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

6 months to
2 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 75 120
Rank change year-on-year +35 +45 +35
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,391 953 812
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.90% 3.29% 1.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.79% 3.62% 2.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,428 570 402
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £403 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% - -4.98%
75th Percentile £588 £629 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £686
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £514 £500
% change year-on-year -10.46% +2.75% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 157 60 172
10th Percentile £17.23 £16.50 £26.88
25th Percentile £27.24 £37.25 £51.25
Median hourly rate £62.50 £56.77 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.09% -5.38% -4.94%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.30 £75.25 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.07 £61.25 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.60% -2.00% -

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 41,283 26,327 36,811
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.64% 90.98% 85.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,781 16,819 23,635
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £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 2,472 1,115 2,532
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £27.99 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.84% -23.32% +0.29%
75th Percentile £67.84 £57.50 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.05 £74.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +8.91%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 +28 2,080 £500 -6.98% 1,198
UK excluding London +30 1,136 £460 -10.46% 874
London +50 990 £513 -6.82% 461
Work from Home +53 711 £481 -3.80% 586
North of England +40 286 £437 -2.83% 181
Midlands +33 255 £492 +9.33% 127
South East -3 239 £500 - 258
West Midlands +25 180 £478 +18.02% 78
North West +31 165 £423 -3.43% 104
South West 0 128 £500 -13.04% 121
East of England +10 127 £475 +5.56% 131
Yorkshire +18 109 £453 +4.14% 56
Scotland +42 76 £395 -16.84% 37
East Midlands +19 70 £525 +15.51% 49
Wales +8 23 £455 +193.55% 20
North East -16 15 £438 -25.53% 23
Northern Ireland +13 13 £400 -32.20% 21

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 85 (3.55%) Confluence
2 53 (2.22%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (1.88%) Apache Spark
4 39 (1.63%) SAS
5 30 (1.25%) SharePoint
6 23 (0.96%) Apache
7 13 (0.54%) Jupyter
8 10 (0.42%) ArcGIS
8 10 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.38%) Appian
9 9 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.17%) CMS
11 4 (0.17%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 3 (0.13%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.084%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 2 (0.084%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 155 (6.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.42%) MS Visio
3 28 (1.17%) Microsoft Office
4 23 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 23 (0.96%) Spreadsheet
5 13 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (0.33%) CATIA
7 5 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 4 (0.17%) Simulink
9 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.084%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.084%) Notion
10 2 (0.084%) Sketch
11 1 (0.042%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.042%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.042%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.042%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.042%) UXPin
11 1 (0.042%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 117 (4.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.38%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.67%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.59%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.59%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.59%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.50%) Oracle Assets
5 12 (0.50%) Workday HCM
6 9 (0.38%) Aladdin
6 9 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
7 8 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
7 8 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.33%) SAP ERP
8 7 (0.29%) NetSuite
8 7 (0.29%) Oracle Financials
8 7 (0.29%) Sage X3
8 7 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 6 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
9 6 (0.25%) iTrent
9 6 (0.25%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 466 (19.49%) Azure
2 297 (12.42%) AWS
3 235 (9.83%) Power Platform
4 122 (5.10%) GCP
5 121 (5.06%) Azure DevOps
6 110 (4.60%) GitHub
7 78 (3.26%) Snowflake
8 65 (2.72%) GitHub Actions
9 59 (2.47%) Serverless
10 58 (2.43%) Azure Data Factory
10 58 (2.43%) Entra ID
11 56 (2.34%) Amazon S3
12 55 (2.30%) SaaS
13 41 (1.71%) OCI
14 38 (1.59%) Microsoft 365
15 35 (1.46%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 32 (1.34%) dbt
17 31 (1.30%) AWS Lambda
18 28 (1.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 28 (1.17%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 88 (3.68%) Firewall
2 58 (2.43%) Network Security
3 41 (1.71%) VLAN
4 38 (1.59%) DNS
5 34 (1.42%) VPN
6 32 (1.34%) TCP/IP
7 30 (1.25%) WAN
8 24 (1.00%) Ethernet
9 18 (0.75%) BGP
9 18 (0.75%) LAN
9 18 (0.75%) OSPF
10 17 (0.71%) SAN
10 17 (0.71%) SD-WAN
11 15 (0.63%) Wireless
12 14 (0.59%) DHCP
12 14 (0.59%) Wi-Fi
13 13 (0.54%) Internet
14 12 (0.50%) HTTP
14 12 (0.50%) NAS
15 10 (0.42%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 219 (9.16%) Power BI
2 118 (4.94%) Data Warehouse
3 86 (3.60%) SQL Server
4 82 (3.43%) Metadata
5 71 (2.97%) PostgreSQL
5 71 (2.97%) Tableau
6 67 (2.80%) Data Lake
7 49 (2.05%) Relational Database
8 34 (1.42%) Big Data
9 30 (1.25%) NoSQL
10 28 (1.17%) Amazon Redshift
11 26 (1.09%) Power Query
12 25 (1.05%) Oracle Database
12 25 (1.05%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 24 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
13 24 (1.00%) Delta Lake
14 23 (0.96%) BigQuery
14 23 (0.96%) Oracle Reports
14 23 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 21 (0.88%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 209 (8.74%) JIRA
2 127 (5.31%) Git
3 92 (3.85%) Jenkins
4 63 (2.63%) GitLab
5 55 (2.30%) Selenium
6 52 (2.17%) Postman
7 47 (1.97%) JMeter
8 37 (1.55%) JUnit
9 35 (1.46%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.25%) WebDriver
11 29 (1.21%) Rational DOORS
12 17 (0.71%) Rational Rhapsody
13 16 (0.67%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.63%) Eclipse
14 15 (0.63%) MLflow
15 10 (0.42%) Gatling
15 10 (0.42%) Gradle
15 10 (0.42%) Maven
16 9 (0.38%) Bitbucket
16 9 (0.38%) REST Assured
General
1 715 (29.90%) Finance
2 714 (29.86%) Social Skills
3 424 (17.73%) Analytical Skills
4 197 (8.24%) Banking
5 196 (8.20%) Public Sector
6 132 (5.52%) Documentation Skills
7 84 (3.51%) Manufacturing
8 67 (2.80%) Aerospace
9 53 (2.22%) Pharmaceutical
10 48 (2.01%) Retail
11 47 (1.97%) Organisational Skills
12 41 (1.71%) Presentation Skills
13 40 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 39 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
15 38 (1.59%) Legal
16 37 (1.55%) General Ledger
17 36 (1.51%) Marketing
18 34 (1.42%) Telecoms
19 33 (1.38%) Front Office
20 30 (1.25%) Military
Job Titles
1 426 (17.82%) Analyst
2 249 (10.41%) Lead
3 217 (9.08%) Senior
4 204 (8.53%) Business Analyst
5 184 (7.70%) Data Engineer
6 169 (7.07%) Consultant
7 147 (6.15%) Architect
8 129 (5.40%) Developer
9 117 (4.89%) Data Analyst
10 85 (3.55%) Project Manager
11 63 (2.63%) Test Engineer
12 61 (2.55%) Tester
13 47 (1.97%) Software Engineer
13 47 (1.97%) Test Manager
14 45 (1.88%) Senior Analyst
14 45 (1.88%) Systems Engineer
15 44 (1.84%) Network Engineer
16 43 (1.80%) Technical Analyst
17 40 (1.67%) Migration Engineer
17 40 (1.67%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 127 (5.31%) REST
2 83 (3.47%) JSON
3 68 (2.84%) Kafka
4 53 (2.22%) Oracle Fusion
5 52 (2.17%) Middleware
6 50 (2.09%) XML
7 49 (2.05%) OAuth
8 42 (1.76%) PySpark
9 40 (1.67%) Swagger
10 39 (1.63%) RESTful
11 38 (1.59%) SOAP
12 37 (1.55%) .NET
13 33 (1.38%) Pandas
13 33 (1.38%) Spring
14 32 (1.34%) pytest
15 30 (1.25%) Node.js
15 30 (1.25%) Web Services
16 29 (1.21%) OAuth2
17 27 (1.13%) PyTorch
18 25 (1.05%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 129 (5.40%) Legacy Systems
2 119 (4.98%) Onboarding
3 116 (4.85%) Data Structures
4 102 (4.27%) Product Ownership
5 92 (3.85%) Cloud Native
6 78 (3.26%) Data Centre
7 60 (2.51%) Management Information System
8 48 (2.01%) Distributed Systems
9 41 (1.71%) Analytical Mindset
10 38 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
11 35 (1.46%) Life Science
12 33 (1.38%) SCADA
13 31 (1.30%) Operational Technology
14 30 (1.25%) Replication
15 28 (1.17%) Hybrid Cloud
15 28 (1.17%) NHS
15 28 (1.17%) Reference Data
16 27 (1.13%) Public Cloud
16 27 (1.13%) Virtual Team
17 25 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 122 (5.10%) Windows
2 93 (3.89%) Linux
3 32 (1.34%) Unix
4 23 (0.96%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.50%) Android
5 12 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.33%) VMS
7 7 (0.29%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.21%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.17%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
9 4 (0.17%) SUSE
10 3 (0.13%) zOS
11 2 (0.084%) HPUX
11 2 (0.084%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.084%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.042%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.042%) Debian
12 1 (0.042%) pSOS
12 1 (0.042%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 634 (26.52%) Migration
2 460 (19.24%) Agile
3 416 (17.40%) Problem-Solving
4 403 (16.85%) Stakeholder Management
5 400 (16.73%) Data Validation
6 381 (15.93%) CI/CD
7 379 (15.85%) Data Migration
8 372 (15.56%) Data Modelling
9 365 (15.27%) User Acceptance Testing
10 349 (14.60%) Analytics
11 298 (12.46%) ETL
12 287 (12.00%) AI
13 286 (11.96%) DevOps
14 283 (11.84%) Test Automation
15 262 (10.96%) Continuous Improvement
16 261 (10.92%) Business Intelligence
17 249 (10.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 225 (9.41%) Data Analysis
19 216 (9.03%) Data Governance
20 215 (8.99%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 548 (22.92%) SQL
2 423 (17.69%) Python
3 114 (4.77%) Java
4 57 (2.38%) C#
4 57 (2.38%) PowerShell
5 47 (1.97%) Bash
6 46 (1.92%) C++
7 43 (1.80%) C
8 40 (1.67%) JavaScript
9 33 (1.38%) Bicep
10 30 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 29 (1.21%) TypeScript
12 26 (1.09%) PL/SQL
13 25 (1.05%) Apex Code
14 23 (0.96%) R
15 22 (0.92%) Ada
16 20 (0.84%) Scala
17 18 (0.75%) MATLAB
18 13 (0.54%) T-SQL
19 12 (0.50%) VBA
Qualifications
1 430 (17.98%) Security Cleared
2 319 (13.34%) SC Cleared
3 186 (7.78%) Degree
4 61 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 49 (2.05%) Computer Science Degree
6 42 (1.76%) DV Cleared
7 31 (1.30%) PMI Certification
8 30 (1.25%) Cisco Certification
9 27 (1.13%) PMP
10 24 (1.00%) CCNP
11 22 (0.92%) Master's Degree
12 20 (0.84%) ACCA
13 19 (0.79%) ISTQB
14 18 (0.75%) CIMA
15 17 (0.71%) CISSP
16 14 (0.59%) Microsoft Certification
17 13 (0.54%) Azure Certification
18 12 (0.50%) CCNA
18 12 (0.50%) DBS Check
19 11 (0.46%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 405 (16.94%) Data Quality
2 293 (12.25%) QA
3 117 (4.89%) GDPR
4 64 (2.68%) NIST
5 54 (2.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 39 (1.63%) Accessibility
7 34 (1.42%) SLA
8 31 (1.30%) GxP
9 29 (1.21%) PMO
10 27 (1.13%) IFRS
11 18 (0.75%) Def Stans
11 18 (0.75%) GMP
11 18 (0.75%) GRC
11 18 (0.75%) IFRS 17
12 17 (0.71%) HL7
13 14 (0.59%) ISO 20022
13 14 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 13 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
14 13 (0.54%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.50%) NIST 800
System Software
1 94 (3.93%) Docker
2 60 (2.51%) Active Directory
3 53 (2.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.00%) Virtual Machines
5 22 (0.92%) Firmware
5 22 (0.92%) Hyper-V
6 17 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.67%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.54%) vSphere
9 9 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.21%) NFS
11 4 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.13%) KVM
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.084%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.084%) Ceph
13 2 (0.084%) Lustre
13 2 (0.084%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.084%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 142 (5.94%) Kubernetes
2 108 (4.52%) Terraform
3 52 (2.17%) Prometheus
4 48 (2.01%) Grafana
5 43 (1.80%) Ansible
6 28 (1.17%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (0.46%) FortiGate
9 9 (0.38%) Kibana
10 8 (0.33%) Puppet
10 8 (0.33%) SCCM
10 8 (0.33%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.25%) Nessus
11 6 (0.25%) vMotion
12 4 (0.17%) Argo
12 4 (0.17%) CASB
12 4 (0.17%) Consul
12 4 (0.17%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.17%) Istio
Vendors
1 326 (13.63%) Microsoft
2 216 (9.03%) SAP
3 199 (8.32%) Oracle
4 114 (4.77%) Databricks
5 77 (3.22%) Salesforce
6 69 (2.89%) ServiceNow
7 64 (2.68%) VMware
8 49 (2.05%) Google
9 48 (2.01%) Cisco
10 42 (1.76%) Splunk
11 31 (1.30%) Workday
12 29 (1.21%) Informatica
13 28 (1.17%) MuleSoft
14 27 (1.13%) Sage
15 26 (1.09%) Palo Alto
16 23 (0.96%) IBM
17 21 (0.88%) IFS
17 21 (0.88%) OpenAI
18 20 (0.84%) CyberArk
18 20 (0.84%) Fortinet