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

6 months to
22 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 82 128
Rank change year-on-year +38 +46 +6
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,878 728 682
As % of all contract jobs in England 4.74% 2.97% 1.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.56% 3.26% 2.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,159 438 356
10th Percentile £325 £354 £313
25th Percentile £400 £413 £408
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 £722 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -9.52% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 46 150
10th Percentile £25.05 £27.63 £24.09
25th Percentile £51.25 £48.13 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.63 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.80% -4.75% -3.20%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £75.23
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £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 33,784 22,346 32,054
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.23% 91.09% 86.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,591 14,669 21,080
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 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.89% -0.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,113 899 2,221
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.82 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.51 £15.89
Median hourly rate £42.00 £31.64 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.74% -9.60% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67.25 £64.50 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.10 £72.45
UK median hourly rate £39.00 £30.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +30.00% -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 22 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 22 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 22 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 +69 900 £500 -9.09% 291
North of England +35 250 £437 -8.00% 126
South East 0 218 £500 - 218
Midlands +31 210 £475 - 110
West Midlands +33 156 £475 -1.30% 69
North West +25 147 £418 -5.80% 66
South West +2 127 £475 -17.39% 83
East of England +11 117 £489 +8.63% 85
Yorkshire +16 92 £455 +8.33% 43
East Midlands -3 51 £525 +14.38% 41
North East -10 14 £450 -37.93% 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 75 (3.99%) Confluence
2 39 (2.08%) Apache Airflow
3 37 (1.97%) Apache Spark
4 31 (1.65%) SAS
5 18 (0.96%) 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 (6.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (1.54%) MS Visio
3 26 (1.38%) 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%) 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
11 6 (0.32%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 424 (22.58%) Azure
2 228 (12.14%) AWS
3 185 (9.85%) Power Platform
4 126 (6.71%) Azure DevOps
5 97 (5.17%) GCP
6 84 (4.47%) GitHub
7 52 (2.77%) Serverless
8 51 (2.72%) Azure Data Factory
9 50 (2.66%) Entra ID
10 47 (2.50%) OCI
11 44 (2.34%) GitHub Actions
12 43 (2.29%) SaaS
13 41 (2.18%) Amazon S3
13 41 (2.18%) Snowflake
14 32 (1.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 27 (1.44%) dbt
16 26 (1.38%) Microsoft 365
17 25 (1.33%) AWS Lambda
18 23 (1.22%) SuccessFactors
19 19 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 76 (4.05%) Firewall
2 53 (2.82%) Network Security
3 34 (1.81%) TCP/IP
4 31 (1.65%) VLAN
5 23 (1.22%) 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%) NAS
11 12 (0.64%) BGP
11 12 (0.64%) OSPF
11 12 (0.64%) SD-WAN
12 11 (0.59%) Cisco ISE
12 11 (0.59%) Wireless
13 10 (0.53%) TACACS
14 9 (0.48%) HTTP
14 9 (0.48%) Wi-Fi
15 8 (0.43%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 173 (9.21%) Power BI
2 101 (5.38%) Data Warehouse
3 94 (5.01%) Metadata
4 68 (3.62%) Tableau
5 57 (3.04%) SQL Server
6 45 (2.40%) Data Lake
7 41 (2.18%) PostgreSQL
8 28 (1.49%) Amazon Redshift
8 28 (1.49%) Oracle Reports
9 27 (1.44%) Relational Database
10 25 (1.33%) Big Data
11 24 (1.28%) NoSQL
12 22 (1.17%) Delta Lake
12 22 (1.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 19 (1.01%) Oracle Database
14 18 (0.96%) Pinecone
15 17 (0.91%) Amazon Athena
15 17 (0.91%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 16 (0.85%) Star Schema
17 15 (0.80%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 186 (9.90%) JIRA
2 106 (5.64%) Git
3 71 (3.78%) Jenkins
4 54 (2.88%) Selenium
5 46 (2.45%) GitLab
6 41 (2.18%) Postman
7 33 (1.76%) Cucumber
8 31 (1.65%) JUnit
9 28 (1.49%) JMeter
9 28 (1.49%) Oracle APEX
10 23 (1.22%) Rational DOORS
10 23 (1.22%) WebDriver
11 18 (0.96%) Visual Studio
12 15 (0.80%) MLflow
13 14 (0.75%) Eclipse
14 13 (0.69%) REST Assured
15 11 (0.59%) Bitbucket
15 11 (0.59%) TestRail
16 10 (0.53%) Rational Rhapsody
16 10 (0.53%) SpecFlow
General
1 626 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 579 (30.83%) Finance
3 380 (20.23%) Analytical Skills
4 162 (8.63%) Banking
5 161 (8.57%) Public Sector
6 105 (5.59%) Documentation Skills
7 50 (2.66%) Manufacturing
8 47 (2.50%) Presentation Skills
9 46 (2.45%) Aerospace
10 40 (2.13%) Organisational Skills
11 37 (1.97%) Retail
12 34 (1.81%) Marketing
13 32 (1.70%) Influencing Skills
14 31 (1.65%) Pharmaceutical
15 30 (1.60%) Financial Institution
15 30 (1.60%) Front Office
15 30 (1.60%) Legal
16 29 (1.54%) Military
17 27 (1.44%) Electronics
17 27 (1.44%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 361 (19.22%) Analyst
2 191 (10.17%) Lead
3 190 (10.12%) Senior
4 165 (8.79%) Business Analyst
5 138 (7.35%) Data Engineer
6 126 (6.71%) Consultant
7 123 (6.55%) Developer
8 118 (6.28%) Architect
9 97 (5.17%) Data Analyst
10 71 (3.78%) Project Manager
11 52 (2.77%) Tester
12 42 (2.24%) Senior Analyst
12 42 (2.24%) Senior Developer
13 41 (2.18%) Software Engineer
14 38 (2.02%) Test Manager
15 37 (1.97%) SAP Consultant
15 37 (1.97%) Test Engineer
16 36 (1.92%) Network Engineer
17 35 (1.86%) Systems Engineer
18 34 (1.81%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 110 (5.86%) REST
2 69 (3.67%) JSON
3 63 (3.35%) Kafka
4 61 (3.25%) Oracle Fusion
5 49 (2.61%) Middleware
6 45 (2.40%) XML
7 43 (2.29%) OAuth
8 38 (2.02%) Node.js
8 38 (2.02%) PySpark
9 34 (1.81%) .NET
10 33 (1.76%) Swagger
11 30 (1.60%) Playwright
11 30 (1.60%) Web Services
12 29 (1.54%) Pandas
12 29 (1.54%) PyTorch
13 28 (1.49%) RESTful
13 28 (1.49%) SOAP
14 26 (1.38%) TensorFlow
15 24 (1.28%) OpenAPI
16 23 (1.22%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 114 (6.07%) Legacy Systems
2 98 (5.22%) Data Structures
3 83 (4.42%) Onboarding
4 78 (4.15%) Product Ownership
5 49 (2.61%) Cloud Native
6 46 (2.45%) Data Centre
7 44 (2.34%) Management Information System
8 34 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
9 31 (1.65%) Analytical Mindset
10 28 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
11 26 (1.38%) Replication
12 24 (1.28%) Public Cloud
13 23 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
14 22 (1.17%) Algorithms
14 22 (1.17%) Greenfield Project
15 19 (1.01%) Reference Data
15 19 (1.01%) Virtual Team
16 18 (0.96%) Derivative
17 16 (0.85%) Credit Risk
17 16 (0.85%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 95 (5.06%) Windows
2 78 (4.15%) Linux
3 24 (1.28%) Unix
4 12 (0.64%) Android
5 8 (0.43%) 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
1 491 (26.14%) Migration
2 417 (22.20%) Agile
3 363 (19.33%) Problem-Solving
4 341 (18.16%) Stakeholder Management
5 329 (17.52%) Data Validation
6 303 (16.13%) Data Migration
7 300 (15.97%) Analytics
8 289 (15.39%) CI/CD
9 272 (14.48%) User Acceptance Testing
10 271 (14.43%) Data Modelling
11 264 (14.06%) DevOps
12 258 (13.74%) ETL
13 222 (11.82%) Business Intelligence
14 217 (11.55%) Test Automation
15 203 (10.81%) AI
16 201 (10.70%) Continuous Improvement
17 199 (10.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 186 (9.90%) Data Governance
19 167 (8.89%) Data Pipeline
20 164 (8.73%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 486 (25.88%) SQL
2 347 (18.48%) Python
3 99 (5.27%) Java
4 76 (4.05%) JavaScript
5 62 (3.30%) C#
6 53 (2.82%) PL/SQL
7 49 (2.61%) C++
8 41 (2.18%) PowerShell
9 39 (2.08%) C
10 32 (1.70%) R
11 31 (1.65%) Bash
12 26 (1.38%) TypeScript
13 24 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 22 (1.17%) Bicep
15 19 (1.01%) Ada
16 17 (0.91%) Scala
17 13 (0.69%) VBA
18 10 (0.53%) Apex Code
18 10 (0.53%) MATLAB
19 9 (0.48%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 373 (19.86%) Security Cleared
2 268 (14.27%) SC Cleared
3 157 (8.36%) Degree
4 50 (2.66%) BPSS Clearance
5 47 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 32 (1.70%) DV Cleared
7 30 (1.60%) Master's Degree
8 29 (1.54%) PMI Certification
9 26 (1.38%) ISTQB
9 26 (1.38%) PMP
10 20 (1.06%) Cisco Certification
11 17 (0.91%) CCNP
12 13 (0.69%) Azure Certification
12 13 (0.69%) CBAP
12 13 (0.69%) CISSP
12 13 (0.69%) Microsoft Certification
13 11 (0.59%) AWS Certification
14 9 (0.48%) ACCA
14 9 (0.48%) CCNA
15 8 (0.43%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 316 (16.83%) Data Quality
2 234 (12.46%) QA
3 110 (5.86%) GDPR
4 65 (3.46%) NIST
5 56 (2.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 26 (1.38%) Accessibility
7 23 (1.22%) SLA
8 22 (1.17%) IFRS
9 20 (1.06%) PMO
10 19 (1.01%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.96%) GRC
12 16 (0.85%) Def Stans
13 15 (0.80%) HL7
14 13 (0.69%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.64%) COBIT
15 12 (0.64%) GxP
15 12 (0.64%) NCSC
16 11 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 10 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
17 10 (0.53%) MiFID
System Software
1 72 (3.83%) Docker
2 37 (1.97%) Active Directory
3 35 (1.86%) 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
1 107 (5.70%) Kubernetes
2 84 (4.47%) Terraform
3 32 (1.70%) Prometheus
4 31 (1.65%) Grafana
5 29 (1.54%) Ansible
6 27 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (0.53%) Kibana
9 9 (0.48%) FortiGate
9 9 (0.48%) Puppet
10 7 (0.37%) SCCM
11 6 (0.32%) Nessus
12 5 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 5 (0.27%) CASB
12 5 (0.27%) vCenter Server
13 4 (0.21%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.21%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.21%) Istio
13 4 (0.21%) vMotion
13 4 (0.21%) VxRail
Vendors
1 250 (13.31%) Microsoft
2 191 (10.17%) Oracle
3 166 (8.84%) SAP
4 87 (4.63%) Databricks
5 74 (3.94%) ServiceNow
6 52 (2.77%) Salesforce
7 41 (2.18%) Cisco
8 40 (2.13%) VMware
9 39 (2.08%) Splunk
10 35 (1.86%) Google
11 30 (1.60%) Informatica
11 30 (1.60%) Workday
12 27 (1.44%) Sage
13 26 (1.38%) MuleSoft
14 24 (1.28%) Palo Alto
15 20 (1.06%) CyberArk
16 19 (1.01%) IBM
17 16 (0.85%) IFS
17 16 (0.85%) OpenAI
18 15 (0.80%) CheckPoint