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

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 78 124
Rank change year-on-year +35 +46 +29
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,254 908 793
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.70% 3.09% 1.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.58% 3.40% 2.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,356 533 389
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £400 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £530 £500
Median % change year-on-year -8.58% +6.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £627 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £452 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -11.81% +2.50% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 136 59 165
10th Percentile £16.96 £22.04 £25.26
25th Percentile £32.32 £39.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.64% -8.33% -5.11%
75th Percentile £71.75 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £82.63 £75.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.63 £62.50
% change year-on-year +12.80% -7.80% -0.04%

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 40,423 26,734 36,712
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.29% 90.97% 86.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,371 17,185 23,631
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.68% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,395 1,096 2,442
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.35 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.72 £18.22 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.18 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +50.82% -21.77% +1.04%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.23 £37.50
% change year-on-year +78.39% -32.73% +7.14%

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 18 May 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 18 May 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 18 May 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 1,969 £492 -8.89% 870
UK excluding London +26 1,043 £452 -11.81% 644
London +57 960 £500 -9.05% 315
Work from Home +58 668 £484 -3.20% 396
North of England +43 272 £425 -5.56% 139
Midlands +27 234 £481 +1.29% 94
South East -9 222 £495 -1.00% 186
West Midlands +26 169 £475 - 56
North West +31 165 £420 -4.00% 86
East of England +10 116 £500 +11.11% 86
South West -1 110 £475 -17.39% 103
Yorkshire +16 97 £451 +8.03% 40
Scotland +44 67 £400 -12.33% 28
East Midlands +8 61 £525 +4.06% 38
Wales +8 21 £455 +193.55% 20
North East -13 13 £450 -28.00% 14
Northern Ireland +10 12 £400 -32.20% 9

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 89 (3.95%) Confluence
2 41 (1.82%) Apache Airflow
3 40 (1.77%) Apache Spark
4 38 (1.69%) SAS
5 20 (0.89%) Apache
5 20 (0.89%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.49%) ArcGIS
7 10 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
8 9 (0.40%) Appian
8 9 (0.40%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
9 5 (0.22%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 5 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 4 (0.18%) CMS
11 3 (0.13%) CICS
11 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
11 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.089%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.089%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.089%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 150 (6.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.42%) MS Visio
3 31 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
4 21 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.93%) Spreadsheet
5 15 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
6 7 (0.31%) CATIA
6 7 (0.31%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
7 3 (0.13%) Notion
7 3 (0.13%) Simulink
8 2 (0.089%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.089%) EPLAN
8 2 (0.089%) Sketch
9 1 (0.044%) Autodesk Inventor
9 1 (0.044%) CANalyzer
9 1 (0.044%) MicroStation
9 1 (0.044%) OrCAD
9 1 (0.044%) UXPin
9 1 (0.044%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 106 (4.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (1.51%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.67%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.62%) Oracle General Ledger
5 13 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
5 13 (0.58%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.53%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
8 9 (0.40%) SAP ERP
9 8 (0.35%) Aladdin
9 8 (0.35%) Dynamics CRM
9 8 (0.35%) NetSuite
9 8 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
9 8 (0.35%) Payment Gateway
10 6 (0.27%) iTrent
10 6 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
10 6 (0.27%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.27%) SAP Business One
11 5 (0.22%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 437 (19.39%) Azure
2 282 (12.51%) AWS
3 227 (10.07%) Power Platform
4 111 (4.92%) GCP
5 110 (4.88%) Azure DevOps
6 94 (4.17%) GitHub
7 66 (2.93%) Snowflake
8 62 (2.75%) Serverless
9 57 (2.53%) SaaS
10 56 (2.48%) Amazon S3
10 56 (2.48%) Azure Data Factory
11 55 (2.44%) Entra ID
12 51 (2.26%) GitHub Actions
13 47 (2.09%) OCI
14 38 (1.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 36 (1.60%) Microsoft 365
16 34 (1.51%) AWS Lambda
17 31 (1.38%) AWS CloudFormation
17 31 (1.38%) dbt
18 25 (1.11%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 87 (3.86%) Firewall
2 58 (2.57%) Network Security
3 41 (1.82%) VLAN
4 34 (1.51%) TCP/IP
5 33 (1.46%) DNS
6 31 (1.38%) VPN
7 26 (1.15%) WAN
8 22 (0.98%) Ethernet
9 18 (0.80%) LAN
10 16 (0.71%) SAN
10 16 (0.71%) Wireless
11 14 (0.62%) BGP
11 14 (0.62%) OSPF
11 14 (0.62%) SD-WAN
12 13 (0.58%) HTTP
13 12 (0.53%) NAS
13 12 (0.53%) Wi-Fi
14 11 (0.49%) Cisco ISE
14 11 (0.49%) DHCP
15 10 (0.44%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 215 (9.54%) Power BI
2 117 (5.19%) Data Warehouse
3 97 (4.30%) Metadata
4 80 (3.55%) SQL Server
5 76 (3.37%) Tableau
6 62 (2.75%) PostgreSQL
7 60 (2.66%) Data Lake
8 48 (2.13%) Relational Database
9 32 (1.42%) NoSQL
10 28 (1.24%) Amazon Redshift
10 28 (1.24%) Big Data
11 26 (1.15%) Delta Lake
12 25 (1.11%) Oracle Reports
13 24 (1.06%) Power Query
14 23 (1.02%) Oracle Database
14 23 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 22 (0.98%) BigQuery
16 21 (0.93%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 20 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
17 20 (0.89%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 201 (8.92%) JIRA
2 126 (5.59%) Git
3 87 (3.86%) Jenkins
4 57 (2.53%) Selenium
5 54 (2.40%) GitLab
6 51 (2.26%) Postman
7 45 (2.00%) JMeter
8 32 (1.42%) JUnit
9 28 (1.24%) Cucumber
10 25 (1.11%) Rational DOORS
10 25 (1.11%) WebDriver
11 16 (0.71%) MLflow
12 14 (0.62%) Eclipse
12 14 (0.62%) Rational Rhapsody
12 14 (0.62%) Visual Studio
13 12 (0.53%) Gatling
13 12 (0.53%) REST Assured
14 11 (0.49%) Bitbucket
15 10 (0.44%) Gradle
15 10 (0.44%) Maven
General
1 696 (30.88%) Social Skills
2 668 (29.64%) Finance
3 419 (18.59%) Analytical Skills
4 192 (8.52%) Public Sector
5 183 (8.12%) Banking
6 123 (5.46%) Documentation Skills
7 77 (3.42%) Manufacturing
8 61 (2.71%) Aerospace
9 48 (2.13%) Organisational Skills
9 48 (2.13%) Retail
10 47 (2.09%) Pharmaceutical
11 43 (1.91%) Presentation Skills
12 39 (1.73%) Legal
13 36 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
14 34 (1.51%) Marketing
15 32 (1.42%) Front Office
15 32 (1.42%) General Ledger
15 32 (1.42%) Telecoms
16 30 (1.33%) Military
17 29 (1.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 421 (18.68%) Analyst
2 235 (10.43%) Lead
3 200 (8.87%) Senior
4 187 (8.30%) Business Analyst
5 177 (7.85%) Data Engineer
6 160 (7.10%) Consultant
7 136 (6.03%) Architect
8 123 (5.46%) Developer
9 117 (5.19%) Data Analyst
10 85 (3.77%) Project Manager
11 58 (2.57%) Tester
12 53 (2.35%) Test Engineer
13 47 (2.09%) Software Engineer
14 46 (2.04%) Senior Analyst
15 45 (2.00%) Network Engineer
16 41 (1.82%) Systems Engineer
16 41 (1.82%) Test Manager
17 40 (1.77%) Security Engineer
17 40 (1.77%) Technical Analyst
18 37 (1.64%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 118 (5.24%) REST
2 78 (3.46%) JSON
3 69 (3.06%) Kafka
4 53 (2.35%) Oracle Fusion
5 52 (2.31%) Middleware
6 51 (2.26%) OAuth
7 47 (2.09%) PySpark
8 42 (1.86%) XML
9 39 (1.73%) Swagger
10 37 (1.64%) SOAP
11 36 (1.60%) .NET
12 35 (1.55%) RESTful
13 31 (1.38%) Node.js
13 31 (1.38%) Pandas
14 30 (1.33%) Web Services
15 29 (1.29%) Playwright
16 28 (1.24%) Spring
17 27 (1.20%) OAuth2
17 27 (1.20%) PyTorch
18 26 (1.15%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 126 (5.59%) Legacy Systems
2 120 (5.32%) Data Structures
3 118 (5.24%) Onboarding
4 98 (4.35%) Product Ownership
5 81 (3.59%) Cloud Native
6 75 (3.33%) Data Centre
7 57 (2.53%) Management Information System
8 40 (1.77%) Distributed Systems
9 35 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
10 34 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
11 30 (1.33%) Operational Technology
12 29 (1.29%) Replication
13 28 (1.24%) SCADA
14 27 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
14 27 (1.20%) NHS
14 27 (1.20%) Reference Data
15 26 (1.15%) Life Science
15 26 (1.15%) Virtual Team
16 25 (1.11%) Public Cloud
17 23 (1.02%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 106 (4.70%) Windows
2 92 (4.08%) Linux
3 33 (1.46%) Unix
4 17 (0.75%) Windows Server
5 11 (0.49%) Android
6 9 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (0.31%) VMS
8 5 (0.22%) Embedded Linux
8 5 (0.22%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.22%) zOS
9 4 (0.18%) SUSE
9 4 (0.18%) Windows 10
10 3 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.044%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.044%) Debian
11 1 (0.044%) HPUX
11 1 (0.044%) pSOS
11 1 (0.044%) Solaris
11 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 618 (27.42%) Migration
2 446 (19.79%) Agile
3 419 (18.59%) Problem-Solving
4 380 (16.86%) Stakeholder Management
5 377 (16.73%) Data Validation
6 371 (16.46%) Data Migration
7 357 (15.84%) CI/CD
8 354 (15.71%) Data Modelling
9 331 (14.69%) Analytics
9 331 (14.69%) User Acceptance Testing
10 299 (13.27%) ETL
11 267 (11.85%) DevOps
12 266 (11.80%) Test Automation
13 260 (11.54%) Business Intelligence
14 244 (10.83%) Continuous Improvement
15 239 (10.60%) AI
16 232 (10.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 221 (9.80%) Data Governance
18 200 (8.87%) Data Analysis
18 200 (8.87%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 533 (23.65%) SQL
2 404 (17.92%) Python
3 108 (4.79%) Java
4 58 (2.57%) C#
5 49 (2.17%) PowerShell
6 47 (2.09%) C++
7 46 (2.04%) C
8 45 (2.00%) Bash
9 43 (1.91%) JavaScript
10 31 (1.38%) Bicep
10 31 (1.38%) TypeScript
11 28 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 27 (1.20%) R
13 26 (1.15%) PL/SQL
14 22 (0.98%) Apex Code
15 20 (0.89%) Ada
15 20 (0.89%) Scala
16 16 (0.71%) MATLAB
17 12 (0.53%) VBA
18 11 (0.49%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 415 (18.41%) Security Cleared
2 301 (13.35%) SC Cleared
3 176 (7.81%) Degree
4 55 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 44 (1.95%) Computer Science Degree
6 36 (1.60%) DV Cleared
7 34 (1.51%) PMI Certification
8 30 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
9 28 (1.24%) PMP
10 26 (1.15%) Master's Degree
11 24 (1.06%) CCNP
12 18 (0.80%) ISTQB
13 17 (0.75%) CISSP
14 16 (0.71%) ACCA
15 15 (0.67%) CBAP
16 14 (0.62%) CIMA
17 13 (0.58%) AWS Certification
17 13 (0.58%) Azure Certification
17 13 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
18 12 (0.53%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 395 (17.52%) Data Quality
2 288 (12.78%) QA
3 118 (5.24%) GDPR
4 68 (3.02%) NIST
5 59 (2.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 32 (1.42%) Accessibility
7 30 (1.33%) SLA
8 26 (1.15%) GxP
9 25 (1.11%) IFRS
9 25 (1.11%) PMO
10 20 (0.89%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.80%) Def Stans
11 18 (0.80%) GMP
11 18 (0.80%) GRC
11 18 (0.80%) HL7
12 14 (0.62%) ISO 20022
12 14 (0.62%) MiFID
13 13 (0.58%) PCI DSS
14 12 (0.53%) NIST 800
14 12 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 81 (3.59%) Docker
2 53 (2.35%) Active Directory
3 47 (2.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (1.02%) Firmware
5 20 (0.89%) Virtual Machines
6 18 (0.80%) Hyper-V
7 15 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
7 15 (0.67%) VMware NSX
8 12 (0.53%) vSphere
9 11 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.22%) NFS
11 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.089%) Ceph
13 2 (0.089%) KVM
13 2 (0.089%) OpenAM
13 2 (0.089%) OpenDJ
13 2 (0.089%) OpenIDM
13 2 (0.089%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 124 (5.50%) Kubernetes
2 98 (4.35%) Terraform
3 45 (2.00%) Prometheus
4 43 (1.91%) Grafana
5 40 (1.77%) Ansible
6 30 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
7 17 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (0.53%) FortiGate
9 11 (0.49%) Kibana
10 10 (0.44%) Puppet
11 9 (0.40%) SCCM
12 7 (0.31%) vCenter Server
13 6 (0.27%) Nessus
13 6 (0.27%) vMotion
14 5 (0.22%) CASB
15 4 (0.18%) Argo
15 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
15 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
15 4 (0.18%) Istio
15 4 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 309 (13.71%) Microsoft
2 195 (8.65%) SAP
3 190 (8.43%) Oracle
4 106 (4.70%) Databricks
5 73 (3.24%) Salesforce
6 72 (3.19%) ServiceNow
7 57 (2.53%) VMware
8 50 (2.22%) Cisco
9 48 (2.13%) Google
10 42 (1.86%) Splunk
11 32 (1.42%) Informatica
12 27 (1.20%) Palo Alto
12 27 (1.20%) Sage
13 26 (1.15%) MuleSoft
13 26 (1.15%) Workday
14 25 (1.11%) IBM
15 22 (0.98%) CyberArk
16 21 (0.93%) IFS
17 20 (0.89%) OpenAI
18 18 (0.80%) Fortinet