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 4 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 96 136
Rank change year-on-year +52 +40 +4
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,100 777 769
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.65% 2.66% 1.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.44% 2.94% 2.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,289 453 390
10th Percentile £348 £363 £320
25th Percentile £400 £421 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.52% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £613
90th Percentile £700 £715 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -7.32% +2.50% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 44 147
10th Percentile £22.25 £25.56 £20.52
25th Percentile £47.43 £47.50 £49.63
Median hourly rate £65.00 £59.13 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.94% -1.46% -4.08%
75th Percentile £73.75 £65.25 £75.25
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.18 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £59.13 £60.50
% change year-on-year +9.94% -2.27% -3.20%

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 38,631 26,466 38,100
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.54% 90.55% 86.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,504 17,183 24,720
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.51% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,266 983 2,350
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.00 £20.00 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.96 £31.52 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.07% -4.48% -11.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.83
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.10 £70.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.55 £30.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +18.50% -7.69% -12.87%

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 4 April 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 4 April 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 4 April 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 +43 1,823 £490 -6.67% 872
UK excluding London +43 991 £475 -7.32% 714
London +66 855 £500 -9.09% 268
Work from Home +67 635 £492 -4.00% 341
North of England +33 250 £450 -2.70% 152
South East 0 206 £500 - 215
Midlands +34 201 £491 +3.37% 118
West Midlands +29 155 £491 +2.03% 77
North West +27 153 £418 -5.80% 74
South West +8 131 £475 -17.39% 89
East of England +16 123 £492 +9.38% 96
Yorkshire +14 87 £462 +9.93% 51
Scotland +45 53 £404 -10.83% 42
East Midlands +2 43 £500 +35.87% 41
Northern Ireland +15 22 £413 -25.00% 5
Wales +5 19 £460 - 16
North East -5 13 £438 -39.66% 27

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 82 (3.90%) Confluence
2 42 (2.00%) Apache Spark
2 42 (2.00%) SAS
3 37 (1.76%) Apache Airflow
4 22 (1.05%) Apache
5 21 (1.00%) SharePoint
6 14 (0.67%) Microsoft Exchange
7 10 (0.48%) ArcGIS
8 9 (0.43%) Appian
8 9 (0.43%) Jupyter
9 7 (0.33%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 7 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.24%) Anypoint
10 5 (0.24%) CMS
11 4 (0.19%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.14%) CICS
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2013
13 2 (0.095%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 118 (5.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 31 (1.48%) MS Visio
3 28 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (1.05%) Spreadsheet
5 18 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
7 10 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.24%) CATIA
9 4 (0.19%) Notion
10 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
11 2 (0.095%) Sketch
12 1 (0.048%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.048%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.048%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.048%) OrCAD
12 1 (0.048%) UXPin
12 1 (0.048%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 97 (4.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (1.67%) Oracle EBS
3 14 (0.67%) Oracle General Ledger
4 13 (0.62%) Oracle Payables
4 13 (0.62%) Workday HCM
5 12 (0.57%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 10 (0.48%) Oracle Assets
6 10 (0.48%) Oracle Receivables
6 10 (0.48%) SAP FI
7 8 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
7 8 (0.38%) NetSuite
7 8 (0.38%) OpenText VIM for SAP
7 8 (0.38%) SAP MM
8 7 (0.33%) Aladdin
8 7 (0.33%) iTrent
8 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
8 7 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.33%) SAP ERP
8 7 (0.33%) Teamcenter
9 6 (0.29%) Oracle Financials
Cloud Services
1 488 (23.24%) Azure
2 279 (13.29%) AWS
3 184 (8.76%) Power Platform
4 146 (6.95%) Azure DevOps
5 101 (4.81%) GitHub
6 95 (4.52%) GCP
7 65 (3.10%) Serverless
8 63 (3.00%) Amazon S3
9 60 (2.86%) GitHub Actions
10 59 (2.81%) Entra ID
11 57 (2.71%) Azure Data Factory
12 55 (2.62%) SaaS
13 51 (2.43%) OCI
14 44 (2.10%) Snowflake
15 40 (1.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 37 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
17 33 (1.57%) AWS CloudFormation
18 31 (1.48%) Microsoft 365
19 28 (1.33%) OpenShift
20 26 (1.24%) Boomi
Communications & Networking
1 77 (3.67%) Firewall
2 52 (2.48%) Network Security
3 36 (1.71%) TCP/IP
4 28 (1.33%) DNS
5 27 (1.29%) VLAN
6 24 (1.14%) Ethernet
6 24 (1.14%) VPN
7 21 (1.00%) HTTP
8 19 (0.90%) WAN
9 15 (0.71%) SAN
10 13 (0.62%) NAS
11 11 (0.52%) BGP
11 11 (0.52%) LAN
11 11 (0.52%) OSPF
11 11 (0.52%) Wireless
12 10 (0.48%) SD-WAN
13 9 (0.43%) Internet
13 9 (0.43%) SSL
14 8 (0.38%) Cisco ISE
14 8 (0.38%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 172 (8.19%) Power BI
2 110 (5.24%) Metadata
3 103 (4.90%) Data Warehouse
4 70 (3.33%) SQL Server
5 62 (2.95%) Tableau
6 58 (2.76%) PostgreSQL
7 46 (2.19%) Data Lake
8 33 (1.57%) Delta Lake
9 32 (1.52%) Oracle Reports
10 30 (1.43%) Azure SQL Database
10 30 (1.43%) Relational Database
11 29 (1.38%) Big Data
12 28 (1.33%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 27 (1.29%) Amazon Redshift
14 25 (1.19%) NoSQL
14 25 (1.19%) Oracle Database
15 24 (1.14%) Amazon Athena
16 23 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 20 (0.95%) Power Query
18 19 (0.90%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 190 (9.05%) JIRA
2 129 (6.14%) Git
3 91 (4.33%) Jenkins
4 69 (3.29%) Selenium
5 58 (2.76%) GitLab
6 55 (2.62%) Postman
7 39 (1.86%) JUnit
8 37 (1.76%) Cucumber
9 35 (1.67%) JMeter
10 28 (1.33%) Oracle APEX
10 28 (1.33%) Rational DOORS
11 22 (1.05%) WebDriver
12 19 (0.90%) Visual Studio
13 18 (0.86%) MLflow
14 15 (0.71%) REST Assured
15 14 (0.67%) Eclipse
16 13 (0.62%) Bitbucket
16 13 (0.62%) TestRail
17 12 (0.57%) Cypress.io
17 12 (0.57%) Zephyr
General
1 698 (33.24%) Social Skills
2 607 (28.90%) Finance
3 406 (19.33%) Analytical Skills
4 192 (9.14%) Public Sector
5 172 (8.19%) Banking
6 118 (5.62%) Documentation Skills
7 63 (3.00%) Manufacturing
8 58 (2.76%) Aerospace
9 49 (2.33%) Presentation Skills
10 46 (2.19%) Pharmaceutical
11 42 (2.00%) Organisational Skills
12 35 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
13 34 (1.62%) Legal
14 33 (1.57%) Electronics
14 33 (1.57%) Marketing
15 31 (1.48%) Telecoms
16 30 (1.43%) Billing
16 30 (1.43%) Retail
17 29 (1.38%) Front Office
17 29 (1.38%) Military
Job Titles
1 392 (18.67%) Analyst
2 210 (10.00%) Senior
3 209 (9.95%) Lead
4 183 (8.71%) Business Analyst
5 149 (7.10%) Data Engineer
6 144 (6.86%) Consultant
7 140 (6.67%) Developer
8 135 (6.43%) Architect
9 98 (4.67%) Data Analyst
10 79 (3.76%) Project Manager
11 62 (2.95%) Tester
12 50 (2.38%) Senior Analyst
13 46 (2.19%) Software Engineer
14 44 (2.10%) Test Engineer
15 42 (2.00%) SAP Consultant
16 41 (1.95%) Senior Developer
16 41 (1.95%) Test Analyst
17 40 (1.90%) Systems Engineer
17 40 (1.90%) Test Manager
18 35 (1.67%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 141 (6.71%) REST
2 104 (4.95%) JSON
3 61 (2.90%) Kafka
3 61 (2.90%) Oracle Fusion
4 58 (2.76%) XML
5 54 (2.57%) OAuth
6 53 (2.52%) Middleware
7 51 (2.43%) PySpark
8 44 (2.10%) SOAP
9 43 (2.05%) Node.js
10 39 (1.86%) .NET
11 36 (1.71%) Playwright
12 33 (1.57%) Swagger
13 32 (1.52%) pytest
14 31 (1.48%) RESTful
15 30 (1.43%) Web Services
16 29 (1.38%) PyTorch
17 28 (1.33%) Pandas
18 27 (1.29%) SAML
19 26 (1.24%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 120 (5.71%) Legacy Systems
2 106 (5.05%) Data Structures
3 92 (4.38%) Onboarding
4 88 (4.19%) Product Ownership
5 64 (3.05%) Cloud Native
6 56 (2.67%) Management Information System
7 51 (2.43%) Data Centre
8 35 (1.67%) Distributed Systems
9 34 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
10 29 (1.38%) Replication
11 27 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
12 26 (1.24%) Virtual Team
13 25 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
14 24 (1.14%) Algorithms
14 24 (1.14%) Life Science
14 24 (1.14%) Reference Data
15 22 (1.05%) Operational Technology
16 21 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
16 21 (1.00%) NHS
17 20 (0.95%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 106 (5.05%) Windows
2 87 (4.14%) Linux
3 29 (1.38%) Unix
4 14 (0.67%) Windows Server
5 11 (0.52%) Android
6 6 (0.29%) Embedded Linux
6 6 (0.29%) zOS
7 5 (0.24%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.24%) VMS
8 4 (0.19%) SUSE
9 3 (0.14%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.095%) Debian
10 2 (0.095%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.048%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.048%) pSOS
11 1 (0.048%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.048%) Solaris
11 1 (0.048%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 518 (24.67%) Migration
2 466 (22.19%) Agile
3 422 (20.10%) Problem-Solving
4 366 (17.43%) CI/CD
5 363 (17.29%) Stakeholder Management
6 358 (17.05%) Data Validation
7 331 (15.76%) Analytics
8 304 (14.48%) Data Migration
8 304 (14.48%) DevOps
9 302 (14.38%) Data Modelling
10 277 (13.19%) ETL
11 271 (12.90%) User Acceptance Testing
12 269 (12.81%) Test Automation
13 240 (11.43%) Continuous Improvement
14 227 (10.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 220 (10.48%) Business Intelligence
16 216 (10.29%) AI
17 211 (10.05%) Data Governance
18 190 (9.05%) Data Pipeline
19 173 (8.24%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 515 (24.52%) SQL
2 390 (18.57%) Python
3 105 (5.00%) Java
4 88 (4.19%) JavaScript
5 76 (3.62%) C#
6 52 (2.48%) PL/SQL
6 52 (2.48%) PowerShell
7 49 (2.33%) C++
8 41 (1.95%) C
9 38 (1.81%) Bash
10 36 (1.71%) TypeScript
11 27 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 27 (1.29%) R
12 26 (1.24%) Bicep
13 21 (1.00%) Ada
14 19 (0.90%) Scala
15 18 (0.86%) T-SQL
16 16 (0.76%) Groovy
17 13 (0.62%) VBA
18 11 (0.52%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 445 (21.19%) Security Cleared
2 323 (15.38%) SC Cleared
3 192 (9.14%) Degree
4 65 (3.10%) BPSS Clearance
5 55 (2.62%) Computer Science Degree
6 41 (1.95%) DV Cleared
7 33 (1.57%) Master's Degree
8 31 (1.48%) ISTQB
9 29 (1.38%) PMI Certification
10 27 (1.29%) PMP
11 18 (0.86%) Cisco Certification
12 16 (0.76%) CISSP
13 15 (0.71%) AWS Certification
13 15 (0.71%) CCNP
13 15 (0.71%) Microsoft Certification
14 13 (0.62%) CBAP
15 12 (0.57%) Azure Certification
16 10 (0.48%) CTC Cleared
16 10 (0.48%) Oracle Certification
17 9 (0.43%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 354 (16.86%) Data Quality
2 271 (12.90%) QA
3 118 (5.62%) GDPR
4 80 (3.81%) NIST
5 70 (3.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 34 (1.62%) Accessibility
7 32 (1.52%) SLA
8 24 (1.14%) GxP
9 22 (1.05%) IFRS
10 20 (0.95%) PMO
11 19 (0.90%) IFRS 17
12 18 (0.86%) GRC
13 17 (0.81%) Def Stans
13 17 (0.81%) HL7
14 15 (0.71%) GMP
15 14 (0.67%) NCSC
15 14 (0.67%) NIST 800
15 14 (0.67%) PCI DSS
16 13 (0.62%) COBIT
17 12 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 80 (3.81%) Docker
2 48 (2.29%) Active Directory
3 40 (1.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 26 (1.24%) Firmware
5 13 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
6 12 (0.57%) Hyper-V
7 11 (0.52%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (0.52%) VMware NSX
8 9 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (0.29%) vSphere
10 5 (0.24%) NFS
11 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.14%) Embedded Firmware
13 2 (0.095%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.095%) Ceph
13 2 (0.095%) KVM
13 2 (0.095%) Lustre
13 2 (0.095%) OpenDJ
13 2 (0.095%) OpenIDM
13 2 (0.095%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 118 (5.62%) Kubernetes
2 93 (4.43%) Terraform
3 34 (1.62%) Single Sign-On
4 31 (1.48%) Prometheus
5 30 (1.43%) Grafana
6 29 (1.38%) Ansible
7 15 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (0.48%) Kibana
8 10 (0.48%) Puppet
9 8 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 8 (0.38%) SCCM
10 6 (0.29%) FortiGate
10 6 (0.29%) Nessus
11 5 (0.24%) CASB
11 5 (0.24%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.19%) EMC NetWorker
12 4 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.19%) RSA Archer
12 4 (0.19%) vMotion
12 4 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 273 (13.00%) Microsoft
2 214 (10.19%) Oracle
3 180 (8.57%) SAP
4 110 (5.24%) Databricks
5 84 (4.00%) ServiceNow
6 54 (2.57%) Salesforce
7 49 (2.33%) Google
8 46 (2.19%) VMware
9 45 (2.14%) Splunk
10 38 (1.81%) Cisco
11 34 (1.62%) Workday
12 31 (1.48%) MuleSoft
13 30 (1.43%) Informatica
14 29 (1.38%) Sage
15 22 (1.05%) Palo Alto
16 21 (1.00%) CyberArk
17 20 (0.95%) OpenAI
18 18 (0.86%) IBM
19 15 (0.71%) Dell
20 13 (0.62%) Bloomberg