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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 68 118
Rank change year-on-year +35 +50 +29
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,912 1,213 772
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.42% 3.70% 1.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.41% 4.09% 2.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,748 709 374
10th Percentile £333 £330 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £588
90th Percentile £702 £688 £666
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -7.91% +5.26% -7.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 89 115
10th Percentile £16.70 £20.50 £29.86
25th Percentile £26.38 £41.25 £51.13
Median hourly rate £52.50 £60.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% -7.69% -1.49%
75th Percentile £73.25 £65.00 £70.13
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £76.12
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -15.38% - -1.49%

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 45,399 29,629 33,143
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.55% 90.46% 85.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,782 18,436 20,950
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,881 1,773 1,687
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £13.86
25th Percentile £17.87 £17.30 £18.13
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -37.90% -4.71%
75th Percentile £67.84 £47.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +91.13% -45.88% +6.25%

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 27 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 27 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Top 18 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 27 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 +33 2,511 £500 -2.20% 2,153
UK excluding London +25 1,341 £460 -7.91% 1,487
London +41 1,228 £525 +2.44% 979
Work from Home +29 811 £500 - 892
North of England +44 331 £451 +0.11% 259
South East -2 316 £500 - 333
Midlands +35 300 £473 -2.97% 187
West Midlands +26 208 £451 -9.90% 122
North West +21 170 £450 -3.23% 150
Yorkshire +39 144 £460 +2.22% 63
East of England -1 141 £475 -7.77% 223
South West +2 133 £525 -8.70% 269
Scotland +49 108 £430 -7.03% 187
East Midlands +25 88 £500 - 65
Wales -5 25 £394 +5.00% 39
North East -31 21 £438 -2.78% 53
Northern Ireland +5 8 £380 -37.45% 30
Channel Islands -1 1 - - 1

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 (2.75%) Confluence
2 67 (2.30%) Apache Airflow
3 54 (1.85%) SAS
3 54 (1.85%) SharePoint
4 41 (1.41%) Apache Spark
5 29 (1.00%) Apache
6 18 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
7 13 (0.45%) Oracle Workflow
8 11 (0.38%) CMS
8 11 (0.38%) Jupyter
9 9 (0.31%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.24%) ArcGIS
10 7 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
11 6 (0.21%) Sitecore CMS
12 5 (0.17%) IIS
12 5 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 5 (0.17%) Tuxedo
13 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
13 4 (0.14%) WebLogic
14 3 (0.10%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 201 (6.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 42 (1.44%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (1.34%) MS Visio
4 34 (1.17%) Spreadsheet
5 31 (1.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.45%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
8 8 (0.27%) CATIA
8 8 (0.27%) Navisworks
8 8 (0.27%) Revit
9 7 (0.24%) ProjectWise
10 6 (0.21%) Simulink
11 5 (0.17%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.069%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.069%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.069%) Windchill
13 1 (0.034%) Autodesk Inventor
13 1 (0.034%) Gliffy
13 1 (0.034%) LaTeX
13 1 (0.034%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 117 (4.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (0.82%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.52%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.48%) Workday HCM
5 13 (0.45%) NetSuite
6 12 (0.41%) SAP SD
6 12 (0.41%) Teamcenter
7 11 (0.38%) iTrent
8 10 (0.34%) Aladdin
8 10 (0.34%) Oracle Assets
8 10 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
8 10 (0.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 10 (0.34%) SAP MDG
9 9 (0.31%) Oracle General Ledger
9 9 (0.31%) SAP ERP
9 9 (0.31%) SAP FI
9 9 (0.31%) SAP MM
10 8 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
10 8 (0.27%) SAP HCM
11 7 (0.24%) SAP PS
Cloud Services
1 626 (21.50%) Azure
2 333 (11.44%) AWS
3 299 (10.27%) Power Platform
4 177 (6.08%) Azure DevOps
5 141 (4.84%) GCP
6 130 (4.46%) GitHub
7 101 (3.47%) Snowflake
8 80 (2.75%) Entra ID
9 74 (2.54%) Azure Data Factory
10 67 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
11 66 (2.27%) Serverless
12 61 (2.09%) Microsoft 365
13 59 (2.03%) SaaS
14 53 (1.82%) Amazon S3
15 46 (1.58%) dbt
16 45 (1.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 42 (1.44%) SuccessFactors
18 39 (1.34%) OCI
19 37 (1.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 34 (1.17%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 114 (3.91%) Firewall
2 69 (2.37%) DNS
3 67 (2.30%) Network Security
4 64 (2.20%) VLAN
5 51 (1.75%) VPN
6 44 (1.51%) BGP
6 44 (1.51%) WAN
7 41 (1.41%) TCP/IP
8 34 (1.17%) DHCP
9 26 (0.89%) OSPF
10 25 (0.86%) LAN
11 24 (0.82%) VXLAN
12 23 (0.79%) Wireless
13 22 (0.76%) Ethernet VPN
13 22 (0.76%) Internet
13 22 (0.76%) SAN
14 21 (0.72%) SD-WAN
15 20 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
16 18 (0.62%) HTTP
17 17 (0.58%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 276 (9.48%) Power BI
2 171 (5.87%) Data Warehouse
3 130 (4.46%) Metadata
4 109 (3.74%) SQL Server
5 101 (3.47%) Relational Database
6 97 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
7 83 (2.85%) Data Lake
8 74 (2.54%) Tableau
9 39 (1.34%) MongoDB
10 37 (1.27%) Delta Lake
11 36 (1.24%) Big Data
11 36 (1.24%) NoSQL
12 34 (1.17%) Oracle Database
13 33 (1.13%) MySQL
14 32 (1.10%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 31 (1.06%) Azure SQL Database
16 30 (1.03%) Redis
17 29 (1.00%) BigQuery
18 27 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
19 26 (0.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 251 (8.62%) JIRA
2 186 (6.39%) Git
3 104 (3.57%) Jenkins
4 88 (3.02%) GitLab
5 67 (2.30%) Selenium
6 47 (1.61%) Postman
7 37 (1.27%) JMeter
8 24 (0.82%) Cucumber
8 24 (0.82%) WebDriver
9 19 (0.65%) JUnit
10 18 (0.62%) Rational DOORS
11 16 (0.55%) Cypress.io
12 15 (0.52%) Gatling
13 14 (0.48%) Rational Rhapsody
13 14 (0.48%) REST Assured
14 13 (0.45%) Oracle Forms
15 12 (0.41%) Maven
15 12 (0.41%) Zephyr
16 11 (0.38%) Gradle
16 11 (0.38%) TestRail
General
1 827 (28.40%) Social Skills
2 812 (27.88%) Finance
3 574 (19.71%) Analytical Skills
4 256 (8.79%) Public Sector
5 219 (7.52%) Banking
6 152 (5.22%) Documentation Skills
7 106 (3.64%) Manufacturing
8 94 (3.23%) Retail
9 67 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 66 (2.27%) Telecoms
11 60 (2.06%) Aerospace
12 59 (2.03%) Pharmaceutical
13 55 (1.89%) Automotive
13 55 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
14 48 (1.65%) Legal
15 47 (1.61%) Marketing
16 43 (1.48%) Front Office
17 42 (1.44%) Law
18 40 (1.37%) Local Government
19 37 (1.27%) Billing
Job Titles
1 520 (17.86%) Analyst
2 321 (11.02%) Senior
3 270 (9.27%) Lead
4 242 (8.31%) Business Analyst
5 234 (8.04%) Consultant
5 234 (8.04%) Data Engineer
6 174 (5.98%) Developer
7 145 (4.98%) Data Analyst
8 141 (4.84%) Architect
9 111 (3.81%) Test Engineer
10 79 (2.71%) Tester
11 77 (2.64%) Network Engineer
12 71 (2.44%) Project Manager
13 66 (2.27%) Systems Engineer
14 60 (2.06%) Administrator
15 58 (1.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 54 (1.85%) Senior Data Engineer
17 53 (1.82%) Technical Analyst
18 51 (1.75%) Test Manager
19 49 (1.68%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 176 (6.04%) REST
2 152 (5.22%) Terraform
3 97 (3.33%) JSON
4 82 (2.82%) PySpark
5 80 (2.75%) XML
6 76 (2.61%) Kafka
7 67 (2.30%) Middleware
8 51 (1.75%) Playwright
9 50 (1.72%) .NET
10 48 (1.65%) Oracle Fusion
11 45 (1.55%) pytest
12 42 (1.44%) SOAP
13 39 (1.34%) OAuth
14 38 (1.30%) Spring
15 37 (1.27%) RESTful
16 36 (1.24%) Pandas
17 35 (1.20%) Web Services
18 31 (1.06%) Spring Boot
19 25 (0.86%) OpenID
19 25 (0.86%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 162 (5.56%) Onboarding
2 156 (5.36%) Data Structures
3 131 (4.50%) Cloud Native
4 125 (4.29%) Legacy Systems
5 120 (4.12%) Product Ownership
6 98 (3.37%) Management Information System
7 90 (3.09%) Data Centre
8 53 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
9 49 (1.68%) Distributed Systems
10 46 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
11 44 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
12 43 (1.48%) AI Agents
12 43 (1.48%) Life Science
13 41 (1.41%) SCADA
14 40 (1.37%) Replication
15 39 (1.34%) NHS
16 32 (1.10%) CMDB
16 32 (1.10%) Operational Technology
17 31 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
17 31 (1.06%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 175 (6.01%) Windows
2 117 (4.02%) Linux
3 68 (2.34%) Windows Server
4 43 (1.48%) Unix
5 19 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.48%) Android
7 13 (0.45%) Windows 10
8 11 (0.38%) Ubuntu
8 11 (0.38%) VMS
9 9 (0.31%) Apple iOS
10 7 (0.24%) Windows 7
11 6 (0.21%) AIX
12 4 (0.14%) SUSE
12 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.069%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.069%) HPUX
13 2 (0.069%) VxWorks
13 2 (0.069%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.034%) Alpine Linux
14 1 (0.034%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 793 (27.23%) Migration
2 578 (19.85%) Stakeholder Management
3 562 (19.30%) Agile
4 521 (17.89%) CI/CD
5 493 (16.93%) User Acceptance Testing
6 468 (16.07%) Analytics
7 467 (16.04%) Data Migration
8 464 (15.93%) Data Modelling
9 449 (15.42%) Data Validation
9 449 (15.42%) Problem-Solving
10 388 (13.32%) DevOps
11 382 (13.12%) AI
12 367 (12.60%) Test Automation
13 359 (12.33%) Continuous Improvement
14 328 (11.26%) ETL
15 320 (10.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 314 (10.78%) Business Intelligence
17 308 (10.58%) Data Pipeline
18 292 (10.03%) Data Governance
19 285 (9.79%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 735 (25.24%) SQL
2 564 (19.37%) Python
3 143 (4.91%) Java
4 94 (3.23%) PowerShell
5 63 (2.16%) Bash
6 54 (1.85%) C#
7 50 (1.72%) JavaScript
8 35 (1.20%) C++
9 32 (1.10%) TypeScript
10 31 (1.06%) Apex Code
11 30 (1.03%) R
12 28 (0.96%) Bicep
13 26 (0.89%) C
14 25 (0.86%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 25 (0.86%) PL/SQL
15 24 (0.82%) Shell Script
16 19 (0.65%) VBA
17 18 (0.62%) T-SQL
18 17 (0.58%) MATLAB
19 13 (0.45%) Scala
Qualifications
1 538 (18.48%) Security Cleared
2 399 (13.70%) SC Cleared
3 189 (6.49%) Degree
4 68 (2.34%) DV Cleared
5 61 (2.09%) BPSS Clearance
6 47 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
7 45 (1.55%) Computer Science Degree
8 40 (1.37%) CCNP
9 28 (0.96%) ACCA
9 28 (0.96%) CIMA
10 25 (0.86%) AWS Certification
10 25 (0.86%) ISTQB
11 22 (0.76%) Azure Certification
12 21 (0.72%) PMI Certification
13 19 (0.65%) CCNA
13 19 (0.65%) PMP
14 16 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
15 15 (0.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 14 (0.48%) CISSP
16 14 (0.48%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 573 (19.68%) Data Quality
2 375 (12.88%) QA
3 114 (3.91%) GDPR
4 52 (1.79%) SLA
5 46 (1.58%) Accessibility
5 46 (1.58%) NIST
6 39 (1.34%) GxP
6 39 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 38 (1.30%) PMO
8 26 (0.89%) GRC
9 21 (0.72%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 19 (0.65%) ISO 20022
11 16 (0.55%) GMP
12 14 (0.48%) NCSC
12 14 (0.48%) WCAG
13 13 (0.45%) Def Stans
14 12 (0.41%) HL7
15 11 (0.38%) IFRS
15 11 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 10 (0.34%) NIST 800
System Software
1 112 (3.85%) Docker
2 101 (3.47%) Active Directory
3 84 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
5 30 (1.03%) VMware ESXi
6 27 (0.93%) Firmware
7 25 (0.86%) Hyper-V
8 22 (0.76%) Virtual Desktop
8 22 (0.76%) vSphere
9 14 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
11 4 (0.14%) KVM
11 4 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.10%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.069%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.069%) NFS
13 2 (0.069%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.069%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.034%) Ceph
14 1 (0.034%) etcd
Systems Management
1 142 (4.88%) Kubernetes
2 82 (2.82%) Ansible
3 45 (1.55%) Grafana
4 37 (1.27%) Prometheus
5 27 (0.93%) Microsoft Intune
6 24 (0.82%) FortiGate
7 23 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
8 14 (0.48%) SCCM
8 14 (0.48%) vCenter Server
9 11 (0.38%) HP ALM
10 10 (0.34%) VxRail
11 9 (0.31%) Failover Clustering
12 7 (0.24%) Argo
12 7 (0.24%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.21%) Microsoft Clustering
14 5 (0.17%) systemd
14 5 (0.17%) vRealize
15 4 (0.14%) Kibana
15 4 (0.14%) Puppet
15 4 (0.14%) vMotion
Vendors
1 442 (15.18%) Microsoft
2 257 (8.83%) SAP
3 246 (8.45%) Oracle
4 159 (5.46%) Databricks
5 97 (3.33%) Salesforce
5 97 (3.33%) VMware
6 87 (2.99%) ServiceNow
7 77 (2.64%) Cisco
8 52 (1.79%) Google
9 47 (1.61%) Workday
10 37 (1.27%) Informatica
11 35 (1.20%) IBM
12 29 (1.00%) Fortinet
12 29 (1.00%) Juniper
13 28 (0.96%) Zscaler
14 26 (0.89%) Palo Alto
15 21 (0.72%) MuleSoft
15 21 (0.72%) Splunk
16 20 (0.69%) Ariba
17 18 (0.62%) Sage