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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 75 121
Rank change year-on-year +39 +46 +33
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,591 1,003 821
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.15% 3.38% 1.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.07% 3.71% 2.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,543 606 401
10th Percentile £327 £350 £325
25th Percentile £406 £419 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% +6.00% -10.71%
75th Percentile £598 £630 £588
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -10.76% +5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 167 63 178
10th Percentile £17.02 £16.84 £26.88
25th Percentile £26.88 £40.35 £48.81
Median hourly rate £60.00 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% -5.11%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.85 £77.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.82 £62.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year +0.51% +0.81% -0.84%

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 42,679 27,009 37,072
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.81% 91.00% 85.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,607 17,137 23,609
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £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 2,567 1,242 2,598
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.87 £16.03
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.27 £37.34
Median % change year-on-year +67.37% -29.66% +6.69%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +76.94% -34.02% +17.29%

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 17 June 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 17 June 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 17 June 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 +36 2,252 £500 -6.98% 958
UK excluding London +30 1,226 £469 -10.76% 792
London +53 1,070 £513 -6.82% 309
Work from Home +53 768 £481 -3.80% 409
North of England +47 311 £449 -0.33% 162
Midlands +33 270 £492 +9.39% 117
South East 0 266 £500 -0.50% 238
West Midlands +27 197 £484 +19.60% 66
North West +30 178 £440 -0.85% 77
South West +7 137 £500 -13.04% 123
East of England +14 132 £500 - 95
Yorkshire +24 116 £458 +5.17% 54
Scotland +41 84 £425 -10.53% 46
East Midlands +17 68 £525 +15.51% 51
Wales +10 25 £455 +193.55% 15
North East -16 20 £425 -22.73% 34
Northern Ireland +11 12 £400 -32.20% 18

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 (3.40%) Confluence
2 62 (2.39%) Apache Airflow
3 50 (1.93%) SAS
4 46 (1.78%) Apache Spark
5 40 (1.54%) SharePoint
6 24 (0.93%) Apache
7 15 (0.58%) Jupyter
8 12 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.35%) Appian
9 9 (0.35%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
9 9 (0.35%) SharePoint 2013
10 6 (0.23%) CMS
11 5 (0.19%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.15%) IIS
12 4 (0.15%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
13 3 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 164 (6.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 36 (1.39%) MS Visio
3 33 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
4 27 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 25 (0.96%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.31%) CATIA
8 6 (0.23%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.19%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.15%) Simulink
11 3 (0.12%) LaTeX
12 2 (0.077%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.077%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.077%) Sketch
12 2 (0.077%) Windchill
13 1 (0.039%) Adobe XD
13 1 (0.039%) Autodesk Inventor
13 1 (0.039%) CANalyzer
13 1 (0.039%) OrCAD
13 1 (0.039%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 122 (4.71%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.39%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.62%) Teamcenter
4 15 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
5 14 (0.54%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.46%) Oracle General Ledger
6 12 (0.46%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.39%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.39%) SAP ERP
8 9 (0.35%) Aladdin
9 8 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
10 7 (0.27%) iTrent
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
10 7 (0.27%) Sage X3
10 7 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
10 7 (0.27%) SAP SD
10 7 (0.27%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 516 (19.92%) Azure
2 329 (12.70%) AWS
3 246 (9.49%) Power Platform
4 132 (5.09%) Azure DevOps
5 129 (4.98%) GCP
6 118 (4.55%) GitHub
7 87 (3.36%) Snowflake
8 67 (2.59%) GitHub Actions
8 67 (2.59%) Serverless
9 66 (2.55%) Entra ID
10 60 (2.32%) Azure Data Factory
11 59 (2.28%) Amazon S3
12 55 (2.12%) SaaS
13 47 (1.81%) Microsoft 365
14 42 (1.62%) OCI
15 38 (1.47%) dbt
16 36 (1.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 34 (1.31%) AWS Lambda
18 31 (1.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 30 (1.16%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 101 (3.90%) Firewall
2 67 (2.59%) Network Security
3 45 (1.74%) VLAN
4 43 (1.66%) DNS
5 41 (1.58%) WAN
6 37 (1.43%) VPN
7 35 (1.35%) TCP/IP
8 29 (1.12%) BGP
9 23 (0.89%) LAN
10 22 (0.85%) Ethernet
10 22 (0.85%) SD-WAN
10 22 (0.85%) Wireless
11 21 (0.81%) OSPF
12 20 (0.77%) SAN
13 18 (0.69%) Internet
14 17 (0.66%) DHCP
15 16 (0.62%) Wi-Fi
16 13 (0.50%) Cisco ISE
17 12 (0.46%) NAS
17 12 (0.46%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 231 (8.92%) Power BI
2 129 (4.98%) Data Warehouse
3 98 (3.78%) Metadata
4 96 (3.71%) SQL Server
5 83 (3.20%) PostgreSQL
6 74 (2.86%) Tableau
7 68 (2.62%) Data Lake
8 62 (2.39%) Relational Database
9 36 (1.39%) Big Data
10 32 (1.24%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 31 (1.20%) Oracle Database
12 29 (1.12%) Amazon Redshift
12 29 (1.12%) NoSQL
13 27 (1.04%) Power Query
14 26 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
15 25 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 24 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
16 24 (0.93%) BigQuery
17 21 (0.81%) Delta Lake
18 20 (0.77%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 233 (8.99%) JIRA
2 150 (5.79%) Git
3 99 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 71 (2.74%) GitLab
5 57 (2.20%) Selenium
6 51 (1.97%) Postman
7 47 (1.81%) JMeter
8 38 (1.47%) JUnit
9 36 (1.39%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.16%) WebDriver
11 26 (1.00%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.69%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.66%) Rational Rhapsody
14 16 (0.62%) Gatling
14 16 (0.62%) Visual Studio
15 15 (0.58%) MLflow
16 12 (0.46%) REST Assured
17 11 (0.42%) Cypress.io
18 10 (0.39%) Gradle
18 10 (0.39%) Maven
General
1 765 (29.53%) Finance
2 757 (29.22%) Social Skills
3 463 (17.87%) Analytical Skills
4 222 (8.57%) Public Sector
5 204 (7.87%) Banking
6 147 (5.67%) Documentation Skills
7 82 (3.16%) Manufacturing
8 73 (2.82%) Aerospace
9 57 (2.20%) Retail
10 51 (1.97%) Pharmaceutical
11 49 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
12 45 (1.74%) Legal
12 45 (1.74%) Telecoms
13 43 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 42 (1.62%) Influencing Skills
15 40 (1.54%) General Ledger
16 39 (1.51%) Marketing
17 38 (1.47%) Front Office
18 35 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
19 34 (1.31%) Law
Job Titles
1 450 (17.37%) Analyst
2 266 (10.27%) Senior
3 259 (10.00%) Lead
4 217 (8.38%) Business Analyst
5 198 (7.64%) Data Engineer
6 195 (7.53%) Consultant
7 157 (6.06%) Architect
8 148 (5.71%) Developer
9 126 (4.86%) Data Analyst
10 87 (3.36%) Project Manager
11 78 (3.01%) Test Engineer
12 65 (2.51%) Tester
13 53 (2.05%) Network Engineer
14 52 (2.01%) Test Manager
15 51 (1.97%) Systems Engineer
16 49 (1.89%) Senior Analyst
17 48 (1.85%) Technical Analyst
18 45 (1.74%) Software Engineer
19 44 (1.70%) SAP Consultant
20 43 (1.66%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 138 (5.33%) REST
2 80 (3.09%) JSON
3 71 (2.74%) Kafka
4 55 (2.12%) Oracle Fusion
5 52 (2.01%) Middleware
6 50 (1.93%) OAuth
6 50 (1.93%) PySpark
6 50 (1.93%) XML
7 39 (1.51%) .NET
7 39 (1.51%) SOAP
7 39 (1.51%) Spring
8 38 (1.47%) pytest
8 38 (1.47%) RESTful
8 38 (1.47%) Swagger
9 35 (1.35%) Web Services
10 33 (1.27%) Pandas
10 33 (1.27%) Playwright
11 30 (1.16%) Node.js
12 27 (1.04%) JWT
12 27 (1.04%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 139 (5.36%) Legacy Systems
2 127 (4.90%) Onboarding
3 124 (4.79%) Data Structures
4 113 (4.36%) Product Ownership
5 107 (4.13%) Cloud Native
6 80 (3.09%) Data Centre
7 63 (2.43%) Management Information System
8 59 (2.28%) Distributed Systems
9 45 (1.74%) Analytical Mindset
10 37 (1.43%) Life Science
11 35 (1.35%) SCADA
12 34 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
13 32 (1.24%) Replication
14 31 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
14 31 (1.20%) NHS
14 31 (1.20%) Operational Technology
15 30 (1.16%) AI Agents
15 30 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
15 30 (1.16%) Virtual Team
16 29 (1.12%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 136 (5.25%) Windows
2 95 (3.67%) Linux
3 33 (1.27%) Unix
4 29 (1.12%) Windows Server
5 15 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (0.50%) Android
7 9 (0.35%) VMS
8 7 (0.27%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.19%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.19%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.15%) SUSE
10 4 (0.15%) Ubuntu
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.077%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.077%) Embedded Linux
12 2 (0.077%) HPUX
12 2 (0.077%) Solaris
12 2 (0.077%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.077%) zOS
13 1 (0.039%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 698 (26.94%) Migration
2 499 (19.26%) Agile
3 454 (17.52%) Stakeholder Management
4 438 (16.90%) Data Validation
5 434 (16.75%) Problem-Solving
6 429 (16.56%) CI/CD
7 419 (16.17%) User Acceptance Testing
8 409 (15.79%) Data Migration
9 405 (15.63%) Data Modelling
10 392 (15.13%) Analytics
11 328 (12.66%) AI
12 317 (12.23%) ETL
13 312 (12.04%) Test Automation
14 308 (11.89%) DevOps
15 288 (11.12%) Continuous Improvement
16 276 (10.65%) Business Intelligence
17 270 (10.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 240 (9.26%) Data Analysis
19 239 (9.22%) Data Governance
20 235 (9.07%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 609 (23.50%) SQL
2 462 (17.83%) Python
3 118 (4.55%) Java
4 68 (2.62%) PowerShell
5 54 (2.08%) C#
6 48 (1.85%) Bash
7 43 (1.66%) C
8 41 (1.58%) C++
9 38 (1.47%) JavaScript
10 32 (1.24%) Bicep
10 32 (1.24%) TypeScript
11 31 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 29 (1.12%) Apex Code
13 23 (0.89%) PL/SQL
13 23 (0.89%) R
14 21 (0.81%) Ada
15 20 (0.77%) Scala
16 18 (0.69%) MATLAB
17 17 (0.66%) T-SQL
18 16 (0.62%) VBA
Qualifications
1 469 (18.10%) Security Cleared
2 345 (13.32%) SC Cleared
3 182 (7.02%) Degree
4 64 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
5 49 (1.89%) DV Cleared
6 41 (1.58%) Computer Science Degree
7 34 (1.31%) Cisco Certification
8 31 (1.20%) PMI Certification
9 28 (1.08%) CCNP
10 26 (1.00%) PMP
11 24 (0.93%) ISTQB
12 20 (0.77%) ACCA
12 20 (0.77%) Master's Degree
13 18 (0.69%) CIMA
14 17 (0.66%) Azure Certification
14 17 (0.66%) CISSP
15 16 (0.62%) Microsoft Certification
16 15 (0.58%) CCNA
17 13 (0.50%) AWS Certification
17 13 (0.50%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 443 (17.10%) Data Quality
2 305 (11.77%) QA
3 122 (4.71%) GDPR
4 60 (2.32%) NIST
5 54 (2.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 41 (1.58%) Accessibility
7 36 (1.39%) SLA
8 32 (1.24%) PMO
9 28 (1.08%) GxP
10 27 (1.04%) IFRS
11 18 (0.69%) IFRS 17
12 16 (0.62%) Def Stans
12 16 (0.62%) HL7
13 15 (0.58%) GMP
13 15 (0.58%) GRC
14 14 (0.54%) ISO 20022
15 13 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
15 13 (0.50%) Solvency II
16 12 (0.46%) NIST 800
16 12 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 107 (4.13%) Docker
2 69 (2.66%) Active Directory
3 60 (2.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (1.04%) Virtual Machines
5 22 (0.85%) Hyper-V
6 20 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
7 18 (0.69%) Firmware
8 17 (0.66%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.54%) vSphere
10 10 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.23%) NFS
12 4 (0.15%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 3 (0.12%) KVM
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.077%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.077%) OpenSSH
14 2 (0.077%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.077%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.039%) etcd
Systems Management
1 151 (5.83%) Kubernetes
2 122 (4.71%) Terraform
3 54 (2.08%) Prometheus
4 49 (1.89%) Ansible
5 48 (1.85%) Grafana
6 28 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (0.81%) FortiGate
7 21 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (0.39%) vCenter Server
9 7 (0.27%) Kibana
9 7 (0.27%) SCCM
10 6 (0.23%) Nessus
10 6 (0.23%) Puppet
10 6 (0.23%) vMotion
10 6 (0.23%) VxRail
11 5 (0.19%) Argo
11 5 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
11 5 (0.19%) Istio
12 4 (0.15%) Consul
12 4 (0.15%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 346 (13.35%) Microsoft
2 232 (8.95%) SAP
3 218 (8.41%) Oracle
4 120 (4.63%) Databricks
5 86 (3.32%) Salesforce
6 75 (2.89%) ServiceNow
7 72 (2.78%) VMware
8 57 (2.20%) Cisco
9 49 (1.89%) Google
10 41 (1.58%) Splunk
11 35 (1.35%) Workday
12 32 (1.24%) Informatica
13 30 (1.16%) Palo Alto
14 28 (1.08%) MuleSoft
14 28 (1.08%) Sage
15 26 (1.00%) Fortinet
16 23 (0.89%) IBM
17 21 (0.81%) IFS
17 21 (0.81%) OpenAI
18 20 (0.77%) CyberArk