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 7 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 72 117
Rank change year-on-year +37 +45 +39
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,725 1,081 843
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.23% 3.40% 1.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.16% 3.75% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,629 644 413
10th Percentile £340 £350 £325
25th Percentile £410 £420 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.91%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £594
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £508 £500
% change year-on-year -7.68% +1.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 174 73 177
10th Percentile £17.39 £18.68 £26.88
25th Percentile £27.56 £41.25 £47.83
Median hourly rate £61.25 £57.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.06% -3.75% -5.11%
75th Percentile £74.81 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.93 £75.00 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +1.02% +4.17% -4.00%

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 44,261 28,859 36,923
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.68% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,507 18,191 23,560
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.28% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £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 2,650 1,433 2,509
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £17.50 £16.12
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.32 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.83 £38.12
% change year-on-year +77.04% -34.86% +8.82%

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 7 July 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 7 July 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 7 July 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 +35 2,370 £500 -4.76% 1,083
UK excluding London +28 1,267 £469 -7.68% 806
London +48 1,141 £513 -6.82% 420
Work from Home +49 791 £488 -2.50% 566
North of England +43 306 £450 - 167
Midlands +39 298 £484 +10.71% 136
South East +4 286 £511 +2.15% 253
West Midlands +34 218 £475 +17.28% 61
North West +28 165 £450 -4.10% 88
East of England +7 134 £500 +5.26% 91
South West -1 132 £508 -11.74% 99
Yorkshire +30 128 £462 +10.72% 52
Scotland +32 84 £416 -11.20% 56
East Midlands +24 75 £525 +15.51% 75
Wales +6 29 £455 +71.70% 17
North East -27 16 £425 -22.73% 27
Northern Ireland +11 10 £380 -35.59% 7

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 88 (3.23%) Confluence
2 63 (2.31%) Apache Airflow
3 55 (2.02%) SAS
4 51 (1.87%) SharePoint
5 43 (1.58%) Apache Spark
6 26 (0.95%) Apache
7 13 (0.48%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.48%) Oracle Workflow
8 12 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.33%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.33%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.26%) CMS
11 6 (0.22%) Appian
12 5 (0.18%) Tuxedo
13 4 (0.15%) IIS
14 3 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
14 3 (0.11%) JBoss
14 3 (0.11%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
14 3 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
14 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 181 (6.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (1.61%) MS Visio
3 36 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (1.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 25 (0.92%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.29%) CATIA
8 6 (0.22%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.18%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.18%) Simulink
10 2 (0.073%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.073%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.073%) Sketch
10 2 (0.073%) Windchill
11 1 (0.037%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.037%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.037%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.037%) LaTeX
11 1 (0.037%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.037%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 124 (4.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (1.28%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.59%) Oracle Payables
3 16 (0.59%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.51%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 13 (0.48%) Workday HCM
6 12 (0.44%) iTrent
6 12 (0.44%) Oracle General Ledger
7 11 (0.40%) Oracle Assets
8 10 (0.37%) NetSuite
8 10 (0.37%) SAP ERP
9 9 (0.33%) Aladdin
9 9 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
10 8 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
10 8 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
10 8 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
10 8 (0.29%) SAP Payroll
10 8 (0.29%) SAP SD
11 7 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
11 7 (0.26%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 555 (20.37%) Azure
2 325 (11.93%) AWS
3 273 (10.02%) Power Platform
4 147 (5.39%) Azure DevOps
5 134 (4.92%) GCP
6 116 (4.26%) GitHub
7 91 (3.34%) Snowflake
8 69 (2.53%) Serverless
9 67 (2.46%) Entra ID
9 67 (2.46%) GitHub Actions
10 62 (2.28%) Azure Data Factory
11 60 (2.20%) Amazon S3
12 51 (1.87%) SaaS
13 50 (1.83%) Microsoft 365
14 42 (1.54%) OCI
15 40 (1.47%) dbt
16 39 (1.43%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 37 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
18 35 (1.28%) SuccessFactors
19 32 (1.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 111 (4.07%) Firewall
2 66 (2.42%) Network Security
3 48 (1.76%) DNS
4 47 (1.72%) VLAN
5 41 (1.50%) VPN
6 40 (1.47%) WAN
7 32 (1.17%) BGP
7 32 (1.17%) TCP/IP
8 24 (0.88%) Wireless
9 23 (0.84%) LAN
9 23 (0.84%) OSPF
10 22 (0.81%) SAN
10 22 (0.81%) SD-WAN
11 18 (0.66%) DHCP
11 18 (0.66%) Ethernet
11 18 (0.66%) Internet
12 17 (0.62%) Wi-Fi
13 14 (0.51%) Cisco ISE
14 12 (0.44%) NAS
14 12 (0.44%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 255 (9.36%) Power BI
2 142 (5.21%) Data Warehouse
3 106 (3.89%) Metadata
4 100 (3.67%) SQL Server
5 84 (3.08%) PostgreSQL
6 77 (2.83%) Tableau
7 76 (2.79%) Data Lake
8 71 (2.61%) Relational Database
9 37 (1.36%) Big Data
10 34 (1.25%) Oracle Database
10 34 (1.25%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 29 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 28 (1.03%) Amazon Redshift
12 28 (1.03%) NoSQL
12 28 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
13 27 (0.99%) Power Query
14 26 (0.95%) Delta Lake
15 25 (0.92%) BigQuery
16 24 (0.88%) Amazon Athena
17 23 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 248 (9.10%) JIRA
2 157 (5.76%) Git
3 97 (3.56%) Jenkins
4 71 (2.61%) GitLab
5 61 (2.24%) Selenium
6 52 (1.91%) Postman
7 51 (1.87%) JMeter
8 39 (1.43%) JUnit
9 38 (1.39%) Cucumber
10 31 (1.14%) WebDriver
11 27 (0.99%) Rational DOORS
12 19 (0.70%) Gatling
13 18 (0.66%) Eclipse
14 17 (0.62%) Rational Rhapsody
15 16 (0.59%) Visual Studio
16 13 (0.48%) MLflow
16 13 (0.48%) Oracle Forms
16 13 (0.48%) REST Assured
17 11 (0.40%) Cypress.io
18 10 (0.37%) Maven
General
1 805 (29.54%) Finance
2 797 (29.25%) Social Skills
3 501 (18.39%) Analytical Skills
4 231 (8.48%) Public Sector
5 213 (7.82%) Banking
6 154 (5.65%) Documentation Skills
7 97 (3.56%) Manufacturing
8 76 (2.79%) Aerospace
9 68 (2.50%) Retail
10 60 (2.20%) Pharmaceutical
11 54 (1.98%) Telecoms
12 52 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 51 (1.87%) Organisational Skills
14 46 (1.69%) Legal
15 41 (1.50%) Front Office
16 39 (1.43%) General Ledger
17 38 (1.39%) Marketing
18 36 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
19 35 (1.28%) Automotive
19 35 (1.28%) Billing
Job Titles
1 482 (17.69%) Analyst
2 274 (10.06%) Senior
3 272 (9.98%) Lead
4 231 (8.48%) Business Analyst
5 216 (7.93%) Data Engineer
6 204 (7.49%) Consultant
7 162 (5.94%) Architect
8 155 (5.69%) Developer
9 133 (4.88%) Data Analyst
10 89 (3.27%) Test Engineer
11 82 (3.01%) Project Manager
12 70 (2.57%) Tester
13 56 (2.06%) Network Engineer
14 50 (1.83%) Systems Engineer
14 50 (1.83%) Test Manager
15 48 (1.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 48 (1.76%) Senior Data Engineer
16 47 (1.72%) Technical Analyst
17 45 (1.65%) Security Engineer
18 44 (1.61%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 127 (4.66%) REST
2 76 (2.79%) JSON
3 73 (2.68%) Kafka
4 57 (2.09%) Middleware
4 57 (2.09%) PySpark
5 54 (1.98%) XML
6 50 (1.83%) Oracle Fusion
7 45 (1.65%) .NET
7 45 (1.65%) OAuth
8 44 (1.61%) Spring
9 40 (1.47%) pytest
10 39 (1.43%) SOAP
11 38 (1.39%) Playwright
12 37 (1.36%) Web Services
13 35 (1.28%) RESTful
14 34 (1.25%) Pandas
15 31 (1.14%) Node.js
16 29 (1.06%) Swagger
17 27 (0.99%) OpenID
18 25 (0.92%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 141 (5.17%) Onboarding
2 135 (4.95%) Data Structures
3 134 (4.92%) Legacy Systems
4 121 (4.44%) Cloud Native
5 114 (4.18%) Product Ownership
6 83 (3.05%) Data Centre
7 68 (2.50%) Management Information System
8 53 (1.94%) Distributed Systems
9 48 (1.76%) Analytical Mindset
10 45 (1.65%) Life Science
11 42 (1.54%) SCADA
12 36 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
13 35 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
13 35 (1.28%) NHS
14 34 (1.25%) AI Agents
14 34 (1.25%) Virtual Team
15 32 (1.17%) Operational Technology
15 32 (1.17%) Replication
16 29 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
17 28 (1.03%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 150 (5.50%) Windows
2 94 (3.45%) Linux
3 42 (1.54%) Windows Server
4 30 (1.10%) Unix
5 17 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (0.33%) Android
6 9 (0.33%) VMS
7 7 (0.26%) Ubuntu
7 7 (0.26%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.18%) Apple iOS
8 5 (0.18%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.15%) SUSE
10 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.073%) Data ONTAP
11 2 (0.073%) HPUX
11 2 (0.073%) Solaris
11 2 (0.073%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.073%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.073%) zOS
12 1 (0.037%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 738 (27.08%) Migration
2 532 (19.52%) Agile
3 482 (17.69%) Stakeholder Management
4 460 (16.88%) Data Validation
5 456 (16.73%) CI/CD
6 448 (16.44%) Problem-Solving
7 445 (16.33%) Analytics
8 432 (15.85%) User Acceptance Testing
9 431 (15.82%) Data Migration
10 426 (15.63%) Data Modelling
11 346 (12.70%) AI
12 338 (12.40%) Test Automation
13 334 (12.26%) ETL
14 330 (12.11%) DevOps
15 325 (11.93%) Continuous Improvement
16 298 (10.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 297 (10.90%) Business Intelligence
18 263 (9.65%) Data Analysis
19 257 (9.43%) Data Governance
19 257 (9.43%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 639 (23.45%) SQL
2 487 (17.87%) Python
3 127 (4.66%) Java
4 68 (2.50%) PowerShell
5 62 (2.28%) C#
6 50 (1.83%) Bash
7 42 (1.54%) C++
7 42 (1.54%) JavaScript
8 37 (1.36%) TypeScript
9 36 (1.32%) C
10 35 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 31 (1.14%) Apex Code
12 29 (1.06%) Bicep
13 25 (0.92%) PL/SQL
13 25 (0.92%) R
14 23 (0.84%) VBA
15 22 (0.81%) Ada
16 21 (0.77%) Scala
17 18 (0.66%) MATLAB
17 18 (0.66%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 488 (17.91%) Security Cleared
2 360 (13.21%) SC Cleared
3 192 (7.05%) Degree
4 65 (2.39%) BPSS Clearance
5 56 (2.06%) DV Cleared
6 41 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
7 40 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
8 31 (1.14%) CCNP
9 27 (0.99%) PMI Certification
10 24 (0.88%) PMP
11 22 (0.81%) CISSP
11 22 (0.81%) ISTQB
12 21 (0.77%) ACCA
13 19 (0.70%) Azure Certification
13 19 (0.70%) CIMA
14 18 (0.66%) Master's Degree
15 16 (0.59%) CCNA
15 16 (0.59%) Microsoft Certification
16 15 (0.55%) AWS Certification
16 15 (0.55%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 475 (17.43%) Data Quality
2 328 (12.04%) QA
3 127 (4.66%) GDPR
4 61 (2.24%) NIST
5 57 (2.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 45 (1.65%) Accessibility
7 37 (1.36%) GxP
7 37 (1.36%) PMO
7 37 (1.36%) SLA
8 21 (0.77%) GRC
9 20 (0.73%) IFRS
10 19 (0.70%) GMP
11 17 (0.62%) Def Stans
12 16 (0.59%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 16 (0.59%) HL7
12 16 (0.59%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.48%) NCSC
13 13 (0.48%) Solvency II
14 12 (0.44%) IFRS 17
14 12 (0.44%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 111 (4.07%) Docker
2 80 (2.94%) Active Directory
3 72 (2.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (1.17%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (0.77%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.70%) vSphere
8 17 (0.62%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.59%) Firmware
10 15 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.22%) NFS
12 4 (0.15%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 4 (0.15%) KVM
12 4 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
13 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.073%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.073%) OpenSSH
14 2 (0.073%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.073%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.037%) etcd
Systems Management
1 157 (5.76%) Kubernetes
2 124 (4.55%) Terraform
3 55 (2.02%) Prometheus
4 52 (1.91%) Grafana
5 49 (1.80%) Ansible
6 27 (0.99%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (0.84%) FortiGate
8 22 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (0.37%) SCCM
9 10 (0.37%) vCenter Server
10 7 (0.26%) HP ALM
11 6 (0.22%) Nessus
11 6 (0.22%) vMotion
11 6 (0.22%) VxRail
12 5 (0.18%) Argo
12 5 (0.18%) CASB
12 5 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
12 5 (0.18%) Istio
12 5 (0.18%) Kibana
12 5 (0.18%) Puppet
Vendors
1 370 (13.58%) Microsoft
2 246 (9.03%) SAP
3 234 (8.59%) Oracle
4 126 (4.62%) Databricks
5 93 (3.41%) Salesforce
6 86 (3.16%) VMware
7 78 (2.86%) ServiceNow
8 62 (2.28%) Cisco
9 46 (1.69%) Google
10 42 (1.54%) Workday
11 40 (1.47%) Splunk
12 36 (1.32%) Informatica
13 32 (1.17%) Palo Alto
14 29 (1.06%) Fortinet
14 29 (1.06%) IBM
15 27 (0.99%) MuleSoft
16 25 (0.92%) Sage
17 23 (0.84%) Juniper
18 21 (0.77%) Zscaler
19 20 (0.73%) IFS