Validation Contracts in the Thames Valley

Validation
South East > Thames Valley

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the Thames Valley 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 47 104 91
Rank change year-on-year +57 -13 -7
Contract jobs citing Validation 56 41 61
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 3.71% 1.53% 2.08%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.99% 1.75% 2.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 36 25 45
10th Percentile £413 £338 £348
25th Percentile £500 £375 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% +5.26% +4.40%
75th Percentile £638 £619 £569
90th Percentile £650 £840 £620
South East median daily rate £500 £513 £490
% change year-on-year -2.49% +4.64% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 9 3
10th Percentile £31.62 - £20.50
25th Percentile £41.33 £13.00 £22.00
Median hourly rate £60.00 £61.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.64% +144.00% -52.83%
75th Percentile £62.50 £65.00 £50.63
90th Percentile - - £65.70
South East median hourly rate £57.50 £67.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -14.81% +50.00% -18.18%

All Process and Methodology Skills
Thames Valley

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 Thames Valley.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,403 2,340 2,682
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 92.85% 87.12% 91.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 851 1,306 1,860
10th Percentile £300 £213 £320
25th Percentile £413 £369 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - +5.26%
75th Percentile £605 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
South East median daily rate £500 £500 £508
% change year-on-year - -1.53% +1.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 170 62
10th Percentile £14.20 £15.30 £18.60
25th Percentile £14.54 £19.48 £24.86
Median hourly rate £32.05 £45.00 £51.25
Median % change year-on-year -28.78% -12.20% +192.86%
75th Percentile £62.44 £64.57 £66.21
90th Percentile £78.03 £85.65 £79.19
South East median hourly rate £28.00 £47.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year -41.05% -5.00% +122.22%

Validation
Job Vacancy Trend in the Thames Valley

Job postings citing Validation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley.

Job vacancy trend for Validation in the Thames Valley

Validation
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Validation in the Thames Valley.

Daily rate trend for Validation in the Thames Valley

Validation
Daily Rate Histogram in the Thames Valley

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

Daily rate histogram for Validation in the Thames Valley

Validation
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Validation in the Thames Valley.

Hourly rate trend for Validation in the Thames Valley

Validation
Hourly Rate Histogram in the Thames Valley

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

Hourly rate histogram for Validation in the Thames Valley

Validation
Contract Job Locations in the Thames Valley

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Validation within the Thames Valley 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
Berkshire +44 37 £548 +9.50% 66
Buckinghamshire +27 16 £575 - 39
Oxfordshire -4 3 £475 +5.56% 41
Validation
South East

Validation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the Thames Valley 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 5 (8.93%) SAS
2 2 (3.57%) Confluence
2 2 (3.57%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 1 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (1.79%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (7.14%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (3.57%) Oracle EBS R12
3 1 (1.79%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (1.79%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (1.79%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (1.79%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (1.79%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 17 (30.36%) Azure
2 7 (12.50%) Azure DevOps
3 4 (7.14%) Power Platform
4 3 (5.36%) AWS
5 2 (3.57%) Azure Data Factory
5 2 (3.57%) Azure Sentinel
5 2 (3.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 2 (3.57%) Figma
5 2 (3.57%) GCP
5 2 (3.57%) Miro
5 2 (3.57%) PowerApps
6 1 (1.79%) Azure AKS
6 1 (1.79%) Azure Logic Apps
6 1 (1.79%) Azure Pipelines
6 1 (1.79%) Dynamics 365
6 1 (1.79%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (1.79%) OCI
6 1 (1.79%) Power Automate
6 1 (1.79%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
6 1 (1.79%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (3.57%) 5G
1 2 (3.57%) Diameter Protocol
1 2 (3.57%) SIGTRAN
1 2 (3.57%) SMS
1 2 (3.57%) SS7
1 2 (3.57%) VoLTE
1 2 (3.57%) VoWiFi
1 2 (3.57%) Wireshark
2 1 (1.79%) HTTP
2 1 (1.79%) MQTT
2 1 (1.79%) PuTTY
2 1 (1.79%) RS-232
2 1 (1.79%) TCP/IP
2 1 (1.79%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (5.36%) PostgreSQL
1 3 (5.36%) SQL Server
2 2 (3.57%) Azure SQL Database
2 2 (3.57%) BusinessObjects
2 2 (3.57%) Metadata
2 2 (3.57%) MS Access
2 2 (3.57%) MySQL
2 2 (3.57%) Oracle Database
2 2 (3.57%) Oracle Reports
2 2 (3.57%) Power BI
3 1 (1.79%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (1.79%) NoSQL
3 1 (1.79%) RDBMS
3 1 (1.79%) Relational Database
3 1 (1.79%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 9 (16.07%) JIRA
2 3 (5.36%) Git
3 2 (3.57%) DBeaver
3 2 (3.57%) GitLab
3 2 (3.57%) Jenkins
3 2 (3.57%) QARun
3 2 (3.57%) Selenium
3 2 (3.57%) SpecFlow
3 2 (3.57%) WinRunner
4 1 (1.79%) Axure RP
4 1 (1.79%) Maven
4 1 (1.79%) Rational DOORS
4 1 (1.79%) Toad
4 1 (1.79%) Vite
General
1 15 (26.79%) Social Skills
2 11 (19.64%) Analytical Skills
3 7 (12.50%) Finance
3 7 (12.50%) Telecoms
4 5 (8.93%) Banking
5 4 (7.14%) Manufacturing
6 3 (5.36%) Retail
7 2 (3.57%) Aerospace
7 2 (3.57%) Avionics
7 2 (3.57%) Electronics
7 2 (3.57%) Marketing
7 2 (3.57%) Public Sector
8 1 (1.79%) Automotive
8 1 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (1.79%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 16 (28.57%) Analyst
2 11 (19.64%) Senior
3 7 (12.50%) Data Analyst
4 6 (10.71%) Senior Analyst
4 6 (10.71%) Test Analyst
4 6 (10.71%) Tester
5 5 (8.93%) Security Engineer
6 4 (7.14%) Consultant
6 4 (7.14%) Senior Test Analyst
6 4 (7.14%) Test Engineer
7 3 (5.36%) Azure Engineer
7 3 (5.36%) Business Analyst
7 3 (5.36%) Senior Security Engineer
8 2 (3.57%) Credit Risk Manager
8 2 (3.57%) Data Engineer
8 2 (3.57%) Data Migration Analyst
8 2 (3.57%) Migration Analyst
8 2 (3.57%) Oracle Analyst
8 2 (3.57%) Senior Data Engineer
8 2 (3.57%) Senior Network Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (16.07%) Web Services
2 2 (3.57%) Gherkin
2 2 (3.57%) Middleware
2 2 (3.57%) PySpark
3 1 (1.79%) ADO
3 1 (1.79%) CSS
3 1 (1.79%) Express.js
3 1 (1.79%) Framer.js
3 1 (1.79%) HTML
3 1 (1.79%) Lightning Web Components
3 1 (1.79%) Node.js
3 1 (1.79%) PostGIS
3 1 (1.79%) React
3 1 (1.79%) REST
3 1 (1.79%) SAP Fiori
3 1 (1.79%) TanStack
3 1 (1.79%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 6 (10.71%) Product Ownership
2 5 (8.93%) Credit Risk
2 5 (8.93%) Data Structures
3 4 (7.14%) SCADA
4 2 (3.57%) Onboarding
5 1 (1.79%) Algorithms
5 1 (1.79%) Augmented Reality
5 1 (1.79%) Cloud Native
5 1 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (1.79%) EPoS
5 1 (1.79%) FPGA
5 1 (1.79%) Infotainment
5 1 (1.79%) Legacy Applications
5 1 (1.79%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (1.79%) Management Information System
5 1 (1.79%) Mobile App
5 1 (1.79%) VHDL
Operating Systems
1 9 (16.07%) Windows
2 4 (7.14%) Linux
3 3 (5.36%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 20 (35.71%) Problem-Solving
2 12 (21.43%) DevOps
3 9 (16.07%) Analytics
3 9 (16.07%) Test Automation
4 8 (14.29%) Agile
4 8 (14.29%) Data Migration
4 8 (14.29%) Data Validation
4 8 (14.29%) Integration Testing
4 8 (14.29%) Migration
5 7 (12.50%) SOA
5 7 (12.50%) System Integration Testing
5 7 (12.50%) Test Management
5 7 (12.50%) Test Strategy
6 6 (10.71%) Defect Management
6 6 (10.71%) Enterprise Architecture
6 6 (10.71%) Information Security
6 6 (10.71%) Software Testing
6 6 (10.71%) Verification and Validation
7 5 (8.93%) Portfolio Management
7 5 (8.93%) Security Architecture
Programming Languages
1 17 (30.36%) SQL
2 8 (14.29%) PL/SQL
3 4 (7.14%) Perl
3 4 (7.14%) Python
4 3 (5.36%) C#
5 2 (3.57%) Java
5 2 (3.57%) VB
6 1 (1.79%) ABAP
6 1 (1.79%) Bash
6 1 (1.79%) C
6 1 (1.79%) Embedded C
6 1 (1.79%) PowerShell
6 1 (1.79%) R
6 1 (1.79%) Shell Script
6 1 (1.79%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 6 (10.71%) Degree
2 5 (8.93%) CISM
2 5 (8.93%) CISSP
3 4 (7.14%) Security Cleared
4 3 (5.36%) SC Cleared
5 1 (1.79%) AWS Certification
5 1 (1.79%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.79%) HNC
5 1 (1.79%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (16.07%) QA
2 6 (10.71%) Data Quality
3 5 (8.93%) IFRS
3 5 (8.93%) IFRS 9
4 2 (3.57%) GDPR
4 2 (3.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 1 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
1 1 (1.79%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 1 (1.79%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 10 (17.86%) Microsoft
2 7 (12.50%) Oracle
3 4 (7.14%) Databricks
4 3 (5.36%) SAP
5 2 (3.57%) Citrix
5 2 (3.57%) Google
5 2 (3.57%) Splunk
5 2 (3.57%) Virgin Media
6 1 (1.79%) CA Agile Central
6 1 (1.79%) CyberArk
6 1 (1.79%) Dynatrace
6 1 (1.79%) Genesys
6 1 (1.79%) Intel
6 1 (1.79%) Rapid7
6 1 (1.79%) Remedy
6 1 (1.79%) Salesforce
6 1 (1.79%) Siemens