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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 67 112
Rank change year-on-year +35 +45 +40
Contract jobs citing Validation 3,023 1,195 778
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.56% 3.68% 2.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.58% 4.07% 2.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,790 683 380
10th Percentile £331 £325 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £503 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.60% +0.60% -9.09%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £591
90th Percentile £701 £688 £663
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -7.50% +5.26% -7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 189 87 105
10th Percentile £16.61 £20.50 £30.00
25th Percentile £26.52 £41.25 £51.25
Median hourly rate £53.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.69% - -3.70%
75th Percentile £71.25 £67.00 £71.50
90th Percentile £82.30 £75.00 £76.12
UK excluding London median hourly rate £53.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -17.69% - -6.14%

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 45,945 29,375 32,666
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.44% 90.50% 85.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,954 18,237 20,159
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,063 1,777 1,475
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.23 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.42 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.47 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £66.70 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.08 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +78.13% -47.67% +6.17%

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 15 September 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 15 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Top 18 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 15 September 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 +33 2,594 £500 -2.44% 4,689
UK excluding London +25 1,374 £463 -7.50% 2,764
London +41 1,283 £525 - 2,345
Work from Home +24 837 £500 - 1,780
North of England +42 330 £450 +5.88% 466
South East +2 330 £501 +0.25% 646
Midlands +34 301 £473 -0.42% 393
West Midlands +25 211 £464 -2.40% 279
North West +21 160 £450 +5.88% 286
Yorkshire +52 148 £461 -2.89% 125
South West +4 142 £525 -4.55% 382
East of England -6 142 £478 -4.40% 420
Scotland +47 122 £430 -15.02% 362
East Midlands +27 86 £490 -2.00% 113
North East -22 27 £425 -5.56% 67
Wales -2 24 £363 -3.33% 60
Northern Ireland +4 4 £363 -40.33% 72
Channel Islands -5 1 - - 1

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 84 (2.78%) Confluence
2 68 (2.25%) Apache Airflow
3 60 (1.98%) SharePoint
4 53 (1.75%) SAS
5 43 (1.42%) Apache Spark
6 31 (1.03%) Apache
7 19 (0.63%) Microsoft Exchange
8 14 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
9 12 (0.40%) CMS
10 9 (0.30%) Jupyter
10 9 (0.30%) SharePoint 2013
11 7 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
11 7 (0.23%) Sitecore CMS
12 6 (0.20%) WebLogic
13 5 (0.17%) ArcGIS
13 5 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 5 (0.17%) Tuxedo
14 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
14 4 (0.13%) Headless CMS
14 4 (0.13%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 216 (7.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 47 (1.55%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (1.39%) MS Visio
4 35 (1.16%) Spreadsheet
5 32 (1.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 15 (0.50%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
7 10 (0.33%) Navisworks
7 10 (0.33%) Revit
8 9 (0.30%) ProjectWise
9 6 (0.20%) CATIA
9 6 (0.20%) Simulink
10 4 (0.13%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.066%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.066%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.066%) Windchill
12 1 (0.033%) Gliffy
12 1 (0.033%) LaTeX
12 1 (0.033%) Oracle Smart View
12 1 (0.033%) Trello
Business Applications
1 117 (3.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 18 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
3 15 (0.50%) SAP SD
4 13 (0.43%) NetSuite
4 13 (0.43%) SAP FI
4 13 (0.43%) Teamcenter
5 12 (0.40%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.36%) Aladdin
6 11 (0.36%) iTrent
6 11 (0.36%) SAP MDG
6 11 (0.36%) SAP MM
7 10 (0.33%) SAP HCM
8 9 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
8 9 (0.30%) SAP CO
8 9 (0.30%) SAP ERP
8 9 (0.30%) SAP PS
9 8 (0.26%) Oracle Financials
9 8 (0.26%) Oracle General Ledger
9 8 (0.26%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 608 (20.11%) Azure
2 341 (11.28%) AWS
3 305 (10.09%) Power Platform
4 181 (5.99%) Azure DevOps
5 139 (4.60%) GCP
6 134 (4.43%) GitHub
7 109 (3.61%) Snowflake
8 87 (2.88%) Entra ID
9 74 (2.45%) Azure Data Factory
10 72 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
11 61 (2.02%) Serverless
12 60 (1.98%) Microsoft 365
13 59 (1.95%) SaaS
14 56 (1.85%) dbt
15 54 (1.79%) Amazon S3
16 41 (1.36%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 39 (1.29%) SuccessFactors
18 34 (1.12%) Azure Monitor
19 33 (1.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 33 (1.09%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 110 (3.64%) Firewall
2 71 (2.35%) DNS
3 67 (2.22%) VLAN
4 60 (1.98%) Network Security
5 51 (1.69%) VPN
6 46 (1.52%) BGP
7 45 (1.49%) TCP/IP
8 43 (1.42%) WAN
9 34 (1.12%) DHCP
10 28 (0.93%) OSPF
11 26 (0.86%) VXLAN
12 25 (0.83%) Wireless
13 23 (0.76%) Ethernet VPN
14 22 (0.73%) Internet
14 22 (0.73%) LAN
14 22 (0.73%) SD-WAN
15 21 (0.69%) Ethernet
15 21 (0.69%) HTTP
16 20 (0.66%) SAN
16 20 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 283 (9.36%) Power BI
2 167 (5.52%) Data Warehouse
3 131 (4.33%) Metadata
4 119 (3.94%) Relational Database
5 105 (3.47%) SQL Server
6 93 (3.08%) PostgreSQL
7 82 (2.71%) Data Lake
8 76 (2.51%) Tableau
9 42 (1.39%) Oracle Database
10 40 (1.32%) Delta Lake
11 37 (1.22%) MongoDB
12 36 (1.19%) Big Data
13 34 (1.12%) BigQuery
14 33 (1.09%) Power Query
15 32 (1.06%) NoSQL
16 31 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
17 30 (0.99%) Redis
17 30 (0.99%) SAS Enterprise Guide
18 29 (0.96%) Azure SQL Database
18 29 (0.96%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 268 (8.87%) JIRA
2 215 (7.11%) Git
3 102 (3.37%) Jenkins
4 89 (2.94%) GitLab
5 80 (2.65%) Selenium
6 42 (1.39%) Postman
7 35 (1.16%) JMeter
8 25 (0.83%) Cucumber
9 22 (0.73%) WebDriver
10 20 (0.66%) Rational DOORS
11 19 (0.63%) JUnit
12 17 (0.56%) Eclipse
13 15 (0.50%) Cypress.io
13 15 (0.50%) Gatling
13 15 (0.50%) REST Assured
13 15 (0.50%) Zephyr
14 14 (0.46%) Oracle Forms
15 13 (0.43%) Visual Studio
16 12 (0.40%) Maven
16 12 (0.40%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 865 (28.61%) Social Skills
2 860 (28.45%) Finance
3 602 (19.91%) Analytical Skills
4 257 (8.50%) Public Sector
5 256 (8.47%) Banking
6 144 (4.76%) Documentation Skills
7 114 (3.77%) Manufacturing
8 98 (3.24%) Retail
9 67 (2.22%) Automotive
9 67 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 66 (2.18%) Telecoms
11 59 (1.95%) Organisational Skills
12 58 (1.92%) Pharmaceutical
13 54 (1.79%) Legal
14 51 (1.69%) Marketing
15 50 (1.65%) Aerospace
16 46 (1.52%) Front Office
16 46 (1.52%) Law
17 41 (1.36%) Local Government
18 39 (1.29%) Billing
Job Titles
1 540 (17.86%) Analyst
2 344 (11.38%) Senior
3 276 (9.13%) Lead
4 246 (8.14%) Business Analyst
5 243 (8.04%) Consultant
6 238 (7.87%) Data Engineer
7 189 (6.25%) Developer
8 158 (5.23%) Data Analyst
9 151 (5.00%) Architect
10 113 (3.74%) Test Engineer
11 76 (2.51%) Tester
12 73 (2.41%) Network Engineer
13 65 (2.15%) Systems Engineer
14 61 (2.02%) Administrator
15 58 (1.92%) Project Manager
16 57 (1.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 57 (1.89%) Senior Data Engineer
17 55 (1.82%) Senior Analyst
18 50 (1.65%) Technical Analyst
19 49 (1.62%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 186 (6.15%) REST
2 162 (5.36%) Terraform
3 101 (3.34%) JSON
4 90 (2.98%) PySpark
5 84 (2.78%) XML
6 77 (2.55%) Middleware
7 74 (2.45%) Kafka
8 54 (1.79%) Playwright
9 51 (1.69%) .NET
10 47 (1.55%) SOAP
11 46 (1.52%) Oracle Fusion
12 45 (1.49%) pytest
12 45 (1.49%) Web Services
13 42 (1.39%) OAuth
14 38 (1.26%) Pandas
15 37 (1.22%) RESTful
15 37 (1.22%) Spring
16 33 (1.09%) Spring Boot
17 30 (0.99%) HTML
18 29 (0.96%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 163 (5.39%) Onboarding
2 158 (5.23%) Data Structures
3 131 (4.33%) Cloud Native
4 122 (4.04%) Legacy Systems
5 111 (3.67%) Product Ownership
6 110 (3.64%) Management Information System
7 86 (2.84%) Data Centre
8 56 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
9 53 (1.75%) Distributed Systems
10 51 (1.69%) AI Agents
11 46 (1.52%) Life Science
12 44 (1.46%) Analytical Mindset
12 44 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
13 42 (1.39%) SCADA
14 37 (1.22%) NHS
15 36 (1.19%) Operational Technology
16 35 (1.16%) Algorithms
16 35 (1.16%) Replication
17 33 (1.09%) CMDB
18 32 (1.06%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 192 (6.35%) Windows
2 132 (4.37%) Linux
3 76 (2.51%) Windows Server
4 53 (1.75%) Unix
5 22 (0.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (0.50%) Android
6 15 (0.50%) Windows 10
7 11 (0.36%) Ubuntu
7 11 (0.36%) VMS
8 9 (0.30%) AIX
8 9 (0.30%) Apple iOS
9 7 (0.23%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.13%) SUSE
10 4 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.099%) VxWorks
11 3 (0.099%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.066%) CentOS
12 2 (0.066%) HPUX
12 2 (0.066%) Solaris
12 2 (0.066%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 816 (26.99%) Migration
2 645 (21.34%) Stakeholder Management
3 591 (19.55%) Agile
4 569 (18.82%) CI/CD
5 491 (16.24%) User Acceptance Testing
6 489 (16.18%) Data Modelling
7 481 (15.91%) Analytics
8 478 (15.81%) Data Migration
9 473 (15.65%) Data Validation
10 465 (15.38%) Problem-Solving
11 411 (13.60%) AI
12 402 (13.30%) DevOps
13 386 (12.77%) Continuous Improvement
14 383 (12.67%) Test Automation
15 342 (11.31%) ETL
16 324 (10.72%) Business Intelligence
17 318 (10.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 314 (10.39%) Data Analysis
19 310 (10.25%) Data Pipeline
20 303 (10.02%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 791 (26.17%) SQL
2 621 (20.54%) Python
3 150 (4.96%) Java
4 101 (3.34%) PowerShell
5 70 (2.32%) JavaScript
6 68 (2.25%) C#
7 60 (1.98%) Bash
8 41 (1.36%) C++
8 41 (1.36%) TypeScript
9 32 (1.06%) Apex Code
10 31 (1.03%) R
11 30 (0.99%) PL/SQL
12 28 (0.93%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 26 (0.86%) Shell Script
14 25 (0.83%) Bicep
14 25 (0.83%) C
15 18 (0.60%) T-SQL
15 18 (0.60%) VBA
16 16 (0.53%) MATLAB
17 15 (0.50%) Scala
Qualifications
1 590 (19.52%) Security Cleared
2 432 (14.29%) SC Cleared
3 196 (6.48%) Degree
4 82 (2.71%) DV Cleared
5 70 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
6 47 (1.55%) Cisco Certification
6 47 (1.55%) Computer Science Degree
7 38 (1.26%) CCNP
8 29 (0.96%) ACCA
8 29 (0.96%) AWS Certification
8 29 (0.96%) CIMA
9 27 (0.89%) ISTQB
10 24 (0.79%) Azure Certification
11 21 (0.69%) PMI Certification
12 19 (0.63%) PMP
13 17 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 17 (0.56%) CISSP
13 17 (0.56%) Master's Degree
14 16 (0.53%) CCNA
15 15 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 625 (20.67%) Data Quality
2 371 (12.27%) QA
3 106 (3.51%) GDPR
4 50 (1.65%) Accessibility
5 41 (1.36%) SLA
6 40 (1.32%) GxP
7 39 (1.29%) NIST
8 37 (1.22%) PMO
9 33 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 23 (0.76%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 21 (0.69%) ISO 20022
12 20 (0.66%) GRC
13 17 (0.56%) GMP
14 16 (0.53%) WCAG
15 14 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
15 14 (0.46%) NCSC
16 11 (0.36%) Def Stans
16 11 (0.36%) IFRS
16 11 (0.36%) MiFID
17 10 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 114 (3.77%) Docker
2 100 (3.31%) Active Directory
3 87 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
5 35 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
6 29 (0.96%) Firmware
7 25 (0.83%) Hyper-V
8 23 (0.76%) Virtual Desktop
8 23 (0.76%) vSphere
9 14 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.17%) KVM
12 4 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.099%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.066%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.066%) OpenSSH
14 2 (0.066%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.033%) Microsoft App-V
15 1 (0.033%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 1 (0.033%) NFS
Systems Management
1 143 (4.73%) Kubernetes
2 92 (3.04%) Ansible
3 42 (1.39%) Grafana
4 34 (1.12%) Prometheus
5 27 (0.89%) Microsoft Intune
6 25 (0.83%) FortiGate
7 19 (0.63%) SCCM
8 18 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
9 15 (0.50%) HP ALM
9 15 (0.50%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.33%) Failover Clustering
10 10 (0.33%) VxRail
11 9 (0.30%) Argo
12 7 (0.23%) Functional Safety
12 7 (0.23%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.20%) Control-M
13 6 (0.20%) Microsoft Clustering
14 5 (0.17%) systemd
14 5 (0.17%) vMotion
14 5 (0.17%) vRealize
Vendors
1 463 (15.32%) Microsoft
2 262 (8.67%) SAP
3 254 (8.40%) Oracle
4 167 (5.52%) Databricks
5 101 (3.34%) Salesforce
6 99 (3.27%) VMware
7 82 (2.71%) Cisco
8 76 (2.51%) ServiceNow
9 55 (1.82%) Google
10 50 (1.65%) Workday
11 45 (1.49%) IBM
12 35 (1.16%) Informatica
13 31 (1.03%) Fortinet
14 30 (0.99%) Zscaler
15 29 (0.96%) Juniper
16 27 (0.89%) Palo Alto
17 23 (0.76%) Splunk
18 22 (0.73%) MuleSoft
19 17 (0.56%) Ariba
19 17 (0.56%) CyberArk