Data Validation Contract Job Trends

Data Validation
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Data Validation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 369 455 534
Rank change year-on-year +86 +79 +132
Contract jobs citing Data Validation 217 109 78
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.32% 0.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.67% 0.36% 0.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 150 58 46
10th Percentile £350 £308 £259
25th Percentile £400 £364 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £425 £450
Median % change year-on-year +11.76% -5.56% -14.29%
75th Percentile £575 £550 £638
90th Percentile £675 £641 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £413 £425
% change year-on-year +15.15% -2.94% -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 7 3
10th Percentile £24.92 £22.35 £22.26
25th Percentile £27.77 £25.26 £32.66
Median hourly rate £34.00 £27.13 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.35% -45.75% +300.64%
75th Percentile £58.25 £30.00 -
90th Percentile £71.90 £53.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.02 £27.13 £50.00
% change year-on-year +91.76% -45.75% +300.64%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Data 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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 32,261 30,399 39,447
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.54% 87.91% 88.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,301 18,546 26,335
10th Percentile £300 £306 £310
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £531
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.13% -3.45%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £744 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,097 1,021 1,510
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.53 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.30 £18.95
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.79% -22.35% +21.43%
75th Percentile £48.75 £63.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -29.23% -26.97% +37.98%

Data Validation
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Data Validation job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Validation
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Validation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Validation

Data Validation
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Validation over the 6 months to 14 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Data Validation in the UK

Data Validation
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Validation.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Validation

Data Validation
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Validation over the 6 months to 14 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Validation in the UK

Data Validation
Top 15 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Data Validation within the UK over the 6 months to 14 December 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
England +60 184 £475 +15.15% 67
London +79 121 £475 -5.00% 31
UK excluding London -15 75 £475 +15.15% 45
Work from Home +14 51 £475 +15.15% 31
South East +13 26 £550 +59.42% 16
South West -2 11 £475 - 2
Scotland +8 10 £569 +22.31% 3
North of England -37 10 £451 +9.45% 8
North West -18 8 £451 +9.45% 5
East of England -18 7 £575 - 2
Midlands -39 6 £430 +36.51% 14
Northern Ireland - 5 £400 - 1
East Midlands -17 4 £434 +37.70% 2
West Midlands -39 2 £350 +3.70% 12
Yorkshire -46 2 £408 +16.43% 2

Data Validation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 13 (5.99%) Confluence
2 8 (3.69%) Apache
2 8 (3.69%) Apache Spark
3 7 (3.23%) SharePoint
4 3 (1.38%) GeoServer
4 3 (1.38%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
4 3 (1.38%) Smallworld
5 2 (0.92%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.46%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.46%) ArcGIS
6 1 (0.46%) CMS
Applications
1 26 (11.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (2.76%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.92%) Oracle Smart View
3 2 (0.92%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.46%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 16 (7.37%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (3.69%) NetSuite
2 8 (3.69%) Oracle EBS
3 6 (2.76%) Aladdin
4 3 (1.38%) Algo Collateral
4 3 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (1.38%) Markit EDM
5 2 (0.92%) Actimize
5 2 (0.92%) Eagle PACE
5 2 (0.92%) HFM
5 2 (0.92%) Maximo
5 2 (0.92%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.92%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.92%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.92%) SAP HR
5 2 (0.92%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.92%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.46%) SAP MM
6 1 (0.46%) SAP PS
6 1 (0.46%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 52 (23.96%) Azure
2 35 (16.13%) Power Platform
3 31 (14.29%) AWS
4 19 (8.76%) Azure DevOps
5 13 (5.99%) Amazon S3
5 13 (5.99%) Azure Data Factory
6 11 (5.07%) GCP
7 9 (4.15%) Snowflake
8 8 (3.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 8 (3.69%) Dynamics 365
8 8 (3.69%) SaaS
8 8 (3.69%) Serverless
9 7 (3.23%) OCI
10 6 (2.76%) GitHub
11 5 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
11 5 (2.30%) Lucidchart
12 4 (1.84%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (1.84%) AWS Lambda
12 4 (1.84%) Entra ID
13 3 (1.38%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.46%) Kerberos
1 1 (0.46%) SSH
1 1 (0.46%) SSL
1 1 (0.46%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (16.13%) Power BI
2 30 (13.82%) Data Warehouse
3 19 (8.76%) Metadata
4 13 (5.99%) NoSQL
5 11 (5.07%) PostgreSQL
5 11 (5.07%) Tableau
6 10 (4.61%) Relational Database
7 9 (4.15%) Data Lake
8 8 (3.69%) SAP HANA
9 7 (3.23%) SAP BW
9 7 (3.23%) SAP Data Services
10 6 (2.76%) Amazon Athena
10 6 (2.76%) Azure SQL Database
11 5 (2.30%) Amazon QuickSight
11 5 (2.30%) Data Vault
11 5 (2.30%) Parquet
11 5 (2.30%) Snowflake Schema
12 4 (1.84%) Delta Lake
12 4 (1.84%) GIS
12 4 (1.84%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 34 (15.67%) JIRA
2 15 (6.91%) Postman
3 10 (4.61%) Git
3 10 (4.61%) Selenium
4 8 (3.69%) Jenkins
4 8 (3.69%) TestRail
5 7 (3.23%) Cypress.io
5 7 (3.23%) GitLab
5 7 (3.23%) REST Assured
5 7 (3.23%) Zephyr
6 5 (2.30%) JMeter
7 3 (1.38%) MLflow
7 3 (1.38%) SoapUI
8 2 (0.92%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.92%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.92%) JUnit
8 2 (0.92%) SpecFlow
8 2 (0.92%) TestNG
9 1 (0.46%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.46%) LSMW
General
1 91 (41.94%) Social Skills
2 74 (34.10%) Finance
3 55 (25.35%) Analytical Skills
4 27 (12.44%) Public Sector
5 17 (7.83%) Banking
6 13 (5.99%) Documentation Skills
7 5 (2.30%) Front Office
7 5 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 5 (2.30%) Investment Banking
8 4 (1.84%) Aviation
8 4 (1.84%) Financial Institution
8 4 (1.84%) General Ledger
8 4 (1.84%) Legal
9 3 (1.38%) Back Office
9 3 (1.38%) Local Government
9 3 (1.38%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (0.92%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.92%) Marketing
10 2 (0.92%) Military
10 2 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 64 (29.49%) Analyst
2 29 (13.36%) Senior
3 28 (12.90%) Lead
4 25 (11.52%) Data Analyst
5 24 (11.06%) Consultant
6 20 (9.22%) Tester
7 19 (8.76%) Business Analyst
7 19 (8.76%) Test Analyst
8 16 (7.37%) Developer
9 14 (6.45%) Data Engineer
10 13 (5.99%) Senior Analyst
11 9 (4.15%) SAP Consultant
12 8 (3.69%) QA Engineer
12 8 (3.69%) Senior Test Analyst
13 7 (3.23%) Data Migration Specialist
13 7 (3.23%) Migration Specialist
13 7 (3.23%) Operations Business Analyst
13 7 (3.23%) Systems Analyst
14 6 (2.76%) Data Business Analyst
14 6 (2.76%) Functional Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (5.99%) JSON
2 11 (5.07%) Oracle Fusion
3 10 (4.61%) PySpark
4 9 (4.15%) Playwright
4 9 (4.15%) RESTful
4 9 (4.15%) XML
5 6 (2.76%) Middleware
6 5 (2.30%) REST
7 4 (1.84%) .NET
7 4 (1.84%) Apache Avro
7 4 (1.84%) Gherkin
7 4 (1.84%) Kafka
7 4 (1.84%) pytest
7 4 (1.84%) React
7 4 (1.84%) Web Services
8 3 (1.38%) Apache NiFi
8 3 (1.38%) FastAPI
8 3 (1.38%) HTML
8 3 (1.38%) NumPy
8 3 (1.38%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 23 (10.60%) Legacy Systems
2 14 (6.45%) Data Structures
3 8 (3.69%) Analytical Mindset
4 7 (3.23%) Product Ownership
5 6 (2.76%) Greenfield Project
6 5 (2.30%) Data Protection Act
6 5 (2.30%) Derivative
6 5 (2.30%) Fixed Income
7 4 (1.84%) Management Information System
7 4 (1.84%) Replication
8 3 (1.38%) BBC
8 3 (1.38%) Reference Data
8 3 (1.38%) SCADA
9 2 (0.92%) Data Centre
9 2 (0.92%) Equity Derivative
9 2 (0.92%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.92%) Virtual Team
9 2 (0.92%) Wiki
10 1 (0.46%) Clustering
10 1 (0.46%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 8 (3.69%) Linux
2 5 (2.30%) Windows
3 3 (1.38%) Unix
4 1 (0.46%) Android
4 1 (0.46%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 217 (100.00%) Validation
2 75 (34.56%) Migration
3 62 (28.57%) ETL
4 58 (26.73%) Agile
5 57 (26.27%) Data Migration
6 54 (24.88%) Data Modelling
7 49 (22.58%) Analytics
8 48 (22.12%) Business Intelligence
9 44 (20.28%) Data Governance
10 40 (18.43%) User Acceptance Testing
11 39 (17.97%) Data Pipeline
11 39 (17.97%) Test Automation
12 35 (16.13%) Problem-Solving
13 34 (15.67%) Stakeholder Management
14 32 (14.75%) DevOps
15 31 (14.29%) Data Analysis
16 27 (12.44%) CI/CD
16 27 (12.44%) Data Cleansing
17 25 (11.52%) Data Engineering
18 23 (10.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 118 (54.38%) SQL
2 54 (24.88%) Python
3 10 (4.61%) Java
4 7 (3.23%) C#
4 7 (3.23%) JavaScript
4 7 (3.23%) PowerShell
5 6 (2.76%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 6 (2.76%) R
6 5 (2.30%) Shell Script
6 5 (2.30%) TypeScript
7 3 (1.38%) ABAP
8 2 (0.92%) PHP
8 2 (0.92%) PL/SQL
8 2 (0.92%) T-SQL
8 2 (0.92%) VBA
9 1 (0.46%) Bourne shell
9 1 (0.46%) C++
9 1 (0.46%) Google Apps Script
9 1 (0.46%) Scala
9 1 (0.46%) XPath
Qualifications
1 26 (11.98%) Security Cleared
2 15 (6.91%) SC Cleared
3 11 (5.07%) Degree
4 10 (4.61%) ISTQB
5 6 (2.76%) CBAP
6 5 (2.30%) CSPO
7 4 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (1.84%) DV Cleared
8 3 (1.38%) AWS Certification
8 3 (1.38%) BPSS Clearance
8 3 (1.38%) Master's Degree
9 1 (0.46%) ACCA
9 1 (0.46%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.46%) CIMA
9 1 (0.46%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 1 (0.46%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 53 (24.42%) QA
2 50 (23.04%) Data Quality
3 12 (5.53%) GDPR
4 8 (3.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 6 (2.76%) Accessibility
5 6 (2.76%) COBIT
5 6 (2.76%) NIST
6 3 (1.38%) IFRS
7 2 (0.92%) IFRS 17
7 2 (0.92%) MiFID
7 2 (0.92%) Software Quality Assurance
7 2 (0.92%) WCAG
8 1 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.46%) EMIR
8 1 (0.46%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.46%) HL7
8 1 (0.46%) NCSC
8 1 (0.46%) PMO
8 1 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.46%) SLA
System Software
1 4 (1.84%) Active Directory
1 4 (1.84%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (2.30%) Terraform
2 3 (1.38%) Kubernetes
3 2 (0.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 2 (0.92%) HP ALM
4 1 (0.46%) Ansible
4 1 (0.46%) Grafana
4 1 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (0.46%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 32 (14.75%) Microsoft
2 27 (12.44%) SAP
3 25 (11.52%) Oracle
4 19 (8.76%) Databricks
5 9 (4.15%) Salesforce
6 6 (2.76%) Workday
7 5 (2.30%) Bloomberg
7 5 (2.30%) Zuora
8 4 (1.84%) Google
8 4 (1.84%) Informatica
8 4 (1.84%) ServiceNow
9 3 (1.38%) ESRI
9 3 (1.38%) Foundry
9 3 (1.38%) GoldenSource
9 3 (1.38%) IBM
9 3 (1.38%) Intergraph
9 3 (1.38%) Palantir
9 3 (1.38%) Refinitiv
9 3 (1.38%) SmartStream
10 2 (0.92%) Splunk