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

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 37 73 61
Rank change year-on-year +36 -12 +45
Contract jobs citing Validation 117 50 63
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 5.09% 2.85% 2.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.98% 3.05% 3.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 85 28 46
10th Percentile £363 £413 £375
25th Percentile £456 £441 £466
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.82% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £728 £675 £616
90th Percentile £798 £729 £803
Central London median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -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 1,955 1,639 1,968
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 85.00% 93.28% 90.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,329 1,040 1,396
10th Percentile £363 £356 £363
25th Percentile £450 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £569
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +1.10% -5.21%
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 26 12 11
10th Percentile £17.99 £22.00 £19.92
25th Percentile £18.75 £24.00 £20.22
Median hourly rate £29.78 £29.58 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.70% +18.30% -28.57%
75th Percentile £49.78 £45.00 £40.00
90th Percentile £59.72 £62.25 £41.84
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £29.07 £27.81
% change year-on-year -10.18% +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 6 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 8 (6.84%) Apache Airflow
2 4 (3.42%) Apache Spark
3 3 (2.56%) Apache
4 2 (1.71%) Confluence
4 2 (1.71%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.85%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.85%) SharePoint
Applications
1 8 (6.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.85%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (4.27%) Workday HCM
2 2 (1.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.85%) Algo Collateral
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%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 31 (26.50%) Azure
2 27 (23.08%) AWS
3 18 (15.38%) Power Platform
4 9 (7.69%) Snowflake
5 7 (5.98%) Azure Data Factory
5 7 (5.98%) GCP
6 6 (5.13%) GitHub
6 6 (5.13%) Serverless
7 5 (4.27%) Amazon S3
7 5 (4.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 4 (3.42%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (3.42%) dbt
8 4 (3.42%) SaaS
9 3 (2.56%) Dynamics 365
9 3 (2.56%) Entra ID
9 3 (2.56%) GitHub Actions
9 3 (2.56%) OCI
9 3 (2.56%) SuccessFactors
10 2 (1.71%) Amazon EventBridge
10 2 (1.71%) Textract
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.71%) Firewall
1 2 (1.71%) Network Security
1 2 (1.71%) VLAN
1 2 (1.71%) WAN
2 1 (0.85%) BGP
2 1 (0.85%) EIGRP
2 1 (0.85%) FTP
2 1 (0.85%) Internet
2 1 (0.85%) LAN
2 1 (0.85%) MPLS
2 1 (0.85%) OSPF
2 1 (0.85%) SD-WAN
2 1 (0.85%) VPN
2 1 (0.85%) VSAN
2 1 (0.85%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.85%) Wireless
2 1 (0.85%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (11.97%) Power BI
2 11 (9.40%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (7.69%) Metadata
4 6 (5.13%) SQL Server
4 6 (5.13%) Tableau
5 3 (2.56%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (2.56%) Azure SQL Database
5 3 (2.56%) Big Data
5 3 (2.56%) Data Lake
5 3 (2.56%) Power Query
5 3 (2.56%) Snowflake Schema
5 3 (2.56%) Star Schema
6 2 (1.71%) CockroachDB
6 2 (1.71%) DynamoDB
6 2 (1.71%) Hadoop
6 2 (1.71%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (1.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (0.85%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.85%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.85%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 7 (5.98%) Jenkins
2 6 (5.13%) JIRA
2 6 (5.13%) Postman
3 5 (4.27%) JMeter
4 3 (2.56%) Git
5 2 (1.71%) GitLab
5 2 (1.71%) MLflow
5 2 (1.71%) Selenium
5 2 (1.71%) 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 60 (51.28%) Finance
2 35 (29.91%) Social Skills
3 31 (26.50%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (17.09%) Banking
5 9 (7.69%) Financial Institution
6 4 (3.42%) General Ledger
6 4 (3.42%) Public Sector
6 4 (3.42%) Publishing
7 3 (2.56%) Front Office
7 3 (2.56%) Investment Banking
7 3 (2.56%) Telecoms
8 2 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.85%) Legal
9 1 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.85%) Retail
Job Titles
1 25 (21.37%) Analyst
2 14 (11.97%) Data Engineer
3 11 (9.40%) Data Analyst
3 11 (9.40%) Migration Manager
3 11 (9.40%) Migration Project Manager
3 11 (9.40%) Project Manager
4 9 (7.69%) Consultant
5 8 (6.84%) Tester
6 7 (5.98%) Business Analyst
6 7 (5.98%) Senior
7 6 (5.13%) Architect
7 6 (5.13%) Lead
8 5 (4.27%) Migration Engineer
9 4 (3.42%) Data Migration Engineer
9 4 (3.42%) Report Analyst
9 4 (3.42%) Snowflake Data Engineer
9 4 (3.42%) Snowflake Engineer
9 4 (3.42%) Workday Analyst
10 3 (2.56%) Automation Tester
10 3 (2.56%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (5.98%) PyTorch
2 6 (5.13%) REST
2 6 (5.13%) TensorFlow
3 5 (4.27%) Kafka
3 5 (4.27%) Swagger
4 4 (3.42%) JSON
4 4 (3.42%) Pandas
4 4 (3.42%) Playwright
4 4 (3.42%) scikit-learn
4 4 (3.42%) XML
5 3 (2.56%) NumPy
5 3 (2.56%) PySpark
6 2 (1.71%) boto
6 2 (1.71%) FIX Protocol
6 2 (1.71%) HTML
6 2 (1.71%) Next.js
6 2 (1.71%) Node.js
6 2 (1.71%) OAuth
6 2 (1.71%) RESTful
6 2 (1.71%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 8 (6.84%) Cloud Native
2 7 (5.98%) Data Structures
3 6 (5.13%) Legacy Systems
4 5 (4.27%) Clustering
5 4 (3.42%) Derivative
5 4 (3.42%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 4 (3.42%) Management Information System
5 4 (3.42%) Onboarding
5 4 (3.42%) Product Ownership
6 3 (2.56%) AI Agents
6 3 (2.56%) Algorithms
6 3 (2.56%) Data Centre
6 3 (2.56%) Fixed Income
6 3 (2.56%) Replication
7 2 (1.71%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (1.71%) Equities
7 2 (1.71%) Reference Data
7 2 (1.71%) Synthetic Data
7 2 (1.71%) Virtual Team
8 1 (0.85%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 2 (1.71%) 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 (30.77%) Migration
2 31 (26.50%) Analytics
3 27 (23.08%) Agile
4 26 (22.22%) Stakeholder Management
5 23 (19.66%) Data Modelling
6 22 (18.80%) AI
7 20 (17.09%) Business Intelligence
7 20 (17.09%) ETL
7 20 (17.09%) Problem-Solving
8 19 (16.24%) Data Pipeline
8 19 (16.24%) Project Delivery
9 18 (15.38%) CI/CD
9 18 (15.38%) Data Engineering
10 17 (14.53%) Data Governance
10 17 (14.53%) Data Validation
10 17 (14.53%) Test Automation
11 16 (13.68%) Data Analysis
12 15 (12.82%) DevOps
12 15 (12.82%) Project Management
12 15 (12.82%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 39 (33.33%) SQL
2 33 (28.21%) Python
3 5 (4.27%) Java
3 5 (4.27%) PowerShell
4 4 (3.42%) Bash
5 3 (2.56%) C#
5 3 (2.56%) C++
5 3 (2.56%) JavaScript
6 2 (1.71%) 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%) R
7 1 (0.85%) Scala
7 1 (0.85%) XPath
Qualifications
1 13 (11.11%) PMI Certification
2 12 (10.26%) PMP
3 11 (9.40%) Security Cleared
4 10 (8.55%) Degree
5 7 (5.98%) SC Cleared
6 4 (3.42%) Master's Degree
7 2 (1.71%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (1.71%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 2 (1.71%) PhD
7 2 (1.71%) SnowPro
8 1 (0.85%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.85%) CBAP
8 1 (0.85%) CCNP
8 1 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (0.85%) CTC Cleared
8 1 (0.85%) CWNA
8 1 (0.85%) DBS Check
8 1 (0.85%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.85%) MBA
8 1 (0.85%) MPhil
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (29.91%) Data Quality
2 22 (18.80%) QA
3 18 (15.38%) GDPR
4 13 (11.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 12 (10.26%) NIST
6 4 (3.42%) Accessibility
7 2 (1.71%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (1.71%) EMIR
7 2 (1.71%) IFRS
7 2 (1.71%) IFRS 17
7 2 (1.71%) MiFID
7 2 (1.71%) SLA
7 2 (1.71%) Solvency II
8 1 (0.85%) Basel III
8 1 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.85%) GAAP
8 1 (0.85%) HL7
8 1 (0.85%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.85%) WCAG
System Software
1 3 (2.56%) 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 (5.13%) Kubernetes
2 5 (4.27%) Ansible
2 5 (4.27%) Grafana
3 4 (3.42%) Prometheus
4 2 (1.71%) Terraform
5 1 (0.85%) Failover Clustering
5 1 (0.85%) Microsoft Clustering
5 1 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
5 1 (0.85%) vCenter Server
5 1 (0.85%) VxRail
Vendors
1 18 (15.38%) Microsoft
2 11 (9.40%) CyberArk
3 9 (7.69%) SAP
4 7 (5.98%) Oracle
5 6 (5.13%) Databricks
5 6 (5.13%) Google
5 6 (5.13%) Salesforce
5 6 (5.13%) Workday
6 5 (4.27%) Informatica
7 3 (2.56%) Anaplan
7 3 (2.56%) Murex
8 2 (1.71%) MuleSoft
9 1 (0.85%) Cisco
9 1 (0.85%) Dell
9 1 (0.85%) Extreme Networks
9 1 (0.85%) IBM
9 1 (0.85%) Palo Alto
9 1 (0.85%) Planon
9 1 (0.85%) Qualtrics
9 1 (0.85%) SmartStream