Validation Contract Job Trends

Validation
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Validation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 11 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 37 72 121
Rank change year-on-year +35 +49 +36
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,521 984 814
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.05% 3.35% 1.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.96% 3.68% 2.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,496 591 402
10th Percentile £326 £350 £325
25th Percentile £406 £413 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £525 £519
Median % change year-on-year -6.26% +1.20% -6.53%
75th Percentile £593 £630 £599
90th Percentile £700 £703 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £514 £500
% change year-on-year -9.98% +2.75% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 163 62 172
10th Percentile £17.23 £16.67 £26.88
25th Percentile £27.87 £38.93 £50.44
Median hourly rate £60.00 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% -5.11%
75th Percentile £74.63 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.95 £77.25 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £62.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year +1.02% +0.81% -0.88%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

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 42,291 26,731 37,187
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.76% 91.01% 85.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,385 16,984 23,772
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,541 1,182 2,587
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.28 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.14% -25.26% +1.39%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £61.16
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +8.91%

Validation
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Validation job vacancy trend in the UK

Validation
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Validation
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Validation over the 6 months to 11 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Validation
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Validation over the 6 months to 11 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Validation within the UK over the 6 months to 11 June 2026. 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 +32 2,187 £500 -4.76% 903
UK excluding London +31 1,199 £463 -9.98% 748
London +50 1,042 £513 -6.82% 284
Work from Home +52 743 £480 -4.00% 397
North of England +38 305 £437 -2.83% 158
Midlands +26 269 £492 +9.39% 122
South East +1 253 £500 - 240
West Midlands +27 194 £484 +20.10% 74
North West +25 175 £423 -3.43% 88
South West +7 131 £500 -13.04% 113
East of England +11 129 £488 +8.33% 81
Yorkshire +28 114 £458 +1.67% 49
Scotland +41 85 £413 -13.16% 35
East Midlands +15 70 £525 +15.51% 48
Wales +10 25 £455 +193.55% 13
North East -13 19 £425 -22.73% 24
Northern Ireland +13 13 £400 -32.20% 13

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 84 (3.33%) Confluence
2 60 (2.38%) Apache Airflow
3 47 (1.86%) SAS
4 46 (1.82%) Apache Spark
5 36 (1.43%) SharePoint
6 23 (0.91%) Apache
7 14 (0.56%) Jupyter
8 10 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.36%) Appian
9 9 (0.36%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
10 7 (0.28%) SharePoint 2013
11 5 (0.20%) CMS
11 5 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 5 (0.20%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.16%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
13 3 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.079%) Anypoint
Applications
1 156 (6.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.39%) MS Visio
3 28 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
4 24 (0.95%) Spreadsheet
5 23 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 11 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.32%) CATIA
8 6 (0.24%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.20%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.16%) Simulink
11 3 (0.12%) LaTeX
12 2 (0.079%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.079%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.079%) Sketch
12 2 (0.079%) Windchill
13 1 (0.040%) Autodesk Inventor
13 1 (0.040%) CANalyzer
13 1 (0.040%) MicroStation
13 1 (0.040%) OrCAD
13 1 (0.040%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 121 (4.80%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (1.35%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.63%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.56%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 13 (0.52%) Oracle Payables
6 12 (0.48%) Workday HCM
7 11 (0.44%) Oracle General Ledger
8 9 (0.36%) Aladdin
8 9 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.36%) SAP ERP
9 8 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
9 8 (0.32%) SAP SD
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle EBS R12
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle Financials
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.28%) Sage X3
10 7 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
11 6 (0.24%) iTrent
11 6 (0.24%) NetSuite
11 6 (0.24%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 501 (19.87%) Azure
2 327 (12.97%) AWS
3 239 (9.48%) Power Platform
4 132 (5.24%) Azure DevOps
5 129 (5.12%) GCP
6 120 (4.76%) GitHub
7 83 (3.29%) Snowflake
8 70 (2.78%) Serverless
9 67 (2.66%) GitHub Actions
10 63 (2.50%) Entra ID
11 61 (2.42%) Amazon S3
11 61 (2.42%) Azure Data Factory
12 56 (2.22%) SaaS
13 43 (1.71%) Microsoft 365
14 42 (1.67%) OCI
15 38 (1.51%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 37 (1.47%) AWS Lambda
16 37 (1.47%) dbt
17 32 (1.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 30 (1.19%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 93 (3.69%) Firewall
2 63 (2.50%) Network Security
3 43 (1.71%) VLAN
4 41 (1.63%) DNS
5 35 (1.39%) TCP/IP
5 35 (1.39%) VPN
6 32 (1.27%) WAN
7 24 (0.95%) Ethernet
8 21 (0.83%) BGP
9 20 (0.79%) LAN
9 20 (0.79%) SAN
10 19 (0.75%) OSPF
10 19 (0.75%) SD-WAN
11 17 (0.67%) DHCP
11 17 (0.67%) Internet
12 16 (0.63%) Wireless
13 14 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
14 12 (0.48%) Cisco ISE
14 12 (0.48%) NAS
14 12 (0.48%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 223 (8.85%) Power BI
2 127 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
3 94 (3.73%) SQL Server
4 90 (3.57%) Metadata
5 79 (3.13%) PostgreSQL
6 71 (2.82%) Tableau
7 68 (2.70%) Data Lake
8 58 (2.30%) Relational Database
9 35 (1.39%) Big Data
10 31 (1.23%) Oracle Database
11 30 (1.19%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 29 (1.15%) Amazon Redshift
12 29 (1.15%) NoSQL
13 26 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
13 26 (1.03%) Power Query
14 24 (0.95%) Azure SQL Database
15 23 (0.91%) BigQuery
15 23 (0.91%) Delta Lake
16 22 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 20 (0.79%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 225 (8.93%) JIRA
2 147 (5.83%) Git
3 99 (3.93%) Jenkins
4 69 (2.74%) GitLab
5 56 (2.22%) Selenium
6 55 (2.18%) Postman
7 47 (1.86%) JMeter
8 37 (1.47%) JUnit
9 35 (1.39%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.19%) WebDriver
11 26 (1.03%) Rational DOORS
12 17 (0.67%) Eclipse
12 17 (0.67%) Rational Rhapsody
13 16 (0.63%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.60%) Gatling
14 15 (0.60%) MLflow
15 12 (0.48%) REST Assured
16 10 (0.40%) Cypress.io
16 10 (0.40%) Gradle
16 10 (0.40%) Maven
General
1 741 (29.39%) Social Skills
2 739 (29.31%) Finance
3 447 (17.73%) Analytical Skills
4 218 (8.65%) Public Sector
5 204 (8.09%) Banking
6 140 (5.55%) Documentation Skills
7 85 (3.37%) Manufacturing
8 71 (2.82%) Aerospace
9 56 (2.22%) Pharmaceutical
10 53 (2.10%) Retail
11 49 (1.94%) Organisational Skills
12 43 (1.71%) Influencing Skills
13 41 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 41 (1.63%) Legal
14 40 (1.59%) Telecoms
15 38 (1.51%) Marketing
16 37 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
17 36 (1.43%) Front Office
17 36 (1.43%) General Ledger
18 33 (1.31%) Law
Job Titles
1 440 (17.45%) Analyst
2 255 (10.12%) Lead
3 250 (9.92%) Senior
4 213 (8.45%) Business Analyst
5 193 (7.66%) Data Engineer
6 180 (7.14%) Consultant
7 152 (6.03%) Architect
8 140 (5.55%) Developer
9 120 (4.76%) Data Analyst
10 87 (3.45%) Project Manager
11 73 (2.90%) Test Engineer
12 65 (2.58%) Tester
13 48 (1.90%) Network Engineer
13 48 (1.90%) Senior Analyst
14 47 (1.86%) Software Engineer
14 47 (1.86%) Test Manager
15 46 (1.82%) Technical Analyst
16 45 (1.79%) Systems Engineer
17 42 (1.67%) SAP Consultant
17 42 (1.67%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 135 (5.36%) REST
2 80 (3.17%) JSON
3 70 (2.78%) Kafka
4 56 (2.22%) Oracle Fusion
5 51 (2.02%) XML
6 50 (1.98%) OAuth
7 47 (1.86%) Middleware
8 45 (1.79%) PySpark
9 41 (1.63%) SOAP
10 40 (1.59%) RESTful
10 40 (1.59%) Swagger
11 39 (1.55%) .NET
11 39 (1.55%) pytest
12 37 (1.47%) Spring
13 33 (1.31%) Pandas
13 33 (1.31%) Web Services
14 32 (1.27%) Node.js
14 32 (1.27%) Playwright
15 29 (1.15%) OAuth2
16 27 (1.07%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 137 (5.43%) Legacy Systems
2 123 (4.88%) Onboarding
3 120 (4.76%) Data Structures
4 109 (4.32%) Product Ownership
5 103 (4.09%) Cloud Native
6 80 (3.17%) Data Centre
7 61 (2.42%) Management Information System
8 57 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
9 45 (1.79%) Analytical Mindset
10 39 (1.55%) Life Science
11 37 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
12 35 (1.39%) SCADA
13 33 (1.31%) Operational Technology
14 30 (1.19%) Replication
15 29 (1.15%) Distributed Architecture
15 29 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
15 29 (1.15%) NHS
15 29 (1.15%) Reference Data
15 29 (1.15%) Virtual Team
16 28 (1.11%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 128 (5.08%) Windows
2 93 (3.69%) Linux
3 34 (1.35%) Unix
4 26 (1.03%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.48%) Android
5 12 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.32%) VMS
7 7 (0.28%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.20%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.16%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.16%) SUSE
10 2 (0.079%) Data ONTAP
10 2 (0.079%) Embedded Linux
10 2 (0.079%) HPUX
10 2 (0.079%) Solaris
10 2 (0.079%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.079%) VxWorks
10 2 (0.079%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.079%) zOS
11 1 (0.040%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 675 (26.78%) Migration
2 487 (19.32%) Agile
3 431 (17.10%) Stakeholder Management
4 428 (16.98%) Problem-Solving
5 424 (16.82%) Data Validation
6 422 (16.74%) CI/CD
7 404 (16.03%) Data Migration
8 397 (15.75%) User Acceptance Testing
9 393 (15.59%) Data Modelling
10 375 (14.88%) Analytics
11 313 (12.42%) AI
11 313 (12.42%) ETL
12 309 (12.26%) DevOps
13 303 (12.02%) Test Automation
14 273 (10.83%) Continuous Improvement
15 268 (10.63%) Business Intelligence
16 261 (10.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 233 (9.24%) Data Pipeline
18 232 (9.20%) Data Governance
19 231 (9.16%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 588 (23.32%) SQL
2 455 (18.05%) Python
3 119 (4.72%) Java
4 64 (2.54%) PowerShell
5 58 (2.30%) C#
6 48 (1.90%) Bash
7 44 (1.75%) C
7 44 (1.75%) C++
8 40 (1.59%) JavaScript
9 34 (1.35%) TypeScript
10 32 (1.27%) Bicep
11 31 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 28 (1.11%) Apex Code
13 23 (0.91%) PL/SQL
13 23 (0.91%) R
14 21 (0.83%) Ada
15 20 (0.79%) Scala
16 17 (0.67%) MATLAB
17 15 (0.60%) T-SQL
18 13 (0.52%) VBA
Qualifications
1 464 (18.41%) Security Cleared
2 342 (13.57%) SC Cleared
3 183 (7.26%) Degree
4 65 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
5 49 (1.94%) DV Cleared
6 47 (1.86%) Computer Science Degree
7 32 (1.27%) Cisco Certification
8 29 (1.15%) PMI Certification
9 26 (1.03%) CCNP
10 25 (0.99%) PMP
11 22 (0.87%) ISTQB
12 20 (0.79%) ACCA
12 20 (0.79%) Master's Degree
13 18 (0.71%) CIMA
14 17 (0.67%) CISSP
15 15 (0.60%) AWS Certification
15 15 (0.60%) Azure Certification
15 15 (0.60%) Microsoft Certification
16 13 (0.52%) CCNA
17 12 (0.48%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 434 (17.22%) Data Quality
2 299 (11.86%) QA
3 120 (4.76%) GDPR
4 64 (2.54%) NIST
5 55 (2.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 39 (1.55%) Accessibility
7 34 (1.35%) SLA
8 31 (1.23%) GxP
8 31 (1.23%) PMO
9 27 (1.07%) IFRS
10 19 (0.75%) GRC
11 18 (0.71%) GMP
11 18 (0.71%) IFRS 17
12 17 (0.67%) Def Stans
12 17 (0.67%) HL7
13 14 (0.56%) ISO 20022
13 14 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 13 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
14 13 (0.52%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.48%) NIST 800
System Software
1 106 (4.20%) Docker
2 65 (2.58%) Active Directory
3 58 (2.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (0.95%) Virtual Machines
5 22 (0.87%) Hyper-V
6 20 (0.79%) Firmware
7 19 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
8 16 (0.63%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.56%) vSphere
10 10 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.24%) NFS
12 4 (0.16%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 3 (0.12%) KVM
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.079%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.079%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.079%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.040%) Ceph
15 1 (0.040%) etcd
Systems Management
1 149 (5.91%) Kubernetes
2 116 (4.60%) Terraform
3 54 (2.14%) Prometheus
4 48 (1.90%) Grafana
5 45 (1.79%) Ansible
6 29 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (0.56%) FortiGate
9 9 (0.36%) vCenter Server
10 8 (0.32%) Kibana
10 8 (0.32%) SCCM
11 7 (0.28%) Puppet
12 6 (0.24%) Nessus
12 6 (0.24%) vMotion
13 5 (0.20%) Argo
13 5 (0.20%) Istio
13 5 (0.20%) VxRail
14 4 (0.16%) CASB
14 4 (0.16%) Consul
14 4 (0.16%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 331 (13.13%) Microsoft
2 223 (8.85%) SAP
3 214 (8.49%) Oracle
4 123 (4.88%) Databricks
5 84 (3.33%) Salesforce
6 73 (2.90%) ServiceNow
7 70 (2.78%) VMware
8 52 (2.06%) Cisco
9 50 (1.98%) Google
10 41 (1.63%) Splunk
11 33 (1.31%) Workday
12 32 (1.27%) Informatica
13 29 (1.15%) Palo Alto
14 28 (1.11%) Sage
15 27 (1.07%) MuleSoft
16 23 (0.91%) IBM
17 22 (0.87%) Fortinet
18 21 (0.83%) IFS
18 21 (0.83%) OpenAI
19 20 (0.79%) CyberArk