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

6 months to
4 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 72 119
Rank change year-on-year +36 +47 +34
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,688 1,073 845
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.21% 3.40% 1.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.12% 3.75% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,603 642 415
10th Percentile £340 £350 £325
25th Percentile £410 £419 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £596
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £508 £500
% change year-on-year -7.54% +1.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 171 71 179
10th Percentile £17.23 £18.22 £26.88
25th Percentile £27.07 £39.38 £47.83
Median hourly rate £62.50 £57.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.23% -3.75% -5.11%
75th Percentile £74.63 £65.00 £70.33
90th Percentile £83.75 £75.00 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.04%

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 43,890 28,628 37,028
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.04% 90.75% 85.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,271 18,064 23,618
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.98% -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 2,636 1,406 2,527
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.46 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.45% -35.31% +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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +34 2,338 £500 -4.76% 1,127
UK excluding London +25 1,246 £469 -7.54% 801
London +49 1,127 £514 -6.59% 441
Work from Home +51 788 £492 -1.60% 478
North of England +36 304 £450 - 163
Midlands +39 293 £489 +11.71% 125
South East 0 276 £507 +1.30% 266
West Midlands +31 213 £475 +17.28% 64
North West +26 165 £450 - 87
East of England +12 134 £500 +5.26% 91
South West 0 131 £504 -12.39% 115
Yorkshire +25 126 £462 +10.72% 49
Scotland +35 82 £407 -13.12% 45
East Midlands +22 75 £525 +15.51% 61
Wales +6 28 £460 +73.58% 10
North East -24 16 £425 -22.73% 27
Northern Ireland +7 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 (3.27%) Confluence
2 63 (2.34%) Apache Airflow
3 54 (2.01%) SAS
4 51 (1.90%) SharePoint
5 42 (1.56%) Apache Spark
6 26 (0.97%) Apache
7 13 (0.48%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.48%) Oracle Workflow
8 12 (0.45%) 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 (0.19%) 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
1 180 (6.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 43 (1.60%) MS Visio
3 36 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (1.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 25 (0.93%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.30%) CATIA
8 6 (0.22%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.19%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.15%) Simulink
11 2 (0.074%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.074%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.074%) Sketch
11 2 (0.074%) Windchill
12 1 (0.037%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.037%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.037%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.037%) LaTeX
12 1 (0.037%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.037%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 123 (4.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (1.30%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.60%) Oracle Payables
3 16 (0.60%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.52%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.45%) iTrent
5 12 (0.45%) Oracle General Ledger
5 12 (0.45%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.41%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.37%) SAP ERP
8 9 (0.33%) Aladdin
8 9 (0.33%) NetSuite
8 9 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
9 8 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
9 8 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
9 8 (0.30%) SAP Payroll
9 8 (0.30%) SAP SD
10 7 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
10 7 (0.26%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 547 (20.35%) Azure
2 325 (12.09%) AWS
3 267 (9.93%) Power Platform
4 145 (5.39%) Azure DevOps
5 133 (4.95%) GCP
6 116 (4.32%) GitHub
7 91 (3.39%) Snowflake
8 68 (2.53%) Serverless
9 67 (2.49%) Entra ID
9 67 (2.49%) GitHub Actions
10 61 (2.27%) Azure Data Factory
11 60 (2.23%) Amazon S3
12 50 (1.86%) SaaS
13 49 (1.82%) Microsoft 365
14 41 (1.53%) OCI
15 40 (1.49%) dbt
16 39 (1.45%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 37 (1.38%) AWS Lambda
18 34 (1.26%) SuccessFactors
19 32 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 110 (4.09%) Firewall
2 66 (2.46%) Network Security
3 46 (1.71%) DNS
3 46 (1.71%) VLAN
4 40 (1.49%) VPN
4 40 (1.49%) WAN
5 32 (1.19%) BGP
6 31 (1.15%) TCP/IP
7 23 (0.86%) OSPF
7 23 (0.86%) Wireless
8 22 (0.82%) LAN
8 22 (0.82%) SAN
8 22 (0.82%) SD-WAN
9 19 (0.71%) Ethernet
10 18 (0.67%) DHCP
10 18 (0.67%) Internet
11 17 (0.63%) Wi-Fi
12 13 (0.48%) Cisco ISE
13 12 (0.45%) NAS
13 12 (0.45%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 250 (9.30%) Power BI
2 138 (5.13%) Data Warehouse
3 104 (3.87%) Metadata
4 99 (3.68%) SQL Server
5 84 (3.13%) PostgreSQL
6 77 (2.86%) Tableau
7 74 (2.75%) Data Lake
8 71 (2.64%) Relational Database
9 36 (1.34%) Big Data
10 34 (1.26%) Oracle Database
10 34 (1.26%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 28 (1.04%) Amazon Redshift
11 28 (1.04%) NoSQL
11 28 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 27 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
12 27 (1.00%) Power Query
13 26 (0.97%) Delta Lake
14 25 (0.93%) BigQuery
15 24 (0.89%) Amazon Athena
16 22 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 248 (9.23%) JIRA
2 156 (5.80%) Git
3 97 (3.61%) Jenkins
4 71 (2.64%) GitLab
5 61 (2.27%) Selenium
6 52 (1.93%) Postman
7 51 (1.90%) JMeter
8 39 (1.45%) JUnit
9 38 (1.41%) Cucumber
10 31 (1.15%) WebDriver
11 27 (1.00%) Rational DOORS
12 19 (0.71%) Gatling
13 18 (0.67%) Eclipse
14 17 (0.63%) Rational Rhapsody
15 16 (0.60%) Visual Studio
16 13 (0.48%) MLflow
16 13 (0.48%) Oracle Forms
16 13 (0.48%) REST Assured
17 11 (0.41%) Cypress.io
18 10 (0.37%) Maven
General
1 797 (29.65%) Finance
2 788 (29.32%) Social Skills
3 493 (18.34%) Analytical Skills
4 228 (8.48%) Public Sector
5 212 (7.89%) Banking
6 153 (5.69%) Documentation Skills
7 95 (3.53%) Manufacturing
8 75 (2.79%) Aerospace
9 68 (2.53%) Retail
10 59 (2.19%) Pharmaceutical
11 51 (1.90%) Organisational Skills
12 50 (1.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 50 (1.86%) Telecoms
13 46 (1.71%) Legal
14 41 (1.53%) Front Office
15 39 (1.45%) General Ledger
16 38 (1.41%) Marketing
17 36 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
18 35 (1.30%) Billing
18 35 (1.30%) Law
Job Titles
1 477 (17.75%) Analyst
2 270 (10.04%) Lead
3 267 (9.93%) Senior
4 229 (8.52%) Business Analyst
5 208 (7.74%) Data Engineer
6 201 (7.48%) Consultant
7 161 (5.99%) Architect
8 153 (5.69%) Developer
9 132 (4.91%) Data Analyst
10 83 (3.09%) Project Manager
10 83 (3.09%) Test Engineer
11 69 (2.57%) Tester
12 55 (2.05%) Network Engineer
13 49 (1.82%) Systems Engineer
13 49 (1.82%) Test Manager
14 47 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 47 (1.75%) Technical Analyst
15 45 (1.67%) Security Engineer
15 45 (1.67%) Senior Data Engineer
16 43 (1.60%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (4.76%) REST
2 76 (2.83%) JSON
3 72 (2.68%) Kafka
4 57 (2.12%) Middleware
5 56 (2.08%) PySpark
6 53 (1.97%) XML
7 50 (1.86%) Oracle Fusion
8 45 (1.67%) OAuth
9 44 (1.64%) .NET
9 44 (1.64%) Spring
10 40 (1.49%) pytest
10 40 (1.49%) SOAP
11 38 (1.41%) Playwright
12 37 (1.38%) Web Services
13 35 (1.30%) RESTful
14 33 (1.23%) Pandas
15 31 (1.15%) Node.js
16 29 (1.08%) Swagger
17 27 (1.00%) OpenID
18 25 (0.93%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 137 (5.10%) Onboarding
2 133 (4.95%) Data Structures
3 130 (4.84%) Legacy Systems
4 119 (4.43%) Cloud Native
5 114 (4.24%) Product Ownership
6 83 (3.09%) Data Centre
7 68 (2.53%) Management Information System
8 53 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
9 48 (1.79%) Analytical Mindset
10 44 (1.64%) Life Science
11 40 (1.49%) SCADA
12 36 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
13 35 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
13 35 (1.30%) NHS
14 34 (1.26%) AI Agents
15 33 (1.23%) Virtual Team
16 31 (1.15%) Replication
17 30 (1.12%) Operational Technology
18 29 (1.08%) Hybrid Cloud
19 28 (1.04%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 146 (5.43%) Windows
2 93 (3.46%) Linux
3 39 (1.45%) Windows Server
4 29 (1.08%) Unix
5 17 (0.63%) 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 (0.19%) Apple iOS
8 5 (0.19%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.15%) SUSE
10 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.074%) Data ONTAP
11 2 (0.074%) HPUX
11 2 (0.074%) Solaris
11 2 (0.074%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.074%) zOS
12 1 (0.037%) pSOS
12 1 (0.037%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 725 (26.97%) Migration
2 527 (19.61%) Agile
3 479 (17.82%) Stakeholder Management
4 456 (16.96%) Data Validation
5 452 (16.82%) CI/CD
6 446 (16.59%) Problem-Solving
7 434 (16.15%) Analytics
8 428 (15.92%) User Acceptance Testing
9 422 (15.70%) Data Migration
10 418 (15.55%) Data Modelling
11 344 (12.80%) AI
12 333 (12.39%) Test Automation
13 328 (12.20%) DevOps
14 326 (12.13%) ETL
15 320 (11.90%) Continuous Improvement
16 295 (10.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 292 (10.86%) Business Intelligence
18 261 (9.71%) Data Analysis
19 252 (9.38%) Data Governance
20 249 (9.26%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 631 (23.47%) SQL
2 480 (17.86%) Python
3 127 (4.72%) Java
4 67 (2.49%) PowerShell
5 61 (2.27%) C#
6 50 (1.86%) Bash
7 42 (1.56%) JavaScript
8 41 (1.53%) C++
9 37 (1.38%) TypeScript
10 36 (1.34%) C
11 34 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 30 (1.12%) Apex Code
13 29 (1.08%) Bicep
14 25 (0.93%) PL/SQL
14 25 (0.93%) R
15 23 (0.86%) VBA
16 22 (0.82%) Ada
17 20 (0.74%) Scala
18 17 (0.63%) MATLAB
18 17 (0.63%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 481 (17.89%) Security Cleared
2 357 (13.28%) SC Cleared
3 187 (6.96%) Degree
4 65 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
5 52 (1.93%) DV Cleared
6 40 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
6 40 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
7 31 (1.15%) CCNP
8 28 (1.04%) PMI Certification
9 25 (0.93%) PMP
10 22 (0.82%) CISSP
10 22 (0.82%) ISTQB
11 20 (0.74%) ACCA
12 19 (0.71%) Azure Certification
13 18 (0.67%) CIMA
14 16 (0.60%) CCNA
14 16 (0.60%) Master's Degree
15 15 (0.56%) AWS Certification
15 15 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
16 14 (0.52%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 466 (17.34%) Data Quality
2 326 (12.13%) QA
3 127 (4.72%) GDPR
4 62 (2.31%) NIST
5 58 (2.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 44 (1.64%) Accessibility
7 37 (1.38%) SLA
8 36 (1.34%) GxP
9 35 (1.30%) PMO
10 21 (0.78%) GRC
11 20 (0.74%) IFRS
12 18 (0.67%) GMP
13 17 (0.63%) Def Stans
14 16 (0.60%) HL7
14 16 (0.60%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.56%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 13 (0.48%) NCSC
16 13 (0.48%) Solvency II
17 12 (0.45%) IFRS 17
17 12 (0.45%) NIST 800
System Software
1 111 (4.13%) Docker
2 79 (2.94%) Active Directory
3 70 (2.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (0.86%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (0.78%) Hyper-V
7 18 (0.67%) vSphere
8 17 (0.63%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.60%) Firmware
10 14 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.22%) NFS
12 4 (0.15%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 4 (0.15%) KVM
13 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.074%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.074%) OpenSSH
14 2 (0.074%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.074%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.037%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 157 (5.84%) Kubernetes
2 124 (4.61%) Terraform
3 55 (2.05%) Prometheus
4 52 (1.93%) Grafana
5 49 (1.82%) Ansible
6 27 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (0.86%) FortiGate
8 22 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (0.37%) vCenter Server
10 8 (0.30%) SCCM
11 6 (0.22%) HP ALM
11 6 (0.22%) Nessus
11 6 (0.22%) vMotion
11 6 (0.22%) VxRail
12 5 (0.19%) Argo
12 5 (0.19%) CASB
12 5 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
12 5 (0.19%) Istio
12 5 (0.19%) Kibana
12 5 (0.19%) Puppet
Vendors
1 367 (13.65%) Microsoft
2 245 (9.11%) SAP
3 231 (8.59%) Oracle
4 123 (4.58%) Databricks
5 91 (3.39%) Salesforce
6 84 (3.13%) VMware
7 78 (2.90%) ServiceNow
8 61 (2.27%) Cisco
9 46 (1.71%) Google
10 40 (1.49%) Splunk
10 40 (1.49%) Workday
11 35 (1.30%) Informatica
12 32 (1.19%) Palo Alto
13 29 (1.08%) Fortinet
14 28 (1.04%) IBM
15 26 (0.97%) MuleSoft
16 25 (0.93%) Sage
17 23 (0.86%) Juniper
18 21 (0.78%) Zscaler
19 20 (0.74%) IFS