Validation Contracts in the North West

Validation
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North West requiring Validation skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Validation over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 61 96 127
Rank change year-on-year +35 +31 +2
Contract jobs citing Validation 60 41 30
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 3.05% 1.49% 0.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.38% 1.72% 1.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 37 22 20
10th Percentile £244 £325 £399
25th Percentile £381 £416 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% -1.96% +10.27%
75th Percentile £630 £580 £575
90th Percentile £703 - £775
England median daily rate £538 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +7.50% -9.09% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 16 7
10th Percentile £44.70 £11.77 £26.25
25th Percentile £49.51 £11.79 £31.96
Median hourly rate £59.27 £42.50 £53.35
Median % change year-on-year +39.46% -20.34% +19.40%
75th Percentile £66.25 £57.50 £57.25
90th Percentile £70.75 - £59.71
England median hourly rate £57.75 £62.00 £62.00
% change year-on-year -6.85% - +12.73%

All Process and Methodology Skills
North West

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 the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,776 2,377 2,894
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 90.24% 86.28% 90.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,147 1,519 2,058
10th Percentile £300 £306 £313
25th Percentile £393 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £593 £588
90th Percentile £661 £688 £675
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 244 144
10th Percentile £15.97 £10.95 £16.85
25th Percentile £22.66 £13.30 £21.25
Median hourly rate £31.88 £21.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +51.81% -40.00% +70.82%
75th Percentile £60.00 £45.22 £48.91
90th Percentile £83.96 £57.50 £65.00
England median hourly rate £29.07 £36.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year -19.25% -4.00% +53.06%

Validation
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Job postings citing Validation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Job vacancy trend for Validation in the North West

Validation
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North West

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Validation in the North West.

Daily rate trend for Validation in the North West

Validation
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Validation in the North West over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Validation in the North West

Validation
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Validation in the North West.

Hourly rate trend for Validation in the North West

Validation
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Validation in the North West over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Validation in the North West

Validation
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Validation within the North West region over the 6 months to 1 May 2025. 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
Manchester +38 35 £463 -7.50% 77
Cheshire -6 16 £499 -12.50% 28
Merseyside - 6 £438 - 11
Cumbria - 2 - - 12
Lancashire 0 1 - - 42
Validation
England

Validation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 1 (1.67%) CICS
1 1 (1.67%) Confluence
1 1 (1.67%) Microsoft Exchange
1 1 (1.67%) SharePoint
1 1 (1.67%) WebSphere
Applications
1 2 (3.33%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.67%) MS Visio
2 1 (1.67%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 10 (16.67%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (1.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (1.67%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 6 (10.00%) AWS
2 5 (8.33%) Azure
3 2 (3.33%) Power Platform
4 1 (1.67%) Azure Data Factory
4 1 (1.67%) Power Automate
4 1 (1.67%) PowerApps
4 1 (1.67%) Slack
4 1 (1.67%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 5 (8.33%) 4G
1 5 (8.33%) 5G
1 5 (8.33%) Firewall
2 4 (6.67%) 2G
2 4 (6.67%) 3G
3 2 (3.33%) SSL
4 1 (1.67%) 3GPP
4 1 (1.67%) BGP
4 1 (1.67%) DMZ
4 1 (1.67%) DNS
4 1 (1.67%) DWDM
4 1 (1.67%) Internet
4 1 (1.67%) IPsec
4 1 (1.67%) L2TP
4 1 (1.67%) MPLS
4 1 (1.67%) OSPF
4 1 (1.67%) VPN
4 1 (1.67%) WAN
4 1 (1.67%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (1.67%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (5.00%) MySQL
1 3 (5.00%) NoSQL
1 3 (5.00%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (3.33%) Data Warehouse
2 2 (3.33%) Power BI
3 1 (1.67%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
3 1 (1.67%) EDRMS
3 1 (1.67%) Relational Database
3 1 (1.67%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 4 (6.67%) JMeter
1 4 (6.67%) LoadRunner
1 4 (6.67%) Selenium
2 3 (5.00%) GitLab
2 3 (5.00%) JIRA
3 2 (3.33%) Jenkins
3 2 (3.33%) Rational DOORS
General
1 26 (43.33%) Social Skills
2 18 (30.00%) Analytical Skills
3 8 (13.33%) Documentation Skills
4 7 (11.67%) Finance
5 4 (6.67%) Banking
6 2 (3.33%) Automotive
6 2 (3.33%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.67%) Law
7 1 (1.67%) Legal
7 1 (1.67%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (1.67%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (1.67%) Retail
Job Titles
1 10 (16.67%) Data Engineer
2 9 (15.00%) Migration Engineer
3 8 (13.33%) Analyst
4 7 (11.67%) Data Migration Engineer
5 5 (8.33%) Business Analyst
6 4 (6.67%) Senior
6 4 (6.67%) Software Tester
6 4 (6.67%) Tester
7 3 (5.00%) Change Manager
7 3 (5.00%) Consultant
7 3 (5.00%) Delivery Manager
7 3 (5.00%) Developer
7 3 (5.00%) Systems Engineer
8 2 (3.33%) Administrator
8 2 (3.33%) Automation Engineer
8 2 (3.33%) QA Engineer
8 2 (3.33%) Senior Automation Engineer
8 2 (3.33%) Technical Analyst
8 2 (3.33%) Technical Business Analyst
8 2 (3.33%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (1.67%) 802.1X
1 1 (1.67%) ISPF
1 1 (1.67%) Middleware
1 1 (1.67%) WebSphere MQ
Miscellaneous
1 10 (16.67%) Legacy Systems
2 8 (13.33%) Product Ownership
3 7 (11.67%) Mainframe
4 4 (6.67%) IoT
4 4 (6.67%) Smartphone
5 3 (5.00%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.67%) CMDB
6 1 (1.67%) Distributed Applications
6 1 (1.67%) Infotainment
6 1 (1.67%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 4 (6.67%) Android
1 4 (6.67%) Apple iOS
2 1 (1.67%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 20 (33.33%) Problem-Solving
2 19 (31.67%) User Acceptance Testing
3 16 (26.67%) Data Modelling
4 14 (23.33%) Migration
5 13 (21.67%) ETL
6 12 (20.00%) CI/CD
6 12 (20.00%) Test Automation
7 10 (16.67%) Data Mapping
7 10 (16.67%) Data Migration
8 9 (15.00%) Agile
8 9 (15.00%) DevOps
8 9 (15.00%) Process Improvement
9 8 (13.33%) Data Ingestion
9 8 (13.33%) Data Validation
9 8 (13.33%) Knowledge Transfer
9 8 (13.33%) Performance Testing
9 8 (13.33%) Test Strategy
10 5 (8.33%) Customer Service
10 5 (8.33%) End-to-End Testing
10 5 (8.33%) Requirements Gathering
Programming Languages
1 20 (33.33%) SQL
2 10 (16.67%) PL/SQL
3 9 (15.00%) Python
4 4 (6.67%) Bash
5 1 (1.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 1 (1.67%) JCL
5 1 (1.67%) MATLAB
5 1 (1.67%) Perl
5 1 (1.67%) PowerShell
5 1 (1.67%) R
Qualifications
1 7 (11.67%) Degree
2 4 (6.67%) ISTQB
3 3 (5.00%) BPSS Clearance
3 3 (5.00%) CCNP
3 3 (5.00%) Cisco Certification
3 3 (5.00%) SC Cleared
3 3 (5.00%) Security Cleared
4 2 (3.33%) CCNA
5 1 (1.67%) CCIE
5 1 (1.67%) ISEB
5 1 (1.67%) RIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (8.33%) Data Quality
1 5 (8.33%) QA
2 1 (1.67%) GDPR
2 1 (1.67%) HAZOP
2 1 (1.67%) IEC 61508
2 1 (1.67%) SLA
2 1 (1.67%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 6 (10.00%) Virtual Machines
2 1 (1.67%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 6 (10.00%) Ansible
2 2 (3.33%) Functional Safety
2 2 (3.33%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.67%) CA Endevor
Vendors
1 13 (21.67%) Oracle
1 13 (21.67%) ServiceNow
2 8 (13.33%) IBM
3 6 (10.00%) Fortinet
4 5 (8.33%) Infoblox
5 4 (6.67%) Databricks
6 3 (5.00%) Cisco
6 3 (5.00%) Informatica
6 3 (5.00%) Talend
7 2 (3.33%) Microsoft
7 2 (3.33%) SAP
8 1 (1.67%) Arista
8 1 (1.67%) Huawei
8 1 (1.67%) McAfee
8 1 (1.67%) Siemens
8 1 (1.67%) Splunk