Validation Contract Job Trends in Reading

Validation
Berkshire > Reading

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Reading requiring Validation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 33 63 64
Rank change year-on-year +30 +1 -22
Contract jobs citing Validation 46 28 22
As % of all contract jobs in Reading 6.55% 2.59% 2.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 7.18% 2.85% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 28 9 19
10th Percentile £400 - £450
25th Percentile £425 £409 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £482 £565
Median % change year-on-year +14.11% -14.69% +3.34%
75th Percentile £620 £545 £623
90th Percentile £642 £556 -
Berkshire median daily rate £525 £500 £558
% change year-on-year +5.00% -10.31% +1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
Median hourly rate £81.00 - -
Berkshire median hourly rate £81.00 - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
Reading

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 Reading.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 641 983 963
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Reading 91.31% 90.85% 92.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 443 551 628
10th Percentile £337 £330 £213
25th Percentile £425 £450 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £525
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +9.52% -
75th Percentile £609 £650 £615
90th Percentile £650 £700 £688
Berkshire median daily rate £500 £540 £500
% change year-on-year -7.41% +8.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 11 17
10th Percentile £14.75 £29.00 £41.24
25th Percentile £16.66 £49.38 £59.89
Median hourly rate £58.00 £60.46 £63.29
Median % change year-on-year -4.06% -4.48% -2.63%
75th Percentile £82.25 £67.21 £65.25
90th Percentile £96.75 £74.87 £66.96
Berkshire median hourly rate £37.28 £59.00 £61.45
% change year-on-year -36.81% -3.98% +21.68%

Validation
Job Vacancy Trend in Reading

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

Validation job vacancy trend in Reading

Validation
Daily Rate Trend in Reading

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Reading citing Validation

Validation
Daily Rate Histogram in Reading

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Validation in Reading over the 6 months to 13 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Validation in Reading

Validation
Hourly Rate Trend in Reading

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Reading citing Validation

Validation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Reading 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 6 (13.04%) OpenStack
2 4 (8.70%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (6.52%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
4 2 (4.35%) SharePoint
5 1 (2.17%) Confluence
5 1 (2.17%) Jupyter
Applications
1 1 (2.17%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 7 (15.22%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 18 (39.13%) AWS
2 6 (13.04%) OCI
2 6 (13.04%) OpenShift
2 6 (13.04%) Power Platform
3 5 (10.87%) Entra ID
4 4 (8.70%) Cloud Computing
4 4 (8.70%) dbt
4 4 (8.70%) GCP
5 3 (6.52%) Azure
5 3 (6.52%) Azure DevOps
5 3 (6.52%) SaaS
6 2 (4.35%) Amazon GuardDuty
6 2 (4.35%) AWS CloudFormation
6 2 (4.35%) AWS CloudTrail
6 2 (4.35%) AWS Control Tower
6 2 (4.35%) AWS KMS
6 2 (4.35%) Microsoft 365
6 2 (4.35%) Miro
6 2 (4.35%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 1 (2.17%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 6 (13.04%) BGP
1 6 (13.04%) LAN
1 6 (13.04%) MPLS
1 6 (13.04%) OSPF
1 6 (13.04%) SNMP
1 6 (13.04%) TACACS
1 6 (13.04%) WAN
1 6 (13.04%) Wireless
2 4 (8.70%) Broadband
3 2 (4.35%) Firewall
4 1 (2.17%) DNS
4 1 (2.17%) Network Security
4 1 (2.17%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (13.04%) NoSQL
1 6 (13.04%) Power BI
2 4 (8.70%) Data Warehouse
2 4 (8.70%) Relational Database
2 4 (8.70%) Tableau
3 1 (2.17%) GIS
3 1 (2.17%) SQL Server
3 1 (2.17%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 6 (13.04%) JIRA
2 3 (6.52%) Jenkins
3 1 (2.17%) Android Studio
3 1 (2.17%) Bitbucket
3 1 (2.17%) GitLab
3 1 (2.17%) MLflow
3 1 (2.17%) Subversion
General
1 23 (50.00%) Social Skills
2 12 (26.09%) Analytical Skills
3 10 (21.74%) Telecoms
4 6 (13.04%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (6.52%) Billing
5 3 (6.52%) Legal
6 2 (4.35%) Automotive
6 2 (4.35%) Finance
6 2 (4.35%) Public Sector
7 1 (2.17%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 6 (13.04%) Cloud Engineer
1 6 (13.04%) Designer
1 6 (13.04%) IP Designer
2 5 (10.87%) AWS Engineer
2 5 (10.87%) Lead
3 4 (8.70%) Data Engineer
3 4 (8.70%) DevOps Engineer
3 4 (8.70%) Project Manager
4 3 (6.52%) Architect
4 3 (6.52%) Compliance Manager
4 3 (6.52%) Compliance Project Manager
4 3 (6.52%) Consultant
4 3 (6.52%) Developer
4 3 (6.52%) Functional Consultant
4 3 (6.52%) Oracle Consultant
4 3 (6.52%) Oracle Functional Consultant
4 3 (6.52%) Supplier Manager
4 3 (6.52%) Telecoms Engineer
4 3 (6.52%) Telecoms Manager
4 3 (6.52%) Telecoms Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (13.04%) Oracle Fusion
2 2 (4.35%) CSS
2 2 (4.35%) Jest
2 2 (4.35%) OAuth
2 2 (4.35%) OAuth2
2 2 (4.35%) OpenID
2 2 (4.35%) React
2 2 (4.35%) SAML
2 2 (4.35%) Sass
3 1 (2.17%) .NET
3 1 (2.17%) .NET Core
3 1 (2.17%) .NET Framework
3 1 (2.17%) ARM Templates
3 1 (2.17%) GraphQL
3 1 (2.17%) Microsoft Graph
3 1 (2.17%) PyTorch
3 1 (2.17%) REST
3 1 (2.17%) RFC 2544
3 1 (2.17%) SOAP
3 1 (2.17%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 7 (15.22%) Data Centre
2 6 (13.04%) Hybrid Cloud
3 3 (6.52%) Virtual Team
4 2 (4.35%) IoT
4 2 (4.35%) PKI
4 2 (4.35%) Product Ownership
4 2 (4.35%) Replication
5 1 (2.17%) Cloud Native
5 1 (2.17%) Fibre Optics
5 1 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (2.17%) Linux Command Line
5 1 (2.17%) Mobile App
5 1 (2.17%) Operational Technology
5 1 (2.17%) Private Cloud
5 1 (2.17%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 2 (4.35%) Linux
1 2 (4.35%) Windows
2 1 (2.17%) Android
2 1 (2.17%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 12 (26.09%) Problem-Solving
2 11 (23.91%) CI/CD
2 11 (23.91%) DevOps
3 9 (19.57%) Migration
3 9 (19.57%) Stakeholder Management
4 8 (17.39%) Data Validation
4 8 (17.39%) Test Scripting
5 7 (15.22%) Agile
5 7 (15.22%) Analytical Thinking
5 7 (15.22%) Data Migration
5 7 (15.22%) End-to-End Testing
5 7 (15.22%) Performance Testing
5 7 (15.22%) Test Automation
5 7 (15.22%) Verification and Validation
6 6 (13.04%) Incident Response
6 6 (13.04%) Information Security
6 6 (13.04%) Information Security Management
6 6 (13.04%) RBAC
6 6 (13.04%) Risk Analysis
6 6 (13.04%) Security Management
Programming Languages
1 18 (39.13%) Python
2 11 (23.91%) SQL
3 2 (4.35%) PowerShell
3 2 (4.35%) TypeScript
4 1 (2.17%) Bash
4 1 (2.17%) C#
4 1 (2.17%) Java
4 1 (2.17%) JavaScript
4 1 (2.17%) Perl
4 1 (2.17%) PHP
4 1 (2.17%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 14 (30.43%) AWS Certification
2 10 (21.74%) Security Cleared
3 8 (17.39%) SC Cleared
4 6 (13.04%) CCIE
4 6 (13.04%) Cisco Certification
4 6 (13.04%) JNCIE
5 4 (8.70%) Degree
5 4 (8.70%) Master's Degree
6 2 (4.35%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 2 (4.35%) DV Cleared
7 1 (2.17%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (23.91%) QA
2 7 (15.22%) NIST
3 6 (13.04%) COBIT
3 6 (13.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (10.87%) Data Quality
5 2 (4.35%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (4.35%) NCSC
5 2 (4.35%) SLA
6 1 (2.17%) EU AI Act
6 1 (2.17%) GRC
System Software
1 7 (15.22%) VMware Infrastructure
2 6 (13.04%) VMware NSX
3 2 (4.35%) Active Directory
3 2 (4.35%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (2.17%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 10 (21.74%) Terraform
2 6 (13.04%) Ansible
3 3 (6.52%) Single Sign-On
4 2 (4.35%) Kubernetes
4 2 (4.35%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (2.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 1 (2.17%) Kubeflow
5 1 (2.17%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 9 (19.57%) Oracle
2 7 (15.22%) Cisco
2 7 (15.22%) Microsoft
2 7 (15.22%) VMware
3 6 (13.04%) F5
3 6 (13.04%) Fortinet
3 6 (13.04%) Juniper
4 2 (4.35%) Citrix
4 2 (4.35%) CloudEndure
4 2 (4.35%) Virgin Media
5 1 (2.17%) Atlassian
5 1 (2.17%) Coverity
5 1 (2.17%) Salesforce
5 1 (2.17%) Thales