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 20 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 34 73 70
Rank change year-on-year +39 -3 +36
Contract jobs citing Validation 118 49 59
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 5.10% 2.82% 2.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.04% 3.02% 3.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 87 28 44
10th Percentile £374 £413 £370
25th Percentile £459 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £558 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.35% +1.36% -4.35%
75th Percentile £738 £685 £597
90th Percentile £800 £729 £664
Central London median daily rate £545 £558 £550
% change year-on-year -2.24% +1.36% -4.35%
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 1,954 1,625 1,959
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 84.52% 93.61% 90.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,332 1,017 1,379
10th Percentile £363 £356 £350
25th Percentile £450 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £565
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +1.77% -5.83%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £813
Central London median daily rate £550 £565 £550
% change year-on-year -2.65% +2.73% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 13 12
10th Percentile £17.84 £22.00 £19.95
25th Percentile £18.75 £23.75 £20.22
Median hourly rate £27.50 £28.15 £25.63
Median % change year-on-year -2.31% +9.85% -26.79%
75th Percentile £52.16 £43.75 £40.00
90th Percentile £59.72 £60.75 £41.65
Central London median hourly rate £26.56 £29.07 £27.81
% change year-on-year -8.65% +4.53% -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 20 May 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 9 (7.63%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (2.54%) Apache
2 3 (2.54%) Apache Spark
3 2 (1.69%) Confluence
3 2 (1.69%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.85%) Anypoint
4 1 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 8 (6.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (1.69%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (4.24%) Workday HCM
2 2 (1.69%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.85%) iTrent
3 1 (0.85%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.85%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.85%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.85%) Oracle E-Business Tax
3 1 (0.85%) Oracle Financials
3 1 (0.85%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.85%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.85%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.85%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 31 (26.27%) Azure
2 27 (22.88%) AWS
3 16 (13.56%) Power Platform
4 10 (8.47%) Snowflake
5 8 (6.78%) Azure Data Factory
6 6 (5.08%) GCP
6 6 (5.08%) GitHub
6 6 (5.08%) Serverless
7 5 (4.24%) Amazon S3
7 5 (4.24%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 5 (4.24%) dbt
7 5 (4.24%) SaaS
8 4 (3.39%) AWS Lambda
9 3 (2.54%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (2.54%) Dynamics 365
9 3 (2.54%) GitHub Actions
9 3 (2.54%) OCI
10 2 (1.69%) Amazon EventBridge
10 2 (1.69%) Collibra
10 2 (1.69%) Textract
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.54%) Firewall
1 3 (2.54%) WAN
2 2 (1.69%) Internet
2 2 (1.69%) LAN
2 2 (1.69%) Network Security
2 2 (1.69%) VLAN
2 2 (1.69%) VPN
2 2 (1.69%) Wi-Fi
2 2 (1.69%) Wireless
3 1 (0.85%) BGP
3 1 (0.85%) EIGRP
3 1 (0.85%) FTP
3 1 (0.85%) MPLS
3 1 (0.85%) OSPF
3 1 (0.85%) SD-WAN
3 1 (0.85%) VSAN
3 1 (0.85%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (10.17%) Data Warehouse
1 12 (10.17%) Power BI
2 8 (6.78%) Metadata
3 6 (5.08%) SQL Server
4 5 (4.24%) Tableau
5 4 (3.39%) Snowflake Schema
6 3 (2.54%) Amazon Redshift
6 3 (2.54%) Azure SQL Database
6 3 (2.54%) Data Lake
6 3 (2.54%) Power Query
6 3 (2.54%) Star Schema
7 2 (1.69%) Big Data
7 2 (1.69%) CockroachDB
7 2 (1.69%) DynamoDB
7 2 (1.69%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (1.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.85%) Hadoop
8 1 (0.85%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.85%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.85%) PowerPivot
Development Applications
1 7 (5.93%) Jenkins
2 6 (5.08%) Postman
3 5 (4.24%) JIRA
3 5 (4.24%) JMeter
4 3 (2.54%) Git
5 2 (1.69%) GitLab
5 2 (1.69%) MLflow
5 2 (1.69%) Selenium
5 2 (1.69%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 1 (0.85%) Cucumber
6 1 (0.85%) Gatling
6 1 (0.85%) git-flow
6 1 (0.85%) REST Assured
6 1 (0.85%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.85%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.85%) SpecFlow
6 1 (0.85%) TestRail
6 1 (0.85%) WinAutomation
6 1 (0.85%) Zephyr
General
1 59 (50.00%) Finance
2 32 (27.12%) Social Skills
3 26 (22.03%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (16.95%) Banking
5 9 (7.63%) Financial Institution
6 4 (3.39%) General Ledger
6 4 (3.39%) Public Sector
6 4 (3.39%) Publishing
7 3 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (2.54%) Front Office
7 3 (2.54%) Telecoms
8 2 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.69%) Investment Banking
8 2 (1.69%) Legal
9 1 (0.85%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.85%) Local Government
9 1 (0.85%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.85%) Retail
Job Titles
1 21 (17.80%) Analyst
2 15 (12.71%) Data Engineer
3 11 (9.32%) Migration Manager
3 11 (9.32%) Migration Project Manager
3 11 (9.32%) Project Manager
4 10 (8.47%) Consultant
4 10 (8.47%) Data Analyst
5 8 (6.78%) Lead
6 7 (5.93%) Senior
6 7 (5.93%) Tester
7 6 (5.08%) Architect
8 5 (4.24%) Migration Engineer
8 5 (4.24%) Snowflake Data Engineer
8 5 (4.24%) Snowflake Engineer
9 4 (3.39%) Business Analyst
9 4 (3.39%) Data Migration Engineer
9 4 (3.39%) Report Analyst
9 4 (3.39%) Workday Analyst
10 3 (2.54%) Functional Consultant
10 3 (2.54%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (5.08%) PyTorch
1 6 (5.08%) REST
2 5 (4.24%) Kafka
2 5 (4.24%) Swagger
2 5 (4.24%) TensorFlow
3 4 (3.39%) JSON
3 4 (3.39%) Pandas
3 4 (3.39%) Playwright
3 4 (3.39%) XML
4 3 (2.54%) NumPy
4 3 (2.54%) PySpark
4 3 (2.54%) scikit-learn
5 2 (1.69%) boto
5 2 (1.69%) FIX Protocol
5 2 (1.69%) Middleware
5 2 (1.69%) Next.js
5 2 (1.69%) Node.js
5 2 (1.69%) OAuth
5 2 (1.69%) RESTful
5 2 (1.69%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 8 (6.78%) Cloud Native
2 7 (5.93%) Data Structures
3 5 (4.24%) Clustering
3 5 (4.24%) Legacy Systems
3 5 (4.24%) Onboarding
4 4 (3.39%) Data Centre
4 4 (3.39%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 4 (3.39%) Product Ownership
5 3 (2.54%) AI Agents
5 3 (2.54%) Derivative
5 3 (2.54%) Fixed Income
5 3 (2.54%) Management Information System
5 3 (2.54%) Replication
6 2 (1.69%) Algorithms
6 2 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
6 2 (1.69%) Equities
6 2 (1.69%) Reference Data
6 2 (1.69%) Synthetic Data
6 2 (1.69%) Virtual Team
7 1 (0.85%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 2 (1.69%) Windows
2 1 (0.85%) Linux
2 1 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 1 (0.85%) SUSE
2 1 (0.85%) VMS
2 1 (0.85%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 36 (30.51%) Migration
2 30 (25.42%) Analytics
3 28 (23.73%) Stakeholder Management
4 26 (22.03%) Agile
5 22 (18.64%) Data Modelling
6 21 (17.80%) AI
7 20 (16.95%) ETL
8 19 (16.10%) CI/CD
9 18 (15.25%) Business Intelligence
9 18 (15.25%) Data Pipeline
9 18 (15.25%) Test Automation
10 17 (14.41%) Data Engineering
10 17 (14.41%) Project Delivery
11 16 (13.56%) Data Governance
11 16 (13.56%) DevOps
11 16 (13.56%) Problem-Solving
11 16 (13.56%) Project Management
11 16 (13.56%) User Acceptance Testing
12 15 (12.71%) Data Validation
13 14 (11.86%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 37 (31.36%) SQL
2 32 (27.12%) Python
3 5 (4.24%) Java
3 5 (4.24%) PowerShell
4 4 (3.39%) Bash
5 3 (2.54%) C#
5 3 (2.54%) JavaScript
6 2 (1.69%) C++
6 2 (1.69%) TypeScript
7 1 (0.85%) Apex Code
7 1 (0.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 1 (0.85%) Groovy
7 1 (0.85%) Korn
7 1 (0.85%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.85%) Scala
7 1 (0.85%) XPath
Qualifications
1 13 (11.02%) PMI Certification
1 13 (11.02%) Security Cleared
2 12 (10.17%) PMP
3 11 (9.32%) Degree
4 9 (7.63%) SC Cleared
5 4 (3.39%) Master's Degree
6 2 (1.69%) CCNP
6 2 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
6 2 (1.69%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (1.69%) DBS Check
6 2 (1.69%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
6 2 (1.69%) PhD
6 2 (1.69%) SnowPro
7 1 (0.85%) CBAP
7 1 (0.85%) CCIE
7 1 (0.85%) CTC Cleared
7 1 (0.85%) CWNA
7 1 (0.85%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.85%) MBA
7 1 (0.85%) MPhil
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (28.81%) Data Quality
2 19 (16.10%) GDPR
2 19 (16.10%) QA
3 14 (11.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 13 (11.02%) NIST
5 4 (3.39%) Accessibility
6 2 (1.69%) Actionable Recommendations
6 2 (1.69%) Cyber Essentials
6 2 (1.69%) EMIR
6 2 (1.69%) IFRS
6 2 (1.69%) IFRS 17
6 2 (1.69%) MiFID
6 2 (1.69%) SLA
6 2 (1.69%) Solvency II
7 1 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.85%) GAAP
7 1 (0.85%) GRC
7 1 (0.85%) NCSC
7 1 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.85%) WCAG
System Software
1 3 (2.54%) Docker
2 1 (0.85%) Firmware
2 1 (0.85%) Hyper-V
2 1 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
2 1 (0.85%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.85%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (0.85%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 6 (5.08%) Kubernetes
2 5 (4.24%) Ansible
2 5 (4.24%) Grafana
3 4 (3.39%) Prometheus
4 2 (1.69%) Terraform
5 1 (0.85%) Failover Clustering
5 1 (0.85%) Microsoft Clustering
5 1 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
5 1 (0.85%) vCenter Server
5 1 (0.85%) VxRail
Vendors
1 21 (17.80%) Microsoft
2 11 (9.32%) CyberArk
3 9 (7.63%) SAP
4 8 (6.78%) Oracle
5 7 (5.93%) Workday
6 6 (5.08%) Google
6 6 (5.08%) Salesforce
7 5 (4.24%) Databricks
7 5 (4.24%) Informatica
8 3 (2.54%) Anaplan
8 3 (2.54%) MuleSoft
8 3 (2.54%) Murex
9 2 (1.69%) Cisco
9 2 (1.69%) Kronos
10 1 (0.85%) Bloomberg
10 1 (0.85%) Dell
10 1 (0.85%) PTC
10 1 (0.85%) Remedy
10 1 (0.85%) Siemens
10 1 (0.85%) VMware