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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 68 127
Rank change year-on-year +32 +59 +24
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,806 1,165 738
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.26% 3.54% 1.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.20% 3.91% 2.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,688 682 366
10th Percentile £339 £350 £340
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £490
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% +6.63% -10.91%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £588
90th Percentile £700 £688 £671
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £515 £463
% change year-on-year -10.19% +11.35% -7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 179 85 122
10th Percentile £17.54 £20.50 £28.18
25th Percentile £27.07 £41.25 £51.06
Median hourly rate £55.00 £60.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -7.69% -
75th Percentile £74.25 £67.00 £68.85
90th Percentile £83.80 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.85% - +3.17%

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 45,262 29,771 33,475
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.91% 90.46% 85.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,917 18,660 21,435
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
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 2,788 1,660 1,878
10th Percentile £14.46 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.30 £18.15
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.63% -5.12%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £64.13
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.30 £40.94
% change year-on-year +88.67% -43.09% +3.38%

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 6 August 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 6 August 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 6 August 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 +32 2,430 £500 -4.76% 1,726
UK excluding London +25 1,329 £463 -10.19% 1,100
London +44 1,156 £525 - 740
Work from Home +41 793 £492 -1.60% 608
South East +6 319 £505 +1.00% 328
Midlands +31 311 £475 +5.56% 178
North of England +50 308 £450 -9.09% 207
West Midlands +30 223 £473 +5.11% 112
North West +24 161 £450 -21.40% 121
East of England +6 149 £475 -6.40% 149
Yorkshire +35 134 £451 +3.56% 48
South West -17 124 £524 -8.91% 157
Scotland +47 94 £423 -9.87% 76
East Midlands +26 82 £525 +15.51% 66
Wales +3 27 £425 +13.33% 20
North East -34 17 £425 -22.73% 41
Northern Ireland +9 10 £380 -35.59% 6
Channel Islands +2 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 83 (2.96%) Confluence
2 68 (2.42%) Apache Airflow
3 56 (2.00%) SAS
4 48 (1.71%) SharePoint
5 41 (1.46%) Apache Spark
6 32 (1.14%) Apache
7 13 (0.46%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
8 11 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.32%) CMS
9 9 (0.32%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.25%) ArcGIS
11 5 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
11 5 (0.18%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
12 4 (0.14%) IIS
12 4 (0.14%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.11%) JBoss
13 3 (0.11%) OpenStack
13 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 190 (6.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 42 (1.50%) MS Visio
3 38 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
4 28 (1.00%) Spreadsheet
5 27 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 11 (0.39%) AutoCAD
6 11 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.29%) CATIA
8 6 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.21%) Navisworks
8 6 (0.21%) ProjectWise
8 6 (0.21%) Revit
8 6 (0.21%) Simulink
9 2 (0.071%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.071%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.071%) Windchill
10 1 (0.036%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.036%) Gliffy
10 1 (0.036%) LaTeX
10 1 (0.036%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 121 (4.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (1.07%) Oracle EBS
3 17 (0.61%) Workday HCM
4 14 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
5 12 (0.43%) iTrent
5 12 (0.43%) Teamcenter
6 11 (0.39%) NetSuite
6 11 (0.39%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 11 (0.39%) SAP ERP
7 10 (0.36%) Aladdin
7 10 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.32%) Dynamics CRM
8 9 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
8 9 (0.32%) Oracle General Ledger
8 9 (0.32%) Sage X3
8 9 (0.32%) SAP MDG
8 9 (0.32%) SAP SD
9 8 (0.29%) Oracle Financials
9 8 (0.29%) SAP Payroll
10 7 (0.25%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 606 (21.60%) Azure
2 329 (11.72%) AWS
3 297 (10.58%) Power Platform
4 155 (5.52%) Azure DevOps
5 147 (5.24%) GCP
6 127 (4.53%) GitHub
7 98 (3.49%) Snowflake
8 75 (2.67%) Entra ID
9 73 (2.60%) Azure Data Factory
10 71 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
11 69 (2.46%) Serverless
12 55 (1.96%) Amazon S3
13 54 (1.92%) SaaS
14 52 (1.85%) Microsoft 365
15 46 (1.64%) dbt
16 45 (1.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 44 (1.57%) OCI
18 41 (1.46%) SuccessFactors
19 34 (1.21%) Azure Monitor
20 33 (1.18%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 113 (4.03%) Firewall
2 69 (2.46%) Network Security
3 63 (2.25%) DNS
4 53 (1.89%) VLAN
5 52 (1.85%) VPN
6 44 (1.57%) TCP/IP
7 40 (1.43%) WAN
8 35 (1.25%) BGP
9 28 (1.00%) DHCP
10 26 (0.93%) OSPF
11 24 (0.86%) LAN
12 23 (0.82%) Internet
13 21 (0.75%) SAN
13 21 (0.75%) SD-WAN
13 21 (0.75%) Wireless
14 17 (0.61%) Ethernet
15 16 (0.57%) HTTP
16 15 (0.53%) VXLAN
16 15 (0.53%) Wi-Fi
17 13 (0.46%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (9.87%) Power BI
2 171 (6.09%) Data Warehouse
3 116 (4.13%) Metadata
4 95 (3.39%) SQL Server
5 91 (3.24%) PostgreSQL
6 89 (3.17%) Data Lake
7 84 (2.99%) Relational Database
8 79 (2.82%) Tableau
9 39 (1.39%) Big Data
10 34 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
11 33 (1.18%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 32 (1.14%) NoSQL
12 32 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 31 (1.10%) Delta Lake
14 30 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
14 30 (1.07%) Oracle Database
15 29 (1.03%) BigQuery
16 27 (0.96%) MongoDB
16 27 (0.96%) Power Query
17 24 (0.86%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 252 (8.98%) JIRA
2 181 (6.45%) Git
3 99 (3.53%) Jenkins
4 76 (2.71%) GitLab
5 63 (2.25%) Selenium
6 49 (1.75%) JMeter
7 45 (1.60%) Postman
8 39 (1.39%) JUnit
9 38 (1.35%) Cucumber
10 33 (1.18%) WebDriver
11 24 (0.86%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.64%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.61%) Gatling
14 15 (0.53%) Visual Studio
15 14 (0.50%) REST Assured
16 13 (0.46%) Rational Rhapsody
17 12 (0.43%) Oracle Forms
18 11 (0.39%) Cypress.io
18 11 (0.39%) Maven
18 11 (0.39%) Zephyr
General
1 804 (28.65%) Social Skills
2 803 (28.62%) Finance
3 545 (19.42%) Analytical Skills
4 238 (8.48%) Public Sector
5 202 (7.20%) Banking
6 150 (5.35%) Documentation Skills
7 105 (3.74%) Manufacturing
8 92 (3.28%) Retail
9 69 (2.46%) Aerospace
10 63 (2.25%) Pharmaceutical
11 61 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 56 (2.00%) Telecoms
13 50 (1.78%) Organisational Skills
14 45 (1.60%) Automotive
15 44 (1.57%) Legal
16 41 (1.46%) Front Office
17 40 (1.43%) Law
17 40 (1.43%) Marketing
18 39 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
19 36 (1.28%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 500 (17.82%) Analyst
2 295 (10.51%) Senior
3 278 (9.91%) Lead
4 234 (8.34%) Business Analyst
5 232 (8.27%) Data Engineer
6 207 (7.38%) Consultant
7 169 (6.02%) Developer
8 146 (5.20%) Architect
9 141 (5.02%) Data Analyst
10 101 (3.60%) Test Engineer
11 80 (2.85%) Tester
12 77 (2.74%) Project Manager
13 67 (2.39%) Network Engineer
14 56 (2.00%) Systems Engineer
15 54 (1.92%) Technical Analyst
16 52 (1.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 50 (1.78%) Administrator
17 50 (1.78%) Senior Data Engineer
18 44 (1.57%) Data Scientist
18 44 (1.57%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 149 (5.31%) REST
2 83 (2.96%) JSON
3 72 (2.57%) PySpark
4 70 (2.49%) Kafka
5 69 (2.46%) XML
6 60 (2.14%) Middleware
7 52 (1.85%) Oracle Fusion
8 49 (1.75%) .NET
9 46 (1.64%) pytest
10 45 (1.60%) Spring
11 42 (1.50%) Playwright
12 41 (1.46%) SOAP
13 37 (1.32%) Web Services
14 36 (1.28%) OAuth
15 34 (1.21%) Pandas
16 33 (1.18%) RESTful
17 29 (1.03%) Node.js
18 26 (0.93%) Spring Boot
19 25 (0.89%) WireMock
20 24 (0.86%) Lightning Web Components
Miscellaneous
1 157 (5.60%) Data Structures
1 157 (5.60%) Onboarding
2 131 (4.67%) Legacy Systems
3 123 (4.38%) Cloud Native
4 118 (4.21%) Product Ownership
5 82 (2.92%) Management Information System
6 80 (2.85%) Data Centre
7 54 (1.92%) Distributed Systems
8 48 (1.71%) Analytical Mindset
9 45 (1.60%) Enterprise Software
10 43 (1.53%) Life Science
11 41 (1.46%) AI Agents
11 41 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
12 40 (1.43%) SCADA
13 36 (1.28%) Hybrid Cloud
14 33 (1.18%) NHS
14 33 (1.18%) Operational Technology
14 33 (1.18%) Public Cloud
15 32 (1.14%) Reference Data
16 31 (1.10%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 161 (5.74%) Windows
2 112 (3.99%) Linux
3 56 (2.00%) Windows Server
4 41 (1.46%) Unix
5 19 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (0.39%) Android
6 11 (0.39%) Ubuntu
6 11 (0.39%) Windows 10
7 9 (0.32%) VMS
8 7 (0.25%) Apple iOS
9 6 (0.21%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.14%) AIX
10 4 (0.14%) SUSE
11 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.071%) HPUX
12 2 (0.071%) Solaris
12 2 (0.071%) VxWorks
13 1 (0.036%) Debian
13 1 (0.036%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 763 (27.19%) Migration
2 553 (19.71%) Agile
3 541 (19.28%) Stakeholder Management
4 489 (17.43%) CI/CD
5 472 (16.82%) Analytics
6 461 (16.43%) User Acceptance Testing
7 458 (16.32%) Data Modelling
8 457 (16.29%) Data Migration
9 454 (16.18%) Data Validation
10 441 (15.72%) Problem-Solving
11 364 (12.97%) AI
12 359 (12.79%) DevOps
13 354 (12.62%) Continuous Improvement
14 340 (12.12%) Test Automation
15 337 (12.01%) ETL
16 317 (11.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 315 (11.23%) Business Intelligence
18 296 (10.55%) Data Pipeline
19 291 (10.37%) Data Governance
20 268 (9.55%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 691 (24.63%) SQL
2 518 (18.46%) Python
3 127 (4.53%) Java
4 76 (2.71%) PowerShell
5 60 (2.14%) C#
6 56 (2.00%) Bash
7 44 (1.57%) JavaScript
8 36 (1.28%) C++
9 34 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 33 (1.18%) TypeScript
11 30 (1.07%) Apex Code
12 29 (1.03%) Bicep
13 26 (0.93%) C
13 26 (0.93%) PL/SQL
14 24 (0.86%) VBA
15 23 (0.82%) R
16 18 (0.64%) T-SQL
17 17 (0.61%) Shell Script
18 16 (0.57%) MATLAB
19 13 (0.46%) Ada
Qualifications
1 509 (18.14%) Security Cleared
2 369 (13.15%) SC Cleared
3 186 (6.63%) Degree
4 65 (2.32%) DV Cleared
5 58 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
6 45 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
7 43 (1.53%) Computer Science Degree
8 36 (1.28%) CCNP
9 25 (0.89%) ISTQB
10 23 (0.82%) ACCA
11 22 (0.78%) CIMA
12 21 (0.75%) PMI Certification
13 20 (0.71%) Azure Certification
13 20 (0.71%) PMP
14 19 (0.68%) CISSP
14 19 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
15 17 (0.61%) CCNA
16 13 (0.46%) AWS Certification
17 11 (0.39%) DBS Check
17 11 (0.39%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 537 (19.14%) Data Quality
2 359 (12.79%) QA
3 126 (4.49%) GDPR
4 52 (1.85%) NIST
5 46 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 45 (1.60%) Accessibility
7 38 (1.35%) GxP
7 38 (1.35%) SLA
8 37 (1.32%) PMO
9 20 (0.71%) GRC
10 19 (0.68%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 18 (0.64%) GMP
12 16 (0.57%) ISO 20022
13 14 (0.50%) Def Stans
13 14 (0.50%) NCSC
13 14 (0.50%) WCAG
14 13 (0.46%) HL7
14 13 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 12 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
15 12 (0.43%) IFRS
System Software
1 120 (4.28%) Docker
2 96 (3.42%) Active Directory
3 73 (2.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (1.18%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (0.75%) Firmware
7 20 (0.71%) Hyper-V
7 20 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.68%) vSphere
9 13 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 4 (0.14%) KVM
11 4 (0.14%) NFS
11 4 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.071%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.071%) OpenSSH
12 2 (0.071%) VirtualBox
12 2 (0.071%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.036%) Ceph
13 1 (0.036%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 156 (5.56%) Kubernetes
2 129 (4.60%) Terraform
3 60 (2.14%) Ansible
4 54 (1.92%) Grafana
5 51 (1.82%) Prometheus
6 26 (0.93%) Microsoft Intune
7 24 (0.86%) FortiGate
8 22 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
9 12 (0.43%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.36%) HP ALM
11 9 (0.32%) SCCM
12 8 (0.29%) VxRail
13 5 (0.18%) Argo
13 5 (0.18%) CASB
13 5 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
13 5 (0.18%) systemd
13 5 (0.18%) vRealize
14 4 (0.14%) Data Guard
14 4 (0.14%) Puppet
14 4 (0.14%) vMotion
Vendors
1 413 (14.72%) Microsoft
2 254 (9.05%) SAP
3 244 (8.70%) Oracle
4 151 (5.38%) Databricks
5 92 (3.28%) Salesforce
6 86 (3.06%) VMware
7 73 (2.60%) ServiceNow
8 62 (2.21%) Cisco
9 52 (1.85%) Google
10 50 (1.78%) Workday
11 39 (1.39%) Informatica
12 31 (1.10%) IBM
12 31 (1.10%) Splunk
13 30 (1.07%) Fortinet
13 30 (1.07%) MuleSoft
13 30 (1.07%) Palo Alto
14 29 (1.03%) Juniper
15 28 (1.00%) Zscaler
16 24 (0.86%) Sage
17 20 (0.71%) IFS