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

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 100 133
Rank change year-on-year +57 +33 +5
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,993 764 767
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.55% 2.62% 1.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.30% 2.90% 2.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,227 453 402
10th Percentile £350 £363 £325
25th Percentile £404 £423 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £545 £531
Median % change year-on-year -10.55% +2.59% -3.41%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £623
90th Percentile £700 £719 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £511 £500
% change year-on-year -7.09% +2.25% +0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 42 146
10th Percentile £22.25 £26.53 £19.94
25th Percentile £48.75 £47.50 £48.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £59.13 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.94% -1.46% -4.08%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.75 £75.16
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.23 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £60.50 £61.82
% change year-on-year +7.44% -2.13% -1.10%

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 37,633 26,370 38,295
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.88% 90.52% 86.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,862 17,096 24,871
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 £743 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.28% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,214 936 2,338
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.20 £12.85
25th Percentile £18.50 £20.75 £16.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.47%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.50 £57.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.35 £71.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.61 £31.76 £31.25
% change year-on-year -6.77% +1.63% -13.19%

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 24 March 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 24 March 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 24 March 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 +44 1,719 £492 -10.55% 893
UK excluding London +43 945 £475 -7.09% 727
London +64 800 £510 -8.11% 269
Work from Home +69 614 £492 -4.00% 340
North of England +36 231 £435 -8.42% 149
South East -5 198 £500 - 221
Midlands +38 186 £486 +2.24% 120
North West +29 149 £418 -7.11% 75
West Midlands +24 146 £481 -2.53% 75
South West +9 137 £475 -17.39% 90
East of England +19 114 £500 +11.11% 103
Yorkshire -4 73 £463 +10.12% 50
Scotland +42 52 £405 -10.00% 43
East Midlands -3 38 £525 +42.66% 45
Northern Ireland +18 25 £400 -27.27% 6
Wales - 17 £460 - 14
North East -10 12 £450 -37.93% 24

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 (4.01%) Confluence
2 42 (2.11%) Apache Spark
3 34 (1.71%) SAS
4 33 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
5 21 (1.05%) SharePoint
6 20 (1.00%) Apache
7 16 (0.80%) Microsoft Exchange
8 9 (0.45%) Appian
9 8 (0.40%) ArcGIS
9 8 (0.40%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.35%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 7 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
11 5 (0.25%) Anypoint
11 5 (0.25%) CMS
12 4 (0.20%) Smallworld
13 3 (0.15%) CICS
13 3 (0.15%) GeoServer
13 3 (0.15%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 3 (0.15%) WebLogic
Applications
1 99 (4.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 27 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
2 27 (1.35%) MS Visio
3 17 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
4 16 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
5 10 (0.50%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.20%) CATIA
6 4 (0.20%) Notion
7 3 (0.15%) LaTeX
8 2 (0.10%) Sketch
9 1 (0.050%) Autodesk Inventor
9 1 (0.050%) CANalyzer
9 1 (0.050%) MicroStation
9 1 (0.050%) OrCAD
9 1 (0.050%) Simulink
9 1 (0.050%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 96 (4.82%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (1.71%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.75%) Oracle General Ledger
3 15 (0.75%) Oracle Payables
4 13 (0.65%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 13 (0.65%) Workday HCM
5 12 (0.60%) Oracle Receivables
6 11 (0.55%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.50%) SAP FI
8 9 (0.45%) Aladdin
8 9 (0.45%) NetSuite
8 9 (0.45%) SAP MDG
9 8 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
9 8 (0.40%) OpenText VIM for SAP
9 8 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.40%) SAP MM
10 7 (0.35%) iTrent
10 7 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 7 (0.35%) SAP ERP
11 6 (0.30%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 468 (23.48%) Azure
2 261 (13.10%) AWS
3 169 (8.48%) Power Platform
4 148 (7.43%) Azure DevOps
5 98 (4.92%) GitHub
6 89 (4.47%) GCP
7 63 (3.16%) GitHub Actions
8 61 (3.06%) Serverless
9 59 (2.96%) Amazon S3
10 58 (2.91%) Entra ID
11 57 (2.86%) Azure Data Factory
12 51 (2.56%) SaaS
13 48 (2.41%) OCI
14 44 (2.21%) Snowflake
15 38 (1.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 35 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
17 32 (1.61%) Microsoft 365
18 30 (1.51%) AWS CloudFormation
19 28 (1.40%) OpenShift
20 24 (1.20%) Boomi
Communications & Networking
1 67 (3.36%) Firewall
2 47 (2.36%) Network Security
3 35 (1.76%) TCP/IP
4 25 (1.25%) DNS
5 24 (1.20%) Ethernet
6 21 (1.05%) HTTP
6 21 (1.05%) VPN
7 17 (0.85%) WAN
8 16 (0.80%) VLAN
9 15 (0.75%) SAN
10 13 (0.65%) NAS
11 10 (0.50%) SD-WAN
11 10 (0.50%) Wireless
12 9 (0.45%) Internet
12 9 (0.45%) SSL
13 8 (0.40%) BGP
13 8 (0.40%) LAN
13 8 (0.40%) OSPF
14 7 (0.35%) Cisco ISE
14 7 (0.35%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 157 (7.88%) Power BI
2 105 (5.27%) Metadata
3 98 (4.92%) Data Warehouse
4 67 (3.36%) SQL Server
5 56 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
6 54 (2.71%) Tableau
7 46 (2.31%) Data Lake
8 33 (1.66%) Delta Lake
9 31 (1.56%) Oracle Reports
10 30 (1.51%) Azure SQL Database
11 28 (1.40%) Relational Database
12 27 (1.35%) Big Data
13 25 (1.25%) Amazon Redshift
13 25 (1.25%) NoSQL
14 22 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 21 (1.05%) Oracle Database
16 20 (1.00%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 19 (0.95%) Amazon Athena
17 19 (0.95%) Geospatial Data
17 19 (0.95%) GIS
Development Applications
1 189 (9.48%) JIRA
2 119 (5.97%) Git
3 90 (4.52%) Jenkins
4 63 (3.16%) Selenium
5 55 (2.76%) GitLab
6 54 (2.71%) Postman
7 37 (1.86%) JUnit
8 36 (1.81%) Cucumber
9 33 (1.66%) JMeter
9 33 (1.66%) Rational DOORS
10 29 (1.46%) Oracle APEX
11 21 (1.05%) MLflow
12 20 (1.00%) Visual Studio
12 20 (1.00%) WebDriver
13 14 (0.70%) Eclipse
13 14 (0.70%) REST Assured
13 14 (0.70%) TestRail
14 12 (0.60%) Rational Rhapsody
14 12 (0.60%) SpecFlow
14 12 (0.60%) Zephyr
General
1 694 (34.82%) Social Skills
2 584 (29.30%) Finance
3 389 (19.52%) Analytical Skills
4 184 (9.23%) Public Sector
5 168 (8.43%) Banking
6 105 (5.27%) Documentation Skills
7 61 (3.06%) Manufacturing
8 52 (2.61%) Aerospace
9 48 (2.41%) Presentation Skills
10 47 (2.36%) Pharmaceutical
11 35 (1.76%) Influencing Skills
11 35 (1.76%) Organisational Skills
12 33 (1.66%) Electronics
13 30 (1.51%) Marketing
14 29 (1.46%) Billing
14 29 (1.46%) Legal
14 29 (1.46%) Telecoms
15 28 (1.40%) Military
15 28 (1.40%) Retail
16 26 (1.30%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 368 (18.46%) Analyst
2 209 (10.49%) Senior
3 201 (10.09%) Lead
4 169 (8.48%) Business Analyst
5 145 (7.28%) Consultant
6 136 (6.82%) Developer
7 132 (6.62%) Architect
8 131 (6.57%) Data Engineer
9 91 (4.57%) Data Analyst
10 77 (3.86%) Project Manager
11 62 (3.11%) Tester
12 50 (2.51%) Software Engineer
13 49 (2.46%) Senior Analyst
14 45 (2.26%) SAP Consultant
15 42 (2.11%) Test Analyst
16 40 (2.01%) Senior Developer
17 38 (1.91%) Test Manager
18 37 (1.86%) Test Engineer
19 36 (1.81%) Embedded Engineer
20 35 (1.76%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 134 (6.72%) REST
2 99 (4.97%) JSON
3 61 (3.06%) Oracle Fusion
3 61 (3.06%) XML
4 55 (2.76%) Kafka
5 53 (2.66%) OAuth
6 52 (2.61%) Middleware
7 49 (2.46%) PySpark
8 45 (2.26%) SOAP
9 41 (2.06%) Node.js
10 38 (1.91%) .NET
11 34 (1.71%) Playwright
12 32 (1.61%) Web Services
13 31 (1.56%) RESTful
13 31 (1.56%) Swagger
14 30 (1.51%) pytest
14 30 (1.51%) PyTorch
15 26 (1.30%) SAML
15 26 (1.30%) TensorFlow
16 25 (1.25%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 118 (5.92%) Legacy Systems
2 103 (5.17%) Data Structures
3 85 (4.26%) Product Ownership
4 83 (4.16%) Onboarding
5 59 (2.96%) Cloud Native
6 56 (2.81%) Management Information System
7 47 (2.36%) Data Centre
8 34 (1.71%) Analytical Mindset
8 34 (1.71%) Distributed Systems
9 26 (1.30%) Replication
10 25 (1.25%) Algorithms
11 23 (1.15%) Data Protection Act
11 23 (1.15%) Life Science
11 23 (1.15%) Virtual Team
12 21 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
12 21 (1.05%) Operational Technology
13 20 (1.00%) Derivative
13 20 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
13 20 (1.00%) NHS
13 20 (1.00%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 98 (4.92%) Windows
2 79 (3.96%) Linux
3 29 (1.46%) Unix
4 11 (0.55%) Windows Server
5 9 (0.45%) Android
6 6 (0.30%) Embedded Linux
6 6 (0.30%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.30%) zOS
7 3 (0.15%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.10%) Debian
8 2 (0.10%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.050%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.050%) FreeRTOS
9 1 (0.050%) pSOS
9 1 (0.050%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.050%) Robot Operating System
9 1 (0.050%) Solaris
9 1 (0.050%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 486 (24.39%) Migration
2 449 (22.53%) Agile
3 416 (20.87%) Problem-Solving
4 352 (17.66%) Stakeholder Management
5 349 (17.51%) CI/CD
6 335 (16.81%) Data Validation
7 303 (15.20%) Analytics
8 297 (14.90%) DevOps
9 294 (14.75%) Data Migration
10 280 (14.05%) Data Modelling
11 259 (13.00%) ETL
12 254 (12.74%) User Acceptance Testing
13 251 (12.59%) Test Automation
14 230 (11.54%) Continuous Improvement
15 219 (10.99%) AI
16 217 (10.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 207 (10.39%) Data Governance
18 200 (10.04%) Business Intelligence
19 169 (8.48%) Data Pipeline
20 166 (8.33%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 484 (24.28%) SQL
2 363 (18.21%) Python
3 98 (4.92%) Java
4 89 (4.47%) JavaScript
5 73 (3.66%) C#
6 51 (2.56%) PL/SQL
6 51 (2.56%) PowerShell
7 49 (2.46%) C++
8 44 (2.21%) C
9 36 (1.81%) TypeScript
10 35 (1.76%) Bash
11 26 (1.30%) Bicep
12 25 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 22 (1.10%) R
14 21 (1.05%) Ada
15 19 (0.95%) T-SQL
16 17 (0.85%) Groovy
16 17 (0.85%) Scala
17 12 (0.60%) VBA
18 11 (0.55%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 423 (21.22%) Security Cleared
2 307 (15.40%) SC Cleared
3 184 (9.23%) Degree
4 63 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
5 57 (2.86%) Computer Science Degree
6 40 (2.01%) DV Cleared
7 36 (1.81%) Master's Degree
8 30 (1.51%) ISTQB
9 27 (1.35%) PMI Certification
10 25 (1.25%) PMP
11 17 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
12 16 (0.80%) CISSP
13 15 (0.75%) AWS Certification
13 15 (0.75%) Microsoft Certification
14 14 (0.70%) CCNP
15 13 (0.65%) CBAP
16 10 (0.50%) CTC Cleared
16 10 (0.50%) Oracle Certification
17 9 (0.45%) Azure Certification
17 9 (0.45%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 327 (16.41%) Data Quality
2 257 (12.90%) QA
3 112 (5.62%) GDPR
4 77 (3.86%) NIST
5 66 (3.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 30 (1.51%) Accessibility
7 27 (1.35%) SLA
8 24 (1.20%) GxP
9 22 (1.10%) IFRS
10 20 (1.00%) Def Stans
11 19 (0.95%) IFRS 17
12 18 (0.90%) PMO
13 17 (0.85%) GRC
14 15 (0.75%) GMP
15 14 (0.70%) HL7
15 14 (0.70%) PCI DSS
16 13 (0.65%) COBIT
16 13 (0.65%) NCSC
17 12 (0.60%) NIST 800
17 12 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 75 (3.76%) Docker
2 47 (2.36%) Active Directory
3 33 (1.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (1.10%) Firmware
5 10 (0.50%) VMware NSX
6 8 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (0.35%) Hyper-V
7 7 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (0.25%) NFS
9 4 (0.20%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
9 4 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
10 3 (0.15%) Embedded Firmware
10 3 (0.15%) vSphere
11 2 (0.10%) Ceph
11 2 (0.10%) KVM
11 2 (0.10%) Lustre
11 2 (0.10%) OpenAM
11 2 (0.10%) OpenDJ
11 2 (0.10%) OpenIDM
11 2 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 114 (5.72%) Kubernetes
2 87 (4.37%) Terraform
3 31 (1.56%) Single Sign-On
4 30 (1.51%) Prometheus
5 28 (1.40%) Ansible
6 27 (1.35%) Grafana
7 13 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (0.55%) Kibana
8 11 (0.55%) Puppet
9 9 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 7 (0.35%) SCCM
11 6 (0.30%) Nessus
12 5 (0.25%) CASB
13 4 (0.20%) EMC NetWorker
13 4 (0.20%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.20%) FortiGate
13 4 (0.20%) RSA Archer
13 4 (0.20%) vMotion
14 3 (0.15%) CloudHub
14 3 (0.15%) linkerd
Vendors
1 257 (12.90%) Microsoft
2 204 (10.24%) Oracle
3 174 (8.73%) SAP
4 106 (5.32%) Databricks
5 84 (4.21%) ServiceNow
6 48 (2.41%) Google
7 44 (2.21%) Salesforce
8 42 (2.11%) Splunk
9 40 (2.01%) VMware
10 35 (1.76%) Cisco
11 33 (1.66%) Workday
12 31 (1.56%) MuleSoft
13 29 (1.46%) Informatica
14 28 (1.40%) Sage
15 22 (1.10%) IBM
16 20 (1.00%) OpenAI
16 20 (1.00%) Palo Alto
17 19 (0.95%) CyberArk
18 15 (0.75%) Murex
19 13 (0.65%) Bloomberg