Validation Contract Job Trends in Preston

Validation
Lancashire > Preston

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Preston requiring Validation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 12 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 - 14
Rank change year-on-year - - -
Contract jobs citing Validation 20 0 1
As % of all contract jobs in Preston 10.81% - 2.22%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.25% - 2.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 18 0 1
10th Percentile £336 - -
25th Percentile £447 - -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 - £400
75th Percentile £570 - -
90th Percentile £587 - -
Lancashire median daily rate £483 £525 £400
% change year-on-year -8.00% +31.25% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
Median hourly rate £72.66 - -
Lancashire median hourly rate £72.66 - -

All Process & Methodology Skills
Preston

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 Preston.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 151 69 36
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Preston 81.62% 92.00% 80.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 102 46 21
10th Percentile £310 £349 £200
25th Percentile £453 £407 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £455 £575
Median % change year-on-year +20.88% -20.87% +29.58%
75th Percentile £626 £630 £627
90th Percentile £675 £675 £975
Lancashire median daily rate £550 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +15.79% -3.65% -10.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 7 6
10th Percentile £37.25 £23.32 £24.48
25th Percentile £60.00 £30.68 £25.98
Median hourly rate £70.00 £47.12 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +48.56% +44.98% -29.16%
75th Percentile £78.17 £53.21 £48.16
90th Percentile £80.00 £63.64 £59.69
Lancashire median hourly rate £49.13 £51.16 £40.33
% change year-on-year -3.97% +26.87% -12.68%

Validation
Job Vacancy Trend in Preston

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Validation relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Preston.

Validation job vacancy trend in Preston

Validation
Daily Rate Trend in Preston

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Preston citing Validation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Preston citing Validation

Validation
Daily Rate Histogram in Preston

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Validation in Preston over the 6 months to 12 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Validation in Preston

Validation
Hourly Rate Trend in Preston

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Preston citing Validation.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Preston citing Validation

Validation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Preston 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 1 (5.00%) Confluence
1 1 (5.00%) SAS
Cloud Services
1 5 (25.00%) Azure
2 2 (10.00%) Entra ID
2 2 (10.00%) IaaS
2 2 (10.00%) Microsoft 365
3 1 (5.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 1 (5.00%) Amazon EMR
3 1 (5.00%) Amazon S3
3 1 (5.00%) AWS
3 1 (5.00%) AWS Lambda
3 1 (5.00%) Azure AI
3 1 (5.00%) Power Platform
3 1 (5.00%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 4 (20.00%) VPN
2 2 (10.00%) DNS
2 2 (10.00%) Firewall
2 2 (10.00%) Internet
2 2 (10.00%) Network Security
2 2 (10.00%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (5.00%) Amazon Athena
1 1 (5.00%) Amazon Redshift
1 1 (5.00%) Big Data
1 1 (5.00%) Data Warehouse
1 1 (5.00%) Oracle Database
1 1 (5.00%) Power BI
1 1 (5.00%) PowerCenter
Development Applications
1 1 (5.00%) Git
1 1 (5.00%) GitLab
1 1 (5.00%) JIRA
General
1 5 (25.00%) Organisational Skills
2 4 (20.00%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (5.00%) Documentation Skills
3 1 (5.00%) Public Sector
3 1 (5.00%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 9 (45.00%) Analyst
2 5 (25.00%) Incident Analyst
2 5 (25.00%) Security Analyst
2 5 (25.00%) Security Incident Analyst
3 4 (20.00%) Consultant
3 4 (20.00%) Management Consultant
3 4 (20.00%) Test Analyst
3 4 (20.00%) Vulnerability Consultant
3 4 (20.00%) Vulnerability Management Consultant
4 3 (15.00%) SC Cleared Test Analyst
4 3 (15.00%) ServiceNow Manager
4 3 (15.00%) Test Manager
5 1 (5.00%) 2nd Line Engineer
5 1 (5.00%) 2nd Line Support
5 1 (5.00%) Infrastructure Support
5 1 (5.00%) Senior
5 1 (5.00%) Senior Analyst
5 1 (5.00%) Senior Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (5.00%) PySpark
1 1 (5.00%) Terraform
Miscellaneous
1 6 (30.00%) CMDB
2 4 (20.00%) Security Operations Centre
3 1 (5.00%) Data Centre
3 1 (5.00%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 2 (10.00%) Windows
1 2 (10.00%) Windows Server
2 1 (5.00%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 15 (75.00%) SIAM
2 9 (45.00%) Cybersecurity
2 9 (45.00%) Performance Metrics
2 9 (45.00%) Service Management
3 8 (40.00%) ITSM
4 7 (35.00%) Test Strategy
5 6 (30.00%) ITIL
5 6 (30.00%) Security Operations
5 6 (30.00%) Verification and Validation
5 6 (30.00%) Workshop Facilitation
6 5 (25.00%) Incident Management
6 5 (25.00%) Major Incident Management
6 5 (25.00%) Operational Acceptance Testing
6 5 (25.00%) Vulnerability Management
7 4 (20.00%) Dashboard Development
7 4 (20.00%) Incident Response
7 4 (20.00%) Information Security
7 4 (20.00%) Security Testing
7 4 (20.00%) Vulnerability Remediation
7 4 (20.00%) Vulnerability Scanning
Programming Languages
1 1 (5.00%) Python
1 1 (5.00%) Shell Script
1 1 (5.00%) SQL
Qualifications
1 14 (70.00%) Security Cleared
2 13 (65.00%) SC Cleared
3 1 (5.00%) AWS Certification
3 1 (5.00%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
3 1 (5.00%) BPSS Clearance
3 1 (5.00%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (45.00%) SLA
2 2 (10.00%) Data Quality
3 1 (5.00%) QA
System Software
1 2 (10.00%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 2 (10.00%) CASB
1 2 (10.00%) Single Sign-On
1 2 (10.00%) WSUS
2 1 (5.00%) SCCM
Vendors
1 6 (30.00%) ServiceNow
2 2 (10.00%) Citrix
2 2 (10.00%) Tanium
2 2 (10.00%) VMware
2 2 (10.00%) Zscaler
3 1 (5.00%) Informatica
3 1 (5.00%) Oracle