%) CASB
11 5 (0.27%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.21%) EMC NetWorker
12 4 (0.21%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.21%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.21%) vMotion
12 4 (0.21%) VxRail
Vendors
1 249 (13.27%) Microsoft
2 191 (10.18%) Oracle
3 165 (8.80%) SAP
4 88 (4.69%) Databricks
5 73 (3.89%) ServiceNow
6 52 (2.77%) Salesforce
7 43 (2.29%) Splunk
8 42 (2.24%) VMware
9 40 (2.13%) Cisco
10 35 (1.87%) Google
11 30 (1.60%) Informatica
11 30 (1.60%) Workday
12 27 (1.44%) Sage
13 26 (1.39%) MuleSoft
14 23 (1.23%) Palo Alto
15 20 (1.07%) CyberArk
16 18 (0.96%) IBM
17 16 (0.85%) IFS
17 16 (0.85%) OpenAI
18 14 (0.75%) CheckPoint