Validation Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Validation
Central London > City of London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the City of London requiring Validation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 27 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 65 57
Rank change year-on-year +20 -8 +59
Contract jobs citing Validation 95 53 74
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.78% 2.88% 3.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.36% 3.15% 3.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 62 29 50
10th Percentile £357 £413 £360
25th Percentile £452 £455 £503
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £591 £550
Median % change year-on-year -12.44% +7.45% -
75th Percentile £676 £638 £573
90th Percentile £750 £703 £779
Central London median daily rate £505 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -12.13% +4.55% -3.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
Median hourly rate £17.23 - -
Central London median hourly rate £17.23 - -

All Process & Methodology Skills
City of London

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 City of London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,771 1,684 2,104
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 89.08% 91.62% 89.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,219 1,040 1,502
10th Percentile £356 £363 £350
25th Percentile £429 £463 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £575 £570
Median % change year-on-year -6.09% +0.97% -5.08%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -6.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 10 13
10th Percentile £18.75 £22.00 £17.00
25th Percentile £20.18 £26.25 £18.93
Median hourly rate £34.25 £35.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.52% +42.00% -28.57%
75th Percentile £48.67 £47.50 £41.84
90th Percentile £59.72 £112.00 £49.55
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £35.00 £27.81
% change year-on-year -25.40% +25.85% -20.54%

Validation
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

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

Validation job vacancy trend in the City of London

Validation
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Validation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Validation

Validation
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Validation in the City of London over the 6 months to 27 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Validation in the City of London

Validation
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Validation.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Validation

Validation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London 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 5 (5.26%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (3.16%) Apache
3 2 (2.11%) Apache Spark
3 2 (2.11%) SharePoint
4 1 (1.05%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (1.05%) CMS
4 1 (1.05%) Confluence
4 1 (1.05%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 6 (6.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (1.05%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (3.16%) Workday HCM
2 2 (2.11%) Algo Collateral
3 1 (1.05%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (1.05%) NetSuite
3 1 (1.05%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 21 (22.11%) Azure
2 19 (20.00%) AWS
3 11 (11.58%) Power Platform
4 5 (5.26%) AWS Lambda
4 5 (5.26%) Azure DevOps
4 5 (5.26%) GCP
4 5 (5.26%) SaaS
4 5 (5.26%) Serverless
4 5 (5.26%) Snowflake
5 4 (4.21%) Amazon S3
5 4 (4.21%) GitHub
6 3 (3.16%) Entra ID
7 2 (2.11%) Amazon SageMaker
7 2 (2.11%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 2 (2.11%) Azure Data Factory
7 2 (2.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 2 (2.11%) Boomi
7 2 (2.11%) Dynamics 365
7 2 (2.11%) Slack
7 2 (2.11%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.05%) Firewall
1 1 (1.05%) Internet
1 1 (1.05%) MPLS
1 1 (1.05%) Network Security
1 1 (1.05%) SD-WAN
1 1 (1.05%) WAN
1 1 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (8.42%) Power BI
2 6 (6.32%) Data Warehouse
2 6 (6.32%) Metadata
3 5 (5.26%) Tableau
4 4 (4.21%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (3.16%) Data Lake
6 2 (2.11%) Amazon Athena
6 2 (2.11%) Big Data
6 2 (2.11%) CockroachDB
6 2 (2.11%) DynamoDB
6 2 (2.11%) MySQL
6 2 (2.11%) SQL Server
6 2 (2.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (1.05%) Data Mart
7 1 (1.05%) Hadoop
7 1 (1.05%) Informix
7 1 (1.05%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (1.05%) PowerPivot
7 1 (1.05%) Snowflake Schema
7 1 (1.05%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 7 (7.37%) JIRA
2 5 (5.26%) Git
2 5 (5.26%) Postman
2 5 (5.26%) Selenium
3 3 (3.16%) Cucumber
4 2 (2.11%) Bitbucket
4 2 (2.11%) GitLab
4 2 (2.11%) Jenkins
4 2 (2.11%) MLflow
5 1 (1.05%) JMeter
5 1 (1.05%) LoadRunner
5 1 (1.05%) Robot Framework
5 1 (1.05%) SonarQube
5 1 (1.05%) SpecFlow
5 1 (1.05%) TestRail
5 1 (1.05%) WinAutomation
5 1 (1.05%) Zephyr
General
1 46 (48.42%) Finance
2 39 (41.05%) Social Skills
3 25 (26.32%) Analytical Skills
4 19 (20.00%) Banking
5 6 (6.32%) Financial Institution
5 6 (6.32%) Front Office
5 6 (6.32%) Investment Banking
6 5 (5.26%) Presentation Skills
6 5 (5.26%) Public Sector
7 3 (3.16%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (2.11%) Back Office
8 2 (2.11%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (2.11%) Publishing
9 1 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (1.05%) Legal
9 1 (1.05%) Police
9 1 (1.05%) Retail
Job Titles
1 26 (27.37%) Analyst
2 11 (11.58%) Business Analyst
3 9 (9.47%) Data Engineer
3 9 (9.47%) Lead
4 8 (8.42%) Data Analyst
5 7 (7.37%) Consultant
5 7 (7.37%) Migration Manager
5 7 (7.37%) Migration Project Manager
5 7 (7.37%) Project Manager
5 7 (7.37%) Senior
6 5 (5.26%) Architect
7 4 (4.21%) Tester
8 3 (3.16%) Automation Tester
8 3 (3.16%) Business Systems Analyst
8 3 (3.16%) Data Scientist
8 3 (3.16%) Principal Consultant
8 3 (3.16%) Test Engineer
9 2 (2.11%) AWS Engineer
9 2 (2.11%) Senior User Researcher
9 2 (2.11%) User Researcher
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (7.37%) PyTorch
2 6 (6.32%) TensorFlow
3 4 (4.21%) .NET
3 4 (4.21%) Pandas
3 4 (4.21%) scikit-learn
4 3 (3.16%) JSON
4 3 (3.16%) NumPy
4 3 (3.16%) Playwright
4 3 (3.16%) REST
4 3 (3.16%) XML
5 2 (2.11%) boto
5 2 (2.11%) FIX Protocol
5 2 (2.11%) HTML
5 2 (2.11%) Middleware
5 2 (2.11%) Next.js
5 2 (2.11%) Node.js
5 2 (2.11%) PySpark
5 2 (2.11%) RESTful
6 1 (1.05%) SAML
6 1 (1.05%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 8 (8.42%) Legacy Systems
2 6 (6.32%) Data Structures
3 5 (5.26%) Derivative
3 5 (5.26%) Product Ownership
4 4 (4.21%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 3 (3.16%) AI Agents
5 3 (3.16%) Algorithms
5 3 (3.16%) Cloud Native
5 3 (3.16%) Data Centre
5 3 (3.16%) Fixed Income
5 3 (3.16%) Management Information System
5 3 (3.16%) Onboarding
5 3 (3.16%) Reference Data
6 2 (2.11%) Equities
6 2 (2.11%) Synthetic Data
6 2 (2.11%) Virtual Team
7 1 (1.05%) Blog
7 1 (1.05%) Clustering
7 1 (1.05%) NHS
7 1 (1.05%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.05%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (29.47%) Agile
2 27 (28.42%) Migration
3 22 (23.16%) Problem-Solving
4 20 (21.05%) Analytics
5 19 (20.00%) Stakeholder Management
6 18 (18.95%) AI
6 18 (18.95%) ETL
7 17 (17.89%) Data Validation
8 16 (16.84%) Data Analysis
9 15 (15.79%) Data Pipeline
9 15 (15.79%) Project Delivery
10 14 (14.74%) Business Intelligence
11 13 (13.68%) Data Engineering
11 13 (13.68%) Data Governance
11 13 (13.68%) Data Modelling
11 13 (13.68%) Test Automation
12 12 (12.63%) Actionable Insight
12 12 (12.63%) Continuous Improvement
12 12 (12.63%) Requirements Gathering
12 12 (12.63%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 33 (34.74%) SQL
2 26 (27.37%) Python
3 6 (6.32%) C#
3 6 (6.32%) Java
4 3 (3.16%) C++
4 3 (3.16%) JavaScript
5 2 (2.11%) TypeScript
5 2 (2.11%) VB.NET
6 1 (1.05%) Groovy
6 1 (1.05%) Korn
6 1 (1.05%) PL/SQL
6 1 (1.05%) R
6 1 (1.05%) Scala
6 1 (1.05%) XPath
Qualifications
1 12 (12.63%) Degree
2 8 (8.42%) PMI Certification
2 8 (8.42%) PMP
3 5 (5.26%) Computer Science Degree
3 5 (5.26%) Master's Degree
3 5 (5.26%) Security Cleared
4 3 (3.16%) ISTQB
4 3 (3.16%) SC Cleared
5 2 (2.11%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
5 2 (2.11%) PhD
6 1 (1.05%) CISM
6 1 (1.05%) CISSP
6 1 (1.05%) DV Cleared
6 1 (1.05%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
6 1 (1.05%) MBA
6 1 (1.05%) MPhil
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (30.53%) Data Quality
2 24 (25.26%) QA
3 14 (14.74%) GDPR
4 9 (9.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 9 (9.47%) NIST
5 3 (3.16%) Accessibility
6 2 (2.11%) Actionable Recommendations
6 2 (2.11%) IFRS
6 2 (2.11%) IFRS 17
6 2 (2.11%) PCI DSS
6 2 (2.11%) SLA
7 1 (1.05%) Basel III
7 1 (1.05%) EMIR
7 1 (1.05%) GAAP
7 1 (1.05%) GRC
7 1 (1.05%) HL7
7 1 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 42001
7 1 (1.05%) MiFID
7 1 (1.05%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (1.05%) Solvency II
System Software
1 1 (1.05%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (2.11%) Terraform
Vendors
1 11 (11.58%) Microsoft
2 8 (8.42%) SAP
3 7 (7.37%) CyberArk
3 7 (7.37%) Oracle
4 6 (6.32%) Salesforce
5 5 (5.26%) Workday
6 4 (4.21%) Databricks
6 4 (4.21%) Google
6 4 (4.21%) Murex
7 3 (3.16%) Informatica
8 2 (2.11%) MuleSoft
8 2 (2.11%) SmartStream
8 2 (2.11%) Talend
8 2 (2.11%) UiPath
9 1 (1.05%) Adobe
9 1 (1.05%) Alteryx
9 1 (1.05%) Ariba
9 1 (1.05%) Bloomberg
9 1 (1.05%) Cerner
9 1 (1.05%) IBM