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 3 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 66 128
Rank change year-on-year +30 +62 +26
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,798 1,158 735
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.27% 3.50% 1.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.20% 3.87% 2.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,687 678 372
10th Percentile £340 £354 £341
25th Percentile £413 £416 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £498
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.53% -9.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £588
90th Percentile £700 £700 £670
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £525 £463
% change year-on-year -11.90% +13.51% -7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 85 120
10th Percentile £17.33 £20.50 £28.00
25th Percentile £26.90 £41.25 £51.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £60.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -7.69% -
75th Percentile £74.25 £67.00 £69.16
90th Percentile £83.85 £75.00 £75.19
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.85% - +3.92%

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 45,145 29,940 33,399
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.95% 90.42% 85.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,873 18,766 21,491
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £734 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,760 1,664 1,872
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.30 £18.14
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.63% -5.12%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.63 £40.94
% change year-on-year +86.03% -42.28% +2.35%

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 3 August 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 3 August 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 3 August 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 2,420 £500 -4.76% 1,553
UK excluding London +26 1,307 £463 -11.90% 1,011
London +44 1,167 £523 -0.48% 658
Work from Home +45 801 £492 -1.60% 615
South East +7 318 £505 +1.00% 307
Midlands +36 308 £475 +5.56% 151
North of England +46 305 £450 -9.09% 195
West Midlands +31 224 £470 +10.59% 94
North West +21 161 £450 -21.40% 114
East of England +2 138 £488 -2.50% 137
Yorkshire +36 132 £450 +3.51% 45
South West -15 119 £525 -8.70% 157
Scotland +49 95 £425 -15.42% 64
East Midlands +21 79 £509 +10.89% 57
Wales +1 28 £450 +20.00% 16
North East -31 16 £425 -15.00% 39
Northern Ireland +8 10 £380 -35.59% 4

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 80 (2.86%) Confluence
2 68 (2.43%) Apache Airflow
3 55 (1.97%) SAS
4 49 (1.75%) SharePoint
5 40 (1.43%) Apache Spark
6 32 (1.14%) Apache
7 13 (0.46%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
8 11 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.32%) SharePoint 2013
10 8 (0.29%) ArcGIS
10 8 (0.29%) CMS
11 5 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
11 5 (0.18%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
12 4 (0.14%) IIS
12 4 (0.14%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.11%) JBoss
13 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 188 (6.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (1.47%) MS Visio
3 37 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
4 29 (1.04%) Spreadsheet
5 28 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 11 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
7 10 (0.36%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.29%) CATIA
9 6 (0.21%) Simulink
10 5 (0.18%) Chatbot
10 5 (0.18%) Navisworks
10 5 (0.18%) Revit
11 4 (0.14%) ProjectWise
12 2 (0.071%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.071%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.071%) Sketch
12 2 (0.071%) Windchill
13 1 (0.036%) Adobe XD
13 1 (0.036%) Autodesk Inventor
13 1 (0.036%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 120 (4.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.18%) Oracle EBS
3 19 (0.68%) Workday HCM
4 14 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
5 12 (0.43%) iTrent
5 12 (0.43%) Teamcenter
6 11 (0.39%) NetSuite
6 11 (0.39%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 11 (0.39%) SAP ERP
7 10 (0.36%) Aladdin
7 10 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
7 10 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.36%) SAP MDG
8 9 (0.32%) Oracle Financials
8 9 (0.32%) Oracle General Ledger
8 9 (0.32%) Sage X3
8 9 (0.32%) SAP SD
9 8 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
9 8 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
9 8 (0.29%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 602 (21.52%) Azure
2 331 (11.83%) AWS
3 299 (10.69%) Power Platform
4 150 (5.36%) Azure DevOps
5 149 (5.33%) GCP
6 127 (4.54%) GitHub
7 102 (3.65%) Snowflake
8 74 (2.64%) GitHub Actions
9 71 (2.54%) Azure Data Factory
10 70 (2.50%) Entra ID
11 67 (2.39%) Serverless
12 57 (2.04%) Amazon S3
13 52 (1.86%) Microsoft 365
13 52 (1.86%) SaaS
14 45 (1.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 45 (1.61%) dbt
15 44 (1.57%) OCI
16 41 (1.47%) SuccessFactors
17 33 (1.18%) AWS Lambda
17 33 (1.18%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 117 (4.18%) Firewall
2 70 (2.50%) Network Security
3 60 (2.14%) DNS
4 53 (1.89%) VLAN
5 52 (1.86%) VPN
6 41 (1.47%) TCP/IP
6 41 (1.47%) WAN
7 35 (1.25%) BGP
8 28 (1.00%) DHCP
9 26 (0.93%) OSPF
10 25 (0.89%) LAN
11 23 (0.82%) Internet
12 22 (0.79%) SD-WAN
12 22 (0.79%) Wireless
13 21 (0.75%) SAN
14 17 (0.61%) Ethernet
15 16 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
16 15 (0.54%) VXLAN
17 13 (0.46%) Ethernet VPN
18 12 (0.43%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 278 (9.94%) Power BI
2 170 (6.08%) Data Warehouse
3 117 (4.18%) Metadata
4 95 (3.40%) SQL Server
5 88 (3.15%) Data Lake
5 88 (3.15%) PostgreSQL
6 81 (2.89%) Relational Database
7 80 (2.86%) Tableau
8 39 (1.39%) Big Data
9 34 (1.22%) Oracle Reports
10 32 (1.14%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 31 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 30 (1.07%) BigQuery
12 30 (1.07%) Oracle Database
13 29 (1.04%) Delta Lake
13 29 (1.04%) NoSQL
13 29 (1.04%) Power Query
14 27 (0.96%) Azure SQL Database
15 24 (0.86%) Amazon Athena
15 24 (0.86%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 247 (8.83%) JIRA
2 174 (6.22%) Git
3 95 (3.40%) Jenkins
4 72 (2.57%) GitLab
5 60 (2.14%) Selenium
6 49 (1.75%) JMeter
7 46 (1.64%) Postman
8 39 (1.39%) JUnit
9 38 (1.36%) Cucumber
10 32 (1.14%) WebDriver
11 22 (0.79%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.64%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.57%) Gatling
14 14 (0.50%) REST Assured
14 14 (0.50%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.46%) Oracle Forms
16 11 (0.39%) Cypress.io
16 11 (0.39%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.39%) Zephyr
17 10 (0.36%) Bitbucket
General
1 813 (29.06%) Finance
2 802 (28.66%) Social Skills
3 539 (19.26%) Analytical Skills
4 235 (8.40%) Public Sector
5 202 (7.22%) Banking
6 149 (5.33%) Documentation Skills
7 105 (3.75%) Manufacturing
8 92 (3.29%) Retail
9 68 (2.43%) Aerospace
10 62 (2.22%) Pharmaceutical
11 60 (2.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 54 (1.93%) Organisational Skills
13 53 (1.89%) Telecoms
14 44 (1.57%) Automotive
15 43 (1.54%) Legal
16 42 (1.50%) Front Office
17 41 (1.47%) Marketing
18 39 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
19 37 (1.32%) Law
20 36 (1.29%) Billing
Job Titles
1 502 (17.94%) Analyst
2 290 (10.36%) Senior
3 279 (9.97%) Lead
4 236 (8.43%) Business Analyst
5 232 (8.29%) Data Engineer
6 211 (7.54%) Consultant
7 166 (5.93%) Developer
8 148 (5.29%) Architect
9 142 (5.08%) Data Analyst
10 98 (3.50%) Test Engineer
11 79 (2.82%) Tester
12 78 (2.79%) Project Manager
13 66 (2.36%) Network Engineer
14 56 (2.00%) Systems Engineer
15 53 (1.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 53 (1.89%) Technical Analyst
16 50 (1.79%) Senior Data Engineer
17 49 (1.75%) Administrator
18 44 (1.57%) Migration Engineer
18 44 (1.57%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 142 (5.08%) REST
2 81 (2.89%) JSON
3 71 (2.54%) PySpark
4 70 (2.50%) Kafka
5 62 (2.22%) XML
6 60 (2.14%) Middleware
7 52 (1.86%) Oracle Fusion
8 50 (1.79%) .NET
9 45 (1.61%) Spring
10 42 (1.50%) pytest
11 41 (1.47%) Playwright
11 41 (1.47%) SOAP
12 37 (1.32%) Web Services
13 36 (1.29%) OAuth
14 32 (1.14%) Pandas
15 29 (1.04%) Node.js
15 29 (1.04%) RESTful
16 26 (0.93%) Spring Boot
17 25 (0.89%) WireMock
18 24 (0.86%) Lightning Web Components
Miscellaneous
1 156 (5.58%) Onboarding
2 154 (5.50%) Data Structures
3 131 (4.68%) Legacy Systems
4 124 (4.43%) Cloud Native
5 115 (4.11%) Product Ownership
6 81 (2.89%) Data Centre
7 80 (2.86%) Management Information System
8 56 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
9 45 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
10 42 (1.50%) AI Agents
10 42 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
10 42 (1.50%) Life Science
11 41 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
12 40 (1.43%) SCADA
13 37 (1.32%) Hybrid Cloud
14 33 (1.18%) NHS
14 33 (1.18%) Reference Data
15 32 (1.14%) Operational Technology
16 31 (1.11%) Virtual Team
17 30 (1.07%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 162 (5.79%) Windows
2 107 (3.82%) Linux
3 56 (2.00%) Windows Server
4 40 (1.43%) Unix
5 19 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (0.39%) Android
6 11 (0.39%) Ubuntu
7 10 (0.36%) Windows 10
8 9 (0.32%) VMS
9 6 (0.21%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.18%) Windows 7
11 4 (0.14%) AIX
11 4 (0.14%) SUSE
12 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.071%) HPUX
13 2 (0.071%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.071%) Solaris
13 2 (0.071%) VxWorks
14 1 (0.036%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 761 (27.20%) Migration
2 548 (19.59%) Agile
3 529 (18.91%) Stakeholder Management
4 481 (17.19%) CI/CD
5 476 (17.01%) Analytics
6 460 (16.44%) Data Modelling
7 457 (16.33%) User Acceptance Testing
8 456 (16.30%) Data Migration
9 449 (16.05%) Data Validation
10 439 (15.69%) Problem-Solving
11 363 (12.97%) AI
12 352 (12.58%) Continuous Improvement
13 342 (12.22%) DevOps
14 337 (12.04%) Test Automation
15 335 (11.97%) ETL
16 317 (11.33%) Business Intelligence
17 313 (11.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 295 (10.54%) Data Pipeline
19 290 (10.36%) Data Governance
20 275 (9.83%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 687 (24.55%) SQL
2 517 (18.48%) Python
3 124 (4.43%) Java
4 76 (2.72%) PowerShell
5 60 (2.14%) C#
6 56 (2.00%) Bash
7 43 (1.54%) JavaScript
8 35 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 34 (1.22%) C++
10 33 (1.18%) TypeScript
11 30 (1.07%) Apex Code
12 27 (0.96%) Bicep
13 26 (0.93%) PL/SQL
14 24 (0.86%) C
15 23 (0.82%) R
15 23 (0.82%) VBA
16 18 (0.64%) T-SQL
17 16 (0.57%) MATLAB
18 14 (0.50%) Shell Script
19 13 (0.46%) Ada
Qualifications
1 500 (17.87%) Security Cleared
2 363 (12.97%) SC Cleared
3 186 (6.65%) Degree
4 64 (2.29%) DV Cleared
5 61 (2.18%) BPSS Clearance
6 45 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
7 38 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
8 36 (1.29%) CCNP
9 24 (0.86%) ISTQB
10 23 (0.82%) ACCA
10 23 (0.82%) PMI Certification
11 22 (0.79%) CIMA
11 22 (0.79%) PMP
12 20 (0.71%) Azure Certification
13 19 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (0.64%) CCNA
14 18 (0.64%) CISSP
15 14 (0.50%) AWS Certification
15 14 (0.50%) Master's Degree
16 12 (0.43%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 528 (18.87%) Data Quality
2 351 (12.54%) QA
3 124 (4.43%) GDPR
4 54 (1.93%) NIST
5 48 (1.72%) Accessibility
6 47 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 40 (1.43%) SLA
8 38 (1.36%) GxP
9 37 (1.32%) PMO
10 20 (0.71%) GRC
11 19 (0.68%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 18 (0.64%) GMP
13 16 (0.57%) ISO 20022
14 14 (0.50%) NCSC
14 14 (0.50%) WCAG
15 13 (0.46%) HL7
15 13 (0.46%) IFRS
16 12 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
16 12 (0.43%) Def Stans
16 12 (0.43%) NIST 800
System Software
1 114 (4.07%) Docker
2 95 (3.40%) Active Directory
3 75 (2.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (1.18%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
6 20 (0.71%) Firmware
6 20 (0.71%) Hyper-V
6 20 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
7 19 (0.68%) vSphere
8 14 (0.50%) VMware NSX
9 5 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
10 4 (0.14%) KVM
10 4 (0.14%) NFS
10 4 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.071%) BitLocker
11 2 (0.071%) OpenSSH
11 2 (0.071%) VirtualBox
11 2 (0.071%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.036%) Ceph
12 1 (0.036%) etcd
Systems Management
1 154 (5.50%) Kubernetes
2 133 (4.75%) Terraform
3 59 (2.11%) Ansible
4 53 (1.89%) Grafana
5 52 (1.86%) Prometheus
6 27 (0.96%) Microsoft Intune
7 24 (0.86%) FortiGate
8 21 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
9 12 (0.43%) vCenter Server
10 11 (0.39%) SCCM
11 10 (0.36%) HP ALM
12 8 (0.29%) VxRail
13 5 (0.18%) Argo
13 5 (0.18%) CASB
13 5 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
13 5 (0.18%) Istio
13 5 (0.18%) systemd
13 5 (0.18%) vRealize
14 4 (0.14%) Kibana
14 4 (0.14%) vMotion
Vendors
1 410 (14.65%) Microsoft
2 253 (9.04%) SAP
3 248 (8.86%) Oracle
4 157 (5.61%) Databricks
5 95 (3.40%) Salesforce
6 89 (3.18%) VMware
7 70 (2.50%) ServiceNow
8 63 (2.25%) Cisco
9 53 (1.89%) Google
10 52 (1.86%) Workday
11 41 (1.47%) Informatica
12 34 (1.22%) Splunk
13 31 (1.11%) Fortinet
13 31 (1.11%) IBM
13 31 (1.11%) Palo Alto
14 30 (1.07%) Juniper
14 30 (1.07%) MuleSoft
15 28 (1.00%) Zscaler
16 24 (0.86%) Sage
17 20 (0.71%) IFS